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NUCLEAR
Earthquake hits Paducah
Depleted Uranium Weapons and Acute Post-War Health Effects
U.N. Presses Bush On Iraq
U.N. Says Iran Not Complying on Nuke Info
Iran says ready to sign protocol on nuke fuel return with Russia
Russia to send nuclear fuel to Iran - Itar-Tass
Questions loom regarding whereabouts of WMDs
Health crisis looms over looted Iraqi nuclear plant
U.S. limits search by Vienna nuke team
International Inspection of Iraqi Nuclear Facility Set To Begin
U.N. nuclear experts back in Iraq
UN nuclear experts arrive in Iraq
Blix: Better chances exist now in Iraq to find out the truth
Blix: America jumped to a conclusion over weapons
US, British spy data on Iraq left UN arms chief disappointed
Blix Questions Credibility Of U.S.-British Inspectors
Row over Iraq's weapons grows
Japan's war policy upsets neighbours
U.S. Troops Will Leave Korean DMZ
Fallout of shuffling US forces in Korea
G.I.'s Will Gradually Leave Korea DMZ to Cut War Risk
Moscow to keep helping Tehran
Official doubts existence of Iran nuke program
Rocky Flats Nuclear Factory to Become Wildlife Refuge
NRC Gives Early Nod to Renewal of Nuclear Plant License
EPA flays OR health report
Repair Plan for Reactor With Leaks
Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?
US hints at force to disarm rogue states
Cheney's CIA visits pressured us: analysts
U.S. Secret Report Raises Questions Over Iraqi Weapons
Iraqi gov't can't be rushed: U.S.
MILITARY
Recycling Wars
Africa's Women Beginning To See Progress in Politics
French Troops Arrive in Congo War Zone
Western Sudan rebels say killed many soldiers in attack on army position
ASIA Chinese Firm Denies Aiding Iran on Weapons
Thailand, US launch another round of joint military exercises
Iraqi military officer 'source for weapons claim'
Weapons dossier 'sent back six times'
Sensytech awarded $4.4 million contract
Canada Scales Back Military Activities in Gulf
Experts Warn Congress About Iranian Exile Groups
Iranians don't need American kingmakers
Iraqi Sevenfold Council Insignificant: Kubaissi
Leading Iraqi Shiite Cleric Emerges to Meet U.S. Ally
British beat my father - then he died
In Iraqi town, misery and despair add to hatred of US troops
Hamas Halts Truce Talks With Abbas
Abdullah 'Nearly Pulled Out of Summit Over Ties With Israel'
Iran will have WMDs by 2006: Israeli FM
Analysis: Poles nudge NATO toward Iraq
Macedonia Sends Troops To Iraq To Prove 'Commitment To NATO'
Manila Rules Out Bases as U.S. Shifts Forces in Asia
Russia OKs Amnesty for Chechen Rebels
Now the US wants control of space
NASA to Send Rover to Study Mars
Mars rovers' plutonium not a threat, NASA says
Intelligence Historian Says CIA 'Buckled' on Iraq
U.S. Seeks to Clarify Iraq Weapons Report
Ukraine joins peacekeeping force
Navy Intends to Expand Seals Force
What Is Patriotism?
LIARS 'R US
WMD Quotes Before & After The Invasion
U.S. Seeks to Extend Int'l Court Deal
Liberian Denounces War Crimes Indictment
Deal Reached on Cambodian Genocide Trials
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Withholding of Lee Report Is Defended
FIGHT PATRIOT ACT II
Ashcroft Wants Stronger Patriot Act
Ashcroft Calls For Expanding Death Penalty To Terrorists
No Excuses From Ashcroft
Government Creates New Cybersecurity Office
Ashcroft Seeks More Power to Pursue Terror Suspects
Man Acquitted in Terror Case Says Co-Defendants Will Be Cleared
For enemy combatant, speaking with lawyer is impossible
Seeking the Roots of Terrorism
ENERGY AND OTHER
Senate Adds Rule to Energy Bill to Double Ethanol in Gasoline
Unions Back Research Plan for Energy
Oregon's Powerdale Hydroelectric Project to Shut Down
World marks environment day "dying for water"
Putin tells govt to get environment act together
USDA to Urge Greenhouse Gas Reduction
Plants Prospering From Climate Change
ACTIVISTS
'Admit your lies', former UN inspector Ritter tells US, Britain
Peace advocates in Egypt revive efforts
Bechtel getting flak over Iraq
Zimbabwe's Main Opposition Leader Arrested
U.N. Envoy Presses Myanmar to Release Dissident
U.N.'s Annan Presses for Suu Kyi Release
Greenpeace stages UK protest over Indonesian wood
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Earthquake hits Paducah
From: Hannah Burdine <stoples2002@yahoo.com>
Fri, 6 Jun 2003
Some of you may not know this, but there is a uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, and lots of aging, nuke-waste filled containers. Not only is there DU here, but also plutonium. Hannah
A minor earthquake occurred Fri Jun 6, 2003 at about 07:29:33 CDT (Jun 6, 2003 12:29:33 GMT). The event was 2.82 km ( 1.75 mi) west of Cunningham, KY (Carlisle). The magnitude was 4.5.
Origin Time: 2003/06/06 12:29:33.33
Magnitude: 3.7
Hypocenter: 36.90 deg latitude -88.92 deg longitude
Depth: 2.62 km
Number Picks: 30
Closest Station: 62 km
RMS: 0.33 sec
Gap: 140 deg
Quality: B
Error Ellipsoid, axis #1: azm> 123 dip> 10 len> 2.79 km axis #1: azm> 215 dip> 13 len> 2.44 km
This is a preliminary location and magnitude determined from data provided by the Central and Southeast U.S. Cooperative Seismic Network and by the U.S. Geological Survey. Magnitude and location may change slightly as more data become available.
Additional information on the CUSSN is available at: http://folkworm.ceri.memphis.edu/recenteqs
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted Uranium Weapons and Acute Post-War Health Effects
by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
Friday June 06, 2003
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/05/1613322_comment.php#1617905
An IPPNW Assessment
The US-led military coalition that fought the 1991 Gulf War is reported to have used about 300 tons of ammunition containing depleted uranium (DU) against Iraqi tanks and other armored vehicles. During the 1999 war in the Balkans, NATO forces used about 11 tons of DU in missiles that were fired into the former Yugoslavia [1]. DU weapons have military utility because the density and tensile strength of uranium (which is relatively cheap and abundant) give it unusual armor-piercing capabilities. Concerns about the potential health effects of DU weapons arise primarily from immediate and long term uranium contamination in the areas where they are used. On penetration, for example, about 20% of the DU burns spontaneously, creating a fine aerosol smoke of uranium oxide that can be easily inhaled and lodge itself in the lungs. Fragments of DU weapons are scattered around battlefields, and can become embedded as shrapnel in human and animal flesh.
In the months and years following both of these armed conflicts, a large number of soldiers, UN peacekeepers, and civilians have exhibited unexpected and unexplained health problems, including excess leukemias and other cancers, neurological disorders, birth defects, and a constellation of symptoms loosely gathered under the rubric "Gulf War Illnesses." Depleted uranium, because of its radioactivity and chemical toxicity, has been linked to these acute health effects in the press and in public forums. Some opponents of DU weapons have categorically asserted that exposure to depleted uranium is the direct cause of these excess cancers. US and NATO officials, citing the published research on the health effects of uranium, have dismissed DU as a potential cause of the acute health effects for which it has been blamed.
IPPNW deplores the use of depleted uranium weapons and supports the calls in the European Union and elsewhere for a ban on their use. We urge caution, however, in making categorical assertions or denials about health effects until systematic, independent, peer-reviewed studies of depleted uranium exposure have been conducted. The US government and NATO have an absolute obligation to provide independent, unbiased researchers with the funding, data, and access required to conduct such studies. The World Health Organization has requested $2 million as an immediate payment toward a four-year $20 million clinical study of DU health effects in Iraq and the Balkans. The US and NATO have an obligation to promptly and unconditionally fund the WHO's work in this area.
While the peer-reviewed studies of health effects from natural uranium exposure are weighted against the probability that DU exposure, in and of itself, is likely to have caused an increase in leukemias or other cancers in the relatively short time since it has been dispersed in the Balkans environment, the science is controversial and the possibility cannot be ruled out. The Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, which reports to the US Department of Defense, has itself stated that DU can pose a chemical toxicity and radiological hazard under specific conditions [2]. Moreover, any impurities that may have found their way into the DU munitions used in either the Gulf or the Balkans -- including plutonium, actinides, and the highly radioactive manufactured isotope U-236 [3] -- pose unquestionably serious health threats, and the extent to which at-risk populations may have been exposed to these substances must be studied promptly and thoroughly by unbiased investigators.
Allied soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and civilians were exposed to many other health hazards before, during, and after the Gulf War. These included multiple vaccines, insecticides, and chemical weapon protectives. Any chemical weapons released as a result of the bombing of Iraqi munitions-dumps would be an additional hazard (as would chemical weapon residues from the prior Iran-Iraq war). The petrochemical fires that raged for weeks at the conclusion of the war added to the toxic burden. In the former Yugoslavia, chemical factories were targeted and destroyed during NATO air strikes, and large amounts of toxic chemicals, some of them known carcinogens, were released. Risk factors can interact (e.g., smoking compounds the risk of radiation exposure among uranium miners).
The British Medical Journal, in a recent editorial, concluded that "the argument for uranium being the cause of leukaemia in peacekeeping forces is thin, notwithstanding the short latencies implied, even by the standards of haematological malignancies," and that, with regard to non-cancer illnesses, "no single candidate hazard...serves as its unifying explanation, depleted uranium included" [4]. To point to these other exposures as possible contributors to post-war health problems is not to exonerate DU weapons in the absence of independent clinical study of the populations that were actually exposed.
Depleted Uranium: The Facts in Brief Natural uranium is composed of three isotopes: U-238 (99.3%), U-235 (0.7%), and U-234 (0.006%). These isotopes decay at different rates, expressed in scientific parlance as half-lives. A shorter half-life means more intense radiation and, in general, greater potential to damage or destroy cells. The half-life of U-238 -- the time in which its radioactivity is reduced by half -- is 4.5 billion years; that of U-235 is 710 million years; and that of U-234 is 250 thousand years. For comparison, the half-life of plutonium -- which can be lethal in even microscopic amounts -- is 24,000 years [5].
Depleted uranium is the byproduct of a process known as uranium enrichment -- the manufacture of uranium with a concentration of highly radioactive U-235 for use in nuclear weapons and in nuclear power plants. DU, which has been depleted of its U-235 and U-234, is about 60% as radioactive as natural uranium. Most of that radiation -- about 95% -- is emitted as alpha particles that cannot penetrate the skin. A minute amount of beta and gamma radiation could strike deeper cell tissue were fine particles of DU inhaled or ingested, as they could easily be by any soldier or civilian in the vicinity of a recently exploded DU shell. Even low doses of low-level radiation can cause some damage to the DNA in living cells. Whether that damage is enough to significantly increase the risk of cancer and other acute health effects is a matter of much debate, and up until now there has been no conclusive evidence of adverse health effects from exposure to natural uranium. We cannot emphasize strongly enough, however, that an absence of evidence about health effects is not evidence that there are no health effects.
DU is no different from natural uranium in its chemical toxicity. It is a heavy metal that, in its soluble form, accumulates in the kidneys (the primary target organ for uranium) and that, in sufficient quantities, can increase the risk of renal damage. The scientific evidence to date suggests that ingestion of uranium, even in unusual amounts, does not by itself cause serious or enduring health problems due to chemical toxicity. Nevertheless, like all heavy metals, DU is a risk factor that cannot be casually dismissed.
Uranium Health Studies
Studies conducted over several decades have found that populations with well-above-average occupational exposure to inhaled or ingested uranium do not suffer from increased rates of the cancers most likely to be associated with radiation, nor do they exhibit the blood disorders that might be expected as a result of chemical toxicity. Other causes, such as radon exposure among uranium miners and mill workers, have been pinpointed for certain specific illnesses [6,7]), but these studies do not account for new experimental data suggesting a role for dust toxicity in the lung. The aerosol particles generated by DU weapons are in a very hard "ceramic" state, so are likely to be retained in the lung and its regional lymph nodes for a prolonged period, increasing the risk of cellular damage from alpha radiation. The main risk from internal radiation, whether the exposure is due to manufacturing processes or DU weapons, is from this inhaled dust.
As mentioned earlier, there is evidence that the DU munitions used in the Gulf war and in the Balkans were tainted with plutonium, U-236, and other substances far more intensely radioactive than U-238. Recent studies have pointed to the possiblility of genetic damage resulting from exposure to some forms of radiation emitted from particles such as those deposited by DU weapons [8]. Any such genomic effect, if substantiated, could point toward increased risk of cancer or leukemia in the lung or regional lymph nodes above the standard -- and controversial -- predictions of radiation protection models [9]. It is simply too early to say. Precisely for that reason, the health of military and civilian populations that have been exposed to DU in the Gulf and in the Balkans should be monitored closely in the years ahead.
What Should Be Done About DU Weapons?
While IPPNW generally concurs with the BMJ's assessment that the jury is still out on DU, and that the other hazards to which civilians and military personnel were exposed, individually and in combination, are themselves very likely causes of the kinds of post-war health problems from which civilians and military personnel have been suffering in the aftermath of these conflicts, we condemn the use of DU weapons and support the calls for a ban on their use.
A basic principle in radiation protection is that all exposures should be justified; that is, the benefit for those exposed should exceed the risk. This is the standard for medical radiography. The military utility of DU weapons for the users does not justify any added health risk for non-combatants, no matter how small. The precautionary principle states that in the absence of convincing proof that a substance or process is harmless, the presumption must be risk. This principle applies clearly to the use of DU weapons. Furthermore, DU weapons indiscriminately contaminate the places in which they are used, and the contamination persists long after the conclusion of hostilities, adding to the radioactive and toxic burden imposed upon civilians, wildlife, and ecosystems. From this perspective, DU weapons should be considered a form of ecological warfare prohibited by the Geneva Conventions [10].
DU weapons may already be illegal under international law and international humanitarian law, and this case is being made in compelling fashion by members of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), who have formed a working group to study this issue. The damage caused by DU weapons cannot be contained to "legal" fields of battle; they continue to act after the conclusion of hostilities; they are inhumane because they place the health of non-combatants, including children and future generations, at risk; and they cannot be used without unduly damaging the natural environment 11].
The fact that military authorities in both the US and NATO advise their own soldiers to take precautions when handling DU munitions and have prepared detailed training manuals and videos to ensure troop safety [12], while issuing blanket denials of health risks to the public, strikes us as hypocritical at the very least, and reinforces our judgment that these weapons should be withdrawn from service.
Whether or not DU weapons are ultimately shown to have the health effects for which they have been blamed, they are only one example of the continuing ways in which militaries pollute our planet. They are emblematic of the unacceptable costs of contemporary armed conflict to civilian populations, who were the predominant casualties of war in the 20th century, and are likely to remain so in the 21st. They are on the spectrum of indiscriminate and inhumane weapons that includes landmines and biological and chemical weapons, and that, at its most devastating end, includes tens of thousands of nuclear weapons that jeopardize all life on earth.
http://www.slmk.org/main/artiklar/du0102.html
add your comments http://sf.indymedia.org/comment.php?top_id=1613322
----
U.N. Presses Bush On Iraq
Return of Weapons Inspectors Urged
By Colum Lynch and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 6, 2003; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21815-2003Jun5?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, June 5 -- U.N. Security Council members called on the Bush administration today to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return to Iraq to certify whether it possessed secret biological and chemical weapons before the U.S.-led invasion.
The demand for renewed U.N. inspections, which was endorsed by an overwhelming majority of council members including Britain, the United States' closest military ally, came as the administration is facing charges by members of Congress and some intelligence analysts that it may have exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq to justify going to war.
It also reflected a growing consensus in the 15-nation council that the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), which carried out inspections between November and March, should test U.S. and British claims that Iraq continued to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. "The disarmament of Iraq must be verified and confirmed by UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency on the ground and in conjunction with the [U.S.-led military] coalition," French Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere told the Security Council, according to a copy of his speaking notes.
"We believe that UNMOVIC can continue to be a great help in the overall business of completing the disarmament of Iraq's WMD [weapons of mass destruction] programs," Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters after the meeting.
Hans Blix, executive chairman of the inspections agency, told the council that independent inspectors would have greater credibility than U.S. or British inspectors.
Blix said he could not verify claims by President Bush and senior U.S. officials that two trucks discovered in Iraq were mobile production plants for biological weapons. But he said Iraq apparently had violated its obligation to declare their existence to U.N. inspectors. "We will make absolutely no assessment without having seen them," he said.
U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte said that the Iraq Survey Group, which the Pentagon recently established to hunt for arms and other evidence of Iraqi crimes, is capable of rooting out Iraq's hidden weapons on its own and that the United States envisions no role for the U.N. inspectors in the foreseeable future.
The administration has agreed to permit the Vienna-based IAEA, which was responsible for inspecting Iraqi nuclear programs, to send in a seven-member team at the end of the week. It will survey the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, a nuclear storage site southeast of Baghdad.
The site, which contains several hundred metric tons of uranium oxide powder along with small quantities of low-enriched and depleted uranium, was unguarded and looted in the first 21/2 weeks of the war, and U.S. military teams have found high levels of radiation inside several buildings.
At a Pentagon briefing today on site conditions, defense officials said a search of the surrounding area by U.S. forces offering rewards of $3 to local residents had yielded more than 100 metal barrels and five radiological items that may have been stolen. But the officials said other material may still be missing.
Defense officials said the amount of materials found at the site exceeded the quantity that U.S. authorities had expected to find. That may reflect faulty prewar intelligence or the possibility that Iraq moved more radioactive material there before the war. In any case, the IAEA team will conduct its own survey and compare the results to the last inventory taken in December 2002, the officials said.
The United States agreed to let the IAEA team visit the Tuwaitha site only after repeated pleas from IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei, who feared a radiological and humanitarian emergency after news reports of possible radiation sickness among local residents. Defense officials today stressed that the visit did not set a precedent for other U.N. weapons inspectors to return to Iraq, citing concerns about the ability of U.S. forces to ensure the safety of and provide logistical support to other teams.
Graham reported from Washington.
-------- iran
U.N. Says Iran Not Complying on Nuke Info
June 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iran has not fully disclosed the extent of its atomic program to the U.N. nuclear agency as required by international treaty, the agency said Friday as its inspectors left for Tehran.
The State Department found the International Atomic Energy Agency report and Iran's nuclear program deeply troubling, department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.
The long-awaited report comes 10 days before the IAEA meets to discuss Iran's programs. The United States wants the IAEA to declare Iran in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at the June 16 session.
A diplomat from an IAEA member country said the report indicated that Iran failed to declare the import of some nuclear material and its subsequent processing.
Another diplomat said Iran agreed to accept the inspection team to defuse accusations it was working on a nuclear program. Both diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity.
Still, the report was critical.
``Iran has failed to meet its obligations under its safeguards agreement with respect to the reporting of nuclear material, the subsequent processing and use of that material and the declaration of facilities where that material was stored and processed,'' the first diplomat quoted the report as saying.
Iran, however, has said it is complying with IAEA rules and has no plans to make a bomb.
In Washington, Boucher refused to detail what the United States found unsettling in the report, but said the administration would work closely with IAEA board members to decide what to do next. One option would be to take the issue to the United Nations by asking for Security Council action.
``We think the report, and Iran's programs themselves, are deeply troubling and need to be studied carefully by all members'' of the IAEA, Boucher said.
The report follows a February visit to Iran by Mohammed ElBaradei, the director-general of the IAEA. His tour of Iran's nuclear facilities was intended to ensure that its nuclear industry was limited to peaceful, civilian purposes and the facilities were safe.
ElBaradei's visit included a tour of the incomplete nuclear plant in Natanz, about 200 miles south of Tehran. Diplomats accompanying him at the time said he was taken aback by the advanced stage of a project there using hundreds of centrifuges to enrich uranium.
A senior U.S. administration official recently said on condition of anonymity that the technology was invented by URENCO, a British-German-Dutch consortium, but suggested it was not provided through the firm but instead was stolen and then sold to Iran.
Gustav Meyer-Kretschmer, a URENCO official in Germany, said, ``We have no business relations with Iran, and we never did.''
----
Iran says ready to sign protocol on nuke fuel return with Russia
Payvand's Iran News,
6/6/03
(AFP)
http://www.payvand.com/news/03/jun/1034.html
Iran's Ambassador to Russia Gholam-Reza Shafe said in Moscow on Thursday that Tehran is ready to sign an additional protocol with Russia on the return of nuclear fuel from the Bushehr power plant, IRNA reported.
Shafei told reporters that Iran is currently prepared for signing the protocol, stressing however that Russia had reportedly developed some legal problems concerning the ecological aspects of the return of spent nuclear fuel.
He said the text of the document has already been agreed on by the two sides.
"Iran's signing the protocol never conveys its fear and worry," Shafei stressed. "Rather it manifests Tehran's good-will toward the international community."
He added that Iran-Russia cooperation in various enterprises, including the nuclear technology, embraces international laws, and rejected reports that Russian officials are worried about Tehran-Moscow nuclear cooperation.
Shafei confirmed that Iran has uranium deposits, stressing though that the issue was nothing new.
"There are deposits of uranium in Iran. The country has built uranium enrichment and heavy water production facilities, but they have produced nothing yet," he said.
Shafei further stressed that Iran's facilities in that connection are closely supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Elsewhere in his remarks, the Iranian envoy said that Tehran intends to use the Russian nuclear fuel for a period of ten years over the first phase of the Bushehr Plant, stressing that Iran is currently developing the early stages to attain the capability to produce the fuel.
----
Russia to send nuclear fuel to Iran - Itar-Tass
REUTERS RUSSIA:
June 6, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21068/story.htm
MOSCOW - A foreign ministry official said Russia would supply Iran with fuel for a nuclear reactor, whether or not Tehran signs an additional protocol with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Itar-Tass news agency reported yesterday.
"We will supply nuclear fuel for Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant even if Iran does not sign a protocol on additional guarantees with the IAEA," ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko was quoted by Tass as saying.
The comments were at odds with a statement to Britain's House of Commons by Prime Minister Tony Blair in which he said Russian President Vladimir Putin had promised to provide no fuel until the protocol was signed.
U.S. officials question why the oil-and gas-rich Islamic republic would be investing in power-generating reactors and suggest Iran may be trying to develop a nuclear weapons programme.
Putin told reporters at the G8 summit this week in the French resort of Evian that Russia would pursue its nuclear programme, making no mention of any suspension of equipment or supplies.
But he also said the nuclear plant being built at Bushehr in southern Iran had to meet all requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. The IAEA is to discuss the Iranian nuclear programme this month.
In London, a spokesman for Blair said the prime minister stood by what he had told parliament on Tuesday.
He said Putin made the comments at Evian "during the discussion on weapons of mass destruction and non-proliferation. He said what the prime minister said he said".
Construction of the reactor at Bushehr is to be completed later this year, with the plant due to come on stream next year. Russia has yet to send any fuel to Iran.
-------- iraq / inspections
Questions loom regarding whereabouts of WMDs
June 6 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/06/1054700371778.html
George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard still don't have their "smoking gun".
Two months after toppling Saddam Hussein, the western coalition leaders remain unable to point to Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - weapons they used to justify their invasion.
The absence of hard evidence raises doubts about the reliability of intelligence data, as well as the propriety of administrations using it to further their own ends.
It also highlights how Australia's war commitment relied at least partially on "second-hand" data - not only questionable but from sources other than its own.
The crushing swiftness and "cleanness" of the war - three weeks and not a single Australian casualty - has obscured the main reason it was fought in the first place.
It may have terminated one of the world's most brutal regimes, but that was not why John Howard went in.
He sent 2000 troops primarily to rid Iraq of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, to prevent the "ultimate nightmare" of such WMDs falling into the hands of terrorists.
"That, more than anything else, is the reason why we have taken the stance we have," he said when outlining his justification for war a week before President Bush gave the nod.
Mr Howard cited Australia's strategic alliance with the US as a secondary factor, along with Saddam's appalling human rights record.
It's true he condemned an Iraqi regime steeped in torture, rape and genocide, but he stressed his government's policy was to disarm rather than oust Saddam.
Deputy US Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has admitted that "for bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, WMD, because it was the one everyone could agree on" to publicly justify the war.
But where are the WMDs?
Some say they never existed, some say they did but were destroyed just before the war, others that they still exist but were hidden and will be found soon.
In the hands of skilful politicians, meanwhile, WMDs have segued into liberating an oppressed people and toppling a murderous tyrant.
Some observers blame politicians for altering the justification retrospectively, others for taking creative liberties with the intelligence.
Britain's claim that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack at 45 minutes notice was allegedly made on the instructions of officials in Blair's office, a claim the government has denied.
Germany's foreign minister told Blair that if no WMDs were found he should "admit he has misused intelligence reports and has misled world opinion".
Similar concerns have been raised in the US, with claims the Pentagon "hyped up" data which at best amounted to circumstantial evidence.
Secretary of State Colin Powell reportedly expressed serious doubts about the information and told his British counterpart he hoped it would not "explode in their faces".
Chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix, in his outgoing address to the UN this week, said that long lists of suspect weapons components remained unaccounted for "but it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for."
Australia, which relied mainly on US and British intelligence, made what Defence Minister Robert Hill called the "right decision on the basis of the information that was available to us".
But he admitted flawed intelligence may have influenced Canberra's decision.
Which raises the possibility that Australia may have waged war on an entirely false premise.
The foreign affairs department says it could take several months to properly examine the 1,000 suspected weapons sites in Iraq.
A British inquiry, meanwhile, will investigate what one MP called "probably the biggest issue for almost a generation where parliament must be seen to be asserting itself".
US senators are calling for an inquiry of their own, some fearing a scandal of Watergate proportions.
Bob Graham, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said failure to find WMDs would indicate "a very serious intelligence failure, or an attempt to keep the American people in the dark by manipulating that intelligence information".
The issue carries clear implications for the operation of supposedly open, accountable western democracies.
The US, British and Australian publics might well accept Saddam's overthrow even without WMDs - a prospect some observers find even more worrying.
AAP
----
Health crisis looms over looted Iraqi nuclear plant
06 June 2003
AP
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=412943
A team of UN nuclear experts arrived in Baghdad today to begin a a growing crisis at Iraq's largest nuclear facility, left unguarded by American troops during the early days of the war and then looted by villagers.
Iraqi scientists who have surveyed the damage at the Tuwaitha plant said looters left behind piles of uranium and spilled radioactive materials, stealing only the containers holding the amterial.
The scientists cemented over the spilled materials to prevent leakage or further exposure to residents in the area.
The United States tried to keep the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) out of post-war Iraq. But it reluctantly agreed to allow the agency's return under pressure from the arms-control community, which was concerned about Tuwaitha's safety and American capability to secure the area and account for its contents.
Dr Hamed Al-Bahili, an Iraqi nuclear scientist who helped design and open Tuwaitha in 1968, was one of the first on the scene after fleeing Iraqi troops abandoned the site.
Raising his hand two inches above the linoleum floor in his living room, he said: "The uranium was all over the floor - all over the ground outside. Piles of it. We poured cement over it inside the rooms because there was no other way to handle it."
Mr Al-Bahili said he pleaded with impoverished villagers in the area not to touch the blue barrels the IAEA had used to store the uranium, "but there were thousands of people - they just kept coming."
Returning to Baghdad, he found Iraqi police who passed on his description of the scene and dangers to advancing American troops.
Since then, Mr Al-Bahili has met twice with U.S. military officials, whom he described as eager to help resolve the situation.
"They sent troops," he said, "but it was already too late."
US troops involved in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction said recently that at least 20 per cent of the barrels containing low-grade or natural uranium appeared to be gone.
IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said some 3,000 barrels were stored there under the agency's watch. Last week, American troops accompanied by Iraqi health workers ordered residents from the surrounding villages to sell back barrels for $3 each. Pentagon officials said that more than 100 barrels had been retrieved.
Ms Fleming said the IAEA would be permitted to examine its barrels. The rest of the mission, however, is restricted to the Tuwaitha site.
----
U.S. limits search by Vienna nuke team
June 06, 2003
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030605-094159-6697r.htm
BAGHDAD - U.S. forces in Iraq have placed limits on a seven-member team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, confining it to a single nuclear-storage site south of Baghdad.
The team is to spend two weeks, beginning tomorrow, investigating pilferage at the Al-Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, where thieves are believed to have stolen uranium and possibly radioactive isotopes used in hospitals, industry and research.
Pentagon officials said yesterday the IAEA visit is a one-time event to enforce the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, not a weapons inspection that might set a precedent for future U.N. searches for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
U.S. troops and weapons experts will accompany the IAEA officials wherever they go, an arrangement the Pentagon officials said was for safety.
U.S. officials compiling an inventory of a looted Iraqi nuclear site found more radioactive material than had been catalogued in the past by the IAEA.
It's not clear whether the discovery means U.S. information was wrong or the Iraqis had moved material to the Tuwaitha site before the war, said three top military and defense officials who briefed reporters in Washington on the condition of anonymity.
The Associated Press reported from Washington yesterday that U.S. officials had recovered more than 100 metal storage barrels thought to be stolen from the site.
Officials said none of the people who returned the barrels in exchange for a $3 reward showed elevated levels of radiation.
An official with the Vienna, Austria-based IAEA said the priority of the team would be to determine how much material is missing.
"They will then work to recapture as much as they can, repackage and reseal it, and secure the facility," said the official, who asked not to be named.
Underscoring the tension of the visit, the IAEA official added that no findings would be released in Baghdad, and that all media inquiries would be referred to the agency's Vienna headquarters.
More than 500 tons of natural uranium and 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium were stored at Al-Tuwaitha.
The facility also has radioactive isotopes such as cesium, cobalt and strontium.
The looting has raised the possibility that terrorist groups could have obtained material for a radiological "dirty bomb" from the site. None of the material at Al-Tuwaitha was of high enough quality to make a nuclear bomb.
The material in question was placed under protective IAEA seal in 1991, and has been undisturbed for the past 12 years.
IAEA experts are to verify the seals annually, as they did in February, just before the U.S.-led coalition bombing began.
This week's visit grows out of Iraq's signature on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, rather than the more aggressive inspections authorized by the U.N. Security Council late last year.
A separate team of medical experts sent by the Pentagon is to arrive in Baghdad next week to study people within a three-mile radius of the site.
Al-Tuwaitha had obviously been picked over by thieves. The fence and 12-foot concrete wall around the three storage buildings for radioactive material showed huge gaps and U.S. Marines found the main gate open when they arrived April 7.
Inside, some radioactive material had been scattered around. Radioactivity measurements inside the three buildings found levels two to 10 times above normal, a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad said, joining the Pentagon news briefing via a satellite link.
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International Inspection of Iraqi Nuclear Facility Set To Begin
(U.S. military says core of Tuwaitha has been secure since April 7)
By Jacquelyn S. Porth Washington File Security Affairs Writer
Friday, 6 June 2003, 11:51 am
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0306/S00086.htm
Washington -- A senior U.S. defense official says that the core of the Iraqi nuclear facility at Tuwaitha has been secure since April 7, and U.S. military forces will now support an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team that will begin inspections there on June 7.
Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon June 5, the official said the IAEA inspection to inventory nuclear materials and assess conditions at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center would likely take several weeks to complete. The seven-member IAEA team is already in Kuwait and on June 6 will be flown to Iraq and given briefings and protective gear before beginning work.
The Iraqi facility, which was last inspected by the IAEA in December 2002, is located about 20 kilometers southeast of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. Iraqi security for the nuclear facility ended in March of this year, leaving the facility unguarded until the U.S. Marines arrived on April 7.
A U.S. military official, who participated in the June 5 Pentagon briefing via video-teleconference from Baghdad, said the Marines found the property in disarray when they arrived. He said the front gate of Tuwaitha was open, a wall in the rear of the facility had been breached and there were no seals on the exterior doors of any of the three buildings.
Since U.S. forces took control of the facility, the official said, they have taken steps "to mitigate the risks" to themselves, local civilians and the environment. He also said an Iraqi-American team was organized in May to visit two local villages and repurchase materials that may have been removed from Tuwaitha. For the cost of $3.00 per item, the team was able to buy back 100 barrels of various sizes and in varying conditions as well as five radioactive sources, including a moisture density gauge for measuring cesium.
The U.S. officials, who briefed reporters on condition that they not be identified, discussed the pending IAEA mission and the support the military will be providing to the team as well as some past history of the nuclear facility. They indicated that the U.S. military will supply food, water, shelter, security and medical care for the IAEA team as well as transportation that could include forklifts.
The IAEA inspection will take place "under the protection and auspices of coalition forces," one of the officials said, and those forces "will accompany the IAEA at all times." In addition, the IAEA will receive technical assistance from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the U.S. Army Nuclear Chemical Agency.
After the IAEA completes its inventory it will repackage any nuclear-related materials -- that could include low-enriched or depleted uranium and sources of non-fissile radioisotopes -- and reseal safeguard rooms, buildings and containers, with coalition assistance as needed.
The IAEA inspection is not taking place according to authority provided by United Nations Security Council resolutions, the official noted, "and does not set any precedent for future IAEA involvement in Iraq." It is occurring under the nuclear safeguards agreement Iraq signed previously with the IAEA. Iraq signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 and ratified it the following year.
The briefers were questioned closely about the security gap at Tuwaitha that occurred during late March and early April and the possibility that nuclear material might have been transported outside Iraq. While giving a chronology of activity that occurred at Tuwaitha, the official speaking from Baghdad said Iraqi Army forces deserted their post around March 10 and civilian guards departed around March 20.
The Marines arrived April 7 and turned the facility over to U.S. Army control on April 20, he said, adding that there has been no unauthorized activity at any of the three core buildings at Tuwaitha.
One of the problems with securing the site fully is its vast size. The entire property measures around 9,200 hectares. U.S. Army patrols apprehend any intruders and put them to work temporarily, the official said, and they are put in confinement for repeated intrusions. U.S. forces have also recruited and begun training a 100-person Iraqi guard force that will be responsible eventually for facility security.
U.S. military representatives first began meeting with Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) scientists who had worked at Tuwaitha on April 18 "to mitigate any radiological hazards" that they could, the official said. A joint U.S.-Iraqi team has already repaired and sealed damaged buildings.
A DTRA technical assessment and inventory was completed on May 20 and determined that the amount of materials found there "exceeds the quantity of materials that we had assessed would be present." But the official indicated that the IAEA review will be an official inventory.
While U.S. personnel found a small amount of uranium on the ground outside one of the on-site buildings early on, the official said it was soon returned and secured. "And so we have no evidence that anything has been stolen at this point," he added.
Representatives of the Coalition Provisional Authority have been meeting weekly with IAEC experts, the official said, and have come up with a plan to make improvements at Tuwaitha. The IAEC, Iraqi Health Ministry representatives and members of the U.S. Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine will soon assess possible health risks to soldiers who have been working at the facility as well as Iraqi civilians within five kilometers of Tuwaitha.
----
U.N. nuclear experts back in Iraq
Officials will try to secure looted facility near Baghdad
Friday, June 6, 2003
(CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/06/06/sprj.irq.main/
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A small team from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived Friday in Iraq to assess damage to a nuclear research center looted after the war.
The experts from the U.N. nuclear body are on their first visit since the end of the U.S-led war, but the team will not conduct weapons inspections, spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.
Residents of villages surrounding the Tuwaitha nuclear facility, about six miles (10 kilometers) south of Baghdad, said they used drums from the site to hold water. The drums had contained uranium oxide, or yellowcake, which the villagers said was dumped on the ground.
Yellowcake is highly toxic if ingested but gives off only low levels of radioactivity. Workers poured concrete over piles of yellowcake to contain it.
"We will determine how much of it was looted, get control of as much as we can, put our seals on it, secure the facility and come home," Gwozdecky said. "We have in the last month or more sounded the alarm that these radioactive materials shouldn't be on the loose."
The U.N. agency has said there is not enough nuclear material at Tuwaitha for a nuclear bomb. But substances there could be used for a "dirty bomb," made by combining conventional explosives with radioactive material. U.S. soldiers wounded
U.S. forces continue to face pockets of resistance in Iraq.
In Baghdad, two men, armed with pistols, wounded two U.S. soldiers guarding a bank in the center of the Iraqi capital, U.S. Central Command said.
Soldiers returned fire, killing one of the assailants, a Central Command statement said. The other escaped. The motive of the attack is unknown.
Officials also said a U.S. soldier was killed and five wounded Thursday in the central city of Fallujah, a hotbed of violence.
An unknown assailant fired a rocket-propelled grenade at soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division in Fallujah, which is 43 miles (about 70 kilometers) west of Baghdad.
In addition, two soldiers were killed and nine wounded in a firefight last week with hostile forces in Fallujah. On May 21, at least two Iraqis were killed when gunmen opened fire on a U.S. patrol in the city center with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles.
At the end of April and the beginning of May, 17 Iraqi civilians were killed in three days of clashes with U.S. troops. Seven U.S. soldiers were wounded. Questions about weapons
In Washington, President Bush is facing growing criticism and calls for congressional hearings about his administration's prewar assertions on the threat posed by Iraq.
Bush vowed Thursday to "reveal the truth" about what he has described as former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
Speaking to troops in Qatar, Bush suggested it shouldn't be surprising that no such weapons have been found. (Full story)
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that inspectors found no evidence before the March invasion that Iraq had reconstituted its chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs.
But he also said that the Iraqi regime was unable to account for chemical or biological weapons it claimed to have destroyed and weapons inspectors couldn't clear up discrepancies before leaving Baghdad in advance of the invasion. (Full story)
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix on evidence of weapons of mass destruction: "I don't think I'd be surprised if they found it."
• A U.S. Navy "Seabee" was killed and one was wounded Thursday in an explosion in Kut, according to Pentagon officials. The seaman was killed while working on a construction site and operating heavy equipment when either a land mine or unexploded ordnance detonated under the vehicle, a Pentagon official said. Officials say they believe the incident was not a hostile act. Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, is under Marine control.
• Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz experienced chest pains this week and may have suffered a mild heart attack while in custody, U.S. officials said Thursday. Aziz, who has a history of heart problems, has received medical treatment for his condition since surrendering to the U.S. military in April, officials said.
• A former Iraqi general who was believed killed in an April airstrike on his Basra home may be alive, senior Pentagon officials said. Intelligence from Iraqi detainees and other sources have led U.S. officials to change the status of Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majeed from "believed killed" to "unknown" on the U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis. Al-Majeed, a cousin of Saddam's, was given the moniker "Chemical Ali" because he is alleged to have ordered a deadly chemical weapons attack on Kurds in 1988. (Flash gallery: Iraq's most-wanted)
• A senior Iraqi officer on active duty told the British government that Iraq was capable of firing chemical or biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice if Saddam gave the order, the Financial Times reported Thursday. Government officials told the newspaper they tried to find a second source for the information but were unable to do so. They relied on the information and distributed it because the official was a senior figure in Saddam's regime, not a defector, the British publication said.
• In response to a news report, the British Home Office said Thursday it would not look favorably on an application to grant asylum to two of Saddam's daughters. A newspaper quoted a cousin, who lives in Leeds, as saying the women want to come to England. The Home Office said it had received no formal application and had "no evidence suggesting that Saddam Hussein's daughters would seek asylum in Britain." (Full story)
CNN Producer Bruce Conover contributed to this report.
----
For the first time since the war started: UN nuclear experts arrive in Iraq
06-06-2003,
(Albawaba.com)
http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=251055&lang=e&dir=news
A small team of U.N. nuclear experts arrived in Baghdad on Friday to start a damage assessment at Iraq's biggest nuclear facility, left unguarded by American forces during the early days of the war and then pillaged by villagers.
The arrival of the team marked the first time since the Iraq war began that representatives from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear agency, returned to the country.
Iraqi scientists who have surveyed the damage at the Tuwaitha plant said looters left behind piles of uranium and spilled radioactive materials, AP reported.
The IAEA experts returned to Iraq despite US efforts to keep them out. But, U.S. military commanders acknowledged earlier this week that they were unequipped to handle the nuclear site.
"I know that the Tuwaitha facility is larger than the assets we have now in country to deal with it," said Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq.
Thus, the Pentagon limited the number of IAEA staff to seven and said the assessment would have to be completed within two weeks.
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Blix: Better chances exist now in Iraq to find out the truth on weapons programs
06-06-2003
(Albawaba.com)
http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=251038&lang=e&dir=news
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Thursday the chances of discovering whether Iraq destroyed or concealed all illegal weapons are much better now because of "the new environment in Iraq."
Blix appeared before the U.N. Security Council to present his final report on the search for chemical and biological weapons, with his inspection teams barred from returning to Iraq by the United States.
"I trust that in the new environment in Iraq, in which there is full access and cooperation, and in which knowledgeable witnesses should no longer be inhibited to reveal what they know, it should be possible to establish the truth we all want to know," Blix said, according to AP.
Speaking to reporters later, he said any inspectors working "under an occupation of a few foreign states cannot have the same credibility internationally as international inspectors would." Blix warned that "it is not justified to jump to the conclusion" that Iraq possesses nuclear, chemical or biological weapons just because there is a long list of outstanding questions about its weapons programs.
Blix made clear his inspectors were ready to resume work, to confirm any findings since their departure just before the war began in March and to continue monitoring Iraq's weapons programs.
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Blix: America jumped to a conclusion over weapons
Weapons inspector was 'disappointed' with quality of US and British intelligence
By Anne Penketh
06 June 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=412792
Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, said yesterday that it was "not justified to jump to the conclusion" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction simply because Saddam Hussein's regime had failed to account for missing arms.
He also said he was "disappointed" at the quality of the intelligence he received from the US and Britain before the war.
He later told BBC News 24: "We went to a great many sites that were given to us by intelligence, and only in three cases did we find anything - and they did not relate to weapons of mass destruction.
"That shook me a bit, I must say. I was impressed by that because we had been told that they would give the best intelligence they had, so I thought: 'My God, if this is the best intelligence they had and we find nothing, what about the rest?"'Mr Blix said.
His parting shot to the UN Security Council will bolster the anti-war camp, which believed the Iraqi threat did not justify military action.
His comments were interpreted in London as an implicit criticism of the spin by politicians who, amid the furore over Iraqi weapons in recent days, have pointed to his reports to as the original justification for the war.
The Government already stands accused of having "sexed up" intelligence reports to produce its report last September which claimed that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.
Tony Blair and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, used to reel off figures from Mr Blix's reports to the Security Council to accuse Iraq of holding 8.5 tons of anthrax, 3.9 tons of deadly VX nerve gas, 6,500 chemical bombs and other banned armaments. The Government argued that military action had to be taken because of the "unique threat" posed by the Saddam's weapons arsenal which they said could end up in the hands of terrorists.
Peter Kilfoyle, the former defence minister, said that Mr Blix's intervention would further weaken the Government's case over weapons of mass destruction and add to uncertainty as to whether they existed. "This is going to go on and on and build up and build up it would have been sensible in my view to have had an independent inquiry," he said.
In New York, the British ambassador to the UN, Jeremy Greenstock, said: "We have jumped to no conclusions."
Mr Blix stressed yesterday that his weapons inspectors had " not at any time during the inspections in Iraq found evidence of the continuation or resumption of programmes of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed items - whether from pre-1991 or later. He added: "As I have noted before, this does not necessarily mean that such items could not exist. They might - there remain long lists of items unaccounted for - but it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for."
Mr Blix was yesterday briefing the 15 ambassadors of the UN Security Council on his final regular report before he retires at the end of the month. The ambassadors went into closed session after the Swedish diplomat's presentation, covering the last three months since the inspectors were withdrawn ahead.
Mr Blix expressed the hope that now Saddam was gone, "it should be possible to establish the truth we all want to know". He also said that his inspectors were ready to return to Iraq. The Bush administration, which made a reluctant approach to the UN before launching military action without UN authorisation, is so dismissive of Mr Blix and his weapons experts that it has sent its own teams into Iraq to search for weapons. So far there have been no confirmed discoveries of any weapons of mass destruction, despite visits to 230 suspected sites over the past 11 weeks.
The US administration has also expressed frustration that scientific aides to Saddam now in US custody are continuing to stick to official denials about weapons of mass destruction. Mr Blix noted that neither the former United Nations Special Commission (Unscom) weapons inspectors, who left Iraq in 1998, nor his own UN monitoring team that succeeded Unscom, had made "significant finds of weapons".
He said: "The lack of finds could be because the items were unilaterally destroyed by the Iraqi authorities or else because they were effectively concealed by them."
Iraq consistently argued that it no longer held any biological or chemical weapons, or ballistic missiles capable of hitting its neighbours.
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US, British spy data on Iraq left UN arms chief disappointed
LONDON (AFP)
Jun 06, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030606104332.90vo79jb.html
Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix expressed disappointment Friday at the quality of intelligence his team got from Washington and London as it scrambled to uncover Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the weeks leading up to war.
In an interview broadcast a day after his swansong briefing to the UN Security Council in New York, Blix told BBC television that, in the run-up to the US-led war to oust Saddam Hussein, his inspectors were promised the best US and British information available.
But he added: "Only in three of those cases did we find anything at all, and in none of these cases were there any weapons of mass destruction -- and that shook me a bit, I must say."
"I thought, 'My God, if this is the best intelligence they have and we find nothing, what about the rest?'"
Blix's remarks added to a furore in Britain over whether Prime Minister Tony Blair's staff embellished a dossier last September on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction so as to beef up the case for military action.
Blair strongly denies the charge, and has told parliament's intelligence and security committee to clear the air, as a US-led team deploys in Iraq this weekend to dig up evidence of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
On Friday, BBC radio quoted a source "close to British intelligence" that the government's Joint Intelligence Committee was asked "six or eight times" to redraft the dossier before it was made public.
It was the public broadcaster which aired the original allegation: that the dossier's claim that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons in just 45 minutes was inserted at Downing Street's behest over the reservations of senior intelligence figures.
On Thursday, in what was likely his final report to the Security Council before he retires, Blix said "there remain long lists of items unaccounted for" among the weapons programs that Iraq claimed to have abandoned more than a decade earlier under UN pressure.
"But it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for," he added.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, Blix cast doubt on the authority of the US and British experts who will be resuming the hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
"I do not want to question the integrity or the professionalism of the inspectors of the coalition," he said.
"But anybody who functions under an army of occupation cannot have the same credibility as an independent inspector."
The former Swedish foreign minister said he felt "disappointed" at the way the United States and Britain started the war without letting his UN Monitoring and Verification Commission (UNMOVIC) finish its work.
Since the fall of Baghdad on April 9, the coalition partners have failed to produce hard evidence of the weapons programs that were the official reason for their invasion.
In Geneva, former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, an outspoken critic of the war, was quoted as urging Washington and London to "acknowledge their lies" about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.
Speaking to the French-language Swiss newspaper Le Temps, Ritter said Saddam's regime could not have destroyed all its weapons of mass destruction "without leaving traces."
He challenged Blair and US President George W. Bush "to explain frankly and honestly why they went to war.... If it was a noble crusade to free the world of a mad dictator, they should say so."
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Blix Questions Credibility Of U.S.-British Inspectors
June 6
(IslamOnline.net & News Agencies)
http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2003-06/06/article04.shtml
UNITED NATIONS - Chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix on Thursday, June5 , cast doubt on the authority of the U.S.-British experts searching for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, as a U.S. Senator welcomed calls for a congressional probe into U.S. troops' not having found WMD in Iraq and called into question President George W. Bush's "truthfulness" on the matter.
"I do not want to question the integrity or the professionalism of the inspectors of the coalition, but anybody who functions under an army of occupation cannot have the same credibility as an independent inspector," Blix told reporters after addressing the U.N. Security Council.
The former Swedish foreign minister admitted that he felt "disappointed" at the way the United States and Britain started the war without letting his U.N. Monitoring and Verification Commission finish its work.
The United States and Britain has refused to let U.N. inspectors back into Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein on April9 .
But they have been unable to produce evidence of the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs they used to justify the invasion and have sent hundreds of "extra experts" to Iraq to step up the hunt.
After failing to locate or even find a solid evidence that alleged WMD exist, the group directing all known U.S. search efforts in Iraq are ready to leave, a leading U.S. paper reported on Sunday, May11 .
Blix gave what he predicted would be his final report on Iraq to the Security Council. The75 -year-old official is expected to stand down at the end of the month.
He told council members "there remain long lists of items unaccounted for" in the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs which Iraq claimed to have dismantled more than a decade ago.
"But it is not justified to jump to the conclusion that something exists just because it is unaccounted for," he said adding that the U.N. Monitoring and Verification Commission should still have a role in Iraq.
The UNMOVIC chairman was asked by reporters whether he felt betrayed by the U.S. decision to start the war while inspections were still going.
"Betrayal is not the right word," he replied. "I felt some disappointment, but I felt that in some months we could have come further."
He said it was "a business that was not finished."
"It is important to retain the view we all want to see the truth on the situation in Iraq. We wish the inspectors and the people who are there the best of luck. They have not found very much so far."
Blix also expressed the hope that UNMOVIC would be used in other places apart from Iraq. He said members of the Security Council shared his hopes.
"We also discussed the potential use of a body like UNMOVIC which has trained inspectors and has capabilities in the area of biology and missiles which no other organization has at the present time," he declared.
"Truthfulness" Of U.S. President On The Line
Rumsfeld insisted the intelligence was "good," and promised that Powell's testimony "will be proved right"
Senator Robert Byrd -- one of the most outspoken critics of U.S. policy in Iraq -- welcomed calls Thursday for a congressional probe into U.S. troops' not having found weapons of mass destruction there, and called into question President George W. Bush's "truthfulness" on the matter.
"What amazes me is that the president himself is not clamoring for an investigation," Byrd said from the floor of the Senate.
"It is his truthfulness that is being questioned. It is his integrity that is on the line," the West Virginia Democrat said.
"Yet he has raised no question, expressed no curiosity, about the strange turn of events in Iraq -- expressed no anger at the possibility that he might have been misled."
"How is it that the president who was so adamant about the dangers of WMD, has expressed no concern about the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?" Byrd said.
'Good'
Nevertheless, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted the intelligence was "good," and promised Thursday that Powell's testimony "will be proved right."
U.S. pre-war intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was "good," Rumsfeld insisted Thursday after closed-door talks with US congressmen.
With the U.S. failure to come up with any evidence of Iraq 's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the main pretext of the invasion, Rumsfeld said on Tuesday, May27 , that Iraq might have destroyed its WMD before the war.
Congressional panels, including the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, are to hold hearings to clarify the Iraqi WMD mystery and also to establish whether there had been political pressure on CIA analysts, as the press has alleged.
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Row over Iraq's weapons grows
06 June 2003
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/world/newsid_2968000/2968196.stm
The man in charge of finding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has criticised the US and UK governments.
Dr Hans Blix said the secret info they gave didn't help him find any evidence that Saddam Hussein was developing illegal weapons.
There's now a growing row about whether there was actually enough proof to go to war with Iraq.
Still searching
A new American-led team's just arrived to hunt for weapons.
Dr Blix said his team went to the places which were supposed to contain weapons - but they found nothing.
'Disappointed'
He told the BBC he was disappointed with the information provided by US and British officials.
US president, George W Bush "Only in three of those cases did we find anything at all, and in none of the cases were there any weapons of mass destruction," he said.
Dr Blix, who is retiring from his job next month, said he still wasn't sure whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The US has defended the information it provided.
-------- japan
Japan's war policy upsets neighbours
June 6 2003
The Age (Australia)
By Shane Green Japan Correspondent Tokyo
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/05/1054700335057.html
South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun has become the first Asian leader to express uneasiness over Japan's new war contingency legislation, saying Tokyo should have consulted its neighbours first.
On the eve of his state visit to Japan today, Mr Roh has reportedly told Japanese journalists of his concern.
"Given the sensitive nature of the matter, Japan should have consulted with China and other neighbouring countries and should have explained how important the issue is domestically," he said.
"We can say that it is regrettable that Japan didn't do so."
The lower house of Japan's national Parliament recently passed bills which give Tokyo new powers to deploy the country's defence forces in the event of an attack on Japan.
The legislation was first mooted 30 years ago, but was shelved because it was argued it would violate Japan's war-renouncing constitution, adopted after 1945.
But the threat posed by North Korea and international terrorism has enabled the Government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to win opposition support for the changes. The move is part of a broader shift to a more aggressive defence position by Tokyo.
South Korea is particularly sensitive to such a shift because it suffered heavily at the hands of an aggressive Imperial Japan between 1910 and 1945.
Old wounds have also been reopened in the lead-up to Mr Roh's visit, by comments of a senior Japanese ruling-party politician, Taro Aso - trying to justify Imperial Japan's practice of forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese names.
Mr Aso, regarded as a potential prime minister, said Koreans voluntarily adopted Japanese names so they could get work.
The comments caused deep offence in South Korea, and Mr Aso was forced to apologise to South Koreans "for having hurt their feelings".
President Roh, in comments reported by the Korea Herald, said that he would "express our position clearly", but believed exchanges with Japan should continue.
These issues aside, the visit by Mr Roh will be a chance for South Korea and Japan to step up pressure on North Korea over its nuclear arms program.
-------- korea
U.S. Troops Will Leave Korean DMZ
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 6, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21319-2003Jun5?language=printer
TOKYO, June 5 -- U.S. troops will withdraw from the tense Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea in a phased redeployment, bringing an end to 50 years of guard duty that began at the end of the Korean War, officials said today.
A joint statement by U.S. and South Korean officials said American troops will be pulled back to positions at least 75 miles from the DMZ, and will abandon a large base they occupy in downtown Seoul. The move from the DMZ will free about 18,000 U.S. troops to be more mobile, and they will be replaced by soldiers in a modernized South Korean army, officials said.
No precise schedule has been announced for the change, although U.S. officials have said the new deployment may begin this year. The South Korean government is seeking a delay until current tensions over North Korea's nuclear program are eased.
Officials said the move would not immediately reduce the 37,000 U.S. troops posted in South Korea.
The statement said the redeployment would "enhance security" and would be done "taking careful account of the political, economic and security situation on the peninsula and in Northeast Asia."
Pentagon officials, under prodding by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to create a more mobile and agile force, insist that the U.S. defense against North Korea remains strong even if American soldiers are not manning bunkers and watching the minefields at the DMZ.
The redeployment was not a surprise. In April, Rumsfeld announced that troops stationed near the DMZ might be shifted south, to other countries in the region or even brought home. U.S. officials have been negotiating with their South Korean counterparts to set the details.
The U.S. withdrawal has put South Korea's president, Roh Moo Hyun, in an awkward situation. He campaigned on a call for reduction of South Korea's reliance on U.S. forces, and many of his supporters continue to demand that U.S. troops leave. But faced with an intransigent North Korea that has declared its intent to possess nuclear weapons, Roh reversed his position and unsuccessfully urged the U.S. to delay the move.
"The South Korean government wants the next steps to be slower," said Ahn Yin Hay, a professor of international relations at Korea University. "The Roh administration thinks it ought to be done after the North Korean nuclear issue is resolved. But the consensus is that no matter what the Roh government would like, it is inevitable the U.S. government will make the decision on the basis of their global strategy."
Agreement on the withdrawal appears to have been costly for the United States. Last week, the U.S. military announced it would spend an additional $11 billion over the next three years for new equipment and defense systems for South Korea, including upgraded missile systems and reinforced military intelligence.
"The essence of what we're trying to do is to make sure that the forces we have here on the peninsula can respond quickly and immediately, even before reinforcements arrive, if there were ever to be an attack," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said in Seoul on Monday.
The DMZ was established along the armistice line drawn to end hostilities of the 1950-53 Korean War, in which U.S. and South Korean troops fought North Korean and Chinese forces to a standstill.
The two-mile-wide, 155-mile-long DMZ has become a de facto border between North Korea and South Korea, which never signed a peace treaty and still are technically at war. The DMZ often is called the most heavily guarded border in the world. During a 1993 visit, then-President Bill Clinton referred to it as "a stark line between safety and danger."
U.S. and South Korean troops face North Koreans just feet from each other at the Joint Security Area on the DMZ, where periodic negotiations are held. The hostility is palpable. Two U.S. soldiers were killed there in a fight with North Koreans in 1976.
But the bulk of patrols along the DMZ already are conducted by South Korean troops, part of a well-equipped, well-regarded 650,000-member military force. U.S. troops will continue to train with them at positions near the border, today's statement said.
In fact, deterrence along the border long has relied on the U.S. ability to call in overwhelming air attacks and firepower -- and ultimately on a nuclear threat. U.S. troops have been called a "tripwire" -- a force whose sacrifice in case of an invasion by the million-man North Korean army would guarantee U.S. retaliation.
Americans increasingly have chafed at that role, especially during the periodic public protests against the U.S. troop presence in South Korea. Officially, U.S. officials deny that the demonstrations -- which swelled last year after a U.S. armored vehicle accidentally ran over two young girls -- prompted their considerations.
According to the statement released in Seoul, U.S. troops will first move from about 15 bases near the DMZ to two major bases, Camp Casey and Camp Red Cloud, north of Seoul. In a second phase, the statement said, the troops will move to "key hubs south of the Han River," which bisects Seoul.
The two countries also agreed to relocate farther south most of the estimated 7,000 troops from the sprawling 8th U.S. Army headquarters in downtown Seoul, though the headquarters itself will remain in the capital.
Some South Korean nationalists object to the U.S. presence on prime real estate in the middle of South Korea's capital. Outside the gates of the base, there are regular protests demanding that Americans move.
Rumsfeld has ordered a thorough revamping of U.S. military deployments throughout the world. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith said last week that the new alignment meant "everything is going to move everywhere. There is not going to be a place in the world where it's going to be the same as it used to be."
Feith's remarks fueled reports that the other large contingent of U.S. troops in Asia -- based on the Japanese island of Okinawa -- also would be moved. U.S. officials played down that prospect, but they acknowledged that the 25,000 troops there are also subject to the review.
----
Fallout of shuffling US forces in Korea
Plans clarified this week leave Seoul edgy at a time when the North's actions are so mysterious
By Ann Scott Tyson
The Christian Science Monitor,
June 06, 2003
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0606/p02s01-woap.html
WASHINGTON - Under the shadow of an unresolved North Korean nuclear crisis, the Pentagon pressed ahead this week with controversial plans both to reconfigure and upgrade American forces committed to the 50-year-old defense alliance with the South.
Major changes include a plan unveiled Thursday to reduce the US troop presence and bases along the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), in addition to a buildup of missile defenses and other capabilities intended to counter a North Korean attack.
Realignment of US forces in Korea is part of a worldwide shift in the American military posture aimed at creating a more fluid, expeditionary force and leveraging US technological advances in long-range precision warfare.
The United States "can achieve an effective military force at much greater distance than we could before, and often with a much smaller number of forces," said US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on an Asian tour this week. "That's I think the spirit in which we are looking at our deployments in Europe, in Northeast Asia ... and in the Persian Gulf as well."
Senior Pentagon officials stress the changes are aimed at countering North Korean "asymmetric advantages" and promoting a quicker, more effective military response to a North Korean onslaught. Still, South Korean officials have expressed concern that Pyongyang might interpret the moves as a weakening of the US posture - or preparation for a preemptive strike.
"Militarily it may make sense. Politically, it's dicey," says Joel Wit, a senior fellow at the Center for International and Strategic Studies and an expert on North Korea. "You don't want to be tinkering with your military posture in the middle of a crisis over the North's nuclear-weapons program." He added that South Koreans fear that the US has "a hidden agenda to pull out. That is their worst nightmare."
In South Korea, a phased plan will consolidate bases and then withdraw US ground troops stationed along the DMZ to locations south of the Han River. No timeline has been given for the plan, but experts say it could take more than three years. Some 6,000 to 7,000 US troops will move from Yongsan garrison in Seoul to a camp 35 miles south of the city - part of a major realignment of the 37,000 American troops on the peninsula.
In new locations, US troops will be less vulnerable to a potential North Korean attack and will gain opportunities to train outside densely populated urban areas such as Seoul. "We've got to get out of the middle of cities," says Larry Wortzel, director of international studies at the Heritage foundation and a former Army officer stationed in Korea. "It amounts to having your military headquarters on the [Washington] Mall," he says.
Long-run plans are likely to shift the mix of US troops on the peninsula and create a more fluid force, defense officials and analysts say. The Pentagon seeks "to give our posture in Korea a little bit more of the character that it already has in Japan, which is not so focused on heavy ground-force deployments and a bit more outward looking, a bit more of a maritime orientation," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
Meanwhile, Washington has pledged to invest $11 billion over four years to bolster South Korean defenses - including upgrades to Patriot antimissile systems, a squadron of AH-64D Apache helicopters, and other capabilities aimed at better countering North Korean missile and artillery attacks.
Other enhancements include high-speed vessels that can more rapidly ferry Marines from Okinawa to the peninsula and the planned rotation to South Korea of the Army's newest force - the wheeled, medium-armored Stryker brigade.
"The North Koreans have certain advantages over us - asymmetric advantages," Wolfowitz said in Tokyo on Tuesday. "It's very important that we update our posture from where it was ten years ago."
Wolfowitz tried to reassure the South Korean leadership that the military shift would bolster, not harm, defenses against North Korea's 1.1-million strong armed forces, which have thousands of artillery pieces within striking distance of Seoul. South Korean officials preferred that troop moves be postponed. But the changes are "not something that should wait until the nuclear problem is solved," Wolfowitz said.
On North Korea's suspected development of nuclear weapons, Wolfowitz played down the possibility of a preemptive US military strike to eliminate the threat. "War in Korea would be quite a terrible thing," he said.
Instead, he advocated a patient, diplomatic course - using economic and political leverage from regional powers such as China, Russia, and Japan to persuade Pyongyang to halt its nuclear program. He suggested that the regime could be encouraged to embark on fundamental reforms such as those in China under former leader Deng Xiaoping.
"The message ... is that the help that they [the North Koreans] are getting now is going to dry up if they keep going down this road of provocative behavior," he said.
----
G.I.'s Will Gradually Leave Korea DMZ to Cut War Risk
June 6, 2003
The New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/international/asia/06KORE.html
TOKYO, June 5 - The United States and South Korea agreed today gradually to reposition American troops far away from the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea to make them less vulnerable to attack by the North.
The 14,000 troops, members of the United States' Second Infantry Division, have long been considered a strategic "tripwire" on the Korean peninsula, ensuring that American troops would be drawn into any war started by the North. The tripwire was seen as a deterrent, because it would theoretically guarantee a decisive American counterattack.
The redeployment, which will occur over a period of years, was negotiated at a time of high tensions between the United States and North Korea over the North's suspected development of nuclear weapons.
It also comes after months of strained relations between the United States and South Korea, which have been formal allies for 50 years. South Korea's president, Roh Moo Hyun, won election in December amid a large-scale protest movement against the American military presence in the country. In all, there are 37,000 American troops in South Korea, most of them based in the northern tier of the country, in and around Seoul.
For a time, South Korea officials strongly resisted the repositioning of troops, openly expressing the concern that it would leave the United States free to make a pre-emptive attack against North Korea's nuclear sites without fear of retaliation against American soldiers. Such a strike, they said, could lead to a devastating war between the two countries.
Seoul, South Korea's capital of 17 million people, lies within easy artillery range of the demarcation line separating the two Koreas. South Korean officials also worry that the American withdrawal would increase the paranoia of the North's leadership and raise the risks of miscalculation and war.
Those fears were eased, a South Korean official said, when the United States explained that American troops would remain a presence in the northern part of the country, near the demilitarized zone.
The redeployment calls for the creation of "hub bases" to the south of Seoul, roughly 75 miles from the DMZ. American troops would then rotate regularly through training zones close to the demarcation line, ensuring a continued forward presence, if not a fixed one.
Pentagon officials said repositioning American forces away from the DMZ would actually increase deterrence, correcting an outdated deployment plan from cold war days.
Had war begun on the peninsula, American forces along the demarcation line would most likely have been ordered to regroup and pull south under artillery fire and then prepare for a counterattack, military analysts said.
That fact, coupled with advances in long-range, precision weapons and maneuver warfare illustrated on the battlefield of Iraq, argued for basing American forces further south in order to better threaten North Korea with more effective attack and, in so doing, bolster deterrence.
The goal is to "align U.S. and South Korean forces to most effectively deter against a North Korean attack and defend South Korea should an attack come," said Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman on Asia-Pacific issues. "It's part of an effort to strengthen our overall deterrence on the peninsula."
The agreement also includes an American plan to invest $11 billion to enhance the defense of South Korea, including upgraded missile systems and reinforced military intelligence.
Visiting Korea earlier this week, the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, said the troop movement was intended "to make sure that the forces we have here on the peninsula can respond quickly and immediately, even before reinforcements arrive, if there were ever to be an attack."
Although the redeployment had not yet been announced, Mr. Wolfowitz said at a Seoul news conference that coming changes would "not only strengthen deterrence but save lives in the horrible event that a war should occur."
South Korean and American officials said today that the repositioning of the troops would also ease frictions between the nations. Anti-American hostility in South Korea has prompted calls in the United States among some conservative defense strategists and foreign policy experts for an outright American withdrawal. And South Koreans, have been growing increasingly resentful of the American troops, whom they were beginning to regard as arrogant occupiers rather than guardians of their security.
Although he never campaigned against the bases, Mr. Roh pledged that he would not "kowtow" to the United States, and promised to guarantee North Korea's security against American attack.
Washington and Seoul have spent the months since his inauguration in February repairing relations, but signs of distrust remain.
Today, Mr. Roh's prime minister, Goh Kun, reformulated the president's vow not to allow military means to be used in any dispute with North Korea. Under the existing alliance, he said, the United States had no right to take independent military action against the North without South Korea's approval. The American commander in Korea "is supposed to exercise his right to control wartime forces under instructions from the supreme state and military leadership of the two countries," Mr. Goh said in a speech to the National Assembly.
-------- russia
Moscow to keep helping Tehran
June 06, 2003
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030605-094208-3046r.htm
Moscow vowed yesterday to continue its nuclear assistance to Iran even if Tehran rejects the tougher international inspections demanded by the United States, as a senior foreign policy adviser to President Vladimir Putin brushed aside U.S. criticisms of the Russian program.
"We genuinely do not understand what the Americans want from us," said Dmitry Rogozin, the influential chairman of the Russian State Duma's committee on international affairs, in an interview yesterday at the start of a visit to Washington.
Arguing that Russia would be a primary target if Iran did acquire nuclear weapons, Mr. Rogozin said, "We are not so insane as to set up a time bomb under our own chairs."
Contradicting assertions made Wednesday by senior Bush administration officials and by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko told reporters in Moscow yesterday that Mr. Putin had not pledged to halt nuclear fuel shipments to Iran until the government there agreed to a stricter monitoring program of the United Nations.
Mr. Yakovenko said Russia will require Iran to sign a bilateral accord to return all spent nuclear fuel - which could be used to produce the plutonium for nuclear bombs - from the joint program to Russia.
But Moscow has no plans to terminate its $800 million contract to build a light-water reactor at the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr, he said, despite sharp U.S. criticisms.
Iran's Islamic Republic New Agency reported this week that Gholamreza Aqazadeh, chief of the country's nuclear programs, planned to travel to Moscow next month to nail down contracts for the completion of the Bushehr plant.
U.S. officials see the Bushehr project as part of an Iranian effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration has been seeking international support to force Tehran to agree to tougher inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. watchdog group.
"The conclusion is inescapable that Iran is pursuing its 'civil' nuclear energy program not for peaceful and economic purposes but as a front for developing the capability to produce nuclear materials for nuclear weapons," John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said at a House hearing this week.
Mr. Rogozin, in Washington for meetings with senior administration officials and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, insisted there were airtight controls of Russia's nuclear contracts with Iran. He said companies in Europe, which he did not name, were far more culpable in delivering equipment and technical aid to help Iran's weapons programs.
The lawmaker said many in Russia remained skeptical of U.S. arguments for the recent war against Iraq, and the failure to discover large stocks of weapons of mass destruction there only fed Russian doubts about Iran.
"Your CIA said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We never thought so in Russia, and so far nothing has been found," he said.
"Now, the CIA makes the same claim for Iran. How on earth can we give them our trust one more time when they just made such a mistake?" he asked.
Mr. Rogozin said he did not expect any long-term damage to U.S.-Russian relations, despite the sharp differences over the Iraq campaign.
"My message is that we didn't disagree with your goals in the recent crisis, but we do have some real disagreements with some of your methods," he said. "I think we can always argue about individual issues, but we should not make mistakes in our relationship that are irreversible."
-------- treaties / diplomacy
Official doubts existence of Iran nuke program
June 06, 2003
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=38455
MOSCOW - A top Russian official raised doubts about the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program in a newspaper interview Friday, less than a week after President Vladimir Putin insisted that the Kremlin's position was growing closer to Washington's over Iranian nuclear ambitions.
The Bush administration claims that Russia's technological aid to Iran is allowing Tehran to speed development of nuclear weapons and has called on Russia to curtail the assistance.
Putin responded by joining the other Group of Eight members this week in urging Iran to sign additional guarantees with the U.N. nuclear watchdog to ease international concerns. But Russian officials have said Russia's US$800 million contract to build a nuclear power plant in the Iranian city of Bushehr will go ahead whether or not Tehran submits to closer scrutiny. "We believe that there is no evidence of the existence of any such program," Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov told the newspaper Vremya Novostei, referring to an Iranian nuclear weapons program. "I want to underline that so far the International Atomic Energy Agency has not discovered any violations of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty by Iran."
Iran says it already is complying with IAEA rules and has no plans to make a bomb. But its nuclear program has been one of the major sources of friction in U.S.-Russian relations since the Bushehr contract was signed in 1995.
Washington accuses Tehran of building a uranium enrichment plant in the central city of Natanz for atomic weapons production and wants the 35-naton IAEA board to declare Iran in violation of the nonproliferation treaty at its meeting later this month.
"We trust the IAEA and we will adhere to its conclusions," Mamedov told Vremya Novostei, while repeating Russia's call for Iran to sign an additional protocol that provides for broader IAEA access to sites.
"In conditions when a propaganda campaign is being conducted, political pressure is being applied ... it is better for everyone, and for Iran also, to sign the protocol to demonstrate openness and good will," Mamedov said.
Vladimir Lukin, deputy speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, also called on Iran to answer key questions about its program, noting that a nuclear-armed Iran is not in Russia's interests.
"We want to work with them. We have economic interests," Lukin said. "But if there is a nuclear danger, our state interests exceed Russia's economic interests and the interests of Russian corporations."
Russia's Atomic Energy Ministry has said that it will not begin shipping fuel to Iran for the 1,000-megawatt light-water reactor in Bushehr until the two sides work out an agreement on returning the spent fuel to Russia. That provision appears aimed at ensuring that Iran would not be able to get plutonium, which can be derived from reprocessing spent fuel from reactors.
Iran has said it is ready to sign such an agreement.
But Russian analyst Vyacheslav Nikonov, president of the Politika Foundation, predicted that Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran will end either way after the IAEA meeting.
He predicted that the board will conclude that "Iran is creating atomic weapons, and unfortunately they are very close."
Nikonov said the end result will be that "Russia will have to freeze its cooperation with Tehran."
He said that Russia's willingness to listen to the United States and other nations' concerns about Iran was a major change of course.
"Now (Russia's) position is more severe and correct," Nikonov said.
Mamedov, however, insisted that Russia's questions for Iran arose "not at the instructions of Americans, but because they worry us. This is happening near our borders."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
Rocky Flats Nuclear Factory to Become Wildlife Refuge
By Leland Rucker
June 6, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2003/2003-06-06-06.asp
BROOMFIELD, Colorado, Sixteen miles from Denver, the highly radioactive plutonium remains of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant are being packaged up and shipped off to South Carolina, and officials say the most dangerous material will be off the site by year's end.
The land is now the subject of cleanup, and is known as Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site. In 2006, it will likely be the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge.
Around the clock cleanup of Rocky Flats is now underway, and government officials and contractors are starting to look at a closing date and what will happen afterwards.
Some 2.1 million people live within a 50 mile radius of the plutonium contaminated site, with a predicted population increase of 30 percent by 2023. Many of those citizens take an interest in what is taking place at Rocky Flats.
On Thursday the Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board was briefed on two issues - one affecting the immediate cleanup and the other concerning the future of the site. The 25 member board provides independent, community recommendations on the Rocky Flats cleanup, and represents a range of government officials and community members.
The board was updated on a change proposed by the Kaiser-Hill Company, the contractor in charge of the cleanup, concerning the Building 771/774 Decommissioning Operations Plan.
plutonium Workers at Rocky Flats have drained the last of the plutonium from tanks in Building 771. (Photo courtesy DOE) Building 771, a major plutonium processing facility, and Building 774, a companion facility for waste treatment of liquid process wastes, were constructed in 1951, Kaiser-Hill spokesman Chris Gilbreath told the advisory board.
Among the most heavily polluted of the buildings at Rocky Flats, the two story structure poses serious site specific cleanup hazards because it was built into a steep hill that leaves concrete floors in areas between 16 and 30 feet below the proposed final grade.
Though much of the building eventually will be demolished, most of the south wall and the basement slab will be left in place and buried, Kaiser-Hill proposed.
Cleanup operations are farther along in Building 771/774 than in any other industrial building on the site, Gilbreath explained. All 240 glove boxes and 251 tanks have been removed, and all liquid systems have been drained.
More than 275 drums of transuranic waste have been removed from former processing tanks, and "all but one of 12 filter plenums have been decontaminated and/or dismantled," Gilbreath said.
Structural decontamination has begun, with demolition expected by April 2004. "We are one of the first to be demolished," he said. "We are decontaminated. Everything has been gutted. We have only a few ventilation areas left."
The modification Kaiser-Hill is proposing seeks permission to apply the same contamination standards to the slabs of concrete that will be buried in the hill portion as those applied to contaminated subsurface soil.
Kaiser-Hill's position is that contamination on concrete below certain levels is not going anywhere and poses little threat to human health and the environment.
"What they have developed and studied is that plutonium and americium in subsurfaces deeper than six feet do not migrate," Gilbreath said in an interview.
"Based on those results, we said, 'if these are not migrating, why are we going after it? Let's go after more surface contamination.' We took the philosophy that if the experts are telling us it is not going anywhere, and I am 25 feet below grade, what is the value?"
Board members questioned the reliability of the data that says burying concrete with more radiation than current levels permit is wise.
Kaiser-Hill spokesmen Gilbreath and Bob Davis, while saying not all modeling is complete, told the board that their research indicates that it will be within a safe level.
Rocky Flats Some of the buildings at Rocky Flats (Two photos courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) If its proposal to leave the contaminated concrete in place is accepted, Kaiser-Hill estimates the savings at between two and three million dollars and a couple months of cleanup time, Gilbreath said.
Board members questioned whether there was any motivation for the change in plans other than to save the contractor money and time on the cleanup.
Gilbreath stressed that safety was an underlying concern. Trying to clean the concrete slabs is difficult and potentially the most dangerous work, he said.
"Honestly, it will save money and time, sure. But we are most concerned about safety," he said. "The last thing we want to do at this point in the cleanup is have someone get crushed or squeezed cutting out a chunk of concrete," he said.
When the site is closed it will be converted to the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. On Thursday, the board also heard about four alternative management plans for the refuge.
The four plans range in scale from one that operates the site under the current plan to one that allows for a variety of human activity, including horseback riding and some hunting on the refuge, said Dean Rundle of the U.S. Forest Service.
The four alternatives are being developed as part of the Comprehensive Conservation Plan, a 15 year program to provide long range guidance and direction for the wildlife refuge. It incorporates public comments gathered last year about purposes and goals that should be applied to the Rocky Flats site in the future.
Board members raised the question of what the radiation levels would be once the government finished its cleanup, but officials of all organizations present declined to take up the issue.
Rundle said that none of the four plans would address the area where the plant's main buildings are located, known as "the blob" and controlled by the Department of Energy. All four plans call this area a "potential riparian and native grass restoration area."
Located on the high plains northwest of downtown Denver, the original nuclear weapons factory was built on a site dominated by tallgrass prairie, areas of high plains and some riparian areas. Using vegetation, soil and landscape as a framework, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated three management zones for planning purposes.
valley Part of the sprawling Rocky Flats site (Photo courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) Xeric tallgrass prairie dominates the western part of the site and provides habitat for plant and animal species. Other grassland communities are found along the ridges and valley floors, while rolling high plains landscapes are seen along the eastern edges. Several drainages characterized by trees, shrubs and grasses form habitat for birds and mammals, including the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, federally listed as threatened.
Alternative A - No Action, Rundle said, would keep the refuge working under the terms of the current "Rock Creek Reserve Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan" adopted in 2000. Stewardship would be the guiding management principle. Most roads and some stream crossings would be removed, and no public facilities would be provided. Except for the barn, which would be stabilized, the structures of the old Lindsay Ranch along Rock Creek on the site would be allowed to disintegrate.
Rundle said that Alternative C - Ecological Restoration - is similar to Alternative A. This plan would return the area to pre-settlement conditions and plant it with native vegetation. Though no one knows what the exact ecological conditions were 200 years ago, Rundle said, the agency intends to use its best science to approximate what it was like. "Under this plan, there would be maximum road and trail and stream crossing removal," he said.
Under Alternative C, public access would be limited to a single road from state highway 93 along the western edge and a short trail to an overlook. Any other access would be by arrangement only. The Lindsay Ranch structures would be documented and removed.
Alternative B - Wildlife, Habitat & Public Use, Rundle said, is preferred by the agency, and would be the best balance. "It allows the big five public uses," said Rundle, "hunting, fishing, observation and photography, environmental education and interpretation."
He said that the agency responded to a public desire for connectivity and Alternative B would connect with walking and biking trails in several directions. Some trails would be open in winter, he said, and the southern half of the refuge would be open in winter months for photographers and those who wish to get off regular trails, when it would not disturb nesting birds.
Hunting activities would be highly restricted and limited to certain weekends, he said. When board members questioned whether that would be safe for pedestrians and cyclists, Rundle said that the site would be closed to other activities during those periods. No pets would be allowed under any of the alternatives, Rundle said.
Alternative D - Public Use is similar to Alternative B but would allow an even higher level of public use, and like B, would include a visitor center. A total of 17 miles of public roads would be included in this plan, with some trails open to horseback riders. He said that only under this option, the agency would consider accepting imported prairie dogs.
Several board members questioned where in any of the plans signage is provided that would include an explanation of previous and current radiation contamination levels. Members said the signs are necessary to give people as much information as possible so they might make their own informed decisions about entering the former nuclear weapons site.
All alternatives can be achieved under current proposed budgets, but Rundle said that Alternative A would be the cheapest and D the most expensive.
-------- south carolina
NRC Gives Early Nod to Renewal of Nuclear Plant License
WASHINGTON, DC,
June 6, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2003/2003-06-06-09.asp#anchor6
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave an early indication that it believes there are no environmental impacts that would stop a nuclear plant in South Carolina from renewing its license.
The agency has been reviewing the application for extension of the H. B. Robinson Steam Electric Plant, Unit 2 in Darlington County, South Carolina, since Carolina Power and Light Company, which operates the plant, filed it in June 6002.
The NRC made its preliminary finding in a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on the proposed license renewal. The draft EIS is open for public comment until July 30 and will also be the subject of public meetings June 65 in Hartsville, South Carolina.
Under NRC regulations, the original operating license for a nuclear power plant is issued for up to 40 years. The license may be renewed for up to an additional 20 years if NRC requirements are met. The current operating license for the H. B. Robinson Steam Electric Plant, Unit 2, will expire on July 31, 2010.
The possible environmental effects of an additional 20 years of nuclear plant operation are described in the NRC's Generic Environmental Impact Statement, or GEIS (NUREG-1437).
The NRC issues a site-specific supplement to the GEIS on each plant requesting license renewal to address the potential environmental impacts.
Issues specific to the H.B. Robinson Steam Electric Plant are addressed in Supplement 13, which was published in draft form in May. The NRC staff's preliminary recommendation is that the Commission determine that the adverse environmental impacts of license renewal for the H.B. Robinson Steam Electric Plant are not so great that preserving the option of license renewal for energy-planning decision makers would be unreasonable.
At the conclusion of the public comment period on July 30, the NRC staff will consider and address the comments provided and issue a final supplement to the GEIS. That supplement will contain a recommendation regarding the environmental acceptability for license renewal.
The draft supplement to the GEIS, along with other related documents, is available at http://www.nrc.gov.
-------- tennessee
EPA flays OR health report
Agency reviewers charge all radiation released by Y-12 not accounted for
By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com
June 6, 2003
Knoxville News-Sentinel
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_2013784,00.html
OAK RIDGE - The controversy over Oak Ridge pollution and its health effects rages on.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has broadly criticized another agency's report that gave the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant a clean bill of health for its uranium releases.
EPA reviewers said the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's health assessment either miscalculated or failed to account for all radiation doses from Y-12's uranium emissions. They also said the report used criteria that fall outside widely accepted methods for risk estimation and radiation protection and failed to address large uncertainties.
In addition, ATSDR's public-health assessment focused on the Scarboro section of Oak Ridge even though the community adjacent to Y-12 probably isn't the most affected by plant releases or the best reference point for such an evaluation, EPA reviewers said.
"We are concerned that the atmospheric transport and environmental fate of the bulk of uranium released from Y-12 have not been adequately accounted for, nor have the exposures of individuals or populations who are as yet unidentified,'' Lowell Ralston, a radiobiologist at EPA headquarters in Washington, said in an April 24 letter to ATSDR.
The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry recently released a report that said uranium discharges from Y-12, both current and historic, did not pose a threat to public health. It is the first of nine Oak Ridge health assessments planned by ATSDR, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
ATSDR officials held meetings Monday in Oak Ridge to discuss the results with local residents.
After EPA's critical comments were made public Thursday, key ATSDR staff members defended the health assessment and said some of the EPA concerns already had been addressed. Others will be considered in the preparation of a final report, which will be issued after the public comment period concludes June 20, they said.
However, Paul Charp, a senior health physicist at ASTDR and principal author of the health assessment, said the report's main findings and conclusions would not change.
Sandy Isaacs, chief of ATSDR's federal facilities assessments branch, said some of the disagreements could be explained by different approaches taken by the two agencies. EPA focuses on risk analysis and setting standards to avoid health concerns, while ATSDR looks at actual releases and uses retrospective studies to determine if health effects occurred, she said.
Some Oak Ridgers applauded the health assessment as a fresh look at a controversial topic, but it outraged others.
"In my opinion, this statement destroys any credibility the ATSDR may have had,'' said Glenn Bell, a Y-12 machinist who suffers from chronic beryllium disease.
More than 6,000 past and present Oak Ridge workers - many of them at Y-12 - have filed claims as part of a compensation program for sick nuclear workers, Bell said. It's hard to believe that none of the "nasties'' from the federal plant caused harm to the nearby community, he said.
Fannie Ball, a longtime Scarboro resident and former Y-12 employee, said she believes the radioactive releases are responsible for her health problems and those of others living near the warhead plant. She, too, said the ATSDR report is unbelievable.
EPA's Ralston said ATSDR, in evaluating past exposures from Y-12 uranium discharges, underestimated the total radiation dose "by nearly a factor of 10.'' He also said the report did not take all necessary factors into account when evaluating current exposures in the local population.
"At this time we do not concur with ATSDR's final conclusions and recommendations,'' he said, asking that the evaluations be revised before the health assessment is completed.
Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329.
-------- texas
Repair Plan for Reactor With Leaks
June 6, 2003
The New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/national/06NUKE.html
ROCKVILLE, Md., June 5 - The managers of a Texas nuclear plant with two leaks at the bottom of its reactor vessel told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today that they were backing away from their top theory on how the leaks developed. But, they said, they were nearly ready to fix them anyway.
The operators of the plant, called the South Texas Project, 90 miles southwest of Houston, also told the agency staff that some residue left by the leaks was more than four years old and possibly much older. Previously, they had said the residue was not visible when the reactor was inspected last year.
The leaks are in 2 of 58 nozzles on the underside of the reactor, which were installed to let operators push monitoring instruments into the nuclear core. The leaks were discovered when the plant was shut down for refueling in late March.
At first, plant managers were inclined to believe that the leaks had been caused by a phenomenon in which the cooling water attacks metal that is under strain. But careful examination of the metal found flaws in some areas that had not been exposed to the water.
The nozzles cannot be fully replaced because they are welded from the inside of the vessel. The managers' repair plan involves cutting off the portion of each nozzle that has the cracks, inserting a length of replacement pipe and welding it to the outside of the vessel.
Leaving a gap between the old part of the nozzle and the replacement part, though, will allow the boron-laden cooling water to get access to areas that are not protected against corrosion. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved "half-nozzle repair" for some structures at nuclear plants, but not for a reactor vessel.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that often criticizes nuclear operators, said the two tubes so far had not presented a major safety problem because they leaked, leaving obvious deposits of boron, before they could break.
If the proposed fix eliminates leaks but accelerates corrosion, Mr. Lochbaum said, "the first sign of a problem will not be a white residue but a loud bang and the rapid loss of water from the reactor vessel."
-------- us politics
Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?
By John W. Dean FindLaw
CNN.com
Friday, June 6, 2003
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/06/findlaw.analysis.dean.wmd/
FOR THE PUBLIC
Legal commentary from FindLaw's Writ LAW DICTIONARY
(FindLaw) -- President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a joint resolution authorizing the use of U.S. military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake -- acts of war against another nation.
Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away -- unless, perhaps, they start another war.
That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.
Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.
Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues. President Bush's statements on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.
--
Bush's statements, in chronological order, were:
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."
United Nations address,
September 12, 2002
-
"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."
"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."
Radio address,
October 5, 2002
-
"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."
"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."
"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."
"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."
Cincinnati, Ohio speech,
October 7, 2002
-
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."
State of the Union Address,
January 28, 2003
-
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Address to the nation,
March 17, 2003
--
Should the president get the benefit of the doubt?
When these statements were made, Bush's let-me-mince-no-words posture was convincing to many Americans. Yet much of the rest of the world, and many other Americans, doubted them.
As Bush's veracity was being debated at the United Nations, it was also being debated on campuses -- including those where I happened to be lecturing at the time.
On several occasions, students asked me the following question: Should they believe the president of the United States? My answer was that they should give the President the benefit of the doubt, for several reasons deriving from the usual procedures that have operated in every modern White House and that, I assumed, had to be operating in the Bush White House, too.
First, I assured the students that these statements had all been carefully considered and crafted. Presidential statements are the result of a process, not a moment's though. White House speechwriters process raw information, and their statements are passed on to senior aides who have both substantive knowledge and political insights. And this all occurs before the statement ever reaches the President for his own review and possible revision.
Second, I explained that -- at least in every White House and administration with which I was familiar, from Truman to Clinton -- statements with national security implications were the most carefully considered of all. The White House is aware that, in making these statements, the president is speaking not only to the nation, but also to the world.
Third, I pointed out to the students, these statements are typically corrected rapidly if they are later found to be false. And in this case, far from backpedaling from the President's more extreme claims, Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer had actually, at times, been even more emphatic than the President had. For example, on January 9, 2003, Fleischer stated, during his press briefing, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."
In addition, others in the Bush administration were similarly quick to back the President up, in some cases with even more unequivocal statements. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed that Saddam had WMDs -- and even went so far as to claim he knew "where they are; they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."
Finally, I explained to the students that the political risk was so great that, to me, it was inconceivable that Bush would make these statements if he didn't have damn solid intelligence to back him up. Presidents do not stick their necks out only to have them chopped off by political opponents on an issue as important as this, and if there was any doubt, I suggested, Bush's political advisers would be telling him to hedge. Rather than stating a matter as fact, he would be say: "I have been advised," or "Our intelligence reports strongly suggest," or some such similar hedge. But Bush had not done so.
So what are we now to conclude if Bush's statements are found, indeed, to be as grossly inaccurate as they currently appear to have been?
After all, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and given Bush's statements, they should not have been very hard to find -- for they existed in large quantities, "thousands of tons" of chemical weapons alone. Moreover, according to the statements, telltale facilities, groups of scientists who could testify, and production equipment also existed.
So where is all that? And how can we reconcile the White House's unequivocal statements with the fact that they may not exist?
There are two main possibilities. One, that something is seriously wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems difficult to believe. The other is that the president has deliberately misled the nation, and the world. A desperate search for WMDs has so far yielded little, if any, fruit
Even before formally declaring war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the president had dispatched American military special forces into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, which he knew would provide the primary justification for Operation Freedom. None were found.
Throughout Operation Freedom's penetration of Iraq and drive toward Baghdad, the search for WMDs continued. None were found.
As the coalition forces gained control of Iraqi cities and countryside, special search teams were dispatched to look for WMDs. None were found.
During the past two and a half months, according to reliable news reports, military patrols have visited over 300 suspected WMD sites throughout Iraq. None of the prohibited weapons were found there. British and American press reaction to the missing WMDs
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also under serious attack in England, which he dragged into the war unwillingly, based on the missing WMDs. In Britain, the missing WMDs are being treated as scandalous; so far, the reaction in the U.S. has been milder.
New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, has taken Bush sharply to task, asserting that it is "long past time for this administration to be held accountable." "The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat," Krugman argued. "If that claim was fraudulent," he continued, "the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history -- worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra." But most media outlets have reserved judgment as the search for WMDs in Iraq continues.
Still, signs do not look good. Last week, the Pentagon announced it was shifting its search from looking for WMD sites, to looking for people who can provide leads as to where the missing WMDs might be.
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, while offering no new evidence, assured Congress that WMDs would indeed be found. And he advised that a new unit called the Iraq Survey Group, composed of some 1400 experts and technicians from around the world, is being deployed to assist in the searching.
But, as Time magazine reported, the leads are running out. According to Time, the Marine general in charge explained that "[w]e've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad," and remarked flatly, "They're simply not there."
Perhaps most troubling, the president has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe?
The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements and reality only increases the sense that the President's misstatements may actually have been intentional lies. Investigating The Iraqi War intelligence reports
Even now, while the jury is still out as to whether intentional misconduct occurred, the President has a serious credibility problem. Newsweek magazine posed the key questions: "If America has entered a new age of pre-emption -when it must strike first because it cannot afford to find out later if terrorists possess nuclear or biological weapons-exact intelligence is critical. How will the United States take out a mad despot or a nuclear bomb hidden in a cave if the CIA can't say for sure where they are? And how will Bush be able to maintain support at home and abroad?"
In an apparent attempt to bolster the President's credibility, and his own, Secretary Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense Department investigation into what went wrong with the pre-war intelligence. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort about on par with O.J.'s looking for his wife's killer. But there may be a difference: Unless the members of Administration can find someone else to blame -- informants, surveillance technology, lower-level personnel, you name it -- they may not escape fault themselves.
Congressional committees are also looking into the pre-war intelligence collection and evaluation. Senator John Warner, R-Virginia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee would jointly investigate the situation. And the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence plans an investigation.
These investigations are certainly appropriate, for there is potent evidence of either a colossal intelligence failure or misconduct -- and either would be a serious problem. When the best case scenario seems to be mere incompetence, investigations certainly need to be made.
Sen. Bob Graham -- a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- told CNN's Aaron Brown, that while he still hopes they finds WMDs or at least evidence thereof, he has also contemplated three other possible alternative scenarios:
One is that [the WMDs] were spirited out of Iraq, which maybe is the worst of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were trying to avoid, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could be in the hands of dozens of groups. Second, that we had bad intelligence. Or third, that the intelligence was satisfactory but that it was manipulated, so as just to present to the American people and to the world those things that made the case for the necessity of war against Iraq.
Sen. Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN "there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration."
Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times, he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Graham requested that the Bush administration declassify the information before the Senate voted on the administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq.
But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only addressed "findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the Administration, by cherrypicking only evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion.
Recent statements by one of the high-level officials privy to the decision making process that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly suggest manipulation, if not misuse of the intelligence agencies. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, during an interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine, said: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." More recently, Wolfowitz added what most have believed all along, that the reason we went after Iraq is that "[t]he country swims on a sea of oil." Worse than Watergate? A potential huge scandal if WMDs are still missing
Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.
This administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, which was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.
To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."
It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.
Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.
John Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the president of the United States.
----
US hints at force to disarm rogue states
June 6 2003
AFP
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/05/1054700342407.html
The United States will try to "roll back" proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in the world - and may use force to take away these deadly arsenals from rogue states, a senior US government official has warned.
Under-Secretary of State John Bolton also told Congress that Washington would not offer disarmament inducements to North Korea, would punish suppliers of dual-use materials and would offer Iraqi scientists specialising in weapons of mass destruction (WMD) a chance to emigrate, presumably to the United States.
"We aim ultimately not just to prevent the spread of WMD, but also to eliminate or 'roll back' such weapons from rogue states and terrorist groups that already possess them or are close to doing so," he told the House Committee on International Relations on Wednesday.
He noted that, while the administration of President George Bush favoured peaceful and diplomatic solutions to the proliferation threat, it ruled out no options, including "pre-emptive military force where required".
"Moreover, the logic of adverse consequences must fall not only on the states aspiring to possess these weapons, but on the states supplying them as well," he warned, without elaborating.
The US has repeatedly accused Russia, China and some cash-starved former Soviet republics of supplying sensitive, dual-use technologies to Iran, Libya, North Korea and other countries deemed by Washington a proliferation threat.
In its most recent report on proliferation, the CIA named Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, India and Pakistan among the countries with the most active WMD and missile programs.
Mr Bolton's warning followed Mr Bush's announcement in Poland last week of a so-called Proliferation Security Initiative aimed at broadening international co-operation in interdicting shipments of WMD- and missile-related equipment and technologies.
As part of this broad campaign, the US will offer Iraqi weapons-scientists an opportunity to emigrate because of serious concern that rogue states or terrorist organisations will try to hire them.
Keeping up pressure on Iran, he accused the Islamic republic of developing a uranium mine, uranium conversion and enrichment facilities and a heavy water production plant as part of its clandestine nuclear weapons program.
He insisted that "there will be no inducements" on the part of the Bush administration to persuade North Korea to "completely, verifiably, and irreversibly" abandon its nuclear weapons program.
North Korea created an international crisis last year, when it admitted to a US envoy that it had pursued a nuclear-weapons drive in breach of a 1994 accord.
Since then, Pyongyang has announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, restarted a five-megawatt nuclear reactor at Yongbyang and admitted to having atomic arms, while offering to scrap the program in exchange for a non-aggression treaty and economic aid.
But in an apparent broadening of US preconditions for a rapprochement with Pyongyang, known as the "bold approach", Mr Bolton made clear US aid might be provided to the Stalinist state only after dramatic policy changes - in addition to nuclear disarmament.
"Assistance would be provided to North Korea through the 'bold approach' if the North addresses concerns about its WMD and missile program and exports as well as other issues, including its conventional force disposition, narcotics trafficking, human rights, and its continued sponsorship of terrorism outside its borders," he pointed out.
He said the administration had already imposed 12 sets of economic sanctions against alleged proliferators this year and was preparing to slap a dozen more.
He did not name countries or firms that would be targeted by sanctions.
----
Cheney's CIA visits pressured us: analysts
June 6 2003
Sydney Morning Herald / The Washington Post
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/05/1054700335400.html
Multiple visits to the CIA by the United States Vice-President, Dick Cheney, created an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments on Iraq fit with Bush Administration policy objectives, intelligence officials said.
They said Mr Cheney and his chief of staff, "Scooter" Libby, questioned analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al-Qaeda.
Mr Cheney took the lead in the Administration last August in advocating military action against Iraq by claiming it had weapons of mass destruction.
The visits "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here", one agency official said.
Other officials said they were not influenced by the visits from Mr Cheney's office, and some said they welcomed them.
But the disclosure of his unusual hands-on role comes on the heels of mounting concern from intelligence officials and members of Congress that the Administration may have exaggerated intelligence it received about Iraq to build a case for war.
While visits to CIA headquarters by a sitting vice-president are not unknown, they are unusual, intelligence officials said.
A spokeswoman for Mr Cheney declined to discuss the matter.
In a signal of the Bush Administration's concern over the issue, two top Pentagon officials held a news conference on Wednesday to challenge allegations they pressured the CIA or other agencies to slant intelligence. "I know of no pressure," said Douglas Feith, the under-secretary for policy.
Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said on Wednesday that he would co-operate with a parliamentary inquiry into his Government's use of intelligence material.
Tom Allard reports: Australian defence intelligence officials told a Senate committee yesterday that their analysis of the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at times had a difference in emphasis from that of their US and British colleagues.
They still believed such arms would be found but they conceded there were always doubts about the extent to which Iraq was armed. "We were cautious about the lack of weaponisation," the director of the Defence Intelligence Organisation, Frank Lewincamp, said. "That was a consistent part of our assessment and it remains the case."
----
U.S. Secret Report Raises Questions Over Iraqi Weapons
Fri June 6, 2003
By Sue Pleming
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2889971
WASHINGTON - As the Bush administration was pushing last fall for a war against Iraq because of alleged weapons of mass destruction, a defense department report said it did not have enough "reliable information" Iraq was amassing these weapons, a defense official said on Friday.
News of the classified September 2002 report by the Defense Intelligence Agency has added to claims the White House and Pentagon slanted U.S. intelligence on Baghdad's alleged weapons program to justify the war against Iraq.
"What this report is saying is that there's not enough reliable information to move things into the category of things we know (about WMDs in Iraq)," said a defense official of the report, a summary of which was leaked to U.S. media this week.
However, he said the 80-plus page report said intelligence indicated Iraq probably did have chemical and other weapons but that there was just not enough reliable intelligence to fully back up this claim.
"What's been reported is accurate but you have to take it in context of the entire report, which is classified," said the official, who asked not to be named,
"The way it's briefed is in the category of 'hey we think this is going on' (but we don't have absolute proof)," he added.
Around the time of the report, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went to Congress to press his case that Iraq was stockpiling chemical and biological weapons.
No such weapons have been found since Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was ousted in April but President Bush has said repeatedly he believes U.S. forces will find them.
Last week CIA Director George Tenet defended his agency's intelligence on Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, saying the "integrity of our process was maintained throughout."
Media reports had said CIA analysts had complained of pressure from the administration about their findings on Iraqi weapons.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has come under similar criticism and on Wednesday he announced a British parliamentary inquiry into the case his government had made for attacking Iraq even as he rebuffed claims he had exaggerated evidence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
----
Iraqi gov't can't be rushed: U.S.
By AP
Friday, June 6, 2003
http://www.canoe.ca/EdmontonNews/es.es-06-06-0059.html
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday the transition to a democratic government in Iraq can't be rushed - and cited the rise of German dictator Adolf Hitler as an example of what could go wrong.
Rumsfeld was asked if he was concerned about the pace of establishing a postwar Iraqi government. Rumsfeld said he wasn't and the transition from dictatorship to representative government is difficult.
"If you think about it, Adolf Hitler was elected. So elections are not the certain judge.
"You don't want to have (an) election one time and then a dictator and go right back to some dictator model," he said after a closed-door briefing with members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Hitler became chancellor in 1933 after the Nazi party's strong showing in elections the previous year.
Rumsfeld said a future Iraq should be unified and respectful of the country's religious and ethnic groups and shouldn't threaten its neighbours.
-------- MILITARY
Recycling Wars
By Col. Dan Smith (Ret.)
June 6, 2003
Editor: John Gershman,
Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0306war.html
Tell it to the troops on the ground, not to mention the indigenous population. They know that war can go on even after it has "ended."
On May 1, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared that major combat in Afghanistan had ended for the 8,000 U.S. troops in country. Yet on June 3, television showed pictures of substantial military units scouring the hills along the border with Pakistan for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Elsewhere in the country, militias of regional "governors" (also known as warlords) still clash with each other over who controls what turf--and which people.
Also on May 1, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, President Bush declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Since then, more than 30 U.S. soldiers and Marines have died, many in armed clashes with Iraqis. The number of troops, instead of falling, has risen to between 160,000-165,000, and the 3rd Infantry Division's scheduled departure from Iraq has been postponed indefinitely. As Lieutenant General David McKiernan, coalition ground forces commander, said May 29, "The war has not ended. These operations happened in a combat zone and it is war." Significantly, his comments don't address communal conflicts within Iraq.
The phenomena of cyclical fighting and resurgent wars should not be as much a surprise as it seems to be for U.S. officials. In its May 22 issue, the highly respected Economist magazine noted three very startling statistics: (1) counting only conflicts involving more than 1,000 deaths from violence, one in eight countries worldwide has a civil war; (2) on average, these conflicts last eight years, twice the length of wars before 1980; (3) 50% of all countries that achieve peace fall back into civil war within a decade.
Direct and Indirect Links to Resurgent Wars
The patterns highlighted above can be complicated by direct (troops, creation and protection of "safe" zones) or indirect (money, arms, training) involvement of outside powers. During the cold war, the usual choice was indirect support, with the obvious exceptions of Korea and Vietnam for the U.S. and Afghanistan for Russia. Of these three, only Korea escaped a plunge back into a wrenching war. Vietnam attacked Cambodia in 1978, remaining there for a decade, and fought with China over their mutual border in 1979. Afghanistan experienced virtually no respite after the fall of the post-1989 communist puppet regime until 1996, when the Taliban swept to power everywhere but in the Panjshir valley. But the new ruling clique failed to bring peace, and four weeks after September 11, 2001, full-scale war, this time led by the United States, descended once again on Afghanistan.
The 1991 Gulf War, coming three years after the end of the eight-year long Iran-Iraq war, conformed to the overall pattern of recurring warfare cited by the Economist. In fact, Iraq in 1991 reflected the uncertainty in international affairs as the cold war ended: the war was direct action, while the encouragement of the uprisings of Marsh Arabs and Kurds reflected the indirect--indeed a very distant and indirect--approach by the U.S. that persisted until March 19, 2003. On another level, peace--as much a sense of personal security as the absence of fighting--never came to Iraq. Throughout the 1990s, the Iraqi people suffered under international sanctions and the brutality of their own government.
The same hesitancy evident in dealing with Iraq in 1991 persisted in the interventions in Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo. In Haiti, with foreign soldiers gone, Haitians were subjected to virtual civil war. The police could not or would not curb the unending series of political and criminal killings. Many analysts believe that Bosnia and Kosovo did not revert to full-scale civil war due primarily to the continuing presence of large, armed, multinational forces in each.
Elsewhere, especially in Asia, a number of recent efforts at peaceful resolution of intranational disputes seem suddenly to be on the brink of confirming the timelines for renewed carnage. After six months of negotiations facilitated by Norway, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lankan government are at an impasse. The situation is complicated by a split within the government. The president's party objects to Oslo's involvement in an "internal matter" (a concern echoed by the Tigers) while the prime minister's party, which is driving the peace talks, wants Norway's help. And while fighting has not resumed, the failure to set a date to resume talks, together with the possibility the prime minister might lose his parliamentary majority, opens a window for new violence by any group or faction opposed to the peace talks.
In Indonesia, peace lasted only six months. A truce between the Free Aceh Movement and Jakarta signed December 9, 2002 fell apart in mid-May when 40,000 Indonesian troops moved back into Aceh to battle an estimated 5,000 guerillas in the reconstituted, pro-independence movement. Some government and military leaders reportedly have justified renewing the civil war by pointing to the U.S. use of force rather than diplomacy to resolve disputes. The death toll in the first week was over 100, including civilians.
On May 30, in Myanmar (Burma), the military junta detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other National League for Democracy (NLD) officials after a violent clash between NLD and pro-government supporters. Government officials said only four died, but NLD sources cited in media reports put the number at around 70-80. Each side blamed the other for the violence, which came during a road trip by Suu Kyi. Although no major uprising has occurred since 1988, widespread student demonstrations in 1996 so alarmed the military that all university campuses were closed and remained shut until 2000.
In Africa, periodic civil war seems to be a fact of life (and death) in Sudan, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Somalia, Zimbabwe, and other countries. A May 2003 World Bank study found that the most common characteristic of intra-warring countries throughout the globe is poverty: four-fifths of the civil wars are concentrated in countries with the poorest one-sixth of the world's population. The Bank concluded that this concentration of wars in impoverished societies was a result of the increased opportunity to find causes--some real, such as corruption and incompetence; some imaginary--for which people would take up arms.
And then there is the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire), a country where, over the past five years, fighting always seems to be going on somewhere and where the estimated deaths in these years number 3 to 3.5 million.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Congress is set to give the Pentagon more than $400 billion to spend on war preparations and now, it seems, on the "non-wars." Once again, the U.S. sets a poor example for other countries, especially those that only recently resolved internal wars. These governments heap scarce funds on their militaries to ward off future rebellions. Ironically, such spending increases the chances for war because it scoops up resources needed for bettering people's lives and suggests that those in power foresee and are planning for renewed warfare. So the killing never stops, and what is left for the poor is recycling war.
(Dan Smith <dan@fcnl.org> is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and a retired U.S. army colonel and senior fellow on Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.)
-------- africa
Africa's Women Beginning To See Progress in Politics
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 6, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21341-2003Jun5?language=printer
NAIROBI -- Her head held high and her body balancing six yellow containers -- one atop her head, three on her back and two looped around her arms -- Rachel Adhimabo glided over the mounds of fuming trash, along the rocky footpaths and through the labyrinth of metal shacks that make up her muddy slum neighborhood. It's a two-hour journey to collect water for her family, and she makes it every day.
Along the way, she and her friends chatted about a provocative suggestion that President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia made recently. He said a woman should take over his job when he leaves office.
Adhimabo fantasized about all the good she could do if she were elected president of Kenya. Like most African women, she's no stranger to hard work. She said she would love a chance to tackle tasks that the continent's powerful and often corrupt male presidents -- the so-called Big Men of Africa -- have failed at: providing water and electricity, jobs and sanitation, not to mention fighting corruption, AIDS, malaria, poverty and famine.
Then again, like most African women, she doesn't have much time for politics.
"Women work so hard -- too hard -- in Africa," declared Adhimabo, 39, her worn, thick hands swatting away flies. "You see, even though I want to, I don't have time to be a leader. Who would take care of the kitchen, do the tailoring, get the firewood, the water, dress the children, make them the porridge, scrub the rooms, roast the meats, build the house when it falls apart?"
On a continent where the long list of jobs considered women's work seldom includes political leadership, the notion of a female president may seem surprising. Though women perform 80 percent of daily work, according to studies by African gender groups, in many countries they own little or nothing and face domestic violence, rape and sexual harassment on a daily basis.
But politicians and analysts say they see signs that an African woman could indeed be elected to a position of national leadership. (Africa's only female head of state, interim President Ruth Perry of Liberia, was appointed to her 1996-97 term.) At the local, legislative and cabinet levels, the role of African women in the traditionally patriarchal realm of politics has grown in numbers and significance over the past decade.
Women hold 30 percent of the parliamentary seats in Mozambique, 29.8 percent in South Africa, 26 percent in Rwanda, 19 percent in Senegal and 24 percent in Uganda, according to the U.N. Development Program's 2002 report. In Uganda, for example, there are 74 women in the 304-seat parliament; in 1983, there were six.
"I have not only hope that women are getting more powerful, but the experience that women in Africa are indeed doing it. And it is becoming more and more evident just how pronounced a turning point this period is," said Beatrice Kiraso, 41, who is in her second term in Uganda's parliament. "We are not inventing anything new. We are just catching up with the rest of the world. But in Africa, the change is just so much more remarkable."
The political advances being made by African women are just one facet of a broader effort across the continent to change long-standing cultural practices, particularly as more and more rural people migrate to cities where Western customs are now the norm. Women in African cities are marrying later, divorcing more and taking empowerment classes offered by Western aid groups.
In February, women from across Africa, including the first ladies of Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Mali and Guinea, gathered in Ethiopia to denounce female genital mutilation. Women in Mali organized the first ceremonial burning of weapons as a protest against regional conflicts, a ritual that has become an annual event across Africa. In Ivory Coast, a group has formed to protest women having to carry heavy loads on their heads, saying it is bad for their bones. In Ghana, women are trying to gain political power through dozens of groups formed to raise money for female candidates.
"The men haven't done a good job of running our countries, so maybe now we are looking for a Big Woman, not a Big Man, to do the job," said Chipo Lungu, executive director of the Zambia National Women's Lobby Group. "The list of corrupt, incompetent and just foolish male leaders is a long one. Where shall we start?"
Lungu rapidly ticked of a list of men whose autocratic and often corrupt rule sent African states into decline -- Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, where one-man rule has left the economy a shambles and politics in crisis; Libya's Moammar Gaddafi, at the helm since 1969; Mobutu Sese Seko, who became rich by plundering the country he named Zaire; and Daniel arap Moi, whose 24-year rule was marked by economic decline and rising corruption.
Female activists acknowledge that some African women have abused positions of power, most recently Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the ex-wife of Nelson Mandela who many South Africans revere as "mother of the nation." A member of Parliament, she was sentenced in April to four years in prison for fraud and theft. But far more often, they say, qualified women are taking a stand and running for office.
"With me, it was a matter of making an important decision to leave a very well-paying job to be in a position of power and to make important decisions for women in Africa," said Juliane Chisupa, deputy minister of sports and youth and child development in Zambia, who gave up a job with UNICEF. "I am not saying it's easy. It's challenging. You find [yourself in] a previously male-dominated [role], so you have to be very strong as a woman. You have to have strong reins and a very good vision to survive."
Male politicians sometimes publicly belittle women with political ambitions, as Kenya's Moi did when he once remarked that women have "little minds." In 1985, Kenya's parliament shot down a bill that would have recognized spouses' equal rights to property because the lawmakers said it interfered with men's ability to "chastise" their wives.
"If women are progressing in politics and even in other areas they are always, not just sometimes, assumed to be sleeping their way up the ladder and neglecting their husbands, who they can't make roasted meats for all day," said Kiraso, the Ugandan legislator, who is divorced and said many male voters in her district accused her of being a bad African woman for wanting to be a leader.
Uganda had a female vice president until May 21 when Specioza Kazibwe resigned to study medicine at Harvard University. Kazibwe was a controversial leader who fought against a bill that would have given women land ownership, but her admission last year that she left her husband because of physical abuse made her a feminist hero and brought attention to the widespread domestic violence against women in Africa.
With their experience in the home and the community, women in politics tend to focus on issues such as crime, violence, AIDS, education and health, which most severely affect women and children.
"Women hold the family together. They are the managers -- they manage the farm, the house, the children, the water, the firewood," said Alicen Chelaite, Kenya's deputy assistant minister for gender, sports, culture and social services. "I think they will give more attention to these issues since they are the ones who will feel the real changes."
For a woman like Adhimabo from the slums of Nairobi, the dream of being president pales before the reality of hauling water. Adhimabo said she would love to run for local office. But like many of Africa's working mothers, or Kenyan mamas as they are warmly called, she is just too busy for politics.
As she and her friends lifted heavy water jugs onto their hunched backs, a group of men leaned against a nearby tree and watched.
"We men are supervising," Humphry Luvembe, who is 23 and jobless, said with a laugh. "Women in Africa can do everything. But president -- when would they have the time?"
[They'd better find the time. See below.]
----
French Troops Arrive in Congo War Zone
June 6, 2003
The New York Times
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/international/africa/06CND-CONGO.html
BUNIA, Congo, June 6 - Starting at daybreak today, four planeloads of French soldiers touched down at the airport here and roared out in jeeps outfitted with heavy machine guns. They were the first of 1,400 troops to be sent by the United Nations Security Council to restore law and order to this beleaguered provincial town, ruled by the latest of a series of ethnic militia groups.
Their arrival was impossible to miss. A loud roar broke the morning calm, as the first plane flew arrived shortly before 6 a.m. By midmorning, the dirt road leading from the airport to the center of town, usually crawling with the young Kalashnikov-toting foot soldiers of the Hema ethnic militia, were nowhere to be seen.
The two forces came face to face only at the barbed-wire gate of the United Nations headquarters. Late this morning, as their respective commanders met inside for their first consultation, the military and militia stood guard outside the gate, warily eyeing each other.
The French soldiers stood by their jeep. The militia hung a handshake's distance away: a young woman in a red beret, a gold chain and an AK-47, next to her a boy with a cheerful yellow cartoon-printed backpack.
All told, roughly 100 French troops were seen arriving this morning. Their commander declined to divulge their number, saying only that their first responsibilities would be to prepare for the deployment of the total force, secure the airport and coordinate with the United Nations peacekeepers already on the ground.
The new French-led multinational force comes with a mandate to enforce law and order, including using force when necessary. Their so-called Chapter 7 mandate is considerably tougher than that issued to the United Nations peacekeeping forces here, who are authorized only to guard United Nations personnel and property, protect relief workers and shoot only when they deem civilians to be in imminent danger.
Their limitations came into sharp relief last month, when ethnic militias battling for control of Bunia stormed through town, butchering each other's people. The peacekeepers could do little to stop the killings: the death toll today stands at 430, at minimum.
"The mission is sensitive and delicate and without a doubt, complicated," said the French force commander, declining to give his name. "But we have robust rules of engagement."
As their caravan rolled down the town's main avenue, a bumpy dirt road lined with the skeletons of looted shops, and into the United Nations compound, a small crowd of townspeople gathered around to cheer and clap, holding up their hands in hearty welcome.
It remains to be seen, however, exactly what the multinational force is willing and able to do to bring a semblance of security to the townspeople. At issue is not only the well-being of those who remain, largely members of the Hema ethnic group.
The bigger challenge is how to make the city safe for the ethnic Lendus, who have fled. Most Lendus were driven out in the latest fighting, between Hema and Lendu militias over several days last month, after the departure of Ugandan troops who had occupied it before.
The capital of the mineral-rich northeast province of Ituri, this town has undergone a series of violent regime changes in the last five years, as neighboring countries and various tribal militias who serve as their proxies on the ground have fought for its control. In that time, an estimated 50,000 have died in Ituri Province alone.
The Hema militia in control of Bunia has agreed to cooperate with the French, their leaders and United Nations officials say. They have already begun to station their troops at key points outside the city, so as to keep at bay the Lendu militias, who are positioned somewhere south of here. Aid workers and United Nations officials acknowledge that Lendu civilians and the thousands of people who belong to other tribes have little chance of coming back home unless the new multinational force secures their return.
Among the most delicate issues is whether the new multinational force can - or will - strip the militias of their weapons.
The Security Council mandate, which charges the force simply with restoring security to the city, is sufficiently vague to allow room for interpretation.
Also outstanding is the question of whether the new force will do anything to stanch the fighting that goes on across the province, outside Bunia. Even this week there were reports of a fresh massacre just southeast of here; United Nations peacekeepers said they did not have the means to investigate what happened, let alone stop it.
Already, the commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force here, Col. Daniel Vollot, has said the force has not come with disarmament as a goal. The commander of the Hema militia has happily echoed that sentiment. The United Nations mission here is organizing a rare meeting, scheduled for next week, of leaders of several armed groups in Ituri with the hopes of negotiating a political agreement.
For the multinational force to secure the city only for members of one ethnic group, everyone here acknowledges, would be a disaster for the force and ultimately for the United Nations Security Council.
Several of the Council's members are scheduled to visit Bunia next Thursday. "I want to work for all the ethnic peoples," Colonel Vollot said today. "If we can get these people to come back, it will be a good thing."
Among those who are at home are countless families who do not have enough food to eat. Their homes were looted in the fighting; their fields were plucked of crops.
One man who dared return to his fields on Thursday returned with a few pounds of tiny sweet potatoes, with which to feed his six children. The big ripe potatoes had all been stolen. No matter. It would be his first meal in three days.
"It's great they will come," he said. "They will arrive too late. We have already suffered so much."
It is likely to take weeks to deploy all 1,400 soldiers to Bunia. At the moment, only six or seven heavy cargo planes can land at the airport here. No matter when they all get here, they must leave on Sept. 1, unless the Security Council extends their deadline.
----
Western Sudan rebels say killed many soldiers in attack on army position
CAIRO (AFP)
Jun 06, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030606091734.jn5emedh.html
Rebels from the Sudan Liberation Movement claimed Friday to have killed a large number of soldiers and captured military equipment in an attack on an army position in the western Darfur region.
SLM Secretary General Mani Arkoi Minawi told AFP in a telephone call his forces "annihiliated" an unspecified number of soldiers" Thursday and had captured 25 vehicles, as well as arms, including rocket launchers and heavy machine guns.
The attack was in the Adar area of North Darfur state.
Minawi said Sunday the SLM wanted to join the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels in peace talks with the government.
He reported that his movement had decided to "begin a dialogue with the Sudan People's Liberation Army in order to reach a comprehensive solution on the entire Sudanese territory."
The SLM has claimed a number of attacks in the Darfur region since it surfaced for the first time in February.
The government has refused to acknowledge any political motivation for unrest in the states of North, South and West Darfur, blaming it instead on "armed criminal gangs and outlaws," who it says are aided by tribes from neighboring Chad.
-------- arms sales
ASIA Chinese Firm Denies Aiding Iran on Weapons
World In Brief
Friday, June 6, 2003
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21832-2003Jun5?language=printer
BEIJING -- A major Chinese conglomerate denied yesterday that it aided Iran's missile program and demanded that the United States lift "groundless and unjustified" penalties imposed on the company.
U.S. officials last month accused China North Industries, also known as Norinco, of supplying Iran with unspecified materials or technology that could help in developing long-range missiles capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction. Its products, which include firearms and firefighting equipment, were banned from U.S. markets for two years.
Norinco said it supports Chinese government policies opposing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and obeys laws on the export of missile technology.
-------- asia
Thailand, US launch another round of joint military exercises
BANGKOK (AFP)
Jun 06, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030606103810.ls2y1z5h.html
Thailand and the United States launched joint naval training exercises Friday, officials said, in the second round of military manouvers in a month between the two countries.
Some 1,500 US sailors and Marines and 1,700 Thais are participating in the annual Cooperation Afloat Readiness Training, or CARAT, exercises. A US envoy said the exercises are aimed at boosting security in Southeast Asia.
"CARAT, now in its ninth year, is the most important naval exercise between our two countries," US charge d'affaires Ravic Huso said at Chuck Samet naval base on Thailand's central coast, according to an official text of his speech at the opening ceremony.
"The goals of this exercise are clear: to give our navies the opportunity to train together, to enhance our naval operational readiness, and to prepare us to work together to meet real world maritime challenges and to ensure regional stability and security."
The annual exercises, which have similar phases in Brunei, Singapore and Malaysia, will involve at least nine frigates and seven aircraft from the Royal Thai Navy, a naval spokesman said.
The US task force of at least four ships is led by the guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, the US embassy said.
Training is scheduled in areas such as manouvering and communications, gunnery, diving and salvage, and amphibious operations.
US troops last week wrapped up Cobra Gold, their biggest Asian war games of the year, after two weeks of manoeuvres with Thai and Singaporean forces in Thailand which focused in part on dealing with terrorist threats.
"We have been engaged in the global war on terrorism in Afghanistan but also in the Asia-Pacific region," Huso said Friday.
He stressed that joint naval operations help reinforce a "collective will" to promote maritime security in Southeast Asia.
The region contains some of the world's most strategic shipping lanes, including the Malacca Straits between Malaysia and Indonesia which carries one third of the world's trade but remains vulnerable to attacks from pirates and terrorist groups.
-------- britain
Iraqi military officer 'source for weapons claim'
June 6 2003
AP
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/05/1054700339635.html
A senior officer within Saddam Hussein's army was the source for a British intelligence claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a British newspaper reported yesterday.
Prime Minister Tony Blair is under fire from parliamentarians because of the failure to find Iraq's alleged chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, which were his main justification for war.
The controversy has focused in particular on claims that Mr Blair's office redrafted an intelligence dossier to emphasise a single-source report that Saddam could have fired chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.
The Financial Times, basing its report on unnamed "senior" civil servants, said that information came from a "senior Iraqi officer on active service within the country's military".
The paper said British officials in two central government departments described the Iraqi source as having a record for providing reliable data over years.
The officials also said the source's claim was analysed by the independent Joint Intelligence Committee, which distributed the information to cabinet ministers in August, several weeks before the government compiled its intelligence dossier on Iraqi weapons.
A report by BBC radio last week quoted an unidentified source as saying that Mr Blair's office had included the 45-minute claim in the dossier even though intelligence officials believed the information was unreliable.
Mr Blair has insisted that the intelligence material used to support his case for military action was approved by the independent Joint Intelligence Committee.
On Wednesday, he announced that he would co-operate with a parliamentary investigation into the government's use of intelligence material on Iraqi weapons.
But the Intelligence and Security Committee probe may not quell the controversy, as the body conducts its business in private.
----
Weapons dossier 'sent back six times'
Friday, 6 June, 2003
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2966636.stm
A dossier including the claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes was repeatedly returned to intelligence chiefs for changes, the BBC has learned.
A source close to British intelligence has told BBC diplomatic correspondent Barnaby Mason that Downing Street returned draft versions of the dossier to the Joint Intelligence Committee "six to eight times". He said Prime Minister Tony Blair was involved in the process at one point.
Mr Blair has vigorously denied that the document was "sexed up" in order to garner support for war.
They have debased their own credibility by only issuing denials Iain Duncan Smith
The prime minister is under pressure over the way the government made the case for war in Iraq, with coalition forces yet to find weapons of mass destruction.
The chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix returned to the UN Security Council on Thursday to present what may be his final report before his retirement.
He said Iraq had left "many unanswered questions" about its unconventional weapons, but this did not mean such dangerous arms still existed.
The first of 1,400 military experts have now arrived in Iraq to begin a new search for evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
Confidence
Responding to Barnaby Mason's report, Mr Blair's office again said no pressure had been put on the intelligence services to change the document.
Mr Blair said on Wednesday he was confident the UN team, from the US, UK and Australia, would find signs of the nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
"I have absolutely no doubt at all that they will find the clearest possible evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," he said.
But a former senior intelligence official in the US state department, Greg Thielman, said he thought evidence had been distorted - a charge also denied by the Bush administration.
Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith repeated his call for a full independent inquiry into whether intelligence documents on Iraq's weapons were changed on the orders of Downing Street to strengthen the case for military action.
'Debased credibility'
He accused Commons leader John Reid of "debasing the credibility the government was standing on" by claiming "rogue elements" in the security services were briefing against the government.
"The government needs the British people to be able to believe, as we do, that they took decisions on the basis of intelligence that was right and that at the end of the day we can believe that intelligence," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"They have debased their own credibility by only issuing denials."
Former Labour chancellor Lord Healey has said Mr Blair should resign if he is wrong about weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
There have been uncorroborated briefings by a potentially rogue element Dr John Reid Leader of the Commons
Analysis: Is Blair off the hook?
On Wednesday the Lib Dems, backed by the Tories, were defeated in a motion calling for a judicial inquiry into the matter, by 301 votes to 203.
Mr Blair again insisted it was "completely and totally untrue" that a dossier had been "sexed up".
But he said he would allow the all-party intelligence and security committee (ISC) to conduct an inquiry into the row.
Do MPs feel misled about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?
In pictures
Mr Blair said the disputed claim over Iraqi weapons strikes within 45 minutes was entirely the work of the JIC.
But another military source, said to be "intimately involved" in the compilation of the dossier, told BBC2's Newsnight programme he had been "uneasy" with the 45-minute claim.
The source, who the programme said could not be described as a "rogue element", believed the emphasis placed on the claim had turned a possible capability into an imminent threat.
But he did not dispute the assertion that the intelligence services had put the claim into the dossier.
MPs on the influential foreign affairs select committee have already said they are to investigate the way the government presented intelligence information over Iraq's weapons.
Former foreign secretary Robin Cook said while he gave "two cheers" to the two investigations, he would have preferred "a more open and transparent inquiry", conducted by somebody from outside politics.
Commons leader Dr John Reid stirred up the row further on Wednesday, saying "rogue elements" in the intelligence services were briefing against the government.
-------- business
Sensytech awarded $4.4 million contract
IN BRIEF
Friday, June 6, 2003
Washington Post; Page E05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21816-2003Jun5.html
• Sensytech, a Newington, Va., government contractor, said it was awarded a $4.4 million contract to produce a Surface Ship Torpedo Defense System for the Navy. The company said it expects to complete the work by the middle of 2004.
-------- canada
Canada Scales Back Military Activities in Gulf
June 6, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-canada-afghanistan.html
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Canada said on Friday it will reduce the number of warships and planes it has in the Arabian Gulf as it prepares to send ground troops to Afghanistan.
The destroyer HMCS Iroquois with 265 sailors aboard will head home next week to Halifax, Nova Scotia, followed a short time later by two aircraft doing long-range patrols for the navy, defense officials said.
A frigate will remain in the Gulf region as part of Operation Apollo, Canada's contribution to the U.S.-led international military effort created for the war in Afghanistan.
``It was determined that we are now at the point where we can reduce operations in the Arabian Gulf area to shift our main efforts to our participation in the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, Afghanistan,'' Defense Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Henault said.
Canada is scheduled to send about 1,800 troops to Afghanistan this summer for peacekeeping and security operations.
Three military transport aircraft working with Operation Apollo will also be redeployed to support the recently launched French-led peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Canada said.
-------- iran
Experts Warn Congress About Iranian Exile Groups
Friday, June 06, 2003
Fox News,
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,88706,00.html
WASHINGTON - Iranian opposition groups seeking Washington's help to oust the country's Islamic theocracy could be as dangerous as the regime they want overturned, say Middle East experts who urge lawmakers to think twice before funding exiles in the United States.
In fact, one opposition group busy lobbying Capitol Hill serves as an umbrella to an organization listed on the State Department's list of terrorist groups, and until Operation Iraqi Freedom began, was sheltered by none other than ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
"There are people who have ideas about funding the opposition - the problem is, which groups do you fund?" asked one House GOP aide who did not want to be named. "The problem is they are not all what they seem. Some are real dirtbags."
Following war with Iraq and dialogue with North Korea, the Bush administration is trying to develop policy for the third member of the "axis of evil," Iran.
Lawmakers have been involved in the debate, suggesting in recent weeks varying responses to deal with mounting evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program and harbored Al Qaeda operatives responsible for the May 12 bombings in Saudi Arabia that killed nine Americans.
Some lawmakers have suggested aiding the National Council of Resistance of Iran (search), which has been lobbying intensely on and off Capitol Hill for support in overthrowing the fundamentalist regime in Iran.
But NCRI faces serious questions about its legitimacy. One of its member groups is the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran (search), also known as the Mujahedin e-Khalq (search). MEK is listed on the State Department's official list of terrorist organizations, and has been blamed for supporting the U.S. embassy takeover and overthrow of the Shah in 1979.
Though NCRI espouses political pluralism, fair and open elections, equality, free markets and separation of religion and state, the Terrorism Resource Center (search) in Virginia said MEK is responsible for orchestrated attacks over the last two decades that have resulted in the deaths of numerous Iranian officials in several countries.
"They're bad news," said Jim Phillips, a foreign policy expert with the Heritage Foundation (search) in Washington, D.C. "They are a terrorist group. They are very anti-American, though they hide behind a democratic charade. I would be against any relationship with them."
NCRI chief congressional liaison Alireza Jafarzadeh (search) defends MEK, saying it has never targeted American interests nor asked for financial aid from Washington. In the last month, it has offered critical intelligence to the U.S. government, providing information on two nuclear bomb-making facilities previously unknown to U.S. officials.
MEK's "only focus is on overthrowing the clerics in Iran," Jafarzadeh told Foxnews.com. He added that MEK does not deserve to be on the same terrorism list as groups like Hezbollah, which supports the Iranian regime.
So far, most lawmakers say they have not decided how they want to pursue "regime change" in Tehran. But many are sure they don't want war and suggest a better way is to aid reformers seeking to oust the Iranian clerics.
Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., said he would consider direct assistance to opposition groups, though he did not specifically mention NCRI. He said he also plans to introduce legislation that would impose import sanctions on Iranian goods and limit the funding Tehran gets from the World Bank.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., has sponsored legislation that would put more money into Radio Farda, a pro-democracy, Persian-language radio service sponsored by the United States and beamed to Iran.
Brownback is firm that he would rather the administration work with reformers than negotiate with the government, currently on the State Department's list of countries that sponsor terrorism. He has expressed no interest in supporting specific opposition groups in the United States.
Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, said he would like to steer clear of any funding for exile groups.
"In our zeal for democracy [in Iran], let us not call a terrorist a good terrorist," said Ney. "I think we have to be careful of who we are funding, and [MEK] is one example. I don't think a dime should go to a group like that."
Ney said he supports open dialogue with the Iranian government "from the top down," and does not want to dismiss out of hand the virtues of diplomacy with moderate members of Parliament.
"If there are members of Parliament who want to communicate with members of Congress, I think that dialogue should occur," he said. "I don't want to shut anyone out."
Neal Pollard, co-founder of the Terrorism Resource Center, said fueling opposition groups with the goal of "planting the seeds of democracy," has worked in the past, but it has also failed miserably.
"At the end of the day, democracy is a good thing and any organization that wants to promote democracy and free trade is a good thing," said Pollard. "But funding, training and equipping an opposition group should be a case-by-case decision made by the president. It's a precarious business."
----
Iranians don't need American kingmakers
Cameron Kamran IHT
Friday, June 6, 2003
http://www.iht.com/articles/98640.html
WASHINGTON Talk of regime change in Iran has been spreading within the Bush administration, particularly after the recent bombings in Saudi Arabia, which may have been directed by an Iran-based Al Qaeda cell. But the administration would simply repeat past U.S. mistakes in dealing with Iran if it followed the advice of those calling loudest for American intervention, whose ties with the family of the deposed shah represent despotism rather than democracy for Iranians.
Long before the Riyadh bombings of May 12, influential interest groups and neoconservatives had coalesced behind the scenes in Washington to steer the Iran debate in a more belligerent direction.
In a conference in early May, Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute said that outside actors were needed to spark change among an Iranian population fed up with clerical rule. He has joined Morris Amitay, a former director of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and James Woolsley, a former CIA chief, to create the Coalition for Democracy in Iran. Meanwhile in Congress, Senator Sam Brownback has introduced an amendment, called the Iran Democracy Act and supported by AIPAC, asking for $50 million to fund opposition groups dedicated to the overthrow of the Islamic regime.
After two decades of corruption, mismanagement and repression by the clerical ruling elite, "mullah" is a dirty word for the vast majority of Iranians today. Both they and the world would be better off with a different form of government in Iran. But America must be careful how it tries to influence change. Many Iranians still bitterly remember the CIA coup in 1953 that replaced the elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq with the dictatorship of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
The shah never recovered from the perception among Iranians that his power and legitimacy were manufactured and imported from abroad, and he was eventually overthrown. The American intervention in 1953 sowed the seeds of the Islamic revolution in Iran 26 years later.
Unfortunately, those currently clamoring for regime change in Iran would go down the same disastrous road. The Coalition for Democracy in Iran has strong ties to the exiled Reza Pahlavi, the deceased shah's son, and the Iran Democracy Act would largely fund dissident groups that advocate a restoration of the monarchy.
Whether Reza Pahlavi truly does want to act as a steward for real democratic change in Iran, as he says he does, is irrelevant. His association with these American initiatives will inevitably taint them among the audience they are targeted at - everyday Iranians who will be the ultimate agents of fundamental change in Iran. Reza Pahlavi as the poster boy for regime change in Iran would evoke the 1953 CIA coup all over again for many Iranians, immediately alienating them.
Opponents of this view counter with the gross oversimplification that Iranians today are in love with everything American and would welcome an American-imposed alternative to the mullahs. Advocates of that argument are reassessing their position next door in Iraq, where they predicted liberation parades instead of angry crowds against occupation.
Iranians are more nationalistic than Iraqis and less divided along ethnic and religious lines. Moreover, they have a long history, stretching back to the Tobacco Revolt of 1890, of uniting to oppose foreign intervention. We must remember the Iranian revolution was waged by a coalition of opposition groups united not by religious devotion but by their intense opposition to the autocracy of the shah.
Iranians today are the most pro-American populace in the Middle East, but the United States would sacrifice that goodwill if it formed an explicit relationship with the shah's son at a time when Iranians look to America as a beacon of future democracy, not a source of despotism from the past.
Despite the oppression of the mullahs, Iran has made some strides toward democracy in the last decade. Iranians turn out in much greater numbers than American do to elect most of their leaders, from the president and Parliament to thousands of local village councils. Regime change and the rise of another strongman would completely nullify this progress. The clerical straitjacket is the only thing preventing these institutions from realizing their true potential.
Strip away clerical authority in Iran and what you have left is secular representative democracy - democracy based on indigenous institutions established by popular mandate instead of from the top down by an occupying power. This seems infinitely preferable to a return to monarchy.
The writer, an Iranian-American, is a free-lance writer and commentator on the Middle East.
-------- iraq
Iraqi Sevenfold Council Insignificant: Kubaissi
"This council is insignificant and has no political leverage," Kubaissi said
By Ali Halani,
IOL Iraq Correspondent
http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2003-06/06/article01.shtml
BAGHDAD, June 6 (IslamOnline.net) - Head of the Unified Iraqi National Movement (UINM) Ahmad al-Kubaissi hit out Thursday, June5 , at the occupation forces in Iraq for trying to create an insignificant role for the U.S.-sanctioned sevenfold Iraqi leadership council.
"This council is insignificant and has no political leverage," al-Kubaissi told IslamOnline.net, noting that many Iraqis did not see this council in favorable light.
"If the Americans had been serious in their cooperation with the council's members and willing to set up an interim Iraqi government, we would have helped and supported them," he said.
Ever since their occupation of the country, the Americans have been hinting at the establishment of an interim Iraqi government "to shift the world attention from their occupation," he charged.
The U.S.-installed council, formed in the wake of the downfall of the Iraqi regime, comprises the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the Iraqi National Accord (INA), the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Shiite Al-Da'wa Party and the Sunni National Democratic Party.
Kubaissi downplayed the importance of the council, noting that he was heading "a political movement aimed at bringing all Iraqis on board."
When asked by IOL in April about the U.S. presence In Iraq and the possibility of joining an U.S.-installed government, al-Kubaissi said, "Yes, it is possible. This is now the destiny of the Iraqis and they must live with it."
'Multi-Faith Country'
Kubaissi further called for establishing "an open, multi-ethnic and multi-faith Islamic state," rejecting that postwar Iraq would be based on one religious school.
He also reiterated that that "there is nothing more dangerous on the unity of the Iraqi people than the cloak of religion and that is why I do not support a religious government in Iraq at such point of time."
He went on: "There are, in effect two Islams: the first one was sent down by Allah Almighty and is suitable for all Muslims worldwide...It is wonderful and provides for freedom, justice and equality.
"The second one is the work of a certain community or group, which stretches it to suit its own way. This version of Islam in not obligatory on anyone and does by no means represent the real Islam," he said.
He further said that there were only three countries worldwide, which describes themselves as being "Islamic."
"Iran which is a Shiite country that does justice to the Shiites and injustice to the Sunnis; Saudi Arabia, which is a scholastic country that throws its weight behind only one school and arbitrarily repress all other schools and Sudan where you find the religious partisan government, which supports one party and oppress other parties eve if they are Islamic-oriented," Kubaissi explained.
He asserted that the Iraqi people did not want such examples, but "want the Islam sent down by Allah Almighty on his Messenger Mohammad (peace be upon him)."
The Iraqis want a country, not an Islamic one, but a country that is based on the Islamic principles just like other countries that are based on Christian, Communist or pagan principles, he added.
On the decision of the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, to dissolute the Iraqi army and cancel the conference of the Iraqi opposition party, Kubaissi said it came as no surprise to him, noting that he asserted from the very beginning that "the Americans will not do any thing in the interest of Iraq."
On the Iraqi resistance, Kubaissi said he supports it but "after one or two years," noting that Iraq was now under the U.S. occupation.
----
ALLIANCES
Leading Iraqi Shiite Cleric Emerges to Meet U.S. Ally
June 6, 2003
The New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/international/worldspecial/06IRAQ.html
NAJAF, Iraq, June 5 - Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sestani, one of the most senior Shiite clerics in Iraq and the world, stepped into the political fray for the first time since the war today, meeting with a Kurdish leader who has enjoyed close ties to Washington and calling for elections to a national assembly for Iraqis to produce a new constitution.
Iraqi political figures who attended the meeting said the grand ayatollah was critical of postwar conditions in Iraq. The allied campaign to end the tyranny and oppression of Saddam Hussein "is like an occupation, not a liberation, as the people have been told," one of those who attended quoted him as saying.
Ayatollah Sestani spoke today during a meeting with Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish chieftain who is among the former opponents of Mr. Hussein who are now stepping up pressure on American and British occupation authorities to allow an Iraqi political process to move forward quickly.
Today's visit, the first time that the grand ayatollah has emerged from seclusion since early April, underscored that the growing dissatisfaction with the current state of planning in Washington and London for a postwar government extends beyond former Iraqi opposition leaders to other major figures.
Shiite Muslims compose 60 percent of Iraq's population, and Ayatollah Sestani is one of the most influential voices among them.
Mr. Barzani traveled to Najaf in a caravan of more than 25 vehicles that wheeled across the desert and into the crowded streets of the city center near the dome of the shrine of the Imam Ali mosque, where the nephew of the Prophet Muhammad and the spiritual leader of Shiite Islam is said to be entombed.
The alleyways were choked with pilgrims, vendors and religious students as Mr. Barzani, wearing a business suit, made his way on foot down a narrow passageway to a nondescript doorway that opened onto a large two-story house. There, the ayatollah's anterooms were crowded with religious visitors from Pakistan, Uzbekistan and China, said Hoshyar Zebari, Mr. Barzani's spokesman and foreign policy adviser.
"His emphasis was on having an Iraqi government, on elections and that this is the right thing in a democratic system," said Hamid al-Bayati, a spokesman for Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, another prominent Shiite Muslim cleric, who sits with Mr. Barzani on a seven-member "leadership council" of Iraqi political leaders.
"The meeting today supported our argument and view of the need for an Iraqi government, an independent government and a constitution through an assembly elected by the Iraqi people," Mr. Bayati said.
Mr. Barzani, who had not visited Najaf since his father, Mulla Mustafa Barzani, sent him on a mission here in 1967, said in an interview that his impression of Ayatollah Sestani "is that he is an advocate of nonviolence, that he does not seek dramatic change, but rather is a man of consensus."
Participants in the meeting said the ayatollah did not criticize the American occupation administrator, L. Paul Bremer III. But they said he did speak pointedly about mistakes that he believes are being made by the allied powers, like appointing Sunni Muslims as governors in predominantly Shiite areas, inflaming longstanding Shiite grievances about being treated as an underclass.
On Friday, Mr. Bremer is meeting with the former opposition groups who have united and seek to form an interim government under the United Nations resolution on Iraq. Thus far, Mr. Bremer has offered the Iraqi political groups membership on a "political council" of 35 that he would appoint for "consultations."
He has also proposed calling a national conference to appoint a commission to write a new constitution, but plans for the conference and the selection of delegates have not been spelled out.
The Iraqi leadership council will meet on Friday in an expanded session where Iraqis are expected to seek clarifications on Mr. Bremer's proposals. After the meeting, the Iraqis said, they will decide whether to participate in Mr. Bremer's political council.
During a joint news conference today, Mr. Barzani and Ayatollah Hakim spoke of the desire not to "clash" with the occupation powers, but at the same time expressed impatience with the pace of the political process under Mr. Bremer.
In February and in May, Iraqi political figures said they were promised first by Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House special envoy to the Iraqi opposition, and then Jay Garner, Mr. Bremer's predecessor as administrator for postwar Iraq, that they would be allowed to form a provisional government as soon as Mr. Hussein was toppled.
----
British beat my father - then he died
By Peter Foster in Basra
06/06/2003
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/06/wirq06.xml/
An Iraqi headmaster who died after being arrested by British troops in Basra was assaulted, his family said yesterday.
Abd al-Jabbar Mossa, 53, was hit "at least three times" on the head with two empty magazines from a Kalashnikov rife and a soldier's Kevlar helmet as he was bundled into the back of British armoured vehicle, witnesses said.
Mr Mossa, a member of the Ba'ath Party, is one of two Iraqis whose deaths in British custody are being investigated by the Royal Military Police.
----
In Iraqi town, misery and despair add to hatred of US troops
Fri Jun 6,
AFP
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030606/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_unrest_town&cid=1514&ncid=1478
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - Qassem Hasnawi watches the US soldiers roaring through Fallujah day after day with their armoured vehicles and machine guns and only thinks about one thing -- how much he wants to spill their blood.
"Imagine how an Iraqi man feels when he sees a foreigner touching his sister," he says in the brutal summer heat of his roadside stand, where he works 16 hours a day selling local cigarettes for around 40 cents a pack.
"We can never accept it. I swear to God, I want to kill them all."
About an hour west of Baghdad, the conservative Sunni Muslim town is filthy, run-down and desolate. Children, shoeless and unwashed, beg in the streets or hustle drivers for a handout to "guard" their parked cars.
Old men dressed in rags kneel on the pavement in diagonal lines, just to keep in the thin shadow cast by the electricity poles.
But in addition to the despair, Fallujah is simmering with rage two months into the US military occupation of Iraq.
The hatred of the occupation has erupted in two deadly attacks in the last two weeks, the latest on Thursday when an assailant shot a rocket-propelled grenade at a convoy, killing one US soldier and wounding five.
In many ways, the city has become emblematic of the complex tangle of problems facing the US-led coalition. Ever since 16 people were shot dead here by US forces in April, the troops in Fallujah can do nothing right.
Patrols come under regular fire from Iraqis armed with the flood of weapons available since Saddam Hussein was toppled, which in turn has left the soldiers edgy and much less friendly.
While the Americans say they want to let Iraqis run their own affairs as soon as possible, they have poured more than 1,000 extra troops in and around the city in the past few days to try to clamp down on the unrest.
And although the coalition says it is waging a "hearts and minds" campaign to win over the public, the residents of Fallujah angrily insist that peace will come only once the US soldiers have packed up and left.
"They wave their guns in our faces and they insult us," says Uday Beldi Edan, a wizened 52-year-old shouting to be heard above the crowd of people voicing their rage.
"The Americans are humiliating us on purpose. They touch and search our women. We should resist them, and we will."
For the Americans, frisking women during house-to-house searches for weapons and attackers is a normal part of security. For the people of Fallujah, it is a horror beyond description.
The word on the street is that US troops fly helicopters over the city at night just to spy on the women sleeping on rooftops to beat the heat indoors, and that they use binoculars to stare at them inside their houses.
Residents also say US troops sometimes urinate in full view of women, mocking Islamic sensitivities.
But the anger in Fallujah goes far beyond the treatment of its women.
Many of its men were soldiers in the Iraqi army, which has been disbanded by the US-led coalition. Their new unemployment has added to the city's misery.
Residents deny they still hold allegiance to Saddam but according to the coalition, pockets of loyalty to the old regime are dotted around the area.
The combination of suffering and outrage -- and what seems to be an endless supply of guns and rocket-propelled grenades -- surely spells more bloodshed to come for the US troops.
"Every time you go out, there is a 50-50 chance you will get shot up," says Private First Class Raymond Mickler, speaking from an armoured Humvee with a machine gun mounted and loaded. "We just have to be real careful."
Nahaf al-Diaji, another resident, warns the Americans have yet to taste Fallujah's full fury.
"We have not even started attacking them yet," he vows. "This is just the beginning."
-------- israel / palestine
Hamas Halts Truce Talks With Abbas
June 6, 2003
The New York Times
By GREG MYRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/international/middleeast/06CND-HAMAS.html
JERUSALEM, June 6 - Top Hamas leaders said today that the militant Islamic group was calling off cease-fire talks with Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, a move that poses a direct challenge to the current Middle East peace plan.
The statements by the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip came a day after Israeli troops killed two Hamas members in a shootout in the West Bank.
It also followed criticism by Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, of Mideast peace talks between Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel convened in Aqaba, Jordan, on Wednesday by President Bush.
Under the peace plan, known as the road map, the Palestinians are obligated to stop violence against Israel, and Mr. Abbas has been trying to negotiate a truce with Hamas and other groups responsible for bombing and shooting attacks.
Further talks were expected this weekend, but Hamas said it was calling off the negotiations with Mr. Abbas after Wednesday's summit meeting in Jordan.
At the Aqaba talks, Mr. Abbas, commonly known as Abu Mazen, called for an end to the ``armed intifada,'' or uprising.
Hamas leaders said they rejected this as a ``surrender'' to Israel, and they also cited the Israeli military operation against Hamas members on Thursday night in the West Bank village of Attil. The Israeli Army said it killed two militants and arrested a third when they refused to surrender.
``We have stopped the dialogue with the Palestinian Authority,'' Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, told Reuters. ``This is our choice and we have no alternative.''
Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a senior Hamas official, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying in Gaza: ``We were shocked when we saw Abu Mazen and his new government giving up all the Palestinians' rights. Abu Mazen committed himself in front of Bush and Sharon to very dangerous issues that closed the door of dialogue between us.''
Other Hamas officials said they would meet on Saturday with Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group, to persuade it to break off truce talks as well.
Hamas has never recognized Israel, and says it is fighting for the destruction of the Jewish state. Hamas has carried out more bombings than any other Palestinian group in the current Mideast fighting, which began in September 2000.
The group carried out four suicide bombings in a three-day span from May 17 to 19, with the first attack coming just hours before Mr. Abbas and Mr. Sharon held a crucial meeting.
Hamas supporters staged three rallies in Gaza this afternoon, with demonstrators carrying green Hamas flags and posters denouncing the summit talks.
The peace plan calls on the Palestinian leadership to rein in militants. Israel says a cease-fire would be welcome, though it stresses that Mr. Abbas will ultimately have to meet the criteria set in the peace plan, which specifies that militant groups must be dismantled and disarmed.
The plan also calls for Israel to gradually pull back its troops from Palestinian areas in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Abbas is also trying to persuade Islamic Jihad and another militant group, Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, to agree to a cease-fire. So far, neither has formally accepted the proposal.
On Thursday Mr. Arafat dismissed a pledge by Mr. Sharon to begin dismantling ``unauthorized outposts'' on the West Bank, saying, ``Unfortunately, he has not yet offered anything tangible.''
-------- mideast
Abdullah 'Nearly Pulled Out of Summit Over Ties With Israel'
Staff Writer,
Arab News
6 June 2003
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=0§ion=1&article=27053&d=6&m=6&y=2003
JEDDAH - Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, nearly withdrew from the summit with US President George W. Bush in Egypt because of US pressure to speed up Arab normalization with Israel, it was reported yesterday.
Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, said Prince Abdullah rejected a US request to mention in the final summit communique that the Arab parties agreed to normalize ties with Israel as part of steps to build trust with the Jewish state.
Prince Abdullah threatened to pull out of Tuesday's summit held in the Egyptian Red Sea resort at Sharm El-Sheikh before Bush stopped him after making sure the US delegation retracted the clause, the newspaper said.
According to sources close to the summit participants, differences emerged between Washington and the five Arab states represented at Sharm El-Sheikh, particularly over the issue of normalization with Israel.
The Egyptian news agency MENA reported later that differences over normalization had delayed the official opening of the summit.
Saudi Arabia in particular insisted that normalization should be comprehensive in exchange for Israel's return of occupied land, according to sources close to the participants.
----
Iran will have WMDs by 2006: Israeli FM
Friday, June 06, 2003
(AFP)
http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=16031&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs
MOSCOW, June 5 - Iran will acquire weapons of mass destruction by 2006 , Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said in an interview with Russian daily Izvestia published on Thursday.
"Iran will possess weapons of mass destruction at the end of 2005 or early in 2006 . This greatly concerns Israel and I think, should concern Russia," Shalom said, without giving any further details.
The Israeli foreign minister is to start a three-day visit to Russia on Monday.
Russia has contested US accusations that oil-rich Iran is using its nuclear sites to develop nuclear weapons. And despite US pressure, Russia is continuing to help build Iran's first nuclear power station at Bushehr.
However, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday that President Vladimir Putin had at the G 8summit committed Russia to ending sales of nuclear fuel to Iran until the country's nuclear activities come under greater international control.
Israel has its own weapons of mass destruction program, though it has never admitted it publicly.
-------- nato
Analysis: Poles nudge NATO toward Iraq
By Martin Walker
UPI Chief International Correspondent
6/6/2003
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030606-045840-1424r
WASHINGTON, June 6 (UPI) -- Few noticed the irony of the anniversary Friday, when Poland's Defense Ministry announced that it had recruited 15 countries to its peace-keeping mission in Iraq and that "the division is now fully formed."
June 6, the day that the Poles showed their commitment to their American and British allies in Iraq, and to the NATO alliance that will run the Polish force's logistics in Iraq, was also the anniversary of the D-Day invasion, 59 years ago.
That Normandy invasion in 1944 also saw Polish troops batter their way through the German defenses, accompanied by their U.S., British, Canadian and Free French allies. For Poland, after its 40 years of Cold War exile and enforced membership of the Warsaw Pact, a wheel has come full circle as its troops deploy again alongside their World War II allies.
"Around 15 countries have declared their contributions to the division and certain countries have expressed the wish to send officers to the (force's) command," Polish Defense Ministry spokesman Eugeniusz Mleczak said in a statement. "We can say as a result that the division has been completely formed."
Mleczak said a first chemical platoon was being sent to Iraq forthwith from its temporary base in Syria. Several dozen officers will follow next week in Poland's first such deployment to the Middle East since it joined NATO in 1999. The Polish mission is all the more important because it starts to bring NATO into the Iraq theater.
"We are not talking about a NATO presence in Iraq," NATO Secretary-General George Robertson stressed this week. "We are talking, purely and simply, about NATO help to Poland, which is intending to be in Iraq and to fulfill a role in the stabilization force."
Several NATO members, including France, Belgium and Germany, are still highly critical of the Iraq war and are wary of the alliance being drawn into a mission they opposed. They note the way that the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan has steadily evolved into a NATO operation, with NATO taking overall control of the Afghan stabilization force in August, and resist seeing that process repeated in Iraq.
The Polish announcement came after a week-long meeting in Warsaw of military officials from around 20 countries. Poland, an important European supporter of Anglo-American policies during the Iraq war that saw intense opposition led by France and Germany, has been given command of a stabilization force in one sector of Iraq, alongside Britain and U.S. forces. The Polish sector covers some 30,000 square miles in south-central Iraq, between Basra and the capital of Baghdad, and includes some of Iraq's most sensitive holy shrines.
The Poles will contribute some 2,000 troops and be in command of the 7,500-strong force. Other contingents include 1,800 troops from Ukraine (not a NATO member), 500 from Bulgaria and up to 800 from Romania. Slovakia is sending 85 soldiers, and Denmark is deploying a small specialist team of ten staff officers that are usually assigned to the joint Polish-German-Danish division based in Poland. Lithuania and Norway are also sending contingents.
The Polish Defense Ministry claims that the force will be on the ground by July and fully operational by Sept. 1, thanks in part to NATO support. The alliance agreed Tuesday to support Warsaw in five specific aspects of the mission: force generation, communications support, coordinating troop and equipment movement, logistics and intelligence. So despite French, German and Belgian reluctance, Iraq will soon start looking more and more like a NATO operation.
Also Friday, the Dutch government agreed to send a self-contained and reinforced battalion of 1,100 soldiers to the southern Iraqi province of Al-Muthanna. The plan has yet to win a formal vote in Parliament, but this is not expected to be a hurdle.
"Of course it is a difficult decision to send 1,100 men and women into an area where there are risks. But the Dutch government thinks it is important that we do our bit for Iraq's future," Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told a news conference.
The Netherlands, also a NATO member, backed the U.S.- and British-led invasion of Iraq but did not provide military assistance because it did not believe there was enough public and parliamentary support.
The Dutch unit will be based around a battalion of Dutch Marines, backed up by a contingent of military engineers, a field hospital, military police and three manned Chinook transport helicopters. Nominally a part of the U.S.-led stabilization force in Iraq, the Dutch unit will operate in the southern, British-run zone. The Dutch Marines routinely train with their British counterparts.
----
Macedonia Sends Troops To Iraq To Prove 'Commitment To NATO'
Macedonian Information Agency
June 6, 2003
http://www.realitymacedonia.org.mk/web/news_page.asp?nid=2617
DEPARTURE OF ARMY CONTINGENT IN PEACEKEEPING MISSION TO IRAQ
-"This would be a realization of all Macedonia's commitments for integration in NATO and an opportunity to show our capabilities, thus demonstrating that Macedonia is ready to bear large-scales burdens."
In the presence of Macedonian Defense Minister Vlado Buckovski, ARM Chief of Staff General Lieutenant Metodi Stamboliski and the family members, the soldiers of the Macedonian contingent departed Friday in a peacekeeping mission to Iraq.
This mission is an investment and will be a proof of our firm determination to endure on the road towards NATO membership and to strengthen the strategic friendship with the members of antiterrorist coalition, Buckosvski told the Macedonian peacekeepers.
Twenty-eight ethnically mixed members of the special units "Scorpions" and "Wolves" will secure facilities and roads along with the 4th American infantry division near the town of Taji.
The medical team of nine persons will work on a request.
Commander of the contingent Metodija Hadzijanev said that he was proud to lead this contingent into "a historic mission for the country."
"This would be a realization of all Macedonia's commitments for integration in NATO and an opportunity to show our capabilities, thus demonstrating that Macedonia is ready to bear large-scales burdens," Hadzijanev said.
"This is the practical part of Macedonia's determination to support the antiterrorism coalition. As professionals we try to present Macedonia in the best light. We are ready to perform this mission," Captain Nexhet Limani said.
Staff Sergeant Gjorgji Stankovski said that after 30 days of preparations they would represent Macedonia in the best way and would return in Macedonia in December.
Buckovski presented to the US Ambassador to Macedonia Lawrence Butler a medallion with the sign of Macedonian Army contingent. Butler told MIA that the soldiers were ready and qualified, voicing his assurance that they would successfully perform their tasks. Earlier this week, the liaison officers Major Zoran Sekulovski and Lieutenant Colonel of Macedonian Air Defense Ljupco Stojanovski departed to Kuwait.
-------- philippines
Manila Rules Out Bases as U.S. Shifts Forces in Asia
June 6, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22767-2003Jun6?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-philippines-usa-bases.html
MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines said on Friday its close security ties with the United States would not extend to the reopening of American military bases, as Washington realigns its forces in Asia.
The Philippines, ruled by the United States for nearly five decades between the departure of the Spanish and the Japanese occupation during the Second World War, closed the last U.S. base on its soil in 1992 but remains a fervent ally.
``Both our countries have a clear idea of what we want and what we expect in our strategic relationship. The establishment of U.S. bases in the Philippines is not even contemplated,'' Foreign Secretary Blas Ople said in a statement.
The commander of U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific discussed Washington's plans to realign its forces in the region with Philippine officials on Friday at the start of a three-day visit.
He told a news conference the realignment would be done in close cooperation with key allies, including the Philippines.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was warmly welcomed in Washington during a recent state visit and received pledges of more U.S. military aid to help battle a host of Muslim and communist guerrilla groups.
U.S. soldiers train local units in counter-terrorism but cannot fight the rebels directly due to a ban in the Philippine constitution against foreign combat troops.
The United States has said it will pull back its forces from the tense demilitarized zone that has separated South and North Korea since the 1950s.
Washington also maintains thousands of soldiers on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa and a resupply center for U.S. warships in Singapore.
``I agree that the U.S. presence and engagement in the region is an important stabilizing factor,'' Ople said.
``During the Cold War, the Philippines carried the burden of contributing to the stability of our region by hosting the U.S. bases, to the benefit of everyone else in the region. Perhaps it is time for other countries to share this burden.''
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia OKs Amnesty for Chechen Rebels
June 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Chechnya-Amnesty.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's parliament Friday approved an amnesty for Chechen rebels who agree to disarm, a move presented by President Vladimir Putin as a major step toward peace but assailed by others as insufficient.
Critics say the amnesty is all but meaningless because it excludes rebels guilty of murder or trying to kill Russian soldiers.
Parliament's lower house voted 352-25 with one abstention for the measure, which pardons rebels who have been fighting in Chechnya for most of the past decade if they give up their weapons or renounce armed separatism by Sept. 1. The motion does not need upper house approval.
In addition to the disarmament deal for rebels, the motion also gives amnesty to Russian troops, who have been accused by human rights groups of committing widespread abuses against Chechen civilians.
The amnesty, which took effect late Friday, does not pardon rebels or Russian soldiers who have committed particularly grave crimes -- including premeditated murder, rape and hostage-taking. It also does not apply to foreigners. Russian officials say many Arabs and other foreigners have fought alongside rebels in Chechnya.
It also denies clemency to rebels found to have tried to kill Russian police and servicemen, an exception critics say could make the amnesty meaningless because it could be used to prosecute any insurgent who has taken part in the wars in Chechnya.
Hours before lawmakers voted for the amnesty, an explosion ripped through an apartment building in the Chechen capital Grozny early Friday, killing 11 people.
Officials said the blast was probably caused by a natural gas leak. It came a day after the suicide bombing of a bus carrying Russian air force crew and support workers in the republic of North Ossetia, adjacent to Chechnya, killing 20 people including the attacker.
Last month, two suicide bombings in a three-day period killed at least 78 people in Chechnya, underlining doubts about how much control Russian troops have over the war-ruined region.
``The latest terror attacks are aimed against the amnesty,'' said Putin's chief spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky.
He said the new amnesty is the most extensive of several such documents issued over the past decade. He wouldn't predict how many rebels could surrender but said about 210 militants in Russian jails could benefit from the amnesty. Some 200 Russian soldiers could also be pardoned, Yastrzhembsky said.
The amnesty follows a March referendum in which Chechens approved a Kremlin-backed constitution that cemented the region's status as part of Russia while promising it limited autonomy that has yet to be defined. Regional elections are set for the fall.
The Kremlin has described the referendum -- and the amnesty -- as part of a peaceful settlement, but liberal critics said they were useless without peace talks with rebel leaders.
Liberal lawmaker Sergei Mitrokhin on Friday dismissed the amnesty as a ``senseless public relations campaign,'' and a group of prominent human rights activists, including Yelena Bonner, the widow of Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov, warned that the Kremlin's refusal to conduct peace talks would trigger more suicide attacks.
``The current policy in Chechnya guarantees a bloody, exhausting and devastating war for decades,'' they said in a statement.
Fighting continued throughout Chechnya, with rebels killing eight federal troops and local police officers in raids and landmine explosions over the last 24 hours, according to an official with the Moscow-appointed Chechen administration who asked not be named.
Russian troops withdrew from Chechnya after a 1994-96 war, leaving the separatists in charge, but returned in fall 1999 after rebel raids in a neighboring region and after a series of apartment house bombings in Russian cities that killed some 300 people and were blamed on rebels.
-------- space
Now the US wants control of space
By Julian Coman in Washington
08/06/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/06/08/wspace08.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/06/08/ixnewstop.html
The United States is planning to take control of parts of space and develop patrolling military aircraft in orbit as part of a revived Star Wars proposal for an American military empire above the ozone layer.
According to James Roche, the US Air Force Secretary, America's allies would have "no veto power" over projects designed to achieve American military control of space.
The key theme of the ambitious plans is described as "negation" - the denial of the use of space for military intelligence, or other purposes, without American endorsement.
The plans come after the successful use of global positioning satellites (GPS) and other space technology during the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the intelligence agency that is responsible for US spy satellites, is to develop a strategy that ensures America's allies, as well as its enemies, never gain access to the same space resources without Washington's permission. Recent proposals that have been circulated at Space Command and NRO briefings suggest that access to "near-earth space" may be refused to other nations.
All GPS satellites are located within near-earth space, which covers the orbital distance from Earth to the moon. A fleet of spacecraft will be developed, designed to attack and destroy future satellites of enemies and rivals. The rapid-launch "military space plane," the potential cost of which has not been disclosed, would also be used as a mobile "bodyguard" for US space installations. It would be the first "space plane" in history with a directly military function.
A prototype is expected by 2005 although military deployment is not expected before 2014. "It will hopefully be a new kind of vehicle, equipped for the challenges of the future," said a Pentagon official.
After the recent military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, US Air Force Command claimed that American forces on the ground had a decisive advantage in gathering intelligence and targeting enemy troop positions.
As a result, the Pentagon believes that the struggle to control space will form the next stage of a global arms race.
Its plans confirm that America expects space to be "weaponised" in the medium-term future, and is determined to take an unassailable technological lead.
Two years ago, a report commissioned by Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, warned of the danger of a "Space Pearl Harbor" if America did not take action to protect itself.
At America's National Space Symposium, held in April in Colorado Springs, Gen Lance Lord, the commander of US Air Force Space Command, explained the logic of the new strategy to a largely military audience.
"The pursuit of asymetric advantage is not new," he said. "In the 20th century, airpower emerged as just such an advantage. Today, at the outset of the 21st century, we are realising the same sort of advantage through space power."
It was at the same forum that Mr Roche warned America's allies not to expect any veto over its plans.
Until now, international treaties have forbidden the deployment of weapons in outer space, although a loophole exists which allows the United States to use its satellites for military intelligence.
The 1967 Space Treaty - the first international legislation on space exploitation - also stated that outer space should be free for exploration and use by all states, and would not be subject to national appropriation by occupation or any other means.
Last month, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Ivanov, repeated Moscow's demands for the complete demilitarisation of space.
In March last year, however, Peter Teets, the under-secretary of the air force and director of the NRO, said: "I believe that weapons will go into space. It's a question of time. And we need to be at the forefront of that."
A Department of Defence Review in 2001 also stated that "a key objective [for the US] is not only to ensure US ability to exploit space for military purposes but also as required to deny an adversary's ability to do so". Canadian government officials have already complained that senior American officials have begun to exclude them from sensitive areas of joint aerospace defence operations.
The implications of an American military monopoly in space are bound to concern European allies, who have recently agreed to launch their own $3.2billion satellite navigation system - Galileo - which is to be used only for civilian purposes.
Europe has long resisted the prospect of a military use of space technology.
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative - the so-called "Star Wars" plan - to use space technology to repel Soviet missiles, ending the era of nuclear deterrence, drew fierce resistance from allies.
President George W Bush's plans for a satellite-guided missile defence system have now largely been accepted.
----
NASA to Send Rover to Study Mars
June 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Mars-Rover.html
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- NASA will send out the first of two rovers to Mars on Sunday, scraping away rock and photographing images in an important mission in the elusive search for life on the Red Planet.
The second rover is scheduled to be launched later this month, and both are expected to reach the planet next January.
A focus of the trip is to find signs of water on Mars. Previous missions showed that there was water on Mars in the past, but NASA scientists want to find out how long the water was there and in what amounts.
``If we have any hopes of finding and answering the questions -- 'Is there life on Mars? Was there life on Mars?' -- we have to not only show that water existed on Mars but that it persevered for long, long periods of time,'' said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science.
Of approximately 30 attempts to reach Mars, only 12 missions have succeeded. Of nine attempts to land there, only three have succeeded.
Four years ago, NASA launched two spacecraft to Mars but both failed, forcing NASA to revamp its Mars program. The current rover program has cost $800 million.
``It's not a trip to the beach on a Sunday afternoon,'' Weiler said. ``Landing on Mars is very, very difficult ... It's a graveyard for many spacecraft.''
The 4-foot, 9-inch rovers will operate like robotic field geologists. They will move around on six wheels that support a platform of solar panels. An arm extending from the front of the rover holds a microscope, spectrometers that can identify minerals and a tool that can scrape away rock to expose its interior.
A mast rises from the solar panel platform holding a panoramic camera whose images will help scientists decide which areas to explore.
The two rovers are scheduled to land on opposite sides of the planet, said Cathy Weitz, a NASA scientist with the rover program.
The first rover will land in a valley that is believed to have been eroded by flowing water. The second will land near the planet's meridian, where scientists believe there is a mineral associated with water called gray hematite.
``When you look at Mars today, it's cold. It's dry. It's barren. It's not the kind of place that would be suitable for life,'' said Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the rover program. ``Yet when you look from above, you see this compelling evidence that once upon a time conditions were different.''
The Red Planet is proving to be a popular destination for space exploration this month because Earth and Mars are as close as they will be in a long time. Besides the NASA rovers, the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter with its British-built Beagle 2 lander was launched Monday from Kazakhstan.
----
Mars rovers' plutonium not a threat, NASA says
By Kelly Young and John Kelly
FLORIDA TODAY
June 6, 2003
http://www.floridatoday.com/news/space/stories/2003b/060603mars.htm
CAPE CANAVERAL -- One ounce of radioactive plutonium will ride on each of the twin Mars rovers to launch this month. It's enough to draw protests, but probably not enough to harm residents in a disaster.
NASA says the mission poses a 1-in-1,030 possibility of a radioactive accident near the launch site. And, even in the worst-case disaster scenario, people there would be subjected to less radiation than a single medical X-ray.
"We really don't see them as a safety hazard," said Peter Theisinger, project manager for the Mars Exploration Rovers.
Brevard County officials would not ask beachside residents to evacuate if a launch accident occurred.
"We would never do any more than ask people to stay indoors," said Bob Lay, director of Brevard County's emergency management office.
Opponents say the government is downplaying the odds of an accident and its consequences. They say any plutonium is too much and even the slimmest chance of a radioactive accident is not worth the risk.
"NASA is lying," said Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.
Anne Richter, a member of Pax Christi in the Tampa area, said she wished NASA would provide more information about the hazards in an easy-to-find place. One website she looked at explained the mission's scientific goals to children, but there was no mention of the risks posed to people living in the launch area.
The liftoffs of Mars Exploration Rovers A and B will mark the first time plutonium has been launched from Florida aboard a NASA spacecraft in six years.
That's when the agency launched Cassini toward Saturn. Protesters picketed the gates of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and hung fliers on residents' doors warning of a potential nuclear disaster over the beaches. For the Mars launches, about 10 people protested outside the spaceport's gates on May 3. Others are distributing flyers around the state letting people know about the radioactive material onboard.
There are some big differences this time, not the least of which is the amount of plutonium aboard.
Cassini carried roughly 72 pounds of plutonium in generators needed to power the giant probe on its voyage to Saturn, where it will arrive July 2004. Each rover will carry an ounce of the radioactive element in eight penny-sized pellets to keep them warm during the Martian nights, which can reach minus 157 degrees Fahrenheit. They will also carry even smaller amounts of the radioactive elements, cobalt-57 and curium-244, to calibrate two science instruments.
The analysis of the risk by NASA and the Department of Energy is laid out in a 200-plus page document the agencies were required to make public before launching the rovers.
The Environmental Impact Statement, which is based upon hundreds more pages of government and contractor analysis, explains how the radioactive particles could be released over the coast if one of the rockets explodes before or during liftoff.
The report says the particles, if enough of them get into the body, can cause cancer and birth defects in humans. However, the government says its worst estimates show the most-exposed person would get 3 percent of the radiation he or she might get in a year's worth of regular activity.
Even in the worst possible scenario, the NASA and Department of Energy scientists estimated that all dangerous particles would stay within Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Kennedy Space Center -- falling to the ground in an area about one-fifth of a square mile near the pad.
The plutonium is not weapons grade. Nor is it the highly explosive material used in nuclear bombs.
It does become a health hazard if its casings are somehow broken and it is reduced to fine particles. The likelihood in this case is remote because the pellets are made of a ceramic material that is difficult to vaporize, but NASA concedes it can happen.
In addition, layers of protective canisters that encapsulate the pellets have been tested to ensure they could withstand the forces of an explosion.
The government documents say it's not the force of the explosion or even the impact from rocket wreckage that poses the biggest threat.
It's the heat from a rocket fuel fireball.
Extreme temperatures could weaken the canisters and allow them to leak radioactive particles. Lay said that people driving through west-central Florida would probably get more radiation passing by the phosphate mines.
"We're taking all the precautions that we can think of," Kennedy Space Center Director Roy Bridges said.
"We have briefed the governor, as well as the local and national officials," he said. "We have a team in place so we know exactly what has happened in the case of a contingency. We think these are entirely safe."
One group of officials will monitor the launch from the radiological control center. Throughout the countdown, workers will keep an eye on the winds and weather conditions.
"On liftoff, prior to that mishap taking place, we would already know the effects of the wind," Lay said. "We would already know the effects of the blast."
Kennedy Space Center's security level was raised to Charlie about the same time that the nation's security status went to high. Area security won't be any tighter for this launch than it will be for comparable launches, said Lay.
What's next
# The first Mars probe will launch Sunday at 2:05 p.m. on a Delta 2 rocket.
# The second is scheduled for a June 25 launch.
# Both will arrive on the Martian surface in January.
-------- spies/spy agencies
Intelligence Historian Says CIA 'Buckled' on Iraq
Reuters
Friday, June 6, 2003
By Jim Wolf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25020-2003Jun6?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, a leading national security historian concluded in a detailed study of the spy agency's public pronouncements.
"What is clear from intelligence reporting is that until about 1998 the CIA was fairly comfortable with its assessments on Iraq," John Prados wrote in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
"But from that time on the agency gradually buckled under the weight of pressure to adopt alarmist views," he said. "After mid-2001, the rush to judgment on Iraq became a stampede."
A CIA spokesman, Mark Mansfield, dismissed Prados' conclusion, saying "The notion that we buckled under and adopted alarmist views is utter nonsense."
The supposedly imminent threat from Iraq's feared chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs was cited by U.S. and British leaders as the chief justification for going to war in March. Eight weeks after Saddam's ouster, U.S. forces have yet to find any chemical or biological weapons in Iraq.
Prados is author of 11 books, including "Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations from World War II through the Persian Gulf." His biography of the late CIA chief William Colby has been praised as "meticulously researched" by Thomas B. Allen, co-author of "Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage."
In his study of unclassified Iraq intelligence judgments, Prados said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had no need for a specially created intelligence team at the Pentagon to search for terrorist links with Iraq and other countries -- "George Tenet's CIA had already been hounded" into building the case for war.
TENET DENIAL
Tenet, the director of central intelligence, denied last week a rising tide of charges, including from insiders who spoke on condition of anonymity, that intelligence on Iraq had been slanted to buttress President Bush's approach to Saddam.
"The integrity of our process was maintained throughout, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong," Tenet said ahead of a report by a CIA review team examining prewar intelligence judgments.
In an Oct. 7, 2002, letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, Tenet said that in response to a U.S.-initiated attack that put Saddam in danger of defeat, the chances of his use of weapons of mass destruction were "pretty high, in my view."
Much of U.S. prewar intelligence findings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was flimsy but policymakers' goals were clear, said Mel Goodman, a professor at the Pentagon's National War College and director of the Intelligence Reform Project at the Center for International Policy in Washington.
"To deny that there was any pressure on the intelligence community is just absurd," said Goodman, who quit in 1990 as a CIA analyst over alleged skewing of intelligence.
The Defense Intelligence Agency, in a classified September 2002 report, said it lacked enough "reliable information" to conclude Iraq was amassing chemical weapons, even as the administration was pushing for war, an official said on Friday.
----
U.S. Seeks to Clarify Iraq Weapons Report
June 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Iraq-US-Intelligence.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Defense Intelligence Agency last fall could not pin down the location of any chemical weapons facilities in Iraq but had no doubt about the existence of programs designed to produce chemical and other weapons of mass destruction, the DIA's director said Friday.
Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, the agency's director, said news reports about excepts from a September 2002 DIA report should not be interpreted as meaning his agency doubted that Iraq had a weapons of mass destruction program.
But he acknowledged that at that time the DIA could not find chemical weapons facilities.
``We could not specifically pin down individual facilities operating as part of the weapons of mass destruction program, specifically the chemical warfare portion,'' Jacoby said at a joint news conference with Sen. John Warner, R-Va., and Stephen Cambone, the Pentagon's intelligence chief.
They spoke after the Senate Armed Services Committee met privately with Jacoby, Cambone and an unidentified CIA representative to discuss prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs.
The September 2002 DIA report is notable because it coincided with Bush administration efforts to mount a public case for the urgency of disarming Iraq, by force if necessary. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others argued that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons and was hiding them.
``We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons,'' Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee on Sept. 18, 2002.
In his description of the still-classified DIA report, Jacoby drew a distinction between the level of certainty about Iraq's pursuit of weapons and the existence of actual chemical weapons.
``As of 2002, in September, we could not reliably pin down -- for somebody who was doing contingency planning -- specific facilities, locations or production that was underway at a specific location at that point in time,'' he said.
That report ``is not in any way intended to portray the fact that we had any doubts that such a program existed,'' he said.
Two months after major fighting in Iraq ended, U.S. officials have yet to find any chemical or other mass-killing weapons, although they still express confidence that some will turn up.
Rumsfeld recently raised the possibility that Iraq destroyed the weapons before the war started March 20. He also has said he believes some remain and will be discovered when U.S. search teams find knowledgeable Iraqis who are willing to disclose the locations.
In making its case for invading Iraq, the administration also argued that Iraq was seeking to develop nuclear weapons and that it might provide some of its mass-killing weapons to terrorists.
On Friday, a small team of United Nations nuclear experts arrived in Baghdad to begin a damage assessment at Iraq's largest nuclear facility, known as Tuwaitha. It was left unguarded by American and allied troops during the early days of the war and then pillaged by villagers.
The arrival of the team -- whose members are not weapons inspectors -- marked the first time since the Iraq war began that representatives from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency returned to the country. The atomic energy agency had long monitored Iraq's nuclear program.
In its report last September, the Defense Intelligence Agency said it could find no reliable information to indicate that Iraq had any chemical weapons available for use on the battlefield. But the agency also said Iraq probably had stockpiles of banned chemical warfare agents.
The existence of the DIA report was disclosed by U.S. News & World Report, and a classified summary was reported by Bloomberg News on Thursday. Two Pentagon officials who had read the summary confirmed Friday that it said DIA had no hard evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons.
A White House spokesman said a portion of the still-classified report is being taken out of context of the entire document's conclusions, which match what the Bush administration argued all along.
``The entire report paints a different picture than the selective quotes would lead you to believe,'' said Michael Anton, a spokesman with the White House's National Security Council. ``The entire report is consistent with the president was saying at the time.''
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was a National Intelligence Estimate published at nearly the same time as the DIA report -- and with DIA's concurrence -- that concluded Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
The DIA's analysis is just one piece of an intelligence mosaic that Rumsfeld and other senior administrations could consider in making their own assessment of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons capability. Congress is reviewing the prewar intelligence to determine whether the administration overplayed the weapons threat in order to justify toppling the Iraqi regime.
-------- ukraine
Ukraine joins peacekeeping force
By Tom Warner in Kiev
June 6 2003
Financial Times (UK)
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1054416476867&p=1012571727166
Ukraine's parliament yesterday agreed to commit more than 2,000 peacekeepers to Iraq. The move is aimed at clearing a lingering cloud of ill-will between Leonid Kuchma, the president, and the US administration over his pre-war relationship with Saddam Hussein. Advertisement
The peacekeepers will form part of a Polish-led force of at least 7,000 troops due to go to Iraq in July to help stabilise the region between Basra and Baghdad.
That Ukraine will soon have one of the largest forces in Iraq after the US and UK represents a dramatic turn of events from the pre-war situation, when Kiev was building diplomatic and commercial ties with Mr Hussein's regime.
Although Ukraine still opposes the US-led coalition's decision to disarm Mr Hussein by force, Kiev asked to be included in the coalition in late March, during the second week of the war.
The huge pool of underpaid military professionals left after the USSR's collapse makes Ukrainian peacekeepers - also in Lebanon - popular. Ukrainian soldiers eagerly sign up for foreign missions to earn salaries of just $660 (€567) a month.
The government is not shy about its financial motives. "Even the temporary presence of troops in Iraq will allow Ukrainian companies to avoid being excluded from the reconstruction process and to renew our former economic co-operation with the future Iraqi government," argued Yevhen Marchuk, national security chief, in a speech before the vote.
That pragmatic logic has already gone a long way toward rehabilitating Mr Kuchma's standing in the US and UK. During the international summit in St Petersburg last weekend, Tony Blair had a short meeting with Mr Kuchma and made a vague promise to visit Ukraine. The last time the two men were at the same event, at the Nato summit in Prague in November, the UK prime minister and George W.Bush, US president, refused to sit next to Mr Kuchma.
The burning issue then was a leaked recording in which Mr Kuchma appeared to approve a plan to supply Iraq with advanced radars. He denied the plan but US intelligence services concluded the recording was authentic.
US support has put Ukraine back on track towards joining the World Trade Organisation and Nato, although both remain distant goals.
But it may be just as important for Ukraine to maintain its traditional eastern trading partners. Last year the Middle East and North Africa took 19 per cent of its merchandise exports.
And while parliament was debating the Iraq issue, corporate leaders were wrapping up a two-day trade summit with their counterparts from Syria.
-------- us
SPECIAL OPERATIONS
Navy Intends to Expand Seals Force
June 6, 2003
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/politics/06SEAL.html
WASHINGTON, June 5 - The Navy plans to expand its special operations forces, whose Seals scored significant commando successes in Iraq, Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations, said today.
Speaking to a breakfast meeting of the Defense Writers' Group here, Admiral Clark was asked whether the forces, called Naval Special Warfare, would be given new roles and missions in the campaign against terror or would expand but carry out essentially the same tasks it has traditionally had. Advertisement
"Both," the admiral said. "Certainly more. I'm growing the force."
Selecting and training members of the special operations forces is slow and carefully managed, and Navy officials said 272 slots would be added to Naval Special Warfare over five years, a 5 percent growth.
About 5,000 people now assigned to Naval Special Warfare units, home of the Seals. The acronym stands for sea-air-land.
"So is it fair to say it's likely that there will be new and different missions and applications in the future?" Admiral Clark asked. "I think the rational response is yes. Do I know how? No, I don't. Do I believe that this kind of capability needs to be exploited in the 21st century? You bet."
In the Iraq war, Seals covertly secured offshore oil terminals to prevent their destruction and gained control of the northern Persian Gulf and other vital waterways, crucial to allowing large cargo ships with food, medicine and other supplies to unload.
Seals also participated in recovering a prisoner of war, Pfc. Jessica D. Lynch of the Army.
-------- propaganda wars
What Is Patriotism?
By Charley Reese,
King Features Syndicate, Inc.
Friday, June 6, 2003
http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20030606/index.php
What with all the flag-waving, pro-war and anti-war rallies, Memorial Day observances and so forth, it seems to be a good time to consider exactly what patriotism is and what it isn't.
The best definition I've run across is "love of the land and its people." Most of us who live in an urban environment might not have the same feelings about land that our more agrarian ancestors felt, but we still become attached to places. Familiarity in this case breeds affection. Who doesn't feel affection for the areas where they were born, grew up and lived?
A patriotic love of land, of course, means our own nation - that land within the borders of the United States. The land immediately on the other side of the borders - say, in Canada - might look just like our land, but it isn't. I feel more at home on the New York side of the Niagara River than I do on the Canadian side, and I am a Southerner. But Southerner or Yankee or Westerner, we are all Americans. Despite the similarities, the United States and Canada are distinctly different countries with different forms of government, different cultures and different traditions.
What makes us unique as a people is certainly not race or ethnicity or religion. We're a hodgepodge of those things. What makes us unique is that we do not take an oath to a politician or to a political party or even to a government. Our oaths in this country are to the Constitution, that written charter of government and basic rights.
Teddy Roosevelt, one of the few geniuses to occupy the White House, once said that an American citizen should stand by a public official only so long as and to the extent that the public official stands by the Constitution. This is entirely consistent with America's founding philosophy. If we have to choose between a politician and the Constitution, we must choose the Constitution. To support a politician who doesn't support the Constitution is to be disloyal to the very thing that makes America, America.
That being the case, it would be a good idea for all Americans to read their Constitution. It's not a lawyer's document. It was written in plain English by some very intelligent men and was intended for public consumption. There are some ambiguities that could lead to honest disagreement about the meaning, but they are mostly on minor points. Americans should also read The Federalist papers, a collection of newspaper articles written during the constitutional ratification debate.
There is no room at all for the ridiculous interpretations some judges and others have made of the Constitution. It was intended to be strictly construed, not surrealistically construed, and if changes are needed, they should be amended by the process the Constitution provides. All Americans should object strenuously to "amendment by interpretation." That is as anti-American, as anti-democratic as you can get.
Too many Americans, it seems to me, associate patriotism exclusively with war. A constitutional war in defense of our land and our people naturally deserves support. The last war that fits that description ended in 1945. Since then, more than 100,000 Americans have died in battle, but not in defense of our land and our people. Since we are a free people, presumably able to control our government, that is our fault. We must learn not to be so susceptible to demagoguery and propaganda. We were never intended to be a people who would shout "Heil Bush" (or Clinton, Nixon, Reagan or anybody else).
The greatest dangers facing us today cannot be solved militarily, yet these civilian concerns are being de-emphasized by unnecessary wars against Third World countries. We had better concentrate on rebuilding the United States rather than Iraq or Afghanistan, and we had better worry more about the health of our people than sending our money to Africa or Asia.
Love and concern for our land and our people is the patriotic duty of every American. How about supporting all of the American people for a change instead of just those in uniform? Let us not throw away the very things so many Americans died to protect for some cockamamie scheme to run the whole world.
----
LIARS 'R US
Our rulers have no conception of objective truth
Justin Raimondo,
Antiwar.com,
June 6, 2003
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html
Let's see: a con-man makes up a few non-facts, invents some quotes, and passes off his minor lies as legitimate news over a period of some 18 months. Result: the executive editor and the managing editor of America's newspaper of record resign in disgrace. On the other hand, U.S. and British government officials, over roughly the same time period, concoct a series of cock-and-bull stories about Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction," and systematically lie to the American people in order to bamboozle them into an unnecessary war. Result: nobody resigns, or is asked to resign. Meanwhile, the same people hailing the downfall of Howell Raines are busy making excuses for George W. Bush and the neoconservative cabal who lied us into war.
We're now supposed to ignore the media because they're unreliable. Listen to the government: they know what's best. That's the whole point of the current campaign to debunk not only the Times but the supposedly "liberal" media. The stupid story about Wolfowitz saying that the Iraq war was really all about oil is somehow supposed to make us forget what he said to Vanity Fair. Even if Wolfowitz had said the war was all about oil, it still would've been a lie - because the truth is a whole lot worse.
The War Party, faced with the debunking of this administration's fabrications, is counterattacking by debunking the debunkers. It's their signature modus operandi: exaggerate, besmirch, smear, and drag everyone down to their level, where we can all roll around in the mud. If caught in a lie, get the goods on your accuser. Plant stories and then debunk them, discrediting your enemies: I have no proof that's what happened in the case of the Guardian, but I wouldn't put it past the War Party. The neoconservative scum who disfigure the public face of this administration like a bad case of acne, and their allies abroad, are capable of almost anything.
That the neocons are now posing as champions of objective truth, and the mortal enemies of context-dropping, has got to be the grossest inversion of reality on record: their hero, Leo Strauss, believed in lying as a high principle. The masses, you see, are too stupid to comprehend the bitter realities of the truth, and must be fed "necessary lies" cooked up by the intellectual elite - i.e. the neocons, in government and the media - but it's all for the greater good.
You have to hand it to the neocons for their boldness. Now they're saying: so we lied, or were lied to, but what does it matter? The end of Saddam is an end worthy of lying, or, as Andrew Sullivan put it:
"One reason I find some of the grand-standing over WMDs increasingly preposterous is that it comes from people who really want to avoid the obvious: more and more it's clear that the liberation of Iraq was a moral obligation under any circumstances."
Ah, the joys of "liberation" - thousands of deaths, ruined and looted cities, the rise of the Iranian-influenced mullahs, the slide into constant guerrilla warfare, widespread fear and uncertainty, the crippling of the economy, and the end of civil society. What more could the Iraqis want?
But all of that's just temporary, you see, an unfortunate stage in the transition to "democracy" and complete "liberation," two words that fall from the lips of administration officials and their media amen corner like overripe fruit in a summer storm. The President, in his "vision" speech to the American Enterprise Institute - that neocon echo chamber where the ideology of Democratism has incubated lo these many years - inveighed against the idea that the soil of the Middle East is too harsh for the tender sprout of democracy:
"It is presumptuous and insulting to suggest that a whole region of the world - or the one-fifth of humanity that is Muslim - is somehow untouched by the most basic aspirations of life. Human cultures can be vastly different. Yet the human heart desires the same good things, everywhere on Earth. In our desire to be safe from brutal and bullying oppression, human beings are the same. In our desire to care for our children and give them a better life, we are the same. For these fundamental reasons, freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred and the tactics of terror."
Speaking of presumptuous, the "interim" occupation government of Iraq has decreed that a "code of conduct" shall govern the "liberated" media of Iraq. Associated Press reports:
"Coalition officials say the code is not intended to censor the media, only to stifle intemperate speech that could incite violence and hinder efforts to build a civil society. The country is just too fragile for a journalistic free-for-all, they say."
Oh, those Ay-rabs, they're so damned fragile, a free press might shatter them. I especially like the way Mike Furlong, described as "a senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority," put it:
"There's no room for hateful and destabilizing messages that will destroy the emerging Iraqi democracy. All media outlets must be responsible."
But if "freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred" then why bother with censorship? Oh, but this isn't censorship, according to a media "advisor" who runs the seized Iraqi government television station:
"'We've done some pretty critical stories on U.S. authorities,' said Don North, an Arlington, Va.-based adviser to the station who has helped launch independent media in the Balkans and eastern Europe. 'The journalists ask, 'It is it all right to criticize the U.S. in our story?' North said. 'Yes, of course - if you can substantiate the charges.'"
To whose satisfaction is left unsaid, but the answer is clear: as in Bosnia and Kosovo, U.S. government media "advisors" will have the final say.
AP reports on an international shindig of "legal and media experts" meeting in Greece this week to draw up a "regulation book" for Iraqi journalists (but not Western journalists working in Iraq?), and lists key proposals:
"Adopt media law with penalties, ranging from public apologies to closure, for defamation, incitement to violence, hate speech.
"Set up council to help draw up code of conduct for journalists, resolve complaints against media.
"Create commission to regulate media, with authority to allocate radio and TV frequencies, monitor content, hear complaints. Separate board would hear appeals."
With the apparatus of censorship securely in place, the overlords of Iraq can safely proclaim that, from this day henceforth, the Iraqi government will "not require licenses for newspapers, magazines, individual journalists." Isn't that great? Furthermore, they'll "grant public and press access to all documents and decisions of U.S.-led interim governing authority" - as long as this material is utilized in a "responsible" manner, and doesn't get Iraqi journalists hauled up before the Media Commission on charges of "hate speech." Sure, why not "allow private Internet service providers to operate," as long as American "advisors" like Commissar North are around to "monitor content"? By all means let us "transform state-owned radio and TV into [a] public broadcasting system with editorial independence" - it's all good, as long as Americans are paying the bills and holding the reins.
But the ultimate solution, of course, is to "turn government newspapers over to independent, private owners," as the Athens conclave put it. Yeah! That's it! Why not just "deregulate" the Iraqi media and save the U.S. taxpayers some small change by turning it all over to Rupert Murdoch? After all, it seems to have worked in the U.S. ...
The War Party smugly cites a poll that avers the people don't care if they were lied to, but that's nonsense. As long as they are blithely unaware of the consequences and costs of the Iraq war, it doesn't matter to most people one way or the other. But at the first sign of trouble, or when the bill comes due - whichever comes first - Americans will suddenly recover their moral sense and recall, albeit dimly, the virtue of honesty.
Our rulers lied about the real reasons for this war, they lied about their war aims, and they are lying, now, about their future plans for a wider and even more destructive war. But their day of reckoning will come, and a lot sooner - by the look of things - than anyone now imagines.
----
WMD Quotes Before & After The Invasion
June 6, 2003
ActiveOpposition.com
http://www.activeopposition.com/WMD.htm
Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
Dick Cheney
August 26, 2002
Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
George W. Bush
September 12, 2002
If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.
Ari Fleischer
December 2, 2002
The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it.
Ari Fleischer
December 6, 2002
We know for a fact that there are weapons there.
Ari Fleischer
January 9, 2003
Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.
George W. Bush
January 28, 2003
We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.
Colin Powell
February 5, 2003
We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.
George W. Bush
February 8, 2003
So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? . . . I think our judgment has to be clearly not.
Colin Powell
March 7, 2003
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
George W. Bush
March 17, 2003
Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.
Ari Fleisher
March 21, 2003
There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.
Gen. Tommy Franks
March 22, 2003
I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction. Defense Policy Board member
Kenneth Adelman
March 23, 2003
One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.
Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark
March 22, 2003
We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
Donald Rumsfeld
March 30, 2003
Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find -- and there will be plenty.
Neocon scholar Robert Kagan
April 9, 2003
I think you have always heard, and you continue to hear from officials, a measure of high confidence that, indeed, the weapons of mass destruction will be found.
Ari Fleischer
April 10, 2003
We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.
George W. Bush
April 24, 2003
There are people who in large measure have information that we need . . . so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Donald Rumsfeld
April 25, 2003
We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.
George W. Bush
May 3, 2003
I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.
Colin Powell
May 4, 2003
We never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.
Donald Rumsfeld
May 4, 2003
I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program.
George W. Bush
May 6, 2003
U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction.
Condoleeza Rice
May 12, 2003
I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden.
Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne
May 13, 2003
Before the war, there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.
Gen. Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps
May 21, 2003
Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction.
Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff
May 26, 2003
They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer.
Donald Rumsfeld
May 27, 2003
For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.
Paul Wolfowitz
May 28, 2003
It was a surprise to me then - it remains a surprise to me now - that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there.
Lt. Gen. James Conway, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force
May 30, 2003
-------- war crimes
U.S. Seeks to Extend Int'l Court Deal
Friday June 6, 2003
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2756823,00.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - In an effort to avoid replaying a confrontation, the United States said Thursday it will seek to extend the deal exempting American peacekeepers from prosecution by the new international war crimes tribunal.
Last year's battle pitted the United States against countries around the world, including close European allies, Canada and Mexico.
It ended in July when the Security Council agreed to exempt from arrest or trial peacekeepers from the United States and other countries that have not ratified the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte told The Associated Press on Thursday that the United States would like ``a technical extension ... of the resolution,'' though he did not give a timeframe or say when a draft resolution would be introduced.
``It's very straightforward. We wouldn't introduce any substantive changes into the resolution we adopted last year by unanimity in the council, and we would assume - certainly hope - that this would receive overwhelming support,'' he said.
Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, said the stakes this year are ``in some ways even higher than last year because if the resolution was rolled over without a debate and without objection, it would increase the chance of its becoming a permanent fixture.''
But council diplomats said the United States was pressing for a quick vote without an open debate.
The court culminated a campaign that began with the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials for World War II's German and Japanese war criminals. It has jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed after July 1, 2002, involving any of the 90 nations adhering to the treaty, but will step in only when states are unwilling or unable to dispense justice.
The United States objects to the idea that Americans could be subject to its jurisdiction even if it is not party to the pact. Washington argues that the court could be used for frivolous or politically motivated prosecutions, especially of American troops.
During last year's battle, the United States threatened to end far-flung peacekeeping operations established or authorized by the United Nations - from Afghanistan and the Mideast to Bosnia and Sierra Leone - if it was not exempted.
The final deal dented the court's underlying principle that no one should be exempt from punishment for war crimes, and it angered court supporters and human rights groups.
----
Liberian Denounces War Crimes Indictment
June 6, 2003
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/international/africa/06LIBE.html
MONROVIA, Liberia, June 5 (AP) - Liberia's embattled president today rejected his indictment on war crimes charges and claimed that his government fended off a coup attempt, while rebel forces advanced on the country's capital.
Gunfire outside this capital city sent thousands of panicked people fleeing, with soldiers turning back refugees who came to the city seeking sanctuary.
Tension surged a day after the announcement of President Charles Taylor's indictment on war-crimes charges by a United Nations-sponsored court. Mr. Taylor was accused of "bearing the greatest responsibility" for a 10-year terror campaign in which tens of thousands of people were killed, raped, kidnapped or maimed in neighboring Sierra Leone.
Mr. Taylor denounced the indictment today, saying, "To call the president of Liberia a war criminal? God himself will not permit it."
Mr. Taylor also announced the alleged coup attempt while speaking to journalists in Monrovia. He had returned home overnight from nearby Ghana, site of new peace talks between Liberia's government and rebels, who have taken about 60 percent of the country during their three-year campaign.
The rebels want to oust Mr. Taylor, a former warlord who has been blamed by the United Nations for involvement in many of West Africa's conflicts.
While in Ghana, Mr. Taylor escaped a push by war-crimes prosecutors for his arrest on the new indictment. He said the coup attempt was launched Wednesday while he was out of the country, by "certain officials" supported by unidentified foreign diplomats.
Mr. Taylor said he accepted the resignation of Vice President Moses Blah because of the coup attempt. He also said he would ask his entire cabinet to resign to "open the road to a government of national unity."
"We are going to remain on course not for me, but for the Liberian people," he said, adding, "We want to continue to ask for your prayers."
Mr. Blah was being detained at the home of a Liberian general and two of his bodyguards were under arrest elsewhere, a senior government official said on condition of anonymity.
Authorities gave no details of the alleged coup attempt.
"As I'm talking to you, there's massive fighting going on . . . with units trying to enter Monrovia," Mr. Taylor told reporters.
Panicked villagers fled the sounds of gunfire near a bridge over the Po River, about six miles northwest of the city.
Liberian defense officials said loyalist troops and rebels were fighting there.
Several hours later, the rattle of automatic weapons and louder, more percussive explosions were heard by an Associated Press reporter at Brewerville, several miles closer to the capital.
Government and rebel forces also were battling in the country's southeast, defense officials said.
In Monrovia, troops patrolled streets in army trucks, while other soldiers on the city's outskirts blocked thousands of people - mainly people staying in temporary camps - who were seeking sanctuary.
"The already precarious humanitarian situation risks becoming catastrophic if a peaceful solution isn't reached immediately," said Ramin Rafirasme, spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program.
The joint United Nations-Sierra Leone court accused Mr. Taylor of trafficking guns and diamonds with the Sierra Leone rebels, who killed, raped, kidnapped and maimed tens of thousands of Sierra Leone's civilians.
Military intervention by Guinea, Britain and the United Nations finally defeated the rebels in 2002.
--------
Deal Reached on Cambodian Genocide Trials
June 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Cambodia-Khmer-Rouge.html
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- Cambodia and the United Nations signed an agreement Friday that would create the first genocide trials for former leaders of the Khmer Rouge, whose reign of terror caused an estimated 1.7 million deaths.
The agreement, six years after Cambodia asked for U.N. help in creating a tribunal, must be ratified by the legislature, and officials warn it may be a long time before the trials convene.
But the accord provides a measure of hope that some of those responsible for atrocities will be prosecuted.
``It's time for justice to be done, because it has been too long already,'' Heang Vuthy, a 20-year-old student, said as he toured a museum that once served as a torture center for the regime.
Sok An, Cambodia's chief negotiator of the pact, and Hans Corell, the U.N. chief legal counsel, signed the agreement in an auditorium before an audience of 500 that included students, government officials, diplomats and representatives of non-governmental organizations.
``For some, this moment may bring back painful memories of the past and cause deep sorrow,'' Corell said. ``For others, it may be the question: Did we not know? Could we not have prevented what happened? What did we do to stop the atrocities?''
No leaders of the Khmer Rouge, which held power from 1975 to 1979, have faced trial for a brutal rule that led to the death of nearly a quarter of the Cambodian population. Surviving members of the regime live freely in the country after surrendering before the movement's collapse in 1998.
In Washington, a State Department spokesman welcomed the agreement.
``The establishment of credible tribunal within Cambodia is a key step toward eliminating the climate of impunity in the country,'' Richard Boucher said.
``Achieving a credible process, however, will not be easy given the state of the judiciary in Cambodia today.''
Under the agreement with the U.N., a majority of judges will be Cambodians, but at least one foreign judge must support any tribunal ruling -- a formula intended to protect the nation's sovereignty while ensuring international standards of justice.
``Their wait is not over yet,'' Corell said, referring to Cambodia's people, ``but hopefully it is fast nearing an end.''
Many Cambodians were unaware of the signing ceremony, but cautiously applauded it.
``This might be a concrete effort in seeking justice for the Khmer Rouge's victims,'' said Hem Daung, a 24-year-old truck driver.
The Khmer Rouge was led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998. He and his top aides were educated in France but greatly influenced by the most radical aspects of China's communist revolution.
The regime sought to purge Cambodia of Western influences and base the economy on massive agricultural communes. They evacuated cities, forcing urban workers to work in the countryside, and persecuted educated professionals.
Many died under the Khmer Rouge were victims of failed utopian plans that led to starvation and disease. Others were tortured and killed.
Sok An said at a post-signing news conference that the preliminary estimated cost of the tribunal is $19 million. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will ask member states for contributions, Corell said.
Leading human rights groups, including Amnesty International, opposed the tribunal agreement, claiming it is susceptible to political influence.
The Cambodian government first asked for U.N. assistance in 1997 to set up an international tribunal in Cambodia, but negotiations proceeded fitfully because the United Nations was concerned about giving too much power to Cambodia's corrupt and politicized judiciary. Cambodia said it feared infringement of its sovereignty.
U.N. negotiators withdrew from talks in 2002, claiming Cambodia was insincere in guaranteeing conditions for fair trials.
Under pressure from some major powers, including the United States, talks resumed, and the negotiators reached a draft agreement in March.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- courts
Withholding of Lee Report Is Defended
From Associated Press
June 6, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la-na-wenho6jun06§ion=/printstory
WASHINGTON - Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft defended the Justice Department's decision to withhold a report on its handling of the case against nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, saying Thursday the department is protecting national interests, not stonewalling.
"There are lots of times, especially in international intelligence security matters, when we don't release things because it's not in the national interest to do so," Ashcroft said when questioned about the report before the House Judiciary Committee.
Rep. William D. Delahunt (D-Mass.) said the department's withholding of the Lee report and information about other cases indicates both "a government obsessed with secrecy" and "a culture of concealment."
A Washington watchdog group appealed the department's decision this week. The Federation of American Scientists argues the review covers a longer time span than a previous department report and may contain new revelations about professional misconduct by Justice Department and FBI personnel.
Lee, a former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, was indicted in December 1999 on 59 felony counts alleging he mishandled nuclear weapons information. He was held in solitary confinement for nine months before he was released in September 2000 as the federal case crumbled.
Lee pleaded guilty to a single felony count and was sentenced to time served.
In a May 29 letter to the federation, a Justice Department lawyer said she had determined the Office of Professional Responsibility report "should be withheld in its entirety."
Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, said the report is still undergoing a classification review and portions of it might be made public.
-------- homeland security
FIGHT PATRIOT ACT II
From: "david peter" <dpeter@writeme.com>
Jun 6 2003
http://dc.indymedia.org/
http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/downloads/Story_01_020703_Doc_1.pdf (second is a LINK TO PATRIOT ACT II info..)
PATRIOT ACT II, THE SEQUEL
Ashcroft Uber Alles
On 5/5, Attorney General Ashcroft went to Congress to ask for more power for the Justice Department in the form of Patriot Act II, in spite of the latest Inspector General of the Justice Department Report, on the abuse of power by especially the FBI, also of the Justice Department, in the treatment of Arab and Muslim detainees post 911. The Inspector General reported physical and verbal abuse, extended detention without cause and unacceptable conditions, particularly at a New York City facility. Inspector General Report.
Patriot Act II will expand the use of searches and wiretaps. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) "those powers would include expansions of the offense of material support for terrorism, which under overbroad definitions of terrorism in the original PATRIOT Act, could be applied to political protesters; broader applicability of the death penalty, and an expansion of presumptive, pre-trial detention, which turns our justice system on its head and requires defendants to prove their innocence before they even come to a trial. The Justice Department's own Inspector General just this week was highly critical of the department for overuse of presumptive detention."
DOJ Has Failed to Answer these Questions:
- How many library, bookstore, medical, credit or other personal records have been examined without probable cause pursuant to the USA PATRIOT Act?
- Is the government using its powers to seize records without probable cause to obtain entire databases for ?data-mining? purposes, or are its requests limited only to discrete records?
- Why did DOJ change its spying guidelines for domestic investigations where the issue is the conduct of international terrorism investigations?
- What is the basis for the Department of Justice claim that its arrests and detentions of ordinary Arab and Muslim immigrants, whether or not lawfully present, have anything to do with making America safer from terrorism?
----
[Fire thr liars. et]
Ashcroft Wants Stronger Patriot Act
Expanded Death Penalty and Bond Changes Sought
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 6, 2003; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21414-2003Jun5?language=printer
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft told Congress yesterday that he would like to strengthen the USA Patriot Act to allow capital punishment for all terrorist acts that result in fatalities and to prevent suspects accused of terrorism from being released on bond.
Three days after the Justice Department's inspector general suggested that law enforcement agencies had mistreated hundreds of immigrant detainees taken into custody after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Ashcroft asked Congress to tighten several Patriot Act provisions, calling them "weaknesses which terrorists could exploit."
Ashcroft testified before the House Judiciary Committee, where Republicans lauded his efforts and Democrats expressed tempered concerns about whether civil liberties were being trampled in the name of national security under the 19-month-old Patriot Act, which gave Justice far-reaching new powers to gather information and crack down on terrorists.
Ashcroft acknowledged that authorities had subjected some illegal immigrants detained after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon to harsh jail conditions for long periods of time before the FBI cleared them of links to terrorism. That was a central finding of the critical report issued Monday by the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn A. Fine.
Ashcroft said he had "some sympathy" for the criticisms leveled by Fine, who found there were "significant problems" in the detention, on charges of immigration violations, of many of the 762 foreign nationals after the Sept. 11 attacks. While none has been publicly charged with terrorism, they spent an average of 80 days in jail before the FBI completed its investigation, and many went weeks before being charged with immigration violations or seeing attorneys. About515 were eventually deported.
Yesterday, Ashcroft said without elaboration that the department has obtained plea agreements, "many under seal," from individuals cooperating in terror investigations. Six of those plea agreements were reached with a group of Yemeni American men in Buffalo who admitted training at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Ashcroft said the Justice Department policy, "for which we do not apologize," is to fully investigate the illegal immigrants who came to the attention of authorities investigating the attacks before deporting them.
"If we, God forbid, if we ever have to do this again, we hope we can clear people more quickly," he told the panel. "There is no interest whatsoever that the United States of America has in holding innocent people -- absolutely none."
He said the department's civil rights division is investigating four instances of alleged abuse of detainees identified by the inspector general. For 14 of 18 incidents noted by the IG, evidence has been deemed insufficient to bring criminal charges, he said, adding, "we do not stand for abuse."
Some Democrats, including Reps. Maxine Waters and Howard L. Berman of California, said they were troubled by the FBI's information-gathering powers. Said Rep. William D. Delahunt (D-Mass.): "It appears that the American people feel that the government is intent on prying into every nook and cranny of people's private lives, while at the same time doing all it can to block access to government information that would inform the American people about what is being done in their name."
But Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) said that with the aid of the Patriot Act, the Justice Department and the FBI have made "impressive gains" in obtaining "critical knowledge of the intentions of foreign-based terrorists, while preempting gathering terrorist threats at home." He stressed, though, that his support for the law's provisions -- which are scheduled for legislative sunset in 2005 -- "is neither perpetual nor unconditional."
The Patriot Act permits unprecedented information-sharing between law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The failure of U.S. authorities to learn of the Sept. 11 plot in advance has been blamed in part on real and perceived legal barriers at the time to the sharing of such information.
The changes under the Patriot Act have resulted in numerous criminal investigations, department officials have said, and at least one significant terrorism-related prosecution -- that of Florida professor Sami al-Arian, who is accused of aiding Palestinian suicide bombers.
One of the changes Ashcroft requested would increase penalties for certain acts of terrorism. If a terrorist caused loss of life by sabotaging a nuclear or defense facility, for example, current statutes do not carry the potential for the death penalty, department officials said. The maximum penalty now is life imprisonment.
Ashcroft also said he wants adjustments that will make it "crystal clear that those who train for and fight with a designated terrorist organization" can be charged under the statute that prohibits providing "material support" for terrorist organizations. While the department has prosecuted men in Lackawanna, N.Y., and Detroit using the material support statute, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which covers California and other Western states, has found the statute vague, and officials are concerned about bringing prosecutions there.
In addition, Ashcroft said, terrorism offenses should be added to the list of crimes for which defendants are presumed ineligible for pretrial release, along with weapons violations, organized crime and drug dealing.
Sensenbrenner complained that Ashcroft had not consulted with Congress last year when he revised the attorney general's guidelines on FBI investigations. The previous guidelines, adopted in the 1970s to curtail bureau spying on political organizations, were widely interpreted as barring agents from gathering information in public, political or religious settings, or even surfing the Internet. The new rules allow agents to go where the public can go, including into churches and mosques, even if there is no ongoing investigation.
Ashcroft said information from such visits "cannot be retained unless it relates to potential criminal or terrorist activity."
----
Ashcroft Calls For Expanding Death Penalty To Terrorists
By Jimmy Moore
GOPUSA Forum -
Talon News
June 06, 2003
http://gopusa.com/cgi-bin/ib3/ikonboard.pl?act=ST;f=18;t=3986
WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- The death penalty needs to be expanded to include people who are accused of perpetrating terrorist activities Attorney General John Ashcroft told lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
Ashcroft expressed concern that this is needed because the new anti-terrorism laws are infringing on the rights of law-abiding citizens. Ashcroft wants to give prosecutors the ability to bring the death penalty to "material supporters" of terrorist organizations.
Holding hard copies of several declarations of war against the United States by al Qaeda and speaking the names of the people who were killed in the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Ashcroft said the Justice Department has used its powers well in the post-9/11 era.
Ashcroft said that the USA Patriot Act has allowed for the capture of over 3,000 "footsoldiers of terror." He admits that the law "has several weaknesses which terrorists could exploit, undermining our defenses."
----
No Excuses From Ashcroft
Fields questions on post-9/11 detainees
By Tom Brune,
Newsday WASHINGTON BUREAU
June 6, 2003
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usash063319981jun06,0,73681.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-print
Washington - In a rare appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday deflected his congressional critics and shrugged off an internal report critical of the treatment of detainees in the Sept. 11 terror probe.
Despite nearly five hours of testimony, Ashcroft added little to the Justice Department's response to questions about its use of new anti-terrorism laws or to the stinging 198-page report issued Monday by the department's inspector general.
Instead, he invoked the "ideological war" between the United States and terrorists, claimed progress and success in that war, and dismissed his critics while asking for three new anti-terrorism measures.
And in his first public comment on the detainee report, Ashcroft ceded no ground, repeating his spokeswoman's line that "we make no apologies" and that the measures taken were necessary and legal.
Democrats on the committee posed a variety of questions challenging the Patriot Act and the detainee report but they failed to pin down Ashcroft, who responded with often lengthy answers.
He was aided by the gavel of committee chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who strictly enforced each committee member's five-minute limit for questions, cutting off some in midsentence.
The tone of the hearing was set when Sensenbrenner ended a line of questioning by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) about the links between the Sept. 11 attacks and the 515 detainees who were deported.
Waters asked, "Mr. Attorney General, how many of the 515 individuals ..."
Sensenbrenner broke in to say her time had expired.
Walters continued, "... were linked to September 11th?"
Sensenbrenner allowed Ashcroft to answer the question.
Ashcroft said that "in deference to other members of the committee" he would not "give the complete answer." Then he said that all detainees arrested and held were here illegally. Department policy, "for which we do not apologize," he said, was that "before we would release them ... we wanted to have them cleared."
Those FBI clearances took on average nearly three months, the report found, after immigration officials gave deportation or voluntary departure orders, leaving the detainees, who had no ties to terrorism, in secret and often harsh jail conditions.
Led by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), a longtime Ashcroft critic and the committee's ranking minority member, Democrats are looking ahead to a series of future oversight hearings that will examine the Justice Department and its anti-terrorism measures, Democratic aides said. Notably, Conyers did not question the attorney general yesterday.
Ashcroft did note that he would not tolerate abuse in the jails, another allegation of the report, and said Justice officials would continue to investigate four of 18 abuse cases brought to their attention. The Civil Rights Division, he said, declined prosecution in the other 14 cases for lack of evidence.
The attorney general was appearing before the committee for the first time in 20 months, when in September 2001 he testified on the legislation that would become the Patriot Act.
But Sensenbrenner and Conyers said Ashcroft had agreed to more frequent oversight hearings for the detainee review and Patriot Act provisions that will expire in 2005.
"It has been my view and the chairman's that we could have a great little blast here today, but that it would be far more purposeful if we were to have several meetings in which we break down the subject matter," Conyers said.
Among the issues that likely will be taken up will be Ashcroft's three new measures: clarifying the definition of "material support" for terrorism; toughening penalties for terrorist acts to include the death penalty and life sentences; and to permit pretrial detention of suspects in terrorism prosecutions.
----
Government Creates New Cybersecurity Office
New Homeland Security Unit Will Work With Private Sector
By Brian Krebs and Robert MacMillan washingtonpost.com Staff Writers
Friday, June 6, 2003
TechNews.com
The Department of Homeland Security today said it will establish an office to focus on U.S. cybersecurity, a move that may blunt criticism that the agency has not devoted enough resources and attention to Internet security.
The National Cyber Security Division will "conduct cyberspace analysis" and issue warnings and alerts about online attacks, the department said. The division also will resopnd to major Internet attacks and assist in "national-level recovery efforts."
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said that the division, which will have 60 employees, will focus on the "vitally important task of protecting the nation's cyber assets."
Part of the new division's mission will be to coordinate the efforts of several cybersecurity offices that were folded into the Homeland Security Department this year. Among the former offices that will be put into the division are the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, the National Infrastructure Protection Center, the Federal Computer Incident Response Center and the National Communications System.
The office will be part of the department's Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection division, which is run by former Coca-Cola Corp. security executive Robert Liscouski.
The division will have three sections. One will identify cybersecurity risks to the government, and coordinate with the private sector on how to minimize them. Another will oversee the Cyber Security Tracking, Analysis & Response Center. CSTARC, as the department labeled it, will respond to Internet "events," track vulnerabilities and coordinate with federal, state and local governments, as well as the private sector and international security groups. The third section will create cybersecurity education programs for consumers, businesses, governments, academia and the international community.
The creation of the new office could mollify critics who have said that the administration is ill-equipped to handle a major attack on the Internet and that it is not too concerned about one happening.
Former White House cybersecurity adviser Richard Clarke also has questioned whether the department will put anyone in charge of cybersecurity who ranks high enough in the homeland security chain of command to steer policy.
"No matter how good you are, many people are going to treat you based on your rank and how often you can see and talk to the president and other important people," Clarke said in an interview last month.
Clarke, who left the administration in January, has criticized the administration for failing to appoint a high-level official to focus exclusively on Internet security. His deputy, Howard Schmidt, resigned in April after an unsuccessful bid to get Ridge to create a high-ranking cybersecurity czar position.
Since then, many critics in the business and private sector have expressed doubt that the administration would take any more high-profile action on cybersecurity, but Liscouski said that the cybersecurity office would show that the Homeland Security Department is serious about protecting the Internet from online hackers and terrorists.
"This (new office) will help put feet to the national strategy," he said.
Robert W. Holleyman II, chief executive of the Business Software Alliance, said the decision to create the new division is a good one.
"We all have a responsibility to make this work. Meeting the information security challenge is not just the job of the government, it is everyone's job. Industry and government can set the example by making sure that this issue is addressed at the top level of every organization," he said.
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Ashcroft Seeks More Power to Pursue Terror Suspects
June 6, 2003
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/national/06TERR.html
WASHINGTON, June 5 - Attorney General John Ashcroft today defended the Justice Department's detention of hundreds of illegal immigrants after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and urged Congress to give the authorities still greater power to pursue terrorism suspects.
Mr. Ashcroft, in five hours of testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, made his first public comments on a report from his inspector general that criticized the department's treatment of 762 illegal immigrants after Sept. 11. He said "we make no apologies" for holding suspects as long necessary to determine whether they had links to terrorism. In the end, none of the 762 suspects were charged as terrorists.
"Al Qaeda is diminished but not destroyed," Mr. Ashcroft said. He said the nation "must be vigilant."
We must be unrelenting," he said. "We must not forget that Al Qaeda's primary terrorist target is the United States of America."
Mr. Ashcroft told lawmakers that the authorities need still greater powers to track and pursue terrorists.
The USA Patriot Act, as the sweeping antiterrorism law that grew out of the Sept. 11 attacks is known, has sparked official votes of protest from more than 100 communities around the country because of civil liberties concerns. But Mr. Ashcroft said the law does not go far enough and "has several weaknesses, which terrorists could exploit undermining our defenses."
Mr. Ashcroft, a strong proponent of capital punishment, said the penalties for some terrorism-related crimes should be toughened to include the death penalty. He also urged Congress to allow the authorities to detain terrorism suspects before trial without bond and to clarify what constitutes illegal "material support" of terrorists, the standard the Justice Department has used against terror suspects.
"We must make it crystal clear that those who train for and fight with a designated terrorist organization can be charged under the material support statutes," he said.
Mr. Ashcroft's lengthy and impassioned defense of the Justice Department's counterterrorism campaign and his push for greater authority met with strong endorsement from many, but not all, of the Republicans on the judiciary panel.
Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Republican chairman of the panel, said that while the Justice Department had made impressive strides in fighting terrorism, he remained concerned about the potential threat to civil liberties posed by the long reach of counterterrorism efforts.
"To my mind," Mr. Sensenbrenner said, "the purpose of the Patriot Act is to secure our liberties and not to undermine them."
Just last month, the Senate rebuffed efforts by senior Republicans to make permanent some critical provisions of the Patriot Act that are to expire in 2005. The concerns raised by Mr. Sensenbrenner, and echoed in even stronger terms by virtually all the Democrats on the panel, signaled that Mr. Ashcroft may face a tough sell in seeking to broaden the Justice Department's authority to pursue terrorists.
"Some of us find that the collateral damage may be greater than it needs to be in the conduct of this war," said Representative Howard L. Berman, Democrat of California.
Democrats said they were particularly concerned about the report released on Monday by Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general. The report found "significant problems" in the way the authorities arrested and treated hundreds of illegal immigrants as part of the Sept. 11 investigation. The report found that the authorities had made little effort to distinguish real terrorist suspects from those who became ensnared by chance in the investigation. Many suspects were jailed for months, often without being formally charged or given access to lawyers, and some inmates in Brooklyn were physically and verbally abused before they were cleared of any terrorist ties, the report said.
While the report drew no conclusions about the legality of the Justice Department's actions, Representative Robert C. Scott, Democrat of Virginia, suggested that the denial of the detainees' civil rights and evidence of physical assaults by Justice Department employees might have risen to the level of criminal conduct.
The congressman asked Mr. Ashcroft whether he planned to appoint an outside counsel to investigate the accusations further, but the attorney general responded that "I have no plan at this time to employ a special counsel in this matter."
Mr. Ashcroft said the department's civil rights division had investigated 18 complaints of abuse by guards against immigrant prisoners and had found in 14 cases that there was not enough evidence to bring criminal charges. Four investigations are pending.
"We do not stand for abuse," he said.
Mr. Ashcroft said he also wished that the department could have resolved cases against many of the 762 illegal immigrants more quickly.
"God forbid, if we ever have to do this again, we hope that we can clear people more quickly," he said. "We'd like to clear people as quickly as possible. There's no interest whatsoever that the United States of America has in holding innocent people, absolutely none. It's costly. It takes up resources that makes it difficult for us to do what we need to do with other people who are threats."
But Mr. Ashcroft stressed repeatedly that he believed the policy of detaining people for as long as it took to clear them of terrorist ties was the right one, and he said that several illegal immigrants did have terrorist connections that are still considered suspicious. One suspect was the roommate of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, and another was found with "jihad material" and more than 30 pictures of the World Trade Center, Mr. Ashcroft said.
Mr. Ashcroft said past data showed that people who were facing deportation and were released from custody on bond fled about 85 percent of the time, and he said he was not willing to take that risk with the suspects apprehended after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We had had to balance the risk," Mr. Ashcroft said. And in doing so, he added, "we did not violate the law."
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Man Acquitted in Terror Case Says Co-Defendants Will Be Cleared
By DANNY HAKIM
June 6, 2003
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/national/06DETR.html
DETROIT, June 5 - A man acquitted on Tuesday in a terror case here said that he was grateful to the American justice system and that he was confident his co-defendants would eventually be cleared as well.
The man, Farouk Ali-Haimoud, 22, had been accused of being part of a four-man terror cell in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn. He was the only one of the men, all Arab immigrants, to be acquitted on Tuesday. Two defendants were found guilty on terror-related charges, and a third was acquitted of a terror-related charge but found guilty of a conspiracy related to document fraud.
On Wednesday, after 14 months in jail, mostly in isolation, Mr. Ali-Haimoud said in an interview that he was shocked that any of them had been found guilty. "None of us had links with terrorists in any way," he said. "I'm just a regular Muslim. I'm not an extremist." He said he believed that the other defendants would be vindicated in appeals. "The justice system is the best in the world," he said. "That's why a lot of people want to come to the United States." Tall and lanky, Mr. Ali-Haimoud could pass for a teenager. But he was described by the government's main witness, Youssef Hmimssa, as the most radical of the group.
The four were charged with providing material support for terrorism. Prosecutors described the cell as having myriad ambitions, from checking airports here and in Chicago for security breaches to acquiring Stinger missiles to shoot down commercial airplanes. But officials said cases involving terror cells would never be easy to prosecute, given the difficulty in linking suspects to the evidence collected. "If you look at the case, and look at the overall structure of the cell and how they operate, they're very fluid," said Richard Convertino, the lead federal prosecutor on the case here. "The fluidity itself almost makes it impenetrable to prosecution. It's a hard thing to take a static look at." Defense lawyers said the government was being manipulated by an opportunistic witness and was reading too much into the physical evidence.
Mr. Ali-Haimoud came to this country from Algeria in 1999 to join his mother, Meriem Ladjadj, a naturalized citizen.
He was first detained after the apartment he lived in with two other defendants was raided shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. He said that he had known the other men a couple months and that they had moved in together to save money. Federal agents had been looking for a previous resident of the apartment but found items that would become crucial pieces of evidence. The government said more than 100 audiotapes belonging to Mr. Ali-Haimoud preached radical views, though a defense expert at the trial differed about the contents. Mr. Ali-Haimoud said the tapes "were just regular lectures."
There was also a day planner with crude sketches that the government said included diagrams of an American Air Force base in Turkey used to patrol the no-fly zone in Iraq and a military hospital in Jordan.
Mr. Ali-Haimoud echoed the arguments of the defense lawyer, who presented evidence that the planner had belonged to a man who was mentally ill and believed he was a general. "I know they were looking for the truth," Mr. Ali-Haimoud said of the government. "They were wrong." Mr. Ali-Haimoud was released a few months after his initial detention and got a job selling ice cream at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Then he was arrested again in April 2002. Initially, he and the other defendants were put in the general prison population. But they began being harassed after appearing on television, and they were moved to small isolation cells where, Mr. Ali-Haimoud said, he spent 23 hours a day reading and sleeping. Mr. Hmimssa described Mr. Ali-Haimoud as a supporter of an extremist group, Takfir wal Hijira. He testified that Mr. Ali-Haimoud had said that there was a war zone "anywhere in the world where there is no Sharia," referring to Islamic holy law, and that Jews, Christians and even Muslims who did not espouse extremist views were infidels. "It's not true," Mr. Ali-Haimoud said of the description. "Anyone who's got a beard, anyone who prays five times a day, you can call him whatever you want. But you can't change the truth."
During the trial Mrs. Ladjadj, the former head of the computer sciences department at the Lewis College of Business in Detroit, became a fixture in the courtroom. On many days during the nine-week trial, it was only her and a few journalists watching in a courtroom without air-conditioning and listening to testimony that had some jurors fighting to keep their eyes open.
She sold some of her furniture to help pay legal fees and had to leave her job. "I was overwhelmed and lost track," she said. "I missed three classes and one meeting and they asked me to take a leave. I was dysfunctional." When the verdict was read, both Mr. Ali-Haimoud and his mother began to cry. Mr. Ali-Haimoud said he was crying for the other defendants. They never spoke to him about terror plots, he said. "I'm not happy, so much, because I feel so bad for them," he said. "I'm praying to God to help them get an appeal or get another trial."
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For enemy combatant, speaking with lawyer is impossible
By Shannon McCaffrey
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Fri, Jun. 06, 2003
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/6031981.htm
NEW YORK - Donna Newman says she isn't asking for much. She wants to meet with one of her clients.
Virtually every other lawyer in the country can do that with ease, but it's different when you represent Jose Padilla, the alleged al-Qaida dirty bomb plotter whom President Bush declared an enemy combatant a year ago Monday.
Although Padilla is a U.S. citizen, he's spent the last year in a Navy brig in South Carolina with no access to a lawyer and no way to appeal his detention. Defense Department officials won't even guarantee that he gets letters Newman sends him, nor will they tell her in what conditions he's being held. It's conceivable that Padilla doesn't know he even has a lawyer.
"He's in a black hole, totally incommunicado," Newman said in an interview with Knight Ridder in which she talked about her frustrating yearlong odyssey.
"It's like he fell down the rabbit hole," she said. "Did I ever think a year later I would still be fighting just to see him? Of course not. This is America. Things like that aren't supposed to happen here."
Padilla's case is part of the Bush administration's broader effort to combat terrorism through a series of aggressive new tactics that have raised constitutional concerns from both ends of the political spectrum and from the legal community. The non-partisan American Bar Association, for example, has condemned the "enemy combatant" policy.
"It's outrageous," said Miami lawyer Neal Sonnett, the head of the bar association's task force studying the treatment of alleged enemy combatants. "That a U.S. citizen has been in jail a year without being able to see his lawyer ... or even challenge the evidence against him, is a travesty."
At least one federal judge agrees. Michael Mukasey, the chief judge for New York's Southern District, upheld the administration's right to designate U.S. citizens as enemy combatants. But Mukasey, who was appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan, has ruled twice that Padilla should have access to counsel, saying that without it, his ability to defend himself would be "utterly destroyed."
Still, the Bush administration has resisted. First the Justice Department asked Mukasey to reconsider, raising national security issues. When Mukasey declined, Justice appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That appeal is pending.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, who took the unusual step of announcing Padilla's address himself while on a trip to Moscow, said the president has a clear right to declare a U.S. citizen an enemy combatant in order to protect the country.
"The courts have not interfered with that in any significant way," Ashcroft told a congressional committee on Thursday. "And I don't think the courts will."
The Justice Department contends that giving Padilla even supervised access to his lawyer would jeopardize national security and harm intelligence gathering by disrupting his interrogation.
In order to extract useful information from Padilla, the military must create a situation in which he feels "that he is reliant on his interrogators for his basic needs and desires," the government said in a legal brief. If Padilla believes he has a lawyer assisting him, that delicate effort to build trust and a sense of dependence would be thwarted, the brief argued.
Federal lawyers also argue that Padilla could dupe his attorney into passing messages to terrorist co-conspirators.
But some U.S. intelligence officials question how much Padilla knows about al-Qaida. The officials, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said that after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Padilla offered himself to al-Qaida and proposed setting off a dirty bomb, which spews radiation, in the United States.
The officials said Abu Zubaydah, one of the terror group's top operatives, accepted Padilla's offer but gave the volunteer only a few days of cursory explosives training. Then, when Zubaydah was captured, he quickly told his interrogators about the Louisiana native.
"He was a throwaway by Abu Zubaydah," said one of the intelligence officials, who refused to speak for attribution because Padilla's legal case is still pending. "A low-level nobody who didn't know enough to be a threat to al-Qaida. Do you think they would give us the name of anybody who could give us their secrets?"
In a declaration by Defense Department adviser Michael Mobbs justifying Padilla's detention, a footnote notes: "Some information provided by the sources remains uncorroborated and may be part of an effort to mislead or confuse U.S. officials."
It also notes that when one of the confidential sources was interviewed by U.S. officials, he was being given various drugs to treat a medical condition. Elsewhere in the six-page filing, Mobbs notes that the dirty-bomb plot "was still in the initial early planning stages and there was no specific time set for the operation to occur."
Yaser Hamdi is the only other U.S. citizen being held by the government as an enemy combatant and he, like Padilla, isn't able to see a lawyer.
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has endorsed the government's position in that case.
But there are distinctions between the two cases. Hamdi, born to Saudi parents in Louisiana before returning to Saudi Arabia as a small child, was picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan when his Taliban unit surrendered. Padilla was taken into custody when he climbed off a plane in Chicago.
"(Padilla) was unarmed. There was nothing on his person to suggest he was involved in any kind of terrorist activity. He had deplaned from a regularly scheduled flight with a valid ticket," Newman said.
But federal agents had been tracking Padilla since Zubaydah told them of his interest in a dirty-bomb attack. After he was nabbed in Chicago on May 8, 2002, Padilla was quickly transferred to New York, where he was held as a material witness. It was then that his path crossed with Newman's.
Newman, who has a solo practice based in Jersey City, N.J., takes cases as a part-time federal defender in Manhattan. When Padilla arrived, Newman was on call. Cases involving terrorism are not uncommon in New York's busy Southern District, and the Padilla case seemed fairly routine until she received a cell phone call last June 9.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Bruce told Newman her client was now an enemy combatant. She laughed.
"I thought he was kidding. I had never heard of such a thing before," she recalled.
The next day in court, she knew how serious Bruce had been. From her seat alone at the defense table, she looked across the room at a row of somber federal prosecutors.
Although Newman was able to spend a month with Padilla before he was shipped to the South Carolina brig, she refuses to discuss the man who's been portrayed in the media as a dangerous international terrorist. The former Chicago gang member already had a lengthy criminal rap sheet when he converted to Islam and left Florida for a more radical religious path overseas.
"I think it's important that he be an Everyman," said Newman. "The implications of this case could last for years to come. I feel that burden. This could be anyone."
She's particularly troubled that she's been able to learn nothing about the conditions in which Padilla is being held or the techniques being used to interrogate him.
A new report by the Justice Department's Inspector General found that some of the hundreds of illegal aliens rounded up after the Sept. 11 attacks were held in "unduly harsh" conditions.
Sonnett said he would expect that conditions would be even worse for a person such as Padilla who the attorney general treated as a big catch.
As she waits for the case to wind its way through the courts, Newman keeps tabs on the other terrorism cases, such as the prosecution of alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.
In some ways, she envies his lawyers.
"He may complain he's not getting due process, but at least he's getting a process," she said. "That's more than my client can say."
-------- terrorism
Seeking the Roots of Terrorism
By ALAN B. KRUEGER and JITKA MALECKOVÁ
June 6, 2003
Chronicle of Higher Education http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 49, Issue 39, Page B10
http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i39/39b01001.htm
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, a consensus quickly emerged that poverty and lack of education were major causes of terrorist acts and support for terrorism. Subscribing to that theory are politicians, journalists, and many scholars, as well as officials responsible for administering aid to poor countries. For example, James D. Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, asserted that the war on terrorism "will not be won until we have come to grips with the problem of poverty and thus the sources of discontent."
The consensus is bipartisan. "We fight against poverty," George W. Bush said in a speech in Monterrey, Mexico, "because hope is an answer to terror. ... We will challenge the poverty and hopelessness and lack of education and failed governments that too often allow conditions that terrorists can seize." At the other end of the political spectrum, Al Gore, at the Council on Foreign Relations, argued that the anger that underlies terrorism in the Islamic world stems from "the continued failure to thrive, as rates of economic growth stagnate, while the cohort of unemployed young men under 20 continues to increase."
Many well-regarded public intellectuals also concur. For example, Elie Wiesel claimed, "Education is the way to eliminate terrorism." And the Nobel laureate Kim Dae Jung asserted, "At the bottom of terrorism is poverty."
With such a strong and broad coalition in agreement, we asked, what evidence links poverty and poor education to terrorism? Perhaps surprisingly, the relevant literature and the new evidence that we assembled challenge the consensus. In a study we recently circulated as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, we considered support for, and participation in, terrorism at both individual and national levels. Although the available data at the national level are weaker, both types of evidence point in the same direction and lead us to conclude that any connection between poverty, education, and terrorism is, at best, indirect, complicated, and probably quite weak.
Defining terrorism is difficult. Some definitions, like the State Department's, emphasize the "subnational," "clandestine" character of "politically motivated violence," while others include the state as a perpetrator. We have focused on substate terrorism because we believe that the roots of state-sponsored terrorism are substantially different. What's common to most definitions is the inclusion of terrorists' goal of inducing fear in a target audience that transcends the physical harm caused to immediate victims, the ultimate purpose being persuasion.
A large body of evidence exists on hate crimes, a close cousin to terrorism. These are crimes against members of a religious, racial, or ethnic group selected solely because they are part of that group. Hate crimes are usually less orchestrated than terrorist acts, and thus a cleaner measure of the "pure supply" of those willing to carry out hateful acts. The effect of both terrorism and hate crimes is to wreak terror in a greater number of people than those directly affected by the violence. Until recently, social scientists thought that economic deprivation was a crucial determinant of hate crimes. However, after research by Donald P. Green and his collaborators at Yale, a consensus is emerging in the social-science literature that the incidence of hate crimes, such as lynchings of African-American people in the South, or violence against gay and lesbian people in New York, bears little relation to economic conditions.
About 10 percent of the 3,100 counties in the United States are currently home to a hate group such as the Ku Klux Klan, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. A study by the Swarthmore economists Philip N. Jefferson and Frederic L. Pryor found that the likelihood that a hate group was located in a county was unrelated to the unemployment rate in the county, and positively related to the education level in the county (that is, the higher the education level in the county, the greater the likelihood of a hate group). Similarly, a study by one of us (Krueger) and Jörn-Steffen Pischke, now of the London School of Economics and Political Science, found that in Germany, both the average education level and average wage in the country's 543 counties were unrelated to the incidence of violence against foreigners occurring there.
Neither cyclical downturns nor longer-term regional disparities in living standards appear to be correlated with the incidence of a wide range of hate crimes. That doesn't prove the absence of a causal relationship, of course; but if there were a direct causal effect one would expect hate crimes to rise during periods of economic hardship. Rather than economic conditions, the hate-crimes literature suggests that a breakdown in law enforcement, and sanctioning and encouragement of civil disobedience, are significant causes.
Turning to terrorism, public opinion polls can provide information on which segments of the population support terrorist or militant activities. In December 2001, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, conducted a public-opinion poll of 1,357 Palestinians age 18 or older in the West Bank and Gaza on topics including the September 11 attacks in the United States, support for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and attacks against Israel.
The poll reveals several things. First, support for attacks against Israeli targets by the Palestinian population is widespread (from 74 percent to 90 percent, depending on the subgroup), though it is important to emphasize that there is a distinction between support for attacks expressed in a poll at a particular moment and participation or active collusion in such attacks. Second, a majority, more than 60 percent of the population surveyed, believes that attacks against Israeli civilians have helped to achieve Palestinian rights in a way that negotiations could not have.
These results offer no evidence that educated people are less supportive of attacks against Israeli targets. In fact, the support for attacks against Israeli targets is higher among those with more than a secondary-school education than among those with only an elementary-school education, and the support is considerably lower among those who are illiterate.
The study showed also that support for attacks against Israeli targets is particularly strong among students, merchants, and professionals. Notably, the unemployed are somewhat less likely to support such attacks. If poverty were indeed the wellspring of support for terrorism or politically motivated violence, one would have expected the unemployed to be more supportive of attacks than were merchants and professionals, but the evidence points the other way.
News reports often create the impression that Islam is a source of terrorism. Note, though, that suicide attacks are a relatively new, alien element in the history of mainstream Islam. The Koran rejects suicide, and classical Islamic legal texts consider it a serious sin. True, a fighter who dies for faith or another noble cause is held in great esteem in both legal and cultural tradition, and those who die on the path of God are promised immediate recompense. Individuals or Islamic sects have used political assassinations (including an 11th-century Shiite sect in Northern Iran, the corrupted nickname of which is the origin of the term "assassin"). Those fighters, however, did not commit suicide attacks. Also, suicide attacks and other forms of terrorism have been carried out by people belonging to other established religions, too, and by individuals professing no religious faith at all. Timothy McVeigh's heinous terrorist attack on American soil, for instance, cannot be linked to organized religion.
To study the correlates of involvement in a terrorist organization more directly, we performed a detailed analysis of participation in Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah is a multifaceted organization that provides health and educational services, has a political wing, and is also believed to engage in terrorism. The U.S. State Department and British Home Office have both classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. We compared the background characteristics of 129 members of Hezbollah's militant wing who died in action in the 1980s and early 1990s to the Lebanese population from which they were drawn. We culled a data set from the biographies gathered by Eli Hurvitz, of Tel-Aviv University, in 1998 that included the individuals' age at death, highest level of school attended, poverty, region of residence, and marital status, and compared it to data on the general population in Lebanon.
Despite the limitations of both data sets, several findings are of interest. The poverty rate is 28 percent among the Hezbollah militants and 33 percent for the population. In terms of education the Hezbollah fighters are more likely to have attended secondary school than are people in the general population (47 versus 38 percent). The results suggest that poverty is inversely related, and education positively related, to the likelihood that someone becomes a Hezbollah fighter.
Similarly, Claude Berrebi, a graduate student in economics at Princeton, has studied the characteristics of recent suicide bombers in Israel. From information on the Web sites of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, he was able to paint a statistical picture of suicide bombers. He compared that to survey-based data on the broader Palestinian population of roughly comparable age. His results indicate that suicide bombers are less than half as likely to come from impoverished families than is the population as a whole. In addition, more than half of the suicide bombers had attended school after high school, while less than 15 percent of the population in the same age group had any post-high-school education.
We regard these findings as suggestive but not definitive. First, data limitations prevent us from drawing strong conclusions. Second, the process of participation in Hezbollah, primarily a resistance organization, may not be representative of participation in other organizations that are more exclusively focused on terrorist activities. Nevertheless, the findings provide no support for the view that those who live in poverty or have a low level of education are disproportionately drawn to participate in terrorist activities.
On the other side of the conflict, the picture is not too different. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, numerous violent attacks against Palestinians were conducted by Israeli Jews in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, led most prominently by the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) group. Those attacks included attempts to kill three Palestinian mayors of West Bank cities and to blow up the Dome of the Rock, the third-holiest shrine of Islam. From 1980 to 1984, 23 Palestinians were killed in attacks by the Jewish Underground, and 191 people were injured.
Looking at the backgrounds of the perpetrators of those violent attacks, it is clear that the Israeli extremists were overwhelmingly well educated and in high-paying occupations. The list includes teachers, writers, university students, geographers, an engineer, a combat pilot, a chemist, and a computer programmer. As Donald Neff, in a 1999 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, observed of the three men convicted of murder, "All were highly regarded, well-educated, very religious."
Although those who carry out terrorist acts themselves do not appear to be particularly impoverished, it is possible that they are acting out of concern for their countrymen, who are less advantaged. One way to investigate that hypothesis is to use cross-country data. Unfortunately, data on the quantity of terrorism carried out by citizens of various countries is difficult to come by.
We made a first pass at the issue by analyzing data on "significant international terrorist events" as recorded by the U.S. State Department. Specifically, we tried to infer the national origin of the events' perpetrators. We then related the number of terrorists produced by each country to characteristics of the country, including gross domestic product per capita, literacy rates, religious fractionalization, and political and civil freedoms. Apart from population -- larger countries tend to have more terrorists -- the only variable that was consistently associated with the number of terrorists was the Freedom House index of political rights and civil liberties. Countries with more freedom were less likely to be the birthplace of international terrorists. Poverty and literacy were unrelated to the number of terrorists from a country. Think of a country like Saudi Arabia: It is wealthy but has few political and civil freedoms. Perhaps it is no coincidence that so many of the September 11 terrorists -- and Osama bin Laden himself -- came from there.
What does economic theory tell us about participation in terrorism? Consider the supply side first -- that is, why do people join terrorist organizations or commit terrorist acts? As is conventional in economics, involvement in terrorism is viewed as a rational decision that depends on the benefits, costs, and risks involved compared with those of other activities.
According to the standard model of crime, participation increases as one's market wage falls relative to the rewards associated with crime, and decreases if the risk of being apprehended after committing a crime, or the penalty for being convicted of a crime, rises. Available evidence -- like Isaac Ehrlich's 1973 study, "Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation," in The Journal of Political Economy -- suggests that people are more likely to commit property crimes if they have lower wages or less education, though the occurrence of violent crimes, including murders, is typically found to be unrelated to economic opportunities. When it comes to terrorism, an important benefit from the standpoint of the terrorist is the furtherance of the goals of the terrorist organization. Affluent, educated people may care more about the political goals of a terrorist organization than impoverished illiterates do. The Harvard economist Edward L. Glaeser emphasizes the role politicians play in fueling hatred against certain groups to solidify their own power. There is little reason to suspect that the supply or demand of hatred would be strongly connected to economic factors in his model, and that is consistent with what we have found.
The demand side is also important. Terrorist organizations recruit and screen their participants. According to Nasra Hassan, a relief worker for the United Nations who interviewed nearly 250 militants and associates of militants involved in the Palestinian cause, there is an excess supply of willing suicide bombers. "The selection process is complicated by the fact that so many wish to embark on this journey of honor," said a senior member of al-Qassam, Hamas's armed wing. "When one is selected, countless others are disappointed." Thus, the demand side clearly plays a role.
A planner for Islamic Jihad explained to Hassan that his group scrutinizes the motives of a potential bomber to be sure that the person is committed to carrying out the task. Now, a high level of educational attainment is probably indicative of one's commitment to a cause and determination, as well as ability to prepare for an assignment and carry it out. For this reason, the stereotype of suicide bombers being drawn from the ranks of those who are so impoverished that they have nothing to live for may be wildly incorrect.
Suicide bombers are clearly not motivated by the prospect of their own individual economic gain, although it is possible that the promise of payments to their families may increase the willingness of some to participate in suicide-bombing missions. We suspect their primary motivation is their passionate support for the ideas and aims of their movement. "Over and over," Nasra Hassan reported, "I heard them say, 'The Israelis humiliate us. They occupy our land, and deny our history.' " Eradication of poverty and universal high-school education are unlikely to change those feelings. Indeed, it is possible that those who are well off and well educated perceive such indignities more acutely.
We believe that in most cases terrorism is less like property crime and more like a violent, inappropriate form of political engagement. Highly educated people from affluent backgrounds are more likely to participate in politics, probably in part because political involvement requires some minimum level of interest, expertise, commitment to issues, and effort. Political participation is much more prevalent among people who are educated and wealthy enough to concern themselves with more than mere economic subsistence. Although the opportunity cost of voting is higher for someone with high education and high earnings than for the unemployed, the more affluent are more likely to vote. Similarly, although the impoverished have a low opportunity cost in terms of time, they are less likely to become engaged in terrorist organizations because they are less involved politically in general, and less committed to the objectives of the terrorist organizations.
Instead of viewing terrorism as a response -- either direct or indirect -- to poverty or ignorance, we suggest that it is more accurately viewed as a response to political conditions and longstanding feelings of indignity and frustration that have little to do with economic circumstances. We suspect that is why international terrorist acts are more likely to be committed by people who grew up under repressive political regimes.
There are many good reasons to improve education and reduce poverty in poor countries. Alas, reducing terrorism is probably not one of them.
Alan B. Krueger is a professor of economics and public policy at Princeton University. Jitka Malecková is an associate professor of Middle Eastern studies at Charles University, in Prague.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Senate Adds Rule to Energy Bill to Double Ethanol in Gasoline
June 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/politics/06ENER.html
WASHINGTON, June 5 - Drivers in every state but Hawaii and Alaska could be pumping gasoline containing ethanol by 2012 if a plan approved today by the Senate becomes law.
The proposal, incorporated in a broad energy bill, would change how refiners blend gasoline and how they meet clean-air requirements. It would require doubling the use of ethanol, to at least five billion gallons a year, in what would be a boon to corn farmers. Advertisement
Methanol is made mainly in the Midwest from corn, although it can be produced with other grains and biomass. Under the bill, refiners in every state except Alaska and Hawaii would have to use it.
The measure, approved 67 to 29, would also ban the use of another gasoline additive, methyl tertiary butyl ether, or M.T.B.E., a derivative of natural gas that can contaminate supplies of drinking water. M.T.B.E. has been added to gasoline in many states since the 1970's to increase the octane rating and make the fuel burn more cleanly.
Refiners would have more freedom to blend fuel because the measure would also end a requirement that gasoline contain at least 2 percent oxygen in areas with air pollution problems. Although the rule has been credited with achieving significant reductions in tailpipe pollution, refiners say they can produce cleaner gasoline without it.
Opponents said expanding the use of ethanol could lead to gasoline shortages and price surges in regions without ethanol plants. The ethanol industry says it does not anticipate problems meeting increased demand under the plan, which would be phased in over eight years.
A proposal by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, a leading opponent of the ethanol rule, would have given states the final say in requiring ethanol. The plan failed by two to one. A proposal by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, to exempt the Far West and Northeast was defeated, 59 to 26.
The proposed requirements, reflecting a compromise developed by interests that represent farmers, oil companies and environmentalists, were inserted in the broad bill.
The House called for a similar expansion of ethanol production in a bill that it passed in April. But the House rejected a ban on M.T.B.E., saying market forces and action by states would phase out the product. At least 17 states have acted to ban or sharply reduce the additive. The White House has strongly supported ethanol.
Backers of ethanol said the bill would help energy independence by displacing up to 250,000 barrels of oil a day by 2012.
"It increases fuel supply, stimulates economic growth and spurs development of domestic ethanol fuels," Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, said. "There are tremendous economic benefits."
As the Senate began debating the fuel rules this week, the ethanol industry issued a report commissioned by the National Association of Corn Growers that estimated that doubling the use of ethanol would add $1.3 billion a year to farmers' incomes and create 214,000 jobs while lowering the cost of gasoline.
Opponents argued that refineries in California and the Northeast, far from ethanol plants, might have trouble obtaining it. Exempting the Northeast and Far West would resolve the problem, some Democrats from those regions said.
The ethanol proposal was introduced by Senators Bill Frist, the Tennessee Republican who is majority leader, and Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader.
-------- energy
Unions Back Research Plan for Energy
June 6, 2003
The New York Times
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/national/06LABO.html
Ten labor unions, including the steelworkers and auto workers, urged presidential candidates yesterday to back a 10-year, $300 billion research plan that would promote energy efficiency, reduce dependence on foreign oil and preserve manufacturing jobs.
Labor leaders said the plan, called the Apollo Project, would foster energy independence by promoting hybrid and hydrogen cars and energy-efficient factories and appliances. Supporters said the project would help make the United States the leader in these areas and would help preserve factory jobs after the nation had lost more than two million manufacturing jobs in the past two years.
The plan's backers said they hoped it would improve ties between labor and the environmental movement, groups that have clashed in recent years on issues like emissions standards and energy exploration.
"We believe this plan can create good manufacturing jobs, good construction jobs, can improve the public infrastructure, can be good for the environment and can reduce our dependence on foreign energy," Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America, said at a news conference.
The plan is also backed by the United Mine Workers, the Service Employees International Union, the International Association of Machinists and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
Several supporters said that labor leaders had planned to send a letter yesterday to Democratic presidential candidates and President Bush. But they said the union leaders decided to delay sending the letter because they were waiting for several of the nation's largest environmental groups to sign on.
"We are very, very excited," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, which is considering whether to support the plan. "It is not that any of these ideas are radically new. What is radically different is the commitment on the part of a huge segment of American organized labor to organize the rebuilding of blue-collar America around modern environmentalism and sound energy technology."
The plan calls for more financing for high-speed rail and fuel-cell technology, for building pipelines and storage facilities to support hydrogen-powered cars and for expanding the use of solar and wind power.
The steelworkers union and the Institute for America's Future, a new liberal research center, which helped develop the plan, distributed polling data showing that the plan had wide support in Pennsylvania and several Midwestern swing states that have lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Supporters said they hoped the poll numbers would persuade presidential candidates to embrace the plan, although privately some acknowledged that candidates might balk at its $300 billion price tag.
A poll commissioned by the steelworkers union found that in Pennsylvania 73 percent of respondents backed the plan, including more than 80 percent of Democratic men without college educations, an important group of swing voters. This group favors re-electing President Bush by 44 percent to 41 percent, the poll found. The survey of 400 likely voters had a margin of error of plus or minus five percentage points.
----
Oregon's Powerdale Hydroelectric Project to Shut Down
SALEM, Oregon,
June 6, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2003/2003-06-06-09.asp#anchor7
Oregon Governor Theodore Kulongoski today announced a cooperative agreement for the decommissioning and removal of the Powerdale Hydroelectric Project, which is located on Oregon's Hood River.
The agreement was reached among state and federal resource agencies, the plant's owner PacifiCorp as well as the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, American Rivers and the Hood River Watershed Group.
"I would like to commend all parties to the settlement process for working together to reach common ground," said Governor Kulongoski during a ceremony today in his office at the State Capitol. "Constructive, collaborative settlement talks like these are the model for how difficult natural resource issues should be handled."
Powerdale's federal operating license for the six megawatt project expired in 2000, and rather than accepting a new license, PacifiCorp approached parties to the licensing process to see if an alternative to a new license could be negotiated.
The future economic viability of the project, which can serve the needs of some 3,000 typical residential customers, was doubtful and a new license would have come with more-restrictive operating conditions. In addition, the plant would have also required a considerable amount of new capital investment to keep it operating for the next 30 to 50 years.
The company determined that it made more sense for its customers to close the plant in 2010 and use its capital resources for other more cost effective generating sources.
"We believe this agreement is in the best interests of our customers because Powerdale will continue to operate for several more years providing low cost power," said Judi Johansen, chief executive officer for PacifiCorp. "But at the same, time the agreement supports the longterm objectives of the resource agencies and other interest groups in the Hood River Basin."
The Powerdale Project now has a small diversion dam with an operating fish ladder. Water is conveyed via a three mile long flow line to the downstream powerhouse close by where the Hood River flows into the Columbia River.
A fish counting station connected to the dam's fish ladder is owned by the Bonneville Power Administration and operated by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, and the facility is critical to fish research that will help with salmon and steelhead recovery efforts in the basin.
For this and other reasons, the agreement permits continued project operation until 2010, at which time the dam will be removed.
"This agreement demonstrates that we can work together and do what is right for rivers and the fish, wildlife, and people who depend on them," said Brett Swift of American Rivers. "We commend PacifiCorp for its leadership. The Hood River will be healthier thanks to the improved flows and fish passage."
-------- environment
World marks environment day "dying for water"
REUTERS NORWAY:
June 6, 2003
Story by Alister Doyle
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21070/story.htm
OSLO - Seeking to ease a water crisis threatening a third of humanity, the United Nations marked world environment day yesterday with calls for governments to double aid to poor countries and for ordinary people to fix leaky taps.
Under the slogan "Water - two billion people are dying for it!", projects ranged from draining ponds where mosquitoes breed in Kenya to water tastings in Brussels.
"Water-related diseases kill a child every eight seconds," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement for the annual day set aside since 1972 to take stock of the state of the planet.
"One person in six lives without regular access to safe drinking water. Over twice that number - 2.4 billion - lack access to adequate sanitation," he said.
The United Nations says the world must do far more to meet goals of halving the proportion of people who lack safe drinking water and sanitation by the year 2015, part of an overall drive to halve global poverty.
"If we are to meet the commitments...the world will have to spend up to $180 billion annually, more than double what is being spent today," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme.
The United Nations says ordinary citizens can also do their bit with simple measures like plugging leaks at home, collecting rainwater, turning off the tap when brushing their teeth or hosing their car on the lawn rather than on the drive.
IRAQ WAR COST MORE
Lebanon's Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, whose country is the main host of this year's event, said the budget of the U.S.-led war on Iraq exceeded the cash needed to alleviate the plight of people suffering from water shortages.
"A fraction of the budgets spent on arms would be enough to eradicate poverty, diseases, malnutrition and protect the environment," he said.
In China, the world's most populous country, the government said it planned to invest more than $30 billion over the next few years to fight water pollution and help relieve shortages.
"China is a country that still lacks water resources, and the problem of water pollution remains severe," said Xie Zhenhua, minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration.
But environmentalists reiterated concern over China's Three Gorges Dam - the world's largest hydroelectric project - which China began filling up on Sunday after a decade of work. It is meant to tame the river whose annual floods have killed 300,000 people in the last century alone.
The WWF environmental group said 1,700 dams planned around the world would suck rivers dry and give few benefits to people most in need. "A growing number of rivers now rarely reach the sea, such as the Colorado River in the United States and Mexico and the Yangtze River," it said.
In Bangladesh, where water can often be both a blessing and a curse, the government launched a tree-planting drive that it said aimed to turn the country into a "garden of green" by 2015.
The United Nations says water is the world's most precious resource and the basis of life. European and U.S. space probes are heading to Mars this year to seek evidence of water - a sign life might have existed on the red planet.
----
Putin tells govt to get environment act together
Story by Clara Ferreira-Marques
REUTERS RUSSIA:
June 6, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21074/story.htm
MOSCOW - Russia must rethink its environmental policy if it is to overcome a Soviet-era legacy of heavy industrial pollution, acid rain and tonnes of nuclear waste, President Vladimir Putin told top officials.
Putin called for a single body to manage Russia's environmental policy - currently spread across at least five ministries and a myriad of intermediate government bodies.
"We need a single government policy on the environment," Putin told his advisory State Council in the Kremlin on the eve of World Environment Day.
"This is one of the conditions for dynamic economic development. It is only the illusions of some managers that by exploiting nature they can boost profits and beat competitors."
During the last years of communist rule, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pledged to clean up the Soviet Union's worst ecological mistakes - ranging from a decision to drain the Central Asian Aral Sea to dumping toxic waste into Lake Baikal.
But with the collapse of communism and the financial turmoil of the 1990s, few initiatives came to fruition.
"Up to 15 percent of Russia's regions are in critical or near-critical condition," Putin was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying.
Millions of Russians still live in areas where levels of air pollution exceed international health norms. Millions more live in ecological disaster zones including the industrial wastelands of the Urals and Siberia.
An official report published last year found that some 300,000 Russians die annually from pollution-related diseases.
Putin said companies themselves should be held responsible for the ecological cost of their production. Russia is home to some of the world's worst polluters, including sprawling heavy industry and mining conglomerates.
"In Russia there is effectively no legal mechanism which allows us to extract compensation from companies for ecological damage," he was quoted by Interfax as saying. "Because of this, we run into chronic lack of funds for ecological programmes...."
In its report to Putin, the advisory council on which sit the governors of the country's 89 regions called for Russia to ratify the U.N. Kyoto protocol on carbon dioxide emissions before a Moscow climate conference set for September.
Under a complex weighting system, the agreement cannot come into force until Russia, responsible for 17 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, ratifies the deal.
Despite publicly voiced scepticism from Russia's scientists and officials, Moscow has repeatedly vowed to ratify the deal, while offering no concrete date.
----
USDA to Urge Greenhouse Gas Reduction
June 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Greenhouse-Gases.html
BONNER SPRINGS, Kan. (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Friday it will begin rewarding farmers and ranchers whose tilling and planting practices help reduce greenhouse gases.
Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman said the department will take greenhouse gas management practices into account when evaluating farmers' applications for conservation grants and subsidies. The department will also offer technical assistance, demonstrations and pilot programs.
``This is good for the environment and it is good for agriculture,'' Veneman said.
Greenhouse gases, which are believed to contribute to global warming, can be reduced through carbon sequestration -- the natural process by which carbon dioxide in the air is turned into carbon stored in the soil and in plants.
Farmers can increase carbon sequestration by tilling less; increasing crop rotation; adding buffer strips; reducing soil erosion; using crops like corn and wheat that leave high amounts of residue in the soil; using cover crops; and selecting plant varieties that store more carbon.
Ranchers can increase carbon sequestration by doing such things as improving forage quality and reducing overgrazing.
Veneman did not disclose how much would be made available to encourage measures that capture carbon dioxide. But she said the money would come from funding already available to the department.
Overall, the Agriculture Department will invest almost $3.9 billion in agriculture and forest conservation on private land next year, an increase of $1.7 billion over 2001.
Veneman made the announcement at the National Agricultural Center and Hall of Fame in suburban Kansas City, where she was joined by Kansas State University agronomy professor Charles Rice.
Rice, who is part of the Consortium for Agricultural Soil Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases, said carbon sequestration is not a permanent solution to global warming, but it buys time to develop more efficient energy sources.
On the Net:
USDA: http://www.usda.gov
----
Plants Prospering From Climate Change
By J.R. Pegg
June 6, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2003/2003-06-06-10.asp
WASHINGTON, DC, Climate change during the past two decades has improved conditions for much of the world's plant life and the Earth is now a greener place as a result, finds a new study published today. Global changes in temperature, rainfall and cloud cover have given plants more heat, water and sunlight in areas where climatic conditions once limited growth, according to the study jointly funded by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Energy.
The study finds that in general, for the period 1982 to 1999, areas where temperatures restricted plant growth, it became warmer; where sunlight was needed, clouds dissipated; and where it was too dry, more rain fell.
Lead author Ramakrishna Nemani, a professor in the forestry school at the University of Montana, says the study indicates climatic changes is "the leading cause for the increases in plant growth over the last two decades."
The study, published today in the magazine "Science," is the first to take a global look at the impact of climate change on plant
Nemani and his colleagues analyzed satellite data and determined that warmer temperatures as well as shifting rain patterns and cloud cover led to a six percent increase in the amount of carbon stored in plants worldwide.
The researchers point to colliding conditions that helped trigger the increase. The two decades they examined were two of the warmest on record, contained three intense El Nino events along with changes in tropical cloudiness and monsoon dynamics. In addition, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) increased 9.3 percent - a factor, Nemani said, but one that provided a "lesser contribution" to vegetation growth.
The researchers constructed a global map of the Net Primary Production (NPP) of plants from climate and satellite data of vegetation greenness and solar radiation absorption. The climate data for the calculations came from two independently derived 18 plus year satellite datasets from high tech radiometers on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite.
They explain NPP as the difference between the CO2 absorbed by plants during photosynthesis, and CO2 lost by plants during respiration. The global NPP increase was six percent from 1982 to 1999, with ecosystems in tropical zones and in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere accounting for 80 percent of the increase.
The study reports that NPP increased significantly over 25 percent of the global vegetated area, but decreased over seven percent of the area. The researchers say this illustrates how plants respond differently depending on regional climatic conditions.
Growth in the Amazon rain forests accounted for nearly half the global increase found in the study, growth linked to reduced cloud cover and steady rainfall.
In addition, some areas in Asia and Africa got the rain they needed, and lands in northern latitudes - such as the United States and Canada - benefited from warming that created favorable conditions and extended the growing season.
The Earth may have become more rich and lush with vegetation over the past two decades, but coauthor Charles Keeling from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California cautions that the findings do not indicate whether these positive impacts are due to short term climate cycles or longer term global climate change.
The 36 percent increase in global population, Keeling said, overshadows the increases in plant growth. Over the period measured, the world's population grew from 4.45 billion to 6.08 billion.
The researchers stress that this study only looks at one part of how the Earth is responding to climate change, which they say is still not fully understood.
Scientists - and policymakers tasked with addressing climate change - are keen to determine how plants are responding, in particular to increased C02 levels. Humanity's emissions of C02 continue to rise and scientists are unclear how much of this increase can be offset by increased vegetation.
Many scientists believe emissions of greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide, are the leading causes of climate change.
Previous studies indicated that the rising levels of CO2 correspond to more plant growth, but the researchers of this latest study say too many factors are at work to draw a clear conclusion given current evidence.
-------- ACTIVISTS
'Admit your lies', former UN inspector Ritter tells US, Britain
GENEVA (AFP)
Jun 06, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030606101035.rse7bulr.html
The United States and Britain should admit they lied when claiming the ousted Baghdad regime had weapons of mass destruction, Scott Ritter, a former UN senior weapons inspector in Iraq, said in an interview published here Friday.
Ritter, speaking to the Swiss daily Le Temps, called on US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to "have the courage to be held responsible" for telling lies to the public into backing the conflict.
An outspoken critic of Bush's handling of the conflict, the ex-Marine said the two leaders should "explain frankly and honestly why they went to war."
They should "admit their lies", he said.
Ritter's comments were published in French.
"If this is a noble crusade to liberate the world from a crazy dictator, admit it," he said.
But, Ritter added, Saddam Hussein could not have destroyed a possible arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) "without leaving traces...Secretary of Defense) Donald Rumsfeld has furnished no proof of their supposed destruction, just as he has never furnished the slightest proof of their existence".
Ritter, a former intelligence officer in the US Marines once dubbed a "cowboy" by UN officials for what they called his intrusive inspection procedures, headed up the inspections team in Iraq from 1991 to 1998.
He resigned in August 1998, citing a lack of UN and US support for his tough disarmament methods, which rattled the Iraqis.
In his "Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem -- Once and For All", Ritter slammed Bush's policy of regime change as having corrupted the inspection process in Iraq.
He also dismissed US intelligence information purporting to show the existence of WMDs, saying doubt would now be cast upon any further declarations made by the US president.
"(Bush) says that Iran has weapons of mass destruction. On the basis of what information? And what about Syria, or North Korea?" he told the paper.
----
Peace advocates in Egypt revive efforts
After three years of silence, Arab and Israeli groups met again last month.
By Paul Schemm
The Christian Science Monitor
June 06, 2003 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0606/p08s01-wome.html
CAIRO - Early last month, William Welles heard that the Israeli ambassador was coming to visit his downtown Cairo art gallery - again. He locked the doors and went to sit in a coffee shop across the street to watch. The last time the Israeli ambassador visited his gallery unannounced in March, Mr. Welles was condemned in the local press.
This time, the ambassador arrived to find a closed gallery.
The incident is one small measure of how politically and socially unacceptable it has become in Egypt to host envoys of the state of Israel. Almost a quarter century after Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, sentiments, particularly in the media, still run high against the Jewish state - especially since the beginning of the latest Palestinian intifada in 2000.
Recently, however, Egypt's fledgling peace lobby has begun to rebuild itself after three years of silence. With the unveiling of the Palestinian-Israeli road map for peace, followed by this week's summit in Aqaba, Jordan, some activists see a fresh opportunity for attitudes to change.
A hundred activists, intellectuals, businessmen, and former diplomats from Jordan, Egypt, the occupied territories, and Israel met in Copenhagen, Denmark, last month to revive public dialogue about the Middle East peace process.
Originally founded in 1997, the group first went to Copenhagen in an attempt to set up parallel dialogue outside government peace efforts and show the world and people of the region that there are Arabs and Israelis ready to talk peace. The group's chapters strive in their respective countries to present pro-peace points of view to combat the knee-jerk, angry rhetoric that often dominates public discussions. Through conferences, seminars, and opinion pieces in newspapers they promote the idea that a real peace will be possible one day.
"Just the fact that 100 Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, and Egyptians are getting together to resume contact and declare publicly that we've had enough of the violence is important," says Israeli peace activist and conference attendee Gershon Baskin. "Peacemaking is too important to be left in the hands of politicians." Baskin founded the only joint Israeli-Palestinian public-policy think tank back in 1988 and has long been working on coming up with practical solutions to the conflict.
The delegates used the US-backed road map as a basis for their discussions and talked about how peace could properly be implemented.
"I think this [the road map] is possibly the last chance for peace in the Middle East," says Hisham Kassem, a member of the Egyptian delegation and the publisher of the Cairo Times weekly news magazine. Waiting another year for another peace plan, says Kassem, will be too late at the current pace of settlement building. "They'll be nothing left of Palestine, which means terrorism forever in the Middle East."
IN Egypt, the result of the first Copenhagen meetings was the Cairo Peace Movement which went on to hold conferences and publish articles between 1997 and 2000 and represented a lone voice supporting peace with Israel.
The organization's high point was a July 1999 conference featuring Israeli peace activists. Attendees called for an end to violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and condemned the settlement-building of Israel's government. A headline in the opposition Nasserist weekly Al Arabi said, "Those responsible for putting together the conference should be prosecuted for committing crimes against Egypt." The death of several prominent members and the outbreak of the intifada, however, resulted in the organization's subsequent disappearance.
Israel's peace movement was similarly hard hit by the intifada ,and Copenhagen delegates see the latest meeting as an effort to rebuild the movement and regain credibility in the population.
"The peace camp is in disarray and we are trying to get it reorganized - we want to be the umbrella organization in Israel for the whole peace movement," says David Kimche, a member of the Israeli delegation and former director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "We want to bring to the Israeli public the fact that there is a peace camp which is working with our Arab neighbors for the sake of peace."
The Israeli group is planning on publicizing their views in the media, taking out advertisements, holding public meetings, and distributing pamphlets in an effort to reach the public. While opinion polls in Israel reveal a great deal of skepticism about whether the Palestinians are viable peace partners, they also show that most are willing to make major concessions for peace, such as recognizing a Palestinian state.
According to members of the Egyptian delegation, that same majority support for peace in the region exists among the Arabs and in Egypt - despite the strident tone in the press. "The media is dominated by the other side," says Adel Al Adawi, a former diplomat and the head of the Egyptian delegation. "We have to talk about our ideas as much as we can, since we think this is the choice of the Egyptian people - in the end we will have the support of the majority."
"We are working very slowly, but I am sure we will be able to change the image," says Mr. Adawi. Then one day, perhaps, the Israeli ambassador in Cairo will no longer find the doors of art galleries locked.
----
Bechtel getting flak over Iraq
REPORT BLASTS S.F. FIRM'S METHODS OF AWARDING REBUILDING CONTRACTS
By Terence Chea
Associated Press
Fri, Jun. 06, 2003
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/6027436.htm
Amid protests claiming it is profiting from the war in Iraq, Bechtel plans to start recruiting more Iraqi firms to rebuild the war-damaged nation.
The San Francisco company, which was awarded a $680 million contract to direct Iraq's reconstruction, announced last week that it had hired its first Iraqi construction company and will hold a conference in Baghdad to invite Iraqi firms to bid for projects.
``Our goal is to ensure the maximum participation of Iraqis,'' said Valerie Kazanjian, a company spokeswoman. ``We want to revitalize the economy. We want to make sure the money is going back to Iraq.''
But a new report released Thursday criticizes what it calls the company's track record of ``environmental destruction, disregard for human rights and financial mismanagement'' during its 100-year history of building power plants, water systems and roads worldwide.
The report's sponsors -- watchdog groups Public Citizen, Global Exchange and CorpWatch -- want more transparency in the government's process of awarding contracts in Iraq. They believe the country's reconstruction should be led by Iraqi people and Iraqi companies.
``We think Bechtel should be held accountable for war profiteering and devastating many communities around the world,'' said Kristi Laughlin, a campaign coordinator at Global Exchange. ``We're taking money from the Iraqi people and U.S. taxpayers to line the corporate pockets of Bechtel.''
About 30 protesters, denouncing Bechtel's role in Iraq, were arrested Thursday morning during demonstrations in front of the company's headquarters in downtown San Francisco.
In response, Bechtel officials denied allegations in the report and said the company was awarded the Iraq contract after a competitive bidding process because of its historical record, technical merit and low prices.
``Both U.S. taxpayers and the Iraqi people are well served by our work rebuilding vital civilian facilities in Iraq,'' said Jonathan Marshall, a company spokesman.
In April, Bechtel won the 18-month contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development to help repair and rebuild Iraq's battered infrastructure, including its electrical grid, roads, schools and water-treatment systems. The company said it plans to farm out 90 percent of the reconstruction work to subcontractors.
So far, almost all of the 16 contracts have been awarded to non-Iraqi companies, mostly from the United States, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The initial work has focused on repairing airports and ports, including the country's only deep-sea port at Umm Qasr.
But as work shifts toward repairing and building schools, bridges and water treatment plants, Bechtel plans to rely more heavily on Iraqi firms. The company anticipates it will need to repair 50 bridges and 1,000 schools and clinics. It plans to buy 75 percent of its equipment from Iraqi suppliers and hire 90 percent of its workers from Iraq.
The Al-Bunnia Trading Company, a 93-year-old construction firm in Baghdad, is the first Iraqi subcontractor hired by Bechtel. It won a $5 million contract to build a mile-long bypass bridge 180 miles west of Baghdad. The original bridge, situated on a key highway between Baghdad and Jordan, was badly damaged during the war.
----
Zimbabwe's Main Opposition Leader Arrested
June 6, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-zimbabwe-protests.html
HARARE (Reuters) - Police arrested Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai Friday and charged him with treason as anti-government protests faltered in the face of a massive show of force by President Robert Mugabe.
Tsvangirai, head of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was arrested after a news conference in which he vowed to press ahead with protests against Mugabe, whom he accuses of being an illegitimate and increasingly incompetent leader.
Friday Mugabe described as ``stupid and naive'' Tsvangirai's threat of street protests to run him out of office.
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said Tsvangirai was being charged with treason in connection with a series of statements since the disputed March 2002 elections that allegedly incited his supporters to seek Mugabe's overthrow.
Police said they were also looking to question MDC Secretary-General Welshman Ncube on the new treason charges.
Tsvangirai, who urged Zimbabweans to turn out ``in their millions'' this week to express their dissatisfaction with Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF party, has launched a legal challenge to Mugabe's 2002 election in polls widely decried as fraudulent.
Mugabe, speaking at a rally in Mamini, 93 miles northwest of Harare, made no reference to Tsvangirai's latest arrest but made clear his anger at the protest action.
``We were expected to quake and shake with fear at this threat from this pathetic puppet who regards the British as his masters and god,'' Mugabe said.
``It is very stupid and naive to think that we would just stand by and watch,'' he added.
Lawyer Innocent Chagonda said Tsvangirai -- who is already on trial for treason in connection with an alleged plot on Mugabe's life -- would be held until Saturday when he was due to appear before a magistrate.
``There is absolutely no basis for the arrest,'' Chagonda told CNN, adding that Tsvangirai would deny seeking Mugabe's ouster.
The MDC accuses Mugabe's government of political repression and mismanagement that has left Zimbabwe's economy in tatters.
Tsvangirai was briefly detained Monday, and government lawyers are now seeking a court order to ban him from making ``inflammatory'' comments or inciting the public.
COUNTER ACTION
Friday, the last day of a five-day campaign of MDC protests which the government has declared illegal, thousands of young men wearing white T-shirts emblazoned with the words ``No to Mass Action'' flooded central Harare, apparently to discourage any attempts by MDC protesters to take to the streets.
Elsewhere in the country, police stopped a handful of people who tried to march in the country's second city of Bulawayo, while another planned MDC protest in southern Masvingo province was reported to have collapsed in the face of heavy security.
Tsvangirai conceded Friday the bruising response to the protest drive -- which began Monday when riot police used tear gas and rifle butts to disperse protests around the country -- had made MDC supporters reluctant to demonstrate openly.
But he described the week-long drive as an overwhelming success and said the opposition would continue the protests.
Mugabe, now 79 and in power since independence from Britain in 1980, says he is being targeted by Western powers and their local proxies angry over his policy of seizing white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks.
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U.N. Envoy Presses Myanmar to Release Dissident
June 6, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-myanmar-razali.html
YANGON (Reuters) - A U.N. special envoy pressed Myanmar officials on Friday to release pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, detained after an ambush that Washington said may have been instigated by the military regime.
The mission of Razali Ismail, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's envoy to Myanmar, followed concern among foreign states that the 57-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate was hurt in the May 30 incident, although government officials denied that.
Razali met with Myanmar Foreign Minister Win Aung and said he would meet the military intelligence chief and number three in the junta, Khin Nyunt, on Saturday morning, in hopes of winning a commitment to meet with Suu Kyi.
U.N. sources in New York said Razali's orders from Annan were to meet with Suu Kyi and leaders of her National League for Democracy party, and said he would cut short his mission and leave Myanmar immediately if this request were denied.
U.N. spokeswoman Hua Jiang would say only that ``a shortening of the visit is a possibility if the objectives of the visit are not achieved.''
Razali has visited Myanmar, formerly Burma, over the past two years to encourage talks on a democratic transition in the country ruled by the military since a 1962 coup.
The ruling generals have held Suu Kyi at undisclosed locations since violence erupted between her supporters and those favoring the junta last Friday as she toured a provincial town in the North.
Myanmar has also shut NLD offices and ordered 19 of its leaders confined to their houses. The NLD easily won Myanmar's last free elections in 1990 but was never allowed to rule.
AMBUSHED BY THUGS
The United States said on Thursday it suspected Suu Kyi and her convoy were ambushed by ``government-affiliated thugs.''
The military says four people died and 50 were injured in the clashes but dissidents in exile suspect as many as 75 of Suu Kyi's supporters were killed.
``I have heard that she's been injured...but these are all just rumors,'' Razali said before leaving Malaysia for Yangon.
``I think the government can be persuaded to allow me to see her. They should really help themselves by allowing me to see her,'' the veteran Malaysian diplomat said.
The United States and Britain have stepped up diplomatic pressure for Suu Kyi's release.
State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said in a statement that U.S. embassy officials had gone from Yangon to the scene of last week's clash to investigate.
``Their findings indicated that there was a premeditated ambush on Aung San Suu Kyi's motorcade. Circumstances and reports from individuals in the region indicated that the attack was conducted by government-affiliated thugs,'' he said.
In London, junior Foreign Office minister Mike O'Brien said in a statement Britain, a former colonial power, remained worried by reports that she had been wounded.
``A refusal to allow (U.N.) access (to Suu Kyi) would constitute a deliberate rebuff to the international community, which would have consequences,'' he said following a telephone call with Myanmar's Deputy Foreign Minister Maung Win.
O'Brien did not say what might happen without access to Suu Kyi but diplomatic sources said Britain and the European Union could be forced to impose new restrictions on the junta.
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U.N.'s Annan Presses for Suu Kyi Release
June 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Myanmar-Suu-Kyi.html
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was concerned about the detention of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as his envoy to Myanmar pressed its generals to release her.
The United States said it would support more economic sanctions against the military regime in Myanmar.
Myanmar has not allowed access to Suu Kyi since a May 30 clash involving pro-junta supporters and her followers in northern Myanmar in which at least four people died.
The junta has said only she is unhurt and in custody at ``a safe place.'' Offices of her National League for Democracy party have been shut and other opposition figures detained.
Exiled opposition figures in Thailand say Suu Kyi may have received head injuries in the violence, which they say left up to 70 people dead.
On the second day of his mission, U.N. envoy Razali Ismail was scheduled to meet on Saturday with Gen. Khin Nyunt, Myanmar's intelligence chief and third-ranking leader, ``where he hopes to receive an official answer to his request'' to meet Suu Kyi, a U.N. statement issued in New York said.
Annan instructed Razali to meet senior officials of the Myanmar regime, Suu Kyi and leaders of her party, the National League for Democracy, or NLD, according to the statement from Annan's spokesman.
``The secretary-general continues to be gravely concerned about the continued incommunicado detention of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of the NLD, and is particularly troubled by reports of injuries suffered by them,'' the statement said. Daw is an honorific title.
Annan said he wants Suu Kyi and other NLD members to be released without delay, it said.
Razali met Friday with Foreign Minister Win Aung after the U.N. envoy arrived in Yangon on a five-day mission, his first in seven months. Details of the meeting were not available.
Razali has yet to comment to reporters in Myanmar, saying only at his hotel: ``I'm in the hands of the government here.''
The United States reiterated Friday its demand that Razali been given access to Suu Kyi and that the democracy leader be released.
U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said it considered the May 30 violence in as an ambush on Suu Kyi's motorcade, ``premeditated as far as we can tell.'' The action suggests the military government has decided to end efforts at national reconciliation, he said.
Boucher said the United States had expanded visa restrictions to more members of the government and is reviewing bills in the House and Senate to prohibit imports from Myanmar, primarily of textiles, clothing and shoes.
Leading U.S. lawmakers Wednesday called for the new sanctions. The United States already has some economic and diplomatic restrictions against impoverished Myanmar, including a ban on new investments.
Tight media controls and the remote location of the May 30 clash have made it difficult to confirm independently what happened. The junta says the violence was sparked when Suu Kyi's motorcade drove through a crowd of thousands of government supporters and denies the government was behind the unrest.
A U.S. Embassy official said that American diplomats who visited the site reported seeing homemade weapons that appeared to have been made in advance, suggesting a planned ambush by ``government-affiliated thugs.''
Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her nonviolent struggle to promote democracy in Myanmar, spent six years under house arrest 1989-95. Her party won general elections in 1990 but was blocked by the military from taking power.
U.N. envoy Razali in late 2000 brokered reconciliation talks between Suu Kyi and the government, and helped secure her release from another 19 months of house arrest in May 2002. But the dialogue reached a standstill later in the year and relations between the opposition and regime have worsened.
International human rights group Amnesty International said Friday it had received reports that other NLD members had been detained this week in central and northern Myanmar, and that it is gravely concerned about more than 100 people missing since the violence.
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Greenpeace stages UK protest over Indonesian wood
REUTERS UK:
June 6, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21077/story.htm
LONDON - Greenpeace activists scaled cranes at a government construction site in central London this week to protest at illegal logging in Indonesia. Nine men and two women took part in the action, at a Home Office site in central London, the group said.
The British government should halt all plywood imports from Indonesia, one of the world's largest timber producers, since it is virtually impossible to certify that wood from the country has not been logged illegally, Greenpeace said.
"Until we can guarantee that there is legal and sustainable timber coming out of Indonesia, we should not buy it," Greenpeace's UK campaign director John Sauven told Reuters. The Home Office says it takes seriously procurement guidelines which ban the use of illegally logged timber.
Asked in parliament this week about the protest, Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "It may be an issue to be brought up with the contractors rather than the government."
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