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NUCLEAR
Texas reactor leak rattles U.S. nuclear industry
Depleted uranium toxicity concerns JPG board
Death By Slow Burn - How America Nukes Its Own Troops
India to Make 'Third and Final' Bid for Peace With Pakistan
Chronology of India - Pakistan Relations
U.S. wants U.N. to probe, cite Iran
Road map lobbyists get into high gear
North Korea Urges Workers to be Prepared for War
US reactors still at risk to airborne attack - group
Two Counties to Withhold Documents on Indian Point Plant
DID DONALD RUMSFELD AID NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM?:
For Bush, the Military Is the Message for '04
GW'S CHECKERED MILITARY PAST
"THE IRON TRIANGLE: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE CARLYLE GROUP"
THE SECRETS OF SEPTEMBER 11, WHAT IS THE WHITE HOUSE HIDING?
Right-wing think tanks rule DC
MILITARY
U.S. Declares Major Combat in Afghanistan to Be Over
Combat over, but there's no peace in Afghanistan
Feds: Co. Sold Used Parts for Missiles
India to export missiles to friendly countries
War propels Exxon profits to record $7bn
70 Chinese Sailors Reported Killed in Submarine Accident
OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM SUED FOR ROLE IN CIVILIAN MASSACRE IN COLOMBIA
TEHRAN Iran Opposes U.S. Accord With Fighters Based in Iraq
Tape Shows Exhausted, Confused Saddam
War and neglect fuel Iraq water crisis
Final tests find no nerve agents in Iraqi chemical
Iraqis vow revenge as hatred of US grows
Global Hunt Is Launched For Iraq's Looted Heritage
U.S. Detains 3 Top Iraqi Officials, Including Arms Adviser
Multi - National Stability Force Set for Iraq
Expert on Terrorism To Direct Rebuilding
Exclusive: U.S. hawks seeking to block plan worry Blair
Lost in Translation: U.S. Security Agenda in the Americas
Assailed by US rhetoric, Syria circles its wagons
Rice actions on Syria disputed
Navy Leaves a Battered Island, and Puerto Ricans Cheer
ACLU Warns Against Domestic Spying Role For CIA
Funding anti-U.S. demonstrators
Fear loss of virtue, Ashcroft says
Commentary: Internet Takes On TV
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Homeland Security Privacy Suit Dismissed
Broad Domestic Role Asked for C.I.A. and the Pentagon
Lawmakers Back Threat Assessment Center
U.S. Ally Uzbekistan Critized
Pentagon: Tribunals to include gag rule
ENERGY AND OTHER
German bird lovers bid to block offshore wind farm
Greens, regulators threaten Brazil hydro projects
Bush Wages Legal Battle Against Environmental Law
Pennsylvania Researchers Turn Stem Cells to Egg Cells
SARS Virus Mutates; WHO Says China Lacks Weapons
ACTIVISTS
May Day protesters target "mass destruction" firms
Funding anti-U.S. demonstrators
Civil Rights `Foot Soldiers' Reunite
Exhibit Showcases Anti - War Movement Art
Israel Cracking Down on Foreign Peace Activists
Protesters on Vieques burn Navy vehicles
Grading the Peace Movement
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Texas reactor leak rattles U.S. nuclear industry
02 May 2003
By Chris Baltimore,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-05-02/s_4232.asp
ROCKVILLE, Md. - Managers of a big Texas nuclear power station told U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff Thursday they do not know what caused a leak in the plant's reactor, a discovery that could set off safety shutdowns at dozens of other plants.
The South Texas 1 plant, 90 miles southwest of Houston, has been shut since late March when a routine inspection turned up two tiny boric acid deposits on the underside of its pressurized reactor vessel. Boric acid, used in reactor coolant water to control its radioactivity, is highly corrosive in open air and can eat through metal.
Plant officials said the leak, which may have begun 4 years ago, poses no public health threat. But the mysterious deposits have raised concerns about possible leaks at 68 other U.S. reactors of similar design, said Richard Barrett, director of the engineering division of NRC's reactor office.
Those reactors, more than half of the 103-unit U.S. fleet, account for about 10 percent of the nation's electricity.
"It's very possible that this would have wider industry-wide implications," Barrett said during a public briefing by South Texas 1 plant managers.
NEXT STEPS
Senior NRC staff planned to meet later on Thursday to discuss the problem in more detail, Barrett said.
Managers of the South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Co., which runs the plant's two reactors on behalf of its four owners, told the NRC they will disassemble the plant's reactor to find the "root cause" of the leak.
"I think we have more questions than answers at this juncture," said Steve Thomas, one of the plant's managers.
One possible explanation is that a small, intermittent leak developed around insulated tubes that pierce the reactor's metal hull to allow instruments to measure its inner workings, Thomas said. A prior inspection on the reactor in November found no problems.
Plant operators said the boric acid deposits, smaller than an aspirin tablet, could be the result of a leak of up to 700 liters of coolant from the reactor over as much as four years.
The NRC ordered owners of all U.S. pressurized water reactors, like the South Texas unit, to inspect their reactor vessel heads after finding severe corrosion last year at FirstEnergy Corp.'s (FE.N) Davis-Besse unit in Ohio, where leaking boric acid ate a cantaloupe-sized hole in that reactor's outer hull. Since then, several U.S. utilities including FirstEnergy have spent millions of dollars to replace faulty reactors.
NEW WRINKLE
Prior to the South Texas plant inspection, leaks at the bottom of reactor vessels had not been a concern.
The 1,250-megawatt Texas plant, which generates enough power to supply more than a million homes, was shut in late March for routine refueling, a job that typically takes about 35 days. But repairs could keep the giant facility shut until late summer, months longer than expected.
Nuclear watchdog groups were skeptical that the operator can complete repairs on its current schedule.
"They don't have a clue what caused it, which means that their schedule is overly optimistic," said Jim Riccio at Greenpeace.
The NRC must approve any repair plans and will ultimately decide when the unit is ready to return to service.
The facility is jointly owned by units of CenterPoint Energy Inc. (CNP.N) and American Electric Power Co. (AEP.N) and the municipal utilities of San Antonio and Austin, Texas.
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted uranium toxicity concerns JPG board
By: Peggy Vlerebome
Madison Courier Staff Writer (Indiana/Kentucky)
Friday, May 02, 2003
http://www.madisoncourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=253&ArticleID=11941
The two faces of depleted uranium are concerning members of the advisory board for restoration of Jefferson Proving Ground. Depleted uranium, which was used in munitions tested at JPG, is both radioactive and toxic.
DU's danger to people's health is far greater from its toxicity than from its radioactivity, Restoration Advisory Board members said at the board's quarterly meeting Wednesday. Board members discussed how to make testing for toxicity part of the regimen at JPG.
But there is a huge problem: No agency or group has set a standard for the level at which DU toxicity is hazardous. One of the health effects is kidney damage.
Some of the board members wanted the Army to do topological tests at JPG, but Paul Cloud, the Army's point-man at JPG and co-chairman of the advisory board, said the Army doesn't have to do so because the DU it tested there in munitions is regulated by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC is concerned only with the radioactive properties of the DU and not its toxic properties, he said.
It's possible another federal agency, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, or an Indiana state agency could take on monitoring the toxicity of the depleted uranium at JPG.
Although DU's toxicity has been known for years, studies to link amounts and effects have not been done, an extensive data search by Indiana University graduate students found.
If such studies leading to standards were started now, establishing safe limits could take years, Cloud said.
The two aspects of depleted uranium are "two different ways it acts negatively on the body," said Diane Henshel, an assistant professor at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs and technical adviser to the Restoration Advisory Board.
One of Henshel's classes for graduate students is studying the radiological and toxic effects of depleted uranium on people, plants, animals and aquatic wildlife.
Cloud said the bottom line is to prevent people from having access to the depleted uranium impact area at JPG, which the Army has fenced and barricaded and posted warning signs.
"Uranium is more toxic as a heavy metal than it is as a radioactive element," said John Ruyack of the Indiana Department of Health, who attended the meeting.
One of the impacts on the body is kidney damage.
Cloud disclosed that last fall the Army Environmental Center, accompanied by explosives experts from the Department of Defense, drilled eight more wells north of the firing line at JPG as part of a study nationwide of geology and hydrology. One of the new wells is in the DU impact area.
Because of the presence in the area of tons of unexploded ordnance, the wells were drilled two feet at a time, with a probe inserted after each two feet to make sure nothing would blow up, he said. Nothing did. Water from the wells is being tested for explosives and metals, but the report has not yet been issued, he said.
Also, he said, the state of Indiana has started monthly testing of streams as they go into and out of JPG and has not found any signs of uranium. And other tests the Army does are aimed at finding uranium. If uranium were found in a sample, the sample would be further tested to rule out the uranium that naturally occurs in the environment, but such further testing has not been needed, he said.
Henshel said that to be useful, such monitoring should include testing mussels to see if uranium has accumulated in their bodies. "The aquatic biota ...is where it's going to accumulate over time," she said.
Mike Mullett, an attorney for the Save the Valley environmental organization, asked Cloud if the Army's license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows transport in and transport out of depleted uranium-his point being whether JPG could become a dumping ground for depleted uranium collected as part of the cleanup in postwar Iraq.
"I cannot comment on that officially," Cloud said. "That would be a policy decision by the Army."
But he said he thinks the amount of depleted uranium the Army left behind after 10 years of testing munitions containing it ended in 1994 is close to the amount the Army was allowed by its permit to have at JPG.
If the government wanted to dispose of depleted uranium at JPG, "we'd have to get a license for that, and that's an open process," he said, so it wouldn't be a secret.
In another area of concern raised at the advisory board meeting, Cloud said the Army has no intention of testing at the former airfield at JPG for the presence of perchlorate, which is used in missiles and rockets. Neither was tested at JPG, he said, so the Army has no reason to believe there is any contamination from it on the airfield parcel, which is in the process of being turned over to businessman Dean Ford, who is buying most of the former proving ground that isn't part of the Big Oaks Wildlife Refuge.
--------
Death By Slow Burn - How America Nukes Its Own Troops
What 'Support Our Troops' Really Means
By Amy Worthington
The Idaho Observer
May 2, 2003
Sierra Times
http://www.sierratimes.com/03/05/02/article_io.htm
On March 30, an AP photo featured an American pro-war activist holding a sign: "Nuke the evil scum, it worked in 1945!" That's exactly what George Bush has done. America's mega-billion dollar war in Iraq has been indeed a NUCLEAR WAR.
Bush-Cheney have delivered upon 17 million Iraqis tons of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, a "liberation" gift that will keep on giving. Depleted uranium is a component of toxic nuclear waste, usually stored at secure sites. Handlers need radiation protection gear.
Over a decade ago, war-makers decided to incorporate this lethal waste into much of the Pentagon's weaponry. Navy ships carrying Phalanx rapid fire guns are capable of firing thousands of DU rounds per minute.(1) Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. ships and subs are DU-tipped.(2) The M1 Abrams tanks are armored with DU.(3) These and British Challenger II tanks are tightly packed with DU shells, which continually irradiate troops in or near them.(4) The A-10 "tank buster" aircraft fires DU shells at machines and people on the battlefield.(5)
DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution as illegal weapons of mass destruction. Their use breaches all international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding poisoned weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.
Ironically, support for our troops will extend well beyond the war in Iraq. Americans will be supporting Gulf War II veterans for years as they slowly and painfully succumb to radiation poisoning. U.S and British troops deployed to the area are the walking dead. Humans and animals, friends and foes in the fallout zone are destined to a long downhill spiral of chronic illness and disability. Kidney dysfunction, lung damage, bloody stools, extreme fatigue, joint pain, unsteady gait, memory loss and rashes and, ultimately, cancer and premature death await those exposed to DU.
Award-winning journalist Will Thomas wrote: "As the last Gulf conflict so savagely demonstrated, GI immune systems reeling from multiple doses of experimental vaccines offer little defense against further exposure to chemical weapons, industrial toxins, stress, caffeine, insect repellent and radiation leftover from the last war. This is a war even the victors will lose."(6)
When a DU shell is fired, it ignites upon impact. Uranium, plus traces of plutonium and americium, vaporize into tiny, ceramic particles of radioactive dust. Once inhaled, uranium oxides lodge in the body and emit radiation indefinitely. A single particle of DU lodged in a lymph node can devastate the entire immune system according to British radiation expert Roger Coghill.(7)
The Royal Society of England published data showing that battlefield soldiers who inhale or swallow high levels of DU can suffer kidney failure within days.(8) Any soldier now in Iraq who has not inhaled lethal radioactive dust is not breathing. In the first two weeks of combat, 700 Tomahawks, at a cost of $1.3 million each, blasted Iraqi real estate into radioactive mushroom clouds.(9) Millions of DU tank rounds liter the terrain. Cleanup is impossible because there is no place on the planet to put so much contaminated debris.
Bush Sr.'s Gulf War I was also a nuclear war. 320 tons of depleted uranium were used against Iraq in 1991.(10) A 1998 report by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances confirms that inhaling DU causes symptoms identical to those claimed by many sick vets with Gulf War Syndrome.(11) The Gulf War Veterans Association reports that at least 300,000 Gulf War I vets have now developed incapacitating illnesses.(12) To date, 209,000 vets have filed claims for disability benefits based on service-connected injuries and illnesses from combat in that war.(13)
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a professor of nuclear medicine at Georgetown University, is a former army medical expert. He told nuclear scientists in Paris last year that tens of thousands of sick British and American soldiers are now dying from radiation they encountered during Gulf War I. He found that 62 percent of sick vets tested have uranium isotopes in their organs, bones, brains and urine.(14) Laboratories in Switzerland and Finland corroborated his findings.
In other studies, some sick vets were found to be expressing uranium in even their semen. Their sexual partners often complained of a burning sensation during intercourse, followed by their own debilitating illnesses.(15)
Nothing compares to the astronomical cancer rates and birth defects suffered by the Iraqi people who have endured vicious nuclear chastisement for years.(16) U.S. air attacks against Iraq since 1993 have undoubtedly employed nuclear munitions. Pictures of grotesquely deformed Iraqi infants born since 1991 are overwhelming.(17) Like those born to Gulf War I vets, many babies born to troops now in Iraq will also be afflicted with hideous deformities, neurological damage and/or blood and respiratory disorders.(18)
As an Army health physicist, Dr. Doug Rokke was dispatched to the Middle East to salvage DU-contaminated tanks after Gulf War I. His Geiger counters revealed that the war zones of Iraq and Kuwait were contaminated with up to 300 millirems an hour in beta and gamma radiation plus thousands to millions of counts per minute in alpha radiation. Rokke recently told the media: "The whole area is still trashed. It is hotter than heck over there still. This stuff doesn't go away."(19)
DU remains "hot" for 4.5 billion years. Radiation expert Dr. Helen Caldicott confirms that the dust-laden winds of DU-contaminated war zones "will remain effectively radioactive for the rest of time."(20) The murderous dust storms which ensnared coalition troops during the first few days of the current invasion are sure to have significant health consequences.
Rokke and his cleanup team were issued only flimsy dust masks for their dangerous work. Of the 100 people on Rokke's decontamination team, 30 have already "dropped dead." Rokke himself is ill with radiation damage to lungs and kidneys. He has brain lesions, skin pustules, chronic fatigue, continual wheezing and painful fibromyalgia. Rokke warns that anyone exposed to DU should have adequate respiratory protection and special coveralls to protect their clothing because, he says, you can't get uranium particles off your clothing.
The U.S. military insists that DU on the battlefield is not a problem. Colonel James Naughton of the U.S. Army Material Command recently told the BBC that complaints about DU "had no medical basis."(21) The military's own documents belie this. A 1993 Pentagon document warned that "when soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust they incur a potential increase in cancer risk."(22) A U.S. Army training manual requires anyone who comes within 25 meters of DU-contaminated equipment to wear respiratory and skin protection.(23) The U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute admitted: "If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences."(24) The Institute also stated that, if the troops were to realize what they had been exposed to, "the financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be excessive."(25) For pragmatic reasons, DOD chooses to lie and deny.
Dr. Rokke confirms that the Pentagon lies about DU dangers and is criminally negligent for neglecting medical attention needed by DU-contaminated vets. He predicts that the numbers of American troops to be sickened by DU from Gulf War II will be staggering.(26) As they gradually sicken and suffer a slow burn to their graves, the Pentagon will, as it did after Gulf War I, deny that their misery and death is a result of their tour in Iraq.
Dr. Rokke's candor has cost him his career. Likewise, Dr. Durakovic's radiation studies on Gulf War I vets were not popular with U.S. officials. Dr. Durakovic was reportedly told his life was in danger if he continued his research. He left the U.S. to continue his research abroad.(27)
Naive young coalition soldiers now in Iraq are likely unaware of how deadly their battlefield environment is. Gulf War I troops were kept in ignorance. Soldiers handled DU fragments and some wore these lethal nuggets around their necks. A DU projectile emits more radiation in five hours than allowed in an entire year under civilian radiation exposure standards. "We didn't know any better," Kris Kornkven told Nation magazine. "We didn't find out until long after we were home that there even was such a thing as DU."(28)
George Bush's ongoing war in Afghanistan is also a nuclear war. Shortly after 9-11, the U.S. announced it would stockpile tactical nuclear weapons including small neutron bombs, nuclear mines and shells suited to commando warfare in Afghanistan.(29) In late September, 2001, Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed that the U.S. would use tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan while Putin would employ nuclear weapons against the Chechnyans.(30)
Describing the Pentagon's B-61-11 burrowing nuke bomb, George Smith writes in the Village Voice: "Built ram tough with a heavy metal casing for smashing through the earth and concrete, the B-61 explodes with the force of an estimated 340,000 tons of TNT. It is lots of bang for the buck, literally two apocalypse bombs in one, a boosted plutonium firecracker called the primary and a heavy hydrogen secondary for that good old-fashioned H-bomb fireball."(31)
Drought-stricken Afghanistan's underground water supply is now contaminated by these nuclear weapons.(32) Experts with the Uranium Medical Research Center report that urine samples of Afghanis show the highest level of uranium ever recorded in a civilian population. Afghani soldiers and civilians are reported to have died after suffering intractable vomiting, severe respiratory problems, internal bleeding and other symptoms consistent with radiation poisoning. Dead birds still perched in trees are found partially melted with blood oozing from their mouths.(33)
Afghanistan's new president, Hamid Karzai, is a puppet installed by Washington. Under the protection of American soldiers, Karzai's regime is setting a new record for opium production. Both UN and U.S. reports confirm that the huge Afghani opium harvest of 2002 makes Afghanistan the world's leading opium producer.(34) Thanks to nuclear weapons, Afghanistan is now safe for the Bush-Cheney narcotics industry.(35) ABC News asserts that keeping the "peace" in Afghanistan will require decades of allied occupation.(36) For years to come, "peacekeepers" will be eating, drinking and breathing the "hot" carcinogenic pollution they have helped the Pentagon inflict upon that nation for organized crime.
As governor of Arkansas during the Iran-Contra era, Bill Clinton laundered $multi-millions in cocaine profits for then vice-president George Bush Sr.(37) As a partner in the Bush family's notorious crime machine, President Clinton committed U.S. troops to NATO's campaign in the Balkans, a prime heroin production and trans-shipment area. DOD's campaign to control and reorganize the drug trade there for the Bush mafia was yet another nuclear project.
For years, the U.S. and NATO fired DU missiles, bullets and shells across the Balkans, nuking the peoples of Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo. As DU munitions were slammed into chemical plants, the environment became hideously toxic, also endangering the peoples of Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Austria and Hungary. By 1999, UN investigators reported that an estimated 12 tons of DU had caused irreparable damage to the Yugoslavian environment, with agriculture, livestock and air water, and public health all profoundly damaged.(38)
Scientists confirm that citizens of the Balkans are excreting uranium in their urine.39 In 2001, a Yugoslavian pathologist reported that hundreds of Bosnians have died of cancer from NATO's DU bombardment.(40) Many NATO peacekeepers in the Balkans now suffer ill health. Their leukemias, cancers and other maladies are dubbed the "Balkans Syndrome." Richard Coghill predicts that DU weapons used in Balkans campaign will result in at least 10,000 cases of fatal cancer.(41)
U.S. citizens at home are also paying a heavy price for criminal militarism gone mad. DOD is a pollution monster. The General Accounting Office (GAO) found 9,181 dangerous military sites in USA that will require $billions to rehabilitate. The GAO reports that DOD has been both slothful and deceitful in its clean-up obligations.(42) The Pentagon is now pressing Congress to exempt it from all environmental laws so that it may pollute and poison free from liability.(43)
The Navy uses prime fishing grounds off the coast of Washington state to test fire DU ammunition. In January, Washington State Rep. Jim McDermott chastised the Navy: "On one hand you have required soldiers to have DU safety training and to wear protective gear when handling DU...and submarines must stay clear of DU-contaminated waters. These policies indicate there is cause for concern....On the other hand the Department of Defense has repeatedly denied that DU poses any danger whatsoever. There has been no remorse about leaving tons of DU equipment in the soil in foreign countries, and there appears to be no remorse about leaving it in the waters of your own country."(44)
DU has been used in military practice maneuvers in Indiana, Florida, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Maryland and Puerto Rico. After the Navy tested DU weaponry on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, one third of the island's population developed serious illness. Many people show high levels of uranium in their bodies. Hundreds have filed a class action suit against the Navy for $100 million, claiming DU contamination has caused widespread cancers.(45)
The Navy's Fallon Naval Air Station near Fallon, Nevada, is a quagmire of 26 toxic waste sites. It is also a target practice zone for DU bombs and missiles. Area residents report bizarre illnesses, including 17 children who have contracted leukemia within five years. A survey of groundwater in the Fallon area showed nearly half of area wells are contaminated with radioactive materials.(46)
The materials for DU weaponry have been processed mainly at three nuclear plants in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, where workers handling uranium contaminated with plutonium have suffered for decades with cancers and debilitating maladies similar to Gulf War Syndrome.(47)
Emboldened by power-grabbing successes made possible by his administration's devious 9-11 project, President Bush asserts that the U.S. has the right to attack any nation it deems a potential threat. He told West Point in 2002, "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long."(48) Thus, it is certain that Bush-Cheney future pre-emptive nuclear wars are lined up like idling jets on a runway. Both Cheney's Halliburton Corp. and the Bush family's Carlyle Group are profiteers in U.S. defense contracts, so endless war is just good business.(49)
The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon will create special nuclear weapons for use on North Korea's underground nuclear facilities.(50) Next August, U.S. war makers will meet to consolidate plans for a new generation of "mini," "micro" and "tiny" nuclear bombs and bunker busters. These will be added to the U.S. arsenal perhaps for use against non-nuclear third-world nations such as Iran, Syria, Lebanon.(51)
The solution? Americans must stop electing ruthless criminals to rule this nation. We must convince fellow citizens that villains like Saddam Hussein are made in the U.S. as rationale for endless corporate war profits. Saddam was placed in power by the CIA.(52) For years U.S. government agencies, under auspices of George Bush Sr., supplied him with chemical and biological weapons.(53) Our national nuclear laboratories, along with Unisys, Dupont and Hewlett-Packard, sold Saddam materials for his nuclear program.(54) Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton in the late 90s when its subsidiaries signed $73 million in new contracts to further supply Saddam.(55) The wicked villain of Iraq was nurtured for decades as a cash-cow by U.S. military-industrial piranhas.
If America truly supports its troops, it must stop sending them into nuclear holocaust for the enrichment of thugs. Time is running out. If the DU-maniacs at the Pentagon and their coven of nuclear arms peddlers are not harnessed, America will have no able-bodied fighting forces left. All people of the earth will become grossly ill, hideously deformed and short- lived. We must succeed in the critical imperative to face reality and act decisively. Should we fail, there will be no place to hide from Bush-Cheney's merciless nuclear orgies yet to come or from the inevitable nuclear retaliation these orgies will surely breed.
Endnotes
1."DOD Launches Depleted Uranium Training," Linda Kozaryn, American Forces Press Service, 8-13-99.
2."Nukes of the Gulf War,"John Shirley, Zess@aol.com. See this article in archives at www.gulfwarvets.com.
3. BBC News, "US To Use Depleted Uranium," March 18, 2003; U.S. General Accounting Office, Operation Desert Storm: "Early Performance Assessment of Bradley and Abrams," 1-2-92.
4."Nukes of the Gulf War," op. cit.
5. Ibid.
6. "Invading Hiroshima," William Thomas, 2-4-2003, www.willthomas.net
7. "US Shells Leave Lethal Legacy," Toronto Star, July 31, 1999; also "Radiation Tests for Peacekeepers in the Balkans Exposed to Depleted Uranium," www.telegraph.co.uk, 12-31-02.
8. "Depleted Uranium May Stop Kidneys In Days," Rob Edwards, New Scientist.com, 3-12-02; also "Uranium Weapons Too Hot to Handle," Rob Edwards, New Scientist.co.uk, 6-9-99.
9. "Navy Seeks Cash for More Tomahawks," David Rennie in Washington, Telegraph Group Limited, 1-4-03, news.telegraph.co.uk.
10. "Going Nuclear in Iraq--DU Cancers Mount Daily," Ramzi Kysia, CounterPunch.org, 12-31-01.
11."Depleted Uranium Symptoms Match US Report As Fears Spread," Peter Beaumont, The Observer (UK) 1-14-01, www.guardianlimited.co.uk.
12. "Gulf War Illnesses Affect 300,000 Vets," Ellen Tomson, Pioneer Press, www.pioneerplanet.com. See also American Gulf War Veterans Association at www.gulfwarvets.com.
13. "2 of Every 5 Gulf War Vets Are On Disability: 209,000 Make VA Claims," World Net Daily, 1-28-03, WorldNetDaily.com.
14. "Research on Sick Gulf Vets Revisited, "New York Times, 1-29-01; "Tests Show Gulf War Victims Have Uranium Poisoning," Jonathon Carr-Brown and Martin Meissonnier, The Sunday Times (UK) 9-3-02.
15. "Catastrophe: Ill Gulf Vets Contaminated Partners With DU," The Halifax Herald Limited, Clare Mellor, 2-09-01. This article is available in archives at www.rense.com.
16. "Iraqi Cancer, Birth Defects Blamed on US Depleted Uranium," Seattle Post- Intelligencer, 11-12-02; "US Depleted Uranium Yields Chamber of Horrors in Southern Iraq, Andy Kershaw, The Independent (London) 12-4-01.
17. "The Environmental and Human Health Impacts of the Gulf War Region with Special References to Iraq," Ross Mirkarimi, The Arms Control Research Centre, May 1992. See also Gulf War Syndrome Birth Defects in Iraq at www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html.
18. "The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm, Has Our Country Abandoned Them?," Life Magazine, November 1995; "Birth Defects Killing Gulf War Babies," Los Angeles Times, 11-14-94; "Depleted Uranium, The Lingering Poison," Alex Kirby, BBC News Online, 6-7-99.
19. "Depleted Uranium, A Killer Disaster," Travis Dunn, Disaster News.net, 12-29-02.
20. San Francisco Chronicle, 10-10-02.
21. "US To Use Depleted Uranium," BBC News, 3-18-03.
22. "Depleted Uranium Symptoms Match US Report As Fears Spread," Peter Beaumont, The Observer (UK) 1-14-01.
23. "Iraqi Cancer, Birth Defects Blamed on US Depleted Uranium," Seattle Post- Intelligencer, 11-12-02.
24. "US To Use Depleted Uranium," BBC News, 3-18-03.
25. US Army Environmental Policy Institute: Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium in the U.S. Army, Technical Report, June 1995.
26. "Pentagon Depleted Uranium No Health Risk," Dr. Doug Rokke, 3-15-03; also "The Terrible, Tragic Toll of Depleted Uranium," Address by Dr. Rokke before congressional leaders in Washington, D.C.,12-30-02; also "Gulf War Casualties," Dr. Doug Rokke, www.traprockpeace.org. 9-30-02.
27."Tests Show Gulf War Victims Have Uranium Poisoning," Sunday Times (UK), Jonathon Carr-Brown and Martin Meissonnier, 9-3-00.
28. "The Pentagon's Radioactive Bullet: An Investigative Report," Bill Mesler, The Nation, 5-28-99, see www.thenation.com/ issue/961021/1021mesl.htm.
29. "Tactical Nukes Deployed In Afghanistan," World Net Daily, 10-7-01. 30. Ibid.
31. "The B-61 Bomb,The Burrowing Nuke" George Smith,VillageVoice.com 12-29-02.; also "Bunker-busting US Tactical Nuclear Bombs, Nowhere to Hide," Kennedy Grey, Wired.com, 10-9-01.
32."Perpetual Death From America," Mohammed Daud Miraki, Afghan-American Interviews, 2-24-03; also "Dying of Thirst," Fred Pearce, New Scientist, 11-17-2001.
33. Ibid.
34. "Afghanistan Displaces Myanmar as Top Heroin Producer," Agence France-Presse, 3-01-03. This article is at www.copvcia.com.;also "Opium Trade Flourishing In the `New Afghanistan,'" Reuters, 3-3-03.
35. "The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire," Michael C. Ruppert, Nexus Magazine, February-March 2000; The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Alfred W. McCoy, Lawrence Hill & Co., revised edition due May 2003; Drugging of America, Rodney Stich, Diablo Western Press, 1999; "Blood for Oil, Drugs for Arms," Bob Djurdjevic, Truth In Media, April 2000, www.truthinmedia.org. 36. ABC News, February 27, 2003.
37. Compromised, Clinton Bush and the CIA, Terry Reed and John Cummings, S.P.I. Books, 1994; The Clinton Chronicles and The Mena Cover-up, Citizens for Honest Government, 1996; "The Crimes of Mena, Grey Money," Ozark Gazette, 1995 (see www.copvcia.com.)
38. "Damage to Yugoslav Environment is Immense, Says a UN Report," Bob Djurdjevic, 7-4-99, truthinmedia.org. This report was submitted to the UN Security Council on June 9, 1999; also, "New Depleted Uranium Study Shows Clear Damage," BBC News,8-28-99; also "NATO Issued Warning About Toxic Ammo," Associated Press, 01-08-01.
39. CounterPunch.org, 12-28-01.
40. "Hundreds Died of Cancer After DU Bombing--Doctor," Reuters, 1-13-01.
41."Depleted Uranium Threatens Balkan Cancer Epidemic," BBC News, 7-30-99.
42. "Many Defense Sites Still Hazardous," Associated Press, 9-24-02; also Old US Weapons Called Hidden Danger, Los Angeles Times, 11-25-02.
43. "Pentagon Seeks Freedom to Pollute Land, Air and Sea," Andrew Gumbel in L.A., 3-13-03, Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.
44. "Radioactive DU Ammo Is Tested in Fish Areas," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1-11-03; Letter from Rep. McDermott to Department of the Navy: see "Navy Fired DU Rounds Into Waters Off Coast of Washington," 1-20-03, rense.com.
45."Cancer Rates Soar From US Military Use of DU On `Enchanted Island,'" www.telegraph.co.uk, 2-5-01; also "Navy Shells With Depleted Uranium Fired in Puerto Rico," Fox News Online, 5-28-99.
46. "The Fallon, NV Cancer Cluster And a US Navy Bombing," Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch.org, 8-10-02.
47. "DU Shells Are Made of A Potentially Lethal Cocktail of Nuclear Waste," Jonathon Carr-Brown, www.sunday-times.co.uk, 1-22-01.
48. "Preventative War Sets Perilous Precedent," Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers, 3-20-03.
49. PIGS at the Trough, Arriana Huffington, Random House, 2003 (New York Times best seller.); also "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy, From Hitler to Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden Insider Connections and the Bush Family's Partnership With Killers of Americans;" Mike Ruppert, From the Wilderness,10-10-01; also "Bush Sr.'s Carlyle Group Gets Fat on War and Conflict," Jamie Doward, The Observer (UK), 3-25-03; also "Halliburton Wins Contract for Iraq Oil Firefighting, Reuters, 3-7-03; also "Cashing In-Fortunes in Profits Await Bush Circle After Iraq War, Andrew Gumbel, The Independent (London) 9-15-02; also "War Could Be Big Business for Halliburton," Reuters, 3-23-03.
50. "Pentagon Seeks a Nuclear Digger," Washington Post, March 10, 2003.
51. "Remember: Bush Planed Iraq War Before Taking Office," Neil Mackay, The Sunday Herald (UK) 3-27-03; also "US Mini-Nukes Alarm Scientists," The Guardian (UK) 4-18-01; also "US Nuclear First-Strike Plan--It Keeps Getting Scarier, Jeffrey Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review, 2-24-03.
52. Wall Street Journal, 8-16-90: The CIA supported the Baath Party and installed Hussein as Iraqi dictator in 1968.
53. "United States Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Impact on the Health of Persian Gulf War Veterans," Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, 1992, 1994; "U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup," Washington Post, 12-30-02.
54. "US Government, 24 US Corps Illegally Helped Iraq Build Its WMD," Hugh Williamson in Berlin, Financial Times, 12-19-02; "Full List of US Weapons Suppliers To Iraq," Anu de Monterice, coachanu@earthlink.net, 12-19-02.
55. Huffington, op. cit.
Amy Worthington is a reporter for The Idaho Observer
-------- india / pakistan
India to Make 'Third and Final' Bid for Peace With Pakistan
May 2, 2003
The New York Times
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/international/asia/03INDO-CND.html
NEW DELHI, May 2 - Saying that he was making a last effort at peace, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India announced in Parliament today that India would send a new high commissioner to Pakistan and restore air links on a reciprocal basis between the two countries.
The decision was welcomed in Pakistan.
The announcement breaks a 16-month-long stalemate that began after a Dec. 13, 2001, attack on Parliament here. India laid the blame for the attack on Pakistan, which has backed a 14-year Islamic insurgency in an attempt to wrest control of Indian-administered Kashmir.
India recalled its high commissioner and suspended air, road and rail links, and later deployed hundreds of thousands of extra troops along its border with Pakistan. Western diplomats have said that the two nuclear-armed nations twice went to the brink of war.
"At least in my life this is the last time I will be making an attempt to resolve the Indo-Pak dispute," an emotional Mr. Vajpayee said today.
Two weeks ago, on a visit to Kashmir, Mr. Vajpayee ended months of hard-line rhetoric by Indian officials and announced he was extending a "hand of friendship" to Pakistan. He reiterated the statement in Parliament, although he insisted that India's conditions of a halt to anti-Indian terrorism emanating from Pakistani territory had not changed.
On Monday, Pakistan's prime minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, called Mr. Vajpayee to extend his appreciation for the Indian prime minister's words. They discussed ways of moving ties forward, including restoring air links.
In making a first move today, Mr. Vajpayee risks the wrath of hard-liners in his own party, which became clear this week. After Pakistani officials announced that Mr. Jamali had informally invited Mr. Vajpayee to Pakistan, leaders from Mr. Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party announced that the invitation was being rejected. India's Ministry of External Affairs rushed to clarify that no formal invitation had been issued, and thus none rejected.
Twice before, Mr. Vajpayee had reached out to Pakistan, only to be met with what India saw as blatant, even mocking rebuffs. In February 1999 he visited Lahore, only to have Pakistan start a miniwar in the peaks of Kargil a few months later.
He invited the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to a summit meeting, only to have the meeting end in acrimony, followed by the attack on Parliament six months later.
Today Mr. Vajpayee said he was making his "third and final" effort at peace. "Even for me, it is a decisive and conclusive step," he said, adding, "We are committed to improvement of relations with Pakistan and we are willing to grasp every opportunity to do so."
This is typically the starting time of the "jehadi season," as some call the infiltration of militants across mountain passes into India. There have been fears that should militants begin a major attack, as they did with the killing of 24 Hindus in Kashmir in March, India would launch limited air strikes in retaliation.
The United States Deputy Secretary of State, Richard L. Armitage, is visiting Pakistan and India next week in part because this is seen as such a critical period.
But an Indian defense official speaking on background said that there had been "nothing significant" in terms of infiltration since the end of March, when the snows melt and infiltration traditionally begins.
Another Indian official said it was essential that "it's all the more critical now that there be a let up" - referring to infiltration and militant attacks - "because he's really staked a lot of things."
"It's a very courageous sort of move," he said of Mr. Vajpayee's statement today.
In his comments today, Mr. Vajpayee also raised the state of economic relations between the two countries, and it is there that India may be looking for gestures from Pakistan. Pakistan still maintains a so-called "negative list" of Indian items it bars from import, and India has long been seeking most favored nation status.
The Indian decision was greeted in Pakistan.
"It is a positive and good gesture and we appreciate this, as it was required in the region," the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Sheik Rashid Ahmed, told news agencies there. "We believe this will be a good start and we are going to solve all our problems, including the Kashmir issue, when the diplomatic facilities will be available."
Mr. Musharraf and Mr. Jamali were meeting with senior foreign policy officials this afternoon.
Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri said on Pakistan television on Thursday night: "We should go back to pre-Dec. 13, 2001, status vis-à-vis diplomatic relations between the two countries to create a conducive atmosphere for a composite dialogue on all outstanding issues."
A spokesman for the United States Embassy said the administration welcomed today's developments.
----
Chronology of India - Pakistan Relations
May 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Pakistan-Chronology.html
Following are significant dates in relations between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan:
August 1947: Pakistan is created as a nation on Aug. 14. The next day, India gains independence from Britain after two centuries of colonial rule.
October 1947: War breaks out between India and Pakistan in Kashmir over rival claims to the mountainous territory. The United Nations brokers a truce 16 months later.
September 1965: The two countries fight a second war over Kashmir, ending in a U.N.-brokered cease-fire after three weeks.
Jan. 3, 1966: India and Pakistan sign Soviet Union-sponsored peace deal intended to permanently end hostilities.
December 1971: A third war breaks out -- this time over Bangladesh, which had been East Pakistan.
July 1972: India and Pakistan agree that a cease-fire line called the Line of Control would divide Kashmir. Neither country recognizes it as an official border.
May 1974: India conducts first nuclear test.
November 1989: Islamic insurgency starts in Kashmir.
October 1990: U.S. halts military and economic aid to Pakistan over suspicion that it is developing nuclear weapons.
May 1998: India conducts five nuclear tests and declares itself a nuclear-armed state. Pakistan carries out its first nuclear tests. The United States and several other nations impose economic sanctions on both. Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declares India will not be first to use nuclear weapons. Pakistan does not match the assurance.
Feb. 21, 1999: Indian and Pakistani prime ministers meet in the Pakistani city of Lahore and sign a declaration promising to notify each other of missile tests to prevent an accidental war.
April, 1999: India successfully tests a missile capable of delivering a nuclear bomb deep inside Pakistan. Pakistan then successfully tests its own similarly capable missile.
May-July 1999: India and Pakistan fight limited 11-week battle in Kashmir.
April 2001: U.S. Congress begins to dismantle all sanctions against India and Pakistan.
Oct. 1, 2001: Islamic militants slam explosives-laden car into the state assembly in Jammu-Kashmir, in India-controlled Kashmir, killing 40 people. India blames Pakistan. Pakistan denies responsibility.
Dec. 13, 2001: Five suspected Islamic militants shoot dead nine people in attack on India's parliament before being killed in the suicide attack. India rushes hundreds of thousands of troops to frontier with Pakistan and puts military on war alert.
May 14, 2002: Islamic militants attack a passenger bus and an army base in Jammu-Kashmir, killing 34 people, mostly soldiers' wives and children. Fears of war resurface.
May 21, 2002: Separatist Kashmiri leader Abdul Ghani Lone is shot to death during a memorial rally attended by thousands in Jammu-Kashmir's summer capital, Srinagar.
May 25, 2002: Pakistan carries out the first of a series of missile tests.
June 4, 2002: Vajpayee and Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf attend regional security summit in Kazakstan, but no talks are held.
May 2, 2003: India and Pakistan agree to restore full diplomatic ties and to hold their first talks in almost two years. The peace overtures come ahead of a visit to the region next week by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. In a first step, Vajpayee announces he is sending an ambassador to Pakistan and restoring air links.
-------- iran
U.S. wants U.N. to probe, cite Iran
By Eli J. Lake
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
May 2, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030502-78717128.htm
The U.S. government is pressing the United Nations' atomic watchdog to take action on what Washington believes are violations by Iran of the treaty on nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, administration sources said yesterday.
Should the Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) establish there is credible information that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, the consequences to Tehran could be international economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation.
The only countries ever to be found in violation of the treaty are Iraq and North Korea. If a similar determination were made in the case of Iran, U.S. officials would expect at least a meeting of the U.N. Security Council similar to the one held last month to discuss North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
The sources said U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Brill, in a closed-door meeting of IAEA's board of governors on March 17, formally requested that the agency's Director General Mohamed ElBaradei submit a report by June 16 on whether Iran's nuclear-power program is directed only to peaceful purposes.
U.S. intelligence agencies have compiled new evidence in the past year indicating Iran is closer to developing nuclear weapons than earlier thought. Some U.S. analysts and outside experts predict Tehran will be able to produce weapons-grade material on a regular basis by late 2005.
"For a long time the U.S. government has had intelligence indicating that Iran indeed is seeking nuclear weapons," Robert Einhorn, assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation in the Clinton administration, said earlier this week. "This would be the first time the international organization charged with monitoring Iran's performance would raise questions about Iran's intentions."
John Wolf, the present assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, also met with Mr. ElBaradei on Wednesday in Geneva to press the case against Iran.
"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," he said Monday to a gathering of diplomats in Geneva.
Earlier in April, Undersecretary of State John Bolton met with Mr. ElBaradei to push for a tough assessment of Iran's nuclear program.
"We hope the [IAEA] report will be as hard-hitting and thorough as possible," one senior State Department official said Monday.
-------- israel
Road map lobbyists get into high gear
Friday, May 02, 2003 Nisan 30, 5763
By Nathan Guttman,
Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/289357.html
WASHINGTON - An hour after the road map was officially delivered in the Middle East, lobbying groups - both for and against the peace plan - sprang into action. Letters that had long been waiting for President George W. Bush and his top advisers were sent and the lobbying went into high gear.
Among those trying to influence the administration are representatives from Israel, including Tourism Minister Benny Elon, the pro-transfer ideologue in the National Union bloc, who is due in the U.S. on Friday to campaign against the road map. Elon's arrival was delayed by the nationwide strike in Israel that kept Ben-Gurion Airport closed, but he is slated to meet with congressmen and senators to deliver a very different message from that being officially issued by Jerusalem.
As far as Elon is concerned, the road map is a "disaster for Israel," an existential threat to the country's citizenry. He also has lined up a series of meetings with well-known evangelist preachers who are known for their support for Israel and their hawkish lines. Given that the right-wing Christian support for Bush is considered a crucial element for his re-election, Elon's campaign could prove to be significant in the long run.
No administration officials will meet Elon, but they will certainly hear his message via the legislators he meets. An even clearer, though more moderate, message reached the administration on Thursday, when a letter from Congress to the president warned Bush not to harm Israel during implementation of the road map.
The letter, initiated by congressmen Tom Lantos, Roy Blunt, Stenny Hoyner and Henry Hyde, drew 313 signatures from other members of the House, an impressive number by all accounts. The language of the letter is cautious but clear. The congressmen say they support the road map and want American intervention in the peace process on the basis of a two-state solution, but warn the administration not to make too many demands on Israel before the Palestinians do their part.
"Many are urging you to short circuit this process and to focus on timelines in achieving the road map benchmarks," they wrote. "We believe you will not be dissuaded and will focus instead on real performance." The letter demands that the Palestinians dismantle the terrorist infrastructure, restructure its security apparatus, and provide more transparency and responsibility on the part of the PA. At the same time, a similar letter signed by 88 of 100 senators was sent to Bush.
Although the letters have no formal status or legislative meaning, the fact that so many congressmen, from both parties, signed them should make it clear to the administration that Capitol Hill firmly supports Israel and demands that the Palestinians fight terror.
That enormous support can be attributed in part to intensive activity by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, which published a cautious welcome to the road map Thursday. AIPAC says it does not support throwing out the road map or advancing it regardless of Palestinian performance.
On the other side of the political map, there is no less activity, including Israeli involvement. At least 100 rabbis have signed a Jewish Peace Coalition letter sent to Bush prodding him to implement the road map and to fill it with more details about the nature of the final settlement to give Palestinians the incentive to fulfill its demands. The rabbis base their appeal on a September letter written to Bush by former Israeli ministers Shlomo Ben-Ami, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and Yuli Tamir, urging the president to develop a detailed American peace plan and press for implementation on both sides.
"The administration isn't hearing the voices calling for something that is more than the road map has to offer," said Jerome Segal, head of the coalition. "They hear only those who oppose it or who are willing to accept it as it is."
Others in the organized Jewish community also believe their voices are not being heard. A group of major Jewish donors, headed by Edgar Bronfman, sent a letter to the leadership of both houses of congress expressing unreserved support for the road map.
"We are writing to express our concern over recent efforts to sidetrack implementation of the road map," they wrote, without mentioning by name those who are trying to divert the road map while adding that they oppose any pressure on Israel.
The decision makers have the entire spectrum of views before them, including the official Israeli government's view. So far, the administration has responded only to Jerusalem's official position, but when the plan reaches the stage of negotiations and pressure, the lobbyists' weight will surely affect the administration's views. Tourism Minister Benny Elon (National Union) is due in Washington on Friday to campaign against the road map.
-------- korea
North Korea Urges Workers to be Prepared for War With U.S.
Friday, May 02, 2003
AP
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,85785,00.html
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea marked May Day on Thursday by urging its workers to prepare for war with the United States, while South Korea's president said he will visit Washington to seek a peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis.
At a rally in Pyongyang, communist labor leader Ryom Sun Gil called for workers to form regiments and divisions " ... so that they may be fully ready to defend the country from the enemy's invasion," said the North's official news agency, KCNA.
Ryom is chairman of the Central Committee of the General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea.
North Korea claims the United States plans to invade the isolated communist state because of a dispute over the North's suspected development of nuclear weapons.
Washington says it seeks to resolve the nuclear dispute peacefully, but U.S. officials have not ruled out a military option.
On Wednesday, North Korea said it would regard any U.S. move to seek U.N. sanctions against it because of its nuclear ambitions as "the green light to a war."
The nuclear crisis flared late last year when Washington said North Korea admitted running a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of a 1994 treaty.
U.S. officials say North Korea claimed last week that it had nuclear weapons and was contemplating exporting or using them, depending on U.S. actions.
In Seoul, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said Thursday he will meet President Bush on May 14 in Washington to seek a peaceful solution to the nuclear standoff.
Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il visited a military unit on Thursday to celebrate May Day with soldiers, KCNA said. The North's 1.1 million-strong military, the world's fifth largest, forms the backbone of Kim's totalitarian rule.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said this week the United States was reviewing the North's offer to give up its missiles and nuclear facilities in exchange for substantial U.S. economic benefits. The North Koreans floated the proposal in talks with American envoys in Beijing last week.
Pyongyang also demands a nonaggression treaty with the United States. The U.S. administration has ruled this out, but says some written security guarantee could be possible.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
US reactors still at risk to airborne attack - group
Story by Leonard Anderson
REUTERS USA:
May 2, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20660/newsDate/2-May-2003/story.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - New security rules ordered by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission do not spell out safeguards against potential airborne attacks on nuclear power plants, an industry watchdog group said.
Three NRC orders, released Tuesday, directed atomic power plant owners to further tighten security at the nation's 103 reactors, a top priority at the agency in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.
A key order, which the NRC labeled as classified, modifies the kind of threat - known as a "design basis threat" - a plant owner must be ready to defend against, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The other orders specified work hours and firearms training and qualifications required of armed security guards hired by utilities to protect the plants.
"The design basis threat has been a ground-based assault on a plant and that's still the case in the new orders, but now the NRC has revised it to make it a larger assault with more capable adversaries," Lochbaum told Reuters.
An attack from the air on a reactor and other plant facilities, including storage areas for used radioactive fuel, is being studied separately by the NRC "to define the weak links at the plants," he said.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, some U.S. lawmakers and activist groups have called for more security at atomic plants to thwart an airplane crash that could split open the reactor or fuel pool and spray deadly radioactive materials for miles.
"PROTECT FAMILIES"
"The security around nuclear power plants must be sufficient to protect families who live in those areas from potential nuclear disasters ... the orders fall short of what is needed in several critical areas," said Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a frequent critic of the NRC.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, a pro-nuclear trade group, said a study by the Electric Power Research Institute concluded that plant buildings housing reactor fuel would protect against a radiation release if struck by a large jetliner.
"The NRC has good people working on this and is moving in the right direction," said Lochbaum.
Nevertheless, the UCS has urged the NRC to order plant owners to measure their facilities against "aerial hazards" and "radiological sabotage" to ensure a safe plant shutdown in the event of an attack.
Tough new security, however, would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and taxpayers likely would have to pay the tab.
"Aerial attacks are beyond what plant security guards can defend against. The government would have to provide for more defense and paying for that probably would have to come from the Department of Homeland Security," said Lochbaum.
The nuclear industry has spent about $370 million on increased security since the Sept. 11 attacks, and more upgrades could run about $6 million a year at each plant, according to NEI.
"Where does the responsibility end for defense with private guards and begin for defense with federal and state law enforcement agencies and the military?" asked Mitch Singer, a spokesman for NEI.
The NRC's new security rules went into effect Tuesday, with a "transition period" lasting to October 2004.
-------- new york
Two Counties to Withhold Documents on Indian Point Plant
May 2, 2003
The New York Times
By LISA W. FODERARO
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/nyregion/02NUKE.html
WHITE PLAINS, May 1 - Two of the four counties surrounding the Indian Point nuclear power complex in Buchanan, N.Y., said today that they would not provide the Federal Emergency Management Agency with documents the agency needs to sign off on emergency plans.
FEMA had set the end of business on Friday as the deadline for crucial information from the counties that would allow the agency to declare that it had "reasonable assurance" of the emergency plan's viability.
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the final judge of whether the plant stays open, requires plants to have a FEMA-approved plan as a condition of its licenses.
Officials from the two counties - Westchester and Rockland - said they were withholding the documents out of concern that they would lead to the endorsement of the plan, which they deem unworkable.
The documents, which include letters of agreement between the counties and emergency services providers, were to be delivered through the state's Emergency Management Office.
Susan Tolchin, the chief adviser to the Westchester County executive, Andrew J. Spano, said the county had grave doubts about the emergency plan after a state-commissioned report in January concluded that the plan would not protect the public in the event of a major release of radiation.
Ms. Tolchin said Westchester County, despite having fulfilled its obligations under the current emergency plan, would not provide the materials for fear that they would "be used to say that everything is fine and that the evacuation plan works in all scenarios."
The Entergy Corporation, which owns the two plants, 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, said that it had filed a Freedom of Information Act request today to obtain the Westchester documents. Jim Steets, a spokesman for the utility, said he was confident that the other counties - Putnam, Orange and even Rockland - would supply the documents.
But the Rockland County executive, C. Scott Vanderhoef, said that Rockland officials, who met with FEMA representatives today, would not submit the documents to the agency. Both Mr. Vanderhoef, a Republican, and Mr. Spano, a Democrat, have called for the closing of Indian Point, which has had a troubled safety record in recent years. Since Sept. 11, worry has grown over the plant's vulnerability to a terrorist attack.
In January, New York State refused to issue its normally routine annual certification of the plan, citing a lack of information from the counties.
If FEMA decides that it does not have enough information to approve the plan, then it could start the clock ticking on a 120-day period in which it would try to work out a resolution with various parties.
-------- us politics
DID DONALD RUMSFELD AID NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM?:
A NEW REPORT REVEALS RUMSFELD WAS ON BOARD OF ZURICH FIRM ABB WHICH SOLD NORTH KOREA TWO NUCLEAR REACTORS
May 2, 2003 on Democracy NOW!
http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20030502.html
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demnow/dn20030502.ra&start=1:26:07.6
There is one image from the 1980s that might best highlight the ties between the Reagan and Bush White House to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. It is a grainy video image of a U.S. envoy enthusiastically shaking hands with Hussein himself. The year was 1983 and the envoy was Donald Rumsfeld, the current Secretary of Defense.
Over the past year Rumsfeld's pair of visits to Baghdad in the early 1980s gained considerable attention but he has generally refused to comment on his trips.
And now it turns out that Rumsfeld is refusing to talk about his possible connections with another of the nations in the so-called Axis of Evil: North Korea.
A new report in Fortune magazine has unveiled that Rumsfeld might have played a direct role in helping North Korea build its potential nuclear capacity.
Three years ago Rumsfeld was sitting on the board of a Zurich-based engineering firm that won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components for a pair of North Korean nuclear reactors.
The company is ABB. Rumsfeld served on the board from 1990 to 2001. He was the only American serving on the board. And he has never acknowledged ABB's role building the reactors in North Korea.
But a former ABB director recently told Fortune magazine that Rumsfeld was asked to lobby in Washington on ABB's behalf.
We are joined by the Fortune magazine writer Richard Behar. The forthcoming issue of the magazine contains his article "Rummy's North Korea Connection: What Did Donald Rumsfeld Know About ABB's Deal to Build Nuclear Reactors There? And Why Won't He Talk About It?"
- Richard Behar, journalist with Fortune magazine. He wrote the article.
- Bjoern Edlund, spokesperson for ABB.
----
For Bush, the Military Is the Message for '04
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 2, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2849-2003May1?language=printer
In declaring military victory over Iraq last night, President Bush made a strong effort to direct Americans' attention away from the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's fall and back toward the ongoing campaign against al Qaeda.
Until yesterday, the White House had postponed a presidential speech declaring victory because of the messy uncertainty that remains on the ground in Iraq. There have been no confirmed findings of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Hussein and most of his top leadership remain unaccounted for. And celebrations among liberated Iraqis have turned into anti-American protests as the country's disparate groups begin to feud.
Last night, however, Bush set such concerns aside. He made just a glancing reference to those problems in his address to cheering sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln off California; the remaining questions in Iraq received just 140 words in an 1,800 word speech. Instead, Bush demoted the war in Iraq, and the earlier war in Afghanistan, to mere "battles" in the larger war on terrorism -- and he rested much of his address on the disputed premise that Hussein's Iraq was allied with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.
Bush's address last night was also designed to celebrate -- and take some credit for -- the one claim on which there can be no doubt: the military triumph of the troops who, as the president said, "have shown the world the skill and might of the American armed forces."
For Bush -- who also spent the night aboard the carrier -- the whole day was devoted to linking his presidency to the aura of the U.S. military. When the Viking S-3B carrying Bush made its tailhook landing on the aircraft carrier off California yesterday, Bush emerged from the cockpit in full olive flight suit and combat boots, his helmet tucked jauntily under his left arm. As he exchanged salutes with the sailors, his ejection harness, hugging him tightly between the legs, gave him the bowlegged swagger of a top gun.
The carrier landing capped a recent period in which the president has tied himself to the military as never before. And that is no accident: Bush aides are planning to make his war leadership the focus of his 2004 reelection campaign, and yesterday's images are crucial in burning that impression into the national cornea.
"It has a huge visual impact," said an admiring Michael Deaver, who created such images for Ronald Reagan, including the Gipper's famous Normandy speech. "This is a powerful, powerful visual, not only of Bush as commander in chief, but of his strength as a world leader."
Bush, in his address from the flight deck, made no claim that Iraq has or had biological and chemical weapons, though this accusation was the central argument the administration used in justifying the war to the international community. "We have begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated," he said.
Instead of discussing the earlier mission of disarming Iraq, Bush emphasized other, less central and less widely supported, reasons for the war. "We have removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding," he said. "And this much is certain: no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because that regime is no more."
The president, in linking Iraq closely to al Qaeda, implied that Hussein had a hand in the September 11 attacks -- a connection has been widely described by intelligence analysts as tenuous, if it exists at all. Subtle linkages of the two in Bush's past speeches have apparently encouraged that belief; opinion polls show large numbers of Americans believe Hussein was culpable in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Last night, Bush hinted strongly at the linkage again.
"We have not forgotten the victims of September 11th," Bush told the sailors. "The last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."
Even before yesterday's carrier landing, for which Bush prepared by taking underwater survival training in the White House swimming pool, the White House had been working extensively to tie Bush's image to the success of the U.S. military.
Before leaving for San Diego yesterday, Bush assembled about 150 military chaplains at the White House for a prayer breakfast. Last week, he climbed aboard a tank in Ohio and delivered a patriotic speech surrounded by five of the fighting machines. Earlier, he went to Ft. Hood in Texas and met with the Americans who had been prisoners of war in Iraq. Even the Easter Egg Roll at the White House took on a military theme; it was changed this year to focus on the children of servicemen and women.
If the theme weren't clear enough, Bush issued a proclamation declaring yesterday "Loyalty Day, 2003." Bush's proclamation urged Americans to "reaffirm our allegiance to our country" and heralded "America's men and women in uniform."
But yesterday's arrival on the carrier, followed by a speech to the nation and an overnight aboard, is without precedent among modern presidents, historians said. Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had their moments on battleships. But historians said they could not recall a president dressing in military gear since Teddy Roosevelt would strap on his old Rough Rider pistol before meeting with troops -- and that was before television could take the image into American homes.
Historian Douglas Brinkley said Bush's aircraft-carrier moment was a "trophy" for the victorious war president. "It'll be in his biography, a moment of sweet triumph," he said. Even before that biography is written, Bush's carrier visit may appear somewhere else: 2004 campaign footage. Brinkley called it "the opening salvo for his presidential campaign."
Ralph Neas of the liberal group People for the American Way, cautioned: "Problems arise when a president uses patriotism and the flag not as unifying things but as political weapons. I believe they crossed the line in 2002 and am worried they'll do the same in 2004."
But Bush aides said the president is in no danger of crossing that line. "As commander in chief, he gave the orders that put these men and women in harm's way," one senior aide said. "This is a way to give appreciation for that."
Bush's visit to the carrier was laden with symbolism. The ship, often called the largest vehicle on the planet, is a symbol of might (the White House issued a fact sheet noting that its sailors had consumed 29,000 pounds of hamburger on their voyage). Its name, the Abraham Lincoln, symbolizes emancipation and freedom. And its triumphant homecoming from the Iraq war provided Bush with the perfect opportunity to highlight the success by -- literally -- embedding himself with the troops for a night.
The image of Bush as victorious war leader is a complete turnaround from the 2000 campaign, when he dodged criticism of his light duty as pilot of an F-102 in the Texas National Guard. Yesterday, making his way to the Lincoln aboard a jet that can carry up to 3,958 pounds of missiles, torpedoes, rockets and bombs, the victorious commander in chief recalled his days in the Guard with fondness.
"I miss flying, I can tell you that," he said, telling reporters he was at the controls for a third of his flight to the carrier from the coast, which at times through the day was visible from the Lincoln. Later, wearing a white life-vest with "Commander in Chief" on the back and a helmet, he moved quickly along the deck, flashing a thumbs-up and shaking hands with sailors.
----
GW'S CHECKERED MILITARY PAST
May 2, 2003
Democracy NOW!
http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20030502.html
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demnow/dn20030502.ra&start=11:48.7
President George Bush co-piloted a navy jet on to an aircraft carrier yesterday to underline his role as America's commander-in-chief.
A former pilot in the Texas air national guard, Bush let it be known he had spent time at the warplane's controls.
Wearing olive-green pilot's overalls, he sat in the co-pilot's seat of a navy Viking S-3B jet as it was brought to a screeching halt by a cable across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
The triumphal and dramatic gesture seems ironic for a president who has never fought in any war. And that's not all.
Expedited entry and promotions to the air national guard, a one-year gap in duty and redacted military reports cast serious doubt over Bush's experiences in the military three decades ago.
- Bill Minutaglio, author of First Son, the unauthorized biography of President George W. Bush.
Bill Minutaglio http://www.bushbook.com
----
"THE IRON TRIANGLE: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE CARLYLE GROUP"
AUTHOR DAN BRIODY CONNECTS THE DOTS BETWEEN THE BUSH FAMILY, THE SAUDI ROYAL FAMILY, OSAMA BIN LADEN'S FAMILY AND DONALD RUMSFELD'S INNER CIRCLE
May 2, 2003
Democracy NOW!
http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20030502.html
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demnow/dn20030502.ra&start=27:35.4
President Bush Senior. President Bush Junior. Former British Prime Minister John Major. Former Secretary of State James Baker. Secretary of State Colin Powell. The half brother of Osama Bin Laden.
These are just some of the high profile figures who have played a direct role in the rise of one of the most powerful and influential and secretive firms in Washington.
The company is called The Carlyle Group. And in the wake of the events of September 11th and the invasion of Iraq, its power and influence have become significantly stronger.
The company operates within the so-called iron-triangle of industry, government and the military. Its list of former and current advisers and associates includes a vast array of some of the most powerful men in America and indeed around the world.
For the first time a book-length expose on the history of the Carlyle Group has been published. It is called The Iron Triangle: The Secret History of the Carlyle Group.
- Dan Briody, author of the new book The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group.
----
THE SECRETS OF SEPTEMBER 11, WHAT IS THE WHITE HOUSE HIDING?
A CONVERSATION WITH NEWSWEEK INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER MICHAEL ISIKOFF
May 2, 2003
Democracy NOW!
http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20030502.html
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demnow/dn20030502.ra&start=1:12:27.3
As the White House plots a 2004 campaign plan, administration officials are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of key events relating to the September 11 attacks - this according to Newsweek.
An 800-page secret report prepared by a joint congressional inquiry is at the center of the debate.
The report details intelligence and law-enforcement failures that preceded the September 11 attacks, including provocative warnings given to President Bush and his top advisors during the summer of 2001.
The report was completed in December with few details released to the public. Five months later, a "working group" of Bush administration intelligence officials assigned to review the document are refusing to declassify many of its most significant conclusions.
- Michael Isikoff, investigative correspondent for Newsweek.
--------
Right-wing think tanks rule DC
By Patrick Anidjar in Washington
02may03
Sunday Times (Australia)
http://www.sundaytimes.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,6371051%5E401,00.html
CONSERVATIVE thinktanks exert a considerable influence over the Bush administration and the US media, with their right-wing agenda considerably at odds with the more moderate view of the State Department, analysts say.
Bodies such as the Heritage Foundation and the Hoover Institute have been influential since the days of the Reagan administration, and are now prominent again under President George W Bush.
"They certainly influence the people or reinforce the ideas of the people who influence the President," according to political scientist Stephen Wayne of Georgetown University.
"It is not only an influence, it's a reinforcement, really, of the directions which this administration has taken in most of its conservative agenda," Wayne said, citing the war against Iraq, the 'war on terror' and also the economy.
The neo-conservatives are also adept at ensuring their message is heard in the media and influences the public discourse, analysts said.
"They're much more effective, a much more strategic model, than what's done on the Left in disseminating information to the public, the media, Congress," according to analyst Jeff Krehely.
As far back as 1998, under the Clinton presidency, a survey by media watchdog FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) showed that "over half (53 per cent) of quotes broadcast by the media came from right-wing thinktanks" against only 16 per cent from the Left. This disparity has grown under the latest Bush administration.
Krehely, a member of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, noted that right-wing thinktanks can also rely on more generous, and numerous, benefactors than their left-wing counterparts.
As well as ensuring a high media profile for their ideologies, the thinktanks also act as a breeding ground for political advisors.
Richard Perle, one of the Pentagon's leading hawks and a key proponent of the 'pre-emptive strike' doctrine, is a member of the ultra-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AIE).
Lynn Cheney, wife of the vice-president, is also a member.
Former House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich also used the AIE as a forum from where to attack the State Department and Secretary of State Colin Powell - who regularly comes under fire from the hawks.
The State Department has remained relatively free of neo-conservatives except for John Bolton, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, who is a member of the AIE, close to Israel and the US right.
According to press reports, Bolton was imposed on the department against the wishes of Powell.
Even political opponents admit the neo-conservatives have mounted a skilful and successful campaign to get their message heard in the corridors of power.
ThirdWorldTraveler.com, a website that claims to offer "an alternative view to the corporate media about the state of democracy in America," concedes that over the past two decades, the conservative thinktanks "have mounted an impressively coherent and concerted effort" to shape the political direction in Washington.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. Declares Major Combat in Afghanistan to Be Over
May 2, 2003
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/international/worldspecial/02RUMS.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 1 - The United States declared today that major combat operations were over in Afghanistan, a step aimed largely at encouraging more nations to join the international reconstruction effort here.
The announcement, made at a news conference here by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is likely to have little practical effect on the 8,000 American soldiers who have been here for 18 months.
Most of these forces have already begun reconstruction efforts and are still conducting sweeps in search of pockets of militants, particularly along the border with Pakistan. An additional 5,500 international peacekeepers are policing the capital here.
Politically, however, the formal transition to stability and reconstruction missions from combat operations is expected to open the door for many aid organizations, particularly in Europe, that had balked at sending troops, supplies or other assistance while the focus was on the American-led fight against Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.
"What's different now is that we can shift our weight," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters. "A significantly larger part of our effort can go in that direction."
The timing of the announcement coincided with President Bush's declaration tonight to shift the emphasis in Iraq to reconstruction from combat after six weeks there, compared with 18 months here.
Mr. Rumsfeld said it had taken longer for a smaller force to root out elusive Qaeda terrorists than for the military to trounce the Iraqi armed forces, but he suggested that Afghanistan could be a laboratory for Iraqi reconstruction efforts. This is Mr. Rumsfeld's third trip to Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001, and he praised the progress he had witnessed.
On the 10-minute drive from the city's airport to Mr. Karzai's palace, bustling stalls selling eggs, fresh meat, vegetables and other services lined the main road, which hummed with cars, buses and taxis.
Mr. Karzai and the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, have been pressing Washington for months for this transition, so as to attract international contributions.
Large new reconstruction projects like rebuilding the road between Kabul and Kandahar in the south would give Mr. Karzai a big political boost and energize the flagging Afghan economy, officials said.
"I advocated this earlier," General McNeill said in an interview. "Now there's simply no reason why the international community can't take bolder decisions on reconstruction."
The shift from full-fledged combat to establishing stability has actually been under way for months. In secure parts of the country, several hundred military civil affairs experts have built schools and dug wells. International aid workers are also in the country, but many say threats to security inside Afghanistan prevent them from reaching many needy communities.
Frustrated at the slow pace of rebuilding the country, the Pentagon last fall decided to use civil affairs teams to take reconstruction efforts to 8 to 10 turbulent regions. The teams have a total of $12 million for projects they oversee, and they hire local contractors to do the work.
Three teams are operating now - in Gardez, Bamian and Kunduz - but General McNeill said only Italy had until now volunteered to help with the program.
Security remains dicey in parts of the country, although General McNeill said the situation was steadily improving. Foreign aid workers have been the targets of nearly daily attacks. Last Friday, two American soldiers were killed and four others wounded in a daytime clash along the eastern border.
Much of the problem is that the border with Pakistan is porous and that the Pakistani authorities are limited in how aggressively they can patrol the largely autonomous tribal regions where local leaders are openly sympathetic toward the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Today, Pakistan's President said Osama bin Laden might be alive and hidden in the tribal areas, Reuters reported.
When asked about Pakistani cooperation, General McNeill said, "We haven't gone as far and as fast as we'd like." He added, however, that Pakistan has seized 450 militants in the campaign against terror.
Mr. Rumsfeld spent much of his weeklong trip in the region assessing how United States forces and bases in the Persian Gulf could be reduced or rearranged to take account of the fall of Saddam Hussein.
But there is no immediate end in sight for the 8,000 American troops here, at least not until summer 2004, when 9,000 to 12,000 Afghan National Army soldiers are expected to be sent around the country.
Mr. Rumsfeld visited the national army's training center here, chatting with Afghan soldiers and officers as well as their American and British trainers. The program got off to a bumpy start last year when many recruits left before basic training was even completed, complaining of homesickness and the paltry $30 a month the United States was paying them.
The program has since picked up momentum, American officials said, partly because of better recruiting to ensure that the mix of soldiers is more representative of the country's ethnic groups. "They've performed extremely well," said Maj. Gen. Karl Eikenberry of the Army, the chief American security coordinator here.
Some Afghan soldiers are already joining American forces on patrol and on specific missions. But American commanders acknowledge that they still have a long way to go before they feel confident enough to turn Afghanistan's security over to the Afghans.
Security was tight today for the meeting between Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Karzai at the National Palace, a compound of stone buildings, some of which date back 600 years. American security personnel said Mr. Karzai was a virtual prisoner of his headquarters, rarely venturing out to mingle with his countrymen, although he did join a parade in downtown Kabul a couple of days ago.
When asked about his inability to travel around his own country safely, Mr. Karzai joked to reporters, "I think I can move much freer than most other heads of state do in their countries."
--------
Combat over, but there's no peace in Afghanistan
Rumsfeld says most of country is secure, but citizens disagree
By Todd Pitman and Kathy Gannon
Associated Press
http://www.detnews.com/2003/nation/0305/02/a05-153433.htm
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The United States says Afghanistan is no longer a combat zone, but revived Taliban and other radical guerrilla bands are targeting American soldiers, foreign relief workers and the government -- sometimes with deadly results.
Emboldened by allies like Iranian-backed rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, they have even made claims to controlling remote areas.
With President Hamid Karzai at his side, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared Thursday that "major combat activity" in Afghanistan is over.
"We're at a point where clearly we have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction activities," Rumsfeld said in Kabul, the Afghan capital. "The bulk of this country today is permissive, is secure."
Yet most Afghans say their nation is overrun by thieving warlords, the countryside is perilous, and the government's control is largely limited to Kabul, which is protected by nearly 5,000 international peacekeepers.
While the resistance in Iraq is loose and disjointed, in Afghanistan there is coordination. The Taliban have forged an alliance with rebel forces led by Hekmatyar, a former U.S. ally now declared a terrorist and hunted by U.S. special forces.
Hekmatyar loyalists control a mountainous swath of the country in the northeast where hit-and-run attacks against U.S. forces are common.
Western intelligence sources as well as former Taliban tell the Associated Press that resurgent Taliban have re-established a command structure and have divided the country among fugitive leaders who are ordered to organize and carry out guerrilla attacks.
Military operations in the dangerous south and southeast of Afghanistan are commanded by former Taliban Interior Minister Abdul Razzak, according to Western intelligence sources and former Taliban.
In the past week, the remote mountain districts of Shenkai and Chapan in southeastern Zabul province have been caught in a seesaw battle between Taliban and government forces. Taliban fighters have sworn to keep U.S. special forces out of the region.
Khalid Pashtun, a spokesman for Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha Sherzai, says the battles with Taliban forces have been fierce. He says they have been dislodged, but residents say Taliban forces remain.
Rumsfeld's promise of reconstruction seems a distant dream -- as vast swaths of Afghanistan are ruled by warlords who have only a flimsy allegiance to the central government; as marauding bands of Taliban fighters establish roadblocks in broad daylight on main highways, killing foreigners so others will flee the country,
Rumsfeld cited a return of millions of refugees as proof that Afghanistan was secure.
"They're voting with their feet, they're saying that the circumstance here is something they want to be a part of and that's a good thing," he said.
But some Afghans have been forced to return home: Britain began repatriating refugees this week, deporting 30 of the 30,000 Afghans who have sought asylum there since 1985.
Others who returned of their own accord have been unhappy to find no reconstruction. And some have left again, crossing the mountains to neighboring Pakistan.
The United States and the French, at odds over Iraq, are working together to train a new Afghan army that is supposed to bring security to Afghanistan. But so far, it has only about 3,000 men and few of them have been embraced by Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, whose private Tajik-dominated army still controls that key ministry.
Karzai has vowed to end the rule of warlords in the country. But each region now is ruled by a governor whose power is his private militia, who collects his own set of taxes and imposes his own rule of law.
U.S. military officials also insist that turning the focus to reconstruction will help them cement what progress they have made.
"Reconstruction will just make it more stable," said Col. Roger King, a U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan. "So let's focus on it and get on with it."
King says the job of the fighting forces here is largely over because it did what it set out to do: "To kill and capture al-Qaida terrorists" and make sure Afghanistan is no longer a haven for Osama bin Laden's supporters.
The job now, he says, is to make sure they don't come back.
"They would still like to portray themselves as carrying on the fight in Afghanistan, but if you look at the reality they can't even live here," King said at the U.S. military headquarters at Bagram, north of Kabul.
"They have to come in across the border, conduct an attack and leave immediately because this is no longer a place where they can hide."
-------- business
Feds: Co. Sold Used Parts for Missiles
May 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Patriot-Parts.html
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- Federal prosecutors on Friday joined a lawsuit accusing a Canadian electronics company of selling improper parts to the Army for its Patriot missile system after the Gulf War.
The suit, originally filed by a former company manager, alleges CMC Electronics of Montreal sold used and surplus radio sets to the Army in the mid-1990s, but charged the government as if the equipment was new.
As a result, the government overpaid ``millions of dollars,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney James B. Clark III said.
Messages left Friday for the company's lawyers were not returned.
The lawsuit, filed in January 2001 by Russell Hayes, was unsealed Friday by a federal judge.
Hayes, a program manager, claims he was fired in 1996 because he was ``increasingly insistent'' that the company stop cheating the U.S. government.
According to the suit, the government contracted in 1992 for 97 new radio sets. CMC concealed the use of used or surplus sets by destroying evidence, including removing original serial numbers, the suit alleges.
Clark said no injuries or defective missile systems have been linked to the radio sets.
On the Net:
U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark: http://www.njusao.org/break.html
--------
India to export missiles to friendly countries: reports
(AFP)
May 02, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030502053041.ip26k52m.html
NEW DELHI - India will soon begin selling missiles to "friendly countries", media reports quoting defence sources said Friday.
The systems earmarked for export include cruise and anti-tank guided missiles, which will not violate international laws governing the sale of missiles -- such as the Missile Technology Control Regime, the reports said.
In January, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said several countries had shown interest in buying the BrahMos missile which India is developing jointly with Russia.
The BrahMos is a 280-kilometre (173-mile) range cruise missile meant to arm Indian warships and submarines.
It has been test-flown three times since 2001 and is likely to enter production by the end of the year.
The Asian Age newspaper said the state-run Bharat Dynamics Limitedwas exploring the option of exporting subsystems of the home-grown surface to surface Prithvi (Earth) missile.
Exporting the entire missile could have security implications for India, which was why the sale of subsystems was being considered, the report said.
"The missile will go to Singapore but from there we do not know what its final destination is," the paper quoted an unidentified BDL official as saying.
"This is a big problem owing to which we can only export subsystems."
BDL has already bagged orders from Malaysia and a number of countries had shown interest in buying missiles from India, the report added.
The prices for some types of missiles -- around 420,000 rupeesdollars) -- are far less than those quoted in the international market, the report added.
In February, BDL and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company unveiled plans to jointly manufacture missiles for export.
-------- business
War propels Exxon profits to record $7bn
Terry Macalister
Friday May 2, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,947859,00.html
ExxonMobil, the world's biggest privately owned oil group and a target of street protesters, celebrated May Day by reporting the largest quarterly corporate profits in history at $7.04bn (£4.4bn).
The company, whose petrol stations around Europe are subject to boycotts by StopEsso campaigners angry about its stance on global warming, made £2.2m an hour - double that of rival BP.
Crucial to the surge in profits was the rising global price of oil, which averaged record highs across the three-month period, buoyed by fears of a supply gap due to the war in Iraq.
The net income figure of $7.05bn included special items and compared with last year's figure of $2.09bn. The company has rewarded shareholders with an 8% rise in dividend.
Fadel Gheit, oil analyst with New York brokerage Fahnstock & Co, said groundbreaking profits had been driven by the Iraq war and strikes in Venezuela and Nigeria. "They [Exxon] had a very strong wind in their sail and they happened to have a very big sail. But if you look at the detail, the US refining and marketing figures fell from the fourth quarter and the US chemicals results were also very disappointing," he said.
The StopEsso campaign denied that the huge Exxon profits suggested its boycott was not working. "All you are seeing is the oil industry getting its first benefits from the war in Iraq. Our action has now spread to nine countries and in terms of brand damage we are winning," said a spokeswoman for the campaign.
Exxon has been pilloried by environmentalists for taking a sceptical stance on global warming and has been blamed by them for encouraging US president George Bush not to sign the Kyoto treaty.
Analysts believe the record first-quarter figures from the top oil companies, including Shell today, will not be repeated because oil prices have already started to fall as the conflict in Iraq comes to an end.
-------- china
70 Chinese Sailors Reported Killed in Submarine Accident
May 2, 2003
The New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/international/asia/02CND-SUBMAR.html
BEIJING, May 2 - Seventy Chinese sailors aboard a diesel-powered submarine perished in a training-mission accident in the Yellow Sea, the official New China News Agency reported tonight.
The brief notice did not reveal when or how the disaster occurred.
Jiang Zemin, the former president and Communist Party chief, who has retained his title as military chairman, "sent condolence messages, dated May 2, to family members of the dead navy officers and seamen," the agency reported.
The account said submarine No. 361 was taking part in drills east of the Neichangshan Islands when a "mechanical problem" occurred that caused the accident. The damaged submarine has been towed to its home port, the agency said.
China's submarine programs, especially its small fleet of nuclear-powered vessels, have a history of safety and performance problems that have generally been cloaked in secrecy.
"What I find most interesting is that they have publicly reported this accident," said Evan Medeiros, an expert on the Chinese military at the Rand Corporation in Washington.
Mr. Medeiros said he wondered whether the domestic and global uproars over Beijing's early efforts to conceal the epidemic of SARS might have encouraged a more open stance on this latest catastrophe.
David Shambaugh, a military expert at George Washington University, in Washington, said that the apparently rapid recovery of the submarine indicated that the boat had not been submerged or did not sink after the accident. Mr. Shambaugh, the author of "Modernizing China's Military" (University of California Press, 2003), speculated that an explosion or chemical disaster might have killed the crew without sinking the ship.
The submarine's identification number indicated to experts that it was a Ming-class vessel, one of 18 to 20 in operation that are Chinese-built variants of an older Soviet design. They are considered antiquated by Western military standards.
The Chinese still use more than 30 of the even more obsolete Soviet-designed Romeo-class submarines, but they have also recently deployed a few of the more modern Song-class diesel submarines.
The navy has also bolstered its forces by buying advanced Kilo-class submarines from Russia.
The Chinese Navy's submarines patrol coastlines but are mainly dedicated to a possible blockade or battle over Taiwan. Beijing considers the island an errant province of the motherland and has threatened to attack if it ever formally declares its independence.
Experts believe that China's sole deployed nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine has been plagued by operational and safety problems. China also has five Han-class nuclear-powered submarines that do not carry ballistic missiles, and it is developing other nuclear-driven models.
------- colombia
OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM SUED FOR ROLE IN CIVILIAN MASSACRE IN COLOMBIA
May 2, 2003
Democracy NOW!
http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20030502.html
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demnow/dn20030502.ra&start=1:40:25.9
On December 13, 1998, Luis Alberto Galvis lost his mother, sister and cousin in a U.S. air raid in Colombia.
He recently confronted shareholders of a U.S. company that he claims is responsible for the deaths of 19 civilians including seven children.
The lawsuit filed on April 25 by international rights attorneys charges that Occidental Petroleum and its private security contractor, Airscan, participated in the air raid that led to the killing of innocent civilians.
The suit charges that both OXY and Airscan helped conduct the attack, providing key strategic information, as well as ground and air support to the Colombian military in the bombing raid on the town. Airscan's "Skymaster" plane--which provides aerial surveillance for OXY'S Ca?o Limon oil pipeline--accompanied the Colombian air force during the bombing, and used its infrared and video equipment to pinpoint targets on the ground. While allegedly targeting suspected rebels, no rebels were in the area.
Occidental has been a chief architect of Plan Colombia and a lobbyist for U.S. military aid to Colombia, currently at $131 million this year. Another $110 million is proposed in 2004 for the protection of OXY's Ca?o Limon pipeline. This unprecedented corporate subsidy of $3.58 a barrel is a handsome payoff for OXY's aggressive lobbying efforts and political contributions.
- Dan Kovalik, lawyer for the plaintiff in the Occidental case.
- Luis Mujica, survivor of a 1998 bombing in Colombia. He is suing Occidental for role in bombing
-------- iran
TEHRAN Iran Opposes U.S. Accord With Fighters Based in Iraq
May 2, 2003
The New York Times
By NAZILA FATHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/international/worldspecial/02TEHR.html
TEHRAN, May 1 - Iran's Foreign Ministry today criticized the American cease-fire agreement with an Iranian guerrilla group based in Iraq, accusing the United States of hypocrisy in claiming to fight terrorism and in its efforts to reshape Iraq. The ministry's spokesman, Hamidrez Assefi, said the truce with the group, Mujahedeen Khalq, or the People's Mujahedeen, in Iraq was evidence of American "weakness" and "lies in combating terrorism." He rejected the accusations by the United States that Iran was meddling in Iraq's reconstruction, saying, "Occupying Iraq is an obvious sign of interfering into affairs of a country, and an occupier cannot accuse others."
His remarks came a day after Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, denounced the arrangement with the guerrilla group, saying the United States had proven that "bad terrorists are only those who are not America's servants."
United States military officials signed the cease-fire agreement with the Mujahedeen Khalq on April 15 and announced it on Wednesday. The truce allows the group, which is listed by Europe and the United States as a terrorist organization, to keep its weapons in return for not committing hostile acts against American forces.
The State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, Cofer Black, said on Wednesday that the cease-fire was a tactical decision by military commanders and that the issue would be addressed in the coming days and weeks.
From its bases in Iraq, the Mujahedeen Khalq has carried out assassination attacks against the Iranian government, and it has also been accused of killing several members of the American military as well as civilians working on defense projects in Iran before the 1979 revolution. Iran had hoped that the group would lose its foothold in Iraq after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's government and had demanded that its members be handed over to Iran.
Iran has expressed concerns over American plans in the region, and it will be the host for a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Countries on May 28 to discuss Mr. Hussein's fall and the presence of United States forces in Iraq, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported today.
For its part, the United States has accused Iran of trying to interfere with efforts to form a new government in Iraq and of sending agents to promote a Shiite theocracy there.
Iran has long allowed an Iraqi Shiite group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, to operate on its soil. The group's leader, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, has in the past called for an Iranian-style Islamic revolution in Iraq, but has recently said he would support a democratic parliamentary system in the country. He said he planned to leave Iran for the the city of Basra in southern Iraq, and would then go to the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
Iran's hard-line Revolutionary Guards have trained the Supreme Council's military wing, which is known as the Badr Brigade. The United States has said that the Badr fighters have crossed into Iraq and are promoting efforts to install Shiite rule.
Early this month, another Iraqi exile in Iran, Kadhem al-Husseni al-Haeri, issued a religious edict urging Iraqi Shiites "to seize the first possible opportunity to fill the power vacuum in the administration in Iraq."
In Tehran today, Mr. Assefi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, rejected American claims that Iran was behind efforts to install Shiite clerics in office. "The Islamic Republic, as a country neighboring Iraq, respects the rights of Iraqi people in deciding their future and believes a democratic government, elected by the free will of people, can secure stability in Iraq and in the region," he said.
He also took exception with the United States' declaration this week that Iran was the world's "most active sponsor of terrorism." He called the accusations baseless, and he also rejected recent American accusations that Iran was developing a nuclear weapons program, repeating the Iranian government's assertion that its nuclear program was fully accountable and was for energy purposes only.
-------- iraq
Tape Shows Exhausted, Confused Saddam
May 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Saddam-Tape.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- In what is purported to be his last known wartime speech -- a video never before televised -- Saddam Hussein appears exhausted, at times confused and seemingly resigned to defeat, but he tells Iraqis that God, somehow, will help them expel the American-British occupiers.
``The faithful will be victorious over the sinners, regardless of the duration of the struggle and the forms it might take,'' Saddam says. With patience, the ``ordeal'' can be overcome, he says, and the invaders driven from Iraq.
The videotape, bearing a presidential stamp, was obtained by Associated Press Television News from a former employee of the Iraqi satellite television channel which, under the regime, was responsible for filming and distributing official presidential video.
The employee said it was made on April 9, the day American troops streamed into central Baghdad and pulled down a towering Saddam statue.
There was no way to authenticate that the tape was made on that day. Nor could it be immediately proven that the speaker on the tape was Saddam -- though Iraqis who watched and listened to the leader for decades believed it was him.
An audiotape of the address was obtained and aired April 18 by Abu Dhabi television, which said it also was told the speech was delivered April 9.
At the same time, Abu Dhabi television also broadcast a videotape, also said to have been made on April 9, showing Saddam in the midst of an enthusiastic crowd in the Baghdad district of Azamiyah, a few miles north of the area occupied by U.S. troops that day.
At the time, two senior Bush administration officials cast doubt on the authenticity of the tapes.
Nearing his 66th birthday, in his familiar open-necked olive drab uniform and black beret, Saddam appears deeply fatigued, like someone who had slept little. The bags under his eyes droop more heavily than before. His speech is abnormally slow, and he seldom raises his eyes from the text to look into the camera.
Twice he repeats a sentence of the speech -- not for emphasis, but out of apparent confusion. He seems on edge, not surprisingly for someone whose government has been under devastating air and ground attack for three weeks.
As he prepares to begin the speech, in a generic room with a backdrop of pink-and-orange drapes, he says to aides, ``The sooner we finish it, the better.''
Then, at the end, Saddam adds an uncharacteristically human note of uncertainty. ``How was my reading as a whole?'' he asks people off camera, and then adds, ``It's OK.''
Thickly laced with religious references, Saddam's speech did not strike the most defiant tones of his earlier televised addresses in the first days of the war, which began March 20, speeches in which he told his people their military would humble the U.S. superpower.
Instead, the president seemed to accept the prospect of defeat and occupation. But he said, ``The duration of invasion or occupation ... will be the exception, a brief period, compared with the period in which people live free in their homeland.''
He said this generation of Iraqis was determined to defend the nation ``until the end, as desired by God, in this form or some other form.''
His references to a changing ``form of struggle'' seemed to imply the possibility of a long-term resistance movement or guerrilla war.
``The ordeal, regardless of how bad it might become, requires patience to be overcome, so that those behind it are expelled,'' he said.
If the April 9 dating is correct, it means the Iraqi president survived an attack two days earlier, when U.S. forces bombed the capital's al-Mansour neighborhood after receiving a tip Saddam had entered a building there.
Since then, Saddam and his sons and aides Qusay and Odai have dropped from sight. The opposition Iraqi National Congress contends they are still in Iraq and have been spotted by INC informants.
EDITOR'S NOTE -- AP Writer Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.
-----
War and neglect fuel Iraq water crisis
Story by Rosalind Russell
REUTERS IRAQ:
May 2, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20661/newsDate/2-May-2003/story.htm
BAGHDAD - As U.S. and British soldiers advanced through Iraq, the plea from civilians in every town and city was the same. "Mister, mister! Water, water!" was the desperate refrain of a war which left millions of Iraqis short of life's most precious commodity.
Damage to Iraq's water infrastructure from air strikes, ground assaults, sabotage and looting may still take weeks to repair. Even then, the neglected and ageing network is in need of urgent upgrading.
U.S. officials estimate that about 20 percent of the population is at risk from unsafe water, raising fears of epidemics as summer temperatures soar.
In Baghdad, a city of five million people, several water treatment stations stopped functioning due to bombing or the loss of power supplies.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was briefed on the severity of the problem in the capital by Brigadier General Steven Hawkins, tasked with fixing Baghdad's power, water and sewage, when he visited the city this week.
Hawkins said that a team of about 2,500 military engineers were working alongside Iraqis to get the power, sewage and water plants back in order. Rumsfeld was told that raw sewage was being pumped into the Tigris river because many treatment plants had no power.
Baghdad's main waste water plant was still not functioning this week after days of looting which left workers too afraid to go to work.
CHAOS
In the mayhem that followed the fall of Baghdad on April 9, looters either stole or destroyed anything of value.
Even emergency tanks supplied by the Red Cross were looted.
"The aftermath was very chaotic, but now we estimate that 60 percent of the water needs of the population of Baghdad are covered," said Nada Dounani of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Most of the city's decrepit water treatment plants have been patched up, including the bombed Qanat station which supplied water to the impoverished and densely populated northern district of Sadr City, formerly Saddam City.
But many of them are running below full capacity on generators, leaving thousands of households without access to clean water.
In a rundown area of southern Baghdad close to the city's main airport, Raeed Hussein said his family's water supply was cut on March 20, the first day of the war.
"How can we take care of the children without water?" asked the father of four. "We boil it but we are scared to drink it. We think the children will get sick."
A spokesman for the U.N. children's agency UNICEF said that cases of diarrhoea among children appeared to be on the increase, a warning sign of water-borne diseases such as cholera.
"The impression we are getting from our health teams is that diarrhoea cases are increasing and are more chronic," said UNICEF spokesman Hatim George Hatim. "Up to now there is no evidence that an epidemic has started but it is a concern."
DESPERATION
In Iraq's second city of Basra, most water supplies have been restored after the capture of the city by British forces triggered a desperate shortage, said the head of ICRC's Basra office Andres Kruesi.
The Wafa-al-Qaed station, which treats water for a wide swathe of the south, was damaged during the battle for Basra and looted after British forces advanced.
"The whole water supply broke down for an entire week after the British entered the city," said Kruesi.
In desperation, the city's residents broke water pipes, and even sewage pipes in a hunt for drinking water. The pipeline supplying the hospital was broken and repaired seven times.
"The water plant is operating again but at lower capacity, and the water quality is not as good as it was," Kruesi said. "The network was already neglected and low pressure is sucking sewage into the pipes."
Poor maintenance and lack of investment in Iraq's water network means a complete overhaul is urgently needed. In the rural areas, USAID estimates that less than half of the population has access to potable water.
At the 1930s-built al-Wathba water treatment plant in Baghdad, engineer Qassim Hussein said the system needed everything from new circuits to control systems to filters.
"Everything needs rehabilitating and replacing," he shouted over the rattle of a noisy generator.
"We planned in 1990 to close this place down but because of (U.N.) sanctions we've had to keep it going. It's the same all over the country. Water quality is too poor and it's the people who suffer."
----
Final tests find no nerve agents in Iraqi chemical
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 2, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030502-72441960.htm
TIKRIT, Iraq - Military officials yesterday said suspicious 55-gallon drums found in northern Iraq do not contain a chemical agent used to make weapons of mass destruction, nullifying earlier field tests that indicated nerve agents were present.
The fluid "appears to be a component of a liquid rocket fuel" that showed up in multiple tests as false positives of nerve and mustard agents, said Maj. Dean Thurmond, a spokesman for the Army's V Corps.
The drums were not holding a "weaponized chemical," Maj. Thurmond said.
Officials with the Army's 4th Infantry Division, the first to announce that initial tests on the drums were positive for chemicals used to make weapons of mass destruction, now say they are not able to comment because the matter is being handled by V Corps.
On several occasions since Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled, military officials have announced the potential discovery of unconventional weapons, only to have initial tests of the findings shot down by more intensive investigation.
Before the war, President Bush aggressively argued the need to strip Saddam of chemical and biological weapons and any remaining elements of a nuclear-weapons program, which Mr. Bush said were being hidden from United Nations weapons inspectors.
Military officials have said their field testing equipment is designed to err on the side of caution to protect soldiers in combat.
Maj. Thurmond said the fuel component inside the 55-gallon drums contained a derivative of the sarin chemical.
While the derivative is not used to make nerve agent, it evidently caused field testing equipment to turn up the false positives.
The Washington Times first reported Sunday that a 4th Infantry reconnaissance unit had secured the site where the 14 drums were discovered by U.S. special forces near the industrial town of Baiji, about 115 miles north of Baghdad.
Lt. Col. Ted Martin, the unit's commander, had said initial tests of a clear, waterlike fluid from one of the drums turned up positive for cyclo-sarin nerve agent and a mustard agent.
On Saturday, Lt. Valerie Phipps, a chemical- and biological-weapons specialist with a reconnaissance element of the 4th Infantry, said that tests of the fluid inside one drum "detected mustard [agent], and we detected another unknown agent."
"We've confirmed that we have a cyclo-sarin agent also known as CF," she had said, based on the initial tests conducted by soldiers using field equipment including kits with chemical test paper.
On Sunday, Lt. Col. Valentine Novikov, the 4th Infantry's chemical officer, said a second round of more sophisticated field tests also was positive for a nerve agent, although the tests were inconclusive about what type of nerve agent.
Stressing that field tests can turn up false positives, he had said a mobile exploitation team would need to take samples that would be sent to laboratories in the United States, Europe and the Persian Gulf to determine conclusively whether they contained a nerve agent.
However, Maj. Thurmond yesterday said the mobile exploitation team that went to the site conducted more thorough tests and "determined they didn't need to take samples to send to other labs."
Military officials have said they will continue the hunt for weapons of mass destruction and will be more careful about publicizing potential findings.
An Iraqi scientist who worked in the biological-weapons program in the 1980s has said he and colleagues lied to U.N. weapons inspectors.
Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. Central Command, has said that coalition forces will "probably go through 1,000 sites" where weapons may be stored.
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Iraqis vow revenge as hatred of US grows
Friday 2 May 2003
By Alan Philps in Falluja
Telegraph UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/05/02/wirq02.xml/
Hatred of the Americans is boiling on the streets of Falluja, where Iraqis lobbed grenades into the US military compound yesterday, wounding seven and damaging vehicles.
All over the town were banners calling on the Americans to go, while local people shook their fists at foreigners, vowing to take revenge.
Outside the mayor's office, which is next to the American compound, staff had hung an uncompromising banner: "Sooner or later, US killers, we will kick you out."
According to the mayor, Taha Bedeiwi, who is recognised by the US forces, 20 people have been shot dead by the Americans so far - 16 in a late-night incident on Monday and four more when a US convoy clashed with stone-throwing demonstrators on Wednesday.
The Americans insist that gunmen among the demonstrators fired first both times. Iraqis support this in the first incident but all the evidence for Wednesday's shooting is that it came in response only to some stone throwing. Witnesses said that the gunner of a Humvee fired his machinegun at the crowd, while ducking down inside the vehicle.
The Americans now find themselves in a blood feud with much of the city, which under Islamic law can be ended only by the payment of compensation.
"We demand compensation from the Americans, but we also demand our town back," said Sheikh Khalaf Abed el-Shebib, leader of one of the 35 clans that make up the town.
Searching for the ugliest comparison he could find, he said: "Even in Israel they do not shoot children in such numbers when they throw stones in a demonstration."
After appeals from the US military, the tribal and religious leaders ordered a break from demonstrations yesterday, but the town was braced for more trouble after Friday prayers today.
The town has offered peace with the Americans if they pull out of the centre and set up a post at the railway station from where they can mount patrols.
But the crisis seems beyond such a simple solution, now that religious and social passions have been inflamed.
The soldiers, in their helmets, body armour and gadgetry slung from neck, belt and thigh, look like warriors from a video game. Unlike the British troops in Basra, they have made no attempt to establish eye contact with the local people or talk to anyone except the mayor and his officials.
The 82nd Airborne - one of the toughest elements in the US military - is ill-equipped to control crowds. The soldiers have no tear gas, and to disperse the first demonstration outside a school they were occupying they fired smoke grenades - a dangerous weapon in a country where everyone knows that the Saddam regime used poison gas.
The 82nd Airborne is now moving out, to be replaced by other units.
It is a deeply confusing situation and nowhere is the split personality of the Iraqis after the fall of Saddam more visible than in the mayor's office.
During a news conference the mayor admitted that there were "bad elements" in the crowds, a phrase his interpreter chose to translate as "patriots". After the mayor had finished speaking, an aide emerged to tell journalists to ignore everything the interpreter had said.
The mayor is a mystery to the Americans. He was chosen by the local tribal and religious leaders after the fall of the Saddam regime, claiming he had been persecuted and driven into exile.
However, local people say that he is a rich man who spent five months in the United Arab Emirates, not a political exile. Getting to the bottom of this will be a learning experience for the Americans.
A British officer commented: "They rely too much on technology and hide behind their defences. They have to get out and meet the people and really find out what is going on."
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Global Hunt Is Launched For Iraq's Looted Heritage
Treasure Trove of Antiquities May Prove Difficult to Recover
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 2, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3186-2003May1?language=printer
Investigators and experts are mounting an international initiative to recover artifacts stolen in the catastrophic looting of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities. But their efforts are sobered by the knowledge that stolen museum pieces -- especially those lost in massive quantities -- are almost never recovered.
The Iraqi museum held 175,000 items before the war. It is not clear how many of them were plundered, but the losses will dwarf the estimated 2,000 to 4,000 objects looted from nine regional Iraqi museums in the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Then, as now, scholars and art theft experts moved rapidly to document and catalogue the losses. But after 12 years, they have almost nothing to show for their efforts. Perhaps two dozen of the lost museum items have resurfaced, and only a handful -- perhaps as few as two -- have been hunted down and reclaimed.
"When material is stolen en masse, chances of recovery are very, very small," said Lyndel V. Prott, the former director of Cultural Heritage for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO. "It's a huge job to mount such a recovery campaign. That's why cultural professionals are horrified by Iraq. Once it's gone, it's almost impossible to get it back."
It may go better this time. Unlike in 1991, when Saddam Hussein remained in control of a pariah state, today's Iraq can count on cooperation and help not only from world scholars, but also from international organizations and a U.S. government chastened by charges that its soldiers watched and did nothing as the looting took place. Or it may go worse. In 1991, the task of cataloguing the lost items was daunting but doable, especially with the help of the National Museum's outstanding archive. This time, the losses are immense, and the archive is damaged and perhaps unusable.
Then there is the shifting nature of the looters. In 1991, they were mobs running wild in a brief and spontaneous uprising. This time, there were probably professionals in their ranks -- some were said to have had glass cutters and keys to the vaults or to have known exactly what to steal.
Joseph Collins, the Pentagon official who held a prewar meeting for experts to discuss how to protect Iraqi antiquities, suggested that U.S. troops who have been blamed for not preventing the looting may not have "fiddled while Rome burned," because the best items may have been taken before the break-in. "In many cases, keys were obtained -- how is that compatible with the notion of the valiant museum staff?" asked Collins, deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability operations.
Regardless of where the finger of blame ultimately points, the dismal results of the past 12 years confirm that the looters have learned their trade, experts say. What began in 1991 as an opportunistic snatch-and-grab was transformed by 2003 into the predatory and systematic pillage of one of the world's great treasure troves.
"At first, the looters were the people on the street," said archaeologist and art historian John Russell of the Massachusetts College of Art. But as time passed, "it became clear that there was no enforcement anymore, and an organized network built up," he added. "I don't know whether it was foreign or domestic, or whether the state was involved."
Beginning about 1995, large amounts of Mesopotamian material began showing up on the antiquities market, he said. Most items were cuneiform tablets and smaller pieces that had probably been stolen from archaeological sites. These had never been seen or catalogued before and were impossible to trace.
The museum pieces were a different story. Iraqi law requires that everything excavated within the nation's borders be turned over to the National Museum, which catalogues and numbers the collections, then distributes samples to the regional museums.
As soon as he heard of the 1991 lootings, University of Chicago archaeologist McGuire Gibson contacted the National Museum and colleagues in the United States and Britain to put together a quickie, 52-page catalogue of everything known to have been taken: "We gave one to U.S. Customs, another one to Interpol, another one to the British," recalled Gibson, an Iraq specialist. "The idea was to get it out there as quickly as possible."
Within 18 months, the British School of Archaeology had published a second volume, and Japanese experts produced a third in what came to be known as the "Lost Heritage" series. In the end, Gibson said, the booklets held pictures and descriptions of about 2,000 items that had disappeared from the regional museums.
There were successes. In 2001, New York University fine arts expert Donald Hansen received a telephone call from the London-based Art Loss Register, an international database that keeps a record of stolen works of art and antiques.
A small, peg-shaped Sumerian copper figurine had been sent to Christie's New York office, and the London-based auctioneer wanted to know if it was the one on page 50 of Gibson's book -- the peg that had been looted from the regional museum in northern Kirkuk in 1991.
Yes, it was, said Hansen, who had excavated the 4,500-year-old figurine from the temple of the goddess Inanna at Al-Hiba, in southern Iraq. Known as a "foundation nail," the figurine had been sent by the National Museum to Kirkuk: "I identified it, and it was turned over to Customs," Hansen said. The case is pending. Customs did not respond to requests to discuss it.
The figurine is covered by several U.S. laws. Under a UNESCO convention ratified by the United States in 1983, it is illegal to import material stolen from a museum. Also, federal law makes it illegal to receive stolen property. Under the sanctions in force, it is illegal to import anything from Iraq.
"It's radioactive material," said attorney William Pearlstein, a specialist in antiquities law and a frequent consultant to antiquities dealers and collectors. "It's stolen, it's illegal to own it, and it's morally and ethically untenable to traffic in it. No museum is going to touch this stuff."
Similar controls prevail in Britain, but Japan and many nations on the European continent have laws that are less stringent . Antiquities specialist Patty Gerstenblith of the DePaul University law school noted that many European countries allow a "good-faith purchaser" to acquire legitimate title to unclaimed property after a statute of limitations has run out.
"There are occasions when things have been on the black market for some years and have acquired a [document] trail," suggesting a string of purchases, added Prott, the former UNESCO cultural heritage chief. "When that happens, they might pop up in the legitimate market."
In a celebrated case, a scholar spotted the second-century A.D. stone head of "Medossa" in a London shop window in 2001 and alerted authorities. UNESCO authenticated the piece as a sculpture stolen from the ruins of the Parthian city of Hatra. British police seized it and eventually returned it to Iraq.
But most cases are not cut and dried. In the mid-1990s, the Massachusetts College of Art's Russell began seeing catalogues advertising pieces of relief sculptures he had photographed at the on-site museum at Nineveh, the fabled center of the Assyrian Empire.
He published his photographs and spread the word that the sculptures were in circulation. In 1996, he said, Shlomo Moussaieff, a well-known Israeli collector based in London, applied for a Customs license to export several Assyrian sculptures to Israel, at least one of which belonged to the photographed collection. Moussaieff did not respond to requests by The Post to discuss the case.
According to Russell and news accounts, Iraq sued to recover the piece, but Moussaieff said he had purchased it in good faith in Switzerland from a Belgium-based dealer. Moussaieff finally surrendered the sculpture, but only after Iraq paid him the equivalent of $15,000.
Despite these few highly publicized cases, scholars say it is clear that looted museum material is circulating. University of Buffalo classicist Samuel Paley routinely fields telephone inquiries from dealers and collectors about whether a piece is sellable or buyable.
"They always say it's from an 'old European collection,' " he said, adding that as soon as he hears that, he knows it is not true. When he tells the caller that the item is stolen, it never appears on the market, he said, but, "I never find the guy who's holding it, either."
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U.S. Detains 3 Top Iraqi Officials, Including Arms Adviser
May 2, 2003
The New York Times
By IAN FISHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/international/worldspecial/02CND-IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 2 - Three more Iraqi officials on the American most-wanted list have been placed in custody, military officials announced today, including another of Saddam Hussein's chief weapons advisers.
The adviser, Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish, was the director of the Military Industrialization Organization, which oversaw the development of Iraq's weapons systems. As with three other top weapons aides already in custody, Mr. Huweish's arrest is of particular interest to American officials because of information that he might be able to provide on weapons of mass destruction.
The issue is a priority for the Bush administration, which waged the war in Iraq based on its charge that Mr. Hussein still held biological or chemical weapons. The United States military has not found any such weapons in the three weeks since the Iraqi government fell.
Meantime, in another sign that life is slowly returning to normal, American military officials here urged parents to send their children to school and teachers to return to work on Saturday, the start of the Muslim workweek.
Many Iraqis have been urging the United States military to reopen schools, but an army major, Linda Scharf, said they are advising them to do so on Saturday only with caution: The Iraqi military had stored much ammunition inside schools, as unlikely targets for American bombing, and so far, Major Scharf said, only 100 schools in this city of five million people had been inspected for safety.
"We want to assure that the environment is safe for teachers and for children," she said. "So I say if it's not safe, don't hold school."
Normally, the school year ends several weeks from now, at the end of May. Two weeks ago some American military officials said they were concerned that the amount of munitions in the schools might delay their reopening until the next term, which begins in September.
The work and presence of the United Nations is growing in Iraq, though its overall role has yet be decided, amid opposition from the Bush administration that it plays too prominent a role. Today a ship carrying 14,000 tons of rice from the United Nations World Food Program, the largest shipment of relief food so far, arrived in the southern port of Umm Qasr. Before the war, about 60 percent of Iraqis depended on food rations.
The ship's arrival came a day after 21 officials from various United Nations agencies returned to Iraq. Aside from the World Food Program, the agencies included the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund and the Development Program.
Even with President Bush's declaration on Thursday evening that the main hostilities in Iraq are over, violence and military operations continued.
In Tikrit, the birthplace of Mr. Hussein and the nation's stronghold for his Baath Party, the American military conducted a raid in which it arrested 20 people. One Iraqi was killed after he reportedly tried to grab a rifle away from an American soldier.
The military said it found various weapons and $3,000 in cash in several of the raided houses.
In Najaf, the southern city holy to Shiite Muslims, there were reports overnight a shooting incident, though the details were not clear.
One report said two men were arrested after a shooting outside the tomb of Imam Ali, the city's central shrine.
The men were later identified as suspects in the slaying last month of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, who was hacked to death by a mob after he returned to the city after Mr. Hussein fell from power. Another rival cleric, Haider al-Kadar, was also killed there at a meeting the two men staged to try to reconcile the differences among various Shiite groups.
There were, however, no new demonstrations in the city of Falluja, where American soldiers this week killed 18 Iraqis in two anti-American protests. The military reported in both cases that soldiers were fired on by demonstrators, though residents said the marches were peaceful.
The United States military provided few details of the arrests of the three officials, which brings to 18 the number of people on the American list of 55 most wanted who are now in custody. Mr. Huweish, who the military said was captured on Thursday in Baghdad, was number 16 on the list.
Also arrested was Taha Muhie-eldin Marouf, a vice president and member of the Revolutionary Command Council, Iraq's central governing body. He was among the most prominent Kurds in an Iraqi government dominated by Sunni Muslims. He was number 42 on the list.
Mizban Khadr Hadi, the other man arrested, was also a member of the Revolutionary Command Council and the military commander during the war for the area that included the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. He was number 41 on the list.
The military did not say if Mr. Marouf and Mr. Hadi had been captured or turned themselves in. Number one on the list is Mr. Hussein himself, followed closely by his two sons, Uday and Qusay. All three remain unaccounted for.
----
Multi - National Stability Force Set for Iraq
May 2, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-usa-force.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq would be divided into three sectors patrolled by troops from at least 10 nations led by the United States, Britain and Poland under a new postwar stability plan, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.
The Bush administration official said 10 nations had so far offered soldiers with expertise from medicine to mine-clearing for a three-division force separate from the 135,000 combat troops still in Iraq six weeks after a U.S.-led invasion.
The 10 volunteer states do not include France, Germany or Russia, which were not invited to a planning meeting of 16 nations in London on Wednesday, said the official, who asked not to be identified, in an interview with reporters.
``That is one view,'' he said crisply when asked if Paris, Berlin and Moscow -- outspoken opponents of an invasion that overthrew Iraqi President Saddam Hussein -- were being punished and shut out of the postwar process.
``Maybe they didn't want to take part,'' he added.
The exact size of the new force has not been determined, but the United States, Britain, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Albania have offered troops for the policing effort. The three future sectors of Iraq have not yet been drawn up.
U.S., BRITAIN PRESS POSTWAR MOVE
The Philippines, Qatar, Australia and South Korea have offered to support the effort but their contribution is not yet clear, according to the U.S. official, who said Washington hoped that more countries would join the force.
``We want to get this started as soon as possible, but the timetable is not clear yet,'' he said, adding that two further ``force generation conferences'' for the security effort are planned for May 7 and May 22 under the auspices of Britain and Poland respectively.
Washington and London are pressing for a major international effort to stabilize Iraq and promote rapid rebuilding, which would also help them more quickly replace tens of thousands of combat troops in the unsettled country.
Under the plan, one full U.S. division of up to 20,000 troops would patrol one of the sectors, while the other two would each have a division of multinational troops under Britain and Poland.
The U.S. official made clear that the stabilization force would be under the command of U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who directed the invasion of Iraq, and that the United Nations would not have a part in it.
He told reporters that the United States was preparing a draft resolution for the U.N. Security Council that would give the world body some work in Iraq in ``things that it does best,'' such as delivering humanitarian aid and reconstruction.
CUTTING OUT THE U.N.?
While some U.N. members have called for control by the world body over all postwar efforts in Iraq, the Bush administration is opposed to turning over the effort to the Security Council after France, Germany and Russia strongly opposed Washington's prewar efforts to win invasion support.
The U.S. official also suggested that France should not have any veto power on whether NATO nations take part in the effort on a ``bilateral'' basis with the United States, Britain and Poland.
Any NATO countries seeking approval from the alliance to take part could do so at the ``level of 18,'' which does not include France because that country is not integrated into the alliance military structure, the official said.
In addition to such areas as military police and engineering, the troops in the new force could include specialists in reconnaissance, civil affairs, ordnance disposal, field hospitals and nuclear, biological and chemical arms.
The 16 nations that attended Wednesday's meeting sponsored by Britain were the United States, Britain, Bulgaria, Romania, the Philippines, Qatar, Australia, South Korea, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
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Expert on Terrorism To Direct Rebuilding
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 2, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2950-2003May1?language=printer
President Bush plans to give a conservative career diplomat authority over the Pentagon's reconstruction of Iraq, setting a fresh course for the risky and complex undertaking, administration officials said yesterday.
L. Paul Bremer III, an expert on terrorism and former consultant with Kissinger Associates, will be named special envoy and civil administrator of Iraq in the next few days, the officials said. He will report to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and will be the new boss of Jay M. Garner, the retired Army lieutenant general who has been in charge of rebuilding Iraq.
Officials said Bremer will have a broad charter that makes him responsible for the formation of an interim government and putting Iraqis on the road to choosing their own leaders. Bush hopes Bremer will elicit support from nations that balked at underwriting a Pentagon-dominated operation, sources said.
The appointment puts an authoritative figure in charge of a process that has been marked by divisions within the Bush administration and some criticism within Iraq, where the United States has been accused by some of using heavy-handed tactics and of being ill-prepared for the chaos that erupted after U.S.-led forces toppled the government of Saddam Hussein.
State Department officials said they view the appointment of Bremer, who was a top aide to six secretaries of state during 23 years as a foreign service officer, as a small victory in their bitter turf war with Pentagon rivals.
But Bremer, 61, is described as a hard-nosed hawk who is close to the neoconservative wing of the Pentagon. He is supported by Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, officials said, and White House aides said the appointment affirms Bush's satisfaction with Pentagon control over Iraq until a new government is in place.
Officials at the White House and Pentagon said the appointment has been in the works for several weeks. A senior administration official said Bremer would bring "a new direction" to postwar Iraq. U.S. officials said postwar conditions have at times been frustrating, with looting and violence marring efforts to restore business and government.
Garner, director of the Pentagon's new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, will continue to oversee policing, the restoration of communications and utilities, and planned improvements to Iraq's schools and roads, officials said.
Negotiations with potential Iraqi leaders will continue to be handled by Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy overseeing Iraq's political development, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ryan C. Crocker.
"Ambassador Bremer is going to help oversee all the responsibilities we and coalition partners have to help the Iraqi people restore and renew their country after 30 years of tyranny," a senior administration official said.
Bremer was still in the United States yesterday, and officials said they were uncertain when he would go to Iraq. His appointment was first reported by the Web site of Newsweek magazine.
Bremer, a member of several corporate boards, is chairman of the crisis consulting practice of Marsh Inc., part of Marsh & McClennan Companies Inc., and has warned clients about the danger posed to businesses operating overseas from "growing income gaps and social tensions."
Bremer's early overseas assignments were in Afghanistan, Malawi and the Netherlands, where he was ambassador from 1983 to 1986. Known as Jerry, Bremer became President Ronald Reagan's ambassador at large for counterterrorism in 1986 and returned to the public eye in 1999 when Congress named him chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism.
That role made him something of a voice of doom on Capitol Hill and on cable news shows. In 2000, Bremer warned in congressional testimony of such scenarios as a radioactive release that "made 10 miles of Chicago's waterfront uninhabitable for 50 years." Shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bremer warned that the country faced the risk of a catastrophic terrorist event "which will have tens of thousands of deaths."
As long ago as 1996, Bremer was publicly urging President Bill Clinton to confront terrorism -- and the states of Syria, Iran and Sudan -- more aggressively.
Henry A. Kissinger, who gave Bremer his introduction to business by making him managing director of Kissinger Associates Inc. from 1989 to 2000, said Bremer will help the United States sort out "the relationship between the need for order and the evolution that will take place toward pluralistic democracy."
"The Pentagon up to now has done an outstanding job in a very difficult situation," Kissinger said. "Now, relations with other departments of government become important, as well as a knowledge of how other countries react and an understanding of the various political currents in Iraq."
One of Bremer's most crucial jobs will be arbitrating the conflicting rosters that the State Department and Pentagon have offered for running Iraq.
Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, national security adviser under Clinton, said Bremer needs to draw more countries into a process that otherwise could be overwhelmed by the more extreme elements within Iraq.
"Our instinct is to control as much as we can for as long as we can to make things happen," Berger said. "But as long as the operation has an American face, we will be the repository of any resentments that arise within Iraq."
At the State Department, Bremer was known for being unusually blunt and decisive in a field where circumlocution was more typical. Alexander M. Haig Jr., who as secretary of state made Bremer his special assistant and executive secretary of the State Department, said Bremer always took a stand.
"The cost would've been high if it had been dumb advice, but it never was," Haig said.
Both State Department and Pentagon officials said they supported the appointment, a rare moment of unity for the battling factions of the administration. Richard N. Perle, a close adviser to the Pentagon's civilian leadership, said Bremer's reputation for toughness should help him in a job that has little precedent.
Then Perle needled the man from Foggy Bottom. "He's aggressive by foreign-service standards," Perle said. "I've seen hummingbirds that are aggressive by foreign-service standards."
-------- israel / palestine
Exclusive: U.S. hawks seeking to block plan worry Blair
Gulf News Online Edition
Friday, May 02, 2003
By Mustapha Karkouti
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=86200
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is keeping in close contact with U.S. President George W. Bush, to prevent U.S. hawks from killing the roadmap, a British source revealed.
Speaking exclusively to Gulf News, the source, who insisted on anonymity, said Republican hawks have been using everything in their power to undermine the administration's support for the new Middle East plan.
The road map, which was announced on Wednesday following the Palestinian Legislative Council endorsement of Mahmoud Abbas' (Abu Mazen) Palestinian cabinet, has been ready for almost a year but delayed - at least on two occasions - by the U.S. at the request of Israel's right-wing government.
Though they are small in number, the so-called neo-conservative group who work closely with Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, have been very influential and seem to be the driving force behind U.S. foreign policy.
The source believes these hawks have begun pre-emptive moves to "sabotage the president's long-awaited declaration of the road map to put the Middle East peace process back on track".
The hawks' aim, according to the British source, is to suggest that the peace plan leading to create an independent Palestinian state by the year 2005 "is against U.S. national interests".
These charges have become worrying for Blair when two leading neo-conservatives closely linked to the Bush administration, former speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich and a leader in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Tom Delay, started to sell this idea to the public.
Newt Gingrich used a speech last week to unleash a blistering attack on Colin Powell's State Department. He said: "Roadmap constitutes an attempt by state department's officials and overseas governments to work against U.S. policies."
Delay has warned Bush against pressing Israel to ease its crackdowns on the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and to withdraw from some colonies, as called for in the roadmap.
He called the roadmap "a confluence of deluded thinking between European elites, elements within the State Department bureaucracy and a significant segment of the American intellectual community".
The British source said it has been known for a long time how the U.S. right feels and thinks of the "quartet's" partners, but the main concern, as far as Blair is concerned, is that these people might "win the president's ear at the last minute".
Blair, the source said, has been very keen to have the roadmap "up and running, even after the war in Iraq broke out".
Blair believed all along that by actively engaging the U.S. president in the Middle East peace plan, the alliance "could win minds and hearts of Arabs in the region".
The source told Gulf News that since the fall of Baghdad on April 9 and their meeting in North Ireland, the prime minister, has been on the phone every day with the president concerning the roadmap.
-------- latin america
Lost in Translation: U.S. Security Agenda in the Americas
washingtonpost.com
Friday, May 2, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A121-2003May1?language=printer
If the United States has had reasons to be "disappointed" in the failures of Chile, Mexico and others in Latin America to understand how significantly its priorities changed 20 months ago and how neatly the war against Iraq fit into them, Latin America has reason to be "disappointed" too.
Latin America has been frustrated with the U.S. inability to clearly explain how after Sept. 11, 2001, the rules of engagement in the hemisphere changed so drastically. Since that day, Washington has come to expect that every country would intuitively know how to adapt to the new world environment of security-first, even if the threat of terrorism that created it seemed distant and intractable to most of them.
Latin Americans are entitled to a clearer explanation. After all, even U.S. observers acknowledge that the frequent clash of wills inside the Bush administration has left the world mostly confused and often suspicious of Washington's vision after Sept. 11. For its harshest critics, the U.S. diplomatic establishment failed to comprehend, let alone articulate, that vision to hemispheric allies.
At a State Department conference on the Western Hemisphere this week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell offered a chance for a new beginning and welcomed the prodigal nations back into the fold, declaring "disagreements come and ... disagreements go." Yet curiously enough, it was not a diplomat who offered the most concrete example of how Washington's security imperative should shape everyday thinking, actions and decisions in Latin America.
Gordon England, second in command at the new Department of Homeland Security, described a hemisphere where some day cargo containers arriving at U.S. shores would not need to be inspected. From their point of departure, whether at a Latin American or Caribbean port, such containers would have been checked, sealed and tracked to U.S. satisfaction.
Governments and industries that fail to understand the need for such a level of security and the work needed to get there will be doomed to irrelevancy, England insisted. In his mind, this logic was not a threat, but a statement of fact.
According to security-first thinking, Washington expects that governments all over the hemisphere will do much more to control their borders. Concerns about third-country nationals sneaking into the United States across those borders are not new, but the potential that these individuals may now mean harm to others must be promptly recognized and addressed. In addition, old transborder crimes of weapons and drug trafficking as well as money laundering must be regarded now as activities that may benefit terrorists.
In today's environment, Washington considers itself to be as vulnerable as the most vulnerable of its partners or neighbors. For that reason, it can no longer wait for new governments to come along and build new agendas of cooperation. It needs leaders who see here and now what must be done and who have the will to do it.
Those Latin American leaders outside the select seven (Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama) that Powell publicly recognized Monday "for their courageous stand for what is right, what is necessary and what is just," have another chance.
They have a new opportunity to show the kind of leadership they lacked before the Iraq war, when, U.S. officials say, they let popular opinion in their countries dictate their opposition to the conflict.
The expectation here is that leaders will cast off the old habit of pandering to anti-Americanism that makes the United States a scapegoat and blames it for all manner of ills. Rather, Washington says, it is time for leaders to fearlessly take on the new tasks and rally support among their people for NOTHING LESS THAN the future of Western civilization.
There is a demand here for leadership in Latin America that will look beyond national boundaries and dare to challenge long-held principles of noninterference in other country's affairs.
This is not just about offering support to help reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Powell pointed to other areas in which Latin American leaders could take even more significant action, like vigorous multilateral assistance to Colombia to confront its terrorist and drug trafficking threats, renewed engagement to help Venezuela resolve ITS internal political upheaval, and aid to Cubans working for a democratic, free COUNTRY and condemnation of its leader who stands in their way.
That is Latin America's onus and Washington's expectation. It is now up to Latin America to respond. If the response is inadequate, will Washington again be "disappointed," or offer some understanding of its own?
Stay tuned.
Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash@washpost.com.
-------- mideast
Assailed by US rhetoric, Syria circles its wagons
Colin Powell is expected to deliver a tough message to Syria when he arrives Saturday.
By Nicholas Blanford
The Christian Science Monitor
May 02, 2003
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0502/p04s02-wome.html
DAMASCUS, SYRIA - Secretary of State Colin Powell arrives here tomorrow for crucial talks during which he is expected to pressure the Syrian government to drop its support for militant anti-Israel groups and abandon its alleged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
But the Syrians, stung by a recent barrage of criticism from Washington, are reluctant to yield to what they see as uncompromising American diktats.
From the presidential palace sitting on a bluff overlooking Damascus to the narrow passageways of the Old City, Syrians view the recent flurry of accusations and demands from Washington with a mixture of alarm and anger.
"We take these threats very seriously," says a Syrian engineer who works for a US firm. "Syria is now surrounded by American countries - Iraq, Turkey, Israel, and Jordan," he says, sipping a tiny glass of steaming tea. "What can we do?"
Syrians were stunned when during the war in Iraq senior administration officials turned on Damascus, accusing it of allowing Arab volunteer fighters into Iraq, harboring fugitives from Saddam Hussein's regime, and smuggling weapons into Iraq.
Although US rhetoric has died down in recent days, the foreign ministers of France and Japan each called upon Syria on Wednesday to withdraw support from radical Arab groups such as Hizbullah. The ministers also asked Syria to support the US-backed "road map" plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But it is Washington's words that have most deeply rankled Damascus. Most Syrians and many diplomats in Damascus believe that the Bush administration is riding roughshod over Syrian sensibilities and complicating the efforts of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to usher in domestic reforms.
"It's a very difficult business for Bashar," says a European diplomat. "If he feels he's being humiliated from outside, like with these public demands from the Americans, then he has to retreat into the old nationalist rhetoric. Otherwise, he will appear weak to the Syrian people."
Diplomats who have met Mr. Assad say that the president has a clear vision of how he would like to see Syria progress and speaks openly of the obstacles facing him, such as a sluggish and corrupt bureaucracy and the reluctance of the country's ruling elite to implement change that might threaten their influence.
He is forced to tread a narrow path through many conflicting interests in Syria. For example, Assad's staunch public opposition to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq arose partly out of a genuine concern at US ambitions for the Middle East. But it was also a case of political expediency, reflecting the strong antiwar sentiment in Syria and the deep sense of Arab unity and pride felt by ordinary Syrians. Assad's stance lost him the sympathy of Washington, but he gained increased popularity among Syrians and other Arabs who viewed him as the only Arab leader willing to publicly challenge the US.
When Washington criticized Damascus midway through the war, Syria reacted defensively, denying the charges outright. It apparently took the personal intervention of Jacques Chirac, the French president, who has close ties toAssad, to persuade Damascus to take Washington's threats seriously. The border with Iraq was closed and Iraqi refugees turned away.
"The Syrians are rattled by what happened in Iraq and the pressure from the Americans... but they cannot be seen caving in to US demands," says a diplomat.
Syrians are still fuming over a visit last weekend to Damascus by Tom Lantos, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives' International Relations Committee and a longtime critic of Syria.
Mr. Lantos publicly chastised the Syrian government, declaring it had made a "historic mistake" in supporting Iraq, and saying that "the time is long overdue to correct the course of Syrian policy."
He delivered to Assad a list of conditions that Damascus should fulfill "if Syria is to forge a new relationship with the United States." Syrians regarded Lantos's demands as the height of American arrogance and bad manners.
"The Syrians are very sensitive to external pressure and unfortunately this is a factor that the Americans fail to appreciate," says Mohammed Aziz Shukri, a professor of international law at Damascus University.
Professor Shukri, who was involved in a Syrian-US dialogue program with Houston's Rice University last year, says he is at a loss to explain what he describes as Washington's hostility toward the Arab world.
"The US administration is acting so irresponsibly that they will end up paying for it," he says. "Sooner or later, the American people will realize that their government has led them into an unholy war with 1.5 billion Muslims."
Syrians argue that Washington fails to understand the complexities and dynamics of Arab and Islamic society. They point to the example of the Bush administration's apparent surprise at the rapid mobilization of Iraq's majority Shiite community and opposition to the presence of American troops in Iraq.
Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Sharaa publicly mentioned this week what he called the "dangerous misunderstanding" between the Washington and Damascus in reference to US warnings for Syria and Iran not to interfere in nation-building efforts in Iraq.
Syria has indicated a willingness to engage with Washington, toning down its opposition to the "road map" charting the path to Palestinian statehood which was released to the Israelis and Palestinians on Wednesday. But at the same time, Damascus insists that the road map include Syria and Lebanon, underlining a concern here that the two countries will be overlooked as the Palestinians and Israelis move ahead with their peace plans.
On the more fundamental issues, such as Syria's support for groups like Hamas and Lebanon's Hizbullah, diplomats and analysts here believe that Damascus is unlikely to bend to Washington's demands if nothing concrete is being offered in return.
"It's like we are being ordered to not only drop our guns but to bend down and kiss the Americans' feet as well. And all we get in exchange is a promise of a smile," a Syrian analyst says.
--------
Rice actions on Syria disputed
By Richard Sale
UPI Terrorism Correspondent
From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk
5/2/2003
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030502-025522-6767r
WASHINGTON, May 2 (UPI) -- Anna Perez, White House communications counselor, Friday sharply contested a United Press International report that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and political adviser Karl Rove shut down a Pentagon plan to expand the Iraqi ground war to Syria in closing days of combat.
"That never happened," she said. "It is a complete fabrication."
Perez also said there was no meeting on this subject at the White House with Israeli National Security Adviser Efrian Halevy and other officials.
UPI's report, published Friday afternoon, quoted unidentified administration officials as saying that a combination of Pentagon hawks and senior Israeli officials had been pressing the United States to expand the ground war to Syria. The officials spoke to UPI on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. strikes on Syria would have taken the form of brief across-the-border forays under "hot pursuit" rules of engagement, these sources said. They said contingency plans for such raids were being drawn up by Doug Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, after the approval of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
They added that the Pentagon press for action against Damascus was bolstered by the visit of Halevy, who traveled to Washington April 12-14 on the invitation of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
According to a Haaretz report of April 13, Halevy and another senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Dov Weisglass, were visiting Washington to "suggest that the United States take care of Iran and Syria because of their support for terror and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction."
During their visit, the administration sources said, they had a meeting in the president's conference room, under a picture of Theodore Roosevelt, with top NSC officials and others with Rumsfeld and Rove in attendance.
In response to Halevy's entreaties for action, these sources said, Rice repeated an assertion that the White House did not want any further military campaigns for the rest of Bush's first term, according to the sources. They said Rumsfeld objected, and, at one point, turned to Rove and asked his opinion. Rove said the president agreed with Rice, and the meeting came to an end, the sources said.
Perez asserted Friday that this meeting didn't take place. She also said that to her knowledge, UPI had not attempted to contact participants.
Beginning Monday, UPI began calling White House officials to get the administration's position on the story. It placed a call to Sean McCormack, director of communications for the National Security Council, on several occasions and left voice messages. The calls were not returned.
UPI also read details of the allegations to a staff member on the NSC.
Another source with close knowledge of the matter told UPI: "The hawks didn't understand the emphasis had all changed: Everything was focused, not on the war any more, but on the president's re-election."
This official added that Rove had handled the elections of 2002 on the basis that "the American public knew the economy was a disaster, but the president asked them to put the war on terror first, and to vote Republican. And the public voted Republican. We think he felt any movement into Syria was pushing his luck."
The hawks proposed punitive raids because Syria and the United States already were bristling at each other, and the war simply took an unfortunate series of circumstances and brought them to a point of crisis, administration sources said.
In spite of Syria's heightened cooperation in the war on terror, with Syria giving the United States much useful information about al-Qaida, it was still supporting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the war.
In an April 13 Washington Post report, Powell issued a harsh warning to Syria against giving safe haven to Iraqi officials fleeing Baghdad. At a Pentagon press conference, Rumsfeld charged: "We are getting scraps of intelligence saying that Syria has been cooperating in facilitating the move (of senior members of Saddam Hussein's regime) from Iraq to Syria."
He warned that arms and supplies were moving into Iraq from Syria as well. Syria replied strongly that such charges were "baseless."
In an interview with The Washington Times, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was quoted as saying: "Syria is shipping killers into Iraq to kill Americans."
There was some truth to this, say serving and former U.S. intelligence officials.
Former senior CIA officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told UPI that U.S. combat forces in Iraq detained at least 700 Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters who came in buses over the Syrian border to fight against the U.S. coalition.
In one incident, a bus filled with Lebanese Hezbollah militants stopped in Iraq included two dozen Chechen terrorists, a former senior agency official said.
He added that another 100 members of Hezbollah are being detained at a camp at Tanaa in Iraq. After stern U.S. warnings, Syria tightened up scrutiny at checkpoints, but more Hezbollah and jihadis "simply went over the border" with weapons and explosives, he said.
"We were seeing some very disturbing signs of plans for anti-U.S. activity" on the part of the Hezbollah, another administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
(Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's deputy secretary general, told UPI's Claude Salhani in an interview in Beirut last week, "We are not a threat to anyone." Qassem said that although now he felt Hezbollah was stronger politically and militarily than ever, it was not to attack anyone, "but only to defend ourselves.")
The hawks also saw Syria as the only remaining military threat to Israel, the sources said.
Former CIA Middle East expert Bob Baer told UPI that Syria possesses "a chemical arsenal that is much more lethal than anything Saddam has," and explained that "in Israeli strategic thought, the most dangerous threat is the geographically closest" -- which would mean Syria.
UPI previously reported that U.S. intelligence agencies believe that rogue elements of Syria's ruling elite have accepted millions of dollars in bribes in return for providing a safe haven for some of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, according to U.S. administration officials, both former and serving.
Chemical and biological weapons were taken by truck to a Syrian munitions compound near a military base near Khan Abu Shamet, about 50 miles northeast of Damascus, these officials told UPI.
The chief suspects in the operation are Bushra Assad, the sister of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and her husband, Gen. Assaf Chawkat, No. 2 in Syria's military intelligence organization, the Mukhabarat.
-------- puerto rico
Navy Leaves a Battered Island, and Puerto Ricans Cheer
May 2, 2003
The New York Times
By DANA CANEDY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/national/02PUER.html
VIÉQUES, Puerto Rico, May 1 - For most of the more than 9,000 people of Viéques, the official end today of Navy bombing exercises after more than 60 years was cause for an islandwide celebration of the conclusion of a painful era and the hope for a new beginning.
"People are very jubilant," said Ardelle Ferrer, a 51-year-old artist who has been celebrating all week and is building a sculpture in honor of the island. "Everyone is so happy seeing something that seemed so impossible."
Viéques officials were to begin four days of activities celebrating the Navy's departure in the first minutes of today, but the party started early when Gov. Sila M. Calderón arrived on Wednesday afternoon and addressed already jubilant residents. Dozens of locals and residents from the main island, many wearing shirts reading "Celebration of Peace on Viéques," clapped and cheered when the governor arrived at Isabel Segunda's town square to the sounds of a steel band.
"This is a moment of great happiness and profound emotion," Governor Calderón said. "Together, we achieved the end of the bombing."
Surrounded by Puerto Rican government officials and 20 local schoolchildren, Governor Calderón said the Navy's exit "marks the beginning of a new era of peace and tranquility" for Viéques. She said, "This is a triumph for all of the people of Puerto Rico, as well as our brothers and sisters in the United States."
In an interview on Monday, Governor Calderón said that while political pressure had helped end the exercises, President Bush deserved credit for keeping his word to stop them. "It is a testimony to the president's commitment to protect human rights," she said. Her administration was setting aside $50 million for public works improvements here, she added.
For more than 60 years, the Navy used a 900-acre firing range on the eastern tip of the tiny island for bombing exercises. For decades it insisted that the exercises could not take place elsewhere, because the area offered a unique opportunity to conduct ship-to-shore gunnery practice and aerial bombings.
The people of Viéques and the Puerto Rican commonwealth bitterly complained that the drills were dangerous. The practice generated international criticism in 1999, when two errant bombs killed a civilian Puerto Rican security guard.
Thousands of people protested the exercises, including politicians, actors and civil rights activists from the mainland. Under political pressure, President Bush announced in June 2001 that his administration would end the bombing practices today. The military will now conduct the exercises in several southern states, including Florida.
Dámaso Serrano, mayor of Viéques, said the island was a safer place today.
"Thanks to the unity of the people of Viéques, of the people of Puerto Rico, of the people of the United States, we achieved the exit of the Navy and a definite peace for the people of Vieques," Mr. Serrano said. Still, he said a battle would continue to see that the land was cleaned up and returned to the municipality.
Rafael Rivera Castaño, a doctor whose father, Antonio Rivera Rodríguez, was mayor of Viéques from 1949 to 1973, echoed the current mayor's concerns.
"We have to get working again," said Mr. Rivera, who believes Navy activities are responsible for poor health among the island residents.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president of Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental group, spent a month in jail in 2001 for trespassing during a protest on the island. Mr. Kennedy said the Navy's withdrawal was a mixed blessing. "The problem is they're leaving the poison behind," he said.
"There are tens of thousands of unexploded bombs," Mr. Kennedy said. "Fish are contaminated, crabs are contaminated, seagrass is contaminated. The soils are contaminated with toxins. The fact that they're leaving the island would be great, if they would clean up."
The Navy said in a statement that it had transferred the property to the Department of the Interior, and that it would be cleaned up.
"The Interior Department is required to develop the land for use as a wildlife refuge, with the area used for exercises with live bombs to be designated a wilderness area and closed to the public," the statement said. It said $2.3 million has been designated this year for the Interior Department for the property.
The Environmental Protection Agency said today that it was considering a request by Governor Calderón to add Viéques to the Superfund list of contaminated sites intended for cleanup.
Many people Viéques residents said today that they would worry tomorrow about the environmental issues and the future of the island. Today, they were content to rejoice in a victory they said was too long in coming.
"Ever since I came here to Viéques, my husband told me Viéques needed people who loved the land to rescue it," said Mariá Velazquez, 58, who has lived here since 1963 and took part in a celebratory march through the streets today.
"We've been rescuing it ever since," Ms. Velazquez said. "I feel like I'm walking on air."
Nestor Guisherd, 33, a school guidance counselor on the island, said he was taking part in the festivities despite his disappointment that the military had not relinquished ownership of the land to Puerto Rico. "I'm happy for one thing: the emotion of the town," Mr. Guisherd said. "I celebrate for the emotion of the people."
The marches, demonstrations and celebrations spread across this tiny island, as people danced, prayed, waved flags and cried, some still in disbelief. Most of the events took place without incident, but early today, as the military presence officially ended, hundreds of demonstrators broke through the gates of Camp Garciá, the Navy site. They tore down a guard house and destroyed two trucks and a boat.
"I can't believe what's going on out there," said Ricardo Jordán, 46, an island resident. Pointing to a news organization's van, he said: "They're sending it out all over the world. People will think that's all that's going on."
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who spent 90 days in prison beginning in May 2001 and fasted for 40 days to protest the Viéques military exercises, attended some of the ceremonies."We won a significant battle," Mr. Sharpton said, "one people thought we would never win.".
Burr Vail, the owner of the Hacienda Tamarindo hotel on Viéques, was glad that the military is gone. But he worries that the island he loves will soon be overrun with tourists.
"The bad news is that the Navy has dominated two-thirds of the land for two-thirds of the century," said Mr. Burr, whose hotel is full this week with people who traveled to the island to celebrate the withdrawal. "The good news is that the Navy has dominated two-thirds of the land for two-thirds of the century."
The Navy's presence has has preserved the island to the point where it's "one of a kind in the Caribbean," Mr. Burr said.
"It is not overdeveloped like others," he said. "The island will now be free to choose its own destiny. It's a tremendous change, and a tremendous responsibility."
-------- spies
ACLU Warns Against Domestic Spying Role For CIA
Urges Congress to Reject Flawed Bush Proposal
May 2, 2003
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media@dcaclu.org
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=12519&c=206
WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today strongly urged Congress to reject a Bush Administration proposal to allow the Central Intelligence Agency and the military broad authority to spy on Americans and raised concerns about how the Administration attempted to push the proposal through a closed Senate hearing.
"Such a radical change in U.S. law must be never be debated behind closed doors," said Timothy Edgar, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "This proposal would allow the CIA and the Pentagon to snoop through Americans' personal records with no oversight by the courts or Congress. It is dangerous and un-American."
The proposal was secretly tucked into an intelligence authorization bill now pending in Congress. Democrats discovered the language, which would allow the CIA and the military to use what are called "national security letters" to gather sensitive personal information about Americans, and raised strong objections to the sweeping provision during a closed Senate Intelligence Committee hearing yesterday.
National security letters, currently only a tool of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are subpoenas issued by government agents that require Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and other organizations that maintain records to disclose highly personal information like phone records, Internet surfing histories, financial records and e-mail logs. Such subpoenas are not subject to court approval.
Reportedly, Senate Democrats were able to get the provision temporarily pulled from the authorization bill but, according to the New York Times, Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) said he would explore the issue further.
"Even during the deepest freeze of the Cold War, when fears of nuclear attack were at their peak, nobody thought to grant the CIA and the military such sweeping authority to spy on Americans," said Timothy Edgar, an ACLU Legislative Counsel.
In its 1947 charter, the CIA was prohibited from spying against Americans because, among other things, President Truman was afraid that it would engage in political abuse. During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services - the CIA's predecessor - had become known for its skill at blackmail, extortion and the collection of information through other dubious methods. President Truman feared the implications of such behavior during peacetime on America's basic democratic institutions. The policy against military involvement in law enforcement investigations is even more venerable. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids military involvement in civilian policing, keeping troops focused on their military mission.
"We keep the FBI in check because agents generally want to make sure that information they gather about American citizens can be introduced as evidence in a court of law," Edgar said. "Military and CIA snooping would have no such natural firewall against the abuse of power."
-------- propaganda wars
[The demonization campaign begins. Remember Goebbels? "...there was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, 'and this will always be the man in the street.' Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology...Hatred and contempt must be directed at particular individuals." H. Trevor-Roper (ed), The Goebbels Diaries, p. XX, cited in Regan, Geoffrey. 1987. Great Military Disasters. New York: M. Evans and Company.]
Funding anti-U.S. demonstrators
Max Primorac
May 2, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030502-15851616.htm
The spate of well-organized and violent anti-American protests in Iraq betrays the guiding hand of Ba'ath extremists or "agents provocateurs" from Iran. Not unexpected. But in years to come, the future sponsors of such hate-America rallies might well come as a shock, if the nation-building foreign aid experience in the Balkans provides any lessons.
As elsewhere in Europe, we find here the same motley mash of anti-war protesters - anarchists, anti-globalists, greens, Marxist peaceniks - shouting "smash capitalism" and "Bush is Hitler." While rallying little support in a Croatia fresh with memories of Serbian aggression, these radicals compensate for their small numbers with anti-American fury, culminating in one march to the U.S. Embassy with a ritual burning of an American flag defiled with swastikas. The rub is that this hate-America crowd is sponsored by the U.S. taxpayer.
Protest organizers - Anti-War Campaign, Green Action, women's group BaBe and others - are a who's who of U.S. foreign aid grantees who, for a decade, have received millions of dollars, ostensibly to strengthen democracy. In fact, aid has been grossly misallocated to a marginal and extremist nexus of former communists, anarchists and extreme feminists that represent the core of anti-American political activity in the Balkans.
Anti-War Campaign (ARK) fronts for numerous anarchist-Marxist groups, offering them office space, equipment, funds and training. They include Zagreb Anarchist Movement, anarcho-feminists ANFEME, Croatian Anti-Globalists and others. Its ZaMirNet (PeaceNet) is a regional Internet link that is part of a global alliance to wage "netwars" against Western institutions. Radicals use it to coordinate activities, inform members on anti-capitalist and anti-NATO rallies, access donors and provide a steady diet of radical literature. Though ZaMirNet's manager is a self-described "anarcho-feminist," she also works for USAID clients Urban Institute, MercyCorps, CARE and others. CARE alone granted ZaMirNet $335,000, part of a larger sum received from the U.S. government.
Following September 11, BaBe leader Vesna Kesic circulated a petition, signed by most aid recipients, denouncing the U.S. war on terrorism as "institutional terrorism," echoing the musings of their ideological mentor Noam Chomsky. No surprise, as Ms. Kesic counts amongst her other friends Katha Pollitt, the Nation columnist that berated her daughter for flying the American flag in solidarity with the victims of September 11 because "the flag stands for jingoism, vengeance and war." Another BaBe principal is the last director of the Museum of Communist Revolution! Nonetheless, this year, the group and its offshoots continue to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. aid and they help write embassy reports sent to Washington.
Green Action takes every anti-U.S. position possible, opposing membership in NATO, imports of genetically modified food, even railing against McDonald's as that evil symbol of global corporate reach. Nevertheless, in 1999, its director, Toni Vidan, coordinated the U.S. Embassy's $3.5 million subgrants program that significantly expanded this anti-American (un)civic nexus. One grantee, Osijek Greens, lamented how "American imperialism is in full bloom."
Under the rubric of promoting youth civic engagement, these U.S. aid recipients finance counterculture initiatives as recruiting vehicles for new generations of anti-U.S. activists. One, Attack, is a joint project of ARK, BaBe and Zagreb Anarchist Movement. Another, Net Club Mama, celebrated the anniversary of the publishing of the Communist Manifesto. Donor agencies and contractors hire local staff from these groups, ensuring a steady stream of taxpayer financing of anti-American initiatives.
In large part, we are paying the price for past policy that defined not communism as the threat to regional peace, but rather a vaguely defined nationalism. In turn, support was channeled to so-called anti-nationalists with little regard to what they actually believed. Pro-Western groups were disqualified from aid from the start because they were considered "too patriotic."
The anti-American tenor of these groups is no secret though, and they are very public about their views. Nevertheless, our embassy continues to finance them. But the problems do not stop at funding those who despise America and its values. Last September, the U.S. Embassy undercut a unique German-American initiative to win U.S. government funding for a pro-America conference on terrorism to commemorate the September 11 terrorist attacks. One-hundred-seventy officials and civic leaders from 23 countries participated in a rare display of pro-Americanism, yet embassy officials boycotted it, considering the whole affair "unimportant."
Besides congenital incompetence of our aid agencies, this also reflects a cynical preference among some of our diplomats to want to co-opt former regime elites because "it is better these people work for us than against us." Of course, co-option has helped restore the communist aristocracy's past prominence - on our dime. Indeed, as plans for rebuilding Iraq now stand, the Balkan "example" will most likely prevail there. So, in five years time, don't assume that those you see protesting American imperialism are necessarily sponsored by the Ba'ath Party.
Max Primorac advises U.S. and foreign officials on postwar democracy-building on the Balkans.
----
Fear loss of virtue, Ashcroft says
May 2, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030502-6176765.htm
The chief threat to America is not terrorism but a loss of righteousness, National Day of Prayer organizers said on Capitol Hill yesterday.
"America now stands at a unique position in the world," Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a four-hour prayer service in the Cannon House Office Building. "[As] the mightiest earthly power perhaps the world has ever known ... it is important for us not to become intoxicated with the power America now has, but to see ourselves in a position of opportunity to reflect the values that are very important: human dignity, grace and forgiveness, and reconciliation and healing."
The real threat to America, he said, "is that we'd forfeit our own righteousness on the altar of our own aspirations and desires."
"President Bush commands the good and mighty armed forces of the United States, but he understands that it is faith and prayer that are the sources of this nation's strength," Mr. Ashcroft said.
The service was one of 40,000 to 50,000 gatherings around the country yesterday to mark the 52nd annual National Day of Prayer. Traditionally set on the first Thursday in May, the gatherings in parks, stadiums, on the steps of county courthouses and state capitals feature representatives from Jewish as well as Christian communities.
This year's Day of Prayer theme: "Righteousness Exalts A Nation," is based on Proverbs 14:34, which continues with "but sin is a disgrace to any people." The double meaning of the verse, along with frequent mentions of the war in Iraq, made for a somber gathering inside the U.S. Capitol.
"It's not enough to say 'God bless America,' " National Day of Prayer Chairman Shirley Dobson said. "We need to say 'God bless and forgive America.' "
Some 150 other religious leaders and military chaplains appeared at a similar service at 7:30 a.m. yesterday in the East Room of the White House. The president then left for the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln near San Diego to announce the end of combat operations in Iraq.
"This past month has been another time of testing for America and another time of intense prayer," Mr. Bush told the gathering. "Americans have been praying for the safety of our troops and for the protection of innocent life in Iraq. Americans prayed that war would not be necessary, and now pray that peace will be just and lasting."
Mrs. Dobson, who attended the White House gathering, later said, "Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you have to give credit to a president who gives priority to prayer."
One Catholic priest at the Hill service warned that large numbers of Americans function as agnostics.
"In this age, even the pursuit of the question of what truth consists of has been - in some of our most prestigious institutions of learning - abandoned," said the Rev. Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Mich.
"Some folks fear people like us who are given to participate in days of prayer," he said. "They are afraid that our claim to be able to know truth means that we seek and are willing to impose our truth claims on others. They fear that we are theocrats, which we are not. On the contrary, it is precisely because we do not know all truth this side of eternity that we seek the face of One who does not merely point the way to truth, but is truth in a certain person."
Moreover, he added, "There is a fear that once people know the truth, they will be under an obligation to make a decision regarding that truth."
The Rev. Luis Palau, an Argentine-born evangelist, exhorted the crowd at the Capitol in his keynote speech to "practice righteousness, proclaim righteousness and love righteousness so God will be good to our nation."
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
Compiled by FIND/AFP and The Washington Times. For an e-mail subscription to the Washington Daybook, click here.
--------
Commentary: Internet Takes On TV
While the mainstream media churns out war propaganda, the Internet quickly mobilizes counter movements of dissent.
By William Marvel,
Intervention Magazine
Friday, May 2, 2003
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=393
In their desperation to find some pretext that would allow them to use "hypocrite" to describe something besides their own party leaders, a lot of right-wing Republicans recently hurled the word at opponents of George Bush's needless war. As they saw it (or as they wished others to see it), those war protestors should have demonstrated just as furiously against Bill Clinton when he used American military might.
There were those who did object to Clinton's more moderate military ventures, including Republican congressmen who accused him of trying to distract the public from his domestic problems. Even if Clinton had acted as unilaterally and recklessly as Bush, and even if he had cowed Congress into the infringement of as many civil liberties, I doubt we would have seen such massive anti-administration demonstrations as descended on our cities last winter. The main reason for that is the recent surge in internet use.
The internet grew to maturity during Clinton's administration, but as late as the waning years of his presidency it had not invaded the homes of most Americans. It was not until 1998 that I connected at home, and even then I used it only for occasional communication with a few chosen friends. Searching the web proved too tedious and time-consuming, yielding spotty, unreliable information. It was not until the last year or two that I began checking newspapers and university websites for useful material. Now I can read this morning's news from Britain, France, or anywhere else with a decipherable language, and that access has been especially important since network television and radio started pandering to popular sentiment.
Reuters reported last week that the head of the British Broadcasting System was "shocked" by the unquestioning regurgitation of government propaganda by U.S. networks. While Fox News drew his greatest scorn, BBC Director General Greg Dyke also specifically named Clear Channel Communications, a radio conglomerate owned by a friend of the Bush family, which Dyke criticized for organizing pro-war rallies to accompany its news. "For the health of our democracy," said Dyke, "it's vital that we don't follow the path of many American networks. If Iraq proved anything, it was that the BBC cannot afford to mix patriotism and journalism. This is happening in the United States and, if it continues, will undermine the credibility of the U.S. electronic news media."
For my money, that credibility evaporated a long time ago, and I stopped watching television altogether in 1998. I have never seen Fox News, but the quotes of its announcers are all I need to convince me of its newsworthlessness. When Dan Rather melodramatically remarked to an interviewer that he would "go anywhere my president tells me," I wrote him off as not being any kind of a journalist. Now that Disney owns ABC, I consider ABC News just another animation of cartoon characters. A powerful few now control our once-independent news media, using it as little more than a means of manipulating the public to favor this-or-that war, this-or-that candidate, or whatever legislation might be most favorable to their corporations.
Over the internet this winter came news from countries with truly independent presses, allowing potential dissenters to make more informed decisions. When dissent reached a certain threshold, antiwar websites appeared, giving readers an opportunity to discover that they were not alone in their concerns. That encouraged activism and enabled the quick and efficient organization of protests electronically. I decided to attend the February 15 demonstration in New York only nine hours ahead of time because a group email acquainted me with a bus that was leaving Portsmouth. I attended the March 22-24 veterans' protest in Washington because of a similar last-minute announcement.
That explains in large part why the latest Bush war drew so much more heat. That is also why I expect the Republicans to act soon to regulate and tax the internet: if they do not cripple it as a means for the people to communicate, the people might take the information highway as the path to real freedom.
William Marvel is a freelance writer in New Hampshire and served in the U.S. Army from 1968-1971. His many books include the award-winning Andersonville: The Last Depot and Lee's Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- courts
Homeland Security Privacy Suit Dismissed
May 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Homeland-Privacy.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A court fight over secrecy at the White House Office of Homeland Security has ended with dismissal of the case.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly earlier this week signed a dismissal agreement between the Justice Department and the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, which had sought records about the office's activities.
The agreement permits the center to re-file the lawsuit if there is a ``relevant, material change'' in the way the office functions. The Bush administration had maintained that the office was not subject to disclosures under the Freedom of Information Act because its duty is solely to advise the president.
The office continues to exist even though Congress last year voted to create a new, Cabinet-level Homeland Security Department that began operations March 1.
David Sobel, general counsel for EPIC, said Friday that ``the action has moved to the new department'' in terms of privacy concerns raised by homeland security decisions.
``We intend to very actively pursue Freedom of Information requests at the new department,'' Sobel said.
President Bush on Wednesday announced that Gen. John Gordon, now the head of an anti-terrorism office at the National Security Council, would become the new White House homeland security adviser. He replaces Tom Ridge, who is secretary of the new department.
-------- homeland security
Broad Domestic Role Asked for C.I.A. and the Pentagon
May 2, 2003
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/international/worldspecial/02TERR.html
WASHINGTON, May 1 - The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations, officials said.
The proposal, which was beaten back, would have given the C.I.A. and the military the authority to issue administrative subpoenas - known as "national security letters" - requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs. That authority now rests largely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the subpoenas do not require court approval.
The surprise proposal was tucked into a broader intelligence authorization bill now pending before Congress. It set off fierce debate today in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, officials said. Democrats on the panel said they were stunned by the proposal because it appeared to expand significantly the role of the C.I.A. and the Pentagon in conducting domestic operations, despite a long history of tight restrictions, officials said.
After raising objections, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and other Democrats succeeded in getting the provision pulled from the authorization bill, at least temporarily, Congressional officials said.
In a closed vote, the committee passed the bill unanimously without the proposal. But Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the intelligence committee, indicated to panel members that he wanted to hold further hearings on the idea, officials said.
There was some disagreement over exactly how the provision originated. Several Senate aides active in the debate said that Senator Roberts had included it in the authorization bill. But a senior Congressional official said the Bush administration had initiated the proposal and that Senator Roberts had not objected.
A C.I.A. official said the provision had come from the Bush administration, after the White House's Office of Management and Budget signed off on it.
The official said that Congressional leaders had asked the Bush administration whether there were any additional powers needed to help combat terrorism. The administration responded with the proposal to give the C.I.A. and military the power to use the national security letters, the official said. Another Congressional official said the move came at the urging of the C.I.A. The White House had no comment last night.
Because the F.B.I. now has primary responsibility for domestic intelligence operations, the C.I.A. and the military must currently go to the F.B.I. to request that it issue a national security letter to get access to financial and electronic records.
The Bush administration believes that giving the C.I.A. and the military direct authority to demand the records would cut down on the lag time in the process and give those organizations more flexibility to combat terrorism, according to the senior Congressional official.
Administration officials played down the significance of the proposal, maintaining that it would not give the C.I.A. or the military access to any information that they cannot already get through the F.B.I.
But Democrats and civil liberties advocates said they were alarmed by the idea that the C.I.A. and the military could begin prying into Americans' personal and financial records.
They said that while the F.B.I. was subject to guidelines controlling what agents are allowed to do in the course of an investigation, the C.I.A. and the military appeared to have much freer reign. The F.B.I. also faces additional scrutiny if it tries to use such records in court, but officials said the proposal could give the C.I.A. and the military the power to gather such material without ever being subject to judicial oversight.
Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the proposal "dangerous and un-American." Mr. Edgar said that "even in the most frigid periods of the Cold War, we never gave the C.I.A. such sweeping and secret policing powers over American citizens."
A Congressional Democratic aide said the measure appeared to go well beyond even hotly debated antiterrorism measures that the Justice Department has been considering in past months. "This is a very odd and very far-reaching idea that came out of nowhere," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It raises a whole series of questions about what the C.I.A.'s mission has really become."
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A. and the military have assumed greater authority overseas over what were once law enforcement terrorism investigations, and the traditional lines between domestic and overseas operations have become increasingly blurred. A new terrorism center, led by the C.I.A., started operation today in an effort to better coordinate the activities of different federal agencies. Civil liberties groups said they were worried it would give the C.I.A. authority to conduct domestic operations.
The proposal to allow the C.I.A. and the Pentagon authority to demand domestic records comes at a time when both Democrats and Republicans have voiced growing concerns about the government's expanded powers to fight terrorism.
New figures released today also showed that the Justice Department is relying with increasing frequency on secret warrants that allow the officials to go to a secret court to get approval for surveillance and bugging warrants in terrorism and espionage investigations without notifying the target.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said in an annual report that the Justice Department used secret warrants a record 1,228 times last year, - an increase of more than 30 percent over the year before. The court that governs the warrants did not turn down any of the Justice Department's applications, officials said.
--------
Lawmakers Back Threat Assessment Center
May 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Analyzing-Threats.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A new terrorism assessment center at CIA headquarters should not diminish the Homeland Security Department's responsibilities to analyze threats to the nation, lawmakers said Friday.
Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, welcomed the opening of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which is designed to coordinate and analyze information from the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security Department and other counterterrorism operations.
But he also said the new center cannot become a substitute for the Homeland Security Department's own analytical duties required under the law that created the department last year.
While the new center can fuse information from various sources, ``we don't have any analysts whose main purpose is to look at this information through the prism of the mission of the Department of Homeland Security,'' Cox said. ``It's very important for the secretary to be able to task his own analysts and put requirements on the intelligence system so that he can satisfy his mission.''
Rep. Jim Turner of Texas, top Democrat on the Homeland Security panel, agreed that while the center can merge foreign and domestic intelligence review functions, the department ``must carry out its statutory responsibility to analyze and assess this data and to make it available on a real-time basis to state and local law enforcement agencies.''
Cox noted that Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, in a recent letter to the House intelligence committee, had confirmed his intention to ``develop a robust team of analysts.''
The Homeland Security Department officially began its work in January, bringing some 177,000 employees from 22 law enforcement and security agencies under one roof. Threat assessments are to be carried out by the Directorate of Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection.
The Terrorist Threat Integration Center was announced by President Bush in his State of the Union address last January. It opened Thursday with about 60 officials from the CIA, FBI, the military and the Homeland Security Department, responsible for producing daily reports for the president and other officials on terrorists threats.
While there's wide agreement on the need to better coordinate information analysis among the various agencies, some have warned that the center could become another layer of bureaucracy or expand the CIA's involvement in domestic counterterrorism activities.
Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, top Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, wrote Bush last week to question the decision to locate the center on CIA grounds and have it report directly to the CIA director.
``Rather than increasing the effectiveness and clarity of intelligence integration in our government as the Homeland Security Act intended, this decision risks increasing bureaucracy and confusion,'' he wrote. The center is to move to its own headquarters later.
On the Net:
Homeland Security Department: http://www.dhs.gov/
Homeland Security Committee: http://hsc.house.gov/
-------- human rights
U.S. Ally Uzbekistan Critized for Torture, Harassment
Fri May 2,
Jim Lobe,
OneWorld US
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/oneworld/20030502/wl_oneworld/11815_1051887154&e=3
WASHINGTON, May 2 (OneWorld) - The government of Uzbekistan is harassing dissidents and human rights defenders in advance of this weekend's annual meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in Tashkent, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The wave of harassment, including arbitrary detentions by police and effective house arrest of the families of individuals imprisoned for their religious practices and beliefs, occurred despite EBRD warnings that lending to Uzbekistan would be affected by the country's human rights performance.
Strategically located in the heart of Central Asia, Uzbekistan became an important base for U.S. military operations during the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan. Uzbekistan is the wealthiest country in the region but also one of the most repressive.
HRW sent a letter to President Islam Karimov Thursday calling for progress on human rights, and urged the EBRD to reiterate its concerns to the government and demand that the harassment cease immediately. The bank has been strongly criticized by human rights groups for holding the meeting in Tashkent, precisely because of Karimov's poor human rights record.
"The bank has justified the choice of Tashkent (for its annual meeting) as an incentive for reform," said Elizabeth Andersen, the executive director of HRW's Europe and Central Asia division. "But talk of future improvements will be empty if at the same time the Uzbek authorities are harassing, beating and arbitrarily detaining people."
Last month a UN special investigator invited to visit Uzbekistan by the government--in part due to pressure from the EBRD--echoed charges by international human rights groups that torture is both institutionalized and systematic in the country.
"It was rampant," the investigator, Theo van Boven told reporters at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. "(In) most cases, convictions are based...by torture. The number of death penalties which are based on convictions and confessions that are extracted by torture are all routine. There are many death penalties pronounced. (The number of) executions that take place (is) a state secret."
Last week, EBRD President Jean Lemierre announced that Karimov had agreed to make a formal statement on national television condemning torture when he opens the EBRD meeting Saturday.
The EBRD is the only regional multilateral bank that requires its borrowers to adhere to basic human rights norms to receive loans. Last month the bank, in its "Uzbekistan Strategy Review," laid out specific benchmarks--of which ending torture was at the top of the list--that it said the government would have to meet to qualify for more support.
Other key points include guaranteeing space for opposition parties, respecting the rule of law, and ensuring the independence of the legislature and the judiciary. Karimov, who was the Communist Party boss in Uzbekistan before the collapse of the Soviet Union has been the Central Asian republic's only ruler since independence.
Police officials warned human rights defenders several times last month not to take part in public protests leading up to and during the meeting, HRW reported Friday. On April 17 police detained six people on their way to a demonstration in front of the President Administration building and held them for several hours. In a similar incident the week before, police reportedly beat one protestor.
Since the arrival of international media and EBRD officials in Tashkent this week, however, the police have not tried to forcibly disperse protesters, according to HRW.
At the same time, however, police have warned relatives of religious prisoners--there are believed to be as many as 7,000 in Uzbekistan--against participating in protests or making statements to reporters or others during the meeting.
"The Uzbek government has a long record of cracking down on peaceful dissent," said HRW's Andersen. "These recent incidents confirm our fears that Uzbekistan could not provide an open and free environment for holding the EBRD meeting."
-------- terrorism
Pentagon: Tribunals to include gag rule
By Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent
From the International Desk
5/2/2003
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030502-053616-7974r
WASHINGTON, May 2 (UPI) -- The Pentagon plans to impose a permanent gag order on attorneys who defend alleged terrorists or "enemy combatants" before any U.S. military tribunals, senior defense officials said Friday. All statements and information about the trials will be made through the Pentagon spokesman's office.
"The goal is a full and fair trial by commission, not to win popular support," a senior military official said.
The Pentagon Friday issued eight documents outlining the procedures for the controversial military commissions, popularly known as tribunals. The issuance of the instructions was the last procedural step required before commissions could be held.
"Pretty much we are ready to go when the time is right," a senior defense official said.
The commissions are intended for people believed to be members of al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations and believed to be guilty of any one of nearly 30 crimes, from using human shields on the battle field, to torture and murder. The commissions could also apply to people alleged to have harbored terrorists.
Senior Pentagon officials told reporters at a briefing Friday an undisclosed number of the hundreds of detainees being held at a facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being considered for trial by commission. The president will select the prisoners to be prosecuted.
"We have been reviewing difference cased for some time. We have some thoughts about who would be appropriate," a senior defense official said.
The commissions, first announced in November 2001, have come under sharp criticism from human rights and legal organizations, which have argued variously that they are unconstitutional, illegal under international law and a dangerous precedent for U.S. troops who might be captured and tried in similar forums in other countries. A chief concern is the lack of an independent appeal.
Convictions are to be automatically referred to another military review board but at no time do defendants have the right to a trial in a court independent of the Defense Department.
The procedure will be tightly controlled. Under the military commission rules, the attorneys for both the government and the defendants will need the express permission of the Pentagon's general counsel or the defense secretary before they "communicate with news media."
"It is probable those contacts would be authorized," a senior defense official said.
The ban on talking to the media will be in effect after the proceeding as well. However, to assure critics the commissions are being conducted fairly, the officials said they will open them as much as possible to the news media.
Lawrence Goldman, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told UPI the gag rule is dangerous because it sets the stage for government abuse. Anything legally questionable that happens behind closed doors would never come to light.
"What bothers me about this is it limits justice. If you do not have press and public scrutiny, there is every incentive for military courts not to give basic rights to the person accused," Goldman said.
Defense officials said the military commission instructions issued Friday were adjusted from a draft version to make it clear that the burden of the proof of guilt is on the government rather than on the defendant, and they have added "torture" and "causing serious injury" to the list of 24 crimes that can be tried in the commission outlined in the February draft.
The military commissions were created to "capitalize on the flexibility needed for the increased need to protect intelligence" that would not be provided by standard courts martial or trials in civilian courts, the military official said. The instructions also give the government more leeway in the laws of gathering evidence.
"It's tough to get a warrant for a cave," the military official said.
The proceedings could be held anywhere, including Iraq, the officials said. They would not say whether any of the defendants are likely to be Iraqi. The United States has captured more than a dozen regime officials and has been trying to build a case linking the Saddam Hussein regime with al-Qaida and international terrorism.
None of the nearly 600 prisoners collected from the war in Afghanistan has yet been designated by the Bush administration to face the military commission.
One of the crimes in the document is the use of human shields, which military officials have said Iraqi forces were guilty of during the just-completed war.
All of the crimes listed in the document have been derived from more than 100 existing international laws that concern the conduct of war and combat, a Pentagon official said in February.
The document lists 26 primary charges, from "willful killing of protected persons" and attacking civilians and misusing the white "surrender" flag, to mutilation, taking hostages, degrading a dead body, rape and hijacking.
It also lists "aiding and abetting" and commanding or supervising the above crimes as charges that could be brought.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
German bird lovers bid to block offshore wind farm
REUTERS GERMANY:
May 2, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20651/newsDate/2-May-2003/story.htm
FRANKFURT - Environmentalists, trying to preserve endangered birds in the North Sea, said this week they had filed a complaint at the European Commission to stop the planned Butendiek offshore wind farm in Germany.
Butendiek is one of two approved German offshore wind farms projects and if realised would be a first step towards the country's goal to build 25,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore capacity by 2030 from a current zero.
"We have filed a complaint to the Commission, which will examine the case, and if it decided that we are right it could take Germany to the European Court of Justice," said Claus Mayr, environmental expert at national environmental group NABU.
Butendieck, which consisted of 80 turbines of three MW each, was planned to be constructed in an area of the North Sea which should be protected by EU law, he told Reuters.
NABU and the German branch of environmental group Friends of the Earth also planned to soon take legal action againts the Butendiek project on a national level, Mayr said.
"We will decide on taking action in Germany in the coming weeks," he said.
The Butendieck project in December received approval from the German maritime planning authority BSH to start building work by June 1, 2005, otherwise the permission will be rescinded.
The park would be in a zone with water depths of 20 metres 34 kilometres off the norh-west German coast near Denmark and owned by a pool of private investors.
BSH said in December risks to the wellbeing of sea animals and birds were ruled out.
BSH also gave building permission last November for the 1,000 MW Borkum-West project 45 km off the German/Dutch North Sea coast, where construction is due to start in 2003.
Germany, the world's largest wind power market, favours the rapid expansion of wind farms to bring down greenhouse gases emissions which many scientists say contribute to damaging global warming.
-------- energy
Greens, regulators threaten Brazil hydro projects
REUTERS BRAZIL:
May 2, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20656/newsDate/2-May-2003/story.htm
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The massive Santa Isabel project in the Amazon basin, along with other hydroelectric power schemes, is at risk of being blocked, according to metals and energy management sources.
They say it may be stopped by environmental lobbies, uncertainty over state and federal regulations and financing difficulties.
"We are pessimistic as to when the environmental permit for Santa Isabel will be approved, or even if it will be approved," said a source close to Canelas, a company appointed to manage the 1,087-megawatt project, whose total investment cost is put at $1.78 billion.
"The project has been under study three years already and is at a standstill. Santa Isabel is the first hydro project so far planned for the Araguaia River and has thus met with considerable opposition," the source added.
The river runs through a national park between Tocantins and Mato Grosso states.
"The project could start up only five or six years after the permit is granted, that is, if it is granted at all," the energy management source said.
Santa Isabel's partners are BHP Billiton Metais, a unit of Anglo-Australian resources group BHP Billiton Ltd/Plc (BLT.L); Alcoa Aluminio, a unit of U.S.-based Alcoa Inc. (AA.N), the No. 1 aluminum producer worldwide; Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD) (VALE5.SA) (RIO.N); the Votorantim group and construction firm Camargo Correa.
Votorantim Energia manager Braz Lomonaco agreed there is an "environmental problem" regarding Santa Isabel.
"Ibama (the federal environmental watchdog) is reassessing the conditions for the granting of environmental licences," he said, estimating the project start-up date at March 2009.
Ibama's offices in Brasilia and in the Amazon basin declined comment.
Another Amazon basin project, the Estreito on the Tocantins river in Para state, is also seen far from a final go-ahead. It is also expected to produce 1,087 megawatts.
Estreito's partners had originally tentatively set April 2004 for starting construction, which could take 3-1/2 years.
"Delays are now foreseen in all projects", said an official at a Brazilian office of Belgian-based engineering company Tractebel, a partner in Estreito.
-------- environment
Bush Wages Legal Battle Against Environmental Law
By J.R. Pegg
May 2, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2003/2003-05-02-10.asp
WASHINGTON, DC, An empirical study released today shows that the Bush administration has repeatedly used the federal courts to try and undermine the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a law environmentalists describe as the "Magna Carta" of U.S. environmental policy.
NEPA, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1969, orders the federal government to consider the environmental impact of it actions, consider alternatives and inform the public of its assessments and decisions.
The report covers all 172 NEPA cases decided by federal courts in the first two years of the Bush administration and finds that in more than half of these cases, it has presented arguments to weaken the application of the statute.
"The Bush administration is hell-bent on weakening our environmental protections, and has already established an incredible record of violating the law while doing so," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife.
"We have in this presidential administration the worst environmental lawbreakers we have ever seen," Schlickeisen said.
The study, compiled by Defenders of Wildlife and the Vermont Law School's Clinic on Environmental Law and Policy, reports that in 94 cases over the past two years, the administration has presented anti-NEPA arguments in court.
These arguments have been rejected by federal judges in 78 percent of the cases.
The administration's legal interpretations of NEPA, the report finds, frequently support timber and oil companies and developers who seek financial gain from public resources. bush Critics say the Bush administration is undermining federal laws that safeguard the environment. Here the President walks with Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton. (Photo courtesy the White House) In one case Bush administration officials with the U.S. Forest Service issued an environmental assessment that found "no significant environmental impact" for a proposed timber sale of three million board feet from 3,340 acres, but then took timber industry bids for a sale of 9.5 million board feet from 800 acres.
One federal judge referred to NEPA analysis presented by the Bush administration that sought to aid a developer as "so implausible that it could not be ascribed to a difference in view or the product of agency expertise."
In a challenge to a federal rule that prevents roadbuilding in wilderness areas, the Bush administration used a timber industry argument that noted the environmental harm from a lack of roadbuilding in unroaded forests. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the administration and said that "NEPA may not be used to preclude lawful conservation measures by the Forest Service and to force federal agencies, in contravention of their own policy objectives, to develop and degrade scarce environmental resources."
Bush administration officials and supporters often say environmental groups abuse the courts and prevent efficient management of the nation's resources and public lands, but Schlickeisen says it is the administration's determination to roll back environmental protections that is causing a slew of legal challenges.
"If we are going to protect the environment for our kids and future generations, we simply have no choice but to try legal steps to stop them," he said. "One shudders to think of the number of times [the administration] must have broken the law without being caught and taken to court by some citizen group."
The report sheds further light on the partisan gap over environmental issues - when the composition of the three judge federal appellate court panel was comprised of a majority of Republican-appointed judges, the success rate of NEPA hostile arguments was 60 percent. This compares to an 11 percent success rate when panels had a majority of Democrat appointed judges where the majority.
The opinions in the cases analyzed by the report show a clear pattern of anti environmental decisionmaking, said Karin Sheldon, professor of law and director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School.
"Future judicial appointments by the Bush Administration seem likely to make the situation worse and long-term impact of an actively anti- environmental judiciary is potentially incalculable," she said.
Of primary concern are nominees to serve on the 13 federal appeals courts - this level of the judiciary is only superceded by the U.S. Supreme Court, which typically chooses to hear less than 100 cases a year.
These 13 courts very often provide the final decision on legal challenges to environmental rules and regulations and their judges are appointed for life. clearcut The administration has tried to ease environmental oversight of logging within the nation's forests. (Photo courtesy the Defend the Forests) With some 25 of the 179 federal appellate court judge positions at the 13 appeals courts currently vacant, the Bush administration has an unprecedented opportunity to reshape the character of the court.
Republicans currently hold majority in seven of 13 courts, Democrats with the majority on two and the remaining four roughly balanced. Environmentalists believe some of the administration's nominees bring clear hostility to many of the nation's fundamental environmental laws.
For example, Jeffrey Sutton, who was confirmed this week to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is on record as arguing that the federal government does not have the authority to enforce the Clean Water Act.
Pending nominee and current District Court Judge Charles Pickering, Sr. had decisions dismissing claims by victims in toxic tort cases overruled by the 5th Circuit, the court that the President has again nominated him to serve on.
The administration's Ninth Circuit nominee Carolyn Kuhl, a former Justice Department lawyer under President Ronald Reagan and a current Los Angeles County judge, challenged the Supreme Court's precedent on associational standing, a longstanding legal interpretation that enables organizations to protect the rights of their members in court.
John Roberts, a pending nominee to the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, defended a coal company's right to blast off the tops of mountains in order to mine coal without concern for degradation to mountain streams and rivers.
Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, a nominee for the Fifth Circuit, has authored court opinions that favor polluters over the public and restrict public access to public information.
Owen is "a particularly egregious example of extremist nominees that President Bush has chosen for key courts," said Glenn Sugameli, senior legislative counsel with the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice. eagle Environmentalists warn the Bush environmental legacy could have far reaching impacts that will harm the nation's public health, wild places and wildlife. (Photo courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) Democrats voted Thursday to block a vote on Owen's nomination, as they have done to prevent a vote on Miguel Estrada, a nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Congressional Republicans said today they are considering an attempt to change Senate rules or perhaps sue to ban judicial filibusters and President George W. Bush called the filibuster of Owen "shameful." Sugameli points out that the Senate has confirmed more than 100 of the Bush administration's federal court nominees.
"The Senate's constitutional duty of advise and consent requires it to block the worst of the worst lifetime nominees, including Priscilla Owen, who has a clear record of anti-environmental judicial activism," he said. Conservationists, including Defenders' Schlickeisen, further worry that the administration is intent on limiting the public's right to appeal and participate in environmental decisions through agency rule changes and legislation.
Last week, for example, the U.S. Forest Service said it is considering a plan to stop accepting emails as legitimate comments on forest management plan, and the administration supports current legislation that would limit appeal times for the public to challenge hazardous fuel reduction programs on Forest Service lands.
"This White House is also working overtime to eliminate those provisions of the law that allow the public to challenge them in court," Schlickeisen said. " This is an administration that apparently will stop at nothing to weaken environmental protection to benefit their supporters in industry."
The full copy of the report can be found here. http://www.defenders.org/publications/nepareport.pdf
-------- genetics
Pennsylvania Researchers Turn Stem Cells to Egg Cells
May 2, 2003
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS WADE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/science/02STEM.html
Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have taken stem cell research in a novel direction, showing how the cells can be converted in the laboratory into egg cells like those produced in the ovary. The work has some theologians reconsidering their ideas about the nature of life.
Use of such eggs might make therapeutic cloning - the idea of repairing patients' tissues by cloning their own body cells - ethically more acceptable to those who object to it. Further, the unfertilized eggs seem capable of developing parthenogenetically, or without the help of sperm, into embryos.
The research was by a team from Penn including Dr. Karin Hübner, Dr. Hans R. Schöler, and researchers elsewhere. They report in today's issue of Science that they developed a way to generate unfertilized eggs, known as oocytes, from mouse embryonic stem cells. They have not tried the same experiment with human embryonic stem cells, but the two species are generally very similar at the stem cell level.
If human oocytes could be generated in the same way from human embryonic stem cells, researchers would have a copious new source of oocytes, which are now obtained from patients through an uncomfortable procedure requiring strong drugs and surgery.
Dr. Schöler, a German citizen, said he was discussing with German parliamentarians whether generating human egg cells this way would be acceptable in Germany. If not, he said he would not undertake the experiment in his laboratory in the United States, even if it were legal here.
Dr. James Battey, chairman of a stem cell task force at the National Institutes of Health, said that researchers supported by the institutes should not undertake such experiments until there had been further ethical review and opinion sounding. He described the research as "a spectacular piece of science."
Human embryonic stem cells are obtained from the discarded human embryos generated in fertility clinics. The embryos, though only a few days past fertilization, are destroyed in the process. As a result, many opponents of abortion rights object to research that involves the cells. In August 2001, President Bush allowed federally financed researchers to start working with the human embryonic cell lines already established by that date, though not with any new ones. That research had long been barred by Congress.
The cells, which have the capacity to develop into all the tissues of the human body, are of great interest to researchers and physicians. Scientists have already discovered ways of inducing mouse and human embryonic stem cells to convert in the laboratory into brain, liver, pancreatic and other types of body cell. Dr. Schöler's team has added a new class of cell to this list - the germline cells which make the oocytes or sperm.
Human oocytes made in the laboratory this way could bring the idea of therapeutic cloning nearer to reality. This is the concept that physicians could generate new body tissues for a patient by taking a cell from the patient's skin, inserting the cell's nucleus into an oocyte whose own nucleus had been removed, and letting the oocyte develop into an early embryo. Stem cells could be taken from the embryo and induced to develop into heart muscle cells genetically identical to the patient's own.
But if the same embryo were put into a woman's womb, it might grow to term. This is reproductive cloning, the method used to make Dolly the sheep. There is wide opposition to using the technique in people.
Therapeutic cloning is seen by some as fraught with hazard because it could so easily lead to reproductive cloning, to the making of a baby instead of the generation of laboratory cell lines. Dr. Schöler said that oocytes made by his method could be genetically engineered so as to be inviable in the womb but still useful for therapeutic cloning, a procedure that might allay some objections to therapeutic cloning.
Opponents of stem cell research support legislation, passed by the House and pending in the Senate, that would outlaw both types of cloning. Dr. Arthur Caplan, an ethicist at Penn who has advised Dr. Schöler, said the new research showed such bans were premature because stem cell technology was moving so fast. "It's as if they were trying to regulate the aviation industry with only the Wright brothers' plane in front of them," Dr. Caplan said.
Besides the unaccustomed idea of generating human oocytes in the laboratory, Dr. Schöler's research points to another anomaly: the oocytes can develop in a dish into embryos, a process that involves a spontaneous doubling of their own genetic material instead of acquiring a second set of chromosomes from a sperm. Dr. Schöler said he has not yet had time to test whether the mouse oocytes and embryos are viable or whether human embryonic stem cells behave in the same way.
These developments have surprised theologians accustomed to defining human life as something that starts at conception with the union of oocyte and sperm. "This scientific research is like a cannon ball fired across the bow of Christian bioethics," Dr. Ted Peters of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley said in a statement.
Dr. Peters added in an interview that ethicists in the past had thought human dignity could be seen to derive from the fertilization process. But mammalian cloning was the first shot at this argument and Dr. Scholer's generation of parthenogenetic embryos "is maybe the second shot," he said.
Thomas A. Shannon, an expert on Catholic teachings at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said the new research challenged the notion that conception signals the presumptive beginning of a human person, as argued in a Vatican document about the gift of life. "If fertilization is no longer a major marker for thinking of the beginning of a person, then where do you go next?" he said, suggesting a better definition might lie in when an embryo develops individuality and a nervous system.
A spokesman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops did not return a telephone call.
-------- health
SARS Virus Mutates; WHO Says China Lacks Weapons
May 2, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-sars.html
GENEVA/BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese officials said on Friday SARS was at its peak in Beijing, but Hong Kong scientists said the microbe was mutating and the World Health Organization warned that China still lacked the equipment and expertise to fight it.
WHO also removed the United States and Britain from the list of countries affected by SARS, following a 20-day period without local spread of the flu-like disease.
Canada, China -- including Hong Kong -- Taiwan, Mongolia and Singapore remain on the list of countries where national authorities reported the virus is being spread locally as opposed to being imported from elsewhere.
In Beijing, the deputy director general of the Municipal Health Bureau, Liang Wannian, said Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome was peaking in the capital, the hardest hit city in the world with 91 deaths and more than 1,600 cases.
``Since April 21, the number of SARS patients in Beijing has entered the peak period,'' Liang told a news conference.
``My personal judgment is the present high plateau of the number of cases in Beijing will continue for a period of time. Overall the situation in Beijing is stable, and the upward trend has been effectively checked.''
SARS has killed close to 200 people in China and infected nearly 4,000 since it emerged in the southern province of Guangdong late last year. Globally, it has infected more than 6,300 people in 30 countries, killing more than 400.
INFECTION CONTROL SHORTFALLS
But WHO said China had a great deal more work to do in containing the virus, which kills between 6 and 10 percent of its victims.
``A WHO field visit to one large hospital not officially designated as a SARS hospital demonstrated the urgent need to review strategies for infection control procedures,'' WHO said in a statement posted on its Web site at http://www.who.int.
``Current infection control practices in emergency rooms may need to be modified, since health care workers continue to be infected. Among front-line health workers, 15 new cases were reported in Beijing. There are now 300 infected health care workers,'' WHO said.
Health-care workers have been hard hit by SARS since the beginning because they see patients who may not know they have the contagious infection. WHO says doctors and nurses should wear specific types of face masks, gloves and even goggles when treating suspected SARS patients.
WHO also said China's government needed to do more to reassure worried citizens.
``The public needs to have more information on when and where infection is happening,'' said Dr. Henk Bekedam, WHO's representative in China. ``We don't know that right now.''
WHO said China was facing a critical period.
``The next few months will prove crucial in the attempt to contain SARS worldwide, which now greatly depends on whether the disease can be controlled in China,'' WHO said.
Scientists are hoping that, like its close relative the common cold, SARS will prove to be a seasonal disease and will wane in the summer months, giving public health experts a chance to come to grips with it.
SEEDING SARS GLOBALLY
David Heymann, the WHO head of communicable diseases, said if China did not stamp out SARS, there would always be the danger that it would continue to ``seed'' the disease throughout the world.
Doctors say immediately isolating SARS patients is key to preventing its spread and quick treatment may help patients survive. Symptoms include high fever, cough and pneumonia, and there is no standard treatment. It is mainly passed by droplets through sneezing and coughing.
Hong Kong scientists said they had isolated four different strains of the virus from patients. It was the first indication the virus was evolving, as earlier analysis had suggested all strains seen so far were virtually identical.
But scientists have said the coronavirus family was very susceptible to mutation. SARS is a previously unknown strain of coronavirus, unlike anything ever seen in animals or people although the coronaviruses have not been widely studied.
``Such a quick mutation means that even if there is a cure it may become ineffective. Even a diagnostic test may not be able to detect it if it has undergone change,'' said Dennis Lo, one of the microbiologists who reported the mutations.
SARS has killed 170 people in Hong Kong and infected 1,611.
Canada said it would soon launch an aggressive campaign to persuade tourists that it was safe to visit Toronto.
Ontario health officials told a news conference in Toronto that 176 people, or two-thirds of SARS patients, had been discharged from hospital. They also said there were 30 active probable hospital cases as of Friday, compared with 53 on April 23.
-------- ACTIVISTS
May Day protesters target "mass destruction" firms
Story by Andrew Cawthorne
REUTERS UK:
May 2, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20653/newsDate/2-May-2003/story.htm
LONDON - Radical British anti-capitalist activists had a hit-list of more than 50 "companies of mass destruction" in their sights yesterday for May Day protests in London and elsewhere that police feared could turn violent.
Anarchist groups published the names and addresses of the firms - mainly oil companies, arms manufacturers, banks and multinationals - along with government departments such as the Ministry of Defence, on various Internet sites.
London May Day protests in previous years have turned ugly, particularly in 2000 when rioters ran amok.
"On May Day we propose a pre-emptive strike at the future that capitalism dictates for us, a future that can only offer us more exploitation, boredom, and submission," one website called "Our MayDay" said.
"To aid the day, we are producing a map with 50 targets on which people are encouraged to go and have a look and see what's possible," it added.
Police mobilised 4,000 officers in the British capital to guard against violence and also to patrol a plethora of authorised demonstrations including a central midday march by unions to mark international workers' day.
Demonstrators hoped mass anti-war rallies earlier this year would give impetus to the May Day events. But with rain deterring early starters, neither police nor organisers knew how many would converge on London during the day.
"It's hard to get a feel for it this year, but anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 would be a fantastic turnout at the TUC (union) march," Andrew Burgin, of the Stop the War Coalition, told Reuters. "I don't know what the anarchists are doing or how many they will get out."
Stop the War, which helped bring a million protesters onto the streets of London in mid-February to oppose the build-up to war in Iraq, was one of numerous groups supporting the authorized May Day events.
"The anti-war movement has not lost its puff," Burgin said.
"People are still angry over Iraq. The justifications for the war are unravelling. The American troops are trying to kill as many people as possible. The whole thing is a bloody mess."
Other groups behind the May Day events included animal rights activists, students protesting against university fees and anti-pollution campaigners planning a mass cycle ride to block traffic in central London.
Police said they had no issue with peaceful demonstrators but would crack down on any violence.
"What we object to are those people who don't cooperate with us, who set out to damage buildings and attack police officers," London police's Deputy Assistant Commissioner Andy Trotter said.
"We've got a lot of reserves ready to go out wherever any trouble may start."
In the worst May Day violence in Britain of recent times, in 2000, masked protesters rioted in central London, defacing the Cenotaph war memorial, trashing a McDonald's shop and setting light to cars.
In 2001, troublemakers were boxed in by police, but there were still ugly scenes and sporadic damage. Last year mainly carnival-style protests were marred by a few minor scuffles.
Security was particularly tight in London's wealthiest districts such as Mayfair, the birthplace of English May Day celebrations.
----
[real democracies include opposing views]
Funding anti-U.S. demonstrators
May 2, 2003
Max Primorac
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030502-15851616.htm
The spate of well-organized and violent anti-American protests in Iraq betrays the guiding hand of Ba'ath extremists or "agents provocateurs" from Iran. Not unexpected. But in years to come, the future sponsors of such hate-America rallies might well come as a shock, if the nation- building foreign aid experience in the Balkans provides any lessons.
As elsewhere in Europe, we find here the same motley mash of anti-war protesters - anarchists, anti-globalists, greens, Marxist peaceniks - shouting "smash capitalism" and "Bush is Hitler." While rallying little support in a Croatia fresh with memories of Serbian aggression, these radicals compensate for their small numbers with anti-American fury, culminating in one march to the U.S. Embassy with a ritual burning of an American flag defiled with swastikas. The rub is that this hate-America crowd is sponsored by the U.S. taxpayer.
Protest organizers - Anti-War Campaign, Green Action, women's group BaBe and others - are a who's who of U.S. foreign aid grantees who, for a decade, have received millions of dollars, ostensibly to strengthen democracy. In fact, aid has been grossly misallocated to a marginal and extremist nexus of former communists, anarchists and extreme feminists that represent the core of anti-American political activity in the Balkans.
Anti-War Campaign (ARK) fronts for numerous anarchist-Marxist groups, offering them office space, equipment, funds and training. They include Zagreb Anarchist Movement, anarcho-feminists ANFEME, Croatian Anti-Globalists and others. Its ZaMirNet (PeaceNet) is a regional Internet link that is part of a global alliance to wage "netwars" against Western institutions. Radicals use it to coordinate activities, inform members on anti-capitalist and anti-NATO rallies, access donors and provide a steady diet of radical literature. Though ZaMirNet's manager is a self-described "anarcho-feminist," she also works for USAID clients Urban Institute, MercyCorps, CARE and others. CARE alone granted ZaMirNet $335,000, part of a larger sum received from the U.S. government.
Following September 11, BaBe leader Vesna Kesic circulated a petition, signed by most aid recipients, denouncing the U.S. war on terrorism as "institutional terrorism," echoing the musings of their ideological mentor Noam Chomsky. No surprise, as Ms. Kesic counts amongst her other friends Katha Pollitt, the Nation columnist that berated her daughter for flying the American flag in solidarity with the victims of September 11 because "the flag stands for jingoism, vengeance and war." Another BaBe principal is the last director of the Museum of Communist Revolution! Nonetheless, this year, the group and its offshoots continue to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. aid and they help write embassy reports sent to Washington.
Green Action takes every anti-U.S. position possible, opposing membership in NATO, imports of genetically modified food, even railing against McDonald's as that evil symbol of global corporate reach. Nevertheless, in 1999, its director, Toni Vidan, coordinated the U.S. Embassy's $3.5 million subgrants program that significantly expanded this anti-American (un)civic nexus. One grantee, Osijek Greens, lamented how "American imperialism is in full bloom."
Under the rubric of promoting youth civic engagement, these U.S. aid recipients finance counterculture initiatives as recruiting vehicles for new generations of anti-U.S. activists. One, Attack, is a joint project of ARK, BaBe and Zagreb Anarchist Movement. Another, Net Club Mama, celebrated the anniversary of the publishing of the Communist Manifesto. Donor agencies and contractors hire local staff from these groups, ensuring a steady stream of taxpayer financing of anti-American initiatives.
In large part, we are paying the price for past policy that defined not communism as the threat to regional peace, but rather a vaguely defined nationalism. In turn, support was channeled to so-called anti-nationalists with little regard to what they actually believed. Pro-Western groups were disqualified from aid from the start because they were considered "too patriotic."
The anti-American tenor of these groups is no secret though, and they are very public about their views. Nevertheless, our embassy continues to finance them. But the problems do not stop at funding those who despise America and its values. Last September, the U.S. Embassy undercut a unique German-American initiative to win U.S. government funding for a pro-America conference on terrorism to commemorate the September 11 terrorist attacks. One-hundred-seventy officials and civic leaders from 23 countries participated in a rare display of pro-Americanism, yet embassy officials boycotted it, considering the whole affair "unimportant."
Besides congenital incompetence of our aid agencies, this also reflects a cynical preference among some of our diplomats to want to co-opt former regime elites because "it is better these people work for us than against us." Of course, co-option has helped restore the communist aristocracy's past prominence - on our dime. Indeed, as plans for rebuilding Iraq now stand, the Balkan "example" will most likely prevail there. So, in five years time, don't assume that those you see protesting American imperialism are necessarily sponsored by the Ba'ath Party.
Max Primorac advises U.S. and foreign officials on postwar democracy-building on the Balkans.
----
Civil Rights `Foot Soldiers' Reunite
May 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Civil-Rights-Reunion.html
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Civil rights demonstrators who faced down fire hoses and police dogs 40 years ago are reuniting in Birmingham -- older but still passionate about freedom.
Hundreds of people are expected in the city this weekend for the first Foot Soldiers Reunion, a meeting of the masses who heeded the call of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders for a nonviolent revolution against discrimination.
The four-day reunion will include a series of workshops about the civil rights era at churches and schools. King's son, Martin Luther King III, will speak Saturday, and widow Coretta Scott King also is scheduled to attend.
Barbara Story was in her early 20s during the protests, and recalled getting doused with what she now calls ``freedom water'' -- the powerful blast from the firefighters' hoses.
``It would knock you down, tear your clothes off and turn you around,'' said Story, walking through the grassy park where the violence happened so long ago. ``You just went back to the church, dried off and came back for more.''
Many adults were hesitant to join in demonstrations for fear of losing their jobs or creating trouble for their families. King and the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth reluctantly let the city's young people march.
Louis Taylor Jr. followed his two brothers to the protests. Afraid of the dogs and the hoses, he recalled ducking behind a building as his brothers joined in.
``I was just watching them, but I was there,'' he said. ``You'd be a fool if you weren't afraid.''
The May 1963 protests made Birmingham synonymous with civil rights protests and police violence, but the worst was yet to come. That September, four black girls died in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the single deadliest racist attack of the era. It was only in the last two years that the last two suspects, Thomas Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry, were tried and convicted of murder.
Looking back, Taylor doubts segregation would have ever ended if not for what happened in Birmingham in 1963.
``I think it would still be going on,'' said Taylor, 60. ``If we had not done what we did at the time we wouldn't have had the changes we had.''
----
Exhibit Showcases Anti - War Movement Art
May 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Anti-War-Exhibit.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- In the days before and during the U.S. military action in Iraq, millions of people throughout the world demonstrated against it, carrying posters and banners with slogans showing their opposition.
New York City was the staging ground for some of the largest anti-war rallies, with more than 100,000 people turning out for each of two separate events.
Now, a union-organized exhibit showcases the creativity and imagination of those people in a collection of materials used in the protests. ``Times of War/Signs of Peace'' opened Thursday at the gallery in the 1199 Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center, and will run through May 10.
The exhibit, housed in a single room, features photographs, posters, T-shirts, buttons, banners and signs used at rallies. The centerpiece is a huge red and black poster featuring President Bush, with the slogan, ``Elect a madman, you get madness.''
On one wall, an Iraqi flag and an American flag are painted side-by-side on a piece of wood. Dolls are attached to both flags, with the American baby looking healthy and the Iraqi baby wrapped in bloodied bandages and covered with burn marks.
Underneath is a poster with a bottle, a package of cheese and a loaf of bread attached, which reads, ``Beaujolais, brie and baguettes, Not bombs!''
Organizers hoped the exhibit would show people that those who spoke out against the war were not isolated voices, but a movement exercising the right of dissent.
``This is part of what our system is built on and this is what makes it exciting and that's what I want them to come away with,'' said Rytva Soni Tilson, the project coordinator. ``It's having the right to speak your voice, having the ability to get out there and say, `I don't agree.'''
About 40 artists took part in the project, submitting their material after a call for works went out over the Internet. Organizers are looking into moving the exhibit into other galleries and exhibit spaces once the show ends.
The project was put together by the Bread & Roses Cultural Project, the nonprofit cultural arm of 1199/SEIU. The Service Employees International Union represents more than 200,000 health care and human services workers.
On the Net:
Bread and Roses Cultural Project: http://www.bread-and-roses.com
----
Israel Cracking Down on Foreign Peace Activists
May 2, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-activists.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel plans to step up the arrest and deportation of pro-Palestinian foreign peace activists and will try to block new ``human shields'' from entering the country, Israeli security sources said Friday.
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which has posted dozens of foreign activists in West Bank and Gaza Strip combat zones, condemned the move as an attempt to allow Israeli ``atrocities'' against Palestinians to go unchecked.
``These foreigners, for all their good intentions, end up being used as cover for terrorism,'' one Israeli security source said. ``Our forces will now enjoy greater freedom to arrest them, and the Interior Ministry will be instructed to expedite expulsion proceedings.''
In the first sign of the new crackdown, an ISM member was detained by Israeli troops in the flash point southern Gaza Strip refugee camp Rafah Thursday.
Military sources said the woman activist was sleeping in a house suspected of concealing a tunnel used by militants to smuggle arms from nearby Egypt. According to a Foreign Ministry spokesman, she was questioned and released in Israel, but barred from re-entering Gaza.
The ISM positions foreigners as ``human shields'' around the West Bank and Gaza, where the Israeli army is confronting a 31-month-old Palestinian uprising for statehood. At least 2,035 Palestinians and 737 Israelis have died in the fighting.
``The Israeli army wants us to leave because we are providing witness to the atrocities committed by the Israeli army,'' said a statement posted on the ISM's Web site in response.
Two months ago, an Israeli armored bulldozer crushed to death an American ISM member as she tried to block the demolition of a Rafah home. Last month, Israeli troops shot and seriously wounded two ISM activists, a Briton and an American. Israel blamed the activists for getting in harm's way.
A suicide bombing that killed three people on Tel Aviv Wednesday has placed added urgency on the new policy, security sources said. British newspapers reported that the bombers, both allegedly Britons, had entered Israel pretending to be part of a foreign movement akin to the ISM.
``An added concern now is that terrorists could try to enter Israel under the guise of peace activist','' a source said.
According to the security source, airport staff would step up scrutiny on arriving foreigners, who are routinely questioned on their reasons for visiting.
``We are especially on the lookout for tourists with bogus cover stories,'' the source said.
A spokesman for the ISM said at least 30 of its members had been deported by Israel since last year, while several others had deportation orders overturned in Israeli courts.
Hundreds of suspected activists have been turned away on arrival at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion International Airport, under government directives, since the uprising began in September 2000, Israeli officials said.
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Protesters on Vieques burn Navy vehicles, then enjoy once-forbidden beaches
02 May 2003
By Michelle Faul,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-05-02/s_4239.asp
VIEQUES, Puerto Rico - On horseback, bicycles, and foot, islanders flocked to beaches Thursday that were once-forbidden by the U.S. military, which for nearly 60 years used the shores for target practice.
The afternoon sojourn to the turquoise waters was in sharp contrast to the morning's violence that erupted when activists set fire to former Navy vehicles, took sledgehammers to former base fixtures, and burned American flags to mark the Navy's long-awaited departure.
Gov. Sila Calderon spoke out against the violence Thursday, saying the protesters were a "small, subversive minority" that did not represent the majority of "peaceful and respectful" Puerto Ricans.
The governor - an outspoken critic of the Navy's presence on the island - was in Vieques on Wednesday when the Navy handed over 15,000 acres (6,000 hectares) of the island's land to the U.S. Department of Interior, whose Fish and Wildlife Service is supposed to oversee a massive cleanup and transform the area to a wildlife refuge.
Many islanders don't want the land to be turned into a wildlife refuge and would rather see it developed to bring tourism and jobs. "Wildlife refuge? Who wants that?!" scoffed Nestor Guishard, a 33-year-old school counselor who was heading to the once-off-limits Red Beach, which had been closed for years.
Since a Marine jet dropped two errant 500-pound (225-kilogram) bombs and killed a civilian guard on the firing range, protesters have steadily invaded the range to thwart maneuvers. Over the years, more than 1,000 protesters were arrested and jailed for trespassing. Celebrities who were jailed included Robert F. Kennedy Jr., New York civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, actor Edward James Olmos, and Jacqueline Jackson, wife of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
"The cynics said we couldn't do it, and we've done it!" said Mrs. Jackson from a bandstand where music and political speeches blared at the entrance to the former bombing range.
The civil disobedience campaign that in part led the Navy to abandon Vieques has stoked anti-American sentiment and local debate over the status of Puerto Ricans. The United States won the three Caribbean islands comprising the territory in the Spanish-American War. The 4 million people who live there are U.S. citizens but have just one nonvoting delegate in Congress and cannot vote for president.
The decision by the U.S. Congress to create a wildlife refuge was "yet another sign of the oppression Puerto Rico suffers as a colony of the United States," Guishard said.
Vieques Mayor Damaso Serrano said he wants the Puerto Rico government to lobby Congress to give them the land for eco-friendly development. Some blame the bombing for a stunted tourist and fishing industry. The Navy denies the practices have been harmful.
"This is certainly not a good start," said Sam Hamilton, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Police officers who did nothing to stop Thursday morning's rampage by activists were standing by to guard against more vandalism and clashes.
Biologist Oscar Diaz-Marrero, charged with helping to create the wildlife refuge, withdrew his staff Thursday after one guard was hurt. "It's not safe for us; it's anarchy," he said. He said they would return when tensions subsided.
In the 1940s the United States bought 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares) - about two-thirds of Vieques - for about $1.4 million to make way for a bombing range, forcing out families and farmers. Military exercises began in 1947.
Yabureibo Silva, 12, was happy to visit Red Beach, apparently unaware of the unexploded ordnance. "It's just so beautiful!"
Calderon has asked to put Vieques on the National Priority List for an environmental cleanup, a one-time option available to states and territories.
"EPA will work to expedite the listing of the site so that cleanup can begin as soon as possible," said Christie Whitman, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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Grading the Peace Movement
Did activists stop a world war?
by Will Swaim
Orange County Weekly,
May 2 - 8, 2003
http://www.ocweekly.com/printme.php?&eid=43802
If you wanted to evaluate the peace movement's recent performance, you could begin and end with the armless, legless Iraqi kid made famous by Time magazine. Or you could note that despite their failure to stop George W. Bush's war on Iraq, American anti-warriors scored several successes. We spoke with local activists and scholars about what went right-and wrong-for the American peace movement.
FOREIGN RELATIONS. Grade: A. Massive American peace rallies made it safe for U.S. allies around the world to dissent. "By Feb. 15, the movement had become so widespread and so demographically diverse that it simply became impossible for the news media and the White House to ignore," says Cal State Fullerton professor Jarret Lovell. "Attempts by the White House to dismiss the movement as a 'focus group' were laughable. France and Germany didn't ignore it."
PLANNING. Grade: F. Lovell says activists should have predicted the fall-off of support during the early stages of the war but didn't. "The peace movement became so focused upon stopping the war that it didn't effectively devise a game plan of what to do after the war started," he says. "This is rather ironic given that the movement has been and continues to be critical of the Pentagon's lack of a game plan for what to do after regime change in Iraq was accomplished."
STOPPING WORLD WAR. Grade: A. American demonstrators may not have stopped the war on Iraq, but it's possible they stopped a world war. "The power of the peace movement was crucial in keeping anti-war sentiment in the Muslim world-for example, in Pakistan-from turning into anti-Western/Christian discourse that could have led to massive calls for jihad," says Mark LeVine, an associate professor of history at UC Irvine. He says a senior Pakistani intellectual told him "that at most of the demonstrations [in Pakistan], the signs were almost identical to the signs in the demonstrations in the U.S. or Europe-no blood for oil, no war, etc.-rather than some kind of jihadist discourse, and the only reason for that was the continual pictures of millions of Americans demonstrating against the war, which told people that Americans were not united behind Bush."
GETTING ALONG WITH OTHERS. Grade: A. "The peace movement expanded far beyond the usual 'lefty' suspects," says Gordon Johnson, an activist and principal organizer with the Orange County Peace Coalition (ocpeace.org). "People we had never heard of were starting their own anti-war protests in twos and threes in their own neighborhoods. Republicans were giving us money for printing signs, and The Orange County Register was printing anti-war editorials. All this is new ground that was broken." Just as important, says LeVine, was the peace movement's rapid integration with anti-corporate globalization activists, a merger with world-wide implications.
RHETORIC. Grade: D. Lovell says peace activists "could have done a better job avoiding the demonization of President Bush and instead focused [their] criticism upon those in both the White House and Congress for leading us down this road. The public was constantly told that Saddam was the enemy. But to respond: What did the peace movement do? Raise Bush to the level of Saddam. Not only did this reduce debate to a clash of two personalities, but it failed to direct attention toward the hundreds in Congress-Democrats and Republicans-who joined ranks with Bush. Simply put, the problem is much greater than Bush; the problem also lies with the Democrats."
CREATIVE THINKING. Grade: F. Unhappy with UN sanctions against Iraq and opposed to war, LeVine says, peace activists "did not offer a coherent, practical alternative to the Bush war doctrine" and failed to show that "it is impossible to bring peace, democracy, freedom or development to the region unless we change not just the foundations of U.S. foreign policy but also our hyperconsumerist culture as well. There was a teachable movement here I don't think was taken advantage of."
PHYSICAL EDUCATION. GRADE: C. Peace is like urban warfare-time-consuming, labor-intensive, house-to-house-but "a lot more people were willing to march in the street than to walk door to door," says Johnson. "That door-to-door, grassroots work is what we haven't had much because the peace movement has been in emergency mode for the past few months, thinking the war will start any minute unless we make a huge show of resistance right now." Nevertheless, Johnson concludes, the Iraq war spurred the development of networks that will come in handy in the event of another White House adventure: "If Bush makes a move toward invading Syria, for instance, all the personal connections, the mailing lists, the vocabulary of tactics, the known meeting places, everything about a culture of resistance is already in place and will still be usable for any future actions."
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