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NUCLEAR
Troops in Gulf to use depleted uranium shells
Letter from Iraq: The Children's Ward
Iraqis trace surge in cancer to US bombings
Weapons-grade uranium not produced at plant
Olympic Hospital Conference studies DU side effects
India Shows Off Military Power on Republic Day
India Hosts Iranian Leader at Military Parade
Blix to Report on Missing Arms Gaps, U-2 Flights
U.N. Hasn't Found Any Iraqi Nuclear Arms Program
Key Questions Unanswered, Blix to Tell Council
After 2 Months, No Proof of Iraq Arms Programs
Inspectors Can't Decide If Iraq Rearming
Blix to Report on Missing Arms Gaps, U - 2 Flights
IAEA Discussing When to Meet on N.Korea-Yonhap
U.S. Spy Plane Crashes in S.Korea, 3 Hurt
North Korea Demands Crisis Talks with Washington
U.S. Has No Intention to Attack N.Korea, Powell Says
North Koreans Still Demand Direct Talks With the U.S.
Powell: U.S. Has No Intention of Attacking N.Korea
Canada Set for Major Missile Defense Talks in U.S.
US may use tactical nukes in Iraq: Report
The Nuclear Option in Iraq
Gospel of Armageddon Finds Fertile Ground Near Indian Point
Bush Campaign Against Iraq Enters Crucial Week
On Tuesday, Bush Should Speak for D.C.
U.S. Is Willing to Stand Alone Against Iraq, Powell Says
Bush wages unprecedented, systematic assault on openness
MILITARY
Peacekeepers: Blasts Heard Near Kabul
Ivory Coast Leader Names New Premier
Envoys Report on Crises in Zimbabwe
Nations Urged to Boost Efforts Against Bioterrorism
Taiwanese Airliner Lands in China for First Time Since 1949
Europe urges restraint, but Bush knows best
Iraqi Dissidents Meet in Iran to Plan Iraq Entry
Stopping War Not 'Up to Us,' Iraqi Says
US buys up Iraqi oil to stave off crisis
Top Iraqi Adviser Says He Believes War Is Inevitable
Iraqi troops may resist bitterly in desperate fight
U.S. Warplanes Strike in Southern Iraq No-Fly Zone
Iraqi Dissidents Meet in Iran to Plan Iraq Entry
Report: Death, Disease Await Iraqi Kids
Israeli Army Raids Gaza, Killing 12 Palestinians
Copters fire on crowds, kill 12
Israel seals Gaza borders after army incursion kills 12
Bahrain Deploys Patriot Missiles
Report: Turkey, U.S. Agree on Troops
Japan to back U.S. independent military operation against Iraq
Weapon-Free Zone to Open in Aceh Amid Violations
Pakistan Begins Satellite Operations
A million refugees if hostilities begin
The CIA's Secret Army
U.S. reluctant to reveal data on Iraqi arms
U.S. Military Considers Limits on Role of the Reserve Forces
U.S. Spy Plane Crashes in South Korea, Injuring 5
The News Media Could Be Our Weakest Link
Blair demands new dossier to drum up support for Iraq war
Oil is key as Bush agrees month delay
Blair: war can start without UN arms find
Britain Says UN Experts Need Time, but Not Months
Powell Tells Europe U.S. Ready to Attack Iraq Alone
Follow the Resolution
In Britain, War Concern Grows Into Resentment of U.S. Power
February date hinted on war decision
Words of War for Doubting Public
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Hunters Captured by the Game Warden
Steele Seeks New Study of Death Penalty Cases
Cheating Security
Customs expands air protection over capital
Growth Brings Crime -- And a Crowded Jail
Sub, Navy SEALs Run Anti - Terrorism Drill
ENERGY AND OTHER
ArrowBio Process: A Source of Green Energy
'There Is No Shortage of Oil'
Island of Dissent Blocks Revival Bid
Containers Go Upscale at Embassy in Kabul
ACTIVISTS
800 march to protest war
Clashes Begin Near Forum as Security Clamps Down
Davos denies protesters an audience
Some War Protesters Uneasy With Others
D.C. bishop plans activist agenda
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Troops in Gulf to use depleted uranium shells
IAN BRUCE
jan. 22nd
The London Herald
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/22-1-19103-0-15-32.html
THE two armoured regiments which will form the spearhead of any British contribution to a US-led attack on Iraq will be relying on radioactive depleted uranium shells to fight their way through the tanks of Saddam Hussein's republican guard, military sources admitted yesterday.
The DU rounds, blamed by veterans for contributing to Gulf war syndrome, a rash of terminal illnesses suffered by those who served in Kosovo in 1999, and by environmentalists for long-term radioactive soil contamination, will also have to be test-fired on Kuwaiti ranges before the British Challenger 2 crews can go into action.
DU is the most effective anti-tank weapon ever devised. Formed into penetrator rods from low-level nuclear reactor waste, it is capable of generating massive kinetic energy which can smash through all known armour.
The other characteristics which make it attractive for conversion to munitions is that it is the densest material on the market, available in large quantities, and is virtually free as an unwanted waste-product of the atomic energy industry.
The Ministry of Defence announced last year it was to buy a tungsten-tipped, armour-piercing round amid concern over the side-effects of the DU shells, although it continues to deny that the ammunition is the source of cancers contracted by servicemen in areas where it was used in battle since its introduction in 1991.
The Royal Navy has also stopped using DU shells for the Phalanx rapid-fire anti-missile gatling guns fitted to most surface warships as a last-ditch defence, because the American manufacturer ceased production to avoid potential lawsuits.
Tank crews in the British, American, French and Russian armies still insist that it is the most effective type of shell they have and most are willing to risk the effects of low-level radiation as an alternative to using tungsten-tipped or other kinds of ammunition.
A direct hit with a DU round at 1500 metres - the optimum battle range for tanks - is almost certain to destroy an enemy vehicle and its crew.
Although there is almost no danger to crewmen handling the DU rounds, when they punch through an enemy tank they disintegrate in a cloud of uranium dioxide dust. This can be breathed in by anyone near the stricken vehicle for some time after the impact. While veterans' organisations claim the particles can cause brain, lung and lymph node cancers, the MoD insists the risks are "overstated" and that it would take 50 hours for troops involved in salvaging damaged or knocked-out armoured vehicles to inhale enough dust to pose a health threat.
Shaun Rusling, chairman of the UK National Gulf War Veterans and Families Association, a lobby group on health and environmental issues, said: "The shame is that if there is an invasion of Iraq, then hundreds of allied servicemen and perhaps thousands of Iraqi civilians are going to be exposed to the killer after-effects once again."
The MoD said: "We have never said we are going into wholesale tungsten at the expense of DU. It's an alternative."
----
Letter from Iraq: The Children's Ward
Inside an Iraqi hospital, where the Gulf War's effects are still felt
Saturday, Jan. 25, 2003
By MEENAKSHI GANGULY
http://www.time.com/time/world/printout/0,8816,411366,00.html
Zainab is 40 days old and has spent her entire life at the Basra hospital. After all this time, her doctors think she just might pull through because she now weighs four and a half pounds. But even if she survives, her future is bleak. Zainab was born with underdeveloped limbs. Her mother Nazad says she knew the reason as soon as her newborn daughter was shown to her. "It is because my womb is poisoned," she said, rocking the tightly wrapped bundle of her child. "The baby became sick and came out early."
Doctors have a different explanation, but Nazad's reasoning is close enough. Her family lives in Al Zubair, a town on Iraq's border with Kuwait. This area was heavily bombed during the Gulf War. According to the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute, more than 900,000 depleted uranium tipped bullets were fired. When they exploded, say experts, toxic substances were released in the ground and air, and after four or five years, entered the food chain, affecting human lives. Gulf War syndrome has been reported in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and even among American soldiers on the ground. (Washington denies that the illnesses are caused by depleted uranium.) The Iraqi government has noted a remarkable increase in cancer, reduced fertility, miscarriages and children born with congenital defects. In the southern Basra province, multiple congenital malformation cases have shot up from 37 in 1990 to 301 in 2002. "We have a generation of children that are going to die too soon," says Dr. Jnana Ghalib Hassan, Zainab's pediatrician. "First the Americans poisoned our land, and now we are being denied medicines to help these people."
Dr. Hassan stalks through the cancer ward of the Basra hospital where several children lie hooked up to intravenous drips. She shows hideous photographs of damaged children, many of them little more than lumps of meat. Those did not make it, but there are plenty that would survive if only they had some medication. But these are poor people and cannot afford medicines. Cancer drugs, for instance, fall under the dual use category and are listed under UN sanctions. So, although medical services are highly subsidized in Iraq, these children can have no treatment. Leukemia patients are given a blood transfusion and discharged. Other cancers are treated symptomatically. Everything is available in Iraq, even medicines, but come at a heavy price in the black market. A drug that the in the states would sell for around $80 U.S. can cost up to $80,000. "I know these children are going to die," says Dr Hassan. "But I don't say anything. I just send them home."
It's not just a shortage of drugs that is hurting the Iraqi medical system. Dr. Murtada Hussan, Deputy Director of the Al Mansur Pediatric Hospital in Baghdad says that supporting facilities like ventilation, sewage disposal and elevators have disappeared because of a shortage of spares. And Iraq's doctors, once considered the best in the Arab world, no longer have access to advances in medical science because they have no books, no Internet connections and barely any money to attend international conferences. "They say we use everything for weapons," he says bitterly. "But everything has a dual use. Even a kitchen knife can cut vegetables or kill someone."
Yasmin brought her 12-year-old son Ahmed to Baghdad hoping that there were more medicines in the capital than in the local hospital in southern Iraq. But Owaid, who has blood cancer, is not getting any better. He has clots in his eyes and his lips are bleeding. Yasmin says that many kids in her village are falling sick. Most of them have the same symptoms: fever and pain in their joints because of swollen lymph nodes. Dr.Hussan walks past rows of sick beds, talking to desperate parents and their children. "All these patients are the same," he says. "They are all victims of the war."
----
Iraqis trace surge in cancer to US bombings
By Elizabeth Neuffer,
Boston Globe Staff,
1/26/2003
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/026/nation/Iraqis_trace_surge_in_cancer_to_US_bombingsP.shtml
BASRA, Iraq - Gashia Said explains why her 6-year-old granddaughter, Duaa, lies weak and emaciated under a thin blanket in a hospital here, her half-open eyes a sliver of exhaustion.
''There was severe bombing in our village during the Bush war. This is the reason why we have all these diseases,'' said the 80-year-old woman, curling her body protectively around her granddaughter's in the hospital bed. ''We never had these diseases before 1991.''
Duaa has leukemia. Doctors in this dilapidated port city say she is one of a growing number of cancer cases here since the end of the Gulf War. While Western researchers have not proven any link, Iraqi doctors attribute the rise in cancer to the depleted uranium in American bombs dropped during the 1991 conflict.
Doctors at the Basra Teaching Hospital not only point to the US-led bombing campaign for Duaa's illness; they also blame the United States for her life expectancy of less than one year. Drugs needed to treat her leukemia and other cancers are impossible to obtain on a regular basis, the doctors maintain, because they are often delayed or blocked by United Nations sanctions pushed by Washington.
''Our job is to give medicine to human beings,'' said Iraq's deputy health minister, Tahir Salman. ''But we are deprived of medicine and the tools to heal, and that is against international law.''
UN officials in New York say that orders for cancer-fighting drugs at times have been approved and sent to Iraq. But doctors here maintain they cannot regularly get the precise mix of medicines needed to treat patients on a regular basis.
''There is always an interruption in chemotherapy drugs - treatment is not one single drug,'' said Dr. Luay I. Kasha, director of Al-Mansour Pediatric Hospital in Baghdad.
Iraq used to have one of the best medical systems in the Middle East. Tours of two public hospitals in this city - a battleground in the Gulf War and still in the heart of the ''no-fly zone'' in southern Iraq - revealed fetid wards, underequipped doctors, and desperately ill patients. There are private hospitals in Iraq, however, where the few who have money can pay to receive better care.
Separating emotion from reality about cancer is difficult here. Passions run high in a country where cancer mortality rates for children are said to be over 80 percent.
Hospital statistics in Basra document that cancer rates are indeed on the rise. In 1988, there were 11 cases of cancer per 100,000 people in the city. By 2001, that number had increased to 116 per 100,000, according to Dr. Jawad al-Ali, a leading Iraqi cancer specialist who teaches at the Saddam Training Hospital in Basra. Breast and lung cancer, lymphoma, and leukemia are among the most common cancers, he said.
Iraq's 1999 National Cancer Registry in Baghdad, also noted an alarming increase in leukemia cases, particularly near Basra. Countrywide, the number of overall cancer cases has grown steadily since the Gulf War, with 7,481 cases in 1989 and 8,592 in 1997, according to registry statistics.
At first, doctors said, they were puzzled by the surge in cancer patients in Basra. Then an American veteran suffering from Gulf War syndrome, Staff Sergeant Carol Picou, drew attention to the fact that many US munitions contained depleted uranium, which remains radioactive, prompting a series of studies. Basra was heavily targeted by the US-led bombing campaign in 1991.
Depleted uranium, because of its high density, is used in armor-piercing shells. When these shell casings explode, small uranium particles are sprayed into the air and can be carcinogenic if inhaled, according to the World Health Organization. The particles are also absorbed by soil and water, entering the food chain.
Researchers in Western countries have not demonstrated that depleted uranium from munitions is responsible for cancer, and there is no consensus on what level of radiation exposure would cause which cancers. In a report last week, the Bush administration accused Iraq of planting false media reports alleging depleted uranium used by allied forces caused birth defects and cancer among its citizens.
The data needed to draw scientific conclusions - such as intensity and duration of exposure - is not the kind of data kept during the chaos of war.
''We have far better data from miners who've been exposed chronically to higher levels,'' said Dr. Graham Colditz, director of education at the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention.
Iraq is not alone in asserting higher cancer rates after a US-led bombing campaign. UN and other officials in Kosovo, which was bombed by US and NATO forces in 1999, have raised the same issue. The World Health Organization is studying whether there are links between depleted uranium and cancer in both places.
Doctors in Basra say that they have no explanation other than depleted uranium for the rise in cancer cases, even factoring in the growing population and greater awareness of cancer symptoms. ''The only factor that has changed here since the '91 war is radiation,'' said Ali, of the Saddam Training Hospital.
The doctor points to his own staff as evidence. All were present when the hospital was heavily bombed during the Gulf War. Thirteen are now cancer patients.
Cancer is just one health concern. Countrywide, infertility has doubled in the past 10 years, health officials say. Doctors say they have also seen an increase in babies born with severe congenital malformations, which they say also may be linked to depleted uranium.
Forty-nine such deformed babies were born in Basra between 1995 and 1998; 224 between 1999 and 2001. Nearly a quarter of the babies born at the Basra Teaching Hospital last year were malformed in some way, said Dr. Janan Ghalib Hassan.
''Before the Gulf War, women would ask when their babies arrived, `Is it male or female?''' Hassan said as she flipped through pictures of newborns with deformities. ''Now they ask, `Is the baby normal?'''
One explanation, doctors outside Iraq say, could be malnutrition. Despite the UN oil-for-food program, which allows some Iraqi oil to be sold and the profits used to buy food for the Iraqi population, more than 50 percent of pregnant women here are anemic, according to the United Nations.
What's more, Iraqi doctors struggle to cope in a public health system eroded by years of war and UN sanctions. Equipment is battered, old, or nonexistent.
Until recently, the UN economic blockade meant nearly every item entering Iraq had to be approved by a UN committee, which sometimes placed holds on imports, disrupting supplies.
UN officials say key cancer-fighting drugs were on a preapproved list and were always swiftly approved. For example, they point to shipments of the cancer-fighting drug cytostar, noting it was delivered to Iraq six times from 1997 to 1999 without delay.
''The bottom line here is, if there are shortages, the drugs simply haven't been ordered,'' said a UN official of the program that controls exports to Iraq, speaking on condition of anonymity.
However, a Nov. 12, 2002 report by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to the Security Council states that cancer-fighting drugs are in ''short supply,'' saying Iraq's failure to order more of them combined with procurement problems means drugs arrive ''erratically.''
Whatever the reason, cancer drugs are lacking. That's why Dr. Jassem Naser looked grim one recent morning as he toured the Basra Teaching Hospital's cancer ward. In one room lay six children, all under 10. None had drugs for their cancer treatment.
''What can I say?'' he said with a shrug. ''This is the effect of war and sanctions.''
--------
Weapons-grade uranium not produced at plant
Sunday, 01/26/03
The Tennessean
By KATHY CARLSON Staff Writer
http://www.tennessean.com/business/archives/03/01/28093534.shtml?Element_ID=28093534
The uranium enrichment plant that Louisiana Energy Services is proposing for Trousdale County would take a uranium compound and process it so that it contains more of an easily split form of uranium than it normally does.
The higher concentration is needed for the uranium to be used to fuel nuclear power plants. More highly enriched, weapons-grade material would not be produced at the plant.
''This plant can't blow up or get a meltdown like in a reactor,'' Thomas B. Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, told The Tennessean last year. ''Here, your concern would be primarily the accidental emissions. Most of the hazard comes from ingestion rather than from the direct exposure, and ingestion is very hard to measure.''
Uranium hexafluoride, the material that would be processed, is slightly radioactive. Its chemical composition, however, poses more serious potential hazards than radioactivity, said University of Tennessee nuclear engineering professor Larry Miller. Breathing the material could be fatal, he said.
LES has said the facility and its processes will be designed to minimize the possibility of emissions, inside and outside the plant.
Much of the concern about the plant has revolved around depleted uranium left over after enrichment.
Opponents say it is still radioactive, could pose health risks if it escaped from containers and could pave the way for storage of other nuclear wastes. LES says it could reprocess the materials and wants to keep some on site.
It says the canisters that would hold the tails are safe, and any radiation is minimal. The company and Trousdale County have reached tentative agreement to limit the amounts that could be kept there, up to 43,500 metric tons at any time.
----
Olympic Hospital Conference studies DU side effects
Baghdad, Jan 26, 2003,
INA (Iraq Daily)
http://www.uruklink.net/iraqdaily/10051/home10.htm
Olympic Hospital First Scientific Medical Conference proved on Sunday , in a study, presented to the conference that using Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons against Iraq during the US-led aggression in 1991 had badly affected the environment and economy. Diseases have lately increased at Basra, Thiquar, Miessan and other provinces.
The study pointed out that researches of Iraqi physicians have disclosed the increasing rate in cancer diseases. Researches and the studies also proved appearance of strange diseases on 120 thousand participating soldiers during the US-led 1991 aggression.
-------- india / pakistan
India Shows Off Military Power on Republic Day
Reuters
Sunday, January 26, 2003; 2:47 AM
By Sanjeev Miglani
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44846-2003Jan26?language=printer
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India celebrated its Republic Day on Sunday with a show of military might, including nuclear-capable missiles designed to reach neighboring Pakistan.
Security was tight as authorities shut off the airspace over capital New Delhi, where the main parade to mark the 53rd anniversary of the country's founding as a republic was being held, and in the financial center Bombay on the west coast.
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, the guest of honor, sat with President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in a bullet-proof enclosure as a 21-gun salute kicked off the parade.
On Saturday, Khatami and Indian Prime Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee joined a host of nations in seeking a peaceful solution under the supervision of the United Nations to the crisis in Iraq.
India and Iran have long had good relations and few in India share Washington's view of Iran as a part of an axis of evil along with Iraq and North Korea.
India's 1.1 million strong military was in full flow on Sunday after last year's truncated show because the bulk of the force was deployed on the border with Pakistan following an attack on Indian parliament blamed on Pakistan-based guerrillas.
Both nations ended the military stand-off late last year, but tense ties were further frayed this week after they expelled each other's diplomats on grounds of spying.
A model of the nuclear-capable Prithvi missile, with a range of 150 km (93 miles), was on show at the parade. "This is a missile capable of striking terror in the enemy, a pride of the Indian army. It is the ultimate weapon," state television said.
Also on show was the 800-km (500-mile) range Agni 1 ballistic missile, which was tested this month.
NEW MISSILE ON SHOW
For the first time, Brahmos, a cruise missile jointly developed with traditional defense partner Russia, was unveiled at the parade. The 290-km supersonic missile is due for tests this month.
Police officials repeated a warning that guerrillas fighting Indian rule in the disputed region of Kashmir could target top politicians attending the parade.
A new metro rail service in Delhi is also feared to be a possible guerrilla target. "We will be keeping a close watch from the air, and on the ground throughout the day," said S.K. Kain, special commissioner, Delhi police.
Hundreds of security men patrolled the violence-torn Kashmir Valley where the main separatist alliance called for a strike and to mark the Indian Republic Day.
Islamic guerrillas in Kashmir have in the past targeted the Republic Day and Independence day celebrations with rocket attacks.
Separatist groups fighting Indian rule in the remote northeast have also called for a general strike to register their protest. ((Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, editing by Rahul Sharma; Reuters Messaging: sanjeev.miglani.reuters.com@reuters.net; +91-11-23012024)
----
India Hosts Iranian Leader at Military Parade
Reuters
Sunday, January 26, 2003; 6:39 AM
By Sanjeev Miglani
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45220-2003Jan26?language=printer
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India celebrated on Sunday its founding as an independent republic by hosting Iranian President Mohammad Khatami at a military parade bristling with nuclear-capable missiles and heavy armor.
Few in India agree with Washington's branding of Iran as part of an axis of evil along with Iraq and North Korea, and analysts said Khatami's presence as guest of honor was a sign of new warmth between the two nations.
"The signal is these are two countries which have common positions on Afghanistan and Central Asia and in a multipolar world which they shall pursue with vigor," said G. Parthasarthy, a foreign policy commentator and former ambassador to Pakistan.
"The significance of Iranian President as a guest of honor at India's most important day is not lost on anyone, including the Islamic world," he said ahead of the 53rd anniversary of India's founding as a republic.
Analysts also saw Khatami's visit as a sign that India intended to carve out relationships independently of Washington.
While ties with the United States have been improving in recent years, New Delhi has been disappointed by what it sees as Washington's failure to stop nuclear rival Pakistan from backing militants fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir.
Washington accuses Tehran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and supporting terrorism.
NUCLEAR-CAPABLE MISSILES ON SHOW
Khatami sat with President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam behind bullet-proof glass during the parade in New Delhi where India rolled out its missiles, including the 800-km (500-mile) nuclear-capable Agni, which can reach most parts of Pakistan.
For the first time, Brahmos, a cruise missile jointly developed with Russia, was unveiled at the parade. The 290-km supersonic missile is due for tests this month. India and Pakistan came close to war last year after a raid on the Indian parliament which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri militants. Pakistan denied involvement.
They have since pulled back some of their troops from the border, but tension remains high.
On Saturday, Khatami and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee joined a host of nations urging a peaceful solution to the crisis in Iraq under the auspices of the United Nations.
Both sides also pledged to start a strategic partnership to build a multipolar world.
India, an ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, has been improving ties with the United States in recent years.
But Washington's decision to turn to Pakistan as its key ally in rooting out the Al Qaeda network in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks on the United States annoyed New Delhi, which accused it of double standards in its war on terror.
India accused Pakistan of working with Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers to train and arm militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, mostly Hindu India's only Muslim-majority state.
Pakistan severed its links with the Taliban after the September 11 attacks, and says it gives only moral support to the "freedom struggle" in Kashmir.
Both New Delhi and Tehran also have common interests in Afghanistan, which shares a border with Iran.
India has built close ties with the new government in Afghanistan and is keen to ensure Pakistan does not regain the influence it had there before September 11.
Indian National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra said last week his country was concerned about reports the Taliban were regrouping in Afghanistan. ((Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani; editing by Myra MacDonald, Reuters Messaging: sanjeev.miglani.reuters.com@reuters.net; +91-11-23012024)
-------- inspections
Blix to Report on Missing Arms Gaps, U-2 Flights
Reuters
Sunday, January 26, 2003; 2:16 AM
By Evelyn Leopold
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44800-2003Jan26?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iraq has left large gaps in its arms declaration, is blocking private interviews with scientists and is balking at U-2 surveillance flights over the whole country, U.N. weapons inspectors are expected to say on Monday.
Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix has given a preview of what he will tell the U.N. Security Council in statements since he left Baghdad last weekend, saying that Iraq vowed it had no more documents on its past weapons of mass destruction programs than it submitted to the United Nations on Dec. 7.
Blix told reporters that when questions arose about data concerning anthrax, the deadly VX nerve gas or Scud missiles, the Iraqis "simply say there is nothing left of this, and there is no evidence that we can view, there are no more documents."
He said he had not been given the go-head to interview Iraqi scientists in private, as the Security Council has authorized, with Iraq sending as many as five minders to every inspector.
Blix also has had difficulties getting assurances that Iraq won't shoot at American U-2 spy planes, loaned to the United Nations to survey inspection sites, when they are in the U.S.-British no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq.
Laboratory reports on recently discovered chemical warhead shells, most of them empty, are not yet ready, although few believe they will disclose active toxins.
In issuing their assessment to the U.N. Security Council on Monday, Blix, in charge of chemical, biological and ballistic teams, and his colleague Mohammed ElBaradei, responsible for nuclear arms programs, will not be certain if Iraq is rebuilding its banned weapons.
But their report will probably bolster U.S. claims that Iraq has violated a key Nov. 8 resolution, No. 1441, by still not coming up with requested data in its 12,000-page arms declaration and not actively cooperating with the inspectors in other areas. The United States has already declared Iraq in "material breach" of the Nov. 8 resolution, legal words that can lead to warfare.
NOT ENOUGH EVIDENCE
But to most Security Council nations, particularly France, Russia and China, permanent members with veto power, the evidence is not conclusive enough to merit war. Blix and ElBaradei will not themselves draw black and white conclusions or in any way declare a "material breach."
Even staunch U.S. ally Britain has been active in trying to persuade the Bush administration that inspectors deserve more time for their disarmament work and that war must wait.
Germany, the Security Council president for February, wants another report from the inspectors on Feb. 14. But while U.S. officials have spoken of weeks rather than months for a delay in a decision to attack Iraq, diplomats doubt France or Russia would change its stance in such a short period. "You can have by the letter of Resolution 1441 a material breach," said one Security Council member from the West.
"But for the majority of the council you don't have something clear enough to say it is the end of the road for inspections," the envoy said. "Many nations sense it is going that way unless Iraq has a change of heart but they are not voting for war yet.
The United State insists it needs no backing for war from the Security Council. But lack of U.N. authorization will cost Washington money in war contributions as well as make governments uneasy, especially in the many nations where polls show a strong anti-war sentiment.
An indication of Russia's stance came during a meeting of an advisory board on Thursday to Blix's U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
Russia's deputy foreign minister, Yuri Fedotov, went through each line of Resolution 1441, showing where Iraq had cooperated, according to those at the meeting. Blix is expected to compliment Iraqi officials for being helpful in setting up for the inspections and allowing the inspectors immediate access to sites they chose to visit.
ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is expected to be less critical of Iraq than Blix. Few experts believe Baghdad has a nuclear bomb, whereas Blix has more outstanding disarmament issues.
The IAEA said last week Iraq would get a "satisfactory"' grade for its response to questions and requests for information from the nuclear inspectors.
ElBaradei earlier this month also told the Security Council that aluminum tubes Iraq tried to purchase were meant for artillery rockets they are allowed to have and not for enriching uranium for a nuclear program, as the Bush administration had claimed last fall.
But ElBaradei is expected to say he still has unanswered questions and needs more time to be sure Iraq is not trying to rebuild it nuclear weapons capabilities.
----
U.N. Hasn't Found Any Iraqi Nuclear Arms Program
Reuters
Sunday, January 26, 2003; 7:44 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45346-2003Jan26?language=printer
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Sunday that it has yet to find any proof of Iraq's alleged secret atomic weapons program and would be informing the U.N. Security Council of this in Monday's update report.
Monday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei and chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix will report on progress in their two-month hunt for Baghdad's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
"It (ElBaradei's report) won't reveal any prohibited nuclear arms program," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told Reuters. "If we were to find a smoking gun, we wouldn't wait for an update report. We'd go straight to the Security Council."
Fleming said ElBaradei had hoped to report positive progress on one-on-one interviews with Iraqi scientists, but would be unable to do so given the refusal of Iraq scientists to submit to interviews without the presence of Iraqi minders.
She said Monday's report would also contain new information on Iraq's suspicious aluminum tubes, originally thought to be useable for enriching uranium but which turned out to be inappropriate for the purpose.
"It will also address allegations Iraq tried to import uranium and the issue of high explosives that could be useable in nuclear weapons," Fleming said. "The question of cooperation is a major section of the report," she added.
The IAEA has repeatedly said that while Baghdad has been generally cooperative, it has to begin providing inspectors with evidence that proves Iraq's innocence.
----
Key Questions Unanswered, Blix to Tell Council
By Walter Pincus and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43746-2003Jan25?language=printer
The United Nations chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, will tell the U.N. Security Council on Monday that key questions remain unanswered about Iraq's possible possession of prohibited weapons of mass destruction and that his meetings last week in Baghdad "gave no signs of major movement" toward full disclosure, according to senior U.N. officials.
In what he has insisted will be only an "update" on the weapons inspections program that began in November, Blix plans to note both the negative and the positive aspects of Iraqi cooperation during the first 60 days of inspections, the officials said.
Blix had been prepared to be more positive in his presentation before his meetings in Baghdad last Sunday and on Monday, the senior officials said. But Iraqi officials showed little interest in moving away from their position that they have no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to declare and no more documents to produce. As a result, Blix expects to tell the Security Council that Baghdad has not been "proactive" in assisting the inspectors' access to information, the officials said.
Blix's presentation will mark an important milestone in the Bush administration's confrontation with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein over his banned weapons programs. Administration officials have pointed to the report as the beginning of a new phase in the crisis that they hope would lead to greater support within the Security Council for its contention that Iraq has violated its international obligations and that the use of force is warranted.
But the report will likely fall short of the administration's desire for a harsh assessment that would demonstrate Iraq has consistently violated its disarmament obligations. Painted more in shades of gray than in black and white, the report could provide more ammunition to those countries on the Security Council that want the inspections to continue for a while and that oppose an immediate decision to go to war.
U.S. and diplomatic sources said last week that, in the face of stiff opposition by leading council allies, the administration will agree to support the continuation of weapons inspections, at least for several more weeks. Talks among council members would continue during this period, with another Blix update due in mid-February.
The extended time frame would also suit the Pentagon's deployment schedule for U.S. military forces under which all the major components of a ground invasion would not be in place until late February at the earliest.
Blix has not discussed how long he believes inspections should run, since he considers that the responsibility of the Security Council. "If we have the proactive cooperation [of Iraq], if they really make an effort in all respects, then we should not need very much time," the Swedish diplomat said last week.
His current plan, which the council could change, is to present regular updates and another major report on March 27.
Blix will report that Iraq has barred surveillance flights, interfered with U.N. interviews of Iraqi scientists and developed missiles with a range greater than the 90-mile limit allowed under U.N. rules, according to U.N. and U.S. officials. In public and private statements last week, U.S. officials urged Blix to conclude that those actions constitute violations of Iraq's disarmament obligations.
The U.S. effort was designed to persuade Blix to formally place as many specific Iraqi violations as possible on the record before the Security Council. Russia, France and other countries sought to counter the U.S. campaign, telling Blix that he should emphasize the extent of Iraq's cooperation, these officials said.
Blix's specific criticisms of Iraq -- based on the first 60 days of inspections -- will in some parts follow along the lines U.S. officials have discussed. But the senior U.N. officials said Blix does not plan to pass judgment on some of the issues raised by the United States; rather, he will refer to them as gaps in the inspections effort that are still open to question. They added that his report will contain some praise for the Iraqis, as well.
The U.S. differences with Blix's approach came to a head on Thursday during a briefing Blix gave to the U.N. inspection agency's college of commissioners, which includes representatives of key Security Council member governments. In a tense exchange, Washington's chief liaison to the U.N. inspectors, John S. Wolf, urged Blix to conduct more aggressive inspections of the homes of Iraqi officials, according to U.N. diplomats who sat in.
He also criticized Blix's decision to issue a joint 10-point statement with Baghdad on Jan. 20 that included an Iraqi commitment to "encourage" Iraqi officials to allow the inspectors into their homes and to submit to private interviews, those diplomats said.
Wolf argued that the statement, which commends Baghdad for providing "helpful assistance" to the inspectors, dilutes the force of the Nov. 8 U.N. resolution that requires Iraq to grant the inspectors access to any individual or site.
Senior U.N. officials said that while they are prepared to fully exercise their authority to inspect any Iraqi home, they are willing to wait for a reasonable period to allow the head of the household to return home. "This is a conflict between the most rigid and legalistic approach," said a senior U.N. official. "We need to strike the right equilibrium. If waiting half an hour -- knowing that nothing is happening, no destruction of evidence -- allows us to behave like human beings, then we will do it."
In his report on Monday, Blix may raise a new concern -- that intelligence passed to his inspectors on sites to be visited may have leaked to the Iraqis. At one recent inspection site, Iraqis moved materials before the U.N. group arrived, one U.N. official said yesterday.
Blix will cite the Iraqi government's failure to encourage Iraqi scientists and technicians to agree to private interviews despite promises that Iraqi Gen. Hossam Amin, director of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, delivered in the joint statement last week with Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the officials said. Blix will also describe Iraq's refusal to permit the inspectors' use of U.S.-piloted U-2 surveillance aircraft without conditions, which he described as "unacceptable."
Blix will note that, despite his warnings, Iraq has yet to answer key questions left by gaps in Baghdad's Dec. 7 declaration of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs, which was supposed to have been "full, final and complete."
He will report that Iraq has yet to answer his commission's questions about certain of its more recent purchases of materials that could be used in the manufacture of banned weapons. For example, he will discuss questions given Iraq about the purpose of nearly 100 newly bought missile engines as well as what type of warheads they were supposed to carry. He also has not gotten answers to questions about Iraqi purchases of missile fuel and a type of chemical explosive usable in some weapons.
U.S. officials have cited as a violation Baghdad's alleged development and testing of prohibited missiles with a range greater than the 90-mile limit set under U.N. rules. Blix will tell the council that Iraq initially reported that 13 of 40 tests of a new missile exceeded the 90-mile limit but that the longest of those test firings went only about 110 miles. Nonetheless, the U.N. inspectors ordered the tests halted until Iraq could keep the flights under the approved range limit.
Blix, whose inspection agency is formally known as the U.N. Monitoring and Verification Commission, has about 100 outstanding issues with Iraq in 30 categories. With regard to gaps in Iraq's Dec. 7 declarations, Blix plans to focus on Monday on a handful of examples, officials said. These will include the need for evidence on anthrax and VX nerve gas production, and on Iraq's alleged destruction of its supply of these two agents and other biological and chemical weapons stocks. He also will call attention to Iraq's failure to provide evidence or individuals with knowledge of the alleged destruction of 550 artillery shells filled with mustard gas and of thousands of bombs, shells and warheads capable of carrying chemical or biological agents.
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After 2 Months, No Proof of Iraq Arms Programs
Bush's claims of illicit weapons manufacturing are uncorroborated, but inspectors will present other violations to the U.N. on Monday.
By Bob Drogin and Maggie Farley
Times Staff Writers
January 26 2003
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-inspect26jan26,0,1235181.story?coll=la%2Dhome%2Dheadlines
WASHINGTON -- After two months and more than 350 inspections, United Nations weapons teams in Iraq have so far been unable to corroborate Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein is secretly building chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
In particular, inspectors have found no proof of prohibited activities at a series of suspect sites -- including nuclear facilities, chemical factories and missile production plants -- that the CIA publicly identified last fall.
The U.N. inspectors, however, have also been unable to resolve scores of crucial questions about Iraq's former weapons programs, including the location of 1.5 tons of VX nerve gas, 2 tons of anthrax growth media, 400 bombs for germ warfare agents and 550 artillery shells filled with mustard gas.
The teams have confirmed that over the last four years, Iraq illicitly obtained hundreds of missile engines without U.N. approval, as well as raw materials for rocket fuel and chemical agents. Such imports, as well as Iraq's failure to provide an accurate account of its weapons programs, are a violation of U.N. resolutions aimed at disarming the Hussein regime, according to U.N. and U.S. officials.
That mix of results is likely to dominate Monday when Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, brief the U.N. Security Council on the first 60 days of inspections of Iraqi factories, laboratories, military facilities, presidential palaces and other sites.
Both men are expected to seek more time for inspectors to search at least 350 more sites in Iraq as well as to follow up current investigations. But they will also sharply criticize Iraq for refusing to provide new information on its past weapons programs and for refusing to allow U-2 high-altitude surveillance flights. U.N. arms teams in Iraq from 1991 to 1998 relied heavily on the American-operated spy planes for aerial reconnaissance.
Bush administration and intelligence officials insist that the failure to find illegal weapons so far simply proves that Iraq has hidden its weapons programs and arsenals in secret underground bunkers or in mobile laboratories. They say Iraq has stashed sensitive documents and other evidence in homes and farms, or under mosques and hospitals.
Such materials "are being moved constantly and hidden," Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of Defense, told the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York on Thursday. Spy satellites have photographed trucks leaving facilities while inspections were going on, other officials say.
Hussein has ordered that any scientist who cooperates in interviews "will be killed, as well as their families," Wolfowitz said. "Furthermore, we know that scientists are being tutored on what to say to the U.N. inspectors and that Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as scientists to be interviewed by the inspectors."
U.S. Shares Limited Data
The Bush administration, which has largely refused to release specific evidence to the public to support its claims, began sharing a limited amount of intelligence with the U.N. teams this month. Officials said they have provided specific information and tips about individuals and facilities that allegedly are part of Hussein's illegal weapons programs, and have suggested ways to investigate them.
But inspectors in Iraq from the U.N. and the IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, have found little that appears to support the widely publicized U.S. assertions. To be sure, some sites are still under investigation, some results may not yet be public, and Iraq may have hidden or moved material after media reports highlighted U.S. concerns. But several of the most prominent claims appear to have been disproved.
The CIA warned in an unclassified report in October, for example, that Iraq appeared to be "reconstituting" its clandestine nuclear weapons program. As evidence, officials cited commercial satellite photos that showed new construction at Tuwaitha, a former nuclear weapons complex that was heavily bombed during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
Such photos, President Bush said in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, "reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past."
Experts from the IAEA have visited Tuwaitha 12 times since December, most recently Tuesday. They have checked equipment, sampled soil and water, conducted radiation surveys, shown up at night and on a Muslim holiday and carried out numerous other tests.
No improper activities have been found so far, according to preliminary U.N. reports. On Dec. 20, a joint U.N. and IAEA statement declared that the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex "now conducts civilian research in the nonnuclear field." A British journalist who visited the site, about 15 miles south of Baghdad, reported that the new buildings "appeared to be no more than a few sheds."
U.S. officials similarly noted seeing new buildings at the Al Qaim phosphates complex in western Iraq. Baghdad refined uranium ore at the facility in the 1980s in an attempt to produce fissile fuel for nuclear weapons. But the site was bombed in 1991, and other equipment later was either dismantled or destroyed by IAEA teams.
U.N. teams spent two days at Al Qaim in December, then returned this month by helicopter for an airborne inspection. They reported no violations, while journalists described seeing mostly rubble on a near-vacant lot.
"We have systematically followed up on not only the indications from our own satellite imagery but others provided by other countries or allegations by other countries about particular sites, including Tuwaitha," said Mark Gwozdecky, an IAEA spokesman.
"We have followed up systematically and have not found signs of prohibited activity so far," he said.
Iraqi Imports
Perhaps the most alarming U.S. claims last fall were about Iraq's attempts to import tens of thousands of narrow, high-strength aluminum tubes in 2001 and 2002. Sources say Iraq used a front company in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to try to import the tubes from China.
Such tubes can be linked in high-velocity centrifuges and "are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons," Bush told the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 24. Similar assertions appeared in State Department and CIA reports.
Outside experts quickly raised doubts, however, noting that Iraq had imported thousands of similar tubes from Italy in the 1980s for helicopter-launched air-to-ground rockets. Extensive retooling would be needed to use the tubes to enrich uranium, officials said. Iraq claims that the new tubes were meant for short-range 81-millimeter rockets.
Investigation Continues
On Jan. 9, El Baradei told reporters that the case was still under investigation.
"But we believe at this stage that these aluminum tubes were intended for the manufacturing of rockets," he said.
In another case, the CIA warned last fall that Baghdad had rebuilt and expanded factories that also could produce chemical weapons. The "best examples," it said, were the chlorine and phenol production plants at Fallujah II, which was bombed in 1991.
Although both chemicals have civilian uses, they are also raw materials for the synthesis of precursor chemicals used to produce blister and nerve agents.
"Iraq is seeking to purchase [chemical weapon] agent precursors and applicable production equipment and is trying to hide the activities of the Fallujah plant," the CIA said.
U.N. chemical teams have visited Fallujah II, about 40 miles northwest of Baghdad, four times since December. They checked "all key buildings" and accounted for equipment previously inspected and marked by U.N. teams in the 1990s.
"The chlorine plant is currently inoperative," the U.N. team reported Jan. 17.
The CIA also warned last fall that "key aspects of Iraq's offensive [biological weapons] program are active and most elements are more advanced and larger" than before the Gulf War.
As evidence, it said Iraq had begun renovating or constructing facilities at several sites secretly used to produce biological agents for germ warfare in the 1980s, including the Al Dawrah Foot-and-Mouth Disease Vaccine Facility, the Amiriyah Serum and Vaccine Institute, and the Fallujah III Castor Oil Production Plant.
U.N. inspectors have now visited all three sites several times. They searched warehouses, refrigerators, trucks and laboratories, checked equipment, and took soil and water samples. Some of the buildings were abandoned shells, while others had limited operations. No evidence was found that Iraq is using the facilities to produce microbes for banned weapons.
U.S. officials say overwhelming evidence indicates that Iraq is planning to resume building ballistic missiles able to deliver warheads farther than 90 miles, the limit set by the U.N. Security Council after the Gulf War.
As evidence, they say Iraq has built a large new testing stand at Al-Rafah North, Baghdad's principal site for testing liquid propellant missile engines. The stand "is clearly intended for testing prohibited longer-range missile engines," the White House said in a background paper for Bush's Sept. 12 speech to the General Assembly.
U.N. teams visited Al-Rafah on Nov. 27, their first day of inspections back in Iraq. Monitoring equipment installed by U.N. teams in the 1990s had been improperly removed, they found. No other prohibited activity was reported. They returned Jan. 9 to witness the static test-firing of a short-range missile engine allowed under U.N. resolutions.
Baghdad has also rebuilt and expanded the Al-Mutasim Solid Rocket Motor and Test Facility, according to U.S. intelligence. The "size of certain facilities there," the CIA wrote in October, suggests that Baghdad is "preparing to develop" prohibited missile systems.
U.N. inspectors have made five visits to Al-Mutasim, however, and reported no violations. They also reported no evidence of illegal activity at Al-Mamoun, where the CIA said the "only logical explanation" for recent construction is that Iraq plans to develop long-range, prohibited missiles. U.N. reports made public so far do not say whether new equipment or facilities at the three sites could also be used to build or test long-range missiles, as U.S. officials contend.
Administration officials have not backed down from their claims about Iraqi weapons programs or from their insistence that Iraq is simply concealing illegal weapons activities from the U.N. teams.
But in response to a question, Wolfowitz -- one of the administration's most prominent hawks on Iraq -- acknowledged Thursday that at least some of the White House assertions should now be reevaluated.
"Yeah, it's possible that we have been misinformed on some things," he said.
Drogin reported from Washington and Farley from the United Nations.
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Inspectors Can't Decide If Iraq Rearming
January 26, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-The-Iraq-Report.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Iraq's arms declaration is incomplete, its scientists aren't fully cooperating with inspections and Baghdad is obstructing the use of a U-2 plane that could be helpful in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, inspectors are expected to tell the Security Council in a toughly-worded report Monday.
After two months on the job, the chief weapons inspectors, who will deliver their assessments to the Security Council Monday at 10:30 a.m. EST, won't be able to confirm claims by the Bush administration that Iraq is rearming, according to U.N. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Still, with all the open questions, the reports by Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei will be key to Washington's efforts to bolster international support for a war on Iraq and to efforts by skeptics to avert one.
By mid-afternoon Sunday, Blix had written a toughly-worded 16-page report that he will deliver as a speech during the public portion of Monday's council meeting. ``I have been working very hard and very carefully on the details,'' he told The Associated Press.
He wouldn't discuss the contents because of ``sensitivities and expectations,'' surrounding the report.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte is expected to respond to the inspectors' reports once Monday's session moves behind closed-doors. An administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the ambassador would focus more on Iraq's obligations than on the inspectors' findings. ``He will remind the council that they all agreed in November that this would be Iraq's last opportunity to comply and that two months is more than enough time to test Saddam's intentions to cooperate,'' the official told AP.
The inspectors still don't know what happened to Iraq's stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons or how much time they have left to find the answers.
Still, ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, intends to make the case for more time.
``We're just in mid-course and we still need to exhaust the option of inspections before we think of any alternatives,'' ElBaradei told AP upon his arrival to New York from Vienna Sunday. ``We still need more time and that depends obviously on how intensive our work is and how cooperative Iraq is.''
According to Security Council Resolution 1441, crafted by the Bush administration and adopted in November, inspectors don't need to prove Iraq is rearming.
Any false statements or omissions in Iraq's arms declaration, coupled with a failure to comply with and cooperate fully in the implementation of the resolution, would place Baghdad in ``material breach'' of its obligations -- a finding that could open the door for war.
For the Bush administration, that has already happened and time is now running out for Saddam to disarm through inspections. In Davos, Switzerland Sunday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he believed the inspections had run their course, though he did not explicitly call for their end. He said that as a result of Iraq's lack of cooperation, he had lost faith in the ability of inspectors to fulfill their mission.
Most of the Security Council believes that's a determination they must make based on the inspectors' assessments. At the U.N. headquarters, Blix would not comment on Powell's speech.
While there is general agreement that Iraq hasn't been fully honest in its declaration and that it could be cooperating better with inspectors, the absence of a smoking gun or cries for help from Blix and ElBaradei have led powerful council members such as France, Germany and Russia to argue against military intervention and in favor of more time for peaceful disarmament.
While Blix and ElBaradei have criticized Iraq over the past 60 days, they have also praised the access inspectors were given at hundreds of sites, including presidential palaces, as well as Iraq's cooperation in the areas of logistics and supplies.
Blix's report will focus on what his inspectors at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission have -- and haven't -- learned about Iraq's biological, chemical and missile programs.
So far, inspectors have discovered thousands of pertinent documents hidden in the home of an Iraqi scientist, at least 16 empty and undeclared chemical warheads and have said that Iraq illegally imported parts for its missile program. Based on one of the few new documents Iraq produced last fall, inspectors are now convinced there are an additional 6,000 chemical weapons unaccounted for.
But what inspectors have learned is far less than they had hoped to know by now.
Unanswered is whether Iraq really destroyed all of its deadly chemical and biological agents, such as VX and anthrax, which it managed to weaponize more than a decade ago on the eve of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Iraq's 12,000-page arms declaration has been of little help. Two weeks after he received the dossier in December, Blix slammed the Iraqis for submitting a report filled with inconsistencies, contradictions and old material.
During a meeting with Iraqi officials in Baghdad last week, Blix pressed for fresh evidence and answers to long outstanding questions on their weapons of mass destruction.
But that information hasn't been forthcoming.
Neither Blix not ElBaradei's teams have been able to privately interview Iraqi scientists believed to have the best information about Iraq's weapons programs. And the Iraqis are blocking inspectors from conducting U-2 reconnaissance flights.
Still, the picture emerging on Iraq's nuclear program seems to be slightly more favorable.
ElBaradei's spokesman said Iraq would get a ``satisfactory'' grade for its response to questions and requests for information from the nuclear inspectors.
His teams seem convinced that aluminum tubes the Iraqis tried to purchase were meant for artillery rockets they are allowed to have and not for enriching uranium for a nuclear program as the Bush administration claimed last fall.
And ElBaradei's oral report will include samples results revealing no indication of prohibited nuclear activities at sites inspected so far.
According to its weapons declaration, Iraq possessed all the necessary components for making nuclear weapons by the time the United States launched Operation Desert Storm to remove Saddam's troops from neighboring Kuwait.
Inspectors returned to Iraq in November, after a four-year absence, under the terms of Resolution 1441, which gave them broader authority but a tighter timetable for reporting to the Security Council.
Associated Press reporter Lukas Alpert contributed to this report.
On the Net:
UNMOVIC: www.unmovic.org
IAEA: www.iaea.org
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January 26, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-un-inspectors.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iraq has left large gaps in its arms declaration, is blocking private interviews with scientists and is balking at U-2 surveillance flights over the whole country, U.N. weapons inspectors are expected to say on Monday.
Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix has given a preview of what he will tell the U.N. Security Council in statements since he left Baghdad last weekend, saying that Iraq vowed it had no more documents on its past weapons of mass destruction programs than it submitted to the United Nations on Dec. 7.
Blix told reporters that when questions arose about data concerning anthrax, the deadly VX nerve gas or Scud missiles, the Iraqis ``simply say there is nothing left of this, and there is no evidence that we can view, there are no more documents.''
He said he had not been given the go-head to interview Iraqi scientists in private, as the Security Council has authorized, with Iraq sending as many as five minders to every inspector.
Blix also has had difficulties getting assurances that Iraq won't shoot at American U-2 spy planes, loaned to the United Nations to survey inspection sites, when they are in the U.S.-British no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq.
Laboratory reports on recently discovered chemical warhead shells, most of them empty, are not yet ready, although few believe they will disclose active toxins.
In issuing their assessment to the U.N. Security Council on Monday, Blix, in charge of chemical, biological and ballistic teams, and his colleague Mohammed ElBaradei, responsible for nuclear arms programs, will not be certain if Iraq is rebuilding its banned weapons.
But their report will probably bolster U.S. claims that Iraq has violated a key Nov. 8 resolution, No. 1441, by still not coming up with requested data in its 12,000-page arms declaration and not actively cooperating with the inspectors in other areas. The United States has already declared Iraq in ``material breach'' of the Nov. 8 resolution, legal words that can lead to warfare.
NOT ENOUGH EVIDENCE
But to most Security Council nations, particularly France, Russia and China, permanent members with veto power, the evidence is not conclusive enough to merit war. Blix and ElBaradei will not themselves draw black and white conclusions or in any way declare a ``material breach.''
Even staunch U.S. ally Britain has been active in trying to persuade the Bush administration that inspectors deserve more time for their disarmament work and that war must wait.
Germany, the Security Council president for February, wants another report from the inspectors on Feb. 14. But while U.S. officials have spoken of weeks rather than months for a delay in a decision to attack Iraq, diplomats doubt France or Russia would change its stance in such a short period.
``You can have by the letter of Resolution 1441 a material breach,'' said one Security Council member from the West.
``But for the majority of the council you don't have something clear enough to say it is the end of the road for inspections,'' the envoy said. ``Many nations sense it is going that way unless Iraq has a change of heart but they are not voting for war yet.
The United State insists it needs no backing for war from the Security Council. But lack of U.N. authorization will cost Washington money in war contributions as well as make governments uneasy, especially in the many nations where polls show a strong anti-war sentiment.
An indication of Russia's stance came during a meeting of an advisory board on Thursday to Blix's U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
Russia's deputy foreign minister, Yuri Fedotov, went through each line of Resolution 1441, showing where Iraq had cooperated, according to those at the meeting. Blix is expected to compliment Iraqi officials for being helpful in setting up for the inspections and allowing the inspectors immediate access to sites they chose to visit.
ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is expected to be less critical of Iraq than Blix. Few experts believe Baghdad has a nuclear bomb, whereas Blix has more outstanding disarmament issues.
The IAEA said last week Iraq would get a ``satisfactory''' grade for its response to questions and requests for information from the nuclear inspectors.
ElBaradei earlier this month also told the Security Council that aluminum tubes Iraq tried to purchase were meant for artillery rockets they are allowed to have and not for enriching uranium for a nuclear program, as the Bush administration had claimed last fall.
But ElBaradei is expected to say he still has unanswered questions and needs more time to be sure Iraq is not trying to rebuild it nuclear weapons capabilities.
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IAEA Discussing When to Meet on N.Korea-Yonhap
Reuters
Saturday, January 25, 2003; 9:08 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43888-2003Jan25?language=printer
SEOUL (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear agency has made no decision on South Korea's request to postpone an emergency meeting on the North Korean crisis, Seoul's Yonhap news agency reported on Sunday, quoting the atomic watchdog's spokeswoman.
South Korea asked the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to put off plans to hold an emergency board meeting around February 3 to discuss North Korea's withdrawal from a global treaty to prevent the spread of atomic arms.
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung will send a special envoy to the North on Monday to discuss the nuclear crisis and Seoul requested the postponement to give diplomacy a chance to work rather than risk infuriating Pyongyang.
Such an emergency IAEA meeting could set the stage for moving the issue to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions on the communist North.
Yonhap quoted IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming as saying the IAEA board member countries were discussing the emergency meeting date, but would decide on the schedule early next week.
Pyongyang, which President Bush has bracketed with Iraq and Iran as members of an "axis of evil," has said U.N. sanctions would be a declaration of war.
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U.S. Spy Plane Crashes in S.Korea, 3 Hurt
Reuters
Sunday, January 26, 2003; 4:40 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44991-2003Jan26?language=printer
SEOUL (Reuters) - A U.S. U-2 spy plane crashed after its pilot ejected near the South Korean capital on Sunday, injuring three people on the ground, the Defense Ministry said.
The aircraft was returning to a U.S. airbase in Osan when it crashed into a hillside in Hwasong city, south of Seoul, news agency Yonhap said.
Three people on the ground sustained minor injuries after the wreckage of the plane landed on a vacant plot near an auto repair shop, engulfing the building in flames, local police in Hwasong told Reuters.
The pilot ejected before the crash and had been taken to hospital for treatment of minor injuries, a U.S. military spokesman said.
He was said to have reported engine trouble just before the crash, Yonhap said. It was the third crash of a Lockheed Martin U-2 on the Korean peninsula. One crashed near Osan in 1984 and the second into the sea off the east coast in 1992.
"The plane crashed at around 3 p.m. and the pilot had ejected," a spokesman for the U.S. Forces in Korea said, adding the pilot had been taken to hospital with minor injuries.
"The plane hit and completely destroyed a car center," resident Kim Yong-pyo told Korean Broadcasting System. "A nearby house caught fire too when the wreckage hit the building."
The crash comes as the United States is locked in a standoff with communist North Korea over its nuclear ambitions. Pyongyang says it will only discuss the crisis with Washington and the United States says it will talk but not negotiate.
The incident comes amid heightened anti-U.S. sentiment in South Korea after two teenage schoolgirls were crushed to death last June by a U.S. armored vehicle during exercises.
The deaths and the acquittal of the two U.S. soldiers driving the vehicle sparked huge demonstrations against the U.S. military presence.
About 37,000 U.S. troops are based in South Korea to provide defense against the North. Korea has been divided by the heavily fortified demilitarized zone since the 1950-53 Korean War.
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North Korea Demands Crisis Talks with Washington
Reuters
Sunday, January 26, 2003; 6:23 AM
By Jane Macartney and Louis Charbonneau
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45168-2003Jan26?language=printer
SEOUL/VIENNA (Reuters) - Between volleys of abuse, North Korea demanded Washington meet to discuss the nuclear crisis as a South Korean envoy prepared on Sunday to go to Pyongyang and the U.N. nuclear watchdog considered delaying an emergency meeting.
The latest flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at persuading the communist North to renounce its atomic arms ambitions gave the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) pause in its plans for an emergency session as early as February 3.
In Vienna, the IAEA said it hoped to make a decision this week on when its governing board would meet to discuss whether to ask the U.N. Security Council to take on the North Korea crisis.
"The date (February 3) was only ever firm for around two hours," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told Reuters, adding that she hoped for a decision this week after Seoul asked on Friday for more time to allow diplomacy to work.
Members were close to agreement on whether to send the issue to the U.N. Security Council but several wanted certainty in advance that the council would not approve economic sanctions against isolated and impoverished Pyongyang, a U.N. source said.
Pyongyang, which President Bush has bracketed with Iraq and Iran as members of an "axis of evil," has said U.N. sanctions would be a declaration of war. The council has the power to impose sanctions on the communist North.
The crisis was sparked in October when the United States said the North had admitted developing nuclear arms. Pyongyang later ejected U.N. nuclear inspectors, removed seals from a mothballed reactor and pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"DIRECT TALKS, NO INTERFERENCE"
The North hurled fresh abuse at the United States, accusing it of sparking the crisis, and demanded direct talks.
"The only way of solving the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula peacefully and in a most fair way is for the DPRK (North Korea) and the U.S. to hold direct and equal negotiations," the Korean Central News Agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.
He warned against interference by other countries or attempts to turn the issue into a multilateral one.
"Any country that is interested in the nuclear issue should not seek any other purpose by poking its nose into it, but give disinterested help to the DPRK and the U.S.... so that they may sit face to face to seek a negotiated settlement of the issue."
The United States risked nuclear war, the North's Minju Joson newspaper said. "The U.S. imperialists should immediately stop scheming to provoke an adventurous nuclear war against the DPRK."
Pyongyang wants the United States to withdraw the 37,000 troops that it has based in South Korea to defend against attack by the North.
A U.S. U-2 spy plane crashed after its pilot ejected near the South Korean capital, lightly injuring three people on the ground, the Defense Ministry said. The pilot was slightly hurt.
The latest volley of invective came just a day before special envoys from outgoing South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and President-elect Roh Moo-hyun are due to go to Pyongyang.
Lim Dong-won, aide to President Kim, will visit Pyongyang on a rare direct flight to the North's capital and over the heavily fortified demilitarised zone that has divided the two since the 1950-53 Korean War. He was expected to carry a letter from Kim.
Analysts say the mission could be a forerunner to possible meetings involving Russia and China and eventually result in direct discussions between Pyongyang and Washington.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Saturday the United States expected to hold talks with North Korea when the time was right. He omitted to cite Washington's usual preconditions for a meeting.
South Korea urged the U.N. to give diplomacy a chance by delaying the IAEA's emergency meeting to allow Seoul's special envoy time to talk to the impoverished government in Pyongyang.
Washington says it will not negotiate and will talk only about how the North Koreans will dismantle a uranium enrichment plant and allow international inspectors to resume monitoring work at another nuclear complex.
Pyongyang says it wants to talk, but only to the United States to back its demand Washington sign a non-aggression treaty. Washington has refused.
President-elect Roh said he saw no alternative to talks with Pyongyang to resolve the crisis, even though he described his neighbor's human rights record as deplorable.
Roh has issued his own overture, saying he planned to propose a summit with Kim Jong-il without preconditions.
----
U.S. Has No Intention to Attack N.Korea, Powell Says
Reuters
Sunday, January 26, 2003; 7:05 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45262-2003Jan26?language=printer
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The United States is prepared to convey to North Korea in an "unmistakable" way that it has no intention to attack it, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday.
"We are prepared to convey this in a way that makes it unmistakable to North Korea," Powell told the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.
Powell said the United States was willing to talk to the North but included the standard U.S. requirement that the talks should be about "how it will meet its obligations to completely dismantle its nuclear weapons programs."
"The United States stands ready to build a different kind of relationship with North Korea once Pyongyang comes into verifiable compliance with its commitments. The North must be willing to act in a manner that builds trust," he added.
North Korea has demanded that the United States open a dialogue and sign a non-aggression pact. U.S. officials say a treaty is difficult because it needs Senate ratification.
----
North Koreans Still Demand Direct Talks With the U.S.
January 26, 2003
New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/international/asia/26KORE.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Jan. 25 - After visits by Australian and Russian diplomats to North Korea, and days before the arrival of South Korean and Indonesian envoys, North Korea warned today that other countries "do not need to poke their nose into" its nuclear bomb program.
"The only way of solving the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, peacefully and in a most fair way, is for the D.P.R.K. and the U.S. to hold direct and equal negotiations," the state news agency said, using the initials of North Korea's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The comments came as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in Switzerland that talks would come "eventually," but added, "We will work out what the proper manner and form is."
"There is a strong desire on the part of the North Koreans to talk directly to us," Mr. Powell said in Zurich today on his way to the annual World Economic Forum of business and political leaders in Davos. "We believe that the problem that exists in North Korea is not a U.S.-D.P.R.K. problem. Other nations are involved."
Although South Korea made little apparent headway during three days of talks with North Korean envoys in Seoul in the past week, South Korea is sending two envoys to Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, on Monday. Hopeful of progress, South Korea today asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to postpone a Feb. 3 board meeting, which could send North Korea's case to the United Nations Security Council, where members could impose penalties on the North.
North Korea wants a survival guarantee, in the form of a nonaggression treaty with the United States.
"Looking at the fundamentals of the current situation, it cannot be resolved by a document such as a mere presidential letter," a North Korean Foreign Ministry official, Oh Sung Chul, was quoted as saying in Friday's edition of the Korean Chosun Sinbo newspaper in Japan.
Behind the diplomatic screens, there were glints today of the military steel that lies in wait.
"North Korea in the past has said it can turn Tokyo into a sea of fire," Shigeru Ishiba, Japan's Defense Agency chief, told a Parliament committee in Tokyo today. "So we consider it possible if" North Korea "starts fueling a missile."
Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi told the same committee that a pre-emptive strike against North Korean missile sites would be an act of self-defense. "If we see there is no alternative, striking bases - such as missile bases - would be within the legal framework of our country's self-defense," she said.
In North Korea, the state news media expressed outrage that the American warship Kitty Hawk left its Japanese home port on Friday, reportedly for the body of water between Japan and Korea.
"The United States is buying time under the pretext of dialogue and negotiations," North Korean radio warned. "And in the meantime, it prepares for dangerous war of aggression on our republic, targeting the next phase of a war in Iraq."
----
Powell: U.S. Has No Intention of Attacking N.Korea
January 26, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north-powell.html
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The United States is prepared to convey to North Korea in an unmistakable way that it has no intention of attacking the communist state, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday.
``We are prepared to convey this in a way that makes it unmistakable to North Korea,'' Powell told the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of business people and politicians in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
North Korea has demanded that the United States open a dialogue and sign a non-aggression pact. U.S. officials have said that a treaty would be difficult because it needs Senate ratification but a document might be possible.
Powell said the United States was willing to talk to the North, but included the standard U.S. requirement that the talks should be about ``how it will meet its obligations to completely dismantle its nuclear weapons programs.''
``The United States stands ready to build a different kind of relationship with North Korea once Pyongyang comes into verifiable compliance with its commitments. The North must be willing to act in a manner that builds trust,'' he added.
In the meantime the United States will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to North Korea, he said.
Powell blamed North Korea for the crisis which broke when the United States disclosed that Pyongyang had acknowledged a secret uranium enrichment program.
The United States then cut off fuel supplies, provoking North Korea into withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and expelling U.N. nuclear monitors.
Powell said the North Korean government had violated ``good-faith nuclear agreements.'' ``At the same time, North Korea's policies have dragged its people into a dark, cold, hungry hell,'' he added.
But in contrast to its policy on Iraq, the United States has promised to seek a peaceful solution with North Korea.
``We are working with our allies and others in the region ... to address through diplomacy our common concerns over North Korea's programs,'' he said.
-------- missile defense
Canada Set for Major Missile Defense Talks in U.S.
January 26, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-canada-usa.html
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian officials hold talks in Washington this week on the proposed U.S. missile defense system that could ultimately include equipment on Canadian soil if Ottawa ends years of indecision and signs on.
The Canadian government, deeply split over the concept, has consistently declined to express an opinion about missile defense on the grounds it has not been asked to take part.
But Ottawa now wants to know much more about Washington's plans after President Bush last month ordered the military to begin deploying a missile defense system with land-and sea-based interceptor rockets to be operational starting in 2004.
``(This) is clearly a new and significant development. We will be seeking information from U.S. officials on a range of issues related to this decision,'' Canadian foreign ministry spokeswoman Kimberly Phillips told Reuters on Saturday.
Tuesday's talks will be the first U.S.-Canadian meeting on the topic since a meeting in Ottawa last July.
Missile defense is becoming the most important issue ever to arise in the highly-integrated Canadian-U.S. defense relationship, which for the last 45 years has been centered on NORAD -- the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
Defense specialists say the proposed system -- designed to shoot down missiles fired from so-called rogue states such as North Korea -- would be more effective if Ottawa permitted a special radar station to be built in the Canadian Arctic.
WEAPONIZATION OF SPACE
This does not sit well with Foreign Minister Bill Graham, who was very unhappy with Bush's decision last year to abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. He fears that missile defense would lead to the weaponization of space, something Canada firmly opposes.
``We have questions about missile defense's potential impact on strategic stability, arms control, disarmament and the non-weaponization of space,'' said Phillips.
Some political opponents inside Canada say that by agreeing to join the system, Ottawa would badly tarnish an international reputation built over decades of peace-keeping and pushing for nuclear nonproliferation.
Many in the Canadian armed forces, however, fear that if Ottawa decides not to take part Canada would effectively be excluded from NORAD and its immense intelligence-gathering capability, particularly since it seems clear the missile defense system would be run from NORAD.
``Both the foreign and defense ministries feel it's in their interest to go ahead and take a hard look at this because the ball is rolling and it's probably to Canada's benefit -- if it is going to participate -- to be in there sooner rather than later,'' said one defense source.
Whether Canada can resist the pressure from its closest ally and trading partner is another matter. Two years ago one frustrated U.S. official suggested that if Canada did not sign up, the United States would not be obliged to shoot down missiles heading for Canadian targets.
James Fergusson, head of the Center for Defense and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba, said he was bemused by the Canadian mission.
``It's hard for me to see how Canada, in the absence of some formal indication to the United States that we are seriously considering participating, is going to get any more information than we've received over the past eight years,'' he said.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
US may use tactical nukes in Iraq: Report
PTI
SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 2003
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=35468521
NEW YORK: The US is quietly preparing for the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons in a war against Iraq, and military planners have been actively studying lists of potential targets, media reported on Saturday.
The preparations include possible use of so-called bunker-buster nuclear weapons against deeply buried military targets, the Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday quoting William M Arkin.
Defence officials have been focusing their plans on the use of tactical nuclear arms in retaliation for a strike by the Iraqis with chemical or biological weapons, or to pre-empt one, the daily said.
US administration officials believe that in some circumstances, using nuclear arms may be the only way to destroy deeply buried targets that may contain unconventional weapons, the report said.
Some officials have argued that the blast and radiation effects of such strikes would be limited.
But a bunker-buster strike using nuclear weapons could involve a huge radiation release, critics said.
Resorting to nuclear weapons in such circumstances would encourage other nuclear-armed countries to consider using such weapons in more kinds of situations and would badly undermine the half-century effort to contain the spread of nuclear arms, they said.
Although it may be highly unlikely that the Bush administration would authorise the use of such weapons in Iraq - Arkin describes that as a worst-case scenario - the mere disclosure of its planning contingencies could stiffen the opposition of France, Germany and Middle East nations to an invasion of Iraq.
"If the United States dropped a bomb on an Arab country, it might be a military success, but it would be a diplomatic, political and strategic disaster," said Joseph Cirincione, director of non-proliferation studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
He said there is a danger of the misuse of a nuclear weapon in Iraq because of the chance that "somebody could be seduced into the mistaken idea that you could use a nuclear weapon with minimal collateral damage and political damage."
Bush administration officials had made clear that they want to be better prepared to consider the nuclear option against the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the hands of terrorists and rogue nations.
The current planning, as reported by Arkin, offers a concrete example of their determination to follow through on this pledge.
Arkin also says that the Pentagon has changed the bureaucratic oversight of nuclear weapons so that they are no longer treated as a special category of arms but are grouped with conventional military options.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on Friday on Arkin's report, except to say that "the US reserves the right to defend itself and its allies by whatever means necessary."
--------
The Nuclear Option in Iraq
The U.S. has lowered the bar for using the ultimate weapon.
COMMENTARY
By William M. Arkin
January 26 2003
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/la-op-arkin26jan26,0,646789.story
WASHINGTON -- One year after President Bush labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea the "axis of evil," the United States is thinking about the unthinkable: It is preparing for the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iraq.
At the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) in Omaha and inside planning cells of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, target lists are being scrutinized, options are being pondered and procedures are being tested to give nuclear armaments a role in the new U.S. doctrine of "preemption."
According to multiple sources close to the process, the current planning focuses on two possible roles for nuclear weapons:
attacking Iraqi facilities located so deep underground that they might be impervious to conventional explosives;
thwarting Iraq's use of weapons of mass destruction.
Nuclear weapons have, since they were first created, been part of the arsenal discussed by war planners. But the Bush administration's decision to actively plan for possible preemptive use of such weapons, especially as so-called bunker busters, against Iraq represents a significant lowering of the nuclear threshold. It rewrites the ground rules of nuclear combat in the name of fighting terrorism.
It also moves nuclear weapons out of their long-established special category and lumps them in with all the other military options -- from psychological warfare, covert operations and Special Forces to air power in all its other forms.
For the United States to lower the nuclear threshold and break down the firewall separating nuclear weapons from everything else is unsettling for at least three reasons.
First, if the United States lowers the nuclear threshold -- even as a possibility -- it raises the likelihood that other nations will lower their own thresholds and employ nuclear weapons in situations where they simply need a stronger military punch. Until now, the United States has reserved nuclear weapons for retaliation against nuclear attacks or immediate threats to national survival, a standard tacitly but widely accepted around the world. If the president believes that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein poses that kind of danger to the United States, he has failed to convince the world -- and many U.S. citizens.
Second, the move toward thinking of nuclear weapons as just one more option among many comes at a time when technology is offering a host of better choices. Increasingly, the U.S. military has the capability of disabling underground bases or destroying biological and chemical weapons without uncorking the nuclear bottle, through a combination of sophisticated airpower, special operations and such 21st century capabilities as high-powered microwave weapons and cyber warfare.
Third, there are dangers in concentrating the revision of nuclear policy within a single military command, STRATCOM, which until now has been focused strictly on strategic -- not policy -- issues of nuclear combat. Command staff members have unrivaled expertise in the usage and effects of nuclear weapons, but their expertise does not extend to the whys of weapons usage.
Entrusting major policy reviews to tightly controlled, secret organizations inside the Pentagon is a hallmark of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's tenure. Doing so streamlines decision-making and encourages new thinking, advocates say.
But it also bypasses dissenters, many of whom are those in the armed services with the most knowledge and the deepest experience with the issues. The Bush inner circle is known to be a tight bunch, prone to "group think" about Iraq and uninterested in having its assumptions challenged. But there are opinions they need to hear. While most military officers seem to consider the likelihood of our using nuclear weapons in Iraq to be low, they worry about the increased importance placed on them and about the contradictions inherent in contemplating the use of nuclear weapons for the purpose of eliminating weapons of mass destruction.
The administration's interest in nuclear contingency plans stems from its deeply held conviction that the United States must act against Iraq because of a new and more dangerous terrorist threat involving weapons of mass destruction.
"The gravest danger our nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology," Bush declared in the introduction to his national security strategy, issued last fall. It said enemies of the United States "have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction."
In May, Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive 17, officially confirming the doctrine of preemptively thwarting any potential use of weapons of mass destruction.
"U.S. military and appropriate civilian agencies must possess the full range of operational capabilities to counter the threat and use of WMD," the president reiterated last December in his National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The current nuclear planning, revealed in interviews with military officers and described in documents reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, is being carried out at STRATCOM's Omaha headquarters, among small teams in Washington and at Vice President Dick Cheney's "undisclosed location" in Pennsylvania.
The command, previously responsible for nuclear weapons alone, has seen its responsibilities mushroom. On Dec. 11, the Defense secretary sent Bush a memorandum asking for authority to place Adm. James O. Ellis Jr., the STRATCOM commander, in charge of the full range of "strategic" warfare options to combat terrorist states and organizations.
The memo, obtained by The Times, recommended assigning all responsibilities for dealing with foreign weapons of mass destruction, including "global strike; integrated missile defense; [and] information operations" to STRATCOM. That innocuous-seeming description of responsibilities covers enormous ground, bringing everything from the use of nuclear weapons to nonnuclear strikes to covert and special operations to cyber warfare and "strategic deception" under the purview of nuclear warriors.
Earlier this month, Bush approved Rumsfeld's proposal. On the surface, these new assignments give the command a broader set of tools to avoid nuclear escalation. In reality, they open the door much wider to contemplating American use of nuclear weapons. The use of biological or chemical weapons against the U.S. military could be seen as worthy of the same response as a Russian nuclear attack. If Iraq were to use biological or chemical weapons during a war with the United States, it could have tragic consequences, but it would not alter the war's outcome. Our use of nuclear weapons to defeat Hussein, on the other hand, has the potential to create a political and global disaster, one that would forever pit the Arab and Islamic world against us.
How great a change these steps represent are revealed in the fact that STRATCOM owes its existence to previous post-Cold War policymakers who considered it vital to erect a great firewall between nuclear and conventional forces.
Now, with almost no discussion inside the Pentagon or in public, Rumsfeld and the Bush White House are tearing that firewall down. Instead of separating nuclear and conventional weapons, Rumsfeld is merging them in one command structure with a disturbingly simple mission: "If you can find that time-critical, key terrorist target or that weapons-of-mass-destruction stockpile, and you have minutes rather than hours or days to deal with it, how do you reach out and negate that threat to our nation half a world away?" Ellis asked in December.
The rapid transformation of Ellis' command reveals his answer to that rhetorical question. Since 9/11, Ellis and his command have been bombarded with new demands and responsibilities. First, the Pentagon's nuclear posture review, signed by Rumsfeld in December 2001 and issued in final form in early 2002, directed the military to reinvigorate its nuclear capability. STRATCOM was to play a leading role in that reinvigoration.
Among other things, the still-classified posture review said, "nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand nonnuclear attack (for example, deep underground bunkers or bioweapon facilities)."
The review called upon the military to develop "deliberate pre-planned and practiced missions" to attack WMD facilities, even if an enemy did not use nuclear weapons first against the United States or its allies.
According to STRATCOM documents and briefings, its newly created Theater Planning Activity has now taken on all aspects of assessing chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons facilities worldwide. Planners have focused intelligence gathering and analysis on seven priority target nations (the "axis of evil" nations along with Syria, Libya, China and Russia) and have completed a detailed analysis of intelligence data available on all suspect sites. According to U.S. Central Command sources, a "Theater Nuclear Planning Document" for Iraq has been prepared for the administration and Central Command.
What worries many senior officials in the armed forces is not that the United States has a vast array of weapons or contingency plans for using them. The danger is that nuclear weapons -- locked away in a Pandora's box for more than half a century -- are being taken out of that lockbox and put on the shelf with everything else. While Pentagon leaders insist that does not mean they take nuclear weapons lightly, critics fear that removing the firewall and adding nuclear weapons to the normal option ladder makes their use more likely -- especially under a policy of preemption that says Washington alone will decide when to strike.
To make such a doctrine encompass nuclear weapons is to embrace a view that, sooner or later, will spread beyond the moral capitals of Washington and London to New Delhi and Islamabad, to Pyongyang and Baghdad, Beijing, Tel Aviv and to every nuclear nation of the future.
If that happens, the world will have become infinitely more dangerous than it was two years ago, when George W. Bush took the presidential oath of office.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new york
OUR TOWNS
Gospel of Armageddon Finds Fertile Ground Near Indian Point
January 26, 2003
New York Times
By MATTHEW PURDY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/nyregion/26TOWN.html
CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.
RICHARD BRODSKY could hardly have been happier.
Speaking to opponents of the Indian Point nuclear plant here Thursday night, Mr. Brodsky, a state assemblyman, recalled a similar gathering last year. "In those days, it was a lonely, lonely battle," he said. "We're standing here tonight as a not-so-silent majority."
Mr. Brodsky, like others in the room, is usually in the not-so-silent minority.
"Now what do we do?" he asked. "Everyone agrees with us."
It was a politician's overstatement, but the Indian Point opposition effort, driven by veteran antinuclear activists and a new anxiety over terrorism, has reached critical mass in a way few believed was likely even a month ago.
In the two weeks since a state-sponsored study laid bare deficiencies in the plan to evacuate area residents in case radiation is released, officials in the four affected counties said they would not certify those plans. The decision on whether to sign the plans and pass them on to federal emergency officials now rests with Gov. George E. Pataki.
Elected officials, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, have joined a challenge to federal approval of the evacuation plans. In Washington, officials are sorting through the implications of the plant's operating without evacuation plans that are supported by local governments. As one federal official said, "It's a muddled mess."
Or a beautiful thing, say Indian Point foes. They always wanted officials to feel their fear.
People everywhere have a most-feared terror target. But some residents here, riveted by the image of a hijacked plane streaking past Indian Point en route to the World Trade Center 40 miles down the Hudson, envision Armageddon - despite the doubts of experts.
"If you hit Indian Point and hit it good, you can take out all of New York City - you're going to take out the Catskills and possibly even the Adirondacks," said Mary Cronin, a leader of Croton's anti-Indian Point group.
The Close Indian Point Now Web site answers questions like "Will the Indian Point evacuation plan work?" and "Does homeowners insurance cover nuclear hazards?"
People flee to the suburbs for family security and solid housing values. Fleeing from the suburbs is a cultural contradiction and a traffic impossibility that can be stated in three words: Tappan Zee Bridge.
No study was needed to tell people that if nuclear calamity hits suburban sprawl, the only thing to do is duck, cover and kiss your S.U.V. goodbye.
The movement's strength is the community groups that sprouted after Sept. 11, 2001, on both sides of the river and joined in a coalition that has engaged in public forums and advertising. Andy Mele, of the Clearwater environmental group, said that Indian Point had little opposition even when it had a troubled operating record, but that after the attacks, "not only was the public interested, the public was scared."
IN Buchanan, Indian Point's home, Mayor Dan O'Neill wonders whether anything the opponents are suggesting would actually increase safety. Shutting it would still leave some radioactive hazard and require more nonnuclear, potentially polluting, power plants. Besides, he said, there are other terror targets like the Croton Reservoir, which "no one's talking about draining." He lives less than a mile from the plant and said, "I don't lose sleep."
Everyone exercises the freedom to fear differently.
Scott Vanderhoef, the Rockland County executive, had called for closing Indian Point before the terror attacks because "it's in the wrong place." But he sees malls as more vulnerable suburban targets and accuses some Indian Point opponents of stirring fear to fit an agenda. "If you can scare enough people, you can get the elected officials to respond," he said.
Agendas on all sides are hard to figure.
Whether fear was fomented or merely focused - or a little of both - officials responded when debate centered on evacuation plans, which opponents saw as Indian Point's Achilles' heel.
Mr. Brodsky, a 10-term Westchester assemblyman, issued a report early last year about deficiencies in those plans, and filed a petition to withdraw federal approval for them, which Mrs. Clinton and others have now joined.
As public pressure mounted, and last November's election approached, Governor Pataki commissioned his study, which found similar problems, and more.
The plant is still splitting atoms, with no sign of stopping. But there's a new burst of energy around Indian Point. "I don't call it fear," Mr. Brodsky said, "I call it realism."
But at least it's not radiation.
-------- us politics
Bush Campaign Against Iraq Enters Crucial Week
January 26, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As President Bush faces a crucial week in his campaign against President Saddam Hussein, a senior White House official warned Baghdad on Sunday that the United States would use ``any means necessary'' to protect itself against Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
In his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, debate over Monday's U.N. arms inspectors report and talks with staunch ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday, Bush will try to rebuild foreign support for a potential war on Iraq as well as answer growing doubts from the U.S. public.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Davos on Sunday that the United States would work ``patiently and deliberately'' with friends and allies. But he said time was running out for Saddam and the United States reserved the right to act alone.
All signs earlier in January had pointed to this week being decisive in the march toward possible war with Iraq. But domestic and foreign pressures have built on Bush to avoid an early decision and give more time to U.N. inspectors searching Iraq for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
Analysts and opposition Democrats said Bush cannot win American public backing for war without international support.
``The president needs to make a compelling case that Iraq poses a very imminent threat to the United States and secondly that he has worked through the international community and exhausted all other options,'' Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle said.
``Only if those two criteria are met does he have the authority, the license to take military action,'' Daschle said on CBS television's ``Face the Nation.''
A CNN/USA Today poll released on Sunday said 56 percent of Americans thought U.N. inspectors should have more time, and the same share said Bush should seek further U.N. authorization before going to war. Fifty-seven percent said the United States should not go to war without the support of European allies.
FRANCE AND GERMANY
But France and Germany dug in their heels last week against war, and a transatlantic spat erupted over Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's characterization of the two as ``old Europe.''
The first challenge for Bush comes on Monday, when chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix gives what is expected to be mixed report to the Security Council. Blix is expected to say that Iraq has failed to meet terms of a resolution demanding that it dismantle mass destruction programs but also that the inspections have uncovered no ``smoking gun'' of banned weapons.
The report, to be debated by the Security Council on Wednesday, is unlikely to trigger U.N. backing for war and could raise pressure on Bush to give inspectors more time.
But it could pave the way to agreement on a final deadline being set for Iraq to answer outstanding concerns or face certain war, said Brookings Institution analyst Ivo Daalder.
He said he understood Britain and the United States were making a list of outstanding questions about Iraqi arms that must be answered by a certain date. ``I think what the U.S. will want to do is (specify) that a failure to get a resolution of those questions automatically constitutes a new material breach and therefore grounds for war,'' he said.
A U.S. official said such a scenario could not be ruled out but there has been no sign of a deadline being set. Asked whether Washington could allow more time for inspectors, he said, ``We never set a deadline for the end of inspections.''
The European Union's top diplomat, Javier Solana of Spain, said on ABC's ``This Week'' on Sunday that inspectors should be given more time if Blix requests.
On Tuesday, Bush gives his State of the Union speech to Congress, outlining to the American public and the world what the White House has called the direct threat posed by Saddam.
GLOBAL TERRORISM
White House officials on Sunday's television talk shows again warned Iraq not to use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. and allied forces in the event of war, saying the United States would use any measures necessary to protect itself.
``Should Saddam Hussein have any thought that he would use a weapon of mass destruction, he should anticipate that the United States will use whatever means necessary to protect us and the world from a holocaust,'' White House chief of staff Andrew Card said on NBC's ``Meet The Press.''
Asked if the options included a nuclear response, Card said: ``I'm not going to put anything on the table or off the table.''
White House officials also revived accusations that Saddam was linked to global terrorism, including the al Qaeda network blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, but they offered no new evidence.
But officials sought to play down the significance of the Iraq issue in Tuesday's speech, after saying last week Bush would use it to gird the public for possible war.
``The primary focus of the speech will not be about Iraq or Saddam Hussein. It'll be about the United States of America,'' Card said on ``Fox News Sunday.''
Bush's meeting with Blair at the Camp David presidential retreat could provide a forum for working out a compromise position to take with Germany and France, Daalder said. Those two countries could lessen their opposition if Bush shows more commitment to working within the United Nations, he said.
----
On Tuesday, Bush Should Speak for D.C.
Sunday, January 26, 2003
Washington Post; Page B08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38776-2003Jan24?language=printer
When President Bush delivers his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday, he should revive a tradition of presidential advocacy for D.C. voting rights that was begun 50 years ago.
In his 1953, 1954, 1955 and 1956 State of the Union addresses, Dwight D. Eisenhower championed D.C. voting rights. Typical was his 1954 statement that "the time is long overdue for granting national suffrage to its [the District's] citizens and also applying the principle of local self-government to the nation's capital."
Republicans in Congress overwhelmingly supported D.C. voting rights during the Eisenhower years, but the Democratic Party was regionally divided on the issue and blocked a change in the voting status of D.C. residents.
After passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, however, Senate leaders Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.) and the current president's grandfather, Prescott Bush (R-Conn.), made D.C. voting rights a priority. Bush was instrumental in including strong voting-rights language in the Republican Party platform. The senators' effort resulted in passage of the 23rd Amendment resolution submitted to the states for ratification in 1960. The League of Women Voters led the ratification effort, and 38 states voted approval in nine months. In 1964, D.C. voters for the first time were able to cast their ballots for president.
Eisenhower and Republican leaders wanted the amendment to provide for voting representation in the House, too, and at a minimum provide for delegate representation in the Senate. But Democratic opposition stripped away the congressional representation elements of the resolution that eventually was submitted to the states.
In his memoirs, Eisenhower mentioned with pride the support of the Republican Party and his administration for D.C. voting rights. Eisenhower lived in the District during several military tours and witnessed firsthand the segregation and lack of voting rights here.
Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon continued Eisenhower's tradition of recommending congressional action on D.C. voting rights in their State of the Union addresses and other messages to Congress. They -- along with Harry S. Truman, who also was a supporter of D.C. voting rights -- served in Congress, Truman and Nixon on the Senate's District Committee and Kennedy on the House's District Committee. Because of this service, these presidents understood the importance of voting rights to D.C. residents. Presidents who had been governors -- Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, for example -- tended to ignore the issue or be less supportive.
Finally, President Bush should consider the example of his grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his father, George H.W. Bush. Prescott Bush was an artillery captain in the American Expeditionary Force in Europe during World War I and often reminded his Senate colleagues that it was unfair for residents of the District to pay federal taxes, serve in the military and be subject to the other laws enacted by a Congress in which they had no voting members.
And President George H.W. Bush, during his one term in the House, voted for an elected D.C. School Board -- the first local election authorized by Congress in the District in 95 years.
For more than 200 years, the residents of the District have been petitioning for representation in Congress. In his State of the Union address, President Bush should uphold the best traditions of his party and redress this long-standing grievance. It would be something that would have made his grandfather proud.
-- Nelson Rimensnyder
--------
U.S. Is Willing to Stand Alone Against Iraq, Powell Says
January 26, 2003
New York Times
By MARK LANDLER and ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/international/middleeast/26cnd-iraq.html
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 26 - On the eve of a crucial report by the United Nations weapons inspectors, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that the United States would go to war against Iraq alone if it could not muster a "coalition of the willing" among its divided European allies.
Bringing the case for military action to a deeply skeptical audience of political, business and religious leaders at a conference in the Swiss Alps, Mr. Powell said Saddam Hussein had "repeatedly violated the trust of the United Nations, his people, and his neighbors."
Though Mr. Powell said the United States hoped to forge a consensus among its allies, the lack of a coalition would not deter the Bush administration from its course. "When we feel strongly about something, we will lead, we will act, even if others are not prepared to join us," he said.
The secretary made a modest concession to the qualms of Europeans about what many here criticize as Washington's stampede toward war. He said the United States would carefully study the report of the inspectors and consult with other members of the Security Council before acting.
"We're in no great rush to judgment tomorrow or the day after, but clearly time is running out," Mr. Powell said. "We will not shrink from war if that is the only way to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction."
His remarks deepened a sense of inevitability about a conflict among people here. Speaking after Mr. Powell, King Abdullah of Jordan said the prospects for a peaceful resolution were fading.
"We are a bit `too little, too late' to see a diplomatic solution," said the king, a key regional player whose land borders Iraq.
"Let us hope that whatever happens between Iraq and the international community is as quick and painless as possible," he added.
Mr. Powell's speech is part of a campaign by the White House, culminating in President Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday, to rally public opinion at home and abroad. While the secretary did not produce new evidence of Iraq's weapons, he insisted the burden of proof was on Mr. Hussein, not the inspectors, to give an accounting of its munitions.
"To those who say, `Why not give the inspection process more time?' I ask, `How much more time does Iraq need to answer these questions?' " Mr. Powell said. "Saddam should tell the truth, tell the truth now."
There was little indication that the secretary changed the minds of people at the World Economic Forum, which assembles a rarified fraternity of heads of states, chief executives and other notables. The audience applauded the loudest for those who rose to condemn American policy.
Still, at a meeting marked by relentless antagonism toward the United States government, Mr. Powell offered a muscular, unapologetic, and at times emotional, defense of the nation's exercise of power.
"I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of, or apologize for, with respect to what America has done for the world," he said in response to a question about why the United States always falls back on the use of "hard power" instead of the "soft power" of diplomacy or persuasion.
Mr. Powell noted that the United States had sent its soldiers into foreign wars over the last century, most recently in Afghanistan, without having imperial designs on the territories it secured.
"We've put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives," he said, his voice growing hoarse. "We've asked for nothing but enough land to bury them in."
At other moments, Mr. Powell's tone was lighter and more conciliatory. He acknowledged the split between the United States and two key European allies, France and Germany, which last week said they would oppose a new Security Council resolution authorizing military action.
But Mr. Powell likened it to the bumps in a marriage, and said the two sides could do with some therapy.
"One or two of our friends, we have been in marriage counseling with for over 225 years nonstop," he said, "and yet the marriage is intact, remains strong, will weather any differences that come along."
Still, the speech laid bare stark differences in how Europe, Arab states and the United States view the threat from Iraq.
King Abdullah said he was "concerned that we are being diverted onto another track" by the crisis in Iraq, distracting from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the main hurdle to regional peace.
That theme was taken up by Prince Turki al-Faisal, a member of the Saudi royal house, who said American policy - seen in the Arab world as pro-Israel - was the principle reason for Arab hostility toward Washington.
"If you don't yet realize that, I think we are going to continue to have a lot of problems," he told Senator Joseph R. Biden, the former head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a panel debate.
A poll of the audience conducted in the session found that 81 percent believed a war with Iraq was inevitable. Fifty-six percent said it would drag on for six months, and ignite urban warfare in Baghdad.
Earlier, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, confronted Mr. Powell, saying the American insistence on military power had created "a credibility gap of trust in American politicians, and it's a very grave problem."
A Dutch banker, Hubertus Heemskerk, seemed to speak for many in the audience when he challenged Mr. Powell to produce evidence of Iraq's transgressions before going to war against it.
"I think the evidence is there, the evidence is clear," Mr. Powell replied. He added there was also a "clear link" between the Iraqi regime and terrorist groups, including the Qaeda network.
Mr. Powell said the United States would present more evidence of Iraqi weapons programs "in the days and weeks ahead."
The White House may not be helped in its case by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which fielded one of the two inspection teams in Iraq, and said today it would not produce a "smoking gun" in its report.
"There aren't going to be any great surprises in it," said a spokeswoman for the Vienna-based agency, Melissa Fleming.
But Mr. Powell argued, that the Security Council resolution placed the onus on Iraq to "come clean" by disclosing its weapons, rather than obliging the inspectors to root out arms in a country "the size of California."
"This is not about inspectors finding smoking guns," he said.
The British head of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, was applauded when she questioned whether the threat posed by Iraq "risks provoking a massive humanitarian and human rights catastrophe."
Mr. Powell said the United States was "sensitive to the plight of the Iraqi people, not only in case of conflict but also right now." He said it would make "contingencies" for the protection of the civilian population.
"I thought his answer was a bit short, if I may say," said Maurice Levy, chairman of a French advertising agency, Publicis Groupe. He added, however, "it's not one speech which will do the job."
-------
Bush wages unprecedented, systematic assault on openness
By PIERRE TRISTAM
EDITORIAL VOICES
Daytona Beach News-Journalm
Jan 26
http://www.n-jcenter.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/opOP2012603.htm
It took President Bush eight months and the attacks of Sept. 11 to "look presidential." It took him no time after that to start acting like an emperor who owed explanations to no one and who was owed deference by all.
He was actually nowhere near presidential, despotism a-la-King George having been the Framers' opposite intent for the presidency. He was only back to his old corporate, imperious, secretive self, liberated by a cataclysmic event that would finally let him act the only way he feels comfortable.
Three weeks into his post-Sept. 11 reign he showed Congress exactly how imperious and secretive. It was the morning of Oct. 4. He was furious that a report in the Washington Post had revealed an FBI and CIA warning to members of Congress that more terrorist attacks were likely. A leak? Not exactly. Congressmen are briefed by government agencies all the time, or should be. It's up to them, as it should be, to decide whether and what to tell constituents through the media.
But not in Bush's world. He drafted an order stating that from then on only the Republican and Democratic leadership and the ranking chairmen of intelligence committees would be privy to sensitive law enforcement information and ordered his chief of congressional liaison, Nick Calio, to messenger the memo to his staff and to Capitol Hill.
As Bob Woodward, the Washington Post writer who'd co-authored the story of the Oct. 4 "leak," describes it in his recent book on the Bush White House, Calio told the president that "such a restriction would be a disaster" -- like cutting off oxygen to 527 of the 535 members of Congress."
"I don't care. Get it up there. This is what's going to happen," Bush ordered.
"Okay," said Calio, "But I just want to tell you that you can expect -- "
"I'm not defending it," Bush said. "Do you get the picture here? Get it up there to them, okay?"
"Fine," Calio said.
"It's tough s---," the president said, a foretaste of the profanities he would later unleash on Sen. Bob Graham, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
In a later interview, Bush was just as candid when Woodward asked him if he thought he owed his own Cabinet any explanations: "Of course not. I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something. But I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
And that's just how the Bush administration governs, replicating the president's contemptuous attitude through a wholly new application of the don't ask, don't tell rule.
Secrecy has become a pathological impulse at every level of government. The president seals previous administrations' records sealed in spite of the law. The Justice Department orders Freedom of Information requests to be effectively denied. The vice president chairs a secret energy policy task force, then refuses to reveal his business links with members of the task force.
The Pentagon forbids universities conducting research for the military from involving foreigners or sharing any of the research, even among other researchers, without permission. Courts sanction the administration's secret detentions of "enemy combatants," of secret and open-ended detention of aliens deemed illegal and of secret deportation hearings.
The Homeland Security Department, now the second-biggest government agency, is created as a separate entity with its records and dealings with outside agencies, private or public, to be kept secret. And at every level, through every government news conference -- beginning with those at the White House, where the president has virtually shrugged off the expectation to give any -- mum's the word.
Ari Fleischer, the president's spokesman, is the face of this administration's facelessness: Evading, obfuscating, lying and when pressed, belittling questions to the point of scorn -- the "tough s . . ." response with the presidential seal of approval.
In 2001, Peggy Noonan, the columnist and Bush family publicist, called Bush's presidency a "return to civility." The columnist Marjorie Williams called it "flamboyant humility." And a few months later National Review called it "A Return to Modesty" in a fawning cover story in which Bush is described as "being civil, polite, unassuming, non-threatening, unobtrusive, attentive to law, and respectful of others." Of being, in short, precisely what he has not been.
The attitude stands in direct opposition to that of the reputedly uncivil Clinton White House. "The Clinton administration for all of its flaws made the dissemination of government information a positive value," says Steven Aftergood, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy.
"They did so not simply rhetorically but in concrete, measurable terms. The whole infrastructure of government on the World Wide Web was created in the Clinton administration, and a nearly unimaginable 1 billion pages of historically valuable records were declassified."
Bush's systematic assault on openness, allegedly in the name of national security but in the service of a pathological need for secrecy, pre-dates Sept. 11, and will have damning consequences on democratic institutions and open government far outlasting any physical damage the likes of Osama bin Laden and his band of barbarians have inflicted. To fully appreciate the extent of the Bush assault to date, a systematic summary:
PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACT
On Jan. 20, 2001, the first batch from President Reagan's papers -- 68,000 documents -- should have been made public according to a 1978 law requiring that all documents from any given administration be made public 12 years after a president leaves office. Highly sensitive documents are exempt. On March 23, 2001, Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel and a potential Bush nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, ordered the papers sealed for 90 days. The papers, incidentally, include those of Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush.
On Nov. 1, 2001, President Bush signed an executive order not only sealing the papers, but giving authority to past presidents, vice presidents or their close relatives to bar release of the papers. A bill was introduced in Congress to negate the order. It failed. It is likely to be introduced again this year. A private citizen has filed suit, challenging the legality of the executive order.
EX-GOVERNOR'S POPPY REFUGE
The November executive order wasn't Bush's first end-run around the Freedom of Information Act. When he became president, he shipped all his Texas governorship's papers to his father's presidential library at Texas A&M University.
By putting them in a federal institution, Bush was shielding the papers from Texas' quite liberal Public Information Act -- and shielding his years as governor from the kind of scrutiny that might have revealed the extent of his dealings with scandal-ridden corporations such as Houston-based Enron, or with the oil-and-gas lobby now fueling much of the White House's energy policies. The president, a former baseball executive, knows how to cover his bases.
CHENEY'S TASK FORCE
In 2001, Cheney chaired secret meetings with energy executives which helped formulate the administration's energy policy. For 10 months the Government Accounting Office, an arm of Congress, demanded to know who took part in the meetings. Cheney refused to yield.
The GAO sued and lost. A federal district court judge appointed by Bush less than a year earlier ruled that since the GAO had not suffered personally from Cheney's actions, the suit could not be considered. Cheney acted victorious.
U.S. Rep. John Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who suspects favoritism for Republican campaign donors taking part in the meetings, called it a cover-up. An appeal of the district court ruling is likely.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT'S FREEZE
In 1993, President Clinton rescinded a 1981 rule that encouraged federal agencies to withhold information whenever there was "a substantial legal basis" for doing so, substituting a "presumption of disclosure" on all FOI requests.
On Oct. 12, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft reversed course. He returned to the 1981 presumption of secrecy.
"You can be assured," Ashcroft told staffers, "that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis."
Even if there is no legal basis for resisting an FOI request, there is also the bureaucratic basis for doing so: The backlog of pending FOI requests has grown from about 125,000 at the end of 1998 to about 170,000 at the end of 2001. Meanwhile, the Bush administration's mania to classify documents, and thus put them out of reach of FOI requests, has also reversed the previous administration's directive to declassify. By the end of the 2001 fiscal year, 261,000 were classified, an 18 percent increase from the previous year.
WEB BLACK OUT
In a memo dated Jan. 3, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered Pentagon officials to filter the content of military Web sites essentially the same way that Ashcroft's directive filters FOI requests. Anything deemed remotely sensitive, even if declassified, must not be posted.
Rumsfeld's memo is fresh. The censoring of taxpayer-funded government Web sites is old news. The Sept. 11 attacks were the justification behind shutting public access to loads of information previously available on the Internet.
Removing detailed maps of nuclear power plants that could be used by terrorists makes sense. But the Department of Energy has removed environmental impact statements informing local communities about the potential dangers posed by nuclear plants. It has ordered research arms such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory to delete entire databases from public access because it would have taken too long to filter and delete only sensitive information.
(In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush signed a law closing public access to hospital security plans and information on emergency medical supplies.)
It is difficult to see how any of that information might have inspired a terrorist plot. It is easier to see how removing it from public access reduces the government's exposure to its own greatest fear: accountability.
CONTINUING TREND
Courts have backed the administration's indefinite imprisonment of "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, without charge and without access to lawyers, ruling that constitutional guarantees don't extend to foreign territories. Courts have backed the administration's similar imprisonment of U.S. citizens in military brigs. Courts have also backed the government's indefinite imprisonment of non-citizens in the United States.
And an obscure, secret court has backed the administration's expansion, under the USA Patriot Act, of secret surveillance tactics on citizens and aliens alike. In short, once they invoke terrorism and national security, the Bush administration and its law enforcement complex are exempt from constitutional constraints, making their targets exempt from due process.
Other examples of compulsive secrecy abound, from gag orders on university researchers contracted by the military to the new Department of Homeland Security's exemption of many of its future activities from Freedom of Information scrutiny or open-meeting laws to the White House's obsessively stingy dealings with the press.
It is a pattern of silence and obstruction that transcends any emergency to the point of making a mockery of the reasoning behind the secrecy. Witness the experience of Steven Aftergood, the Project on Government Secrecy director, when he filed an FOI request for the 1947 budget of the CIA, the first year the agency was in operation. The 1997 budget totals were declassified. He figured 55-year-old budget totals would be, too. He figured wrong. Ashcroft's Justice Department denied the request. Aftergood is suing.
James Aune chuckles at the suggestion that Bush's compulsion for secrecy has much to do with the events of Sept. 2001. He experienced the Bush-family silencer firsthand in 1998 when then-Gov. Bush was running for re-election in Texas, an obvious warm-up for a presidential run. Aune kept a close ear on him. As a professor of speech communication at Texas A&M University, he remembered George H.W. Bush's dismal public speaking and wanted to see how Junior compared. Aune was surprised. Bush performed brilliantly during a debate the professor watched on C-SPAN, only the second debate in Bush's political career. It sounds improbable now, given a media subculture devoted to documenting W's Waterloos with English, but at the time the governor seemed to have stumbled on fluency, taming whatever gremlins had bedeviled the senior Bush's tongue.
Aune said as much when a Dallas Morning News reporter contacted him for an analysis of the debate. "Almost against my own better judgment, I thought he looked presidential," Aune told the reporter. W's demeanor was identical to his father's, he said. "But his father was so utterly inept as a public speaker. The governor seems to have corrected all that."
Those last two remarks spoke an indisputable truth about the father and should have flattered the son. Yet the remarks kicked off a minor scandal. At the time Aune was a researcher at the Center for Presidential Studies at the brand new George Bush School for Government and Public Affairs, then closely affiliated with Texas A&M. The governor's office was incensed that a faculty member had been critical of senior Bush, and asked that Aune be reprimanded.
It turned out not to have been the first time. Articles in the local paper and in Editor & Publisher, a newspaper industry trade weekly, revealed that the governor's office had on several occasions so pressured the school to silence critics that the Bush School director drafted a memo warning against causing "embarrassment to the Bush family" and raising the possibility of firings in case of a "failure to comply." The memo never actually reached faculty members. It didn't have to. It was printed in the local paper. The message was sent. Don't mess with the Bushes.
A minor, dated scandal that anticipates with chilling precision two co-dependent Bush family traditions: Loyalty and secrecy.
"As years have gone by I've just gotten madder and madder about it," Aune now says, his affiliation with the school long over (although he's just been promoted to full professor at A&M).
The Bush school, where W's governorship papers are stored in a wall of boxes, itself is no longer intimately affiliated with Texas A&M so much as a right-wing think pod on campus, a stand-alone institution closed to anyone ideologically left of the senior Bush, as Aune describes it, but not one lacking influence.
Robert Gates, the CIA chief under George H.W. Bush was its interim dean for three years. And when A&M went looking for a president of its own last spring, Gates managed to find himself as the sole finalist for the $300,000-a-year post. University professors grumbled about those appointments, too, citing the Bush family's undue influence and such. But they'd learned their lesson.
Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Peacekeepers: Blasts Heard Near Kabul
Associated Press
http://www.austin360.com/aas/news/ap/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V4653.AP-Afghan-Kabul-Bl.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)--Multiple explosions were heard near a deserted palace southwest of Kabul, a spokesman for international peacekeepers said Friday. It was unclear what caused the blasts.
Four or five explosions were reported near destroyed Darulaman Palace early in the morning in a war-damaged section of the capital, said Squadron Leader Mark Whitty of the International Security Assistance Force. Peacekeepers were investigating.
The International Security Assistance Force, a 4,345-strong coalition force from 21 countries helping to provide security in the Afghan capital, also has begun to dispose of a stockpile of weapons and ammunition recently handed over by the Afghan government.
It includes three anti-personnel mines, 33 rocket launchers, 97 fragmentation rockets, 152 mortars, three anti-vehicle mines and assorted ammunition.
-------- africa
Ivory Coast Leader Names New Premier
First Step Taken Toward Sharing Power
By Kim Housego
Associated Press
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43666-2003Jan25?language=printer
PARIS, Jan. 25 -- Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo appointed a transitional prime minister today, taking the first step toward implementing a peace plan aimed at ending a four-month civil war.
Gbagbo said he had chosen Seydou Diarra, a former prime minister who previously chaired national reconciliation talks, as his new partner in a power-sharing government.
Appearing at a news conference with Diarra, Gbagbo said he had "taken note" of the peace agreement reached Friday by government and rebel leaders in Paris and would announce a new coalition government soon. The peace deal requires that the new government include opposition members.
Peace negotiations ended Friday with a draft agreement to end a spiraling civil war in Ivory Coast. A weekend summit of 11 African leaders being held in Paris gave international legitimacy to the peace plan.
"It is, of course, for the men and women of Ivory Coast to repudiate this dark page of their history," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said. "But we can and must help them to do so."
Thousands of people in Ivory Coast's commercial capital, Abidjan, protested the peace agreement, saying it made too many concessions to the rebels.
Angry youths chanted anti-French slogans. One group demonstrated outside the French army's base in Abidjan, denouncing an accord they said Gbagbo signed under pressure from France, the former colonial power of Ivory Coast.
Under the peace agreement, Gbagbo can remain in office but must share power with a newly strengthened prime minister until new elections can be held.
Guillaume Soro, head of the main northern rebel group, the Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast, said his group would be given the defense and interior portfolios in the new government.
Gbagbo, however, did not discuss the makeup of the coalition government at his news conference and declined to take questions.
Ivory Coast's civil war broke out in September after a failed coup to oust Gbagbo. Since then, hundreds of people have been killed and thousands displaced.
Diarra, a career ambassador, served as prime minister in a national unity government under Gen. Robert Guei, who led Ivory Coast's first military coup in 1999 and died in the failed coup in September. Diarra later led national talks in October 2001 aimed at reconciling Ivory Coast's deep ethnic and political rifts.
Gbagbo came to power in 2000 in a flawed election in which opposition leader Alassane Ouattara, a former prime minister with heavy support in the rebellious north, was barred from running after doubt was cast over his nationality. Gbagbo's victory infuriated the opposition.
-------- africa
Envoys Report on Crises in Zimbabwe
World In Brief
Reuters
Sunday, January 26, 2003
Washington Post; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44127-2003Jan25?language=printer
HARARE, Zimbabwe -- U.N. envoys in charge of food aid and efforts to battle HIV in Africa said Zimbabwe's food and AIDS crises were getting worse and urged the government to launch a huge effort to overcome them.
"This is a tragedy, a catastrophe that the world finds itself in," the chief of the World Food Program, James Morris, told reporters during a two-day trip to Harare, during which he was accompanied by Stephen Lewis, special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Food shortages have worsened the impact of Zimbabwe's HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the government faces a major challenge in rebuilding a farming sector that used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa, Morris said.
-------- biological weapons
Nations Urged to Boost Efforts Against Bioterrorism
By Robert J. McCartney
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44004-2003Jan25?language=printer
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 25 -- U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today urged European and other governments to step up efforts to combat the threat of a bioterrorist attack, saying the United States was "further along" in that field and calling on the world community to "get better prepared."
Thompson said in an interview that he will exhort health ministers of 19 other countries to take additional precautions against bioterrorism when he meets them Sunday at an international economics conference in this Swiss mountain resort.
He said the threat of biological or chemical attacks in Europe has been highlighted by the arrest last week of suspected terrorists in Italy and Spain.
They have been linked by authorities to a group seized in Britain in early January in possession of the toxin ricin. Those arrested in Spain allegedly were planning a chemical attack
"All I'm suggesting is they should be more vigilant and devote more resources to prepare for a biological attack," given the threat "evidenced by the arrests just recently," Thompson said.
Thompson is not alone in pressing European governments to do more to guard against bioterrorism. Doctors and other experts in Europe have expressed concern in the past year that authorities were moving too slowly to prepare for attacks using viruses or other biological agents.
The problems range from language barriers that hampered emergency crews during a simulated bioterrorist attack in October to delays in purchasing equipment and secrecy about national stockpiles of vaccines.
Thompson pointed to steps that the United States has taken -- but other countries have not -- to prepare for a biological attack. He cited the procurement of enough vaccine against smallpox for the entire population, and the allocation of $1.1 billion for improved public health facilities and $1 billion for research into smallpox, anthrax, botulism, plague and other diseases.
"Everybody would have to admit we're further along than any of the other countries," Thompson said, because the United States has been working on it longer and has invested more money in the effort.
"Ours is a model. I'm not saying ours is the best," Thompson said. "As a world community, we should get better prepared."
Thompson said he would raise these issues at the meeting Sunday of health ministers of the G-20 group, which includes the G-8 industrialized countries plus 12 other nations, including many with less-developed economies. The meeting is part of the annual World Economic Forum here.
"We've got to work in a cooperative manner," Thompson said.
-------- china
Taiwanese Airliner Lands in China for First Time Since 1949
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43749-2003Jan25?language=printer
SHANGHAI, Jan. 26 (Sunday) -- A chartered jet operated by Taiwan's national airline landed here this morning to pick up passengers and fly them home across the Taiwan Strait for Chinese New Year, transcending a geographic and symbolic divide that has separated the self-governing island from mainland China for more than half a century.
It was the first time a Taiwanese carrier had landed in mainland China since 1949, when Mao Tse-tung's Communist Army conquered Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces and sent them fleeing to Taiwan, where they established a government in exile.
So much has happened since, not least a growing economic integration that has seen Taiwanese businesses plow as much as $100 billion into ventures on the mainland. An estimated 500,000 Taiwanese now live in mainland China. But the political division has remained: Taiwan clings to its status as a self-governing territory, while China insists that the island is part of its domain, often threatening to reclaim it by force.
Today's charter flights, the first of 16 scheduled to run through Feb. 9 , were hailed by authorities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait as a small but significant advance. They amount to a token first step toward the establishment of the "three links" of direct trade, transport and postal ties, which have been severed since 1949. Reestablishing those links has long been an official goal of both China and Taiwan.
"The flights can improve the cross-strait relationship," Chen Ming-tong, vice chairman of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, which oversees relations with China, said in a telephone interview from Taipei. "We hope we can use this experience to learn how to handle the relationship."
Still, the special New Year flights seem unlikely to lead to the establishment of direct air links anytime soon, because the agendas of the two governments now pull in opposite directions.
China has embraced economic integration as the best way to press for reunification by creating advocates for that outcome among Taiwanese businesspeople. It has dropped its former demands that the establishment of the three links requires that Taiwan first acknowledge that it is part of China, a formulation reiterated last week by China's top foreign policy official, Qian Qichen.
But Taiwan's government remains suspicious of Beijing's intentions and concerned that regular air links across the strait could hollow out the island's economy.
"We worry that if we have three links, then the investment will rush across the Taiwan Strait," a senior Taiwan government official said last fall. "Basically, not having direct flights is a brake. If we open direct flights, that means the government is sponsoring investment in China. It means we depend on China. It means we disarm ourselves, open up our airspace."
"Beijing threatens Taiwan every day," the official said. "How can we just open our door?"
This morning, the door opened a crack, and it was treated here as a very big deal.
The first plane to make the trip, a China Airlines 747 bound for Taipei, landed at Pudong International Airport with fanfare worthy of a returning space voyager. The jet was assigned an apron normally reserved for visiting heads of state. The plane arrived at 8:51 a.m., nine minutes ahead of schedule.
In Taiwan, a media frenzy has probed every detail of the flights, from the crews onboard -- one of the six carriers involved, Far Eastern Air Transport, said its inaugural flight would be staffed by flight attendants once hijacked to the mainland -- to how captains who have never landed in Shanghai trained on its geography using flight simulators.
Still, for an event billed as a milestone, much of what happened today was remarkably unexceptional.
As with planes that fly existing routes, the charter flights cannot fly directly to Taiwan but must touch down in Hong Kong or Macau before continuing on. The flights are only open to Taiwanese returning home for the holiday. The cheapest tickets cost about $450 round-trip, only about 20 percent less than the regular fare. A China Airlines spokesman said Saturday that only about 200 of the 370 seats on today's inaugural flight had been sold. The only substantive change was that the jets originated in Taiwan and were operated by carriers based there.
Nevertheless, how the flights came about showed new flexibility on both sides of the strait. As China and Taiwan swapped conditions last year for talks on forging direct air links, Beijing at first insisted the talks be treated as a domestic dialogue. Taiwan rejected that as tantamount to forcing it to recognize China's authority, an unacceptable compromise of its sovereignty. China then suggested that Taiwan could be represented by private businesspeople. Taiwan asserted that no deal could be completed without government involvement.
Amid the stalemate, the New Year charter flights emerged as a baby step forward. Both sides agreed that the Taiwan carriers could simply apply to China's government for permission to operate the flights, thus tiptoeing around the well-staked-out positions on the formal terms of engagement. Still, Taiwan insisted that the flights travel by way of a third port, citing security concerns. That requirement has been criticized by China.
While direct flights would connect Shanghai to Taipei in as little as two hours, the trip now takes about six hours.
"It increases costs, wastes time and undermines the whole point of the charter flights," Li Weiyi, a spokesman for the Taiwan office of China's State Council, said at a press conference last week in Beijing.
Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, has been hearing increasing criticism from the island's key business leaders for his unwillingness to compromise further to establish direct air links.
J.T. Wang, president of Acer Inc., the Taiwan-based computer giant, suggested in an interview last fall that if direct flights were not established soon, he could be forced to shift more personnel to the mainland to support his manufacturing there and lessen Acer's presence in Taiwan. Acer has been shifting production to southern China, where labor costs are far lower. The company now employs 250 people on the mainland and 1,800 in Taiwan.
"If you continually block [direct flights], then the feeling is that mainland China is so far away that it's impossible to support China operations, to dispatch staff from Taipei," he said.
Staff writer Philip P. Pan in Beijing contributed to this report.
-------- europe
Europe urges restraint, but Bush knows best
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor
January 26, 2003
Canoe
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_jan26.html
NEW YORK -- Time's European edition asked its readers what nation posed the greatest threat to world peace. Of the 268,000 respondents (as of this writing), 7.8% replied North Korea, 8.9% named Iraq and a shocking 83.3% said the United States. Good work, President Bush.
The Time poll mirrors feeling around the globe, with the exceptions of Israel and Britain. American neo-conservatives, however, will dismiss this poll as just another example of European wimpiness, irrelevance and anti-American prejudice. So will George Bush and his hawkish entourage, who have made it plain they don't care what the rest of the world thinks so long as America and Israel get their way.
Last week, France's able foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, warned his nation would delay, or might even veto, efforts by the Bush administration to strong-arm the UN Security Council into a rushed war vote against Iraq. Germany, China and Russia backed France.
American right wingers harbour particular venom for France. Americans expect their allies to be obedient. While Washington constantly hectors Europe to take more international responsibility, Europeans are not expected to disagree with American policy. To Americans, France often appears downright insubordinate. Ever since Gen. Charles de Gaulle, Paris has refused to take orders or accept being a junior ally of the U.S.
Europeans see the Mideast very differently from North Americans, thanks to their long experience in the region, and their media, which provides far more accurate, balanced and diverse reporting on the region than do ours.
Americans accuse the French of arrogance, rudeness and illusions of grandeur, which is often true. The French rightly accuse American politicians - epitomized for Europeans by President Bush - of being arrogant and ignorant, as well as loud, uncultured, impatient and dreadfully lacking in those two fundamentals of civilized education: geography and history. French intellectuals warn American TV and movies are spreading "cretinization" to Europe's youth, a charge easily confirmed by an evening's viewing of North American television.
American neo-conservatives know Europeans sneer at them as dangerous ideological crackpots, the 2003 version of 1930s militant Marxists. The neo-con's riposte (oops, a French word) "We saved you in two world wars. Now we have to do it again. You're no better than those wimpy, socialist Canadians."
Foolish intervention
These chest-thumpers are unaware that without France's military intervention in the War of Independence, there would be no United States. Or that Germany was effectively defeated in 1917 by Britain and France when the U.S. foolishly intervened, thus preventing a fair, negotiated peace that would have prevented the evil Treaty of Versailles, the Bolshevik Revolution, Adolf Hitler and World War II.
Most Americans believe their nation alone defeated Germany in World War II. Not so. Stalin's Soviet Union defeated the Third Reich, destroying 100 German divisions in titanic battles on the Eastern front that made D-Day seem a minor battle. By the time U.S. forces landed in Europe, Germany was almost defeated, without a navy, air force or oil.
Smirking Gallophobes love to revile the French for being faint-hearted fighters in World War II. But France lost 210,000 dead fighting the mighty Germans. The Maginot Line worked as planned, contrary to popular belief. America's great fortress, Corregidor, failed miserably.
America lost 292,000 dead in the war, including both the European and Pacific Theatres, where the U.S. totally and brilliantly defeated Japan. Poland lost more soldiers than America, 320,000; even unwarlike Romania lost 300,000 men.
Europe, including the USSR, lost at least 13 million soldiers and 25 million civilians killed in World War II. When Russia opens its secret files, the numbers may soar. "Wimpish" Europeans know something more than Americans about the cost of war. Take the damage of 9/11 and multiply it 1,500 times and you get a taste of the devastation caused by World War II.
Europeans still have fresh memories of their brutal, futile colonial wars. America, about to embark in Iraq on its first large-scale colonial adventure since it annexed Cuba and the Philippines in 1899, has forgotten, and seems fated to relearn, the cost of empire.
By and large, Europeans like and admire Americans, as do most people around the globe. There are some chronic America-haters in Britain and France, to be sure, on both right and left, but in general Europeans are opposed to the unilateralist, aggressive policies of the Bush White House, not to America. But it's also plain, Bush's thirst for war and oil are cultivating strong new strains of anti-Americanism.
Unfortunately, the Bush Administration, obsessed to the point of psychosis with Iraq, refuses to heed the cautions of its old European friends, listening only to exhortations of Israel's far right wing, whose American supporters now dominate the Pentagon and National Security Council. The White House won't listen either to the sensible advice of Israel's far-sighted Labour party leader, Amram Mitzna, or to its Arab allies.
President Bush claims he is about to wage war for America's security. But the rest of the world scoffs at this claim, knowing his true objective is oil. By generating ever increasing antipathy towards the U.S., the Goliath-like Bush administration is actually undermining the security of the U.S. and of Americans abroad. Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com or visit his home page -http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_home.html.
-------- iran
Iraqi Dissidents Meet in Iran to Plan Iraq Entry
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
January 26, 2003
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/international/middleeast/26IRAN.html?ei=1&en=83fe662a5591f920&ex=1044546023&pagewanted=print&position=top
TEHRAN, Jan. 25 - More than a dozen exiled Iraqi opposition leaders have quietly gathered in Iran to prepare their entry into northern Iraq, in a sign of Iran's increasing involvement in planning for its neighbor's future.
Iran's welcome of the opposition leaders, who came at the invitation of a senior Iraqi opposition cleric here, was coupled with an official offer of protection into Iraq, the opposition leaders said. They plan to hold meetings there in an area under Kurdish control and out of reach of the government in Baghdad, to designate a small group that will eventually decide on the shape of a government if Saddam Hussein is ousted.
"We are struggling to determine whether or not an Iraqi leadership that can claim legitimacy can emerge," Kenan Makiya, an author and a Brandeis University professor who is part of the delegation, said in an interview.
Mr. Makiya, who was one of three Iraqi opposition leaders to meet President Bush at the White House this month, added: "The Iranians are actually offering to protect us so we can hold our meetings in northern Iraq. Would you believe that?"
Plans for the opposition to meet inside Iraq were drawn up at a meeting of more than 300 Iraqi opposition figures representing six main groups in London last month. There, the deeply divided groups called for a democratic and parliamentary federal government to replace Mr. Hussein, and they appointed a 65-member committee to continue planning.
Mr. Makiya said his group planned to enter Iraq in the next few days but had rejected the offer of Iranian protection.
The visit by the Iraqi opposition leaders and Iran's involvement illustrate the volatility of politics in a region where the United States, even if it intervenes directly in Iraq, is unlikely to be able to fully control developments.
Iran's official position is that it opposes American military intervention in Iraq and that it must be left to the Iraqi people to decide their fate. But Iran has given protection and material support to Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, the Iraqi cleric whose goal is the overthrow of Mr. Hussein.
Today, the influential head of Iran's Supreme Council for National Security, Hassan Rowhani, said of a potential war in Iraq, "If the U.S. goal is to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, we accept it if it is done under U.N. leadership."
He added, however, that weapons inspectors must be given time to disarm Iraq, and charged that the real American goal "is the domination of the region and Iraqi oil."
"Iraq has a 1,300 kilometer common border with us," Mr. Rowhani said. "An outbreak of a new war only one year after a war in our other neighboring country, Afghanistan, is unbearable."
He added, "Military action is unjustifiable, and we should make all efforts to avert a war."
The Bush administration recently told Iraqi opposition leaders that it opposed creating a government in exile because a huge swath of the Iraqi people would feel excluded after Mr. Hussein was ousted.
The administration also told the group that the planned opposition conference in Kurdish-held northern Iraq in February could provoke retaliation against the Kurds by Mr. Hussein or even cause war. One member of the Iraqi delegation now in Iran said that the group might use this visit only to meet with the two main Kurdish leadersand to prepare for a gathering of the entire 65-member committee inside Iraq.
An American official said that Iran has become increasingly helpful to the opposition. The official said the administration was generally pleased that Iran would provide such support, calling it a "positive trend." However, he cautioned that there continue to be deep divisions within the Iranian government over whether to support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein - divisions that cut across both the religious conservative and reformer camps.
The official also said that the administration would prefer that the opposition conference not take place now in northern Iraq, in large part because of concerns about security.
The presence of the Iraqi group in Iran has not been acknowledged by the Iranian government or reported by news organizations, even those not under government control.
But the opposition leaders said they received an exceptionally warm welcome at the airport when they arrived on Wednesday.
The delegation, which is led by Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the umbrella opposition group known as the Iraqi National Congress, includes Gen. Wafiq Sumarahi, the former chief of Iraqi military intelligence who defected in 1994; Latif Rashid, a representative of one of the two Kurdish opposition groups; and Mudhar Shawkat, leader of the Iraqi National Movement, an organization of mainly Sunni Arabs that works closely with the State Department.
The group is meeting with Iranian officials in various power centers, but not with officials in either the office of the reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, or the Foreign Ministry, Mr. Makiya said.
Neither of those offices seems deeply involved in the plan, he said.
"We've had very important meetings here and increased support shown here for us," Mr. Makiya said of Iranian officials, declining to identify his interlocutors by name. But, he added, "We're not involved with the Khatami group. They have absolutely no say over Iraqi affairs."
Mr. Khatami met with Ayatollah Hakim last week, but both Mr. Khatami and Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi are on an official visit to India. In New Delhi today, Mr. Khatami said, "I hope the present situation would be solved without any war in a peaceful way."
If Mr. Khatami and the Foreign Ministry have been excluded from planning with the Iraqi opposition, it would underscore the extent to which power is divided in Iran. The group would need the protection of the Revolutionary Guards and the Intelligence Ministry to cross the rugged mountains of the northern Kurdish area from Iran into Iraq.
Neither the presidential spokesman, Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, nor the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid-Reza Assefi, returned phone calls seeking comment.
On Friday evening, the Iraqi group met with Ayatollah Hakim over dinner at his office. The ayatollah, a Shiite who leads an organization called the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has abandoned his goal of creating an Iranian-style Islamic Republic in Iraq. He has instead moved closer to Iraqi groups, allowing his followers to cooperate with both Shiites and Sunnis, and even with the United States.
The ayatollah has his own army, some of it in Iraq, but estimates of the number of troops vary from 12,000 to 40,000. Diplomats say Iran's Revolutionary Guards, controlled directly by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader and the most powerful person in the country, train Ayatollah Hakim's troops in Iran.
The meeting in Iraq to decide the shape of a post-Hussein government initially was supposed to take place on Jan. 15, but it has been delayed, Mr. Makiya said, because of opposition by the Bush administration.
"I don't want a new page opened in Iraq that starts as an American occupation," he said.
-------- iraq
Stopping War Not 'Up to Us,' Iraqi Says
Hussein Aide Sees Conflict As Inevitable
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43857-2003Jan25?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 25 -- The Iraqi government believes it has done enough to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors and now regards a war with the United States as almost inevitable, a top adviser to President Saddam Hussein said today. Providing a rare glimpse into the strategic thinking of Hussein's secretive, authoritarian government, his chief adviser on weapons issues, Gen. Amir Saadi, suggested Iraq would not alter its policy toward the inspections and overall disarmament. Although U.N. and U.S. officials demand that the government work actively to resolve conflicts over the private questioning of scientists, the handover of documents and a host of other issues, Iraq believes that it is already "doing all the things we think can prevent war," he said.
With tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops headed to the Persian Gulf region for a possible invasion of Iraq, Saadi voiced a sense of resignation that war could not be averted. "When preparations for war go to this extent, if we go by the First World War and the Second World War, simply mobilizing is enough to make the process irreversible," said Saadi, a British-trained chemist regarded as one of Hussein's most trusted lieutenants. "After you mobilize, that's it. It takes a momentum of its own."
Calling the U.S. military buildup "far in excess of what's reasonable," he said: "One tends to think it's coming no matter what we do."
Saadi rejected the Bush administration's contention that Hussein bears the responsibility for averting war, arguing that the only way to end the showdown would be for the United States to step back. "There are things which can prevent war: for instance, the worsening of the [U.S.] economic situation, demonstrations all around the world, countries showing exactly how they're feeling by talking frankly -- not necessarily publicly, but behind the scenes -- to the United States to make them come to their senses," he said. "But I don't think it is up to us."
Although Saadi insisted his government has encouraged scientists to submit to confidential interviews with U.N. inspectors, three more Iraqi scientists today rebuffed requests to be questioned in private. Frustrated U.N. officials had regarded today's attempt to arrange private interviews as a last chance for Iraq to improve perceptions of its compliance before the United Nations' top two weapons inspectors report to the Security Council on Monday.
In a wide-ranging interview with a small group of American reporters, Saadi indicated that Iraq's leadership may now have as little faith as many in the Bush administration that continued inspections could stave off war. Officials here say the focus on issues such as private interviews and the permission to fly U-2 surveillance aircraft over Iraq is a ploy to divert attention from the fact that the inspectors, according to a preliminary report delivered this month, have not yet found any evidence that Iraq possesses or is developing weapons of mass destruction.
"They keep changing the goal posts," said Lt. Gen. Hussam Mohammed Amin, the head of Iraq's weapons-monitoring directorate, who also participated in the interview.
Saadi said even if Iraq were to force its scientists to agree to private interviews, which he called an "unreasonable demand," he predicted it would not satisfy the Bush administration. "There will be something else," he said. "It won't end there."
The Bush administration insists Iraq, which acknowledged producing tons of chemical and biological warfare agents in the 1980s, still is holding on to many of those weapons, despite Iraqi claims that they were destroyed. Administration officials argue that Iraq should proffer more evidence to support its contention instead of forcing inspectors to hunt for clues about the scope of the country's arms programs.
Administration officials also contend they have strong evidence that Iraq has active programs to manufacture chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. But Saadi dismissed those claims, noting that allegations advanced by the administration last year that Iraq was using imported aluminum tubes to enrich uranium have largely been dismissed by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"It was a lie and they fell for it," he said.
In other areas, though, Saadi said it would be impossible for Iraq to make similar demonstrations that it is free of weapons of mass destruction. "The onus is on us to prove we don't have any," he said. "Is that credible? Is that just? How can you prove a negative?"
Iraq's war footing has become increasingly evident in recent weeks. State-controlled newspapers have warned people to prepare for a conflict. The government-owned television channel has broadcast snippets of Hussein's frequent pep talks with top military commanders. Branch offices of Hussein's Baath Party have organized rallies in which men and women are encouraged to parade around with machine guns and hunting rifles. According to diplomats, the party has also been handing out more weapons to civilians and encouraging them to take to the streets and fight in the event of an American attack.
Saadi said he still held out hope that "wise men and wise minds" would find a way to avert war. He pointedly criticized Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz as people unwilling to heed "any wisdom." But he said he regarded President Bush as someone who "listens," and he expressed hope that Bush would observe calls from Europeans and Arab leaders to allow the inspections to continue.
"There is still time to hold back," he said.
He dismissed suggestions that Hussein should step down or go into exile as "ridiculous." Nobody in the Iraqi government, he said, "is serious about this."
He also denied U.S. allegations that Iraq is planning to set fire to its oil wells in the event of an invasion. "It's preposterous," he said. "There are no such plans. It's our wealth. It's for the Iraqi people."
Shortly before Saadi spoke, the inspectors attempted to conduct private interviews with three Iraqi scientists. But all of them, according to U.N. and Iraqi officials, refused to speak to the inspectors without a government monitor present. A team of nuclear inspectors, who flew by helicopter to the northern town of AlJesira to speak to a scientist, eventually decided to conduct their interview with a government official in the room, a U.N. spokesman said.
Amin said he tried to persuade the scientists to attend the interviews without minders, but he said they objected out of concern their testimony could be distorted or misrepresented by the inspectors. The inspectors also tried to change the scientists' minds, spending more than an hour with each of them to urge them to speak confidentially, Amin said.
"Our role is just to make that person available," he said. "It's for that person himself to say" if he wants to be questioned.
Under a Security Council resolution passed in November, Iraq is required to provide "private access" to anyone the inspectors wish to interview. U.S. officials regard Iraq's ability to produce scientists for private interviews to be a key test of its compliance with the resolution.
U.S. and U.N. officials said they believe the Iraqi government could compel its scientists to talk, but instead is dissuading them from speaking privately with inspectors.
Last week, the inspectors had asked to interview six scientists in private, but all of them refused to do so without a minder. On Monday, after two days of discussions with senior officials here, Hans Blix, the chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Inspection and Verification Commission (UNMOVIC), and IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei announced they had reached an agreement with the Iraqi government on 10 procedural issues, the most important of which was that Iraq would start to encourage its scientists to accept private interviews.
After Blix and ElBaradei left on Monday, UNMOVIC inspectors asked Iraqi authorities to summon six scientists for interviews. They, like the three today, refused to talk without a government official present.
A U.N. official said the inspectors' inability to conduct private interviews would be "mentioned prominently" in a report Blix and ElBaradei are scheduled to present to the Security Council on Monday. "This was their chance to show they could be more cooperative," the official said. "But they threw it away."
Early this morning, a man carrying an iron rod was apprehended by U.N. security guards as he tried to enter the U.N. compound here. The guards, who found three knives on the man, turned him over to Iraqi authorities, U.N. spokesman Hiro Ueki said.
As the man approached the compound, Ueki said he was heard shouting: "Foreigners and strangers are hurting Iraq. Leave Iraq alone."
Less than an hour later, around 8:30 a.m., as a convoy of inspectors was departing the compound and merging into a busy expressway, a young man dressed in a black leather jacket and clutching a notebook jumped in front of the lead vehicle. When the driver got out of his car, the man jumped into the driver's seat and refused to leave, sparking a dramatic confrontation with Iraqi authorities assigned to guard the compound.
As a green-uniformed soldier attempted to pull the man out of the car by grabbing his neck and then his arm, he screamed in Arabic that he did not want to leave the car. With the inspector sitting in the passenger seat looking on impassively, the man began shouting in English.
"Save me. Save me," he wailed. Then, a few moments later, he repeated the refrain: "Save me please. Save me please."
Eventually, U.N. security guards escorted him out of the car and into the compound, where he was immediately handed over to Iraqi authorities after determining his notebook was empty. Ueki said the guards turned him over because the incident occurred outside the compound, where "the U.N. has no jurisdiction."
----
US buys up Iraqi oil to stave off crisis
Seizing reserves will be an allied priority if forces go in
Faisal Islam and Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Sunday January 26, 2003
The UK Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,882512,00.html
Facing its most chronic shortage in oil stocks for 27 years, the US has this month turned to an unlikely source of help - Iraq.
Weeks before a prospective invasion of Iraq, the oil-rich state has doubled its exports of oil to America, helping US refineries cope with a debilitating strike in Venezuela.
After the loss of 1.5 million barrels per day of Venezuelan production in December the oil price rocketed, and the scarcity of reserves threatened to do permanent damage to the US oil refinery and transport infrastructure. To keep the pipelines flowing, President Bush stopped adding to the 700m barrel strategic reserve.
But ultimately oil giants such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell saved the day by doubling imports from Iraq from 0.5m barrels in November to over 1m barrels per day to solve the problem. Essentially, US importers diverted 0.5m barrels of Iraqi oil per day heading for Europe and Asia to save the American oil infrastructure.
The trade, though bizarre given current Pentagon plans to launch around 300 cruise missiles a day on Iraq, is legal under the terms of UN's oil for food programme.
But for opponents of war, it shows the unspoken aim of military action in Iraq, which has the world's second largest proven reserves - some 112 billion barrels, and at least another 100bn of unproven reserves, according to the US Department of Energy. Iraqi oil is comparatively simple to extract - less than $1 per barrel, compared with $6 a barrel in Russia. Soon, US and British forces could be securing the source of that oil as a priority in the war strategy. The Iraqi fields south of Basra produce prized 'sweet crudes' that are simpler to refine.
On Friday, Pentagon sources said US military planners 'have crafted strategies that will allow us to secure and protect those fields as rapidly as possible in order to then preserve those prior to destruction'.
The US military says this is a security issue rather than a grab for oil, after a 'variety of intelligence sources' indicated that Saddam planned to damage or destroy his oil fields - which would inflict up to $30bn damage on the US economy and cause irreparable environmental damage.
But the prospect of British and US commandos claiming key oil installations around Basra by force has pushed global oil diplomacy into overdrive. International oil companies have been jockeying position to secure concessions before 'regime change'.
Last weekend a Russian delegation flew to Baghdad to patch up relations after Iraq's cancellation of its five-year-old contract to develop the huge West Qurna oil field - worth up to $600bn at today's oil price. Lukoil was punished by Baghdad for negotiating with the US and Iraqi exiles on keeping its concession in a post-Saddam Iraq.
The delegation of Ministers and oil executives returned to Moscow with three signed contracts. Oil is the state budget's lifeblood, and Russia requires an oil price of at least $18. Russians fear a US grip on a large reserve of cheap oil could send prices tumbling.
But Saddam has offered lucrative contracts to companies from France, China, India and Indonesia as well as Russia.
It is only the oil majors based in Britain and America - now the leading military hawks - that don't have current access to Iraqi contracts.
Richard Lugar, the hawkish chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, suggests reluctant Europeans risk losing out on oil contracts. 'The case he had made is that the Russians and the French, if they want to have a share in the oil operations or concessions or whatever afterward, they need to be involved in the effort to depose Saddam as well,' said Lugar's spokesman.
A delegation of senior US Republicans was in Moscow last Tuesday trying to persuade Kremlin officials and oil companies that a war in Iraq would not compromise their concessions. A leaked oil analyst report from Deutsche Bank said ExxonMobil was in 'pole position in a changed-regime Iraq'.
Washington is split along hawk-dove lines about the role of oil in a post-Saddam Iraq. Two sets of meetings sponsored by the State Department and Vice-President Dick Cheney's staff have been attended by representatives of ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhilips and Halliburton, the company that Cheney ran before his election.
The dovish line, led by Colin Powell, places the emphasis on 'protection' of Iraq's oil for Iraq's people. His State Department has pointed to a precedent in the US interpretation of international law set in the 1970s. Then, when Israel occupied Egypt's Sinai desert, the US did not support attempts to transfer oil resources.
While the State Department is mindful of cynical world opinion about US war aims, officials do not always stick to the script. Grant Aldonas, Under Secretary at the US Department of Commerce, said war 'would open up this spigot on Iraqi oil which certainly would have a profound effect in terms of the performance of the world economy for those countries that are manufacturers and oil consumers'.
The US economy will announce zero growth this week, prolonging three years of sluggish performance. Cheap oil would boost an economy importing half of its daily consumption of 20m barrels.
But a cheaper oil price could have been reached more easily by lifting sanctions and giving the US oil majors access to Iraq's untapped reserves.
Instead, war stands to give control over the oil price to 'new Iraq' and its sponsors, with Saudi Arabia losing its capacity to control prices by altering productive capacity.
Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Defence Secretary, and Richard Perle, a key Pentagon adviser, see military action as part of a grand plan to reshape the Middle East.
To this end, control of Iraqi oil needs to bypass the twin tyrannies of UN control and regional fragmentation into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish supplies. The neo-conservatives plan a market structure based on bypassing the state-owned Iraqi National Oil Company and backing new free-market Iraqi companies.
But, in the run-up to war, the US oil majors will this week report a big leap in profits. ChevronTexaco is to report a 300 per cent rise. Chevron used to employ the hawkish Condoleezza Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser, as a member of its board.
Five years ago the then Chevron chief executive Kenneth Derr, a colleague of Rice, said: 'Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas - reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to.'
If US and UK forces have victory in Iraq, the battle for its oil will have only begun.
----
Top Iraqi Adviser Says He Believes War Is Inevitable
January 26, 2003
New York Times
By IAN FISHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/international/middleeast/26IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 25 - Saddam Hussein's top science adviser said today that he feared a United States attack might now be inevitable, regardless of what United Nations inspectors conclude about the last two months of renewed searches for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"One tends to think it is coming, no matter what we do," the adviser, Gen. Amir al-Saadi, said in an interview with foreign reporters.
With tensions rising sharply - two days before United Nations inspectors deliver a report the Bush administration sees as a crucial measure of Iraqi cooperation - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warned reluctant allies not to shrink from any strike on Iraq just because "the going is getting tough."
"The burden is upon Iraq," Mr. Powell said today after he arrived in Davos, Switzerland, where he consulted with potential allies in any war on Iraq and prepared to deliver a speech at the World Economic Forum on Sunday addressing the prospects for war and the diplomatic confrontation with North Korea over its nuclear program. "Iraq must comply, or it will be made to comply with military force."
No decision on using force would be made before President Bush - who is expected to lay out his position on Iraq in the State of the Union address on Tuesday - meets Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain on Friday, Mr. Powell said.
In Iraq today, at least three more Iraqi weapons specialists refused to be interviewed in private by United Nations inspectors.
Earlier this week, six other scientists, experts in biological weapons, said they would not speak to inspectors outside the presence of Iraqi government officials - further evidence, the Bush administration says, that Mr. Hussein is trying to undermine the inspection process.
On Monday, the Iraqi government agreed to measures for greater cooperation with the United Nations in which Iraqi officials said they would "encourage" the scientists to grant such interviews. Today, the United Nations decided to interview one of the scientists, a nuclear expert, near the city of Mosul in the presence of a government witness.
The United States deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, said on Thursday that Washington had evidence that Iraq had threatened to kill scientists and their families if they cooperated with the United Nations inspectors. Iraqi officials insist that they have fulfilled their pledge to the United Nations, but could not force the scientists to speak.
"Our role is just to make that person available, to inform him that he is required for a private interview," General Saadi said. "We do that."
Saying he still held out hope war could be averted, he strongly defended Iraq's overall cooperation with inspectors and noted that they had been free to visit any site they wanted and that they had still turned up nothing. The United Nations inspectors have said they have not found any "smoking gun."
General Saadi challenged the Bush administration's measure of cooperation: that it is up to Iraq, not the inspectors, to prove it does not have weapons.
"The onus is on us to prove we don't have any," he said. "Is that credible? Is that just? How can you prove a negative?"
He said he believed that the United States had reasons other than weapons for staging an attack. He said Iraq was still being punished for invading Kuwait in 1990, which spurred a war that had far more international support than Mr. Bush is receiving now. The general also contended that Iraq was being used as an example to other countries not to oppose the United States.
"They have an agenda which takes priority over anything else - hegemony," he said.
Today, the United Nations mission here confronted two unusual incidents. In the first, about 8 a.m., an Iraqi man with a metal rod and three knives tried to push through security at the United Nations offices here. He was subdued, and no one was hurt.
Half an hour later, a second young Iraqi clutching a notebook and yelling, "Save me!" climbed into the car of inspectors who were about to leave to inspect a site. A video of the incident by Associated Press Television News showed an Iraqi officer trying to remove the man from the car, as he yelled in Arabic, "I have been treated unjustly!"
Yasuhiro Ueki, a spokesman for the inspectors, said they had called United Nations security out of concern about the inspectors' safety, because the incident occurred so soon after the other man had tried to enter with knives. United Nations guards helped remove the Iraqi from the car and handed him over to the Iraqi police. As for the contents of the notebook, Mr. Ueki said, "My understanding is that it was empty."
There is, in all, a palpable sense here that the next few days may tell whether Iraq is the target of another American attack. In Switzerland, Mr. Powell planned a round of meetings with representatives of several key allies.
En route to Switzerland, he told reporters that he was convinced that other countries would be willing to assist an American military campaign. "We will not be alone, that's for sure," he said. "I can rattle off at least a dozen from memory."
In Davos, he met with Prime Minister Abdullah Gul of Turkey, a country from which the United States is seeking the use of military bases for a possible attack on Iraq despite public opposition. Mr. Powell said the Turks "understand our needs, and I have a complete understanding of their political situation."
He also met with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer of Australia and dismissed a proposal by the Swiss foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey, to set up a meeting with the Iraqis in an effort to avert war.
In 1991, just before the Persian Gulf war, Secretary of State James A. Baker III met with senior Iraqi officials in Switzerland in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Iraq to withdraw its forces from Kuwait.
"We have lots of venues in which one could hold talks," Mr. Powell said. "She made a gracious passing reference to the fact that talks had been held here previously, and that was the extent of her comment."
On Monday, the two top United Nations arms inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, will report to the Security Council in New York on the inspections so far.
Inspectors have generally praised Iraq for allowing visits to any site they have requested, but have issued several criticisms, some concerning the level of Iraqi cooperation on interviewing Iraqi scientists in private.
The inspectors, like the Bush administration, also say Iraq's 12,000-page report in December did not provide conclusive proof of destruction of all weapons and arms programs.
In general, the inspectors, as well as France, Germany and Russia, have been urging at least several more weeks of inspections before any attack begins. On Friday, 120 Democrats in Congress delivered Mr. Bush a letter also asking him to grant the inspectors more time.
At the Davos gathering, the Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, warned that the United States' war plans were stoking anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, and that a war thus presented a danger to the United States.
"My point is that the whole Middle East will or could be inflamed, which means that there is a big risk," Mr. Moussa said in an interview with Reuters. "So why take that risk?"
"It will add to the frustration and the agitation of the people in the Middle East," he said, and he complained about the "double standard" of America: the United States' threat of pursuing a war against Iraq while not solving the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
In the interview here today, General Saadi said he was buoyed by the level of opposition to an American attack, and he held out some hope war could be avoided. "We insulate ourselves that war is never coming," he said. "We must do everything within our power not to give them the excuse."
----
Iraqi troops may resist bitterly in desperate fight
FALEH JABAR
Sun 26 Jan 2003
Scotsman
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=101442003
NOW that the United States and Iraq seem set on a collision course, the fate of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime will be determined by how well the Iraqi army performs.
The conventional US wisdom is that Iraq's regular army will readily lay down its arms, but the Republican Guard may put up a fierce fight. US experts say the Guard is better motivated, equipped and paid than regular units, and so more loyal and willing to fight.
What can we really expect? During the ground war in February 1991, soldiers voted with their feet. Few units in Kuwait put up much of a fight, and 70,000 surrendered during the first day of fighting. After the ceasefire the levels of mutiny and desertion in the southern theatre led to total disintegration. In the northern sector, some 150,000 soldiers of the military units laid down their arms, determined neither to rebel nor defend the regime. In the middle sector centring on Baghdad, there was far more cohesion and loyalty.
How can these differences be explained? First, there was a strong and generalised sense of apathy toward the Kuwait war, as the soldiers called it. There was still great war fatigue from the Iraq-Iran war. This destroyed the old union between official and popular nationalisms. Heavy casualties, poor logistics, meagre provisions, operational mismanagement, defeat and, finally, a disorganised withdrawal augmented the bitterness among the units stationed in the south. Party commissars and loyal kinship networks were sparsely represented in the units sent to the south and those left in Kuwait. The grip of the party and the clan over the army was weak. Paradoxically, the devastating Allied coalition air campaign, which had initially triggered an angry reaction by the soldiers in the south, ultimately wiped out most of them. 'The euphoria over the swift success in Afghanistan is misleading'
The Bush senior administration had decided in 1990 not to destroy the Iraqi army completely, but to leave it enough power to balance that of Iran. With this quantitative approach the US failed to destroy the troops that were loyal to Saddam but wiped out the rebellious units instead, inadvertently helping Saddam Hussein deal with the threat from his routed army in the south.
The section of the armed forces left intact for Iraq's national defence carried out its domestic security tasks almost to perfection. There are many factors behind this cohesion: the high density of kinship and party networks in the guard, compared to the main army; its sense of collective threat. This helped keep morale high and lent a sense of purpose to the government's campaign to prevent revolt. These high spirits were further enhanced by the relative safety of the guard's positions during the war. From 1991 on, the Iraqi regime restructured to put its ruling house and governmental institutions in order, reorganising the ruling household, which was beginning to show signs of disunity; arranging a smooth succession; forcing the re-tribalisation of society; and reorganising the military.
The looming war is different from 1991 in political objectives, operational drive and battlefield zones. Politics will play a much larger part in shaping the attitude of the Iraqi military. As the US openly seeks regime change, it will require operations, direct or by proxy, to take the seat of power, Baghdad. If key Iraqi units are not won over or a coup successfully encouraged, the main objective will not be attainable except by full-scale invasion and occupation. The euphoria over the swift success in Afghanistan is misleading. Afghanistan does not prove the viability of enforced regime change in Iraq, rather the reverse. Breaking the unity of the ruling clan-class may prove very difficult. There is at present no sign that the coherence of the ruling elite has been targeted.
From the Iraqi side, the nature of the conflict is also quite different; it is now a war for survival, and the ruling class is painfully aware of the gulf between official nationalism and popular patriotism. There is also a grim awareness that the Iraqi army is no match for the US or a coalition of armies. What can Baghdad do? It has tried to manipulate and accentuate the sense of collective threat posed by the US to all the ruling elite; the indiscriminate threat of elimination may unite them in a drive to fight to the end. This sense of collective vulnerability has been reinforced by the undifferentiated presentation of the objectives of the US campaign. To offset the inherent weakness of official nationalism, the regime has mobilised popular and institutional religion, both anti-Shi'ite communalism, and Shi'ite religious rulings (fatwa) against the Shi'ite opposition.
This is new. Baghdad is also trying to fortify the cities as the best fighting locations. This may increase civilian casualties, slow down or limit US operations, offset the weakness of the Iraqi army, and help achieve the regime's intent to inflict as many US casualties as possible. There is a careful plan, too, to use the international media to pressure the attacking forces to stop short of Baghdad. In the desert there are few opportunities for sensational press stories. In the 1991 Gulf war, the coalition forces controlled the media. Now Iraq seems bent on reversing that and 10 media stations have been installed underground.
To ensure continuity, a bipolar system of political leadership has been created: Saddam and Qusay, his son, as the actual and reserve presidents. A third centre of power is also possible though it has not been announced: the commander of the Republican Army, General Kamal Mustafa. To stem any potential mutiny by the public, military commanders have replaced civilian governors across Iraq. Loyal tribal forces are also to be deployed in urban centres. These and other measures may reflect the extent to which the ruling elite is aware of its own weaknesses and of the limitations of the coalition camp. Based on the 1991 experience, the military on both sides of the internal divide (mainstream army versus the Republican Guard) may fight, rebel or disintegrate. The politics surrounding a possible coup are even more complicated. Compared to 1958, when a previous coup was carried out, the military is today highly depoliticised. Then, 10% of the armed forces took part in the coup while at least 80% were neutralised by the swift takeover. In present conditions, at least a fully-fledged corps would be required, provided that three other corps are politically neutralised. Without the co-operation of a considerable segment of the Beijat clan, that is unthinkable.
Whether or not the politics of the coalition campaign will succeed in attracting part of the ruling tribal alliance to their side is open to question. If a military coup fails, the potential for a civil war will increase. In all cases, civilian loss will be dramatic, the tempo of the war will be slow and the rise of uncontrollable forces will defy our worst imaginings.
FALEH JABAR IS A WRITER ON THE MIDDLE EAST
----
U.S. Warplanes Strike in Southern Iraq No-Fly Zone
Sun January 26, 2003
Reuters
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2111515
WASHINGTON - U.S. and British coalition warplanes patrolling "no-fly" zones over Iraq bombed five communications sites in southern Iraq Sunday, the U.S. military said.
It was the latest in what has become frequent activity in the no-fly zones as the U.S. military builds up forces in the Gulf region to prepare for a possible war with Iraq. The last strike in southern Iraq occurred on Jan. 24.
Sunday's strikes occurred at about 7 a.m. EST on cable repeater sites located between Al Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, and An Nasiriyah, about 170 miles southeast of Baghdad, the U.S. Central Command said.
"Coalition strikes in the no-fly zones are executed as a self-defense measure in response to Iraqi hostile threats and acts against Coalition forces and their aircraft," the U.S. military statement said. "The coalition executed today's strike after Iraqi military aircraft violated the Southern No-Fly zone."
The United States and Britain declared no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Kurds in the north and Shi'ite Muslims in the south from Baghdad's forces. Iraq does not recognize the zones.
----
Iraqi Dissidents Meet in Iran to Plan Iraq Entry
January 26, 2003
New York Times
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/international/middleeast/26IRAN.html
TEHRAN, Jan. 25 - More than a dozen exiled Iraqi opposition leaders have quietly gathered in Iran to prepare their entry into northern Iraq, in a sign of Iran's increasing involvement in planning for its neighbor's future.
Iran's welcome of the opposition leaders, who came at the invitation of a senior Iraqi opposition cleric here, was coupled with an official offer of protection into Iraq, the opposition leaders said. They plan to hold meetings there in an area under Kurdish control and out of reach of the government in Baghdad, to designate a small group that will eventually decide on the shape of a government if Saddam Hussein is ousted.
"We are struggling to determine whether or not an Iraqi leadership that can claim legitimacy can emerge," Kenan Makiya, an author and a Brandeis University professor who is part of the delegation, said in an interview.
Mr. Makiya, who was one of three Iraqi opposition leaders to meet President Bush at the White House this month, added: "The Iranians are actually offering to protect us so we can hold our meetings in northern Iraq. Would you believe that?"
Plans for the opposition to meet inside Iraq were drawn up at a meeting of more than 300 Iraqi opposition figures representing six main groups in London last month. There, the deeply divided groups called for a democratic and parliamentary federal government to replace Mr. Hussein, and they appointed a 65-member committee to continue planning.
Mr. Makiya said his group planned to enter Iraq in the next few days but had rejected the offer of Iranian protection.
The visit by the Iraqi opposition leaders and Iran's involvement illustrate the volatility of politics in a region where the United States, even if it intervenes directly in Iraq, is unlikely to be able to fully control developments.
Iran's official position is that it opposes American military intervention in Iraq and that it must be left to the Iraqi people to decide their fate. But Iran has given protection and material support to Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, the Iraqi cleric whose goal is the overthrow of Mr. Hussein.
Today, the influential head of Iran's Supreme Council for National Security, Hassan Rowhani, said of a potential war in Iraq, "If the U.S. goal is to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, we accept it if it is done under U.N. leadership."
He added, however, that weapons inspectors must be given time to disarm Iraq, and charged that the real American goal "is the domination of the region and Iraqi oil."
"Iraq has a 1,300 kilometer common border with us," Mr. Rowhani said. "An outbreak of a new war only one year after a war in our other neighboring country, Afghanistan, is unbearable."
He added, "Military action is unjustifiable, and we should make all efforts to avert a war."
The Bush administration recently told Iraqi opposition leaders that it opposed creating a government in exile because a huge swath of the Iraqi people would feel excluded after Mr. Hussein was ousted.
The administration also told the group that the planned opposition conference in Kurdish-held northern Iraq in February could provoke retaliation against the Kurds by Mr. Hussein or even cause war. One member of the Iraqi delegation now in Iran said that the group might use this visit only to meet with the two main Kurdish leadersand to prepare for a gathering of the entire 65-member committee inside Iraq.
An American official said that Iran has become increasingly helpful to the opposition. The official said the administration was generally pleased that Iran would provide such support, calling it a "positive trend." However, he cautioned that there continue to be deep divisions within the Iranian government over whether to support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein - divisions that cut across both the religious conservative and reformer camps.
The official also said that the administration would prefer that the opposition conference not take place now in northern Iraq, in large part because of concerns about security.
The presence of the Iraqi group in Iran has not been acknowledged by the Iranian government or reported by news organizations, even those not under government control.
But the opposition leaders said they received an exceptionally warm welcome at the airport when they arrived on Wednesday.
The delegation, which is led by Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the umbrella opposition group known as the Iraqi National Congress, includes Gen. Wafiq Sumarahi, the former chief of Iraqi military intelligence who defected in 1994; Latif Rashid, a representative of one of the two Kurdish opposition groups; and Mudhar Shawkat, leader of the Iraqi National Movement, an organization of mainly Sunni Arabs that works closely with the State Department.
The group is meeting with Iranian officials in various power centers, but not with officials in either the office of the reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, or the Foreign Ministry, Mr. Makiya said.
Neither of those offices seems deeply involved in the plan, he said.
"We've had very important meetings here and increased support shown here for us," Mr. Makiya said of Iranian officials, declining to identify his interlocutors by name. But, he added, "We're not involved with the Khatami group. They have absolutely no say over Iraqi affairs."
Mr. Khatami met with Ayatollah Hakim last week, but both Mr. Khatami and Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi are on an official visit to India. In New Delhi today, Mr. Khatami said, "I hope the present situation would be solved without any war in a peaceful way."
If Mr. Khatami and the Foreign Ministry have been excluded from planning with the Iraqi opposition, it would underscore the extent to which power is divided in Iran. The group would need the protection of the Revolutionary Guards and the Intelligence Ministry to cross the rugged mountains of the northern Kurdish area from Iran into Iraq.
Neither the presidential spokesman, Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, nor the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid-Reza Assefi, returned phone calls seeking comment.
On Friday evening, the Iraqi group met with Ayatollah Hakim over dinner at his office. The ayatollah, a Shiite who leads an organization called the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has abandoned his goal of creating an Iranian-style Islamic Republic in Iraq. He has instead moved closer to Iraqi groups, allowing his followers to cooperate with both Shiites and Sunnis, and even with the United States.
The ayatollah has his own army, some of it in Iraq, but estimates of the number of troops vary from 12,000 to 40,000. Diplomats say Iran's Revolutionary Guards, controlled directly by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader and the most powerful person in the country, train Ayatollah Hakim's troops in Iran.
The meeting in Iraq to decide the shape of a post-Hussein government initially was supposed to take place on Jan. 15, but it has been delayed, Mr. Makiya said, because of opposition by the Bush administration.
"I don't want a new page opened in Iraq that starts as an American occupation," he said.
--------
Report: Death, Disease Await Iraqi Kids
By Hamza Hendawi
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, January 26, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46461-2003Jan26?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Death, disease and starvation await Iraq's children should war break out, and casualties in the thousands or even in the hundreds of thousands cannot be ruled out, according to a report released Sunday by an independent team of European and American experts.
The team forecasts a "grave humanitarian disaster" in its report prepared by 10 experts from the International Study Team, an independent group of academics, researchers, physicians and child psychologists founded in 1991 to examine the effect of military conflicts on civilians.
The report, titled "The Impact of a New War on Iraqi Children," expressed concern not only about casualties among children as a direct result of combat, but more importantly as a result of the results of war - including disruptions of food supplies, lack of medicines, the flight of refugees.
Some 500,000 children already malnourished or underweight, and Iraq currently only has a month's supply of food and three months' supply of medicines. If a war - especially a lengthy one - cuts off supplies or damages Iraq's already decrepit medical infrastructure, then children would see the most suffering, said the report.
"While it is impossible to predict both the nature of any war and the number of expected deaths and injuries ... casualties among children will be in the thousands, probably in the tens of thousands and possibly in the hundreds of thousands," team leader Eric Hoskins said.
The report's findings, read out at a news conference, were based on data collected in three Iraqi cities - Baghdad, Basra and Karbala - and interviews with 200 families. The team did not receive any help from the Iraqi government and hired its own interpreters, said Hoskins, a Canadian.
The United States and Britain are assembling the biggest ground, air and naval force in the Persian Gulf region since the 1991 Gulf War, threatening war against Iraq to disarm it of weapons of mass destruction. On Monday, the chief arms inspectors are to deliver to the U.N. Security Council a crucial report on the progress of two months of searching for biological, chemical or nuclear weapons in Iraq.
"Iraq's 13 million children are at a grave risk of starvation, disease, death and psychological trauma," Hoskins told reporters, summing up the findings of the survey, conducted Jan. 20-26. "Iraqi children are more vulnerable than ever," he said. Iraq's under-18 population was worse off than on the eve of the 1991 war, when a U.S. led coalition drove Iraq's army out of Kuwait.
Twelve years of economic sanctions, imposed by the United Nations after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, have left Iraq's economy shattered, although expansion of the oil for food program in recent years have improved conditions somewhat.
Under the oil for food program, Iraq is allowed to sell unlimited amounts of oil to buy humanitarian goods and pay war reparations.
Figures published in September 2000 by the United Nations and the World Food Program said malnutrition among children in Iraq was very serious outside Baghdad and in rural areas, reflecting the effects of drought and poverty.
But it found the nutritional situation in the north "significantly improved." In the north, the oil-for-food program is implemented by the U.N. Inter-Agency Humanitarian Program on behalf of the government of Iraq, the report said.
"No one is ready for this war. Not the national government not the United Nations," said Hoskins, a medical doctor, referring to preparations for any humanitarian crisis that may result from a military conflict.
The report said that interviews with Iraqi children showed they had great fear of a new war.
It said researchers were shocked to learn that children as young as four and five had clear concepts of the horrors of war, speaking of the threats posed by bombs, guns, destruction of houses, burning homes, killing of people: and in the end referring to their own families "We will all die.'" "Iraqi children already are psychologically and mentally exhausted," said Hoskins, alluding to the U.N. sanctions.
The International Study Team's backers include World Vision Canada, Oxfam Canada, United Church of Canada and the University of Bergen. Its report on the humanitarian situation in Iraq following the 1991 war was considered the most comprehensive of such reports. It was based on more than 9,000 household interviews in 300 locations across Iraq.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Army Raids Gaza, Killing 12 Palestinians
Incursion Is Deepest Into City Since Beginning of Uprising
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43667-2003Jan25?language=printer
JERUSALEM, Jan. 26 (Sunday) -- Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships swept into central Gaza City late Saturday night, killing at least 12 Palestinians and injuring an estimated 50 others in the deepest incursion into the populous city in 28 months of fighting, according to Palestinian witnesses.
Palestinian gunmen used antitank missiles, explosives and other firepower to fight back against the armored vehicles, according to Israeli military sources. No soldiers were reported killed in the operation, which continued early today.
Witnesses reported that 30 Israeli tanks, backed by Apache helicopter gunships, participated in the attack, which marked a dramatic escalation of the conflict in Gaza. Israeli troops had attacked a community just outside the entrance to Gaza City on Friday.
The death toll in today's fighting was the highest in the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 8 military operation in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. Fifteen Palestinians were killed there when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile into a crowded street.
Though the Israeli military has steadily stepped up its attacks in the Gaza Strip in recent months, today's operation was the first time tanks had ventured into the heart of Gaza City, close to the central square, according to witnesses.
The attack comes as Israelis prepare to vote in an election Tuesday that polls show will return Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Likud Party to power. Sharon's two-year term has been marked by mounting violence between Palestinians and the Israeli army.
On Friday, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said he and Sharon had decided to conduct a series of military operations in the northern Gaza Strip in response to missile attacks by Palestinians on Israeli towns.
Palestinian witnesses said the assault today included the destruction of the home of a member of the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, who had been involved in an attack on a Jewish settlement more than a year ago. Tanks and helicopters also reportedly demolished two other houses and two metal workshops that Israeli military sources said were used to manufacture the short-range Qassam rockets fired at Israeli towns.
Early Saturday, Israeli troops and tanks pulled out of the Palestinian town of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza after a Palestinian teenager was killed and an estimated 25 residents were wounded in fighting there. Israeli forces also destroyed four bridges that provide access to the town, severing it from the rest of the Gaza Strip.
Although Palestinians frequently fire the homemade Qassam rockets toward Israeli communities and Jewish settlements inside the Gaza Strip, the projectiles are extremely inaccurate and usually cause more fear than physical damage.
Palestinian witnesses said that Palestinian gunmen attacked the 60-ton Merkava tanks and that fighters from nearby towns and refugee camps converged on the city of 300,000 people to engage in the battle. Local Palestinian media reports said at least three of the dead Palestinians were armed fighters, but that some of the fatalities were civilians hit by shrapnel from exploding tank shells and missiles fired by helicopter gunships.
"We were asleep -- all of a sudden the ground was shaking," Ahmed Nemer, a resident of the Zaitoun neighborhood in Gaza City, told the Reuters news agency. "I saw tanks and froze. . . . We squeezed in one room and awaited God's mercy. We could hear soldiers shouting at neighbors to open doors and come out."
Loudspeakers from mosques summoned Palestinians, declaring, "Every man with a weapon must rush to the streets and defend Palestinian honor," according to Reuters.
Heavy fighting was continuing early into the morning today as the tanks rumbled toward the central square at the heart of Gaza City, witnesses said.
----
Copters fire on crowds, kill 12
Ibrahim Barzak
ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 26, 2003
http://dynamic.washtimes.com/twt-print.cfm?ArticleID=20030126-46242118
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli tanks entered Gaza City from three directions and helicopter gunships exchanged fire, killing 12 Palestinians early today, in the deepest incursion in more than two years of fighting, security officials and witnesses said.
Witnesses said helicopters fired on crowds, including gunmen, gathering in Gaza streets. Twelve Palestinians were killed and 51 wounded, hospital officials said.
Tanks were spotted just a mile from downtown Palestine Square.
Israeli forces blew up the two-story house of a Hamas militant and were approaching the houses of two others involved in an attack on a Jewish settlement in Gaza, Palestinians said. A metal workshop in the same area was blown up.
Early today, witnesses said nine Israeli tanks took up positions in the center of Beit Hanoun, a town at the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces blew up four bridges a day earlier.
The Israeli military said that during the operation, soldiers came under heavy fire from guns and anti-tank weapons and that the Israeli forces returned the fire.
The raid came just three days before an Israeli general election that was expected to keep Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Likud party in power.
The incursion began around 10 p.m. yesterday, with about 35 tanks moving toward the center of Gaza City from three directions, witnesses and security officials said.
Palestinian legislator Ziad Abu Amr said he saw 10 tanks drive through his street. Another resident, Mohammed Tafesh, 29, said electricity was cut in the neighborhood. From mosque loudspeakers across the city, gunmen were called into the streets to wage "holy war" against the Israelis.
Two helicopter gunships fired machine guns at armed men. In one incident, gunmen fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli armored vehicle, drawing Israeli tank fire. Mr. Tafesh said the gunmen got away.
Early yesterday troops left the Palestinian town of Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza, after a Palestinian teenager was killed and 25 residents were wounded there in a fierce firefight. The raid was triggered by Palestinian rocket fire on the nearby Israeli town of Sderot on Friday.
Troops blew up four small bridges the army said were used by militants in Beit Hanoun to fire rockets. Palestinians have fired more than 30 rockets from Beit Hanoun at Israeli towns and settlements in the past year, an army statement said.
Mr. Sharon said in an interview on Israel's Russian-language TV network yesterday that Israel would not gamble with its security.
"Israel will be willing - in exchange for real peace, peace for generations - to make concessions," Mr. Sharon said. "As long as I am prime minister there will be no compromise, not now and not in the future, on the issue of security of the citizens of Israel or the security of the state of Israel."
----
Israel seals Gaza borders after army incursion kills 12
By Donald Macintyre in Gaza City
27 January 2003
UK Inpendent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=373124
The Israeli army sealed off Gaza and the West Bank last night to prevent attacks by militants until after polling in tomorrow's elections.
The move came hours after the army had ended its incursion into Gaza City, its deepest into the territory for more than two years, leaving 12 Palestinians dead and 67 injured. Palestinian sources said that in a separate incident, a boy aged seven was killed by Israeli army fire and his five-year-old brother wounded in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. The killing was not confirmed by Israel.
Earlier, helicopter gunships, tanks and armoured vehicles swept far into Gaza City for the first time since the current uprising began. A seven-hour night-time operation met pockets of fierce armed resistance. Palestinian leaders were swift to condemn the incursion as a move by Ariel Sharon's Likud government to shore up support in the Israeli general election.
The armed column destroyed metal workshops and other businesses in what the defence ministry said was an attempt to disable the production of rockets and mortars. Hamas militants fired 10 Kassam rockets from the Gaza Strip on to the Israeli desert town of Sederot on Friday.
After Israeli forces withdrew at about 5am, four other rockets were fired from Gaza at Sederot and three other communities in the Negev desert. No injuries were reported in either attack. In the separate incident, the two boys were reported to have been shot as they played near a military outpost.
As the military announced that it was completely sealing the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the Defence Minister, Shaul Mofaz, said the option of "taking control of the Gaza Strip" was still being considered in the wake of "an increase in attempts by terror organisations to carry out attacks". Such a move, if it was to be made, would place heavy demands on military resources, probably requiring the call-up of reserve troops.
Several of the bereaved relatives and wounded in Gaza City confirmed that the casualties had included gunmen resisting the incursion. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a leader of Hamas, declared as some 30,000 attended the funerals of the 12 men: "The Israelis will pay a heavy price for every drop of blood shed last night. Our battle will continue until we uproot this Zionist occupation from our holy land, no matter what the sacrifice."
An opinion poll published yesterday indicated that the Likud party remains comfortably ahead, projected to win 30 seats in the 120-member parliament, compared with 19 for the opposition Labour party.
Arab leaders at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos pleaded for a new US-led push to resolve the conflict.
-------- mideast
Bahrain Deploys Patriot Missiles
January 26, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bahrain-Patriot-Missiles.html
MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) -- Bahrain, a key U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf, has announced it is deploying Patriot missile batteries to counter any possible long-range missile threats, newspapers reported Sunday.
The announcement to deploy Patriots, one of world's few workable defenses against surface-to-surface guided missiles, came during a visit Saturday by the king, Sheik Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa to the kingdom's Royal Field Artillery Unit, several pro-government newspapers reported Sunday.
An Information Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the Patriot deployment, but would not comment further. Telephone calls to the Defense Ministry spokesperson's office went unanswered.
King Hamad, who is supreme commander of the island's defense force, said introduction of the Patriots, ``would reinforce (Bahrain's) air defense against ballistic missiles threats,'' newspapers said.
None of the Bahraini newspapers said how many Patriot batteries were deployed or elaborated on the source of the ballistic missile threat. It wasn't clear when the deployment would be completed.
Iraq fired long-range Scuds at Bahrain, base for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, twice during the 1991 Gulf war. Of more than 800 long-range Scuds provided by the former Soviet Union, Iraq also fired 43 at Saudi Arabia, 39 at Israel and one at Qatar during the war. Scuds also were widely used by the Iraqis during the latter part of the 1980-88 war with Iran.
The United States and Britain say Iraq is hiding mass destruction weapons and that they will disarm the Arab nation by force if necessary. They are assembling the biggest ground, naval and air force in the Gulf since a U.S.-led coalition defeated Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War.
----
Report: Turkey, U.S. Agree on Troops
Associated Press
Sun, Jan. 26, 2003
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/5036413.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkey's military will allow up to 20,000 U.S. troops to pass through the country into northern Iraq in the event of war, a newspaper report said Sunday.
The report follows visits last week by the U.S. military chief of staff and the U.S. general in charge of NATO, of which Turkey is a member. The report said the agreement was between Turkish and U.S. military officials.
Turkish officials were not available to comment on the report. The Turkish Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment and a U.S. Embassy spokesman said he had no knowledge of an agreement.
Any transit of U.S. troops through Turkey would require approval in parliament, where it could face stiff opposition.
According to a report published in the Milliyet newspaper, U.S. troops would not be stationed in Turkey, but would only pass through on their way to northern Iraq, which is controlled by Kurds and is outside of Baghdad's control.
An overwhelming majority of Turks oppose military action in Iraq and Turkish legislators have balked at a U.S. request to allow U.S. troops to be based in Turkey for an Iraq operation.
On Sunday, about 5,000 demonstrators gathered in Istanbul, chanting anti-U.S. slogans and holding signs saying "We will not be America's soldiers," and "Yankee go home."
Hoping to avoid a war, Turkey hosted a meeting of Iraq's neighbors on Thursday and urged Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.
Turkey fears that a war in Iraq could deepen its economic recession, send a wave of refugees over its borders and lead to the formation of an independent Iraqi Kurdish state in northern Iraq - a development which Turkish officials say could inspire autonomy seeking Kurdish rebels in Turkey.
-------- pacific
Japan to back U.S. independent military operation against Iraq
Saturday, January 25, 2003
Japan Today
(Kyodo News)
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&id=247081
TOKYO - Japan will support the United States even if Washington independently launches a military attack against Iraq, under conditions that the U.N. Security Council finds Iraq in "serious violation" of U.N. resolutions regarding its weapons of mass destruction, government sources said Friday.
Japan has also begun studying how to secure escape routes of Japanese citizens staying in Iraq and how Tokyo should contribute to international society on the assumption that the U.S. will launch an attack as early as mid-February, they said.
The moves follow visits to the U.S. earlier this month by senior Foreign Ministry officials, including North American Affairs Bureau chief Shin Ebihara, who were seeking information on Washington's stance, they said.
The officials found it likely the U.S. will launch a strike against Iraq as early as mid-February when its military buildup will be complete, they said.
A ministry source said, "There are no examples in history that the U.S. did not carry out a military attack after deploying troops on such a large scale."
The U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Committee (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency are scheduled to report to the Security Council on Monday about Iraq's compliance with inspections over weapons of mass destruction.
While UNMOVIC chief Hans Blix reportedly expects the inspections to continue after Monday, China, France and Russia - three of the five permanent member of the Security Council - oppose the possible U.S. attack without a new U.N. resolution authorizing force.
The Foreign Ministry source said, however, "It is highly likely that Washington will launch an independent military operation, citing serious violations by Iraq of U.N. resolutions."
The sources said international society will need to take a joint step toward the Iraqi issues if the Security Council recognizes any threats from Baghdad concerning anthrax, VX nerve gas, and other biological and chemical weapons.
Given such circumstances, the Japanese government has decided it will be able to express support for possible military action by the U.S., the sources said.
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Weapon-Free Zone to Open in Aceh Amid Violations
Reuters
Sunday, January 26, 2003; 4:22 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44970-2003Jan26?language=printer
JAKARTA (Reuters) - The first weapon-free zone will open in Indonesia's Aceh province this week to help cement a peace deal that both sides have violated less than two months after signing it, mediators said on Sunday.
The peace zones would help keep the truce between the government and rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) intact and were a step toward eventual demilitarization, they said.
"The peace zones are meant to be weapon-free areas...neither GAM nor the military are allowed to carry weapons there," said Steve Daly, a spokesman for the Henry Dunant Center that brokered the agreement signed on December 9.
The first peace zone will lie south of the provincial capital, Bandai Aceh, some 1,700 km (1,060 miles) northwest of Jakarta. Daly said the aim was to establish a total of eight peace zones in the next two weeks.
A joint monitoring committee said in a statement on Friday that GAM committed two "very serious" violations of the pact in mid-January, in which one Indonesian soldier was killed and two were injured.
The statement said the military had committed a "minor" violation in mid-January in which a GAM member was intimidated.
"This is the first time that either GAM or Indonesia has ever publicly admitted any wrongdoing by any of their people," Daly told Reuters.
"They recognize that they need to discipline their people so at this point we will see what happens," he added.
Aceh is one of several flashpoints where separatist, communal or religious violence threatens to undermine the government's efforts to maintain stability in the world's fourth most populous country and bring investors back.
Among other complaints, the separatists say Jakarta has siphoned off too large a share of the income from Aceh's energy and other resources. The government has moved toward satisfying such concerns but says it would never allow full independence for the province in the northern tip of Sumatra island.
In the two years leading up to the pact, an estimated 4,000 people -- civilians, government troops and rebels, were killed in the conflict.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan Begins Satellite Operations
World In Brief
Associated Press
Sunday, January 26, 2003
Washington Post; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44127-2003Jan25?language=printer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan marked its entry into the space age yesterday when its first communication satellite, PAKSAT-I, formally began operations.
Officials at Pakistan's Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission said the satellite will provide improved Internet access and broadcast services.
The satellite gives Pakistan its "first foothold in space," the country's state-run news agency reported.
Since being launched in December, the satellite has undergone testing. Pakistani officials envision the satellite as a base for broadcasting educational programming across the Muslim world.
Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, congratulated scientists and engineers at a ceremony marking the beginning of the satellite's operations.
"Pakistan can be developed as a hub of learning for the Muslim countries," Musharraf said.
-------- refugees
A million refugees if hostilities begin
By Kerry-Anne Walsh, Political Correspondent
January 26 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/25/1042911596223.html
A confidential internal United Nations report prepared last month estimated that a US-led war would create nearly one million refugees needing outside resettlement and 7.2 million people displaced internally, millions of whom could later swell the ranks of refugees.
The report estimated that 100,000 would need immediate resettlement once the US attacked the country.
"There is also the likelihood of transit camps being established in Iraq adjacent to borders, with a population of perhaps 500,000," the report states.
The displaced people in immediate danger because of a lack of health services would include 4.2million children under five and one million lactating women.
Federal Opposition foreign spokesman Kevin Rudd demanded that the Government explain how it would handle such a big influx of refugees.
"John Howard has dispatched 2000 troops for war with Iraq, and it is up to him to tell the Australian people what additional cost will be borne by Australia," he said.
In 2000-01, of those who sought refugee status as boat arrivals, only Afghans outnumbered Iraqis. Ninety-one per cent of the 1000-plus who arrived that year were recognised as bona fide refugees and given visas. Many Iraqis, however, remain in detention centres.
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said if there was a need to respond to a major flow of refugees from Iraq, it would be as part of an international effort.
-------- spies
The CIA's Secret Army
Because of past scandals, the agency had largely dropped its paramilitary operations. But the war on terrorism has brought it back into the business
By DOUGLAS WALLER
Sunday, Jan. 26, 2003
Time
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,411370,00.html
The U.S. is not yet at war with Saddam Hussein. Not officially. But quietly, over the past few months, some of its savviest warriors have sneaked into his country. They have been secretly prowling the Kurdish-controlled enclave in northern Iraq, trying to organize a guerrilla force that could guide American soldiers invading from the north, hunting for targets that U.S. warplanes might bomb, setting up networks to hide U.S. pilots who might be shot down and mapping out escape routes to get them out. And they are doing the same in southern Iraq with dissident Shi'ites.
But the biggest surprise of all is that they are not even soldiers; they are spies, part of the CIA's rough and ready, supersecret Special Operations Group (SOG). Until fairly recently, the CIA, in an effort to clean up a reputation sullied by botched overseas coups and imperial assassination attempts, had shied away from getting its hands dirty. Until about five years ago, it focused instead on gathering intelligence that could be used by other parts of the government. Before that, traditional CIA officers, often working under cover as U.S. diplomats, got most of their secrets from the embassy cocktail circuit or by bribing foreign officials. Most did not even have weapons training, and they looked down on the few SOG commandos who remained out in the field as knuckle draggers, relics of a bygone era. Now the knuckle draggers are not just back; they are the new hard edge of the CIA, at the forefront of the war on terrorism. And, says a U.S. intelligence official, "they know which end the bullet comes out of."
It was George Tenet who began rebuilding the SOG five years ago when he took charge of the CIA, but the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, accelerated his efforts.
Confronted with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, an enemy that has no army, no fixed assets and no clearly defined territory, the Bush Administration needed an unconventional military force. It wanted combatants who could match al-Qaeda for wiliness, adaptability and, up to a point, ruthlessness. It wanted its own army of James Bonds. So in the past year, hundreds of millions of additional dollars have been pumped into the CIA budget by President George W. Bush, a man who may be predisposed to believe strongly in an agency his father once headed. He has ordered SOG operatives to join forces with foreign intelligence services. He has even authorized the CIA to kidnap terrorists in order to break their cells or kill them.
All of which could make for a more agile, effective intelligence agency. Or it could also mean a CIA that once again steps beyond the realm of collecting secrets to intervening forcibly in the affairs of foreign states. In that area, the agency's history has often been one of blunders and worse, from Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s through the Bay of Pigs fiasco under John F. Kennedy to the Nicaraguan war that led to the Iran-contra debacle in the '80s. Some longtime intelligence watchers are wondering whether a reinvigorated paramilitary wing of the CIA could be a mixed blessing for America once again. And the military itself is not too pleased. It believes its special-ops forces are perfectly equipped to handle these jobs. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has reacted in part by planning his own secret unit, which would function much like the SOG but would answer to him rather than Tenet.
Though tiny by Pentagon standards, the SOG has swelled to several hundred officers. They are planted in Pakistan, Central Asia, North Africa and East Asia. "These are people who are operating every day around the world," Jim Pavitt, the CIA's deputy director of operations, told TIME. "I can insert a team anywhere quickly and clandestinely." The future may bring even more ambitious missions. Last May, Bush signed a top-secret directive authorizing pre-emptive strikes by the Pentagon and the CIA against nations that are close to acquiring nuclear weapons. Administration sources tell TIME that the Department of Energy's nuclear-weapons experts are training SOG operatives on ways to attack enemy nuclear facilities. In the current crisis with North Korea, Washington so far is committed to diplomacy as a means of pressuring Pyongyang to give up its atomic-arms program, but it might well be a SOG team that gets called to action.
The latest debate over the wisdom of expanding CIA powers in this way has been confined mostly to a small group of professionals, escaping the public's notice. That's largely because the evolution of the CIA's mission has proceeded so quietly. Americans did get a glimpse into the world of the CIA paramilitary when American Johnny (Mike) Spann, 32, was killed in Afghanistan in November 2001 after being overpowered by Taliban prisoners he had been interrogating; uncharacteristically, the CIA confirmed that Spann was one of its own, a member of the sog. Another peek into the shadows came last November when it was revealed that the explosion that had carbonized a carful of alleged al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen was caused by a Hellfire missile let loose by a CIA Predator drone.
The outlines of this new mission are not new, but TIME has uncovered enough fresh details to construct the fullest picture yet of the CIA's secret army. It spoke to past and current intelligence officials, including an active member of the sog, as well as to detractors within the Pentagon. Our report:
INTO AFGHANISTAN Officially, the war in Afghanistan began on Oct. 7, 2001, with the first round of U.S. air attacks. For the SOG, however, the battle opened on Sept. 26, just 15 days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That was how "John," one of the SOG's paramilitary officers, unexpectedly found himself peering out the open window of a Soviet-made Mi-17 helicopter that day as it soared over the Anjuman Pass and into the Panjshir Valley, northeast of Kabul. Just ahead on the ground, John spotted a patrol of bearded men in turbans toting AK-47 rifles.
John tugged the sleeve of the pilot from the rebel Northern Alliance, who was aboard to guide the aircraft through the treacherous mountains of northeastern Afghanistan. "They're not ours," the Afghan shouted, letting John know that the helicopter could be fired on from below. The Taliban fighters, however, were so stunned by the appearance of the beastly aircraft roaring above them that they did not have time to shoulder their weapons and shoot before it flew out of range. "Wonderful," the CIA officer shouted to his Afghan comrade. Just a week earlier, John (who talked to TIME on the condition that his real name not be used) had been studying at a language school in Virginia, preparing for an entirely different assignment overseas. (What language and what posting, he would not say.) The agency yanked him out to join the first U.S. team going into Afghanistan. That was typical for a CIA paramilitary officer, who at a moment's notice may be thrown into what John calls a pickup team. John's team included four CIA officers fluent in Farsi or Dari who for years had been sneaking into Afghanistan, recruiting spies for the agency. Their mission now was to hook up with those contacts, collect intelligence for the impending U.S. aerial attack and hunt for bin Laden. Along with the light arms, radios and rations they had packed into the Mi-17 were two suitcases stuffed with $3 million. It was used for bribing Afghan warlords to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
WHO JOINS UP? Like all the SOG's other paramilitary operatives, John had spent years in the U.S. military before joining the cia; five years is the minimum requirement. CIA recruiters regularly prowl clubs like those at Fort Bragg, N.C., where the Army's Special Operations Command has its headquarters, looking for Green Berets interested in even more unconventional work and higher pay (a starting SOG officer can earn more than $50,000 a year; a sergeant in the Green Berets begins at about $41,000). Special-forces soldiers, Navy seals and Air Force commandos are routinely dispatched to the agency on a temporary basis to provide special military skills that the CIA needs for specific missions. If a soldier is assigned highly clandestine work, his records are changed to make it appear as if he resigned from the military or was given civilian status; the process is called sheep dipping, after the practice of bathing sheep before they are sheared.
Military commandos who join the CIA full time are sent to the "farm," the agency's Camp Peary training center, located on 9,000 heavily wooded acres surrounded by a barbed-wire-topped fence near Williamsburg, Va. There the soldiers go through the yearlong course that all new CIA case officers must take to learn such skills of the trade as infiltrating hostile countries, communicating in codes, retrieving messages from dead drops and recruiting foreign agents to spy for the U.S. The CIA wants its paramilitary officers to be able to steal secrets as well as blow up bridges. John proudly recalls overhearing an Afghan commander tell a comrade, "Yes, I have these Americans with me, and, yes, they have rifles, but I don't think they're soldiers. They spend all their time with laptops." Says John: "We wrote hundreds and hundreds of intelligence reports."
At Camp Peary, new SOG recruits also hone their paramilitary skills, like sharpshooting with various kinds of weapons, setting up landing zones in remote areas for agency aircraft and attacking enemy sites with a small force. Some are sent to Delta Force's secret compound at Fort Bragg to learn highly specialized counterterrorism techniques, such as how to rescue a fellow agent held hostage.
Over the years, the SOG has taken on some of the CIA's most dangerous work. Paramilitary officers account for almost half the 79 stars chiseled into the wall in the main foyer of the agency's Langley, Va., headquarters commemorating all the spies who have died since the cia was founded in 1947. The newest star is dedicated to Spann. But the CIA suffered additional casualties in Afghanistan and some injuries that the agency has not yet publicly acknowledged. A CIA officer was wounded by a bullet in the chest during a fire fight in southern Afghanistan, and one of the U.S. soldiers confirmed killed was working with a CIA team when he was hit in a separate skirmish.
IN, OUT AND IN AGAIN The SOG traces its roots to the days of William (Wild Bill) Donovan, the general in charge of espionage and clandestine operations during World War II, whose Office of Strategic Services sent paramilitary commandos behind enemy lines. The CIA, since its founding after the war, has always had a paramilitary unit, which has carried various names. At the height of the cold war, the agency had hundreds of paramilitary operatives fomenting coups around the world. It was involved in assassination plots against the leaders of Congo, Cuba and Iraq and was linked by a 1976 Senate inquiry to ousters that resulted in the deaths of the leaders of the Dominican Republic, Vietnam and Chile. When Ronald Reagan wanted to roll back communism in the 1980s, the agency organized paramilitary operations in Central America. These adventures had checkered results. The governments that the CIA destabilized in Iran, Guatemala and Chile were replaced by repressive regimes that ended up doing more damage in the long run to U.S. foreign policy.
By 1990 the SOG had practically been disbanded, the victim of domestic and international outrage over the agency's lethal meddling in other countries. Congressional and CIA budget cutters slashed money for the clandestine force, believing that billion-dollar spy satellites collected intelligence more efficiently and without embarrassing the U.S. The pendulum soon began to swing back, however, as intelligence officials realized that technology has its limitations. Satellites, for instance, can't see inside buildings; phone taps can't capture an enemy's every move. When Tenet was installed as CIA director in 1997, he began fielding more human spies and rebuilding the SOG.
During the Balkan conflicts in the mid- and late 1990s, agency paramilitary officers slipped into Bosnia and Kosovo to collect intelligence and hunt for accused war criminals like Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his top general, Ratko Mladic. But the newly formed teams did not have enough manpower for snatches even when they were able to pinpoint Serbian targets. "The CIA," complains a former senior Clinton aide, "didn't have the capability to take down a three- or four-car motorcade with bodyguards."
Today it does, and the sog's capacities are growing. Its maritime branch has speedboats to carry commandos to shore, and the agency can rent cargo ships through its front companies to transport larger equipment. The air arm, which Pentagon officials have nicknamed the Waffen CIA, has small passenger jets on alert to fly paramilitary operatives anywhere in the world on two hours' notice. Other cargo planes, reminiscent of the Air America fleet that the agency had in Vietnam, can drop supplies to replenish teams in remote locations. For areas like Afghanistan and Central Asia, where a Russian-made helicopter stands out less, the agency uses the large inventory of Soviet-era aircraft that the Pentagon captured in previous conflicts or bought on the black market.
The part of the air arm that has received the most publicity lately is the fleet of remote-controlled Predator drones, armed with 5-ft.-long Hellfire missiles, that the agency bought from the Air Force. In November 2001 the CIA deployed the drone to eliminate bin Laden's lieutenant, Mohammed Atef. Last November's Predator hit in Yemen killed an al-Qaeda commander and his entourage of five, though the strike was controversial: one of the dead men turned out to be a U.S. citizen.
There have possibly been other missteps as well. In February 2002 a cia Predator fired at a group of Afghan men gathered around a truck, killing at least three of them. U.S. intelligence insists the men were an al-Qaeda band, but locals say they were nothing more than scrap dealers or smugglers. And as the agency tries to pull together rival Iraqi Kurdish forces into a viable guerrilla force that could take on Saddam, it must confront its sorry history in that territory. In 1995 it attempted to organize a Kurdish rebellion against Saddam, but in the end CIA officers fled their base in northern Iraq, abandoning their Kurdish agents to Iraqi police, who rounded up and executed hundreds. The Clinton Administration, fearing the operation would end in disaster, had pulled the plug.
But perhaps the sog's most notable lapse in the field has been its failure to locate bin Laden. "They're still developing their capability," says a Bush Administration official who has worked with the unit. "It doesn't mean that they won't be a force to be reckoned with. But they're not there yet."
OPPOSITION AND RIVALS The pentagon is not happy about the SOG's moving aggressively onto its turf. When aides told Rumsfeld in late September 2001 that his Army Green Beret A-Teams couldn't go into Afghanistan until the CIA contingent there had laid the groundwork with the local warlords, he erupted, "I have all these guys under arms, and we've got to wait like a little bird in a nest for the CIA to let us go in?" What's more, Rumsfeld, according to a Pentagon source, does not like the idea that the CIA's paramilitary operatives could start fights his forces might have to finish.
The resentment burns even more because the generals know that when it comes to special-operations soldiers, they have a deeper bench than the spooks at Langley. And in Afghanistan, the Pentagon was regularly asked to supply the CIA with people from that bench. The Defense Department already has 44,000 Army, Navy and Air Force commandos in its U.S. Special Operations Command, who are as skilled in covert guerrilla warfare as the CIA's operatives. In the basement vaults of the command's headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., sit secret contingency plans to send military special-ops teams to any trouble spot in the world, complete with infiltration routes, drop zones, intelligence contacts and assault points.
The CIA ended up having about 100 officers roaming in Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion. But the agency teams were still critically short of key operatives. "I kept signing more and more deployment orders for folks to go to the CIA," recalls Robert Andrews, who at the time was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations. "They were looking for any medics, operational soldiers and even intelligence specialists that we had."
Even some old agency hands think the CIA should stick to intelligence and leave the commando work to the military. "Agency operators lack the experience to be effective military operators," says Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and State Department counterterrorism expert. "They have just enough training to be dangerous to themselves and others." And there is the historic danger that CIA paramilitary operations, cloaked in layers of secrecy, can become rogues. "Everybody has seen this movie before where secret wars have developed into public disasters," warns John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense and intelligence think tank. "We're going to wind up doing things that, when the American people hear of them, they will repudiate."
The CIA responds that its commandos take on the jobs the military can't or won't handle. The SOG prides itself on being small and agile, capable of sending teams of 10 operators or fewer anywhere in the world much faster than the Pentagon can. One reason the agency was the first into Afghanistan was that the Special Ops Command dragged its feet getting its soldiers ready for action. Intelligence sources tell Time that the CIA had requested that commandos from the U.S. Army's elite Delta Force join its first team going into Afghanistan but that the Pentagon refused to send them.
Once deployed, CIA operatives have fewer regulations to hamstring them than their military counterparts do. In Afghanistan, CIA cargo planes were dropping warm-weather clothing, saddles and bales of hay for allied Afghan foot soldiers and cavalry. One cable that officers in the field sent back to Langley read, "Please send boots. The Taliban can hear our flip-flops." Says Kent Harrington, a former CIA station chief in Asia: "If a military special-operations soldier parachuted in with $3 million to buy armies, he'd have to have a C-5 cargo plane flying behind him with all the paperwork he'd need to dispense the money."
The CIA also has far more contacts than the Pentagon among foreign intelligence services that can help with clandestine operations overseas, plus a global network of paid snitches on the ground. The agency "deals with everything from bottom feeders around the world to their governments on a routine basis," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. "Name a country anywhere, and (the CIA) can identify with a couple of telephone calls four or five people who will have a variety of skills to go into that country if it becomes a difficult place." Green Berets can operate covertly in a combat zone, but they would stick out like sore thumbs if they tried to infiltrate a foreign city, because they don't have the intelligence network in place to conceal themselves. "We have the ability to hide in plain sight, get in and get out before anybody figures out who we are," asserts a CIA source.
CIA officials, leery of being sucked into new scandals, insist that their covert operations are now subject to layers of oversight. Before an agency paramilitary team can be launched, the President must sign an intelligence "finding" that broadly outlines the operation to be performed. That finding, along with a more detailed description of the mission, is sent to the congressional intelligence committees. If they object to an operation, they can cut off its funds the next time the agency's budget comes up.
After approving a covert operation, Bush leaves the details of when and how to Tenet and his senior aides. For example, Administration officials say Bush did not specifically order the Predator attack in Yemen. But after Sept. 11 he gave the CIA the green light to use lethal force against al-Qaeda.
Rumsfeld, nevertheless, is intent on building his own covert force. He recently ordered the Special Operations Command to draw up secret plans to launch attacks against al-Qaeda around the world, and he intends to put an extra $1 billion in its budget next year for the job. Elsewhere in the Defense Department, small, clandestine units, coordinating little with the CIA, are busy organizing their own future battles. Several hundred Army agents, with what was originally known as the intelligence support activity, train to infiltrate foreign countries to scout targets. With headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va., the unit is so secretive, it changes its cover name every six months. Delta Force has a platoon of about 100 intelligence operatives trained to sneak into a foreign country and radio back last-minute intelligence before the force's commandos swoop in for an attack.
The CIA isn't amused. "Don't replicate what you don't need to replicate," argues a senior U.S. intelligence officer. So who referees this dispute? In addition to running the CIA, Tenet, as director of Central Intelligence, is supposed to oversee all intelligence programs in the U.S. government. But the Pentagon, which controls more than 80% of the estimated $35 billion intelligence budget, doesn't want him meddling in its spying.
Ultimately, the man who chooses between them is the President. Both Tenet and Rumsfeld report directly to him. And thus far, Bush has been eager to give Tenet leeway to build up his commando force. With a major conflict looming in Iraq, units from all branches of the military are mobilizing to get a piece of the action. The CIA, at least, will have its own.
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U.S. reluctant to reveal data on Iraqi arms
1/26/2003
By John Diamond,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-01-26-arms-data-usat_x.htm
WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence officials are pressing the Bush administration to withhold highly classified information on Iraqi weapons programs to protect technical and human sources that could prove vital in wartime, Pentagon and intelligence officials said.
So far, the White House has acceded to the pleas. Last week, at the behest of the CIA, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz deleted part of a speech on Iraq to protect intelligence "sources and methods."
As the United Nations Security Council meets Monday to consider the report of its inspection team after two months of work in Iraq, the Bush administration is under increasing pressure to back up its charges against Saddam Hussein's regime with hard proof.
But the Bush administration is concerned that the classified information would not be persuasive enough to justify the damage disclosing it would do to sensitive sources of intelligence. Intelligence officials said repeatedly in interviews in recent days that they have no unqualified "smoking gun" evidence that would prove Iraq has chemical and biological weapons or a program to develop a nuclear bomb.
Senior administration officials said they expect Bush to disclose new information on Iraq in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. And a CIA team has been working intensively to prepare material on Iraq that might be made public if the president agrees.
"We have more information and knowledge, much of it highly classified," Secretary of State Colin Powell said on PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last week. "I hope we'll have the opportunity to present this."
The most sensitive intelligence on Iraq, the administration has decided, will remain secret unless absolutely necessary to make a case for war, according to administration and intelligence officials. A decision to disclose more could come by the end of this week, administration officials said.
Some of the factors working against broader disclosure:
- Key U.S. allies such as France and Germany already have access to much of the most sensitive intelligence on Iraq and yet remain skeptical of the need for military action. If the best intelligence has not persuaded these allies in private, the administration reasons, there is no reason to think it would do so in public.
- U.N. inspectors may deliver a strong indictment of Iraq that could persuade allies and the public without the need for disclosing classified information.
- With the Bush administration increasingly willing to consider war against Iraq without the support of some allies, further disclosure of secrets may be pointless.
One senior Pentagon official described a "cost-benefit analysis" going on within Bush's national security team, weighing the support that might be gained by revealing additional evidence against the damage to U.S. intelligence-gathering capability by the disclosures.
"You can throw out all your sources and methods and compromise all your human sources and still not convince the international community," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Intelligence officials say proof of the charges against Saddam can always be found after the invasion by victorious U.S. forces, essentially making the case for war after the war is over.
Administration officials speak longingly of replaying a dramatic scene from the Cuban missile crisis when President Kennedy's U.N. envoy, Adlai Stevenson, showed U-2 photos of Soviet crews deploying long-range missiles on Cuban soil.
Some administration officials have hinted that such an ace card remains to be played. But intelligence officials said no such clear evidence against Iraq exists.
The reason, the Bush administration contends, is that Iraq has learned from the Cubans' mistakes and become expert at concealing its weapons programs.
Less-than-certain intelligence on Iraq has not prevented the administration from stating flatly that Iraq has prohibited weapons.
"The dictator of Iraq has got weapons of mass destruction," Bush said last week. "He's a dangerous, dangerous man with dangerous, dangerous weapons."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the administration "would very likely present to the world some additional information, information relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." Powell made the same assertion. Some of that information, however, will focus on Iraqi efforts at concealment rather than on the alleged weapons themselves, according to Defense and intelligence officials.
"Some people may say there is no smoking gun," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said last week, "but there is nothing but smoke."
Intelligence officials describe an accumulation of evidence that, taken together, makes a persuasive case that Iraq is violating U.N. resolutions requiring it to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction.
Last week Wolfowitz appeared to pave the way for a less-than-conclusive presentation of evidence.
"American intelligence capabilities are extraordinary, but they are far from the omniscient, all-seeing eye depicted in some Hollywood movies," Wolfowitz said. "For a great body of what we need to know, we are dependent on traditional methods of intelligence, that is to say, human beings who either deliberately or inadvertently are communicating to us."
Polls show Americans support an invasion of Iraq if there is proof that Saddam has chemical or biological weapons. Without that proof, support drops off sharply.
"I still need evidence," said Howard Wiarda, an international policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
After listening to Wolfowitz's speech, Wiarda said, "They have to find one of those mobile trailers, containers or one of those (Iraqi) scientists. It's not just me that needs to be convinced."
Wolfowitz trimmed his address to the Council on Foreign Relations to delete classified information.
"There are three words in my speech that I was forced to substitute for two rather stunning paragraphs, on the grounds that we would say too much about what we're observing," he said.
By mentioning Iraqis who "deliberately or inadvertently" communicate with the United States, Wolfowitz acknowledged that U.S. intelligence gathers information from officials and ex-officials, both in and out of Iraq, as well as from communications intercepted by the National Security Agency (NSA), the nation's eavesdropper.
The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency are in contact with some government sources inside Iraq whose lives would be imperiled by disclosure of the information they have shared, officials say. In addition, defectors who still have relatives in Iraq have briefed intelligence officials on Iraqi weapons programs.
The NSA intercepts a high volume of signals intelligence, or "sigint," including conversations among Iraqi military commanders, electronic messages from senior leadership to field commanders, according to a Pentagon official. Though some of these intercepts point to possible Iraqi weapons programs, disclosing them would cause Iraq to shut down those lines of communication.
Contributing: Barbara Slavin and Laurence McQuillan
-------- us
U.S. Military Considers Limits on Role of the Reserve Forces
January 26, 2003
New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/politics/26RESE.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 - Citing problems with the mass call-up of Reserve and National Guard forces, Pentagon leaders are rethinking the way America goes to war, even questioning whether relying on these citizen soldiers to perform some crucial duties hamstrings urgent military operations.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld now openly expresses unhappiness with how military mobilizations - for the war in Afghanistan, for domestic security and now for a possible war with Iraq - have been planned and carried out since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He says they caused needless hardship for too many members of the Guard and Reserve, for their families and for their employers.
"They're perfectly willing to be called up, but they only want to be called up when they're needed and for something that's a real job," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "And they prefer not to get jerked around and called up two or three or four months before they're needed, and then found they're not needed and sent back home with a `Sorry about that.' "
As the Pentagon orders the largest mobilization since the Persian Gulf war of 1990 and 1991, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was reviewing decisions dating to the post-Vietnam era that removed many important missions from the active-duty military, reassigning them to part-time forces.
"We need to look at that mix very carefully and see if we put, in some cases, 100 percent of our capability in the reserve component," General Myers said. The current approach has created a situation where "you can't even do some of the things you need to do day to day without calling up the reserves," he added.
For example, in devising war plans for Iraq, a desert nation that fired chemical weapons against Iran and its own population, planners had to wrestle with the fact that 100 percent of the Army's water supply battalions and 100 percent of its chemical brigades are in the reserve arm.
Almost all Army civil affairs personnel who help rebuild war-torn nations reside in the reserve arm, as do more than 80 percent of medical brigades and psychological operations units. Two-thirds of the military police battalions - an increasingly important mission in an era of heightened terrorist threat - are in the reserve arms.
Just as Army reservists and National Guard members have joined in operations in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Kuwait and South Korea, Air Force reservists and National Guard pilots patrol skies over Afghanistan and bomb Iraqi air defenses in the "no flight" zones.
Full-time Air Force crews fly 92 percent of the bomber assignments, a holdover from their cold war nuclear missions, but active-duty crews fly only 61 percent of fighter sorties, and fewer than half of the tanker, airlift and rescue missions.
The Naval Reserve provides 100 percent of the personnel for important maritime assignments, including logistics support squadrons and heavy logistics support, and for a crucial port security job called mobile inshore undersea warfare.
Similarly, military intelligence staffing has shrunk 27 percent since the gulf war, and reservists are essential to continuously staffing intelligence centers around the country that compile data and write analyses.
While American military victories in conflicts including Iraq and Afghanistan helped exorcise other ghosts of Vietnam, the heavy reliance on the National Guard and Reserve remains a legacy of the armed service's frustration with that war.
Angered that President Lyndon B. Johnson, and then President Richard M. Nixon, declined to call up the reserves during the Vietnam War for fear of generating greater opposition to it, Gen. Creighton W. Abrams, the Army chief of staff, shaped the post-Vietnam mix of active and reserve forces to make sure that when America next went to war with its new all-volunteer force, hometown America would have to go along too.
This dependence on reserve components only grew after the end of the cold war and the decision to cut the military. The Pentagon and Congress wanted to keep as much tooth in the active force as it could afford, and pushed missions in the logistics tail to the reserves.
But mass mobilizations in the past year and a half raised concerns at the Pentagon and, just as important, on Capitol Hill. Many look to streamline the system to more nimbly counter the unpredictable terrorist threat. Others are going further, asking whether the number of active-duty personnel is too small - which translates directly into budgets - if the American military cannot fulfill global commitments without relying so heavily on the Guard and Reserve.
"In the aftermath of Sept. 11th, we realized that the enemy was on the doorstep, that we would not have warning, might not have time to mobilize and train for a great length of time, because the world had changed," said Thomas F. Hall, the assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs.
Mr. Hall has completed the first phase of a broad review that includes asking whether some of the capabilities now in the reserve component should migrate back to the active force. In the conflicts facing America, specialties assigned to the reserve component "are the kind of people we use every time," Mr. Hall added. "We are going to the well time and time again with the same units each year. We are simply going to have to change that."
Any suggestions to move skills in the reserves back to the standing force would slam against budget constraints capping the numbers of active-duty military.
The first draft of Mr. Hall's review has gone to the armed services for analysis and comment, and officials are hinting that it could be the Army - which is providing the bulk of the Guard and Reserve call-ups - to first feel the pressure. Some of Mr. Rumsfeld's senior advisers have advocated moving some of the Army's brigades - or even divisions - into the reserve to free up money for new technologies, or those personnel slots could now make room for moving the high-demand reserve specialties back into the standing Army.
"We are in line with the secretary of defense's intent," an Army official said in a statement. "It is premature at this point to specify the `what' and `who's.' We are studying how best to do this in a manner which creates efficiencies above our current `Total Army' capabilities."
Charles Moskos, a Northwestern University professor who specializes in military sociology, advocates short-term military service that could take the burden off the reserves and save money. Per capita personnel costs in the military have doubled since the end of the draft, he said, and the offer of a short-term tour might attract young people wary of a long commitment. They could serve in important jobs that do not require specialized combat skills or bonuses, like military police.
The Air Force has tried to lessen the stress on its reserve component by first seeking volunteers for missions, said Lt. Gen. James E. Sherrard III, chief of Air Force Reserve, although that has not always been possible as the global campaign against terror has accelerated.
But cultivating its reserve arm is an economical way to fulfill Air Force requirements, he added, and to recapture investments made in training air and maintenance crews after they leave active duty.
Lt. Gen. John B. Conaway served the first President George Bush as chief of the National Guard Bureau, overseeing the mobilization of nearly 80,000 National Guard members for service in the gulf war. About 265,000 Guard and Reserve members were summoned to duty then.
"The Guard and Reserves can do things for long periods of time in smaller numbers, and in large numbers for a short period of time," said General Conaway, now retired. "The rule should be that overseas, the active-duty folks are first in and last out. The Guard and Reserve should be last in, first out. That didn't happen in the desert the first time around. That was kind of abusing them. That was a lesson we learned."
Senior Pentagon and military officials say that should President Bush order America to war with Iraq, a number on the scale of the 265,000 mobilized in the gulf war would be called up for combat and combat support, for postwar patrols of Iraq and, in particular, for domestic security and force protection missions.
Senior military officers say Mr. Rumsfeld has scrutinized draft deployment orders closely and has redrafted or sent back for revision a number of recent orders for forces flowing into the Persian Gulf region.
Speaking this week to the Reserve Officers Association, Mr. Rumsfeld described a system in which deployment orders are "not managed skillfully in a single place," with a system that "moves people in big lumps - meaning it's going to be imprecise as to who's needed, where, when."
Mr. Rumsfeld concluded, "So we're going to have a very careful look at that subject and do it a whale of a lot better next time."
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U.S. Spy Plane Crashes in South Korea, Injuring 5
January 26, 2003
New York Times
By DON KIRK
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/international/asia/26CND-KORE.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Jan. 26 - A United States spy plane crashed 30 miles south of here today, injuring the pilot and four Koreans on the ground.
The U2-S, a late-model version of the reconnaissance aircraft that has traversed the skies in search of information on America's adversaries for nearly half a century, crashed in a town as the pilot, the only person on board, ejected and landed several miles away. He was treated for minor injuries at an American military hospital and released, said a spokeswoman for the United States Seventh Air Force at nearby Osan Air Base.
The cause of the crash was under investigation.
Korean news reports said the plane hit a house and a motor vehicle repair center, setting off an explosion that burned down the buildings while the owner of the garage was on a break.
A Korean defense ministry spokesman said four Koreans were taken to a nearby hospital and treated for injuries that he described as "not serious."
The crash came at a time of increasing tensions over North Korea's weapons program, and disputes between the United States and South Korea over policy toward the North.
The United States military command, wary of providing more ammunition for opponents of the American troop presence here, promptly expressed sorrow for the accident.
Brig. Gen. Mark Beesley, vice commander of the Seventh Air Force, visited the injured Koreans, promising to spare no efforts in assisting them and ensuring that claims for personal injuries and property damage are processed "quickly and effectively."
There was no immediate Korean comment, but Korean television networks showed graphics with maps and dates of two previous U-2 crashes, one in 1984 in the same general region near Osan, headquarters of the Seventh Air Force. The second crash was in the sea off Korea's east coast in 1992.
The Air Force did not state the plane's mission at the time of the crash but said U2's in general provide "continuous day-and-night high altitude all-weather surveillance and reconnaissance" on behalf of the 37,000 American troops in South Korea.
Such planes are not believed to be flying over North Korea but instead are confined to flights on the South Korean side of the demilitarized zone between the two countries and just off North Korea's coastlines.
North Korea has frequently protested the flights, which are believed to have been a source of some of the detailed information the United States acquired on the North's nuclear weapons program before the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, James A. Kelly, confronted North Korean officials with what he knew in early October.
That conversation led to the North's acknowledgement that it indeed had a program for developing nuclear warheads with enriched uranium.
-------- propaganda wars
The News Media Could Be Our Weakest Link
By Randy Atkins
Sunday, January 26, 2003
Washington Post; Page
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41407-2003Jan25?language=printer
This country isn't ready to deal with a catastrophic terrorist attack, and government preparedness may not be the biggest problem. Indeed, one of the most critical parts of our infrastructure -- the nation's news media -- doesn't appear near the top of anyone's list of concerns. They should be of utmost concern to those responsible for homeland security.
I suspect, though, that most defense types simply regard journalists as pests at best, maybe even a threat to national security. They generally feel the media are to be avoided as much as possible and told as little as possible. But with the country's increased focus on security here at home, I think that the strength of the news media is more important than ever.
When we think of infrastructure, we usually think of tangible things that bind us together: our water supply, transportation networks, energy pipelines . The media, too, belong in this category. They are the main communication conduit to the public, carrying valuable information from one place to another. The interconnectedness of these modern infrastructure systems allows greater efficiency, but it also creates new vulnerabilities. And the news media may be the weakest link in this system.
We need to protect the media as zealously as we protect the electric power grid and nuclear reactors, and not just their printing plants and broadcast towers. Their journalists also need to be armed to work effectively as part of the nation's response to terrorism. And to do that, they need the help of the engineering and science community.
A couple of months ago, I was on a panel at a meeting of the Associated Press Managing Editors, and I began by asking who knew anything about the place where I work -- the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Not one editor in the room raised a hand, and this was a group interested in participating in a discussion about science and technology reporting. I bet I would get the same response from an audience of government policymakers.
Here's what scares me: Neither the media nor the government value the roles of science and technology as much as the terrorists do. While terrorists see Western civilization as bad, they have demonstrated both their adeptness and willingness to take from it what they need -- chemicals, computers, planes. In the same way, while calling us an entertainment-obsessed culture, they use our media, too, to full advantage -- counting on journalists to dramatically present the terrorists' ghastly handiwork.
Ignorance and misinformation can be as damaging to the information infrastructure of the United States as a break in an oil pipeline. It can cause paralysis among citizens, and confuse people trying to respond to a crisis. As a local police chief recently said, "You can't build a fence around a community, but you can arm your citizens with knowledge." American journalists have few precedents for these emerging terrorist threats -- it's different from traditional war reporting. Organizations like mine must work hard to get good information into the hands of the media quickly in the event of any cyber, nuclear, chemical or biological attack. Journalists need instant access to trusted experts who are good communicators.
I would go so far as to argue that getting good information to the public in the midst of a crisis can be more vital than the actions of first responders. In fact, journalists are first responders. Not only do they sometimes get to the scene first, but they are the only ones focused on and able to describe the level of risk to the public. They can save lives through the efficient delivery of good information.
With today's 24-hour coverage, journalists are under tremendous pressure to say something -- anything -- and to say it first. Of course, this can lead to speculation, which is not always harmless. In fact, sometimes it can cost lives. This isn't just the media's problem. It's the engineering and science communities' problem, too.
At the NAE, we have wrestled with the question of how to help the media become better informed and more conscious of their importance in the event of a terrorist attack. The media, after all, are a vigorously independent bunch, constitutionally protected and -- to the nation's benefit -- outside of government control. So the NAE has decided to conduct a war game exercise that, for the first time, would focus on the media. The goal is to develop new communication strategies for cutting through the chaos of a terrorist attack, as well as to develop better connections between the journalists and the scientists and engineers.
I mentioned our war game idea to a major news organization, and the executives there replied that they felt they had already been tested by 9/11. Well, yes, to a point. But next time -- which we are constantly warned will come -- could be worse. Accurate and efficient communication with the public during a catastrophic attack will require more technical expertise than was needed on 9/11.
Based on past experience, I know that I'm facing an uphill climb. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, for example, the NAE held a daylong briefing for senior news executives from across the country on the technical aspects of various forms of terrorism. We were pleased that the TV networks sent a camera crew over for pool coverage. The crew got there early, but didn't turn on its cameras during any of the morning briefings -- and the briefers included some of the nation's premier experts. The cameras were only there to record the words of the luncheon speaker, Tom Ridge. Then they left.
Too often, journalists take the path they're most comfortable with -- which often means the political angle. Even during the anthrax attacks, journalists were turning to members of Congress and their staffs for technical answers.
I think that, in part, this is because politics is a form of theater, and entertainment trumps substance in the ratings. Let's face it, news is about people and personalities. I know the journalistic importance of storytelling and of doing it in compelling ways. The public, unfortunately, has been trained to have a limited and shallow attention span. If we want it to get information at all, that information must be "packaged" correctly.
The challenge -- for both scientists and journalists -- is to make science, technology and engineering more intriguing; to make it, whether in wartime or not, more a part of popular culture. The media don't take their role -- their responsibility -- seriously enough. They aren't just a business. They are part of this country's infrastructure and times have changed.
We need the media to keep challenging the government, because that friction makes us all stronger. But uninformed journalists can't effectively question authority. For example, well-meaning but misguided government efforts to classify too much information could harm national security by slowing the delivery of research results beneficial to society. And unless the public is well-informed, it won't know how to analyze the issues and know how to assess the information being provided by its leaders.
Before 9/11, people like me chuckled as journalists churned out their usual ratings-grabbing fare, overlooking important stories while providing full details on the psychology behind the contestants on "Survivor." Just as terrorism was not at the forefront of many journalists' minds before 9/11, I think it's being slowly overshadowed again by today's trivial obsessions.
Randy Atkins is senior media relations officer for the National Academy of Engineering, one of several independent organizations created by Congress to advise the nation on issues involving science and technology.
----
Blair demands new dossier to drum up support for Iraq war
By Colin Brown Telegraph
26/01/2003
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/01/26/wirq26.xml/
Tony Blair has ordered the security and intelligence services to prepare a new dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction amid concern that Britain and America are losing the propaganda war over Iraq.
The Prime Minister has asked the intelligence services to reveal highly sensitive information to convince the public that the Iraqi dictator poses a direct threat to Britain.
Ministers are alarmed that the Government's first dossier on Iraqi weapons, published by Mr Blair last September, failed to move public opinion on the issue.
The most recent poll showed that only a third of Britons supported war with Iraq. A Cabinet minister told The Telegraph last night: "We have to accept there's a battle for hearts and minds which we're not yet winning."
Ministers fear that tomorrow's report to the Security Council by Hans Blix, the head of the UN weapons inspectors, will accuse the Iraqi regime of failing to co-operate with his team, but will not include sufficiently damning disclosures to turn popular opinion.
One Foreign Office minister said: "It will be written in the sort of bland English you would expect from a Swede." Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, told Cabinet colleagues after his talks in the US last week with Colin Powell, America's secretary of state, that more time was needed to convince the public that there was a case for war.
Senior Foreign Office officials said that, to date, they had been instructed to be circumspect with sensitive evidence about Saddam's weapons to protect Iraqi informants. But ministers have accepted that more information must be released if the case for a pre-emptive war against Iraq is to be made.
Disclosing more detail may lead to tensions between MI6 and the CIA, which fears that a more explicit dossier could jeopardise Western intelligence networks in Iraq.
Mr Blair discussed the campaign against Saddam in a half-hour telephone call to President George W Bush on Friday night, in preparation for their summit at Camp David next Friday.
Washington and London were agreed last night that Iraq would be given "weeks not months" to disarm or face attack. The inspectors will be told to continue their work but one British minister said: "The message needs to go out that we will not allow Saddam to lull the international community into a prolonged game of hide-and-seek."
President Bush will make clear that there has been no change of strategy on Iraq in his State of the Union address on Tuesday
Mr Blair will today use the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme in an attempt to convince a sceptical public and doubters within the Government that action is justified because Saddam has systematically flouted UN demands to disarm.
"The Prime Minister will emphasise that it is the pattern of behaviour by Saddam that proves he is in breach of the existing UN resolution on weapons inspections," said a senior government official.
Mr Powell admitted yesterday that Washington had not done enough to convince US and world opinion that war was justified. He added, however: "We've started to make that case more fully now."
---
Oil is key as Bush agrees month delay
France demands Iraqi oil rights to drop veto
Sunday Herald -
26 January 2003
By James Cusick in London, Marion McKeone in New York and David Pratt, Foreign Editor
http://www.sundayherald.com/print30905
TONY Blair and George Bush have privately agreed a joint strategy that will delay any possible war against Iraq for four weeks during which time they will work tirelessly to achieve three key objectives:
Firstly, they seek to p ersuade France, one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, not to carry out its threatened veto of a second UN resolution to allow the US to intervene in Iraq.
The French, along with Russia and China, also permanent members of the UN but not expected to vote, have extensive oil rights in Iraq and want those guaranteed before agreeing to any UN resolution.
Secondly, to ensure that all military personnel and hardware is in place for a likely attack at the start of March.
Finally, to u tilise every possible moment to win the hearts and minds of the American and British public and persuade them that war is justified in order to disarm Saddam Hussein.
In what will be a crucial five days for the two leaders, culminating in their meeting at Camp David on Friday, the Prime Minister and the US president agreed during a lengthy telephone conversations last week that the 'United Nations route', however difficult, remained their political preference.
According to sources at the United Nations in New York, the White House has now confirmed to senior UN officials that weapons inspectors in Iraq will be given more time and that tomorrow's report to the Security Council by the chief weapons inspector, Dr Hans Blix, will not be regarded as a trigger for unilateral action by the US and Britain.
However, the softening of Washington's hardline rhetoric comes at a price. Weapons inspection teams will be given only a matter of weeks, not months, to complete their report.
The US is also understood to be ready to compromise its plans to monopolise the post-war oil industry in Iraq using only US oil firms. The US government's promise to hold Iraqi oilfields 'in trust' for the people of Iraq is now looking like an international, US-led promise to spread the spoils between US, French, Chinese and Russian oil companies.
What remains unclear diplomatically is the position the anti-war German government will take if the French are seen to roll over in a covert oil deal. However new diplomatic noises from Berlin appeared positive, with Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, insisting that his country maintained 'close ties' with Washington. Fischer also said Iraq had to disarm, indicating even Germany would be forced into a compromise position.
Blix's report to the security council tomorrow, in his own words, will state that Iraq's co-operation with weapons inspectors has been 'a mixed bag'. His report will also state that Iraq has not been pro-active in assisting the inspectors. For the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell -- speaking in Davos, Switzerland, today at the gathering of international political and business leaders -- Iraq has not done enough.
And in a hint of what is to come in the coming month, he said the international community could not shrink from its responsibility to disarm Iraq by force just because 'the going is getting tough'.
Just how tough will probably be evident within a matter of weeks. Bush's State of the Union address to the US Congress on Tuesday, followed by discussions inside the security council on Wednesday and the Camp David meeting two days later, will be the foundation of an offensive by the US government to convince a still doubt-ridden US public that war against Saddam is both justified and clear cut.
Powell has previously admitted that the US administration has not done enough to convince the hearts and minds of American and international opinion.
The additional breathing space will also be crucial for Blair. A new opinion poll in today's Sunday Times states that the Prime Minister still has his work cut out: only 26% said he had convinced them that Saddam was sufficiently dangerous to justify military action. Though 72% said they would support a war that had the backing of the UN, only 20% gave Blair the backing for a war in which British troops would join a US-led force.
All diplomatic, political and military considerations now point to war being timetabled for the first week of March. March 3 is likely to be the first date of any sustained bombing campaign, with US meteor ologists forecasting ideal weather conditions.
----
Blair: war can start without UN arms find
Last chance for Saddam to aid weapons team
Kamal Ahmed and Peter Beaumont, London, Ed Vulliamy in Washington and Suzanne Goldenberg in Baghdad
Sunday January 26, 2003
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4591843,00.html
Tony Blair has raised the temperature in the confrontation with Iraq by insisting there is no need for United Nations weapons inspectors to find a 'smoking gun' for Saddam Hussein to be in breach of UN resolutions and face military action.
Downing Street sources made it clear last night that although there would be a 'short pause' in preparations for war while the inspectors are given 'a few more weeks' to try to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Saddam's failure to co-operate pro-actively with the team will provide a pretext for attack.
As it became increasingly clear that Saddam now believes war is inevitable, Washington sources said the inspectors were now 'on a very short leash'.
Whitehall officials said they are increasingly resigned to the fact that Hans Blix, the head of the Unmovic inspections team, would fail to uncover significant evidence of nuclear, biological or nuclear weapons.
'Of course it would be far better if he did,' said one Number 10 insider. 'We realise they have to be given more time to see what they can do. That is an imperative for the public debate here and the wider diplomatic world.
'We know the stuff is there. Whether the UN team can find it is a different matter.'
The official said the Prime Minister knew a stronger case must be made for action against Iraq if public opinion was to swing behind it.He would now start making the case that an 'incremental breach' is enough to trigger action if Saddam does not disarm.
'An absence of co-operation and a pattern of obstruction does constitute a breach,' said another Downing Street official. 'As each day goes by and he doesn't satisfactorily answer these question [on weapons of mass destruction] then it becomes clear that we may not need a smoking gun - but we know there is the whiff of cordite.'
Blair will insist Saddam has done nothing to account for tons of munitions and biological and chemical weapons which previous UN weapons inspectors said were unaccounted for in the Nineties.
It will be argued that there are still 11 key questions unanswered from the Iraq's widely-criticised weapons declaration which have already been outlined to Iraqi officials. Other issues include a lack of unfettered access for interviews with Iraqi scientists who, US officials claim, have been threatened with death if they co-operate with the UN, and Saddam's refusal of permission for flights over Iraq by U2 spy planes.
Blair had a 30 minute phone conversation with George Bush on Friday night in which the President agreed to press for more time for the inspections..
Blix is expected to express frustration in his report to the UN Security Council tomorrow that Saddam has not been more helpful.
In an interview with The Observer , Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said tomorrow's report was not a deadline but that Saddam could not expect the inspectors to continue searching indefinitely. 'Evidence is mounting that Saddam Hussein's policy is not to comply but to conceal. If the deceit and delays continue Iraq will, to quote UN resolution 1441, have to face serious consequences.'
Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, also kept up the military rhetoric: 'The burden is upon Iraq. Iraq must comply, or it will be made to comply with force.'
Powell said no decision on the use of force would be made on military action before Bush meets Blair on Friday at Camp David.
Blair is still fighting against the weight of UK public opinion. A poll in today's Sunday Times revealed that 68 per cent of people feel Blair has failed to convince them Iraq poses a significant threat that justified military action.
In an article in today's Observer , Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, says the Prime Minister is in danger of acting too quickly and without UN authority: 'I see no contradiction between abhorrence of his leadership and the profound anxiety many people in this country feel about the way in which the Americans - with Tony Blair's support - are proposing an invasion,'
In Baghdad it is becoming clear that Saddam believes war is almost inevitable.
In a highly unusual interview with a small group of journalists, one of his closest confidantes said that Iraq had exhausted all the measures at its disposal to avoid a conflict, and the decision to go to war.
'One tends to think it is coming no matter what we do. We insulated ourselves that war is never coming. We must do everything in our power not to give them an excuse,' General Amer Saadi, said.
----
Britain Says UN Experts Need Time, but Not Months
Reuters
Sunday, January 26, 2003; 6:24 AM
By Jonathan Wright and Hassan Hafidh
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45176-2003Jan26?language=printer
DAVOS/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Britain declared on Sunday that the U.N. arms inspectors should be given time, but not months, to check if Baghdad is cooperating with them.
Kicking off a week that could hasten or delay a U.S.-led war to disarm Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell was to deliver a major speech to try to win over Europe for a possible attack on Baghdad after wooing Turkey over the use of its bases.
Iraq's most influential newspaper, Babel, warned the United States that any invading troops would go home in body bags.
"If the Americans try to occupy any land of Iraq, our brave forces would turn them to dead bodies, wrap them in plastic bags, and send them back home," said Babel, which is owned by President Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Iraqi non-cooperation would breach a U.N. resolution that gave Saddam a last chance to scrap his alleged doomsday arsenal or face serious consequences.
"I don't believe it will take them months to find out whether he is co-operating or not, but they should have whatever time they need," Blair said on BBC television.
Britain has sent thousands of troops to join a U.S. military buildup in the Gulf ahead of a possible war with Iraq, but many of its European partners want more time for U.N. inspections.
The U.N. inspectors are due to report to the Security Council on Monday on progress in their two-month-old search for banned nuclear, chemical and biological weapons Washington says Baghdad possesses. Iraq denies having such weapons programs.
U.S. officials said the report would start a final phase of consultations, including a visit by Blair to the United States on Friday, toward a decision on whether to depose Saddam.
U.N. chief arms inspector Hans Blix says Iraq has not filled holes in its arms declaration, is blocking confidential access to scientists and is balking at U-2 surveillance flights.
The inspectors said they had failed to persuade two Iraqi scientists and an expert to agree to private interviews.
INSPECTORS FAN OUT
Scores of experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) searched more sites in Iraq on Sunday.
Powell will take on skeptical European allies in a major speech to persuade them not to shy away from force if Iraq does not voluntarily hand over banned weapons.
The speech, in the Swiss winter resort of Davos, venue for an annual gathering of politicians and business people, is part of a rhetorical offensive by the U.S. administration to run in parallel with its military preparations to attack.
Many nations oppose any invasion of Iraq, at least without a further Security Council resolution authorizing it.
Blair said Britain would only attack Iraq without U.N. backing if inspectors declared that Saddam was not cooperating and a U.N. Security Council member vetoed a second resolution.
On Saturday, Powell discussed the use of Turkish bases in a meeting with Prime Minister Abdullah Gul and ruling AKP party leader Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the Davos gathering.
"They understand our needs," Powell said afterwards.
President Bush also discussed Iraq with the leaders of Italy and Japan.
Greece, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, said there was an emerging consensus in the 15-nation bloc that the inspectors should be given more time if they ask for it.
Foreign Minister George Papandreou said he expected EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday to declare full support for U.N. efforts to tackle Iraq's suspected arms programs and urge a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
In Damascus, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese Islamic militant group Hizbollah, warned Washington an attack on Iraq would lead to an Arab war against the United States. He was speaking at a conference on boycotting Israel and its allies.
"If this war broke out it would not be over in a year or two," he said, arguing no military power could win a war against Arabs because they would fight Americans in the same way that Palestinians and Lebanese were resisting Israeli occupation.
U.S. sources in Washington said the United States wanted to put at least 15,000 troops in Turkey to open a "northern front" against Baghdad in the event of war. In return for Turkish cooperation, Washington was offering an economic and military aid package worth nearly $14 billion over three years.
----
Powell Tells Europe U.S. Ready to Attack Iraq Alone
Reuters
Sunday, January 26, 2003; 7:29 AM
By Jonathan Wright
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45312-2003Jan26?language=printer
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell told skeptical Europeans Sunday the United States was willing to attack Iraq alone if the U.N. Security Council shrank from disarming President Saddam Hussein.
In a speech to muster European support for a tough line against Iraq, Powell made few concessions to European doubts about the wisdom of invading the country while U.N. inspectors are still searching for suspected weapons of mass destruction.
He mixed reassurances that the Bush administration would be patient and consult its allies with warnings that time was short and Washington would not wait for ever.
"We are in no great rush to judgment today or tomorrow but it's clear that time is running out," he told a gathering of business and political leaders in the Swiss town of Davos.
"Multilateralism cannot become an excuse for inaction," Powell added, referring to opposition to an early war among key veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council, France, China and Russia.
"We will work through these issues patiently and deliberately with our friends and allies... Let the Iraqi regime have no doubt, however. If it does not disarm peacefully at this juncture, it will be disarmed at the end of the road," he said.
"We will not shrink from war if that is the only way to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. We continue to reserve our sovereign right to take military action against Iraq alone or in a coalition of the willing," he said.
TIES TO AL QAEDA?
Powell said Saddam had "clear ties to terrorist groups including al Qaeda" and had not yet made a strategic decision to comply with his obligation to disarm under a U.N. resolution passed in November.
He offered no evidence of the disputed link to al Qaeda, the Islamic militant network which Washington blames for the September 11, 2001, suicide hijacker attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
A milestone in the inspections timetable comes Monday when U.N. chief inspector Hans Blix and nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei report to the Security Council on what they have achieved in the first 60 days.
They are expected to give Iraq a mixed report, saying it has opened doors to inspectors but failed to account adequately for materials it was known to have before the last inspection system broke down in 1998.
Powell put the U.S. argument, repeated at every opportunity throughout last week, that U.N. resolution 1441 demands that Iraq disarm voluntarily, not that it merely lets the inspectors scour a country the size of California for weapons.
"It is not a matter of time alone, it is a matter of telling the truth, and Saddam Hussein still responds with evasions and lies. Saddam should tell the truth now," he said.
He also sought to counter suspicions that the Bush administration has hidden motives linked to oil for attacking Iraq, citing U.S. military interventions in Kuwait in 1991, in the Balkans in the 1990s and in Afghanistan in 2001.
The American argument has so far failed to win over many Arab and European leaders, who predict drastic consequences for the Middle East if U.S. forces invade Iraq, or public opinion.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa told Reuters on Saturday a U.S.-led war against Iraq would likely inflame the Middle East, fueling popular anger and anti-American unrest.
"It will add to the frustration and the agitation of the people in the Middle East because of the catastrophic situation in the occupied (Palestinian) territories, and the double standard followed by the policy of the United States in the Arab world," he said.
European Union president Greece said there was an emerging consensus in the 15-nation bloc that the U.N. inspectors should be given more time if Blix and ElBaradei request it.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of President Bush's closest allies, also said Sunday the inspectors should be given time to check if Iraq is cooperating with them, but said that should not take months to ascertain.
----
Follow the Resolution
Washington Post
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page B06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44052-2003Jan25?language=printer
HANS BLIX, the chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, offered a revealing hint the other day of what the thrust of his first report to the U.N. Security Council will be tomorrow: Saddam Hussein's cooperation with the latest U.N. resolution ordering his disarmament, he said, has been "a mixed bag." That sounds to us like an awfully generous description of the facts, considering that Iraq, by Mr. Blix's own account, responded to Resolution 1441's requirement for a full disclosure of its weapons of mass destruction with a blatantly false declaration; that it has refused to make its scientists available for unmonitored interviews; that it has blocked U-2 aerial overflights; and that despite all this, the inspectors have already found undeclared chemical warheads and illegally imported missile parts. Yet even if it is accurate, Mr. Blix's phrase points to the most serious emerging problem in the Security Council's handling of Iraq. Resolution 1441 offered Saddam Hussein "a last chance" to voluntarily disarm; it said that a false disclosure, coupled with "failure by Iraq at any time to comply . . . and cooperate fully" is a "material breach" that should trigger consideration by the council of "serious consequences," including military action. There is no tolerance in this formulation for "a mixed bag"; yet Mr. Blix probably will decline to report a material breach by Iraq, and both he and several members of the council will likely propose that instead of considering consequences, the council should simply allow the inspections to continue.
There is simply no way to square this proposed course with the terms of 1441, and the advocates of temporization, led by France and Germany, don't try very hard to do so. Instead, they set aside the text and offer a series of hypocritical rationalizations. It's true, they say privately, that Saddam Hussein hasn't complied with the resolution, but he might once he feels the pressure of the U.S. and British troops assembling around Iraq -- deployments Paris and Berlin publicly condemn as a "rush to war." Privately, officials acknowledge that Iraq does have hidden chemical and biological weapons; publicly, they insist that no action can be justified unless the inspectors manage to uncover them. At bottom, the argument is this: Saddam Hussein might be flouting a unanimously approved U.N. resolution, but as long as the inspectors are there, he is unlikely to use his weapons, and such containment is preferable to war, with all its risks and costs.
The French and Germans are right about war: It is always terrible, it can have unpredictable results, and democracies can embrace it only as a last resort. Yet their posturing, combined with the waffling of Mr. Blix, has made war more rather than less likely. Saddam Hussein can draw only one message from the current debate: that the Security Council no more has the will to force disarmament on him now than it did in the 1990s. Mr. Blix's report and the European reactions will encourage him to cooperate not more, but less. He might be contained for a while, but in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world, another failure by the world's powers to enforce Iraqi disarmament would be a disaster even worse than war: It would touch off a rush by rogue states for nuclear weapons. Consequently, the absence of firmness by the council will only force the Bush administration to conclude that it has no choice other than to bypass the United Nations and lead a "coalition of the willing" into Iraq. That coalition likely would include half or more of the members of the NATO alliance; France and Germany, more than the United States, would risk isolation.
The rift towards which the Western allies now are headed, which only the world's despots and terrorists could welcome, can still be avoided. A solution could begin with a simple statement of the truth tomorrow by Mr. Blix, who ought to drop his mixed bag and simply report the indisputable fact that Iraq is in material breach of the terms of 1441. The council could then decide on actions, or at least set a deadline for action to be taken. If European governments wish to postpone a final decision on military intervention for a few weeks, the Bush administration should be ready to show patience; but if inspections are to be continued despite Iraqi noncompliance, the council ought to clearly define what their purpose is. In the end only a unified and determined stand by the council, backed by a readiness for war, has a chance of bringing about the necessary change in Iraq by peaceful means. If that fails, council members will have to decide whether to preserve the credibility of the United Nations -- or hand over the enforcement of global order to the United States.
----
In Britain, War Concern Grows Into Resentment of U.S. Power
Anxiety Over Attack on Iraq Moves to Political Mainstream
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43665-2003Jan25?language=printer
LONDON -- In a recently televised satire here titled "Between Iraq and a Hard Place," George W. Bush is depicted as an idiot who can't seem to grasp why Saddam Hussein isn't cooperating with the U.S. timetable for war. American democracy is defined as "where there are two candidates and the one with the most votes loses," and Britain's role in the forthcoming military campaign is starkly simple:
"What is it that the Americans want from us?" asks a British official.
"From us?" replies an army general. "Dead bodies."
Prime Minister Tony Blair is the Bush administration's staunchest international ally in its campaign against Iraq and war on terrorism. But apart from Blair and his inner circle, there is growing unease and resentment here not just over Iraq but over U.S. power and foreign policy in general, according to political analysts, commentators and politicians.
There are fears that the United States is determined to act without heeding the concerns of its allies -- and fears that Britain will be dragged along in its wake. These fears have spread far beyond the traditionally anti-American hard left -- known here as "the usual suspects" -- to include moderates and conservatives as well.
"There's no question the anxiety is moving into the mainstream," said Raymond Seitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Britain who is vice chairman of Lehman Brothers Europe. The debate here, he said, has shifted. "It's not about how you deal with weapons of mass destruction or how you combat the threat of terrorism in the world, it's about how do you constrain the United States. How do you tie down Gulliver?"
Opinion polls show that support for military action against Iraq is at its lowest level ever among the British public. The Guardian newspaper and the ICM polling group found last week that 30 percent of respondents now support the idea, down from 42 percent in October. Opposition has risen from 37 percent to 47 percent.
Other signs of the swing in mood: efforts by the tabloid Daily Mirror to build circulation with an all-out campaign against an attack on Iraq; the sold-out success of "The Madness of George Dubya," a north London theatrical satire that depicts a child-like president in pajamas with a giant teddy bear; and the continuing bestseller status of Michael Moore's book "Stupid White Men," a blistering critique of the United States.
Criticism of America here begins with Iraq but quickly broadens to accusations that Washington is aiding and abetting Israeli repression of Palestinians and is a gluttonous society of large cars, fast food and environmental degradation seeking cheap Iraqi oil to feed its consumption habits.
"People in America don't understand that Blair is a rather lonely figure within his own party and within the country as a whole" concerning war and the alliance with the United States, Michael Gove, a columnist for the Times of London newspaper, said. "Anti-Americanism is a real force here and a growing one. It starts with tightly focused arguments but broadens into the crudest of caricatures."
Other British observers insist that what's growing here isn't anti-Americanism, but rather healthy criticism of a superpower gone awry. "Being critical of U.S. policy does not constitute a prejudice," said Godfrey Hodgson, a veteran journalist and author. "A vast majority of the British people are favorable to the United States, but a substantial majority are opposed to George W. Bush."
Much of the outrage is indeed aimed at Bush, whose colloquial speaking style and Texas accent don't go over well here. A cartoon in last Sunday's Observer newspaper depicted him as the Lone Ranger and Blair as Tonto. When Blair expresses doubts about the Iraq campaign, Bush replies: "Shut up, Tonto, and cover my back."
"Bush is a gift for anti-American cartoonists," Timothy Garton Ash, director of the European Studies Center at St. Antony's College at Oxford University, said. "If Bill Clinton were still in the White House, I suspect it'd be a very different story."
Garton Ash insists that anti-Americanism is not moving into the British mainstream. "America is the new Rome, the hyper-power, and when you're the imperial power, you get a lot of stick," he said. "But this isn't a clash of civilizations between Europe and America."
British opposition differs from that found in other European allies such as France, which has a complicated relationship with the United States, and Germany, with its post-World War II aversion to warfare.
By contrast, Britain has a martial tradition similar to America's, and its relationship to the United States remains one of the world's enduring love affairs. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Blair was one of the first foreign leaders to express sympathy and solidarity, and he sat next to Laura Bush during President Bush's speech to Congress regarding the attacks. Queen Elizabeth II emerged from a memorial service for the victims at St. Paul's Cathedral with tears in her eyes after singing "Battle Hymn of the Republic" with fellow mourners.
But there always was an alternative view that the United States had gotten some of what it deserved, that the attacks were payback for decades of ignoring Third World grievances. At a BBC televised panel discussion two days after the attacks, a studio audience fired hostile remarks at former U.S. ambassador to Britain Philip Lader and jeered his responses. "We share your grief, America -- totally," wrote columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, one of the panelists, afterward. "But you must share our concerns."
Novelist John le Carre wrote in an op-ed piece in the Times newspaper that "America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War."
The British left, which has waged a steady campaign against the United States since the days of the nuclear disarmament campaign and the Vietnam War, has also weighed in. Playwright Harold Pinter in a recent speech denounced "American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence."
For the traditional left, said Emmanuele Ottolinghi, a research fellow at the Middle East Center at St. Antony's, anti-Americanism has replaced a belief in socialism as the common denominator that holds disparate groups together. It also binds the left to Britain's growing Muslim population, anti-globalists and anti-Zionists. "Anti-Americanism is glue that holds them together, and hatred of Israel is one aspect," he said.
But there is also unease in the establishment. Some of the architects of Britain's involvement in the first Persian Gulf conflict in 1991, including former foreign secretary Douglas Hurd, former foreign minister Douglas Hogg and the former permanent undersecretary of the ministry of defense, Michael Quinlan, have expressed deep reservations about the new campaign similar to those expressed in the United States by Republican veterans such as Brent Scowcroft and James Baker.
Hurd in several opinion pieces has questioned whether overthrowing Hussein, the Iraqi president, would make the world safer from terrorism or simply trigger more attacks, especially if no steps are taken to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Next month, when the Oxford Union debates the proposition that "This House believes the U.S.A. is the greatest barrier to world peace," one of those speaking in favor will be Paul Robinson, a lecturer in security studies at the University of Hull. He is a former military intelligence officer who calls himself a right-of-center conservative, yet he argues that the Bush administration is destroying the long-standing international consensus that nations shouldn't wage war unless they are seriously threatened. "We are just becoming naked aggressors," he said of the United States and Britain.
Americans in Britain say they still are welcomed here, but feel increasingly challenged to take a stand against war in Iraq. When Melvyn P. Leffler, a history professor at the University of Virginia, and John Arthur, a philosophy professor at Binghamton University in New York, arrived last fall to spend a year teaching at Oxford, they went to visit a British friend of Arthur's and spent most of the night arguing over Iraq. "I was stunned to realize that people here seem more fearful of American power than they are of the oppressiveness and hideousness of Saddam Hussein's regime," Leffler said.
Former ambassador Seitz said the fears of the British are compounded by the realization that they have little or no control over what happens. "At the end of the day, the British do not control their own fate," he said. "They've hitched their wagon to the American juggernaut, and the decisions that can pose danger to British forces and interests are essentially taken in Washington, not London."
Few observers believe the current unease here poses a serious political danger to Blair, whose ruling Labor Party has a massive majority in Parliament and the backing on Iraq of the leadership of the opposition Conservatives. But if Washington fails to seek U.N. Security Council support for military action, or if a military campaign bogs down, Blair could face trouble. Having gotten much credit for steering Bush toward the U.N. route last fall, Blair needs to do so again when he visits Washington next weekend, analysts said. "He needs plausibly to be able to say we're doing this with the U.N.," Garton Ash said.
----
February date hinted on war decision
Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 26, 2003
http://dynamic.washtimes.com/twt-print.cfm?ArticleID=20030126-85000386
DAVOS, Switzerland - The Bush administration signaled yesterday that it would not decide whether to go to war with Iraq before early to mid-February, even though it was confident that "at least a dozen" countries would follow its lead in a military conflict.
Two days before U.N. chief weapons inspectors report to the Security Council on Iraq's cooperation, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell pressed world leaders on the need to make Baghdad give up weapons of mass destruction - by military force, if necessary.
"We cannot now start shrinking because the going is getting tough," he said on his way to the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday.
Mr. Powell, who is expected to make a major policy speech at the forum today, said the administration will make the next steps "deliberately, wholeheartedly, patiently" and "methodically" after the Security Council hears the chief weapons inspectors' report tomorrow.
He said Washington will wait for the Security Council debate on Wednesday, following the presentation of Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, as well as British Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit to Camp David for talks with President Bush on Friday.
"And then, after I've had the chance to consult with my colleagues in the Security Council - all of them - and the president has had a chance to, as I'm sure he will, consult with heads of state and government, we'll make a judgment about what we've heard and what we see then ahead," Mr. Powell said.
But in remarks to reporters on board his plane en route to the forum, the secretary also noted that "time is running out" on Iraq to disarm or "pay serious consequences."
"We are doing this deliberately, wholeheartedly, patiently, but there will be ultimately an end, I believe, to the patience of the international community, and we are doing it in full consultation and coordination with our friends and allies, some of whom have a different perspective on it than we do," he said.
Mr. Powell met with Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party, yesterday. Mr. Gul has been consulting with Iraq's neighbors on ways to avert war, because Turkey, the only Muslim NATO ally, would be directly affected in the event of a military conflict.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Mr. Powell and the Turkish officials "discussed the need to prepare for possible use of force, should Saddam not accept peaceful disarmament."
Mr. Powell has maintained that he would prefer the United Nations to authorize the use of force against Baghdad, if necessary, with another resolution, but if that is impossible, he would support a decision to wage war on Saddam Hussein with what Mr. Bush has called a "coalition of the willing."
"There are quite a number of countries that already have indicated that they would like to have another resolution, but without another resolution, they will be with us," he said.
"I don't want to give you names or give you a count," the secretary said, "but we would not be alone, that's for sure. I could rattle off at least a dozen off memory, and I think that there will be more."
On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, responding to increasingly vocal French and German opposition to war, said that it was Paris' and Berlin's prerogative to be "on the sidelines" if they chose to do so. In addition to Britain, he named Italy, Spain and Australia and some Eastern European nations as likely participants in the coalition.
Russia and China - permanent and veto-holding members of the Security Council along with the United States, Britain and France - as well as Canada, have come out in support of Paris and Berlin.
Meanwhile, Switzerland yesterday suggested hosting a last-chance peace meeting to head off a war with Iraq, and it insisted that, in case military force is used, the Geneva Conventions governing the conduct of warfare to protect civilians, injured fighters and prisoners of war should be respected.
European governments and human rights groups have criticized Washington's treatment of terrorist suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba, arguing that they should be treated as prisoners of war whose rights are protected under the Geneva Conventions. But the Bush administration says the detainees are enemy combatants not covered by the conventions, although it insists that they live under humane conditions.
Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey told Mr. Powell that her affluent central European nation is ready to do anything to prevent war.
"Switzerland is very concerned about the Iraqi civilian population. It is a tradition of Switzerland - international humanitarian law, humanitarian aid," she told reporters after a half-hour meeting with Mr. Powell.
Mrs. Calmy-Rey said Switzerland, the newest U.N. member since September, thinks that there must be a new Security Council resolution before any attack on Iraq.
"We are a small country, but we have a duty to do what we can to shape things," she said.
Mr. Powell denied the minister had made a specific offer to host a meeting, saying that she had "just made a reference to the fact that such talks have been held here in the past," in reference to a 1991 unsuccessful meeting between Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.
"She made a gracious, passing reference," the secretary told reporters after the meeting. "We have lots of venues in which to hold talks."
A senior State Department official later said that Mr. Powell "did not pick up on the idea," adding that Resolution 1441, adopted unanimously by the Security Council on Nov. 8, "is not a matter to be negotiated."
----
Words of War for Doubting Public
Bush's Address Must Convince Others of Urgency to Attack Iraq
By Dana Milbank and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43822-2003Jan25?language=printer
For the first time since terrorists turned him into a war president 16 months ago, George W. Bush on Tuesday night will address a nation that has serious questions about his leadership.
He must convince the American public of the urgency of attacking Iraq when support is falling for such a venture and for his foreign policy generally. He must demonstrate concern for the economy when Americans are worried he is not doing enough -- and is selling a tax cut opposed by a majority of the public and key lawmakers in his own party. In addition, he must also persuade lawmakers to make good on his big domestic promises, including a Medicare overhaul fraught with political risk.
Less than three months after spearheading a historic midterm election victory for the Republicans, Bush looks embattled rather than triumphant. On the two biggest issues of any presidency -- national security and the economy -- the public has far more doubts about him today than it did just a few months ago. As such, Bush arrives for his State of the Union message, his fourth address to Congress, suddenly under pressure.
"They've got big, tough issues," Republican pollster Robert Teeter said of the White House. Bush "is in a situation where you've got a lot of important balls in the air" and a public that is "at a minimum, uncertain" about the future. Teeter said polls showing a decline in Bush's approval rating -- from the mid-80 percent range to the mid-50 percent range, where he was before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- are no cause for panic, but "will focus their attention" in the West Wing.
A poll last week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 87 percent of Americans believe this year's State of the Union address is as or more important than last year's speech, as doubts about international and economic policies have risen. By nearly 2 to 1, Americans said Bush could be doing more to boost the economy, a sharp increase from a year ago.
Meanwhile, a flurry of polls conducted this week by The Washington Post and other news organizations found only bare majorities supporting Bush on foreign policy -- an area where he commanded support of more than 80 percent a year ago.
"The agenda in 2003 is not united, the public is not united and the public is much less confident of his leadership this year than they were a year ago," said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster. "His personal challenge is to reestablish a sense of presence and leadership that seems to have been lost."
Bush's speech will thoroughly address matters domestic and economic; he'll push for Medicare legislation and his "compassion agenda," in addition to his $670 billion tax cut. But political strategists and White House officials agree that Iraq will inevitably be the subject of dominant interest -- and the most urgent test of Bush's leadership.
Because of the administration's steady vows to disarm or oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the massing of U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf region, Bush has all but committed the country to war. Yet allies are balking and the American public is unhappy about acting alone and denying U.N. inspectors the additional time they seek.
Republicans on Capitol Hill, a few of whom have uncharacteristically begun to question Bush's policies, agree that Bush must deliver "a galvanizing speech" Tuesday. "This is the first crisis of confidence in his leadership since September 11th," said a prominent GOP Senate aide. "This is the speech that redirects the country's attention to the need to go to war at a time when he's at a nadir in his foreign policy leadership."
On Iraq, Bush's challenge is particularly delicate. Americans are still generally supportive of ousting Hussein, and there would almost certainly be a vast increase in support for Bush and the attack once it begins. But Bush is not ready to order war -- in part because U.N. deliberations are ongoing, Turkey has not yet committed to cooperate, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, with whom Bush promised to consult, has not arrived in Washington for such talks.
"What needs to be done at this point to pull things together is the president has to be decisive, saying, 'This is it; no more fooling around; I've made a decision,' " said Gary Schmitt, a former Reagan administration official who heads the Project for the New American Century. "The problem is he doesn't want to do this before he's consulted with Blair, because he wants to make Blair a partner, not a poodle."
Therefore, Schmitt said, Bush is in the awkward position of making the case that Hussein is a bad man -- something Americans already believe -- without stating what must be done. "The problem with presidential rhetoric is sooner or later, the coin gets spent," he said. "You can only make so many speeches on the same subject, and people stop listening."
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said Bush views Tuesday's speech as an "opportunity to educate the public and the world about the threat that Saddam Hussein poses." While asserting that "we are entering the last phase," Bartlett warned: "Don't expect any declaration of war in this speech because of where we are in the diplomatic phase."
Bush allies cautioned against expecting new details of the case against Iraq. "I don't think he will get as much into Iraq as people expect; I think it will be general, and you'll get more specifics later," said GOP lobbyist Charlie Black, who is close to the White House. Rather, Black said, Bush will link Iraq and his foreign policy more closely with homeland security. "It's all under a big umbrella theme," he said.
Bush's address will deal with North Korea and Iran, the other countries he put in the "axis of evil" a year ago. But the Iraq component is more urgent, intended to amplify the administration's rhetoric, which has begun to escalate.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said last week that Hussein has responded with "a clear and resounding no" to disarmament, and she warned that "time is running out." A day later, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz echoed the warning. Even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, ambushed at the United Nations by the French opposition to an attack, dropped his enthusiasm for arms inspections.
Both critics and supporters of the president said they believe that, at least in the short term, Bush should be able to rally the country behind his Iraq policy, as he did in September with his speech to the United Nations after several weeks when the administration was on the defensive. "I think the temporary dip will fade starting [this] week when the president commands center stage," said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist.
But whether that support proves durable over the long run is another matter. If Americans do not fully embrace the cause, then support could slip easily, particularly if the war went slowly and casualties were high. Bush is in a much more fragile position than he was in rallying the nation to war against Afghanistan, where the moral case was clear, the national interest certain, and bipartisan agreement easy. Americans are wondering not only why the country must go to war now, but also what the long-term risks and commitments will be. On this, Bush has been quiet.
Eric V. Larson, who studies public opinion and war at the Rand research group, said long-term support for the war would depend on Americans' perception of the importance of the mission, the prospects for success, the likely costs and casualties and the support for the war from national leaders. Support for war in Iraq, he said, will depend on a key question: "Do all parties come together and say this is worth doing, or do they divide along partisan lines?"
Last fall, Bush found it easy to get bipartisan support, because he coupled action against Hussein with a willingness to let the United Nations resume arms inspections -- and he shifted his goal from "regime change" to the more modest "disarmament." Now, though, he must demonstrate why he may go to war with only a few allies on board and possibly without a fresh authorization from the United Nations.
James Steinberg, deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, said the president has failed to answer many of the key questions: why he believes the United States should go to war; what Hussein could do to avert war; how important it is if key allies oppose a war; and what the United States would have to do in Iraq after a war. Some believe Bush should also brace the nation for the street fighting that could occur if the campaign did not succeed quickly.
And Bush may not be able to make an open-and-shut case that Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. "You'll never come up with enough information to convince everybody," said Kenneth Adelman, a former Reagan official who is on a Pentagon advisory panel. He acknowledged that "the momentum has gone away from the administration," but he said Bush can quickly regain his advantage by convincing Americans "that time is not on our side."
Though a temporary boost in support for military action and the commander in chief will come easily enough, Bush has much work to do, starting Tuesday, to establish more durable support for his foreign policy and for his leadership generally. "The war on terrorism, like World War II, was a war you felt in your gut had to be fought," a former government official said. "People may feel this [the need to oust Hussein] in their head, but they don't feel it in their gut."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Hunters Captured by the Game Warden
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44067-2003Jan25?language=printer
For years, they roamed the Sierra Nevada range unnoticed, investigators say, stalking and killing black bears with abandon.
But their illegal hunts finally may have come to an end.
California wildlife agents announced a few days ago that they had busted the largest poaching ring in the state in 20 years, a criminal operation that may have killed hundreds of bears and other animals for profit.
Eleven men -- hunters, mountain guides and taxidermists -- have been arrested in the probe, which began with a tip more than a year ago. Most face felony charges that could bring as much as three years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Authorities said 17 other people in California are being questioned about the poaching.
Wildlife agents who infiltrated the ring and went on illegal hunts said the poachers flouted state laws in many ways: They hunted black bears year-round. They shot deer, then used the carcasses as bear bait. Some poachers allegedly even shot bear cubs in the hope of attracting, then easily shooting, their mothers.
"Any way they could make money, they'd do it," Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the California Fish and Game Department, told reporters after the arrests.
Authorities suspect the poachers were illegally selling bear pelts and other body parts to underground markets in Asia.
California allows bear hunting only for three months in the fall. It also limits how many can be killed every year.
-------- death penalty
Steele Seeks New Study of Death Penalty Cases
Finding of Bias Against Blacks in Prosecutions Concerns Lieutenant Governor
By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44061-2003Jan25?language=printer
Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele says he is troubled by new evidence of racial bias in Maryland's capital murder system and will advise Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to seek a new study of the issue, even as Maryland prepares for its first execution in more than four years.
Steele, the first African American elected statewide in Maryland and a personal opponent of the death penalty, said his concerns arose from a new University of Maryland study that shows black killers of white victims are nearly four times as likely to be sentenced to die than blacks who kill blacks. Ehrlich has named Steele his point person on capital punishment.
"This report demonstrates the necessity for a closer look at how we handle these cases, from the moment an individual is captured to the moment he is sentenced," Steele said in an interview last week. "I haven't discussed it yet with the governor, but maybe we should commission another study that looks at how our prosecutors prosecute capital crimes."
Steele's comments represent the new Republican administration's first substantial response to the study released Jan. 7 by University of Maryland criminologist Raymond Paternoster.
In a brief interview Friday, Ehrlich did not directly address Steele's remarks and played down the study's significance. He said he asked Steele and top aides, including chief lobbyist Kenneth Masters, to read it and report back to him.
Steele said that he finds the study's conclusions "personally troubling" and that Ehrlich has indicated that he, too, is "bothered by it."
When Ehrlich took office this month, he said he would allow executions to resume in Maryland after a moratorium imposed last year by former governor Parris N. Glendening (D). With a Baltimore County judge expected this week to schedule the first execution in Ehrlich's term as governor, Masters said, "It's an issue we're going to have to confront."
Prosecutors say there could be as many as seven executions this year, a record since the death penalty was reinstated in Maryland in 1978.
The Paternoster study was commissioned by Glendening, who halted executions in May pending its completion, making Maryland the second state to declare a moratorium. In Illinois this month, before leaving office, Gov. George Ryan (R) emptied death row because of persistent questions about the fairness of capital punishment.
Glendening cited concerns about racial bias and about the dramatically different policies among local prosecutors that had made the death penalty a "lottery of jurisdiction."
Of 12 men on death row in Maryland, eight are black, four are white and all killed white victims. Nine of the 12 were convicted of crimes committed in Baltimore County.
In an analysis of each of 6,000 murders committed in Maryland from 1978 to 1999, Paternoster found statistical evidence that the race of the victim plays a significant role when prosecutors decide whether to seek the death penalty, a finding that mirrors studies in 19 other states.
Paternoster also found overwhelming evidence that a killer's chances of being sent to death row depend heavily on the location of the slaying. A killer who commits his crime in Baltimore County is 26 times more likely to receive the death penalty than one in neighboring Baltimore City and 14 times more likely than in Montgomery County, the study shows.
Ehrlich, Maryland's first Republican governor in more than three decades, said he would rescind the moratorium regardless of the study's findings and evaluate each capital case individually.
Baltimore County prosecutors last week asked a judge to sign a death warrant ordering the execution of Steven H. Oken in mid-March.
Ehrlich has the authority to stay the execution, and Oken's attorney's are likely to ask him to do so. Ehrlich said he has begun to gather information about Oken, a white man who raped and killed three white women over 16 days in 1987 in an alcohol- and tranquilizer-fueled rampage so savage that his attorney called it "a script for a horror movie."
"The facts are particularly egregious," Ehrlich said. "I find it just a little bit disquieting that there's been relatively little analysis of the lives cut short, the views of the victims and their families, which we view as also important."
Unlike Glendening, Ehrlich said he is not concerned about the overall fairness of a system in which prosecutors in some jurisdictions rarely seek the death penalty while prosecutors elsewhere, particularly in Baltimore County, seek it in every eligible case.
"One element I reject out of hand is that there shouldn't be discretion in the system," Ehrlich said. "The state's attorneys all run on different [campaign] platforms. Their views are approved by a majority of voters in their communities. You would expect different results in different jurisdictions, and that's what you get."
Ehrlich, who aggressively courted African American voters during his gubernatorial campaign, declined to comment on Paternoster's findings of racial bias. He said he and Steele will review every death warrant, and "if I'm not comfortable with any aspect of the case, we won't go forward."
Masters said that the administration clearly must respond to the study but indicated that Ehrlich has yet to decide what form that response would take.
Steele's idea for a second study won praise from a Democratic lawmaker who has played a leading role in challenging the fairness of the death penalty. Del. Salima Siler Marriott (Baltimore) said she is drafting legislation to create a panel, with Steele as chairman, to review the Paternoster study and propose ways to change state law.
"It is not responsible to ignore this study, but it didn't come with any recommendations," Marriott said. "I think the idea of a commission is the perfect way to go."
Steele, a Roman Catholic, is bracing for his first up-close experience with the death penalty, which he fervently opposes on religious grounds. Regardless of how Ehrlich proceeds, Steele said, he intends to serve as an advocate for mercy.
"I feel it is important to relay to the governor and respond to the question of: Should we do this? What is to be gained beyond providing satisfaction to someone who wants to see this individual die?" Steele said.
"There may be a case that comes across his desk where the evidence and the facts and the situation compel him to let this person live, despite his belief in capital punishment," Steele said. "Likewise, despite my fervent belief in life, I'm not for the death penalty -- there may be a case that comes across my desk that's so egregious, so heinous, so beyond the pale that the course of action taken by the state to bring about justice is appropriate.
"That's one where I'll spend time with my priest, I'm sure," he said.
-------- homeland security
Cheating Security
LaGuardia screeners say they were given answers to tests
By Thomas Frank
WASHINGTON BUREAU
January 26, 2003
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-ustsa263104038jan26,0,663486.story
Several government security screeners at LaGuardia Airport said that moments before they took a certification test to operate machines that detect bombs in luggage, instructors told them answers to all or most of the questions.
Four screeners interviewed separately described nearly identical scenarios from classes last month: an instructor taught material for several hours and then read and answered a series of 25 multiple-choice questions that were on an exam the screeners took immediately afterward.
"He read the questions right out of the test, word for word, answer for answer," one screener said, adding that the 25 people in his class wrote down the correct answers on note paper and copied them onto their tests with the instructor out of the room.
A second screener, in a separate class in mid-December, said the instructor stayed in the room during the test but that the exam questions "were the same questions he asked orally just before the test."
"It was pretty much set up so that you shouldn't have any way to fail," said a third screener, who, like all screeners interviewed, asked not to be named fearing retaliation. "The guy read all 25 questions to you just before he gave the test. To tell you the truth, as he gave the questions, I wrote the answers down, because he read them exactly in order."
Passing the tests was required for screeners to become certified in using machines that detect explosives in checked baggage. All checked baggage was to be checked for explosives starting Dec. 31 in a new federal initiative to strengthen aviation security in response to the Sept. 11 hijackings and attacks.
The screeners' statements raise questions about the integrity of the training, which the federal government vowed to improve when it took over airport security last year from private firms that were criticized for cutting corners. The comments also underscore concerns raised last year by government auditors who said the Dec. 31 deadline may not provide enough time to hire and train screeners.
A spokesman for the federal Transportation Security Administration, which runs airport security, said he found the screeners' statements "highly suspect."
"That absolutely would not be done," spokesman Mark Hatfield said. "It's counter to training protocols and training ethics and the nature of the program."
Hatfield said instructors did give answers before exams to a few questions - "three at most" - that were deemed flawed because there was more than one possible answer or because it concerned material not covered in class.
TSA officials are looking into the screeners' statements, trying to locate and talk to instructors.
At LaGuardia, screeners said TSA officials were rushing to train them late last year to operate newly acquired machines.
"They knew that they would need us to fill these positions, so we were not allowed to fail. They wanted you to pass," said a fourth screener, recalling how he and classmates wrote down answers to questions as the instructor read them.
Screeners said that instructors did not say that the questions they were reading were going to be on the exams. "It just happened to be those exact same questions and answers made up the test," the third screener said. "That's why if you wrote down the letter answers to each question while we were doing the review, you had all the answers to the test."
The first screener said that after an instructional segment, his instructor told the class, "We're going to review, everyone take out a pen and piece of paper. People asked, 'Are these questions going to be on the test?' He said, 'Just take out a piece of paper.'"
The instructor then began reading multiple-choice questions with the four possible answers, and would pose each question to the class before providing the correct answer himself, the first screener said.
The screener said the procedure angered him. "I think something as important as bomb-detection should not be played with."
But the fourth screener said, "I wouldn't consider it cheating. He wanted everyone to pass."
Two other screeners said in interviews that instructors did not read questions and answers immediately before the test but said during the class that certain material might be on the test or screeners would have to know it for the test.
The training and testing were overseen by Boeing Co. under a $508-million contract to train 21,500 baggage screeners nationwide in using baggage-inspection machines the airplane manufacturer installed at the nation's 429 commercial airports.
Boeing spokesman Eliot Brenner said, "I would consider it unlikely that an instructor would have reviewed every question in advance of the test."
Brenner said the classroom training was done by Boeing subcontractor Advanced Interactive Systems Inc. of Seattle, which provides training for law enforcement, military and security agencies. A company spokeswoman did not return calls Friday and yesterday.
Screeners had been hired en masse at LaGuardia last summer and fall to work security checkpoints for passengers and their carry-on bags. In December, TSA officials at LaGuardia asked and directed approximately 200 to undergo the additional training on baggage machines, screeners said.
Last year, two government auditors said meeting the Dec. 31 deadline set by Congress would be challenging, and many experts said it was unrealistic. Auditors found TSA was having hiring problems in major metropolitan areas such as New York, where many job applicants failed pre-hiring tests of aptitude and English proficiency.
The Transportation Department's inspector general found that as of mid-July, the TSA had deployed just 166 baggage screeners out of the 21,500 that would be needed.
Hatfield said the TSA is at its full staffing level.
All screeners also receive 40 hours of classroom instruction and 60 hours of on-the-job training when they are initially hired. Hatfield said baggage training involves another day in a classroom followed by a day-and-a-half of instruction on the machines.
Screeners do not get certified to use the baggage machines until they work on them for 60 hours under supervision and demonstrate competence at operating them, Hatfield said.
"The training and testing is multilayered," Hatfield said, adding that TSA has dramatically improved airport security while meeting tight deadlines and facing budget pressure.
"The response we get from passengers, airport operators, critics both in and out of the industry is resoundingly positive. They've been put on the line for a very short period of time, and got up to speed very quickly and have been exceeding expectations," Hatfield said.
Most screeners interviewed said they would have liked more practice time on the machine before being assigned to work it. But others said they've grown proficient with experience.
"From what I've seen so far, everyone seems to be comfortable with what they're doing. We all kind of lean on each other," the fourth screener said. "I don't see anyone with my crew who doesn't belong here."
The machines at LaGuardia, developed by InVision Technologies of California, use X-ray technology to view a bag's contents. If potential explosive material is detected, the machine signals with an alarm or red light and displays the location of the material on a computer monitor next to the machine.
The technology is designed to enable screeners to look at the monitor and determine whether the material is actually explosive or a benign substance that can trigger an alarm.
But the TSA, uncertain that the machines are so accurate, requires screeners to run an additional explosives test on each bag that has set off the alarm and then inspect it by hand.
The manual process is substantially slower and precludes LaGuardia and other airports from running all checked baggage through the machines. But it also is more reliable, experts say.
----
Customs expands air protection over capital
Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published January 26, 2003
http://dynamic.washtimes.com/twt-print.cfm?ArticleID=20030126-94683307
The U.S. Customs Service has assumed an expanded role in guarding the country against terrorist attacks, with air patrols over the White House, the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon.
Customs aircraft will also patrol the skies above San Diego today for the Super Bowl game.
The anti-terrorism patrols over Washington by the Customs Service Air and Marine Interdiction Division will begin tomorrow in an effort to enhance airspace security for the Washington Area.
The patrols are part of a program under the National Capital Region Coordination Center (NCRCC), which is designed to coordinate the anti-terrorism efforts of several federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies, and facilitate the exchange of crucial information among the various departments.
Customs Service spokesman Kevin Bell said NCRCC participants also include the Federal Aviation Administration, Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Secret Service, Defense Department, U.S. Park Police, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Capitol Police and local law-enforcement agencies.
Formed in the early 1970s, the Customs Service Air and Marine Interdiction Division was assigned the task of protecting the nation's borders and the people from illicit drugs and other contraband destined for the United States. That mission continues.
But since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed nearly 3,000 people, the Customs Service's highest priority has shifted to preventing terrorists and their tools from entering the country.
Since the attacks, Mr. Bell said, the Air and Marine Interdiction Division has expanded its mission to include a much more significant role in homeland security.
The Customs Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center in Riverside, Calif., Mr. Bell said, was instrumental in re-establishing and intensifying airspace security over the nation's skies by providing what he described as "seamless radar detection, sorting and monitoring in support of national security."
He said the air division supports homeland security in several ways, including:
•Working with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to monitor U.S. borders and assist in tracking and identifying suspect aircraft.
•The use of Customs P-3 aircraft to provide surveillance flights in support of NORAD, including presidential airspace security.
•The assignment of Customs aircraft and vessels to patrol the skies, land borders and coasts in support of homeland security and to support other federal law-enforcement agencies such as the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the Secret Service counterterrorism operation.
Strategic planners in the Air and Interdiction Division, Mr. Bell said, are "active participants in the Interagency Homeland Air Security Steering Group, which is tasked with developing the nation's homeland security strategy and operational concept."
He said the division also played a key role in forming the air-security plan for the National Capital Region.
Customs Service aircraft enforced airspace security during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and played a critical role in the hunt for the two sniper suspects - accused of terrorizing Maryland, Virginia and the District late last year - flying Blackhawk helicopters day and night to support federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies investigating the sniper attacks.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Growth Brings Crime -- And a Crowded Jail
By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44058-2003Jan25?language=printer
It was just after lunchtime in the day room of Cell Pod A1, midway through "The Maury Povich Show" and a gin rummy game, when a guard called out that it was nearly time for inmates to return to their cells.
"Man, we've just been out here less than an hour and a half," said a lanky, middle-aged inmate, his face and tone suggesting defiance but his low mumble acknowledging defeat.
Just 2 1/2 years after it opened, the Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford -- which serves Stafford, Spotsylvania and King George counties and the City of Fredericksburg -- holds an average of 800 to 850 prisoners a day. That is about 200 more than it was built for, and a population officials weren't expecting to reach until 2007.
Without the space and staff to properly monitor inmates -- 40 percent of whom are awaiting trial -- officials say they have no choice but to keep the inmates in their cells 18 hours a day. Computers and books are being packed so libraries can become dorms, and 8-by-11-foot cells designed for two inmates are housing three -- one of whom sleeps on a plastic cot called a "boat" by inmates.
But Rappahannock Regional is not just a story of numbers, of a criminal population multiplying along with the rest of swelling north-central Virginia. It documents the spread of crime to an area that still thinks of itself as rural and immune to big-city problems.
"If people would just get in the habit of locking their cars and their homes," said 1st Sgt. Shawn Kimmitz, 31, of the Stafford County sheriff's office, who patrols the county's many subdivisions and the back lots of its malls on his nightly shifts.
In the history of jail crowding, Rappahannock Regional is nothing spectacular. Stories of inmates sleeping on soiled mattresses in the hallways of the D.C. jail made news in the 1980s, and the downtown Fredericksburg jail that Rappahannock replaced closed with 300 inmates -- nearly four times its intended population.
Adding to the problem was the state's decision to save money by closing at least one of its prisons, thus spreading inmates among county jails.
About one-fourth of the people at Rappahannock Regional have either been accused or convicted of a violent felony, and a large percentage of the charges involve drugs. Training for jail employees involves learning about gang behavior, and the wall next to the phone in the intake room is plastered with ads for new bail-bond businesses.
"Let's put it this way -- it's not like I'm worried about being out of work," said Officer Peter Ries, a former minister who is the security officer in the jail's kitchen. "It's a business, and it's growing."
The jurisdictions served by the jail still count their annual homicides in single digits, but violent crimes such as rape and armed robbery are on the rise. Domestic violence and drug possession still top the list of common crimes.
As the region has become more than a pit stop on Interstate 95 and more than a bedroom community for Washington and Richmond, each about 50 miles away, law enforcement officials say they see a disturbing sign of the area's independence: its own criminal ecosystem. Those who commit crimes in the area tend to have a local base of operations, Stafford County Sheriff Charlie Jett said.
"We used to be the bastard children of Northern Virginia, but I think we've grown into our own identity. The people we deal with on a daily basis, it seems like they stay within the geographical limits," Jett said.
Rappahannock Regional's crowding is attributable in part to a series of Virginia laws aimed at locking up more people and keeping them locked up longer. Jails across the state, including those in Roanoke and Augusta counties and the Prince William-Manassas facility, have experienced serious crowding. Some have built additions, others have increased home-incarceration programs, and still others have sent inmates to other jurisdictions.
In 1995, state legislators eliminated parole and decreed that prisoners must serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. A few years later, they did away with "good time," which meant prisoners could no longer lop time off their sentences by good behavior. A couple of years ago, they brought state bail law into closer alignment with federal law, making most people accused of serious crimes ineligible for bail.
Abolishing parole increased the jail population by about one-third, according to Stephen Bishop, facilities manager at Rappahannock Regional.
Against that backdrop, some prominent law enforcement officials in one of Virginia's most conservative regions are calling for less emphasis on incarceration.
"We're coming to a fork in the road," said Larry Hamilton, superintendent at Rappahannock Regional.
"You can continue to incarcerate people or we need to increase programs like work release, diversion centers, drug courts -- those kinds of things.
"I know if you lock everyone up, there's less money for schools, for ballparks," Hamilton said. "It's a philosophical debate."
Hamilton believes that crime is down across the country in recent years because criminals -- many of whom are repeat offenders -- are behind bars longer. But many inmates are nonviolent offenders, and Hamilton says that is an expensive punishment that may not be worth the cost.
Increasingly, local and regional jails also serve as temporary housing for inmates sentenced to serve time in state prisons.
Rappahannock was built for those awaiting trial or those sentenced to less than a year in jail.
Although the state is required to take prisoners with longer sentences, Hamilton said 14 percent of his inmates are state prisoners who shouldn't be there.
Many local law enforcement officials believe that the state Department of Corrections is balancing its budget on their backs. The state pays local jails $16 a day to house its inmates, then charges about twice that much to rent space to out-of-state inmates or federal prisoners, Spotsylvania County Attorney Bill Neely said.
"It keeps the local jails jammed," he said.
-------- terrorism
Sub, Navy SEALs Run Anti - Terrorism Drill
January 26, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Sub-Terrorism-Experiment.html
ABOARD THE USS FLORIDA (AP) -- Cruise ships are sharing the ocean off the Bahamas with something menacing and stealthy: an enormous black submarine carrying Navy commandos hunting for terrorists.
The sub and its contingent of SEALs (for Sea, Air and Land) are part of a Navy experiment exploring ways to clandestinely confirm and eliminate threats from terrorist cells.
``This is a different kind of enemy,'' said Capt. William Toti, who is running the $6 million exercise, called Giant Shadow.
``They don't just stand there and fight,'' Toti said Saturday of terrorists. ``They scatter like cockroaches. If they know we're onto them, they're gone.''
The centerpiece of the 10-day exercise, due to end Tuesday, is the USS Florida, which formerly carried Trident nuclear missiles.
The 560-foot Florida, based in Norfolk, Va., is one of four such missile submarines that had faced the scrap heap. Instead, the subs will now be converted to each carry up to 154 Tomahawk guided missiles and ferry more than 60 SEALs, the Navy special operations troops.
The exercise involved a simulated mission to confirm intelligence reports that terrorists were building a chemical weapons facility on an island.
Unmanned air and underwater vehicles took surveillance images. The SEALs then went ashore in rubber rafts, hid acoustic, video and chemical weapon ``sniffer'' sensors and took vegetation and soil samples to be analyzed for biological or chemical agents.
Some parts of the exercise had to be scrubbed because of rough seas. But officials said that did not detract from the experiment, which they already consider a success despite communications problems.
``We don't expect an experiment to work perfectly. That's what experimenting is about,'' said Toti, assistant chief of staff for requirements for the commander of the Navy's submarine forces.
To the SEALs, the converted missile sub means roomy accommodations, plus facilities that will help support multiple missions over several months.
Ordinarily, such missions would take them to sea on fast-attack subs, which are about 200 feet shorter and have room for only 10 to 20 SEALs. The smaller subs mean they must bunk practically on top of each other in the torpedo rooms, and they can only do one mission over a short period.
``This is a great platform for us to be able to work off of,'' said Capt. Randy Goodman, commander of Naval Special Warfare Group Four, SEALs based at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in Virginia Beach, Va. ``I'm sold.''
Critics argue that the roughly $3.8 billion it will cost to convert all four Ohio-class subs -- the Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Georgia -- would be better spent developing new weapons and attack submarines.
``As much as I like the Ohio-class subs -- they're big, they're neat, they're silent, they're famous from Tom Clancy (novels) -- I kind of have to wonder how important it is for this particular conversion to take place,'' said Patrick Garrett, a defense analyst who did not participate in the experiment.
``I'm not sure if it's anything other than a large taxi or a large bus for the SEALS,'' said Garrett, of GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit military intelligence and space research organization in Alexandria, Va.
The Navy, however, figures it would be cheaper to convert the subs than to create something new at an estimated cost of $12 billion.
The Florida still faces 32 months of conversion and refueling. After testing, it is expected to return to the fleet in 2007.
``They took away all my missiles, but actually it's really exciting,'' said Petty Officer 1st Class Kevin Maden, a 31-year-old missile technician from Pensacola, Fla. ``It's awesome to see change.''
On the Net:
Giant Shadow: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/giant-shadow.htm
Atlantic Fleet Submarine Force: http://www.sublant.navy.mil/
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
ArrowBio Process: A Source of Green Energy
26 January 2003
Arutz Sheva
Israel Broadcasting Network
http://israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=1896
Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) disposal is a major ecological challenge. Landfills, which has been the preferred solution, pollute well water, demand ever expanding land use, and contaminate their surroundings with unpleasant odors. All of which make them the worst possible solution for Israel, a country with limited water and land resources, and with crowded population centers.
The search for new methods have produced incinerators, biological treatments, recycling by manual sorting and more; however, all of those solutions are expensive and have had only partial successes, if that. Therefore, the unique ArrowBio MSW treatment process is well-suited to Israel, but also a method to produce "green" energy for transportation and power plants.
According to the Haifa-based Arrow Ecology Ltd., developers of the ArrowBio Process, the system is a "unique technology that succeeds to treat MSW, to recover materials from the waste and to produce Biogas, that is an alternative, clean and 'green' energy...." The company reports that the "process was tested in the last five years in laboratory and field tests at the semi-industrial plant near Hadera, Israel. It was approved, by scientists from Israel, the US and others, as more effective and economically better than all existing methods." With the ArrowBio Process, traditional recyclables (metal, glass, plastic) are recovered, while diverse biodegradable organic waste is converted into three products: high quality biogas, organic residue not needing further treatment for use as in soil, and biologically generated water. Thus, less than ten percent of the incoming waste exits as biologically inert residue to be landfilled.
In December of 2002, the first full-scale ArrowBio plant, consisting of one 220 ton per day module, was brought online at the Tel Aviv MSW transfer station. At the Tel Aviv facility, the biogas, produced by the plant, is actually used to generate electricity for the plant. The plant will also be able to sell power in the future, as well, reports Arrow Ecology.
In sum, the company says, "the ArrowBio Process is a currently available, cost-effective, benign, non-threatening, MSW management technology suited to the demanding needs of the 21st century. Its benefits include energy production and near-zero landfilling."
-------- energy
'There Is No Shortage of Oil'
War in Iraq Won't Diminish Flow, OPEC Officials Pledge
By David McHugh
Associated Press
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43726-2003Jan25?language=printer
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 25 -- Saudi Arabia's oil minister said today that his country and OPEC could make up for any interruption in oil supplies from a war in Iraq, adding the price of oil had been driven too high "by all these drums of war."
Oil Minister Ali Naimi said producers had been able cover disruptions such as the seven-week strike that has reduced supplies from Venezuela.
"Although I admit there is a perception of a threat to supply, producers and consumers are working to mitigate the threat," Naimi said at a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum. "There is no reason for the price of oil to be as high as it is today."
Naimi said suppliers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries had stepped up during past regional upheavals that temporarily reduced deliveries, including the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
He referred to Saudi Arabia's policy of holding production capacity of 3 million barrels a day in reserve.
"No matter what we say, no matter what we do, there are always doubts whether we will deliver," Naimi said. "But history is on our side."
He said fears of a U.S. attack on Iraq had driven prices, currently more than $33 a barrel, too high despite OPEC efforts to produce more oil in response to the disruption in Venezuela.
"Did we bring the price back to $25?" he said. "We didn't, because there are all these drums of war."
OPEC's president, Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah of Qatar, said, "There is no shortage of oil." OPEC may even have an oil surplus when its members next meet in March.
Oil buyers fear that Iraq may destroy its oil production facilities in case of an attack by the United States. Iraq is the fourth-largest exporter in OPEC.
-------- environment
Island of Dissent Blocks Revival Bid
Senate Moves to End 14-Year Impasse on the Everglades Restoration Effort
By Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43647-2003Jan25?language=printer
MIAMI -- Julio Concepcion has re-created his own little slice of Cuba here in the most contentious patch of Florida, a rustic neighborhood at the edge of the Everglades known as the 8.5 Square Mile Area. Concepcion has a tropical orchard with mangos, mammees, plantains and papayas the size of footballs. He has an apiary with about 1.5 million bees. And just as he did before fleeing from Fidel Castro in 1962, he has a beef with his government.
Federal officials want to buy 77 homes at the western tip of Miami's sprawl in order to reflood the eastern end of the Everglades. The Senate approved language in its budget bill Thursday authorizing the buyouts; Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and President Bush's aides recently endorsed the measure. But Concepcion and some of his neighbors are refusing to sell, and it is not clear whether the buyout plan will survive negotiations with the House of Representatives.
All in all, it's a fairly routine property rights dispute -- except that it has stalled a plan to revive Everglades National Park for the past 14 years. And now it is bogging down the related $8 billion effort to restore the entire Everglades, the largest environmental project ever.
"We're not leaving. No way," Concepcion said. "Castro doesn't run this country. They can't make us go."
Everyone involved in the 8.5 Square Mile Area battle agrees that it is a waste of time and energy, that the otherwise uncontroversial park restoration plan known as "Mod Waters" ought to move forward as soon as possible, that the overall Everglades restoration effort will be doomed if it cannot even overcome this local spat. That $8 billion Everglades restoration -- an array of 68 projects enacted by Congress in 2000 -- is already a model for rescue efforts in the San Francisco Bay Delta, Louisiana's coastal wetlands and the Pantanal region of Brazil.
But no one can agree whether the 8.5 Square Mile Area's unwilling sellers -- the government counts only 10, although local activists say there are dozens -- should be allowed to stay and receive flood protection. In May, a federal judge ruled that Congress never authorized the buyouts, and ordered the Army Corps of Engineers back to the drawing board on Mod Waters. Congress had already decreed that until Mod Waters was completed, the government could not move forward on key elements of the overall Everglades restoration plan.
So the impasse has dragged on, shrouded by political intrigue, bureaucratic paralysis and finger pointing. Hulking concrete floodgates have been built but never opened. The price tag for Mod Waters has soared from $89 million to $191 million. And federal agencies have been forced to improvise an expensive array of interim plans to prevent the last few endangered Cape Sable seaside sparrows from drowning. One Army Corps official wrote in an internal e-mail message last February: "We risk wasting megabucks of government money."
On one side, environmentalists and government officials say a compromise plan to buy out one-third of the 8.5 Square Mile Area is the only way to rehydrate the park and jump-start Everglades restoration. On the other side, property rights activists argue that the buyouts are unnecessary, and that the rights of people should take precedence over the rights of birds. The Miccosukee Indians support the residents, even though Mod Waters would relieve flooding on tribal lands; they call the buyouts a throwback to the 19th century displacement of Indians.
"We're stuck," said Robert Johnson, Everglades National Park's top scientist.
"It's a mess," said Terry Rice, a former Army Corps colonel who now works for the Miccosukees.
Everglades National Park has been a mess for decades, ravaged by canals, levees and pumps that have flooded its western side, parched its eastern side and decimated its wildlife. Mod Waters -- its formal name is the Modified Water Deliveries Project -- was designed to restore more natural flows to the park, shifting water from west to east through weirs and floodgates. But the original legislation also pledged that if Mod Waters worsened flooding in the 8.5 Square Mile Area, the neighborhood would receive flood protection. Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and the late representative Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.) ushered the bipartisan bill through Congress in 1989.
In 1992, the Corps drafted its technical plan, which included a levee and a canal around the entire neighborhood. But Everglades National Park scientists concluded those structures would dry out nearly 30,000 acres of park wetlands. Conservationists proposed a buyout of the entire neighborhood instead, and at one point Florida officials agreed. "We will all be pushing up daisies before you fully get it resolved," then-House Resources Committee Chairman James V. Hansen (R-Utah) once grumbled at a hearing. The debate raged until 2000, when the Corps, the park and the state agreed on the compromise, which would require buyouts of 77 of the neighborhood's 602 residential properties.
Twenty-two families have accepted buyouts. But others are determined to protect their sparsely developed community as an alternative to Miami's high-density subdivisions, a getaway where they can grow avocados or raise horses or enjoy retirement in peace. Even families that were not targeted for buyouts are fighting the plan, suspecting a government conspiracy to clear out their community in phases. They accuse federal lawyers of harassment and ruminate about secret plans to sell their land to rock-mining companies.
"They say they want to save the planet, but first they want to destroy us," said Alice Pena, who leads the local opposition to the compromise even though it would protect her home. "This is America. We should prove to the world that people can live with nature."
Park scientists say the lowest-lying portions of the 8.5 Square Mile Area were once shallow wetlands that flooded every year, and must be reflooded for the Everglades flows to be restored. The residents insist that they do not live in Everglades wetlands, that their homes flood only because of government actions, that park officials are simply desperate for buffer land. "This isn't the Everglades," Concepcion said. "Squash doesn't grow in the Everglades."
The residents want the Corps to go ahead with the original 1992 plan, and say their victory in court last year should force the Corps to do just that. One sympathetic Corps hydrologist, furious at park scientists, declared in an internal e-mail message that "it's going to take strong leadership and possibly a chopped-off hand or firing squad to get out of this."
Last fall, a House subcommittee passed a measure responding to the judge's ruling by specifically authorizing the compromise plan, but Hansen and Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) blocked it on property rights grounds. Graham then tried to push the language in the Senate, and administration officials in the Corps and the Interior Department drafted a letter supporting his efforts. But the letter was suppressed by the White House; Gov. Bush, who was running for reelection, remained silent at the time.
On Thursday, Graham and Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) got the compromise measure through the Senate again. Environmentalists, who once denounced the compromise as a cave-in to property rights radicals, now say it is absolutely vital. Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton announced earlier this month that President Bush's administration supports the compromise, and Gov. Bush wrote in an e-mail message to a disappointed Rice that "the consensus is the [compromise] is the route to go." Hansen has retired from Congress, but his successor, Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.), has voiced property rights concerns about the measure as well.
"We all want to get this thing moving," said Richard Bonner, a top Corps official in Florida. "It's been sitting around way too long."
As long as Mod Waters stalls, the larger Everglades restoration, which is far more complex and controversial than Mod Waters, and will affect far more people, will sputter as well. For now, officials are still planning projects and buying land, but much of the restoration work is on hold. Rice quoted the late environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who famously warned that: "The Everglades is a test. If we pass, we may get to keep the planet."
"We're flunking right now," Rice said.
-------- recycling
Containers Go Upscale at Embassy in Kabul
U.S. Diplomats Solve Housing Problem by Creating Community of Metal Boxes
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 26, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44055-2003Jan25?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan -- For decades, the dusty streets and bazaars of the Afghan capital have been the final resting place for thousands of shipping containers, the bulky metal boxes that carry cargo around the world on trucks, trains and ships.
Those that had delivered their last loads and outlived their usefulness were rounded up in countless foreign depots by private firms and sold in developing countries such as Afghanistan, where they would be turned into shops, garages and even homes, their incongruous CSX or SeaLand markings often covered with mud or blankets for insulation.
Over the past year, however, as foreign governments and aid groups have dispatched workers to assist with the reconstruction of post-Taliban Afghanistan, the phenomenon of shipping-container living has taken an upscale turn here in Kabul. The largest collection of containers is no longer found in the city's machine-parts neighborhood but on the expansive, heavily fortified grounds of the U.S. Embassy.
More than 100 are arrayed around the embassy compound, some providing housing for one to eight people, others serving as a recreation center, a laundry, a cafeteria and even the ambassador's residence.
"You know, I think most people like them," said Matthew A. Weiller, the officer in charge of logistics for the embassy. "We needed to have housing for people fast, and this was the best way we could find."
Weiller explained the situation from the 17-foot-long by 8-foot-wide comfort of his own "hootch," as they are called at the compound. One shipping container usually gets divided into two hootches. Each contains a single or bunk bed, a small refrigerator, a heater/air conditioner, a shower and toilet, a sink, a microwave and, this being U.S. soil, a television.
"It certainly isn't up to the standards of other diplomatic postings, but it meets my needs and I have no complaints," said William Taylor, the U.S. special representative to Afghanistan for reconstruction.
When the Taliban was toppled in late 2001 and the United States returned to an embassy that had been shuttered since 1989, arriving diplomats found plenty to do but nowhere to live. Security concerns dictated that they live on the embassy grounds, yet no housing had ever been built there, except for an underground bunker used only in emergencies. Diplomats were forced to live in their offices, in the embassy basement or in tents.
Half a shipping container, with enough hot water for a five-minute shower, suddenly seemed very good in comparison. So the embassy contracted with a firm based in Dubai to supply refurbished containers at a cost of $13,000 each, according to Brad Olson, a construction manager for the embassy building project.
Containers cost about $2,300 brand-new, Olson said, and the extra cost stems not only from the remodeling but from having them shipped to Afghanistan, a trip that involves travel along dirt roads with potholes the size of craters. Red Sea, the Saudi-owned company that supplies them, sometimes uses new containers, but sometimes fixes up older ones that have already carried their share of toys, televisions and building materials.
"It's a helluva lot better than what was here before, and better than what most of us were expecting when we headed out to Afghanistan," said Alberto Fernandez, public affairs officer for the embassy. "People get their own rooms and a microwave, and that's pretty darn nice." In fact, although diplomats in Kabul for a full-year assignment do get their own rooms, some short-timers have to share their containers with as many as three others.
Taylor, the reconstruction envoy, said he was pleased to read recently that a shipping container chic has begun to emerge in New York, which means the Kabul embassy apparently is far ahead of the curve. But when a senior official with the Office of Management and Budget traveled to Kabul and visited his quarters, he was reminded that trendiness is subjective. "She was horrified and said it was so depressing," Taylor said. "So I guess people will have very different responses to our little hootches."
All the containers in the embassy compound are a bright white, and all are covered with a layer of sandbags for protection from rockets. To relieve the industrial motif that the containers gave to the compound, people have added distinguishing features. A plastic pink flamingo and bird feeder were placed in front of one hootch; one cluster of hootch residents planted some tentative-looking shrubs and bushes, and another arranged several containers so that a shared front lawn of sorts can serve as a public square in the warm weather.
By far the most extensive and artfully designed hootch belongs to Ambassador Robert Finn who, after all, needs space to entertain congressional delegations and heads of state, as well as for his living quarters. Three containers were used to create his relatively palatial hootch, with a formal dining room that can seat eight, a front sitting room and a side lawn. A wooden fence around the ambassadorial residence gives it privacy and a suburban hominess.
An apartment complex with more conventional housing is planned for the embassy compound, and some diplomats may be able to move in as early as mid-2004, Weiller said. As the need for the containers declines, they will gradually be discarded or sold off, some doubtless finding their way into the parts of Kabul that the containers have been walled off from since their arrival and joining the thousands of other containers that shelter needy Afghans.
-------- ACTIVISTS
800 march to protest war
BY MARK STODGHILL
Sun, Jan. 26, 2003
DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/5034521.htm
IRAQ: Activist says the rally was Duluth's largest peace event since the Vietnam War four-block long peace army marched down Superior Street on Saturday carrying placards and posters as earnestly as soldiers carrying M-4 carbines into combat.
The goal of an estimated 800 people who took part in the Northland Anti-War Coalition demonstration for peace is to keep American soldiers from going to war against Iraq.
They believe their noon-hour turnout with a windchill of 13 degrees below zero indicates they are winning the war of public opinion. Only about 15 people showed up at a "Support Our Troops" rally across Lake Avenue from where hundreds lined up for the march to the Civic Center.
President George W. Bush took a beating on this day.
Posters made the peace activists' case:
"Drop Bush, not bombs."
"Human life for sale, $1.59 a gallon."
"Bush is the evil one."
John Herbertz, a social worker from Duluth, carried a poster that read: "Hummer, BMW, Cadillac, SUV drive Bush war for oil."
"I'm here on behalf of children and the future generations to come," said Herbertz, the father of three children, ages 7, 5 and 1. "I think war is a short- term solution for a long-term problem. I feel we are going to Iraq solely for the oil, and the weapons of mass destruction is simply a smoke screen to claim the oil on our behalf. Does Iraq pose a clear and present danger? We have not been given hard facts by our government to prove that is true."
When they arrived at the Civic Center, the peace activists sang "If I Had a Hammer." Bush has made the argument that Saddam Hussein has the hammer in the form of biological and chemical weapons and that the United States is better off being the hammer than the nail.
Joseph Terrell, 27, a motel worker from Brule, buys that argument. He was one of the few who showed up to show support for American forces.
He carried a poster that read: "It's about small pox, not oil."
Master of ceremonies and local activist Joel Sipress said it was the largest peace rally in Duluth since the Vietnam War. One poster seemed a throwback to that time. It read: "We'll be bringing our boys to Canada."
Two Duluth veterans didn't attend either of the rallies Saturday, but offered their views when asked about the possible war with Iraq.
David Wheat was a Navy pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1965. He spent more than seven years in North Vietnamese prison camps. He believes Saddam is a clear threat.
"The smoking gun is the fact that Iraq has the capability to build biological and chemical weapons," he said. "Once they do that, they can go in cahoots with terrorists and they can put an item like that on a container ship in any major port in the United States and wipe out millions of people. Then we're going to sit back and say how did that happen?"
But Mike Colalillo, a 77-year-old Duluth World War II veteran who was awarded the Medal of Honor -- the highest honor for military heroism -- has mixed feelings.
His belief is if your country calls you to serve in a war, you go. But as a citizen, he would like to know more. He hasn't seen enough information to make him believe an attack on Iraq is warranted.
"To tell you the truth... to start a war is unseemly," he said. "Why should we start a war? The countries around Iraq are the ones who should be scared. Why aren't they doing anything about it?
"To me, we better hold off and see what is going to happen first before we start anything. Are we going there for their chemicals? I have no idea," Colalillo said.
Despite his reservations, Colalillo has faith that this country's leaders will make the right ultimate decision. Wheat believes the same.
"It's a matter of having faith in them and that they have access to information that we do not," he said.
About 800 marchers Saturday indicated they have no such faith. MARK STODGHILL reports on legal affairs and public safety. He can be reached weekdays at (218) 723-5333 or by e-mail at mstodghill@duluthnews.com.
----
Clashes Begin Near Forum as Security Clamps Down
January 26, 2003
New York Times
By ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/international/europe/26DAVO.html
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 25 - While participants in the World Economic Forum here nibbled on canapés and debated the consequences of a possible war in Iraq, police officers with tear-gas grenades and water cannons mounted a huge security operation to keep protesters away from the delegates, who included Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
At the railroad junction of Landquart, about 25 miles down the road from Davos, antiwar and antiglobalization protesters, some hiding their faces with ski masks and goggles, pelted the police with snowballs after the authorities refused to allow them to travel to Davos unimpeded. Police officers lobbed tear-gas canisters after protesters fired flares. German police officers reinforced the Swiss by firing water cannons into small knots of demonstrators.
At Fideris, halfway between Davos and Landquart, another standoff developed after a group of protesters who said they believed they had struck a deal with the police were ordered off Alpine railroad cars at a barrier and refused to submit to security checks.
In Davos itself, about 1,000 protesters who had agreed to stringent security checks - some dressed in monkey suits - beat makeshift globes with sticks to protest the process of globalization, of which the World Economic Forum, with its assembly of executives and political leaders, has become an emblem.
"Wipe out WEF," some chanted, using the organization's acronym. Others held up banners proclaiming, "No Business over Dead Bodies" and "Leave Iraq in peace, stop the Bush warriors."
The authorities are spending $10 million to protect the 2,000 participants at this Alpine resort.
Officially, demonstrators have been given permission to protest here. But hundreds of police officers, backed by 300 soldiers, blocked off streets to prevent the protesters from approaching the forum's venue - a concrete congress center that bears more than a passing resemblance to a military bunker. A helicopter clattered overhead.
Fearing possible terrorist attacks, the Swiss authorities have also threatened to shoot down any unauthorized aircraft over Davos during the gathering. About 20 presidents and prime ministers along with senior government officials and top executives are attending the forum.
For most of the past week, the protesters have been divided among those prepared to be searched for weapons on their way to Davos at the security barrier in Fideris and those demanding free access. Some of the hard-line group prevented other protesters from boarding trains to get here. The police said that some protesters had blockaded the tracks to prevent trains from leaving Landquart. By midafternoon, Davos seemed more like a police encampment than a conference site.
Within the congress center, however, participants focused more on the likely consequences of an American attack on Iraq. Mr. Powell and King Abdullah II of Jordan are both set to address the gathering tomorrow, on the eve of a critical Jan. 27 deadline for United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq to report their findings.
One concern has been that fears of a war, which have already sent stock markets tumbling, will also sustain high oil prices, currently at a two-year record. But the Saudi oil minister, Ali Naimi, said there was no shortage of oil on world markets "and there should be no reason for prices where they are today."
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chief executive of Russia's second largest oil company, Yukos, said in an interview that while there might be a spike in oil prices, "it won't be that big and it won't be that long."
Separately, Turkey's prime minister, Abdullah Gul, who was to meet here with Mr. Powell, suggested today that Turkish forces could cross into neighboring northern Iraq if an American-led invasion created a threat of disintegration.
With its own large and restive Kurdish minority, Turkey has long resisted a separate Kurdish state in northern Iraq and says it will protect the Turkmen minority there. "Not only the Turkmens, but also the Kurds are our relatives there," Mr. Gul said at a news conference. "We want to protect them if there is a massacre there."
"Definitely, we do not want to see a divided Iraq in the region," he said in reply to a question about whether Turkish troops would entering northern Iraq, as they have in the past.
Mr. Gul declined to say publicly whether Turkey would permit American ground forces to carry out an invasion from Turkey.
----
Davos denies protesters an audience
Davos protest Protesters have big business in their sights
By Mike Verdin
BBC News Online business reporter, Davos
Sunday, 26 January, 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2695093.stm
So now I know what it feels like to be, say, Brigitte Bardot.
You know. That "stop looking at my chest" feeling.
It's all to do with the identification badge that swings over the bosoms of each Davos delegate. (Although the elastic is not too generous. Some thicker necked participants seem to be wearing theirs as chokers).
On it World Economic Forum supremos have printed your name and employer.
Perhaps they should have made the type a little bigger, I don't know.
But I had never appreciated that sense of invasion a late-middle aged man can cause by leering at nipple height.
Especially the short-sighted American executive who had left his spectacles in his hotel.
All Davos is a stage
Still it certainly breaks the ice at the snowbound business and political jamboree that is the World Economic Forum's annual summit, in Davos. (Europe's largest skiing resort, yes I know.)
I hope they do not use water cannon - the water is so cold here
Raphael Klyn, protester And, indeed, the badges divide the pack, like scouts. Those awarded white badges with holograms (your excellency) from the greens, the blues from the oranges (lowly media).
Splits them for security reasons, that is.
For the annual summit is not one event. All Davos is a stage.
Deals and meals
The main conference hall, where the all-access meetings are held, and the side-rooms, where orange press badges hold no currency.
The timetabled dinners, where moderators ensure "lively interaction at their table". (Reporters are again excluded, dammit).
And the hotel suites, hosting hushed tete-a-tete's open to none but the biggest tetes. Where US Secretary of State Colin Powell and a Turkish delegation are reported to have struck a foreign-aid for Iraq-aid agreement.
It is a theatre of deals and meals, for the, largely, well heeled. Access - exclusive or more so.
Lone protester
And that was a major gripe of the anti-globalisation protesters who, on Saturday, had hoped to march past the conference centre, but were denied access even to most of Davos's streets.
"It is wrong that all this goes on behind closed doors," said Raphael Klyn, a Dutch student of political science.
"These are democratically elected people. I want to talk to them."
Mr Klyn had bussed 10 hours from Amsterdam the day before to join the protest.
And he was lucky - he had arrived. Unlike the 1,500 reportedly stranded 20 miles up the line by security measures.
I have no time for these people
Pere Roquet, president Caixa Bank Indeed, Mr Klyn, veteran of demonstrations at G8 meetings, was a one-man anti-capitalist bandwagon for the morning.
It was not for an hour after high Davos noon before it became at all clear why quite so many police had been called, with quite so many riot shields.
("I hope they do not use water cannon," Mr Klyn said, quite straight faced. "The water is so cold here.")
Why shops were closed, with some boarded up, and others bearing the sign "US - no war please" in a feeble bid to appease the swelling rabble, and be spared a call to Davos Glaziers the next day.
Protest menagerie
The BBC was caught in the first whooping bunch of demonstrators that came through - George Bush, or someone who looked like him in a cardboard cut-out sort of way, Donald Rumsfeld, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
A pinstripe-suited pig scattering photocopied and defaced dollars, monkeys bowing before a golden calf, a trio of veterans of G8 protests, and a computer worker called Michael who wore a snout between drags of a vile cigar.
"We want justice," he wheezed. "The gap between these people and the poor is too big."
Indeed, so far away was the conference centre, that delegates continued benignly unaware of the clamour.
Actions speak louder...
Not that most minded.
"I have no time for these people," said Pere Roquet, president of Andorra's Caixa Bank.
"I see what they are trying to say, but actions speak louder than words," he said, reeling off development projects in Kenya, India and Peru he had supported.
"There are a lot of people like this in the conference centre. We are not all so bad."
Youth power
Still, a group of highly motivated 20-somethings had, by the end of the evening, managed to steal through even the police cordon and badge checks to occupy the central hall.
Indeed, the 112-strong UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra went down a storm.
"Wonderful energy, I have never heard Berlioz better," orchestra director Martin Engstoem said after a rousing performance of Symphonie Fantastique.
"These young musicians are outstanding ambassadors, building trust and goodwill and creating harmony and pleasure wherever they go," said UBS chairman Marcel Ospel.
If only it were true, that a harp or viola wielded more political power than a breast-height white badge with hologram.
----
Some War Protesters Uneasy With Others
January 24, 2003
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/national/24PROT.html?ei=1&en=6d8580feb32f334f&ex=1044425265&pagewanted=print&position=bottom
WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - After a weekend of antiwar protests that many participants say signaled an expansion of public opposition to military action against Iraq, some organizers are facing criticism, much of it from within the movement, about the role played by their group, International Answer.
Attendance at rallies in Washington and San Francisco last Saturday was in the tens of thousands, and reflected a mix of views that spanned the social and political spectrums. Many protest organizers say the presence of labor unions, religious groups, business people and soccer moms showed a growing mainstream opposition to the war.
But behind the scenes, some of the protesters have questioned whether the message of opposing war with Iraq is being tainted or at least diluted by other causes of International Answer, which sponsored both the Washington and San Francisco rallies.
Answer, whose name stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, was formed a few days after Sept. 11, 2001, by activists who had already begun coming together to protest policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Some of the group's chief organizers are active in the Workers World Party, a radical Socialist group with roots in the Stalin-era Soviet Union. The party has taken positions that include defense of the Iraqi and North Korean governments and support for Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugolav president being tried on war crimes charges.
The positions of some of Answer's members have caused rifts in past antiwar movements as well. In January 1991, at the onset of the Persian Gulf war, two coalitions of protesters marched separately, on consecutive weekends, because one refused to align itself with the other, whose members included current Answer officers who would not criticize the Iraqi government or support economic sanctions against it.
In an interview today, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a spokeswoman for Answer, said questions raised about the group's role were "classic McCarthy-era Red-baiting."
"When you select out the Socialists or Marxists," she said, "the point is to demonize and divide and diminish a massive, growing movement."
But Answer's critics say they simply wish that when it sponsors antiwar rallies, it would confine its message to opposition to war. At the rally in Washington, the group's speakers advocated causes like better treatment of American Indians and release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the radical activist long imprisoned for killing a Philadelphia police officer.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the Jewish magazine Tikkun, which sent protesters to the rally despite concerns about pro-Palestinian speeches planned there, said: "There are good reasons to oppose the war, and Saddam. Still, it feels that we are being manipulated when subjected to mindless speeches and slogans whose knee-jerk anti-imperialism rarely articulates the deep reasons we should oppose corporate globalization."
Karen Guberman helped organize a small protest in her neighborhood in Northwest Washington last weekend, in part to provide an outlet for those who felt uncomfortable attending the Answer-sponsored rally.
"I felt like it was important just to go and be counted," Ms. Guberman said, "but many of my friends felt they couldn't count on what was going to be said, and so we did this very specific thing."
In fact, some of the newer antiwar coalitions were formed precisely to create a forum for protesters with views different from Answer's. Leaders of those groups have carefully avoided criticizing Answer, for fear that doing so would undercut their movement.
Still, the more mainstream voices in the antiwar movement may be trying to focus the message. The next national rally is scheduled for Feb. 15 in New York, and it is being sponsored by United for Peace, a coalition of more than 120 groups, most of them less radical than Answer.
Answer has signed on as a supporter of the New York rally, but it is not yet clear what role it will play in shaping the tone. Leslie Cogan, a coordinator with United for Peace, said her organization would welcome a wide variety of perspectives. But she added, "We want our speakers making a clear link to the issue."
---
D.C. bishop plans activist agenda
Larry Witham
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 26, 2003
http://dynamic.washtimes.com/twt-print.cfm?ArticleID=20030126-71630981
The new Episcopal bishop of Washington laid out an activist and anti-war agenda for his diocese yesterday and said he hoped his "cordial" relations with traditionalists would soften the local church debate about homosexuality.
"This diocese must step up to the plate and be a leader," said Bishop John B. Chane at his first diocesan convention since taking the leadership position eight months ago. The convention was at the Washington National Cathedral.
"War no longer has a place on this shrinking planet," he said. "The real 'axis of evil' is poverty, illiteracy and disease, and we have got to get it right."
The most contentious topic at the convention was an attempt by conservatives to pass a policy allowing them to register disagreement with the church's more liberal teachings on sexual morality.
"Either change is likely to create a crisis for many Episcopalians," said David Bickel of All Saints Church.
He presented the registry proposal, saying church members who disagree with the teachings could sign a national register so they don't feel compelled to leave the denomination.
Delegates overwhelmingly rejected the registry and called instead for a study of how "sharply divergent views" can abide in the same faith.
The General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which meets in August in Minneapolis, could officially approve same-sex union ceremonies and ordination of non-celibate homosexuals.
"The minority view in the Diocese of Washington [against homosexuality] is the majority view in the Anglican Communion," said the Rev. Frank Wade of St. Alban's Church.
The Anglican Communion, of which the 2.3-million-member Episcopal Church is the American branch, has 70 million members.
"There have not been any winners or losers on the floor of the convention today," Bishop Chane said after the vote.
He has met with leaders of the American Anglican Council, a group based in Washington that opposes homosexual clergy and said he believes cordial relations create a mood respectful of disagreement.
"When I came to the diocese, I was very clear where I was coming from," Bishop Chane said in an interview, referring to his liberal views.
Presiding at the 108th diocesan convention with about 800 attending, he takes over when at least six traditional parishes have finally accepted visits by female bishops, either under ecclesiastical pressure or, in one case, a court order.
In his address, Bishop Chane described the diocese of 41,000 members in 94 parishes as having "an energy level that begged to be engaged" with new initiatives.
"We will continue to battle each other over issues of sexuality and spiritual authority," he said, but it should not distract from ministry and building healthy congregations. "We have decisions to make and not a lot of time to make them," he said.
Also in recent days, the dean of the Washington National Cathedral, a separate entity from the diocese, announced his resignation Friday.
The Rev. Nathan Baxter told diocesan delegates he had boosted the cathedral's annual budget to $17 million from $6 million during his 12-year tenure.
"I'm pleased to say there is no scandal in my resignation," Mr. Baxter, the first black dean of the cathedral, said at the convention. "Unfortunately, my life is very boring along such lines. Nor is the cathedral in any kind of trouble."
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