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NUCLEAR
US to use depleted uranium
Nuclear inspectors reportedly angry
Blix: Iraqi weapons probe should continue
Nuclear Threat Haunts S. Korean Economy
Powell Rejects North Korea's Talks Demand
A dirty bomb may not kill, but it sure would hurt
Russia Delays Ratifying Nuclear Treaty With U.S.
U.S., Russia Delay Nuclear Weapons Treaty
Minnesota Tribe Reaches Deal with Xcel Nuclear Power Plant
'We are now acting because the risks of inaction would be far greater'
DEMOCRACY OR DEATH
Letter from the State Department
Things to Come
War in the Ruins of Diplomacy
Bush's Doctrine for War
MILITARY
Bush Ultimatum Hardens Some Positions, and Blurs Others
Bush Fails to Win China, Russia Support
Anthrax attack could kill 123,000
Testing of Anthrax Drug on Humans May Be Near
Briton Quits Cabinet in Protest
Why I had to leave the cabinet
U.S. company holds Colombia operations secret
US firms get $1.5bn deal to rebuild Iraq
Canada's Leader Rejects Sending Troops to War Chretien Cites U.N. Obstacle
China Hopes Conflict Can Still Be Avoided
Germany's Military Sinking to 'Basket Case' Status
Suit Begins Against Iran in Marine Barracks Bombing
Likely targets linked to Saddam
Deals Could Keep Foes in Barracks
Baghdad Ready to Take Up Arms
Iraq's Soviet - Made Weapons Assessed
Israel Mobilizes Reserve Defense Forces
FEDERALS DESTROY TWO POWERFUL LANDMINES
Turkish Officials Say Aid to American Forces Is Likely
Rhetoric of Pakistan Extremists Rises
Russia's Putin Calls Iraq War A 'Mistake'
Russia Says U.S. Anti - Terror Coalition Could Be Hit
U.N. Shifts Focus to Food Aid for Iraq
U.S. forces girding for short, furious war
U.S. Infantry Packs Up Camp in Kuwait
Software bug bites US military
Wary news crews abandon front lines as Iraq war looms
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
War Means Rights May Be Scaled Back
Iraq war prompts terror threat hike
U.S. Heightens Alert, Asks for Guard Call-Ups
'Operation Libery Shield' Security Measures
OTHER
Government Promotion of Irradiated Food for Schools Challenged
ACTIVISTS
Protests Planned for Beginning of War
Protests continue amid looming war
Anti-war activists to take many fronts
Gaza protester mourned
Chechen Human Rights Activist Released
Confronting Our Fears
'Human Shields,' Armed With Prayers
2 Humboldt tree-sitters removed
Dressed for Protest
War Means Rights May Be Scaled Back
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
US to use depleted uranium
2003/03/18
BBC NEWS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/in_depth/2860759.stm
Drawing of DU tank bomb: http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38972000/gif/_38972561_du_missile4_416inf.gif
A United States defence official has said moves to ban depleted uranium ammunition are just an attempt by America's enemies to blunt its military might.
Colonel James Naughton of US Army Materiel Command said Iraqi complaints about depleted uranium (DU) shells had no medical basis.
"They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them," he told a Pentagon briefing.
If war starts, tonnes of depleted uranium (DU) weapons are likely to be used by British and American tanks and by ground attack aircraft.
Some believe people are still suffering ill health from ammunition used in the Gulf War 12 years ago, and other conflicts.
In the House of Commons in London on Monday, Labour MP Joan Ruddock said a test of the UK Government's pledge to keep civilian casualties to a minimum in an attack on Iraq would include not using depleted uranium weapons.
Military uses
Apparently anticipating complaints, the US defence department briefed journalists about DU - making it plain it would continue to be used.
Depleted uranium, a by-product of uranium enrichment for nuclear weapons or nuclear reactors, has valuable military properties.
It is very dense, about 1.7 times heavier than lead, and not only very hard but unlike other materials is self-sharpening when it penetrates armour.
Used defensively as armour, it tends to make ordinary munitions bounce off.
These properties contributed to the relative success of American tanks against Iraq's in 1991.
For the M1 Abrams tank there is no other option: it uses only DU-tipped shells and has DU armour.
'Who says?'
"In the last war, Iraqi tanks at fairly close ranges - not nose to nose - fired at our tanks and the shot bounced off the heavy armour... and our shot did not bounce off their armour," Col Naughton told the briefing.
"So the result was Iraqi tanks destroyed - US tanks with scrape marks."
He questioned the motives of those who challenged US use of depleted uranium.
"Who's asking the question? The Iraqis tell us 'terrible things happened to our people because you used it last time'.
"Why do they want it to go away? They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them, OK?
"I mean, there's no doubt that DU gave us a huge advantage over their tanks. They lost a lot of tanks.
"Their soldiers can't be really amused at the idea of going out in basically the same tanks with some slight improvements and taking on Abrams again."
'Marked increase in cancers'
Cancer surgeons in the southern Iraqi port of Basra report a marked increase in cancers which they suspect were caused by DU contamination from tank battles on the farmland to the west of the city.
But the director of the Pentagon's deployment health support directorate, Dr Michael Kilpatrick, said: "To the question, could depleted uranium be playing a role, the medical answer is no."
Depleted uranium is mildly radioactive but the main health concern is that it is a heavy metal, potentially poisonous.
The likelihood of absorbing it is increased significantly if a weapon has struck a target and exploded because the DU vaporises into a fine dust and can be inhaled.
Dr Kilpatrick said a study that had followed 90 US Gulf War veterans exposed to the dust and to shrapnel from DU rounds in "friendly fire" incidents had found no DU-related medical problems.
Uncertainty
Some Gulf War veterans believe DU might have contributed to health problems they have suffered. And it has been blamed for a number of leukaemia cases among former Balkans peacekeepers.
BBC News Online environment correspondent Alex Kirby says scientists disagree about the ability of DU to cause the horrific problems that have been reported.
The World Health Organisation recommends cleaning areas with high concentrations of radioactive particles.
"There is real controversy, and real uncertainty," he said.
There have also been various health warnings. A 1995 report from the US Army Environmental Policy Institute, for example, said: "If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences."
Alex Kirby says the Pentagon claim that criticisms of DU come only from Iraq and "other countries that are not friendly to the US" is demonstrably untrue.
"To sum up, I guess the Iraqis have got much worse things than DU to worry about in the immediate future, and any risk to environment and health over the longer term remains unproven and perhaps circumstantial.
"But that does not mean the risk is proven not to exist."
-------- inspections
Nuclear inspectors reportedly angry
CHECKING FALSE U.S. LEADS WASTED TIME, SOURCE SAYS
By Dan Stober
San Jose Mercury News
Tue, Mar. 18, 2003
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/5418901.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
As United Nations nuclear inspectors flee Iraq, some of them are angry at the Bush administration for cutting short their work, bad-mouthing their efforts and making false claims about evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Some inspectors are ``scandalized'' at the way President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, among others, have ``politicized'' the inspection process, said a source close to the inspectors.
None of the nuclear-related intelligence trumpeted by the administration has held up to scrutiny, inspectors say. From suspect aluminum tubes to aerial photographs to documents -- revealed to be forgeries -- that claimed to link Iraq to uranium from Niger, inspectors say they chased U.S. leads that went nowhere and wasted valuable time in their efforts to determine the extent of Saddam Hussein's arsenal of weapons banned after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
The administration said the Iraqi aluminum tubes were uniquely suited for centrifuges to make bomb-grade uranium. But U.N. officials argue that the Iraqi explanation -- that the tubes were destined to become artillery rockets -- was more plausible. Moreover, the source close to inspectors said, the U.S. military uses similar tubes for a rocket known as the Hydra 70.
In October the White House released aerial photos of activity at former Iraqi nuclear facilities. The inspectors, however, found no sign of weapons activity and suggested that Saddam was not likely to reuse known nuclear sites.
In February the administration said trucks were spotted at facilities shortly before the arrival of inspectors, apparently to haul away and hide banned equipment. But in one case, according to a U.N. official, the trucks were fire engines standing by the building for safety reasons. In the case of the Niger documents, they appeared genuine at first glance -- accurate nomenclature, proper stamps -- but further study turned up crude errors, such as words misspelled in French and dates that did not match the day of the week. Who created the counterfeit documents remains a mystery.
Recent inspection teams have included a new batch of U.S. nuclear scientists from Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories. The U.N. official described these inspectors as arriving as hawks and leaving as doves, after finding Iraq ``a ruined country, not a threat to anyone.'' It is a view radically different than the administration's.
The nuclear inspectors trudged through the Iraqi countryside for months. They found the Iraqi weapons infrastructure, built at great expense in the 1980s, to be in a state of decay. They sought out out-of-the-way machine shops or companies where Iraqi scientists might be congregated. But they found no sign of an organized nuclear weapons program.
At the most, the U.N. official said, there may be ``a few guys with paper and pencil and some computer in a back room.''
Responding to the U.S. emphasis on underground facilities, the inspectors slugged through the mud beneath a petroleum plant and paid a visit to an irrigation reservoir carved into the inside of a mountain. Neither contained anything suspicious.
The nuclear inspectors -- the International Atomic Energy Agency's Iraq Action Team -- are lead by a Frenchman, Jacques Baute. Under his direction the team has focused on unraveling the clandestine Iraqi procurement networks that imported nuclear weapons technology in the 1980s and the aluminum tubing more recently.
During unannounced visits to trading companies, the inspectors used special equipment to copy the hard drives of computers. Among the thousands of files they found some leads, as well as pornography.
Traders in the procurement networks, the inspectors discovered, have been using their positions to steal oil-for-food money and shift the stolen profits out of the country. For example, a $100,000 purchase of humanitarian goods from Jordan might be inflated to $200,000, with the extra money split between the Iraqi buyer and the Jordanian seller.
Some of the inspectors leave with a deep suspicion of U.S. motives. Some believe, for example, that recent flights of U.S. U-2 spy planes were intended to help the military draw up target lists, not to aid the inspectors in their search for weapons of mass destruction. Contact Dan Stober at dstober@mercurynews.com or (650) 688-7536.
----
Blix: Iraqi weapons probe should continue
By William M. Reilly
UPI United Nations Correspondent
March 18, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030318-084838-7547r.htm
UNITED NATIONS, March 18 (UPI) -- On the same day the last U.N weapons monitors were withdrawn from Iraq, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said that three and a half months was too soon for the inspections to end.
Blix told reporters Tuesday that he never said Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction, only a lot of unaccounted for material. He added that he did not think Resolution 1441, adopted unanimously on Nov. 8, 2002, foresaw such a short inspection time.
"I don't think it is reasonable to close the door to inspections after three and a half months," said Blix, executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
However, he told reporters at the U.N. Correspondents Association it would have been interesting to see what would be found once people go in and can go anywhere and examine the sort of intelligence the inspectors never had access to.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan ordered the withdrawal from Iraq of all U.N. personnel on Monday after Washington advised him of imminent military action against Baghdad.
Asked about the turn of events, Blix said: "I think it's a rather sad moment. My sadness is somewhat tempered by the fact all the inspectors, whether from the UNMOVIC or the International Atomic Energy Agency, have come safely back to Larnaca, (Cyprus)."
Chief U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said the last plane evacuating the more than 300 international staff in Iraq left from Baghdad for Larnaca. The plane arrived late Tuesday in Cyrus. Blix said there were 134 from UNMOVIC and the IAEA.
Asked if he thought Iraq would use chemical or biological weapons in a war with the U.S-led coalition, Blix said he didn't think so, although he believes Baghdad has the know-how to produce and deliver chemical weapons.
"I think it is unlikely they will do that because I think world public opinion, which they study quite a lot, is in large measure feeling that going to war is too early," he said. "So there is a fair amount of skepticism about armed action. That skepticism would turn immediately around if they used chemical weapons or biological weapons. My guess is they would not."
Blix is scheduled to meet with the Security Council Wednesday to discuss a work plan of remaining disarmament. He submitted the plan on Monday just hours before U.S. President George W. Bush delivered his ultimatum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and sons to go into exile or face war.
The foreign ministers of France Germany, Guinea, Russia and Syria were expected to attend the open council session where Blix was to deliver his report. Unable to attend, IAEA Executive Director Mohammed ElBaradei was sending a representative.
The session will be held just before expiration of the 48-hour ultimatum Bush issued Monday night.
Late Wednesday, an angry Ambassador Mohammed Aldouri of Iraq told reporters at the United Nations, "This is the first time in the history a president of a state ordered another president of another state to leave his own country."
Aldouri described the possibility of a U.S.-led invasion as "a mess" and "madness."
"It is unacceptable by any logic, unless we have to accept the law of the jungle: might is right, which violates all principles enshrined in the charter of the United Nations. We reject totally this madness, the aggression and the outlaw policy," he said.
"This war will be a crime against humanity," he said. "It is illegal, immoral and unjustifiable. It will cause huge casualties, great destruction and endless suffering. This war, in short, is tantamount to genocide.
"The president of the United States is deceiving his people in justifying the war against Iraq, because Iraq has fulfilled its obligations as requested by Resolution 1441 and cooperated fully with the inspectors and has, in fact, disarmed," said Aldouri.
-------- korea
Nuclear Threat Haunts S. Korean Economy
March 18, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-SKorea-Economic-Worries.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- As tensions mount over North Korea's worrisome nuclear programs, so do the problems for South Korea's normally resilient economy.
The stock market has tumbled, the currency has slumped and foreign investment is beating a quick retreat as Seoul grapples with the potential of a nuclear-armed neighbor.
South Korean officials have made the rounds of global credit agencies like Moody's to stave off the slashing of the South's sovereign debt rating.
``A resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue in the shortest time is urgent and pivotal for the future improvement of the South Korean economy,'' said Lee Sangjae, senior economist at Hyundai Securities Research Center in Seoul.
South Korea's economy is far from the downward spiral it took during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, but economists warn that investors could be spooked if Pyongyang adds to the two atom bombs it is believed to already possess.
Tension with the North is not uncommon on the Korean peninsula, which has been divided since 1945 and where a three-year war was fought in the 1950s to stop a North Korean invasion.
Last June, a naval shootout killed six South Korean sailors, and a year earlier, communist and South Korean troops fired shots across the Demilitarized Zone separating the two sides.
Financial markets usually react to such events with no more than a ripple.
But since allegations in October that North Korea has a secret atomic weapons project, even small confrontations along the border now carry nuclear overtones.
Jitters have been stoked recently by two North Korean missile tests and the interception of a U.S. spy plane by communist fighter jets.
Seoul's main stock index has tumbled 14 percent since the beginning of the year, while the currency has dropped 5 percent to a five-month low against the dollar. Foreign investment in the stock market declined 12.5 percent over the period.
``If tension continues in the Korean Peninsula because of the current Korean nuclear issue, investment in (South) Korea will of course be reduced,'' warned Lee Won-joon, a partner at Accenture Consultants in Seoul.
Some of the woes are attributed to jitters over the looming war in Iraq, the worldwide economic slowdown and an insider-trading scandal that recently hit South Korea's SK Group, one of the nation's biggest conglomerates.
But Korean central bank governor Park Seung identified the threat of North Korea's nuclear programs as the biggest economic peril.
Before the crisis, the central bank had predicted the South Korean economy to grow around 5 percent this year.
But its latest report forecast that lingering problems with North Korea would contribute to slower growth, substantially higher inflation and a current account deficit.
Hoping to forestall a potential drop in the government's credit rating, Finance Ministry officials visited the headquarters of Moody's and Standard & Poor's in New York to explain South Korea's economic conditions and the latest impacts of North Korea.
The nuclear crisis could also undermine the economic agenda of President Roh Moo-hyun, who took office last month. Burdened by new diplomatic pressures, he may have less focus on his much vaunted economic reforms, analysts say.
But many business leaders say the economy is still sound.
``Once Iraq is resolved, we will see foreign investors returning,'' said Lee Wonki, of Merrill Lynch in Seoul. ``But they are not likely to aggressively buy back into Korea until the North Korean issue is settled peacefully, and that won't be until later this year.''
--------
Powell Rejects North Korea's Talks Demand
March 18, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-korea-north-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday rejected North Korea's latest demand for direct talks and said North Korea would complicate diplomacy if it started a plutonium reprocessing plant.
Powell told a small group of reporters that the more he heard demands for direct talks between North Korea and the United States, the more he believed the United States was right to insist on starting talks in a multilateral forum.
North Korean state media on Monday repeated Pyongyang's rejection of any formula other than direct one-to-one talks.
``It is not multilateral talks but direct talks between the DPRK (North Korea) and the U.S. that serve as a key to settling the nuclear issue,'' said the Rodong Sinmun daily.
Powell said: ``We're going to stick with the multilateral arrangement because we think it's best.
``The more I hear about this business of 'the United States must do it this way or else North Korea will never respond,' the more I believe that that is not the correct way to do it.''
After North Korea acknowledged a secret uranium enrichment project in October, the United States initially offered talks once North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear programs.
It then changed its position to support for multilateral talks, alongside South Korea, Japan and other Asian countries, without stressing the precondition of dismantling programs.
Analysts said it suited Washington's purposes to delay talks with North Korea until its invasion of Iraq was complete. President Bush gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein an ultimatum late on Monday to leave the country in 48 hours or face war.
The North Koreans appear to have sought international attention by testing missiles in the Sea of Japan, buzzing a U.S. spy plane this month and by rhetoric hostile to the United States.
Powell said, ``It should be clear to the North Koreans right now that, while we look at these provocations with concerns, they are not going to provoke us into their policy choices.''
Asked about the reprocessing plant, he said: ``So far they have not begun the reprocessing facility. I don't know if they will or they won't. I think it would make political dialogue and finding a diplomatic way forward much more difficult if they started a reprocessing facility.''
-------- terrorism
A dirty bomb may not kill, but it sure would hurt
Story by Louis Charbonneau
REUTERS AUSTRIA:
March 18, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20200/newsDate/18-Mar-2003/story.htm
VIENNA - After September 11, 2001, nuclear experts realised the danger of handling deadly radioactive material would not deter suicidal maniacs who could hijack a plane and ram it into a skyscraper.
They asked what would happen if al Qaeda got one of the world's thousands of lost radioactive sources, attached an explosive like dynamite and exploded it in a major urban centre.
Britain said in January it had evidence that al Qaeda, widely thought to be behind the attack that toppled New York City's Twin Towers, had tried to develop such a bomb in the 1990s.
Wolfgang Weiss, head of radiation hygiene at Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection, prepared a hypothetical case study to show what would happen if a radiation dispersal device - popularly known as a dirty bomb - exploded in Munich.
The results, based on an imaginary bomb made with weapons-grade plutonium placed in Munich's Olympic Stadium, were superficially reassuring: there would probably be no deaths and the number of severely contaminated victims would be small.
"According to the calculations I did, the radiological impact would be very limited, though the wider impact to society would be large," Weiss told Reuters during the first global conference on dirty bombs.
Severe contamination would likely occur at the centre of the explosion in the stadium, which has a capacity of almost 70,000. He said that at five km (three miles) from the stadium, radiation levels would drop by a factor of 100, resulting in only mild exposure levels.
DANGEROUS, BUT NOT DEADLY
Disregarding damage from the explosion itself, Weiss said exposure for someone near the bomb "would require emergency medical treatment, but it would not lead to death".
If the radioactive material was caesium, a common easy-to-disperse radioactive powder used in medicine and agriculture, victims would be exposed to quite low levels.
"These models tell us that you wouldn't have to evacuate a huge city. You would concentrate on an area of a few kilometres," from the explosion, Weiss said.
But the bomb would cause panic, and it would be crucial for political leaders to behave calmly, to speak honestly and in clear, easy-to-understand language about the attack.
"It's not primarily a radiological problem which we'd face, it's a psychological problem and a problem that has to do with trust in a society in their leaders," he said.
Failure to handle the situation properly could turn a manageable crisis, which emergency response teams should be capable of managing, into a disaster.
But Weiss said specific case scenarios were not a good basis for preparing a government on how to respond to an attack.
"You have to be ready to be flexible, ready for everything. Reality is always different," Weiss said. "Before the events in New York on September 11, nobody thought it was possible."
Dirty bombs hit the headlines in May, 2002, when U.S. authorities captured Jose Padilla, an American al Qaeda operative, in Chicago, and prevented a dirty bomb attack.
But there has never been a dirty bomb attack, so scientists and policymakers still have no actual case to examine.
This is why Weiss and others look closely at a tragedy in southern Brazil considered to be the benchmark dirty bomb scenario. This case shows that while the number of deaths may be low, the long-term effects of such an attack could be severe.
GOIANIA: THE DIRTY-BOMB BENCHMARK
On September 13, 1987, two men in Goiania, Brazil were looking for scrap metal at a partly demolished medical clinic.
They found a radiation therapy machine containing a small canister of highly radioactive caesium powder. Unaware of what it was, they sold it to a junkyard dealer, who took the canister apart.
Within two weeks, local children discovered the glowing blue powder. Some even used it as body paint.
This quickly led to a catastrophe that was second only to the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. A total of 249 people were exposed, 10 were seriously injured and four died.
The long-term socio-economic effects were devastating. Goiania suffered a 20 percent drop in gross domestic product, which took five years to return to normal levels.
Tourism in the tropical town dropped to zero and Goiania found itself the victim of economic discrimination, as demand for food and other products from the area plummeted.
"Imagine it would happen here in Vienna," Weiss said. "The city would never be the same."
TRAFFICKING IN RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS
"We need to take into account Murphy's Law - whatever can go wrong, will go wrong eventually," said Chris Schmitzer of the Health Physics Division from Austria's ARC research laboratories in Seibersdorf, referring to the possibility of a dirty bomb attack.
According to the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, there have been more than 280 confirmed cases of illicit trafficking in radioactive materials since 1993, though the agency suspects the actual number may be much higher.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the threat of a dirty bomb attack was real and urged speedy improvements in the security of radioactive sources and border controls to keep them out of the hands of terrorists.
"The fact that you haven't seen (a dirty bomb attack) yet doesn't mean one isn't imminent," ElBaradei said.
Caesium, which ravaged Goiania, is one of many deadly radioactive sources that have fallen out of regulatory control through loss or theft across the former Soviet Union, the world's hotspot for illicit trafficking in radioactive material.
"Our database of cases of smuggling gives an indication that there is a market and there is an effort to obtain radioactive sources, and the obvious question is why," ElBaradei said.
-------- treaties
Russia Delays Ratifying Nuclear Treaty With U.S.
Legislators Say White House Setting Stage for World War
By Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 18, 2003; 4:14 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47527-2003Mar18.html
MOSCOW, March 18 -- The lower house of the Russian parliament today put off a vote on ratification of a U.S.-Russia arms control treaty after angry legislators accused the Bush administration of setting the stage for a world war.
Duma leaders said the dramatic cuts in nuclear warheads envisioned under the treaty should not be considered at a time when the United States has flaunted international law and tried to strong-arm countries such as Russia that objected to its policy on Iraq. The vote had been scheduled for Friday.
Duma speaker Gennady Selezynoz, who until recently was a Communist Party member,suggested the accord might be shelved indefinitely if the United States invades Iraq, because an attack would usher in "the law of the jungle" in international relations.
"The strong will trample the weak. And we don't want to be weak. Therefore we will still need the missiles," he said.
Other lawmakers predicted that the treaty would be approved, perhaps as soon as the Duma resumes work on April 1 after a break. "The deputies are angry," said Sergei Shishkaryov, deputy head of the Duma's foreign affairs committee. "But they still understand how important this treaty is for Russia."
When they signed the treaty last May, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin cast it as a dramatic sign of the improvement in U.S.-Russian relations since the end of the Cold War. The three-page agreement commits both countries to reduce their nuclear warheads by roughly two-thirds, from 6,000 warheads apiece to between 1,700 to 2,200. Russia pushed hard for the cuts in large part because it can no longer afford to maintain its stockpile.
The U.S. Senate unanimously approved the agreement two weeks ago as part of an effort by the Bush administration to both woo and pressure Russia not to block a UN resolution that would have authorized a military strike on Iraq. Putin opposed the now-moot resolution while trying to preserve the spirit of good will that has prevailed between the two countries since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The Duma typically obediently follows instructions from Putin's office in the Kremlin. But in this case, deputies put Putin's wishes aside to vent their unhappiness over U.S. Iraq policy and, some analysts said, to win points with voters before parliamentary elections in December. "This is a silly thing because our relations with the United States are not simple and there is a threat that they will deteriorate," said Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent Duma deputy. "Now it would be important to give a positive signal, not a negative one."
The Kremlin had no immediate comment, but Mikhail Margelov, an influential lawmaker close to the Kremlin, said the Duma had voted against Russia's interests.
--------
U.S., Russia Delay Nuclear Weapons Treaty
March 18, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US-Treaty.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian lawmakers postponed indefinitely a vote Tuesday to ratify a U.S.-Russian nuclear arms treaty, as the parliament speaker warned that a war against Iraq could endanger the pact.
The treaty, agreed to last May by Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Bush, requires that the two nations cut their strategic nuclear arsenals by about two-thirds, to 1,700 to 2,200 deployed warheads each, by 2012.
The treaty was seen as more advantageous to Russia than the now-defunct START II agreement, which specifically banned Russia from deploying land-based missiles with multiple warheads. The new deal would leave it to each nation to decide which weapons it will scrap. That would let Russia keep its Soviet-built multiwarhead SS-18 and SS-19 missiles at the core of its nuclear arsenal.
Russia's lower house, the State Duma, had been expected to take up debate on the treaty Friday. But the Duma Council, which sets the legislative agenda, put off the vote indefinitely and did not set a new date.
``We consider ratification very important, but now this step is not justified,'' said Sergei Shishkaryov, the deputy chairman of the Duma's international affairs committee. He added that ``in essence, we are standing on the threshold of World War III.''
The U.S. Senate unanimously approved the treaty earlier this month, a move widely seen as part of a diplomatic effort to win Russian support for a tougher line against Iraq. But Russia opposed a U.S.-backed draft resolution at the U.N. Security Council threatening the use of force against Iraq.
President Bush has abandoned diplomatic efforts at the United Nations and given Saddam Hussein until Wednesday night to leave the country or face war.
``In the event of an American strike on Iraq the fate of the entire treaty will be in question,'' Gennady Seleznyov, speaker of the Duma, said during a visit to the Czech capital, Prague.
``The Americans are striking at international law,'' he said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Tuesday's postponement reflected the ambivalence of post-Cold War Russian-U.S. relations. Washington and Moscow have pursued closer ties, but the Kremlin bridles at what it regards as a U.S. penchant for unilateral action, such as its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
Some Russian lawmakers lashed out at the United States over Iraq.
``Let them know there is a serious nuclear power that will really provide for the security of the entire world community and will never allow itself to act by the laws of the jungle,'' Interfax quoted Seleznyov as saying.
Other lawmakers cautioned their colleagues against making rash decisions that could imperil the nuclear treaty and strain the overall U.S.-Russian relationship.
Sergei Mironov, the speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament, called the decision to put off ratification a mistake.
``This treaty plays an important strategic role for both Russia and the United States,'' Mironov said, according to the Interfax-Military news agency reported.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- minnesota
Minnesota Tribe Reaches Deal with Xcel Nuclear Power Plant
March 18, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2003/2003-03-18-09.asp#anchor4
PRAIRIE ISLAND, Minnesota, The Prairie Island Tribal Council announced Monday that it has reached a tentative agreement with Xcel Energy, which owns a nuclear power plant located only 600 yards from the tribe's reservation.
The deal would provide financial compensation to address many of the tribe's longstanding health and safety concerns, including money for a health study, improved evacuation and land for tribal members who wish to move a safer distance from Xcel's nuclear facilities. In return, Xcel gets a promise from the tribe that it will not block its request to store more of its waste at the Prairie Island facility.
"In a perfect world we would never again need to be concerned about nuclear power or nuclear waste," said Audrey Bennett, president of the Prairie Island Tribal Council. "But we need to be pragmatic, and this agreement helps make a bad situation better by providing us with the resources we need to improve our safety and build a more promising future for our young people."
A federally recognized Indian Nation, the Prairie Island Indian Community is located some 50 minutes southeast of Minneapolis along the Mississippi River.
The tribe's close proximity to the plant and its nuclear waste storage site has given many cause to worry about the health and safety risks. In addition, the tribe has been concerned that there is only one evacuation route off Prairie Island and passing trains often block it.
The deal would provide the tribe with $1 million per year for each year the plant is in operation and $450,000 every year for as long as nuclear waste is stored on the island unless it is for decommissioning purposes. In addition, the tribe would receive $700,000 per year for 10 years to help with evacuation improvements and land acquisition and $100,000 per year for 10 years to help pay for a health study and emergency management activities.
The deal commits Xcel to move nuclear waste from Prairie Island as soon as an alternative is available and prohibits the company from storing waste from other sites at Prairie Island.
The proposed agreement must still be approved by a tribal community referendum and relies on the Minnesota Legislature allowing Xcel enough storage at Prairie Island to keep the plant operating until its licenses expire in 2013 and 2014.
If Xcel is not allowed additional storage, the company will be forced to close the plant within five years. The Prairie Island community referendum is expected to be completed April 17, 2003.
"This is a very important decision for our community and one that could forever impact our people," Bennett explained. "We can either try to manage the threat to our community by enforcing the storage limit or we can try to manage it by accepting an agreement that improves our safety."
"Our Tribal Council believes this agreement is the best alternative for our people."
-------- us politics
'We are now acting because the risks of inaction would be far greater'
March 18, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030318-7643288.htm
Text of President Bush's nationally televised address last night from the White House.
My fellow citizens, events in Iraq have now reached the final days of decision. For more than a decade, the United States and other nations have pursued patient and honorable efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime without war. That regime pledged to reveal and destroy all its weapons of mass destruction as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf war in 1991. Since then, the world has engaged in 12 years of diplomacy. We have passed more than a dozen resolutions in the United Nations Security Council. We have sent hundreds of weapons inspectors to oversee the disarmament of Iraq. Our good faith has not been returned.
The Iraqi regime has used diplomacy as a ploy to gain time and advantage. It has uniformly defied Security Council resolutions demanding full disarmament. Over the years, U.N. weapon inspectors have been threatened by Iraqi officials, electronically bugged and systematically deceived. Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime have failed again and again because we are not dealing with peaceful men.
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people. The regime has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends. And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al Qaeda.
The danger is clear: Using chemical, biological, or one day nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other. The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat. But we will do everything to defeat it.
Instead of drifting along toward tragedy, we will set a course toward safety. Before the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this danger will be removed. The United States of America has the sovereign authority to use force in assuring its own national security. That duty falls to me as commander in chief by the oath I have sworn, by the oath I will keep. Recognizing the threat to our country, the United States Congress voted overwhelmingly last year to support the use of force against Iraq. America tried to work with the United Nations to address this threat, because we wanted to resolve the issue peacefully. We believe in the mission of the United Nations. One reason the U.N. was founded after the Second World War was to confront aggressive dictators actively and early, before they can attack the innocent and destroy the peace.
In the case of Iraq the Security Council did act in the early 1990s, under Resolutions 678 and 687, both still in effect. The United States and our allies are authorized to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a question of authority. It is a question of will.
Last September I went to the U.N. General Assembly and urged the nations of the world to unite and bring an and to this danger. On November 8th, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations and vowing serious consequences if Iraq did not fully and immediately disarm. Today no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed. And it will not disarm as long as Saddam Hussein holds power.
'We will rise to ours' For the last four and a half months, the United States and our allies have worked within the Security Council to enforce that Council's long-standing demands. Yet some permanent members of the Security Council have publicly announced they will veto any resolution that compels the disarmament of Iraq. These governments share our assessment of the danger, but not our resolve to meet it. Many nations, however, do have the resolve and fortitude to act against this threat to peace. And a broad coalition is now gathering to enforce the just demands of the world.
The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities. So we will rise to ours.
In recent days, some governments in the Middle East have been doing their part. They have delivered public and private messages urging the dictator to leave Iraq, so that disarmament can proceed peacefully. He has thus far refused.
All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end. Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing. For their own safety, all foreign nationals, including journalists and inspectors, should leave Iraq immediately.
Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them: If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror, and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.
'Too late' for Saddam It is too late for Saddam Hussein to remain in power. It is not too late for the Iraqi military to act with honor and protect your country, by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. Our forces will give Iraqi military units clear instructions on actions they can take to avoid being attacked and destroyed. I urge every member of the Iraqi military and intelligence services, if war comes, do not fight for a dying regime that is not worth your own life.
And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. In any conflict, your fate will depend on your actions. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, "I was just following orders."
Should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation, the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war, and every measure will be taken to win it. Americans understand the costs of conflict because we have paid them in the past. War has no certainty except the certainty of sacrifice. And yet the only way to reduce the harm and duration of war is to apply the full force and might of our military, and we are prepared to do so. If Saddam Hussein attempts to cling to power, he will remain a deadly foe until the end.
In desperation, he and terrorist groups might try to conduct terrorist operations against the American people and our friends. These attacks are not inevitable. They are, however, possible. And this very fact underscores the reason we cannot live under the threat of blackmail. The terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed.
'Protect our homeland' Our government is on heightened watch against these dangers. Just as we are preparing to ensure victory in Iraq, we are taking further actions to protect our homeland.
In recent days, American authorities have expelled from the country certain individuals with ties to Iraqi intelligence services. Among other measures, I have directed additional security at our airports and increased Coast Guard patrols of major seaports. The Department of Homeland Security is working closely with the nation's governors to increase armed security at critical facilities across America.
Should enemies strike our country, they would be attempting to shift our attention with panic and weaken our morale with fear. In this, they would fail. No act of theirs can alter the course or shake the resolve of this country. We are a peaceful people, yet we are not a fragile people. And we will not be intimidated by thugs and killers. If our enemies dare to strike us, they and all who have aided them will face fearful consequences.
We are now acting because the risks of inaction would be far greater. In one year, or five years, the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be multiplied many times over. With these capabilities, Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies could choose the moment of deadly conflict when they are strongest. We choose to meet that threat now where it arises, before it can appear suddenly in our skies and cities.
The cause of peace requires all free nations to recognize new and undeniable realities. In the 20th century, some chose to appease murderous dictators whose threats were allowed to grow into genocide and global war.
In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth.
'Deepest commitments' Terrorists and terrorist states do not reveal these threats with fair notice in formal declarations. And responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense. It is suicide. The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now.
As we enforce the just demands of the world, we will also honor the deepest commitments of our country.
Unlike Saddam Hussein, we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty, and when the dictator has departed, they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation.
The United States with other countries will work to advance liberty and peace in that region. Our goal will not be achieved overnight, but it can come over time. The power and appeal of human liberty is felt in every life and every land, and the greatest power of freedom is to overcome hatred and violence, and turn the creative gifts of men and women to the pursuits of peace. That is the future we choose.
Free nations have a duty to defend our people by uniting against the violent, and tonight, as we have done before, America and our allies accept that responsibility.
Good night, and may God continue to bless America.
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DEMOCRACY OR DEATH
18 March 2003
by Michael Stephens
PopMatters Columnist
http://www.popmatters.com/features/030318-iraq1.shtml
The idea that America is poised to ride into Iraq on a white charger, spreading democracy like fairy dust, is the popular conservative version of the oncoming war in Iraq. But in American politics, "democracy" ceased long ago to be a genuine political ideal and became instead an image without substance or integrity, used to mask, justify and sell the naked exercise of power.
"Democracy" under the Bush regime does not mean that the will of the majority of the people or their representatives rules. If it did, the U.S. government would have celebrated when Turkey voted that American troops could not use Turkey as a strategic military base. After all, this was a truly democratic decision that expressed the will of what one Turkish politician calculated as, "100% of the Turkish people". Instead, the U.S. government expressed shock and anger at the vote, and immediately began putting the screws on the Turkish parliament to reverse it. Who cares what the Turks want? The will of the Bush administration must be imposed on Turkey by the usual democratic means: bribery, arm-twisting, and threats. What the Bush administration has demanded in Turkey is not another free vote, but a vote that will produce the "right" results. It is to this end, that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, spent the day of his election in conference, not with his parliament, but with W. Robert Pearson, the American ambassador. The first order of business for the newly elected Mr. Erdogan is to fire those members of his party who voted against the American proposal: democracy in action, American style.
The National Security Agency's surveillance of email (http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,905936,00.html) and bugging of telephones at the UN Security Council to provide the Bush regime with advance notice of decisions that could help the U.S. government to manipulate the vote is another example of the democratic methods that America will soon be exporting to Iraq. A memo sent to members of the NSA by Frank Koza, stated that, "the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to (sic) membership is reacting to the ongoing debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/dependencies, etc - the whole gamut of information that could give American policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises". The elimination of all "surprises" -- like the Turkey vote -- is the Bush regime's ultimate goal; a goal absolutely opposed to all the principles of democracy. Bush wants to remove the wild card of free choice from every negotiation and stack every deck in favor of a pre-determined outcome. This is not democracy. It is preserving the image of free choice without the substance. As Ari Fleischer put it, "the president is still committed to staging a UN vote".
Staged democracy extends to the un-freedom of the American news media. A comparison of the British and American press's reporting on Iraq is instructive in terms of understanding just how much public political debate is permitted in America. Britain and America are allies in the Iraq conflict. Both are, at least in name, democracies, both are in favor of war with Iraq, and both have powerful news media. However, Britain has a much more diverse and argumentative press than America, whose national newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today demonstrate little deviation from one another and from a bland, centrist worldview, highly supportive of the Bush regime. Britain's Mirror has collected 224,500 signatures for its "Not In Our Name" campaign against war with Iraq, and regularly runs anti-Blair, anti-Bush and anti-war editorials. Yet the Mirror is the traditional Labour party (Blair's party) newspaper, not an anti-establishment or minority opinion newspaper.
What distinguishes the U.S. press from the British press, is the lack of distance the former places between the U.S. government and American society as a whole. In headlines like the New York Times' "Urgent Diplomacy Fails to gain U.S. 9 Votes in the U.N.", there is no attempt to differentiate between the U.S. and the Bush administration. America is not represented here as a diverse culture, with a highly differentiated population that includes millions who oppose a war with Iraq. Instead, the "U.S." is the Bush administration. Consider John Pilger's editorial from a recent Mirror (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12729598&method=full&siteid=5014), in which Pilger argues that the American and British governments are suppressing evidence that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were all destroyed following the Gulf War.
Information like this is simply not made available to the U.S. public by the mainstream U.S. media. Americans who support the war in Iraq do so based on false information provided to them by the U.S. government -- such as that Iraq has nuclear weapons and that there is a clear connection between Saddam and al Queda -- promoted without any rebuttal by the U.S. press. Of course Americans can seek out alternative interpretations of the news at www.truthout.org and www.takebackthemedia.com, but, valuable as they are, these are fringe sites that preach to a small, converted, liberal audience and are not seen by the vast majority of Americans. There are no major popular newspapers or news sites in America like Britain's www.guardian.co.uk or www.mirror.co.uk that regularly present alternative viewpoints and stories and editorials that argue with the government's version of things. For information to be of any use, it must be widely and freely available. Americans are criminally under-informed about the facts behind their government's decisions. There is no democracy when people are purposefully and repeatedly lied to by their government and by corporate news services that monopolize the media channels and purposefully prevent the free circulation of information.
Recently the British press reported that George Bush had refused to address the European Union because they would not guarantee him a standing ovation and a room free of hecklers. President Bush will only agree to public appearances and press conferences where everything is controlled and cleansed of even the smallest hint of dissent. Tony Blair is willing to go on MTV Europe and face attacks from women opposed to war in Iraq, but Bush doesn't have the courage or the wit to meet intelligent opposition. Isn't this highly reminiscent of his counterpart in Iraq?
Since 9/11, America seems to feel that it is entitled to an infinite resentment against the world. Torture in the interrogation of prisoners, prisoners beaten to death in Afghanistan, it's all good because look what "they" did to 3000 Americans at the World Trade Towers. The Bush regime has legalized imprisonment without due process. There are almost daily suicide attempts by the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. These people have been held in isolation, under 24-hour spotlights, without trial and without hope of legal intervention for over a year now. The U.S. administration admits that at least 10% of the 650 people interned at Guantanamo Bay are innocent (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2648547.stm), yet since no legal process is available to any of the prisoners, innocent and guilty alike remain subject to an irrational and indefinite denial of their human rights that amounts to intense psychological and emotional torture. Who in America cares about the fate of these people? Certainly no one in the Bush administration seems concerned. They are foreigners after all, and not worthy of the human and civil rights that Americans take for granted. Yet, with a straight face, the Bush administration speaks of bringing democracy to the Iraqi people.
The Bush administration daily strips people of their human and civil rights. The Bush administration subverts and undermines the democratic process in America and globally by illegal surveillance, bribery, violence and coercion. The Bush administration defies international law, lies to the public and suppresses the truth. The Bush administration will soon sacrifice American soldiers for the profit of multinational companies and rain death on helpless Iraqi children -- to "liberate" them, of course, from the "tyranny" of their own government.
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Letter from the State Department
By Eli J. Lake
UPI State Department Correspondent
March 18, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030318-050615-5648r.htm
WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush was fond of saying it was time for nations to stand up and be counted as the U.N. saga on Iraq drew to a close. The world should know who was willing to stand up to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, and who opted for continuing to appease him. In reality, it was the Bush supporters -- or some of them -- who preferred not to be counted, at least not publicly.
On Tuesday, the State Department helpfully made available to reporters a list of 30 coalition countries that had agreed to have their names published as backers of U.S. action in Iraq.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher explained: "This is a list of countries, 30 countries, that want to be publicly associated with the idea that Iraq needs to be disarmed now. They're all participating, contributing in some way, or interested in participating in some way. I suspect the numbers don't quite compare yet."
Another 15 coalition countries did not want their names announced even though in some cases the help they are providing is crucial for pursuing the impending war.
As it turns out a sizable part of the Bush administration's backing was coming from a coalition of the unwilling-to-be-named.
The group is dominated by countries that have been vehement in their public opposition to U.S. war plans in the United Nations.
France -- now publicly blamed by Washington for the collapse of the U.S.-British-Spanish Security Council resolution authorizing war on Saddam, and as unwilling as any country can be to back the U.S.-led action -- will allow U.S. combat planes to fly over French territory. Earlier this month, Germany, the other bete noir in the Security Council, provided Turkey with Patriot air defense batteries to boost its defenses against a possible Iraqi attack.
In some cases America's silent partners have already let the cat out of the bag. Take the case of Bulgaria, one of the first countries to come out in support of the United States and its allies.
Kuwait itself, which is host to 149,000 U.S. troops poised to strike Iraq with the media in full attendance, is not listed among the 30 states helping the American war effort.
All of the Gulf States have signed a pact to come to the defense of Kuwait in the event that it is attacked by Iraq; but you will not find any of the emirates and sheikdoms identified among the 30 members of the "coalition of the willing."
Saudi Arabia is allowing the United States to fly defensive air missions from Prince Sultan Air Base. But it has opted to keep this indispensable help hidden from the public for now.
It won't be so secret to Iraqi jets once they are intercepted by planes flying over Iraq's southern border.
Israel, an early proponent of armed action against Iraq, does not get a mention either. Its inclusion would have made it harder for Arab allies to cooperate.
Yet last year, Israeli elite commandos units ventured into the western Iraqi desert to locate scud missiles. Israeli also trained some of the U.S. Special Forces in urban warfare.
On the other side of the secret alliance spectrum is Iran. But Iran's deputy foreign minister pledged as early as January to absorb excess refugees from Iraq in the event of a conflict, and agreed to close the Iranian border if any al-Qaida terrorists would dare escape into their territory.
The main reason for this unusual coyness is fear of provoking anti-U.S. sentiment, compounded with opposition to the Iraq war.
The official list of 30 nations includes obvious allies like Spain and the United Kingdom, who co-sponsored the U.N. Security Council resolution to disarm Iraq by force.
But the list also includes Afghanistan, which is still looking for aid to rebuild its own country from the first battle on the war on terrorism in 2001. The Afghans are hardly likely to divert some of their own flow of cash to the rebuilding of Iraq.
Albania wants to send its dreaded commandos to the Gulf to fight alongside the U.S. force. Will this reassure Gen. Thomas Franks, chairman of the U.S. Central Command? Will the mention of Albania make Saddam, and sons Uday and Qusay, quake in their boots? Will the thought of the elite of Albania's army hasten the Iraqi collapse?
It's also nice to know that the Eritreans and Ethiopians, who ended a civil war in December 2000, want to be counted as coalition members -- as long as they don't stop fighting the Ba'athists to resume fighting against each other.
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Things to Come
March 18, 2003
The New York Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/18/opinion/18KRUG.html
Of course we'll win on the battlefield, probably with ease. I'm not a military expert, but I can do the numbers: the most recent U.S. military budget was $400 billion, while Iraq spent only $1.4 billion.
What frightens me is the aftermath - and I'm not just talking about the problems of postwar occupation. I'm worried about what will happen beyond Iraq - in the world at large, and here at home.
The members of the Bush team don't seem bothered by the enormous ill will they have generated in the rest of the world. They seem to believe that other countries will change their minds once they see cheering Iraqis welcome our troops, or that our bombs will shock and awe the whole world (not just the Iraqis) or that what the world thinks doesn't matter. They're wrong on all counts.
Victory in Iraq won't end the world's distrust of the United States because the Bush administration has made it clear, over and over again, that it doesn't play by the rules. Remember: this administration told Europe to take a hike on global warming, told Russia to take a hike on missile defense, told developing countries to take a hike on trade in lifesaving pharmaceuticals, told Mexico to take a hike on immigration, mortally insulted the Turks and pulled out of the International Criminal Court - all in just two years.
Nor, as we've just seen, is military power a substitute for trust. Apparently the Bush administration thought it could bully the U.N. Security Council into going along with its plans; it learned otherwise. "What can the Americans do to us?" one African official asked. "Are they going to bomb us? Invade us?"
Meanwhile, consider this: we need $400 billion a year of foreign investment to cover our trade deficit, or the dollar will plunge and our surging budget deficit will become much harder to finance - and there are already signs that the flow of foreign investment is drying up, just when it seems that America may be about to fight a whole series of wars.
It's a matter of public record that this war with Iraq is largely the brainchild of a group of neoconservative intellectuals, who view it as a pilot project. In August a British official close to the Bush team told Newsweek: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran." In February 2003, according to Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper, Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria and North Korea.
Will Iraq really be the first of many? It seems all too likely - and not only because the "Bush doctrine" seems to call for a series of wars. Regimes that have been targeted, or think they may have been targeted, aren't likely to sit quietly and wait their turn: they're going to arm themselves to the teeth, and perhaps strike first. People who really know what they are talking about have the heebie-jeebies over North Korea's nuclear program, and view war on the Korean peninsula as something that could happen at any moment. And at the rate things are going, it seems we will fight that war, or the war with Iran, or both at once, all by ourselves.
What scares me most, however, is the home front. Look at how this war happened. There is a case for getting tough with Iraq; bear in mind that an exasperated Clinton administration considered a bombing campaign in 1998. But it's not a case that the Bush administration ever made. Instead we got assertions about a nuclear program that turned out to be based on flawed or faked evidence; we got assertions about a link to Al Qaeda that people inside the intelligence services regard as nonsense. Yet those serial embarrassments went almost unreported by our domestic news media. So most Americans have no idea why the rest of the world doesn't trust the Bush administration's motives. And once the shooting starts, the already loud chorus that denounces any criticism as unpatriotic will become deafening.
So now the administration knows that it can make unsubstantiated claims, without paying a price when those claims prove false, and that saber rattling gains it votes and silences opposition. Maybe it will honorably refuse to act on this dangerous knowledge. But I can't help worrying that in domestic politics, as in foreign policy, this war will turn out to have been the shape of things to come.
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War in the Ruins of Diplomacy
March 18, 2003
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/18/opinion/18TUE1.html
America is on its way to war. President Bush has told Saddam Hussein to depart or face attack. For Mr. Hussein, getting rid of weapons of mass destruction is no longer an option. Diplomacy has been dismissed. Arms inspectors, journalists and other civilians have been advised to leave Iraq.
The country now stands at a decisive turning point, not just in regard to the Iraq crisis, but in how it means to define its role in the post-cold-war world. President Bush's father and then Bill Clinton worked hard to infuse that role with America's traditions of idealism, internationalism and multilateralism. Under George W. Bush, however, Washington has charted a very different course. Allies have been devalued and military force overvalued.
Now that logic is playing out in a war waged without the compulsion of necessity, the endorsement of the United Nations or the company of traditional allies. This page has never wavered in the belief that Mr. Hussein must be disarmed. Our problem is with the wrongheaded way this administration has gone about it.
Once the fighting begins, every American will be thinking primarily of the safety of our troops, the success of their mission and the minimization of Iraqi civilian casualties. It will not feel like the right time for complaints about how America got to this point.
Today is the right time. This war crowns a period of terrible diplomatic failure, Washington's worst in at least a generation. The Bush administration now presides over unprecedented American military might. What it risks squandering is not America's power, but an essential part of its glory.
When this administration took office just over two years ago, expectations were different. President Bush was a novice in international affairs, while his father had been a master practitioner. But the new president looked to have assembled an experienced national security team. It included Colin Powell and Dick Cheney, who had helped build the multinational coalition that fought the first Persian Gulf war. Condoleezza Rice had helped manage a peaceful end for Europe's cold war divisions. Donald Rumsfeld brought government and international experience stretching back to the Ford administration. This seasoned team was led by a man who had spoken forcefully as a presidential candidate about the need for the United States to wear its power with humility, to reach out to its allies and not be perceived as a bully.
But this did not turn out to be a team of steady veterans. The hubris and mistakes that contributed to America's current isolation began long before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. From the administration's first days, it turned away from internationalism and the concerns of its European allies by abandoning the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdrawing America's signature from the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. Russia was bluntly told to accept America's withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the territory of the former Soviet Union. In the Middle East, Washington shortsightedly stepped backed from the worsening spiral of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, ignoring the pleas of Arab, Muslim and European countries. If other nations resist American leadership today, part of the reason lies in this unhappy history.
The Atlantic alliance is now more deeply riven than at any time since its creation more than a half-century ago. A promising new era of cooperation with a democratizing Russia has been put at risk. China, whose constructive incorporation into global affairs is crucial to the peace of this century, has been needlessly estranged. Governments across the Muslim world, whose cooperation is so vital to the war against terrorism, are now warily navigating between popular anger and American power.
The American-sponsored Security Council resolution that was withdrawn yesterday had firm support from only four of the council's 15 members and was opposed by major European powers like France, Germany and Russia. Even the few leaders who have stuck with the Bush administration, like Tony Blair of Britain and José María Aznar of Spain, have done so in the face of broad domestic opposition, which has left them and their parties politically damaged.
There is no ignoring the role of Baghdad's game of cooperation without content in this diplomatic debacle. And France, in its zest for standing up to Washington, succeeded mainly in sending all the wrong signals to Baghdad. But Washington's own destructive contributions were enormous: its shifting goals and rationales, its increasingly arbitrary timetables, its distaste for diplomatic give and take, its public arm-twisting and its failure to convince most of the world of any imminent danger.
The result is a war for a legitimate international goal against an execrable tyranny, but one fought almost alone. At a time when America most needs the world to see its actions in the best possible light, they will probably be seen in the worst. This result was neither foreordained nor inevitable.
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NEWS ANALYSIS
Bush's Doctrine for War
March 18, 2003
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/18/international/middleeast/18ASSE.html
WASHINGTON, March 17 - In announcing tonight that he had chosen war, President Bush cut through the debate over who has the right to enforce United Nations resolutions or overthrow brutal regimes.
His argument boiled down to one precept: In an age of unseen enemies who make no formal declarations of war, waiting to act after America's foes "have struck first is not self-defense, it is suicide."
President Bush thus turned America's first new national security strategy in 50 years - the doctrine of pre-emptive military action against foes - into the rationale for America's latest war.
It is a view of America's role that Mr. Bush never discussed when he ran for president, when he spoke of the need for a "humble" approach to the world. Yet he began to embrace it within months of entering the Oval Office, and it became a fierce passion after Sept. 11, 2001.
Standing in the White House this evening, Mr. Bush seemed to complete that evolution, describing America as having virtually a duty to police the world if the United Nations fails to do so, and giving Saddam Hussein 48 hours to get out of Iraq.
The speech marked the culmination of the rupture with the United Nations and with two of America's closest post-war allies - France and Germany - that has been building for months. Mr. Bush's speech almost certainly confirmed some of the world's worst fears about George Bush's America: that when the United Nations will not bend to its will, when allies will not go along, Mr. Bush will simply break away and pull the trigger.
"To them, it will show that this whole U.N. detour was an exercise in futility - that this is what the president planned to do all along," Stanley Hoffmann, the Harvard professor who has spent a lifetime studying war and the trans-Atlantic alliance, said today. "There is no room in the U.N. charter for the president's doctrine of pre-emption, for anticipatory self-defense."
But Mr. Bush was not talking to Europe tonight. He was speaking first to the American people, explaining a war that seems certain to come in days, and casting it as a matter of national survival. And he was speaking to the people of Iraq - in translated radio broadcasts beamed in around Saddam Hussein's radio jammers - promising food and freedom.
"In a free Iraq," he said, "there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near."
Mr. Bush's words were, in many ways, drawn straight from the days of World War II - an era of far clearer challenges and more obvious threats. The president portrayed the Iraqi threat as one so large and so imminent that it challenges America's survival - an argument his critics were already saying tonight was exaggerated to justify a preventive war.
He described Mr. Hussein as a modern-day Hitler, whom America - and its allies - must confront. He openly compared the United Nations and the countries that have refused open confrontation with Mr. Hussein - Germany, France and Russia - to the nations that turned a blind eye as Nazi Germany re-armed.
"In the 20th century, some chose to appease murderous dictators whose threats were allowed to grow into genocide and global war," Mr. Bush said, his voice far steadier, and his anger far better controlled than it was Sunday afternoon in the Azores following his war council with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and José María Aznar of Spain.
"In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth."
But the rest of the world is unlikely to see the confrontation in such terms, and that will be only the first of many challenges as Mr. Bush turns the doctrine of pre-emption into a war of pre-emption.
In Europe, his message will undoubtedly play into the favorite image of Mr. Bush as gunslinging cowboy. In the past, the White House has always dismissed that view as a gross caricature, meant to exaggerate Mr. Bush's views so that they could be discredited.
But now, Mr. Bush's allies - and his political advisers - have decided that the image may have its advantages.
"As a Westerner, I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea," his vice president, Dick Cheney, said on television on Sunday. "He's exactly what the circumstances require."
What has surprised the world is the audacity with which Mr. Bush has pursued that vision - to the point today of drawing up detailed plans for making Iraq an American protectorate, for as long as it takes to transform it into a peaceful nation.
Many, including some Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and some people inside the administration, fear that that process could become a trap for Mr. Bush's new doctrine.
In the optimistic view of Mr. Bush's team, the war will be as quick - or quicker - than the first gulf war. Mr. Hussein will be ousted in days, they hope, after his military heeds Mr. Bush's warning tonight that they should signal early surrender, and that it would be foolish to "fight for a dying regime."
What will follow, his aides hope, is jubilation and a shift to an American administration accepted by Iraqis.
But as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, put it succinctly today, "that is not a sure shot." In moments of candor, even some of Mr. Bush's most senior national security aides say they have no idea what they will find after they lift the top off a dictatorship.
"If it's not post-war Japan - if it's more like post-war Yugoslavia - we will have a huge and expensive problem on our hands," one of those advisers conceded recently. "And I can't honestly tell you we are prepared for that, because there is no way to prepare for that."
Mr. Bush himself has acknowledged that he will need allies to help rebuild Iraq. Whether they are willing to help after such an open breach with Washington is unknown.
"We are going to want someone to pay for all this," said Joseph Nye, the dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "And that is when you discover the cost of relying too much on efficiency, and not enough on establishing the legitimacy of your military actions."
The other question is whether Mr. Bush takes his doctrine to what is arguably next logical step: stopping other countries that pose an even greater threat of proliferation.
North Korea? It seems an obvious choice - but it can strike back in ways Mr. Hussein can only dream about, hitting American troops and allies. Iran? Perhaps, but it has an identifiable democracy movement that could suffer immensely from American meddling.
But both countries pose potential threats to the United States at least as imminent as those posed by Iraq. And they are not only points on Mr. Bush's "axis of evil," they are in the sights of the more hawkish members of the Bush administration, who won the Iraq debate.
-------- MILITARY
Bush Ultimatum Hardens Some Positions, and Blurs Others
March 18, 2003
The New York Times
By ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/18/international/europe/19CND-REACT.html
LONDON, March 18 - President Bush's ultimatum to Saddam Hussein resonated across a worried and divided world today, exposing in equal measures an overwhelming opposition to war in many nations, and a growing resignation to its approach.
In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a passionate opponent of the military campaign, condemned the move toward an invasion, saying it meant "certain death to thousands of innocent men, women and children." At the same time, his spokesman, Bela Anda, said Berlin would honor pledges to permit overflights by United States military aircraft and the use of American bases in Germany.
Australia said it would commit 2,000 troops, flying in the face of wide domestic opposition to any deployment. But in Spain, one of the few other governments, along with Japan, to openly back President Bush, Prime Minister José María Aznar emphasized that Madrid's support for Washington - which has been greeted with massive opposition among ordinary Spaniards - did not include combat forces.
"In the case of a military intervention, Spain will not participate in attack missions," Mr. Aznar said to cheers in the Parliament. "As a result, there will not be any Spanish combat troops in the theater of operations."
Underlying the world's response was a sense that corrosive divisions caused by the crisis would fester unhealed whatever the outcome in Baghdad. The European split over Iraq - largely pitting Britain and Spain against France and Germany - was depicted as yet further evidence of what critics regard as the Continent's impotence in international crises.
Europe's divide, said Prime Minister Costas Simitis of Greece, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, illustrates "the need for European countries to finally decide to adopt a common foreign and defense policy" if the Union is to be "effective in any international intervention."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was reported to have said that 30 nations supported the move to disarm Iraq, including Estonia and Uzbekistan.
The Bush ultimatum Monday night triggered a spate of last-minute departures from Iraq by weapons inspectors, diplomats and journalists, while other outsiders readied precautions against the possibility of the war spreading across the region and beyond.
British Airways announced the cancellation of daily flights to Israel and Kuwait. The Dutch and German airlines were also reported to have canceled flights to Kuwait scheduled for Wednesday. Two Indian airlines, Air India and Indian Airlines, said they were preparing to evacuate as many as 50,000 of the 315,000 Indians working in Kuwait if the conflict threatened that country.
In East Africa, the European Union urged its citizens to leave Somalia, although a United Nations security report said there was "no credible information that events in Iraq will stimulate reactions in Somalia." In Washington, the State Department has warned Americans to "re-evaluate" any planned trips to Kenya, in case of terror attacks.
"Al Qaeda is everywhere," said Kenya's national security minister, Christopher N. Murungaru. "Al Qaeda is in mosques. Al Qaeda is in offices. Al Qaeda is in every part of the world, including east Africa."
The divisions go far beyond the region itself, cementing a range of nations from China to Mexico in opposition to America's war plans.
China's newly appointed president, Hu Jintao, took his first cautious steps into international crisis diplomacy in telephone conservations with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Jacques Chirac of France, both strong opponents of the war, who had threatened to veto United Nations Security Council resolutions threatening conflict.
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Kong Quan, said Beijing wanted a peaceful outcome.
"We demand that the Iraq question be solved with the United Nations framework," he said. "China is a responsible member of the international community. Under such circumstances, we still urge peace and want to avoid war."
That was the view, too, from the Vatican, where Pope John Paul II had tried in vain to persuade world leaders to avoid war. The papal spokesman, Joaquín Navarro-Walls, said, "Whoever decides that all peaceful means available under international law are exhausted assumes a grave responsibility before God, his own conscience and history."
In a statement, India's Ministry of External Affairs said, "As long as the peaceful disarmament of Iraq has the slightest chance, we would continue to urge caution, self-restraint and high sense of responsibility on the part of concerned parties."
That sense of unhappiness, resignation and frustration extended to Moscow, where in a largely symbolic gesture the Duma, the lower house of the Russian legislature, postponed a vote on a landmark treaty with the United States to reduce nuclear arsenals. But the Kremlin's reaction appeared more nuanced, reflecting a concern to keep open channels of communication.
In a telephone call initiated by the White House, President Putin "expressed regret that Washington issued an ultimatum and that intensive diplomatic efforts did not lead to a mutually acceptable compromise," the Kremlin's news service said. "It was stressed that in any situation the U.N. and its Security Council are called on to play a central role in ensuring international peace and stability."
It continued, "Both parties emphasized that despite differences in approaches and assessments, maintaining bilateral ties in critical situations like the present one are of special importance."
Mr. Putin's adviser on strategic issues, Marshal Igor Sergeyev, the hawkish former defense minister, sounded more bleak. In an interview with the Interfax news service, Mr. Sergeyev said that "the consequences for international security in the event of a new war in Iraq would be unpredictable and extremely negative."
In the protracted diplomacy leading up to the ultimatum, both the United States and Britain calculated that they had won unequivocal support from several former Warsaw Pact allies of Moscow in Eastern and Central Europe that are now poised to join the European Union.
Those nations - from Poland to Slovakia - seemed more muted in their responses today.
The Czech defense minister, Jaroslav Tvrdik, told journalists after the meeting that Czech soldiers would only take part in cleaning up after the use of any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
Slovakia, which has sent a nuclear chemical and biological warfare defense and cleanup unit to Kuwait, said it would not withdraw its support. "The key to settling the problem is now in the hands of the Iraqi leader," Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda.
Hungary's government said it will not send troops or combat units to Iraq, limiting its support to the use of the Taszar air base, where hundreds of Iraqi émigrés are being trained as liaison officers for American forces in the Persian Gulf. Poland took the firmest line in supporting the United States, pledging 200 troops, most of whom are already in the gulf region.
The eastern European countries are torn between American pressure for support and French threats that their membership in the European Union could be called into question by their backing for the military campaign.
Poland's foreign minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, who visited Paris on Monday, said, "It is clear, unfortunately, that question marks hang over the future and the efficacy of the United Nations, question marks hang over the future of the European Union, as well as over the efficacy of NATO."
In Brussels, the secretary general of NATO, Lord Robertson, said: "What happens next is up to Saddam Hussein."
Perhaps the most plaintive appeal for restraint came from an organization representing the 120 human shields who have traveled to Iraq to try to prevent military strikes.
In a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, the group urged him to protect from bombing the sites where human shields had been deployed. "We call on the public to support the brave men and women from Britain who have placed themselves in harm's way in order to try and protect the innocent people of Iraq," the letter said.
--------
Bush Fails to Win China, Russia Support
March 18, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bush-Iraq.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- On the brink of war with Iraq, President Bush reached out Tuesday to the leaders of Russia and China, two countries that resisted setting an ultimatum for using force against Saddam Hussein. But Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao told Bush they still preferred a U.N.-brokered solution.
Bush called both leaders a day after aborting diplomatic efforts in the United Nations and giving Saddam until 8 p.m. EST Wednesday to surrender power or face a U.S.-led war.
The Russian president ``expressed regret in connection with Washington's decision to issue the ultimatum and the fact that intensive diplomatic efforts had failed to produce a mutually acceptable compromise,'' the Kremlin said.
``The two openly acknowledged that they don't see eye-to-eye on whether or not force should be used to disarm Saddam Hussein,'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. ``They agree about the threats in the region.'' Bush also spoke to China's newly installed president, who told Bush that U.N. weapons inspections must continue despite the U.S. ultimatum to Saddam.
Hu told Bush that China hopes for ``peace instead of war'' and wants a political settlement through the United Nations, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The White House offered no details on the conversation. Fleischer said that ``the presidents shared views on Iraq and North Korea.''
U.S. troops are headed into Iraq one way or another. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that even if Saddam seeks exile U.S. forces will enter Iraq to disarm it -- hopefully without opposition.
On Tuesday, Iraq's leadership rejected Bush's ultimatum. Iraqi television said the decision was made in a joint meeting of the Revolution Command Council -- Iraq's highest executive body -- and the leadership of the ruling Baath party. Saddam chaired the meeting, it said.
Saddam's elder son, Odai Hussein, said in a statement that Bush is ``unstable'' and ``should give up power in America with his family.''
Fleischer responded that ``Iraq has made a series of mistakes, including arming themselves with weapons of mass destruction that have brought this crisis upon itself.
``This is the latest mistake Iraq could make. It would be Saddam's final mistake,'' Fleischer said. ``The president still hopes he will take the ultimatum seriously and leave the country.''
But Fleischer would not rule out a U.S. attack before Bush's 48-hour clock ran out if the Iraqi leader rejects the exile offer. ``Saddam Hussein has to figure out what this means,'' he said.
Bush was spending the day in a White House protected by increased security measures, calling allies and trying to recruit partners for the war. He also met with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, as he has each day.
He was making several calls to world leaders, including , in a prime-time speech Monday night, vowed to strike Iraq with ``the full force and might'' of the U.S. military unless Saddam and his two sons leave Iraq within 48 hours. More than 250,000 American forces are poised for action in the Persian Gulf. ``The tyrant will soon be gone,'' the president pledged
Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle charged that a collapse of the administration's diplomatic efforts had brought an unneeded war.
``I'm saddened, saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war,'' Daschle said in a speech to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. ``Saddened that we have to give up one life because this president couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country.''
Fleischer accused Daschle of being ``inconsistent'' because the Democratic leader had insisted last September -- after Bush accused Democrats of putting politics ahead of the nation's security -- that ``we ought not politicize this war.''
Fleischer said Daschle did not raise objections Monday in a meeting at the White House with other lawmakers shortly before the president's address. ``He said nothing,'' Fleischer said.
Bush likened the Iraq threat to those posed by perpetrators of genocide in the last century. ``In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth,'' he said.
``Responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense, it is suicide,'' Bush said. ``The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now.''
-------- biological weapons
Anthrax attack could kill 123,000
Rapid care would be essential
Tuesday, 18 March, 2003
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2857207.stm
An anthrax weapon aimed at a major city could kill at least 123,000 people even if every victim received treatment, experts have calculated.
US researchers have used a computer model to predict the devastation that would result from the launch of an anthrax bomb or missile on a city the size of New York.
The figures are based on what would happen if a bomb containing 1 kilogram of anthrax spores was dropped on a city of 10 million inhabitants.
The projected number of fatalities is based on the assumption that antibiotics would not be administered for 48 hours until the first symptoms appeared.
If it proved possible to distribute drugs more quickly, then the death toll could be substantially reduced.
However, they warn that inadequacies in the current US emergency response plan may make such a rapid response unlikely.
Lead researcher Dr Lawrence Wein, from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, California, said: "The first people develop symptoms within two days of exposure, and many more would develop symptoms over the next week.
"Our response needs to be measured in hours, not in days or weeks."
Intensive care
Five of the 11 people who inhaled anthrax during the 2001 attacks on the US postal system died despite intensive treatment by large teams of doctors.
The researchers recommend distributing anti-anthrax antibiotics such as Cipro in advance of any major attack.
If this was not possible, then the aim should be to distribute antibiotics to everyone infected within 12 hours.
In the case of an attack on New York City, that would mean supplying the drugs to 1.5 million people.
The only way to do this would be to increase the number of available health professionals dramatically.
The researchers estimate that to keep the death toll down to about 1,000, one health professional would be required for every 700 people in the affected population.
This could only be achieved by training non-emergency medical staff and making maximum use of military personnel and volunteers.
Similar findings
Dr Robert Spencer, an infection control expert at the UK Public Health Laboratory Service, told BBC News Online that the conclusions were similar to those reached by research carried out by the World Health Organization in 1970.
However, he said it was very difficult to determine what would happen should weapons grade anthrax be released on a city, not least because of weather patterns, and the complex effect of wind distribution in a built up area.
Dr Spencer said the only recorded case of anthrax release, from a Soviet installation in 1974, had resulted in surprisingly few cases of illness.
"It would be very difficult to disprove what they are saying," he said.
"My personal feeling is that anthrax is not a weapon of mass destruction, but a weapon of mass hysteria.
"Terrorists like bombs, they know what happens when they cause an explosion, and can make predictions based on that."
Dr Spencer also said that to stock up on vaccines and antibiotics to combat a possible anthrax attack would be to drain resources away from more certain demands for health care.
The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
--------
Testing of Anthrax Drug on Humans May Be Near
March 18, 2003
The New York Times
By ANDREW POLLACK
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/18/business/18BIOT.html
Human Genome Sciences is expected to announce today that it has developed a drug for anthrax that works in animals, one that it hopes could win government approval for human use in as little as a couple of years.
The announcement is a sign that new government biodefense initiatives, combined with a poor financial climate for the biotechnology industry, are inducing even relatively wealthy companies like Human Genome Sciences to develop countermeasures for bioterrorism agents.
Human Genome Sciences, a pioneer in genomics, said it had developed a monoclonal antibody that binds to one of the three toxins produced by the anthrax bacterium. A single dose of the drug, administered before the animals inhaled anthrax spores, significantly increased survival in rabbits and primates, the company said.
The existing vaccine for anthrax requires several shots over 18 months. Human Genome Sciences said its drug could provide protection in advance of anthrax exposure much faster than the vaccine, though such protection might last only 30 to 40 days.
The company, based in Rockville, Md., said its drug might also work after exposure to anthrax. Antibiotics can protect people after exposure by killing anthrax bacteria, but will not help much if the bacteria have already released their toxins.
The company said it would soon ask the Food and Drug Administration for permission to test the drug's safety in healthy human volunteers, which might be enough to win approval. Under rules intended to spur development of drugs for protection against biological, chemical and radioactive weapons, it is not necessary to test whether such drugs actually work in people if that would require unethically exposing people to lethal agents.
Human Genome Sciences is the latest company to announce work in biodefense. Avanir Pharmaceuticals, a small biotechnology company in San Diego, announced last month that it had developed an antibody against anthrax, though it had yet to test it in animals. Vical, also of San Diego, said it hoped to begin tests of an anthrax vaccine this year.
Biodefense work was once of less interest to companies because the drugs were considered to have a small sales potential. But the September 2001 attacks, and the difficulty that biotechnology companies are now having raising money from investors, have made such work more attractive. Moreover, in an initiative code-named Project BioShield, President Bush has proposed spending $6 billion over 10 years, in part to stockpile biodefense drugs, creating a market for such drugs even if an attack never occurs.
"We have been specifically encouraged by BioShield," said William A. Haseltine, chief executive of Human Genome Sciences. Without the prospect that the company's drug might be purchased for inventories, he said, "it's hard to imagine" making the commitment to test and manufacture the anthrax drug.
Human Genome is in a different state from most of the struggling biotechnology companies working in this area, having more than $1 billion in cash and eight drugs in clinical trials. Nevertheless, its stock price has fallen to $7.18, up 20 cents yesterday, from more than $100 in 2000, in part because its drugs are several years from reaching the market. The anthrax drug, which is not expected to require long clinical trials, could be one solution.
"It may provide a route to significant income in short order because the development times for these drugs, rather than 7 to 8 or 10 years, could be as short as two years," Dr. Haseltine said.
Company officials are scheduled to speak at a Wall Street investment conference today.
-------- britain
Briton Quits Cabinet in Protest
Labor's Parliamentary Leader Splits With Blair Over War Policy
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 18, 2003; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42635-2003Mar17?language=printer
LONDON, March 17 -- Robin Cook, the ruling Labor Party's parliamentary leader and a former foreign secretary, quit his cabinet post today to protest Britain's involvement in imminent military action against Iraq without U.N. authorization.
"I cannot support a war without international agreement or domestic support," Cook told a crowded House of Commons tonight in explaining his resignation, the first from the cabinet of Prime Minister Tony Blair because of differences over war policy. Cook's departure highlighted the political vulnerability of Blair, who has been the United States' staunchest ally in the confrontation with Iraq despite widespread opposition among the British public and criticism from abroad.
A second cabinet member, International Development Secretary Clare Short, was weighing whether to resign and said she would announce her decision Tuesday morning, before the House of Commons holds a special day-long debate on the prospective war.
At that session, rebellious lawmakers from Blair's party will seek to pass a motion condemning military action in a last-ditch effort to keep Blair from ordering British forces to join a U.S.-led attack. Many observers expect Blair to muster a sizable majority, because of near-total support on this issue from the opposition Conservative Party.
In an effort to bolster support, Blair has been the prime mover behind the campaign in recent days to have the U.N. Security Council pass a resolution increasing pressure on Iraq. He and his government conceded defeat today, placing the blame both on Iraq for defying the U.N. mandate to disarm and on France for resisting military action.
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott emerged from an emergency cabinet meeting this afternoon to condemn France for declaring it would veto any Security Council resolution leading to war. "We deeply regret that French intransigence and the Iraqi noncompliance have left us with no option but to bring discussions to an end," he said in a statement.
The language was unusual for Blair's government, which until now has generally avoided anti-French rhetoric. But in recent days, officials have noted popular suspicion about French motives and taken off their diplomatic gloves.
The government has also sought to win support for Blair's Iraq policy by emphasizing that he had helped persuade President Bush to renew efforts for a diplomatic breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and by outlining plans for international economic development aid to Iraq after the removal of President Saddam Hussein.
Officials also took the unusual step of releasing a written opinion from Attorney General Peter Goldsmith that war against Iraq was legally justifiable even without a new U.N. resolution.
Cook got a rare standing ovation in the House of Commons tonight after outlining the reasons for his resignation. He said none of the international institutions that Britain belonged to -- the United Nations, the European Union or NATO -- had endorsed military action. He said he believed Iraq posed no serious threat to British or U.S. security. And he said the Bush administration seemed more interested in replacing the government than in disarming the country.
"What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops," Cook told the lawmakers.
Cook stepped down as leader of the House of Commons, the cabinet post he was assigned by Blair after being removed from the position of foreign secretary, which he held under the first Blair government, from 1997 to 2001.
Once a member of Blair's inner circle, Cook has been widely considered a fading political star in recent years. But he is highly respected here for his intellect and rhetorical skills, and lawmakers who oppose the war believe his resignation could help further crystallize opposition to Blair's policy in Tuesday's vote.
In a letter to Blair, Cook was largely amicable in tone. Applauding the "heroic efforts" that Blair had made to achieve a second U.N. resolution, Cook told the prime minister, "It is not your fault that those attempts have failed."
He also stressed differences in their views. "In principle I believe it is wrong to embark on military action without broad international support," Cook wrote. "In practice I believe it is against Britain's interests to create a precedent for unilateral military action."
He expressed dismay that Britain was at odds with France and Germany on the war issue and that Blair's Labor Party was in conflict with other left-of-center political parties in Europe.
In a reply, Blair declared that despite a lack of international will, "My will is as strong as ever, that he [Hussein] must be disarmed. The threatened French veto set back hugely the considerable progress we were making in building consensus among [Security Council] members."
He added, "I passionately believe that if the international community had stayed rock-solid in its determination and unity around Resolution 1441, Saddam could finally have been disarmed without a shot being fired."
The cabinet ministers left their emergency meeting at the prime minister's 10 Downing Street office to a chorus of antiwar protesters just beyond the gates. Earlier in the day, Andrew Murray, chairman of the Stop the War Coalition, said at a news conference that Blair should resign. "I believe he has forfeited the right to lead a democratic country by taking us into a war that people do not support," Murray said.
Murray added that the coalition would stage a protest march Saturday in London to coincide with similar rallies throughout Europe. Organizers are hoping to approach the record turnout a month ago, when more than 1 million protesters marched through the streets of the British capital.
--------
Why I had to leave the cabinet
This will be a war without support at home or agreement abroad
Robin Cook
Tuesday March 18, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,916318,00.html
I have resigned from the cabinet because I believe that a fundamental principle of Labour's foreign policy has been violated. If we believe in an international community based on binding rules and institutions, we cannot simply set them aside when they produce results that are inconvenient to us.
I cannot defend a war with neither international agreement nor domestic support. I applaud the determined efforts of the prime minister and foreign secretary to secure a second resolution. Now that those attempts have ended in failure, we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of no importance.
In recent days France has been at the receiving end of the most vitriolic criticism. However, it is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany is opposed to us. Russia is opposed to us. Indeed at no time have we signed up even the minimum majority to carry a second resolution. We delude ourselves about the degree of international hostility to military action if we imagine that it is all the fault of President Chirac.
The harsh reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading member. Not Nato. Not the EU. And now not the security council. To end up in such diplomatic isolation is a serious reverse. Only a year ago we and the US were part of a coalition against terrorism which was wider and more diverse than I would previously have thought possible. History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition.
Britain is not a superpower. Our interests are best protected, not by unilateral action, but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet tonight the international partnerships most important to us are weakened. The European Union is divided. The security council is in stalemate. Those are heavy casualties of war without a single shot yet being fired.
The threshold for war should always be high. None of us can predict the death toll of civilians in the forthcoming bombardment of Iraq. But the US warning of a bombing campaign that will "shock and awe" makes it likely that casualties will be numbered at the very least in the thousands. Iraq's military strength is now less than half its size at the time of the last Gulf war. Ironically, it is only because Iraq's military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate invasion. And some claim his forces are so weak, so demoralised and so badly equipped that the war will be over in days.
We cannot base our military strategy on the basis that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a seri ous threat. Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of that term - namely, a credible device capable of being delivered against strategic city targets. It probably does still have biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions. But it has had them since the 1980s when the US sold Saddam the anthrax agents and the then British government built his chemical and munitions factories.
Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years and which we helped to create? And why is it necessary to resort to war this week while Saddam's ambition to complete his weapons programme is frustrated by the presence of UN inspectors?
I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to disarm, and our patience is exhausted. Yet it is over 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
We do not express the same impatience with the persis tent refusal of Israel to comply. What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops to action in Iraq.
I believe the prevailing mood of the British public is sound. They do not doubt that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator. But they are not persuaded he is a clear and present danger to Britain. They want the inspections to be given a chance. And they are suspicious that they are being pushed hurriedly into conflict by a US administration with an agenda of its own. Above all, they are uneasy at Britain taking part in a military adventure without a broader international coalition and against the hostility of many of our traditional allies. It has been a favourite theme of commentators that the House of Commons has lost its central role in British politics. Nothing could better demonstrate that they are wrong than for parliament to stop the commitment of British troops to a war that has neither international authority nor domestic support.
· Robin Cook was, until yesterday, leader of the House of Commons
-------- business
U.S. company holds Colombia operations secret
By Rachel Van Dongen
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 18, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030318-26492966.htm
BOGOTA, Colombia - The Web site for California Microwave Systems, a unit of defense giant Northup Grumman, shows an image of a plane soaring against a picturesque mountain range next to a military-looking helicopter whipping its blades furiously in the sky.
"Our real-time intelligence systems have been used in peacekeeping operations in Korea, Haiti and Bosnia, and for counternarcotics operations in Colombia and South America and the Caribbean," the site says.
California Microwave Systems (CMS) specializes in imagery, communications and electronics intelligence.
But that's about all one can find out about the company that was operating an intelligence mission in the Colombian jungle when its single-engine Cessna 208 crashed in guerrilla territory last month.
On Feb. 13, Marxist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fired on the CMS plane as it was trying to make an emergency landing in Caqueta, about 220 miles south of Bogota. Afterward, the rebels executed American Thomas John Janis, 56, and Colombian Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz, and captured the Cessna's three other passengers, all U.S. citizens and Defense Department contractors.
They are being held in a high-stakes game of diplomatic poker in which FARC is demanding that they be traded for guerrillas in Colombian jails.
Washington has refused to negotiate, and a massive manhunt is under way.
CMS is just one of at least seven private military companies operating in Colombia's jungles, where the U.S. mission is increasingly shifting from counternarcotics to counterterrorism.
The companies, and their myriad subcontractors, are not required to disclose their activities or personnel to any government agency, making their operations impossible to track or even keep up with.
A recent telephone call to the offices of CMS was referred to Northup Grumman's press division. Northup Grumman's spokesman would not elaborate on a brief statement released after the kidnappings. The statement confirmed that three employees were missing but did not name them.
The spokesman would not say how many CMS employees work in Colombia.
On Feb. 20, President Bush sent a letter to Congress pegging the number of temporary and permanent military personnel in Colombia at 208 and the number of civilian contractors at 279.
Congress has placed a limit of 400 American military personnel and 400 civilian contractors working at any time. The limits apply to Plan Colombia, an anti-narcotics assistance package on which the United States has spent nearly $2 billion since 1998.
But the cap can be exceeded in an emergency, such as the recent kidnapping, and for the first time since Plan Colombia began, there are 411 American military personnel on the ground in this war-torn Andean country.
Peter Singer, a foreign policy fellow with the Brookings Institution who wrote the upcoming book "Corporate Warriors," argues that there are ways to get around the cap.
He estimates that as many as 600 contract employees could be working in Colombia at any given moment.
That's because the U.S. government has long hired non-U.S. citizens, who don't count toward the cap, Mr. Singer said."
Paul Watzlavick, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, said the embassy is only responsible for estimating the number of contract employees related to Plan Colombia.
As for the larger number of those not related to the anti-narcotics program, Mr. Watzlavick estimated that it was "pretty evenly split" between social services, such as aid to displaced people, and military operations such as protecting the oil pipeline in Arauca, which is not part of Plan Colombia.
Big contractors working in Colombia include Northup Grumman, which operates U.S. radar sites, and DynCorp, which runs the State Department's aerial spraying to defoliate coca plants in the same guerrilla-ridden territory where the CMS plane crashed.
Each low-flying spray plane is accompanied by a search-and-rescue squadron.
According to a September 2001 General Accounting Office report, "Aerial eradication missions are dangerous, and as a normal course, helicopter gunships and search-and-rescue aircraft accompany the eradication aircraft."
In fact, at least three DynCorp pilots have been killed in accidents since 1997. Spray planes have been hit by hostile gunfire at least 70 times during the past year, U.S. officials say.
In February 2001, American contractor helicopters came under rebel fire when they swooped in to save a Colombian National Police aircraft shot down by FARC in Caqueta while on a spray mission.
Though Americans were not allowed to operate the helicopters' guns, they had M-16 assault rifles, and all DynCorp personnel carry pistols.
As of late March 2001, there were a little more than 100 U.S. DynCorp contractors in Colombia, according to the American Embassy in Bogota and a roughly equal number of third-country nationals and Colombian citizens.
In the wake of the CMS abductions, a U.S. official vowed that American policy would continue unchanged.
"Contractors are going to provide a big role in Plan Colombia for some time to come," said the official, who asked not to be named.
As for whether security protocol would be altered in the wake of the incident, another U.S. official said, "We simply cannot provide escorts for every plane. It's dangerous out there."
A third U.S. official said spray planes are afforded the extra security because they typically fly so low, while intelligence missions typically fly at higher altitudes.
The Cessna 208 was flying at 17,000 feet when it had engine trouble.
Adam Isacson, a Colombia analyst at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, which supports demilitarization of the conflict, argued that the CMS incident is likely to increase the role of contractors in Colombia.
"God forbid this should happen if they were uniformed military personnel. This whole episode has hardly made it to the front pages here," Mr. Isacson said.
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US firms get $1.5bn deal to rebuild Iraq
Oliver Burkeman in Washington
Tuesday March 18, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,916508,00.html
The United States plans to transform the infrastructure of Iraq within a year of a war ending, but has sidelined aid agencies by allocating almost all the funds available to private American firms.
Non-governmental organisations and the UN would get just $50m, a tiny fraction of the $1.5bn being offered to private companies, according to more than 100 pages of confidential contract documents leaked to the Wall Street Journal.
In the Azores at the weekend, President George Bush emphasised the need for a significant UN role in a postwar Iraq, a stance the administration considers essential to maintaining some degree of multilateral backing for military action and its aftermath.
But Washington's plan - backed by a request for cash that the White House is expected to submit to Congress soon - envisages a rapid reconstruction process led by US corporations, repairing Iraq's infrastructure and reforming its educational, healthcare and financial systems, with many results evident before a year has passed.
US administration officials would act as "shadow ministers", keeping a close eye on Iraq's new government.
The UN development programme, which has traditionally coordinated many postwar rebuilding schemes, estimates that reconstruction could cost $10bn a year, over at least three years - whereas the request to Congress is expected to demand a total of $1.8bn for reconstruction in the first year, and $800m for humanitarian assistance, the Journal reported.
Washington has restricted the initial bidding process - for contracts worth $900m - to American firms, invoking emergency regulations that allow companies to sidestep the usual open procedures.
A subsidiary of Halliburton, the firm formerly headed by the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, is a member of one of four consortia whose bids were invited in a secret process last month. Several of the firms are major Republican party donors.
The Bush administration intends to make sure the Iraqi people know that the US has taken the central role in rebuilding, in an effort to shore up public opinion there, the leaked documents suggest.
Officials at USAID, the government department coordinating the plan, believe that a more multilateral approach could see projects getting bogged down.
Ellen Yount, a USAID spokesperson, said non-American firms were not excluded from the process because they could serve in subcontract roles, and might be candidates for future bidding rounds.
The USAID plans have been roundly condemned by NGOs and representatives of the EU and UN.
Mark Malloch Brown, head of the UN development programme, said the one-year deadline "flies in the face of human history," while Chris Patten, the EU's external affairs commissioner, has called the US approach "exceptionally maladroit".
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Canada's Leader Rejects Sending Troops to War Chretien Cites U.N. Obstacle
By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 18, 2003; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43008-2003Mar17?language=printer
TORONTO, March 17 -- Canada will not join a U.S.-led war on Iraq without a new resolution by the U.N. Security Council, Prime Minister Jean Chretien told the House of Commons today.
Chretien, who received loud applause in Parliament, said: "Canada worked very hard to find a compromise to bridge the gap in the Security Council. Unfortunately, we were not successful. If military action proceeds without a new resolution of the Security Council, Canada will not participate."
While Chretien said that Canada's position has been clear -- that the government would join only a U.N.-sanctioned use of force -- critics have said he had sent conflicting signals over the past weeks.
Last month, Canada asked the United Nations to set an early deadline for Iraq to disarm, and the prime minister called leaders in a number of countries, seeking support for the proposal. Last week, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations delivered a "Canadian compromise" that would have extended the disarmament deadline, but that compromise was rejected by the United States and France.
Canada considers itself among the closest allies of the United States, but according to recent public opinion polls, a majority of Canadians oppose a war without a second U.N. resolution.
Chretien made his statement today after the United States, Britain and Spain, in the face of a veto threat by France, withdrew their call for a U.N. vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq.
Steven Hogue, a spokesman for the prime minister, said Canada had reached its decision "because we feel that it is better for peace to work under the U.N. umbrella."
Hogue made his comments before President Bush's address at 8 p.m., but said that no matter what Bush said, "Canada will not change" its position. Hogue said a small contingent of Canadian soldiers serving in an exchange program with U.S. troops had been authorized to fight alongside them despite the fact that Canada will not join the war. Thirty-five Canadian soldiers are serving with U.S. units in a long-term personnel exchange program. Canadian officials have said it is unlikely the troops will be on the front lines.
Hogue said those officers would remain. "We are not pulling the exchange troops back," Hogue said. "My understanding is they are not on the ground with guns at the border of Iraq. Most likely, they are people sitting at desks, and we are comfortable with that."
Alexa McDonough, foreign policy spokeswoman for the opposition New Democratic Party, said Canada should ask those officers to return home. "Once Bush declares an illegal war on Iraq, the terms of reference will change for those officers," McDonough told reporters. "We should bring them home quickly."
Other members of Canada's opposition also criticized the government, saying they were disappointed Canada would not be standing with the United States. "Canada finds itself frozen on the outside," said Stephen Harper, leader of the Canadian Alliance. "In all the great conflicts of the 20th century, Canada and the U.S. have fought side by side. Frankly, the reality is Canada was often at the forefront of those conflicts. In threats of world security, democracy and freedom, we are disappointed we are no longer a leader."
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China Hopes Conflict Can Still Be Avoided
New Foreign Minister Makes Plea for Peace
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 18, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42960-2003Mar17?language=printer
BEIJING, March 17 -- A new foreign minister took office today in China, saying his country still hoped that war would not erupt between the United States and Iraq.
Minutes after being installed in his new post, Li Zhaoxing, a one-time ambassador to Washington who has a reputation for being tough on the United States, told reporters to "keep your fingers crossed for peace."
China, one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council all of whom have veto power, has consistently expressed its opposition to a U.S.-led war but had not said whether it would veto a now-abandoned U.N. resolution on the issue.
This evening, Li told the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, that "China is willing to make the utmost effort to avoid war," the official New China News Agency reported.
China's rubber-stamp legislature, the Na