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NUCLEAR
Potassium Iodide Pills
Children are main victims of UN curbs
Church activists welcome US Navy plan to leave Vieques
U.S. Study Finds No New Links to Gulf War Illness
U.N. refers N. Korea nuke dispute to experts
Speculation Shrouds N. Korean Nuke Site
Seoul Plays Down N. Korea's Threat on Armistice
Meanwhile, in N. Korea
Expert: Chemical Weapons, Dirty Bomb Risk Minimal
US plan for new nuclear arsenal
Risk at Indian Point
Powell Expected to Visit Japan, China, South Korea
Costs of war already coming in
The surprisingly quiet American
Rumsfeld keeps four-page list in his desk
Moseley-Braun Joins Democratic Presidential Field
2004 presidential field keeps growing
Gephardt Opens Presidential Campaign
MILITARY
Afghan Weapons Work Requires Diplomacy
Mine Injures U.S. Soldier in Afghanistan
SOUTH AFRICA - Scientists to teach Iraq how to disarm
GREEK AIR FORCE RECEIVES FIRST UPGRADED F-4
U.N. Court Indicts 4 Kosovo Albanians
Milosevic Trial Shown Secret Paramilitary Video
BRITAIN - Mrs. Blair opposes husband on Gurkhas
Deals: Silicon Graphics Wins $26 Million Contract
COLOMBIA: Clash kills 29 near U.S. forces
Colombia: Missing Americans Are Hostages
Saddam Says Iraq Wants Peace, Dignity
Saddam: Peace 'at any cost' unacceptable
Report: Iranian-backed opposition forces penetrate Iraq territory
U.S. Would Remove Iranian Opposition in Iraq
Snubbed Iraqi Opposition Turns on U.S. Sponsors
Schroeder, Mubarak Urge Iraq to Cooperate More
U.S. delays new Iraq resolution
Hunger Among Kurds for a Final Fight With Hussein
Germany Shifts Its Stand on Iraq Crisis
Israel Disbands a Disobedient Combat Unit
11 Palestinians Killed as Israeli Troops and Tanks Enter Gaza
Israeli Army Raids Gaza and Nablus, Killing 13
Incursion targets militants
PERU - Former spy chief goes on trial
Trial Begins For Peru's Former Spy Chief
U.S. TAKES OFF THE GLOVES WITH TURKEY
Some Syrian Troops To Leave Lebanon
SAUDI ARABIA - Prince announces terrorism crackdown
Doubt Hangs Over Turkish Arm of Iraq Invasion Plan
Turkey Conditions Troop Deployment On More U.S. Aid
Crisis Over, NATO Approves Defense Gear for Turkey
Vieques residents bid a farewell to arms
Isser Harel Dies at 91; Israeli Spymaster
U.N. Nations Urge U.S. to Choose Peace in Iraq
U.N. Tribunal Convicts Rwandan Pastor
U.S. Aircraft Carrier Jet Crashes, Pilot Rescued
In a Dance Against Time, A Division Packs for War
Ridge Launches Terror Readiness Campaign
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Police Searching Cars at Random Outside Airports
ACLU Challenges Surveillance Powers
ACLU Asks High Court to Set Spy Limits
Guns and D.C.
You Fly, They Spy
Oakland Settles Alleged Police Abuse
Fire set on S. Korean subway kills estimated 120
ENERGY AND OTHER
Europe Ahead of U.S. in Renewable Power
German "green" power output up 18 pct in 2002 -
Australia to target India with green power turbine
BP Creates Multi-Billion Dollar Oil & Gas Partnership In Russia
Greenhouse Gases Declined in 2001
Insectides, Solvents Linked to Gulf War Syndrome
Ebola May Spread in Republic of Congo
ACTIVISTS
War talk enters classes in U.S.
Protests Complicate U.S. Policy on Iraq
Israel's 'Bread Loaf Battle' Highlights Social Gap
Cuba Gives Democracy Backers Prison Time
Anti - War Groups Planning Phone Campaign
Older Activists Speak Out for Elderly
Man Who Beheaded Thatcher Statue Jailed
America's Image Declines on War Issue
Protesters take over the streets of Lismore
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Potassium Iodide Pills
February 19, 2003, Wednesday
EDITORIAL DESK
New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/search/full-page?res=9E0CE6DD163DF93AA25751C0A9659C8B63
To the Editor:
Re ''The Smart Way to Be Scared'' (Week in Review, Feb. 16):
Gregg Easterbrook is right to point out that much of the current panic related to possible bioterrorism is based on a mythologizing of prior attempts at such bioterror and chemical weapons.
In fact, in each case the potential weapon has severe practical limitations that thankfully reduce the number of deaths.
Regarding radiation exposure, while there is some evidence that the use of potassium iodide pills cut down the incidence of thyroid cancer in those who experienced Chernobyl, that is far from supporting its use as a pill of great protection.
Giving potassium iodide to protect against the effects of radiation is like sending a naked person out into a blizzard wearing only a scarf.
MARC SIEGEL, M.D.
New York,
Feb. 16, 2003
-------- depleted uranium
Children are main victims of UN curbs
Gulf News Online,
Asia Editor
19-02-2003
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=77853
Baghdad | In a corner of this bleak place they call a children's ward, a small bundle wrapped in a blanket of indeterminate colour, tubes running from a wasted hand into a bag of clear fluid, moans and threshes about in pain.
The grimy room faces the east and the early morning light floods through the huge window overlooking the Tigris river, but the weak sunshine is the only ray of light in this dark corner.
These are the children who are waiting to die, victims of a war they had no part of, suffering the consequences of a war they knew nothing of; a war that was over long before they were born.
Each and every one of the ten children in this paediatric oncology ward, barring one, is a cancer patient, suffering from the effects, doctors here say, of the radiation from the nuclear warheads that rained down on Iraq in 1991. Most of these children come from the south, where the battle for Kuwait was fought.
Shrunken, distended bodies, their heads shorn of hair, some alive, others marking time, their faces are a study of anguish and pain. And indifference.
"This is the death ward," said Dr Wissam Yunus, chief paediatrician and Resident of the Al Mansoor Children's Hospital, where these children, radiation victims all, come to die.
"There is nothing we can do for them, except make their last days as painless as possible," Wissam added as we toured the grim 150 bed hospital that once boasted the best facilities for Iraqi children.
Today, its 70 doctors battle a disease they have not seen the likes of before. The radiation from the depleted uranium is causing not just huge deformities at birth, but worse, is surfacing when the child is three or four. "By then, it's often too late." Death is often swift.
"Within three to six months, it's over," says Wissam, "what more can we do for them. Many of the medicines and treatment we need is beyond the hospital's means. We cannot afford bone marrow transplants, which is what seven year old Rania and this child Sheba and many of the others here need.
It costs $2,500 every time and even then, their chances would be no more than fifty per cent. The embargo and the sanctions has meant that the medicines we most need to give these children a chance at fighting the cancer is simply not available."
The embargo has also meant that the doctors are in fact treating the chidren with one hand tied behind their backs, says the child specialist.
"We may have one medicine, but then we don't have another. Some children were able to buy time because they managed to get the bone marrow transplant that was available as soon as the embargo kicked in.
"Now, one of the children has come back and she needs another transplant, but we just do not have it. The child's father Waleed, is a truck driver. He barely makes enough to feed his family and relies on us. He has come back to us for help today. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do."
Rania, who looks more like a two than a seven year old is from Salahuddin, Tikrit, native to the ancestral home of the Tikritis from where Iraqi President Saddam Hussain hails. One of four children, she was diagnosed with bone cancer five months ago. She exhibited all the symptoms. She had very high fever, rapid weight loss and pain.
"We have had to amputate her left leg," Wissam said, "we were hoping that by cutting the cancer cells out and giving her chemotherapy we could save her, but it's obvious the cancer has spread, no amount of the little cytotoxic treatment we can offer is going to save her. How much can we surgically remove. We've told her mother it's terminal."
Does Rania know? The question didn't need an answer. Her eyes cast down, not once did she attempt to make eye contact, the child was rubbing the stub that was once her leg, the sleeve of her pullover patterned with congealed blood, a scarf barely covering her painful baldness.
The maladies vary from Non Hodgkins Lymphoma to leukaemia, but it's only a variation.
----
Church activists welcome US Navy plan to leave Vieques
February 19, 2003
From dmack@episcopalchurch.org
Episcopalians: News Briefs 2003-036
http://www.wfn.org/2003/02/msg00221.html
(ENI) The announced departure of a US Navy military base from the small Puerto Rican island of Vieques has been hailed by church leaders and others who have for years protested against the base's bombing range. "Thanks to the religious leaders who knew how to be authentic pastors walking with their people and defending their people, David has once again overcome Goliath," said the Rev. German Acevedo-Delgado, a United Methodist activist.
The US Navy began its last training operations on Vieques at the beginning of February, and has promised to leave by May 1, having used the eastern third of the Caribbean island for military maneuvers since 1947. The navy, which is moving its maneuvers to Florida and other areas on the US mainland, has said it will turn the Vieques base over to the US Department of the Interior for use as a wildlife refuge.
A widespread coalition of Puerto Ricans from all walks of life, including church ministers, nuns, bishops and the general secretary of the Puerto Rican Bible Society, as well as US Congressmen, had steadfastly opposed the naval base on the 37-kilometer-long island, which has a population of about 9,000. Tens of thousands of protesters have taken part in demonstrations against the base, and about 1500 have been arrested in the past four years. Protesters often occupied the bombing beaches until US marshals and troops dragged them off. On one occasion, an ecumenical chapel was built on the bombing range, only to be torn down when military forces retook the area.
Residents of the island, part of the United States Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, are worried the navy is leaving them to deal with an environmental mess, and have demanded that the US government clean up any toxic remnants of military exercises. Decades of bombing have left islanders with elevated cancer rates, say the residents, who are concerned that the military's legacy of depleted uranium shells and heavy metals will leave them suffering for years. A Pentagon report has confirmed that the navy also tested chemical weapons simulants on the island in the 1960s, news agencies reported on Wednesday.
After six decades of vicious feuds with the navy, Vieques residents are skeptical about the military's exit. "We do not trust the navy or the federal government, so we will be steadfast in our struggle, attentive to any plan to continue using and abusing Vieques," said Nilda Medina, spokesperson for the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, which has been campaigning against the military exercises.
----
U.S. Study Finds No New Links to Gulf War Illness
Wed Feb 19,
Health - Reuters
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=571&ncid=751&e=4&u=/nm/20030219/hl_nm/gulfwar_illness_dc
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Studies show long-term exposure to certain pesticides and solvents can damage a person's health, but there is not enough evidence to show whether such chemicals are linked to Gulf War Syndrome, US scientists said on Tuesday.
A review of 3,000 studies confirmed the chemicals may be bad for those exposed to them, but hardly any of the studies looked at veterans, said the Institute of Medicine report.
"Our exhaustive examination of the literature produced no unexpected findings," said Dr. Jack Colwill of the University of Missouri, who led the study. "Our conclusions about exposure to insecticides and solvents and long-term health problems largely mirror those reached by many other scientific groups."
Gulf War Syndrome is a poorly defined group of illnesses seen in many veterans of the 1991 conflict. Few doctors dispute that veterans have a collection of symptoms, but experts have been unable to find an explanation. Vaccines and exposure to chemicals are the main suspects but no link has been found.
Congress asked the Institute of Medicine, an independent body that advises the federal government, to put together a panel of experts to look at possible causes.
Their first report focused on depleted uranium, the anti-nerve gas treatment pyridostigmine bromide, the poison gas sarin, and vaccines. There was not enough evidence to determine these caused the syndrome.
Wednesday's report looked at what is known specifically about insecticides and solvents and the next report will be on pollutants and particulates such as smoke from oil-well fires, diesel heater fumes and jet fuels.
In the latest report the panel did not do any new research, but looked at studies of exposure to insecticides and solvents such as cleaning agents and their possible links to cancer and other health problems.
They found most of the studies involved farm or industrial workers. They reaffirmed that the solvent benzene can cause acute leukemia and aplastic anemia, which was already known.
They also found some suggestion that benzene and organophosphorus and carbamate insecticides may be associated with a type of cancer known as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. But neither DEET nor permethrin, the pest-control agents most commonly used during the Gulf War, belong to these insecticide classes.
The committee said there was insufficient evidence to associate any insecticides or solvents with neurological diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease; Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's disease.
-------- koreas
U.N. refers N. Korea nuke dispute to experts
2/19/2003
AP
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-02-19-un-nkorea_x.htm
UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. Security Council discussed North Korea's nuclear weapons program and its rejection of an anti-nuclear treaty Wednesday, before asking specialists from its member states to study the issue.
German Ambassador Gunter Pleuger said the Security Council will await the recommendations of experts before taking any action.
"As it is an important and very complicated issue, the council wanted to refer this to" experts, said Pleuger, whose country holds the council presidency this month.
The United States said last week it would not press for punishing U.N. sanctions against North Korea now, but Pyongyang said it didn't trust Washington and demanded that the council blame the U.S. government for the nuclear crisis.
North Korea has warned that sanctions would be tantamount to "a declaration of war."
The International Atomic Energy Agency referred the issue to the council in a resolution, which accused the communist state of "noncompliance" in its nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA.
North Korea is sticking to its demand for direct dialogue with the United States on the nuclear impasse. China, its close ally, said it was "working very hard on the two parties" to resolve the issue.
"We wish to see the parties meet," said China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Yingfan.
U.S. representatives at Wednesday's council meeting said the IAEA's decision to refer North Korea's noncompliance to the council emphasized the international, rather than bilateral, nature of the issue.
"We look forward to working with our colleagues on the council on finding a way to achieve a verifiable and irreversible dismantling of North Korea's nuclear program," deputy U.S. ambassador James Cunningham said. "This kind of violation is something that we should all be concerned about."
The nuclear standoff began in October, when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted having a covert nuclear program - which Pyongyang calls a U.S. "rumor." Washington and its allies suspended fuel shipments, and the North retaliated by expelling U.N. monitors, taking steps to restart frozen nuclear facilities and withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
North Korea says it is reactivating its facilities to generate badly needed electricity, but U.S. officials say the equipment could be used to produce atomic bombs.
North Korea's recent moves to restart its nuclear facilities have been widely viewed as attempts to pressure Washington into direct negotiations on a nonaggression pact.
----
Speculation Shrouds N. Korean Nuke Site
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-Nuclear-Program.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- In the past month, U.S. spy satellites have detected smoke rising from the once shuttered buildings clustered around a loop of North Korea's Kuryong River. Trucks arrived and departed, and workers bustled.
The Yongbyon Nuclear Center is one of the most heavily guarded areas in one of the world's most secretive nations, and it is the focal point of rising tensions over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
American analysts aren't sure what is going on there, and some South Korean experts think the North is staging phony activity as a bargaining chip in its effort to get Washington to sign a nonaggression treaty. But the increased movement at the site 50 miles north of the capital, Pyongyang, has increased anxiety over the North's intentions.
Neighboring nations worry the North may be resuming its program to produce nuclear weapons, fearing that could bring an arms race in the region or even war. The faceoff also has caused some strain between Washington and South Korea's government over how to deal with the crisis.
Experts say the complex is home to 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods that could be processed within a few months into enough weapons-grade plutonium for several atomic bombs.
``The moment they remove those rods for reprocessing will be the moment they cross the danger line,'' said Paek Hak-soon, a North Korea expert at Seoul's independent Sejong Institute. ``Whatever they do at Yongbyon will be carefully calculated and choreographed.''
Earlier this month, U.S. officials said satellite images caught covered trucks apparently taking on cargo around the fuel rod storage facility, but they were divided over whether the North Koreans were really removing rods or just bluffing.
``They are just putting up a Potemkin village,'' said Kim Dong-kyu, an analyst at Seoul's Korea University, referring to a showy facade intended to divert attention. ``They know there are watched by satellites.''
Paek also doesn't think the North Koreans are reprocessing fuel rods. He said the North's most likely next step would be to restart the site's nuclear reactor, which can produce more spent fuel rods.
``They will save reprocessing the spent rods as an option they can use at a more critical time, like when the U.N. Security Council tries to impose economic sanctions,'' Paek said. ``Like cutting salami in thin slices, North Korea raises the stakes step-by-step.''
The International Atomic Energy Agency decided last week to refer the North Korean dispute to the U.N. Security Council as a way to put more pressure on the communist state to abandon nuclear weapons work and allow the return of U.N. monitors expelled from Yongbyon late last year.
No international journalists have visited the area, and photographs of the facilities are so rare that TV stations have used the same footage of the inside of the complex for years.
North Korea says Yongbyon was built to generate badly needed electricity. U.S. officials say the entire site is a nuclear weapons facility operating behind a peaceful facade.
The complex began with a tiny research reactor North Korea built in 1965 with Soviet help. It now has a 5-megawatt reactor and an unfinished 50-megawatt reactor and facilities for fuel manufacture. Some of the hundreds of buildings there are designated ``military facilities'' and have never been opened to outside inspectors.
During a 1994 showdown, then-President Clinton was close to ordering Yongbyon bombed. That crisis was defused when North Korea agreed to mothball the facilities in return for free oil and help building two new, but less dangerous nuclear power plants.
Under the 1994 accord, U.S. experts visited the complex and worked with the North Koreans to place the 8,000 spent fuel rods from the 5-megawatt reactor into airtight, stainless steel canisters. The cans were sealed, tagged and placed underwater.
The uranium-alloy rods -- 1 inch in diameter, 21 inches long and 13.7 pound each -- could yield enough plutonium for several bombs if they were put through a nearby radiochemical reprocessing lab, experts say.
The current crisis flared up in October when the U.S. government said North Korean officials had admitted pursuing a secret nuclear arms program, a charge later denied by the North.
Washington and its allies cut off oil shipments, and the North responded by reactivating Yongbyon, expelling the U.N. monitors and withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
----
Seoul Plays Down N. Korea's Threat on Armistice
By Joohee Cho and Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27761-2003Feb18?language=printer
SEOUL, Feb. 18 -- South Korea shrugged off a threat by North Korea today to abandon the armistice agreement that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. Officials in the South said the dispute over North Korea's nuclear program is not as dangerous as some people in Washington believe.
"I believe the danger of war on the Korean Peninsula is slight -- in fact, nonexistent," President Kim Dae Jung told his cabinet this morning, according to a statement from his office. Kim did not mention the armistice threat specifically, a spokesman said.
In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the North's threat would "only serve to hurt, isolate and move North Korea backward." He advised being "judicious" about it, saying, "there is a lengthy history of bravado to some of their statements."
North Korea declared it would have "no option but to take a decisive step to abandon its commitment" to the armistice if the United States imposed sanctions, such as a naval blockade, and continued what the statement called plans to build up forces for a preemptive attack on the North.
The U.N. Security Council is due to take up North Korea's declaration that it has withdrawn from the global nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The council has the authority to impose sanctions.
An official of the transition team for President-elect Roh Moo Hyun, who is scheduled to take office next Tuesday, noted that the North Korean warning is contingent on sanctions being imposed. "We must resolve the conflict before the situation develops in that direction," he said.
In Japan, the government's top spokesman, Yasuo Fukuda, said of North Korea's threat: "We have to take it calmly."
The armistice stopped the Korean War after three years of fighting, establishing a truce line between North and South Korea and procedures for military consultations between the two sides. There was never a peace treaty officially ending the war, and the so-called Demilitarized Zone along the truce line is one of the most heavily fortified boundaries in the world.
Differences in perception of the seriousness of the North Korean program to enrich uranium and produce weapons-grade plutonium are creating strains in relations between Washington and Seoul, key officials have acknowledged. Privately, some South Korean officials today were blunt, accusing the United States of mishandling the affair and exaggerating the threat.
"I wouldn't put too much weight on whether North Korea will actually initiate any real conflict," said one official, insisting on anonymity. The problem, he said, is "you've got a lot of people who haven't watched the North-South situation in the past" in Washington. "Suddenly you've got these amateurs with lots of ideas."
"I think the U.S. is exaggerating North Korea's threat and being too sensitive about this," said another official. North Korea's threat "is a very offensively oriented move," said Kim Byung Ki, a professor of international relations at Korea University in Seoul. "They are trying to gain as much of a bargaining position as possible. They are waiting for the U.S. response."
----
[To reply - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com]
Meanwhile, in N. Korea
Helle Dale
February 19, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030219-88416330.htm
It is a very sad fact indeed that South Koreans now find the United States to be a greater danger to the peace than North Korea. A recent "60 Minutes" segment on South Korea showed passions running high and anger against the United States disturbingly widespread. Who remembers now that, had it not been for the intervention of the United States when the North attacked the South in 1950 and the war fought at the loss of tens of thousands of American lives, the entire peninsula would have been enveloped in the totalitarian darkness?
Instead the South, the 11th-largest economy in the world, is now a free and highly developed society - and yet another one in the throes of a tremendous fit of anti-American sentiment. Two generations have grown up since the Korean War. Many people prefer to believe, against plenty of evidence going back over decades, that the North Korean regime can and will change if engaged.
"The starting point for Korea is that there should never be another war on the Korean peninsula," said Seok Hyun Hong, the publisher of Korea's largest newspaper JoongAng Ilbo, last week at the Heritage Foundation. "We start with this unequivocal belief and then work to arrive at the unwavering determination that a crisis must be resolved through dialogue and negotiations."
As a matter of fact, that has also been the approach of the U.S. government, which has actually taken an entirely different approach to the Korean situation than it has to Iraq, but has received precious little applause for working multilaterally in this case. Congressional Democrats have complained that the administration's approach to Korea has been, of all things, too restrained - not a charge often leveled at the White House these days.
The administration in this case has committed itself to work through the U.N. Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and through negotiations with North Korea's regional neighbors, seeking to avoid making this a two-way standoff between Washington and Pyongyang. Ironically, that is exactly what many would prefer, including the North Koreans. (Needless to say, this is an idea entirely rejected by the international community when it comes to Iraq. Go figure.)
Within the next two weeks, the United States is expected to urge the Security Council to condemn North Korea's recent moves to restart its nuclear program, its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the restarting of the nuclear reactor in Yongbyon. A list of potential sanctions is being drawn up by the White House, the mere idea of which has unleashed yet another verbal explosion from the North Koreans, to the effect that this would amount to a declaration of war.
What North Korean Dear Leader Kim Jong-il would like more than anything, according to knowledgeable South Korean observers, is the prestige and recognition of dealing one-on-one with the world's only superpower. After all, Kim got Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang - and almost succeeded in getting then-President Clinton. (He could still get Mr. Clinton, of course, but, let's face it, he doesn't carry quite the same prestige these days.)
Kim certainly would not want to see anyone less than a president or vice president, and for meaningful dialogue with Korea, there is no one else to negotiate with. He wants a package deal that would solve all North Korea's problems together and keep him in power - international aid, IMF and World Bank assistance, reconciliation with Japan and aid from South Korea. He thinks that only the United States is able to order all these players to act and to do so quickly. North Korea is a country in abysmal shape, close to mass starvation and totally dependent on international assistance.
And, of course, he wants all of this after admitting to having cheated on the 1994 Agreed Framework with Washington and Seoul, which provided North Koreans with food and energy for most of a decade in return for canceling their nuclear program - which they never did, of course.
Now, the Bush administration has stated that it will not talk until North Korea allows the IAEA's nuclear inspectors back in. If that happens, then perhaps the United States should contemplate opening a dialogue, but not before. The CIA believes that North Korea has been a nuclear power for some time, and to rush into premature and panicky concessions now would be a mistake and reward deception, dishonesty and blackmail.
Unfortunately, there are those who will condemn even this principled stand and paint the United States as the aggressor, which is clearly the case in South Korean public opinion, if not leading political circles. A strong resemblance to European attitudes towards Iraq may be detected here. It is yet another case where American rejection of the appeasement favored by others is causing the United States to be seen as the problem.
Helle Dale is deputy director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Email: helle.dale@heritage.org.
-------- terrorism
Expert: Chemical Weapons, Dirty Bomb Risk Minimal
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; 11:53 AM
By Michael Holden
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30078-2003Feb19?language=printer
LONDON (Reuters) - Chemical, biological and radiological weapons (CBR) pose only a minimal risk of causing widespread deaths and are of little interest to al Qaeda, a British counter-terrorism expert said Wednesday.
Instead militant groups such as Osama bin Laden's network, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, would continue to use bombs or easily accessible "weapons" like planes or petrol tankers as weapons of mass destruction.
"CBR weapons have received only desultory attention from old terrorist organizations and almost none from new. Al Qaeda have shown no interest," Brigadier Malcolm Mackenzie-Orr told Reuters. "Why change their favored method of attack?"
The United States and Britain are massing troops in the Gulf in preparation for a possible invasion of Iraq to disarm Baghdad of weapons of mass destruction which they say could be used in the future by terror organizations.
Last week the U.S. government warned that al Qaeda could be planning a possible mass-casualty CBR attack, and raised the national threat level to orange, the second-highest after red.
But Mackenzie-Orr accused governments of playing up the risk of CBRs for political reasons, saying they had proved generally nowhere near as effective as traditional weapons in the past.
He said chemical weapons were quickly dispersed, biological weapons were difficult to spread widely, and radiological weapons -- so-called "dirty bombs" -- presented big logistical problems.
Mackenzie-Orr, who served as a former bomb disposal chief in Northern Ireland and worked at Britain's Porton Down chemical and biological weapons testing site, was also the former head of the Australian National Counter-Terrorism and Protective Security Organization. "Chemical weapons have not been successfully used since the First World War," he said, adding that unless a person received a lethal dose, most quickly recovered.
The 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the subway in Tokyo was such an example, he said, causing only 12 deaths despite about three years of planning -- the same time taken to plot the Sept. 11 attacks.
He also pointed to the gas attack that did kill thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq in the late 1980s but which he said had only been possible because the chemicals had been dispersed using a crop-sprayer.
Biological agents, such as anthrax which killed five Americans in 2001, were difficult to use and tended only to affect those with health problems.
"It's (anthrax) a problem but not an easy one to disseminate and not one that will readily kill fit, healthy people," he said, adding that deadly toxins such as ricin, a small amount of which was discovered in a north London flat in January, was only effective if you "stabbed someone in the bum with it."
He also played down the danger of radiological weapons saying there were "enormous problems" getting them to the intended target in sufficient concentration because the material needed to be cased in lead.
But Mackenzie-Orr, who admitted not all security experts agreed with his assessment, accepted that CBRs did have some attraction to terror groups because the substantial fear that would be generated.
"The potential use of a CBR is emotive against a population that doesn't understand or is frightened by them. It would have a great psychological effect," he said.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
US plan for new nuclear arsenal
Secret talks may lead to breaking treaties
Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday February 19, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,898550,00.html
The Bush administration is planning a secret meeting in August to discuss the construction of a new generation of nuclear weapons, including "mini-nukes", "bunker-busters" and neutron bombs designed to destroy chemical or biological agents, according to a leaked Pentagon document.
The meeting of senior military officials and US nuclear scientists at the Omaha headquarters of the US Strategic Command would also decide whether to restart nuclear testing and how to convince the American public that the new weapons are necessary.
The leaked preparations for the meeting are the clearest sign yet that the administration is determined to overhaul its nuclear arsenal so that it could be used as part of the new "Bush doctrine" of pre-emption, to strike the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons of rogue states.
Greg Mello, the head of the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear watchdog organisation that obtained the Pentagon documents, said the meeting would also prepare the ground for a US breakaway from global arms control treaties, and the moratorium on conducting nuclear tests.
"It is impossible to overstate the challenge these plans pose to the comprehensive test ban treaty, the existing nuclear test moratorium, and US compliance with article six of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty," Mr Mello said.
The documents leaked to Mr Mello are the minutes of a meeting in the Pentagon on January 10 this year called by Dale Klein, the assistant to the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to prepare the secret conference, planned for "the week of August 4 2003".
The National Nuclear Security Administration, which is responsible for designing, building and maintaining nuclear weapons, yesterday confirmed the authenticity of the document. But Anson Franklin, the NNSA head of governmental affairs, said: "We have no request from the defence department for any new nuclear weapon, and we have no plans for nuclear testing.
"The fact is that this paper is talking about what-if scenarios and very long range planning," Mr Franklin told the Guardian.
However, non-proliferation groups say the Omaha meeting will bring a new US nuclear arsenal out of the realm of the theoretical and far closer to reality, in the shape of new bombs and a new readiness to use them.
"To me it indicates there are plans proceeding and well under way ... to resume the development, testing and production of new nuclear weapons. It's very serious," said Stephen Schwartz, the publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who added that it opened the US to charges of hypocrisy when it is demanding the disarmament of Iraq and North Korea.
"How can we possibly go to the international community or to these countries and say 'How dare you develop these weapons', when it's exactly what we're doing?" Mr Schwartz said.
The starting point for the January discussion was Mr Rumsfeld's nuclear posture review (NPR), a policy paper published last year that identified Russia, China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya as potential targets for US nuclear weapons.
According to the Pentagon minutes, the August meeting in Strategic Command's bunker headquarters would discuss how to make weapons to match the new policy. A "future arsenal panel" would consider: "What are the warhead characteristics and advanced concepts we will need in the post-NPR environment?"
The panel would also contemplate the "requirements for low-yield weapons, EPWs [earth-penetrating weapons], enhanced radiation weapons, agent defeat weapons".
This is the menu of weapons being actively considered by the Pentagon. Low-yield means tactical warheads of less than a kiloton, "mini-nukes", which advocates of the new arsenal say represent a far more effective deterrent than the existing huge weapons, because they are more "usable".
Earth-penetrating weapons are "bunker-busters", which would break through the surface of the earth before detonating. US weapons scientists believe they could be used as "agent defeat weapons" used to destroy chemical or biological weapons stored underground. The designers are also looking at low-yield neutron bombs or "enhanced radiation weapons", which could destroy chemical or biological weapons in surface warehouses.
According to the leaked document, the "future arsenal panel" in Omaha would also ask the pivotal question: "What forms of testing will these new designs require?"
The Bush administration has been working to reduce the amount of warning the test sites in the western US desert would need to be reactivated after 10 years lying dormant.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new york
Risk at Indian Point
February 19, 2003, Wednesday
EDITORIAL DESK
New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/search/full-page?res=9804EED61F3AF93AA25751C0A9659C8B63
To the Editor:
Re ''Pataki's Bill on Terrorism Passes Senate'' (news article, Feb. 12): Does this mean that Gov. George E. Pataki will use his influence to help close the Indian Point nuclear plant, which is obviously one of the biggest threats to the state of New York?
JUDY TOMKINS
Palisades, N.Y.,
Feb. 12, 2003
-------- us politics
Powell Expected to Visit Japan, China, South Korea
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29618-2003Feb19?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected to travel to Japan, China and South Korea this week for talks on North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons program, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
The trip, which has yet to be formally announced by the State Department, is also likely to cover the U.S. push for a possible war against Iraq, which China has resisted, arguing that U.N. weapons inspectors should have more time to search for Baghdad's suspected weapons of mass destruction programs.
Powell is expected to make stops in Tokyo and Beijing on his way to Seoul, where he is expected to attend the Feb. 25 inauguration of South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun.
--
Write to the Secretary of State: http://contact-us.state.gov/ask_form_cat/ask_form_secretary.html
Express your opinion to US State Department or ask a question on foreign policy: http://contact-us.state.gov/ask_form_cat/ask_form_foreign.html
US Secretary of State Press Releases: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/
----
Costs of war already coming in
by Pat Buchanan
February 19, 2003
WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31110
Had President Bush never used all that barstool bellicosity about an Axis of Evil, "pre-emptive strike," "regime change" and "weeks, not months," he could now claim victory in his showdown with Saddam.
For it is only through Bush's resolute leadership that U.N. arms inspectors are back in Iraq. With steady pressure, Bush could have hundreds more swarming all over that country, to where it would be inconceivable that Saddam could mount an assault on his neighbors.
Without war, Saddam could be back in his box. But Bush set the bar for himself too high. Now, though war is not necessary to contain Iraq, Bush cannot pull back from it. To send 200,000 troops to the Gulf, then bring them home with Saddam still in power, would cripple U.S. credibility.
One wonders if the president ever asks himself: Who got me into this? Who persuaded me to surrender my freedom of action?
While the war has not yet begun, the costs are already coming in. Europe is bitterly divided and increasingly anti-American. NATO is split. Tony Blair, a loyal ally, is in a hellish spot.
Polls show only one-in-10 Britons favor war without a new U.N. resolution, and France will veto any new resolution. And as the winter window for war closes, France's position is unlikely to change. For the anti-Bush posture of Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, is wildly popular on the continent.
Belgium, France and Germany may be isolated inside NATO, but most Europeans back Paris, Berlin and Brussels in the clash with Washington. And with animosity toward Bush soaring on the continent and across the Arab and Islamic world, the U.S. ability to lead through suasion is being lost. The drive for hegemony is isolating America.
How can a new world order rooted in American values be erected now, with George W. Bush as architect? Not in recent memory has an American president been so reviled abroad.
While this caricature is grossly unjust and in large measure the work of anti-Americans abroad, the president, his War Cabinet and the War Party have contributed to America's isolation. For this year-long campaign to paint Saddam Hussein as the new Hitler - a mortal peril to the Middle East, America, the world, even civilization itself, according to John McCain - with George W. Bush cast in the role of Churchill, is just not believable. Sustaining this fiction is taking a heavy toll on our credibility.
First, there remains not a fiber of evidence Saddam was involved in 9/11. Despite the Stakhanovite efforts of our war propagandists, the "Prague connection" between Mohammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence proved nonexistent. Colin Powell's indictment of Saddam's arms violations now appears to have been overdrawn. The British paper he cited was hyped and plagiarized from academic scribblings. The al-Qaida cell in Iraq seems to be in territory controlled by our Kurdish allies, not Saddam.
As for the tape in which bin Laden calls on Iraqis to launch suicide attacks on invading Americans, the White House claims this conclusively ties Saddam to Osama. It does no such thing. On the tape, bin Laden uses terms such as infidel, apostate and socialist to describe Saddam, for whom his affection is comparable to that of the late Ayatollah Khomeini for the novelist Salman Rushdie.
When it comes to aiding terrorists, Saddam is not even in a league with Iran or Syria. His missile capacity is inconsequential alongside that of Iran or North Korea. His nuclear program has been moribund for years, while Iran is mining uranium and building reactors, and North Korea is producing fissile material. North Korea is the rogue state proliferator of missiles, Pakistan the proliferator of nuclear technology. Nor is Iraq the reason F-16s over-fly our homes each night here in Washington and we drive by Stinger missile batteries on the way to work.
Nevertheless, it is Iraq against whom we are going to war, and few in this city think the president - having sent all those troops to the Gulf - can now simply declare victory and get out. No way. Delenda est Iraq. Iraq has to be destroyed.
Yet, there is a sense here that this invasion of a country that never sought war with us will bring an end to the post-Cold world we knew and vault us into a new era, the outlines of which we cannot see.
Most of us, however, look to it with greater foreboding than those neoconservatives who now anticipate with wild surmise the war for empire they have finally got.
----
The surprisingly quiet American
Harlan Ullman
February 19, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030219-23421183.htm
President George W. Bush is not known for reticence. Yet, regarding three extraordinary questions, the administration is keeping deathly quiet. Some answers to these questions might help the administration better make its case in terms of what it intends to do in the war on terror, in rallying international support to disarm Iraq, in containing North Korea's nuclear ambitions and in protecting the homeland.
The first question is why, before Congress voted last year to authorize force to disarm Iraq of all of its nuclear and other mass destruction weapons, the administration purposely chose not to reveal to the Senate or the House that North Korea had already confessed to actively pursuing the nuclear option that we wanted to prevent Iraq from obtaining and was in "material" breach of international law and treaties it was obliged to respect?
The second question is why hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people around the world demonstrated last weekend against the United States and the need for war to disarm Iraq, and cast the Bush team and not Saddam Hussein as the villains in this piece?
Finally, why has the administration not more forcefully reacted to the enormous opportunity chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix presented in his report to the Security Council on Friday, clearly stating that if Iraq fully complied with Resolution 1441, inspectors could complete their job of verification in a very short time?
None of these questions is easy or straightforward. But surely some answers are needed. In the case of Congress' vote authorizing force to disarm Iraq of its weapons, no doubt the administration did not wish to compound its problems by coming clean on North Korea at that point. The Bush administration has often demonstrated more than a penchant for keeping its deliberations very close hold and out of public view. On that score, the General Accounting Office unsuccessfully went to court to force Vice President Dick Cheney to make public his private discussions with energy companies. Mr. Cheney, arguing executive privilege, prevailed. That, in general, is how the administration tends to view its responsibility to disclose.
Still, that the administration chose not to disclose the North Korean situation to Congress raises the question of what crucial information it may be withholding in other areas. None of this helps the administration's credibility. And, while light years away, Lyndon Johnson's decision not to reveal what really happened (or did not as it turned out) in the Tonkin Gulf incident, when asking Congress for a de facto declaration of war in Vietnam, still haunts those of us old enough to remember.
That people around the world are protesting against the United States and not the villainy of Saddam Hussein is truly extraordinary. That the administration has now become the target for such animosity and abuse is evidence that, if the Bush assessment of Iraq is right, no good deed goes unpunished. And, no matter how much Mr. Bush believes in the case to disarm Saddam, his message has not proven sufficiently convincing to rally the broad support needed to assure lasting solutions.
Finally, while much of the media is hyping the story of Mr. Blix's "sack" of the Bush administration by his report, the fact is that Mr. Blix has given the White House a huge opening. The central argument Mr. Bush is correctly making is that Saddam must comply with U.N. resolutions and disarm, or else. Mr. Blix has said, with equal correctness, that once Iraq complies with those mandates, it is an easy matter to complete the inspectors' task of confirming the destruction of all Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. So, why not ride this particular argument of compliance to the final destination of disarmament by using this Blix formula as the basis for forcing Iraq to act?
Answering these questions would help the administration greatly. And on the subject of important questions, two others are also timely. The Department of Homeland Security came out last week, with good intentions, to help the public protect itself in the event of a terrorist attack. The list of recommendations was over the top, and induced, if not panic, certainly much more concern than was justified. Why the department did not use a more commonsensical and reassuring approach of relating these precautions to ones people are used to taking in the event of natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods, is inexplicable.
And to make this a bipartisan interrogation, what about the loyal opposition? Where are the Democrats? Surely, criticism of a selectively quiet American in the White House, also applies to the Democrats. It is not fine only to carp and complain. Good policy suggestions would be useful.
A vibrant democracy needs debate, discussion and disclosure. Where are they when they are most needed?
Harlan Ullman, a distinguished former naval officer and past teacher at the National War College, is currently with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for Naval Analyses Corp, and a columnnist with The Washington Times.
----
Rumsfeld keeps four-page list in his desk of how Iraq invasion could go wrong
By Rupert Cornwell
19 February 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=379614
Donald Rumsfeld has long been famous for his "Rumsfeld's Rules" on how to survive and flourish in a bureaucracy. Now the pugnacious American Defence Secretary has compiled a darker list: of the things that could go wrong in and after a war with Iraq.
The New York Times says it is a four-page or five-page typewritten document he keeps in his desk. The fears he catalogues range from Saddam Hussein "using weapons of mass destruction on his own people, and blaming it on us", to sabotage of Iraq's oilfields and score-settling, factionalism and anarchy after the dictator has been deposed.
Above all, the nightmare is of a prolonged war, leading to high casualties of American forces and of Iraqi civilians, a disaster for the Bush administration in domestic and international opinion.
The word from the Pentagon and most of the news channel pundits is that America's overwhelming military machine will secure a speedy victory, with the Iraqi enemy stunned into surrender. "Awe and Shock" is the informal name of this strategy. But the Times quotes an unnamed senior official saying: "How long will this go on? Three days, three weeks, three months, three years?"
Iraq could be very different from Afghanistan, where the Taliban was overthrown more quickly and with fewer casualties than the Pentagon had dared hope. Another question-mark hangs over the reception of US troops. Optimists say they will be welcomed as liberators. But as the official said: "Will it be cheers, jeers, or shots? The fact is, we won't know until we get there."
A conquered Iraq could pose huge problems. Economically, the biggest danger is of wholesale destruction by President Saddam of his oilfields, on which America is banking for the revenue to rebuild the country. The Pentagon fears wells could be set with explosives deep underground, doing far more long-term damage than in Kuwait's wells in 1991.
The biggest political danger on the Rumsfeld list is of a post-Saddam Iraq plunging into chaos, with factions racing to seize control of what was left of the country's chemical and biological weapons. This would mean a longer, more difficult and more expensive American occupation than is intended.
----
Moseley-Braun Joins Democratic Presidential Field
By David Von Drehle and Kari Lydersen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26553-2003Feb18?language=printer
Former senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, the only African American woman ever elected to the Senate, announced yesterday that she is forming a presidential campaign exploratory committee, further expanding the crowded field of Democratic candidates.
"It's time to take the Men Only sign off the White House door," Moseley-Braun said during a speech at her alma mater, the University of Chicago Law School. She was surrounded by family and friends, and some of her supporters waved blue placards bearing the words "Ms. President."
Fresh from a weekend tour of early primary states -- including Iowa, where snow held her audience to just one old college chum -- Moseley-Braun tore into the Bush administration on issues foreign and domestic.
"I am a budget hawk and a peace dove," she said. "The unilateral attempt to take military action against Iraq is not in the interest of our long-term security. And the budget deficit is another matter. We have no right to saddle our children with our debt and our bad decisions."
The entry of candidate No. 8 -- at least five more are still mulling things over -- underscores how wide open the race for the Democratic nomination is. Beyond that, however, Moseley-Braun's impact is a big question mark.
On one hand, she is a forceful communicator, a seasoned politician and a statewide winner in one of the most important swing states in the country. Moseley-Braun also could have special appeal for two of the Democratic Party's most important blocs: women and African Americans.
On the other hand, she has been out of elective office since 1998, when she was unseated after a single term after accusations that she had lavished campaign funds on herself and her boyfriend, and that she had coddled the late Nigerian dictator Gen. Sani Abacha.
"Ms. Braun will probably appeal to women and suburbanites and probably some blacks," said Robert T. Starks, a professor at the Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University who has watched Moseley-Braun's career for years. Starks, however, has signed on to help New York political activist Al Sharpton, who became the first African American in the race earlier this year. Sharpton, he predicted, will have more mass appeal in the black community.
Ron Walters, who teaches political science at the University of Maryland, was even more reserved about Moseley-Braun's chances.
"It's going to be tough," he said. "She is going to have to do a lot to establish name recognition across the country. . . . I think she is well-known in the black community but not outside. She's going to have to have a significant amount of money if she is going to be viable, and I don't think she can raise a lot of money."
Moseley-Braun will file papers setting up an exploratory committee with the Federal Election Commission today, she said, "assuming Washington is opened up again" after the big snowstorm.
Her decision returns to politics one of the most interesting figures of the early 1990s, a prime example of the breakthrough by female candidates that led analysts to dub 1992 "the year of the women." After a stint as a prosecutor, Moseley-Braun served in the Illinois legislature for 10 years, ramrodding bills for the then-Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. In 1987, she moved into the powerful post of Cook County recorder of deeds.
Moseley-Braun's bold dash past two-term Democratic senator Alan J. Dixon in 1992 electrified liberals across the country, and she quickly showed the debating skills that had made her effective in Springfield. In a memorable floor speech, she challenged then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) over the Confederate flag; Helms took his revenge by singing "Dixie" the next time they passed in the Capitol.
But Moseley-Braun also came in for severe criticism. The investigative arm of the Internal Revenue Service pushed for authority to examine her use of campaign money. Her campaign manager -- and then-fiancé -- was accused of sexual harassment. Opponents claimed she was favoring friends with sweetheart legislation.
In 1998, she received a million fewer votes than she had six years earlier and lost her seat to Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.). President Bill Clinton appointed her ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa.
Moseley-Braun brushed off questions yesterday about her loss of the Senate seat. "The people of Illinois saw through that. I've won 15 elections and lost only one," she said. "I have every confidence I will be able to do the fundraising necessary. We'll know in the next few months whether the support is out there."
A number of Democratic leaders have been increasingly concerned by Sharpton's potential appeal in a field where no other candidate has a particularly strong connection to the African American vote. Especially in southern states, with large numbers of black voters, the controversial New Yorker could win a primary or two -- ensuring that he would influence the campaign at least through the convention.
Moseley-Braun -- if she can get the support to make it to the primaries a year from now -- could offset Sharpton's power, some Democrats believe.
Donna Brazile, manager of the Gore 2000 campaign, said it is good to have multiple candidates competing for black votes, and welcomed Moseley-Braun into the race. As a former senator, "a member of the club, she brings a lot more to the table than a lot of the other asterisks," Brazile said.
Von Drehle reported from Washington and Lydersen reported from Chicago. Staff writer Robert E. Pierre in Chicago contributed to this report.
----
2004 presidential field keeps growing
By Associated Press
Wednesday, February 19th, 2003
http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php?story_id=1008212&t=Nation+%2F+World&c=26,1008212
WASHINGTON - Only a scorecard will help the voters sort through the growing field of presidential hopefuls as one Democrat announced his candidacy Wednesday and two others filed papers to create exploratory committees. The current count is eight with the prospect of more joining the race in the coming weeks.
On the day Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt announced his bid, former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich filed formal papers with the Federal Election Commission that will allow them to raise money for a possible campaign.
They join five candidates who have either announced or filed with the FEC: former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
Money, specifically political fund raising, is certain to separate the viable candidates from the also-rans as the Democratic field for 2004 now outnumbers the crowd of seven Democrats who entered the primaries in 1988.
"I don't think there's enough money to sustain all of those candidates into September and October," said Joe Keefe, a New Hampshire businessman and former state party chairman.
Political observers said the crowded field also makes it difficult for the Democrats to put forth a single message, especially in contrast to the one voice coming from the White House.
"It creates a kind of mass confusion in which it's much harder for the party to coalesce around one candidate. It takes a lot longer to sharpen the debate," said Norman Ornstein, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Moseley-Braun, 55, described herself as a "peace dove and a budget hawk." She criticized the Bush administration for its push for war against Iraq, arguing that the policy had alienated allies and "frittered away" good will overseas.
----
Gephardt Opens Presidential Campaign
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; 1:02 PM
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30374-2003Feb19?language=printer
ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - Democrat Richard Gephardt formally launched his 2004 presidential campaign on Wednesday, blasting the Bush administration's economic policies and promising to lead a crusade to "put hard-working Americans first."
In the packed gymnasium of his former elementary school in south St. Louis, the Missouri congressman stressed his working-class Midwestern roots and said the nation could not afford four more years of President Bush.
"I'm going to fight for you, and I'm going to win," Gephardt told a crowd jammed with family, friends and longtime supporters. "I'm running for president because I'm tired of leadership that's left us isolated in the world and stranded here at home."
Gephardt, 62, has served in Congress for a quarter century and brings an established political and fund-raising network to the Democratic race, which now has eight declared candidates with several more considering jumping in.
But he faces doubts about his political viability after failing to lead Democrats back to House control in four consecutive elections since 1994. He stepped down as House Democratic leader after November's elections.
He acknowledged the concerns of some Democrats that his image is too stale to lead the party against Bush in 2004, but told them not to worry.
"I'm not the political flavor of the month," Gephardt said. "I'm not the flashiest candidate around, but the fight for working families is in my bones. It's where I come from, it's been my life's work."
He argued that his experience at the highest levels of government mattered. "It's what our nation needs right now," he said.
Gephardt blasted Bush's record on the environment, energy, economy and foreign affairs, saying, "Bush has taken us right back to the broken policies of the past, the economics of debt and regret -- unaffordable tax cuts for the few, zero new jobs, surging unemployment."
"Never has so much been done in so little time to help so few," he said.
The Republican National Committee quickly issued a statement attacking Gephardt's record going back to 1988, saying the former St. Louis city alderman had been "tried, tested and rejected."
WANTS HEALTH CARE FOR ALL
Gephardt, whose father was a milk truck driver and a member of the Teamsters, said he would scrap most of the remaining Bush tax cuts and institute health care coverage for every working American, a task he called "a moral imperative."
He also would press the World Trade Organization for an international minimum wage, push an aggressive "Apollo Project" for energy independence, create programs to attract new teachers and develop a system that would let each worker keep a single pension plan through multiple jobs.
"Every proposal I am making, every idea I'm advancing, has a single central purpose -- to revive a failing economy and give working Americans the help and the security they need," he said.
This is the second presidential bid for Gephardt, who won the Iowa caucuses in 1988 but saw his campaign falter and the money run dry after a second-place finish in New Hampshire.
He has heard grumbling from some rank-and-file Democrats about his cooperation with Bush last fall on a congressional resolution authorizing military action against Iraq, but he defended his position.
"I stand with this administration's efforts to disarm (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein and I'm proud that I wrote the resolution that helped lead the president to make his case to the United Nations," he said.
He warned, however, that the United States needed to work with the United Nations and keep the friendship of long-standing allies. "We must lead the world instead of merely bullying it," he said.
Gephardt hit the road immediately after the St. Louis announcement, heading out for a two-day swing through three states with early nominating contests -- Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
On Friday, Gephardt will return to Washington to address the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting, which will hear from most of the party's presidential hopefuls.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan Weapons Work Requires Diplomacy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-US-Demolition.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) -- The explosives were set, the soldiers' guns were drawn and the 15-minute countdown had began to blow a cache of abandoned rockets to kingdom come.
But no one expected a herd of goats and their minders to walk nearby -- and the countdown was rescheduled.
American troops are facing a delicate task as they rid largely rural Afghanistan of heavy weapons left behind after decades of war, mixing diplomatic skill and care handling explosives.
The soldiers of the 82nd Airborne's Task Force Dragon put their demolition work north of their headquarters at Bagram Air Base on hold while they negotiated with the herders.
``Tango, Base. Tango, Base,'' Sgt. Arnel Udani barked into his radio once the Afghans were spotted. ``Alpha Zero One. We have three local nationals approaching. They don't appear to be armed. Over.''
Capt. Steven Janko of Honolulu stopped the countdown. He and another soldier approached the herders with their assault weapons pointing downward. The remaining soldiers stiffened in readiness. Was it an ambush?
A tense moment soon evaporated when both soldiers returned in smiles.
Janko had exhausted the little Dari he had learned in Afghanistan by repeating the word ``boro'' -- which means ``go'' -- and pointing to his watch to warn the herders a big explosion was imminent.
``We want to keep good relations with the people in the area,'' Janko said. ``I greeted them with 'Salaam' and put my hand over my heart, and immediately they knew 'OK, this guy doesn't have any hostile intent.'''
The discussion had been cordial, he said. There was much hand shaking and sign language.
As the herders slowly moved further away across the Shomali Plain, the countdown was restarted. The soldiers were eager to destroy the cache of nine 107-mm rocket shells and more than a dozen fuses.
Similar weaponry -- some used, some new, some disassembled -- appear almost weekly on mountainsides surrounding Bagram and other U.S. bases in Afghanistan. The military discovers new caches from aerial reconnoissance or tips from Afghans.
``The last time we were here, there were four rockets set up on the top of that mountain, aimed directly at the base,'' Janko said. ``If somebody else finds them before we do, they could possibly be launched against us.''
Such rockets and mortars are often very old -- legacies of more than two decades of war in Afghanistan. The missiles rarely hit their targets if fired, but U.S. soldiers don't want to take any chances.
It was the job of Sgt. 1st Class Chris Brown and Sgt. William Martin of the 705th Ordinance Disposal Company to evaluate the current cache once the perimeter was secured. Both walked gingerly, in case there were any booby-traps or land mines.
Brown and Martin got down on their knees to peer into the 107-mm shells baking in the sun. They pulled out detonation cords and layered 32 blocks of C4 explosives on the cache. Martin whistled softly as he worked.
The decision was made to blow up as many shells as possible since even old ordnance can be reconfigured into something deadly. The latest cache was found just four miles from the base; a 107-mm rocket has a range of up to 10 kilometers.
Brown, a munitions veteran for 14 years, has a grudging respect for the unseen and unknown men who transform the shells into new weapons before fleeing into the darkness. A few days ago, he came across a makeshift rocket that used water as a time release.
``They filled a bucket up and punched a hole in there,'' said Brown, of Houston. ``They had a plunger that when it came down and made contact, it closed a circuit and launched the rocket.''
With the goatherders safely gone and the charges ready, it was time to blow the stash.
The soldiers hiked to a nearby, dried-out river bed and took cover. They passed around their personal cameras and posed for the folks back home. The 10-minute warning was announced, then the five, then the one. Martin detonated the cache by remote control.
``Incoming!'' he yelled as the boom shook the ground. Smoke and dust from the blast blocked out the sun for a moment.
``Well, hell, that was great,'' said Martin.
``I love my job,'' said Brown as he waited for a Black Hawk to ferry him back to Bagram.
----
Mine Injures U.S. Soldier in Afghanistan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-US-Mine.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) -- A U.S. soldier was injured in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday when the military vehicle he was traveling in struck a land-mine, the U.S. military said.
The soldier was patrolling near the eastern city of Gardez when the incident occurred. The soldier was taken to an American base farther east in Khost and treated there.
The soldier's right foot was blown off by the explosion, the military said in a statement from Bagram Air Base, north of the capital, Kabul.
``He is in currently undergoing surgery at the forward operating base in Khost and is in stable condition,'' the statement said.
The statement did not identify the soldier or his unit.
Meanwhile, a lone gunman opened fire on U.S. Special Forces in Urgun in eastern Afghanistan, military spokeswoman Capt. Alayne Cramer said at Bagram. No one was hurt, but Urgun has been a particularly tense area for special forces operating there, who have faced regular attacks. Usually the gunmen, who operate in small groups, flee the area, often into neighboring Pakistan.
There have been reports from former Taliban that fresh training camps have been set up in the mountainous Urgun area of Paktika province. The camps are small and mobile, they say. The United Nations also confirmed reports of new training camps in eastern Afghanistan.
The military was also investigating the origins of two explosions that rattled the area outside a U.S. military compound in northern Kunduz province late Tuesday. No one was hurt in the blasts.
-------- africa
SOUTH AFRICA - Scientists to teach Iraq how to disarm
World Scene
February 19, 2003
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030219-88432832.htm
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa named a team of seven scientists yesterday to go to Iraq to share expertise on disarmament, in a move Pretoria believes could help avert a U.S.-led war against Baghdad.
Iraq, facing threats of war from Washington if it fails to comply with U.N. demands to surrender any weapons of mass destruction, had accepted the offer of the team, officials said.
They said the scientists, who led South Africa's own voluntary program to shed all weapons of mass destruction, would fly to Baghdad.
-------- arms sales
Wed, 19 Feb 2003
Middle East News Line [MENL]
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/february/02_20_4.html
ATHENS -- The Greek Air Force has taken delivery of the first upgraded F-4E from the Hellenic Aviation Industry despite setbacks that have hampered the program.
Greek opposition parliamentarians assert that the upgrade of the air force's F-4 fighter-jet fleet has been plagued by delays and cost overruns.
The parliamentarians from the New Democracy Party, the leading opposition group, accused the government of losing control over the F-4 upgrade project. They said the project is more than two years behind schedule.
The program, entitled Peace Icarus-2000, aimed to upgrade more than 35 F-4E Phantom fighter-jets for the Hellenic Air Force. The German-based European Aerospace Defence and Space Co. is the prime contractor for the Group-A Kits used in the modification, installation and testing of the new system while Israel's Elbit Systems is producing may of the components. These include the mission computer and the related software. Other Greek companies were contracted to manufacture or modify the system's parts.
-------- balkans
U.N. Court Indicts 4 Kosovo Albanians
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; Page A30
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27604-2003Feb18?language=printer
BELGRADE, Feb. 18 -- The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague today disclosed its first indictments of Kosovo Albanians for alleged atrocities during the 1998-99 war against Serb forces.
Fatmir Limaj, a Kosovo legislator, is the highest-ranking of the suspects, all former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the ethnic Albanian militia that battled then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's Serb forces.
The four are accused of atrocities, including torture and murder, against Serb and Albanian civilians in a KLA prison camp in mid-1998.
Many Serbs regard the court as biased against them and willing to overlook crimes committed by their ethnic Albanian adversaries during the Kosovo war. The court has denied these claims.
The NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force, known as KFOR, said Monday that it had detained three of the suspects, Haradin Bala, Isak Musliu and Agim Murtezi. But Limaj, an ally of ex-Kosovo Albanian rebel chief Hashim Thaqi, left Kosovo without being detained.
A spokeswoman for the U.N.'s chief war crimes prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, said Limaj was arrested later "in a state of the former Yugoslavia."
Del Ponte criticized KFOR for letting Limaj leave Kosovo on Friday despite having a warrant for his arrest. A spokesman for KFOR declined to comment.
The indictment said KLA forces under Limaj's command held at least 35 Serb and ethnic Albanian civilians in the Lapusnik prison camp "under conditions that were brutal and inhumane." The forces beat, tortured and murdered a number of detainees, it added.
----
Milosevic Trial Shown Secret Paramilitary Video
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; 12:16 PM
By Paul Gallagher
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30150-2003Feb19?language=printer
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial was shown a secret video Wednesday which captured the ex-Yugoslav president at a ceremony paying tribute to Serb paramilitaries accused of ethnic cleansing.
Prosecutors are trying to establish a direct link betweeen Milosevic and shadowy paramilitary units -- allegedly controlled by Serbian state security -- accused of atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia in 1991-5.
Milosevic has been on trial since February last year charged with genocide and crimes against humanity in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The former Serb and Yugoslav president has refused to plead, accusing the court of bias against Serbs.
The 1997 video shot in a paramilitary camp in the Vojvodina region of northern Serbia showed Milosevic shaking hands with state security paramilitaries involved in special operations to seize territory in Croatia and Bosnia.
"You can see all members of the Serbian state security in one place, which made it unique. I asked them to give me this tape and they denied it to me because it was very sensitive material," a prosecution witness who attended the meeting told the trial.
The witness, Dragan Vasiljkovic, headed a force of about 300 well-trained and highly-mobile commandos from the Serbian enclave of Krajina in southern Croatia which stormed the Croatian town of Glina in 1991.
SECRET TRIBUTE
The video shows a then high-ranking Serb state security official Franko Simatovic telling Milosevic and other senior Serb officials at a private ceremony about the role of paramilitary units fighting in the two wars.
Simatovic -- known as "Frenki" -- was head of Serbian state security special operations in the wars, prosecutors said. They said Milosevic was instrumental in the creation of special covert paramilitary forces involved in ethnic cleansing.
Prosecutors did not reveal how they obtained the video. Milosevic sat quietly in the dock as the tape was shown, the faint flicker of a smile playing on his lips.
Prosecutors can introduce new evidence provided on a confidential basis and ask judges to hear testimony behind closed doors. The court also can hear evidence from witnesses whose identity is not disclosed for security reasons.
Serbia's then state security chief Jovica Stanisic, who is accused of overall responsibility for the paramilitary units, is also shown in the video. Stanisic is pictured showing Milosevic on a map where the units fought in both wars.
Stanisic was replaced in 1998 by Rade Markovic as head of Serbia's powerful State Security (DB). Markovic testified at Milosevic's trial last July.
Vasiljkovic said he was in no doubt that Belgrade controlled, financed and supported Serb operations in the battle for territory in the Krajina.
"I do not accept that any unit could act independently," he said speaking of his time training and fighting with Serb paramilitary units in the breakaway Krajina Serb republic.
"Many good men died believing they were serving on the police force or in the army or in the state security service and today some people are trying to wash their hands of them."
Vasiljkovic is named alongside Stanisic and Simatovic by prosecutors in a pre-trial document as directly involved in crimes listed in charges against Milosevic.
-------- britain
BRITAIN - Mrs. Blair opposes husband on Gurkhas
World Scene
February 19, 2003
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030219-88432832.htm
LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair's lawyer wife went to court yesterday to accuse her husband's government of racial discrimination against a group of former Nepalese soldiers from the British army's Gurkha units.
"This case concerns what we say is systematic and institutionalized less-favorable treatment of Gurkha soldiers ... on the grounds of their race and nationality," Cherie Booth Blair told London's High Court.
She was representing seven former members of the Gurkhas - a group that has been fighting for Britain since 1815 and numbers 3,517 within the British military.
+Prime minister to get audience with pope
LONDON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to have a private audience with Pope John Paul II later this week, a political source said yesterday.
The two men do not see eye to eye on the issue of a potential U.S.-led attack on Iraq. Earlier this month, the pope urged the world not to resign itself to war in Iraq, saying a conflict could still be averted.
-------- business
Deals: Silicon Graphics Wins $26 Million Contract
February 19, 2003, Wednesday
New York Times
BUSINESS/FINANCIAL DESK Technology Briefing
http://query.nytimes.com/search/full-page?res=9901E2DA173DF93AA25751C0A9659C8B63
Silicon Graphics Inc., whose computers are used in missile systems, won a $26 million contract yesterday from the Defense Department and said similar deals may be forthcoming. The department ordered hardware, software and services for its High Performance Computing Modernization Program, which conducts simulations of weapons and weather, said Tony Celeste, director of Silicon Graphics' military business. Silicon Graphics, which has posted net losses for three straight quarters, has increased revenue from the military sector to 35 percent, from 20 percent about two years ago. Its shares rose 16 cents, to $1.28.
-------- colombia
COLOMBIA: Clash kills 29 near U.S. forces
World Scene
February 19, 2003
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030219-88432832.htm
BOGOTA - At least 29 Marxist rebels and paramilitary militia members have been killed in a clash in a lawless area of Colombia near where crack U.S. soldiers are training local troops, officials said yesterday.
The fighting over the weekend in the eastern, oil-rich province of Arauca was a blow to President Alvaro Uribe, who has turned Arauca into a showcase of his security policies to crack down on violence after four decades of war. The 70 U.S. Special Forces, part of Washington's expanding military assistance to the war-torn country, are training a Colombian brigade to protect an oil pipeline.
----
Colombia: Missing Americans Are Hostages
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-US-Plane.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Three Americans who vanished after their U.S. plane crashed during an intelligence-gathering mission last week are believed held by a Colombian rebel faction known for daring kidnapping operations, officials said.
Colombian troops made no progress Tuesday in their search for the missing Americans, whose plane crashed in guerrilla territory on Thursday, officials said.
The Teofilo Forero unit of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are apparently holding the Americans, Colombian military officials said.
The Teofilo Forero unit is believed to be under the direct orders of the FARC's top military commander, German Briceno, and has conducted several daring operations. In April, they kidnapped legislators in Colombian city of Cali while posing as government bomb-squad members. On Feb. 20, 2002, they hijacked a domestic airliner, forced it to land on a rural road and kidnapped a Colombian senator who was aboard.
A member of a government commission to explore the possibility of trading imprisoned rebels for kidnap victims said Tuesday that U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson requested help from the commission.
She asked that ``we negotiate and send messages to the gentlemen of the FARC so that they respect the lives of the three Americans,'' former labor minister Angelino Garzon told Caracol TV.
The Americans were on an intelligence mission when their U.S. government single-engine Cessna crashed Thursday in the Colombian jungle. A fourth American and a Colombian army sergeant aboard the plane were found shot to death at the site.
``A joint effort is underway, of our armed forces with the support of the Embassy of the United States, to recover these three people,'' Foreign Minister Carolina Barco told reporters Tuesday.
The U.S. government has not identified the people on the flight or disclosed their mission. Several U.S. agencies and government contractors are in Colombia. They operate radar stations that track drug-smuggling flights, fumigate drug crops with airplanes and assist Colombian security forces in other anti-drug operations.
A U.S. military official said Tuesday that the United States is helping search for the trio in the jungles and mountains of Caqueta. The remains of the fourth American killed at the scene were sent to the United States on Sunday, officials said.
Colombia's 38-year civil war pits the 17,000-strong FARC and a smaller rebel group against the government and right-wing paramilitary fighters. About 3,500 people, mainly civilians, die in the fighting each year.
-------- iraq
Saddam Says Iraq Wants Peace, Dignity
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
Feb 19, 2003 11:40 AM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Saddam Hussein declared Wednesday that Iraq wants peace - but not at the price of its dignity and independence.
The Iraqi leader told a visiting delegation of Russian lawmakers, including Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, that if the United States carries out its threat to attack, Iraq will, "triumph over it, God willing."
"Iraq doesn't want war," he said. But he added that peace "at any cost" was not acceptable. "We shall not relinquish our independence, our dignity and our right to live and act freely."
Even as Saddam spoke, U.N. weapons inspectors hunted for banned Iraqi missiles, visiting at least three sites involved in making rockets and their components.
The United Nations has not yet said whether it will insist that Iraq modify its Al Samoud 2 missiles, whose range has been found to exceed the 94-mile limit imposed by U.N. resolutions, or will require they be destroyed.
Under the resolutions, all proscribed weapons systems must be destroyed, but inspectors' spokesman Hiro Ueki told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Al Samoud missiles could also be "rendered harmless ... making sure that they cannot be used."
During a visit to Baghdad in January, chief arms inspector Hans Blix said the Iraqis suggested that when they fitted guidance and control systems and other devices to the missiles, they would be weighed down and fly within the legal distance.
Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, was asked Tuesday night what Iraq would do if told to destroy the missiles. He refused to answer, saying the question was too hypothetical.
Destruction of the Al Samouds would rob Saddam's army of a potentially valuable military asset at a time when nearly 250,000 American and British troops have massed in the region in preparation for a possible invasion of Iraq.
The United States and Britain, which accuse Iraq of concealing weapons of mass destruction, plan to press this week for a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to disarm Iraq, U.S. and British diplomats say.
The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they expected the negotiations to be wrapped up by the time Blix delivers his next report on Iraq - March 1.
Ueki said the inspectors in Baghdad already have identified and tagged 380 rocket engines which Blix said were illegally imported by Iraq for use in the al Samoud missiles.
A U.N. spokesman said Wednesday that inspectors were tagging more missiles. The Iraqi Information Ministry said the weapons inspectors on Wednesday visited the al-Mamoun missile fuel plant and al-Karama complex, which manufactures missile components and guidance systems.
It said the experts also went to "Al Samoud site" and a military site in the al-Taji area north of Baghdad. Inspectors who visited a military unit in al-Taji earlier this week were seen by journalists examining Al Samoud missiles, but it was not immediately clear whether it was same site visited Wednesday.
Also Wednesday, U.S.-British coalition warplanes patrolling the southern "no-fly" zone early Wednesday targeted an Iraqi mobile air defense radar and a mobile multiple-rocket system, the U.S. military said. The targets were near Basra, approximately 250 miles (400 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad.
Two no-fly zones were declared after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Iraq's Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north from Saddam's forces.
Iraq was having trouble meeting another U.N. demand: encouraging scientists involved in weapons programs to grant private interviews to inspectors from UNMOVIC, the U.N. Monitoring and Observation Commission led by Blix.
Ueki told reporters Tuesday that only three of 30 scientists invited since the inspectors returned to Iraq in November have been willing to talk to UNMOVIC without a tape recorder - a condition the inspectors insist on because they believe it will make the scientists more candid.
The three scientists who gave interviews were suggested by the Iraqi government - not requested independently by the U.N. team, Ueki said.
A separate team of U.N. nuclear inspectors has conducted more interviews but allowed the scientists to record them. On Monday, those inspectors interviewed Saad Ahmed Mahmoud, deputy director-general of the al-Rasheed Co., which makes rocket motors and infantry rockets.
Addressing a news conference on Tuesday, Mahmoud denounced the interview, calling it unjustified because it "came from a political decision imposed by the United States."
----
Saddam: Peace 'at any cost' unacceptable
2/19/2003
AP
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-02-19-iraq_x.htm
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said Wednesday that "Iraq doesn't want war," but that peace "at any cost" was not acceptable.
"We shall not relinquish our independence, our dignity and our right to live and act freely," he told a visiting Russian delegation of several dozen lawmakers including Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov.
The comments were carried by the official Iraqi News Agency.
If the United States carries out its threat to attack Iraq, Saddam said, "it will see for itself the kind of resolve Iraqis have and we shall triumph over it, God willing."
Also Wednesday, U.N. weapons inspectors hunted for banned Iraqi missiles, visiting at least three sites involved in making rockets and their components.
The United Nations has not yet said whether it will insist that Iraq modify its Al Samoud 2 missiles, whose range has been found to exceed the 94-mile limit imposed by U.N. resolutions, or will require they be destroyed.
Under the resolutions, all proscribed weapons systems must be destroyed, but inspectors' spokesman Hiro Ueki told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Al Samoud missiles could also be "rendered harmless ... making sure that they cannot be used."
During a visit to Baghdad in January, chief arms inspector Hans Blix said the Iraqis suggested that when they fitted guidance and control systems and other devices to the missiles, they would be weighed down and fly within the legal distance.
Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, was asked Tuesday night what Iraq would do if told to destroy the missiles. He refused to answer, saying the question was too hypothetical.
Destruction of the Al Samouds would rob Iraq's army of a potentially valuable military asset at a time when nearly 250,000 American and British troops have massed in the region in preparation for a possible invasion of Iraq.
The United States and Britain, which accuse Iraq of concealing weapons of mass destruction, plan to press this week for a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to disarm Iraq, U.S. and British diplomats say.
The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they expected the negotiations to be wrapped up by the time Blix delivers his next report on Iraq - March 1.
Also Wednesday, U.S.-British coalition warplanes patrolling the southern "no-fly" zone targeted an Iraqi mobile air defense radar and a mobile multiple-rocket system, the U.S. military said. The targets were near Basra, approximately 250 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Two no-fly zones were declared after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Iraq's Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north from Saddam's forces.
Ueki said the inspectors in Baghdad already have identified and tagged 380 rocket engines which Blix said were illegally imported by Iraq for use in the al Samoud missiles.
A U.N. spokesman said Wednesday that inspectors were tagging more missiles.
The Iraqi Information Ministry said the weapons inspectors on Wednesday visited the al-Mamoun missile fuel plant and al-Karama complex, which manufactures missile components and guidance systems.
It said the experts also went to "Al Samoud site" and a military site in the al-Taji area north of Baghdad. Inspectors who visited a military unit in al-Taji earlier this week were seen by journalists examining Al Samoud missiles, but it was not immediately clear whether it was same site visited Wednesday.
Iraq was having trouble meeting another U.N. demand: encouraging scientists involved in weapons programs to grant private interviews to inspectors from UNMOVIC, the U.N. Monitoring and Observation Commission led by Blix.
Ueki told reporters Tuesday that only three of 30 scientists invited since the inspectors returned to Iraq in November have been willing to talk to UNMOVIC without a tape recorder - a condition the inspectors insist on because they believe it will make the scientists more candid.
The three scientists who gave interviews were suggested by the Iraqi government - not requested independently by the U.N. team, Ueki said.
A separate team of U.N. nuclear inspectors has conducted more interviews but allowed the scientists to record them.
----
Report: Iranian-backed opposition forces penetrate Iraq territory
19-02-2003
Albawaba.com
http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=242414&lang=e&dir=news
Up to 5,000 Iranian-backed Iraqi opposition forces have crossed into the northern area of Iraq from Iran with the goal of securing the frontier in the event of war, according to the Financial Times Wednesday.
Quoting high-ranking Iranian officials, the British daily said that the troops, with some heavy equipment, were nominally under the command of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, a leading Iraqi Shiite Muslim opposition leader who has been based in Iran since the year1980 .
A US State Department official told the daily that he was aware of reports that part of Hakim's Badr brigade had crossed into northern Iraq but declined to further comment.
The Badr brigade has been trained and equipped by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and could be regarded as a proxy force of the Iranian government, the Financial Times added.
A top Iranian official, who requested anonymity, told the paper the presence of Hakim's troops was defensive and aimed at countering a possible attack on Iran by the People's Mujahideen Organization, an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq and supported by President Saddam Hussein.
----
U.S. Would Remove Iranian Opposition in Iraq
Wed February 19, 2003
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=2254370
WASHINGTON - The United States will "give no quarter" to the Iranian opposition based in Iraq if U.S. forces invade the country, a U.S. official said Wednesday.
The Mujahideen Khalq organization, which broke with the Tehran government in the early years of the Iranian revolution, has thousands of well-armed and disciplined troops and large military bases in Iraq along the Iranian border.
"We see them as part of the problem, an element that would have to be removed," the U.S. official, who asked not to be named, said.
The United States has designated the group as a "foreign terrorist organization" but the Mujahideen has many supporters in the U.S. Congress and it continues to run an office a few blocks from the White House.
The U.S. official said the Mujahideen had "American blood on its hands" because the group had killed some Americans during attacks in Tehran during the late 1970s, before the Islamic Revolution.
"We are not going to be giving them any quarter and we don't expect others to give them aid or comfort," he added.
One aim of any U.S. military operation in Iraq was "dismantling the infrastructure of terrorism in Iraq," he said.
"The Mujahideen is part of that infrastructure. It has been used to crush the Shi'a uprising in the south and is part of (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein's brutal apparatus," he said.
Mujahideen officials in Washington were not immediately available for comment.
----
Snubbed Iraqi Opposition Turns on U.S. Sponsors
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30035-2003Feb19?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The main Iraqi opposition group, sidelined by U.S. plans for a long military occupation of Iraq, has turned on its former sponsors and accused them of drafting a "recipe for disaster."
Ahmad Chalabi, the best known leader of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that the United States planned to staff the top levels of Iraq ministries for up to two years and to appoint an unelected and toothless consultative council of Iraqis.
The proposals, he said, would leave in place many existing Iraqi officials from the current era of President Saddam Hussein and fall short of the complete eradication of Baath Party members from the Iraqi elite.
It would also exclude the INC and other opposition groups from any role in government during the transitional period. In the meantime Iraqis who lived under Saddam would probably start their own independent political groups.
Chalabi said: "The proposed U.S. occupation and military administration of Iraq is unworkable and unwise. Unworkable, because it is predicated on keeping Saddam's existing structures of government, administration and security in place -- albeit under American officers."
"(It is) Unwise, because it will result in long-term damage to the U.S.-Iraq relationship and America's position in the region and beyond," he added.
"You cannot cut off the viper's head and leave the body festering. Unfortunately, the proposed U.S. plan will do just that if it does not dismantle the Baathist structures.
"We deserve better. The U.S. has a moral obligation to Iraqis to fight for more. Apart from the practical and ethical problems in terms of loss of Iraqi sovereignty, it is a recipe for disaster," he added.
Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi opposition figure close to the INC, made a similar case in an article published in the British Observer newspaper on Sunday.
"The plan ... envisages the appointment by the U.S. of an unknown number of Iraqi quislings palatable to the Arab countries of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia as a council of advisers to this military government," he said.
"The plan reverses a decade-long ... commitment by the U.S. to the Iraqi opposition, and is guaranteed to turn that opposition from the close ally it has always been during the 1990s into an opponent of the United States on the streets of Baghdad the day after liberation," he added.
The criticism of the United States came to a head as the Iraqi opposition prepared for a meeting this week in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
Makiya said some key Bush administration officials had done everything they could to make the Iraqis postpone the conference, which is expected to discuss the creation of an Iraqi leadership to take power after a U.S. invasion.
The White House last month turned down a Kurdish request that it provide extra security for the conference, which is taking place only miles from Iraqi army lines.
Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush's special envoy for "free Iraqis," is however expected to attend the meeting.
----
Schroeder, Mubarak Urge Iraq to Cooperate More
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
By Kerstin Gehmlich
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29258-2003Feb19?language=printer
BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak urged Iraq on Wednesday to cooperate more fully with U.N. arms inspectors and Mubarak said inspections could not go on for ever.
"We are both of the opinion that everything, but everything must be done to resolve this situation peacefully," Schroeder told a joint news conference after talks with Mubarak. "Iraq must cooperate still better than in the past."
Schroeder said the U.N. inspectors hunting for alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq must be given the time the U.N. Security Council determined they needed.
Speaking through a translator, Mubarak said: "Sufficient time for the inspections must be given to destroy weapons of mass destruction but it must be a limited time."
"I believe that incomplete cooperation with the inspectors would lead to dreadful consequences."
In an interview with Germany's ZDF television broadcast just before the news conference, Mubarak said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had just weeks to change his behavior: "Saddam Hussein must cooperate fully with the inspectors or there will be war."
"The Americans don't give him more than a few weeks, two to three weeks," Mubarak told ZDF.
Mubarak said President Bush had told him in three telephone conversations he wanted to resolve the crisis peacefully if possible, but that could only happen if Iraq declared what weapons of mass destruction it owned. "I hope the United States does not begin a war without the green light of the Security Council," he told ZDF. "I hope that Saddam Hussein will cooperate with the inspectors to avoid this."
Schroeder denied that his vocal anti-war position -- credited with helping him win a second term in last year's general election -- was driven purely by electoral tactics.
"My position has stayed the same and will not change. It is of a fundamental nature," he said.
Schroeder said he and Mubarak were agreed that U.N. Security council resolution 1441 -- which demands Iraq disarm or face "serious consequences" -- should be implemented.
Schroeder said Mubarak had clearly laid out the possible consequences of a war with Iraq for the region and for the U.S.-led coalition against international terrorism.
Schroeder and Mubarak also stressed the importance of seeking peace between Israel and the Palestinians, with Mubarak saying it was the most dangerous problem in the region that must be solved after Iraq was dealt with.
----
U.S. delays new Iraq resolution
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 19, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030219-91259126.htm
The United States and Britain delayed a decision yesterday on a new U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Iraq, and a group of 60 Third World nations made a case to the U.N. Security Council against going to war.
The new resolution, a document with three key paragraphs, would find Iraq in "further material breach" of demands that it disarm.
In the morning, the White House said the U.S.-British draft could be introduced as early as today. But in the afternoon, officials said the new text may not be introduced at all.
"At this point, it's not clear we'll put a resolution down. We are really still testing the waters," one U.S. official said.
The official said the administration wanted to hear what the 60 U.N. members have to say during an open council meeting that began yesterday and is expected to end today.
President Bush said yesterday that Washington does not need another document because Saddam "could even care less about" Resolution 1441.
"The timing will be determined as a result of ongoing conversations within our government and our allies," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said later at a press briefing. "I think it's going to be a relatively simple and straightforward resolution, not very lengthy."
"But we are working with our friends and allies to see if we can get a second resolution," he told reporters.
The group addressing the council comprises members of the Non-Aligned Movement and was led by South Africa's U.N. ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, who said that "the inspection process in Iraq is working and that Iraq is showing clear signs of cooperating more proactively with the inspectors."
Meanwhile, Washington's military planning suffered a serious setback after Turkey, seeking to double its multibillion-dollar U.S. aid package, postponed a parliamentary vote to permit the deployment of tens of thousands of U.S. troops to open a northern front in a war with Iraq.
Yesterday's developments followed a weekend of global anti-war protests and a declaration by leaders of the 15-nation European Union giving Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein one "last chance" to disarm.
In describing the draft of the U.S.- and British-backed resolution, the American official said the document begins with a standard preamble followed by "three operative paragraphs." They state that Iraq is in "further material breach," using language taken directly from Resolution 1441, adopted unanimously by the Security Council on Nov. 8.
The draft also mentions "serious consequences," if Iraq does not disarm, language also used in the earlier resolution.
Nine Security Council votes are necessary to adopt a resolution, provided none of the five permanent members vetoes it.
But French President Jacques Chirac said in Brussels on Monday that his country would veto it if the text is introduced at this time. Two other permanent members, Russia and China, support France's position that inspections should be given more time.
A former top Iraqi scientist said in Manila yesterday that he believes Saddam had dismantled his nuclear program but was making chemical and biological weapons hidden deep underground.
"There is no way [the inspectors] can really find them, unless by pure accident," Hussain al Shahristani, a former chief scientific adviser to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, said at a briefing organized by an association of foreign journalists in the Philippines. "These materials are hidden deep underground or in a tunnel system."
Mr. al Shahristani, who said he had been jailed by Saddam's regime for 11 years because he refused to develop banned weapons, said his information came from former colleagues and dissidents who had recently fled Iraq. He escaped from Iraq in 1991 and lives in London.
"There has even been discussion within [Saddam´s] circle to set up what they call a chemical belt around Baghdad using his chemical weapons to entrap the residents of Baghdad inside," he said.
"Based on contacts that we are having with the people inside Iraq, who are talking with the military all the time, the general understanding of the population now is that the army is not going to fight. The army is not going to defend Saddam."
In Turkey yesterday, the leader of the governing Justice and Development Party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Ankara would allow U.S. troops on its territory only after Washington substantially increases its aid offer to compensate Turkey for any losses during a war with Iraq.
"The other side must meet our demands, and if they do, we shall see. After this is finalized, the authorization will come to parliament," Mr. Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia News Agency.
According to reports from Turkey, the government is demanding $10 billion in grants and as much as $20 billion in long-term loans, but the negotiations have been about $4 billion to $6 billion in grants and $10 billion to $15 billion in loans.
"We are working closely with the Turks," Mr. Bush said yesterday. "We have great respect for the Turkish government. They have no better friend than the American government, and hopefully we can come up with an agreement that's satisfactory to both parties."
Mr. Fleischer said negotiations had reached a crucial stage and that the matter "will be settled one way or another rather soon."
"We continue to work with Turkey as a friend. But it is decision time," he said.
Also yesterday, 13 EU candidates endorsed the European Union's warning on Monday to Iraq that it has a "last chance" to cooperate fully with the United Nations if it wants to avoid war.
•This article is based in part on wire service reports.
----
Hunger Among Kurds for a Final Fight With Hussein
Despite Autonomy in Iraq, Many Are Motivated to Revenge by Memories of Army's Atrocities
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27343-2003Feb18?language=printer
GOBTAPPA, Iraq -- On the worst day of his life, Qadir Ismail Ali said, he found so many corpses on the ground at Gobtappa that he walked right past those of his wife, Hajir, who was 50, and their eldest daughter, Amina, 18. He failed to recognize his girls, Aska, 12, Kocha, 10, and all three boys, Sadir, 11, Dara, 6, and Sarbast, 5. And he overlooked Hawzhen, a girl of 18 months, huddled with the others in a neighbor's yard.
According to historians and human rights advocates, the Iraqi air force had dropped 13 gas-laden containers on Ali's home village just after 6 p.m. that day -- May 30, 1988. The attack was part of Operation Anfal, mounted to punish Kurdish militiamen and their families for rising up in alliance with the Iranian enemy of the time. Kurds say as many as 180,000 people in 60 villages were killed in the operation.
That number is disputed, but one thing is certain: In the bloodstained ledger of modern Iraq, no population has paid quite so dearly as the Kurds for opposing President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party government. And now that U.S. forces are preparing what is widely regarded in this Kurdish-controlled zone of northern Iraq as the final assault on Baghdad, some Kurds eager to settle accounts are asking why their peshmerga militias are not part of the planning.
"Let us pay some more," Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, implored last week.
The plea is heard most among the old warriors who have fought Hussein for much of the last three decades, carrying on a long combative tradition among the Kurds. The insurgency has gone quiet since 1991 as, beneath the cover of a "no fly" zone enforced by U.S. and British warplanes, 4 million Kurds in the mountainous reaches of northern Iraq enjoy considerable autonomy and freedom from attack.
Electing their own parliament, staffing their own schools, waving at their own traffic police, Kurds now savor the self-rule for which they were fighting. Yet some here say they want to be part of a decisive blow against Hussein.
"We want to take revenge on him," said Mustafa Ali, a surviving son of Qadir Ismail Ali. "We are ready to lose half our population, just for Saddam to be removed."
"Now it's almost nine decades we've been fighting, and we've never been so powerful, felt so close to getting what we want," said Shalaw Ali Askari, son of a legendary peshmerga leader and minister of agriculture in the Kurdish zone administered by Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "If you do not share, we will not be happy," Askari said, addressing the Americans. "If we cannot shoot Baath people, we will not be happy."
Faraidoon Abdul Qadir, the group's interior minister, agreed, but added that the Kurds eager for a final battle assume it would be dominated by U.S. firepower.
Kurdish officials insist that, despite their appetite for another fight, they will obey U.S. instructions to remain in defensive positions. "All Kurds would like to fight Saddam Hussein," said Burham Sofi, a militia commander. "But the political conditions do not allow us to do that."
That makes sense militarily, according to independent analysts and U.S. officials. The value of the Kurds' lightly armed and trained militias -- especially in the closely integrated warfare that U.S. forces would bring to an invasion -- is debatable. In any case, the debate was ended early by Turkey.
A key U.S. ally that shares a 218-mile border with northern Iraq, Turkey is indispensable to Pentagon plans to open a northern front against Hussein's forces. But having fought a 15-year insurgency by Kurdish separatists, Turkish generals made clear from the start that cooperation required a U.S. vow that Iraqi Kurds would play no part in the fighting, U.S. and Turkish officials said.
To reinforce the point, Turkey will deploy a sizable military force in northern Iraq, ostensibly to manage refugee flows but also to "protect Turkey's national interest."
The appetite for more fighting against Baghdad is not unanimous, even among the Kurds who have suffered from Hussein's rule. In Halabja, the town about 75 miles southeast of here that Sofi's forces defend, interviews with survivors of Hussein's most infamous chemical attack revealed an avid interest in his demise, but no great hunger for fresh sacrifice.
"We would like to see Saddam Hussein finished," said Zuhra Ali Mohammed, who lost her sister and son in March 1988. "But we would prefer the Americans do it."
Azad Hussein, pausing at the ruins of a bombed house down the street, said the same. "If you're talking about fighting and suffering and misery, it's all happened here," he said. "We don't want to make the war. If others want to do it, that's better for us."
"The only sense I have is for that regime to go," said Amin Rashid Amin, hefting an empty chemical warhead from his scrap metal shop in Halabja's downtown market. "I don't want to suffer again what I suffered before."
In Gobtappa, about 40 miles northwest of Sulaymaniyah, Ali led a visitor up a green hillock behind the local mosque. At the top was a graveyard marked by six rows of granite slabs, irregular but placed in perfect rows. Crowning the hill was a sculpture of a man's head emerging from a pile of bodies. The man is screaming.
"We cannot forget. We cannot recover," Ali said, standing beside the slab where most of his family rests. "We wish the ground would swallow us up, but we can't do anything about it."
----
Germany Shifts Its Stand on Iraq Crisis
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Germany-Iraq.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
BERLIN (AP) -- Germany's endorsement of war as a last resort marks a shift of position on Iraq after months of often strident opposition, allowing Berlin to sound a conciliatory note toward Washington even as its leaders pledged to push for a peaceful solution.
Germany's new tone at a summit of European leaders this week showed that Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer is gaining foreign policy influence over Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in a drawn-out battle over how much diplomatic conflict Germany can stomach.
In the summit's high-stakes bargaining to cobble together a common European stand, Germany successfully blocked a declaration from warning Saddam Hussein that ``time is running out'' -- a phrase favored by Britain, as well as the United States.
But as part of the deal, Berlin explicitly acknowledged that war was an option -- something it had avoided until recently.
``Germany, and Schroeder in particular, made a step he did not want to make before by saying there could be war,'' said Reinhardt Rummel, a foreign policy analyst at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. ``The Germans had to agree to language that was previously ruled out.''
Both Schroeder and Fischer still oppose a war to disarm Saddam Hussein, saying U.N. weapons inspectors should get more time -- a call backed at the EU summit. And Schroeder stood by his refusal to support a new Security Council resolution authorizing force against Iraq. The United States and Britain are trying to draft such a measure.
``I see absolutely no need for a new resolution,'' Schroeder said on ARD television late Tuesday. ``I am deeply convinced that all of us -- that means all partners in this world -- must work to give peace a chance and avoid war.''
Other points agreed to by the EU leaders also pleased Germany: pledging to solve Iraq's disarmament through the United Nations, stating that a peaceful solution ``is what the people of Europe want,'' and that war ``is not inevitable.''
``We remain committed to our peace policy,'' Fischer said in Berlin on Tuesday.
That includes a firm refusal to let Germans fight in an Iraq war. But now, the policy includes the notion that war by others might be necessary -- putting Germany in line with France in a partnership recharged by common opposition to U.S. pressure for war.
Fischer had previously tried to keep the option open, sensing that Germany's international standing could suffer from Schroeder's open hostility to war under any circumstance.
Schroeder refused to budge, even dressing down Fischer's chief U.N. diplomat for suggesting that no new Security Council decision might be needed to authorize war.
The struggle has played out over the past nine months as Fischer balanced his mission of crafting a foreign policy with Schroeder's drive to keep his shaky government in power with an anti-war campaign platform.
``As I see it, Joschka Fischer has regained the initiative a bit for German diplomacy,'' Rummel said.
Despite their differences, the two leaders have critical common beliefs. Neither is persuaded by the U.S. case for war, a point driven home by Fischer in an emotional speech at a Munich security conference attended by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. On Tuesday, Fischer said he remains unconvinced.
Both also point out that Germany has contributed to international missions repeatedly since the end of the Cold War, sending peacekeepers to the Balkans and launching its biggest military deployment since World War II to help fight international terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks -- in solidarity with the United States.
More deeply, they share a sense that because of its history Germany has a special duty to pursue peaceful solutions.
Karsten Voigt, the German Foreign Ministry's top official for relations with Washington, said Germany always asks three questions before sending its soldiers abroad -- ``about the morality, the legitimacy under international law and whether the use of military force is inevitable.''
``In the case of Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, the answer was yes,'' he said in a telephone interview. ``In Iraq, the answer is that we still believe force can be avoided.''
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Disbands a Disobedient Combat Unit
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Disobedient-Soldiers.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
JERUSALEM (AP) -- In an unprecedented step, an Israeli combat unit renowned for both its military prowess and its misbehavior has been disbanded, the army said Wednesday.
The unit, a 70-man rifle company in the Golani Infantry Brigade's 13th Battalion had informally renamed itself ``Satan's Messengers.''
In recent years, the soldiers vandalized and disabled military vehicles so they would not have to carry out routine patrols. They hurled eggs at military police. They ignored orders from their commanding officers and barred them from entering the soldiers' quarters, the Yediot Ahronot reported.
Rookie soldiers, who do most of the menial work in combat units, complained of mistreatment at the hands of veteran soldiers. In one instance, older soldiers were accused of breaking a dishwashing machine so the younger ones would be forced to wash dishes by hand.
According to Yediot, soldiers in the company rebelled six times in four years.
Recent attempts to restrain the unit through discussions with senior commanders, warnings and jail terms were unsuccessful, and disciplinary violations increased, Yediot Ahronot reported.
In a statement, the army said the company's conduct ``did not befit the norms and values of the Israel Defense Forces'' and that the unit ``would be broken up and its soldiers scattered to various units.''
``You might see it as vandalism'' one former soldier from the unit, who did not give his name, told Israel Radio. ``We see it as fun, so we'll have stories to tell.''
The unit's soldiers were drawn from the general pool of Israeli men who serve three years of compulsory military duty after high school.
The entire Golani Brigade, Israel's oldest infantry brigade, is also for its strong record in combat as well as its reputation for disobedience. The brigade's unofficial motto is ``Golani -- Chaos!''
Neither the newspaper report nor the army statement made any accusations of abuses against Palestinians.
----
11 Palestinians Killed as Israeli Troops and Tanks Enter Gaza
By Ibrahim Barzak
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; 12:25 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27606-2003Feb18?language=printer
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israeli tanks and soldiers battled Palestinian militants in the streets of Gaza City before dawn Wednesday in violence that left 11 Palestinians dead, including a suicide bomber who tried to blow up a tank, Palestinians said.
The Israeli forces said they were targeting Palestinian metal workshops that manufacture mortars and rockets. However, Israeli troops also destroyed several homes and damaged a school.
Twenty-five Palestinians were wounded, and electricity was cut to much of Gaza City, the largest Palestinian city with some 300,000 residents.
The fighting began as 40 tanks charged into the city's Shajaiyeh neighborhood late Tuesday. The forces withdrew six hours later.
Army spokeswoman Capt. Sharon Feingold called it a "pre-emptive, pinpoint, targeted operation against a Hamas stronghold."
Hamas' spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, said "the Israeli enemy has lost its mind. They are like an angry bull ... We have to make (Israel) pay the price sooner or later, and our people are capable of resisting."
Palestinian militants responded hours after the Israeli troops pulled out, firing four rockets from northern Gaza at the nearby Israeli town of Sderot. Three Israelis were injured, including a 35-year-old man who suffered serious head injuries, the army said. No group claimed responsibility, though Hamas has frequently carried out rocket attacks in the area.
Afterward, Israel informed the Palestinian security forces in Gaza that it would cut the territory in half by blocking the main north-south road, Palestinian officials said. Palestinian witnesses said the army began placing concrete barriers on the road to restrict travel by Palestinians in Gaza.
In the West Bank, three Palestinians were killed Wednesday - one of them when a small bomb in his car exploded as he traveled to the town of Jenin, Palestinian security sources told The Associated Press. Four others in the car were wounded. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Palestinian militia to which the men belonged, claimed Israel was responsible for the blast.
Also, two Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops conducting house-to-house searches in the Old City in Nablus. Palestinians said one was a 32-year-old baker on his way to work, and the other was a 16-year-old who was among a group of stonethrowers. The Israeli army said the older man was shot after he ignored orders to halt and the teenage boy was shot after throwing a firebomb at Israeli forces.
In the more than two years of Mideast fighting, Israel has largely refrained from large-scale military incursions in Gaza. The crowded towns make it difficult and dangerous for Israeli troops to operate. In addition, the territory is fenced off from Israel, which keeps the militants pinned in and has largely limited their attacks to Israeli troops and Jewish settlers already inside Gaza.
However, Israeli leaders promised a crackdown on Hamas after the group blew up an Israeli tank Saturday, killing four soldiers. The raid was the second in Gaza City since that attack, and the third in the past month.
The Israeli media have predicted the army will carry out a series of operations aimed at Hamas, though it is not expected to reoccupy the coastal territory, where more than 1 million Palestinians and about 7,000 Jewish settlers live.
Seven of the Palestinians killed in the overnight fighting were militants or members of the security forces, and four were civilians, according to Palestinian hospitals. It was the highest death toll in a single Israeli operation since Jan. 26, when 12 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli invasion in another part of Gaza City.
In addition, 25 Palestinians were wounded, all but two of them militants or security force members, the hospitals said.
The Israeli army said it targeted only armed Palestinians, and that it had no information on Palestinian casualties.
The Israeli tanks, accompanied by attack helicopters, entered the Shajaiyeh neighborhood late Tuesday from three directions, residents said. Several tanks also surrounded an elementary school run by Hamas in the nearby Tufah area.
The Israeli military said soldiers blew up four metal workshops used for manufacturing weapons and exchanged fire with gunmen, and there were no Israeli casualties.
Three of the civilian deaths came from the demolition of a workshop. After the Israelis blew up a workshop on the ground floor of a three-story building, the troops left and the three Palestinian men entered, Palestinian witnesses said. Then came a second explosion, which brought down much of the building, crushing the three men to death, including brothers Said al-Helo, 25, and Ala al-Helo, 20, according to the building's owner Mohammed al-Kataa.
Another civilian, a nurse, was shot and killed when he left his house to help his sick neighbor, Palestinians said.
The dead also included three security officers, shot by an Israeli helicopter that fired on a checkpoint they were manning, Palestinians said.
Israel says many Palestinian metal workshops in Gaza produce the mortars and rockets that Hamas fires at Jewish settlements and Israeli villages just beyond the border fence. Palestinians say most of the workshops destroyed by Israeli forces are ordinary businesses that aren't involved in the conflict.
Israeli Col. Imad Faras, commander of the infantry, said the operation showed Israel was willing to go after Hamas targets inside Gaza City. "This was a deeper operation, ... in a place they thought, they believed, that we would not be able to get to," Faras told Israel television.
Palestinian witnesses said an explosion set one of the Israeli tanks on fire late Tuesday night. Hamas claimed responsibility, saying one of its suicide bombers, Karim Batron, 21, blew up the tank. The Israeli military said it knew nothing of the incident.
Iman Shamali, 39, said her house "shook like an earthquake" from the force of the blast, and she saw the tank burning outside. "Bullets are coming from all directions," she said.
----
Israeli Army Raids Gaza and Nablus, Killing 13
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29590-2003Feb19?language=printer
GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli troops, tanks and helicopters staged lightning overnight raids on militant strongholds in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 11 Palestinians and wounding 27, witnesses and medics said Wednesday.
Troops and armor later entered the West Bank city of Nablus, killing two Palestinians, arresting suspected militants and reimposing a curfew on the ancient Casbah, witnesses said.
In Jenin, another West Bank city, a militant affiliated with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction was killed and three other men hurt when their car blew up, witnesses said.
The circumstances were unclear but the explosion bore the hallmarks of an undercover Israeli track-and-kill operation.
During one Gaza Strip raid, an Islamic militant wearing an explosives belt ran at an Israeli armored column shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest), drawing gunfire which apparently detonated his load and killed him, witnesses said.
Signaling defiance after the Israeli assault, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired four Qassam rockets, a crudely built weapon developed by the Islamic group Hamas, into southern Israel, injuring three people, one of them seriously.
The Israeli raids, which triggered street battles with militants, rattled a tentative cease-fire dialogue between the two sides after 29 months of violence in the uprising against Israel for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel had vowed to intensify operations against militants after a land mine blast gutted an Israeli tank and killed its four crew Saturday. Hamas said it blew up the tank to avenge the army's killing of two militants a few days earlier.
Fierce fighting erupted when Israeli armor rolled into Tufah, a central Gaza City district supportive of militants linked to Arafat's Fatah movement.
Local security sources and hospital officials said seven Palestinians were killed in Tufah -- two militant gunmen, a security officer, a medic and three people in a collapsed house.
Witnesses said the house caved in when the Israeli army dynamited two nearby metalworks alleged to have produced munitions for militant attacks.
Israeli Colonel Imad Faris rejected that account. "We know 10 armed Palestinians were killed by precise shooting. When we use explosives we ensure adjacent buildings are evacuated to remove anyone from danger. The chance there were people in this building does not exist," he told army radio.
ROCKET ATTACK
Three Palestinian intelligence officers were killed and five policemen wounded by helicopter missiles fired at a security position in north Gaza set up to prevent Islamic militants firing rockets into nearby Israel, hospital officials said.
Palestinian security forces recently cracked down on Qassam rocket squads because their attacks have provoked punishing Israeli incursions into Gaza.
Shortly after militants vowed revenge for the latest Gaza raids, three rockets hit the southern Israeli town of Sderot, a frequent target of Qassams. One landed near a factory entrance in the town's industrial zone, seriously wounding a worker standing there.
In Shijaia, a Gaza City district associated with Islamic militants, fighters in black balaclavas and camouflage fatigues fired rifles and homemade rockets at Israeli forces.
Twenty-seven Palestinians were wounded, medics said, before the troops withdrew.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, inspected the damage in Tufah and told reporters: "The Israeli enemy has lost its mind. It acts like a runaway bull destroying houses on the heads of their owners... The enemy will pay the price for its crimes and will never escape punishment."
A mass funeral march for the 11 dead attracted at least 60,000 Palestinians, including dozens of militants firing rifles into the air as well as Palestinian Authority policemen.
Vows of revenge reverberated through loudspeakers. "(Jewish) settlements will be bombarded and Jews will be torn into pieces in Tel Aviv and Jaffa!" militants shouted.
Palestinian suicide bombings have tailed off since the army reoccupied most Palestinian-administered areas of the West Bank last year and tightened travel curbs in Gaza.
Palestinian officials said the Gaza incursions were unwarranted in their severity and would damage fresh diplomatic efforts, which included talks Tuesday in London on Palestinian reforms deemed crucial to reviving a peace process.
Israeli officials said raids remained necessary to root out "terror infrastructures."
At least 1,854 Palestinians and 705 Israelis have been killed since the uprising began in September 2000 after the breakdown of U.S-brokered negotiations on Palestinian statehood in territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
----
Incursion targets militants
From combined dispatches
February 19, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030219-73695256.htm
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli soldiers engaged in fierce firefights with Palestinian gunmen during a raid into a stronghold of the militant Islamic Jihad group east of Gaza City yesterday, Palestinian witnesses and security sources said.
Two Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops early today during the major incursion, bringing the night's toll to six Palestinians, hospital sources said.
The latest victims were killed in an exchange of fire. Shortly before, two brothers, Ala and Said el-Ilou aged about 20, also were shot dead and one other unnamed Palestinian died in similar circumstances.
A suicide bomber belonging to the military wing of Hamas blew himself up beside an Israeli tank. Palestinian gunmen fired at an estimated 40 Israeli tanks that rumbled several hundred yards into the Shajaiyeh neighborhood late yesterday evening, accompanied by bulldozers and attack helicopters.
Calls came from mosque loudspeakers for gunmen to come out and confront the Israelis, and witnesses said armed Palestinians were taking up positions on Gaza streets.
Witnesses said the tanks were moving toward the neighborhood from three directions. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
Israeli incursions into Gaza City are relatively common. The presence of the bulldozers indicated the Israelis intended to knock down a building. Israel has been pursuing a policy of destroying houses of suspected militants.
The raid followed a stepped-up offensive by the Israeli army against Islamic militants in the Gaza Strip after four soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack carried out by the militant Hamas group Saturday.
Since the bombing, Israeli forces have killed a senior Hamas militant and destroyed the house of another Hamas member Israel says masterminded Saturday's attack in the northern Gaza Strip. Hamas has also blamed Israeli security forces for the killing of six militants in a mysterious explosion Sunday.
-------- latin america
PERU - Former spy chief goes on trial
World Scene
February 19, 2003
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030219-88432832.htm
LIMA - Vladimiro Montesinos, the former spy chief who was once Peru's most feared man, went on trial yesterday on one charge at a Lima prison guarded by hundreds of elite police commandos armed with automatic weapons.
Mr. Montesinos, 57, faces a charge of influence peddling, a minor offense among the dozens of counts before him that range from corruption to drug trafficking, arms dealing and directing a death squad.
Mr. Montesinos, the most trusted aide to former President Alberto Fujimori, was captured 20 months ago in Venezuela after escaping Peru on a friend's yacht.
---
Trial Begins For Peru's Former Spy Chief
By Monte Hayes
Associated Press
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27605-2003Feb18?language=printer
LIMA, Peru, Feb. 18 -- Vladimiro Montesinos, the former spy chief who was once Peru's most feared man, went on trial today at a Lima prison guarded by hundreds of police commandos with automatic weapons.
"It is the beginning of the public trial of probably the most corrupt man in the history of Peru," said Ronald Gamarra, a special state attorney assigned to the Montesinos investigation.
Looking grayer than the last time he appeared in public, six months ago, the balding, bespectacled Montesinos, 57, walked into a prison courtroom for the opening of his first public trial.
He faces a charge of influence peddling, a minor offense among the dozens of counts before him that range from corruption to drug trafficking, arms dealing and directing a death squad.
He sat down stiff-backed beside his former mistress, Jacqueline Beltran, without greeting her. Montesinos is accused of using his reputed control of the judiciary during the previous decade to get Beltran's brother out of prison. He could be imprisoned for five years if convicted.
Montesinos, dressed in a blue silk shirt and dark slacks, showed little emotion as he faced a three-judge panel and listened to the charges against him. The former spy chief entered a written statement in which he exercised his right to remain silent and challenged the impartiality of the judges.
Montesinos is accused of building a criminal empire involving generals, legislators, the mass media and judges while he served as the most trusted aide to then-President Alberto Fujimori. Investigators say he bilked Peru of hundreds of millions of dollars during Fujimori's decade-long authoritarian rule.
Montesinos was brought by helicopter from a high-security naval prison to Lurigancho prison in a shantytown on the far side of Lima. He was in handcuffs and wore a bulletproof vest. Hundreds of police ringed the prison and sharpshooters perched on nearby houses and surrounding hills.
Montesinos has gone on a hunger strike and refused to testify as a witness in other cases. By questioning the impartiality of judges, he has forced a delay in his trials. Montesinos recently complained to prison psychologists that he was having thoughts of suicide.
Many in Peru contend Montesinos still wields influence over a judicial system he reputedly controlled with intimidation and bribes until Fujimori's regime collapsed in 2000. His corruption trial is viewed as a test of the independence of the courts.
In the cases that involve more serious charges, including murder and drug trafficking, the strength of the evidence is unclear. A judge ruled in December that there was insufficient evidence to try Montesinos on one count of drug trafficking.
-------- mideast
U.S. TAKES OFF THE GLOVES WITH TURKEY
Wed, 19 Feb 2003
Middle East News Line
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/february/02_20_1.html
ANKARA [MENL] -- The United States appears to have ended its patience with Turkey and threatens to review their strategic relationship unless Ankara immediately approves the deployment of tens of thousands of American troops in Turkey.
The new U.S. approach is being utilized amid another Turkish delay of a request by Washington for the deployment of up to 40,000 American troops in Turkey. After reassurances to Washington, Ankara has not linked such approval to a huge U.S. compensation package and a new United Nations Security Council resolution that would authorize war against Iraq.
"The United States has thousands of troops on ships waiting outside of Turkish ports and Ankara won't come to a decision," a Western diplomatic source said. "This situation is quickly coming to a head. It's a matter of hours and days."
Turkey's parliament did not receive a government request for U.S. troop deployment. Officials said the government of Prime Minister Abdullah Gul will not ask for a parliamentary vote until negotiations over a U.S. compensation package with Turkey are completed.
----
Some Syrian Troops To Leave Lebanon
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
World in Brief; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27838-2003Feb18?language=printer
BEIRUT -- Lebanon said yesterday that Syria would redeploy some troops from Lebanon starting today as part of an accord that helped end Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war.
A presidential statement did not mention withdrawal, but a Lebanese army source said that about 4,000 troops would leave Lebanon, where 20,000 Syrian troops have been based since the civil war.
The statement said the move was in line with the 1989 Taif accord, which stipulated that Syria withdraw its troops to areas near the Syria-Lebanon border and leave within two years.
----
SAUDI ARABIA - Prince announces terrorism crackdown
World Scene
February 19, 2003
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030219-88432832.htm
RIYADH - Saudi Arabia, facing U.S. criticism for laxness on fighting terrorism, said yesterday that it has referred 90 Saudis to trial for suspected al Qaeda links, and that 250 Saudi suspects were under investigation.
The announcement from Interior Minister Prince Nayef, reported in the kingdom's Arabic-language newspaper Okaz, was the first word of Saudi court proceedings connected to post-September 11 terror crackdowns.
Prince Nayef also said more than 150 Saudi suspects, including one being sought by the United States, had been released.
----
Doubt Hangs Over Turkish Arm of Iraq Invasion Plan
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
By Evelyn Leopold and Ralph Boulton
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29449-2003Feb19?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS/ANKARA (Reuters) - The northern thrust of a planned two-pronged U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was thrown into doubt Wednesday when Turkey put off any decision on whether to allow American forces onto its soil.
Western forces poured into the Gulf south of Iraq, and the United States and Britain were working to draw up a U.N. resolution authorizing force that they hope will placate global opposition to a war assumed to be only weeks away.
But the government of Turkey, Iraq's northern neighbor, deferred a decision on allowing U.S. invasion troops to be deployed on its territory, as the two states wrangled over the size of a multi-billion-dollar aid package for Ankara.
"A framework for the agreement we are looking for has not been established," a spokesman said after a meeting of Turkey's cabinet. "No decision regarding the request (to parliament on admitting troops) has been made."
The United States warned its reluctant ally time was running out. "Time is a critical issue for us," U.S. Ambassador Robert Pearson told reporters in Ankara.
Washington has shown growing frustration as the clock ticks toward military action and has made clear it is close to the point where it could abandon plans for a Turkish front.
A NATO committee, meeting without France, approved on Wednesday the deployment of defense equipment to Turkey, which fears possible counter-attacks from Iraq in the event of war.
Washington Tuesday ordered 28,000 troops to the Gulf region, where it has already massed more than 180,000. The U.S. force is expected to eventually total well over 200,000. Britain has mobilized some 40,000 troops.
President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair insist no deadline for war has been set, but military experts say the huge military build-up has been designed for an offensive in March, before temperatures in the region soar.
Kurds running a breakaway enclave in northern Iraq said they had arrested agents of Baghdad who threatened the safety of Iraqi opposition leaders gathering there to plan for a future after President Saddam Hussein.
IRAN WARNS U.S.
The defense minister of Iran, Iraq's eastern neighbor, said its forces would "confront" U.S. aircraft over its territory. "We will defend our airspace and will not let America violate our airspace while attacking Iraq," Ali Shamkhani said.
The strength of the anti-war mood was clear in a debate at the United Nations, where country after country spoke out against war and said inspectors looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq should instead continue their work.
U.N. Security Council endorsement of the use of force against Iraq in a new resolution would help Washington's key allies overcome opposition to war among their voters.
Resolution 1441, approved last November, threatens "serious consequences" if Iraq refuses to disarm, but many U.S. allies want further U.N. endorsement of any use of force.
A White House spokesman said the United States might propose a new resolution as early as this week but possibly next week. "I think it's going to be a relatively simple resolution, not very lengthy," he added.
Currently most Security Council members support France, which says weapons inspectors must be given more time. The United States and Britain face a struggle getting even the minimum nine votes out of 15 needed to adopt a resolution.
Diplomats said they expected any new resolution to follow the language of 1441. London and Washington are also considering putting a set of conditions to Iraq with a tight deadline to disclose any banned weapon programs.
European Union president Greece said Wednesday the United Nations should formally demand that Iraq answer questions raised by inspectors on such issues as what has happened to its stocks of anthrax, VX gas and long-range missiles.
One suggested option -- that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein be given an ultimatum to relinquish power -- is considered unlikely. This would be tantamount to a call for "regime change" which most of the 15 council members would reject as illegal, diplomats said.
South Africa has organized a debate at the United Nations to give nations without a seat on the Security Council a chance to air their views. Twenty-seven ambassadors spoke Tuesday, 23 in favor of further weapons inspections rather than war. On Wednesday 29 more will address the council.
"Evidently some in the world don't view Saddam as a risk to peace. I respectfully disagree," Bush said Tuesday.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, meeting in Berlin, urged Iraq to do more to cooperate with inspectors, with Mubarak saying inspections could not go on forever.
----
Turkey Conditions Troop Deployment On More U.S. Aid
By Glenn Kessler and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27320-2003Feb18?language=printer
The Turkish government yesterday demanded Washington significantly enhance a multibillion-dollar aid package before it receives new U.S. troops, a move that threatened to scramble the Bush administration's plans to use Turkey to open a northern front against Iraq.
The delay in Turkish approval -- which administration officials had expected by yesterday -- has left four U.S. ships carrying tanks and other heavy equipment for the Army's 4th Infantry Division stranded off the Turkish coast. Twenty to 30 ships to supply an estimated 15,000 troops are expected to arrive shortly, and U.S. officials said a decision must be made within the next 48 hours before the equipment is sent elsewhere and the war plans redrawn.
Turkey's refusal to grant timely approval of the presence of U.S. troops is yet another element of the administration's march to war that has not fallen into place as expected. Key nations on the U.N. Security Council have balked at the administration's efforts to pass a new resolution authorizing military action. President Bush said yesterday he would like to win approval for a new resolution but pointedly added, "It's not necessary as far as I'm concerned." [Details, Page A24.] The Pentagon yesterday also ordered the deployment of an additional 5,000 troops to the Persian Gulf region, where about 150,000 troops already are stationed.
Turkish officials have rejected what was termed the final U.S. offer of $6 billion in grants -- which could be leveraged into as much as $20 billion in loans -- and instead have demanded as much as $10 billion in aid. But U.S. officials yesterday dug in their heels, indicating they are not inclined to increase the proposal much.
The dispute "will be settled one way or another rather soon," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "We continue to work with Turkey as a friend. But it is decision time."
Turkey's participation is considered central to the U.S. war plans, which envision ground forces converging on Baghdad from the north through Turkey as well as from the south through Kuwait. Military analysts say U.S. forces moving south would also seize valuable oil fields and help secure Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq in the war's aftermath.
Turkey shares a 218-mile border with Iraq. Without Turkish bases, said one defense official close to the war planning effort, there would be no way to invade Iraq from the north with heavy armored and mechanized forces, because it is extremely difficult to bring in large numbers of the needed tanks and vehicles by air.
Retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a veteran planner, said the inability to stage major combat forces out of Turkey and the resulting loss of a northern invasion route would be "a significant blow to the war plan."
"The loss of Turkey means you can't open the front that would play a major role in distracting the Iraqi forces, so I think the stakes are pretty big here," Killebrew said. "Any time you can get your enemy looking in two directions or three directions instead of one is a big plus. And the inability to put forces on that axis would allow Saddam [Hussein] to focus his forces on the south."
The administration has pushed hard to win an agreement with Turkey, arranging a meeting at the White House last Friday between Bush and Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis. The administration also enlisted House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to assure Turkish officials that Congress would honor a deal made between the administration and the Turkish government.
Turkey's new government, led by an Islamic-based party, has been caught between broad public opposition to a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the desire not to alienate one of its closest allies. U.S. officials believed they had a deal with Turkey to have a vote in parliament by Feb. 18. But a vote was put off, and the head of Turkey's ruling party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Ankara's backing of a war was in doubt if Washington did not meet Turkish demands.
"If we are to act together, if our support is meaningful and necessary to the U.S., then the U.S. should take into account our sensitivities and consider with good will our demands," Erdogan said, according to the Anatolia news agency. "Otherwise the partnership and the friendship will turn into constant sacrifices made by one of the sides. And this is unacceptable."
He added that "our American friends should not interpret this decision [to mean] that Turkey has embarked on an irreversible road."
But one senior U.S. official said it is "their decision to make," adding that Turkey must realize that without an agreement a war may take longer and may be more costly for the Turkish economy, and that the country may have to face a refugee crisis by itself. U.S. officials have also argued that a democratic Iraq that is economically viable would over the long term be a huge benefit to the ailing Turkish economy.
Yet money remains the key issue separating Turkey and the United States. Two other areas of discussion -- the conditions that would apply to U.S. troops in Turkey and the principles that would govern the reconstruction of a postwar Iraq -- have been largely addressed, officials said.
Turkish officials say that because of the way it is structured, they believe the U.S. offer is actually closer to $4 billion than $6 billion, which is not enough to win parliamentary approval for a troop deployment. "The Turkish government is in a really difficult situation, with 94 percent of the public opinion set against a war in Iraq," a senior Turkish official said. "The U.S. needs to show it is doing its best to help Turkey."
Turkish officials also have repeatedly stressed that the Turkish economy suffered greatly during the Persian Gulf War.
At the Pentagon, senior defense officials said they have reached the breaking point in their discussions with the Turks and either have to start offloading combat equipment at Turkish ports or turn their ships around and go somewhere else in the region.
One senior military officer said the next 24 to 48 hours would be critical. "We have a force afloat that needs to get off someplace," he said. "If it ain't going to be there, it needs to be somewhere. We're out of time. We've got to get them somewhere else in the region."
Another defense official said that Turkey could do serious long-term damage to its close relationship with the United States if it drives too hard an economic bargain and forces U.S. troops to stage elsewhere.
"We are very near the breaking point, and they're playing a game of very hard bargaining that has the potential for significant ramifications in future relations," the official said.
Without the cooperation of Turkey, one option would be to fly airborne forces directly into airfields in northern Iraq and essentially skip the need to stage in Turkey, said Michael Vickers, a former military officer and CIA operative who works as an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank. But he agreed the airlift option only works for light infantry units, not heavy armored and mechanized units.
Another option would be to try to make greater use of bases in Jordan. "But I think Jordan is going to be limited to Special Forces and search-and-rescue [units]," he said.
-------- nato
Crisis Over, NATO Approves Defense Gear for Turkey
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; 12:41 PM
By John Chalmers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30272-2003Feb19?language=printer
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO brought one of the stormiest chapters in its 54-year history to a close on Wednesday, authorizing the deployment of defense equipment to Turkey which fears counter-attack in the event of a war in Iraq.
The decision was taken by the Defense Planning Committee, a forum of the 19-nation alliance on which France does not sit. Paris had blocked military planning to bolster Turkish defenses.
Diplomats said the United States and some other NATO members sought a statement welcoming the move at a meeting of all 19 allied ambassadors later, but they retreated quickly when it became clear that France was prepared only to "take note" of it.
The 18-nation Defense Planning Committee approved deployment of AWACS early warning aircraft, Patriot air defense missile systems and chemical-biological response units in southern Turkey, a likely launchpad for any U.S.-led strike on Baghdad.
NATO Secretary-General George Robertson resorted to the same committee Sunday to break a month-long deadlock over when to start the planning, which he said in interviews published on Wednesday had dented the alliance's credibility.
"Yes we had a problem, yes it was damaging, yes we picked up a lot of adverse criticism," a NATO official said. "But at the end of the day we acted, we supported Turkey. They wanted help from us, they're getting it. That is not papering over cracks."
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns welcomed Wednesday's decision as a sign that the alliance had lived up to its core responsibility to respond to an ally in a time of threat.
"Alliance solidarity has prevailed," he said in a statement.
FRANCE "TAKES NOTE"
France, Belgium and Germany had all held out until last weekend against asking military planners for advice on Turkey's defense, arguing that this would be an implicit acceptance that military action was inevitable and diplomacy had failed.
Their veto exacerbated tensions both across the Atlantic and within Europe over how best to ensure that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein gives up alleged weapons of mass destruction.
But after a series of emergency meetings under a blaze of adverse publicity last week Belgium and Germany joined the other 16 in the Defense Planning Committee to end the standoff.
France is not included in the committee because it withdrew from NATO's integrated military structure in 1966.
One diplomat said that when the French envoy joined the other 18 ambassadors Wednesday, he refused to "pass judgment" on a decision taken by the committee.
"'Welcome' was one option on the table, that was discussed. But in the end we stuck with 'taking note'," said another.
The 19 also decided to ask NATO's civil emergency planning committee for advice on how to prepare for any impact on Turkey's civilian population from a conflict in Iraq.
The Dutch government said it had shipped Patriot systems to Turkey from the port of Vlissingen and expected them to arrive in the second half of next week.
The systems, to be deployed at the airforce bases in Batman and Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey, provide defense against attacking aircraft and can also be used against ballistic missiles such as Scuds. Most of the 370 Dutch airforce personnel trained to use the systems will fly to Turkey.
NATO officials said that not all of the 17 alliance-owned and -operated AWACS, which are based at Geilenkirchen just inside Germany's border with the Netherlands, would be deployed. When operating at an altitude of 30,000 feet the E-3A planes can scan more than 120,500 square miles. This means that one or two could be enough for surveillance at any one time but, because they can fly for only 6-8 hours, several would be needed for an around-the-clock operation.
The forward operating base for the E-3As may be Konya in Turkey or Aktion in Greece.
-------- puerto rico
Vieques residents bid a farewell to arms
Story by John Marino
REUTERS PUERTO RICO:
February 19, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19870/newsDate/19-Feb-2003/story.htm
VIEQUES, Puerto Rico - For nearly four years, U.S. Navy war games on this tiny island off Puerto Rico were met with spirited protest and civil disobedience that landed more than 1,000 people behind bars in federal prison.
Those protests drew to a close last week as the Navy ended what were likely to be the last of its training exercises before a planned pull-out in May. But worries about Vieques' future remain and are now focusing on clean-up of the site.
"We're happy that the bombing has probably ended, but we remain sceptical. There is a lot of mistrust," said Robert Rabin, a long-time leader at the protest camps that sprang up along the front gate to Navy property after a bombing accident killed a civilian security guard four years ago.
Many people in the U.S. Caribbean territory of Puerto Rico were galvanized by the drive to end more than six decades of military training on Vieques, a 21-mile-long (33-km-long) island that lies off the eastern tip of Puerto Rico and has about 9,100 residents.
The campaign attracted protesters from further a field, too: In 2001, the Reverend Al Sharpton and attorney Robert Kennedy Jr. were among celebrities arrested as they protested against exercises.
For years, residents complained the Navy bombing stifled economic development and worried that it posed a threat to the environment and their health.
Puerto Rican scientists have measured heightened levels of heavy metals in the soil and plants of Vieques from 60 years of Navy bombing. Scientists have also expressed concerns about solvents and other chemicals from bombs, and metal debris from weaponry is littered about the land and water of the island.
Then, when two 500 lb (230 kg) bombs missed their mark by nearly a mile (more than a km), killing civilian security guard David Sanes Rodriguez in a botched bombing run in April 1999, those concerns exploded into open protest.
WORRIES NOT GONE YET
Washington announced two years ago that the Navy would pull out by May 2003 and in January the Navy said it would transfer exercises to bases in the southeastern United States.
"We are certainly happy that we are moving into the demilitarisation area," Rabin said. "But we are very conscious that there is much more to be done."
For most residents, that means the clean-up and return of lands formally occupied by the Navy.
After the Navy pulls completely off the island by May, nearly half of Vieques - 16,000 of its 33,000 acres (6,475 to 13,360 hectares) - will remain in federal government hands.
Current plans call for most of Camp Garcia, the 12,000-acre (4,800-hectare) military reservation that sprawls across the eastern third of this island, to be transferred to the Department of the Interior to manage as a wildlife refuge, which carries a lower standard of clean-up than if developed for public use.
Plans call for the 900-acre (360-hectare) live impact area where Navy bombs rained down to be fenced off and access permanently denied.
"We will continue struggling for the clean-up and return of the lands. Vieques has the right to sustainable development," said Mayor Damaso Serrano, who spent four months in prison for trespassing on Navy land during protests in 2001.
The Navy has denied repeatedly that its activities harm the environment or the health of residents.
But anti-war games protesters always cited a cancer rate on Vieques at 27 percent above the average in Puerto Rico as a major cause for concern. Now, residents fear the contamination the Navy will leave behind.
Those fears heightened recently after it was discovered that a sunken Navy destroyer, 900 feet (270 metres) off the Vieques coast, was used as a target ship for nuclear tests in the Pacific in 1958.
Also raising concerns was a recent Pentagon acknowledgment that chemical weapons simulants were tested on island beaches in the 1960s. Months after the death of Sanes Rodriguez in 1999, the Navy acknowledged that it had used depleted uranium munitions during training in Vieques.
NAVY DENIES HEALTH, ENVIRONMENT HAZARDS
Navy studies and those undertaken by local researchers have found heavy metal contamination in local soil, plants, groundwater and seafood.
The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is undertaking a series of reviews on existing tests. While it too confirms the contamination, it says that existing levels of toxins are not in sufficient quantities to pose a health risk to residents.
But the residents want more testing, arguing that current clean-up plans, drawn up by Navy contractors, are based on old and limited research.
"The fact that the Navy has not helped Vieques at all is now complicated by the verification of the contamination and the level of cancer we have," said Osvaldo Gonzalez, owner of Vieques Air Link, a small commuter airline that employs 80 people, making it one of the island's largest employers.
"Everyone is afraid. They believe that when the Navy leaves here, they should clean up. At least some of the contaminated areas should be cleaned."
The feelings against the Navy go back to the 1940s, when it expropriated three-fourths of the island, displacing whole communities of plantation workers and small land owners.
For decades, the Navy blocked plans for tourism projects and improved utility and transport services, arguing that such development was incompatible with its training plans.
It was not until the early 1980s, in the wake of fishermen protests and an environmental lawsuit, that the Navy began a real economic development programme for Vieques residents. Although a few factories did open, the effort died out after two years.
TOURISM KEY TO ISLAND'S FUTURE
Residents and Puerto Rico government officials now want at least some of the former Navy lands opened for projects that could spur economic development on the island of secluded beaches and rolling scrub-covered hills.
Most believe that Vieques' future lies in tourism, and a 156-room luxury resort, the Wyndham Martineau Bay Resort & Spa, will open this month near the airport after years of delay.
Puerto Rico government officials met for the first time this month with federal officials who will oversee the wildlife reserve slated for most of eastern Vieques.
They said they were encouraged by the commitment of wildlife officials to press for the highest level of clean-up "allowable under current law," but said the island government would lobby Congress in an effort to win title to at least some of the former Navy lands.
In the meantime, the protest camps lining Camp Garcia will remain, converted into meeting places for community groups who will continue to exert public pressure for a voice in clean-up and development issues, Rabin said.
"We have been fighting for 60 years to get back the lands they took from us," said 69-year-old Radames Tirado, a former mayor whose childhood home was expropriated and knocked down by Navy bulldozers.
"It will take some time, but we will get the land back and we will get it cleaned up too. No one thought we could stop the bombing and we did that."
-------- spies
Isser Harel Dies at 91; Israeli Spymaster
By Mark Lavie
Associated Press
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; Page B06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27834-2003Feb18?language=printer
JERUSALEM -- Isser Harel, 91, an Israeli spymaster who directed the capture of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in 1960, died Feb. 18 at a hospital near Tel Aviv. No cause of death was reported.
Mr. Harel was one of the founders of the Mossad -- an intelligence agency that achieved international renown -- and served as its head from 1952 to 1963. He was also the first director of the Shin Bet internal security agency.
One of the tasks of the Mossad in its first years was to track down leaders of the German Nazi regime, which killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust of World War II.
A prime target was Eichmann, Adolf Hitler's top aide, responsible for implementing what the Nazis called the Final Solution -- the murder of all the Jews in Europe.
In his 1975 book "The House on Garibaldi Street," Mr. Harel related how Israeli agents tracked Eichmann to Buenos Aires, where he was living under the identity of Ricardo Klement, a businessman.
When Eichmann's identity was verified, Mr. Harel drew up a plan to kidnap him and fly him to Israel. He used Abba Eban, a young Israeli diplomat, to bring an Israeli plane into the country under the cover of Eban's meetings with government officials.
Mossad agents abducted Eichmann, spirited him aboard the plane and flew him to Israel before Argentine authorities were alerted. Eban at the time was unaware of the plot. He went on to become Israel's foreign minister and died in November.
"I didn't know what sort of man Eichmann was," Mr. Harel wrote in his book. "I didn't know with what sort of morbid zeal he pursued his murderous work. . . . I didn't know that he was capable of ordering the slaughter of babies -- and depicting himself as a disciplined soldier."
Arriving in Israel after bringing back Eichmann, Mr. Harel went to the office of Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and told him, "I've brought you a present," he recalled in an interview rebroadcast on Israel TV after his death.
In 1961, Eichmann was put on trial in Israel, a cathartic experience for Israelis.
Sitting unrepentant in a glass enclosure, Eichmann heard Holocaust survivors relate the horrors of the Nazi concentration and death camps. Convicted of mass murder, Eichmann was executed.
Mr. Harel, a diminutive, slight, balding figure, said that part of his motivation for seeking out Eichmann was revenge for the deaths of so many of his people.
Born Isser Halperin in Vitebsk, Russia, in 1912, he immigrated in 1930 to Palestine, where he changed his name to Harel.
After leaving the Mossad in 1963, he served briefly as an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in 1965.
In 1969, he was elected to the Israeli parliament, where he served until 1973.
-------- un
U.N. Nations Urge U.S. to Choose Peace in Iraq
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; 1:10 AM
By Louis Charbonneau
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28205-2003Feb19?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Nation after nation from all parts of the globe demanded weapons inspectors have a chance to disarm Iraq peacefully, defying intentions by the United States and Britain to seek a resolution authorizing war.
Only Australia, Japan, Argentina and Peru, in varying degrees, supported the tough U.S.-British position during 27 presentations on Tuesday by U.N. members who do not have seats on the 15-nation Security Council. Another 29 ambassadors address the council on Wednesday.
But most speakers, many from developing nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America as well as Iraq's neighbors in the Middle East, spoke out against war and backed France's position to let arms inspectors have more time to account for Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction programs.
So did Greece, New Zealand, Ukraine and Belarus.
South Africa's U.N. ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, head of the 115-member Non-Aligned movement, which called for the meeting, said that "Resorting to war without fully exhausting all other options represents an admission of failure by the Security Council in carrying out its mandate."
Iran's ambassador, Javad Zarif, whose country was invaded by neighboring Iraq in 1980, said "the prospect of another destabilizing war in our immediate vicinity is a nightmare scenario of death and destruction."
Zarif said that war would produce "the prospect of appointing a foreign military commander to run an Islamic and Arab country is all the more destabilizing and only indicative of prevailing delusions."
The strongest support for the United States came from Australian Ambassador John Dauth, who said that given President Saddam Hussein's "record" he was "not sure why we should be giving him the benefit of the doubt."
"The council could give Iraq more time, yes. We could wait until March. We could wait another three months," Dauth said. "But do we really think more time will make Iraq cooperate. Does Iraq really need more than three more months to make a decision that should take no more than three minutes?"
But New Zealand's U.N. ambassador, Don MacKay said his government " has a very strong preference for a diplomatic solution to this crisis."
Turkey, another Iraqi neighbor which the United States wants to use as a springboard for a possible invasion, emphasized the money it lost by years of sanctions against Baghdad and said talk of war further depressed its economy.
"This is precisely why we are genuinely distressed with the escalation of this crisis," Ambassador Umit Pamir said.
To Washington's dismay, Turkey has not yet accepted a $26 billion U.S. economic aid package in exchange for its help.
The United States and Britain maintain that Iraq is still hiding its banned weapons programs in violation of a Security Council resolution adopted on Nov. 8 and have started work on a follow up measure to authorize force. The resolution has not yet been circulated and probably would not be put to a vote before the end of the month, diplomats said.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said the United States wants to wait until after the open debate is completed before deciding on "the specifics, the timing and the contents of such a resolution." He said such a decision would be made shortly.
Iraq's U.N. envoy, Mohammed Aldouri, dismissed accusations that Baghdad had failed to cooperate with arms inspectors and referred to last weekend's massive anti-war demonstrations across the globe as proof that the world opposed war.
But Aldouri warned the U.S. and Britain that Baghdad would not react passively to a military attack.
"If the aggression against Iraq takes place, Iraq's sons, famous for their struggle against British occupation in the 1920s, will defend their country," Aldouri said.
----
U.N. Tribunal Convicts Rwandan Pastor
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Rwanda-Genocide.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
ARUSHA, Tanzania (AP) -- A U.N. tribunal on Wednesday convicted a Rwandan pastor and his son of genocide for calling in Hutu gangs to kill minority Tutsis who had sought refuge in a church during the 1994 slaughter in the tiny central African country.
Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, 78, and his doctor son, Gerald Ntakirutimana, 45, were both convicted of genocide, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity for their part in the killings at a Seventh-Day Adventist complex in Kibuye, Rwanda, on April 16, 1994.
Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, the pastor at the Kibuye church, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. His son, who worked at the associated hospital, was sentenced to 25 years.
The trial was held at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is hearing cases involving major suspects in the genocide. The maximum sentence the Tanzania-based tribunal can hand down is life in prison.
Erik Mose, the Norwegian judge presiding over the case, said Gerald Ntakirutimana deserved the stiffer sentence because he had ``abused the trust bestowed on him as'' a doctor.
It was not immediately clear where the two would serve their sentences. But former U.S. Attorney-General Ramsey Clark, the lead defense lawyer for Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, said they would appeal.
Elizaphan Ntakirutimana's case generated some controversy in the United States where he went to live with another of his children after Tutsi rebels took control of Rwanda and stopped the killing in July 1994.
He was first arrested in Laredo, Texas on Sept. 29, 1996, but released 14 months later after successfully petitioning a Texas court to drop the extradition warrant against him.
The State Department petitioned to reverse that decision, and he was arrested again in Feb. 1998. His appeals to avoid extradition went all the way to U.S Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case, allowing his extradition in March 2000.
The younger Ntakirutimana was arrested in the West African country of Ivory Coast in 1996 and later transferred to the tribunal.
The tribunal found that Elizaphan Ntakirutimana transported attackers to various locations around the church and ordered the church's roof removed so Tutsis couldn't use it as a shelter.
``In doing so, Elizaphan facilitated the hunting down and killing of Tutsi refugees,'' Mose said.
The son was found to have taken part in attacks on Tutsis in the area around the church and to have shot and killed Charles Ukobizaba, a Tutsi accountant, in the courtyard of the hospital.
More than 500,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed during the genocide.
The region around the church was home to more than 50,000 Tutsis before the genocide, but only 1,000 survived, government and human rights officials have said.
Wednesday's conviction were the ninth and tenth at the tribunal, which was set up in Arusha in November 1994 and is currently holding 54 suspects. The tribunal has acquitted one suspect.
-------- us
U.S. Aircraft Carrier Jet Crashes, Pilot Rescued
Reuters
Tuesday, February 18, 2003; 11:18 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27961-2003Feb18?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An F/A-18 "Hornet" warplane with the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson went down in the ocean in the western Pacific but the pilot was rescued, the U.S. Navy said on Tuesday.
Ensign Mike Morley, spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said there was no immediate word on why the fighter/attack aircraft crashed into the sea but said the pilot was retrieved alive from the ocean.
The Hornet was conducting routine flight operations about 45 miles from the aircraft carrier when it crashed. The pilot ejected safely and was rescued, uninjured, by one of the Vinson's helicopters which was airborne at the time of the crash, the Navy said.
It said the cause of the crash is under investigation.
The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier has been sent to the western Pacific from Hawaii to be near the Korean peninsula, where the United States and its allies are in a nuclear crisis with North Korea.
----
In a Dance Against Time, A Division Packs for War
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27501-2003Feb18?language=printer
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- The big helicopters come in cocky, noses tipped slightly upward on the approach, as if they already know what everyone else knows: They are the stars of the show.
Hundreds of soldiers from the Army's fabled 101st Airborne Division -- the Screaming Eagles -- wait on the ground at the vast, paved staging area of the Jacksonville port to coddle these killing machines that are sure to play a central role in any attack against Iraq. Mechanics gingerly remove rotors, or smooth them back like rabbit's ears, to make sure they are not damaged in transit.
Others lay great sheets of shrink-wrap plastic over the copters, sealing them into oversized white cocoons with 3,000-degree heat guns. It is hard, mostly unsung work, played out 24 hours a day against wind, chilling rain and a building sense of urgency.
"Trying to do shrink-wrap in the wind and the rain is crazy," said Lt. Col. Joe Dunaway, a former rodeo cowboy who oversees the day-to-day packing operation for the 101st. "But we're doing it."
This is the backstage of war, one step of many in a sprawling, highly synchronized dance that takes place any time the United States sends troops overseas. The art of military logistics seldom captures the public imagination. But just ask the generals and they'll say the side that does the best job moving troops, trucks, helicopters, ammunition and food usually wins.
"It's almost like a guy directing a great orchestra, a great symphony," said retired Lt. Gen. William G. "Gus" Pagonis, who oversaw logistics during Operation Desert Storm and wrote a book about the experience called "Moving Mountains." "Every battle that was ever lost, every battle that was ever won, was because of logistics."
Already, the U.S. military has moved staggering amounts of equipment in preparation for a war against Iraq. U.S. forces in 16 ports around the world have jammed trucks, Humvees, helicopters and a plethora of other materiel onto 6 million square feet of shipboard storage space, the equivalent of 125 football fields, according to the Military Traffic Management Command. And more is sitting in ports waiting to be shipped.
No division takes more work to move and produces more logistical challenges than the 101st, a group of fighters based at Fort Campbell, Ky, along the Tennessee border. The 101st is famed for its stubborn stand at Bastogne, Belgium during World War II and its Vietnam-era motto: "First in, last out." The 101st is deploying its full complement of 20,000 soldiers, along with more than 250 helicopters and 1,800 rail cars full of ambulances, trucks, bulldozers and levelers.
The massive deployment is a strong indication of the Bush administration's intentions in Iraq. The full 101st has deployed only two other times since World War II -- during the Vietnam War and in the 1991 Persian Gulf War -- and it only sent one-third of its troops and equipment to Afghanistan last year.
Getting the 101st from Fort Campbell to the Middle East requires a mind-spinning act of coordination that reaches outside the "yes sir, no sir" confines of the military and into the private sector, with its own sets of cultures and rules. If one leg in the operation finishes late, it backs up the whole system. A ship sitting at dock, waiting to be loaded, costs $17,000 a day, said George Heath, a spokesman for the division. Generals tend to get white-hot when ships sit at dock very long.
The railroad company CSX Corp. hauls rail cars carrying the division's heavy equipment to Jacksonville, where it is deposited at the city's port and eventually loaded by longshoremen.
The process of packing the ships is dictated by computers that store the shape and size of each piece of equipment, then sort digital images, allowing crews to fit the pieces more efficiently into cargo holds. It's like working a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, and the goal is to fit in more cargo than the last ship held.
The current champion is the USNS Dahl, which towers seven stories high and has been packed with 347,593 square feet of equipment. The Dahl, a "large, medium-speed, roll-on, roll-off ship," has sailed to Jacksonville to help deploy the 101st. The military has vastly increased its supply of roll-on, roll-off ships, or "RO-ROs," so named because they have cargo-hold doors that flip down and turn into ramps, allowing equipment to driven on and off. Using the ships drastically reduces loading and unloading time because fewer pieces have to be lifted by cranes. The ships also travel faster -- reaching the Middle East in 14 to 18 days -- than many of the older cargo ships used during the Persian Gulf War, which sometimes took more than a month to make the trip.
During Desert Storm, soldiers of the 101st drove hundreds of vehicles 650 miles from Fort Campbell to Jacksonville to be loaded on ships because they could not get them onto rail cars fast enough. "A lot of vehicles broke down," said Brig. Gen. E. J. Sinclair, who is in charge of the division's logistics. Since then, the Army has built a huge rail station at Fort Campbell, allowing the division to load 10 tracks of rail cars simultaneously. Its ammunition is shipped separately from depots in Illinois.
The helicopters fly down. But once they arrive, they quickly have to be encased in plastic to prevent corrosion and sabotage.
Some of the copters have no wheels and need to be jacked up, allowing soldiers to slip on temporary wheels and drag them by hand to be shrink-wrapped. As the helicopters line up, the five-soldier teams assigned to move them start hollering and looking over their shoulders at the competition.
"Slow guys, slow guys, slow guys," the winners taunt as they pull another helicopter away.
The helicopters might seem rugged, but Sinclair said they can be quite delicate. Salt air or desert sand can penetrate their working parts and render them useless, making the shrink-wrapping essential. Some are just plain old. Many of the heavy Chinooks have been flying since Vietnam, he said.
The division's maintenance unit, known as "The Bandits," spends so much time with these helicopters -- a Blackhawk, for instance, requires three hours of maintenance for every hour of flying time -- that they've figured out surprisingly humble ways to protect them. They've learned that paper cups, like the ones used to serve potato salad at barbeque joints, work nicely with some heavy tape to cap radar sensors, Dunaway said.
"Can you imagine, we're protecting a $1,000 radar system with a 3-cent Dixie cup that we bought at Ace Hardware?" Dunaway said.
Dunaway gets teary when he talks about his soldiers. He starts each day by reading aloud a letter taped to their bus outside their hotel after they got to Jacksonville that called them "heroes."
"I don't think people understand that without these guys, we wouldn't get to the battlefield," Dunaway said. "The Apache [helicopter] guys get the glory for killing stuff; the tank guys too. But these guys -- they work through the night. You never see them at the front of the parade."
Dunaway and others like him around the country are working from a playbook refined over the years by the lessons of failure as much as by the lessons of success. Pagonis wrote a 12-volume internal assessment about mistakes in the Persian Gulf War, a conflict in which the military is generally thought to have performed well.
Much of it can be boiled down to over-packing. He remembers having to take back 320,000 of the 400,000 tons of ammunition shipped to Kuwait.
"The combat guys kept wanting more and more," Pagonis said. "Finally [Gen. H. Norman] Schwartzkopf, [commander of the U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf] said, 'stop.' "
Pagonis said he greatly underestimated the amount of water tank drivers would need in the desert heat and recommended that water supplies be kept closer to the battlefront in the future. He also learned that the cargo industry credo "never ship air," which dictates stuffing containers to capacity, sometimes did not work in military settings. He remembers finding containers that mixed ammunition and Christmas decorations.
Now the task is eased somewhat because a great deal of equipment is already in the Persian Gulf region, pre-positioned on cargo ships and at military bases. The buzzwords are "total asset visibility," meaning commanders know exactly what is in each container. But, for all the planning and all the sophisticated systems, the troops here -- to a person -- say each deployment comes down to individual soldiers figuring out the best way to deal with every unexpected problem.
None understands this more than a soldier who raced through a hangar at the Jacksonville port recently with tape wrapped around his left index finger.
"My wedding ring's under there," he said. "I don't want to lose it."
-------- propaganda wars
Ridge Launches Terror Readiness Campaign
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
Associated Press Writer
Feb 19, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HOMELAND_SECURITY?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
CINCINNATI (AP) -- Telling Americans to be ready for terrorist attacks, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge launched a public-relations campaign Wednesday that offers families a few basic steps to prepare for the worst.
The message: Have a communications plan so the family can get in touch during an emergency; put together a disaster kit with a few days of critical supplies, and know where to turn for information during a crisis.
"We will not be afraid. We will be ready," said Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who traveled to Cincinnati to announce the program and meet with safety and emergency workers at the local Red Cross. "Make a kit! Have a plan! Get informed!" he said.
Homeland Security officials said the campaign launch has been a year in the making and not tied to the orange - "High" - terrorism alert that began more than a week ago.
Officials said they crafted the campaign to avoid scaring people while providing some commonsense ideas that will help families find and care for each other when normal government and emergency services aren't available.
Many of these steps are worth taking to prepare for natural disasters, as well, officials said.
This includes keeping a three-day supply of water, food and medicine, Ridge said. Among other things, the government-recommended "kit" also includes duct tape and plastic sheeting Ridge said could be used to seal off a room in the event of a chemical or biological release.
"Stash away the duct tape - don't use it!" Ridge said.
With shades of the duck-and-cover campaigns of the Cold War, the Homeland Security blitz will include television public-service announcements and fliers that will be distributed with Yellow Pages phone directories.
Brochures can be obtained at post offices or by calling 1-800-Be-Ready. Also, a new web site, www.ready.gov, is online.
The television spots will feature Ridge prominently, along with some New York City firefighters, police officers and other emergency workers.
The trip to Ohio marks Ridge's second public engagement outside of Washington since taking over the nascent Homeland Security department. The previous trip was to Florida, another key electoral state.
The Ad Council - the nonprofit group that came up with Smokey Bear's "Only you can prevent forest fires" and McGruff the crime dog's "Take a bite out of crime" - helped put together the campaign.
The ads don't seem to have a single catch phrase, although most of them include the words, "Be ready."
The campaign is essentially free to taxpayers, officials said. It is starting under a $5 million donation from the nonprofit Sloan Foundation, and will rely on tens of millions of dollars of donated ad space and air time to get the message out.
One billboard will be going up in Times Square in New York City later this month.
The Martin Agency, an advertising firm in Richmond, Va., developed the multimedia campaign pro bono, according to Homeland Security officials.
On the Net:
Ready Campaign: www.ready.gov
Department of Homeland Security: www.dhs.gov
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Police Searching Cars at Random Outside Airports
By Sara Kehaulani Goo and Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 19, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27518-2003Feb18?language=printer
First, air travelers had to submit to an electronic wand waved over the body. Then they were asked to remove their shoes. After that, their checked luggage was opened and searched. Now, with the nation under a Code Orange alert, local police are pulling over drivers as they approach airport terminals for random searches of their vehicles.
The searches at all three major Washington area airports and across the nation have met resistance in some cities as airport managers assess their legality. The measures, ordered by the federal agency in charge of airport security, have been criticized by civil liberties groups and prompted legal scholars to question whether random searches imposed by the federal government violated states' rights.
At least one major airport, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, said it would not comply with the directive because it ran counter to state laws prohibiting police from searching a vehicle without a specific reason. "We can't just stop everybody, or stop every third car or every blue car," said airport spokesman Bob Parker.
The Transportation Security Administration instructed local police on Feb. 8 to begin the searches "in response to threats and intelligence information" it received. In the past, the agency has required some airports to search vehicles at parking lots or garages near terminals, but it has never before ordered random checks at arrival and departure curbs.
Some airport managers balked at following the directive until the TSA clarified the legal issues. In its defense, the agency pointed to several cases in which federal courts ruled that vehicles could be searched for reasons of public safety.
"We have legal standing to do this and do it in a constitutional manner," said TSA spokesman Robert Johnson. "Where there is a conflict, we'll work through that with local jurisdictions."
Now police at most airports, including the Washington region's three airports, are randomly inspecting cars and trucks that drop off or pick up passengers. They also are searching delivery trucks and other vehicles entering the airport.
Police at Harrisburg International Airport in Pennsylvania have been sweetening the inspections by passing out lollipops to targeted drivers. "It's so we don't intimidate," said Alfred Testa Jr., the airport's aviation director. "The policemen are very polite. They will have a smile on their face."
At some airports, such as Los Angeles International and Dallas-Fort Worth International, police have set up a presence similar to a sobriety checkpoint or a border crossing, where tens of thousands of drivers are told to slow down and officers visually inspect cars, waving some through and motioning others to pull over for a search.
Constitutional experts said the TSA could face a fight over the new rules. "There is a serious constitutional question about whether the federal government can direct local law enforcement agencies to do anything," said Georgetown University law professor Mark Tushnet.
The American Civil Liberties Union said airport officials in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and San Francisco contacted their local ACLU chapters with questions about the policy.
Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport stopped the inspections for several days last week, then resumed them after posting signs warning drivers that they might be searched. Most airports have posted similar signs. "There were enough questions that we decided to suspend the program," said airport spokesman Paul Hudson. Now, "We're happy with it."
The ACLU asked to meet with federal security officials to discuss the directive but has not received a response. "Like many airport authorities, we are struggling to understand what TSA has in mind, how it will operate and whether it will work," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project. "We have lots of questions about whether these measures are going to be effective. . . . Flailing around is not good security."
How airports conduct the searches may have a strong bearing on whether they are ultimately deemed legal -- a question that remained unanswered yesterday, said airport executives and lawyers familiar with the issue.
Legal scholars likened the TSA directive to instances in which police have erected roadblocks to combat drunk driving or the smuggling of illegal aliens. Such steps typically are legal, so long as they are designed to promote public safety rather than to nab a specific criminal, Tushnet said.
In similar cases dating back to the 1970s, the Supreme Court has encouraged government officials to give people an alternative to vehicle checkpoints and urged police officers to perform searches that are not overly invasive, legal experts said. To comply, most airports have set up the inspection sites far enough away from the terminal so that drivers could decide to turn around and leave before entering the terminal area.
Important legal considerations include whether every driver will be stopped at a checkpoint or whether some will be selected at random, which potentially raises concerns about security officers improperly targeting drivers based on their race or religion, said Steinhardt.
Another open issue is whether drivers will be ordered to get out of their vehicles or will merely be asked a few simple questions about the cargo they are carrying. If police find evidence of a crime in the course of their search, it is generally admissible in court.
"The searches have to be standardized and minimally intrusive," said Washington law professor David Cole. "On the other hand, there's a very strong safety interest at play. People who want to wreak havoc with the airlines could attack outside rather than on the plane."
-------- courts
ACLU Challenges Surveillance Powers
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
Washington Post; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27884-2003Feb18?language=printer
Civil liberties groups are using a long-shot approach in an effort to persuade the Supreme Court to limit the government's power to spy, filing an appeal yesterday on behalf of people who are unaware they are being monitored.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations hope to draw the justices into their first post-Sept. 11 anti-terror case with a challenge to the Justice Department's surveillance powers.
Congress gave the government broader spying authority after the terrorist attacks. The ACLU argued that the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or "spy court," misinterpreted the law, making it too easy for the government to obtain permission to intercept telephone conversations and e-mails and search private property, and then use the information in criminal cases. The ACLU and other critics say there are not enough checks to ensure the government's snooping does not stretch to law-abiding citizens.
The Supreme Court may not allow the appeal because the ACLU was not one of the parties in the spy court case. The ACLU filed arguments opposing the government's position but was not directly involved.
----
ACLU Asks High Court to Set Spy Limits
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Spy-Court.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Civil liberties groups are using an unusual legal maneuver to challenge the government's spying authority, filing a Supreme Court appeal on behalf of people who don't even know they're being monitored.
The court, however, could refuse to even consider the appeal, the first post-Sept. 11 anti-terror case to reach the justices.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations asked the court Tuesday to consider the boundaries of a law that gave the government broader spying authority after the terrorist attacks.
The ACLU argued that a review court misinterpreted the Patriot Act, making it too easy for the government to get permission to listen to telephone conversations, read e-mail or search private property, then use the information in criminal cases.
Critics worry there are not enough checks to ensure the government's snooping doesn't stretch to law-abiding citizens.
The court may not allow the appeal because the ACLU was not one of the parties in the review court case. The ACLU filed arguments opposing the government but was not directly involved.
The ACLU and Arab-American groups argue that they represent people who are being monitored under warrants approved by the super-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or ``spy court.'' The court deals with intelligence requests involving suspected spies, terrorists or foreign agents.
``The irony is no one can know for certain whether they are the subject of these secret surveillance orders because they're secret,'' said Ann Beeson, ACLU's associate legal director.
She said the ACLU has ``taken this somewhat radical step'' to protect those people.
Washington lawyer Stewart Baker, former general counsel for the National Security Agency, said the groups can argue that this is the Supreme Court's best, and possibly only, chance to consider the work of the surveillance court.
Still, he said, ``I can't imagine why the Supreme Court would take this case. The court doesn't take cases that are unique.''
Scott Silliman, director of Duke University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, said the Supreme Court would have to make an extraordinary exception. ``Clearly it will be dismissed,'' he said.
The November ruling by the review court was a huge victory for the Bush administration, which argues that the surveillance is an important component of its war on terror.
The administration was the only participant in the case. The Justice Department had appealed after the spy court turned down a request for a wiretap. The review court overturned that decision. It was the first time the review panel had ever met, or issued a decision, during the spy court's 25-year existence.
A key part of the review panel's ruling removed legal barriers between the surveillance operations of the Justice Department's criminal and intelligence divisions.
The decision ``opens the door to surveillance abuses that seriously threatened our democracy in the past,'' justices were told in the filing by the ACLU, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services.
On the Net:
Supreme Court: http://supremecourtus.gov/
American Civil Liberties Union: http://www.aclu.org/
-------- guns
[To reply - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com]
Guns and D.C.
Washington Times
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
February 19, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030219-2187358.htm#5
Thursday's editorial "End the D.C. handgun ban" was sharply out of step not only with the views of Mayor Anthony A. Williams and the D.C. Council, but with public opinion in the District as a whole. Far from dispelling myths about gun violence, I saw your editorial as perpetuating them.
You weaken your constitutional argument right off the bat by selectively citing the Second Amendment. Conveniently left out is the opening clause, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State." You quoted only the second half of the sentence, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." The United States no longer has citizen militias like those of the 18th century. Today's equivalent, the National Guard, has more limited membership than its early counterparts and depends entirely on government-supplied, not privately owned, firearms. I disagree entirely with your interpretation of the Second Amendment as broadly protecting the rights of individuals to own guns. It clearly is a collective right, and one that is anachronistic in light of present-day realities.
I am not alone in this opinion. Since U.S. vs. Miller in 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court consistently has ruled that the Second Amendment refers to a right to keep and bear arms only in connection with a "well-regulated militia," which it defined in 1965 and 1990 as the National Guard.
You then assert that "mainstream legal thinking" is moving away from these rulings, but such thinking is embodied in one man, who is anything but mainstream: Attorney General John Ashcroft, who has been on the far right his entire political career. He is the only government official in modern history to take the position that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right and represents no one but himself in that view. The U.S. Attorney's Office itself has vigorously defended the District's handgun ban and, according to U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Roscoe Howard Jr., it has no intention of altering its position.
We live in a country where gun violence kills nine children a day. Last year, there were 262 homicides in the District, the overwhelming majority involving firearms. Opposition to handguns is not opposition to hunting deer. It is about opposition to handguns, which are designed for the sole purpose of taking the lives of human beings. The District of Columbia has promulgated its own firearms laws in order to protect the residents of our great city. Those who advocate the madness of weapons proliferation in the District will soon learn that we care more for our children and loved ones than you do for your weapons.
Ladd Everett President D.C. Million Mom March Washington
-------- homeland security
You Fly, They Spy
Taken for a Ride
Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
February 19 - 25, 2003
Village Voice
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0308/ridgeway.php#Spy
While Congress voted last week to curb the Pentagon's efforts to set up a broad electronic spy program, there is an equally bad project within the Department of Transportation that would officially label every person who rides a commercial airliner as a potential terrorist and a threat to national security. By doing this, the department can gather all sorts of information and conduct background investigations of airline passengers that otherwise would require court orders. This program is tucked away in what the DOT euphemistically calls the Privacy Act System of Records, Christopher Effgen reports on his Disaster Center Web site. "DOT," Effgen writes, "is proposing that passengers' names be entered into a computer program that will then match their name against names in law enforcement systems of records, financial and transactional databases, public source information, proprietary data, and be used to create risk assessment reports. When a person is identified as being a possible suspect, in violation of any federal, state, territorial, tribal, local, international, or foreign law, the information will be forwarded to the appropriate law enforcement agency. These agencies may also access the database." All of this is being done as part of the department's "risk assessment" for spotting would-be terrorists getting on planes.
The database has other uses, of course, as a tool in deciding whether to hire or fire someone, issue a security clearance, make a grant, give a license. The applicants will never know they are being scrutinized through this secret system.
-------- police
Oakland Settles Alleged Police Abuse
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Oakland-Police-Scandal.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- City officials have agreed to pay $10.9 million and implement reforms to settle a series of civil rights lawsuits involving a band of rogue police officers who allegedly beat suspects and planted drugs on innocent people.
The 119 plaintiffs alleged the police department either encouraged or ignored the abuse by the officers during the summer of 2000.
Some of the proposed reforms include establishing a hot line to report police abuse and improving citizen access to internal affairs investigators. An outside monitor will be named in the next two months to a five-year term to ensure the reforms are implemented.
``We did not bury our heads in the sand,'' City Attorney John Russo said. ``We acknowledged freely our faults, and we've worked arm in arm toward fixing the problem rather than hiding from or denying the problem.''
U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson approved the settlement Jan. 22, but it remained sealed until Tuesday. It ends nearly all civil legal actions brought in connection with the officers, who called themselves The Riders.
Former officers Clarence ``Chuck'' Mabanag, 37, Jude Siapno, 34, and Matthew Hornung, 31, are currently on trial for allegedly beating suspects and falsifying police reports. Alleged ringleader, Frank ``Choker'' Vazquez, fled to escape prosecution.
The four were turned in by a rookie officer, Keith Batt, who has since left the department. Batt said The Riders had randomly accosted suspects, handcuffed them and threw them in patrol cars before questioning them, and routinely beat suspects and concocted police reports.
-------- terrorism
Fire set on S. Korean subway kills estimated 120
By Soo-jeong Lee
ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030219-24151516.htm
DAEGU, South Korea - Fire spread through two crowded subway trains in South Korea yesterday after a man ignited a carton filled with flammable material, killing about 120 people and injuring at least 138, officials said.
A suspect with a history of mental illness was being interrogated by police in Daegu, the country's third largest city. Police did not know what motivated the attack or what substance was used to start the blaze.
Many of the injured were in serious condition, authorities said.
The fire started in one six-car train at a station, igniting seats and spreading to another train that had stopped there, officials said.
Lim Dae-yoon, chief of Daegu's east district municipal government, estimated that about 120 people had been killed. "We believe the death toll will not rise drastically from that," Mr. Lim said.
Many bodies were burned beyond recognition. Officials said they would have to wait for DNA tests to determine the death toll. That could take weeks.
Many died of asphyxiation on the train platform. One man said his daughter, who is missing, had called by mobile phone to say there was a fire and that the subway door wasn't opening.
Firefighters spoke of bodies of victims asphyxiated as they tried to escape up the stairs and of the platform strewn with the charred bones of those trapped.
Chung Sook-jae, 54, rushed to the scene after her daughter, Min Shim-eun, 26, called her husband to say that she was suffocating. Then the line went dead.
"She never caused any problems. She was a good kid. Why does this have to happen to her?" Mrs. Chung said, crying on the pavement near the scene. "If she's not out by now, she's probably dead. What am I going to do if her body is all burned out of recognition?"
Police were interrogating Kim Dae-han, 56, who witnesses said carried the milk carton into the subway car, according to Kim Byong-hak, a police lieutenant in Daegu. Another police official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the suspect had been treated for mental illness.
"When the man tried to use a cigarette lighter to light the box, some passengers tried to stop him. Apparently a scuffle erupted and the box exploded into flames," the officer said.
Authorities said the fire was put out by 1 p.m., about three hours after it started, but toxic gas in the tunnel delayed rescue efforts, the Yonhap news agency reported. The odor of burned plastic lingered over the scene hours after the flames had been extinguished.
The television station YTN aired footage of the chaos inside a nearby hospital reportedly showing the suspect being attended to by nurses. The man sat frowning on a bed, wearing a hospital smock, his face and hands smudged from soot.
Yu Heung-soo, a police sergeant in Daegu, said the suspect had been burned in both legs and the right wrist. But a doctor told YTN that the man's only injury was toxic gas inhalation.
YTN, without citing sources, also reported that the suspect worked as a truck driver and had once threatened to burn down the hospital where he had received unsatisfactory treatment.
In the minutes after the fire began, thick black smoke billowed out of the subway's ventilator shafts. Downtown traffic came to a standstill as ambulances and firefighters wearing oxygen tanks rushed to the scene.
Kim Bok-sun, 45, said her daughter, 21-year-old Kang Yeon-ju, was on the burning train and had called in panic.
"She only said that there was a fire and the train door wasn't opening, so I told her to just break open a window and get out," she said. She called her daughter back a few minutes later, "but she never answered the phone."
Rescuers brought the victims up to the street in stretchers and slid them into ambulances. One witness detailed the terrifying scene inside the subway as the fire ignited.
"The man kept flickering a lighter and an old man told him to stop. The man dropped the lighter and the train caught fire," an unidentified male survivor told YTN. "Several young men seized him, but the fire spread and black smoke rose. Then everyone rushed out."
President Kim Dae-jung ordered the government to consider designating the accident site as a special disaster zone, which would give it priority in receiving government aid and other assistance.
Daegu, formerly spelled Taegu, was one of the 10 World Cup soccer venues last year. It has a population of 2.5 million.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Europe Ahead of U.S. in Renewable Power
DENVER, Colorado,
February 19, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/feb2003/2003-02-19-09.asp#anchor3
Europeans have far outdone Americans in developing new sources of renewable energy and a sound environmental policy, argue researchers.
As the world's only remaining superpower, the United States is often at the cutting edge of science and technology. But according to researchers at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting this week, the Europeans are way ahead in renewable energy research and development.
"Europe has made a major commitment to renewable energy and is leading the United States in deploying it," said Allan Hoffman, a renewable energy expert and senior advisor to the Clean Energy Group at Winrock International, a nonprofit group dedicated to sustainability and based in Arkansas.
Of all the potential sources of renewable energy, wind is the most widely used. It is the world's fastest growing energy source, with the current worldwide capacity at around 30,000 megawatts. In less than five years, wind power capacity is expected to rise to around 60,000 megawatts, according to speakers at the AAAS meeting.
Citing a recent survey of renewable energy initiatives worldwide, L. Hunter Lovins of The Global Academy, an interdisciplinary think tank based in Florida, rejected the contention of U.S. President George Bush that U.S. adherence to the Kyoto protocol would place the United States at a competitive disadvantage.
"It turns out that the U.S. will be at a competitive disadvantage by not signing" she said.
As consumers begin to notice the benefits that renewable energy sources bring to the environment and their quality of life, Lovins said, companies in nations that have invested in the new sources of energy will gain a marketing edge.
Lovins added that the investment community has also begun seeing an increase in "socially responsible investing," investments in companies that agree to practice environmentally and socially responsible policies.
As a result, such investment options have received the attention of the big institutional investors - pension funds with assets equal to 46 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. One of these, The California Public Employees' Retirement System, (CalPers), with $130 billion in assets, has announced that it has begun screening investments. From such decisions, Lovins expects to see a ripple effect that will lead to changes in U.S. energy policy.
"As Americans we are in a time of unprecedented opportunity and unprecedented peril. We have more choices than ever in terms of efficient energy and renewables," Lovins said. "At the moment, however, our administration's policies are going in the wrong direction."
----
German "green" power output up 18 pct in 2002 -
REUTERS GERMANY:
February 19, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19876/newsDate/19-Feb-2003/story.htm
FRANKFURT - Power production from renewable energies rose 18 percent last year in Germany to 45 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), electricity industry association VDEW said this week.
Citing preliminary estimates, the association said in a statement that green power in 2002 had accounted for eight percent of total production in Europe's biggest power market.
This compared with a renewables share of 6.5 percent out of total output in 2001.
The fast growth is mainly due to the expansion of wind energy which already makes up a third of renewables output, with hydro power continuing to account for the bigger share of around 50 percent of the total.
A table offered by VDEW showed an overview of power production fromn renewable sources in both years (in billion kWh) -
TYPE OF POWER GENERATION 2001 2002 Hydro 23.5 23.9 Wind 10.5 16.8 Biomass 2.0 2.3 Waste
-------- energy
Australia to target India with green power turbine
REUTERS AUSTRALIA:
February 19, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19864/newsDate/19-Feb-2003/story.htm
MELBOURNE - Australia will target mining companies and power producers in India this week with a turbine designed to generate electricity from waste coal and methane, which could slash greenhouse emissions.
The government-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said the hybrid coal and gas turbine could help India - one of the world's largest coal producers - generate cheaper and greener power.
The turbine system burns methane and waste coal in a kiln to produce hot air that is then passed through a specially adapted heat exchange unit to drive a gas turbine which generates power.
Waste coal that is not suitable for normal power generation and methane gas is considered 21 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas
Cliff Mallett, CSIRO exploration and mining research investment manager, said the turbine was designed as part of a CSIRO research project targeting a 75 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from coal mines over the next 20 years.
"India is already heavily coal-dependent and, being under no constraint to cut back coal production - as it is not subject to the Kyoto agreement provisions - the coal industry...is expected to increase production over the next decade," Mallett said.
Representatives from CSIRO and project partner Brisbane-based Liquatech Turbine Company, who are part of a delegation led by Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile, will meet major industry leaders in New Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai this week.
"There is huge potential for India to invest in this technology. The proposal offers an opportunity for India to burn much of its waste coal in the generation of power in regional areas," Liquatech Chief Executive John Hocken said.
CSIRO said there are more than 500 coal mines in India and coal accounts for nearly 70 percent of the country's power generation.
The turbine project was funded by CSIRO, Liquatech, the Australian Coal Association Research Programme, and the New South Wales Sustainable Energy Development Authority.
----
BP Creates Multi-Billion Dollar Oil & Gas Partnership In Russia
LONDON, England,
February 19, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/feb2003/2003-02-19-19.asp#anchor2
The BP energy company and the Alfa Group and Access-Renova (AAR) have agreed in principle to combine their interests in Russia to create the country's third biggest oil and gas business, in which the two parties will each have a 50 percent stake.
The transaction was effective from January 1, 2003, and is scheduled for completion in the summer. The deal is subject to regulatory and other approvals, including the consent of the European Union and the Russian Ministry of Anti-Monopoly Activities.
The new company will incorporate TNK and Sidanco which, between them, produce some 1.2 million barrels of oil a day. It will also own exploration interests in Siberia and Sakhalin Island, interests in five refineries and a retail network of more than 2,100 sites in Russia and the Ukraine.
For its 50 percent stake in the new company, BP will pay AAR $3 billion in cash on completion of the deal and three subsequent annual tranches of $1.25 billion in BP shares, valued at market prices prior to each annual payment, the company said in a statement February 11.
BP Chief Executive Lord Browne described the transaction as "a major strategic step into a country with massive oil and gas reserves and immense potential for future growth."
BP entered Russia five years ago when the company bought 10 percent of Sidanco. "We had a tough time initially," Lord Brown said, "but after the present management and ownership structure was established early in 2001, we have gradually built an important, mutually beneficial relationship with the owners of AAR and learned a great deal about doing business in Russia."
Rigorous and extensive physical inspections of the properties involved, and a system of governance that safeguards the interests of all parties have been accomplished, BP says.
"These prudent measures, combined with Russia's greatly improved economic stability, improved legal system and increasing commitment to international rules of trade and business, have convinced BP that now is the time to deepen our partnership with AAR," Lord Browne said.
The new combined company will have production of some 1.2 million barrels of oil a day. BP estimates that the oil and gas resources of the new concern are at least 5.2 billion barrels.
-------- environment
Greenhouse Gases Declined in 2001
Associated Press
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27377-2003Feb18?language=printer
A poor economy and high electricity costs in the West produced an unusual environmental bonus, the government says: In 2001, emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases declined for the first time in a decade.
Still, annual increases in such gases -- mostly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels -- are expected to continue under future economic growth.
The Energy Information Administration said pollution linked to climate change declined by 1.2 percent in 2001, but it also forecast a likely annual 1.5 percent increase in those same emissions through 2020.
The 2001 figures "certainly do not make a trend," Melissa Carey, who deals with global warming issues at Environmental Defense, said yesterday.
The EIA, a statistical arm of the Energy Department, said the decline in greenhouse gases was the first since 1991. It said the drop resulted from a 3.5 percent decline in economic growth, a 4.4 percent reduction in manufacturing output, a warm winter that curtailed demand for heating oil and natural gas and a decline in electricity demand, especially in the West, wherehigh prices caused people to conserve.
-------- health
Insectides, Solvents Linked to Gulf War Syndrome
WASHINGTON, DC,
February 19, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/feb2003/2003-02-19-09.asp#anchor2
A comprehensive assessment of the available scientific literature reaffirms findings of a link between Gulf War Syndrome and exposures to a few specific insecticides or solvents.
A new report from the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Sciences confirms what is known already about specific human health effects associated with the Persian Gulf War. There is some limited evidence to link certain long term health problems with exposures to some specific chemicals, the report argues.
However, for the majority of solvents and insecticides that have been studied, there is not enough epidemiologic evidence to determine whether associations exist between diseases and exposures to these chemicals, the researchers conclude.
"Our exhaustive examination of the literature produced no unexpected findings," said Jack Colwill, emeritus professor of family and community medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia, and chair of the committee that wrote the report.
"Our conclusions about exposure to insecticides and solvents and long-term health problems largely mirror those reached by many other scientific groups," Colwill continued. "While we would like to have more definitive answers to questions about the specific diseases that may be associated with these chemicals, in most cases the evidence simply is not strong enough or does not exist."
The committee evaluated the published, peer reviewed research on exposure to various insecticides and solvents - such as cleaning agents - for any evidence of links to specific cancers, neurological effects, or other health problems that occur or persist after exposure. Of the 3,000 studies the committee reviewed, most involved individuals who were exposed to these agents in occupational settings such as agricultural and industrial sites.
Only a small number of reports studied veterans who may have been exposed while serving in the Persian Gulf. Toxicology studies conducted in animals also were reviewed, but played only a supportive role in this assessment.
The insecticides and solvents used during the Gulf War were agents that have also been used for industrial and personal applications. Insecticides and repellents, including DEET and permethrin, were applied by service members to control insects that can carry infectious diseases endemic to the area, such as malaria and leishmaniasis. Personnel came into contact with solvents during activities such as equipment cleaning and vehicle maintenance and repair.
However, little information exists on the use of insecticides or solvents by individual service members, and how that use may have differed from stateside use or exposure. Because scant information exists on actual exposure levels - a critical factor when assessing health effects - the committee emphasized that it could not draw specific conclusions about the health problems of Gulf War veterans.
Veterans who have experienced chronic health problems following their service in the Persian Gulf are asking whether exposure to various chemical or biological agents might be responsible. Thousands of troops did come in contact with a number of agents before, during, and after the war.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs requested an Institute of Medicine (IOM) study of potentially harmful chemical, biological, or environmental agents to which Gulf War veterans might have been exposed. Congress mandated a similar study, listing several specific agents.
This report on insecticides and solvents is the second in a series from the IOM that responds to these requests. The first report focused on depleted uranium, pyridostigmine bromide, sarin, and vaccines. The next report will examine the health effects of exposure to selected environmental pollutants and particulates, such as smoke from oil well fires, diesel heater fumes and jet fuels.
----
Ebola May Spread in Republic of Congo
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Republic-of-Congo-Ebola.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (AP) -- U.N. health officials confirmed Wednesday that a disease outbreak killing scores of people in the Republic of Congo was Ebola and warned that the highly lethal hemorrhagic fever could still be spreading.
``We're not suggesting that this is over or even contained. We're treating it as an active outbreak,'' said Iain Simpson, a World Health Organization spokesman in Geneva.
So far, 73 people have been infected, of whom 59 have died, according to WHO investigators. Government health officials in the tiny Central African nation report 80 cases with 67 deaths.
The Cuvette West region, where the deaths have occurred, has been quarantined by the government since last week.
Blood samples drawn from victims in the region tested positive for the Ebola virus, said Josef Mboussa, a top official in Republic of Congo's health ministry.
The disease is one of the world's deadliest, causing rapid death through massive blood loss in up to 90 percent of those infected. Ebola spreads through bodily fluids. Primates, hunted by many central Africans for food, can also carry the infection.
``There will probably be more deaths due to the complexity of the disease,'' said Mboussa.
Mboussa wasn't able to say if medical examiners were registering new infections in the region; the first reports of the illness reached the capital, Brazzaville, over two weeks ago.
Ebola's two- to 21-day incubation period makes it difficult to gauge how quickly the outbreak may still be moving, Simpson said.
The forested Cuvette West region has 30,000 inhabitants spread among provincial towns and small villages. The disease has centered in the villages of Kelle and Mbomo.
Efforts to investigate the outbreak are being stymied. Frantic villagers terrified by Ebola's horrific symptoms have fled from health workers in their head-to-toe protective suits.
Along with medical personnel, anthropologists have been sent to the region to help explain to the disease to people.
``The villagers are very scared; they see people getting sick and dying,'' said Simpson. ``We're trying to get them to understand the situation.''
Ebola killed 43 people in Republic of Congo and 53 others in Gabon between October 2001 and February 2002.
WHO says more than 1,000 people have died of Ebola since the virus was first identified in 1976 in western Sudan and in a region of Congo.
-------- ACTIVISTS
War talk enters classes in U.S.
By Ben Feller
ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20030219-86302836.htm
As U.S. troops mount for battle and Americans absorb terrorism warnings, schools are preparing for war, too. Weapons of mass destruction have become the subject of classroom instruction, resonating so strongly with students that even some teachers are surprised.
Jenn Storck, who teaches government to 10th graders at Rockville's Thomas S. Wootton High School, asked her students why America is such a lightning rod for people in the Middle East - especially in countries like Iraq.
"Their government has almost brainwashed them. They think the U.S. is horrible and does all these evil things," said Amy Fries, 15. "I think the Iraqi people really don't know what to think by now. They're just confused."
But Ross Godwin, 16, remembered the message from "Three Kings" - the George Clooney movie set during the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Most Iraqis have no beef with the United States, he said.
"Look at it from their perspective," Ross said. "We've bombed them periodically throughout the last decade. We've gone to war with them. We've killed a lot of their people. In general, we've acted like a superior nation around the world."
Teachers say their mission is to help students understand and analyze a crisis that seems to shift topic, country, channel and color code all the time.
"I hear kids saying it: Will I have to go off to war?" said Todd Wallingsford, who teaches high school civics and history in a Boston suburb. "There's more genuine interest in a current event than I've seen in a long time, and that's because it's really relevant to these kids. [September 11] was sort of something that happened to us, and now this is something that could really involve them.
But as they talk of balancing civil liberties and military might, educators have a lot to balance themselves - weaving war into a curriculum geared toward standardized tests, preparing older students but reassuring younger ones, presenting balanced views of America's goals.
"It's a hard issue to talk about, and when you take it into the classroom, you don't want to push one point of view," said Susan Graseck of Brown University, who has overseen the creation of Iraqi-conflict lesson plans used by more than 3,000 teachers. "That's not the point of public education. The point is to help them think more clearly about the issues and let them form their own opinions."
Mrs. Storck's advanced-placement students did not need much prodding. "I think people are being a little hard on Bush," said Claire Stein, a 15-year-old in the Thomas S. Wootton High School classroom in Rockville. "He's sitting up there with this huge decision to make."
Some students feel the same way, with school police officers nationwide warning that they are unprepared for terrorism and parents stockpiling emergency supplies.
"We don't really understand. They're making contingency plans, but what are they doing?" said Wootton student Mitchell Lerner, 16. "We weren't alive during the Cold War threat, so we don't know how real it really is."
It is real enough for some students to see a human face in this conflict - their own, or at least those of their older siblings and friends.
"A lot of us have friends who are 18," said classmate Miriam Yavener, 15. "If the draft gets reinstated, life could change a lot."
It is important for students to understand the costs of war, including death tolls on all sides, said James McGrath Morris, who teaches social studies in Springfield.
Mr. Morris helped create a national curriculum on the September 11 attacks from a historical perspective.
"I want them to focus on the politics and the government, on who makes decisions," Mr. Morris said. "I want them to see that the power of the presidency grows in these moments and doesn't always shrink after. It's an opportunity to help create better citizens."
But what message to send? This lesson is not in a textbook, and the flexibility and innovation that lead to teaching success also can open educators to criticism.
What is critical is balance, said Charles Haynes, who works with schools as a scholar for the First Amendment Center in Arlington.
"I don't mean giving equal time to Saddam Hussein's point of view," Mr. Haynes said. "But I do mean where there is debate in this country, teachers must teach that controversy. ... When they veer off to the right or the left, then a teacher has violated a trust. It doesn't happen visibly very often, but when that door is closed, who knows what goes on?"
In essence, the Iraq conflict, depicted as an extension of the war on terrorism, may reopen the same touchy debate about how teachers responded to the September 11 anniversary.
Teachers have an obligation to do more than elicit debate among students, said Chester Finn, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, an education reform group based in Dayton, Ohio. They also must help them understand why American values are worth defending even in war, he said.
"There's a fine line between helping kids understand and telling them what to think, and good teachers do a good job on that line," Mr. Finn said. "But on matters of profound national interest, I don't think it's a sin to slip a little over the line, to tell them this is a better country than most and democracy is better than anything most people have tried."
What is taught may reflect as much about a region as anything else.
In the San Francisco Bay area, school boards in at least three districts passed resolutions encouraging school debate about the causes and consequences of war.
Oakland, one of those districts, altered the anti-war tone of its message after some leaders pushed for neutrality.
Intended for middle and high school students, the effort was broadened to include younger students, said Dan Siegel, an Oakland school board member.
"We literally had kindergarten teachers come up to us and say, 'Look, after 9/11, we want to know this,' " Mr. Siegel said.
The mood differs in Fayetteville, N.C., where about a third of the students in the Cumberland County district are military dependents. The neighboring Army base, Fort Bragg, has deployed at least 6,000 troops expected to play a role in the conflict.
Counselors are watching for signs of stress among military-connected students and preparing to work with caretakers if both parents of a child are sent to war.
"I can tell you we are a very patriotic community, and if our president says this is what's necessary for our well-being, we try to support his viewpoint," said Robin Tatum, a counselor coordinator. "But as a school system, our focus is on supporting those families."
Just finding time to teach war is the chore for some teachers because they must cover the topics students will face on increasingly important standardized tests.
But such effort will pay off, said Cricket Kidwell, who oversees curriculum for Trinity County schools in the Northern California mountains.
"It's time we bring young people into the national dialogue," she said. "I think if there's one thing all history and social science teachers agree on, it is that we have a democracy that allows for participation. And that begins in the classroom."
----
Protests Complicate U.S. Policy on Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Iraq-Protests.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush is shrugging off global anti-war protests, saying his role as a leader is to put national security first and confront Saddam Hussein.
Yet the size of the protests, drawing millions to the streets of world capitals last weekend, complicated White House efforts to rally world support for disarming the Iraqi leader.
The administration mounted a public relations campaign Tuesday in an effort to liken the protests to demonstrations against NATO's staging of missiles in Germany in the early 1980s -- rather than to the massive protests against the Vietnam War three decades ago.
``I respectfully disagree'' with those who doubt that Saddam is a threat to peace, Bush said. ``I owe it to the American people to secure this country. I will do so.''
The weekend demonstrations, the largest anti-war protests since the Vietnam era, presented an unwelcome distraction to the White House as it joined with Britain in pressing for a new Iraq war resolution before the U.N. Security Council. More demonstrations are scheduled for March 1 in Washington and San Francisco.
``These marches are 1983 all over again,'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, referring to angry street protests against NATO's positioning of intermediate-range missiles in what was then West Germany.
In that case, the missiles helped contribute to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, Fleischer suggested.
``There is no question that, as a result of peace through strength, communism was defeated and the Berlin Wall came down,'' Fleischer said.
``The point I'm making is that mass street protests don't always lead to the results people think,'' the spokesman added. ``Often the message of the protesters is contradicted by history.''
He also noted that there was substantial anti-war sentiment in the United States in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but that President Franklin D. Roosevelt rallied the U.S. public in World War II ``to save the world.''
Historians and analysts suggested that the recent demonstrations are not really comparable to those against the Vietnam War -- held as the war was going on and as thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were losing their lives.
Such protests ``are not going to have the same policy implications as Vietnam, because this war is going to be over fast even if it goes badly,'' said Michael O'Hanlon, an analyst with the Brookings Institution. ``So you're not going to have that sense of a protracted military stalemate.''
As with those missile protests in Europe, the current demonstrations are ``serious but ultimately containable,'' O'Hanlon said. Even so, he said, the missiles-in-Germany flap ``had the potential to really divide the alliance. And it took a lot of work to get beyond it.''
At the very least, O'Hanlon said, the level of global opposition now to war in Iraq makes it harder for Bush to press ahead with military action anytime soon.
Demonstrators took to the streets on Saturday in London, Rome, Berlin, Madrid, Sydney and dozens of U.S. cities.
Bush talked about the protests in a question-and-answer session Tuesday with reporters after a White House swearing-in ceremony for new Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William H. Donaldson.
``Democracy is a beautiful thing,'' Bush said. ``I welcome people's right to say what they believe.''
But he said neither the size of the protests nor the anti-war message of the demonstrators would sway him.
That would be ``like deciding ... policy based upon a focus group. The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security -- in this case, the security of the people,'' the president said.
``War is my last choice. But the risk of doing nothing is even a worse option as far as I'm concerned,'' Bush said.
As to negative public reaction, particularly in countries that are traditional U.S. allies, Bush said, ``I think anytime somebody shows courage, when it comes to peace, that the people will eventually understand that.''
Polls show that Bush has persuaded a majority of Americans about the need for military action against Iraq, but most want more time for the United Nations to build a broad alliance.
----
Israel's 'Bread Loaf Battle' Highlights Social Gap
Reuters
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
By Maia Ridberg
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29609-2003Feb19?language=printer
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Living in tents and abandoned commuter buses, dozens of Israel's homeless have set up camp near glitzy designer clothing shops in central Tel Aviv in a protest against poverty they call the "Bread Loaf Battle."
A banner in State Square declares it to be the "headquarters" of a battle against unemployment and poverty in a severe economic recession, which economists blame partly on a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
"This is the true picture of what is happening today in Israel," said Yisrael Tweeto, self-proclaimed leader of the Bread Loaf Battle, who says he sleeps in one of the old buses. "All government services have simply collapsed."
Well-dressed women walk groomed dogs wearing special coats to ward off the cold in the square, where the homeless build fires in rusting oil drums. An empty cast-off refrigerator is spray-painted with the words "We want work."
The name of the Bread Loaf Battle draws on the socialist past of the newly born Israel in 1948, when subsidized bread and work were seen as a basic human right.
In the 1960s, Israel had one of the smallest income gaps in the world, according to a recent parliamentary report. It now ranks second in the Western world, behind the United States, for the disparity in income between rich and poor.
Unemployment and poverty levels have soared since the start of the Palestinian revolt and a world economic downturn in 2000.
Unemployment is at 10.5 percent and forecast to rise this year. One in five Israelis lives below the poverty line, according to government figures. International investment in the Israeli economy has shriveled, and once-bustling stores and restaurants have lost customers because of the fear of Palestinian bomb attacks.
Israelis are grappling with rising prices for staples such as flour and sugar, as well as skyrocketing rents linked to an increasingly expensive dollar. Tens of thousands of Israeli families sought food handouts in 2002.
Israeli residents say they believe there are more beggars on the streets.
"There was never a period like this when people were so fearful of the economic crisis," said Ami Baram, founder of a food charity in Givatayim, an upper middle-class suburb of Tel Aviv. "It reaches everyone, this recession."
IRAQI WAR TALK INCREASES FOOD DEMAND
Israeli charities are straining to meet demand for food among the poor, particularly as Israelis prepare for the threat of an Iraqi missile strike should the country's closest ally, the United States, launch a war to disarm Iraq.
"There is a higher demand now for canned foods, anything that doesn't need refrigeration ... This began as soon as the war talk began," said Amos Yerushalmi, head of a charity in the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon.
He said poor Israelis fearful of war were hoarding more food than they needed. Many request a portion of canned food twice in one day by claiming they never received the first handout.
Latet, Israel's largest food provider for the poor, saw a 30 percent increase in demand for food handouts last year.
Some formerly middle class people who once donated food have now joined the lines for handouts. Many say they are picking up food for neighbors .
"They are too embarrassed to ask for themselves," said Yerushalmi.
ECONOMY AND POLITICS
Voters and politicians generally put security ahead of economic concerns in the January general elections in which Ariel Sharon was re-elected prime minister.
Tomer Yarimi, a father of two boys who occasionally receives food from Baram's charity, had the government allowance for his children halved this year but voted for Sharon because of his tough military response to Palestinian attacks.
"Everything has gone up in price during his term. We can't even afford bread now -- not meat, but bread," said the 27-year-old former courier who has been jobless for more than a year.
Three months behind in his rent, Yarimi plans to squat in an unoccupied fishing shack on the Hayarkon River or join the battalions in the Bread Loaf Battle if he and his family are evicted from their apartment.
"The shack is probably my preference. No one will bother us there. We've lived there before," he said. His wife Karin cringed. "It's a nightmare there with the cockroaches."
In a survey conducted by the Israeli Hakar Institute, 43 percent of 504 Israeli adults polled said security was the country's largest problem. Some 39 percent placed poverty as the most urgent issue the government needed to address.
Late last year, Tweeto mobilized homeless Israelis to move into the square ringed by designer stores where some clothes cost thousands of dollars.
Limor Bechor, a mother of two girls, lived in an old bus there. "There are men here looking for sex. I am only thinking about getting out and finding a house for my kids."
The protest has gained the attention of artists, activists and local news channels, which have featured the struggles of individual protesters.
The Bread Loaf Battle has critics who are skeptical about whether the protesters are truly in need or just lazy.
"They are people who are capable of working. I believe that in Israel, every healthy Israeli can find work to support himself, despite the recession," said Roni Hassid, a former spokesman for Tel Aviv's city hall.
Local residents and shopkeepers say the tents and fires are an eyesore in one of Israel's wealthiest quarters.
Owners of the valuable property on the square want the squatters removed. They have filed a complaint with the police but must wait for a court order to eject them.
----
Cuba Gives Democracy Backers Prison Time
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Cuba-Opposition.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
HAVANA (AP) -- A Cuban court has sentenced two supporters of the pro-democracy Varela Project to 18 months in prison for contempt and resisting arrest, organizers of the reform movement said.
Jesus Mustafa Felipe, 58, and Robert Montero, 32, were sentenced Tuesday by a provincial court in the eastern city of Palma Soriano, said a statement by the Christian Liberation Movement, whose founder is a top Varela Project organizer.
The contempt and resisting arrest charges evidently were the result of a confrontation the pair had with police in their hometown on Dec. 18, said Efren Fernandez of the Christian Liberation Movement, which informed journalists of the sentences.
The men had visited a local police station to get information about a third man who had been detained and refused to leave when officers ordered them to, Fernandez said in a telephone interview.
The contempt charge is generally applied for acts considered disrespectful to Cuban leaders, symbols or institutions.
In the past it has been used for those accused of publishing or broadcasting insults against President Fidel Castro and other senior government officials, as well as for hanging the national flag upside down in a sign of civil protest.
Christian Liberation Movement founder Oswaldo Paya is a top organizer of the Varela Project, which seeks a referendum on several laws that would guarantee civil liberties such as freedom of speech, assembly and the right to private business ownership. The government has shelved the Varela Project's request for the voters' initiative.
Castro's government refers to the island's dissidents as ``counterrevolutionaries'' and accuses them of being on the U.S. government payroll -- a charge the opponents deny.
----
Anti - War Groups Planning Phone Campaign
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Virtual-March.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A coalition of groups opposed to a U.S.-led war in Iraq will have supporters call, fax and e-mail the White House and Congress next week in an effort to overwhelm switchboards and catch the attention of political leaders.
``Last weekend, we marched in the streets,'' former Rep. Tom Andrews, D-Maine, national director of Win Without War, told a news conference Wednesday. ``Next week, we're taking it to the suites of official Washington.''
Organizers of the ``virtual march'' on Washington are calling on supporters to call, fax or e-mail their two U.S. senators and the White House during business hours on Feb. 26.
The group also unveiled a new television ad featuring actor Martin Sheen, who plays the fictional President Josiah Bartlet on NBC's ``The West Wing.'' In the ad, which begins airing Thursday, Sheen urges Americans to take part in the call-in effort.
``Our message to Washington will be clear,'' Sheen says in the ad. ``Don't invade Iraq. We can contain Saddam Hussein without killing innocent people, diverting us from the war on terrorism and putting us all at risk.''
Participants who register for the call-in campaign at the group's Web site will be directed to make their phone calls at specific times, Andrews said. The goal is to record one call per minute in every Senate office and at the White House.
``We're hoping there will be thousands and thousands of phone calls,'' he said.
Sheen, along with other West Wing cast members and actress Janeane Garofalo, was appearing later Wednesday at a press conference in Los Angeles to discuss the new ad and the campaign.
The ad, produced by Win Without War, will air initially on CNN and other cable networks in Washington and Los Angeles at a cost of $30,000.
Win Without War is a coalition of more than 30 organizations opposed to war with Iraq, including the National Council of Churches, National Organization for Women, NAACP and the Sierra Club.
On the Net:
Win Without War: www.winwithoutwarus.org
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Older Activists Speak Out for Elderly
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-PRI-Older-Activists.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
NEW YORK (AP) -- It's not always easy for these demonstrators to attend meetings and rallies. Some have aches and pains. Others must depend on a van service, having given up driving and public transportation.
But when they get where they're going, the gray-haired activists of the Joint Public Affairs Committee for Older Adults have plenty to say. Neither age nor infirmity keeps them from speaking out on issues affecting the elderly, from budget cuts to prescription drug costs.
``I intend to do a lot until the day when I can't walk,'' said Louise Sharpe, a 76-year-old retired nurse who rides the subway from her home in the Bronx to events in Manhattan.
The group recently marked 25 years since its founding as an outgrowth of the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged. With members ranging in age from 55 to 90-plus, it is active in more than 700 senior centers and community groups throughout the city.
``Wherever we go, we're treated with respect and attention,'' said Dorothy Epstein, 89, a longtime member and adviser who founded a course that teaches seniors advocacy skills. ``We know we can't appeal on the basis of emotion alone. We must have our facts and we must have our numbers.'' Through letter-writing campaigns and phone calls, the group, known as JPAC, has taken on drug companies, banks, funeral services and home loan programs.
Members take a stand on Social Security and Medicare -- ``hot-button'' issues that have been a focus for senior-citizen organizing efforts around the country, according to John B. Williamson, a sociology professor at Boston College and author of ``The Senior Rights Movement: Framing the Policy Debate in America.''
Williamson suggested Republicans have backed off a proposal to partially privatize Social Security, in part, because they feared seniors would mobilize against it. ``There are a few key issues where it's risky for people to get on the wrong side of seniors, and that's been a fascinating thing to watch,'' he said.
Experts say it is difficult to estimate how much of the nation's growing senior population is politically active, and they are quick to point out that seniors have diverse interests and vote in patterns similar to those seen in the general population.
But the Gray Panthers, another senior advocacy group, claims 20,000 members, and smaller organizations, like the Raging Grannies of Seattle, modeled after a Canadian group, are active around the country.
The nation's largest organization for older adults, AARP, has a membership of 35 million, although not all members consider themselves activists.
Many activist groups have benefited from the Internet, which has allowed them to establish worldwide e-mail lists known as list-serves and easily link with other organizations. JPAC offers classes in computer skills, and some members are learning to use the Internet.
Still, for much of its organizing, the group relies on phone calls, letters and delegations that regularly travel to Albany to meet with lawmakers face to face.
JPAC members took part in successful lobbying for city-funded Access-A-Ride, a van service for the elderly and disabled, and for a program to provide prescription drug coverage for low-income seniors.
``I think that as our population ages, and as the issues of the senior community become more acute, their voice becomes an even stronger and more meaningful one,'' said state Sen. Carl Kruger, who is helping members deal with traffic safety problems near a senior housing complex in Brooklyn.
As New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg warns New Yorkers of coming fiscal sacrifices, JPAC members have spoken against cutbacks in senior programs.
A fired-up group demonstrated at City Hall last fall against proposals to eliminate some senior centers and meal programs, not to mention JPAC's own city funding. Their picture in the Daily News was captioned, ``Gray Wrath.''
Bloomberg backed away from the closings in late January, saying he thought the city could preserve the senior centers after all.
Epstein's activism course -- called the Institute for Senior Action -- has been instrumental in expanding the ranks of JPAC activists since it was founded in 1994. The six-week class includes lectures on writing skills, public speaking and conducting meetings.
Seventy-four-year-old Shirley Ehrlickman, one of the first to take the course, has stayed active with JPAC since her graduation.
``It's not only because I'm a senior and these issues are hurting me,'' Ehrlickman said. ``I know that I'm one of millions of others in my position.''
On the Net:
Joint Public Affairs Committee for Older Adults:
http://www.jpac.org
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Man Who Beheaded Thatcher Statue Jailed
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Thatcher-Statue.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
LONDON (AP) -- A political protester who decapitated a marble statue of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was sentenced Wednesday to three months in jail.
Paul Kelleher, 37, said he slugged the statue with a cricket bat and a metal pole to protest global capitalism, but last month a jury at Southwark Crown Court found him guilty of criminal damage.
Kelleher admitted sneaking a cricket bat into London's Guildhall Gallery under his raincoat last July and using it to whack the 8-foot, $240,000 statue. When it resisted the onslaught, he used a heavy metal pole from a crowd barrier to knock off the statue's gleaming white head.
Kelleher, a theater producer from London, pleaded innocent to criminal damage, saying he had carried out the attack to protest globalization and what he sees as Britain's too-close relationship with the United States.
He said the act was not criminal damage but ``artistic expression and my right to interact with this broken world.''
Passing sentence Wednesday, Judge George Bathurst-Norman said he respected the sincerity of Kelleher's beliefs, but that the court had a duty to protect property.
``When it comes to protest there is a right and proper way to protest and also a wrong way to do so,'' the judge said. ``The way people banded together last Saturday to demonstrate against the war in Iraq was the right and proper way to make their voices heard.''
Kelleher -- who wore jeans, a cardigan and a white T-shirt bearing the words ``small Japanese soldier'' -- showed no emotion as sentence was passed. As he was led from the dock, he turned to the judge and said: ``Sorry to cause you all this trouble.''
The judge replied: ``No, you haven't caused me any.''
Artist Neil Simmons created the statue of Britain's first female prime minister -- nicknamed the Iron Lady during her tenure form 1979 to 1990 -- for display in the Members' Lobby at the House of Commons. By convention statues are not placed there while the subject is alive.
Thatcher's robust brand of conservatism -- she crushed the once-mighty labor unions and privatized many state-owned industries -- still stirs strong emotions among Britons.
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America's Image Declines on War Issue
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Angry-With-America.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
PARIS (AP) -- The years have not dimmed Bernadette Mouchel's respect for Americans. Nothing, the French retiree says, could erase her gratitude to the brave GIs -- ``those boys who died,'' she calls them -- who liberated her Normandy farm from Nazi occupiers in World War II.
Which is why, 59 years later, the prospect of renewed war over Iraq leaves Mouchel deeply conflicted. Like others the world over, her attitude toward Washington is hardening. Despite her feelings for Americans, she can't help but voice -- almost apologetically -- concern that the United States is a superpower running amok.
``Business America, economic America, is just too powerful and it wants -- I don't necessarily want to say rule the world, that might be too strong -- but it wants nevertheless to keep an eye on the entire world's affairs,'' said Mouchel, aged 75.
In many corners of the globe, America's image is slipping. While the current crisis is over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the United States is on trial in the court of world public opinion for pushing efforts to disarm President Saddam Hussein by military force, rather than through slower but peaceful U.N. inspections.
Interviews by Associated Press reporters with dozens of ordinary people in nations as far-flung as France and China, Algeria and South Korea, suggest that goodwill and sympathy for the United States generated by the Sept. 11 terror attacks have evaporated.
For some, the United States is again -- or always has been -- the country they love to hate: America the brutal, America the hypocrite, America the implacable ideological or religious foe.
``We pray for America's destruction day and night,'' says Haider Khan, who drives a taxi in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.
But beyond the zealots and outside the Muslim world, many others are torn between admiration for Americans and things American -- they cite democracy, technology, Hollywood movies -- and the discomforting reality of America the sole superpower, able and willing to fight alone if need be, despite international opposition.
``A year-and-a-half ago, we said we're all Americans. That has changed,'' said Emanuela Lo Monaco, an architect sipping juice in a Rome bar. But, she says, ``How could someone not admire Woody Allen?''
``We like American things -- just give us the choice, don't shove it down our throats, you know?'' said Irish bank clerk John O'Donnell, lunching at a McDonald's in Dublin and gesticulating with a half-eaten Big Mac.
No survey can capture the global range of emotions the United States inspires. But there are common threads. No matter the language, words used these days to describe America are often the same: bent on war, arrogant, bullying, blind to the plight of the poor. At anti-war protests like those that brought millions onto streets worldwide this weekend, President Bush is lampooned as a bloodthirsty bandit or a cowboy.
``I don't need the Third World War,'' said Eleonora Chizhevskaya, a 68-year-old Russian retiree demonstrating in St. Petersburg. ``The United States is just trying to save its dollar and it spits on the rest of the world.''
But to others, American power is comforting. In Kabul, Afghan army major Sultan Mohammed frets that his country will plunge back into war if U.S. troops ``get busy in Iraq and say goodbye to Afghanistan.''
``We should be pleased that somebody else wants to do the dirty work for us -- I mean fight evil and dangerous countries,'' says Slawomir Konopiek, a retired teacher in Poland. ``If not America, who can do it?''
Martin Glas, a 72-year-old Czech retiree, regrets that no ``world's cop,'' as he put it, was there to prevent World War II. ``History could have been different. Hitler would never have become as strong as he was and my father would not have died in a gas chamber,'' said Glas, who is Jewish.
Even in the Middle East, attitudes are not always clear-cut.
``I don't like anything in America, except for the high standard of living and job opportunities,'' said Adnan Youssef, a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon. But he added: ``If the Americans launch a war against Iraq, my hatred for them will increase.''
Such hardline sentiment echoes across the Islamic world. ``Bush is an assassin thirsty for oil and the blood of Muslims,'' says Aziz Moktari, a 22-year-old science major in Casablanca, Morocco.
``All this suspense about whether or not they will go to war is just to prove a point: 'Look, I have the power to push a few buttons and wipe this country out -- I'm still boss,''' argued Mohamad Ismail, a Muslim businessman in Malaysia.
Outside the Islamic world, however, and even in France, which has led European opposition to an attack, many say their beef is not with America or the Americans, but solely with the Bush administration.
``War would be bad for the whole world -- bad for the economy, bad for security, bad for peace,'' said a hawker waving fistfuls of pirated American movies on a street in Beijing, the Chinese capital.
``We understand where America's coming from. I don't like Saddam, he's dangerous and a little crazy. But Bush needs to be careful. ... He may be right about Iraq, but that doesn't mean he's right about war. He has to listen more to others,'' said the DVD seller, surnamed Dai.
A common argument in Europe, where tens of millions died in two world wars last century, is that U.S. leaders are ignorant of war's devastation because they have not experienced conflict at home.
Americans ``live in a world of their own,'' complained Vit Vojtech, a Czech advertising executive. He nonetheless confessed that he likes Hollywood movies ``because I love happy endings.''
In Hong Kong, whose currency is linked to the U.S. dollar, and in Taiwan, which looks to Washington for protection against neighboring China, emotions are tuned to the economic might America wields.
``We'll be seeing another hike in unemployment. Our economy will be very much affected if there's any war,'' said Ivan Kaan, a Hong Kong computer engineer.
Others, especially in European cities already on heightened states of alert, fear that by infuriating Muslims, the United States will sow the seeds of future conflict and increase the risks of revenge attacks by extremists.
``If you kill terrorists, you just make more terrorists. They thrive on their grievances. You never wipe them out,'' said O'Donnell, the bank clerk in Dublin. ``America needs to be subtle, patient -- everything Bush isn't.''
On the Net:
Pew Research Center: http://www.people-press.org
Gallup International: http://www.gallup-international.com
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Protesters take over the streets of Lismore
BY TOM FLANAGAN
From Green Left Weekly,
February 19, 2003.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/current/526lismo.htm
LISMORE - In what many participants described as the biggest political event in this town's history, 5000 people - about a ninth of the town's total population - overflowed Spinks Park to say no to any war on Iraq.
Lisa Yeates, well-known local singer and political activist of 25 years, began the event with a compelling musical and political presentation, highlighting the impact of the use of depleted uranium weapons in the last Gulf war and Australia's involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle.
Other speakers included NSW Greens Senator Kerry Nettle, Reverend Cameron Venables of the Anglican Church, Peter Lanyon, a Labor Party candidate in the March 22 NSW elections, and Socialist Alliance candidate for Lismore Nick Fredman.
After a street march, in which protesters carried giant Bush and Howard puppets and hundreds of banners and placards, the anti-war protest clogged Lismore's CBD for an hour to hear further speakers. These included World War II veterans Arthur Pike, who saw action on the Kokoda Trail, and Phil Davenport, who was a pilot and POW. The silence of the crowd as both veterans spoke was an indication of the intense attention their anti-war messages received.
One rally participant, Barbara Elliot, a Socialist Alliance member from Collins Creek, said "it brought back memories of marching against the Vietnam War 30 years ago - it was the same feeling, and people have found their voices again".
Upcoming anti-war actions in Lismore include the March 5 student strike against the war and the International Women's Day rally on March 8.
This student strike has been endorsed by the Lismore No War group and the Southern Cross University branch of the National Tertiary Education Industry Union. An announcement of the planned student strike at the rally by Resistance member Matt Egan was received an enthusiastic response and dozens of high school students put their names on contact lists to help with the strike.
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