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NUCLEAR
Depleted Uranium May Cause Environmental Hazards in Iraq
Manufacturing Victory
German day ahead power gains as nukes go offline
Franks Foresees a Weapons Hunt at 'Several Thousand Sites'
U.S. Accuses Iran of Cheating on Nuclear Arms Pact
U.S. Official Urges Iran Nuke Inspections
China Says N.Korea Offers to Scrap Nuclear Program
N Korea nuclear claim 'hushed up'
N.Korea Offers Plan to Deal with Nuclear Capability
N.Korea Wants Aid, Festivals but No Nuclear Talk
US nuclear sub spotted near Kamchatka, watching exercises
Ukraine says Chernobyl nuclear shield is safe
US awards $1.05 bln contract to clean weapons site
MILITARY
After the Airstrikes, Just Silence
Attorney Asks Why Halliburton Not Being Pursued
Blair: No Doubt Saddam Had Banned Weapons
Aerospace & Defense Companies
Tests Cast Doubt on Chemical Find in Iraq
False Alarm?
Second test positive
Paris and Berlin prepare alliance to rival Nato
Iraq war legacy: cluster bombs, wounded civilians
Oil-rich Iraq looks elsewhere for fuel
IRAQ - Freed POWs leave camp hailing President Bush
U.S. ready to scrap oil-for-food
Agency: Jordanian Diplomats Back in Iraq
Danger, dirt and death in the desert
Israeli court refuses to outlaw army's use of deadly dart shells
Israeli Calls for 'Regime Change' in Iran, Syria
Israel Wants EU to be Sidelined in Mideast Deal: Report
Fighting is over but the deaths go on
RAND and Qatar to launch policy institute
Saudi telethon raises millions for Iraqis
Pakistan Makes Peace Overture to India
Russia to boost military presence along Tajik-Afghan border
Spy case will be hard to pursue
'90 Trip to China a Turning Point for Ex-FBI Agent
Anger, horror at war's violence - WAR DIARY
Postwar Reconstruction Efforts Have Had Dicey History
Iraq war's color lines
Banfield Lashes Out at Own Network
SMOKING GUN STINKS OF SPOOKS
Saddam link to al-Qaeda in doubt
Rumsfeld heralds 'first strike' era
Embedded Reporters A Good Idea - for the Pentagon
Panel Backs Use of Embedded Reporters
Franks: No Security Breaches With Embeds
Ukraine Law Prohibits Media Censorship
Iraqis target Gen. Franks for war crimes trial
ENERGY AND OTHER
U.S. Details Hyrdrogen Energy Plan
California Pulls Plug on Battery Electric Vehicles
U.S. Fosters International Hydrogen Partnership
Manitoba to make ethanol-blend gasoline mandatory
ACTIVISTS
Peaceful activists caught in fight
Antiwar Protesters Say Cops Used Excessive Force
Iraqis protest at Baghdad talks
Anti-war carnival arrives at BP AGM
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted Uranium May Cause Environmental Hazards in Iraq
Rosanne Skirble,
28 Apr 2003,
Voice of America
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=A84192B7-B136-47BC-B75694965E5EBB0A
Washington - During the war in Iraq, thousands of rounds of munitions made with depleted uranium have been fired from Abrams battle tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and A-10 attack aircraft. The highly effective weapon can easily bore through an armored tank.
Depleted uranium was first used in combat in 1991 during the first Gulf War and again by the United States forces in the Balkans and Afghanistan. The uranium hardens the tips of bullets and artillery shells and greatly improves their ability to penetrate armored targets.
On impact, depleted uranium, a toxic heavy metal, bursts into flames and is dispersed as a dusty residue in the smoke. It sticks to vehicles and leeches into the soil. It can also be inhaled or ingested from contaminated food or water from anybody nearby. Dan Fahey, a U.S. Navy veteran who has written extensively about the potential health effects of depleted uranium, says in the 1991 Gulf War, most of the shooting took place in sparely populated desert regions. In Iraq, depleted uranium munitions were used in some densely populated areas.
"That included the strafing runs in downtown Baghdad and tank battles in cities," he said. "And that brings up the need for very rapid assessments of the environment in those areas, to cordon off areas of contamination to protect people from being exposed to depleted uranium that has been left behind."
Dan Fahey says studies of laboratory animals and human cells, research largely funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, show a high risk of disease with increased exposure to depleted uranium.
"It has been found that depleted uranium causes cancer. It causes DNA damage. It can cause cell death. It can cause neurological disorders and also reproductive effects," said Mr. Fahey. "And the scientists who have conducted these studies have called for studies to [learn more]."
Pentagon health official Michael Kilpatrick says that while laboratory animals exposed to depleted uranium have indeed developed tumors, there is no conclusive evidence that humans exposed to the material face a similar health risk.
"And, in one set of animals these tumors are in fact cancers, but these animals do develop tumors or cancers from other heavy metals also," said Mr. Kilpatrick. "So, these are not unique effects with depleted uranium being the only cause. I think that we need to do these studies, but I think there is a great deal of science that needs to go on before you can say that this in fact can translate into a health effect in a human being." One such ongoing study, Dr. Kilpatrick says, focuses on veterans exposed to high concentrations of depleted uranium dust or bits of shrapnel in their bodies from the 1991 Gulf War.
"The study of some 70 of these individuals that has been conducted at the University of Maryland, Baltimore by Dr. Melissa McDermott, has not shown any medical effects due to their depleted uranium exposure," he explained. "And, this is now some 12 years after that exposure occurred. Those individuals who have fragments of depleted uranium in their body are excreting high levels of depleted uranium in their urine. But their kidneys have adapted and there is no sign of any kidney damage."
Nor, he said, has there been any sign of birth defects in their children.
Dan Fahey says the study is too small to produce any significant data. He wants that study expanded and another one begun on veterans of the current conflict.
"The proper way to address this problem is to do proper health studies and proper environmental studies and to let the scientists do what they need to do to clarify the effects of this issue," he said. "But unfortunately the way it has worked in this country is that despite what the scientists say on this issue, decisions are made at the political level. That has brought about the Pentagon's position that there is nothing to worry about on this issue, because their policies are driven by politics and not by science."
The Pentagon's Michael Kilpatrick counters that public research on the health effects of depleted uranium continues. And he says any veteran of the 1991 Gulf War with concerns about it can obtain a free analysis of their urine.
"And some 300 have sent samples in. And, those urines are almost across the board normal. Several [had] high levels, which was probably due to their dietary intake in an area of the country where they live," said Mr. Kilpatrick. "But, if we look at doing other studies, if the uranium level is normal in a person today, Dr. McDermott has said there is no reason to have any concern about their depleted uranium exposure."
Still, many experts are not convinced. The British Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific institution, has urged that more research be done on depleted uranium contamination. And a report released April 23, 2003 by the United Nations Environment Program called for a detailed scientific assessment of sites that were hit by the fortified weapons.
The UNEP report says intensive use of DU weapons "has likely caused environmental contamination of as yet unknown levels or consequences" and recommends that guidelines be distributed immediately on how to minimize the risk of accidental exposure.
In a written statement, UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said, "Not only do environmental hazards threaten human health and well-being, but they can impede aid operations."
Pentagon health official Michael Kilpatrick says depleted uranium contamination is not a major health concern of U.S. military officials right now, although he says fragments of depleted uranium penetrators embedded in the ground could pose a threat to soil and water. In post-war Iraq, he says, proper sewage, sanitation and clean water are far more urgent health issues, and should be addressed first.
--------
Manufacturing Victory
Monday, April 28 2003
By Ramzy Baroud
PalestineChronicle.com
http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=2003042801535176
"Sure, 'Iraq is free' and everything is grand, for maybe a month or so, before more bloodshed restarts somewhere, before terrorists strike, and calls for vengeance dominate our lives again .."
In the early days of the war on Iraq, just after the news was confirmed that the invading British troops had in fact occupied the tiny port town of Umm al-Qasr, a crowd of Iraqis encircled an al-Jazeera cameraman and reporter.
The scene was taken in a hurry, at the outskirts of Umm al-Qasr, Al Jazeera said. Many faces forced themselves above the shoulders of an older man who was the one interviewed. They all screamed on their own, some demanding water and food and others angrily screaming, just because they can.
An older man, with a darkened, tired face, drowning in wrinkles and washed with sweat fought for a spot, struggled to reach the microphone and finally burst out with screams. "Enough humiliation, enough degradation. All of them are shit. Saddam took us from one defeat to another, and now to occupation. The Americans and the British are stripping our women's cloths to look for weapons. They are here for oil. No one cares about us. Just leave us alone, leave us alone."
Maybe the Iraqi man was terrified from the consequences of his inflaming remarks, a backlash from the Iraqi regime or the occupying forces. But apparently, the level of anger, humiliation, defiance, and a complex ray of emotions were much stronger than fear. The chances were that the man never saw himself on television, since his town had no access to electricity, and maybe he didn't care.
Social scientists, on a group level, and psychiatrists, mostly on an individual level, strived throughout the years to explain why we behave the way we do. I wonder what the circumstances were that drove an old Iraqi man to declare to the whole world "they are all shit"? I am equally interested to know when the nations of the world reach a similar conclusion, not necessarily to make a similar declaration, but to realize the injustice of it all.
Following the end of the Gulf War in 1991, America declared victory and the celebrations began. Iraq was left with tons of depleted Uranium that is destined to remain there for millions of years. Iraq was also left with harsher sanctions that claimed the lives of over a million innocents. But the victory was beyond sweet then, and the dancing in the streets brought Americans from all walks of life together like never before.
It was not about oil then, and it's not about oil now, we were told, and most of us agreed. It was about liberating Kuwait, restoring democracy (what democracy in Kuwait?), it was about "containing Saddam Hussein", it was about ridding Iraq of its Weapons of Mass Destruction (where are these weapons?), it was about regime change in Iraq, it was about protecting Iraq's neighbors, it was about redrawing the map of the Middle East, it was about liberating the Iraqi people. But never had the United States any intention in controlling Iraq's oil reserve (which could reach 200 billion barrels of oil soon, compared to 35 billion barrels acquired by the US), or creating permanent military bases in the Middle East, to contain Iran, threaten Syria and protect Israel. If you say so, you are paranoid, pathetic and simply stupid. Yep, the American government would designate nearly one hundred billion dollars (estimated to last for less than a year) during one of its worst financial struggles in years, just to help those poor miserable Iraqis.
As silly as such a possibility might sound, Gallop polls are telling us that a great majority of Americans believe it. True, corporate media deserves to be blamed for deceiving the people, but how much of the blame lies on the shoulders of the people themselves?
Why don't Americans ask why aren't we storming African countries, East and West to "restore democracy"? They are certainly in a much a greater need than Iraq for this rare commodity that is only defined by the United States. Perhaps our troops will head to Africa's dictatorships when cocoa and rubber prove valuable in the international market, especially since the distance between Congo and Israel is way too far and we were promised no Armageddon there anyway.
Why don't Americans ask why their government allows itself to develop, own and use Weapons of Mass Destruction (The nuclear bomb in Japan, Agent Orange in Vietnam, and Deplete Uranium in Iraq and Yugoslavia), but we must go to war to rid Iraq of its weapons, although, oops we didn't find any such weapons in Iraq anyway? Are we just too distracted by the fabricated stories in which our media is keeping us engaged so that we don't dare ask the relevant questions: 'Coalition forces located a yacht were Saddam Hussein's son Udi used to have orgies' ..'Coalition forces located torture chambers where Iraqi Olympic team members were kept if they failed to perform well' .. and many more tales that shall generate Hollywood hundreds of millions of dollars for years to come since our chaps would love to kick Iraqi ass in movies for such cruelty.
Aren't we concerned of what our marginalization of the United Nations would cost us in the long run? Isn't anyone worried about where our arrogance might lead us? (Even France should be 'punished', Powell says for rejecting our Iraq war, so much for democracy.) Have we all forgotten how terrorism is directly manufactured by our own irresponsible foreign policy? Is this the best we could have done to honor the memory of 9/11 victims, and are these our vows that resound, "never again"?
I don't know what it will take for us to acquire the courage of that Iraqi man of Umm al-Qasr to break out from pain and scream in defiance against those who are gambling on our fate and our future, who manipulate our losses to serve their interests, who use our bodies like bridges to cross from one nation to another, from one conquest to another.
Sure, "Iraq is free" and everything is grand, for maybe a month or so, before more bloodshed restarts somewhere, before terrorists strike, and calls for vengeance dominate our lives again. Then, most likely, an 'embodied' academic or experts will appear on Fox news to tell us how 'militant Islam' is the one to blame for the world's evil, and conveniently, most of us will readily agree.
-------- germany
German day ahead power gains as nukes go offline
REUTERS GERMANY:
April 28, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20581/newsDate/28-Apr-2003/story.htm
FRANKFURT - German day ahead electricity prices soared last week as two more nuclear power stations will be taken off the grid for maintenance in the coming days, reducing power output, traders said.
In the over-the-counter (OTC) market, day ahead baseload last dealt at around 26.8 euros ($29.49) compared to 25-25.5 euros in Thursday trade, while peakload firmed four euros to 34 euros. At the German EEX power bourse, spot prices were fixed more than four euros higher at 26.75 euros for baseload and almost six euros higher at 32.79 euros for peakload.
The 1,344 megawatt (MW) Gundremmingen B plant will be closed on Sunday for approximately 20 days, while capacity at the 926 MW Philippsburg 1 plant will be halved on Monday evening before it will be shut for a three-week maintenance period on May 1. "Monday power prices exceed Friday prices due to the planned outages, while it also remains unclear when the Biblis reactor as well as Isar 1 will return," said one trader.
The Hesse state environment ministry, which is supervising Biblis, said last week the RWE-owned 1,225 MW Biblis A reactor continues to be shut and it would not approve a restart until the plant's faulty cooling system, which has caused the prolonged outage, would meet the required standards.
RWE said it would submit a detailed report of the state of the cooling system at the beginning of next week.
Traders said week ahead contracts for week 19 were significantly higher than prices for week 18 when demand will be limited due to the May 1 public holiday.
Week 19 baseload was cited in the range of 23.75-24.25 euros compared to 21 euros in week 18, while peakload was at 34.5-36.5 euros compared to 29.5 euros.
May contracts traded a touch higher at 22.8 euros and at 33.5-33.75 euros for baseload and peakload, respectively.
Calendar Year 2004 baseload held firm at 25.8-25.9 euros.
-------- inspections
Franks Foresees a Weapons Hunt at 'Several Thousand Sites'
April 28, 2003
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/28/international/worldspecial/28RUMS.html
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, April 27 - Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of allied forces in the Persian Gulf, said today that the hunt for unconventional weapons in Iraq would require scouring "several thousand sites," a process that experts said could take months.
"We have about 1,000 sites that we knew about before this point," General Franks told reporters here. "We'll go through all of those. The whole thrust of this is probably going to carry us through several thousand sites up in that country."
The failure of military teams to find evidence of illegal chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, a major reason the United States attacked Iraq, has forced the Bush administration to rethink the scope of the search.
The administration is tripling the number of scientists and engineers assigned to the operation, to about 1,500. President Bush has also said that Iraqi officials have told American investigators that Saddam Hussein may have ordered some of the illicit weapons destroyed or dispersed before the start of the war.
Military teams have turned up tantalizing prospects, including a dozen suspicious 55-gallon drums found propped up with gravel on Friday in an open field near the northern Iraqi town of Baiji. Tests indicated that one drum might contain the nerve agent cyclosarin and a blister agent that could be mustard gas.
But General Franks warned against jumping to conclusions.
"What we want to do is not come across like Baghdad Bob," he said, referring to Iraq's former information minister, "and say we have it before we have it. But we do believe that it is there, and we're going to continue to get through all the sites."
General Franks's comments came after he and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld met here with top officials of the United Arab Emirates, including Abu Dhabi's crown prince, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan. On Monday, Mr. Rumsfeld is to hold a town-hall-style meeting with troops in Doha, Qatar.
Mr. Rumsfeld is on a weeklong trip to the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan to thank regional allies for their support in the Iraq war, to promise to help guide Iraq through postwar reconstruction, and to consult his senior commanders and regional leaders about America's military commitments after the fall of Mr. Hussein's government. He is also expected to visit Iraq.
Speaking to reporters traveling with him, Mr. Rumsfeld said he told officials here that "the United States intends to do what is necessary with coalition partners to ensure there's a secure environment in Iraq," to nurture an interim Iraqi civilian authority and, ultimately, to support a permanent elected Iraqi government.
The emirates allowed American U-2 spy planes, a Global Hawk reconnaissance aircraft and KC-10 refueling jets to fly from Al Dhafra air base and a second airstrip that was hastily prepared after Turkey rejected the Pentagon's request to use air bases there. The port of Jebel Ali is a major Navy logistics hub.
The oil-rich emirates, a loose federation of seven former sheikdoms at the southern end of the gulf, have already played an important role in Iraq's reconstruction, Mr. Rumsfeld said. They sent the first relief ship into Iraq, carrying 700 tons of food, medicine and supplies. They are also re-equipping six Iraqi hospitals that were looted and building a plant in Basra that will convert 250,000 gallons of sea water into drinking water each day.
Mr. Rumsfeld and General Franks said American forces were making steady progress capturing Iraqis on the administration's most-wanted list, thanks in large part to Iraqis providing tips. Lt. Gen. Hossam Muhammad Amin, the Iraqi chief liaison to United Nations weapons inspectors, surrendered today.
General Franks said the most well-known Iraqi prisoner, Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister, was answering interrogators' questions, but it was too soon to tell if he was being truthful or helpful.
Neither General Franks nor Mr. Rumsfeld offered any new clues about Mr. Hussein's fate. "I'm not sure," General Franks said. "I've seen nothing recently that convinced me he's alive."
-------- iran
U.S. Accuses Iran of Cheating on Nuclear Arms Pact
April 28, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-usa-iran.html
GENEVA (Reuters) - A senior U.S. official on Monday accused Iran -- already under pressure from Washington over events in Iraq -- of cheating on its obligations under a key global pact to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
John Wolf, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Non- Proliferation, said that Iran had an "alarming, clandestine program" to get hold of nuclear technology as part of an illegal weapons effort.
Despite saying it wants nuclear energy only to generate electricity, "Iran is going down the same path of denial and deception that handicapped international inspections in North Korea and Iraq," Wolf declared.
President Bush labeled the three nations members of an "axis of evil" in a landmark speech at the United Nations in New York in September last year, accusing them of aiding terrorism and trying to build nuclear weapons.
Wolf was speaking at the opening of a two-week gathering at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva to prepare for a 2005 conference on reviewing and updating the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
"Iran provides perhaps the most fundamental challenge ever faced by the NPT," he declared.
Iran, one of 187 signatories of the treaty, insists that it is working on a legal program based on the peaceful use of nuclear energy for economic development, including mining its own uranium and building plant to enrich it for use in atomic reactors.
But Wolf said recent revelations by private groups and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, "raise profound doubts about Iran's intentions."
Comparing Iran to North Korea and Iraq, which both had international inspections, Wolf said the world had "already seen the pattern of cheat and retreat before -- of begrudging compromises on process but obstinacy on real disclosure."
Iraq, another signatory to the NPT, was also accused by the United States and Britain of developing a secret nuclear program, as well as chemical and biological weapons, before they invaded the country last month and ousted its rulers.
Searches by U.S. and British forces have so far failed to find evidence of such weaponry, though both governments insist they will do so eventually.
In recent days, U.S. officials have suggested that Shi'ite Muslim Iran has been interfering in Iraq by pushing for a political role for Iraq's Shi'ites -- charges Iran has denied.
Wolf said the problem with Iran was not a bilateral one with the United States, which has had no diplomatic relations with Tehran for more than two decades. "This is an issue between Iran and the rest of the world," he said.
Last week France, which opposed the war on Iraq, itself urged Iran to accept stricter international inspections of its nuclear program and open up more sites to the IAEA.
Tehran has yet to sign an IAEA agreement that would give inspectors virtually unlimited access to any site at any time, and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin urged Iran to sign this Additional Protocol during a visit last week.
--------
U.S. Official Urges Iran Nuke Inspections
April 28, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Iran.html
GENEVA (AP) -- Iran must come clean about its nuclear program and submit to increased inspections by a global monitoring body, a U.S. official told an international conference Monday.
"Despite professions of transparency and peaceful intent, Iran is going down the same path of denial and deception that handicapped international inspections in North Korea and Iraq," said John Wolf, U.S. assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation. Advertisement
"We have seen the pattern of cheat and retreat before -- of begrudging compromises on process but obstinacy on real disclosure," Wolf said at the opening of a two-week meeting on the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The conference is one of the meetings that precedes a review of the 188-nation accord in 2005.
There was no immediate reaction to Wolf's remarks from Iran. In the past, Iranian officials have said they have nothing to hide because their nuclear program is only meant to generate electricity.
The United States has accused Iran, which is building a nuclear power plant in the southern part of the country, of having secret plans to produce nuclear weapons.
The International Atomic Energy Agency oversees compliance with the nonproliferation treaty. The head of the Vienna-based agency visited Iranian nuclear sites -- including a uranium mine -- in February and is expected to report to the agency's board in June.
Wolf said the agency should get tough in its probes of Iran's program.
"What is presented as 'compliance' may in fact not be real," he said. "The International Atomic Energy needs to ask the hard questions and get complete answers.
"It needs to go wherever necessary to find the truth and it needs to measure each answer against Iran's pattern to date of denial and deception," Wolf said.
Under the nonproliferation treaty, the declared nuclear powers of the 1960s -- the United States, China, France, Russia and Britain -- were meant to reduce their arsenals, try to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and ensure nuclear technology was only used for peaceful purposes. However, the accord has failed to stop the growth in the number of nuclear powers.
-------- korea
China Says N.Korea Offers to Scrap Nuclear Program
Mon April 28, 2003
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=3AQORBKUFVKOWCRBAELCFEY?type=topNews&storyID=2643292
BEIJING - North Korea offered to scrap its nuclear program during talks with the United States in Beijing last week if Washington dropped its hostile attitude, Western diplomats briefed by a Chinese official said on Monday.
Pyongyang also offered to suspend ballistic missile tests and stop missile exports, said the diplomats who asked not to be identified.
North Korean negotiators told their U.S. counterparts nuclear inspectors would be allowed into their country if Washington dropped its hostile attitude, a European Union diplomat quoted the Chinese Foreign Ministry's top North Korea expert as saying.
It was unclear why China held the briefing for about 20 EU diplomats, a rare occurrence.
U.S. administration sources said last week North Korean officials told Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly in Beijing it already had atomic bombs and could make more because it had reprocessed thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods.
But the Chinese Foreign Ministry painted an entirely different picture of the April 23-25 talks, which Beijing hosted in the hope of ending a nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang which began last October.
The Western diplomats quoted the Chinese Foreign Ministry official as saying North Korea backed down from its previous insistence on bilateral talks with the United States and told Kelly it had no preference for any particular format for negotiations.
But North Korea warned of extraordinary measures if the United States played its "usual tricks," the diplomats quoted the Chinese official as saying.
U.S. negotiators made no comment on North Korea's proposals other than saying Washington would study them, the diplomats said.
They said they were told North Korean negotiator Li Gun did not make any threats about "selling, testing or possessing nuclear weapons" during the formal sessions of the Beijing talks.
But there was ample opportunity to do so privately, the diplomats said.
The Washington Post has quoted a U.S. official as saying Li Gun took Kelly aside to tell him that North Korea already had nuclear weapons.
U.S. officials have said the reported admission came as no surprise to Washington, which already believed Pyongyang possessed one or two atomic bombs.
----
N Korea nuclear claim 'hushed up'
By David Rennie in Washington and Hannah Cleaver in Berlin
28/04/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$0IBOC2EQ2MMTXQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2003/04/28/wkor28.xml/
A "poisonous" row is brewing in Washington over allegations that diplomats knew for weeks that North Korea claimed to be reprocessing nuclear fuel rods but hushed the matter up for fear of derailing peace talks.
The world first knew of North Korean claims to be processing weapons-grade plutonium 10 days ago when the isolated Stalinist regime issued a statement saying it had told America in March about the reprocessing.
That statement was initially dismissed as an error. But angry American officials told yesterday's Washington Post that North Korea passed on a message about reprocessing during an earlier meeting with two State Department officials at the United Nations in New York.
The State Department kept the Koreans' claim largely under wraps and an administration official predicted: "Heads will roll over this."
Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, told reporters that North Korea's statements in March were contradictory and ambiguous, adding that all information was shared "appropriately".
The Washington row came as a German businessman was arrested on suspicion of trying to smuggle aluminium pipes to North Korea, where they could be used to build centrifuges to refine raw uranium into weapons-grade material. A manager of the firm, Optronics, based in Konigsbronn, denies ignoring an order barring it from exporting the pipes.
• Robin Gedye writes: A high-level North Korean delegation headed by Choe Su-hon, deputy foreign minister, will visit Britain this week as part of the Government's efforts to defuse the escalating crisis with Pyongyang.
----
N.Korea Offers Plan to Deal with Nuclear Capability
April 28, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea has proposed a plan that would "ultimately deal with" their nuclear capability and missile activities but wanted something major in return, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Monday.
North Korea put the plan forward during three-way talks in Beijing last week with the United States and China at which U.S. sources have said North Korea admitted that it had nuclear weapons, an admission likely to make it more difficult to resolve the six-month standoff over its nuclear capabilities.
"The North Koreans acknowledged a number of things that they were doing and in effect said these are now up for further discussion," Powell told reporters in response to a question.
"They did put forward a plan that would ultimately deal with their nuclear capability and their missile activities but they of course expect something considerable in return," he said. "We are studying that plan."
President Bush last week said North Korea was "back to the old blackmail game" and he and other U.S. officials stressed that the United States would not be threatened or intimidated by North Korea.
Powell, however, did not repeat the long-standing U.S. position that it would not offer North Korea inducements to give up its nuclear programs, which Washington fears could be used to threaten South Korea and the 37,000 U.S. troops based there as well as other nations in the region.
On Friday U.S. officials said North Korea had made proposals but suggested these largely repeated things Pyongyang had demanded in the past.
The North Koreans "talked at some points about giving up nuclear weapons, about doing that in return for extra deals that would not be acceptable," one official told Reuters.
This official said the proposals included demands for "everything the North Koreans ever wanted ... There was an element to the talks of attempts to threaten and intimidate and elements of wanting to buy a Rolex."
While he and other officials seemed skeptical, they said they would analyze the North Korean proposals.
Powell described last week's talks as "quite useful" and he played down suggestions that North Korea had threatened to test nuclear weapons, saying they never used that exact word.
"It was useful to get it all out on the table and see where we go from here," Powell said. "They've never used the word 'testing.' You suggest that they threatened to test, but they never used the world 'test."'
"They said that it is a kind of capability that one can display in one way or another and we are talking all of this (with) seriousness and now that Assistant SecretaryKelly is back we will be spending quite a bit of time going over his notes and his impressions on what he heard," he said.
Powell thanked China for having been a "full participant" in last week's Beijing talks, a comment that appeared designed in part to play down comments by analysts suggesting that China would largely be a bystander.
----
N.Korea Wants Aid, Festivals but No Nuclear Talk
Mon April 28, 2003
By Martin Nesirky
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2640777&src=eDialog/GetContent
SEOUL - North Korea told South Korea on Monday it would discuss its suspected nuclear weapons program only with the United States but was happy to talk about boosting North-South economic cooperation and staging festivals together.
The communist North and capitalist South -- divided by the world's last Cold War border, the fortified Demilitarized Zone -- held the second of three days of talks in Pyongyang.
"Our side demanded an official explanation of the 'nuclear possession comment'," a South Korean pool report from Pyongyang said. Foreign journalists were not allowed to cover the talks.
"But the North avoided direct responses to these requests, countering with requests to discuss economic cooperation," the report said. Economic cooperation is often a euphemism in inter-Korean dialogue for South Korean aid or assistance.
The North also said it wanted to upgrade joint festivals from non-governmental to official. It made no mention of atomic bombs.
U.S. administration sources said last week North Korea had told U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly at talks in Beijing it already had atomic bombs and could make more because it had reprocessed thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's national security advisor, Ra Jong-yil, said Seoul had not confirmed the North's claim. But he said if it were true, Seoul would tell Pyongyang "nuclear weapons cannot guarantee the country's security."
"We cannot permit North Korea to have nuclear weapons. The international community can work to remove any security threat felt by North Korea," Roh's spokeswoman quoted Ra as saying.
Pool reports said the North told the South, as it did on Sunday, it would discuss the nuclear crisis only with Washington.
"It resulted from U.S. moves to isolate and crush North Korea," a pool report quoted the North as telling the South. The North said that was why it would only speak to Washington.
That message did not bode well for a proposed multilateral meeting at a regional security summit in Cambodia in June.
CRUX OF CRISIS
A statement from officials meeting in Cambodia to agree an agenda for the ASEAN Regional Forum on June 18 said on Monday Cambodia proposed North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States sit down together to discuss the crisis.
South Korea said it would seek support at the summit.
Roh told his foreign minister the crux of the crisis was scrapping nuclear capabilities in return for security guarantees.
He also told troops departing for Iraq he would talk with President Bush next month about ways to try to solve the nuclear impasse. Advisor Ra said he would fly to Washington on Tuesday to discuss the nuclear dispute and to arrange Roh's U.S. visit.
The crisis has hit South Korea's already weakening economy. Shares ended up but concern about North Korea capped gains.
The North's official KCNA news agency said North Korea had made a series of separate proposals on Sunday to South Korea. It did not mention the South's demand for nuclear details.
It said the North had proposed the two sides should stop loudspeaker broadcasts across the DMZ, agree on allowing commercial ships into the other's waters and speed up existing projects such as rail and road links and an industrial center.
It also said civic festivals to mark the June 15, 2000, summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung should be made official.
Roh has pledged to continue Kim's policy of engaging North Korea, but one official made clear it might not be at any price.
"We will not display an appearance of purposely avoiding issues that must be raised for the sake of keeping open communication channels," said the official of the first talks under the Roh administration.
It was not clear whether that tough language would translate into a halt or reduction in food and other aid to the North.
China took part in the Beijing talks but South Korea and fellow U.S. ally Japan did not. Kelly briefed officials in Seoul and Tokyo on his way back to Washington.
-------- russia
US nuclear sub spotted near Kamchatka, watching exercises
28.04.2003
ITAR-TASS
By Alexander Arkhipov
http://www.itar-tass.com/english/allnews/287357.html
PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, April 28 (Itar-Tass) - A US nuclear-powered submarine of the Los Angeles class has been spotted in Avacha Bay near the shores of the Kamchatka Peninsula during military exercises of the northeast Russia group of troops, Alexander Peletsky, a liaison officer of the Group headquarters, told Itar-Tass on Monday.
The submarine left Russian waters after being followed by naval planes for several hours. The military believe that the submarine was on a reconnaissance mission, watching the exercises taking place on the Peninsula.
The drills were held in preparation for the Pacific Fleet's large-scale exercises scheduled for the August of this year. The Kamchatka-based group of troops in conjunction with PF forces and security agencies of the region during the past week drilled missions to defend the Far East against an attack by a simulated enemy.
The exercises on Kamchatka were held under the supervision of Admiral Viktor Fyodorov, PF Commander. As a result of the exercises, he gave a positive appraisal of the combat readiness of the Group.
-------- ukraine
Ukraine says Chernobyl nuclear shield is safe
REUTERS CZECH REPUBLIC:
April 28, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20584/newsDate/28-Apr-2003/story.htm
PRAGUE - Ukrainian Foreign Minister Anatoly Zlenko last week dismissed concerns about nuclear safety at the Chernobyl power plant, which documents released by security services showed had been a disaster waiting to happen.
Ukraine closed Chernobyl in 2000, 14 years after it became the site of the world's worst nuclear accident, but fears remain about the state of a protective shield hastily thrown up after the accident to cover a gaping hole in one of its reactors.
Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev said this week the concrete "sarcophagus" was collapsing and needed reinforcement. He also said the concrete was leaking radiation.
But Zlenko, on a visit to the Czech Republic two days before the 17th anniversary of the disaster, tried to dispel Russian concerns.
"I do not think there is a big danger that it will collapse," he told reporters. "We have experts who are managing the situation and are in control."
Zlenko's remarks followed the release in Kiev of secret KGB archives on the accident, which showed the Soviet secret police knew the plant was dangerous long before the disaster.
The 100-page dossier of secret correspondence between Moscow and Kiev released this week revealed that the Chernobyl plant, built in the 1970s, suffered 29 accidents between 1977 and 1981. Most accidents occurred through equipment failures.
The documents, compiled in 1985 and published in Russian on the SBU (Ukrainian Security Service) website www.sbu.gov.ua, listed flaws in design, shoddy workmanship and major violations of safety rules at the plant.
One report described a 1982 accident at one of Chernobyl's reactors when "significant quantities of radiation" escaped into the atmosphere.
"According to operational data, there were deviations from design and violations of technology procedures during building and assembling works. It may lead to accidents," said a report written on January 19, 1979.
The SBU said the dossier had been released to help people see the truth about the disaster.
"We hope to restore the historic truth publishing documents about the station, its construction and the disaster itself," Maryna Ostapenko, the SBU spokeswoman, said last week.
More than 30 firefighters, sent to put out the fire at the reactor, died immediately afterwards. The accident has also been blamed for thousands of radiation-linked deaths and for a rise in thyroid cancer since 1986.
Zlenko called for more money from Western nations to erect a new shield around the reactor and help complete construction of two new nuclear units. Ukraine says the West has never made good on its promise to pay for Kiev's agreement to close the plant.
(Additional reporting by Olena Horodetska in Kiev).
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- washington
US awards $1.05 bln contract to clean weapons site
REUTERS USA:
April 28, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20588/newsDate/28-Apr-2003/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Energy Department awarded last week a $1.05 billion contract to Washington Closure Co. to speed the clean up and closure of the 210-square-mile Columbia River Corridor of the department's Hanford weapons waste site in Washington state.
The Washington Closure Co., based in Boise, Idaho, is made up of three firms: Washington Group International (WGII.O), Fluor Corp.'s (FLR.N) Fluor Federal subsidiary and Tyco International's (TYC.N) Earth Tech subsidiary.
For every dollar under that "target cost," the company will receive 30 cents in additional fees. For every dollar in increased expense, the company will lose 20 cents in fees.
As a plutonium production complex, Hanford played a pivotal role in the nation's nuclear defense for more than 40 years beginning in the 1940s with the Manhattan Project, which led to development of the atomic bomb.
Currently, the Hanford site, located in southeastern Washington, is the world's largest environmental cleanup project.
The Energy Department's said Washington Closure's proposal for Hanford was chosen for "both its technical advantages and its low costs."
The contract is structured in two phases.
Phase one, awarded last week, includes placing three defunct plutonium production reactors into interim safe storage, demolishing reactor-area structures, remediating 269 waste sites and 46 burial grounds and taking down surplus buildings.
The contract includes an unpriced option for performance of phase two, which includes placing three additional reactors into interim safe storage, remediating four burial grounds and 240 waste sites and demolishing 218 surplus facilities.
Except for two burial grounds requiring special handling capabilities, and continuing groundwater remediation and monitoring, the two phases of the contract will complete Hanford's cleanup of the river corridor and reduce active cleanup operations to just 75 square miles in the center of the site.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
After the Airstrikes, Just Silence
No Compensation, Little Aid for Afghan Victims of U.S. Raids
By April Witt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 28, 2003; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45676-2003Apr27?language=printer
MADOO, Afghanistan -- There are more graves than houses in Madoo.
The mosque and many of the roughly 35 homes that once made up this hamlet in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan lie in rubble. At least 55 men, women and children -- or pieces of them -- are buried here, their graves marked by flags that are whipped by the wind.
Seventeen months after U.S. warplanes bombed this village and others in the vicinity of Osama bin Laden's cave complex at Tora Bora, Madoo's survivors say they can tell civilian victims of U.S. bombing in Iraq what to expect in the way of help from Washington: nothing.
"Our houses were destroyed," said Niaz Mohammad Khan, 30. "We want to rebuild, but we don't have the money. . . . We need water for our land. We need everything. People come and ask us questions, then go away. No one has helped."
Madoo is one of several enclaves in the region that the U.S. military bombed over several days in December 2001, killing an estimated 150 civilians. Once home to 300 people, Madoo has lost roughly half its population, villagers say. In addition to the dozens killed by U.S. airstrikes, many others lost their homes and moved away. The people who remain are destitute. They live crowded in the few stone and timber homes they've managed to rebuild on their own. They subsist on bread and the vegetables they grow. Several children look slight and frail.
Half a world away in Washington, finding ways to help people in such desperate need became an immediate priority for some policymakers and a dangerous precedent to others.
Congress directed that an unspecified amount of money be spent to assist innocent victims of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, just as it recently called on the Bush administration to identify and provide "appropriate assistance" to civilian victims in Iraq. But the money has not yet reached any of the intended recipients, U.S. officials acknowledged.
"The money is there," said Tim Rieser, an aide to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). "Mistakes were made. Mistakes are made in wars. We all know that. But we have yet to see the administration take action to carry out the law in Afghanistan."
The U.S. Agency for International Development, for example, had $1.25 million in last year's budget to help Afghan civilians who suffered losses as a result of U.S. military action, according to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. But the agency has not spent any of that money helping Afghans who had their relatives killed, their children maimed, their homes leveled or their livestock and livelihoods destroyed by American bombing, several U.S. officials in Afghanistan conceded this week.
The biggest obstacle to delivery of the aid, officials say, has been a prolonged debate over how to assist bombing victims without compensating them. To policymakers, the distinction between easing the plight of suffering innocents and compensating the victims of war is more than semantic. Both the U.S. military and the State Department are leery of setting legal precedents for compensation and have declined to establish programs that either systematically document civilian losses or give Afghans any opportunity to apply for reparations.
Short of that, military civil-affairs units in Afghanistan have, in isolated instances, provided general humanitarian assistance to communities that happen to have suffered as a result of U.S. bombing. They are, for example, helping rebuild Bamian University -- but only, officials insist, because Bamian needs a new university, not because U.S. bombs destroyed the old one.
"Claims have never been processed for combat losses," said Col. Roger King, U.S. military spokesman at Bagram air base near Kabul, the Afghan capital.
The policy debate has gone on too long, Rieser said. "It's tricky," he said. "We don't imagine going around handing out dollar bills to people. We are sensitive to the issues. If we were to announce some kind of a claims program, every single person in Afghanistan would sign up. It's just not feasible.
"But we do know about a lot of these bombing incidents. We know there is a real need there. Why not start doing something about it in the context of our overall aid program? All Congress is saying is, don't leave out the people who suffered serious losses on account of our mistakes. It should have happened already."
There are no official estimates of how many Afghan civilians have been killed by U.S. bombs. A survey published last year by the human rights group Global Exchange estimated the number at more than 800.
A year and a half after the U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban and al Qaeda, bombs are still falling on Afghan civilians as U.S. forces combat a resurgence of terrorism aimed at destabilizing the government of President Hamid Karzai. In eastern Afghanistan this month, a U.S. warplane mistakenly killed 11 members of one family when a 1,000-pound laser-guided bomb missed its intended target and landed on a house.
And Madoo still lies in ruins.
The village, 25 miles south of Jalalabad, is not accessible by road. It is a short but arduous hike through mountain gorges from the Pakistan border. On the horizon jut the black peaks of Tora Bora, home of the cave complex where an estimated 1,000 of bin Laden's fighters are believed to have gathered after the defeat of the Taliban last fall.
It was late afternoon on Dec. 1, 2001, when U.S. warplanes appeared over Madoo. The people of Madoo were observing Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.
"It was the time of breaking fast, and we were just sitting together to have dinner," Munir, 12, recalled. "We heard the voice of the planes, and we went outside to see what was happening. A bomb landed on our home. There weren't any Taliban or Arabs with us. For nothing they dropped bombs here."
After the first bombers left, Munir's mother and 8-year-old sister were dead. His infant brother, Abdul Haq, was buried alive. Relatives spied the boy's foot sticking out of a mound of dirt and dug him out.
The bombers returned three times, villagers said. In all, the people of Madoo say they buried at least 55 loved ones.
Many bodies were too damaged to identify. Some of the dozens of mounds in Madoo's hillside burial ground are marked with two and three pieces of wood, signifying that the remains of more than one person are interred there.
The people of Madoo remain puzzled by Americans. A retired Ohio lawyer, who read about one Madoo boy injured in the bombings, was so moved that he visited and gave each survivor about $300. People bought tents and clothes and wheat seeds to plant. But Madoo's losses outstripped one man's largess.
Munir's youngest brother, now a toddler, coughs frequently and swipes at his runny nose. His family, whose home and meager possessions were destroyed in the bombing, lives with relatives.
"Before, it was good here," Munir said. "The people and my father worked on the land. Life was better than it is now. We have lost everything."
Munir's father, Shingul, 55, who is raising his four surviving children alone, tried to talk about his late wife and daughter but could only turn away and weep.
"If we were doing something wrong, I could understand this," he said when he regained his voice. "But it was Ramadan and we were breaking the fast. The main problem we have now is that we have nothing. We would really appreciate it if someone could help."
-------- arms sales
Attorney Asks Why Halliburton Not Being Pursued For Selling Warheads To N.M. Company
Date: April 28, 2003
Source: KRQE News 13 / AP
http://www.krqe.com/Global/story.asp?S=1168473
An attorney for the head of a New Mexico anti-terrorism training firm is asking why prosecutors have zealously pursued his client for allegedly stockpiling warheads but ignored the company from they purchased the weapons.
The attorney for High Energy Access Tool's president David Hudak, says Halliburton Corporation solicited Hudak to purchase about 2,400 warheads. Bob Gorence says the company offered the warheads as demolition charges and not as the government-owned military items that are illegal to posses.
H.E.A.T president David Hudak has been indicted on charges of the unlicensed exportation of defense services and use of explosive materials during the commission of a felony. H.E.A.T. trained anti-terrorism teams -- predominantly from foreign countries on the use -- of explosives to raid structures and airplanes.
Hudak claims the sale of the warheads was initiated by Halliburton just before the company sold the Texas-based subsidiary that made the missiles -- Jet Research Center -- to Accurate Arms Company.
A spokesman for the agency that oversees military contracts says the warheads should not have been sold to a nongovernment entity. A federal grand jury has returned another indictment against a Canadian man who ran a counter terrorism training program in Roswell.
Hudak has been in custody since his arrest August 15th. He now faces 17 charges including possessing unregistered destructive devices and being an alien in possession of a firearm.
Background In August of 2002 federal agents removed thousands of warheads the company's bunker at a Roswell airport . A federal criminal complaint filed says agents discovered the 2,352 missiles during a dramatic raid.
H.E.A.T.'s director of security has defended Hudak as a victim of a paperwork error.
The criminal complaint describes the missiles found the company's training compound as military weapons to be used to defeat light armored vehicles and/or bunkers. The warheads are designed to be fired from shoulder-mounted infantry weapons.
-------- britain
Blair: No Doubt Saddam Had Banned Weapons
April 28, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Britain-Blair.html
LONDON (AP) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair said Monday he had no doubt that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and predicted that evidence would emerge linking Saddam Hussein to terrorist groups.
Blair told reporters that coalition forces had identified about 1,000 suspicious Iraqi weapons sites but rebuilding the country was a bigger priority than finding illegal arms.
"There isn't any doubt that Iraq has had weapons of mass destruction," the British prime minister said at his monthly news conference. "That is not in dispute, not by anybody. I remain confident they will be found."
Saddam's alleged program to develop biological, chemical and nuclear arms was the main justification for U.S.-led war that ousted the Iraqi dictator. But no such weapons were used against coalition forces, and Blair's critics say the failure so far to find illicit arms proves war was unnecessary.
No weapons of mass destruction have been found by coalition troops.
Blair suggested Saddam hid his banned weapons before the arrival of U.N. inspectors.
"If they were systematically concealed, they might not have been available for use in a conflict," he said. "It does not in the least follow from that that they couldn't have been reconstituted had we all left Iraq and the weapons inspectors not been able to carry out their job."
Blair appeared to suggest that although Saddam might not have used weapons of mass destruction in combat, the arms risked getting into the hands of terrorists.
"As more intelligence emerges, in particular from inside Iraq and the former Iraqi intelligence unit, I think you will find increasing evidence of links between the previous Iraqi regime and terrorist organizations," he said.
Part of the Bush administration's justification for going to war was its allegation that Iraq had ties to terror groups, including al-Qaida. Last week, U.S. officials announced the capture of Farouk Hijazi, a former high-ranking Iraqi intelligence official with possible al-Qaida links.
Blair said there was a need for a process of "independent verification" of Iraq's weapons program but didn't say whether he believed that task should fall to the United Nations.
Blair also said it was vital for discussions to begin between Europe and the United States to prevent a dangerous scenario of two centers of power developing in the world.
"I think it is perfectly possible for Europe to become more powerful, but as an ally and partner of the United States of America," Blair said.
French President Jacques Chirac, whose ties with Blair have been strained by France's opposition to the war, has outlined a vision of a multipolar world, where a strong European Union would act as a counterweight to U.S. foreign policy.
"If we don't deal with the world on the basis of a partnership between Europe and America, then we will, in a sense, put back into the world the divisions we wanted to get rid of when the Cold War finished," Blair said. "That would be just a disaster for the world."
-------- business
Aerospace & Defense Companies
Monday, April 28, 2003
Washington Post; Page T09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43633-2003Apr27?language=printer
Lockheed Martin Corp.
6801 Rockledge Dr.
Bethesda, Md. 20817
301-897-6000
www.lockheedmartin.com
Founded: 1995
Revenue: $26.58 billion
Net income: $500 million
Earnings per share: $1.11
Dividend: 44 cents
Stockholder equity: $5.87 billion
Auditor: Ernst & Young LLP
Stock: LMT (NYSE)
Assets: $25.76 billion
Market capitalization: $20.28 billion
52-week high: $71.52 (6/27/2002)
52-week low: $40.64 (3/12/2003)
Chairman and CEO: Vance D. Coffman
President and COO: Robert J. Stevens
Employees: 125,000
Local employees: 10,000
DESCRIPTION: Lockheed Martin is a defense contractor that builds fighter jets, military spy satellites and specializes in integrating disparate weapons systems.
DEVELOPMENTS: Lockheed Martin remained the Pentagon's largest contractor last year despite some bitter contract losses.
After a more than yearlong review, Lockheed decided to keep its struggling commercial satellite business. Despite being battered by the telecommunications industry's downturn, it was still easier -- and cheaper -- to keep the business unit than to sell it, analysts said. While the military side of the satellite business remained strong, the company was handed a tough defeat when it lost a multibillion-dollar contract to build a fleet of next-generation weather satellites.
One of Lockheed's key airplane contracts, the F/A-22 fighter jet, remains controversial. In November, the Pentagon revealed an $876 million cost overrun on the project. This year the General Accounting Office identified $1.3 billion still not included in the cost of the program. Some members of Congress are calling for cutbacks, even while Lockheed and the Air Force note significant progress.
Last year was also marked with successes. Lockheed is sharing a $17 billion program with Northrop Grumman Corp. to modernize and replace the Coast Guard's fleet of ships and helicopters. After seven years and $1.6 billion, Lockheed launched its rocket, the Atlas V, delivering an Air Force satellite into orbit and opening a potential international market. The Transportation Security Administration awarded the company a contract to develop a passenger-screening network to assess the background and potential threat of everyone who makes a reservation to fly. The downside? The contract puts Lockheed at the center of debate about privacy rights.
General Dynamics Corp.
3190 Fairview Park Dr.
Falls Church, Va. 22042
703-876-3000
www.generaldynamics.com
Founded: 1952
Revenue: $13.83 billion
Net income: $917 million
Earnings per share: $4.52
Dividend: $1.20
Stockholder equity: $5.20 billion
Auditor: KPMG LLP
Stock: GD (NYSE)
Assets: $11.73 billion
Market capitalization: $10.95 billion
52-week high: $111.18 (6/24/2002)
52-week low: $50.00 (3/12/2003)
Chairman and CEO: Nicholas D. Chabraja
CFO: Michael J. Mancuso
Employees: 53,900
Local employees: 2,000
DESCRIPTION: General Dynamics makes warships, armored combat vehicles, information systems and the Gulfstream line of business jets.
DEVELOPMENTS: With conflicts in the Middle East and a major buildup in the defense budget, military contracting remains a profitable and promising business for General Dynamics. But the company took some lumps over the past year, including the loss of a key shipbuilding contract and write-downs in its business-jet segment.
In April 2002, the Navy handed a stinging setback to General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works unit by awarding a $2.9 billion contract to a shipbuilder owned by rival Northrop Grumman Corp. The order was to begin work designing flexible high-tech warships that can evade detection and operate with small crews. Although Bath Iron Works is expected to get some of the production work on the ships, the company filed a rare protest of the Navy's decision. But the General Accounting Office ruled in August that the contract had been awarded properly.
The economic downturn put a severe crimp in sales of Gulfstream jets, as companies and individuals pushed for steep discounts or postponed purchases. In the fourth quarter, General Dynamics sold 21 previously owned aircraft but was forced to take a loss of $30 million on those transactions as well as write down some of its inventory.
On the plus side, solid growth continued in the information technology division, which was launched in 1997 and overtook shipbuilding as the company's biggest source of revenue in the second quarter of last year.
The company became the world's biggest maker of armored vehicles when it bought General Motors Corp.'s defense unit for $1.1 billion.
United Defense Industries Inc.
1525 Wilson Blvd., Suite 700
Arlington, Va. 22209
703-312-6100
www.uniteddefense.com
Founded: 1994
Revenue: $1.73 billion
Net income: $134.58 million
Earnings per share: $2.55
Dividend: None
Stockholder equity: -$29.71 million Auditor: Ernst & Young LLP
Stock: UDI (NYSE)
Assets: $1.45 billion
Market capitalization: $1.14 billion
52-week high: $29.00 (4/12/2002)
52-week low: $17.60 (7/15/2002)
President and CEO: Thomas W. Rabaut
CFO: Francis Raborn
Employees: 7,200
Local employees: 50
DESCRIPTION: United Defense builds precision munitions, combat vehicles, artillery guns, naval guns and missile launchers.
DEVELOPMENTS: As the maker of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, United Defense holds the franchise on a long-standing line of Army business. But the firm continues to struggle to keep up as the military's focus moves from guns and armor to newer technology.
One of its biggest hopes for the future, the Crusader, a 40-ton automated artillery system, was cancelled by Congress, which criticized the gun for being too big and heavy for a military that increasingly needs to be able to deploy rapidly.
United Defense regained some ground when the Pentagon chose the company and General Dynamics Corp. to develop the armored-vehicle component of the Army's $4 billion high-tech "future combat system." The design deal could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
But according to the company's annual report, to fund work on the future combat system the Bush administration plans to "sharply curtail spending" on the Bradley tank. Unless that changes, "we believe that our [Bradley Fighting Vehicle] production work would largely terminate following the completion" of the current contract, the report noted. That would be significant because in 2002, United Defense derived $219 million of its $1.73 billion in revenue from the program.
The company got a boost when it bought a ship-repair business from the Carlyle Group, the D.C. investment fund that owns a large chunk of United Defense. United States Marine Repair is one of the company's largest units and accounted for most of its growth last year.
Carlyle owns 49.5 percent of United Defense, according to the company's last proxy statement.
United Defense's acquisitions boosted its earnings in 2002, helping it chip away at the negative stockholders' equity it assumed after taking on debt in 2001.
Veridian Corp.
1200 S. Hayes St., Suite 1100
Arlington, Va. 22202
703-575-3100
www.veridian.com
Founded: 1948
Revenue: $834.08 million
Net income: $12.28 million
Loss per share: $2.13
Dividend: None
Stockholder equity: $309.62 million
Auditor: KPMG LLP
Stock: VNX (NYSE)
Assets: $751.89 million
Market capitalization: $676.59 million
52-week high: $26.00 (9/26/2002)
52-week low: $16.00 (6/4/2002)
President and CEO: David H. Langstaff
CFO: James P. Allen
Employees: 7,380
Local employees: 3,597
DESCRIPTION: Veridian supplies computer software and other technology, such as chemical and biological weapons detection devices, to the Pentagon and other security-related government agencies. Four-fifths of its employees hold security clearances.
DEVELOPMENTS: Taking advantage of investor excitement over the boom in security-related technology, Veridian staged an initial public offering of its stock in June 2002. Its shares rose 13 percent on the first day of trading, and the IPO raised $227 million.
The company made another major move that summer, agreeing in August to buy Signal Corp., a privately held Fairfax firm, for $227 million. Like Veridian, Signal does the majority of its business with the Pentagon.
Veridian's business continued to expand rapidly; revenue increased by 21 percent in 2002 and its backlog grew to $2.6 billion. Contracts won by the company include a $154 million deal with the Navy for technical support in weapons systems development, and one with the Defense Department valued at more than $25 million to make "significant improvements" in the ability to detect "asymmetric threats to national security."
Anteon International Corp.
3211 Jermantown Rd.
Fairfax, Va. 22030
703-246-0200
www.anteon.com
Founded: 1976
Revenue: $825.83 million
Net income: $26.44 million
Earnings per share: 78 cents
Dividend: None
Stockholder equity: $128.83 million
Auditor: KPMG LLP
Stock: ANT (NYSE)
Assets: $364.69 million
Market capitalization: $803.79 million
52-week high: $29.35 (10/15/2002)
52-week low: $18.90 (8/14/2002)
President and CEO: Joseph M. Kampf
COO: Thomas M. Cogburn
Employees: 5,799
Local employees: 1,802
DESCRIPTION: Anteon is an information technology and systems-integration company that markets its services to U.S. government agencies and international clients, mostly in the defense arena.
DEVELOPMENTS: It's been a dramatic year for Anteon, which was one of several defense contractors to mount an initial public offering last year. Anteon, which raised more than $76 million through its IPO, used most of the money to repay outstanding debt and to pay down a revolving loan. It amended its credit agreement in October 2002, allowing it to borrow more money and loosening some conditions for the loans.
The company has reaped the benefits of a stepped-up military environment, snagging as much as $1 billion last year in contracts with branches of the U.S. military and Cabinet-level agencies if options on the contracts are exercised. It recently won a subcontract with Lockheed Martin Corp., under which Anteon will provide system integration for Navy warships. The deal is worth up to $55 million.
The company has raised its visibility in military circles with the additions of former defense secretary William J. Perry and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Henry Hugh Shelton to its board of directors.
Anteon, which specializes in emergency response, ballistic-missile defense and intelligence systems, developed a training system for special operations forces that is being delivered to troops in Kuwait and Afghanistan. To the extent that a national missile defense system gets off the ground in coming years, Anteon executives will try to position themselves to win part of that business.
Anteon recently acquired government information technology contractor Information Spectrum of Annandale, Va., for $90.7 million in cash.
CACI International Inc.
1100 N. Glebe Rd.
Arlington, Va. 22201
703-841-7800
www.caci.com
Founded: 1962
Revenue: $681.94 million
Net income: $30.47 million
Earnings per share: $1.18
Dividend: None
Stockholder equity: $367.16 million
Auditor: Deloitte & Touche LLP
Stock: CAI (NYSE)
Assets: $480.66 million
Market capitalization: $1.01 billion
52-week high: $43.10 (10/30/2002)
52-week low: $27.43 (5/2/2002)
Chairman and CEO: J.P. London
President: L. Kenneth Johnson
Employees: 6,004
Local employees: 3,009
DESCRIPTION: CACI International is an information technology firm that integrates business systems and networks for government agencies as well as some private-sector clients.
DEVELOPMENTS: CACI remains an acquisition-prone defense contractor determined to reach $1 billion in revenue by 2005.
The company completed its acquisition of Applied Technology Solutions in March, adding more expertise in the intelligence sector. It was the 21st deal in the past decade, and one of three completed in the past 12 months, but it's not likely to be the last one this year. "CACI continues to look at acquisition opportunities and expects to complete at least one other accretive acquisition before the end of its fiscal year on June 30," a company spokeswoman said.
CACI expects to report revenue of $815 million to $835 million this year.
The company's defense and civilian agency business continued to grow last year, accounting for most of its revenue, but CACI began to phase out its state and local business. Local budget deficits dampened information technology spending and CACI would rather focus on homeland security and defense markets, company officials have said.
The year brought a milestone for CACI when it left the Nasdaq Stock Market for the New York Stock Exchange, bringing it in line with local rivals Anteon International Corp., SRA International Inc. and Veridian Corp.
Orbital Sciences Corp.
21839 Atlantic Blvd.
Dulles, Va. 20166
703-406-5000
www.orbital.com
Founded: 1982
Revenue: $551.64 million
Net income: $765,000
Earnings per share: 2 cents
Dividend: None
Stockholder equity: $134.57 million
Auditor: PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Stock: ORB (NYSE)
Assets: $416.31 million
Market capitalization: $243.66 million
52-week high: $7.98 (6/28/2002)
52-week low: $2.47 (8/2/2002)
Chairman and CEO: David W. Thompson
President and COO: James R. Thompson
Employees: 2,000
Local employees: 1,400
DESCRIPTION: Orbital Sciences manufactures and sells satellites and launch vehicles. Its basic pitch is cost: Orbital's low-orbit satellites are inexpensive to launch and maintain and save customers money. The company also sells products and services that use global-positioning satellites, such as transportation management systems.
DEVELOPMENTS: After several years of accounting and balance-sheet problems, Orbital has begun to fly right.
The company sold off non-core assets over the past two years and in 2002, for the first time, focused solely on two main products. The emphasis on satellites and rockets helped fuel its financial turnaround.
Orbital won a nearly $400 million contract for missile defense work from Boeing Co. Growth has been propelled by its increased role in missile defense and other military spending.
The Boeing contract, which lasts for seven years, was the company's largest contract ever. Orbital was tapped to develop, build, test and support missile-interceptor booster vehicles.
Orbital ended the year with a 12-for-12 mission reliability record, bringing its cumulative experience to 255 successes in 267 space missions carried out since 1982. The company is optimistic about the coming year, especially because of increased defense spending by the federal government.
ManTech International Corp.
12015 Lee Jackson Hwy.
Fairfax, Va. 22033
703-218-6000
www.mantech.com
Founded: 1968
Revenue: $500.22 million
Net income: $19.15 million
Earnings per share: 74 cents
Dividend: None
Stockholder equity: $246 million
Auditor: Deloitte & Touche LLP
Stock: MANT (Nasdaq)
Assets: $364.39 million
Market capitalization: $488.61 million
52-week high: $25.79 (8/28/2002)
52-week low: $11.66 (3/21/2003)
Chairman, president and CEO: George J. Pedersen
CFO: John A. Moore Jr.
Employees: 4,436
Local employees: 2,389
DESCRIPTION: ManTech International provides technical support and services to U.S. intelligence agencies and the military.
DEVELOPMENTS: ManTech kicked off last year with an initial public offering, and the IPO netted the Fairfax company $115 million, which it used to fuel a ferocious buying spree.
In the past year, ManTech has bought Integrated Data Systems of Chantilly for $62 million in cash. The move added to the pool of ManTech workers with highly coveted security clearances. It purchased Greenbelt-based MSM Security Services Inc., which provides personnel investigation services to federal agencies, for $5.3 million in cash. It gobbled up CTX Corp. of Vienna for $34 million in cash and agreed to retire $1.3 million in CTX debt. ManTech also paid about $70 million to buy Aegis Research Corp., a Falls Church firm that offers technical support to intelligence agencies.
Among the contracts the company won last year were a $53 million deal to support a State Department countermeasures program and a $50 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command.
ManTech raised more money in December, when it sold 922,500 shares in a follow-on public offering. Separately, it moved to sell businesses in Australia, Britain and China that were geared toward commercial customers.
But ManTech's financial performance has been partly obscured by a number of federal investigations into the way it billed federal agencies and whether its workers carried the proper clearances to perform sensitive work for the government. A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, the Defense Department's inspector general and the Environmental Protection Agency are investigating separate allegations. The company fired an undisclosed number of employees last December after an internal investigation revealed that workers had altered time sheets.
SRA International Inc.
4300 Fair Lakes Ct.
Fairfax, Va. 22033
703-803-1500
www.sra.com
Founded: 1978
Revenue: $361.20 million
Net income: $11.28 million
Earnings per share: 66 cents
Dividend: None
Stockholder equity: $159.44 million
Auditor: Deloitte & Touche LLP
Stock: SRX (NYSE)
Assets: $226.29 million
Market capitalization: $550.69 million
52-week high: $30.65 (9/27/2002)
52-week low: $18.00 (5/23/2002)
President and CEO: Ernst Volgenau
COO: Edward E. Legasey
Employees: 2,480
Local employees: 1,996
DESCRIPTION: SRA International is an information technology company that provides services to federal agencies. Its largest customer is the Defense Department.
DEVELOPMENTS: SRA International went public last year and joined the crowd of local information technology firms shedding commercial ventures to concentrate on government business.
After raising more than $100 million in a public offering last May, SRA began what it said would be a practice of one or two acquisitions a year. The company paid $40 million in cash for privately held Adroit Systems Inc., increasing its surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities and giving it a key position in the growing government market for drones.
As part of the strategy, SRA also began divesting units that had been dedicated to commercializing its technology. Emerging technologies had made up 4.5 percent of SRA's revenue but fell to 1.4 percent last year. Last October, the firm sold its e-mail surveillance unit, Assentor Solutions, saying Assentor did not fit into its core government-contracting business.
But a public offering did not greatly change SRA's character. Insiders still hold 92 percent of the company's total voting power, according to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Founder and chief executive Ernst Volgenau holds 68 percent of the total voting power.
SI International Inc.
12012 Sunset Hills Rd.
Suite 800
Reston, Va. 20190
703-234-7000
www.si-intl.com
Founded: 1998
Revenue: $149.35 million
Net income: $2.48 million
Loss per share: 3 cents
Dividend: None
Stockholder equity: $73.98 million
Auditor: Ernst & Young LLP
Stock: SINT (Nasdaq)
Assets: $92.32 million
Market capitalization: $67.75 million
52-week high: $14.20 (11/12/2002)
52-week low: $6.75 (3/6/2003)
Chairman and CEO: Ray J. Oleson
President and COO: S. Bradford Antle
Employees: 1,240
Local employees: 472
DESCRIPTION: SI International provides consulting, software development and information security services primarily to the military and the State Department.
DEVELOPMENTS: Like others in the business of contracting and consulting, SI International has been challenged by a drop-off in work for commercial clients. In the fourth quarter of 2002, revenue growth was hampered by a 28 percent decline in the company's commercial business, and the fall offset an 8 percent increase in revenue from government contracting.
However, the commercial sector has never been SI's focus. The company has been less affected than other firms by the slowdown in corporate work because about 90 percent of SI's business comes from the government. The company expects increased spending for homeland security and the military to help boost revenue.
SI International was the fifth local government contractor to go public last year. It raised $53.9 million in a November offering.
Allied Defense Group Inc.
8000 Towers Crescent Dr.
Suite 260
Vienna, Va. 22182
703-847-5268
www.allieddefensegroup.com
Founded: 1961
Revenue: $130.87 million
Net income: $10.67 million
Earnings per share: $1.92
Dividend: None
Stockholder equity: $86.51 million
Auditor: Grant Thornton LLP
Stock: ADG (AMEX)
Assets: $168.17 million
Market capitalization: $82.62 million
52-week high: $28.05 (4/18/2002)
52-week low: $14.20 (11/19/2002)
Chaiman and CEO: J.H. Binford Peay III
President and COO: John G. Meyer Jr.
Employees: 579
Local employees: 8
DESCRIPTION: Allied Defense Group makes ammunition at a factory in Belgium and also produces electronic security systems and military training systems. It has only a bare-bones headquarters staff in the D.C. area. Its largest customer is Saudi Arabia.
DEVELOPMENTS: Allied Defense had a busy year, changing its name, hiring a new leader and making two major acquisitions.
Until recently, Allied Defense was known as Allied Research Corp., but it jettisoned that moniker to better reflect its status as a mini-conglomerate of defense-related products.
The company's biggest acquisitions last year included SeaSpace Corp., a California maker of systems for processing information from environmental and weather satellites, and Texas-based Titan Dynamics Systems Inc., which makes battle-effects simulators for the military.
Those additions and some smaller ones helped boost Allied's revenue last year by 35 percent, to $130.9 million, and the company's backlog of work rose 180 percent, to $157 million.
Earnings were down, though, primarily because of the costs of the acquisitions.
Many of the acquisitions have been aimed at protecting Allied from the cyclical nature of its core ammunition business. Because so much of its customer base is in the Middle East, Allied's revenue tends to follow the ups and downs of oil prices.
Allied's chief executive, retired Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III, will step down in June to become superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute. He'll remain chairman of the board, though, and the company has tapped its chief operating officer, retired Maj. Gen. John G. Meyer Jr., to replace Peay as chief executive.
Integral Systems Inc.
5000 Philadelphia Way
Lanham, Md. 20706
301-731-4233
www.integ.com
Founded: 1982
Revenue: $50.92 million
Net income: $2.62 million
Earnings per share: 28 cents
Dividend: None
Stockholder equity: $82.26 million
Auditor: Ernst & Young LLP
Stock: ISYS (Nasdaq)
Assets: $96.62 million
Market capitalization: $192.54 million
52-week high: $23.98 (5/24/2002)
52-week low: $14.31 (7/24/2002)
Chairman and CEO: Steven R. Chamberlain
President and COO: Thomas L. Gough
Employees: 358
Local employees: 231
DESCRIPTION: Integral Systems makes programs and software, primarily for government agencies, that help guide and control satellites.
DEVELOPMENTS: Integral has provided ground control systems for more than 190 satellite missions for communications, scientific and meteorological clients. It bills itself as a more affordable and flexible alternative to the giant satellite and aerospace firms that are its chief competitors.
The strategy worked in 2002.
Revenue in fiscal 2002, which ended Sept. 30, grew to $50.92 million from $40.53 million the previous year. The increase was mostly because of greater business from government clients such as the Air Force, Integral's fastest-growing source of revenue.
Sixty percent of Integral's fiscal 2002 revenue came from government clients; 31 percent came from its largest client, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The commercial side of business is slipping, though. In the first quarter of this fiscal year, Integral's commercial business shrank to 23 percent of its revenue from 48 percent in the year-earlier period. Operating losses at subsidiaries that cater to commercial business also dragged down the bottom line in fiscal 2002. Integral made several acquisitions in recent years to build up its commercial side, but the moves have yet to pay off.
Nevertheless, Integral is nearly debt-free, having financed its growth through internally generated funds, stock sales and judicious use of a line of credit. It has never had an annual loss.
Integral expects its government business, particularly its defense-related orders, to boost its revenue and net income by 50 percent from fiscal 2002 levels.
Sensytech Inc.
8419 Terminal Rd.
Newington, Va. 22122
703-550-7000
www.sensystech.com
Founded: 1968
Revenue: $32.29 million
Net income: $2.19 million
Earnings per share: 52 cents
Dividend: None
Stockholder equity: $14.67 million
Auditor: PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Stock: STST (Nasdaq)
Assets: $25.85 million
Market capitalization: $65.27 million
52-week high: $12.43 (2/13/2003)
52-week low: $6.81 (8/5/2002)
Chairman and CEO: S. Kent Rockwell
President and COO: David A. Smith
Employees: 201
Local employees: 110
DESCRIPTION: Sensytech makes communication and surveillance equipment for the military and federal agencies, as well as other military contractors. Uses for its products include intercepting, interpreting and tracking signals from hostile radar and weapons.
DEVELOPMENTS: Last year was a period of strong growth for Sensytech, brought on by growing military demand for the company's communication and surveillance equipment. Annual revenue rose 97 percent, to more than $32.29 million, from the previous year. Earnings also climbed, and the company's order backlog grew to nearly $30 million.
In June, the company named David A. Smith president and chief operating officer. Smith, a former Navy pilot, had previously worked for other defense contractors.
Some of the company's growth was attributed to corporate acquisitions. In February 2002, Sensytech paid an undisclosed amount for Frequency Engineering Laboratories, a manufacturing and engineering firm. But a planned purchase of Codem Systems Inc. was withdrawn earlier this year.
One reflection of the firm's recent growth was its shift to the Nasdaq National Market. Sensytech's stock had previously traded on Nasdaq's small-cap market.
-------- chemical weapons
Tests Cast Doubt on Chemical Find in Iraq
By LOUIS MEIXLER
Associated Press Writer
Apr 28, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_BANNED_WEAPONS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAIJI, Iraq (AP) -- A metal drum found in northern Iraq that initially tested positive for nerve and blister agents might instead contain rocket fuel, according to new tests, a U.S. chemical weapons expert said Monday.
More tests were planned in the coming days on the 55-gallon drum, said Lt. Col. Valentin Novikov, the chief chemical weapons officer of the 4th Infantry Division, the unit which found the site.
Novikov's comments raised the prospect that the discovery was the latest in a series of false alarms as U.S. troops try to find the remains of Saddam Hussein's suspected programs for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
The suspicious barrel was among 14 barrels found in an open field near the Tigris River town of Baiji, among mounds of earth that hid missiles and missile parts. U.S. troops performed an initial test and found indications the barrel may contain the nerve agent cyclosarin and a blister agent that could be a precursor of mustard gas.
By design, initial test procedures favor positive readings, erring on the side of caution to protect soldiers.
Two teams of experts were brought in this weekend for additional testing.
One team conducted three tests, but the tests "were not totally conclusive," Novikov said.
The second team, a specialist Mobile Exploitation Team, "suspects that it might be rocket fuel," Novikov said.
That team is expected to return to the site in the coming days for further tests.
"There is a chance that it could be chemical weapons, but we don't know for sure," Novikov said, speaking outside of the 4th Infantry headquarters, a former palace in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, near Baiji.
Also found at the site were two unmarked vans that soldiers first suspected to be mobile chemical laboratories. Inside the vans were three cylinders for mixing liquids and a dosage chart in English and Russian. Green camouflage netting was draped across the front of one of the vans.
Novikov, however, said the vans "could be" a rocket fuel mixing station.
Near the site was a low, brown sandstone building that had 150 gas masks that are of a higher quality that those usually used by Iraqi soldiers.
The initial tests on the barrel were conducted late Friday by Lt. Valerie Phipps and Pfc. Jeremy McCullough, chemical warfare experts with the 1st Squadron of the 10th Cavalry Regiment.
All three of their tests pointed to nerve or blister agents. Afterward, Phipps and McCullough left the area and burned their chemical warfare suits for fear that they were contaminated.
There have been numerous false reports that coalition forces have turned up chemical or biological weapons.
Mustard agent burns skin, eyes and lungs, while exposure to high amounts cyclosarin may lead to loss of muscle control, twitching, paralysis, unconsciousness, convulsions, coma, and death within minutes.
Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles ringed the 1.5-square-mile field Sunday and Monday, watching for intruders. Troops had permission to shoot to kill if anyone entered the area, which was near the Tigris River about a mile outside Baiji.
----
False Alarm?
Experts Believe Positive Tests for Chemicals Were Wrong
April 28, 2003
(ABCNEWS.com)
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/world/Primetime/iraq_barrels030428.html
NEAR BAYJI, Iraq, - It's now believed that more than a dozen 55-gallon drums found in northern Iraq might contain rocket fuel - not the dangerous chemicals first suspected after two days of tests.
Lt. Col. Valentin Novikov, the chief chemical weapons officer of the 4th Infantry Division, the unit which found the site, told The Associated Press that new tests were conducted on one of the drums.
The results raised the prospect that this find would just be the latest in the series of false alarms in U.S. effort to prove Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.
More tests on the unmarked barrels found near Bayji, about 130 miles north of Baghdad are planned in the coming days.
Earlier today, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons specialists from the Army's 5th Corps examined them, and tentatively concluded that there were no chemical weapons there, the leader of the team told a New York Times reporter embedded with the team.
"Our tests showed no positive hits at all," Capt. Ryan Cutchin, the leader of Mobile Exploitation Team Bravo told the Times.
The suspect site also included missiles, warheads and vehicles that were suspected to be mobile laboratories for banned weapons, but Cutchin said the vehicles were "probably for decontamination or some kind of fuel filling, consistent with the rockets found at the site."
Using high-tech gear unavailable to experts from another Army squad, Mobile Exploration Team (MET) Bravo - whose preliminary tests over the weekend identified a nerve agent and a blister agent - tests came up negative.
By design, initial test procedures favor positive readings, erring on the side of caution to protect soldiers.
The investigators searching for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been frustrated by a lack of information and say they are understaffed and under-equipped.
Wary of False Alarms
Even before MET Bravo conducted tests on Sunday, at least one member of the team, which is responsible for moving samples of suspicious substances for laboratory analysis, was convinced the containers contained rocket fuel, not chemical weapons, sources told ABCNEWS.
The team, which does not talk to the media, arrived Sunday just as the Army 5th Corps experts were taking off their protective silver suits and orange boots.
Officials exercised caution in characterizing the Bayji discovery north of Tikrit. In recent weeks, U.S. forces have found a number of suspicious containers in Iraq that initial tests suggested contained potentially dangerous chemical agents. In each case, the initial results turned out to be false alarms.
Such initial field tests easily can confuse pesticides for dangerous military chemicals, as was the case in at least one previous discovery, experts note.
There are other reasons for caution: It is one thing to identify chemical weapons in the field, but in order for those results to hold up in an international court, they have to be tested under controlled laboratory conditions in three different labs.
Warheads, Vehicles
Military officials, and the chemical specialists at the site, were intrigued by other debris scattered near the suspect barrels. A U.S. Special Forces reconnaissance team on Friday found at least a dozen missiles, 150 gas masks and warheads at the site.
Local residents said the material was dumped at the location by Iraqi troops the day after U.S. forces took Baghdad. They said an Iraqi officer stayed behind and stood watch over the material for two more days.
"The warheads are in one place and the device, the rocket part of it, is in a different place," Novikov told ABCNEWS on Sunday. "That's why there's some thought that some of the drums are potentially propellant and some of the drums are potentially what they pour into the warhead."
Also raising suspicions were two partially looted vehicles at the site with dosage charts, a workstation, and what appeared to be a giant, Russian-made mixing device inside. Army Lt. Valerie Phipps, who gave ABCNEWS an exclusive tour of the site Saturday, said the vehicles might be mobile labs used to mix chemicals.
ABCNEWS' David Wright near Bayji, Iraq and Bill Blakemore in Baghdad, contributed to this report.
----
Second test positive
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 28, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030428-57890184.htm
TIKRIT, Iraq - More-sophisticated field tests conducted yesterday on the pile of 55-gallon drums found near a small industrial town in central Iraq came up positive for a chemical nerve agent.
But military officials said it will be two to three days before laboratory tests can show with certainty whether fluid from one of the 14 drums is a chemical agent used to make weapons of mass destruction.
The Washington Times first reported yesterday that U.S. troops discovered the pile of drums near Baiji, about 115 miles north of Baghdad, and that initial tests yielded positive results for the nerve agent cyclo-sarin.
The 4th Infantry Division's 1st Squadron, 10th Cavalry, was sent to secure and investigate the suspicious-looking pile of drums late Friday, after a U.S. Special Forces team discovered it.
The town, home to one of Iraq's oil refineries, is on the west bank of the Tigris River north of Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein and a known pocket of his most loyal supporters.
During the weekend, soldiers wearing gas masks and full-body protective suits extracted a small amount of clear fluid from one of the 55-gallon drums. Initial tests were conducted with Army M-8 test paper.
Yesterday, Lt. Col. Valentine Novikov, the 4th Infantry's chemical officer, stressed that M-8 paper is not always accurate, being designed to err on the side of caution to protect soldiers in combat.
He said a special team was sent yesterday with a civilian, "not so militarily rugged" test kit to evaluate the fluid in the drums.
The test with an AP-2C detector, which heats the agent in what is considered a more-accurate test, "came up positive for a nerve agent," Lt. Col. Novikov said.
"With the testing device that they used, you could not tell whether it was cyclo-sarin or sarin," he said. "It could only tell that it was a nerve agent."
Cyclo-sarin is a variant of the lethal chemical used in a gas attack that killed 12 persons and sickened thousands on the Tokyo subway in 1995. Heavy exposure can cause loss of muscle control, paralysis, unconsciousness and death within minutes.
"What's going to happen next is that a mobile exploitation team needs to go out and actually take samples of the fluid, which will go back to a laboratory," Lt. Col. Navikov said.
"The lab will determine whether it really is a positive chemical agent ... which I guess would be a smoking gun then," he said, adding that four samples of the fluid will be taken.
One will be sent to a lab in the United States, one to a lab in Europe and one to a lab in the Persian Gulf war theater. The fourth sample will be preserved for "historical purposes in a library kind of thing," Lt. Col. Navikov said.
In other developments:
•Four U.S. soldiers were wounded yesterday when an attacker opened fire on them in central Baghdad. The soldiers were stopped in traffic in two Humvees when the attacker fired. One of the soldiers was in serious condition, officials said.
•One U.S. soldier was killed and another hurt when their armored vehicles overturned near a checkpoint in Tikrit Saturday. The two soldiers were in Bradley Fighting Vehicles that rolled over.
•A leading Iraqi scientist who worked in the country's biological weapons program in the 1980s said he and his colleagues lied to UN inspectors about biological and chemical weapons. The stories he gave the inspectors "were all lies," Nissar Hindawi told the New York Times. He said Iraq "produced huge quantities" of liquid anthrax and botulinum toxin.
Yesterday on CNN's "Late Edition," Gen. Tommy Franks said coalition forces will "probably go through 1,000 sites" where weapons could be stored in Iraq.
U.S. military officials increasingly have felt pressure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or at least find the agents that could be used to make chemical and biological weapons.
"Our government wants to make sure that when they announce to the world that they've got the smoking gun that nobody, like [U.N. chief inspector for such weapons] Hans Blix, can poke holes in it," said one military official close to the investigation.
Before the war, President Bush aggressively argued the need to strip Saddam of his arsenal of chemical and biological weapons and any remaining elements of a nuclear-weapons program, which he said were hidden from U.N. weapons inspectors.
The U.N. team, led by Mr. Blix, spent months searching for such weapons in Iraq before the war.
Ultimately the inspectors failed to turn up enough evidence to persuade the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution for war, so the United States established its "coalition of the willing" to disarm Saddam's Iraq.
There have been several reports of possible chemical-weapons finds since coalition forces toppled Saddam's regime this month. So far none has panned out.
The pile of 55-gallon drums at issue near Baiji was stacked into a dirt berm that military officials said appeared at first to blend into the Iraqi countryside.
"It looked like a typical revetment that you see all over this country with munitions in it, except these containers looked different," said Col. Michael E. Moody, commander of the 4th Infantry's aviation brigade.
Before last week no U.S. troops had operated with intensity in the area around Baiji. Such units as the 101st Airborne Division and the Marines bypassed the town on their way to Mosul, about 100 miles to the north.
"I'm pleased that we found bad chemicals and can get them out of circulation; that whatever toxins, if they are weapons of mass destruction, that we are able to take control of it," Col. Moody said.
He said that for him the war in Iraq hasn't been about validating the action by finding unconventional weapons .
"This is really about, to a large degree, Iraqi freedom," he said.
-------- europe
Paris and Berlin prepare alliance to rival Nato
From Charles Bremner in Paris,
April 28, 2003
UK Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-661517,00.html
EUROPE'S self-inflicted wounds over Iraq will be on display tomorrow, when the leaders of France and Germany - dubbed the "Axis of Weasels" in America - start to try to lay the groundwork for a European Union military alliance that would compete with Nato.
At a meeting in Brussels with the Prime Ministers of Belgium and Luxembourg, President Chirac and Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, want to clear the way for a common European defence system that would start with a core of volunteer states.
Although the Germans have qualms about a confrontation with Nato, the French are not hiding their aim to achieve their long-standing goal of unhitching the United States from European defence. This has become more pressing with the reported plans of the US to punish France for its stand on the war in Iraq by excluding it from Nato decision-making.
Last night, however, Tony Blair gave warning to M Chirac against placing Europe as a rival to the United States, calling such a move "destabilising". In an interview with the Financial Times, he said: "I am not really interested in talk about punishing countries, but I think there is an issue that we have to resolve here between America and Europe and within Europe about Europe's attitutde towards the transatlantic alliance.
"I don't want Europe setting itself up in opposition to America. I think it will be dangerous and destabilising."
The mechanism for founding what would be a unified EU military force was tabled last week without much fanfare by the chiefs of the convention that is drafting a new EU constitution. The arrangement, akin to the foundation of monetary union, would be far more ambitious than the existing European security and defence policy that was launched by Britain and France in 1998. That policy, which includes a rapid reaction force, is limited to humanitarian, peacekeeping and crisis management in co-operation with Nato.
Although Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian Prime Minister, proposed the mini-summit months ago, London and other EU capitals view the Brussels initiative as akin to provocation by the four most active opponents of American policy over Iraq.
Despite denials from Paris and Berlin, the session looks like a manoeuvre by French-led "old Europe" against the pro-Atlantic axis, led by Britain and Spain and featuring new EU states, which Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, called "new Europe".
Britain, which has the EU's most powerful Armed Forces, was not invited. Nor were the leaders of the EU's other main pro-Atlantic states - Spain, Italy and the Netherlands.
Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, said that the Brussels meeting "risks sending a message of division about the the creation of a defence policy separate from Nato". Britain was adamant that the EU's present security arrangement had nothing to do with a common defence, which was the domain of Nato, Mr Hoon told a French newspaper.
Britain is especially opposed to the French-backed idea of creating an EU military general staff, but it supports the view, shared by France and the others, that the EU needs to raise defence spending and to create a centralised arms agency, which would avoid duplication and help competition with the American defence industry.
While Europe's split over Iraq has given impetus to the defence initiative, the project has been looming since the 1950s and in particular since President de Gaulle took France out of the Nato military structure in 1967. Differences over autonomy from Nato were buried and not resolved after M Chirac and Tony Blair launched their security initiative in St Malo in 1998.
The confrontation with the United States over Iraq was seen by M Chirac and his allies as a coming-of-age test that the expanding Union had failed. To become a real power, the EU must, in their eyes, define itself as a "balance" against the United States. An independent defence force is a primary condition for confirming Europe's identity as more than an economic bloc, they say.
Extending the defence concept over the weekend, Michele Alliot-Marie, the French Defence Minister who was visiting Moscow, sought to involve Russia, the ally of France and Germany in the anti-war front over Iraq, saying that "Russia should be associated with the planning work that we are carrying out".
Britain and other opponents of the plan point out that even with French power, the proposed four-nation core marshals only 35 per cent of EU defence spending. Britain is likely to oppose inclusion in the new constitution of the machinery for creating a defence alliance.
-------- iraq
Iraq war legacy: cluster bombs, wounded civilians
By Christine Hauser
28 Apr 2003
(Reuters)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L28180866.htm
NAJAF, Iraq, April 28 - Life has moved on in Najaf from the days when American and Iraqi forces battled it out in the war which ended Saddam Hussein's rule, but the fighting has left a painful legacy for many of the city's 200,000 residents.
Iraqi children are still in hospitals recovering from war wounds. Hundreds of civilian casualties are listed in medical records. And dozens of what U.S. soldiers call cluster bomb submunitions litter a street in Najaf's Hay Karama area.
"The Americans have cleared some explosives but there are still a lot of these little bombs around," said resident Abdelkarim Suleiman, pointing out the brass and plastic objects.
A deeply religious city populated by mostly Shi'ite Muslims, Najaf was the scene of U.S. ground and air attacks during the war to root out paramilitaries and soldiers loyal to Saddam.
The legacy of war in the city shows the struggle U.S. officials face as they begin the task of rebuilding Iraq. The U.S. team administering postwar Iraq met prominent Iraqis in Baghdad on Monday to discuss the country's problems and future.
War debris lies about 100 metres (yards) from houses in Hay Karama, indicating fighting took place in civilian areas. Multiple Launch Rocket System casings lie on the road. One casing is broken open to reveal the tips of munitions still embedded. Iraqi anti-aircraft and mobile artillery pieces stand crippled in their hiding places among the trees, a futile camouflage judging by their bombed and scorched wreckage.
Just metres away is the house of Abbas Habib, who says his father was killed in a U.S. strike. "It was about 1 a.m. and the battle lasted for about five hours," Habib said. "There were air strikes and other explosions. Our house was hit."
DEAD AND WOUNDED
Najaf's main hospitals kept records of the dead and wounded.
Dr Safa al-Amaidi, director of Najaf Teaching Hospital, said the hospital recorded 256 civilians killed and 393 wounded in the fighting in Najaf, mostly in Hay Karama, and from subsequent cluster bomb explosions, from March 21 through to April 17.
Najaf General Hospital records show seven killed, six of them civilians, and 112 civilians wounded. Kufa Ifrat al-Awsat hospital recorded 65 citizens wounded, mostly from shells.
Casualties could be higher -- doctors said some people were buried in villages because families could not reach the city during the war. Many asked for death certificates later, but Najaf Teaching Hospital did not issue them because they were not certain who was buried where.
"On one night, we received 35 dead from cluster bombs," Amaidi said. "After the cessation of hostilities most of the casualties were from cluster bombs."
Five-year old Isra Habib is an example of what American and British military spokesmen refer to as "collateral damage" when they mention the effects of weaponry and war on civilians who were not targeted but ended up as casualties.
Her leg has been amputated below the knee because of serious injuries from shrapnel, surgeon Muthanna al-Athari said.
"We looked outside the window of our house and there was a car on fire. We ran outside to extinguish the fire, afraid it would explode," the child said from her hospital bed.
Her sister Noor is recovering from wounds in the next bed.
Human rights groups have called for a ban on cluster bombs because they disperse in civilian areas and are indiscriminate. Some explode and others land intact and primed. Doctors say most of the wounds they saw were from cluster bomb shrapnel.
"We saw them. Some were not exploded and children picked them up and they were killed and injured," said Abdul-Illa al-Kaabi, a surgeon at Najaf General.
FIGHTING IN CIVILIAN AREAS
Iraqis in Najaf say pro-Saddam paramilitaries fought in civilian areas, worsening the damage and casualties.
"Iraqis used weapons near houses and schools so when the Americans fired back they could blame the damage on the Americans," said Ammar al-Safi. Nobody in the crowd around him spoke up to disagree.
Iraqi residents described nights of terror during U.S. air strikes, as they heard their neighbours screaming and crying and ambulance sirens shattered the darkness.
"We arrived at night and found many victims on the ground or in houses with severe injuries, fractures and severed limbs," said Ahmed Mazhar, who was on ambulance duty in late March.
Many Iraqis in Najaf say they are glad Saddam and his fighters are gone. But few are fans of the United States.
"Really, the defence of Najaf was not so strong," said Kaabi, the surgeon.
"True. What was there to fight for?" asked Tufaili, the doctor, sitting with him.
"To keep that President Saddam? No way," said Kaabi. "I don't want Saddam but I don't like Americans, because they are two-faced."
----
Oil-rich Iraq looks elsewhere for fuel
April 28, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/business/20030428-75505666.htm
DOHA, Qatar (AP) - Iraq's huge oil fields are pumping again, but kinks in the flow of gasoline and other refined fuels mean a country with the world's second-largest oil reserves may have to import stopgap petroleum products.
The danger of running dry is not high, but the risk highlights the fragility of efforts to restart Iraq's once-booming oil industry. Crude oil is plentiful. The trick is turning it into gasoline, fuel oils and lubricants that can keep Iraq running.
"We need the refineries to start producing more here," Clarke Turner, an oil official with the interim U.S. postwar administration, said yesterday. "If they don't, then we'll have to start looking at importing refined product."
Iraq's three refineries normally produce enough for domestic needs and for export, but one is hobbled by sporadic electricity shortages, another is running far below capacity and the third is still idle.
Restarting the oil industry is key to the U.S. plans for rebuilding Iraq. The refinery problems won't affect exports of crude oil, which will be sold to help pay for reconstruction, but refined fuels are crucial for the domestic economy.
Iraq has more proven oil reserves than any other country except Saudi Arabia, and before the war it was pumping around 2.8 million barrels a day, or 3 percent of global supplies. It needed around 300,000 barrels a day for domestic use, by some estimates, and the rest was exported.
Pumping resumed in the Rumeila field in southern Iraq near Basra on Wednesday, but the refinery in Basra isn't working.
Its planned restart has been pushed back to Wednesday. Rafael Jabba, director of economic activities for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Iraq, said the problem was leaky pipes.
"They have cracks and they are leaking and they have to be repaired before they can fire up the plant," Mr. Jabba said. He was not sure whether the damage was caused by the war or by years of neglect under the impoverished regime of Saddam Hussein.
"They do have supply of petroleum, oil and lubricants in Basra, but they are starting to run out," Mr. Jabba said. It was not clear how many days' supply were left.
At top speed, the Basra facility can refine 140,000 barrels a day. More than 180,000 barrels of crude oil are in its storage tanks awaiting refining, Mr. Turner said.
In northern Iraq, the Bayji refinery near Kirkuk has a capacity of up to 290,000 barrels a day, but Mr. Turner said the plant is reporting sporadic power outages.
Baghdad's Daura refinery is getting a trickle of oil from Iraq's northern fields and is producing about 45,000 barrels of fuel a day, but that is just 45 percent of capacity.
With refined stocks dwindling, U.S. officials said, they may need to temporarily import gasoline and other refined products, especially in the south, although Mr. Turner said there were no plans yet to do so.
Gary Volger, an oil adviser to Jay Garner, the retired U.S. Army general overseeing postwar reconstruction, said U.S. officials had received commitments from Kuwait to supply fuel and were seeking deals with other Persian Gulf countries.
----
IRAQ - Freed POWs leave camp hailing President Bush
World Scene
April 28, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030428-70279240.htm
CAMP BUCCA - Chanting "Saddam no, Bush yes," about 200 Iraqi prisoners of war were let go yesterday at the coalition's main internment camp in the desert near the southern port of Umm Qasr.
The men, many of them barefooted, shook hands with the American soldiers guarding the camp before boarding buses to be driven to nearby Basra, southern Iraq's largest city.
Their departure brought to 700 the number of POWs released since Friday.
----
U.S. ready to scrap oil-for-food
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 28, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030428-26533992.htm
Iraq's U.N.-administered oil-for-food program, created amid rancor among the United States, Russia and France, looks set to expire with even greater discord.
The United States, which long tried to tighten the sanctions and trade controls in the program, now is poised to demand the United Nations scrap the program altogether with the ouster of Saddam Hussein by coalition forces.
Russia and France, which led the fight against U.S. efforts to put teeth into the program while Saddam ruled, are now its biggest fans as their lucrative middleman role comes under threat.
The original thrust of the program - using Iraq's vast oil wealth to purchase food, medicine and supplies to up to 90 percent of the country's population - has been all but obscured by power plays over who will have the determining say in the country's political and economic future.
With oil revenues considered critical to the reconstruction of Iraq and the financial solidity of a new government, the Bush administration argues that ending the convoluted oil-for-food mechanisms and the sanctions on Iraq's economy is vital. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's oversight authority for the program ends June 3.
An interim management team for Iraq's oil ministry, to be headed by former Shell Oil executive Philip J. Carroll and reporting to American civil administrator Jay Garner in Baghdad, is expected to be officially announced this week.
But the sudden change of regime in Baghdad has not led France, Russia and other Security Council members to back U.S. plans for a swift termination of the oil-for-food program and a quick resumption of unfettered Iraqi oil production.
"We feel it should be phased out gradually, because we cannot terminate a program that has such significance for such a large proportion of the population," said Mexico's U.N. Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, who currently holds the Security Council presidency.
The need for some hard decisions on Iraq's oil wealth was underscored Friday with the resumption of production at the major Jambur oil field near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
The U.S. proposal, strongly pushed by the Pentagon, would lift all the sanctions imposed on Saddam's Iraq since the 1991 Persian Gulf war and eliminate virtually all U.N. oversight of Iraqi oil production and sales.
Future oil sales would go into a new development fund to be run by the interim Iraqi authority the United States and its coalition allies are helping to establish.
France has countered by seeking a "suspension" of most of the civilian sanctions on Iraq, but putting off a complete elimination of the oil-for-food program until the United Nations determines Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction.
Russia, whose giant oil firms signed lucrative exploration deals with Saddam's fallen regime, floated another proposal that would give Mr. Annan continuing authority over new Iraqi oil sales and humanitarian aid, so long as existing deals and contracts are honored.
With multiple accounts, high overhead, a staff of 4,000 Iraqis and international professionals, and a pattern of sweetheart deals built into its very fabric, the oil-for-food program was ripe for manipulation by all sides.
"If you like Enron-style transparency, you'll love the oil-for-food program," according to Wall Street Journal Europe analyst Claudia Rosett, who published an extensive expose of the program's shortcomings and compromises.
Established in 1996, the program called for U.N. oversight of all Iraqi oil sales, with the proceeds to be used to finance U.N.-approved contracts for humanitarian aid to Iraq's citizens and to finance reparations Iraq owes on claims dating back to the Gulf war.
Oil revenues went to an escrow account jointly controlled by the Iraqi government and a U.N. agency that oversaw the awarding of approved humanitarian and infrastructure contracts to international bidders.
The idea was to thwart any effort by Saddam to use the oil money for his military, but the practical upshot was to provide a bonanza for the companies and banks serving as middlemen for the oil-for-food contracts.
Russian firms dominated that market, winning 159 contracts, or about 21 percent, of all deals approved in a recent six-month period, U.N. records show.
French firms picked up 6 percent. No U.S. or British firms were awarded any of those contracts.
The U.S. proposal for a complete end to the sanctions would have the added effect of cutting out French and Russian middlemen.
--------
Agency: Jordanian Diplomats Back in Iraq
April 28, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Jordan-Iraq.html
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) -- Jordanian diplomats returned to Iraq on Monday to resume their duties in the kingdom's embassy in Baghdad, the official Petra news agency reported.
It said the diplomatic mission included the charge d'affaires, the consular team, and the cultural, trade and administrative sections.
Jordan, like many other countries who had diplomatic representation in Iraq, ordered most of its diplomats to leave the country ahead of the U.S.-led war aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein's regime. Advertisement
Some 4,000 Jordanians, including 3,000 students, were in Iraq before the war broke out March 20. Most of them returned to Jordan before or during the war.
Jordan, a close U.S.-ally, opposed the war in Iraq, but allowed several hundred American troops into the country to man Patriot missile batteries to protect the kingdom's airspace during the war.
Jordan also held close ties with Saddam's government, relying on Iraq for all its oil supplies and a great deal of trade.
----
Danger, dirt and death in the desert
THE BLACK WATCH AT WAR - PART2
GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN,
Mon 28 Apr 2003
The Scotsman
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/international.cfm?id=482522003
WHEN we awoke the mood had changed. Gone was the nervous excitement of the night before that came with the first taste of action. In its place was something less tangible, a sense that nothing was quite as it had been.
It was John who told us, John the irrepressible motor transport officer, whose ebullient nature enthused all around him. He didn't really need to say anything, his face told its own story. But he told us all the same. There were casualties, he said, some of the boys were dead.
We didn't really know them, the men who had gone, didn't know them like their friends did. But the feeling of loss was there, all the same. Two men killed, dying together in the dark, gone in a moment, killed by a shell fired by one of our own tanks in the confusion of battle. Two more badly hurt. A blue on blue, they call it, but maybe friendly fire is not such an inappropriate name after all. The commander who ordered the shot to be fired, distraught.
And another young man dead, Barry Stephen, 31, from Perth, killed as he tried to protect his friends, climbing up to man the machine gun on the roof of his vehicle just as the rocket-propelled grenade struck and tipped them over. Difficult to know which was harder to take.
Wherever we had gone, they found us. One night early on we camped in the centre of the town near an old Iraqi barracks, but sleep was not easy. Packs of dogs roamed the area and every now and again one would stand on a mine.
And then we were told to move out, the camp was just too dangerous, too difficult to defend. So we moved to a new base close to where the prisoners of war were being held and spent a night there, short on water because the supplies had not caught up.
That was the night before the worst morning. After the news of the deaths was broken we tried to tidy ourselves up a bit, washing with the water we had left in the leaking jerry can in the side bins of the Land Rover, rinsing out our clothing, grabbing a shovel and wandering off to find a little bit of privacy to dig our own toilet, all the things we tried to do every day to make ourselves feel a little more human.
And then more Scud alerts and panic, orders to form up and get out, people shouting again and desperately trying to get away, from what we were not yet sure but the body language said everything we needed to know. We had to get away, and quickly, but that is not how armies work.
Suddenly the front of the convoy was rocked by a massive explosion as a rocket-propelled grenade landed between the lead vehicles.
That galvanised our efforts, though it was another uncomfortable 15 minutes before we pulled out and off down another dark road to a new temporary home, further back from the front. The threat, it emerged, was tanks, hundreds of them, seen emerging from Basra and heading in our direction.
The following morning the rain had gone and the sun was out, our clothes were dry and we were on the move again, this time heading towards Basra. Dougie Hay's raid on the Baath Party HQ in Az Zubayr seemed to have broken the back of the resistance there and we were taking over the town. Overnight there had been reports of some sort of uprising in Basra itself and though these were overstated, there had been some rioting in the western slums of the city, a welcome sign that the regime might be losing its grip.
Our armoured units camped on the outskirts of Basra had also been busy, a battle we had witnessed in the distance as we stood around after the gas alert watching the explosions bursting along the skyline, the sound of the blasts mingling with the rolls of thunder put paid to any thoughts of sleep.
High explosives, bomblets and phosphorus shells had rained down on the Iraqi positions, a mortar line blown apart, armed pick-up trucks and tanks destroyed wherever they were spotted.
In Az Zubayr, the militiamen were on the run. Piling into mini-buses, they tried to flee, grabbing whatever they could lay their hands on. Pockets stuffed with hundreds of dollars, they headed north out of the town. The first one got through, but there was no such luck for the others. Picked off at vehicle checkpoints they found themselves driving straight into the sights of the British troops. The men who had terrorised the civilian population and subjected the advancing British troops to a campaign of harassment were forced to squat by the roadside, hands on their heads, British guns pointed unswervingly at them.
On a scrappy piece of land on the edge of town, we stopped and a large crowd gathered.
They wanted water, they said. We understood, we said. They repeated their requests, we repeated our assurances and so it could have gone on for hours if the militia, which it turned out had been watching this cultural exchange from cover nearby, had not chosen that moment to drop two mortar bombs a couple of hundred yards in front of us and open up with their AK47s.
It was the first time some of us had ever come under fire, and we stopped for a moment, looking at each other, before everything else kicked back in. The crowd was screaming and scattering, we were running but not sure where to run to. Towards the explosions? Away from them?
So we ran away again but the next day we were back handing out food and water to the massive crowd.
Before we could get comfortable at our new base, that too came under fire, but this time a lot of people had a very lucky escape. This time, the mortars were bang on target. The first warning we had was a radio message to say that a 120mm mortar battery had been spotted well within range, but we were outside the camp gates waiting to join a night raid into Basra. Inside the base, the message arrived that 120 Iraqi soldiers were approaching.
The first mortar exploded as they were reaching for their weapons to fight off the attackers. Outside the gate, the first explosion sounded in front of our Land Rover, rocking it violently. Another, behind us, followed. It was a classic military tactic, it was explained later, called bracketing. As we ripped open the Land Rover door and ran towards the Warrior armoured vehicle parked just a few yards away, five more shells exploded in a line between the first two.
We ran like men possessed and hurled ourselves through the open hatch, turned and saw Rob getting back out, and running back to the Land Rover, expecting at any moment another shell to explode and blow him to pieces, heard him shouting for Davie, our driver, convinced that he was out there.
And then we heard Davie's voice, behind us. He had been the first in through the door. We yelled to Rob to get in, pulled the hatch behind him and sat there trying to grab our breath. Rob looked terrible, but that was no great surprise.
Basra was still to come, but the militia in Az Zubayr seemed to be on the run. And there was something else to raise the spirits. The snipers were resting up in the same place, and they brought with them tales from the rooftops of fights and stake-outs and chases and dead militia men picked off and mortar plates destroyed. They had killed 17 people in just eight days.
We listened fascinated to these quiet men with their strange rifles wrapped in rags who sat around for days waiting for the moment to strike.
It was the tank crew who had spotted the militiamen first, four men in civilian clothing jumping out of the back of a pick-up truck carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in the heart of Az Zubayr. Corporal Mark Harvey was the first of the snipers to react, dropping to his knee and fixing the man carrying the RPG in his sights, one shot, a moving target, the militia man dropping like a stone, dead before he hit the ground. A clean shot to the head.
The three others with him stopped in their tracks, grabbed the body of their fallen comrade and pulled him into the bushes by the roadside, then took off towards the nearby houses. The snipers followed.
In the lead was Corporal "Pedro" Laing, SA80 rifle in hand. He reached the door and never paused, raising his boot and kicking hard against the woodwork, sending it flying open.
Inside the building, a militiaman, pulling the pin from his grenade and hurling it at Pedro's head. The corporal ducked, the grenade flying over his head, exploding in the street, shrapnel whizzing past his friends outside, fragments hitting Lance Corporal Scott "Robbo" Robertson at the top of his legs. As Pedro got back to his feet, he looked up to see that the man in front of him had snatched up his AK47.
As he hit the ground again, a burst of bullets whistled over his head. On his feet once more, he saw that the man had now grabbed the RPG launcher and down he went again, diving out of the doorway, the rocket missing him by inches, hitting the embankment on the opposite side of the street, the explosion sending Corporal Harvey somersaulting over the mound of sandy soil, landing heavily on the other side. Later, he would realise that the fall had crushed a vertebrae in his back and that he could hardly stand. But not now.
Jumping up, he fired one shot at the man now standing in the doorway , a single round from his Accuracy International L96 sniper's rifle from 20m away, killing him instantly.
Then Robbo and Pedro were in through the doorway, throwing grenades on the run, one, two, three, four, exploding in front of them, the tank outside pouring chain gun fire into the roof of the building. As the grenades went off, the pair opened up with their rifles, finishing off the militiamen, four soldiers from a mortar platoon rushing in to help make sure none got away, clearing the building, killing everyone in their way.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli court refuses to outlaw army's use of deadly dart shells
MARGARET NEIGHBOUR
Mon 28 Apr 2003
The Scotsman
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/international.cfm?id=482472003
ISRAEL'S supreme court yesterday threw out a bid to bar the army's use of flechette shells against Palestinians.
The use of the weapons, which explode in the air and spread thousands of small metal darts over a wide area, did not contravene international law, the court said.
Two human rights groups had argued that use of the shells in residential areas is against international law and asked the court to outlaw their use in the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the Tel Aviv branch of Physicians for Human Rights had cited evidence of two recent incidents that killed six Palestinians.
The three-judge panel said the decision on when and in what circumstances flechette shells could be used lay with Israeli military commanders in the field.
But the court said officers must exercise maximum care to prevent injuries to Palestinian civilians "who are not involved in activities which endanger Israeli soldiers or civilians".
In one case cited by Physicians for Human Rights, a flechette shell killed three Bedouin women in a tent after being launched in response to fire at an Israeli army position near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim. The other case involved a shell fired at three Palestinian youths who were trying to infiltrate a settlement.
Fired from tanks, flechette shells disperse darts 3.75mm in diameter in a conical arch 300 metres long and 90 metres wide, the Haaretz newspaper reported on its web site yesterday.
Flechette shells are not banned by international law as weapons, but are not to be used in areas where civilians live.
The executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, Tomer Fesser, said he was not surprised by the ruling. "It joins a long list of similar decisions ignoring the rights of the Palestinian residents of the territories and giving a free hand to the army to continue its policy of injuring innocent civilians," Dr Fesser said.
Yochi Gensin, a representative of the state prosecutor's office who represented the Israeli Defence Forces, said the force had drawn up rules to ensure flechettes would not be used regularly and restricted to areas where the chances of hitting civilians were minimal.
Meanwhile, in London last night, Jordan's King Abdullah II said that even with a democratic Iraq as a possible example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stood in the way of Arab states embracing democracy.
"With the cloud of the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Arab issue hanging over our heads, we'll never have the secure, stable atmosphere: to be able to develop in the way that we want," he told CNN.
The new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, said yesterday he will not meet with officials abroad until Israel lifts its travel ban on Yasser Arafat. Mr Abbas - a moderate whose appointment is seen by Israel and the US as a key condition for a Middle East peace settlement - appeared to be making a gesture to Mr Arafat before a critical vote in the Palestinian parliament.
"I will not leave the country and I will not visit anywhere before the siege imposed on President Arafat has been lifted and before he enjoys full freedom to move within the West Bank and Gaza and outside, without any obstacles to his return," Mr Abbas said.
Israel tightened restrictions on Mr Arafat's movements more than a year ago. At times, it has confined him to his West Bank headquarters, with Israeli troops besieging the compound. Israel now says Mr Arafat is free to leave the West Bank, but will not guarantee he will be allowed to return.
Aides to the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said last week it was not planned to ease restrictions on Mr Arafat.
----
Israeli Calls for 'Regime Change' in Iran, Syria
April 28, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-israel-ambassador.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Israeli ambassador in Washington called for "regime change" in Iran and Syria on Monday through diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions and what he called "psychological pressure."
Ambassador Daniel Ayalon said the U.S. invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein helped create great opportunities for Israel but it was "not enough."
"It has to follow through. We still have great threats of that magnitude coming from Syria, coming from Iran," he told a conference of the pro-Israeli Anti-Defamation League.
Ayalon said he did not advocate or foresee the invasion of Syria and Iran. "I certainly do not see any aggressive military campaign. I don't think that would be the right thing. Nobody is suggesting that," he said.
But he added: "There are other means that can be exhausted ... The way to deal with Iran for instance is to delegitimize its regime and the way to do that is applying political pressure ... and to really apply economic sanctions."
Governments should not allow visits by Iranian leaders such as President Mohammad Khatami and Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi and foreign leaders should not visit Iran, he said.
He criticized the European Union for encouraging commercial relations with Iran. "I don't think this is the way to deal with them, because the more the regime is isolated, the shorter its days and, as I mentioned, there is fertile ground in Iran to have a regime change there," he said.
"Seventy percent of the population (of Iran) are really ready for regime change. They have tasted, they have been experiencing before democracy and Western cultures and they are yearning for it," he added.
He was apparently referring to the authoritarian and undemocratic rule of the Shah of Iran, who was overthrown in 1979 by a popular revolution in the name of Islam.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PRESSURE
Ayalon spoke less about Syria, which held peace negotiations with Israel until 2000, but to most of his comments on Iran he added that the same applied to Syria.
"The important thing is to show (international) political unity and this is the key element to pressure the Iranians into a regime change and the same case is with the Syrians. So this is the direction -- a lot of psychological pressure.
Ayalon complained of Syria and Iranian support for Lebanese and Palestinians guerrilla groups which attack Israelis and said that Iran had accelerated its quest for nuclear weapons.
"If we thought a few years ago that they are five or six years shy from a nuclear device, now it's being very sharply reduced, the time that they can achieve that," he said.
On the Middle East peace plan which the United States is expected to release this week, the ambassador said that for peace talks to succeed the new Palestinian prime minister will have to create new security organizations and dismantle the infrastructure of groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The prime minister-designate, Mahmoud Abbas or Abu Mazen, is expected to win a vote of confidence from the Palestinian legislature this week, clearing the way for serious talks on the peace plan, also known as the road map.
Ayalon said: "We are not going to put (this) as conditional for starting the process but certainly the process cannot go forward if terror continues. There cannot be a situation where we negotiate during the day and get killed at night.
"Any progress, any program will be driven by performance and we will not move from any stage to the next until specific benchmarks have been fulfilled."
Answering American-Jewish mistrust of the European Union and the United Nations, which are joint authors of the road map with the United States, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, the State Department official in charge of Middle East policy, said that there was no substitute for "strong American leadership."
----
Israel Wants EU to be Sidelined in Mideast Deal: Report
Monday, April 28 2003
Palestine Chronicle
http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20030428004440774
BRUSSELS - A diplomatic dispute over the formalities of publishing the long-awaited 'road map' for peace in the Middle East may see the EU's role in the process severely curtailed.
Israel is said to be demanding that the 'road map,' agreed upon by the international community, be presented to them only by the United States, reports the internet online 'EUOBSERVER'
Both the Israeli and US governments have repeatedly talked about the "US road map" much to the chagrin of the three other Quartet members -- Russia, the UN and the EU -- who, with the US, agreed to the text in December 2002.
EU officials have criticized the US-Israeli intention to sideline Europe in the Middle East peace deal.
''This is not a problem to be solved by only one country, it is a problem to be solved by the cooperation of... members of the international community that have been engaged in this peace process for a long time," said EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
"The road map is not the property of one country, it is the property of the Quartet," he told reporters in Brussels.
"I would like to remind you all that although I hear and read quite frequently that this is America's road map, it is not America's road map," Commission spokeswoman for external relations, Emma Udwin, told reporters.
"It is the road map of the Quartet, which is the U.S., the UN., Russia and - let me modestly put us last - the EU," she said. The road map is due to be presented after the new Palestinian Prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is formally appointed, probably this weekend.
The text of the plan agreed on the 20 December is in fact an amalgamation of two papers presented to the Quartet, one from the US and one from Denmark , acting for the EU. But presentation only by the US would be tantamount to a death-blow for the plan's acceptance in the Arab world, noted the EUOBSERVER.
Even before its publication, it has been received with a great deal of skepticism by Palestinians and the Arab press.
-[Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).] Published at the Palestine Chronicle.
-------- landmines
Fighting is over but the deaths go on
Guardian investigation reveals mines have killed up to 80 civilians since the conflict ended
Michael Howard in Kirkuk
Monday April 28, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,944831,00.html
Unexploded ordnance and landmines littering northern Iraq have killed or maimed more people - many of them children - since the end of the war than during the fighting, a Guardian investigation has revealed.
In the two weeks after the cessation of hostilities on the northern frontline, which divided the Kurdish self-rule area from government-controlled territory, as many as 80 civilians have died and more than 500 have been injured.
"We are facing an emergency situation," said Sean Sutton of the UK-based Mines Advisory Group, which is coordinating an operation in the region to clear unexploded ordnance and mines.
"Across Iraq, the detritus of war is killing, maiming and scarring for life adults and, most tragically, children."
In the north, human rights groups, anti-mine organisations and Kurdish regional authorities are struggling to document the casualties. And, because of a piecemeal approach to record-keeping, mortality rates could be even higher than suggested.
To assess the scale of the problem, the Guardian visited hospitals and police stations in the city of Kirkuk, as well as in four towns on the south-east tip of the green line: Kalar, Kifri, Khanaqin and Jalula.
Casualty departments were struggling to cope with the effects of the arsenal left by the Iraqi army and US warplanes.
Among the injured were farmers who stepped on mines planted by retreating Iraqi soldiers; scrap dealers who tried to salvage brass from unexploded shells; and children who played a disastrous game of "genie" with gunpowder from anti-aircraft bullets.
Some of the 1,500 cluster bombs the US dropped on Iraq have also killed and wounded people around Mosul, Kirkuk and Jalula. In Mosul and Kirkuk, Iraqi soldiers stockpiled ammunition and small arms in homes and schools. "They clearly believed that by withdrawing into the cities they could make the war last for six months," Mr Sutton said.
Reports from hospitals in Mosul suggest a rise in deaths and injuries since the end of hostilities, only some of it attributable to the unrest in the city after its fall.
But with more than 300 dead or injured so far, the population of Kirkuk appears to have suffered the most.
The Guardian was told of 44 deaths caused by landmines or unexploded ordnance in the five days after the collapse of the city on April 9. And, on April 15, 17 people were killed and three injured in one blast in the district of Dibs. They were reportedly trying to take scrap from unexploded shells.
At the Bayda secondary school for girls, researchers for Human Rights Watch found a classroom stuffed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortar shells, and machine-gun bullets. A school guard said the ammunition had been taken to the school shortly before the war began, and that the girls had been forced to take their lessons in a room next door.
In Kirkuk, anti-personnel mines and ammunition were found packed into makeshift bunkers on common ground near residential areas. Other explosive materials lay around the grounds of abandoned military bases on the city's edge. A local mosque was home to around 700 landmines.
Mr Sutton said the Mines Advisory Group had also found evidence of a new type of American cluster bomb dropped outside the city.
The BLU 108, he explained, is an anti-armour bomblet with a sensor. When the mother unit is dropped it spews out four smaller units with parachutes. Each of these then slings out four lethal circular discs. "These should be directed toward armour," Mr Sutton said. "But we found them in fields. And 75% of them were unexploded."
He said the group had cleared most of the cluster bombs from the city in cooperation with US forces. But more needed to be done.
"We need funds to clear up this mess now. For the price of two cruise missiles we could save many lives."
Yesterday in Jalula locals told of cluster bombs dropped nearby. Hussein Khalifa, chief surgeon at the local hospital, said there had been 12 incidents of burns, mine and UXO injuries in the last few days.
As he spoke, another burns injury arrived. Satair Ahmed Abbas, 15, had been playing with explosives on wasteground near the military camp. He sat stoically as the doctor examined his charred face. "He's lost one eye; we may be able to save the other," Dr Khalifa said.
Later, in the town of Kalar, the Guardian was told of a further 12 deaths and 95 injuries in the two weeks after fighting stopped. Thirty-two of the injured were children.
Meanwhile, in Baghdad on Saturday at least six people died and 10 were wounded when an Iraqi weapons cache under US control exploded.
The US military blamed unknown attackers who had fired four flares into the open dump. Residents accused the Americans of storing the arsenal near a housing estate.
-------- mideast
RAND and Qatar to launch policy institute
April 28, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030428-055623-5042r.htm
WASHINGTON, April 28 -- The RAND Corp. and the Qatar Foundation agreed on Monday to establish the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute, which will involve hundreds of RAND experts in the United States and Europe in research and analysis focused on critically important issues facing the Middle East.
The think tank and the foundation signed the agreement at a ceremony in Doha, Qatar. Sheika Mozah Bint Nasser al-Misnad, chairwoman of the Qatar Foundation and consort of the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, signed for the foundation and RAND President James A. Thomson signed for the think tank.
This agreement is the latest of several education and research initiatives launched by the Qatar Foundation. The RAND-Qatar Policy Institute will be a part of the Education City being created in Doha as a regional center of excellence in learning, research and technology development. It will forge ties with programs in medicine, science, engineering and other areas in Doha, and will train the region's policy analysts in research methods that can help leaders make informed policy decisions.
The RAND-Qatar Policy Institute will be directed by C. Richard Neu, a RAND economist with broad experience in government service, international affairs and security issues, who will move to Doha to assume his new position. Neu has extensive experience in the Middle East and has visited the region many times.
The RAND-Qatar Policy Institute will work closely with RAND's Center for Middle East Public Policy, which is directed by Jerrold Green and is based in Santa Monica, Calif.
RAND officials expect the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute to grow significantly in the future, adding staff from other RAND locations, hiring analysts from the Middle East and using consultants from the branch campuses of top quality universities in the Qatar Foundation's Education City and other universities in the region. Like RAND, the new institute will be a non-profit organization.
It is hoped that the new institute, which has been under development for nearly three years, will strengthen Qatar's standing as the Middle East's center for analysis and research, and will help build regional capabilities for policy analysis. Qatar has been in the forefront of Middle Eastern nations in applying careful and objective analysis to key policy problems.
--------
Saudi telethon raises millions for Iraqis
Saudi King Fahd personally donated almost $3m
Monday, 28 April, 2003,
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2982099.stm
A telethon on Saudi state television has raised about 43.3 million Saudi riyals ($11.5m) in aid donations to Iraq, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said.
The agency said King Fahd, who called Sunday's event to show Saudi Arabia's commitment in helping Muslims across the world, personally donated 10m riyals ($2.7m).
It said Crown Prince Abdullah contributed 5m riyals ($1.3m), and other government ministers donated several millions riyals.
Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef said the decision to stage the telethon, which ran until early hours on Monday, came "from a desire to satisfy God".
"Our aid for the afflicted in the world is not for earthly purposes or publicity objectives," Prince Nayef said during a live phone-in at Saudi television.
"Such aid is guided by our Islamic principles and authentic values."
Saudi convoy
The SPA said all the fund would be given to the Iraqis in need directly by Saudi relief agencies. Humanitarian aid workers unloaded packages for from a plane 17 April, 2003 at Marka airport in Amman The UN says half of Iraqis will run out of food by the end of April
Last week, the first Saudi humanitarian convoy entered Iraq, carrying food and medicine, and also including equipment for a mobile field hospital.
A large team of Saudi surgeons accompanied the convoy.
Saudi Arabia - which publicly opposed the US-led war against Iraq - has held several telethons to help raise money for Muslims in several other countries.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan Makes Peace Overture to India
April 28, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-India.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan made a major peace overture to nuclear rival India on Monday, proposing visits between their leaders in an effort to ease decades-long tensions over the disputed Kashmir region.
Pakistan Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali called Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and asked "to resolve outstanding issues through dialogue," according to Pakistan Television. Advertisement Jamali also said Pakistan officials are willing to visit India and invited Indian officials to visit Pakistan "in the cause of peace," the report said.
Jamali made his offer after Vajpayee last week proposed talks between the two nations while visiting the troubled Indian-Kashmir capital of Srinagar. It also comes weeks before a top Bush administration official visits the region in an effort to ease ongoing tensions.
According to a Pakistan foreign ministry statement, Jamali "welcomed Prime Minister Vajpayee's offer of talks with Pakistan and reiterated Pakistan's readiness for a dialogue with India at any level."
The South Asian neighbors have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan but which both claim in its entirety.
So far, India has refused to negotiate with Pakistan, instead demanding that Islamabad first stop Muslim militants crossing from Pakistan-ruled Kashmir into Indian-ruled Kashmir to launch attacks.
The militants have been fighting since 1989 for the region's independence or merger with Pakistan, and Pakistan-based militant groups regularly claim responsibility for shooting and bomb attacks in Kashmir.
When Vajpayee made the proposal last week, he said Pakistan first had to close militant camps in its territory.
Pakistan says it is doing all it can to seal the border and asked Monday for more international monitors to verify its assertions that no cross-border infiltrations are taking place. India has blocked the request.
Islamabad says it only gives political and moral support to the militants.
Under increased pressure to clamp down on extremist Muslim groups, Pakistan promised Monday to stop outlawed groups from reorganizing under new names.
Several groups outlawed by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States appear to have sidestepped the ban by adopting new names. One of them, the anti-Indian group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, regrouped under the banner of Jamaat al-Dawat.
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba often has been accused by India of carrying out attacks on Indian troops in its part of Kashmir.
The dispute over Kashmir attracted international attention only after India conducted a 1998 nuclear test and Pakistan followed with its own.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage will discuss Kashmir province when he visits Pakistan and India next month, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said Monday. Armitage will visit the region May 5-11 and is expected to visit Afghanistan.
Both countries have declared themselves nuclear powers and there are fears that another conflict could escalate into a nuclear confrontation.
During the telephone conversation, the two leaders also discussed ways of moving beyond the Kashmir dispute. They spoke for 10 minutes, according to the Press Trust of India.
"The prime ministers exchanged views on exploring ways and means to initiate relations in economic, culture and sports fields which will be to the mutual benefits of the two people," the foreign ministry statement said.
-------- russia
Russia to boost military presence along Tajik-Afghan border
Monday April 28, 2003-- Safar 25, 1424 A.H.,
Pakistan International News
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2003-daily/28-04-2003/world/w2.htm
DUSHANBE: Russian President Vladimir Putin Sunday told Russian troops based in Tajikistan that he planned to boost his country's military presence in the former Soviet republic as dangers still loomed across the border in Afghanistan.
"We plan to reinforce our presence here," Putin said during a visit to a Russian military complex outside the Tajik capital Dushanbe. "The situation remains complicated in Central Asia, especially with regard to Afghanistan," he said. Russia has a total of 19,000 troops in Tajikistan, with 11,000 of them patrolling the country's tense southern border with Afghanistan -- a porous frontier through which hundreds of kilograms of Afghan drugs pass every month.
Putin warned that the situation remained tense in Afghanistan, where "our special services have recently noticed increased activity from the Taliban and al-Qaeda." Russia was a key ally in the "war on terror" launched by the United States after the September 11 attacks, supporting the war in Afghanistan and accepting the presence of US bases in several Central Asian countries traditionally seen as its backyard. Putin said he had won the support of Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov in talks Saturday to boost Russia's military presence in the impoverished republic. Yet Russian and Tajik officials have failed to agree over the status of Russian military troops in Tajikistan. Tajikistan has failed to ratify a 1999 accord giving Russian military complexes the status of being a "base" and thus denying them various social benefits.
Alexander Baranov, military chief at the 201st division complex visited by Putin, said Russian and Tajik officials continued to have a "difference of opinion" over the issue. "If we get 'base' status, things will change for the better, it will allow us to create better living conditions for the troops' families," he said, adding that the facility struggled with water, heat and electricity shortages. Putin, who visited the site with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, was due to meet his Tajik counterpart again later Sunday, as well as the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, for a meeting of the regional Eurasian Economic Community.
-------- spies
Spy case will be hard to pursue
Defense may seek dismissal by threat to expose secrets
James Sterngold,
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, April 28, 2003
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/04/28/MN224377.DTL
Los Angeles -- It has been only two weeks since the government arrested an alleged double agent for China, as well as her FBI handler and lover, but even before an indictment has been handed up, the case is fraught with complications.
Defense attorneys are considering a strategy that has proved extremely effective in a number of recent cases: demanding the disclosure of classified information in court, or forcing prosecutors to drop the charges.
The two arrested in the latest case, Katrina Leung, a Los Angeles area businesswoman, and James J. Smith, a retired FBI agent and counterintelligence expert, have been accused of having illegally copied a classified document with the intent of harming the United States. Smith, who reportedly had an affair with Leung for nearly 20 years, was charged with negligence in permitting her to take and copy the documents.
Leung reportedly carried on an affair with another former FBI counterintelligence agent, William Cleveland, who resigned from a security job at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory after his name surfaced in the case. He has not been charged in the case.
Both Leung and Smith have declared their innocence through their attorneys. But the lawyers have said little else, other than suggesting that the pair were acting at the FBI's behest and hinting they would attempt to prove that by demanding the disclosure of potentially embarrassing classified documents.
That is precisely the approach that appeared to have been decisive in forcing federal prosecutors to drop 58 of their 59 charges in another celebrated case several years ago involving Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos nuclear scientist accused of mishandling government secrets.
That is no coincidence, because Smith has hired two of Lee's attorneys, Brian Sun and John Cline, who are now experts in the relatively obscure rules surrounding the use of classified information in criminal cases.
EXPERIENCED LAWYERS
John Vandevelde, Leung's lawyer, also has used the rules in a previous case involving a rocket scientist. He said that even at this preliminary stage, the approach could be the pivot on which the case turns -- assuming there is a trial.
"There's no question that classified documents and classified information are central to understanding how Katrina Leung acted at the behest and at the direction of the FBI in order to further the interests of the United States," Vandevelde said.
Sun said, "I can tell you we intend to use classified material if necessary to show (Smith) had a well-placed justification in believing Katrina Leung was loyal based on a long track record."
The government has refused to comment on its legal strategy. Bryan Sierra, a Department of Justice spokesman, said, "It's too soon to discuss it at this point."
The rules on when and how classified information can be introduced at criminal trials were codified in the Classified Information Procedures Act, known as CIPA. They are not invoked often, and relatively few attorneys have extensive experience in applying the rules because there are relatively few indictments involving espionage or other alleged misuses of classified information.
But the rules have been critical on some important occasions. When Oliver North was defending himself against charges in the Iran-Contra scandal, his attorneys persuaded a judge to allow them to introduce government secrets in court, which prompted the prosecutors to drop a number of the counts against him. Cline was one of North's attorneys.
LOATH TO REVEAL DATA
In the Wen Ho Lee case, the government dropped most of its charges and cut a plea deal on a single count after a judge ruled that the classified data requested by his attorneys was relevant to the case.
And in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, an alleged terrorist accused of being the so-called 20th hijacker on Sept. 11, 2001, the government has sought to use the CIPA rules. Moussaoui has argued that he should be able to have access to some classified material to mount a defense, and a court has agreed. The prosecutors have responded that they should be able to offer summaries or declassified substitute documents, as the CIPA rules sometimes permit.
The CIPA rules expected to be central to the case are cumbersome and complex. Essentially, they set up a three-stage process, each of which can be appealed.
First, the defense asks to use classified material. The judge then rules on whether the material would be relevant to the trial. If the judge rules the material is relevant, then a battle begins over the third step, whether the defense will be permitted to use the actual classified documents, or whether the government may offer an unclassified summary of the disputed materials, an edited version, or a substitute document.
If the defense wins, the prosecutors face a choice -- permit the information to be made public, or, potentially, drop at least some of the charges.
Because the CIPA rulings can be so decisive, the battle, sometimes called a trial within a trial, can be fought bitterly and for months.
E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com.
----
'90 Trip to China a Turning Point for Ex-FBI Agent
Extensive Surveillance of Cleveland's Team Was Result of Tip From Accused Spy, Officials Say
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 28, 2003; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46157-2003Apr27?language=printer
American officials who travel in China expect to be watched. But for former FBI counterintelligence agent Bill Cleveland, who visited China with three colleagues under his own name in late 1990, the extensive monitoring proved to be a pivotal career event.
The U.S. team was dogged at every turn by teams of Chinese agents on foot and in cars, attracting considerably more attention than they expected for a routine check of security at U.S. diplomatic facilities, said I.C. Smith, a former FBI counterintelligence official who led the trip while on loan to the State Department.
"I think all of us thought this was more than coincidence," Smith said. "The coverage that was given to us was not the norm; it was way beyond the norm."
The surveillance, the government now alleges, was not a coincidence. Katrina M. Leung, a highly valued informant for the FBI, had tipped off China's Ministry of State Security about the trip, and had disclosed Cleveland's identity as head of a failed espionage probe against a Taiwanese American scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, code-named "Tiger Trap," according to court documents and officials.
Furthermore, prosecutors say, Leung was having affairs at the time with both Cleveland and another FBI counterintelligence agent, James J. Smith (no relation to I.C. Smith), who was acting as her handler.
Cleveland's trip to China now stands as a crucial turning point in an otherwise esteemed career. In the few short weeks since Leung and James Smith were arrested in connection with espionage-related crimes, Cleveland has lost a lucrative job as a senior security official at Livermore and has seen his professional reputation called into question.
The son of a career FBI man who worked under J. Edgar Hoover, Cleveland has not been charged with a crime and is cooperating with federal officials. Authorities are investigating whether Cleveland allowed Leung access to any of the sensitive nuclear secrets he was responsible for guarding at Livermore, and whether any of the investigations he conducted during his tenure at the FBI were compromised.
FBI investigators and Livermore officials say they are optimistic that Cleveland did not leak nuclear secrets to Leung, in part because he passed a recent FBI polygraph test.
But Cleveland also took an earlier polygraph test administered by the Department of Energy, during which he was asked about contact with foreign agents, sources say. He passed, despite his intermittent love affair with a woman he knew had been suspected of spying for the Chinese government.
"She was targeting him, and I would sure worry about anything he had access to," said Danny B. Stillman, a former counterintelligence chief at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who knew Cleveland well. "Why would she continue the relationship if she wasn't getting something out of it? I doubt that there was that much prestige in sleeping with two FBI agents."
The case marks an abrupt turn for a 25-year FBI agent who was viewed by many as one of the bureau's top experts on Chinese counterintelligence. Court affidavits say Cleveland had a romantic affair with Leung from 1988 to '93, then resumed it in '97 and '99. Cleveland, 60, has not responded to numerous requests for comment.
Compared by more than one acquaintance to George Smiley, the erudite and reflective spymaster in John Le Carre's novels, Cleveland was still sought for expertise by the FBI years after his 1993 retirement, and was regularly asked to lead seminars for rookie intelligence agents in the federal government.
He is fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese and, unlike some other agents, has a deep and abiding interest in Chinese culture and history. He is a baseball nut and an avid jogger, friends said. In Monterey, Calif., friends and neighbors have told reporters that Cleveland and his wife, a schoolteacher, were extremely close.
Cleveland headed the FBI's Chinese counterintelligence squad in San Francisco until the early 1990s. He told friends he took the Livermore job in part so he could stay in the Bay Area without pressure from the FBI to move on.
"If you assume the FBI's San Francisco office was the critical node in Chinese espionage, he was the guy," said Notra Trulock III, the DOE's former head of counterintelligence, who worked with Cleveland on the controversial investigation of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee. "When he went to Livermore, he was still the guy. . . . When I heard he was involved in this, I almost fell off my chair. He was the last guy I would suspect."
Robert S. Vrooman, a former CIA officer who directed counterintelligence at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which, along with Livermore, is administered by the University of California, said that in his manner and bearing, Cleveland "stood out as a class act."
"There were a lot of FBI agents who wanted to be Bill Cleveland," he said.
Vrooman and other counterintelligence experts said the Leung revelations also shed new light on the flaws evident in some of the cases that Cleveland worked.
In Tiger Trap, the main suspect, Gwo-Bao Min, was forced to resign from Livermore under suspicion of passing neutron bomb secrets to China, but no criminal charges were ever filed. No one answered the phone on several occasions last week at the Danville, Calif., trading company Min owns.
The same probe introduced Cleveland and other U.S. counterintelligence agents to Los Alamos scientist Lee, who was recorded on wiretaps offering to help Min, but who was never disciplined for admitted security violations. Lee was later the target of a bungled FBI investigation, supported by Cleveland, into whether he gave nuclear secrets to the Chinese. The Justice Department subsequently faulted the bureau for failing to consider other suspects.
Similarly, many officials were disappointed in the outcome of Cleveland's investigation of Peter Lee, who worked at Los Alamos in the 1980s and later at TRW Inc. Lee confessed to passing nuclear secrets to China in 1997, but received a controversial sentence of 12 months in a halfway house.
In all three instances, Cleveland either headed or played a crucial role in the investigation. Some current and former counterintelligence officials now fear that if Leung was a Chinese spy, she may have had a hand in influencing the outcome of those cases.
"In some ways I have to say I'm not all that shocked" by Cleveland's involvement with Leung, Vrooman said. "The truth is, every time I worked on something with him, it never went anywhere. Maybe this will help explain that."
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III did not mention Cleveland when he briefed key members of Congress on the spy scandal two weeks ago. Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), who chaired a select committee on technology transfers to China, said later, "It is not clear why he was not part of the arrests."
Cleveland did not know that his lover had allegedly betrayed him until he returned from the China trip and overheard her voice on a clandestine wiretap talking with a Chinese agent, court records show. After he warned Smith, both agents attended a meeting at FBI headquarters, where officials decided to let Smith take care of the problem, records show.
In fact, the romantic relationship between Smith and Leung continued until 2002, two years after Smith retired from the bureau, court documents allege. Still unresolved is how much FBI officials in Los Angeles -- where Smith worked -- and Washington knew about his relationship with Leung, and to what extent bureau policies were violated when it was allowed to continue.
Although Cleveland had the highest possible clearance at Livermore -- known as "Q" level -- one senior U.S. intelligence official said that would not necessarily give him access to nuclear weapons design details. Instead, this official said, Leung could have learned passwords and other tricks from Cleveland on how to bypass the lab's security systems, gaining access to such secrets on her own.
Ironically, several officials noted, Cleveland was hired by Livermore in 1993 to shore up defenses at a lab with notoriously lax security. After about eight years in the top counterintelligence job, Cleveland switched to part-time status two years ago to focus on special projects, lab spokeswoman Susan Houghton said.
Cleveland also recently signed on as a lecturer at San Jose State University, where he has taught classes on law enforcement management and counterintelligence. The latter course includes discussion of prominent spy cases, nuclear espionage and "China's intelligence services and methodologies," according to a syllabus. Cleveland has retained that post.
Cleveland's message during many seminars and classes has remained similar over the years, according to participants: that those who work with sensitive national security information must be vigilant to protect against espionage.
As he warned in a lab newsletter in 2001, "because we are government contractors who have access to secrets, we can be targeted by a foreign power for those secrets."
Staff writers Susan Schmidt and R. Jeffrey Smith contributed to this report.
-------- us
Anger, horror at war's violence - WAR DIARY
NBC's Mike Taibbi goes inside a counseling session with soldiers from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division as they confront their memories, fears and battlefield demons -- and try to deal with them before they return home.
By Mike Taibbi
NBC NEWS,
April 28, 2003
http://msnbc.com/news/906181.asp?cp1=1
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The war in Iraq may be over, but the memories of that conflict are recurring nightmares for some U.S. troops who witnessed horrific scenes of violence. In debriefing sessions in Baghdad, they are voicing anger and grief at what they saw.
THEY'RE CALLED "critical event stress debriefing" sessions, and they're now mandatory for U.S. soldiers heading home. The aim is to help those returning from combat know when and how to stop acting - and reacting - like soldiers. Last year, after Afghanistan, Americans were horrified when a number of returning soldiers brought the violence of the battlefield home with them. Four combat veterans at Fort Bragg alone killed their spouses, and two of them then turned their guns on themselves.
The debriefing sessions, which took place on Saddam Hussein's palace grounds, are intended to head off the potentially explosive consequences of "post-traumatic stress syndrome."
We were allowed inside one session, for soldiers of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division. What we saw - and heard - was extraordinary.
AT FIRST, WISECRACKS
There were the typical GI wisecracks at first, some awkward silences as the first questions went around the room and then some of the usual war stories. But the process wasn't about war stories. It was about horror-of-war stories, those seconds in the cauldron of battle that leave an indelible imprint.
And gradually, as the room seemed to get smaller, the stories came out: The tough young recruit frothing in anger as he recalled a lieutenant's command to leave a dead brother soldier on the road - another crew would retrieve him, "Keep that vehicle moving!" The veteran squad sergeant, all sinew, jaw working against his grief, recalling the task of pulling the remains of a dead friend from his ruined tank, "even a piece of skull that I put in my pocket and carried around, I don't know why."
And finally, from nearly every one of the 16 soldiers in the room, heartbreaking details about the death of innocents at their hands. The killings occurred April 9, the day before Saddam's statue was hauled down in a scene that told the world the regime had been vanquished.
Amid a series of suicide bombings, soldiers at a checkpoint near the entrance to one of Saddam's palaces had been ordered to take out any vehicle that ignored instructions to stop and a volley of warning shots.
An Iraqi soldier had barreled through, dressed as a civilian in a car full of weapons, and he'd been cut down by these soldiers hunkered down in ambush position. Then came another car, whose driver also ignored warning shots, and the soldiers opened fire with deadly purpose. A father and his daughter were killed. The mother, who emerged from the burning car unhurt, spent the next four hours in the faces of the men who had just wiped out her family.
"That was the worst thing of the whole war," one soldier said. From another: "Having to listen to her cry and scream that whole time, that she and her family were just coming home from church services (they were Christians, not Muslims), I'll never forget it."
Another voice added that he saw the terrible accident unfolding as though in slow motion and knew at the outset, when he saw who was in the car, "all it would take is one guy to start firing" and then he'd have to decide - shoot a brother soldier to try to prevent a tragedy, or.... But everything happened so fast, there was no time for that decision.
A young soldier nodded his head, listening, thinking the thoughts he then spoke: "I just hope that these people can find it in their hearts to forgive us, and that they know it was an accident."
Then Spc. 1st Class Bill Scates of Oklahoma City spoke. "I had to look that woman right in the eyes," he said, "and I felt so horrible for her. I've got a little girl."
His rage began to boil. "I'm f---- constantly angry over what happened with that family. ... I'm pissed off at my chain of command for not putting up signs in every language (at that checkpoint), to warn 'em. Normally I'm a talkative guy, a happy person, ... but I've been real quiet lately, because I'm so pissed off. I'm thinking more and more I'm so frustrated, so angry, I want to choke somebody ... constantly."
And there it was, that level of honesty that is the point of the "stress debriefing" sessions. Scates later said that after talking about it "the weight's kinda off me, sort of. A little bit."
It is a little bit at a crucial time, an emotional unburdening so important for all the soldiers coming home, if they are ever to leave this war behind them.NBC News correspondent Mike Taibbi is on assignment in Iraq.
----
Postwar Reconstruction Efforts Have Had Dicey History
By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 28, 2003; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46042-2003Apr27?language=printer
From Haiti to Bosnia to East Timor, the United States and the United Nations have stumbled time and again while pressing forward ambitious programs designed to keep the peace and deliver democracy to war-pocked landscapes.
Lawlessness, spotty oversight and ethnic strife all have vexed past rebuilding efforts, according to audits and reports by public and private institutions.
In Afghanistan, where U.S. forces intervened 18 months ago, security remains so precarious that a recent federal analysis concluded that auditors may be unable to track the spending of U.S. tax dollars. So far, $500 million has been paid out and an additional $1.5 billion is earmarked over the next two years.
"The risks are high" for illegal spending, misleading bookkeeping and project failure, according to a March 11 memorandum prepared by the inspector general's office of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Similar risks loom in Iraq, where the stakes are greater. The Bush administration's nation-building vision there is the boldest since the United States rebuilt Germany and Japan after World War II. Analysts believe it may cost as much as $20 billion a year to fund reconstruction and maintain a U.S. military presence.
A recent study by international security experts described Iraq's reconstruction as a "test case" by which the Islamic world will judge U.S. intentions worldwide.
Months before the U.S. invaded Iraq, analysts began cautioning the Bush administration to avoid what one report termed "a number of consistent mistakes and pitfalls" encountered in previous rebuilding efforts.
"We have the opportunity to learn from past cases," said the January report by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies and the nonprofit Association of the United States Army.
Afghanistan showed the essential need for security and accountability. Administrators of AID programs in Kabul are barred from leaving their compound without high-level approval and a heavily armed military escort, the inspector general's report noted. Even then, bandits, landmines and fractured roads make travel difficult or impossible.
One consultant recently wrote in a private assessment, obtained by The Washington Post, that security issues have made it "almost impossible" for U.S.-backed education officials to work in 24 of the nation's 34 provinces. An International Red Cross worker was stopped along a roadway March 26 and shot 20 times, becoming the first foreign aid worker killed since the Taliban's fall. Continuing attacks have forced some humanitarian groups to withdraw altogether.
"These risks will remain high for the foreseeable future," the report concluded.
"Security has yet to be achieved in Afghanistan and that's the issue we're struggling with in Iraq," said Michael Delaney, humanitarian aid director for Oxfam America, which has withdrawn personnel from parts of Afghanistan. "There was an under-investment in security in Afghanistan. That's fundamental to be able to do development there, or in Iraq," he said.
In Bosnia, some U.S. mistakes involved simple dollars and cents.
Congressional audits in 1997 and 2000 found that the U.S. Army had lost control of costs run up by its private contractor, Brown and Root Services Corp., a division of Halliburton Co.
Since renamed KBR, the contractor was hired to prepare food, sort mail, build camps, generate power, fix trucks and clean laundry for U.S. peacekeeping forces.
The audits found that KBR contract workers were often idle and had inadequate training and oversight. Workers cleaned some offices as many as four times a day, the audits found, and Army demands for quick construction forced the contractor to fly $14 plywood sheets in from the United States, increasing each sheet's cost to $86. The company disputed the findings.
The CSIS report lays out 10 concrete recommendations for rebuilding Iraq, each informed by what the report calls "lessons learned" in other regions.
"Certainly, none of these have been shining examples of success," said CSIS analyst Bathsheba Crocker.
Among the recommendations:
• Hit the ground running. In 1999, one U.N. official alone was responsible for recruiting more than 4,000 civil servants for missions in Kosovo and East Timor. The hiring lag created an initial law enforcement vacuum. As recruitment dragged, former Kosovo Liberation Army officers seized government control, creating an ongoing problem.
• Plan to handle retribution. The first NATO peacekeepers stationed in Kosovo were unprepared for waves of "score-settling violence."
• Reestablish the local justice system. In East Timor, a prison shortage forced authorities to free career criminals. In Kosovo, the U.N.'s delay in bringing in international judges and prosecutors continues to plague the justice system today, and has thwarted efforts to tackle rampant organized crime.
• Find the right power-sharing balance with the locals. Exclusion of local residents from decision-making in Kosovo and East Timor has been blamed for slowing the development of democracy. Conversely, in Afghanistan, a "light footprint" approach in support of President Hamid Karzai has been criticized as evidence of inadequate international commitment to reconstruction.
Other analysts have issued similar recommendations. As long ago as January, a report co-sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations warned that "without an initial and broad-based commitment to law and order, the logic of score-settling and revenge-taking will reduce Iraq to chaos."
"U.S. and coalition military units will need to pivot quickly from combat to peacekeeping operations in order to prevent post-conflict Iraq from descending into anarchy," the report said in language that proved prophetic when widespread looting broke out after Baghdad fell on April 9.
The nation-building challenge that follows that switch to peacekeeping is daunting, said Andrew S. Natsios, head of AID. "We've never spent this much money in one year in one country in the 40-year history of AID. The only thing comparable would probably be the Marshall Plan in the 1940s, although the Marshall Plan was for many countries all over Europe after World War II."
The estimated U.S. reconstruction package for Iraq in the next year is $1.7 billion. Prime contractors will manage such areas as road building and education, he said, and those companies will then subcontract much of the work.
San Francisco-based Bechtel Group has won the prime contract, initially worth $34.6 million but potentially $680 million, for the repair of war-damaged infrastructure. Other initial contracts have gone to RTI International of Research Triangle Park, N.C., to establish local democratic institutions, and Stevedoring Services of America of Seattle to run the Umm Qasr port.
"This is not the first reconstruction effort" for AID, Natsios stressed. "It is a system that works, that is fair, and that involves all of the international players and all of the companies working together in a constructive way."
Foreign aid specialists expect the initial efforts in Iraq to mirror those in Afghanistan. Just as generals are always preparing to fight the last war, one federal aid official quipped, development experts are always preparing to rebuild the last war-damaged nation.
That, of course, was Afghanistan, where the Bush administration kicked off reconstruction with highly visible projects that could be mobilized quickly and provide good public relations. Three months after hostilities ended at Tora Bora, and even as a major battle with Taliban and al Qaeda holdouts was unfolding at Shahikot in eastern Afghanistan, U.S. and local officials in the spring of 2002 reopened schools and delivered school supplies, trailed by television news crews.
An education consultant for nonprofit organizations, who has reviewed AID contracts and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that U.S. plans for Iraq "seem to be very much modeled on the experiences of Afghanistan, as if conditions in Iraq were the same -- and they are not." Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq is much larger and has a more established education system and a long history of supporting education.
AID privately asked five companies to bid on a contract to rebuild Iraq's educational system, the consultant said. All but one reportedly declined, citing in part safety concerns and contract demands. An AID spokesman said three of the non-bidding companies later became subcontractors to the winning company, Creative Associates International.
Creative, a Washington-based consulting firm, won the $62 million contract to help rebuild the public school system on April 11. Creative also has a $60 million AID contract in Afghanistan to rebuild 1,000 schools, train 30,000 teachers and provide $15 million in textbooks.
In Iraq, Creative will work to reopen schools by this fall, supplying equipment and introducing a new curriculum that is free of praise for Saddam Hussein and the glorification of violence.
In Afghanistan, U.S. development officials also have focused initial efforts on quickly rebuilding and opening a primary highway. Earlier this month, workers under an $80 million contract to the Louis Berger Group, a New Jersey contractor, are being paid to hastily grade a roadbed between Kabul and Kandahar.
The project was designed and rushed along to build goodwill toward the United States. The stretch of highway -- referred to by U.S. diplomats as a "political road" -- is slated to reopen before Karzai's administration stands for election in June 2004.
As in Afghanistan, rebuilding in Iraq is aimed at a political end.
"Getting post-conflict reconstruction in Iraq wrong could prove devastating to the interests of the United States," the CSIS report stated. "The success of any U.S.-led effort to disarm Iraq . . . will be judged more by the commitment to rebuilding Iraq after a conflict than by the military phase of the war itself."
Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
----
Iraq war's color lines
By Brian DeBose and Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 28, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20030428-51163438.htm
The speed and efficiency of the war in Iraq have not lessened blacks' distrust of the government and of Bush administration efforts to obtain their support for the U.S.-led effort to oust Saddam Hussein. Although support for the war has increased among most groups, blacks continue to register lower poll percentages in favor of the conflict.
"I don't think [the war] was right. America needs to clean up their own back yard before they go looking into someone else's," said carpenter Chamberlain Adams, 36, of Silver Spring. "I think President Bush did this to spur support for re-election. He had to attack somebody after September 11, and Saddam was who he chose."
Mr. Adams said he opposes war in general, fearing that it will lead to other wars and skirmishes.
Don Scoggins, 57, an independent businessman from Fairfax, shares Mr. Adams' distaste for warfare but takes a different view on the conflict in Iraq.
"I think our cause going in was justified. ... I am behind President Bush 100 percent," Mr. Scoggins said. "Just because we're people of color doesn't mean we should support regimes run by people of color that are vicious."
"I'm not for war, but I am against the Hussein regime, and if this is what it takes to remove him, then so be it," he said.
A Pew Research Center survey of 1,254 adults in February found that 66 percent of Americans backed military action in Iraq, but that 44 percent of blacks favored war, the lowest level of any group surveyed. About 73 percent of whites and 67 percent of Hispanics supported combat, the Pew survey found.
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Zogby America poll of 1,002 likely voters in February found that 25 percent support the war among blacks. About 70 percent of men and 50 percent of women said they supported the war, the poll found.
As recently as this month, about 49 percent of blacks said they backed the war, according to a Washington Post/ABC News telephone survey of 1,030 randomly selected adults conducted April 2-6. About 81 percent of whites supported the war, the poll found.
Blacks' opposition to the war has grown out of their distrust of the Bush administration, said David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that focuses on black issues.
Mr. Bositis said that because 9 percent of blacks voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 - a lower percentage than any Republican since Barry Goldwater - "he is not likely to get black support for something like this."
However, blacks have objected to war in general at least since Vietnam, said Ron Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute, and a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland.
Martin Luther King's outspoken criticism of the Vietnam conflict and Muhammad Ali's refusal to be drafted set benchmarks of opinion in the black community, he said, noting that many blacks also opposed the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
"When we have a war, the number of blacks die disproportionately. And African-Americans are disproportionately represented in the military," Mr. Walters said.
Mr. Walters' argument about black overrepresentation on the battlefield has resonated among some blacks since the Vietnam War, but numbers don't seem to support such an assertion.
According to the Defense Department, of the more than 58,200 service personnel killed in Vietnam, a little more than 7,000, or 12 percent, were black. Blacks, who made up about 12 percent of the U.S. population during Vietnam, accounted for about 10 percent of combat troops.
Since the advent of the all-volunteer military in the 1970s, blacks make up about 30 percent of service personnel but about 10 percent of combat troops. Blacks account for about 13 percent of the general population.
"The military is the most integrated government establishment," said Tracy Price-Thompson, 39, a retired Army lieutenant and author of "Black Coffee," a novel about a black female Army officer. "A lot of blacks enlist as a way to progress in society because they know the benefits and they want to help their country."
As of Wednesday, the Pentagon has reported 132 U.S. casualties in the war in Iraq: 111 due to "hostile" incidents and 21 attributable to "nonhostile" incidents. According to published reports and photographs, at least 17 black servicemen have been killed in the war, about 13 percent of casualties. The Pentagon has not created a demographic breakdown of casualties by race.
The relatively few casualties notwithstanding, polls showing even 40 percent support for the war among blacks are greeted with some skepticism.
"Nobody believes that there are 41 percent of blacks in favor of the war," said Cliff Kelley, a black host on Chicago's WVON-AM, the city's only black-owned talk radio station. "The only black people supporting this effort are people like Armstrong Williams," a conservative commentator.
Mr. Kelley's callers have come in about 9-to-1 against the war, he said, because "they believe that it is morally wrong to bomb people who haven't done anything to them."
Conversely, Mr. Williams said, he his talks to blacks about the war leads him to believe that "it's more like 50-50 on support of the war."
"They were influenced by 9/11, and they realize that we are all Americans," Mr. Williams said. "They know that these people hate us. ... I have no idea who is being polled, but it seems that only the bourgeoisie is having its say."
National black leaders, such as Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, have voiced outrage and opposition to the war, as well as to the Republican-led Congress and Bush administration.
Blacks opposed to the war cited the United States' resources among a variety of issues and concerns, some tinged with suspicion and doubt.
"I thought the war was a stupid use of our resources," said Damien King, 21, a grocery-store seafood manager from Congress Heights, in Southeast. "If it was just about giving freedom to the Iraqi people, I think it is a worthwhile cause. But I think there is a hidden agenda, and that is controlling their oil and giving U.S. companies major contracts for the rebuilding effort."
Robert Wright, 36, a client-service representative from Seat Pleasant, said, "It's sad we're going through this war with our limited resources."
Troy Williams, a 36-year-old health-club manager from Alexandria, said war in Iraq "is about taking other people's resources."
"We have numerous issues at home - the economy, crime, health care, providing equal opportunities for education with the affirmative-action debate - and we can't take care of any of those," he said.
Mr. Bositis, the Joint Center analyst, said many blacks take the view that funds spent on a foreign war means fewer funds for key black issues such as housing, education and Social Security.
"It is seen as a trade-off between foreign and domestic spending, with domestic spending losing," he said.
That notion is highlighted in an essay titled "Smart Bombs and Dumb Children" on www.blackpressusa.com. In his essay, James E. Clingman, an adjunct professor of African-American studies at the University of Cincinnati, questions the Bush administration's spending priorities, saying the war and its technological needs will usurp the president's education goals.
Leo S. Mackay Jr., deputy secretary of Veterans Affairs and a former "top gun" Navy aviator, acknowledged that domestic issues "are what interest blacks primarily." However, he added, "Domestic issues are often affected by foreign issues."
Suspicion of the administration's goals, both foreign and domestic, has fueled some of the black opposition to the war.
"I ... think it is interesting that the administration had no children going over to fight, compared with the large numbers of blacks in the military who sent their loved ones to battle," said Bob Nock, 51, an engineering manager from Chantilly. "I think the war was about oil and U.S. efforts to control the Middle East."
Stephanie Cardwell, 34, an analyst for the National Association of Securities Dealers, said the U.S.-led action in Iraq "is to show our efforts towards hemispheric globalization."
"We want a foothold in the new world order being established in the Middle East."
Charlie Johnson, 33, resident barber at Cutz on the Hill Barber Shop in Capitol Hill, said, "I don't believe we are over there because Saddam killed his own people. I think it's something else they are not telling us about."
Mrs. Price-Thompson, the author and former Army officer who lives at Fort Dix, N.J., said, "We as a people have a history of opposing any type of government action. Because the government has not been kind to us, we are naturally mistrustful."
In addition to distrust of the government, blacks couched their opposition to the war in concerns about its aftermath, doubts about the U.S. role in the Middle East and criticism of the U.S. failure to find terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Pat Cook, 49, a secretary from the Petworth neighborhood in Northwest, said the United States did not have a legitimate reason to invade Iraq, adding, "My real concern is, where will it end? First, we were after [bin Laden], then without reason the focus changed to Saddam Hussein."
Speaking of his respect for U.S. troops, florist Joe World, 50, noted the failure to find bin Laden, saying, "Now we can't find Saddam. ... How long will it be before this is forgotten like the first [Persian Gulf] war, where people closed their eyes for 12 years?"
Ronald Bowman, a 38-year-old electrician from Alexandria, said the United States has "opened up a Pandora's box in the Middle East, and this won't be the last conflict between the two regions."
Guy Raphael, a former Air Force sergeant from Fort Washington, expressed support for the troops and noted that his sister - Air Force Cmdr. Valerie Bryant of the 82nd Airborne Division, the first woman to command a jump unit - is in Iraq.
"I just wish we hadn't gone into the conflict alone and disunited," said Mr. Raphael, a systems analyst.
The Bush administration's action against Saddam has created an unstable climate, he said. "A lot of the 'axis of evil' countries are now nervous that they are next, and their first thoughts are of survival and doing whatever they can to ensure it. And that is dangerous for us."
Jamal Shivers, 22, a college student from Fort Washington, said, "I think this idea of attacking other countries, like Syria, makes it look like the U.S. imposing a new world order, and that's the wrong move."
Mr. Shivers' attitudes about the war reflect the ambivalence among some blacks about the necessity of military action in world politics.
"Well, my take on the war is Saddam is a very bad man and needed to be removed," said Mr. Shivers, 22. "I am not for the war, but a lot of things are necessary for there to be peace, and I think they're doing the right thing."
Joan M. Riggins, 48, a telecommunications store manager from Takoma, in Northwest, said she does not support the president. "We wouldn't have gone to war if he were not in power," she said.
"The war was justified because we don't want our country to be like Israel, with terrorist attacks every other day," she said. The military "made it safer for us to get back and forth to work by their show of force as a warning to others."
Nakisha Nichols, 25, a sales representative from Takoma, said she supports the troops "because they have to go, but I don't support the U.S. trying to regulate what goes on in someone else's country."
A few blacks voiced unqualified support for the war.
U.S. Capitol Police Officer Neil MacCalla, 26, of New Carrollton said U.S. officials had good reasons for military action in Iraq. "I support them 100 percent," she said.
"I thought the reasons were political to remove the Saddam regime, and I don't think there is anything he could have done to stay in power," Officer MacCalla said.
Kelli Lee, 22, a hairstylist at Lee's Barber and Braiding shop on Capitol Hill, said the U.S. goal of removing Saddam was justified, even though anti-U.S. sentiment in the Middle East will hinder efforts to set up a democracy in Iraq.
"I'm not mad or upset that we went to war. I agree with the reasons behind it," she said. "I'm just glad it's over."
-------- propaganda wars
Banfield Lashes Out at Own Network
Mon Apr 28
Reuters
By Andrew Grossman
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030428/tv_nm/television_banfield_dc_1
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - NBC News correspondent Ashleigh Banfield has ripped television news networks, including her own, for their "glorious" coverage of the Iraqi war and a lack of focus on international news overall.
In a speech Thursday at Kansas State University, she also attacked NBC News for hiring right-wing radio talk-show host Michael Savage to do a show on MSNBC. Savage recently called Banfield a "slut" after her reports portraying the radical Arab point of view.
Banfield, who won her first notoriety for her coverage from the World Trade Center on 9/11, might be in some trouble for her comments. In a statement issued on Friday, NBC News said, "Ms. Banfield does not speak for NBC News. We are deeply disappointed and troubled by her remarks, and will review her comments with her. In the meantime, we want to emphasize how proud we are of the journalism produced by NBC News and of the men and women who worked around the clock, even risking their lives, to bring this story to the American public."
War coverage is an especially sensitive subject inside NBC News, whose embedded reporter David Bloom died in Iraq.
Her comments, coincidentally, came on the same day that Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, ripped American radio and TV networks for their "shocking," and "gung-ho" coverage of the Iraqi war, according to British newspaper reports.
Banfield, who hosted an unsuccessful talk show on MSNBC last year and is now reporting for both MSNBC and NBC News, criticized the networks for showing a bloodless war that gave a skewed picture which glossed over the horrors of battle. She did not report from Iraq during the war, but has been stationed overseas in the past.
"It was a glorious and wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited about cable news," she said at the college's annual Landon Lecture in Manhattan. "But it wasn't journalism because I'm not so sure we in America are hesitant to do this again, to fight another war ... because it looked like a glorious and courageous and so successfully terrific endeavor."
What was wrong with the coverage?
"You did not see where those bullets landed. You didn't see what happened when the mortars landed. A puff of smoke is not what a mortar looks like when it explodes, believe me," Banfield said.
She ripped NBC for putting Savage on the air saying, "He was so taken aback by my daring to speak to martyrs ... for being prepared to sacrifice themselves, he chose to label me a slut on the air, and that's not all, as a porn star and an accessory to the murder of Jewish children. These are the ramifications for simply bringing the message in the Arab world."
Banfield said it was vital to present the Arabs' viewpoint because of a lack of understanding among them and Americans in what has driven them to such violence.
She blamed the networks for failing to air enough international news except after 9/11 and during wars and pointed to the lack of stories emanating from Afghanistan these days as an example of the networks' lack of focus overseas.
She said NBC was preparing to close its Kabul bureau, a statement that NBC News denied.
"If we had paid more attention to Afghanistan in the '80s, we might not have had 9/11," she said.
In the past week, she noted, cable networks with an eye on their declining ratings since the war has wound down have devoted extensive coverage to the Laci Peterson murder case and less to the chaotic situation in Iraq.
But Banfield also exonerated the networks to some degree by blaming viewers for being more interested in titillating crime stories than vital international news.
"It's critical to our security that you be interested in this," Banfield urged the audience. "Because when you are interested, I can respond. If I put this on the air right now, you'll turn it off and we'll lose our numbers as we're finding out now."
Banfield also criticized Fox News Channel for merging entertainment value with news, saying the network has risen to the top by targeting conservative viewers. "Fox has taken so many viewers away from CNN and MSNBC because of their agenda and because of their target marketing of cable news viewers. I'm afraid there's not a really big place in cable for news," she said.
She added that networks like MSNBC have tried to compete by aping Fox's format. "You can see the big hires on other networks, right-wing hires to try and chase after this effect," she added.
Fox declined to comment on Banfield's comments.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
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SMOKING GUN STINKS OF SPOOKS
Apr 28 2003
UK Mirror
Paul Routledge Chief Political Commentator
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12898683&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=ROUTLEDGE%3A%20SMOKING%20GUN%20STINKS%20OF%20SPOOKS
CALL me a cynic, as many do, but I have great difficulty in believing all the top-secret files cascading from the bombed-out ministries of Baghdad.
Here they are, just lying around on the floor waiting for eagle-eyed reporters to pick them up and phone their news editor.
Even more amazingly, every single document points the guilty finger at Saddam's regime and those who questioned the Anglo-American war against Iraq.
They expose the perfidy of President Putin, the chicanery of President Chirac, the knavery of German intelligence, the alleged greed of George Galloway MP, and the terrorist link-up with the head of al-Qaeda.
How fortunate! What a coincidence! And how convenient they should all be discovered by journalists working for papers that back Bush all the way.
Of course, there could be another explanation. It could be that the security services, in this business up to their ears, have had a hand.
SO far, the much-vaunted weapons of mass destruction have not been found. The Iraqi dictator has not been found. Nor has Osama bin Laden.
And if they cannot be found, what better than hard, documentary evidence that can be splashed all over friendly newspapers?
The reaction of the CIA to yesterday's latest exposure, purporting to establish a Saddam-Osama connection, is illuminating.
"This sounds like a find," said an official. A find? Is that all he can say? If true, this is not just a smoking gun, but a whole battery of smoking artillery.
Forgive me if I smile, but where was the CIA when the headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's secret service, fell to advancing American troops more than two weeks ago?
Does anybody expect me to believe they simply left these buildings to the tender mercies of western journalists, practically none of whom read Arabic?
Pull the other one. It has depleted-uranium bells on it.
Naturally, I may be wrong. But this fascinating exercise in war justification has all the hallmarks of the dirty tricks fusiliers.
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Saddam link to al-Qaeda in doubt
April 28, 2003
By Michael Evans, Defence Editor,
UK Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-661840,00.html
BRITISH Intelligence officials have expressed doubt that Saddam Hussein established any working relationship with al-Qaeda despite the discovery of documents showing that an "envoy" for Osama bin Laden visited Baghdad in 1998.
The documents were found by The Sunday Telegraph at the bombed-out Baghdad headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's Intelligence service, and were hailed yesterday as positive proof of an Iraqi link to al-Qaeda. They mentioned the arrival of a confidant of bin Laden who had travelled to Baghdad from Khartoum in March 1998. Bin Laden was based in Sudan until 1996.
Officials told The Times that there had been intelligence indicators about that time of a possible visit to Baghdad by someone purporting to represent al-Qaeda. There had been no evidence of any follow-up meetings to suggest that Baghdad had forged a long-term partnership with al-Qaeda.
According to The Sunday Telegraph report, the purpose of the March 1998 meeting was to establish a relationship on the basis of Iraq and al-Qaeda's mutual hatred of the United States and Saudi Arabia. Because of the sensitivity of the meeting, the Iraqi agents who wrote the documents had covered bin Laden's name with correcting fluid. Once it was removed, the name was visible, the report claimed.
There is pressure on Western Intelligence services to provide governments with their own assessment of the thousands of secret files that were abandoned when Saddam's regime collapsed.
On the al-Qaeda link to Saddam's regime, Britain has taken a robust line against the Americans who insist there was a connection. Washington gave the link as one of the reasons for toppling Saddam. Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) has always rejected the idea of a link.
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Rumsfeld heralds 'first strike' era
Rumsfeld: 'We are not going to climb into holes and hide'
Monday, 28 April, 2003,
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2982421.stm
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that his country has entered a new era in which it must pre-emptively seek out and prevent attacks by terrorists and terrorist states.
He told coalition troops at US Central Command in the Gulf state of Qatar that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq showed that America had made a good start.
He said the US-led invasion of Iraq would go down in military history because of its unprecedented combination of power, precision, speed and flexibility.
It was also notable for its compassion towards innocent civilians, he said.
His comments came after US military officials were reported as saying that American air operations in the region would be run from Qatar rather than Saudi Arabia for the foreseeable future.
BBC Middle East analyst Roger Hardy says the war in Iraq showed that Saudi Arabia was unwilling to accept a high-profile American presence on its soil.
Baghdad was liberated in less than a month, possibly the fastest march on a capital in modern military history Donald Rumsfeld
He adds that the country's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, is thought to have wanted to reduce the US military presence in Saudi Arabia for some time.
In his address to the troops, Mr Rumsfeld said: "The task we have is a different one in the 21st century - it is not conventional, it is unconventional.
"It requires us to seek out and defend and prevent the attacks by terrorists.
"It may be an untidy world, but our country and our friends and allies are going to be able to preserve our way of life, continue our way of life, not climb into holes and hide."
'Be proud'
To cheers, Mr Rumsfeld told the troops that what they had done would go down in history.
"Those scenes we have all witnessed of free Iraqis pulling down statues of Saddam Hussein, greeting coalition forces and celebrating their new-found freedom - they will certainly take their place alongside the fall of the Berlin Wall and the liberation of Paris and each of you helped make that happen.
"You can be very proud of it.
"You have helped rescue a nation and liberate a people.
"You have driven a repressive regime from power, ending a threat to free people everywhere, protecting our country from a growing danger and giving the Iraqi people a chance to build a free nation."
Mr Rumsfeld hit back at critics of the war in Iraq by paraphrasing Winston Churchill's comments about the Battle of Britain, saying: "Never have so many been so wrong about so much".
He praised General Tommy Franks, the commander of the coalition forces in Iraq, and all of the men and women who served under him.
"Baghdad was liberated in less than a month, possibly the fastest march on a capital in modern military history," he said.
Mr Rumsfeld is on a tour to thank Gulf leaders for their support during the war.
He is expected to visit Afghanistan later this week. A trip to Iraq could also be included in his schedule.
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Embedded Reporters A Good Idea - for the Pentagon
Charley Reese,
King Features Syndicate,
April 28, 2003
http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20030428/index.php
Embedding reporters - assigning journalists to specific military units - was a good idea - for the Pentagon. It meant tight control over the information about the war that got out, and in the case of the TV "embeds," it quickly became nothing more than cheerleading.
If you noticed, the Bush administration had quite a propaganda operation. There were three daily "briefings," nearly always devoid of solid information. One by the Central Command in its fancy and expensive briefing room; one by the Pentagon; and one by the White House. This allowed the administration to set the agenda for the day's news coverage.
In some respects, this has been a ghost war. We know that 125 Americans were killed. We know that there are about 6,400 Iraqi prisoners of war. How many Iraqi civilians were killed? How many Iraqi soldiers were killed? This we don't know. We were told there were fierce battles here and there. Where are the corpses? Either there are thousands of Iraqi bodies lying around rotting, or 400,000 or so Iraqi soldiers are not dead, wounded or in custody. Where are they? Did they just go home? Did they take their personal weapons with them? What are their plans?
And, of course, as of this writing, Saddam Hussein and a majority of his top people remain unaccounted for. Usually when one wins a war there is a formal surrender, but there hasn't been one in this war. The other side just vanished overnight. Now there are vague reports, but no factual reporting, about revenge killings and ethnic cleansing in the north of the country. What's going on up there? Have all the reporters gone home? If the Kurds are driving out the Iraqi Arabs, where are these people going?
And why did we attack the Iranian rebels who have been in Iraq and who have had an office in Washington for the past several years? And what's happened to them?
Scanning all the TV cable news shows this morning, I was able to learn four simple facts. One, there was a pilgrimage to Karbala. A million people are hard to miss, but there were no interviews with the pilgrims or the clerics. Just a crowd shot and the usual blather. Two, retired Gen. Jay Garner visited the Kurds, who like him because he was in charge of saving their skins in 1991. Three, a brief mention that some power had been restored in Baghdad. Four, there was an even briefer mention that the first cases of cholera and typhoid have shown up in Baghdad. Apparently, there is not a lot going on in a country the size of California, a comparison that has become a cliche.
The truth is, I'm a news junkie, and I've got to get some rehab. This craving for information is frustrating when, despite the communications revolution and proliferation of journalists and outlets, there seem to be fewer and fewer facts actually making their way through to the reader and the viewer. Guess we'll just have to wait for the instant histories of this war, which should be out in the fall, if not sooner.
In the meantime, there is the civil war within the Bush administration between the neocons and the State Department. The Defense Policy Board (Richard Perle, Newt Gingrich, et al.) seems to think it is in charge of the U.S. government. President Bush would be wise to fire the whole lot and abolish it.
Also, there are the bilateral talks with North Korea we said we would never have. The United States claims they are multilateral, but in fact, China is only providing the table and chairs and is serving tea. North Korea is, of course, the real threat the Bush administration ignored while concentrating on the phony threat of Saddam Hussein.
The North Koreans just don't get it. Having nuclear weapons won't get the attention of the American administration. You have to have oil. Iraq has it, North Korea doesn't, so it's the back burner for the Korean communists, despite their threats and the weapons to back them up. Provided your sense of humor is a little dark, it really is a funny world these days.
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Panel Backs Use of Embedded Reporters
April 28, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-AP-Annual-Meeting-Panel.html
SEATTLE (AP) -- Embedding reporters with fighting military units during the Iraq war offered unprecedented access to the battlefield and was generally a success, a panel of journalists told the annual meeting of The Associated Press on Monday.
But "we still have to work hard" for bits of information that help bring the story of the war to readers, listeners and viewers, said Kathleen Carroll, AP executive editor.
Carroll participated in the panel discussion, which was moderated by AP president and chief executive officer Louis D. Boccardi. Others on the panel included AP senior White House correspondent Ron Fournier and John Moore, a Mexico City-based photographer who was embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq.
Joining them in a satellite hookup from Baghdad were Lourdes Navarro, an AP radio correspondent based in Baghdad, and Chris Tomlinson, the AP's Nairobi-based correspondent, who also was embedded with the 3rd Infantry.
Fournier said President Bush is likely this week to declare military victory over Iraq, but at the same time say that the war has moved to a new phase -- away from the battlefield to a peacekeeping operation. He said Bush recognizes that much remains to be done before the United States can withdraw all its forces.
The danger of the battlefield was brought home during the discussion as the audience of AP members editors and publishers heard the sound of automatic gunfire echoing through Baghdad, behind Tomlinson and Navarro.
When Boccardi noted that neither Tomlinson nor Navarro appeared to flinch, Navarro said, "You really hear gunfire all the time."
Tomlinson and Moore said they got great access to information during their time with the 3rd Infantry.
"There was nothing that was off-limits," said Tomlinson, noting that military officials never asked to see his dispatches before they were sent.
"I thought it was very successful as well," said Moore, who explained that the only restrictions on coverage were prohibitions against reporting on troop locations, transmitting photos that would identify troop locations, or sending photos of wounded soldiers before the military had had time to notify their families.
"When they realized that we just wanted to tell their story, they really opened up," Moore said.
In an interview with Boccardi taped before the start of the meeting, Gen. Tommy Franks also supported the practice of embedding reporters.
"The further one gets away from the point of action, the less fidelity one has with what's really happening," said Franks, operational commander of the war, speaking from Qatar.
"Embedding will happen again, and I remain a fan," Franks said.
Carroll agreed that embedding reporters provided "highly valuable" access to timely war information. But she said reporters still had to press hard in some cases for access or information from commanders who were not forthcoming.
Carroll said the AP had 32 news staffers embedded with military units and about a dozen non-embedded reporters covering the war.
Tomlinson said he'd left the 3rd Infantry only one day before and had his first shower in six weeks.
Navarro, who was in Baghdad before the war began, said the difference was startling when she returned after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
"It is indeed two different cities," she said.
While Baghdad remains a chaotic place, Navarro said, order is gradually being restored and perhaps half of the city now has at least sporadic electrical power.
She said some looting continues and there are massive traffic jams, "worse than anything you could imagine in L.A.," because traffic signals don't work. Hundreds of weapons are now available, abandoned by the Iraqi army.
"Even in the markets now, they're selling guns next to the oranges and the apples," she said.
--------
Franks: No Security Breaches With Embeds
April 28, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Franks-Media.html
CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar (AP) -- Gen. Tommy Franks said Monday there were no operational security breaches involving embedded reporters in the war against Iraq and that the U.S. military would bring journalists along with front-line forces in the future.
"It will happen again. Embedding will happen again," Franks said in an interview broadcast to The Associated Press' annual meeting in Seattle. Advertisement
Franks has been a longtime supporter of the embedding program, in which more than 600 journalists traveled with American ground, naval, Special Operations and air forces during the Iraqi conflict.
"The further one gets away from the point of action, the less fidelity one gets in terms of what's really happening," Franks said. "I believe embedding journalists ... provided the opportunity to have a great deal of very precise information about what was going on in the war."
When asked whether he had learned of any security issues involving embedded reporters, Franks said he hadn't.
"I was very pleased with the fact that the journalists to my knowledge were very, very cooperative. They were very honest. When we asked that they not give away an operational construct they didn't do that. So I was pleased with that as well."
But he acknowledged media outlets faced a challenge in trying to make sense of the very pinpointed reports embedded journalists gave, likening them to "looking through five, six hundred straws at one time."
"For any network or any aggregation of those soda straws to have meaning is where one finds the difficulty," he said.
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Ukraine Law Prohibits Media Censorship
April 28, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ukraine-Media.html
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma has signed a bill prohibiting media censorship amid claims by journalists that his administration is meddling in their work.
Signing the bill adopted by parliament into law was Kuchma's second step in a week dealing with press freedoms in the former Soviet republic.
The law makes it a criminal offense for officials to "deliberately intervene in the professional work of journalists." It also aims to shield the media from frivolous lawsuits and limits financial penalties against journalists for defamation claims. Advertisement
On Thursday, Kuchma ordered the prosecutor-general's office to drop cases opened earlier this month against five newspapers that published what it called "offensive and slanderous" materials that "undermined the president's authority."
Andriy Shevchenko, leader of the newly formed Independent Media Union, called the law "a very positive move" but cautioned that enforcement is needed to allay journalists' concerns about "how serious the president is in his desire to help the profession."
In a report last month, the New York-based Human Rights Watch claimed Ukraine's government blatantly violated press freedom, saying media outlets that criticize government officials or prominent figures have faced arbitrary tax inspections, denial and revocation of licenses on technicalities, and crippling libel suits.
-------- war crimes
Iraqis target Gen. Franks for war crimes trial
By Jeffrey T. Kuhner
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 28, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030428-12027619.htm
Iraqi civilians are preparing a complaint to present in court in Belgium accusing allied commander Gen. Tommy Franks and other U.S. military officials of war crimes in Iraq, according to the attorney representing the plaintiffs.
The complaint will state that coalition forces are responsible for the indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians, the bombing of a marketplace in Baghdad, the shooting of an ambulance, and failure to prevent the mass looting of hospitals, said Jan Fermon, a Brussels-based lawyer. He is representing about 10 Iraqis who say they were victims of or eyewitnesses to atrocities committed during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Mr. Fermon said the complaint will ask an investigative magistrate to look into whether indictments should be issued against Gen. Franks. If an indictment is filed against the general and other U.S. officials, they could be convicted and sentenced by a Belgian court.
"Belgium could issue international arrest warrants, but I don't think we will get to that point," Mr. Fermon said.
If arrest warrants were issued, U.S. officials could be arrested on entering Belgium.
The Bush administration has reacted angrily to the complaint. A senior administration official warned that "there will be diplomatic consequences for Belgium" if the complaint is taken up by a court there and Belgian authorities issue indictments against Gen. Franks and other U.S. officials.
"The complaint will be filed stating that unknown American personnel are directly responsible for committing war crimes in Iraq," Mr. Fermon said.
"On some of these questions there is an issue of command responsibility for atrocities committed on the ground, and that responsibility ends with Gen. Franks and those who are under him in the U.S. military line of command," he said.
The administration official said the complaint highlights U.S. concerns that laws regarding war crimes and institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) can be used to initiate politically motivated prosecutions against American officials.
"This is obviously not a political case with the ICC, but it's typical of what we can expect in the future," the official said on the condition of anonymity.
Mr. Fermon said that because under international law President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell cannot be prosecuted for war crimes while they are in office, the complaint will target Gen. Franks and other U.S. military officials.
"U.S. military officials had the authority but did nothing to stop these war crimes from occurring," Mr. Fermon said. "A military commander is responsible for war crimes even if he did not commit or order them, but also if he fails to take all the necessary steps to prevent the atrocities from happening."
Mr. Fermon said the complaint against U.S. officials is based on a 1993 Belgian law that gives a Belgian court authority to judge war crimes committed by noncitizens anywhere in the world. The plaintiffs sought to file the complaint with the recently inaugurated ICC, but "since the United States did not ratify the treaty to join the institution, we felt compelled to go to a court in Belgium," he said.
He said Belgium's law of "universal jurisdiction" recently allowed indictments to be issued against Rwandan officials for war crimes. He said a similar process is expected to take place against Gen. Franks and other U.S. military officials.
"The most realistic scenario for us is that a serious, independent inquiry is made, and then those U.S. officials with serious responsibilities for the atrocities that were committed in Iraq are subpoenaed to appear in court," he said. "If they do not show up in court, then a court case can proceed with them being absent. If the court finds them guilty, they will be convicted and sentenced."
The filing of the complaint threatens to heighten tensions between Brussels and Washington, which have been strained since Belgium joined France and Germany to lead European opposition to the war in Iraq.
Earlier this month, Mr. Powell said Belgium's law threatened to hamper travel by U.S. officials to Brussels, where NATO headquarters are located.
"It affects the ability of people to travel in Belgium without being subject to this kind of threat. For a place that is an international center, they should be a little bit concerned about this," Mr. Powell said, according to the Associated Press.
Washington's concerns recently prompted Belgian lawmakers to approve amendments to the law, making it harder for cases to be filed against leaders of democratic nations.
Complaints that have been filed against high-ranking leaders such as former President George Bush and Mr. Powell over the 1991 Persian Gulf war are to be sent back to Washington.
Under the amendments, the 10-year-old law only applies to war crimes committed in countries that lack democratic credentials and are unable to provide a fair trial.
But international-law observers say the amendments still leave it up to the Belgian government to decide whether complaints can go forward against U.S. officials.
"These amendments are a positive first step because they help to restore some control over the complaint process by giving the Belgian government the power to shape these kinds of proceedings against the United States, but they are not a panacea," said David Rivkin, a Washington-based lawyer and former official in the Reagan administration and first Bush administration. "They would not shield all possible defendants from these kind of complaints because it is not clear that the Belgian government can always be trusted to do the right thing."
He also said because the amendments have not been tested, it is not clear whether U.S. military officials who are not political leaders, such as Gen. Franks, can be shielded from prosecution.
The senior administration official said the complaint against Gen. Franks was deeply flawed. "There are serious problems with the principle of command responsibility being used in international law as the basis for indictments," the official said. "It goes well beyond what we could reasonably call criminal behavior."
But Mr. Fermon said that the principle of "command responsibility" has been established in international law by the war-crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia at The Hague.
Mr. Fermon said the principle has been used especially effectively in indictments against generals in the former Yugoslavia, who have been charged not "for crimes that were committed or ordered, but for command responsibility."
The most notable case has been that of Croatian Gen. Ante Gotovina, whose indictment on charges of command responsibility over a 1995 military operation has been criticized by many Hague tribunal observers. Gen. Gotovina has refused to hand himself over to the tribunal.
Although the administration official declined to discuss the specifics of the Gotovina case, he said, "But I do think that the indictments issued by the Hague tribunal based on the theory of command responsibility risks establishing the principle in international law," which could be used against U.S. officials.
Mr. Fermon said four Belgian doctors who were working in Iraq during the war came into contact with Iraqi civilians who said they were victims of war crimes by coalition forces. The doctors, who were part of an association called Medicine for the Third World, then told the Iraqis to submit their complaints to a court in Belgium.
Mr. Fermon said that the plaintiffs number about 10 Iraqi civilians, all of whom say they were victims in the war or family members of victims.
"We don't yet know the precise number of plaintiffs because complaints are still coming in," he said.
But the complaint, which Mr. Fermon said will be officially filed in about two weeks, will accuse coalition forces of numerous atrocities in Iraq. Among them:
•The failure to prevent the mass looting of hospitals in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
•Eyewitness testimony of U.S. troops firing upon an ambulance.
•The indiscriminate shooting and wounding its driver by U.S. armored vehicles of civilians in Baghdad.
•The bombing of a marketplace in Baghdad that killed scores of civilians.
• The attack on a civilian bus with an "energy weapon" in the town of al-Hillah, killing at least 10 passengers.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
U.S. Details Hyrdrogen Energy Plan
April 28, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-France-US-Hydrogen-Energy.html
PARIS (AP) -- The world's top economies should pool resources to develop hydrogen energy technology, limiting dependence on fossil fuels, the U.S. secretary of energy said Monday.
Spencer Abraham proposed an international partnership for hydrogen energy at the International Energy Agency, which began a meeting in Paris on Monday.
"By working together ... we can dramatically speed the day when everyone can buy a competitively priced hydrogen-powered vehicle," Abraham told reporters.
Abraham said countries could cooperate to develop technology, set safety and other standards, find ways of producing and storing hydrogen and otherwise prepare for a future "hydrogen economy."
The United States plans to spend about $1.7 billion over the next five years on hydrogen development, and Abraham said the European Union has committed up to $2 billion for research into hydrogen and other renewable energy sources.
He said the aim was to put competitively priced hydrogen cars on the market by 2020.
Hydrogen fuel cell automobiles run on electricity from a chemical reaction between oxygen and hydrogen and only emit clean water from the tailpipe rather than polluting exhaust.
The meeting also will focus on security of the world energy supply, environmental damage and unequal access to energy sources.
Abraham plans to meet next week with the president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the Saudi Arabian oil minister during a trip to the Persian Gulf.
----
California Pulls Plug on Battery Electric Vehicles
By William J. Kelly
April 28, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2003/2003-04-28-04.asp
SACRAMENTO, California, California officially pulled the plug on electric vehicles Thursday, opting instead to rely on gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles and ultra-clean gasoline powered vehicles to meet clean air standards. However, in a bow to advocates of zero emission vehicles and renewable energy, the state also held out the distant flicker of hope that hydrogen powered fuel cell cars might enter the early phases of commercialization within a decade.
By a vote of 8-3, the California Air Resources Board eliminated its existing standard requiring automakers to sell thousands of battery powered electric vehicles in the Golden State. The long awaited move was designed to head off litigation against the state's zero emissions vehicle rules.
"Mandates alone cannot overcome the laws of physics," said air board chairman Alan Lloyd shortly before the vote in Sacramento. Automakers have maintained that short driving ranges and long recharge times made battery electric vehicles impractical for motorists.
In a nod of agreement, the board voted instead to require automakers to produce 250 fuel cell powered cars by the end of 2008, a goal they already had agreed to under the auspices of the California Fuel Cell Partnership. Pending successful development of the emerging technology - which has gained new federal support from the Bush administration - thousands more fuel cell powered cars could be required beginning in 2009.
Meanwhile, the amended rules are expected to increase the number of ultra-clean gasoline cars, known as partial zero emissions vehicles, sold in California from some 140,000 this year to more than 600,000 in 2010. The cars - which include models of the Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Ford Focus, Nissan Sentra, Volkswagon Jetta, and some BMW's and Volvos - emit the equivalent of just a pint of gasoline vapors for every 100,000 miles of driving, according to the board.
In addition, the board projects that the regulatory changes will increase the number of hybrid vehicles sold in California to almost 100,000 in 2010, up from about 10,000 this year. The Toyota Prius, Honda Insight, and one model of the Honda Civic employ hybrid technology, which consists of a small gasoline engine that is boosted by a battery powered electric motor during acceleration. At cruising speeds, the gasoline engine recharges the motor's battery pack.
Ford Motor Company soon is expected to offer the Escape, its small sport utility vehicle, as a hybrid, and other automakers are working to debut hybrid vehicles.
The board rejected pressure mounted by several environmental groups to increase the number of fuel cell vehicles required by the end of 2008 from 250 to 500. "What we are aiming for is long term mass market penetration," said Chuck Shulock, who was in charge of developing the revised standards for the board. "In the near term, practical, affordable zero emissions vehicles are an elusive goal."
Automakers are expected to hand build each of the 250 fuel cell vehicles at a cost of $1 million a car. Pending a favorable assessment of the technology, the number of fuel cell vehicles in the state would increase to a target of 2,500 between 2009 and 2001, 25,000 between 2012 and 2014, and 50,000 between 2015 and 2017.
An independent panel of experts will review the state of automotive fuel cell development in 2006 and the air board will make any needed adjustments in those goals.
California adopted its zero emissions vehicle mandate in 1990. Originally, the mandate called for automakers to make sure that two percent of the cars they sold were pollution free - that is powered by battery electric technology - beginning in 1998 with a gradual increase to 10 percent by this year. The board amended the standard in 2001 when it became evident that battery powered vehicles were not highly marketable, offering automakers the opportunity to gain credit toward the zero emissions standard by producing hybrids and so called partial zero emissions vehicles.
However, when the board amended the rule in 2001, it included a fuel efficiency criterion in its credit scheme for hybrid vehicles. General Motors, DaimlerChrysler, and other automotive businesses sued California in federal court to block enforcement of the standard. They won a temporary injunction against its enforcement because states are pre-empted under federal law from adopting fuel economy standards. The injunction triggered the California board's move to amend the zero emissions vehicle standard. The new amendments remove the fuel efficiency language.
The board voted without hearing testimony after holding an all day public hearing last month. At that hearing, automakers remained neutral on the proposed changes, although environmental groups, independent electric vehicle makers, and electric utility companies fought to retain the battery electric vehicle requirement. While they ultimately failed, some board members voiced support for retaining a battery electric vehicle requirement.
"I'm concerned we're putting all our marbles in one basket," said air board member Matthew McKinnon. "The battery electric vehicle is proven technology."
Shulock said that automakers still could sell battery electric vehicles to meet up to 50 percent of the fuel cell car production requirement. However, he said that based on discussions with the major car makers they would buy battery electric vehicles from independent manufacturers rather than make the cars themselves. Most observers consider continued sales of battery electric vehicles by the major auto companies an unlikely prospect.
{Published in cooperation with Southland Reports, publisher of the California Environmental Report.}
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U.S. Fosters International Hydrogen Partnership
April 28, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2003/2003-04-28-09.asp#anchor1
PARIS, France, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham today called for international collaboration in advanced research and development to support the deployment of hydrogen energy technologies for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
During his presentation to the International Energy Agency (IEA) Ministerial meeting, Abraham said he envisions an International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy such that "a participating country's consumers will have the practical option of purchasing a competitively priced hydrogen power vehicle, and be able to refuel it near their homes and places of work by 2020."
The international partnership would establish cooperative and collaborative efforts in hydrogen production, storage, transport, and end use technologies; common codes and standards for hydrogen fuel utilization; and the sharing of information necessary to develop hydrogen fueling infrastructure.
"International cooperation is key to achieving hydrogen and fuel cell program goals such as those President [George W.] Bush stated in his recent State of the Union address," Abraham said.
"Partnerships that leverage scarce resources, develop technology standards, and foster private-public technology and infrastructure collaboration can more easily overcome the technological and institutional barriers that inhibit the development of a cost-competitive, standardized, widely accessible and safe hydrogen economy," he said.
The world oil market is stretched nearly to capacity, Abraham and IEA Executive Director Claude Mandil agreed during their meeting in Brussels March 7.
Most of the industrialized countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries face undesirable levels of risk to the reliability of their energy sectors and environmental quality resulting from on over reliance on imported petroleum, unstable energy prices, aging electricity and natural gas infrastructures, and the air and water pollution issues associated with the extraction and use of traditional fuels. In addition, greenhouse gas emissions are a growing concern, Abraham acknowledged.
A growing number of countries have committed to accelerate the development of hydrogen energy technologies in order to improve their energy, economic, and environmental security.
The United States has committed $1.7 billion for the first five years of a long term research and development program for hydrogen, hydrogen infrastructure, fuel cells, and hybrid vehicle technologies. The European Union has committed up to ?2 billion to long term research and development of renewable and hydrogen energy technologies.
The use of hydrogen as an energy carrier offers several advantages over existing systems, Abraham said. Hydrogen can be derived from multiple feedstocks, which fosters fuel versatility. End-use technologies that employ hydrogen, such as fuel cells and combustion engines, are more efficient and can be used safely while improving the environment and public health. Fuel cell vehicles may one day serve as sources of reliable, distributed electricity generation when not being used for transportation, he said.
--------
Manitoba to make ethanol-blend gasoline mandatory
REUTERS CANADA:
April 28, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20600/newsDate/28-Apr-2003/story.htm
WINNIPEG, Manitoba - The Canadian Prairie province of Manitoba will make it mandatory for gasoline sold there to be blended with ethanol by September 2005, the provincial government said.
The government introduced a proposed law to require that 85 percent of gas be blended with 10 percent ethanol. Ethanol-blend gasoline emits lower levels of greenhouse gases.
Energy minister Tim Sale said the province would also help support ethanol producers in the province for eight years with a special fund.
Five Canadian plants currently produce about 235 million liters (62 million U.S. gallons) a year of the high-octane, water-free alcohol made from grain, and import another 100 million liters annually from the United States.
Manitoba has one small plant that makes ethanol from wheat. A government-commissioned study said the province could produce up to 140 million liters per year.
"By mandating the use of ethanol, agricultural producers and local communities will be in a better position to benefit from this opportunity," Sale said in a release.
The neighboring Prairie province of Saskatchewan has said it will also make it mandatory to use ethanol-blended gas when supplies rise and prices fall.
The Saskatchewan government said it plans to build three 80-million liter plants with a private sector partner.
By 2010, Ottawa wants a third of Canadian gasoline to contain ethanol as part of its plan to implement the Kyoto protocol.
But ethanol producers have said they need tax incentives to be able to increase production.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Peaceful activists caught in fight
Protesters recently killed or injured in the Palestinian territories highlight the perils of peaceful protest
By Nicole Gaouette
The Christian Science Monitor,
April 28, 2003 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0428/p06s01-wome.html
JERUSALEM - The death of one foreign activist and serious injury of two others has underscored the growing presence and potential of nonviolent protest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even as it shows the limits of such movements in a war zone.
Within the past six weeks, Tom Hurndall and Brian Avery were grievously wounded by Israeli army gunfire; Rachel Corrie died confronting an army bulldozer.
While the Israeli army and eyewitnesses give starkly divergent accounts of those events, experts who study protest movements all say that these events will give nonviolent activism here new momentum.
"[Corrie's] death will galvanize others," says Dr. Nancy Snow, a political scientist at California State University, Fullerton, who studies social movements. "They will not want her to die in vain. But you have to understand that [in nonviolence protest movements] there will be people who die. Outsiders can help, but they have to pass the baton to those living there day in, day out, because you have to rebuild not only homes but trust and respect."
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) says its mission is to support Palestinian nonviolent resistance by working with Palestinians who the group says would otherwise face "harsh punishment from Israeli forces."
But in doing so, says Dr. Snow, they face dangerous challenges from both Israelis and Palestinians. "You have competing narratives of violent and nonviolent resistance against Israel, that's a problem," says Snow. "There is always this question of whether [activists] can be used as a ruse by those who are really committed to violent resistance."
Snow says that a core strength of Mohandas Gandhi's movement was that Indians were so united behind him. The picture here is far less clear. Just over 64 percent of Palestinians support the continued use of violence against Israel, according to a poll taken this month.
In another poll, the US-based Search for Common Ground found that 80 percent also support nonviolent resistance and 56 percent would participate. "Once you introduce violence, it is much harder to get away from it," says Lucy Nusseibeh, director of Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy (MEND), which runs workshops for Palestinians on nonviolent activism. "But there's an enormous interest in alternative resistance," she says.
Indeed, demand for their workshops now outstrips MEND's ability to provide them. It is compensating by creating a radio soap opera featuring a Palestinian who favors violence and one who favors nonviolence.
"Nonviolence creates the space for Palestinians to reach Israelis and ... communicate," says Ms. Nusseibeh. "Fear blocks things enormously and justifies an enormous amount of wrong. You have to address that fear first, so that people can hear a little bit."
In the fog of the current conflict, it is easy to overlook the fact that both sides have long used nonviolent measures. The collapse of the peace process demoralized the Israeli left, but its members still organize actions. Israeli and foreign activists often accompany Palestinians during olive harvests to protect them from attacks by Israeli settlers.
Palestinian peaceful resistance began on a large scale in 1967 with strikes and boycotts against Israel, which had just seized the territories. It may have culminated in the first months of the Palestinian uprising of 1978 to 1993, with widespread nonviolent resistance to Israel's occupation.
Since the Sept. 2000 resurgence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nonviolent protest has largely been the province of women and children demanding access to schools, food and milk during military restrictions that confine people to their homes.
"We have found that if women and children act, it decreases the violent response of the soldiers," says Annan Qadri, who works with neighborhood committees in Nablus.
Even so, Snow says in conflict situations, nonviolent protesters must remember that they will be seen as resisters and perhaps collaborators with the enemy. "I'm sure that fear spills over to the Israeli military," she adds, referring to the army's attitude toward the ISM.
Hostility between activists and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is clear in their differing accounts of the activists' death and injuries.
Mr. Avery, an American, was shot in the face in Jenin this month. It is unclear whether he will be able to speak or eat properly again. An ISM activist with him at the time says they were alone with their hands raised in the air, about 50 meters from an Israeli armored personnel carrier when it opened fire.
The IDF says that it fired four warning shots at a blank wall in response to the appearance of "four figures ... near the forces holding what appeared to be Molotov cocktails."
Tom Hurndall, a Briton, was shot in the back of the head in Gaza in April and remains in a deep coma. Activists and an Associated Press photographer with him say that, like Mr. Avery and Corrie, he was wearing a fluorescent orange vest. They say soldiers in a sniper tower were shooting at them and hit Mr. Hurndall as he herded two children to safety. IDF spokeswoman Maj. Sharon Feingold says the soldiers spotted an armed Palestinian shooting at their post and returned fire. The incident is still under investigation, she says.
As for Corrie, the IDF says she was not run over by their bulldozer last month, contrary to eyewitness accounts, but crushed by blocks of concrete in a sand pile that the bulldozer was moving. Corrie's is the most inflammatory case, in part because there are harrowing photos of the event. The ISM has received a torrent of hate mail in the wake of her death, but it has also seen interest in their work soar. Where they once received three inquiries a day, now the group gets seven to 10.
The ISM's spokesman says that applicants have no illusions about safety. That's a good thing, says Snow. "Nonviolence doesn't mean you'll be protected," she says, citing Mr. Gandhi's call for "soldiers" who had the courage to fight without a knife or gun.
----
Antiwar Protesters Say Cops Used Excessive Force
Associated Press / WNBC
April 28, 2003
http://www.wnbc.com/news/2162403/detail.html
NEW YORK -- The New York Civil Liberties Union is scheduled to release a report Monday detailing protesters' complaints that police used excessive force at the Feb. 15 rally against war in Iraq.
The NYCLU report draws upon testimony from protesters at the massive rally, which stretched for 20 blocks along First Avenue.
Organizers had initially wanted to march past the United Nations that day, but the city had refused to issue a permit for such a march, citing security concerns.
During the rally, police cordoned off streets with metal barricades, and many protesters ended up on Second and Third avenues, complaining that officers in riot gear and on horseback kept them from crossing barriers to First Avenue.
The NYCLU report describes these and other complaints in detail and makes recommendations for reforming the way the police department handles large crowds.
Police spokesman Michael O'Looney told the New York Times in Monday editions that it was "difficult to comment on a report that was not shared with the department."
He said the organizers of the rally had too few marshals telling protesters where to go, and that there was "a small hard-core group of demonstrators intent on having a confrontation with police."
The NYCLU report will be delivered to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, the organization said.
----
Iraqis protest at Baghdad talks
George Wright and agencies
Monday April 28, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,945126,00.html
Street protests by thousands of Iraqis and a boycott by leading Shia Muslims today marred US-sponsored talks on the formation of a new government in Baghdad.
British and American politicians hoped the "all faction" meeting - involving 250 prominent Iraqis from across the political spectrum - would be more positive than the first, much smaller summit that took place in Nassiriya on April 15.
Retired US general Jay Garner, who is responsible for the country's post-war reconstruction, opened the meeting - on Saddam Hussein's 66th birthday - by telling the participants that they bore a heavy responsibility in launching a new era for Iraq.
"Today, on the birthday of Saddam Hussein, let us start the democratic process for the children of Iraq," he said.
Mr Garner, who yesterday assured Iraqis that US forces would leave their country as soon as possible, plans to oversee the immediate reconstruction of Iraq and then hand over to an interim government before a democratic election. He hopes the process of forming a government will start by next weekend.
Today's delegates included clerics from the Shia majority and the traditionally dominant Sunni Muslims, as well as Kurds from the northern mountains.
But the main Shia group - the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) - turned down its invitation in protest at US involvement in the formation of a new government.
SCIRI's London representative, Hamid al-Bayati, said its central committee and general assembly refused to attend because they disapproved of US interference in Iraqi politics. But the group sent affiliated "engineers and technocrats" to discuss humanitarian issues. Its concerns were amplified outside the venue, a heavily guarded convention centre in Baghdad, as protesters, mostly Shia Muslims, staged the latest in a series of rallies held since US troops arrived in Baghdad on April 9.
They claimed that Shia leaders from the holy city of Najaf were not adequately represented at the talks.
Some of the demonstrators carried banners in support of Mohammed Mohsen Zubaidi, the former exile who declared himself mayor of Baghdad but was arrested by US forces on Sunday.
Despite the dissenting voices, British foreign office minister Mike O'Brien, who is representing the UK at the talks, expressed hope that the meeting would "bring together an even broader range of Iraqi participants than at Nassiriya, including opposition exile groups and those newly liberated".
He said the transitional authority should have only a limited existence and that Iraqis should vote in a referendum on a new constitution before electing their own government.
"I hope we then move to a constitutional assembly, then a referendum and a new constitution and then a directly and properly elected democratic government of Iraq," he told reporters outside the meeting.
In London the prime minister, Tony Blair, said there was no doubt Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and predicted that evidence would emerge linking the former Iraqi leader to terrorist groups.
Speaking at his monthly news conference, Mr Blair told reporters that coalition forces had identified around 1,000 Iraqi sites they wished to search for banned weapons, but said rebuilding the country was a bigger priority than finding illegal arms.
Meanwhile, as the mystery over Saddam Hussein's fate deepened, Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, was reported to have told US interrogators that Saddam survived two air strikes.
Mr Aziz, who is being questioned at an undisclosed location, said he saw Saddam alive after the March 19 and April 7 air strikes on Baghdad which targeted the former Iraqi leader and his two sons, according to a report in USA Today that cited a senior US defence official.
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Anti-war carnival arrives at BP AGM
Story by Sudip Kar-Gupta
REUTERS UK:
April 28, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20597/newsDate/28-Apr-2003/story.htm
LONDON - Anti-war protestors greeted BP investors last week by handing out a spoof report that criticised the oil giant's ethical policies as the group held its annual shareholder meeting.
The role of oil firms has come under intense scrutiny following the recent U.S.-led war in Iraq, which has the world's second largest reserves of crude oil.
"We are reaping the rewards from the latest in a long line of oil wars," read the fake report, whose design closely resembled that of the actual BP 2002 report.
Around 100 protesters held a "Carnival Against Oil Wars" outside the meeting of the world's third largest oil group in central London, surrounded by a large police presence.
BP Chairman Peter Sutherland denied that the Iraq war was fought over oil and also refuted allegations that some of BP's work in countries such as Colombia had harmed local communities there.
Sutherland added that Iraq did not form part of BP's current strategy, although industry sources told Reuters this month that BP had a team in place to work on a strategy for its future in the country.
"The oil industry has considerable expertise, which we expect to take part in the rebuilding of Iraq," Sutherland told shareholders, adding BP would only get involved in Iraq with a legitimate government chosen by the Iraqi people.
Protester Jo Hamilton arrived dressed in black, which she said was a gesture to "mourn the people who are feeling the brunt of BP's exploration techniques".
Liz Hitchcock from the Green Century Balanced Fund, which owns BP shares, also urged BP to refrain from drilling in the Arctic region.
Sutherland said BP was far ahead of its peers in ethical and environmental issues and pointed to the fact that the company had set up a committee to deal with these topics.
Shares in BP, which reports first-quarter results next week, were down 1.2 percent at 407-1/2 pence in early afternoon trade.
BP shares have underperformed the DJ Stoxx European Energy sector by about 10 percent over the last year. The company repeatedly missed production growth targets in 2002 - a point not lost on some shareholders.
"You need a metaphorical kick up the backside in certain areas," said private investor Mike Porter.
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