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NUCLEAR
NEOs and nukes
China successfully tests multi-warhead missiles
NO RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS IN GREEK ARMY
We now sit in an uneasy twilight - at home, abroad
Pakistan Expels Indian Embassy Officials
India, Pakistan expel diplomats
UN Arms Expert Says Iraq Talks 'Very Substantial'
Leave it in Blix's hands
Iraq Shows Facilities Cited by Powell
Media Tour Alleged 'Poison Site' in Iraq
Reporters on Ground Get Iraqi Rebuttal to Satellite Photos
High level of secrecy on space launch
S. Korea Appeals for Calm in Nuke Crisis
Bush Urges Chinese President to Press North Korea on Arms
S.Korea Questions U.S. 'Emotions' Over North
S. Korea Appeals for Calm in Nuke Crisis
Nation Put on Higher Threat Alert
Nuke this bad idea in the bud
For reader, this Perle doesn't shine
US cranks up economic pressure on Germany
Rumsfeld: Delay in disarming Iraq may mean war
Bush Prepared to Act on Iraq if U.N. Balks
Rumsfeld Slams NATO Delay on Support for Turkey
MILITARY
Official afraid of backlash from war
Tamil Rebels Set Off Explosion
In Stalin's Footsteps
Howard's support of US defies public opinion
Blast at Bogota Club Kills at Least 25
At least 25 die in Bogota blast
Franco-German Plan Floated to Avert Iraq War
U.S. Met With Iranians On War
Iranian Calls U.S. Presence Worse Than Rival's Weapons
France Said to Favor Peacekeepers in Iraq
Kuwait Builds Up Arsenal, Confidence
US urges quick end to Hajj so it can prosecute war
Egypt Asks U.S. for Trade Pact, Aid Boost
Hamas Leader Tells Muslims to Retaliate if U.S. Attacks
Turks unhappy with decision to allow in American troops
Extremist Groups Renew Activity in Pakistan
Two panels to monitor Pentagon's spy project
Iraq: Blair seeks new 'fig-leaf' resolution to avert French veto
France and China Rebuff Bush on Support for Early Iraq War
Boards to Monitor Surveillance Program
Britain Admits That Much of Its Report on Iraq Came From Magazines
Myths of the 'War on Terrorism'
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
U.S. May Seek Wider Anti-Terror Powers
Justice Dept. Draft on Wider Powers Draws Quick Criticism
Ashcroft Sets a Tone on the Death Penalty
Tons of boric acid hijacked in SoCal
U.S. put on higher terror alert
Tighter Security Under Terror Alert
Pentagon Forms 2 Panels to Allay Fears on Spying
ENERGY AND OTHER
War Worries Compound Energy Woes
Federal program to aid trafficked victims
ACTIVISTS
Rumsfeld Faces Tense Greeting and Antiwar Rallies in Munich
Venezuelan Opposition Stages March for Oil Strikers
Germans Rally Against War as Rumsfeld Speaks
Thousands in Germany Protest Iraq War
New York City Rally and March Permit Status
Christian Leaders Prominent in Anti-War Movement
-------- NUCLEAR
NEOs and nukes
WASHINGTON TIMES EDITORIAL •
February 8, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030208-69354831.htm
It's a lottery that no one wants to win, since everyone will lose - it's also the one that the earth plays each day, as it rolls like a roulette ball around the sun. Someday zero, a devastating hit by a near earth object (NEO) - an asteroid or comet - will come up.
There are basically three types of threats from such objects, based on their size. Large objects (greater than 1 kilometer in size - 1 kilometer is roughly 1/2 mile) have the potential to wipe out civilization. Thanks to its Spaceguard Survey, NASA has been cataloguing those objects (it's estimated that there are between 900 and 1,230 of them), and should have more than 90 percent of them identified by 2008. Midsized NEOs, about 150 meters in size, are large enough to penetrate the atmosphere, and so could wipe out cities or states. There are thought to be about 25,000 such objects, about 250 of which are thought to be potentially hazardous. Only about 300 of those NEOs have been catalogued. The smallest threatening NEOs, less than 10 meters in size, pose a different threat. Instead of penetrating through the atmosphere, they explode in it with nuclear-weapon sized detonations.
That happens about 30 times a year, according to Randall R. Correll, who addressed the national security implications posed by NEOs at a seminar hosted this week by the George Marshall Institute. It's an area of increasing concern, considering the growing number of nuclear powers. Last June, for instance, a Hiroshima-sized NEO explosion over the Mediterranean might have triggered a war had it hit over Kashmir.
Defense Department satellites detected that and other explosions. Mr. Correll pointed out that, while the DOD can distinguish between natural NEO explosions and nuclear war shots, it does not have procedures for processing that information or presenting it in a timely manner to interested parties, whether scientists or nuclear powers engaged in a standoff. Mr. Correll suggested that the DOD, or at least its civilian leaders, look into ways in which such information can be shared without compromising classified mission data.
It is understandable that the DOD is reluctant to share any information that could compromise its spy satellites. There's a constant tension between scientific openness and national security. However, midpoints can, and should, be sought, especially since preventing unnecessary nuclear wars would seem to be in the best interests of the DOD.
Also, policymakers should seriously consider a program to catalogue midsized NEOs. While the last thing that either the DOD or NASA needs is another worry, the threat posed by NEOs will only grow greater with time.
-------- china
China successfully tests multi-warhead missiles
Hiroyuki Sugiyama,
Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent (Japan),
February 8, 2003
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20030208wo41.htm
China successfully test-launched a medium-range missile with multiple warheads in December 2002, indicating a rapid modernization of China's nuclear missile capability aimed at countering the U.S. missile defense network planned for the region, sources said Friday.
The launching of the Dong Feng-21 (DF-21), with a target range of about 1,800 kilometers, was the first successful test launch of the missile with multiple warheads for China.
According to the sources, the launch was carried out in mid-December at a Second Artillery Corp's base of the People's Liberation Army in Shanxi Province, China.
It is believed that the multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV), which China had sought to develop quickly, was used for the missile.
Few newspapers in China carried any specifics of the test launch.
One newspaper wrote, "The first flight mission of a missile targeting certain points was successfully carried out."
Another newspaper said, "The successful test launch plays an important role in improving China's defense capabilities."
Although the success of the test launch does not mean that the missiles will be immediately deployed, Beijing is expected to further improve its technical capabilities and to aim for an early deployment based on the test results.
China has been trying to quickly develop a multiple-warhead missile system to counter the missile defense network being pursued by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush on the U.S. mainland and in east Asia and to deter U.S. military pressure, Chinese diplomatic sources said .
China maintains two major types of missiles as a deterrence to U.S. military force. They are intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which include the U.S. mainland in their target range, and medium-range missiles, designed to contain U.S. military intervention in Taiwan.
The DF-21 is categorized as a medium-range missile. About 50 DF-21s have been deployed in China since the 1980s.
If the MIRV missiles are deployed, they could help to deter U.S. mobile forces on aircraft carriers near Taiwan.
According to the sources, Beijing will begin deploying the DF-31--a new type of ICBM with a target range of about 8,000 kilometers--by this summer at the earliest. Three test launches of the ICBM have been carried out so far.
China reportedly has begun testing the DF-31 with multiple warheads.
During the 16th China Communist Party Congress last autumn, the party confirmed a policy to spur modernization of its military.
The strategic missile unit is the core of the policy, the sources said. The rate of modernization of Chinese missiles is expected to increase, analysts said.
-------- depleted uranium
NO RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS IN GREEK ARMY
Athens, 8 February 2003
MPA (Macedonian Press Agency)
http://www.mpa.gr/article.html?doc_id=324336
The Greek armed forces do not use radioactive weapons, while there are no such weapons in shooting ranges, underlined in Parliament yesterday Undersecretary of Defense Loukas Apostolidis responding to a question by Communist Party deputy Mrs. Liana Kanelli.
Mr. Apostolidis stated that the Atomic Energy Committee has conducted inspections and no radiation was recorded in the following areas: the Naval Yard in Salamina, the Greek army camp in Kosovo and Bosnia, the Air Force and land forces shooting ranges and in the island of Samos.
He said that the Greek army does not use neither depleted uranium missiles nor any kind of missiles with radioactive elements. He clarified that the only case is a number of missiles that are in storage in a special Navy depot since 1990 and added that based on the existing figures the number of cancer cases among the military personnel have dropped.
--------
We now sit in an uneasy twilight - at home, abroad
February 8, 2003
Albuquerque Tribune
http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/opinions03/020803_opinions_price.shtml
The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas observed, in the McCarthy era, that "as nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
Oppression comes in strange packages. These twilight days, we can barely discern it, as it moves toward us, deflecting concerns about needless human suffering in wartime with institutional fibs etched in stone and a foreboding magic act of PR, in which the right hand works a puppet selling fear about terrorism, while the left hand pushes buttons to massacre tens of thousands.
Of course, terrorism is to be feared and condemned in all its endless forms and permutations. There's simply no good terrorist, period - not in uniform or disguised in noble causes.
The twilight of oppression, however, cloaks the truth in terror and denial. And you don't need to go halfway around the world to see it.
So-called "harmless" depleted uranium munitions-testing outside Socorro in the late 1980s and early 1990s; denial of health dangers from post-Cerro Grande Fire plutonium concentrations in runoff around Los Alamos Laboratory that are 100 times as potent as runoff measured four years ago; and the complete disguising of war-caused human catastrophes in euphemisms about "regime change" and "disarmament" - these are dark enough.
In this twilight, an aggressive war against Iraq is being sold as if our military could simply scoop out the offending Iraqi "illegal weapons" and, along with them, Saddam himself.
But the reality is surely nothing like the sell. American troops by the thousands, and Iraqi civilians in appalling numbers, will be killed, and all to demolish a single monster, who probably will have escaped before the first bomb is dropped, much like that other monster, Osama bin Laden.
Imagine what would happen to Albuquerque if a war should take from us an estimated 48,000 to 260,000 civilians - numbers cited by the United Nations and the World Health Organization as probable for the citizens of Iraq.
As Newsweek noted recently, "New reports predict that, as bombs destroy Iraq's transportation networks and electricity grids, millions will lose access to basic medicine, adequate food and even potable water . . . (and) health consequences range from malnutrition and dysentery to deadly outbreaks of measles and meningitis." All that for "regime change."
If cruise missiles should hit us here, our lives would change forever, if we survived. Dead friends and spouses, dead children, closed schools, closed banks, no food or water, rampaging illness, social disruption, trauma of all kinds - what could possibly be worse? It would be a living hell.
In order to kill one man, in essence, a whole nation and its people have to be irreparably mangled. The U.N. high commissioner for refugees estimates that, after such a war in Iraq, some 7.4 million people will need humanitarian aid. That's over three times the population of New Mexico. How can that be sane?
In twilight times, however, even madness is sold as rationality. State health officials here see, for instance, "no immediate health risks" from what they euphemistically call "legacy waste," in the form of old plutonium carried in runoff to the Rio Grande in intense concentrations since the big Los Alamos fire. The facts that there are some 2,000 toxic dump sites around Los Alamos, that petty crime is rampant at the labs and that institutional lying, in the form of national security coverups, are the order of the day make twilight seem darker than ever.
The darkness is particularly chilling, though, when it comes to ammunition made from depleted uranium, a material suspected as a cause of lung and kidney cancer and nonchalantly tested behind New Mexico School of Mining and Technology for years.
Depleted uranium is "pyrophoric" - it burns on contact - and as an Army fact sheet states that the impact of DU shells causes great heat, which "results in smoke that contains high concentrations of DU particles . . . (which) can be inhaled or ingested and are toxic."
Think of Iraq covered in such smoke. Think of Socorro. These are twilight times, indeed.
Price is an Albuquerque free-lance writer, author, editor and longtime commentator. His column runs on Saturdays.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan Expels Indian Embassy Officials
February 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-India-Expulsions.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan on Saturday ordered the acting Indian ambassador and four other Indian Embassy officials to leave the country in an apparent retaliation for the expulsion by India of its senior diplomat.
Sudhir Vyas, the acting ambassador of the Indian Embassy has 48 hours to leave the country, according to a foreign ministry statement.
Earlier Saturday, India ordered Jalil Abbas Jilani, the acting head of the Pakistani diplomatic mission, to leave India within 48 hours, a day after accusing him of funneling money to separatists in Kashmir. Four other Pakistan Embassy staff also were ordered to leave India.
The two countries routinely engage in tit-for-tat diplomatic posturing.
Pakistan accused Vyas and his four colleagues at the Indian Embassy here of ``involvement in activities incompatible with their status,'' a usual reference to spying. The other Indian Embassy officials ordered out of Pakistan were Rahul Rasgotra, first secretary, and embassy staff M.R. Balu, Rambir Singh and Surinder Raj Anand.
While the Indian Embassy officials have to be out of the country within two days, their families have seven days to leave.
The Pakistan foreign ministry said the decision to expel five employees of the Indian Embassy here keeps staff numbers the same as those at the Pakistan Embassy in New Delhi.
``Reciprocating the Indian decision to further cut the strength of the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi from 51 to 47 personnel, the government of Pakistan has also decided to apply the same staff ceiling on the Indian High Commission in Islamabad,'' the ministry statement said.
Pakistan and India have fought three wars since the British gave the Asian subcontinent its independence in 1947.
Two of the three conflicts have been over the disputed Kashmir region, which is divided between the two nuclear neighbors and claimed in its entirety by both nations.
They routinely accuse the other of fomenting violence and carrying out acts of sabotage on each other's territory. India says Pakistan is arming, training and financing a bloody secessionist movement in Indian-controlled Kashmir that has killed as many as 60,000 people since 1989.
Pakistan says its support is limited to political and diplomatic help.
----
India, Pakistan expel diplomats
By Harbaksh Singh Nanda
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
February 8, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030208-092512-7552r.htm
NEW DELHI, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- India on Saturday expelled Pakistani Deputy High Commissioner in New Delhi Jaleel Abbas Gilani and four other diplomatic officers for allegedly funding Kashmiri separatists.
New Delhi has asked Gilani to leave the country within 48 hours since he allegedly committed actions in breach of his diplomatic status.
"We have hard evidence to show that what he (Gilani) was doing is incompatible with diplomatic norms," the Press Trust of India quoted India's foreign ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna as saying. Pakistan retaliated by expelling India's deputy high commissioner in Islamabad and four diplomatic officers.
India said it seized 300,000 rupees (about $6300) from a Muslim woman who said the money was to be passed on to the chief of an umbrella group of separatist rebel groups in Kashmir. She said the money was given to her by the expelled Pakistani officials.
Anjum Zamrooda Habib was arrested Thursday near the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi. She told a judge the money was a "gift" from the High Commission for Kashmir's All Party Freedom Conference chief Abdul Ghani Bhatt.
India also directed four officials of the Pakistani High Commission to leave the country. They are Habibur Rehman, Aftab Ahmed, Abdul Razak and Mohammed Nazir.
A Pakistani high commission spokesperson termed India's decision to expel the diplomatic officials as "very regrettable," PTI said.
Pakistan retaliated by expelling Sudhir Vyas, India's deputy high commissioner in Islamabad, and four other embassy officials.
India had earlier expelled the Pakistani high commissioner and withdrew its own envoy to Islamabad to protest Pakistan's alleged complicity in the Dec. 13, 2001, attack on the Indian parliament by Muslim separatists.
The embassy staff in both capitals was also halved.
India and Pakistan have often expelled each other's diplomats on charges of spying or funding militants. They have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.
-------- inspections
UN Arms Expert Says Iraq Talks 'Very Substantial'
February 8, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq.html
BAGHDAD/MUNICH (Reuters) - Chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix called new disarmament talks with Iraqi officials on Saturday ``very substantial,'' as the United States rebuked European allies for their reluctance to back war on Baghdad.
Blix and chief U.N. atomic expert Mohamed ElBaradei opened two days of talks in Baghdad as they prepared to present a fresh report to the U.N. Security Council next Friday that could start a countdown to war.
In Germany, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a security conference the world was serious about disarming Baghdad. He rounded on France, Germany and Belgium for ``inexcusable'' stalling of NATO moves to help protect Turkey from any war in its neighbor Iraq.
Apparently undeterred, Germany announced a new Franco-German initiative to try to avert military conflict. A German magazine reported it involved sending thousands of U.N. peace-keeping troops to Iraq and trebling the number of arms inspectors.
But President Bush appeared to be preparing his nation for war in a radio address: ``The United States, along with a growing coalition of nations, will take whatever action is necessary to defend ourselves and disarm the Iraqi regime.''
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in an address at William and Mary College in Virginia, warned the United States against attacking Iraq on its own, saying collective action under a U.N. umbrella would have greater legitimacy and better odds of success.
A U.N. source in Baghdad said Iraqi had handed over documents to Blix and ElBaradei during their first round of talks on Saturday.
IRAQ HANDS OVER DOCUMENTS
``The Iraqi side gave us documents. We will work on them tonight and will discuss them tomorrow,'' the source said.
Blix and ElBaradei are in Baghdad for the first time since Secretary of State Colin Powell spelled out to the Security Council last Wednesday Washington's case against Iraq.
Blix categorized Saturday's talks as ``very substantial.''
ElBaradei said: ``The Iraqi side is providing explanations on some of the issues. We have discussed the (U-2) surveillance flights, scientists' interviews as well as outstanding chemical, biological and missile issues.''
``We have to see the results tomorrow,'' ElBaradei said, adding that there would be more talks on Sunday.
They have warned Iraq it must take drastic steps to avert a U.S.-led war to rid it of alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Babel, Iraq's most influential newspaper, said Baghdad would do its best to make the visit a success.
``No one wants war. War is never a first or an easy choice. But the risks of war need to be balanced against the risks of doing nothing while Iraq pursues weapons of mass destruction,'' Rumsfeld told the conference in the south German city of Munich.
``Clearly, momentum is building, momentum that sends a critically important message to the Iraqi regime -- about our seriousness of purpose and the world's determination that Iraq disarm.
``This is not months or years, this is days or weeks we're going to know whether they are going to cooperate,'' he said.
``He (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) has not been contained, he is successfully getting into that country darn near everything he wants.''
DEEP U.S.-EUROPEAN DIVISIONS
Laying bare deep U.S.-European divisions over Iraq, Rumsfeld said NATO's failure to agree on planning defense measures for alliance member Turkey risked undermining NATO's credibility.
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of Germany, a firm opponent of war on Iraq, replied by insisting peace should be given a chance. He said Berlin stood by NATO obligations but wanted to wait until after the U.N. inspectors' report.
In Ankara, Prime Minister Abdullah Gul sought to ease concerns in Turkey about an unpopular war, saying it must be prepared if its close ally the United States struck neighboring Iraq.
Ankara has agreed to allow U.S. engineers to upgrade Turkish air bases and sea ports ahead of a parliamentary vote on February 18 to open the military facilities to U.S. forces in the event of a war.
Opinion polls show four out of five Turks oppose a possible war on a fellow Muslim state.
Confirming the Franco-German peace initiative, a German government spokesman said: ``I can confirm that there are joint considerations on finding a peaceful alternative to a military solution to the Iraq conflict.'' He gave no details.
A report by news magazine Der Spiegel said the plan for U.N. troops to enforce disarmament was to be put to the Security Council. It would also involve stricter rules on exports to Iraq and an agreement with Iraq's neighbors to stop oil smuggling.
FRANCE SAYS WAR A LAST RESORT
French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said in Munich Paris had never ruled out military action to disarm Iraq, but it would have to be a last resort.
Amid the diplomatic moves for peace, Pope John Paul urged the world not to resign itself to war, declaring:
``We have to multiply efforts. We can't stop when faced with either terror attacks or the threats that are on the horizon. We should never resign ourselves, almost as if war is inevitable.''
Amid a huge U.S. military buildup in the Gulf, Bush has said he would welcome a new U.N. resolution after one in November that warned of serious consequences if Iraq failed to comply.
Diplomats said a new Security Council resolution seeking international legitimacy for war might not include a deadline for Saddam to comply, or explicitly authorise force.
Defense and foreign ministers of six pro-Western Gulf Arab states agreed to send a joint force to Kuwait ``as soon as possible'' to defend it against any Iraqi attack in the event of war.
-------- iraq
Leave it in Blix's hands
By Linda S. Heard,
Arab News SAUDI ARABIA'S FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE DAILY
08 February 2003
http://www.arabnews.com/print.asp?id=22616&ArY=2003&ArM=2&ArD=11
We knew in advance that Secretary of State Colin Powell did not have the infamous "smoking gun", we knew that Powell would not provide solid proof that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, but we did expect that Powell would present convincing evidence to the UN Assembly.
In reality, Powell's presentation, although professionally delivered, merely illuminated that America has little evidence to back up their claim that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction. It was a mishmash of hearsay, supposed communications intercepts, eye-witness reports, and secondhand accounts from defectors and the "disappeared" languishing in Guantanamo Bay. The latter would no doubt say that the moon was made of Feta cheese, if that would help their case. Hans Blix, in his earlier report, said that information from such defectors is not reliable.
First of all we heard a transcript of a conversation between a Republican Guard and an officer in the field where the guard asks his subordinate to clear out the scrap. He then goes on to tell him to destroy the message. What message?
Powell comments that this is part and parcel of Iraq's policy of evasion and deceit. Given that we know for certain that the Bush administration is determined to overthrow the Iraqi regime, and is willing to go it alone if necessary, how can we be certain that this alleged intercept is genuine?
My own experience in the Middle East and the Gulf convinces me that this recording does not sound like an authentic exchange between two Arabs of differing status. First, there would have been elaborate greetings, with the junior soldier calling his superior by a respectful title, instead of just answering "na'am", meaning "OK". To my ears, the soldier sounded far too curt to be for real. Amer Al-Sa'adi, Saddam Hussein's chief scientific advisor, referred to this as "manufactured evidence." He said: "It is known as the concealment theory and the author of this theory is still around, Scott Ritter. You can ask him about the concealment theory to which Colin Powell repeatedly refers." Al-Sa'adi derided Powell's presentation as being "a typical American show complete with stunts and special effects".
The secretary of state next described the high level committee set up by Iraq to monitor the inspectors, a committee headed by Foreign Minister Taha Yassin Ramadan. Again, in the light of the fact that several UNSCOM weapons inspectors were found to be American spies, why wouldn't Iraq be cautious about allowing foreigners to run around its country unfettered on the brink of a possible war? "Orders were issued to Iraq's security organizations to hide all correspondence with the Organization of Military Industrialization," said Powell. He said that Hussein's son had ordered the removal of illicit weapons from the Iraqi president's palaces. He talked about material, which has been concealed in scientist's home, as well as items in cars, which drive perpetually around the countryside.
Amer Al-Sa'adi, countered by saying that Hans Blix had jumped the gun talking about the document found in the scientist's home. He said that the document was not classified, as Blix had first supposed, and that a copy of this research document had been given to a representative of the IAEA after a conference in the 1980s.
Satellite photographs: I was pleased to hear Powell saying that he found satellite photographs hard to interpret. An astute observation. A cloudy photograph of a munitions facility in Taji, taken before the latest inspections, showed decontamination vehicles driving around what he said were four active chemical munitions bunkers.
Just before the inspections, Powell said, the vehicles were nowhere to be seen, and the bunkers had been cleaned out. We have to wonder why the satellite didn't later capture the current locations of these vans, and how every trace of chemicals could have been so completely cleared from those bunkers and the surrounding areas.
The inspectors have such sophisticated state-of-the-art testing equipment. Still if Iraq removed every single trace of illicit materials, we must surely regard it with awe for its technical expertise. America and Britain have shown us numerous satellite photographs before in relation to Iraq. On many of these occasions, Iraq immediately took reporters to the sites photographed, and each and every time they found nothing, except such innocuous items as baby milk and sugar.
Al-Sa'adi said that the inspectors, armed with similar satellite imagery, have already checked these sites and left satisfied with the answers to their questions and their test results.
Iraq is currently being threatened with a massive bombing campaign in which nothing is ruled out including the use of microwave technology, depleted uranium and even the nuclear bunker busting warheads. Baghdad is under threat. Which country on earth would wish to see its enemies' spy planes circling overhead at a time like this? The Americans are already listening in to telephone and wireless communications, taking satellite pictures, and has admitted to the infiltration of human intelligence to pinpoint Iraq and persuade the world to rubber-stamp a war. Is Iraq just expected to lift up its skirts leaving itself exposed and vulnerable to attack?
Al-Sa'adi explained that the Iraqi government did not object to U2 flights but could not be responsible for their safety as long as British and American planes were dropping bombs over the so-called "no-fly" zones.
He asked that these incursions over Iraqi territory stop as per Resolution 1441, which provides for the maintenance of the sovereignty and integrity of Iraq.
Al Qaeda: As the editor of the Arabic daily Al-Quds, Abdel Bari Atwan says, "the link with Al- Qaeda is very weak. The secretary said these links (between Al-Qaeda and Iraq) started in 95, so why didn't Saddam pass his nerve gases to Al-Qaeda then? If Al-Qaeda had been handed these devastating weapons from Saddam Hussein they would have used these on Sept. 11 and not aircraft."
Bari Atwan said that Osama Bin Laden once offered his services to the Saudi government to eliminate Saddam Hussein and was angered at being turned down. Given their widely differing ideologies - Saddam Hussein a secular leader and Osama Bin Laden an extremist Wahhabi, who has called Hussein "an apostate" - it is hardly unlikely that they would now be working together. Powell is crediting Saddam Hussein with adhering to the principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," but has no evidence that this is the case.
As for Abu Musab Zarqawi, an Al-Qaeda affiliate implicated in the African embassies and the USS Cole bombings, he is based in Powell's own words in northwestern Iraq, which is Kurdish territory protected by the United States. If Powell knows this, why doesn't America go after him? Based on the way that the US treated the Taleban, targeting them because they were harboring Bin Laden, then why is America so reticent when it comes to the Kurdish tribes, who they say have welcomed Zarqawi into their bosom?
He said that Zarqawi spent some time in a Baghdad hospital and was soon followed by Al-Qaeda militants who are allowed to come and go as they please. Couldn't we say the same thing about London, Paris, Milan, and yes, even Washington? Isn't there an Al-Qaeda presence in almost every country of the world, according to United States government sources? Osama Bin Laden was reported to have undergone treatment in the American Hospital in Dubai in mid-2001 where he was visited by a CIA agent, but nobody is pointing fingers at the UAE.
Iraq's UN ambassador said that just a few days ago the CIA reported that there are no verifiable significant links between the Iraqi government and Al-Qaeda members. This was backed up by the British intelligence services, which are miffed that their work is being distorted for political purposes.
Powell once again talked about the aluminum tubes, those same tubes that IAEA head Mohamed El-Baradei had investigated at length and which he declared, during his earlier presentation to the UN, as having been used to manufacture short-range ballistic missiles, not for producing fissionable material.
The dove-turned-hawk didn't shrink from vilifying Saddam Hussein on a personal level citing "his contempt for the truth" and "his utter contempt for human life". We again heard how Hussein used mustard and nerve gas against the Kurds (his own people they are called, even though at the time those chemicals were used, the Kurds were attempting to pull down the Baghdad regime). The Iraqi ambassador to the UN said that he was surprised about this statement since the CIA had verified years ago that Iraq didn't have that particular type of chemical weaponry in its armory.
The secretary talked about how chemical weapons had been used on another nation, obviously talking about Iran but failed to say, that at that time Hussein had been the blue-eyed boy of Washington. America supplied Iraq not only with weapons but also with technical know-how during the Iran-Iraq War. No wonder the US grabbed the Iraqi weapons declaration document, pulling out entire sections, before it was handed over to the other Security Council members. The pages were choc-a-bloc with the names of American and British companies, which had willingly sold materials for the manufacture of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
"When we confront a regime that harbors ambitions for regional domination - unless we act we are confronting an even more frightening future," warned Powell. Detractors of American hegemony in the region and beyond may well be thinking the very same thing about the US.
Al-Sa'adi was dismissive of Powell's claim that Iraq had pronounced many Iraqi scientists as "deceased" while they were still walking around. He challenged Powell to produce these individuals if, as he says, they were still alive, and called the American contention "ridiculous" in these days of DNA testing. "This is really below the level of a country leading the world," he said. So which side do we believe? Both sides have a vested interest and so we should leave the final analysis in the hands of Blix and El-Baradei. After all, they are the UN-appointed experts.
There is one question that bothers me in the meantime. Why did the US come up with this so-called "evidence" at the eleventh hour?
Time is running out for Saddam Hussein, we are told over and over by the Bush-Blair partnership. Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, in his speech to the UN even parroted George Bush's frequent use of the word "evil" pertaining to the Iraqi leader.
But what both Powell and Straw failed to mention was the horrendous human tragedy that would be suffered by the Iraqi people if the pyrotechnics begin. Iraq is not threatening its neighbors, does not want war and wants to rejoin the world community. For the sake of the Iraqi children and the stability of the region, we should keep the inspectors in place for as long as it takes and say a firm "no" to any war for regional domination, the furtherance of American hegemony and oil.
----
Iraq Shows Facilities Cited by Powell
Missiles Within U.N.'s Limits, Officials Assert
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 8, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42275-2003Feb7?language=printer
AL MUSAYYIB, Iraq, Feb. 7 -- The Iraqi rocket-testing workshop here was cited before the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday as a hiding place for banned weapons. Today, journalists brought in by the government saw missile tubes, tailfins and nosecones inside the building, along with four assembled Al Fatah missiles, freshly painted white, that lay outside near a large truck.
Nothing at the facility, Iraqi officials asserted as they showed reporters around, constitutes a violation of U.N.-imposed weapons restrictions.
In his presentation to the council, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell alleged that President Saddam Hussein's government sought to hide missile components here in the weeks before U.N. inspectors began scouring the country for banned arms, including missiles that can travel more than 93 miles. Powell displayed a satellite photograph of the workshop, which he said was taken Nov. 10. To ministers and diplomats assembled around the Security Council chamber, he pointed out missile-storage canisters, warhead canisters, missile airframes and a cargo truck, all of which, he said, suggested unusual goings-on.
To respond to Powell's contention, Iraq's weapons-monitoring directorate organized a field trip for about 100 journalists, escorting them to Al Musayyib and another rocket-testing facility. At both sites, officials insisted they test and assemble only missiles whose ranges and payloads do not violate U.N. disarmament resolutions.
Powell's "allegations are untrue and absolutely baseless," said the facility's director, Karim Jabbar. On any day, he said, "Colin Powell can claim there is intense activity here . . . because we are busy assembling and testing."
Jabbar said the solid-propellant Al Fatah missiles assembled and tested at Al Musayyib have a range of less than 93 miles. Asked if biological or chemical warheads were ever placed on one of the missiles, he responded with an icy "absolutely not!"
Conspicuously absent during the workshop visit were workers. "It's Friday," an amused official from Iraq's weapons-monitoring directorate explained. Friday is the Muslim Sabbath, and in Iraq, it is the day of the week people do not go to the office. Every other day, said Jabbar, "there is constant activity here."
At the other facility to which the journalists were escorted, the Al Rafah missile test stand, site director Ali Jassem maintained that the liquid-propellant Al Samoud missile engines he tests are within the approved range, despite Powell's contention that a new testing unit on the grounds is designed for longer-range missiles.
The two sites were among the least-sensitive of those Powell mentioned in his presentation. U.N. inspectors have visited both of them more than once. The inspectors even observed a missile engine test at Al Rafah, which is near the town of Al Fallujah about 50 miles west of Baghdad. The inspectors also have placed small metallic identification stickers on missiles at Al Musayyib, which is about 50 miles south of Baghdad.
It was impossible for the journalists to determine whether the missiles on display at Al Musayyib or the design of the stand at Al Rafah violate U.N. resolutions passed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to limit Iraq's weapons. But in his report to the Security Council last month, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, did not mention either site as a potential concern -- a point Iraqi officials were quick to point out today.
"The inspectors looked at everything technical. They copied all the plans. They asked many questions," Jassem said. "They found no problem with it."
But Blix did say that the Al Fatah and the Al Samoud have been tested to a range in excess of 93 miles. "Some of both types of missiles have already been provided to the Iraqi armed forces, even though it is stated that they are still undergoing development," Blix told the council on Jan. 27.
What has prompted concern among U.S. intelligence officials at Al Rafah is a new engine-testing unit so large it is housed in a four-story concrete-frame hangar. Powell asserted that the unit "is larger than anything [Iraq] has ever had" and is designed for missiles that can fly 750 miles.
But Jassem said that, because the new unit is designed to test engines horizontally, instead of vertically as it was previously done, the unit needs a large exhaust vent and a cavernous structure. He also disputed Powell's contention that the structure has a corrugated tin roof to prevent satellite observation. "We are covering it because of rain and dust," he said.
Jabbar said the activity at Al Musayyib on Nov. 10, captured in a grainy black-and-white satellite photo, was not intended to sanitize the facility in anticipation of inspections. With Iraq facing a possible war with the United States, Al Fatah missiles are regularly brought to the site for alignment and testing, he said, adding that "we do this every day."
Walking over to the truck parked outside, he pointed inside the empty cargo compartment. That day, he said, the truck was loaded with 10 separate missile components. "It was just machine parts used in the assembly of the missiles," he said. "There was nothing forbidden."
Jabbar said he could think of only one reason Powell mentioned his facility. "It was to mislead," he said. "What he said was not the truth."
----
Media Tour Alleged 'Poison Site' in Iraq
Islamic Militants Show Press the Camp Powell Called Poison Site
The Associated Press
February 8, 2003
http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20030208_1486.html
SARGAT, Iraq Feb. 8 - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called the camp in northern Iraq a terrorist poison and explosives training center, a deadly link in a "sinister nexus" binding Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.
But journalists who visited the site depicted in Powell's satellite photo found a half-built cinderblock compound filled with heavily armed Kurdish men, video equipment and children but no obvious sign of chemical weapons manufacturing.
"You can search as you like," said Mohammad Hassan, a spokesman for the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam, which controls the camp and the surrounding village. "There are no chemical weapons here."
Ansar al-Islam, believed to have ties to al-Qaida, says the camp serves as its administrative office for Sargat village, living quarters and a propaganda video studio.
A half-dozen children and some teenagers watched with curiosity as Western journalists arrived in a convoy of white SUVs. A couple of dozen bearded men in black turbans, heavily armed with Kalashnikovs and grenades, watched closely.
During his appearance before the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, Powell displayed a satellite photo of this camp, which was identified as "Terrorist Poison and Explosive Factory, Khurmal."
Powell said the camp was run by al-Qaida fugitives from Afghanistan who were under the protection of Ansar al-Islam here in the autonomous Kurdish area of Iraq in a region beyond Saddam Hussein's control.
But Powell maintained that a senior member of Ansar al-Islam was a Saddam agent, implying a tenuous link between Baghdad and the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
Western journalists were brought to this camp, with its distinctive polygon-shaped fencing and nearby hills, by the Islamic Group of Kurdistan, a moderate Muslim organization which maintains good relations with Ansar al-Islam.
The compound, accessible by a long dirt road, is in a village of several hundred people at the base of the massive Zagros mountains separating Iraq from Iran.
Security appeared lax at the compound, whose jagged barbed-wire perimeter matched a satellite photograph Powell displayed in his Security Council presentation.
As evidence that the camp serves as a housing area, child-sized plastic slippers could be seen in the doorways. A refrigerator had been turned into a closet and filled with colorful women's clothes. The most sophisticated equipment seen at the site was the video gear and makeshift television studio Ansar says it uses to make its propaganda films.
Ansar officials speculated that Powell was misled in his accusations of a poison factory by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two parties governing the autonomous northern Kurdish section of Iraq. Ansar has been at war for two years with the PUK.
"Everything Powell said about us is untrue," said a man calling himself Ayoub Hawleri. Other Kurds referred to him as Ayoub Afghani, who manufactures explosives for suicide bombers.
"He was just repeating the PUK's lies," Ayoub said.
The Patriotic Union said Powell's allegations about the poison laboratory were correct and it was in the Sargat compound in an area accessible only to those who had come from Afghanistan and had "ties to al-Qaida." A PUK spokeswoman said Saturday that Ansar could have moved the facility before the journalists got there.
Though Ansar officials allowed the journalists access to the site, they did not permit reporters to talk to anyone except two designated Ansar officials.
Hawleri said he was shocked and surprised after watching Powell's speech, which said Ansar harbored Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, a suspected al-Qaida operative and alleged assassin of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Jordan last year.
"The first time I even heard of al-Zarqawi was on television," he said.
The name on the photo Powell showed to the world was Khurmal, a nearby town that is under the control of Islamic Group of Kurdistan.
Islamic Group denies there is such a camp at Khurmal and believes Powell's satellite photo evidence misidentified the site's location.
An official at the equivalent of the local social security office said the Sargat compound is in the district of Biyare, near the town of Biyare where Ansar has its headquarters.
Before taking journalists to Sargat, Islamic Group took them to Khurmal to show them the camp was not there.
Group official Fazel Qaradari said he welcomed the large contingent of Western media to "see for themselves" that there is no such factory in Khurmal.
The road to Sargat passes the ruins of numerous villages destroyed by Saddam Hussein in his late 1980s campaign against Iraq's Kurds. Though less well-known than nearby Halabja a city about 19 miles away where 5,000 Kurds were killed by chemical weapons in 1988, the Sargat area also was subjected to chemical weapons bombardment.
In the village of Ahmad Awa, headquarters of the Islamic Group's leader, Ali Bapir, residents said they frequently visit Sargat, and although they have been denied access to the compound, they do not believe there are any chemical weapons or al-Qaida operatives in the village.
"We're certain that's wrong," said Azad Muhedil, head of the village council. "We have been victims of war and upheaval in the past. The people here are still recovering from chemical weapons."
photo credit and caption: The Ansar Al-Islam base is seen at Sargat, Iraq, Saturday, Feb. 8, 2003. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called camps in this area in northern Iraq a terrorist poison and explosives training center, a link binding Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. But journalists who visited the site depicted in Powell's satellite photo found a half-built cinderblock compound filled with heavily armed Kurdish men, video equipment and children - but no obvious sign of chemical weapons manufacturing. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)
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Reporters on Ground Get Iraqi Rebuttal to Satellite Photos
February 8, 2003
New York Times
By IAN FISHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/international/middleeast/08BAGH.html
AL MUSAYYIB, Iraq, Feb. 7 - "No smoking - please!" the Iraqi official said, and he meant it.
In front of him were actual missiles - five of them, with a scattering of steel cases for the warheads - in a lot at a factory near here. Not just any factory, but one that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell showed the world this week in his presentation to the United Nations Security Council, charging that satellite photos had caught the Iraqis hiding things they did not want weapons inspectors to see.
"At this ballistic missile site on Nov. 10," Mr. Powell said at the United Nations on Wednesday, "we saw a cargo truck preparing to move ballistic missile components."
To which, Kareem Jabbar Yusuf, the manager of the plant near here, said, "It's all lies."
Thus was crystallized, under the sun in the steadily warming desert, the dynamic in the debate over whether to attack Iraq: American accusations, Iraqi denials and pretty much no way for anyone else to know where the truth lies.
But what is clear is that Iraq is working vigorously to present its version of events, the day before the two chief United Nations weapons inspectors' scheduled treturn to Baghdad for another round of last-minute talks. After devoting two news conferences this week to rebutting Mr. Powell's accusations that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction, officials here escorted dozens of journalists to two sites that he singled out before the Security Council.
These were not the precise, scientific visits that the inspectors, who have gone to both sites several times since November, presumably enjoy. Rather, the scene was one of chaos, with journalists armed with little more knowledge than the transcript of Mr. Powell's speech jostling one another for scraps of Arabic translated on the fly.
Officials took reporters to Al Rafah plant, near Faluja, roughly 50 miles west of Baghdad, to view a new testing stand for Iraqi rockets. Under United Nations resolutions, Iraq is permitted to make rockets with a range of no more than 150 kilometers, or about 93 miles. But Mr. Powell alleged that this new testing stand was designed "for long-range missiles that can fly 1,200 kilometers," or about 745 miles.
"These are missiles that Iraq wants in order to project power, to threaten, and to deliver chemical, biological and, if we let him, nuclear warheads," Mr. Powell charged.
The new and unfinished stand, which rises in steel and concrete roughly 50 feet, is in fact, as Mr. Powell alleged, much larger than the old stand a few hundred yards away, which Iraq has used to test its rockets for more than a decade. The vent for the exhaust, a concrete channel embedded in the desert, is bigger, too, about 36 yards long, according to the plant's director, Ali Jassim.
But, Mr. Jassim said, the explanation is simple. Unlike the old stand, in which rockets are mounted and fired off in a vertical position, the new stand is designed to test the same permitted rockets lying horizontally, and thus the vent must be longer. This design, he said, was safer.
"By constructing this facility, we are taking precautions to keep people from getting burnt," he said.
As to whether this new stand could be used for rockets that go farther than 150 kilometers, he said that the inspectors visited here five times and made no complaints. Also, an aluminum roof, which Mr. Powell said was meant to conceal activities from satellites, is actually meant to protect the stand, Mr. Jassim said, "from rain and dust."
Here at Al Rashid company, the second stop on the tour, about 50 miles south of Baghdad, things look much as they did in the satellite photo taken in November. In front of a building full of the unfinished tail pieces of Fatah missile, surrounded by large earthen bunkers, sat a truck similar to the one in the photo - which Mr. Powell said was used to move components that Iraq wanted to conceal from the inspectors.
But the director of this plant, Mr. Yusuf, who showed off the empty inside of the truck, said it was used only to move "mechanical parts" allowed under United Nations regulations. Nothing unusual was happening in November, he said.
"Any day they would see constant activity here," he said. "Colin Powell could say any day that there is activity."
He said the plant had never been used for any prohibited weapons, including biological or chemical ones.
On the eve of a war that seems ever closer, one firm fact, at least, stands out: Both these plants were bombed extensively, either in the 1991 Persian Gulf war or in American-led missile strikes in 1998, after the last weapons inspections were called off.
-------- japan
High level of secrecy on space launch
By Hans Greimel
ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 8, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030208-79159653.htm
TOKYO - Shrouded in secrecy and guarded by gunboats, Japan's latest rocket arrived yesterday at the country's secluded space center, where officials are quietly preparing to launch Japan's first spy satellites in response to North Korea.
The launch is likely to be the most clandestine to date by Japan's space program, the reasons being its payload and the current international standoff over North Korea's nuclear programs.
The project was nearly four years in the making and originally envisioned as an advance-warning system against North Korean military moves.
But officials from Japan's National Space Development Agency were mum about details yesterday as coast guard patrol boats escorted a ship carrying rocket parts to the southern island of Tanegashima, where Japan has its launching pad.
Spokeswoman Yuko Kubota would not confirm media reports that the shipment contained Japan's two-stage H-2A rocket, although she said it was part of the launch. The truck-sized rocket containers, usually bearing the National Space Development Agency logo, were bare and a squad of riot police secured the port as they unloaded, according to Kyodo news agency.
Japan announced last year that it planned to launch the two Earth-observation satellites by the end of March.
But as the launch date nears and relations with North Korea deteriorate, space agency officials have declined to discuss details, including the launching timeline.
Miss Kubota cited the payload as a reason for the extra precautions and said the stepped up security on the island may be extended to include a ban on press coverage of the launch itself.
Japan usually welcomes news coverage of its beleaguered and cash-strapped space program. It has launched four H-2A rockets, most recently in December when one lifted off with an Australian satellite - Japan's first launch with an international payload.
-------- korea
S. Korea Appeals for Calm in Nuke Crisis
By SANG-HUN CHOE
Associated Press Writer
Feb 8, 2002,
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KOREAS_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korea's ruling party said Saturday it feared Washington might be getting emotional in its handling of a nuclear standoff with North Korea, a day after President Bush left open the possibility of a military strike.
"North Korea's recent moves cannot be praised, but we cannot help expressing concern as to whether emotions have interfered with U.S. efforts to resolve the North's nuclear problem," Chang Chun-hyong, a deputy spokesman of the South's ruling Millennium Democratic Party, said in a statement.
Bush said Friday that "all options are on the table," suggesting that the United States could consider military action to curb the Stalinist regime's nuclear activities. Bush and his aides usually take care to state that the United States has no intention of attacking North Korea. In his comments Friday, Bush did not repeat that message.
On Saturday, North Korea accused Bush of planning to invade the impoverished state and warning that a conflict on the divided Korean Peninsula would devastate the South as well.
Chang also referred to remarks by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who called North Korea "a terrorist regime" on Wednesday.
"We make it clear that there should be no mistake in judgment and a worst-case scenario should never unfold on the Korean Peninsula," Chang said in his statement.
South Korea, while saying it wants to continue its close military alliance with Washington, fears that the standoff between the United States and North Korea could lead to clashes and has urged the United States to seek a peaceful settlement.
"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching closer to the phase of serious crisis," the North's state-run daily Rodong Sinmun said. "There is no guarantee that the U.S. warhawks, seized by extreme war fever, would not ignite a war of aggression."
"This war will not bring disasters to the North only," the newspaper said. "It is, therefore, a task facing all Koreans in the North and the South to avert the danger of a war and protect peace on the Korean Peninsula."
North Korea's long-standing strategy has been to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington by arguing that the U.S. stance poses a threat to South Korea as well. It warned Thursday that if the United States builds up reinforcements in the region, it could trigger "a total war."
Relations between the United States and North Korea deteriorated in October, when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted having a nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement. Washington and its allies suspended oil shipments to North Korea - which in turn expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors and pulled out of a global nuclear arms control treaty.
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors will meet next Wednesday to discuss the standoff and is almost certain to send the dispute to the U.N. Security Council, which may discuss economic sanctions against Pyongyang.
U.S. officials have spoken before about their ability to respond militarily to any potential hostile action by North Korea, in part to dispel any hopes Pyongyang may have about taking advantage of Bush's focus on Iraq.
----
NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY
Bush Urges Chinese President to Press North Korea on Arms
February 8, 2003
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/international/asia/08KORE.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 - President Bush urged President Jiang Zemin of China today to help resolve the crisis with North Korea, telling him in a phone conversation that Beijing had a responsibility to prevent the North from developing nuclear weapons that could threaten much of Asia.
But even as he insisted that the crisis could be resolved peacefully, Mr. Bush told reporters that "all options are on the table," including military action, if diplomacy failed to prevent North Korea from resuming its efforts to build nuclear weapons.
"I will continue working diplomatically to convince Kim Jong Il that he will be further isolated if he continues to develop a nuclear program," Mr. Bush said of North Korea's leader.
Shortly after Mr. Bush conferred with Mr. Jiang, Pentagon officials said that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld had ordered the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson from the West Coast to Japan, to replace the Kitty Hawk carrier battle group, which is heading to the Persian Gulf.
The swap ensures that America's military presence around the Korean peninsula will not shrink even if the United States attacks Iraq, allowing for what White House officials have called a "robust deterrent" against North Korea. The latest deployment comes on top of a decision to place 24 long-range bombers on alert to move toward the area on short notice.
North Korea issued a new round of threats today, saying that a buildup of American "aggression troops" could lead to nuclear war that would reduce both Koreas "to ashes." The statement called on South Koreans to join the north in a "struggle to check and frustrate the U.S. arms buildup."
Concerns about North Korea's nuclear program intensified this week when the North announced that it was restarting a mothballed nuclear reactor at Yongbyon that can produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. The move came after evidence that the north had begun removing spent nuclear fuel rods from storage, possibly in preparation for reprocessing them for weapons.
Many American officials believe that China could play a lead role in pressuring North Korea, particularly now that America's relations with South Korea have been strained.
China is one of North Korea's largest trading partners and, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has emerged as the largest provider of economic, food and fuel aid to the north, American officials said. By some estimates, half of China's foreign aid budget goes to North Korea.
American officials say the Chinese have been a conduit for American messages to North Korea and have worked with Washington to set up a multinational meeting at which American and North Korean officials could meet privately. But some officials have complained privately that Beijing could do more to pressure concessions from the North.
Speaking at the Foreign Press Center in Washington, John Wolf, the assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, said a nuclear North Korea "would pose an enormous threat to its neighbors and would create an unstable situation in Northeast Asia, which would be a threat not only in the region but, given the importance of the countries in that region, it would be a threat that would worry us all."
He called North Korea "Missiles-R-Us," because of its history of selling ballistic missile technology.
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S.Korea Questions U.S. 'Emotions' Over North
February 8, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north.html
SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - South Korea's ruling party questioned the United States' handling of North Korea's nuclear crisis on Saturday and said it feared emotions may have interfered with diplomacy.
President Bush, preparing for possible war in Iraq, said all options were open to end a stand-off over the North's suspected nuclear arms program, after Pyongyang warned of ``horrible nuclear disasters'' should the United States attack.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called North Korea's announcement that it was preparing to restart nuclear facilities dangerous and said U.S. forces were ready to confront the ``terrorist regime'' if necessary.
``We are closely watching as to what the real intention was regarding Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush's comments,'' the South's Millennium Democratic Party said in a statement containing rare criticism of the country's alliance partner for the past half-century.
``North Korea and Iraq are different. We make it clear that there must be no mistake in decision-making...
``North Korea's recent activities cannot be praised, but we cannot but express concern as to whether emotions have interfered in the United States in resolving the North's nuclear problem.''
Bush said he hoped the problem could be resolved diplomatically and the United States has repeatedly stressed that it has no intention of attacking North Korea, which Bush last year branded part of an ``axis of evil'' along with Iraq and Iran.
ALL OPTIONS ON TABLE
``All options are on the table, but I believe we can solve this diplomatically,'' Bush told reporters in Washington on Friday when asked whether he was prepared to use military force in North Korea, which Washington suspects of building nuclear weapons.
A foreign ministry official in Seoul told Reuters Bush's comments did not ``deviate'' from Washington's original stance.
``We view it as only natural for a president to keep all options open,'' he said.
Late last year, South Korea saw a wave of anti-U.S. sentiment sparked by the accidental death in June of two schoolgirls under a U.S. military vehicle.
But since his election in December, president-elect Roh Moo-hyun, who won office with promises of less reliance on U.S. protection, has embarked on a series of pragmatic moves, calling the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea ``the driving force of security and the backbone of our prosperity.''
U.S. bombers, fighter jets and warships have been put on alert for possible deployment to the western Pacific to deter any aggression by North Korea in the event of a war in Iraq.
North Korea's state media kept up its bombastic rhetoric after a senior diplomat told British reporters in Pyongyang that ``pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the U.S..''
Pyongyang portrayed U.S. contingency plans to beef up forces in the western Pacific during any Iraq hostilities as actual deployments that foreshadowed an attack.
``If the U.S. moves to bolster aggression troops are unchecked, the whole land of Korea will be reduced to ashes and the Koreans will not escape horrible nuclear disasters,'' the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland was quoted as saying by North Korea's KCNA news agency on Friday.
DIPLOMATIC FLURRY
Bush said he had spoken with Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in a bid to solve the crisis.
``We will continue to work diplomatically to make it very clear to (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-il that should he expect any kind of aid and help for his people that he must comply with the world's demand that he not develop a nuclear weapon,'' he said.
North Korea insists the nuclear issue can only be settled in direct negotiations with the United States.
Washington says Pyongyang has admitted to enriching uranium in violation of a 1994 accord, under which the North froze its nuclear program in exchange for two electricity-generating reactors and free fuel.
Since December, North Korea has expelled International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and threatened to resume missile tests.
The North's dire warnings followed a statement from the energy-starved country's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday, indicating Pyongyang was preparing to fire up a reactor thought to have produced plutonium for weapons in the past.
Washington said the developments were dangerous but not a reason to abandon diplomacy to resolve the four-month-old crisis.
Last week, U.S. officials said satellite surveillance had shown North Korea was moving fuel rods around the Yongbyon reactor complex, including possibly some of the 8,000 spent fuel rods experts consider a key step in building bombs.
But there was no sign that reprocessing the rods had begun, a step that would enable North Korea to start adding to the two bombs the West suspects it may have built already.
--------
S. Korea Appeals for Calm in Nuke Crisis
February 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korea's ruling party said Saturday it feared Washington might be getting emotional in its handling of a nuclear standoff with North Korea, a day after President Bush left open the possibility of a military strike.
``North Korea's recent moves cannot be praised, but we cannot help expressing concern as to whether emotions have interfered with U.S. efforts to resolve the North's nuclear problem,'' Chang Chun-hyong, a deputy spokesman of the South's ruling Millennium Democratic Party, said in a statement.
Bush said Friday that ``all options are on the table,'' suggesting that the United States could consider military action to curb the Stalinist regime's nuclear activities.
Bush and his aides usually take care to state that the United States has no intention of attacking North Korea. In his comments Friday, Bush did not repeat that message.
On Saturday, North Korea accused Bush of planning to invade the impoverished state and warning that a conflict on the divided Korean Peninsula would devastate the South as well.
Chang also referred to remarks by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who called North Korea ``a terrorist regime'' on Wednesday.
``We make it clear that there should be no mistake in judgment and a worst-case scenario should never unfold on the Korean Peninsula,'' Chang said in his statement.
South Korea, while saying it wants to continue its close military alliance with Washington, fears that the standoff between the United States and North Korea could lead to clashes and has urged the United States to seek a peaceful settlement.
``The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching closer to the phase of serious crisis,'' the North's state-run daily Rodong Sinmun said. ``There is no guarantee that the U.S. warhawks, seized by extreme war fever, would not ignite a war of aggression.''
``This war will not bring disasters to the North only,'' the newspaper said. ``It is, therefore, a task facing all Koreans in the North and the South to avert the danger of a war and protect peace on the Korean Peninsula.''
North Korea's long-standing strategy has been to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington by arguing that the U.S. stance poses a threat to South Korea as well. It warned Thursday that if the United States builds up reinforcements in the region, it could trigger ``a total war.''
Relations between the United States and North Korea deteriorated in October, when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted having a nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement. Washington and its allies suspended oil shipments to North Korea -- which in turn expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors and pulled out of a global nuclear arms control treaty.
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors will meet next Wednesday to discuss the standoff and is almost certain to send the dispute to the U.N. Security Council, which may discuss economic sanctions against Pyongyang.
U.S. officials have spoken before about their ability to respond militarily to any potential hostile action by North Korea, in part to dispel any hopes Pyongyang may have about taking advantage of Bush's focus on Iraq.
-------- terrorism
Nation Put on Higher Threat Alert
Officials Cite 'High Risk' of Al Qaeda Attacks With Poisons, 'Dirty Bombs'
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 8, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42521-2003Feb7?language=printer
The government yesterday raised the terrorist threat index for only the second time, warning that newly acquired intelligence indicates a "high risk" of attacks by the al Qaeda terrorist network against U.S. targets at home and abroad.
U.S. intelligence and health officials said in public announcements and private briefings that they were particularly concerned about chemical, biological or radiological weapons, including ricin, cyanide and "dirty bombs" that would spread radioactive debris over a wide area.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other officials said al Qaeda operatives may seek to time attacks to coincide with the hajj, the annual five-day pilgrimage by Muslims to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, that begins Sunday. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge urged citizens to "to prepare for an emergency" by readying contact lists, talking with their families and reviewing information on other precautions.
The heightened alert status, from yellow to orange on the five-tiered, color-coded scale, is the result of days of contentious debate within U.S. counterterrorism circles over what to do about a surge in intelligence information indicating the possibility of attack. Many analysts, particularly in the White House and Pentagon, had pushed for a general public warning like the one issued yesterday. But some FBI and CIA officials had argued that the information was too vague and could unnecessarily alarm the public.
Ultimately, President Bush made the decision, raising the 11-month-old threat index to its second-highest level. The designation triggered tighter security at borders, airports and hotels, enhanced identification checks at government buildings and beefed-up protection of power grids, dams, financial networks and transportation systems. Officials also urged greater vigilance by all Americans.
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said the threat information "is serious and specific. . . . There's not just chatter, but a pattern, and not just a pattern, but dots" that intelligence agencies have been able to connect in a general way.
"There are a lot of things that add up," Roberts said.
However, others with access to the intelligence upon which the alert was based said it was largely an effort to make sure government officials could not be blamed for not warning Americans, as they were after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "That's what this whole process is about," said one well-placed intelligence source. They said the information was voluminous but not specific.
The warning comes amid international rancor over a possible U.S. invasion of Iraq and follows a wave of high-profile terrorism arrests throughout Europe in recent weeks. Ashcroft said U.S. officials were particularly concerned about the arrests of more than a dozen men, mostly Algerians, in London after authorities there discovered traces of the deadly toxin ricin. Traces of the poison, which is made from castor beans, were discovered near a London mosque that security officials have described as a recruiting ground for al Qaeda. Some authorities are concerned that the European network may have operatives in the United States.
The State Department on Thursday issued a "worldwide caution," warning of a growing threat of attacks by al Qaeda or other terrorist groups with chemical or biological weapons.
The FBI also announced separately yesterday that it was seeking a Pakistani man, Mohammed Sher Mohammad Khan, who is wanted for questioning and is believed to have entered the United States illegally sometime after September 2001. His case was "one of a number of factors taken into consideration" in elevating the threat index, a law enforcement official said.
Information provided about Khan was sketchy and mixed. The FBI said in one notice that Khan was "being sought in connection with possible terrorist threats against the United States." But a separate FBI news release said his name and birth date may be fictitious and that there was "no specific information that this individual is connected to any potential terrorist activities."
Since it was unveiled last March, the terror threat warning system has generally been held at yellow, which signifies an elevated risk of attack. Yesterday's decision to raise the threat level to orange, indicating high risk, was only the second time the index has been moved up. The last time was on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The only level above orange is red, which indicates an imminent or ongoing attack.
Ashcroft, joined at an afternoon news conference by Ridge and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, said the decision to elevate the threat index was based on "specific intelligence" that had been "corroborated by multiple intelligence services."
Ashcroft warned about the threat of attacks on "soft or lightly guarded targets" in the United States, including apartment buildings and hotels. The attorney general also said authorities were particularly concerned about al Qaeda's interest in conducting biological, chemical or radiological attacks on U.S. targets. He said recent terror strikes in Bali, Indonesia, and Mombasa, Kenya, "demonstrate the continued willingness [of] al Qaeda to strike at peaceful, innocent civilians."
Ridge took the unusual step of urging citizens to take "precautionary measures" to "minimize the damage" from a possible terrorist attack, and to consider a "contact plan" in the event of an emergency. Yet Ridge and other officials also encouraged people not to drastically change their plans or lifestyles.
"We are not recommending that events be canceled or travel or other plans be changed," Ridge said. "We do recommend that individuals and families in the days ahead should take some time to prepare for an emergency."
Homeland Security officials held urgent briefings throughout the day with police chiefs, sheriffs, public health directors and other community leaders from around the country. Officials said that security would be noticeably tightened in public locations, while health authorities issued alerts urging that hospitals and physicians review procedures for treating victims of radiation and chemical exposures.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush made the decision to raise the alert level after receiving recommendations from Ashcroft and Ridge and regular daily briefings from the FBI and CIA. The Homeland Security Council spent more than an hour debating newly received intelligence in the White House situation room yesterday, Fleischer said.
In response to the recommendation, Bush said, "I agree. Change the code," according to Fleischer.
Ridge conducted conference calls yesterday to brief governors, congressional members and key industry leaders about the threat level. Jerome M. Hauer, acting assistant secretary for public health preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, held a similar conference call with state health commissioners, in which he said there were new, credible threats relating to cyanide, ricin and "radiological dispersion devices," according to several people on the call.
A report released Thursday by the Association of Public Health Laboratories found that virtually none of the nation's state labs are capable of testing chemical agents likely to be used as terrorist weapons.
In New York, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R) and Gov. George E. Pataki (R) said security measures would be beefed up, but added that no specific threat had been made against the city.
State homeland security officials said the information they received about the threat did not go much beyond what was presented publicly at yesterday's news conference.
"There has not been any reference to a specific means of attack," said Timothy Lowenberg, Washington state homeland security director. He said federal officials have told the states that there has been "an across-the-board increase in chatter," coming both from human intelligence sources and signals intelligence.
Joseph Samuels Jr., police chief of Richmond, Calif., and president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said training since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, combined with preparations for a possible invasion of Iraq, have already placed most police departments on a high state of readiness. "The imminent war was probably enough," Samuels said. "The alert just added credence to what we're already expecting."
Staff writers Ceci Connolly, Spencer S. Hsu, Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- utah
Nuke this bad idea in the bud
Deseret News editorial
Saturday, February 8, 2003
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,455030301,00.html
There are bad ideas and very bad ideas. And then there's the idea to out-maneuver the Goshute tribe for a nuclear waste storage facility, put it on state lands, and make a killing in the process.
That's not a bad plan.
It's a terrible plan.
Rep. Steve Urquhart of St. George has filed HB366, which would permit state trust lands to be used to store spent nuclear fuel.
Here's a better idea: Find a way to work with the Goshutes instead of working against them. Pull the state together instead of pulling it apart. Now, more than ever, the world needs more plowshares and fewer swords.
Having 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in Utah is troubling, no matter who reaps the benefits. The state has spent several years trying to block the Goshutes from building a facility in the name of public welfare. For the state to jump in at this point and create its own facility would pit the state against its citizens.
The days of fighting the Indians are over. The ashes of Manifest Destiny are cold. And any attempt to submarine Native Americans in the name of self-interest carries overtones of racism. The state's Native Americans have been pushed to the periphery of society and their tribal lands pushed to the periphery of the state. It is time to welcome them back, not drive them farther away.
What's more, any attempt by the state to get involved in the nuclear storage business makes a sham out of the high-minded rhetoric about Utah not being the nation's garbage dump. To put it politely, the state cannot afford to send mixed signals. To put it bluntly, passage of the bill would be two-faced.
Meanwhile, the old arguments used against storing nuclear waste remain. Nuclear waste lasts forever. Guarding it would be a headache, transporting it a nightmare. The state is right to fight against this coming to Utah, whether on Goshute land or anywhere else.
In the end, the reason the Goshutes are looking to store nuclear waste is they have turned their backs on government funds. They don't want the government controlling their destiny. They are desperately looking for ways to make ends meet. The tribe should be commended for showing the kind of free-spirited independence championed by the Republican right.
The best way to make the best of this ugly situation is for the state to lend the Goshutes a hand, not offer them the back of one.
-------- us politics
For reader, this Perle doesn't shine
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
February 8, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030208-15786076.htm
Richard Perle's ridiculous statement that France is no longer an ally of the United States is part of a larger pattern of irresponsible behavior on his part ("Top Pentagon adviser says France no longer U.S. ally," Nation, Wednesday).
Previously, Mr. Perle brought in Laurent Murawiec of the Rand Corp. to brief the Pentagon's Policy Advisory Board on relations with Saudi Arabia. Mr. Murawiec proposed declaring Saudi Arabia an enemy and suggested that our government invade Saudi Arabia and occupy its oil fields.
Mr. Perle must be removed from his position as chairman of the Policy Advisory Board. He was not elected by the American people, nor does he reflect the views of a majority of us.
Furthermore, Mr. Perle's behavior poses a threat to America's image and interests abroad. He should be left to express his ridiculous views as an individual without any affiliation with the Bush administration.
ARIF RAFIQ Greenvale, N.Y.
----
US cranks up economic pressure on Germany
AFP
Saturday February 8, 2003 3:59 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030208/1/375mq.html
Washington is tightening the economic screws on Berlin over a looming conflict with Iraq, threatening to clamp down against both the government and private companies in staunchly anti-war Germany, according to press reports.
The United States has decided to freeze all but the bare minimum of its planned multi-million investments in its German military bases "because of the political situation," the weekly Welt am Sonntag will report on Sunday.
A letter from the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announcing the decision has been sent to the US command in Germany, according to the weekly.
Washington is also threatening to clamp down on German companies who maintain their trade ties to Iraq, the newspaper Die Welt said in its edition due out on Saturday.
The administration of US President George W. Bush, in a letter to Berlin's economy ministry, said companies that do business with Baghdad would compromise their ties to their US trade partners, according to the daily.
Germany-Iraq trade ties are worth some 336.5 million euros (364.0 million dollars) yearly, according to German government statistics.
Blocking US military investment across Germany could mean a major loss of capital, as it would shelve a 100-million-euro US Air Force investment in the southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Renovation at the US military airport at Ramstein, in the same state, could also be affected by the plan, the paper said.
Germany has more US military bases than any other European country.
Berlin, a traditional US ally, has come out strongly against waging war on Iraq, saying it will not participate in military operations and will not vote in the Security Council in favor of the use of force.
Pentagon chief Rumsfeld has lashed out several times at Germany, recently lumping it together with Libya and Cuba -- Washington's sworn enemies -- as countries who would not participate at all in a US-led coalition against Iraq.
He also has chided Germany and France for being part of an "old Europe" because of their calls for continued UN inspections and reluctance to use military force to disarm Saddam Hussein.
----
Rumsfeld: Delay in disarming Iraq may mean war
2/8/2003
AP
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-02-08-rumsfeld-iraq_x.htm
STANDOFF WITH IRAQ
MUNICH, Germany - In a jab at major U.S. allies, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Saturday countries such as France and Germany that favor giving Iraq another chance to disarm are undermining what slim chance may exist to avoid war.
"There are those who counsel that we should delay preparations" for war against Iraq. "Ironically, that approach could well make war more likely, not less, because delaying preparations sends a signal of uncertainty," Rumsfeld said in the opening address at an international conference on security policy.
President Bush said he will not wait much longer before moving against Saddam Hussein, declaring in his weekly radio address that the Iraqi leader is wasting a last opportunity to come clean.
Rumsfeld said "there is no chance" Saddam will disarm voluntarily or flee his country if given yet another opportunity to comply with the U.N. Security Council resolution from November that demands Iraq's complete disarmament.
Thousands more American forces are converging on the Persian Gulf region in anticipation of a decision by Bush, within days or weeks, to invade Iraq and oust Saddam. Also, Turkey's top civilian and military leaders reportedly agreed Saturday to let the United States send 38,000 troops to the country to open a northern front should there be war with Iraq.
On Munich's snowy streets, as many as 20,000 people staged protests against U.S. policy on Iraq. "Today Munich says yes to peace and no to war," said Roman Catholic Bishop Engelbert Siebler.
Rumsfeld said Saddam has time to avert war but should not be given another U.N. reprieve.
"We all hope for a peaceful resolution," Rumsfeld said at the 39th Munich Conference on Security, which attracted lawmakers, policy officials, military leaders and private analysts from the United States, Europe and Asia.
"But the one chance for a peaceful resolution is to make clear that free nations are prepared to use force if necessary - that the world is united and, while reluctant, is willing to act."
In response to Rumsfeld's remarks, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer made an impassioned plea for patience with Iraq and said the German public sees no justification for going to war.
"We must not accept the logic of a military campaign," Fischer said. "We must give the inspectors more time."
In Berlin, a German government official said his country is working with France on "specific peaceful alternatives to a military solution." The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the French-German plan includes placing U.N. troops across Iraq, conducting reconnaissance flights over the country and tripling the number of U.N. weapons inspectors.
Rumsfeld told reporters he had heard of the proposal through media reports, but suggested inspections only work if a country cooperates. A senior U.S. official said Rumsfeld, in a meeting with German Defense Minister Peter Struck, mentioned the report, but Struck said he could not discuss it because it was not finalized.
Bush said in his broadcast that Saddam "was given a final chance. He is throwing away that chance." Also Saturday, the president spoke with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who endorses the U.S. hard line on Iraq.
Sergei Ivanov, the Russian defense minister whose government opposes early military action against Iraq, told the Munich conference the main focus should be on fighting international terrorism of all kinds.
Ivanov did not mention Iraq. He and Rumsfeld met later for a one-on-one session that included a discussion of the way ahead in Afghanistan, including the training of a national army.
The split over Iraq among the United States, Britain and numerous other European countries on the one hand and Germany, France and Russia on the other has caused severe strains in diplomatic relations.
Some of the harshest words came from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who, with Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., led a U.S. congressional delegation to the conference.
McCain hammered France and Germany for blocking a NATO effort to plan for ways of defending alliance member Turkey from potential attacks by Iraq in the event of war. Turkey has requested such assistance, and the United States is strongly in favor of it. The Turks want Patriot anti-missile batteries, surveillance planes and other defensive help.
McCain accused the Germans and French of "calculated self-interest." He said their actions had caused a "terrible injury" to NATO and exposed their "vacuous posturing."
NATO officials are to meet Monday in an attempt to resolve the conflict over defensive aid for Turkey.
"Turkey needs to be looked after," Rumsfeld said before returning to Washington. He noted that Turkey shares a border with Iraq, and "the idea that NATO would deny them NATO support in that circumstance, in my view, is inexcusable.'
In his speech, Rumsfeld left no doubt that Bush is prepared to act soon on Iraq. The Pentagon chief referred to Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the Security Council last week and said it provided "not conjecture but facts" on the Iraqi threat.
"It is difficult to believe there still could be any question in the minds of reasonable people open to the facts before them," Rumsfeld said. "The threat is there to see. ... Really the only question remaining is: what will we do about it?"
He concluded his speech by saying, "The coming days and weeks will tell."
Rumsfeld also criticized the United Nations for making Iraq the head of the U.N. Commission on Disarmament and Libya the head of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
"An institution that, with the support or acquiescence of many of the nations represented in this room, would permit" this to happen "seems not to be even struggling to regain credibility," he said with a tone of incredulity.
"That these acts of irresponsibility could happen now, at this moment in history, is breathtaking."
In another development signaling the Bush administration's move toward war, the U.S. government has started granting permission for American humanitarian organizations to work in Iran and Iraq.
For now, groups that received U.S. funds will begin surveying the potential needs and getting supplies in position to prepare for the fallout of war, said Sid Balmer, spokesman for InterAction, an alliance of 160 private U.S. organizations doing overseas humanitarian work.
----
Bush Prepared to Act on Iraq if U.N. Balks
February 8, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush braced the nation on Saturday for a possible war with Iraq, saying it must be prepared to act if the U.N. Security Council backs down.
``The United States, along with a growing coalition of nations, will take whatever action is necessary to defend ourselves and disarm the Iraqi regime,'' Bush said in his weekly radio address.
Bush consulted by telephone with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a key ally on Iraq, about stepping up diplomatic pressure on the Security Council, as top U.N. weapons inspectors began crucial disarmament talks in Baghdad.
Bush said he would welcome a new U.N. resolution that backs up the demands of the one the Security Council approved in November warning of serious consequences if Iraq did not give up its suspected weapons of mass destruction.
``Having made its demands, the Security Council must not back down when those demands are defied and mocked by a dictator,'' Bush said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Washington on Saturday against attacking Iraq on its own, arguing action under a U.N. umbrella would have greater legitimacy and be more likely to succeed.
Annan stressed that force should be used only as a last resort. But if the Security Council concluded, after a critical report by U.N. inspectors due on Friday, that Iraq was not disarming as required, ``the council must face up to its responsibilities,'' he said.
The comments came one day after the United States ordered a fifth aircraft carrier to the Gulf region, where more than 110,000 U.S. troops have already gathered, and increased the terror alert level at home, warning of a high risk of attack.
In preparation for a possible invasion, warplanes participating in an American-British patrol over the ``no-fly'' zone in southern Iraq dropped 480,000 leaflets on Saturday saying the United States did not wish to harm Iraqi civilians, the U.S. military's Central Command said in a statement.
VAST ARSENAL
Citing evidence presented to the United Nations by Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had never accounted for a vast arsenal of deadly biological and chemical weapons, and was pursuing an ``elaborate campaign'' to conceal them from U.N. inspectors.
Bush, who spent the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat, accused Baghdad of ``actively and secretly'' attempting to obtain equipment needed to produce nuclear weapons, and said Iraq had at least seven mobile factories -- mounted on trucks and rails to evade discovery -- to produce biological agents.
``The Iraqi regime's violations of Security Council resolutions are evident, they are dangerous to America and the world, and they continue to this hour,'' Bush said.
Citing unidentified sources, he said the Iraqi leader had recently authorized his field commanders to use chemical weapons, and accused him of having ``long-standing, direct and continuing'' ties to terrorist networks, including al Qaeda.
He said Iraq sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda, and provided the group with training in chemical and biological weapons. In addition, he said members of a group affiliated with Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has had contacts with al Qaeda, had been operating freely in Baghdad.
Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda has been blamed by Washington for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
IRAQ SAYS IT OBEYING UNITED NATIONS
Iraq accused the Bush administration of manufacturing evidence and said Baghdad had no banned weapons. Baghdad also has said it has no ties with Zarqawi.
Bush hopes to convince balky Security Council members France, Russia and China to back U.S. war plans -- or at least not block them. But so far, they appear to be standing their ground in demanding more time for weapons inspections.
Berlusconi's office said Bush and the Italian prime minister agreed ``on the need to try every possible means to avoid a military conflict in the face of Saddam Hussein's persistent refusal to neutralize his arsenal of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.''
The statement added, ``With the aim of defending peace and security, the United States and Italy will intensify their efforts, respectively in the United Nations Security Council and the European Union.''
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said Bush and Berlusconi agreed to ``stay in touch as we move forward with the consultative process concerning Iraq.''
The leaflets dropped on Saturday over southern Iraq pointed Iraqis to frequencies of broadcasts criticizing Saddam and giving information on the U.N. Security Council resolution demanding Iraqi disarmament and U.N. arms inspections.
Another leaflet stated that ``coalition forces do not wish to harm the noble Iraqi people or destroy their landmarks, and for the civilian populace to avoid military occupied areas,'' Central Command said.
----
Rumsfeld Slams NATO Delay on Support for Turkey
Reuters
Saturday, February 8, 2003; 7:45 AM
By John Chalmers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43857-2003Feb8?language=printer
MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Saturday branded as "inexcusable" moves by France, Germany and Belgium to stall NATO planning for the protection of Turkey in the event of a war in Iraq.
Rumsfeld said if a three-week deadlock at NATO is not ended, Washington and other allies will provide defense for Turkey anyway, and NATO's credibility would suffer a severe blow.
"Turkey will not be hurt. The United States and the countries in NATO will go right ahead and do it," he told a security conference in the German city of Munich. "What will be hurt will be NATO, not Turkey."
"Turkey is an ally," he said. "To prevent defensive capabilities -- just the planning, not even deployment -- I think that is inexcusable."
NATO Secretary-General George Robertson on Thursday put the onus on the three dissenters, which have opposed any NATO war preparations as premature, to stop the clock on a decision to launch planning of limited defensive measures for Turkey.
Unless one of the countries objects before 0900 GMT on Monday, military planning will begin automatically.
Speaking in Munich after Rumsfeld, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Berlin stood by its obligations to its NATO partners but defended not wanting to push forward planning for protecting Turkey.
"We didn't want an extra build-up to be done so to speak before the decisive Security Council meeting," he said. "Otherwise the NATO secretary-general knows we are working hard to bring things forward. We have absolutely no fundamental dissent, not to speak of wanting to undermine anything."
DEEP DIVIDE
Robertson voiced confidence that the 19-nation alliance would adopt the plan early next week to prepare to send Patriot air defense missiles, early warning aircraft and anti-chemical and biological warfare units to Turkey, which borders Iraq.
Actual deployment of the systems would require a further unanimous NATO decision. Turkey would probably be a major launchpad for a U.S.-led attack on Iraq, which military experts say could come as early as next month.
France continued to insist publicly on Friday that NATO should not begin any war preparations and U.N. weapons inspectors should be allowed more time to do their work in Iraq.
Diplomats said they expected intensive talks at the Munich conference, on the sidelines of which Rumsfeld was due to hold talks with German Defense Minister Peter Struck.
But Fischer said he remained unconvinced of the case for a war against Iraq and rejected suggestions by Rumsfeld that Europe was divided on the issue, saying public opinion was firmly anti-war.
"I am not convinced. That is my problem. I cannot go to the public and say these are the reasons because I don't believe in them," he said, switching briefly from German into English.
Robertson's use of the NATO "silence procedure" -- after another bruising North Atlantic Council meeting failed to break the deadlock -- piled pressure on Paris and Berlin.
Diplomats said that if they wanted to climb down, the three dissenters could argue that the decision did not involve war preparations or military deployments but merely planning to help protect a NATO ally in case of need.
However, some said France and Germany were so angered by disparaging comments by Rumsfeld and other influential U.S. officials, and so strongly backed by public opinion, that they might well block the NATO decision.
Rumsfeld sought to play down his recent comment that France and Germany's reticence over war had sidelined them, branding them "old Europe," saying at his age "old" was a term of endearment.
But he urged Berlin and Paris to get on board: "As the old saying goes, if you're in a hole, stop digging."
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Official afraid of backlash from war
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 8, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030208-11455840.htm
Kenya, twice the site of brazen attacks by Islamic terrorists in recent times, fears it may experience a "backlash" to any U.S.-led military strike in Iraq, the country's new foreign minister said yesterday.
With the United States and Britain gearing up for war against Saddam Hussein, "our fear in Kenya is about the very possible backlash," Stephen K. Musyoka said in an interview.
"Our hope is that any attack on Iraq does not bring an escalation in the kind of international terrorism from which we have already suffered."
Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network is blamed for the August 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi that killed some 220 people and for last November's attacks on an Israeli plane and a hotel favored by Israeli tourists in Mombasa that took 16 lives.
In both cases, the large majority of the victims were Kenyans.
"When the bulls fight, it is the grass that suffers," Mr. Musyoka said, quoting an old Kenyan proverb.
Mr. Musyoka, the highest-ranking Kenyan official to visit Washington since the Dec. 27 election that swept the party of longtime Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moi from power, said he found understanding for Kenya's vulnerability in talks this week with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other senior administration officials.
U.S. military officials last month announced a new joint task force with Kenya and five other Horn of Africa countries, backed by a 900-soldier force in Djibouti, to disrupt terrorist operations in the region.
"Certainly we found U.S. leaders very aware of our situation," Mr. Musyoka said.
He said Kenya has been exploited in part because Nairobi has tried to maintain good relations with Israel, with the Arab world, and with Washington and the West.
"We want to be the Switzerland of Africa," he said.
The Bush administration and European leaders have hailed the peaceful transfer of power in Kenya and the triumph of an opposition coalition headed by one-time Moi ally Mwai Kibaki. Mr. Musyoka, who served for a time as foreign minister under President Moi in the 1990s, was one of a number of senior officials of the ruling Kenya Africa National Union (KANU) who defected to Mr. Kibaki's cause in the months before the election.
With a 125-seat majority in the 210-seat parliament, Mr. Kibaki's National Rainbow Coalition now faces steep voter expectations to bolster the economy and sagging educational and social services while attacking endemic corruption.
"We know there are a lot of eyes focused on us, in Africa and around the world," said Mr. Musyoka. "We have to demonstrate we can implement the attributes of good governance, that we can make Kenya a place where there is zero tolerance for corruption."
The foreign minister met with International Monetary Fund and World Bank officials in Washington and said his country is preparing to apply for funding from President Bush's new Millennium Challenge Accounts, an aid program designed to reward countries that institute political and corruption reforms. Analysts say Kenya's economy, which grew by less than 1 percent in 2002, needs fresh international funding to be revived this year.
Mr. Musyoka hailed President Bush's State of the Union pledge to sharply increase U.S. funding to fight HIV/AIDS. An estimated 2.2 million Kenyans have AIDS, and just a tiny fraction can afford the latest anti-viral treatments used in the West.
He said the new Kenyan government has the political support to take a more active role in regional crises, notably the instability in neighboring Sudan and Somalia. The virtual collapse of central authority in Somalia has led to a surge in smuggling and criminal activity across the poorly policed border with Kenya.
"It is one of our top foreign policy interests to restore law and order in Somalia," said Mr. Musyoka, adding that Kenya and the United States have cooperated closely in the effort.
-------- asia
Tamil Rebels Set Off Explosion
Sri Lankan Tigers Blow Up Boat, Weapons in Suicide Blast
Associated Press
Saturday, February 8, 2003; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42715-2003Feb7?language=printer
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Feb. 7 -- Three ethnic Tamil rebels blew up their boat and themselves today after they were found trying to smuggle an antiaircraft gun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition into Sri Lanka, defense officials said.
Two European peace monitors who had boarded the boat to inspect it were unharmed. Before blowing up their boat, the rebels asked the monitors to jump overboard, a military spokesman, Brig. Sanath Karunaratne, said in a statement.
The monitors, who searched the trawler this morning, found an antiaircraft gun, spare parts for the gun, two boxes of ammunition, three hand grenades and a radio communication set, Karunaratne said.
The monitors had earlier said the find was a "clear violation" of a cease-fire agreement the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam signed with the government last February. The Tigers began fighting in 1983 to create a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils. The war has killed nearly 65,000 people and displaced more than 1.6 million.
The rebels dropped a demand for a separate state last year and agreed to discuss setting up a federal system that would give them regional autonomy.
The explosion came only hours before a fifth round of peace talks started in Berlin. Norwegian mediators drafted a statement to keep the negotiations on track, blaming the explosion on an "apparent communication failure" between the rebels and their commanders.
Sri Lanka's government has repeatedly accused the rebels of smuggling arms during the cease-fire. There was no comment from the rebels.
----
In Stalin's Footsteps
By Masha Lipman
Saturday, February 8, 2003
Washington Post; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42683-2003Feb7?language=printer
In just over a decade as independent states, the various former Soviet republics have gone their separate ways so fast and so far that it's hard to believe they were once parts of the same empire.
Under Communist rule, all the constituent republics, from the Baltics to Central Asia, worked according to economic plans drafted for them in Moscow. They were governed by the same Communist nomenklatura, brainwashed with the same ideological tools, had the same school curriculum and the same schoolbooks and watched the same daily TV news at 9 p.m. -- with the secretary general of the Soviet Communist Party as the central newsmaker.
Today the three Baltic states are about to join NATO. Russia is relatively democratic. And the Central Asian state of Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic, is a totalitarian autocracy of Orwellian -- or Stalinist -- dimensions.
Turkmen President Saparmurad Niyazov, who has assumed the title of Turkmenbashi ("The Father of All Turkmen"), apparently regards himself as complete master not only of his people but also of the universe. He has renamed streets, city districts, a town, a canal and countless schools and hospitals in honor of himself. He has also given new names to three months and to six days of the week. He has closed down the Turkmen opera and ballet theater, deeming these arts to be alien to Turkmen culture. His list of achievements even includes the reinvention of human age: Youth in Turkmenistan now extends through 37, and at 61 one enters "spiritual greatness" (Niyazov is 62), which lasts for 12 years. Old age begins at 85. The Father of All Turkmen has granted his nation a "spiritual code of conduct," which he compares to the Bible and Koran. Living by this code is a moral duty of all Turkmen. Learning it is mandatory in Turkmen schools.
When a ruler assumes divine powers and undertakes to shape his own reality by giving new names to the basic elements of life, it's not long before he sets out to reshape his people as well -- an ambition that invariably results in ferocious repression. Unfortunate nations -- such as the Soviet Union and North Korea -- have learned this from experience. The lucky ones that have never been subjected to such megalomaniac experiments find it hard to see what is so obvious to us: The leader who has taken to writing epics or inventing his own philosophy of time and space is a mortal danger to his people.
In today's Russia it's not uncommon to hear people say, "It's like the year '37" -- the time when Joseph Stalin's terror killed millions of Soviet citizens. But it's only a metaphor. Vladimir Putin's Kremlin may be obsessed with taking control of political life in Russia, but fortunately it's far from succeeding. There is no fear of the state in post-Communist Russia.
In Turkmenistan, however, "the year '37" is more than metaphor. It has elements of chilling reality. Niyazov has built a brutal and isolationist totalitarian regime in his country. Any trace of political opposition has been eradicated. Torture, lawless arrests and disappearances of people are common. A free press does not exist (the Russian print media were recently barred from Turkmenistan). Internet access is strictly limited.
In late November 2002 it was reported that there had been an attempt on Niyazov's life. It proved to be a bizarre, and apparently staged, assassination scheme in which several men with automatic weapons tried to take aim at Niyazov's motorcade. Niyazov was unhurt. The evildoers were arrested.
Of course, assassinations have been repeatedly used by a variety of rulers as a pretext for campaigns of terror. One of the most well known is the murder of Leningrad Communist leader Sergei Kirov in 1934. After that killing, Stalin launched a massive extermination of much of the Communist elite, as well as of great numbers of rank-and-file Soviet people. The terror was effectively enhanced by show trials.
The aftermath of the purported attempt on Niyazov's life looks a bit like "Turkmen '37." The Father of All Turkmen promptly named the perpetrators of the hideous crime. The plotters, the nation was informed, included several high-ranking officials who had dared criticize Niyazov's regime.
Some had sensed the danger and defected, among them former foreign minister Boris Shikhmuradov. But according to some accounts, Shikhmuradov came back when he learned that his family had been arrested. A short time later he was seen making a confession on Turkmen television, looking blank-faced and speaking in an eerily even voice -- possibly the result of torture or drugs or both.
Television has lent the affair an immediacy not available to those who conducted Stalin's show trials. Shortly after Shikhmuradov's confessions, scenes of public wrath were also televised. One after one, Turkmen people have appeared on the screen demanding that the traitors be killed. They plead that the criminals be given to them so they can kill them with their own hands.
The trials were conducted quickly. Within two months of the alleged assassination attempt, 46 people had been convicted as plotters, with more to come. Shikhmuradov and several others were sentenced to life. About a month later, Niyazov placed strict limits on travel abroad.
Little concern has been raised in the world over the Turkmen show trials. In Russian intellectual circles, people shudder at the news coming from Turkmenistan, yet some admit to a perverse satisfaction: By comparison with Turkmenbashi's regime, Russia looks like an ideal democracy.
The Russian government is far too pragmatic these days to antagonize Turkmenistan's dictator and thereby threaten its ties with a country rich in natural gas. But Russia is not alone in showing indifference to the plight of Turkmen people. Since Sept. 11, 2001, interest in human rights has subsided dramatically. Except for human rights organizations, the world has expressed hardly any concern over Niyazov's regime. With Saddam Hussein picked by the United States as the epitome of evil, other villainous leaders can kill and torture their citizens undisturbed.
The writer, deputy editor of the Russian newsmagazine Ezhenedel'ny Zhurnal, writes a monthly column for The Post.
-------- australia
Howard's support of US defies public opinion
By Barbie Dutter in Sydney
08/02/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/02/08/wirq208.xml/
John Howard, Australia's prime minister, flies to Washington today to confirm his place in the coterie of leaders girding for military action against Iraq.
Mr Howard's stalwart support of American moves to disarm Saddam Hussein has caused uproar in Australia, where three-quarters of the population opposes going to war without United Nations backing. Critics have accused Mr Howard of being President George W Bush's southern hemisphere surrogate, condemning his decision to deploy 2,000 Australian troops to the Gulf without the mandate of parliament, the public or the UN.
Mr Howard has fractiously maintained that he abhors the prospect of war and hopes his whistle-stop tour next week - taking in talks with Mr Bush, the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, Tony Blair and President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia - will be a mission of peace. But he has acknowledged that his pro-US stance on Iraq is a gamble that has already dented his personal standing and could cost his government dearly.
While much of the pacifist protest has been put down to anti-American sentiment or anxiety over US unilateralism, the vast majority of Australians are clearly not persuaded that their national interest lies in attacking Saddam Hussein.
For the first time since Mr Howard's third consecutive election victory in 2001 the opposition Labour Party is surging out of the political sidelines with public opinion filling its sails. In an unprecedented move the Senate passed a no-confidence vote against a serving prime minister, censuring Mr Howard over his handling of the Iraq crisis.
"John Howard has let this nation down," said Senator Bob Brown, the leader of the Australian Greens. "He stands condemned, censured and without the confidence of the house of review, the senate in Australia." Commentators have claimed that Mr Howard is pinning his hopes on a swift, UN-sanctioned liberation of Iraq that will vindicate his position and restore his popularity at the grassroots.
In the meantime, Mr Howard has emphasised the importance of the Australia-US alliance and hinted broadly to parliament that Australia would consider joining an American-led strike even if the UN did not authorise the use of military force.
-------- colombia
Blast at Bogota Club Kills at Least 25
February 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-Explosion.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Vice President Francisco Santos on Saturday blamed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for planting the car bomb at an exclusive Bogota social club that killed at least 25 and injured more than 150.
Santos said that he ``had no doubt,'' that the FARC, Colombia's largest rebel group, was responsible for the blast which gutted the El Nogal Club, suggesting the rebels were making good on their threat to carry attacks to the capital's elite.
He blamed the rebel organization for adopting the tactics of the drug lords who plague the country as well.
``Before, what the narcoterrorists used, now they (FARC) use without any concerns of conscience,'' he said.
The bombing was the worst terrorist attack in Colombia since Pablo Escobar's Medellin drug cartel orchestrated a wave of bombings and assassinations in the 1980s and early 1990s. His organization carried out the attacks in Colombia's cities in an attempt to preven his extradition to the United States.
After Escobar was killed by police in 1993, Colombia's cities saw little of the violence that remained a staple of the countryside.
Rescue searched the wreckage of the 11-story club in northern Bogota Saturday morning, looking for the bodies of more victims.
Though officials held little hope of finding anyone alive, rescuers dug out 12-year-old Maria Camila Garcia about midday Saturday, said Attorney General Luis Camilo Osorio after touring the scene.
The girl was found between the third and fourth floors and suffered only minor injuries, Osorio said. Her uncle, Mauricio Mugno, at the scene hoping for news of her, said both her parents had been killed in the blast.
The 330-pound bomb was planted in a car in the underground parking garage. It gutted much of the fancy club that was packed Friday night.
Floors collapsed, windows were blown out and a fire burned for more than two hours before fire crews brought it under control. Scores of people stumbled from the wrecked building, many of their faces streaked with blood.
Rescue workers set up a morgue in tents outside the building. Bodies, many of them charred from the fire, were brought out on stretchers.
Family members of missing employees and patrons of the club gathered nearby, many holding pictures of their loved ones.
Jose Fernando Cadavid said his brother-in-law was in a business meeting on the 11th floor when the explosion occurred.
``From here on out, it would be a miracle if they found him alive,'' he said. ``We have looked in all the clinics and this is the last option we have.''
While no one claimed responsibility for the attack, FARC said several months ago it intended to start attacking Colombia's elite. The rebels had only recently brought their four-decade war from the countryside into the cities.
The club was one of Colombia's most exclusive, and a symbol of wealth and power. It was frequented by politicians and business executives and included restaurants, a miniature golf course, a gym and rooms for overnight guests.
The blast could be heard for miles across this capital city of 7 million.
Among those injured in the bombing were children who were to put on a ballet show at the club Friday night.
More than 40 people, including several children, were able to escape from the fifth floor, where many others died, because one of the survivors found a large plastic tube near a hole where air was coming in through the smoke.
``That's how my small children got out,'' said Luis Carlos Naranjo, explaining that his 2-year-old daughter slid down the tube on the shoulders of her nanny and his 4-year-old son escaped the same way, with the help of a waiter who was himself injured.
``The man's face was bleeding, but despite his injuries, he helped my son,'' Naranjo said. ``Some 48 people, among them six or eight children, were able to escape sliding down the tube.''
Naranjo said he was on the eighth floor during the explosion. Others had also told of escaping in the tube, apparently a piece of the building detached in the explosion.
President Alvaro Uribe visited the scene, asking for the world to stop tolerating Colombia's armed groups.
``This tragedy is the daughter of the mix of drugs and violence,'' he said. ``While many countries of the world tolerate the consumption of drugs ... the laundering of money, while they arm these violent groups, they produce tragedies like what occurred tonight in the streets of Bogota.''
``When will this end?'' asked taxi driver Jairo Alvarez, crossing himself and asking for the Virgin Mary's protection as he detoured around the charred hulk of the club.
Jorge Velandia, who works at the miniature golf course in the building, said the blast opened a hole in one of the floors and people tumbled through.
``It was a huge explosion. I thought an airplane had crashed outside,'' said Luis Moreno, who lives across the street from the club and whose apartment building's windows were shattered in the blast.
----
At least 25 die in Bogota blast
February 8, 2003
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030208-050309-9378r.htm
BOGOTA, Colombia, Feb. 8 -- Investigators in Colombia are blaming Marxist militants for a car bomb that left ripped through a multi-story club complex, killing at least 25 people and injuring more than 150 others, authorities said Saturday.
The Friday night blast, which appears to have originated in a third-floor parking lot, caught the upscale Club El Nogal building in full swing, trapping people on the upper floors. The bomb attack -- the most deadly in Colombia since clashes between government forces and drug lords in the early 1990s -- ignited a blaze that took two hours to get under control.
Emergency workers were still removing bodies Saturday. Media reports indicated a number of children were in the building at the time of the explosion, and the club is a favorite of upper-class foreigners as well as Colombians. It encompassed a swimming pool, playing courts and an art gallery as well as hotel and restaurant facilities.
No group immediately claimed responsibility but Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos blamed the far-left rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Known by its Spanish initials, FARC, the group used mortars last August to attack the presidential palace during Uribe's inauguration.
"It was a huge explosion -- I thought an airplane had crashed outside," Luis Moreno, who lives across the street from the club, told the British Broadcasting Corp.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe toured the wreckage and offered an $180,000 reward for information about who was behind the suspected terror attack. Experts in explosives from the United States were summoned for the investigation.
U.S. President George Bush extended "deepest sympathy" for the devastation Saturday and added in a statement, "We stand with the Colombian people in their fight against narcoterrorists who threaten their democratic way of life. We will offer all appropriate assistance to the Colombian government in bringing to justice the murderers responsible for this act."
-------- europe
Franco-German Plan Floated to Avert Iraq War
Reuters
Saturday, February 8, 2003
By Emma Thomasson
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45121-2003Feb8?language=printer
MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - Germany and France are working on a new plan to try to avert war in Iraq that would compel Baghdad to admit thousands of U.N. troops to enforce disarmament and tighter sanctions, a magazine said on Saturday.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he knew nothing officially of the proposal.
Germany's leading news magazine Der Spiegel said the idea had originated in the office of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Berlin and Paris had been working on the details of the initiative in secret talks since the beginning of the year.
A German government spokesman confirmed Berlin and Paris were collaborating to find a peaceful alternative to war with Iraq, but would not provide any details of the efforts.
German government sources said the initiative built on proposals made by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin this week to intensify weapons inspections in Iraq and offer French reconnaissance planes to support them.
After talks with German Defense Minister Peter Struck in Munich, Rumsfeld said he had not been officially informed of the initiative. U.S. officials said it was "extraordinary" Rumsfeld had not been told of the plan.
"I heard about it from the press. No official word. I have no knowledge of it," Rumsfeld told journalists after the meeting with Struck on the sidelines of a major security conference.
A senior U.S. official said Rumsfeld had questioned Struck on reports of the proposal to beef up inspections in Iraq and the German side had confirmed they were talking to the French but were not ready to discuss the plan with the Americans.
"We're now making the point to every Frenchman and German we find that that is not the way to have a winning hand with the United States," the official said.
Struck would only say the plan represented a "concrete proposal," but added he did not want to preempt an address by Schroeder on Iraq to the German parliament on Thursday.
OLD EUROPE STRIKES BACK
Schroeder, who has angered Washington with his opposition to any war with Iraq, would discuss the idea at the weekend with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Der Spiegel said. France would probably take over driving the initiative forward and use it as a basis for a new Security Council resolution proposal.
French and German reticence over war has infuriated Washington, prompting Rumsfeld to label them "old Europe," saying they were isolated in a continent whose center of gravity was shifting east to embrace U.S. allies in central Europe.
The French Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the proposal but French diplomatic sources confirmed Paris was discussing bolstering inspections with Security Council members. French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told the Munich conference Paris believed inspections had proved more effective than the Gulf War of 1991 in disarming Iraq, but did not rule out military action as a last resort to make Baghdad cooperate.
"That's why France has proposed reinforcing the means given to inspectors, to reinforce the number of inspectors," she said.
In an advance copy ahead of publication on Sunday, Der Spiegel said Berlin and Paris wanted to publish their proposal in the next few days before weapons inspectors in Iraq report back to the U.N. Security Council on Friday.
Initial reactions from Security Council veto-holders Russia and China and European Union president Greece were positive, the magazine said, while Pope John Paul had offered German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer support for the initiative.
U.N. PROTECTORATE
Der Spiegel said the initiative, which it said had been dubbed "Project Mirage," included the following proposals:
-- the some 150,000 U.S. troops already deployed to the Gulf should stay in place to force Baghdad to cooperate and be ready to invade if it breaches the new proposed U.N. resolution;
-- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would be forced to admit thousands of armed U.N. troops to oversee intensified weapons inspections in the whole country as well as full disarmament, creating a de facto "U.N. protectorate";
-- the number of weapons inspectors should be tripled from the current 100 operating in Iraq;
-- the no-fly zone over northern and southern Iraq should be extended to cover the whole country and French, German and U.S. reconnaissance planes should be allowed to patrol the skies;
-- a permanent U.N. coordinator of arms inspections in Iraq could be appointed;
-- sanctions should be made more focused to clamp down on oil smuggling by Iraq's neighbors and tighten export controls;
-- a special U.N. court should be established to oversee infringements of the new resolution and human rights abuses;
The magazine said the initiative could help Schroeder out of the corner he seemed to have backed himself into over Iraq, risking international isolation if he sticks to his anti-war stance but political suicide at home if he changes course.
He could sell the proposal to war-weary Germans as a last-ditch bid to avert conflict, but swing behind any military action if Baghdad failed to go along with the plan, it said, although without the involvement of German troops.
President Bush has said the United Nations must soon decide whether to back his demand that Iraq abandon its alleged chemical, biological and nuclear programs or be disarmed by force. Iraq denies having any such weapons.
(With additional reporting by Paul Carrel in Paris)
-------- iran
U.S. Met With Iranians On War
Tehran Was Asked Not to Interfere in Invasion of Iraq
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 8, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42556-2003Feb7?language=printer
Bush administration officials held a rare private meeting with Iranian envoys in Europe last month to seek a promise of humanitarian help and an assurance that the Tehran government would not interfere in military operations if the United States goes to war against Iraq, U.S. officials said yesterday.
U.S. diplomats carrying a carefully designed message also asked Iran to join search-and-rescue missions for downed U.S. air crews, officials reported. They further requested that the Iranian government deny haven to fleeing Iraqis who might try to cross into Iran and regroup against a U.S.-supported government in Baghdad.
A senior administration official said the White House hopes the Iranians "will stay out of the way" if U.S.-led forces topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in favor of a pro-Western government. U.S. and U.N. officials report that signals from Tehran have been encouraging, although the Iranian government opposes military action.
The overture to Iran, a member of what President Bush called an "axis of evil," demonstrates the extent of the administration's efforts to line up support in the Persian Gulf for an increasingly likely war against Iraq. Bush has condemned the politics of the Tehran government but is seeking its cooperation as agreements with Iraqi neighbors Turkey and Jordan fall into place.
In London this week, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said a war would have repercussions in Iran. But he said Iran is prepared to settle Iraqi refugees temporarily along its border. During the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan on Iran's northern border, Iran offered to conduct search-and-rescue missions. "Iran is basically against war and is not going to support either side," Kharrazi said.
There is no fondness in Iran for Hussein, who waged a bitter war against the country in the 1980s and allegedly used poison gas against its citizens. Yet, great ambivalence exists about the prospect of a new government next door endorsed by the United States. It has been barely a year since a U.S.-backed government took root in Afghanistan after the fall of the Islamic Taliban government.
Analysts believe Iran has an abiding interest in the outcome of any conflict in Iraq. Tehran has long supported Muslim Shiite exiles from Iraq who intend to seek power if Hussein falls. Analysts predict Iran will not take an active role during any armed conflict, but will later seek influence in heavily Shiite southern Iraq and the central government. As a U.S. official put it, "They don't want to be shut out."
In another development, the Bush administration has begun notifying U.S.-based humanitarian organizations that they will be issued licenses permitting them to work in Iran and northern Iraq. The groups will be surveying potential needs and positioning supplies in readiness for a potential conflict, said representatives of the organizations and the U.S. government.
The aid organizations have been pressing the administration for months to make it easier to acquire the licenses. They are required because of U.S. economic sanctions against Iran and Iraq. The organizations welcomed the news but expressed frustration that time appears short to develop contingency plans in a region where relatively few humanitarian groups operate.
U.S. relations with Iran, troubled since the Iranian revolution nearly 25 years ago, took a still more difficult turn when Bush grouped Iran with Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil" in January 2001. Later last year, Bush issued a statement sharply critical of Iran's conservative leadership and supportive of pro-democracy protesters.
In last month's State of the Union address, Bush said the Iranian government "represses its people, pursues weapons of mass destruction and supports terror." Yet U.S. officials concluded that Iran should not be ignored in preparations for a potential conflict along its 904-mile border with Iraq.
U.S. envoys sought a measure of help while also reassuring the Iranians that a prospective war for control of Baghdad would not target them, said a U.S. official who was briefed on last month's mission. The U.S.-Iran meeting, which involved two U.S. officials steeped in the region's politics and history, coincided with a larger gathering on the future of Afghanistan that included U.S. and Iranian delegations.
The country in which the meeting was held could not be learned. The names of the U.S. envoys were withheld from publication at the request of U.S. officials.
"We wanted to make clear to them that, just as we cooperated with them in Afghanistan, we'll cooperate with them in Iraq. We're able and willing to cooperate in Iraq," the official said. He added that the administration and the Iranians have been communicating regularly through partners in Europe and the Persian Gulf.
To solidify its pledge that it seeks a representative government elected by Iraqis, the administration has also noted its acceptance of Tehran-based Shiite Muslim leaders among the Iraqi opposition. Indeed, members of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose militias are trained by the Iranian military, were welcomed with other opposition figures to Washington last year.
Elsewhere yesterday, U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad tried to calm Kurds in northern Iraq by declaring that Turkish troops entering the region would report to a U.S. commander and would pose no threat. Kurdish groups fear Turkish forces may try to seize territory; the Turkish government worries that the Kurds may grab oil-rich zones in the north or seek political autonomy.
----
ANTI-AMERICANISM
Iranian Calls U.S. Presence Worse Than Rival's Weapons
February 8, 2003
New York Times
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/international/middleeast/08IRAN.html
TEHRAN, Feb. 7 - Former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said today that while Iraq should be disarmed, the presence of American forces in the Persian Gulf was worse than Iraq's access to weapons of mass destruction.
Speaking at the University of Tehran for the Friday Prayer sermon, an official national pulpit, Mr. Rafsanjani said: "We agree that Iraq should rid itself of weapons of mass destruction. We do not think the Baath regime of Iraq should possess weapons like long-range missiles."
But he added, "We consider the presence of the U.S. in the region worse than Saddam possessing these weapons."
The crowd responded with chants of "Death to America!"
Mr. Rafsanjani sought to portray the United States as a dangerous warmonger that threatens to use nuclear weapons to pursue its interests, and he hinted that Iran might be singled out after Iraq.
"A country that threatens to use nuclear bombs is not seeking the disarmament of Iraq," he said. "Even if it conquers Iraq and installs a ruler, it will use the same weapons against neighboring countries that Saddam did."
In an apparent reference to the American use of force against Iraq, he said, "We hope this act of madness will not take place and the region will not be put on fire."
Mr. Rafsanjani, a midlevel cleric, has always been a strong force in Iran's Islamic Republic. He is the head of the Expediency Council, a powerful oversight body that settles constitutional disputes and advises Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. Before that, Mr. Rafsanjani served for eight years as speaker of Iran's Parliament and then eight years as president.
But he was humiliated in the 2001 parliamentary elections, just grabbing the 30th of 30 seats for the city of Tehran, finishing behind 29 reformist candidates. He relinquished his seat shortly before Parliament convened.
Now Mr. Rafsanjani seems to be consolidating power once again and is much more visible on the political scene. He shares in many of the ceremonial functions of both President Mohammad Khatami and Ayatollah Khamenei. Earlier this week, for example, Chris Patten, the European Union's foreign affairs commissioner, met with Mr. Rafsanjani during a three-day tour of Iran, much to the consternation of reformists who view him with suspicion, even loathing.
Both conservative and reformist Iranian leaders have said that Iran opposes a unilateral American military attack against Iraq, but that it would not oppose decisions of the Security Council.
In Bratislava, Slovakia, today, Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, told reporters that Iran was "not going to support either side in such a battle. We believe that there is still room for diplomatic effort."
He added that there was suspicion in the Middle East that the United States had a "hidden agenda" in attacking Iraq and wanted to "reshape the whole Middle East area based on their own interests."
Iranian officials seem to be building a case against unilateral military action in part because they want to avoid the unintended consequences that could come with war. In calling on the United Nations to take the lead in disarming Iraq, Mr. Rafsanjani warned today that if the disarmament were not carried out properly, "there could be a backlash."
On Sunday, Iran's top naval officer warned that the United States would pay a heavy price if it attacked Iran. "If the United States attacks Islamic Iran, it will suffer heavy losses," Rear Adm. Abbas Mohtaj was quoted as saying in The Kayhan, a conservative newspaper. He added, "We know its weak points."
-------- iraq
France Said to Favor Peacekeepers in Iraq
By TONY CZUCZKA
Associated Press Writer
Feb 8, 2003 7:27 PM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GERMANY_FRANCE_IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Czuczka reports Germany's defense minister says the chancellor will address the topic next week. (Audio)
BERLIN (AP) -- Germany and France are working on a broad disarmament plan for Iraq designed to avoid war, including the deployment of U.N. soldiers throughout the country, reconnaissance flights and a tripling of the number of weapons inspectors, a magazine reported Saturday.
The plan could be presented to the U.N. Security Council as a resolution, the weekly Der Spiegel said, though it was unclear how the two countries or the United Nations would win Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's approval for carrying it out.
The plan would have international peacekeepers "in effect take control of the country for years," declare all of Iraq a no-fly zone and lead to agreements with Iraq's neighbors to crack down on smuggled exports of Iraqi oil as part of strengthened economic sanctions.
The German and French governments - which are opposed to a war on Iraq - have been working on the plan since the start of the year, the report said.
A German government spokesman said Germany and France are "jointly considering specific peaceful alternatives to a military solution" in Iraq. The spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, refused to comment on details of the report.
German Defense Minister Peter Struck, attending a security policy conference in Munich, said Schroeder would address the topic during a speech to parliament Thursday.
As part of intensified sanctions against Iraq, Western countries would tighten export control laws, Der Spiegel said. France would provide Mirage jets for reconnaissance flights to aid the inspectors in their search for weapons.
Some of the ideas were presented to the Security Council this week by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. He suggested tripling the number of inspectors and aiding their job with Mirage jets.
Der Spiegel said Germany and France are sounding out other critics of the U.S. approach about their plan, including Russia, China and Greece.
-------- mideast
Kuwait Builds Up Arsenal, Confidence
Emirate Aims to Avoid Replay of '91
By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 8, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42492-2003Feb7?language=printer
KUWAIT CITY, Feb. 7 -- Twelve years and more than $12 billion ago, the Kuwaiti military fled from the invading Iraqi army without a fight.
Khalid Faraj remembers well the humiliation of the moment. An officer in the Kuwaiti navy, he was at home when the call came in the middle of the night on Aug. 2, 1990. By the time he rushed to the navy's main base here to inspect the missile boats he commanded, the Iraqis had already taken over. He was arrested and taken to the Iraqi commander.
"He said to me, 'What's happened to you guys?' " In embarrassment, Faraj recalled, he told the Iraqi that the Kuwaitis were simply not prepared. "They were expecting us to fight, but we did not have an order," he recalled.
Faraj spent the next seven months in Iraqi prisons, along with about 630 other captives from Kuwait's armed forces.
"Never again" might be the new motto for Faraj and the rest of a military still struggling to overcome the memory of that day.
In the dozen years since U.S. forces liberated it from Iraq, Kuwait has used its main resource -- oil money -- to rearm and rebuild. This tiny emirate, with 2.2 million inhabitants, has become the world's biggest per capita spender on defense, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). The 10-year, $12 billion program has bought state-of-the-art American weaponry, from Patriot anti-missile batteries to F/A-18 warplanes to AH-64 Apache attack helicopters for a force estimated at 15,500 plus 23,700 in reserves.
In 1990, the Kuwaiti armed forces barely stung the invading Iraqis. The ruling Sabah family, including the defense minister, fled to Saudi Arabia at the first sign of hostilities, leaving individual officers to organize a haphazard middle-of-the-night defense.
Despite the military expenditures over the intervening decade -- and despite advance planning for a war against its main threat -- Kuwait is still not scheduled to take part in the expected U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Instead, the reborn military says its role is to defend against any retaliation or other attack against Kuwait. The credo now, said one general, is simple: "inflict maximum damage" on any invading force.
"Kuwait 2003 is not the Kuwaiti forces of 1990," said Col. Yusuf Mulla, the Defense Ministry spokesman. In the future, he vowed, "we will defend our borders to the last man."
According to international experts and independent observers here, however, Kuwait remains unable to defend the country without the thousands of U.S. troops that have guarded it since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. It may not even be prepared for the civil defense and internal security role it must play if the United States invades Iraq, they say.
Many view the heavy defense spending -- mostly to buy arms from the United States and Britain -- as an expensive thank-you to the countries that saved Kuwait, a shopping spree disproportionate to the added security such advanced weaponry can bring to a small nation.
"They've gone for the Rolls Royce approach," said Mark Stoker, a defense economist at London's IISS. "But clearly Kuwait is never going to be able to defend itself against any of its neighbors."
Even if Kuwait cannot defend itself, its leaders insist they are ready to show a skeptical population what 12 years of preparation has bought the country. Kuwait plans to deploy the military for the first time in the streets of Kuwait City as well as along the country's desert borders. "Iraq would pay a high price" if it attacked Kuwait, Defense Minister Jabir Mubarak Hamad Sabah promised last week.
The Kuwaiti military definitely has something to prove, even if its role in the coming conflict is limited to homeland defense.
"It was not a military disaster; it was a political disaster. But still there is the feeling that we failed to defend the population. Now, we have to do it," said Sami Faraj, director of the Center for Strategic Studies here, brother of Khalid and a former military officer who helped direct reconnaissance teams in Kuwait during the seven-month Iraqi occupation.
The regrouping began almost as soon as the Iraqis were driven out. Just as the U.S. military led the coalition that defeated the Iraqis, the Americans came in to oversee the rebirth of the Kuwaiti military. The goal, as Faraj put it, was to turn "an armed force into a fighting force."
"We didn't have to start again from zero," said Mulla. "We started from less than zero, because we had to clean up the damage and then build from scratch."
Only two boats from the Kuwaiti navy had escaped the invaders, because they happened to be out on regularly scheduled patrols. The story was the same with the army, which lost virtually all its weapons and equipment. Only the air force survived partially intact, flying out 70 percent of its A4 Skyhawks and Mirage F1s and, according to current and former military officers, destroying a couple dozen Iraqi planes and helicopters.
Mulla, an air force squadron commander when the Iraqis invaded, became famous for escaping with his men and their now-retired Skyhawks to Saudi Arabia. At the time, he recalled, the Kuwaiti military was a force without a mission, its ruling family on friendly terms with President Saddam Hussein's government in Baghdad.
"Before, we were training, but for what? We did not have an objective then. We were just trying to defend against an unseen, unknown enemy, but now we know," he said. "We know everything about Saddam Hussein."
Working with U.S. military experts, Kuwait launched a review of its military, trying to decide how to redesign it, then approved the purchasing program in 1992. The main question, according to retired Brig. Gen. Mohammed Sirri: "We know we're outnumbered, so how can we equip, train and coordinate to fight when the numbers are 10 to one against us?"
Sirri held up two small balls -- a soft soccer ball and a smaller, harder golf ball -- to explain the result. "Which one would you use to hit somebody?" he asked. Before, Kuwait's military was the soccer ball; now, he said, it is the golf ball.
A former leader of the Kuwaiti air force, Sirri is sanguine about Kuwait's dependence on the U.S. military for its security but said the new concept is a much more aggressive homegrown force capable of holding off an Iraqi invasion for far longer than before.
Rebuilding the Kuwaiti military was crucial not only for defense but also to keep American goodwill, he argued. "If Kuwait didn't have an army, they wouldn't come. Why defend a country that doesn't defend itself, that's not trying," he said. "It's important that they are helping somebody who deserves it, not somebody who is sleeping."
The result is a Kuwaiti force that believes in the superiority of American technology and training. Patriot missile batteries defend the skies, M-1A2 Abrams tanks patrol the desert. The air force flies in the latest F/A-18s and will soon boast a fleet of AH-64D Longbow Apache attack helicopters.
But the spending did not necessarily buy Kuwait the military strength it hoped for, according to independent observers. "To absorb such weapons you need to have a generation to train on them and integrate them," Sami Faraj said. "We bought the best weapons in the world, but they are still not yet integrated into the machinery of the armed forces."
And such high-tech armaments are not necessarily the best defense for the most urgent threats faced by Kuwait today: potential terrorists and fallout from weapons of mass destruction.
"It can come home to us in several ways -- Iraqi intelligence, al Qaeda sympathizers," said Interior Minister Mohammed Khalid Sabah. In an indication of how different this war will be, he, rather than the defense minister, will be in charge of a special command for Kuwait's civil defense.
----
US urges quick end to Hajj so it can prosecute war
Mohamed Gamal Arafa for IslamOnline
8 February 2003
UmmahNews
http://ummahnews.com/print.php?sid=1385
The Saudi authorities have decided to cut short the rituals of this year's Hajj (pilgrimage) in response to a US request to clear the peninsula of pilgrims so it can pursue a war with Iraq as soon as possible after the annual gathering.
The policy has been adopted as a "necessary" measure taken in accordance with a fatwa (religious edict) to that effect, a leading Egyptian paper reported on Saturday, February 8.
The semi-official widely-circulating daily Al-Ahram quoted the head of Egyptian delegation of pilgrims as saying that "the Saudi officials grounded their shortcut in a fatwa to the effect that pilgrims might not stay overnight in the Mina area and move directly for Arafat plain."
In the first day of the Hajj, pilgrims travel a few miles to the plain of Mina and encamp there. From Mina, pilgrims then move the following morning to the plain of Arafat where they spend the entire day in earnest supplication and devotion. That evening, the pilgrims move and encamp at Muzdalifa, which is a site between Mina and Arafat. Muslims stay overnight there offering more prayers.
According to the latest modification, the pilgrims would leave directly for Arafat, without earlier encamping in Mina.
The reported announcement raised questions whether there is an American request for an evacuation of the pilgrims amid great prospects for launching a military offensive against Iraq after Eid Al-Adha (Day of Sacrifice), an Islamic celebration marking the end of Hajj.
Meanwhile, a correspondent for German news agency Deutsche Press-Agentur (DPA) quoted a western source as saying on Wednesday, February 5, that a number of Islamic countries received American calls for precipitating the return of their nationals travelling for pilgrimage in a five day frame after the end of Hajj.
The press report, carried by the Saudi website Elaph, quoted the western source as saying that Washington made the call for "security reasons", and that Arab and foreign airliners would be used in the evacuation process.
The evacuation, the largest in history during such a short period, would come at a time when a state of emergency is declared in Arab Gulf countries in anticipation for a military campaign against Iraq.
Saudi papers made no mention of the abridgement of the Hajj rituals. Al-Watan daily only said authorities in the Islamic kingdom had taken all preparations for receiving two million pilgrims flocking to Mina for the Sunday 9 ritual.
A director with EgyptAir airlines, Rashad Rifei, said 300 flights were earmarked for the return of pilgrims from the holy land, including 180 charter flights, a step explained to add up to evacuation preparations.
But airline officials made clear that running charter flights is a normal measure in the season of pilgrimage.
According to the Fatwa section in IslamOnline, some religious schools, such as the Hanifiyyah sees the Mina ritual as a recommended act according to Islamic Law (Sharia) which can be skipped during Hajj. However, other religious schools see it as an obligation.
The Hajj consists of several ceremonies, meant to symbolize the essential concepts of the Islamic faith, and to commemorate the trials of Prophet Abraham and his family.
Over two million Muslims perform the pilgrimage annually, and the rest of the over one billion Muslims worldwide celebrate Eid Al-Adha in conjunction with the Hajj.
----
Egypt Asks U.S. for Trade Pact, Aid Boost
Possible War in Iraq Fuels Other Requests
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 8, 2003; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41886-2003Feb7?language=printer
Egypt has asked the United States for an additional aid package to defray anticipated costs of a possible war with Iraq and has renewed its appeals for a bilateral free-trade agreement.
The appeal, made by a high-level Egyptian delegation visiting Washington this week, follows similar requests in recent months by Israel, Turkey and others seeking stepped-up U.S. assistance to offset whatever contribution they might make to an Iraq war, as well as declines in tourism and exports they expect would result from upheaval in the region.
The Bush administration is still considering an Israeli appeal for $2 billion in new military assistance along with $10 billion in loan guarantees. Turkey has also requested as much as $14 billion in various forms of assistance, and Jordan is receiving more than a dozen new F-16 fighter planes.
A free-trade agreement between Jordan and the United States recently went into effect, and early talks have started on a similar agreement with Morocco. "The Egyptians have said, 'If you can do it with Jordan, why not us?' " a U.S. official said. The State Department has been pushing for consideration of a U.S.-Egypt agreement as part of its Middle East Partnership Initiative, which aims to promote both economic and political reforms, but trade officials have resisted.
Israel and Egypt are already the largest recipients of U.S. military aid. Under the Bush administration's fiscal 2004 budget proposal, Egypt would receive $1.3 billion, the same as was allocated for 2003. Egypt is also among the largest recipients of U.S. development aid.
In terms of a new aid package, Foreign Trade Minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali said the Egyptians have submitted "outlines of what a conflict with Iraq would cost us" in meetings at the White House, the State Department and with trade officials. Although no specific figure has yet been mentioned, he said, "we will be submitting a set of requests on how to address it."
Boutros-Ghali said Egypt's initial analysis indicated that once a war starts, "tourism drops the next day to zero." Tourism, he said, amounts to 10 percent to 15 percent of the country's gross domestic product and employs about 2.5 million people.
The entire Middle East has been classified by insurers as a war zone since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and subsequent war in Afghanistan, Boutros-Ghali said, and further conflict with Iraq, he said, would send insurance premiums "through the roof" on goods entering and leaving Egyptian ports and traveling through the Suez Canal and Red Sea basin.
Egypt is also one of the principal suppliers to Iraq under the United Nations-administered oil-for-food program, with exports totaling more than $5 billion a year.
The Egyptian delegation also includes Osama Baz, senior adviser to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and Gamal Mubarak, the president's son, who is head of the policy planning committee of the ruling National Democratic Party.
Asked about reports that the United States has discussed with countries in the region the possibility of creating a joint Arab force to administer Iraq after a military conflict, Baz said, "nobody has approached us" on the question. "We have been asked for certain facilities," he said, "but not for any [direct] participation." In order to consider such a proposal, he said, "we would have to be part of the whole thing. . . . informed . . . [and] consulted before starting a strike against Iraq." Right now, Baz said, "we still think there is a certain room for maneuver within the [U.N.] Security Council. War is not taken as a given or inevitable. It is something that is most likely, but not inevitable."
----
MILITANTS
Hamas Leader Tells Muslims to Retaliate if U.S. Attacks
February 8, 2003
New York Times
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/international/middleeast/08MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Feb. 7 - The spiritual leader of the Palestinian group Hamas instructed Muslims worldwide today to retaliate against "Western interests" if the United States made war on Iraq.
In an open letter released today, the Hamas leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, wrote, "Muslims should threaten Western interests and strike them everywhere." Hamas leaders had previously said they would not widen their conflict with Israel to focus on Americans and other Westerners.
Calling an attack on Iraq part of "a crusaders' war" against Islam by "the envious West and the U.S. first among them," Sheik Yassin urged, "As they fight us, we have to fight them."
Sheik Yassin also called for a boycott of products from the United States and its allies.
The letter came as Hamas was already flexing its muscles within Palestinian society, increasing longstanding tension with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and with his Fatah faction, which is less religious than Hamas.
In addition to conducting some of the most devastating suicide attacks against Israelis, Hamas has built a network of schools, health clinics and other service organizations in the West Bank and Gaza.
In some areas, particularly in Gaza, the Hamas infrastructure has come to rival that of Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority, which is staggering under Israeli pressure. In response to violence by all the Palestinian factions, Israel has repeatedly attacked buildings and security forces of the Palestinian Authority.
Leaders of Hamas are also widely viewed as less corrupt than senior Fatah officials.
Hamas, which is on the Bush administration's list of terrorist organizations, recently rejected an effort supported by Fatah leaders and Egypt to unilaterally declare a limited cease-fire in the conflict with Israel. In his letter, Sheik Yassin repeated his intention to destroy "this cancer that is called Israel."
Recently, the Palestinian Authority has taken some steps to contain Hamas violence, heightening friction between the factions, Palestinian officials and Western diplomats said.
In the northern Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority's security forces this week began cracking down on efforts by Hamas to fire crude rockets over the boundary with Israel. The move followed increasingly devastating Israeli raids in what Israel called reprisal for the rocket attacks, which have not caused any fatalities.
In comments to The Associated Press, Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader, said the group was "absolutely" in position to take over from the Palestinian Authority, "politically, financially, socially." He was quoted as saying that Hamas would take over through elections, not by force.
With the support of the Bush administration, the Israeli government has been seeking to isolate and weaken Mr. Arafat in hopes of seeing him supplanted by what it describes as moderate Palestinian leaders.
Israeli security officials say the army's pervasive presence in the West Bank and its aggressive raids in Gaza, rather than any Palestinian efforts, are for now reducing the threat to Israelis.
The Israeli police said that on Thursday night, its officers found an explosive belt for use in a suicide bombing hidden in the washroom of a mosque in the Israeli-Arab town of Taybeh. Israeli officials said the police were led to the bomb by two Islamic Jihad terrorists who were captured by the army in the West Bank on Thursday.
The two men had apparently hidden the explosive themselves, officials said.
It was the first time such a weapon had been hidden in an Israeli mosque, the police said. Taybeh's mayor, Salah Jabara, condemned the use of the mosque. He told Israel's Army Radio, "In the final analysis, bombs harm Arabs and Jews alike."
Police sappers usually destroy such devices on the spot. But in this case, the police moved the explosive out of the mosque before detonating it, said Superintendent Gil Kleiman, a police spokesman.
Israeli Arabs, who make up almost 20 percent of Israel's population, have been implicated in several Palestinian attacks. At least one suicide bombing was carried out by an Arab citizen of Israel. That violence, together with Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, has deepened the divide between Jewish and Arab citizens here.
But Superintendent Kleiman said of the involvement of Israeli Arabs in terrorism, "It's something we have to watch, but we don't think it's a phenomenon."
----
Turks unhappy with decision to allow in American troops
Saturday February 8,
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030207/1/375jc.html
Turks were unhappy with their parliament's decision to allow US forces to prepare for an attack on Iraq from their territory, but many understood their country's need to support its top ally.
"Public opinion is more than 90-percent against this war," said Ayse Kabakcioglu, a 49-year-old interpreter. "Turkey should therefore refrain from committing itself any further, even if it has to pay a heavy price."
Turkey was a "victim of American blackmail", she said, adding: "If Ankara had been able to resist the Americans' will, it would already have been done."
She said the best that could be hoped for now under under the new deal with Washington was to "buy some time" before the war by limiting the number of US troops allowed into Turkey at a time.
The decision to allow US forces into Turkey was taken during a stormy closed-door session on Thursday, when deputies who had previously spoken out against American troop deployments rallied to the government's plan to allow thousands of US military personnel to upgrade ports and airports which could be used for war.
The government is expected to ask the parliament later in the month to approve the entry of US combat troops into Turkey, which shares a 330-kilometer (204-mile) border with Iraq.
Few Turks are directly critical of their government's decision, instead suggesting that it had been forced to cooperate with its most powerful ally by its economic dependence.
The US has major influence on decisions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to which Ankara is heavily indebted.
"This government, which I support, was forced to accept America's demands," said shipowner Derya Sabaz, 37.
Ankara was not following US policy, he insisted, but "isn't strong or independent enough to resist Washington".
Cengiz Algon, who makes car parts, said Turkey was anxious to avoid the creation of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq and was therefore keen to be involved in any military intervention.
Furthermore, he said, "Turkish policy is based on its alliance with the United States, so it cannot refuse to help."
According to Algon, there is "hardly any doubt" that the parliament will approve the deployment of Turkish forces to Iraq alongside the Americans.
Thursday's vote is "already a step towards war", said 26-year-old housewife Hatice Guler, who believes Ankara "will also say yes to US troops".
A few Turks questioned Thursday's decision, however.
"Turkey has everything to lose," said 34-year-old waiter Hayati Bercinli. "As usual, Turkey will be sidelined as the US pursues its own interests -- so why help them?"
The parliament can still say "no" to further US troop deployments if the United Nations Security Council has still not taken its own decision when lawmakers debate the issue again later this month, he said.
Bercinli's 18-year-old colleague Ejder Yildirim was even more adamant.
"It's not right for a Muslim country to attack another Muslim country," he said, especially for the benefit of a "Christian country".
-------- pakistan
Extremist Groups Renew Activity in Pakistan
Support of Kashmir Militants Is at Odds With the War on Terrorism
By John Lancaster and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 8, 2003; Page A01
MURIDKE, Pakistan -- A year after President Pervez Musharraf announced a ban on Muslim extremist groups, a move hailed in Washington as a turning point for Pakistan, several of the organizations have reconstituted under different names and are once again raising money and proselytizing for jihad against India and the West, according to Pakistani officials and members of the groups.
Over the past few months, leaders of four groups banned by Musharraf have been released from house arrest or jail. One of them, Hafiz Sayeed of Lashkar-i-Taiba, has been traveling around the country to meet with supporters and whip up enthusiasm for renewed attacks on Indian forces in Kashmir, according to a top aide. Another, Azam Tariq of Sipah-i-Sahaba, serves in parliament.
Pakistani authorities have released almost all of the hundreds of militants detained after Musharraf pledged on Jan. 12, 2002, to dismantle extremist groups that he said were "bringing a bad name to our faith," according to Pakistani officials and Western diplomats. His landmark speech came as Pakistani and Indian military forces were massing along their common border, one month after an attack on India's Parliament complex by guerrillas that India alleged were supported by Pakistan.
Since Musharraf's address, however, no effort has been made to disarm the groups, Pakistani officials acknowledge, and donation boxes for the supposedly outlawed organizations have reappeared in stores, mosques and other public places.
At the same time, Pakistani officials deny that Musharraf has reneged on his commitment to curb extremist groups, noting that scores of al Qaeda operatives have been rounded up in Pakistan in recent months, frequently in cooperation with the FBI. They say the government had no choice but to release Pakistani militant leaders and their followers because courts in many cases found insufficient evidence to continue holding them.
Perhaps nowhere is Musharraf's unfinished business more visible than on the outskirts of this farming community near Lahore, where a group called Jamaat ul-Dawa -- the religious and political affiliate to Lashkar-i-Taiba and now its apparent successor -- occupies a sprawling, 190-acre compound protected by barbed wire and bearded men with Kalashnikov assault rifles.
Though spokesmen for the organization say it has nothing to do with violence, the group continues to churn out books and periodicals preaching the virtues of jihad, or holy war, in Kashmir, Chechnya, the Middle East and elsewhere.
Sayeed, who founded Lashkar-i-Taiba in the early 1990s and now runs Jamaat ul-Dawa, said in a telephone interview last week that his organization remains dedicated to the armed struggle against Indian forces in Kashmir. Since Muslim Pakistan and Hindu-majority India were carved out of British-ruled India in 1947, each has claimed Kashmir as its own. The two countries' military forces occupy separate portions of Kashmir, and Muslims in the Indian portion have been waging an insurrection with Pakistani support since 1989.
Sayeed said he does not recognize Musharraf's pledge last spring to "permanently" end militant crossings of the Line of Control dividing Indian and Pakistani Kashmir. "Despite my detention here, jihad didn't stop even for one day in Kashmir throughout last year," Sayeed said, asserting that about 1,000 of his supporters have "embraced martyrdom" in Kashmir in the past two years. "India should believe me that it is beyond General Musharraf to blow a whistle and stop the jihad in Kashmir."
Another hard-line group banned by Musharraf, Jaish-i-Muhammad, is reorganizing under the name of al-Furqan, according to officials with the group.
The reemergence of "jihadi groups," several of which have been linked to the Taliban and al Qaeda, has caused deep concern among Western diplomats. They say it holds the potential for renewed confrontation between Pakistan and India, both of which possess nuclear arms and nearly went to war last spring, and calls into question the depth of Musharraf's commitment to the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
In that regard, the groups' reappearance is further evidence of the shift that has occurred in the country since hard-line religious parties opposed to Pakistan's cooperation with the United States staged an unexpectedly strong showing in national and provincial elections last fall.
"At one point I think [the government was] very seriously committed to reining them in," said a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Now I think that commitment has probably flagged."
Last month, American frustration with Musharraf flared into the open when the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Nancy Powell, during a speech to businessmen in Karachi, called on the government to fulfill its pledges to "end the use of Pakistan as a platform for terrorism." Although U.S. officials subsequently played down its significance, the remark caused an uproar in Pakistan, whose government is unaccustomed to such blunt talk from Washington's envoy.
"There was a total feeling of unacceptance of what she had said," Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, Musharraf's spokesman, said in an interview. "The president has said that Pakistan will not be used [by militant groups], and the Pakistani army is not allowing any movement across the Line of Control."
By most accounts, the militants are not operating as freely as they did in the past, when they openly campaigned for funds and recruits and celebrated the "martyrdom" of slain fighters at mass rallies. And Musharraf seems to have taken a hard line toward groups involved in sectarian violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, regarding them as a serious threat to internal stability, diplomats and analysts say.
From all indications, however, the government still maintains a lenient attitude toward groups focused on the Kashmir conflict, such as Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad. Trained and supplied by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, these organizations have long been regarded as an instrument of state policy. The government has used them to "bleed" India, with its vastly larger military, as a means of applying pressure for a negotiated settlement of the Kashmir issue.
"I don't think they're terrorists," said a senior military intelligence officer who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Anyone who has a beard -- just put an al Qaeda stamp on him. You have got to be slightly more realistic. We are talking about our own people."
But Pakistan's long-standing support for those it considers "freedom fighters" in Kasmhir has proved increasingly difficult to reconcile with the U.S.-led global war on terrorism. Indian officials regularly argue to their U.S. counterparts that Pakistan is on the wrong side of that war. While Lashkar-i-Taiba, for example, concentrates its military operations on Indian security forces, it has also been blamed for attacks that killed civilians, including the December 2001 assault on the grounds of the Indian Parliament.
Equally alarming to the West and to moderate Pakistanis, some Lashkar-i-Taiba fighters trained in Afghanistan during the Taliban era, and their leader, Sayeed, have professed admiration for Osama bin Laden. For those reasons, President Bush cheered Musharraf's ban on such groups, welcoming his "firm decision to stand against terrorism and extremism and his commitment to the principle that no person or organization will be allowed to indulge in terror as a means to further its cause."
But progress has been spotty at best. Though guerrilla incursions into India were curtailed early last year, pressure on the groups eased in the spring. In May, militants attacked an Indian army camp in Kashmir, killing 34 people, most of them women and children.
The incident brought the two countries to the brink of war, a crisis that was defused only when Musharraf, under intense U.S. pressure, pledged to "permanently" end infiltrations across the Line of Control. American and Indian officials say incursions dropped sharply in June and early July, but U.S. officials now concur with the Indian assessment that they have resumed.
The government has also allowed considerable latitude for militant leaders who were supposed to have been reined in. Even during their detention, for example, Sayeed and two other militant leaders -- Masood Azhar of Jaish-i-Muhammad and Fazlul Rahman Khalil of Harkat ul-Mujaheddin -- stayed in ISI safe houses, where they were permitted visitors and the use of cell phones, according to statements filed by their relatives in court proceedings related to their cases.
The militant leaders were held under a loosely defined "maintenance of public order" law. Human rights groups urged that they be prosecuted under laws barring private groups from conducting military training and operating private armies. But none was ever charged, and courts ordered their release. They moved home a few weeks before they were officially set free.
While Musharraf has by most accounts taken a hard line toward militant groups associated with sectarian killings in Pakistan, there are exceptions: The leader of one such group, Azam Tariq of the banned Sipah-i-Sahaba movement, was allowed to run for parliament from his jail cell. He has since been released and was recently a guest at the wedding of the daughter of one of Musharraf's top aides, according to Pakistani press reports.
Pakistani officials insist that the groups face more restrictions than they did in the past, especially in the area of recruitment. Before Musharraf's speech, for example, Pakistan's Interior Ministry had estimated that at least 5,000 Pakistanis trained in guerrilla warfare were registered with five key militant groups in Pakistan. But over the past year, said a senior Interior Ministry official in Islamabad, there has been little or no recruitment.
But that too may be changing. In the two months since he was released, Sayeed, the Lashkar-i-Taiba founder, has addressed about 100 gatherings around the country to "educate people about the virtues of jihad," according to an aide who spoke on condition of anonymity.
At the entrance to the group's headquarters in Lahore the other day, a clear plastic donation box was plainly visible. Filled with crumpled rupee notes, it invited contributions for jihad in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and Kashmir.
An official at the headquarters, who declined to give his full name, said he saw nothing unusual in the appeal. "We will help anybody in the world who is helping jihad," he said.
Khan reported from Karachi.
-------- spies
Two panels to monitor Pentagon's spy project
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 8, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20032825814.htm
The Pentagon announced yesterday the creation of two boards to oversee an experimental anti-terrorism program designed to snoop on financial transactions.
The Bush administration hopes the dual committees, one internal and one an outside advisory panel, will blunt fierce attacks from Democrats and Republicans alike of Total Information Awareness. Critics say activating TIA will mark a massive government intrusion into the private lives of citizens.
"What we´re talking about is to give myself and the Department of Defense one more degree of confidence that we´re doing the right thing with the project," said Edward Aldridge, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.
The Senate last month unanimously passed an amendment to the 2003 omnibus spending bill that blocks funding for TIA until the Pentagon assures that there will be no privacy violations.
"We´re working with the Congress on their amendment," said Mr. Aldridge, who will be chairman of the internal committee. "We think we can probably come to a compromise that is acceptable to us."
TIA is trying to develop computer software that can analyze millions of financial and visa transactions, such as airline-ticket purchases and car rentals, and identify a pattern unique to international terrorists. Advocates say such a program could stop terrorists and save lives.
The September 11 terrorists, for example, completed hundreds of transactions to prepare to hijack four airliners and fly them into targets in New York and Washington.
But privacy advocates say such snooping would violate constitutional protections. Some want the Bush administration to cancel TIA, which is overseen by retired Navy Vice Adm. John Poindexter, a figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Instead, the Pentagon is setting up two boards. One, inside the Defense Department comprising senior civilian officials, will establish policies on how any TIA technologies would be transferred to law enforcement or intelligence agencies for their use.
The second, a federal advisory committee, has been appointed to advise Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on how TIA proposals mesh with privacy laws.
The latter committee´s members are Newton Minow, director of the Annenberg Washington program and the Annenberg professor of communications law and policy at Northwestern University, as chairman; civil rights lawyer Floyd Abrams; corporate lawyer Zoe Baird, director of the Markel Foundation; Griffin Bell, former U.S. attorney general and appeals court judge; Gerhard Casper, president emeritus of Stanford University; William Coleman, former chairman and chief executive of BEA Systems Inc. applications and infrastructure company; and Lloyd Cutler, former White House counsel.
Mr. Aldridge yesterday refused to either commend or criticize TIA, which is under the Pentagon´s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
"I really don´t want to debate the merits of TIA," he said at a Pentagon news conference.
Adm. Poindexter has given several speeches on TIA but refused press interviews. The Pentagon issued its first statement yesterday defending Adm. Poindexter´s research.
"TIA does not plan to create a gigantic database," the Pentagon said. "Further, TIA has not ever collected or gathered and is not now collecting or gathering any intelligence information. This is and will continue to be the responsibility of the U.S. foreign intelligence/counterintelligence agencies, which operate under various legal and policy restrictions with congressional oversight."
Adm. Poindexter is spending $10 million in this year´s defense budget on TIA that was already approved by Congress. President Bush has asked lawmakers to double the amount to $20 million in fiscal 2004.
A TIA spokeswoman has said that if the program develops usable software, it will transfer the technology to agencies that then must abide by federal privacy laws. TIA is using fabricated data to test the software.
Mr. Aldridge said his committee will ensure that "if the technology is, in fact, successful we´ve got the right protocols to transfer that with all the necessary provisions of privacy and things that give us the confidence, supplemented by the external board, which will also review this, and to give us additional confidence that we´re doing the right thing."
Ralph G. Neas, president of the liberal People for the American Way, said Congress should still enact the Senate´s amendment.
"This administration´s flagrant willingness to trample on citizens´ civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism should make us skeptical of relying on the administration to police itself," Mr. Neas said.
"The decision to create Pentagon oversight boards is a welcome recognition that there are serious privacy concerns with the Total Information Awareness program. But advisory boards cannot be considered a substitute for real congressional oversight."
-------- un
Iraq: Blair seeks new 'fig-leaf' resolution to avert French veto
By David Usborne in New York, John Lichfield, Paul Waugh and Anne Penketh
08 February 2003
Independent Digital (UK)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=376445
An anxious Tony Blair and George Bush were pushing for a new "fig-leaf" United Nations resolution last night to avert a French veto and clear the way for war on Iraq.
Senior diplomats told The Independent that the planned resolution would lay down a brief deadline for Saddam Hussein to co-operate fully with UN demands but would fall short of providing an explicit authorisation of force.
President Bush would push for a "serious, effective and acceptable" UN resolution, his spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said. The price of securing UN unity and thereby persuading sceptical public opinion throughout Europe and America to back the war was to opt for such a watered-down approach, diplomatic sources said. The news came as Jacques Chirac, the French President, raised the stakes by hinting that his country would use its Security Council veto to block a war.
Mr Blair faces the risk of cabinet resignations, a lasting split in the Labour Party and widespread public opposition if he backs military action without a second UN resolution. He clearly hopes the new strategy will achieve UN unity and overcome public scepticism.
The Prime Minister told BBC2's Newsnight this week he would get public opinion behind him if there were such a resolution. "I think if there's not [a new resolution] then there's a lot of persuading to do," he said.
The most recent opinion poll by YouGov/ITV News, conducted after Colin Powell's address on Wednesday, found 59 per cent of Britons would only support war if it was approved by the UN. Only 18 per cent would support action without a UN mandate.
The first drafts are being put together in London. The proposed resolution would say the regime of President Saddam was, once more, in "material breach" of obligations to disarm and co-operate with inspectors but would stop short of explicitly authorising military force.
It may be tabled soon after 14 February, when Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector, is to make a new report to the Council. Such a formula is seen as offering the best possible chance of averting a French veto of a second Iraq resolution. But the tactic may backfire, provoking Paris to dig in its heels, as it will be seen as a transparent manoeuvre to give UN cover for war without specific Security Council authorisation of military action.
British officials stressed last night the effect of declaring Iraq in "material breach" would be exactly the same, in legal terms, as authorising force. "If you say Iraq is in material breach, that is authorisation for the use of force," one official in New York said. "It amounts to the same thing."
London may be gambling that France and other countries hesitant about the military option would be ready to swallow a second resolution if its provisions did not spell out that the Council was authorising a military response. "It might make some on the Council who are squeamish about the words more able to support it," the official said. "But of course they understand the legalities and know perfectly well that if material breach is declared, that means there is a green light for use of force."
Sources close to President Chirac said France would veto a UN resolution approving military action in Iraq if faced with the choice today. The veto threat would be lifted only if France saw an "imminent danger" from Iraq, sources told the newspaper Le Monde.
M. Chirac told Mr Bush on the telephone last night: "We can disarm Saddam Hussein without going to war." In separate comments to reporters, he said "an alternative to war" still existed and called on Iraq to "accept its responsibilities" and co-operate more activelywith weapons inspectors.
Igor Ivanov, the Russian Foreign Minister, also underscored the rift in the Security Council by insisting it was too early for a second resolution and a diplomatic solution with Iraq should be sought.
The split among the Council's five permanent members, who have power of veto, is all the more damaging because it coincides with a visit by the UN weapons inspectors to Baghdad. Mr Blix sought reassurances that the 15-member Council was united before he left New York. Mr Bush tried to turn up the pressure, saying: "This is defining moment for the Security Council. If the Council were to allow a dictator to lie and deceive, the Council will be weak."
----
France and China Rebuff Bush on Support for Early Iraq War
February 8, 2003
New York Times
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/international/middleeast/08IRAQ.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 - The leaders of France and China rebuffed efforts by President Bush today to line up support for the use of force against Iraq within the next month or two. Their continuing resistance made clear the difficulty the White House faces in its attempt to win explicit new authorization from the United Nations Security Council for military action.
A day after he said he was open to pursuing a new Council resolution, Mr. Bush said that the 15-member Security Council would have to decide soon and that he was confident it would uphold "to the fullest" its previous demands that Saddam Hussein's government disarm.
But after phone conversations with Mr. Bush today, President Jacques Chirac of France and President Jiang Zemin of China both signaled that they wanted United Nations weapons inspections to continue for some time before they would support war. The French ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, told reporters here that by his nation's count, there were 10 or 11 Security Council members in favor of giving the inspectors more time.
The administration showed no signs of deviating from its timetable of forcing a showdown within "weeks, not months," as Mr. Bush put it last week. But British and American diplomats began considering language and options for a new United Nations resolution, while the military buildup in the region continued, with the Pentagon sending a fifth aircraft carrier, the Kitty Hawk, to the Persian Gulf.
During a visit to American forces based at Aviano Air Force Base in Italy, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the length of any war was unknowable, but then went on to estimate that it could be "six days, six weeks, I doubt six months."
On a day when the administration put the United States on high alert for terrorist attacks, the State Department issued further travel warnings for Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Israel. It also authorized the voluntary departure of dependents and nonemergency personnel at the United States embassies in those countries at government expense.
Administration officials said their efforts to line up international support for Mr. Bush's hard line against Mr. Hussein were benefiting from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's presentation to the Security Council on Wednesday of previously classified evidence against Iraq.
But Iraqi officials, continuing a counteroffensive against the American claims, showed reporters a ballistic missile site 50 miles west of Baghdad that had been singled out by Mr. Powell. They sought to prove that features of the site Mr. Powell had presented as ominous had more benign explanations.
In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government was forced to acknowledge that it had lifted parts of its most recent Iraq report from magazines and academic journals.
In Moscow, the Russian foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, said the crisis had entered a "very crucial phase," and urged Iraq to cooperate more actively with the weapons inspectors. But he said his government continued to believe that the matter could be resolved with "political tools" rather than military action.
At the White House, officials said Mr. Bush and his aides intended to spend the next two weeks focusing on diplomacy to bring together as broad and united an international front as possible for moving militarily against Iraq. But mindful of the potential political costs to the president of appearing wholly focused on foreign policy at a time of domestic economic weakness, they said Mr. Bush and his top aides would simultaneously undertake a public relations campaign in favor of the president's tax cut proposals.
Speaking to reporters outside the Treasury Department, Mr. Bush challenged the Security Council to follow up on the resolution it adopted unanimously in November, No. 1441, with another resolution calling for the use of force if Iraq continues to obstruct the inspections.
"This is a defining moment for the U.N. Security Council," he said. "If the Security Council were to allow a dictator to lie and deceive, the Security Council will be weakened."
Mr. Bush went on to say that "the U.N. Security Council's got to make up its mind, soon, as to whether or not its words mean anything." But he then restated his position that Resolution 1441 provided him with all the authorization he needed to take military action in any case.
"I have said that if Saddam Hussein does not disarm, we will lead a coalition to disarm him," he said. "And I mean it."
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said the diplomatic process of seeking support for a new resolution and trying to reach agreement on the specific language "is now just beginning," and he suggested that there was flexibility in the administration's position about how the resolution might read.
"What you are seeing here is a serious diplomatic effort under way, and it's going to continue," Mr. Fleischer said. He said the opinions of other world leaders would matter to Mr. Bush. "But make no mistake," he said. "He will also lead."
If his efforts at diplomacy today were any indication, Mr. Bush faces a difficult selling job with France and China, both of which can veto Security Council resolutions.
After Mr. Jiang's 20-minute phone call with Mr. Bush this morning, the official Chinese news agency said Mr. Jiang had pointed out "that the two U.N. weapons inspections organizations in Iraq had made some progress" and that "support should be given to the two U.N. organizations in the strengthening of the weapons inspections."
Mr. Jiang had spoken earlier in the day to Mr. Chirac, pledging support for continued weapons inspections and telling the French leader that all efforts should be made to avoid a war, Chinese news agencies said.
Even before Mr. Bush spoke to Mr. Chirac, French officials made clear that they would resist Mr. Bush's pressure. A day after Mr. Bush said, "the game is over," Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin told reporters during a trip to New Delhi: "It's not a game. It's not over."
Speaking in Paris today, Mr. Chirac said, "France considers that in between the inspection arrangements as they exist now and war, there are many, many ways to disarm Iraq. We have still not gone to the end - far from it."
After the call between Mr. Bush and Mr. Chirac, a French official said it was an "excellent conversation" that nonetheless did not produce a meeting of minds. Both leaders said they would agree to disagree, this official said, adding that Mr. Chirac said, "We respect the American position."
According to the official, Mr. Chirac spent part of the call simply explaining the French position to Mr. Bush, saying it was best that each side understood the other's position.
France's position continued today to be that it would not rule out backing a resolution authorizing force against Iraq, but only when it became clear that the inspections process would no longer work.
"Let's wait for the report of the inspectors," Ambassador Levitte said, referring to the report next Friday. He said that if they said they were at a "dead end," a decision on using force would be discussed.
Mr. Levitte said the French view on this was supported by 10 or 11 members of the Security Council, enough to block a resolution. But American diplomats said they thought that they had a good chance of getting the nine votes necessary to adopt a resolution, with the possibility that France, Russia and China might go along or at least not exercise their veto.
Mr. Fleischer said the administration's goal was not necessarily another unanimous Council vote. "Nobody has said that that is a standard that must be set," he said, noting that Germany, a Council member, is strongly opposed to a war.
-------- us
Boards to Monitor Surveillance Program
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 8, 2003; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42371-2003Feb7?language=printer
The Pentagon plans to create an oversight board and outside advisory committee to track the activity of a global data-surveillance research program, following complaints from some lawmakers and civil liberties activists that the program poses a new privacy threat to Americans, officials said yesterday.
The move follows growing criticism of the Total Information Awareness project, a program begun a year ago by former national security adviser John M. Poindexter, as part of a broad push by the government to deploy data-surveillance and profiling technology in the war on terrorism.
Two weeks ago, the Senate unanimously approved an amendment to its omnibus spending bill that would cut off funding for research and development for Poindexter's initiative unless the Defense Department explained the program's aims and its potential impact on privacy. The House must also approve the measure for it to take effect.
Under the plan announced yesterday, an internal oversight board would track development of the surveillance technology for "real world use," and it would create policies to ensure that it does not violate privacy laws and rules. The outside board, including civil liberties and legal specialists, will advise the defense secretary on the social and legal implications of the new surveillance technology. Among those on the board is civil rights lawyer Floyd Abrams and former U.S. attorney general Griffin Bell.
The department said in a statement that its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where the TIA program is based, "is continuing its research into whether advanced technologies can be used to help identify terrorist planning activities. . . . While the research to date is promising, TIA is still only a concept." Edward C. "Pete" Aldrich Jr., the undersecretary in charge of department acquisition, said he hopes the effort will head off tougher restrictions by Congress.
Critics praised the boards' creation but said Congress needs to maintain close watch and control over the project, which has become the focus of unease about an array of government initiatives that rely on new legal authorities and powerful computers, databases and other technology to track and profile individuals.
"We're talking about a program that would undermine the core American value of privacy," said Katie Corrigan, legislative counsel at the Washington national office of the American Civil Liberties Union, which recently teamed up with conservative groups such as the Free Congress Foundation to oppose Poindexter's program.
The TIA plans call for development of technology that would enable analysts and computer software to sift through "ultra-large" data warehouses and networked computers to discern threatening patterns among everyday transactions, such as credit card purchases, travel reservations, e-mail and unusual medical care, such as that indicating the effects of biological weapons.
In an interview last fall, Poindexter said much of the data would be collected through computer "appliances" -- some mixture of hardware and software -- that would, with permission of governments and businesses, enable intelligence agencies to routinely extract information. Poindexter said he understands the privacy implications but said it is up to Congress and policymakers to define how the emerging technology is used.
-------- propaganda wars
INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENT
Britain Admits That Much of Its Report on Iraq Came From Magazines
February 8, 2003
New York Times
By SARAH LYALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/international/europe/08BRIT.html
LONDON, Feb. 7 - The British government admitted today that large sections of its most recent report on Iraq, praised by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as "a fine paper" in his speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, had been lifted from magazines and academic journals.
But while acknowledging that the 19-page report was indeed a "pull-together of a variety of sources," a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair defended it as "solid" and "accurate."
The document, "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation," was posted on No. 10 Downing Street's Web site on Monday. It was depicted as an up-to-date and unsettling assessment by the British intelligence services of Iraq's security apparatus and its efforts to hide its activities from weapons inspectors and to resist international efforts to force it to disarm.
But much of the material actually came, sometimes verbatim, from several nonsecret published articles, according to critics of the government's policy who have studied the documents. These include an article published in the Middle East Review of International Affairs in September 2002, as well as three articles from Jane's Intelligence Review, two of them published in the summer of 1997 and one in November 2002.
In some cases, the critics said, parts of the articles - or of summaries posted on the Internet - were paraphrased in the report. In other cases, they were plagiarized - to the extent that even spelling and punctuation errors in the originals were reproduced.
The Blair government did not deny that any of this had happened. But its spokesman insisted today that the government believed "the text as published to be accurate" and that the document had been published because "we wanted to show people not only the kind of regime we were dealing with, but also how Saddam Hussein had pursued a policy of deliberate deception."
He added: "In retrospect, we should, to clear up any confusion, have acknowledged which bits came from public sources and which bits came from other sources." He said the document had been written by government officials and drawn from "a number of sources, including intelligence sources."
"The overall objective was to give the full picture without compromising intelligence sources," he said.
But critics of the government said that not only did the document appear to have been largely cut and pasted together, but also that the articles it relied on were based on information that is, by now, obsolete.
For instance, the second section of the three-part report, which is described on the Downing Street Web site as providing "up-to-date details of Iraq's network of intelligence and security," was drawn in large part from "Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network: a Guide," an article about the activities of Iraqi intelligence in Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, which appeared in the Middle East Review of International Affairs last September. Its author was Ibrahim al-Marashi, a postgraduate student at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.
Mr. Marashi told Channel 4 News, which first reported the plagiarism charges, that his research had been drawn primarily from two huge sets of documents: "one taken from Kurdish rebels in the north of Iraq - around four million documents - as well as 300,000 documents left by Iraqi security services in Kuwait." He also said that while he had no reason to doubt the truth of anything he had written and believed the government report to be accurate, no one had asked permission or informed him about using his work.
"I am surprised, flattered as well, that this information got used in a U.K. government dossier," Mr. Marashi said in an interview with Reuters. "Had they consulted me, I could have provided them with more updated information."
Dr. Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Cambridge University who has compared the British report with the articles it used as sources, said that in some cases, the authors apparently changed phrases from the original articles to make the case against Iraq seem more extreme.
For instance, Dr. Rangwala said, a section on the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi directorate of general intelligence, appeared to have been lifted verbatim from Mr. Marashi's article, except for a few tweaks. Where Mr. Marashi mentions that the Mukhabarat's responsibilities include "monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq," the government document speaks of "spying on foreign embassies in Iraq." Mr. Marashi's description of the Mukhabarat's role in "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes" becomes "supporting terrorist organizations in hostile regimes."
Critics of the British and American policy toward Iraq said the report showed how little concrete evidence the two governments actually have against Iraq, as well as how poor their intelligence sources were.
"Both governments seem so desperate to create a pretext to attack Iraq that they are willing to say anything," said Nathaniel Hurd, a consultant on Iraq and a critic of the American position. "This U.K. dossier, which deceptively uses outdated material and plagiarizes, is just the latest example of official dishonesty."
Opposition politicians here attacked the report as the deceptive work of a bumbling government clutching at straws as it tries to make a case for war.
"This is the intelligence equivalent of being caught stealing the spoons," said Menzies Campbell, the foreign affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats. "The dossier may not amount to much, but this is a considerable embarrassment for a government trying still to make a case for war."
Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative Party's shadow defense secretary, said the government had not satisfactorily addressed the concerns raised by the disclosures.
"The government's reaction utterly fails to explain, deny or excuse the allegations," Mr. Jenkin said. "The document has been cited by the prime minister and Colin Powell as the basis for a possible war. Who is responsible for such an incredible failure of judgment?"
----
Myths of the 'War on Terrorism'
By Pip Wilson
Researched by Jeannine Wilson and Pip Wilson
SF IndyMedia Pip Wilson, 2003
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/02/1571186.php
May be forwarded or reproduced in not-for-profit ways, in its entirety - in fact I encourage it (and fast!), but only reprinted commercially with the written permission of Pip Wilson, Wilson's Almanac, http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com
Introduction
Do you sometimes feel that we are not being told everything by those who are leading us all into war? Do you feel that perhaps we are even being told lies?
I'm reminded of Detective Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) in the 1960 thriller, Psycho. Faced with conundrums aplenty, he says, "If it doesn't gel, it ain't aspic. And this ain't gelling". That's how this feels.
Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein might be guilty as hell. All I know is that the week the Enron scandal broke in the USA was the week that Bush turned his attention from the former to the latter, and it seems that the media followed like a pack of hounds. It sure ain't aspic.
I felt it necessary to jot down some of the things that don't gel for me. I do not pretend to have the answers. I'm just glad I have some questions, because our media seem to have fallen strangely dumb.
Skip myths, on to 'What can I do?'
Myth: War is the only way to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
Comment: War is always a sign of a failure of human imagination and a loss o faith in human ingenuity. It should not just be the course of last resort, but the course of absolute last resort. On the whole, the global community has not been persuaded that all options have been tried. War is futile. "War is a vestige of our common ancestry with the apes, one that we can deliberately shed as surely as that vestigial, unnecessary organ, the appendix. But we need to be seriously dedicated to the task, and we need to commit serious resources to it." [2]
There are still many things that could be tried; let us consider one that, while imaginative, is not fanciful. A sum of money equivalent to the US military budget (approximately one trillion dollars), could be applied to an international quest for solutions to this particular problem (which might end up costing more than a trillion dollars and let loose weapons that might kill and maim hundreds of thousands of people). Only the most cynical of people could be sure that the certainty of such a quest's failure would outweigh the enormity of its alternative. We do not teach our children to bully, but to reason, for we know that reason and not playground fights are to the advantage of all.
Imagine for a moment how effective a reward one trillion dollars would be for Saddam Hussein to be delivered to an international court. Such a concept is outside the purview of politicians who think in obsolete modes.
Weapons of mass destruction are more likely to be eliminated by negotiations, containment and treaties than by their use, as history has shown. The Soviet Union was not brought undone by nuking Moscow, but by these methods. Regrettably, on several occasions recently, US administration officials have publicly indicated that nuclear weapons might be used against Iraq. Such an unthinkable action would not only release toxins into the air we all breathe, it would also be similar to provoking a hornet's nest with a stick, and much more terrorism can be expected. The most elementary mind can see that almost no conceivable circumstance on Planet Earth could justify the use of nuclear weapons, which have been roundly condemned by so many of the great thinkers of the last few decades, including many scientists who helped create them. We must let our politicians know that nuclear war talk is entirely unacceptable to humanity.
Myth: In the Gulf War of 1991, the Iraqi people were largely protected because America used 'smart bombs' that hit buildings and similar military targets accurately
Comment: That is how the media presented it to us, as they were managed very carefully by the US military and its public relations machine, as the George Bush Sr administration intended not to have another situation like Vietnam in which the American voters became affected by negative reporting of that war.
In fact, 70 per cent of the 88,500 tons of bombs dropped on Iraq and Kuwait - the equivalent of more than seven Hiroshimas - completely missed their targets, falling on civilian populations.[3]
Estimates of the numbers of people (men, women and children) killed by the coalition forces are generally in the hundreds of thousands. The lowest would seem to be General 'Stormin'' Norman Schwarzkopf's 100,000.[4]
According to a UN World Health Organization (WHO) report[5], as many as half a million civilian casualties are to be expected in the invasion of Iraq now being planned.[6]
Non-governmental agencies, such as Oxfam[7], dealing with the tragic humanitarian crisis[8] caused in Iraq by the Western sanctions[9], report similar projections for human misery should Iraq be invaded.
Myth: At least not many Western coalition soldiers suffered in the war
Comment: "As of May 2002, the Gulf War casualties include 8,306 veterans dead and 159,705 veterans injured or ill as a consequence of wartime service to our nation.[10] The official May 2002 Department of Veteran Affairs report classifies 168,011 individuals as 'disabled veterans'. That reflects a staggering casualty rate of 29.3 per cent for combat-related duties between 1990 and 1991." Doctor Doug Rokke, quoting US government figures.[11]
Myth: The war in Afghanistan produced few casualties
Comment: Casualties were not low by any stretch of the imagination, and number in the thousands of innocent civilians - an estimated 2.6 civilians per ten tons of bombs[12]. More information is coming to hand all the time.[13]
Myth: The coalition forces in the Gulf War of 1991 acted honourably at all times
Comment: The Clark Commission, which investigated the Gulf war, chaired by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark[14], heard how US pilots massacred thousands of Palestinians, Bangladeshis, Sudanese, Egyptians and other nationals towards the end of the war.
Myth: In the Gulf War, CNN and other news agencies told the public in the West what was going on, honestly and thoroughly
Comment: The US military, with the aid of huge transnational public relations (PR) corporations, confined journalists away from the true events of the war. The media organizations themselves were largely compliant with this manipulation, and still are today
Journalist John Pilger has written, "Unknown to journalists, in the last two days before the cease-fire, American armoured bulldozers were ruthlessly deployed, mostly at night, burying Iraqis alive in their trenches, including the wounded. Six months later New York Newsday disclosed that three brigades of the 1st Mechanised Infantry Division - 'The Big Red One' - used snow plows mounted on tanks and combat earth movers to bury thousands of Iraqi soldiers - some alive - in more than 70 miles of trenches".[15] This massacre of retreating Iraqi soldiers lives in military infamy as the 'Highway of Death'.[16]
Myth: CNN has nothing to gain by being pro-war or compliant with military PR
Comment: CNN was scarcely known in global infotainment until the Gulf War, then it was a household word almost overnight. Following are examples of CNN-related personnel whose careers and bank accounts were hugely boosted by the Gulf War: stockholders, executives, editors, chiefs-of-staff, journalists, camera crew, on-air presenters and anchor-people, and so on. A similar situation exists today: war is excellent for journalism, even when it has been co-opted by the military. CNN is notorious amongst serious journalists for its sloppy journalism and pro-aggression politics.[17]
Myth: We can trust the media to tell us the truth about the war
Comment: Media corporations - which today are huge and powerful[18] - rely on advertising, and some of their biggest advertisers have vested interests not only in Iraq, but in an Iraqi war. For example, that 'family company', Eastman Kodak, supplied Saddam Hussein with rockets, and Honeywell provided Iraq's regime with sophisticated computer equipment.[19] Other household names, like Sperry, Dupont and Unisys, to name but a few, helped armed Saddam Hussein.[20] Oil companies, aviation companies, chemical companies, vehicle companies - big advertisers - all have dirty hands over Iraq, but you have to dig for the data.[21]
I am sometimes asked, "Why do we not hear these things of which you speak?" When almost all of what we "hear" comes from advertising-reliant media, how can one answer this question in any way apart from raising an eyebrow?[22] US President George W Bush's January, 2003 State of the Union address, which was markedly bellicose, was a case in point. CNN's coverage was gushingly in favour of his every word. Various commentators were employed to discuss the speech, but not one of them represented a view that was against invasion of Iraq.[23]
Furthermore, the Gulf War of 1991 and the current planned war, have been media-managed by huge public relations firms as well as the US military's own huge PR machine.[24] Executives of the large PR firm, Hill & Knowlton[25] (the public relations firm hired by Citizens for a Free Kuwait, the Kuwaiti government front group that lobbied Congress for military intervention), were involved in arranging for a speech to be made by a 15-year-old girl, 'Nariyah', to the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990. To the caucus she told of being an eyewitness to babies in hospital incubators being killed by Iraqi soldiers. Even Amnesty International, normally an excellent organization, swallowed the story, which goes to show how scientific and persuasive PR is today. 'Nariyah' played a significant role in turning public opinion towards the George Bush Sr administration's war plans.
'Nariyah' turned out to be the daughter of Kuwait's Ambassador to the United States, and Congress had been conned by PR. The Congressional Human Rights Foundation was actually housed in Hill & Knowlton's Washington headquarters.[26]
Other clients of Hill & Knowlton have included Turkey and the former dictatorship of Indonesia, when both were at the height of human rights abuses.[27]
Myth: At least the Gulf War wasn't a nuclear war
Comment: The US fired an estimated 944,000 rounds of Depleted Uranium (DU) ammunition in Iraq and Kuwait. Cancer and leukemia victims are the human tragedy of this ammunition.[28]
Myth: Iraq is a big, oil-rich country that presents a threat to the west in general, and the USA in particular
Comment: Iraq does indeed have vast oil reserves. However, it is a poor nation, especially when compared to Western nations such as the USA.
The GDP of the United States is $10,082,000,000,000 ($10.82 trillion). The GDP of Iraq is $59,000,000,000 ($59 billion). The GDP of the United States is 174 times bigger than the GDP of Iraq.
The population of the United States is 280,562,489. The population of Iraq is 24,001,816. The United States has 11.7 times more people than Iraq.[29]
Myth: This surely isn't about oil; America has plenty of its own
Comment: America produces about 8 million barrels of oil a day[30], but consumes about 20 million barrels a day. Because of its citizens' consumer lifestyle, just one country of 190 causing more than 25 per cent of the world's oil consumption, it is dependent upon 12 million barrels per day from outside its own borders, and increasingly so.[31] The Bush administration is attempting to allow oil wells in National Park wilderness in Alaska[32], but public and political opposition to this, on the grounds of protecting the environment, has been great, so Alaskan oil is an unreliable possibility for future consumption.
The Chairman of British Petroleum (BP) recently in public bemoaned the fact that in a post-invasion Iraq, the spoils would go to America, and BP and other corporations would be disadvantaged.
War will be profitable to some rich people in your neighbourhood, as in mine. Oil is at the heart of it, as we in the West are addicted to it.[33]
Myth: Iraq is a major nuclear threat
Comment: Even the UN weapons inspectors and Iraq's detractors agree that Iraq has not one nuclear weapon. By comparison, the USA has approximately 10,000, and numerous other countries are nuclear armed already: Russia, India, Pakistan, France, Great Britain and Ariel Sharon's[34] Israel being examples.
The United States is the only country in world history to have used nuclear weapons. Senior US administration officials have stated that they are considering the use of nuclear weapons against Iraq, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2003[35], and in many other media worldwide.
Myth: Iraq has defied the world by creating chemical and biological weapons
Comment: No sane person could condone Iraq's possession of these weapons of mass destruction, but they did not defy the international community by making them - and UN inspectors are still trying to find some evidence they exist.
At the end of the Gulf War, the Kurds of northern Iraq were encouraged by the USA to rise up against Hussein. When they did so, the USA did not come to their aid, as the Kurds had been promised; as they feared, Hussein systematically destroyed thousands of their villages (almost every village in the north), and used poison gas against many people. At the time, the USA did not condemn Iraq for this atrocity but, according to the New York Times, actually helped Saddam Hussein.[36] In fact, according to a US Senate investigation the capability for making the weapons came from the United States.[37]
It should be noted that many other nations also have these terrible weapons: the USA used chemical weapons in Vietnam, notably napalm and Agent Orange.
Myth: Iraq has acted badly and Western coalition nations have acted well
Comment: UNICEF reported (August 1999) that the under-five mortality rate in Iraq has more than doubled since the imposition of sanctions.[38] Western nations and their corporations have been instrumental in arming Saddam Hussein and supplying him with chemicals and biological agents (as affirmed by President Clinton). Donald Rumsfeld, America's Secretary of Defense, was formerly involved in this disgrace.[39]
Myth: In 1998, Saddam Hussein expelled UN weapons inspectors from Iraq, because they found weapons of mass destruction
Comment: Richard Butler, head of the UN inspection team, withdrew the team on his own accord, and the next day the USA commenced a bombing raid on Iraq.[40]
Myth: Saddam Hussein is preparing to attack the USA
Comment: No one knows what is in the head of Saddam Hussein. Certainly, if he was planning do such a thing, the CIA would have recordings by now, considering the highly sophisticated digital equipment and satellites at their disposal. However, such a 'smoking gun' has not been forthcoming. There are many good reasons to believe that he has no plans to attack America or arm proxies to do so. Journalist Michael Elvin considers questions about Hussein's intentions:
"Are these scenarios realistic? They presuppose first that he has something he will gain by doing this, and second that the US will buckle under and somehow fail to deploy an arsenal the likes of which the world has never seen before."[41]
Myth: Saddam Hussein is arming Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist organization
Comment: We simply do not know this, and if Western politicians knew for sure, we would know it. There is no evidence of this that has been produced, yet such evidence should not be difficult for Great Britain and the USA, with their vast intelligence resources, to discover. In fact, officials from Iraq are adamant that their party and al-Qaeda do not share the same ideology. Like Christianity and Communism, Islam has many different and even opposing strands. It is impossible to know all the details, but it might be that the notion of Hussein arming bin Laden is as preposterous as Stalin arming Trotsky, who was also Communist, but his mortal ideological enemy.
Moreover, it does not seem likely that a poor nation surrounded by rich nation aggressors would part with his weapons at such a time. This is not to deny the evil of Hussein's regime, nor its potential for causing damage to regional security. However, this is true of many nations that are not being invaded. Libya, for example has just been elected unopposed to the Chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights.[42]
Myth: When a nation defies United Nations resolutions, they should be invaded and forced to comply
Comment: No nation that now intends to invade Iraq has applied this dictum to the nation of Israel, which for decades, by its illegal occupation of Palestine, has defied many significant UN resolutions.[43] American allies such as Morocco and Turkey[44] flout UN resolutions, but their citizens and those of Israel appear in no imminent danger of a superpower conflagration.
Myth: The Hans Blix[45] weapons inspection team progress report[46] of January, 2003, condemned Iraq for its weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's opposition to assisting his team
Comment: The report of Mr Blix's United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC)[47] did no such thing. Most media reports sounded like the journalists had not even read it, which might well have been the case. While not exonerating Iraq, Blix made a point of stating that Iraq had been very helpful. In fact, Blix took issue with what he said were US Secretary of State Colin L Powell's claims that Iraqi officials were hiding and moving illicit materials within and outside of Iraq to prevent their discovery. He said that the inspectors had reported no such incidents.[48]
Colin Powell's speech before the Security Council of the United Nations on February 5, 2003[49], which supposedly presents reasons for this massive war, is so unpersuasive as to be risible. Mr Powell seems to want to us believe that a water pistol is a smoking gun. Saddam Hussein, we all know, is a monster, like many dictators in the world today. However, no evidence has been given that indicates he is a danger to anyone but the benighted inmates of Iraq.
Sad to relate, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice and other senior Bush administration officials have repeatedly said that the forthcoming invasion will not be determined by any evidence reported by Blix's team.[50] No evidence is evidence; heads we invade, tails you get invaded.
Myth: In December, 2002, the USA demanded from Iraq a complete written survey of Iraq's military capabilities. Iraq was slow to comply, and when the report was received, UN members condemned it for the weapons of mass destruction it revealed
Comment: Iraq handed over a 12,000-page report to the UN, but America commandeered it (much to the dismay of many other nations in the UN). To do so, it had to obtain the permission of the tiny nation of Colombia, which in December, 2002 was the President of the UN Security Council. The USA released only 3,000 of these pages; most UN nations, including major powers such as Germany (which opposes unilateral US action against Iraq), were not privy to the contents of the missing 75 per cent of Iraq's document.[51]
Myth: Saddam Hussein is deliberately making things difficult for the USA, much like the Taliban did when it would not hand over Osama bin Laden
Comment: Many people have forgotten that the Taliban dictatorship of Afghanistan consistently offered to hand bin Laden over to a neutral third country for trial in the World Court if damning evidence about his role in the September 11, 2001 outrage were provided.[52] Just as consistently, President George W Bush refused to give Afghanistan's rulers a 'smoking gun', and he is repeating that formula in the case of Iraq: the formula implies that war plans have not been related to the casus belli (ostensible cause for war) in either case. Ulterior motives must be suspected.
The fact that many have forgotten the Taliban's offer is, no doubt, a consequence of the negligible reporting that it received in mainstream media, which was as gung-ho to invade Afghanistan as it is to invade Iraq.
It must be remembered that bin Laden consistently denied responsibility for 9/11[53],[54], although it is quite usual for terrorist groups to glory in their crimes. The Taliban also claimed that bin Laden could not have been involved in the terror attacks because there is no flight training school in Afghanistan and because the regime had cut off bin Laden's communications with the rest of the world.[55]
One cannot conclude whether al-Qaeda performed the outrage or not, because to this day the Bush administration expects you and me to take it on trust. Osama bin Laden might or might not be the culprit, but not one shred of evidence - no 'smoking gun' - has yet been given you, me, nor the relatives of the victims. By what stretch of the imagination must we believe that the US administration, with the most sophisticated and highly funded intelligence agencies in the world, could not find incriminating evidence? By what stretch of the imagination must we believe that it would not flaunt a smoking gun?
Myth: Like Afghanistan, Iraq should be punished for September 11
Comment: No Iraqis or Afghans were on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.[56] They were mostly Saudi citizens. Saudi Arabia is an ally of the USA and a major source of oil for US industrial and domestic consumption, but is under no threat of invasion at the time of writing.
Myth: Neighbouring states in the Middle East fear Iraq enough to want it invaded
Comment: According to the Wall Street Journal[57], 80-90 per cent of people in Turkey, Iraq's neighbour, NATO member, and the closest ally to the United States in the region, do not support an invasion of Iraq.
Myth: Most people in the West want this war
Comment: US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, even acknowledged that the war is unpopular even before it has begun. In January he said: "You know what the opinion polls are in various countries," Mr. Powell acknowledged in an interview last week. "People would rather not see a war. You can look at our own opinion polls and there's, you know, there's ambivalence about it. There's more than ambivalence. People would rather not see a war."[58]
There is a huge and growing groundswell against the war[59], but much of the media is under-reporting it. Every day there are rallies of thousands of people protesting the invasion of Iraq. This is happening in countries that are not committed to war, as well as those that are, such as Great Britain[60].
For example, in my own small (50,000 population) and conservative-voting town of Coffs Harbour[61], Australia, on Sunday, February 1, 2003, fully 3,000 people rallied and marched against the war.[62] It was, however, not reported widely as the significant news story that it was. Rallies of tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Great Britain, the USA, and elsewhere, have scarcely made the back pages of most newspapers, many of which have been editorialising in favour of war.
The Australian government is preparing to be part of the invasion coalition of nations, but for this its Prime Minister has been censured by the Australian Senate with a no-confidence motion supported by the other three major parties, all of which are firmly against the current plans.
On January 18 hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated[63] against the war across much of the United States. Almost 50 American cities[64] have passed resolutions against the war. February 15 will be a day internationally on which rallies will occur against the war. (I publish important details below, so spread the word please)[65] Even families of victims of 9/11 have been demonstrating.[66]
Time magazine ran an informal online poll[67], asking which nation the readers considered to be the greatest threat to world peace: Iraq, North Korea, or the USA. Approximately 70 per cent, a remarkably high figure, voted for the USA. Poll after poll shows that most Westerners do not support[68] President Bush's apparent personal obsession.
A fast-growing movement has begun to impeach president George W Bush[69]. Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General during the Johnson Administration has drafted articles of impeachment setting forth high crimes and misdemeanours by President Bush and other civil officers of his administration.
Myth: It will be good for the economy of the USA and the world to have a war Comment: There is a respectable, but contested, school of thought in political and economic circles that war is good for the economy, and that that is precisely why war happens so regularly. This school of thought basically says that capitalist economies require 'booms and busts', and war is an assured way to have a 'boom'. However, there are very good reasons (such as to oil trafficking, and the Venezualan oil strike[70] that has seriously depleted reserves[71]) to believe that even the global economy[72] could be severely damaged by an invasion of Iraq.[73]
Myth: It is worth giving up a few freedoms to prevent terrorism
Comment: From time immemorial, governments and regimes have used various societal fears in order to increase their own power. Many Western nations are now experiencing this phenomenon, especially since September 11, 2001. Australia's government is progressively removing long-hallowed rights enshrined in common law, and citizens are no longer assured of the support given them by previous governments.[74]
In the United States of America, the Total Information Awareness Office[75] part of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)[76], has been established under the leadership of convicted felon John Poindexter[77], and there are grave concerns about the massive and widespread computerized surveillance the American people may now expect as normal and usual.
Myth: The invasion and conquest of Iraq will help put an end to terrorism
Comment: A moment's reflection will almost certainly reveal that the reverse case is true. While many countries and their citizens are no friends of Saddam Hussein, there is a common feeling of outrage against this war, and this is especially true in the worldwide Muslim community[78]. While most people of the Muslim faith practice Islamic values of peace and tolerance, there seems little doubt that there is a considerable number of fanatical 'Islamists' who do not, and for whom this war, based on the flimsiest of causes, will be an outrage worthy of retaliation.
The commission of massive acts of terrorism does not require organizations (such as al-Qaeda). This option is available to a single disaffected and angry individual or a small band, who can cause untold grief and havoc with implements cheaply and readily obtained.
Myth: A US-led coalition will invade Saddam Hussein
Comment: Saddam Hussein is not being invaded. In a sense, it is not even Iraq, because in many ways, nations are just abstract concepts.
It is millions of men, women and children who will be invaded. Family members who, as I write, are no doubt beginning to dig shelters in their backyards, and watch the skies for signs of raining death - the same death that took scores of thousands of their fellows not so long ago. These are mostly abjectly poor people who have already lost relatives. Even the soldiers will quite likely have been conscripted against their will, or have taken a job so they can send money to their families for food.
We cannot afford to dehumanise and demonize the people who happen to have been born in Iraq. To do so is to lose part of our own humanity. I happen to have been born in Australia; had I been born in Iraq, I would probably think like an Iraqi. War is obsolete in the 21st century, and bridge-building between people is the only way that you and I, as well as they, will survive. Our grandchildren depend on our wisdom at this juncture in history. I believe that Mr Bush, for all his qualities, is not exercising wisdom, but is acting like a hothead. In his passionate obsession with the man who tried to kill his Daddy, he seems to have entirely forgotten that multitudes of human beings will be his targets, and he has dragged his whole Cabinet with him. Mr Bush, this is not 'Gunsmoke', this is us you're playing with.
Myth: The US-led coalition will liberate Iraq
Comment: The wrong people will probably get hold of the reins of power. There are many undesirable people waiting in the wings[79], and how can we be sure they are truly democratic? Indeed, how can we know that they are not pawns or leaders of the oil industry?
One must ask how an occupying force led by the USA can maintain stability in Iraq. We are now witnessing the devastation being caused in most of Afghanistan (except Kabul) by the warlords who have returned to power following the American-sponsored 'regime change' there. As much, if not more, opium than ever is being grown, and armed bands and militias are popping up throughout that benighted country. Top-down transformation of societies does not have a good track record in world history; usually only a few rich people at the top ever benefit, and the poor get poorer.
Myth: We are powerless to stop this war
Comment: Society and nations are made of individuals. The American anthropologist, Margaret Mead, once said, "Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."[80]
"Where can I start?" is the question that comes to most of us sooner or later. Don't be dismayed or fearful, there is much each of us can do, and the institutions are already in well place so that we don't need to struggle alone.
As you are probably reading this on the Internet, you are already halfway there. The Net is the most powerful tool for peace and humanity that has ever been devised, but it is also a tool being used by negative forces, so our participation is needed today.
What can I do?
Use the Internet to join the movement
The Internet can connect you to groups already working for peace, and they are calling out for support. Join one of these groups, help them, and make new friends. If you are a very private person, and if you prefer, you can join them and stay in the background and not socialize much if at all. But you can make a difference. If your politics are quite conservative, you will not necessarily be mixing with counterculture freaks: in the words of Rene Ciria-Cruz, "It's not yesterday's Peace Movement"[81] - it is much more mainstream these days.
Soon, Wilson's Almanac will be publishing a directory of groups and institutions that are working for the good of humanity, but in the meantime, here's a 5-minute way to connect and unleash that idealism that might not yet be fully realised - I am confident you have this quality or you probably would not have read this far. Here's what to do:
Go to http://www.google.com and type in keywords such as peace, "peace group", and your local town. If this doesn't deliver what you are looking for, get creative with your keywords. When you find groups that you can connect with, don't delay - the war is scheduled for a date within a few weeks. Join up, send money or volunteer your services to do whatever you can do. Maybe it's just to seal envelopes and lick stamps, but you will be welcome like you have never been welcome before, because things are moving very fast now and human energy is needed. Remember, the ocean is made of drops of water, and a beach is made up of grains of sand. That's me I'm talking about - and you.
Spread the word
If you think this article might help add a grain of sand to the scales in favour of peace and humanity, I ask you to forward it. How many people are in your email address book? Please send this article on. You might help by using http://www.google.com to find radio stations, TV channels and newspapers in your town and in your state. Within most websites of these media organizations, you will soon find email addresses of individual journalists, disk jockeys and presenters. Send them this article, someone else's article, or a personal letter explaining how you feel about the plans for a war that could turn nuclear. That is how things change in 2003.
You could go to http://www.google.com again, and look up the names of your political representatives. Send them something like this article today, with your personal passionate (but polite) message - their staff are counting the emails and letters they get, you'd better believe it. That is one thing that politicians do take notice of - votes and voters.
And remember, research has shown that taking part in demonstrations might be good for your health![82]
Acknowledgements
A number of people have provided information that I have used in this article. I would like especially to thank Jeannine Wilson, whose column in Wilson's Almanac ezine (http://www.wilsonsalmanc.com), Daily Planet News, is unfailingly an essential resource for lovers of peace and this Planet Earth. Jeannine's research forms the greater part of the citations in this article.
The webpage, Is Iraq A Threat to the United States? by Lawrence McGuire (Dissident Voice, January 27, 2003, http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/McGuire_Iraq.htm) inspired me to write this article and provided many good ideas and links.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
U.S. May Seek Wider Anti-Terror Powers
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 8, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42267-2003Feb7?language=printer
The Justice Department is considering legislative proposals that would significantly expand the federal government's power to investigate, detain and punish suspected terrorists in secret and without court supervision, according to a preliminary draft of the bill disclosed yesterday.
The draft, a potential successor to the Patriot Act that passed Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, would authorize the Justice Department to conduct clandestine searches or eavesdrop on any suspected terrorist or foreign agent for 15 days after the beginning of a military conflict or "national emergency," rather than after a formal declaration of war, as current law provides. It would also permit wiretaps of U.S. citizens in terrorism cases for longer periods and with less court oversight than now permitted; and allow the department to collect a DNA-sample database from both convicted and suspected terrorists.
Under the draft, the government could declare individuals, not just groups, "foreign powers" subject to clandestine surveillance under looser standards than would apply in criminal cases, and it would permit such surveillance against a U.S. citizen suspected of spying for a foreign power, even if the alleged suspicious conduct was not itself criminal.
Taken as a whole, the proposals would constitute a far-reaching invitation to Congress to ratify the Bush administration's get-tough legal approach to the war on terrorism. The Jan. 9 document, labeled "confidential -- not for distribution" and titled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, was posted on the Internet by the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit organization.
Civil liberties advocates immediately expressed alarm about the draft.
"There are some truly breathtaking provisions here. In some respects it is bolder even than the Patriot Act," said Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit organization based in Washington.
"It raises a wide range of very troubling questions that deserve a lot of thoughtful debate and attention," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor.
The Justice Department declined to comment specifically on the proposals, but did not dispute the authenticity of the draft, which is being developed in the Office of Legal Policy.
"We are continually considering anti-terrorism measures and would be derelict if we were not doing so," Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock said in a statement. "The Department's deliberations are always undertaken with the strongest commitment to our Constitution and civil liberties.
"During our internal deliberations, many ideas are considered, some are discarded and new ideas emerge in the process along with numerous discussion drafts. Department staff have not presented any final proposals to either the Attorney General or the White House. It would be premature to speculate on any future decisions, particularly ideas or proposals that are still being discussed at staff levels."
Democratic aides in Congress grumbled privately that the Bush administration's proposals are timed to take advantage of the Republican takeover of the Senate, and that the administration has brushed aside inquiries about its deliberations until now.
At an Oct. 9 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) asked Justice Department official Alice Fisher to "describe what efforts are being made within the department to broaden the powers of the USA Patriot Act."
Fisher replied that officials "are still studying that."
The Center for Public Integrity's Web site suggests that a routing slip attached to the proposal indicates that it was sent to Vice President Cheney and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) on Jan. 10.
Comstock said that neither man had been sent the document.
The proposal also contains language that would specifically exempt the names of persons who are detained in connection with terrorism investigations from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, a position similar to what the Bush administration has asserted in several court cases challenging its policy of closing immigration hearings for terror suspects.
And the proposal would make it easier for the government to strip U.S. citizens of their citizenship if they serve in a foreign enemy army or terrorist group. Under current law, such service must be done with clear intent to renounce U.S. citizenship. The proposal would make service in a foreign army or terrorist group, such as John Walker Lindh's assistance to the Taliban, evidence of intent to renounce U.S. citizenship that the citizen would then have to rebut.
----
Justice Dept. Draft on Wider Powers Draws Quick Criticism
February 8, 2003
New York Times
By ADAM CLYMER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/politics/08BILL.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 - A storm of liberal criticism erupted today over a Justice Department draft of legislation to increase the law enforcement powers it won in 2001 in the U.S.A. Patriot Act.
Although a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Barbara Comstock, insisted that the draft represented nothing more than staff discussions, copies were sent to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and to Vice President Dick Cheney in his capacity as president of the Senate.
The 80-page draft, marked "Confidential - Not for Distribution Draft Jan. 9, 2003," was posted in midafternoon on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/home.asp. It was quickly scrutinized and denounced by the American Civil Liberties Union and Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
These are some of the major proposals in the draft:
¶Invalidate state legal consent decrees that seek to curb police spying. The authors argued such orders could hinder terrorism investigations.
¶Eliminate the requirement that the attorney general personally has to authorize using certain intelligence evidence in a criminal case, permitting him to designate an assistant attorney general to make such authorizations.
¶Allow the collection of DNA samples by "such means as are reasonably necessary" from suspected terrorists being held by federal authorities. Failing to cooperate would be a crime.
¶Flatly bar Freedom of Information Act efforts to gain information about detainees, because litigation over such issues costs the Justice Department resources.
¶Allow citizenship to be stripped from people who support groups that the United States considers terrorist organizations.
Mr. Conyers said: "This draft bill constitutes yet another egregious blow to our citizens' civil liberties. Among other things, the Bush administration now wants to imprison suspects before they are tried and create DNA databases of lawful residents who have committed no crime."
The associate director of the national office of the A.C.L.U., Gregory T. Nojeim, said:
"The initial U.S.A. Patriot Act undercut many of the traditional checks and balances on government power. The new Ashcroft proposal threatens to fundamentally alter the constitutional protections that allow us to be both safe and free."
Ms. Comstock's statement did not disavow the document, though she said no final proposals had even been sent to the attorney general.
"We are continually considering antiterrorism measures and would be derelict if we were not doing so," she said. "The department's deliberations are always undertaken with the strongest commitment to our Constitution and civil liberties."
Exactly how receptive Congress will be to whatever proposal the administration makes is uncertain. Democrats and Republicans on both Judiciary Committees have complained that the Justice Department was withholding information on how the 2001 law was being applied and whether changes were needed.
-------- death penalty
NEWS ANALYSIS
Ashcroft Sets a Tone on the Death Penalty
February 8, 2003
New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/nyregion/08DEAT.html
Prosecutors say one of their toughest decisions is whether to seek the death penalty. In the last week, Attorney General John Ashcroft had a message for federal prosecutors in the New York region about when he thinks it ought to be sought: more often.
In 10 cases being handled by federal prosecutors in New York and 2 in Connecticut, he has rejected the recommendations of his United States attorneys and ordered them to seek execution.
Some current and former prosecutors have been stunned by the newly assertive approach to the most controversial issue in the criminal justice system. But, whether they agree with him or not, many of them say Mr. Ashcroft is doing exactly what an attorney general is empowered to do: set national law enforcement policy, even if that means discarding the recommendations of some of his prosecutors.
"The law vests in the attorney general the authority to make a death penalty decision," said Otto G. Obermaier, a former United States attorney in Manhattan. "It doesn't vest that authority in the U.S. attorneys."
The decision about whether or not to seek death is often a close call, prosecutors say. Mr. Ashcroft has made it clear he favors making that call more often than federal prosecutors in the Northeast have been since new federal death penalty laws were passed more than a decade ago.
He also seems unimpressed by the reality that it has been remarkably difficult to persuade jurors in federal cases in the New York area to vote for death. No federal jury in New York City and its suburbs has yet voted for execution in the new era of federal death-penalty laws.
Justice Department officials declined to discuss the standards the attorney general is using, saying only that the department's decisions are governed by a desire to see that the federal death penalty is applied uniformly around the country.
An examination of some of the cases in which Mr. Ashcroft has directed prosecutors to seek execution shows that the Justice Department is using what might be called an outrageousness test. Among those now facing possible execution are at least three men charged with killing witnesses who were cooperating with prosecutors and a carjacking suspect charged with beating his victim to death. Other cases for which Mr. Ashcroft has required prosecutors to seek the death penalty involve alleged members of drug gangs charged in what prosecutors call assassinations that were a routine method of doing business.
In some areas of the country, where execution has been sought more routinely, such volatile charges are frequently the focus of death penalty trials.
Opponents of the death penalty see the change in directives from Washington as an ominous intrusion on the discretion of prosecutors who themselves may be squeamish about the death penalty. "They want to impose their ideology about the death penalty on more moderate parts of the country," said Kevin M. Doyle, the New York capital defender, who heads the office that provides defense in state death-penalty cases.
That ideology, some lawyers say, may well be a strict right-and-wrong view of justice, one that holds that federal prosecutors in the New York area have been too accepting of the kinds of violence that are seen as shocking elsewhere.
The recent cases show that Mr. Ashcroft and his aides appear particularly vigilant about seeking the ultimate punishment when witnesses working with prosecutors were killed. Defendants involved in such so-called obstruction-of-justice killings, some lawyers say, are now viewed in Washington as presumptive candidates for execution.
A Manhattan case involves the torture and murder of a government informant. A Brooklyn case centers on the drive-by killing of a man who was supposed to be a witness in an attempted-murder case being prosecuted by the Brooklyn district attorney's office.
Mr. Ashcroft's decisions also show a hard line against the homicidal routines of drug gangs.
A Long Island case involves a man facing murder and cocaine distribution charges who had offered to cooperate with prosecutors. Although few details have been made public, court records suggest that the prosecutors believe that the defendant, Jairo Zapata, was part of an assassination crew that killed people at the direction of the murderous representative of a Colombian drug cartel in Queens.
Mr. Obermaier, who was the Manhattan United States attorney in the administration of the elder George Bush, says that the attorney general is responsible for carrying out the president's law enforcement policy. Seeking the death penalty more often or in different kinds of cases, he said, is each administration's prerogative.
He said that kind of policy shift might include insisting that people who commit murders to obstruct justice face the possibility of execution, even though jurors might resist voting for it. "I could understand someone in Washington saying, `I understand it's hard to convince a jury, but it's important from a law enforcement perspective to go for the death penalty,' " Mr. Obermaier said.
Insisting on more death-penalty trials, some lawyers say, may accomplish one goal of death-penalty proponents, which is to make such trials seem less extraordinary. That in turn, could make it a less forbidding task for jurors to determine whether someone lives or dies.
But if Mr. Ashcroft is trying to re-educate federal prosecutors and potential jurors in New York, some lawyers say that may come at great cost.
Alan Vinegrad, the former United States attorney in Brooklyn, said New York jurors might be so averse to execution that they might effectively demand that the prosecution prove to a certainty that a defendant is guilty. That, he said, might mean some defendants in heinous cases would be acquitted entirely.
"Although it is laudable in the abstract to impose the death penalty consistently," he said, "the danger is that may not be taking sufficient account of the resistance in a particular locale toward the death penalty or the specific facts that might weigh against the death penalty in a particular case."
Other lawyers say Mr. Ashcroft's effort to foster more federal death-penalty trials in areas of the country where there have been few of them could backfire. The modern federal death-penalty system has been seen as having more safeguards than some state systems, which have sentenced innocent people to death.
But in the last week, as Mr. Ashcroft's policy spurred discussion wherever criminal lawyers gathered, it has been common to hear both prosecutors and defense lawyers worry about life-or-death decisions made in Washington.
The Justice Department, they said, is too far from the streets and courtrooms, where the complicated stories of crime and punishment play out. From a distance, some of them said, mistakes can be made.
-------- homeland security
Tons of boric acid hijacked in SoCal
By Hil Anderson
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
February 8, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030208-031614-5974r.htm
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Law enforcement agencies in the Los Angeles area were on alert Friday night for a stolen truck hauling 44,000 pounds of boric acid, a material that can be used as an ingredient in explosives.
The California Highway Patrol told United Press International the missing truck and its cargo container were stolen around 8 p.m. PST in Corona, around 30 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The circumstances surrounding the alleged theft were not immediately available.
The Corona police informed the FBI of the theft. There was no immediate comment from the bureau.
There were no indications that the vehicle had been targeted by terrorists or anyone else intent on causing an explosion. However the theft occurred on the day that the national terrorist threat level was raised to "high" based on what federal authorities viewed as a credible evidence that an al Qaida attack was possible.
Boric acid, the stolen cargo, is a colorless, odorless crystalline substance and is used in a number of industrial processes and products such as eye wash solution, flame retardants, insecticides and fertilizers, although it can also react violently with potassium, acid anhydrides and other chemicals.
The vehicle was described as having a green tractor and a flatbed trailer carrying a cargo container and having an Oregon license plate. The CHP said there had been a number of possible sightings of the truck but the vehicle remained missing early Saturday.
----
U.S. put on higher terror alert
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 8, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20032824923.htm
Federal authorities, concerned about al Qaeda terrorist attacks on U.S. targets here and abroad, raised the country´s security alert yesterday to the second-highest level as hundreds of thousands of Muslims prepare for a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
"Recent reporting indicates an increased likelihood that al Qaeda may attempt to attack Americans in the United States or abroad in or around the end of the Hajj, a Muslim religious period ending mid-February," Attorney General John Ashcroft said during a Justice Department press conference.
The high risk, or "level orange," security designation was approved at a meeting of the Homeland Security Council. It was based on specific intelligence received and analyzed by the law enforcement and intelligence communities, corroborated by multiple sources.
"Recent intelligence reports suggest that al Qaeda leaders have emphasized planning for attacks on apartment buildings, hotels and other soft or lightly secured targets in the United States," he said.
He noted that the recent bombings of a nightclub in Indonesia and a hotel in Kenya "demonstrate the continued willingness of al Qaeda to strike at peaceful, innocent civilians."
Mr. Ashcroft said there were "indications" of al Qaeda´s interest in carrying out chemical, biological and radiological attacks, including "dirty bombs," and to strike at economic targets, including the transportation and energy sectors, as well as symbols of American power.
The Bush administration has blamed al Qaeda for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed more than 3,000 people.
The Department of Homeland Security has established five color-coded threat-assessment levels: green for a low risk of attacks; blue for a general risk; yellow for a significant risk; orange for a high risk; and red for a severe risk.
Under the orange level, federal agencies coordinate security efforts with federal, state and local law enforcement and with various military entities; take additional precautions at public events and consider alternative venues or cancellations; prepare contingency plans, such as moving to an alternate site or dispersing the work force; and restrict threatened-facility access to essential personnel.
In the District, Mayor Anthony A. Williams said no specific threat had targeted the city, but that precautions were being taken. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said street cameras had been turned on and that the city´s Joint Operations Command Center would be running around the clock.
In Maryland, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. also said no specific threat had been identified for the state, but he ordered authorities to the orange level designation based on reports by federal officials of "credible threats against the continental United States as a result of potential actions abroad."
In Virginia, Gov. Mark R. Warner said the commonwealth was taking the warning seriously, working closely with federal and local law enforcement, as well as other first responders. He called on Virginians to help authorities by maintaining a heightened sense of awareness.
The religious observation known as the Hajj is the once-in-a-lifetime obligatory pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. About 2 million Muslims from around the world are expected to attend the weeklong event honoring Muhammad, the founder and prophet of Islam.
Mr. Ashcroft said that since September 11, 2001, federal authorities have "substantially improved" their ability to disrupt, deter and prevent terrorist attacks against U.S. targets. He said the FBI has investigated more than 3,000 terrorist threats in this country, issued 103 warnings to state and local law enforcement, and announced three major nationwide terrorist alerts.
"We are not recommending that events be canceled, nor do we recommend that individuals change domestic or work or travel plans," he said.
"As we have in the past, we ask that Americans continue their daily work and leisure activities, with a heightened awareness of their environment and the activities occurring around them."
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who joined Mr. Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III at the press conference, said the increased threat level dictated that specific protective measures be taken by federal agencies to reduce vulnerabilities and serve as a deterrent.
"The call we give today, which Americans have certainly heard before, is based on our knowledge and our conviction that heightened awareness and readiness deters terrorism and saves lives," Mr. Ridge said.
"Today, we call on Americans to continue to persevere in the face of this evil, in the face of this terror, because we understand that by working together, not only will we persevere, but we will prevail."
Mr. Mueller said the FBI is "fully mobilized" to respond to any terrorist threat, along with state and local authorities, and added that "an alert public is our strongest asset." He encouraged citizens to "contact your local FBI office or your local police" to report suspicious activity.
Mr. Ashcroft said he did not know when the threat level might be reduced, adding that the designation is "driven by intelligence-information analysis."
He said a September 2002 decision moving the level from yellow to orange was based in part on terrorist-related activity in upstate New York and that when that activity was "neutralized," the threat level was reduced.
"We hope to reduce the level of the threat by our activities," he said.
----
Tighter Security Under Terror Alert
February 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-Alert.html
Law enforcement and private business braced for a possible terrorist attack after the starkest warning since the Sept. 11 anniversary, stopping more cars at borders, readying Coast Guard cutters, and tightening security from airports to theme parks.
Worries were raised New York once again could be a target.
While stepped-up protection stretched across the country, a high-ranking law enforcement source told The Associated Press intercepted communications between suspected terrorists suggested a potential threat to New York.
The communications, some intercepted as late as Thursday night, raised specific concerns about hotels and subways in the city and the East Coast, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Airports, subways, nuclear plants, hotels, even plans for Sunday's NBA All-Star Game in Atlanta received new attention after the federal government upgraded the terror alert color to ``orange,'' warning of a growing possibility that the al-Qaida network would launch an attack to coincide with Muslim holy days.
``What's being communicated is that we're entering into a very sensitive period,'' said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, who joined other governors in a conference call with Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. ``We're possibly on the brink of war. Obviously there has been some intelligence gathered by the CIA among other agencies that suggests something could happen.''
Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday the government had received intelligence information, corroborated by multiple sources, that Osama bin Laden's terror organization sought to attack Americans at home or abroad during the annual hajj pilgrimage to the holy Saudi city of Mecca. The five-day hajj involving more than a million Muslim pilgrims begins Saturday.
Potential targets, he said, could include ``soft'' or lightly guarded targets such as apartment buildings and hotels, and could involve chemical, biological or radiological devices. Al-Qaida might also seek to hit economic targets connected to transportation and energy, or ``symbols of American power.''
At U.S. border crossings, inspectors began searching more vehicles, and running computer checks on all pedestrians, said Lauren Mack with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Before Friday, Mack said, inspectors ran computer checks on about 80 percent of pedestrians entering the country.
Commercial vehicles entering from Mexico will also be inspected more thoroughly, with many screened by X-ray, said U.S. Customs spokesman Vince Bond. ``It may be drugs. It may be avocados. It may be Cuban cigars. It may be weapons of mass destruction. We're looking for anomalies,'' he said.
Chicago restarted its emergency operations center for the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and it will remain open 24 hours a day for an indefinite period.
In New York, Gov. George Pataki said specialized units of the state police and the National Guard were activated. He and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced extra security at bridges, tunnels, airports, subways and many public buildings.
Nuclear facilities in California and Washington state, and utilities in New England and elsewhere, all put security plans into action.
The warning about soft targets spurred a response by private businesses from Las Vegas to Florida to New York.
``We have greatly enhanced what was already strict security since 9-11,'' said Universal Orlando spokesman Jim Canfield. He wouldn't discuss specific new measures.
In New York, the president of the city's tourism bureau, Cristyne Nicholas, warned guests they might encounter new security procedures. ``We should be patient, we should be understanding. If we're asked to show our room key or identification, it's for the betterment of the entire city.''
Not everyone felt the same worries. In Hawaii, authorities decided there wasn't any reason to change its security alert. ``There is nothing to indicate there is a direct threat to Hawaii,'' said Gov. Linda Lingle.
On the streets, some said they couldn't really tell any difference.
``Looking around, it seems like everybody's getting on with their daily lives,'' said Ansley Dickens, a 20-year-old student in Boston. ``The likelihood of an earthquake is more of a huge concern of mine,'' said Rob Huntley, general manager of The Inn At Union Square in San Francisco.
-------- spying
Pentagon Forms 2 Panels to Allay Fears on Spying
February 8, 2003
New York Times
By ADAM CLYMER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/national/08PRIV.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 - The Defense Department established two new advisory committees today as it sought to curb fears about domestic spying by its Total Information Awareness program and to keep Congress from supervising the program closely.
But Newton N. Minow, the newly appointed chairman of one panel, of outsiders, said he did not believe his group's scrutiny was a substitute for work by Congress. "I think there should always be Congressional oversight," Mr. Minow said. Other members of his committee agreed.
Last month, the Senate unanimously passed an amendment to the omnibus spending bill that would bar deployment and limit research of the project, whose purpose is to search for terrorists by scanning information in Internet mail and in the commercial and financial databases of health, financial and travel companies here and abroad.
That provision is now before a House-Senate conference committee, and Edward C. (Pete) Aldridge Jr., under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told a Pentagon news conference today that he believed the new committees should reassure Congress that the system being developed would not threaten privacy. He suggested that today's actions meant the provision, sponsored by Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, could now be reduced in scope.
Michael Wynne, principal deputy under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, went further. He characterized the Senate amendment as basically requiring "more reporting to Congress over the activities that are in place now." In fact, it would also ban deployment of the system without specific Congressional legislation.
Mr. Wynne said: "I think while we want to share as much as we can with the Congress, especially on that kind of sensitive issue, we really don't think it merits that kind of day-to-day oversight. So what we are trying to do is work with the Congress is, in fact, to point out to them that with this kind of resolution, the inside board and the outside board, we are instituting the kind of oversight that, in fact, they want."
Mr. Aldridge said the internal board, composed of various department officials, would make sure that the data mining system was used in accordance with existing privacy laws and policies and would establish protocols for transferring it to other agencies for their use.
This hardly satisfied Mr. Wyden. While conceding that the panel headed by Mr. Minow was a strong body, he said: "Those folks did not get an election certificate. When you are talking about an expansive surveillance program like this, the accountability should run to those who are directly accountable to the people and have election certificates."
He said, "I believe that Congress on a bipartisan basis is going to continue to demand accountability, oversight and legally established safeguards."
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the only Republican to co-sponsor the Wyden amendment, made it clear that he was not going to drop his scrutiny either. "While the board works to provide guidance, I'll continue my oversight," he said.
Mr. Minow, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and now head of the Annenberg Washington Program, said that when asked about serving, he had told Defense Department officials, "I had, like all citizens, concerns about balancing the interests of national security with our civil liberties." He said he had known Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for 40 years and found him "not only aware but sensitive to these issues."
He said the committee would hold its first meeting later this month, would hold public sessions and report publicly.
Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment lawyer, said he felt it was essential to make sure that the balance between liberty and security "is not struck in a way that destroys the very principles that underlie what sort of country we are." He said, "Congress always ought to have a serious role in oversight."
Another panel member, Zoë Baird, president of the Markle Foundation, which focuses on public policy and technology, said, "Any new technologies have the potential to invade our privacy, and as we develop these new technologies we need to develop the guidelines to use them appropriately." She said, "There certainly needs to be Congressional oversight of the balance between security and privacy."
John M. Poindexter, a retired admiral who is in charge of developing the program, was not present. The appointment of Admiral Poindexter, who was convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-contra scandal, has helped make the program controversial, despite his victory on appeal. But Mr. Aldridge said he would remain in charge.
The other members of the outside advisory committee are the former attorney general Griffin B. Bell, the former Stanford University president Gerhard Casper, William T. Coleman III, former head of BEA, an application infrastructure software company, and Lloyd N. Cutler, a former White House counsel.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
War Worries Compound Energy Woes
Rise in Oil Prices Follows Widespread Industry Slump
By Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 8, 2003; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42478-2003Feb7?language=printer
The wait for war in Iraq has been expensive for the world's economies.
Crude oil prices climbed to nearly $35 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday, up from around $20 a year ago. The prime mover: uncertainty over what will happen to oil supplies if and when the Bush administration launches a campaign to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Energy traders were as focused on Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's televised United Nations speech this week as on the prices flickering across their desktop monitors. As long as the war issue is in doubt, energy producers and traders will hold back some products from the market, said Peter Beutel, president of Cameron Hanover Inc. in New Canaan, Conn. "They expect prices to move higher, and prices do -- it's a self-fulfilling prophecy," he said.
Prices of other key energy products have marched up in step with oil. Regular gasoline averaged $1.53 a gallon around the country last week, compared with $1.12 this time last year, helping to boost the profits of the major oil companies. Natural gas prices are near $6 per 1,000 cubic feet, pushing up heating costs for households and production expenses for manufacturers.
Ray Ratheal, who directs energy purchases for Eastman Chemical Co. in Kingsport, Tenn., must cope with gas prices that are triple the level of a year ago. "That's a tremendous impact on our cost of manufacturing," he said. "It's very hard to pass on price increases, particularly in this economy."
Consumers are spending nearly $100 million more a day on energy compared with a year ago, when energy prices were deflated by recession. "One of the main reasons why the economy is struggling is higher energy prices," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com. "It is already having a very significant effect."
But the Iraq crisis is far from the only problem afflicting the U.S. energy industry as it grapples with a far-ranging slump.
Refineries have cut back operations, depleting stockpiles of gasoline that will be needed this summer. Natural gas inventories are shrinking fast because of an extremely cold winter. New U.S. oil and gas exploration projects are yielding discouragingly poor results. And a financial crisis in the electric utility industry has drastically cut back new investments in pipelines and transmission lines.
Energy prices are notoriously volatile, and many analysts believe that crude oil costs would plunge quickly to $25 a barrel if a campaign against Hussein appeared headed for success and Iraq's oil facilities remained undamaged.
Other U.S. energy prices also would drop under this scenario, but not as much as globally traded crude oil, because of domestic energy issues that have nothing to do with Iraq, analysts say.
Natural gas production, for example, is struggling to stay even with demand, much less grow.
When gas prices shot up two years ago, the number of operating drilling rigs nearly tripled. But no bonanza ensued, and gas production for 2002 was about 3 percent below 2001 levels.
"We're simply not getting enough supply," said Adam Sieminski, an energy analyst with Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown in London.
Gas supplies could be short this summer, when the fuel is needed to produce electricity for air conditioning.
Gas producers -- and gas customers like Eastman Chemical -- are again calling on Congress to support the Bush administration's goal of expanding production from western public lands. "We need to open more lands to drilling," Ratheal said. The issue will again divide Congress, as environmental groups and their legislative allies argue that energy conservation is the better solution.
Gasoline inventories also are down sharply from a year ago, in part because of a strike at Venezuelan oil fields. Moreover, U.S. refineries are running at low rates, with oil companies waiting to ramp up operations in anticipation of higher summer gasoline prices, analysts said.
The current high oil prices have jacked up fourth-quarter profits for major oil companies. The Royal Dutch/Shell Group yesterday reported a $2.78 billion profit for the quarter, 46 percent above weak results from the year before. Exxon Mobil Corp. last month reported a 53 percent increase in quarterly profit.
But with their stock prices at the lowest levels in a half-dozen years, oil companies are not about to spend freely on new exploration and facilities, analysts said.
"The system is stretched," Sieminski said.
Looming over the entire energy sector is a shortage of funds for expansion. Capital investment in U.S. oil and gas drilling totaled $35 billion in the fourth quarter of 2001. "At the end of last year, it was back to $26 billion and falling fast," Zandi said. A key issue is uncertainty -- producers have no idea where natural gas prices will settle.
Even if more public lands were opened to exploration, pipeline systems to move the gas are crowded, and investment funds to add capacity are scarce.
Much of the nation's electricity industry, meanwhile, still is reeling from a headlong over-investment in new power plants during the deregulation boom of the late 1990s.
William F. Hederman Jr., head of market investigations for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, noted Wednesday that U.S. energy companies -- primarily utilities -- must repay $100 billion in short- and long-term debt in the coming year. Some will be forced into bankruptcy, analysts warn.
"The energy markets are in severe financial distress," Hederman said. "There's a loss of confidence in the markets that is feeding on itself."
-------- human rights
Federal program to aid trafficked victims
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 8, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030208-89514098.htm
The Justice Department has announced a $9.5 million nationwide federal program to help the estimated 50,000 women and children trafficked each year into the United States, many of whom are forced into the sex trade.
The department's Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) Thursday awarded 12 grants under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act Grant program.
Boat People S.O.S. in Falls Church received a $1.89 million grant. Formed in 1981, the organization conducts joint rescue-at-sea missions with international organizations and has rescued more than 3,000 Vietnamese boat people in the South China Sea.
The organization moved its headquarters from San Diego to Northern Virginia in 1990 and now concentrates on policy advocacy and casework, assisting some 1,500 refugee families in their asylum claims.
Since 1996, it has shifted its focus to helping and empowering Vietnamese immigrants and refugees in America.
"Trafficking victims are often poor and disadvantaged, and do not have access to traditional forms of assistance," said OVC Director John W. Gillis.
"We will work with our grantees to ensure that these victims are no longer ignored and receive the help they need."
Justice Department spokesman Adam Spector said trafficking victims may also be forced into domestic servitude, prison-type factory labor or migrant agricultural work.
He said eight of the grants will support comprehensive services to trafficking victims in a specific state or region, including emergency medical attention, food and shelter, vocational and English-language training, mental health counseling and legal support.
The grant winners will also educate local victim service providers on the needs of trafficking victims and develop training materials that can be used nationally.
Three of the grants will support specialized services to trafficking victims in larger multistate areas, including:
•The Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights will provide legal and social services to trafficking victims in eight Midwestern states.
•The Massachusetts Mental Health Institute Trauma Center will offer psychological assessments and crisis treatment to victims in 15 East Coast states and the District.
•The Salvation Army will establish at least 29 programs nationwide to house and support sex-trafficking victims.
Mr. Spector said the department also awarded a grant to Safe Horizon Inc., which will develop and deliver training and technical assistance to the other grantees.
Grants also went to the Little Tokyo Service Center in Los Angeles; the Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach in San Francisco; the International Rescue Committee in New York; the East Dallas Counseling Center Inc. in Dallas; and the YMCA International Services Inc. in Houston.
-------- ACTIVISTS
GERMANY
Rumsfeld Faces Tense Greeting and Antiwar Rallies in Munich
February 8, 2003
New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/international/europe/08RUMS.html
MUNICH, Germany, Feb. 7 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld arrived tonight in the heart of what he has dismissed as "old Europe," facing antiwar street rallies and a tense reception from his hosts even as he declared that debate among allies is healthy.
In advance of his speech on Saturday to an annual security conference, Mr. Rumsfeld was the object today of hostile headlines for his comments that Germany was on par with Cuba and Libya, at least when measured by support for American efforts to disarm Iraq.
These latest comments to irk Germany came during an otherwise uneventful budget hearing on Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
When asked by Rep. Robert E. Andrews, a New Jersey Democrat, to identify nations that have committed troops, offered bases, pledged overflight rights and other assistance should the United States attack Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld ticked off a few different categories of countries and their participation. He then added: "Then there are three or four countries that have said they won't do anything. I believe Libya, Cuba and Germany are ones that have indicated they won't help in any respect."
Quizzed by reporters today, Mr. Rumsfeld tried to put his comments in context but in no way sought to soften his argument.
"There are obviously enormous differences" between Germany, a thriving democracy, and the dictatorships of Cuba and Libya, Mr. Rumsfeld said. And, responding to a reporter's question, he said with a grin that it would be "mischievous" to construe his comments as an attempt to draw a direct comparison between Fidel Castro of Cuba and Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor.
But Mr. Rumsfeld pointed out that Mr. Schröder's campaign platform included a pledge that German forces would not join an American-led attack on Iraq. By so doing, Mr. Rumsfeld said, Germans "had nominated themselves" for the list that included Cuba and Libya.
Mr. Rumsfeld, a former American ambassador to NATO, said the alliance had been roiled by internal dissent throughout its history, and he said such debate was "healthy and desirable and part of a process."
Germany cannot prevent the United States from deploying American troops stationed here to join an offensive against Iraq, under the status of forces agreement between the two nations.
Mr. Rumsfeld hinted to correspondents traveling aboard his plane that the Defense Department might review the constellation of American bases in Germany, but he stressed that this would be a natural part of a continuing study of possible realignment and closings of installations in the United States and elsewhere.
Mr. Rumsfeld is scheduled to meet with his German counterpart, Peter Struck, on Saturday, although Iraq is expected to play less of a role in their talks than military cooperation to maintain security in Afghanistan, Pentagon officials said.
During his speech, Mr. Rumsfeld is expected to repeat that time is short for disarming Iraq. Conference officials said they anticipated large protests on Saturday, including one endorsed by Christian Ude, the mayor of Munich. An estimated 3,500 police were called to duty.
"These comments of Rumsfeld should help bring more people out onto the street," Raied Naieem, a member of the antiglobalization group Attac, which is organizing the protests, told local reporters.
Mr. Rumsfeld's comments, which came just days after he angered officials in France and Germany by describing them as "old Europe," compared with new and vibrant members of NATO and the European Union who support American policy toward Iraq.
Although Italy is a historic European power, it is one that supports the American stance on Iraq. Before Munich, Mr. Rumsfeld was in Rome to meet with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Defense Minister Antonio Martino. Mr. Rumsfeld praised Italy for its "strong friendship and staunch support." Mr. Martino said the Italian government was in step with the American position on Iraq.
"It would be a terrible, terrible blow to the credibility of the United Nations" if Saddam Hussein continued defying United Nations resolutions on disarmament, he said.
Mr. Rumsfeld ended his day in Italy with a visit to an air base in Aviano for a town hall-style meeting. "You are what stands between freedom and fear," he told the troops.
While Mr. Rumsfeld was in Rome, the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, went to Vatican City and met with Pope John Paul II. A Vatican spokesman said the meeting gave the Vatican an opportunity to reiterate its preference for a peaceful resolution with Iraq.
At a news conference in Vatican City, Mr. Fischer said of his meeting with the pope this morning, "I'm not the spokesperson for the Holy Father," but added, "With our deep worries and our deep skepticism, we are very close." That referred to the justification and wisdom of going to war with Iraq.
--------
Venezuelan Opposition Stages March for Oil Strikers
February 8, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-venezuela.html
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - More than 100,000 opponents of President Hugo Chavez marched through the streets of Caracas on Saturday in solidarity with oil workers staging a two-month strike against the beleaguered Venezuelan leader.
In a boisterous rally of national flags, whistles and beating drums, demonstrators joined strikers from the state oil firm PDVSA to show support for the shutdown aimed at forcing early elections in the world's No. 5 petroleum exporter.
The stoppage, which started on Dec. 2, has crumbled as private businesses reopened to stave off bankruptcy. But thousands of PDVSA employees are vowing to stay out until Chavez quits and reinstates rebel oil workers fired during a government crackdown on their protest.
``PDVSA belongs to us, not to the government,'' strike leader Juan Fernandez shouted from a stage to the crowds jamming a major highway in the capital. ``There can be no step back.''
Chavez, first elected in 1998, faces a determined alliance of political parties, unions and businesses who accuse him of dictatorial rule and mismanaging the economy. He has resisted opposition calls for elections.
Opponents, who demand that any political solution to the crisis must include the PDVSA strikers, said they had collected a petition of more than two million signatures in support of the oil workers.
Chavez has fired 9,000 oil workers and restructured PDVSA to counter the stoppage, which has battered Venezuela's economy by slashing the crude exports that account for half of government revenues.
AMNESTY REJECTED
Chavez has also firmly rejected any amnesty for the strikers. ``Not even if I were mad, not even if I were crazy would I do that,'' Chavez told foreign diplomats.
The dispute over the oil workers and the economic crisis have complicated negotiations between the government and the opposition. Peace talks backed by a six-nation group and the Organization of American States have faltered over the timing of a possible election.
The strike fueled political tensions between Chavez and his foes, who have led scores of huge street rallies. More than nine weeks into the oil strike Venezuelans still must cope with severe domestic fuel shortages and long lines at gas stations.
Hoping to soften the strike's economic blow, the government introduced tight foreign exchange curbs and price controls to shore up its reserves and the local bolivar currency.
Officials have suspended currency markets for more than two weeks, but the bolivar has plunged more than 24 percent since the start of the year.
Venezuela's political divide over the president's rule has widened since April, when Chavez survived a brief coup by rebel military officers. At least seven people have died in shootings at political rallies and in street clashes and other violence since the strike began in December.
The government says oil output has recovered somewhat to nearly 2 million barrels a day (bpd) and exports are at 700,000 bpd. But strikers estimate that output is still at a third of the 3.1 million bpd the South American nation produced before the strike. Exports are usually around 2.7 million bpd.
--------
Germans Rally Against War as Rumsfeld Speaks
February 8, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-germany-demonstration.html
MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - More than 12,000 peace demonstrators gathered in central Munich on Saturday outside a conference where Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld criticized Germany's efforts to prevent a U.S. war against Iraq.
Munich police said the protest was largely peaceful, though some scuffles broke out between demonstrators and the 3,500 police. Snowballs and bottles were thrown from the crowd.
The rally, held under the slogan ``No War in Iraq'' was organized by trade unions, church groups and politicians. It was the latest in a series of anti-war rallies in Germany.
``Osama Bush Laden'' read one poster carried through a steady snowstorm in the southern German city. ``No Blood for Oil'' read another. ``No war, Mr. Rumsfeld'' and ``NATO War -- Stop the Capitalist Terror!'' were written on other posters.
An overwhelming majority of Germans, who acquired a strong pacifist streak following the devastation of World War II, are firmly opposed to any war in Iraq, opinion polls have found.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government has also angered President Bush for saying Germany, which holds a non-veto seat in the U.N. Security Council, would not under any circumstances vote to support a war.
``If we end up in this war, it will mean we've returned to wars of conquest,'' Rolf Boysen, a Munich actor, told the crowd.
Susanne Breit Kessler, a local Protestant church leader, also criticized any rush to war: ``We know all the arguments for war, but we want to know that all the political possibilities for a peaceful resolution are first being pursued.''
Munich Mayor Christian Ude joined the rally and told German television: ``The participants (of the conference) probably won't let themselves be affected by this rally, but the large numbers here make me confident it may be possible to change the opinions of people around the world, especially in America.''
Inside the tightly guarded hotel venue for the conference, Rumsfeld said the world was serious about disarming Baghdad and rounded on France, Germany and Belgium for what he called ``inexcusable'' stalling of NATO moves to protect Turkey in any war against neighboring Iraq.
``No one wants war,'' Rumsfeld said. ``War is never a first or an easy choice. But the risks of war need to be balanced against the risks of doing nothing while Iraq pursues weapons of mass destruction.''
--------
Thousands in Germany Protest Iraq War
February 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Security-Conference-Protests.html
MUNICH, Germany (AP) -- As many as 20,000 anti-war protesters demonstrated peacefully Saturday while a massive force of 3,500 police protected a security conference attended by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other prominent defense and security officials.
Demonstrators opposing war with Iraq carried signs through snowy Munich saying ``Rummy, go home'' and ``Welcome to Cuba'' -- a reference to Rumsfeld's remark last week that lumped Germany with U.S. adversaries Cuba and Libya over their resistance to war.
``I'm demonstrating against Mr. Bush because I know what war means. I lived through a bombing attack on a train as a child,'' said Georg Franz, a 73-year-old retiree.
Police closed down large sections of downtown Munich for two protests, one called by church and union leaders and another by anti-globalization protesters and radical leftists.
Authorities reported no major incidents, but said 18 people had been arrested since Friday, mostly for minor infractions like disobeying police.
More than 10,000 demonstrators joined a peaceful protest endorsed by Munich Mayor Christian Ude earlier Saturday. ``Today Munich says yes to peace and no to war,'' said Roman Catholic Bishop Engelbert Siebler.
Many of those demonstrators joined the second protest of some 4,500 radicals at Munich's well-known Marienplatz square.
Police raided a youth center where the radicals were gathering Friday, arresting one person and detaining 22 others until the end of the security conference on Sunday. Authorities said there were indications they planned violence.
----
New York City Rally and March Permit Status
February 8, 2003,
United for Peace
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=801
We have a permit to rally on First Avenue stretching north from 49th Street -- but to our great shock and outrage, Federal Judge Barbara Jones has ruled that the NYPD can deny our right to hold a march as well. We will not let the NYPD and the Bush Administration silence our cry for peace.
Speak Up for Your Right to March!
United for Peace and Justice has secured a rally location for the protest on February 15, on First Avenue stretching north from 49th Street. We have a legal permit for this rally, and our massive, peaceful demonstration to stop the Iraq war will go forward no matter what.
But in an outrageous attack on our civil liberties, Federal Judge Barbara Jones ruled on February 10 that the City of New York can deny United for Peace and Justice a permit to march on February 15. Citing "heightened security concerns," she ruled that we may only hold a stationary rally. In his deposition before the court, Assistant Chief Michael Esposito admitted that the NYPD has adopted a blanket policy since fall 2002 of banning all protest marches in Manhattan south of 59th Street.
This fight is about far more than one protest march; it's about how much political space for dissent there will be in this country for the forseeable future. We are appalled by this attack on our basic First Amendment rights, and we will continue to fight for the right to march.
Our attorneys from the New York Civil Liberties Union have filed an appeal of Judge Jones' decision. But this is a political fight as well as a legal one. We need all of our supporters to make a huge ruckus about the NYPD's attempt to keep us from marching on February 15.
Some suggestions:
Fax a statement from your organization to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg insisting on our right to march on February 15. Fax#: (212) 788-2460
Ask sympathetic elected officials, community leaders, and/or celebrities to contact Mayor Bloomberg and demand that the City issue a march permit.
Contact your local media, write letters to the editor, call in to radio talk shows, get the word out about this outrageous denial of our Constitutional rights
Make phone calls to these officials supporting our request for a march permit:
- NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg: 212-788-9600, 212-788-3010, 212-788-3040
- NYC Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly: 646-610-8526
- NYPD Chief of Department Joseph Esposito: 646-610-6710
Send emails expressing your feelings about our right to march:
- NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg: http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html
- NYC Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly: rkelly@nypd.nyc.gov
- NYPD Chief of Department Joseph Esposito: jesposito@nypd.nyc.gov
You can also sign an online petition urging the Mayor and Police to issue permits for a march through Midtown.
----
Christian Leaders Prominent in Anti-War Movement
Sat February 8, 2003
By Alan Elsner, National Correspondent
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2192937
WASHINGTON - Christian church leaders and lay people are taking an usually prominent role in the U.S. anti-war movement, arguing that an attack against Iraq would not fit the theological definition of a "just war."
Leading Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran clergy have for months been issuing statements and writing petitions against the war and urging their followers to join anti-war demonstrations. A leading Methodist bishop even recently appeared on a television commercial against the war.
"The churches are very intensely involved in all aspects of the peace movement. They are playing a very visible and active role and they are equally involved behind the scenes in fundraising, grassroots organizing and just rolling up their sleeves and working," said Tom Andrews, a former Democratic member of Congress who now serves as national director for Win Without War, an umbrella anti-war group.
Barbara Epstein, a history professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said church leaders had opposed many past U.S. wars but the extent of their involvement this time was remarkable.
"We see an extensive and growing role of the churches which is very remarkable and is greater than we have seen before," said Epstein, who has studied previous anti-war movements.
That is not to suggest that a majority of U.S. Christians oppose President Bush on Iraq. Many Protestants and Catholics do not agree with their leaders and polls suggest the president enjoys overwhelming support from southern conservatives, many of whom are evangelical Christians.
Richard Land, speaking for the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, the largest denomination in the United States, recently wrote to Bush assuring him that the Iraqi threat satisfied the conditions of a "just war."
The same split emerged in the 1991 Gulf War, when some Protestant and Catholic leaders raised moral concerns about the U.S. military campaign to expel Iraq from Kuwait. But protests then were on a much smaller scale.
At the heart of the debate is the Christian doctrine of a just war, first formulated by St. Augustine in the 5th century and built upon by later generations.
"In religious terms, the issue comes down to the just war tradition, which holds that religion can sanction the constrained use of violence but only if certain conditions are fulfilled," said Frank Kirkpatrick, a professor of religion at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
The current formulation lays out seven principles under which war is permissible: to resist aggression or to defend its victims; it should be waged to secure just goals; it should be a last resort; it should be waged by a legitimate legal authority; it should be limited in scope; its human cost should be proportionate to the good it is intended to achieve, and it should exclude civilians and noncombatants.
"The key provision is the one referring to war only as a last resort. That's where most of the churches feel that Bush has not yet made his case," said Kirkpatrick.
Bush acknowledged the debate in his State of the Union address last week when he said, "If war is forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means."
VEHEMENT LANGUAGE
Some of the language of church leaders against the war has been surprisingly vehement. United Methodist Board of Church and Society director Jim Winkler caused a stir in religious circles in September 2002 when he stated it was "inconceivable that Jesus Christ would support this proposed attack."
A few weeks later, the Methodists wrote to Bush, who is a member of their church, saying, "A preemptive war by the United States against a nation like Iraq goes against the very grain of our understanding of the gospel, our church's teachings, and our conscience."
More recently, Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, got into a public dispute with former President George Bush, father of the present incumbent.
In an interview with a religious news service, Griswold said, "We are loathed and I think the world has every right to loath us ... I'd like to be able to go somewhere in the world and not have to apologize for being from the United States."
The elder Bush, who is an Episcopalian, said, "I found these particular quotes to be offensive. And knowing the president as I do, I found them uncalled for."
Spurred by statements from Pope John Paul II, who last month implored Washington to look for peaceful ways to settle its differences with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Catholic leaders have also spoken out strongly against the war.
New York Cardinal Edward Egan recently called for U.N. weapons inspectors to be able to continue their work in Iraq. During a teleconference for priests, Egan said that justifying war requires "clear and certain knowledge of a clear and certain danger."
George Weigel, a prominent Catholic commentator and biographer of Pope John Paul II, said just war theory needed to be updated to meet new conditions, specifically the emergence of international terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. He believes war against Iraq is justified.
"Some of these clerical opponents of war have given themselves over to a functional pacifism, a conviction that there are virtually no circumstances in which the proportionate and discriminate use of armed force can serve the goals of peace, order, justice and freedom," he said.
"The evangelical churches seem to have a clearer understanding of what wickedness can do in the world, a realization of the reality of evil," he said.
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