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NUCLEAR
Russia, Iran fail to agree on key nuclear accord: ministry
Dozens of Iranian scientists already working on nuclear bomb: report
U.S. softens nuke charge against Iran
Iran may agree to tougher nuclear inspections in near future: minister
Carter: US, Japan Should Guarantee NK's Safety
North Korean Standoff Poses 'Greatest Threat,' Carter Says
Blackout, not nuke-out
Tabloids Cause Minor Nuclear Smuggling Panic in Scandinavia
Kawaguchi tries to buoy nuke treaties
Powell Strongly Defends Bush's Foreign Policy
Senior House Democrat Urges Top Defense Hands to Resign
MILITARY
Attacks Slowing Key Afghan Road
Peacekeepers to Deploy in Rural Liberia
Young Zimbabweans admit militia crimes
Arms Dealer Arrested in Plot to Kill Cartel Kingpin
Sending extra British troops 'pushes Army to break point'
Boeing Satellite Project Criticized Funding, Delays Concern Panel
Hong Kong Chief Drops Unpopular Security Bill
Indian, US special forces hold joint exercises in Himalayas
Security at Iraq Munitions Sites Is Vulnerable, U.S. Officials Say
Shiite Militia Deploys Forces
Jailing Iraqi Scientists May Be Hurting Weapons Search
Army kills suspect, demolishes apartment house
Alleged Bomb Maker Is Slain
The Militarization of the Americas
PAKISTAN - Belgian F-16s sought to counter India
A Legal Netherworld
Most Chechens 'want to remain part of Russia'
U.S. Offers to Revise Iraq Resolution
Russia, France, Germany soften stance on Iraq proposal in U.N.
Envoys Urge U.S. to Cede More Power to U.N.
Hard homecoming
Rumsfeld Touts U.S. 'Success'
Anger at top Arab reporter's arrest
Rumsfeld to Iraq: 'Remarkable changes'
Dull Paean
Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Results Retracted On Ecstasy Study
Ashcroft Defends Patriot Act Secrecy
Saudi-U.S. Meeting Touches on Detainees
FBI Issues Alert for Four Terror Suspects
OTHER
Inquiry Opens Into Effects of 9/11 Dust
Scientists spot 'Serengetis' of the sea
Research Lab Falsified Tests on Toxins, Reports Say
22 million Americans are addicts
ACTIVISTS
Red Cross: Suu Kyi Not on Hunger Strike
Court overrules campus speech code
"Aftermath: Unanswered Questions From 911"
Protests Thwart Security Rules in Hong Kong
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- iran
Russia, Iran fail to agree on key nuclear accord: ministry
MOSCOW (AFP)
Sep 06, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030906094742.qpu85w5m.html
Talks between Moscow and Tehran have failed to produce a key agreement that would launch the Islamic state's first nuclear reactor, the Russian atomic energy ministry said Saturday.
The two sides held talks Friday on Iran's Bushehr power plant project in the Russian capital, but were unable to agree on a date to sign the controversial agreement, a ministry official told the ITAR-TASS news agency.
"Talks on this point will continue in the nearest future," the official said.
Russia and Iran had planned to sign an agreement under which Moscow would provide fuel for the Bushehr nuclear power plant that it has been helping build in southern Iran.
In return, Tehran was to agree to return all of the reactor's spent fuel to Russia for reprocessing, officials in Moscow had said.
Many Western countries, notably United States and Israel, fear that the Bushehr project could help Iran develop a nuclear weapons program.
The Unites States had urged Russia not to sign the agreement until Iran allows open inspections by teams from the United Nations of its military installations.
On Saturday, Russia said it would not begin delivering fuel for the reactor until an agreement on the return of the fuel is signed.
"The signing of the agreement on the return of nuclear fuel... is a prerequisite for the start of deliveries of 'fresh' fuel," the atomic energy ministry source told ITAR-TASS.
Russia first announced the delay in the Bushehr agreement last week, in an apparent concession to US and Israeli concerns.
Russia's atomic energy spokesman Alexander Agapov told the Interfax news agency on August 29 that the new protocol with Iran might not be signed for several more months.
"Generally, all disputes will be resolved by the end of the year," Agapov was quoted as saying.
He blamed the delay on the Iranians.
"The delivery of fuel is constantly being delayed because Iran has no final document on a reaction to a possible emergency" during the transport of fuel, the Russian spokesman said.
"We cannot carry (spent nuclear fuel into Russia) until we are convinced it will be transported safely to a temporary storage facility," he added.
He added that a group of Russian experts would travel to Iran on September 21 to help resolve the problem.
The developments come before a key meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, which is due to discuss the Iranian question during its September 8-11 session.
----
Dozens of Iranian scientists already working on nuclear bomb: report
BERLIN (AFP)
Sep 06, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030906181156.vw9csowl.html
Up to 90 scientists are working secretly on the construction of a nuclear bomb in Iran under the supervision of the ministry of defense, the weekly Tagesspiegel am Sonntag said in its Sunday edition.
Quoting intelligence sources, it said Iran had bought high-tension switches and high-speed cameras to conduct nuclear tests.
Although Iran has insisted all its it nuclear facilities are for civil purposes and has offered to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has consistently refused to accept surprise inspections of its plants.
The IAEA was scheduled to meet on the issue on Monday, when sources in Vienna said Iran would come under renewed pressure to lift the secrecy around its nuclear program.
----
U.S. softens nuke charge against Iran
World Scene
September 06, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
Combined dispatches and staff reports.
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene.htm
VIENNA AUSTRIA - Washington has abandoned plans to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for what it says are breaches of U.N. nuclear rules, despite worries that Tehran is secretly developing nuclear weapons, diplomats said yesterday.
Diplomats said Thursday that Washington had circulated a draft resolution among members of the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency declaring Iran in "noncompliance" with U.N. nuclear obligations.
But diplomats said Washington realized there was little support for its draft resolution, and dropped "noncompliance" from the draft as the case for declaring Iran in breach is far from clear-cut.
The United States will instead agree to present a less strongly worded resolution at next week's meeting of the IAEA board urging Iran to open up its nuclear programs to unfettered access.
----
Iran may agree to tougher nuclear inspections in near future: minister
TEHRAN (AFP)
Sep 06, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030906115543.6x2rsk9r.html
Iran's foreign minister said Saturday that the Islamic republic may soon agree to tougher nuclear inspections if ongoing talks on the issue with the UN's atomic energy watchdog removed "ambiguities".
"With explanations and the removal of ambiguities from the IAEA, Iran will in the near future will sign the additional protocol," Kamal Kharazi was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with major international backing, is pressing Iran to quickly sign and ratify an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which would allow unannounced checks of its nuclear facilities by UN inspectors.
Iran, which has dismissed widespread suspicions it is using an atomic energy programme as a cover for nuclear weapons development, has maintained that it needs certain points of the protocol clarified before it can sign.
Kharazi, who was speaking just days ahead of a key IAEA meeting in Vienna, gave no indication on how the talks on the protocol were progressing.
However, the foreign minister did call on the agency's board of governors not to bow to US pressure when they discuss Iran's nuclear programme in the coming days, saying he hoped their final decision on how to move ahead on the Iran dossier was "professional and not politicised".
In separate comments to the student news agency ISNA, Kharazi explained that "the protocol would need to be ratified in parliament, and for this it is necessary for the MPs to be informed."
"They have to know the content and the necessity of this protocol, what obligations it has for the Islamic republic and what problems it could solve. The important question that we have is that by signing this protocol, would the problems and bilateral misunderstandings be solved or would Iran still be faced with other pressures?" he said.
"We hope the US will not put pressure on the agency and members of the board of governors to take a political stance," he added.
Also speaking on the nuclear tensions ahead of the IAEA meeting was the powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who in comments carried by state media described the US pressure against Iran over its atomic programme was "satanic and oppressive".
The US ambassador to the IAEA said Thursday that Washington will push for "a strong resolution" on Iran's suspect nuclear programme at the Vienna meeting, which begins on Monday.
But he stopped short of saying that Washington and its allies on the IAEA's 35-member board of governors would push for a resolution calling it in non-compliance with the treaty. Such a resolution could send the matter to the UN Security Council, which could in turn impose tough sanctions on the Islamic republic.
-------- korea
Carter: US, Japan Should Guarantee NK's Safety
2003-09-06
Daily Yomiuri
ANN Sinchew-i
http://e.sinchew-i.com/content.phtml?sec=4&artid=200309060000
To solve the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, the United States, Japan and other concerned nations should guarantee Pyongyang that its current regime will not be overthrown through military or economic means, former US President Jimmy Carter said at a press conference held Friday in Tokyo.
"At the same time, North Korea must do two things: One, renounce its commitment to become a nuclear weapons power and place all of its nuclear programs under unimpeded inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency," said Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
"The other is to give an unequivocal assurance of no military threat against South Korea and its other neighbours."
In 1994, Carter negotiated a deal with then North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, in which North Korea confirmed its willingness to freeze its nuclear arms programs, which led to the conclusion the Agreed Framework in Geneva. However, in October 2002, North Korea revealed it had a covert program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
"Both sides have violated some of the agreements," he said.
Carter said the most disturbing violations are North Korea's decisions to resume its processing of fuel rods in Yongbyon and to end its self-imposed freeze on the production of plutonium.
He also criticised the United States for refusing to enter into direct talks with Pyongyang and branding the country part of an "axis of evil".
Carter arrived in Japan Thursday to attend events sponsored by the privately funded Nippon Foundation and its affiliated Sasakawa Africa Association, a non-governmental organisation providing assistance for the development of agriculture in Africa. He leaves Japan Sunday for China.
--------
North Korean Standoff Poses 'Greatest Threat,' Carter Says
September 6, 2003
The New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/international/asia/06KORE.html
TOKYO, Sept. 5 - Former President Jimmy Carter, the man credited with defusing the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis, warned here today that the current standoff was the world's "greatest threat."
"This paranoid nation and the United States now are facing what I believe to be the greatest threat in the world to regional and global peace," Mr. Carter said of North Korea. The Bush administration, which has avoided using the word "crisis" in referring to North Korea's revival of its nuclear program, had no immediate comment on Mr. Carter's Asian visit or his message. Advertisement
Mr. Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, met here today with Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi. On Sunday he flies to Beijing where he is to meet with top Chinese leaders. Traveling on an agenda to promote aid to Africa, he said he had no plan to repeat his 1994 trip to North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, which opened the way to the first nuclear agreement with North Korea.
"Unfortunately both sides have violated some of those agreements," he said, criticizing North Korea for enriching uranium in order to make bombs. "At the same time, the United States has refused direct talks, has branded North Korea as an axis of evil, has declared an end of no first use of atomic weapons, has invaded Iraq and has been intercepting North Korean ships at sea."
Warning against pushing North Korea, he added, "That country is isolated, very fearful of outside threats, economically punished by longstanding sanctions with a superb military technology and the ability to destroy hundreds and thousand of lives and most of Seoul if a war should come."
He urged a continuation of the six-party talks in Beijing that took place last week with the participation of China, Japan, Russia, the United States and North and South Korea.
Mr. Carter said North Korea should renounce nuclear weapons and the use of violence in dealing with South Korea. Next Tuesday North Korea's leadership celebrates the 55th anniversary of the founding of the country. Many outside analysts fear that North Korea could use the anniversary to declare itself a nuclear power or hold a nuclear test.
In return for North Korea's giving up its bombs and its bomb-making capabilities, Mr. Carter said, the United States should agree to a nonaggression pact with North Korea, negotiated and guaranteed by North Korea's neighbors.
"A unilateral decision by the United States the North Koreans would not trust," he said. Other incentives, he said, could include "the lifting of all economic and political sanctions against North Korea and the opportunity for that little country to become completely absorbed in world affairs on a normal basis."
-------- terrorism
Blackout, not nuke-out
September 06, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030905-082350-2146r.htm
While the politicization of last month's electricity blackout could be anticipated easily, the exploitation of this event by Frank Gaffney Jr. to advance his views on the war on terrorism is repugnant ("The blackout next time," Aug. 19, Commentary).
Mr. Gaffney employs the popular neoconservative technique of elevating the specter of fear within our nation to justify a military buildup, pre-emptive attacks on other nations and the development of advanced concept nuclear weapons - all in an attempt to force other nations to cower before the United States. What this peace-through-strength theme does, in fact, is force other nations to pursue the only viable alternative they can afford to deter aggression by the United States: nuclear weaponry.
So while he warns us of a terrorist-generated electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that could send our country back to pre-industrial-age conditions for months if not years, Mr. Gaffney, and other neocons, would be wise to rethink how their policies adopted by the current White House are accelerating global nuclear proliferation that could lead to the devastating EMP against which he warns us.
JOHN G. DUESLER JR.
Nuclear Policy Research Institute Huntingdon Valley, Pa.
----
Tabloids Cause Minor Nuclear Smuggling Panic in Scandinavia
Bellona Foundation (Russia)
Charles Digges,
2003-09-05
http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/nuke-weapons/nonproliferation/31106.html
Norway awoke Friday morning to disturbing newspaper headlines and television reports that a major plan to smuggle 90 kilograms of radioactive waste-which may have included plutonium-into Finland in the trunk of a car driven by a Swedish national had been foiled by Russian border control agents.
The reports had appeared in the Helsinki tabloid, Iltalehti, which were then duplicated in Stockholm's sensationalist Svenska. By the time the reports reached Norway, Friday's news was brimming with scenarios of possible plutonium smuggling corridors from the Kola Peninsula into Scandinavia, and information about an unnamed Swedish national who had attempted, via one of these apparent corridors, to transport a load of his own.
Fortunately, say Russian, Finnish and Swedish officials, the reports were not only several weeks late, but highly exaggerated. Nonetheless, the news unsettled the pubic across Scandinavia, whose close proximity to Russia and Russia's well-documented problems with securing fissile materials are cause for worldwide alarm.
What the Papers Erroneously Reported According to the Norwegian daily VG newspaper published Friday, Russian police are busily investigating a case of radioactive smuggling that was brought to an end just 100 metres from the Finnish border by Russian customs' radiation detectors. VG was quoting an article published by the Svenska, which said that the Swedish national driving the car loaded with radioactive waste was in Russian police custody.
VG quoted Svenska further, adding that it was unknown when the arrest occurred, but that the Swedish national had been confirmed to be in custody of the Russians by the Finnish Police division in Salla, directly across the Russian-Finnish border.
Iltalehti quoted Salla's Police Chief Pentti Saira as saying "I don't know what this material is, but according to our information, the material is radioactive."
Iltalehti insisted that the seized material contained plutonium, VG reported. But Iltalehti's report and Svenska's version of it began to fall apart when representatives for Russia's Murmansk Regional Customs Division flatly contradicted much of what the papers reported.
The Facts of the Case
What was reported to be 90 kilograms of radioactive waste by the papers, said Murmansk's Chief Customs Inspector Vitaly Popov in a telephone interview, turned out to be a car trunk full of 90 kilograms of assorted rocks and minerals that were emitting radiation levels strong enough to be picked up by radiation detectors at the border checkpoint. All of this occurred when the Swedish national left Russia a month ago.
These rocks and minerals that the Swedish tourist had picked up while in the northern Kola Peninsula were confiscated, and he was sent on his way, said the chief customs inspector.
"There was no arrest here," Popov said. "There is an investigation of the materials underway, but there was no arrest. Customs officials delayed him for some 20 minutes, and then let him go."
Another customs spokesman in Murmansk, reached by telephone on Friday, said that the Swedish national had gathered the confiscated rocks and minerals in an area of no military or security significance to Russia, and he had done so with the aid of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "He was a rock collector, evidently," said the spokesman. "That's a hobby, not a crime."
According to a representative for the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, any number of minerals and rocks collected anywhere in northern Russia could contain some amount of radiation.
"Everything contains a slight degree of radiation," said the spokeswoman, who asked not to be identified because she was not specifically familiar with the case. "It could be that this man picked up something that contained natural uranium or another naturally occurring radioactive element, which would have registered on radiation detectors. Whatever it was, I am sure it could not be plutonium, which is not a naturally occurring element."
Diplomatic Reactions "All we know about the case is what we saw in Svenska newspaper," said Consul Elizabeth Stan of Sweden's Moscow embassy in a telephone interview. "We don't know when it happened, or if it happened."
"The Russian authorities have not approached us about this matter at all," she added.
The Finnish Embassy in Moscow likewise had no information on the case other than what they had seen in Iltalehti. "At this point, anyone's guess is as good as mine," said a spokesman by telephone from Moscow.
Finnish police in Salla-the border point to which the Swedish national was headed from the Murmansk region-denied both Svenska and Iltalehti's reports that the Swedish national had been arrested by Russian authorities, adding further that they had never suggested that to any of the reporters who had called them for information.
"We know there is an investigation underway about the materials, but other than that, we have no official information-all we know is what we saw in the paper," said the officer, who asked not to be identified.
At Russian customs, the spokesman said that the material taken from the vehicle is still under investigation and that if it is found to be radioactive, the Swedish national could face so-called administrative responsibility. "But the Swedish national is probably already home and bringing any administrative charges would be difficult," said the spokesman. "In such a situation the case is likely closed."
As for Iltalehti and Svenska, who started the radioactive furore, both papers say they stick to their stories. Neither paper would comment on why they had reported the incident a month after it happened, where they got the information that plutonium was involved, and why they had reported that the Swedish national was in the custody of the Russian police.
-------- treaties
Kawaguchi tries to buoy nuke treaties
By SATOSHI UKAI,
The Asahi Shimbun
(09/06)
http://www.asahi.com/english/politics/K2003090600249.html
GENEVA-Delegates from Mexico and the Philippines slid through the crowd, eager to shake hands with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi.
Kawaguchi, on a weeklong ``disarmament'' tour of Europe, had just finished a speech in Vienna on the importance putting the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) into action.
``Since Japan is the only country in the world to have suffered the tragedy of atomic bombings, we Japanese people have a particularly strong desire for a ban on nuclear testing,'' she said.
Although Mexico and the Philippines aren't nuclear powers, the delegates' reaction to Kawaguchi's speech is what Tokyo is seeking.
Japan wants to show its individuality in diplomacy over disarmament-independent of Washington-at a time when nuclear disarmament does not look promising.
Kawaguchi's approach to the nuclear issue has been based on two things: the CTBT and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
Her ``disarmament trip'' started with a stop in Ukraine, which has dismantled its Soviet-era nuclear arms. Kawaguchi's tour took her to the CTBT meeting in Vienna and the United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.
In a speech delivered to the conference Thursday, Kawaguchi expressed Japan's anxiety about North Korea's nuclear program.
``Japan is deeply concerned about North Korea's declaration of its intention to withdraw from the NPT,'' she said.
The foreign minister touched upon the danger that the NPT system could implode.
``Problems of noncompliance with multilateral disarmament and nonproliferation treaties, including the NPT, have become more acute,'' she said in her speech. She also stressed the importance of the entire international community working to prevent such moves.
Japanese analysts say the problem with the CTBT is that opposition from the United States and others prevents the treaty from going into force.
The CTBT was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1996 and has been ratified by 104 nations. But for the CTBT to take effect, 44 designated nations must ratify it. The United States and China are among the 12 nations that have not ratified the treaty.
Kawaguchi told The Asahi Shimbun in a telephone interview that Japan's role is to ``create international rules in disarmament and management of weapons.''
She specified other urgent tasks, including ratification of the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, which bans the production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium.
At the Conference on Disarmament, Kawaguchi strongly called for action on the cut-off treaty.
``We believe such negotiations should begin without further delay,'' she said.
The task facing Japan's disarmament diplomacy is that the country must find a way to balance disarmament ideals and ``realistic'' policies and have them take shape as concrete achievements.
The task is all the more urgent because Japan faces the threat of an NPT collapse and a tougher stance of nuclear powers standing in the way of the CTBT.
-------- us politics
Powell Strongly Defends Bush's Foreign Policy
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32802-2003Sep5.html
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday aggressively defended the Bush administration's handling of foreign policy, arguing that instead of the widespread perception of a unilateralist, go-it-alone approach, "the president's strategy is a strategy of partnerships" with nations around the globe.
The administration's foreign policy "strongly affirms the vital role of the partnerships that we have throughout the world -- our partnership with NATO; our partnership with the United Nations and with so many other precious alliances that we have created over the last 50 years," Powell said in an impassioned speech at George Washington University before an overflow crowd. "And the president's strategy doesn't rest on old alliances; it calls for new partnerships, new alliances to meet new challenges."
The speech appeared to be part of a coordinated effort by the administration to reassure the nation that it is pursuing the right policies in Iraq. The White House announced yesterday that President Bush will address the nation on Iraq at 8:30 p.m. Sunday. Aides said Bush plans to appeal for global help and will stress the importance of more international participation as Iraqis assume increasing responsibility for their future.
Powell has generally resisted making speeches that lay out a broad foreign-policy vision, but in recent months he has spoken to aides about the need to rebut the concept that the administration cares only about Iraq and is not interested in working with other nations. The speech -- billed by the State Department as a "major foreign policy address" -- is the first in what is expected to be a series by Powell that explain and define administration foreign policy.
On Sunday morning, Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice will precede Bush's speech with appearances on television talk shows.
Bush's aides have become concerned about the trajectory of events in Iraq, where U.S. soldiers are being killed nearly daily, troops are overextended, costs are spiraling and the reconstruction has barely begun. "The president believes this is a good time to talk to the American people about the progress we are making in our ongoing war on terrorism and our needs going forward," White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with the president in Indiana.
In the speech Sunday night, the president "will talk about how Iraq is something that the world has a stake in . . . because it is central to winning the war on terrorism," McClellan said.
"Progress is being made," Powell said yesterday, "and because the coalition is making such progress, far more Iraqis worry about our leaving too soon than about our staying too long. They need not worry. We will neither leave too soon nor stay too long."
Powell made no mention of the vexing issues that have riled relations with key European allies, such as the administration's rejection of the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto global warming treaty, or its refusal to accept NATO's offer of help in prosecuting the war against Afghanistan. But he accused France, the main roadblock to winning U.N. authorization for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, of creating international tensions by pursuing a vision of a "multipolar world."
"Some authorities suggest that we must move now to a multipolar world," Powell said, not mentioning France by name but making clear his reference. "But there need be no poles among nations that share basic values. We have no desire to create such poles, either. Indeed, we must work to overcome differences, not to polarize them."
French President Jacques Chirac has declared that the only way to combat the unilateralism of the Bush administration is to create a "multipolar" world of competing power centers, to try to build a new world order that does not revolve around U.S. power. Powell argued that instead the great powers have less to fear from each other and can work cooperatively together to tackle common problems.
"For too many years, too many centuries, the imperial habits of great powers squandered untold resources and talent and lives, jousting for real estate, glory and gold," Powell said. "Instead of wasting lives and treasure opposing each other as in the past, today's powers can pull in the same direction to solve problems common to all. And if we do pull together, we will begin to redeem history from so much human folly."
Powell lauded the administration's relations with Russia and China, two longtime rivals of the United States, asserting that they had rarely been stronger.
When the Bush administration took office, officials pointedly replaced President Bill Clinton's description of China as a "strategic partner" with the more ominous-sounding "strategic competitor." But Powell said, "today, I would submit U.S. relations with China are the best they have been since President Nixon's first visit" in 1972.
"Neither we nor the Chinese leadership anymore believe that there is anything inevitable about our relationship, either inevitably bad or inevitably good," Powell said. "We believe that it is up to us together to take responsibility for our common future, and we do not conceive that future in zero-sum terms."
Powell pointed to China's assistance in facilitating six-nation talks last month to try to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis. Although the administration has been criticized for appearing to lack a coordinated strategy for dealing with North Korea, Powell said the diplomatic process underway will yield results, but "we still have a long way to go" before the crisis is ended.
"I believe strongly that a diplomatic solution can be achieved, and when it has been achieved, we will have demonstrated that American diplomacy is designed to satisfy not only American national interest, but the interest of international security, as well," Powell said. "We will show that the equities of other powers can be best advanced along with American ones, not in opposition to them."
Staff writer Mike Allen in Indianapolis contributed to this report.
----
Senior House Democrat Urges Top Defense Hands to Resign
By DAVID FIRESTONE
September 6, 2003
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/politics/06RESI.html?ei=1&en=b76718117b70ffd1&ex=1063902997&pagewanted=print&position=
WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 - A senior House Democrat called today for the resignation of the top two officials at the Defense Department, saying that miscalculations by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the deputy secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, had cost American lives in Iraq and damaged the nation's fiscal health.
In a letter to President Bush, Representative David R. Obey, the ranking minority member of the House Appropriations Committee, said the Pentagon should be relieved of its role in determining foreign policy in Iraq, in part because of errors made by Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Wolfowitz before and after the war.
"It is impossible to review the record of the past year and not conclude that they have made repeated and serious miscalculations," said Mr. Obey, who has represented northern Wisconsin for 34 years.
The unilateral conduct of the war and the planning for postwar occupation cannot be seen as "anything other than a disaster," he wrote.
The White House did not respond to the letter, but Stuart Roy, a spokesman for Representative Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader, dismissed Mr. Obey's call.
"Here the president is, freeing Iraqi citizens and giving them a first taste of democracy, and you have Democrats like Obey who come up with bizarre requests like this," Mr. Roy said. "They think they're going to get a political gain from this, but they're really running their own party off the cliff."
Mr. Obey's remarks reflected a growing fury among Congressional Democrats about the handling of the occupation and the vast sums that will be required to rebuild Iraq at a time of record-setting budget deficits in the United States. Later this month, the administration is expected to submit a supplemental spending bill for more than $40 billion to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq and to rebuild the country.
Mr. Obey will probably not be the last Democrat to demand high-level resignations.
On Thursday, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, said Democrats were willing to pay to rebuild Iraq, but not for what she said was the administration's poor planning.
On the Senate floor today, Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, questioned how Republicans could be willing to spend tens of billions of dollars on Iraq while refusing to spend $6 billion to bring the administration's education program, known as No Child Left Behind, up to its authorized spending level.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Attacks Slowing Key Afghan Road
Deadly Nighttime Assault at Police Post Seen as Evidence of Resurgent Taliban
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33378-2003Sep5.html
SHAH JOI, Afghanistan -- Even on a good day, progress along the 300-mile highway between Kabul and Kandahar, Afghanistan's two major cities, is painfully slow. In a few spots, massive machines inch along under the hot sun, laying a coat of asphalt that extends perhaps 100 yards by dusk. Ahead wait endless stretches of rutted, sandy track, passing through parched lands of grazing sheep and camels.
But on a bad day, it seems that forces more nefarious than equipment breakdowns, shipping delays or hot weather are determined to sabotage the U.S.-funded project to rebuild Afghanistan's most important road, the centerpiece of national reconstruction and reunification efforts.
Just before midnight last Sunday, a gang of armed men on motorbikes attacked a police checkpoint near a camp for Indian and Afghan highway workers in this remote district of Zabol province. Six of the sleeping guards were killed, several others were kidnapped and two vehicles were incinerated by rockets and gunfire.
"The people who did this do not want Afghanistan to be rebuilt," said Mahmoud Sozan, 40, a shopkeeper in Shah Joi, a town about three-quarters of the way from Kabul to Kandahar. "This road has been destroyed by fighting since I was a boy. If it is paved again, we will be able to send our grapes and melons to the cities much faster. But these strangers who come in the night, they want to stop everything."
None of the assailants was caught, but officials suspect they were part of a newly regrouped and well-organized force of fighters from the Taliban, the Islamic militia that ruled Afghanistan for six years and was overthrown in late 2001. Since July, more than 200 Afghans have been killed in bombings and other guerrilla assaults blamed on the Taliban.
Two weeks ago, in their boldest offensive to date, as many as 1,000 Taliban fighters occupied a mountainous region of Zabol called Dai Chupan between the highway and the Pakistani border. U.S. military forces responded by launching Operation Mountain Viper, which combined sustained bombing with ground attacks by hundreds of Afghan and U.S. forces.
On Wednesday, Afghan security officials in Zabol announced that they had driven most renegade fighters out of the province and that 125 bodies of dead enemy fighters had been found. But Taliban commanders -- who felt bold enough to name their own provincial governor last week -- reportedly said they had only made a tactical retreat.
In the wake of Sunday's attack near the highway camp, project officials in Kabul said they have asked Afghan and U.S. military authorities for extra protection in addition to the 800 Afghan troops that currently patrol the highway in trucks or stand guard at roadwork sites. But they insisted that the work would proceed and be completed, on schedule, by year's end.
"We are committed to having a paved road by December 31st. There is a determination to carry on, but security does have to be beefed up," said Michael Staples, a spokesman for the U.S.-based Louis Berger Group, which is overseeing the $250 million reconstruction contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Japan is funding the last 50 kilometers -- about 30 miles.
Staples said rebuilding the highway is an important "symbol of unification" for Afghanistan after 25 years of conflict, as well as a practical means of speeding goods, services and government authority to remote regions of this impoverished nation.
But the project, which President Hamid Karzai named one of his top priorities after taking office in December 2001, was plagued by repeated bureaucratic and financial delays. An official ribbon-cutting was held in October 2002, but work did not begin in earnest until May, with bids awarded to Turkish, Indian and Afghan American firms to build five sections of road.
The logistics were daunting enough; power shovels, drums of asphalt and virtually everything else had to be imported by air or road. While most grading has now been completed, paving is still in the early stages. The journey between Kabul and Kandahar, while swifter and less jolting than a year ago, is still marred by patches of deep sand, zigzagging detours and cratered sections of old asphalt destroyed by tanks, land mines and thousands of cargo trucks.
From the beginning, the job has also been fraught with danger. Much of the route had to be cleared of mines left from the civil war of the 1990s, a painstaking process in which teams test the earth square by square, using trowels, metal detectors and dogs.
The de-mining teams, working alone in remote areas of the ethnic Pashtun heartland that brought forth the Taliban, were also easy targets for saboteurs. One de-miner was killed in May, causing work to be temporarily suspended, while others have been beaten or had their vehicles burned by unknown attackers.
But Sunday's brutal assault, coming at a time of unprecedented Taliban resurgence, has sent new jitters up and down the highway, where gas stations and restaurants sporting colorful flags and neon lights have been built in anticipation of a long-distance traffic boom. Along the route this week, people expressed anger at the attack and fear that the project would be suspended.
Many said repairing the road was so important to the country's future that they could not believe other Afghans -- even the Taliban -- would sabotage it. Instead, they blamed next-door Pakistan and its powerful intelligence agencies, accusing them of seeking to destabilize Afghanistan and paying saboteurs to slip across the border.
"Pakistan does not want Afghanistan to improve. It pushes people and pays them to do these things," said Mohammed Nader, an engineer who was supervising a paving operation in Ghazni province. He also said he had heard that Taliban forces were distributing leaflets at mosques telling local people not to be afraid, because their aim was only "to stop the Americans."
Tensions between Pakistani and Afghan authorities have been running high in recent months, with widespread reports of Taliban forces and guerrillas loyal to fugitive Afghan militia leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar being given safe haven inside Pakistan. Pakistani officials deny sheltering the renegades and blame the long, porous border and its lawless tribal areas for the problem.
Gen. Sayed Ahmed, an Afghan army official from Ghazni who is investigating the attack, said the circumstances were murky and that there were indications the checkpoint commander may have been cooperating with the Taliban. He said he was bringing 60 additional troops to guard the area.
"For two months I have been patrolling this highway, and this is the first fatal incident," Ahmed said as he indicated the charred hulk of a van resting in front of the now-abandoned checkpoint and the spots where the guards' bodies had lain. "My job is to make sure this road gets built. If I need more men, I will ask for them."
Along the highway, the rash of conflicting rumors surrounding Sunday's attack reflected the confusion and prejudices of postwar Afghan society. Many Afghans harbor long-standing animosity toward Pakistan, while many rural Pashtun communities still harbor goodwill toward the Taliban.
In contrast, the 800 Indians and Turks carrying out much of the roadwork, from surveying to driving bulldozers, have been living in an isolated bubble. They know little about Afghanistan, speak none of its dialects, work on remote sites in the rural semi-desert and live in temporary roadside camps.
Attempts to speak with some of them this week ended mostly in frustration, and the project manager said the attack would have no effect on the work. But one English-speaking Indian worker, resting in his camp just down the road from Sunday's attack, looked bleak and murmured, "We all have fear in our hearts now."
For residents of Shah Joi, the central preoccupation is making sure nothing stops the highway from being built. After years of war and drought, they said, the local economy has fallen into such ruin that the town is full of single men who cannot afford to pay the customary bride price.
"This road will be a great blessing to us. We can get our patients to the hospital sooner and send our products to markets faster. Foreign agencies will come and everyone will be busy," said Hayatullah, a tractor driver. "We like Karzai and we like the Americans, but only if they bring us security and the reconstruction goes on. This is the future of our country."
-------- africa
Peacekeepers to Deploy in Rural Liberia
By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH
Associated Press Writer
Sep 6, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LIBERIA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) -- West African peacekeepers were preparing to deploy Saturday into Liberia's volatile countryside to establish their first substantial foothold outside the capital since arriving to bolster security a month ago.
About 500 peace troops were to leave Monrovia at midday for the north-central town of Kakata, said Col. Theophilus Tawiah, the peacekeepers' Ghanian chief of staff. The town is on the road connecting scenes of reported fighting and the capital.
North-central Liberia has been among the most troubled spots in the country since the peace force landed Aug. 4, ahead of an Aug. 18 peace deal that has largely brought calm to the capital.
Thousands fled unconfirmed rumors of fighting in the area this week. Tawiah urged refugees to return to their camps and homes in the north, saying peacekeepers would arrive soon to protect them.
"We are reassuring them that we are deploying by the weekend, so they should go back to their camps - because we realize that if they will all descend on Monrovia, there will be a big trouble," Tawiah said Friday.
The peace force numbers 3,050 soldiers and is expected to reach its full force of 3,500 African troops by Wednesday. Peacekeepers so far have helped end 2 1/2 months of rebel sieges of the capital, lifted after warlord-president Charles Taylor resigned and flew into exile in Nigeria on Aug. 11.
At a press conference in Monrovia on Friday, Jacques Klein, the U.N. special envoy to Liberia, urged the United States not to pull its last troops out of the impoverished country.
President Bush has said 30 Marines who are acting as liaisons with the West African peace force would leave by Oct. 1. Another some 70 Marines are guarding the U.S. Embassy and a 150-member rapid-reaction force is poised on warships off Liberia.
Meanwhile, top rebel official Sekou Fofana held talks with his longtime foe, Defense Minister Daniel Chea in a meeting arranged by peacekeepers. Fofana described the meeting as "cordial."
"We're all Liberians and need to know that the war is over," he said.
Both rebels and government forces have been accused of pillaging villages in Liberia's countryside despite the peace deal.
On Thursday, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo met with former Liberian President Charles Taylor for the first time since the former warlord arrived in the country, Nigerian presidential spokeswoman Remi Oyo said Friday.
Oyo declined to give details about the meeting at Obasanjo's farm at Ota, 30 miles north of the commercial capital, Lagos. A Nigerian government official said on condition of anonymity that Obasanjo expressed concerns about the activities of pro-Taylor militias in Liberia that Nigerian-led peacekeepers want reined in.
Klein, the U.N. envoy, said he was checking into "rumors and allegations" that Taylor left for Nigeria with $3 million meant for disarmament in Liberia. The money allegedly was given to him by an unnamed Asian nation.
"That's something we'll have to check into," Klein said in an interview. "There's nothing left in the treasury of Liberia, and that's going to be a major problem as we try to rebuild the country."
Liberian government officials could not be reached for comment.
Taylor, a one-time rebel who won the presidency in 1997, made his stronghold during Liberia's 1989-96 civil war at the north-central town of Gbarnga. As president, he put his most-feared forces in the nearby town of Gbatala.
Rebels are believed to hold at least Gbatala, and Gbarnga has been the scene of repeated attacks and counterattacks.
----
Young Zimbabweans admit militia crimes
September 06, 2003
By Philippe Bernes-Lasserre
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030905-105640-1744r.htm
JOHANNESBURG - Young Zimbabweans who fled recently to South Africa yesterday recounted, shamefaced, the savage crimes they committed as members of pro-government youth militias.
Speaking in the presence of Zimbabwean and South African bishops who denounced the atrocities committed by the National Youth Service, they talked in low voices, their gaze fixed on the floor, of how they killed, burned and raped.
Invariably, after a few moments, the stream of words faltered as they started to sob.
Opposition parties in Zimbabwe have long accused the militia of large numbers of attacks on critics of President Robert Mugabe, who won a disputed re-election in 2000.
The bishops, releasing the results of a no-holds-barred probe into the Zimbabwean program, said that the 30,000 to 50,000 youngsters in the service - some as young as 11 - are themselves maltreated.
"The youth militias so created are used as instruments of the ruling party, to maintain their hold on power by whatever means necessary, including torture, rape, murder and arson," the report said.
Debbie, 22, one of the former members of the militia, held her year-old daughter Nothula ("Peace" in Sindebele) on her lap at the press conference.
"I was raped by so many different men, I don't know whose baby it is," she said.
Debbie, who gave only one name, said the female members used to share a room with boys at the training camp at Ntabanzinduna, near the western Zimbabwean city of Bulawayo, "and at night they would rape us."
She said she has tested positive for HIV, the AIDS virus. Thabo, 21, said he learned to make gasoline bombs at the training program.
In the camp where he spent 10 months, he said he had raped several of the girls who slept in the same dormitory.
Thabo, who also gave only one name, said in January last year he joined some 50 militiamen in invading the home of an opposition politician.
"We twisted his head, we beat him with sjamboks [long leather whips], iron bars, crowbars, in front of his wife and seven children - they were crying. ... Then we left his body by the river."
Thabo said the militia leader used to give the youth beer and marijuana before they went out on an operation. "When we got back to the camp we would have a party."
Wesley, 19, said: "There are many things we did ... some of them, if I think of them, make me feel like crying."
When he joined, he said, he was promised money, comfort, land for his family - but was left empty-handed.
The three youths, who are seeking political asylum in South Africa, are among hundreds who have fled the youth service. Isolated and penniless in Johannesburg, they dream about returning one day to their homeland.
"If my country is going to be OK, I'm going back," Thabo said.
The bishops, whose report criticized Mr. Mugabe's party for using its youth service to carry out brutal crimes aimed at "inculcating blatantly antidemocratic, racist and xenophobic attitudes," predicted that returning would be difficult.
"Our youths have been turned into vandals and have become a lost generation in the process," they said.
-------- arms
Arms Dealer Arrested in Plot to Kill Cartel Kingpin
By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33163-2003Sep5.html
A veteran British mercenary and arms trafficker who allegedly became involved in Colombia's drug war in the early 1990s was arrested this week as he tried to attend a chemical weapons safety class in Texas, U.S. officials said yesterday.
David Brian Tomkins, 63, was arrested Thursday when he arrived in Houston, where he was scheduled to attend a survival class at Fort Bliss, Tex., according to Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE) of the Department of Homeland Security. Taking the class was a requirement to be hired by a U.S. firm involved in reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
"The arrest of this individual removed a key player from the ranks of international arms dealers," said Michael J. Garcia, the acting assistant secretary for BICE.
A federal judge set bond for Tomkins at $100,000.
Although Tomkins has been linked to paramilitary activities stretching from Suriname to southern Africa, he was arrested on a nine-year-old warrant that alleges he helped one of the world's largest drug cartels attempt to assassinate the head of a rival cocaine-trafficking organization. Officials say he was paid $10 million for his efforts, which ultimately failed.
A 1994 indictment, brought in the Southern District of Florida, alleges that in 1991 Tomkins attempted to buy a Dragonfly A-37 fighter jet from undercover agents on behalf of the Colombia-based Cali cocaine cartel. The Cali organization at that time was supplying more than half the cocaine consumed in the United States and Europe.
The jet was to be used to bomb the prison near Medellin where Pablo Escobar, the leader of the rival Medellin cocaine cartel, was being held. In December 1991 Tomkins made a down payment of $25,000 for the aircraft and inspected a jet set up by Customs agents. But Tomkins fled back to Britain after being mysteriously tipped off that he was involved in a sting operation. After escaping, he allegedly called federal agents and taunted them, officials said.
Escobar was eventually killed by police in 1993 after escaping from prison.
In addition to the jet, officials said, Tomkins sought to buy 500-pound bombs from El Salvador to use in the attack and Bell helicopters for use by the cartel.
In congressional testimony, Tomkins has acknowledged a long history of service to Colombia's drug barons, for whom he was a top weapons purchaser. He said he worked for the Cali cartel for at least three years, but claimed that he did not know his employers were drug traffickers.
In 1991, just months before he allegedly attempted to buy the jet, he testified before a Senate committee about how easy it was to provide illegal groups with weapons. He bragged that he could usually get any weapons order filled within a week.
Other mercenaries who worked with him said Tomkins was an explosives expert and had served in the elite British SAS forces before offering his services to the highest bidder.
Tomkins was one of dozens of mercenaries who worked for the cocaine cartels in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a time when the drug barons operated more openly, financed by millions of dollars from drug sales.
-------- britain
Sending extra British troops 'pushes Army to break point'
By Jo Dillon, John Lichfield, and David Usborne
07 September 2003
Digital (UK)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=440955
The British Army will be at breaking point when it sends thousands of extra troops to Iraq, military experts have warned.
Already at "considerable overstretch", the decision to bolster the British presence in the Gulf will mean almost half of the trained strength of the Army will be in use. An announcement is expected as early as tomorrow that around 1,200 soldiers will be deployed with a further 1,800 put on standby.
"The British Army cannot do any more than that," Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies, said yesterday. And he predicted that a long-term commitment in Iraq, against the background of an over-extended Army, would adversely affect morale.
The pressure on Britain to back its American allies continues to increase as the French and German leaders have yet to give a clear indication that they will join an international force in Iraq.
Ahead of expected wrangling at the UN this week, France was keen not to again be seen as blocking international progress following the enormous damage to Franco-American relations caused by its decision to withhold its backing for military action against Saddam Hussein.
But President Jacques Chiraq is equally determined to sign nothing which seems to justify the American-led invasion of Iraq after the event. He insists the UN should not be just a rubber-stamp for American strategy.
France wants the US draft resolution amended to give the UN the primary, legal and political responsibility for the transition to Iraqi rule. France would accept the continuing presence of American military commanders and civilian administrators, so long as they report regularly and directly to the UN.
France is also demanding a clear and brief timetable for the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty and assurances that access to Iraqi oil and rebuilding contracts will be shared fairly among the international community.
But any failure to secure international agreement will leave the British armed forces exposed. Latest figures show that Britain is relying on attracting overseas recruits - from far-flung countries, including Fiji - as numbers decline and the trainee drop-out rate rises. The figures for July show overall armed forces numbers have dropped to 206,150, marking an overall fall of more than 10,000 since 1997.
Experts have repeatedly warned that the armed forces are overstretched. But the demands on British troops - 45,000 of whom are currently deployed - continue to increase.
As ever more soldiers serve in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Cyprus, Gibraltar and the Falklands, a recruitment crisis is looming.
The Army is already operating at 5 per cent below strength. But between April and July this year, only 5,290 new recruits were taken on to replace 6,010 people leaving the services. There is a high drop-out rate among trainees.
In 2002-03, 37 per cent of Army recruits dropped out before completing their training. In the armed forces as a whole, the overall drop-out rate was 32 per cent. As a response to the growing crisis in recruitment and retention of the armed forces, the Ministry of Defence has turned to other countries to find recruits.
In the past three years, the Royal Navy and the Army have sent selection teams to Commonwealth countries including Fiji, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines. It is also understood that recruits have been drawn from Australia and New Zealand.
The MoD has also been forced to call up more reserves. At 2 May, the number of reserves called up to take part in Operation Telic in Iraq had reached 8,706 with just over 5,000 being accepted into service. There are currently some 2,600 reservists in the Gulf, amounting to more than a quarter of the total British force.
Bernard Jenkin, shadow defence secretary, said last night: "The armed forces are desperately overstretched. The trouble is that while the armed forces are being used more and more, they have been getting smaller.
"We are expecting further manpower cuts in the autumn defence review. We can't afford to go on losing experienced personnel."
-------- business
Boeing Satellite Project Criticized Funding, Delays Concern Panel
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33006-2003Sep5.html
A Boeing Co. project to develop the next generation of spy satellites has been significantly underfunded and has suffered from technical shortcomings, according to a report by a Pentagon advisory panel.
Boeing beat out Lockheed Martin Corp. for the contract in 1999 but has struggled to deliver on promised technology. The Future Imagery Architecture program can be "mitigated sufficiently to permit the program to continue," but was "not executable" as it existed before recent changes, according to the report by the Defense Science Board. There should be an independent analysis of the revamped program, it said.
"Boeing picked a very demanding technology that has resulted in cost growth, delays and performance shortfalls," said Loren Thompson, a defense industry analyst with the Lexington Institute.
The Defense Science Board report found that most of the Pentagon's space program has been affected by declining budgets, industry consolidation and the fizzling of the commercial space market, contributing to "significant, systemic problems." The government has often set unrealistic cost estimates leading to a "predictable cost growth of 50 to 100 percent."
"Cost has replaced mission success as a primary driver in managing space development programs, from initial formulation through execution," the report said.
Its assessment comes at a time when the military is trying to develop more advanced space-based programs to fight wars, augmenting its existing ability to beam information to soldiers or detect enemy missile launches.
The FIA program is important to Boeing's already struggling space business. While its total budget is classified, FIA contributes an estimated $50 million a year in pretax profit to Boeing, according to Paul Nisbet, defense industry analyst with JSA Research. "They certainly wouldn't want to lose it; Boeing has a huge investment in their satellite operations," said Nisbet.
Boeing declined to comment on the report.
The National Reconnaissance Office, which oversees FIA, has already addressed many of the concerns raised by the report, said spokesman Art Haubold. About $4 billion was added to the program in January to initiate changes, including new deadlines and more testing of technology, he said. "We are confident that [the plan] was executable as it currently exists," said Haubold.
FIA is considered critical to national security because delays in the program could leave the CIA and Pentagon with gaps in satellite coverage. But shifting funds to FIA could have unintended consequences, said Thompson. "The budget of the National Reconnaissance Office is stretched, so most of the $4 billion being added to FIA is coming out of more futuristic programs that could have offered better performance," he said.
The program was envisioned to replace the current constellation of Cold War spy satellites with smaller, cheaper, advanced alternatives, Thompson said. But the weight of the satellites, which affects the cost of launching them, has increased, and the expectations of the programs have been scaled back, he said.
Another program spotlighted by the report, Lockheed Martin's Space Based Infrared-High satellite program, which will act as an early warning system for incoming missiles, "could be considered a case study for how not to execute a space program," the report said. The program lacks experienced personnel and has counted on unproven approaches because they promised cost savings, the report said.
The Air Force doubled the size of the program, known as SBIRS, last year, from $2 billion to $4 billion, but the report says the "enormous" changes require close monitoring.
"The program is challenging because of the many new and unique technologies that will be a part of the system," said Lockheed spokesman Tom Jurkowsky, but the "SBIRS program is on track."
The program currently on schedule with the first satellites should launch by 2006, said Air Force spokeswoman Angela Billings.
-------- china
Hong Kong Chief Drops Unpopular Security Bill
Retreat Signals Change In Beijing's Strategy
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32701-2003Sep5.html
BEIJING, Sept. 5 -- Hong Kong's chief executive abandoned plans to resubmit an internal security bill that sparked huge street demonstrations in July and indicated today he may not introduce the bill again during his remaining four years in office. The move was another retreat by the Chinese government, which rarely backs down in the face of popular protests.
Tung Chee-hwa, the former shipping tycoon appointed by China to run Hong Kong, said he was withdrawing the anti-subversion bill because of lingering "doubts and concerns" among residents that the legislation would curb civil liberties in the former British colony. Hong Kong was promised a high degree of autonomy when it was returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
"I think that we need to reexamine the whole issue," Tung told reporters at a hastily scheduled news conference in Hong Kong. "We will want to consult very widely in the community again, and until there is sufficient consultation and support, we are not going ahead" with the bill.
The withdrawal of the security legislation was the latest in a series of concessions Tung has made to Hong Kong's pro-democracy opposition since a protest on July 1, when more than 500,000 people demonstrated against both the bill and his leadership. Tung softened the measure and then put it on hold, but pledged to reintroduce it to the local legislature this month.
The decision to withdraw the bill indefinitely also signals a shift in strategy in Beijing. The central government had backed the legislation, which would have given authorities wide latitude to prosecute vaguely defined crimes against "national security." But the leadership now seems wary of triggering another wave of demonstrations by pressing the issue.
Instead, it appears to have decided that the best way to quell public anger in Hong Kong is to repair the city's troubled economy, which has been in a long slump and was further battered by the SARS crisis. Unemployment in Hong Kong is at a record high.
Tung set no timetable for raising the security bill again. Asked if he wanted it enacted before leaving office, he replied: "Of course, I hope it can be completed earlier, but most important is that it can only be done with society's support."
Tung said he decided to withdraw the bill because he wanted to concentrate on leading Hong Kong to an economic recovery. "The focus of the community should be on the economy," he said. "This is what I hear when I walk around and talk to people, that we have gone through really some tough times. . . . We need to move ahead, get the economy going again, get the unemployment situation improved."
In recent weeks, China has taken several steps to help Tung, lifting tariffs on many exports from Hong Kong to the mainland and relaxing restrictions on mainland residents traveling to or buying property in the territory. Beijing also approved plans to build a bridge over the Pearl River estuary to the mainland that could improve Hong Kong's position as a transportation hub.
But even pro-Beijing politicians in Hong Kong warn that the Chinese government may be betting too heavily on an economic solution to its problems and underestimating public discontent with the city's political system. Tung is deeply unpopular in Hong Kong. Protesters have demanded that he resign and that direct elections be held to choose his successor.
So far, Beijing has refused to abandon Tung, while Tung has resisted calls to begin discussions about democratic reforms. Under the current system, only 800 people from Hong Kong, chosen by Beijing, will be allowed to vote for his successor when his term ends in 2007.
An early test of China's strategy will come next year, when Hong Kong residents will be allowed to elect half of the territory's 60 lawmakers. Small constituencies such as bankers, lawyers and accountants will choose the remaining 30 legislators. Leaders of the territory's pro-Beijing and pro-government political parties have said they are worried they will be humiliated at the polls and had pushed Tung to delay the security bill.
Many analysts say they believe Tung's retreat may be too late. One sign of the wide gap in understanding between Beijing and Chinese citizens in Hong Kong was the recent dust-up over a trip to Taiwan by Emily Lau, a pro-democracy lawmaker in Hong Kong. Two Beijing-backed newspapers published harsh attacks on her for associating with pro-independence politicians in Taiwan, stopping just short of accusing her of treason.
One of the newspapers said her trip demonstrated the urgent need for the anti-subversion bill to be enacted. But the newspaper attacks only highlighted the worries of many Hong Kong residents that any security law would be abused by Beijing to stifle dissent.
-------- india
Indian, US special forces hold joint exercises in Himalayas
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Sep 06, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030906095728.szkuxytm.html
US and Indian special forces are holding joint exercises on high-altitude operations in Ladakh, a Himalayan region on the sensitive frontiers with Pakistan and China, officials said Saturday.
The two-week manoeuvres are focused on training for high-altitude operations, including "mountain safety, acclimitisation and medical aspects," a US embassy official said.
Indian defence ministry officials have given few details about the joint manoeuvres that begin Friday in Ladakh, which is administratively part of Kashmir but has been relatively untouched by the province's 14-year Islamic insurgency against Indian rule.
Defence Minister George Fernandes on Friday said there was "no political reason" behind the exercises.
"In the past, we have held such exercises with some Asian countries. We have also done it with the US. Such exercises are carried out so that countries get to know the areas of strength and weakening of its military," Fernandes said.
Officials declined to say how many US and Indian personnel were involved in the operation.
The manoeuvres are the third phase of the joint Indian-US training sessions in extreme weather, codenamed Balance Iroquois.
Previous exercises were carried out in May 2002 near the northern Indian city of Agra where temperatures reached 45 degrees (113 Fahrenheit) and in October that year in frigid Alaska.
The Agra exercises were the first between India and the United States in 39 years.
Relations between the countries were strained during the Cold War, when India tilted towards the Soviet Union. Washington imposed military sanctions on India and Pakistan after the arch-rivals carried out nuclear tests within days of each other in May 1998.
The sanctions were lifted on the two countries after they joined the US-led "coalition against terrorism" following the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The United States has said its military cooperation with India will not be harmed by New Delhi's rejection of a US proposal to send troops to Iraq.
-------- iraq
MUNITIONS
Security at Iraq Munitions Sites Is Vulnerable, U.S. Officials Say
September 6, 2003
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT with LOWELL BERGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/international/middleeast/06MILI.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 - American officials said today that about 50 munitions sites in Iraq containing explosives similar to those used in the recent major bombings had only light security and were poorly guarded.
An official from the United States Central Command, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged today that the American-led military operation in Iraq did not have enough troops to heavily guard all 2,700 Iraqi munitions sites that have been identified. Advertisement
Every ammunition dump has some level of security, the Central Command official said. But he added that increasing demands on American troops have meant that the military has had to reserve the heaviest security for munitions sites containing weapons like rocket-propelled grenades that could be used most readily against allied forces; that left other sites, with larger weapons like bombs and missiles, with less security or Iraqi guards who may be prone to bribes.
A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan G. Whitman, said tonight, "All known Iraqi munitions sites are being secured by coalition forces." But Mr. Whitman said he could not address questions of security at each munition site, saying that would be a matter for the local ground commander.
Senior civilian American officials in Iraq, who have privately raised concerns about security at some munitions sites, say even a small number of poorly guarded sites would pose a risk to American forces and the reconstruction effort. "It's a problem," said a senior American official who has been actively involved in Iraqi security matters.
Another problem for the American-led forces is the looting that followed the fall of the government of Saddam Hussein. A senior defense official said today that the rapid collapse of the Iraqi Army during the war had left extensive ammunition dumps unguarded for many days, and that in many cases virtually everything had been looted by fleeing conscripts and officers.
The defense official said United States forces had worked hard to secure the dumps since then. But their presence, and delays in destroying some of the ammunition caches, were cited as a source of concern today by Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the commander of the Army's Fourth Infantry Division, in a briefing for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is visiting Iraq.
"That's where a lot of the stuff has come from," the defense official said of explosives, rocket-propelled grenade and other ammunition used in attacks against American troops by supporters of the ousted government and others.
Recent bombings at the Jordanian Embassy and the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, as well as one at a Shiite shrine in Najaf, have added to growing criticism of the government's Iraq policies, concerns that President Bush is expected to address in a nationally televised speech about Iraq on Sunday night.
The bombings at the United Nations headquarters and the Jordanian Embassy used vehicles packed with high explosives drawn from old Iraqi military stocks, counterterrorism officials said. F.B.I. agents have said the truck used in the United Nations attack carried about 1,500 pounds of explosives, including mortar shells, hand grenades and a 500-pound Soviet-made bomb from old Iraqi military stocks.
At a briefing at F.B.I. headquarters on Thursday, a senior bureau official said chemical tests found that similar munitions were used in the Aug. 7 bombing of the Jordanian Embassy and the attack on the United Nations headquarters 12 days later. The official, John Pistole, said results from tests on last Friday's bombing in Najaf should be available in a few days.
Officials cautioned that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to trace the source of the explosives used in the bombings to specific sites in a country awash in weaponry. Officials said that vast caches of ammunition were hidden before the war and that military sites had been pilfered in the chaos following the conflict.
But the senior American officials say they were troubled about reports of munitions sites with no visible security.
American officials and troops visited a number of sites in the last month, including a former Iraqi Air Force base southwest of Baghdad and a storage area north of the capital, according to an American official in Baghdad familiar with the visits. Neither site had any visible security, the official said.
At the air base there were no guards present or an effective security gate. Local villagers were rummaging inside buildings and fled when the Americans approached. Explosives like TNT were found along with live shells and a wide variety of bombs and mines.
At the site north of Baghdad that American officials visited, experts discovered shoulder-fired antiaircraft weapons that were apparently overlooked during previous inspections, an American official said. The inspections of both sites revealed munitions clearly marked with Russian writing.
Recently, Iraqi police and civil officials in Najaf told United States officials in Baghdad that corrupt Iraqi guards at a munitions storage area near that city were allowing looters to make off with bombs and others explosives, according to a American official familiar with the allegations.
A senior American official in Washington who follows Iraq closely said that about 50 sites had only light security now after American troops went through them after the war, seizing the most dangerous weaponry, like surface-to-air missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.
The American-led military in Iraq is responsible for seizing weapons and munitions stocks from the former Iraqi armed forces and security services. Tons of ammunition have been confiscated, often from homes, schools and other buildings.
Just today, the Central Command announced that Army troops in an area northeast of Baqubah, in north-central Iraq, had detained a taxi driver and captured a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, 12 grenade-launcher rounds, one AK-47 automatic rifle and a submachine gun. Military demolition specialists were summoned to destroy the munitions.
Some weapons and ammunition are being stockpiled to be used by the new Iraqi army and Iraqi security forces that the United States is helping to train. Older stocks typically are destroyed.
But civilian American officials in Iraq say officers have told them that there are shortages of engineers to transport captured weaponry, military personnel to guard it and demolition experts to destroy it.
--------
Shiite Militia Deploys Forces
Brigade Poses Challenge to U.S. Authority in Najaf
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33025-2003Sep5.html
NAJAF, Iraq, Sept. 5 -- Dozens of armed men belonging to a militia loyal to Iraq's best-organized Shiite Muslim party deployed today in this sacred city, posing a challenge to U.S. forces that have vowed to disband them.
The Badr Brigade, a force of lightly armed fighters once said to number 10,000, was supposed to have been disarmed early in the U.S. occupation. But in the wake of the assassination last week of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, killed with scores of others in a car bombing outside the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, the brigade has returned to the streets of this southern city.
Men in black uniforms with armbands that read "Badr" in Arabic were visible throughout Najaf today. About a dozen were posted atop the shrine, the most sacred to Shiites in Iraq, and others manned checkpoints on roads leading to its grounds. Several pickup trucks, carrying men with Kalashnikov rifles, roamed the city's streets and the perimeter of the shrine.
"We don't depend on the Americans, we depend on ourselves," said Montadhir Naim, a 23-year-old militiaman.
The public presence of the Badr Brigade suggests another fault line between Iraqis and U.S. forces seeking ways to enhance security in the country, which is reeling from four car bombings in a month. The U.S.-led occupation has increasingly turned to Iraqi forces, in particular the police, as a way to address growing public demands for a safer environment. But the police still suffer from a lack of public confidence, and Shiite leaders in Najaf have promised to take security into their own hands if U.S. forces fail to take more assertive steps.
"The Badr Brigade must continue to exist and thrive. They must be supported and recognized," said Sadreddine Qobanji, who delivered the Friday sermon at the Imam Ali shrine to thousands of supporters, some of whom chanted, "We are all Badr Brigade."
Formed in exile in Iran and long funded by the Islamic government there, the Badr Brigade was the military wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the parties now participating in Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council. In exile, the militia was led by Abdul Aziz Hakim, who inherited leadership of the Supreme Council after the death of his elder brother last week.
U.S. forces ordered the group disbanded soon after the fall of president Saddam Hussein on April 9. While its members were believed to have kept their weapons, the militia maintained a low profile until last weekend, when it reappeared in force to help provide security during Hakim's three-day funeral procession, which traveled from Baghdad to Najaf.
At a news conference Thursday, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, said U.S. officials have yet to confirm the brigade's reemergence but said the military would not tolerate any independent militias in a country increasingly beset by sectarian and ethnic tensions.
"Americans are not turning a blind eye to any militias coming together in this country," he said.
Maj. Rick Hall, executive officer of the U.S. Marines in Najaf, said U.S. forces realized the friction the brigade's presence could cause and said his troops would disarm any of its followers carrying an unlicensed weapon in the street.
"We're not looking the other way," he said in an interview this week. "If they do not have a weapons card, they are not allowed to have a Kalashnikov out on the street. That is a violation of the law, and we will uphold the law."
The Supreme Council, a highly disciplined organization honed by years in exile, is one of several groups vying for influence among Iraq's Shiite majority. Since the start of the U.S. occupation, it has advocated cautious cooperation with American authorities, in contrast with senior religious figures who have remained largely silent on political issues and a more radical movement led by a junior cleric, Moqtada Sadr, who has formed his own unarmed militia and denounced the U.S. presence in Iraq.
Even with the return of the brigade, the Supreme Council's leaders have said they are not seeking a showdown with U.S. authorities. "We're not looking for any confrontation," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, the director of the group's political bureau.
But like other officials, he said Hakim's assassination only reinforced their demands for more aggressive steps to police Iraq, specifically by turning over control to Iraqi parties taking part in the Governing Council.
"We can't wait for their measures, and our people are being killed," he said. "Nobody wants militias in the street, but nobody wants these kinds of assassinations either. A security vacuum is not acceptable."
The militiamen in Najaf today said their presence was not a show of force, but rather a measure to defend themselves.
"We are protecting our clergymen and we are protecting our leaders," said Qassim Jabbouri, 33, a militiaman from nearby Mashkhab. "We are providing protection by ourselves, not through the Iraqi police and not through the Americans."
Outside the shrine, a group of vendors selling soft drinks and bottled water looked on approvingly as pickup trucks with armed men careered dramatically around the shrine. Men in black uniforms were posted every 10 yards or so along the streets, directing crowds and communicating by walkie-talkies.
"They're good people. They're the people of the city and they know who's a stranger," said 46-year-old Raja Allah Sayhoud, one of the vendors. "If there are Badr troops, that means there's security."
His friend, Hussein Khalil Ibrahim, nodded in agreement, saying: "The Americans come for 15 minutes and they leave, and they're afraid to come out at night. You can find the Badr troops in any place, at any time, at any hour."
--------
Jailing Iraqi Scientists May Be Hurting Weapons Search
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32975-2003Sep5.html
Uncertainty about how to deal with Iraqi scientists has complicated the search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction being coordinated by David Kay, the CIA representative on the 1,200-person Iraq Survey Group, according to administration and congressional officials as well as former United Nations inspectors.
Highly publicized U.S. arrests and jailings of weapons specialists have had the effect of limiting cooperation from Iraqis who have first-hand knowledge of former president Saddam Hussein's programs, these sources said. Those in jail have not so far provided information on chemical, biological or nuclear programs, perhaps fearing they will be prosecuted, the officials said. And scientists yet to be contacted or whose identities are unknown have not come forward out of fear of going to jail.
Kay, a United Nations inspector in the 1990s, is expected to provide an update on his activities to Congress later this month, although the exact date and the form it will take has yet to be determined, a senior administration official said yesterday. Kay has indicated that he will provide a factual recitation of what he has found with some interpretation of what his findings disclose about the state of Iraq's proscribed weapons programs when the Hussein government was toppled.
"He's not raising expectations," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who recently returned from Baghdad, where he had two meetings with Kay. "He's not talking or speculating about what he may or may not find."
Kay told visiting lawmakers recently that he had obtained documentation of how Iraqis described the programs among themselves and how they were concealing them. A senior administration official said there was also information about how groups of scientists were being employed in non-weapons industries but conducting research that could be applied to weapons once U.N. sanctions were lifted.
But Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who was among those who met with Kay in Baghdad, told reporters Thursday that he did not believe proscribed weapons would be found "without some cooperation" from Iraqi weapons specialists. In June, Kay told NBC News, "People are the key to understanding weapons of mass destruction programs."
There is disagreement over the policy of arresting Iraqi scientists and holding them in isolation, which began in April when the U.S. military was in charge of the weapons hunt. "There is uncertainty about the best way" to deal with the Iraqis, Hoekstra said yesterday in a telephone interview. "Some [say] the role of prosecuting attorney would not be inappropriate, deciding who to negotiate a deal with so that we not let everyone get off scot-free."
Gen. Amir Saadi, the rocket engineer and adviser to Hussein who was Iraq's liaison with U.N. inspectors, surrendered in April when he learned through the media that he was on the U.S. most-wanted list. He was jailed and has been held incommunicado since.
His wife was visiting the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad when it was bombed earlier this month, and she was reported wounded and in a hospital. Along with other senior scientists associated with the weapons programs, some lower-level scientists were arrested when they went to the Iraqi Defense Ministry to pick up their paychecks.
Former U.N. inspectors who gained experience talking to Iraqi scientists during inspections from 1991 to 1998 and in 2002 and 2003 have encouraged a different approach. One former inspector said a colleague returned from Baghdad and said he was "shocked at the way scientists were being treated. They wanted to be assured they would not be prosecuted before they would speak, and they [U.S. interrogators] would not do it."
Other former inspectors have had contact with Iraqi scientists who are concerned about what could happen to them if they tell their stories. "They are being treated as common criminals," one former inspector said. Another, who is also familiar with events in Baghdad, said, "We have created negative incentives for them to come forward."
Meanwhile, in Paris Thursday, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton supported what is expected to be the emphasis of the eventual Kay report: that Hussein was developing a capability to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons once U.N. sanctions were ended.
Whether or not Hussein had weapons was not central to the U.S. decision to invade Iraq, Bolton said. "The issue I think has been the capability that Iraq sought to have . . . WMD programs," he told the Associated Press. "Whether he possessed them today or four years ago isn't really the issue. Until that regime was removed from power, that threat remained. That was the purpose of military action."
-------- israel / palestine
Army kills suspect, demolishes apartment house
September 06, 2003
By Mohammed Daraghmeh
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030905-105643-3613r.htm
NABLUS, West Bank - Israeli commandos killed a suspected Hamas bomb maker in a firefight yesterday and pulverized the seven-story apartment building in which he had been hiding, leaving dozens of Palestinians homeless and prompting charges that soldiers meted out collective punishment.
An Israeli soldier was killed and four were wounded in the gun battle, which took place after soldiers surrounded the 3-year-old building and ordered residents out. The Israelis said they blew up the structure more than six hours after the fighting ended because they believed some militants might be inside.
Hours later, 8-year-old Bakr Sobah searched through the rubble, looking for his books and school bag. "I have homework in my notebooks. What can I do now?" the boy said. "We had a house here, now we don't."
The Hamas explosives expert who was killed, 26-year-old Muhammad Hanbali, was involved in bombings and shootings that killed at least 36 Israelis and wounded hundreds, the army said.
Hanbali also recruited members and trained them in making explosives, according to the military.
Before becoming a fugitive, Hanbali had studied industrial engineering at Nablus' An Najah University.
Yesterday's raid in Nablus came as Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas' fight for political survival intensified.
The Palestinian Parliament speaker said yesterday he has decided to hold a confidence vote on Mr. Abbas, who is distrusted by many Palestinians because he has Israel's backing and has been further weakened by a power struggle with veteran leader Yasser Arafat.
The vote will likely be next week, said the speaker, Ahmed Qureia, who initially opposed such a showdown.
Eight of the 15 apartments in the building demolished yesterday had been occupied, housing about 50 people. Residents included shopkeepers, accountants and middle-class professionals. Each apartment had cost $50,000, with a monthly mortgage payment of $300 - high sums in the impoverished Palestinian economy.
Mona, the mother of the 8-year-old boy, was at a nearby elementary school, still dressed in the black bathrobe she wore when soldiers asked her to leave her apartment at the start of the raid. "I have only this," she said, raising her identity card. "I thought we were only being asked to leave for a few minutes."
The Israeli operation began about 9:30 p.m. Thursday.
Soldiers surrounded the building, ordered the residents out and took them to a school, said Jamal Kordi, 38, a house painter and one of the residents. Men were handcuffed and questioned about strangers in the building.
Mr. Kordi said that after midnight, he and three other men were taken into the building as "human shields," leading the way as soldiers, accompanied by dogs, searched various apartments. Israel's Supreme Court has outlawed the practice of using human shields; the army had no immediate comment.
After some time, Mr. Kordi said he heard an explosion on one of the upper floors, and that he and the other three men were eventually taken back to the elementary school.
The Israeli military said that Hanbali, armed with an assault rifle and standing on top of an elevator between the building's lower floors, ambushed troops as they pried open doors to the elevator shaft above, on the fifth floor. The shots killed an Israeli naval commando, Sgt. Maj. Raanan Kumimi. Soldiers returned fire, killing Hanbali.
Adnan Asfour, a Hamas spokesman in Nablus, said the group would help those made homeless by paying rent on a new apartment for a year and buying some furniture. The Nablus municipality said it would also pitch in.
--------
Alleged Bomb Maker Is Slain
Israeli Soldiers Then Leave Many Palestinians Homeless
Associated Press
Saturday, September 6, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33381-2003Sep5.html
NABLUS, West Bank, Sept. 5 -- Israeli commandos killed a reputed bomb maker in a firefight today and demolished the seven-story apartment building in which he had been hiding, leaving dozens of Palestinians homeless and prompting charges that soldiers had meted out collective punishment.
An Israeli soldier was killed and four were wounded in the battle, which took place after soldiers surrounded the three-year-old building and ordered residents out. The Israelis said they blew up the structure more than six hours after the fighting ended because they believed some militants might still be inside.
The army said that the Palestinian who was killed, Mohammed Hanbali, was an explosives expert with the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, and had been involved in bombings and shootings that killed at least 36 Israelis and wounded hundreds. Hanbali, 26, also recruited Hamas members and trained them in the manufacture of explosives, according to the military.
The Israeli military said that Hanbali, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and standing on top of an elevator between the building's lower floors, ambushed troops as they pried open doors to the elevator shaft on the fifth floor. The shots killed an Israeli naval commando, Sgt. Maj. Raanan Kumimi. Soldiers returned fire, killing Hanbali.
During the battle, gunmen threw hand grenades at troops, said Maj. Sharon Feingold, an army spokeswoman.
Four Israeli soldiers were wounded, one critically. The army fired rockets at the building.
Jamal Kordi, 38, one of the residents evacuated after soldiers surrounded the building at about 9:30 p.m., disputed Feingold's contention that the Israelis blew up the structure because they feared some militants remained inside.
"There was no reason," he said. "It was just for revenge."
-------- latin america
The Militarization of the Americas
The Pentagon's New "Forward Operating Location"
By LAURA CARLSON
September 6, 2003
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/carlson09062003.html
The Bush administration has launched renewed efforts to reach out to Central and South American countries over the past month. The recent visits of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers signal that Latin America is back on the U.S. government's geopolitical map--but the map is being significantly redrawn.
That both overtures were military comes as no surprise. The trips emphasized hemispheric security as the number-one priority for the region, and Myers and Rumsfeld noted that security depends on fighting terrorism. The U.S. has pushed its southern neighbors to support its anti-terrorist agenda both in the UN and in actions such as the recent dispatch of Salvadoran, Nicaraguan, and Honduran troops to back up U.S. forces in Iraq.
The war on terrorism has accelerated funding for establishing new U.S. military centers and beefing up old ones in the hemisphere. In the past four years, the U.S. has broadened its military presence throughout Latin America, opening new "Forward Operating Locations" in Ecuador, El Salvador, Aruba, and Curacao.
Spurred in part by anti-terrorism, Plan Colombia alone has funneled over $3 billion in U.S. aid to that region over the past three years, most of it military. The State Department's list of terrorist organizations includes three based in Colombia: the leftist Colombian Armed Revolutionary Front--FARC, the National Liberation Army--ELN, and the rightwing paramilitary group the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia--AUC.
Following his two-day visit to Bogota, Gen. Myers stated that Plan Colombia military aid and equipment will be increasingly used in counterinsurgency efforts, despite former restrictions to antinarcotics activities. Myers underlined the government's position: "Terrorism of any kind affects the stability of not only Colombia, but also the entire Western Hemisphere."
The implications of increased U.S. involvement in internal counterinsurgency efforts could have grave implications, not only for Colombia but for its neighbors as well. Erasing the line between terrorism, the drug war, and counterinsurgency fighting opens the door to increased involvement in Bolivia, where coca producers form the backbone of the opposition movement, and Ecuador, where the indigenous-led movement has ousted governments.
Nobel Peace prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel recently warned: "I have no doubt that if Ecuador should become involved in Plan Colombia, Latin America could become a new Vietnam, with consequences as serious as, or more serious, than those of the war in Iraq." (Latinamerica Press, 5/7/03)
Speaking in Honduras, Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld called terrorism a "terrible problem" in the region and also coupled it with the drug trade. But the U.S government's focus on the war on terrorism clashes sharply with the way Latin American civil society groups are reformulating the concept of security in the Western Hemisphere. These groups note that the region has seen a marked decrease in international imbroglios and an increase in what they call "intrastate insecurity." They emphasize growing threats within national borders, stemming primarily from the social causes of poverty, impunity, and discrimination.
It seems that in the lexicon of the Bush administration, "terrorism" has become a catchall term for interpreting conflicts that have plagued Latin American countries for years, including narcotics production and trafficking, guerrilla and paramilitary activity, and illegal migration. In lumping together deeply rooted conflicts under the rubric of terrorism, the U.S. has allocated huge sums for mostly military solutions while ignoring the larger causes.
However, military solutions to social and political problems not only escalate violence, they don't work. Despite evidence that funding to Colombia has not reduced the violence, U.S. military involvement has increased in the wake of the Sept. 11th attacks with little congressional debate about its effectiveness. Unrestricted funding to the Colombian military, which has a long history of human rights violations and paramilitary ties, will end up fanning the flames of an extremely volatile situation that affects the whole region.
On the <U.S.-Mexico> border, the Department of Homeland Security has included illegal migration among terrorist threats, resulting in a record $6.7 billion budget for border security, much of it earmarked for infrastructure to prevent the entry of mostly Mexican and Central American job seekers. The measures have so far increased migrant deaths and done little to abate the flow of undocumented workers.
The anti-terrorism lens fails to see crucial factors in regional conflicts: the drug trade may fund terrorists, but it stems from peasants' lack of other productive options and the incessant demand for illegal drugs in U.S. cities. Counterinsurgency efforts may decimate organizations like the FARC, but they also lead to the displacement and death of thousands of civilians, thus creating new sources of social instability.
By framing Western hemisphere security in anti-terrorist terms, the U.S. seeks the moral authority to intervene in regional conflicts in defense of its own particular interests, rather than the interests of long-term conflict resolution. Granting the U.S. a carte blanche for intervention based on its post-Sept.11th victim status would be a fatal mistake.
The campaign against terrorism should not be viewed as a boilerplate for security policy in the Western Hemisphere. The results could be the opposite of peace.
Laura Carlsen is director of the IRC's Americas Program. She can be reached at: laura@irc-online.org.
-------- pakistan / india
PAKISTAN - Belgian F-16s sought to counter India
World Scene
September 06, 2003
Combined dispatches and staff reports.
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene.htm
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan, worried by nuclear rival India's plans to acquire a strategic radar system from Israel, said yesterday it is seeking about 20 secondhand F-16 fighters from Belgium and will also request a similar U.S. radar system.
Air Cmdr. Sarfraz Ahmed Khan, the spokesman for the Pakistani air force said an airborne early-warning system would be on Pakistan's shopping list when the U.S.-Pakistani Defense Consultative Group meets in Washington later this month.
He said Pakistan would also repeat its request for the supply of an initial 28 F-16 aircraft the United States refused to deliver in the 1990s owing to concerns about Islamabad's nuclear program.
-------- prisoners of war
A Legal Netherworld
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
September 6, 2003
Counterpunch
By ELAINE CASSEL
http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel09062003.html
It has been a while since the hapless prisoners of the United States, those being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as "enemy combatants," have been in the news. The last rush of publicity in the spring had to do with plans to build execution chambers and try them in secret with government prosecutors and defense attorneys. Then Blair got feisty and wanted the British subjects held there not to face death. Alright, Bush said, we won't shoot your guys, out of gratitude for your putting your asses on the line for us in Iraq.
Then there was the news of the juveniles held there--we now find that some were as young as 13. We have not heard of their fates yet, only that they were held separately from adults and are being "schooled." That's a new twist on the Administration's "no child left behind" policy, isn't it?
Few Americans care about the prisoners, captured in Afghanistan and brought to Cuba about 18 months ago. Hell, they must have been up to no good, or they would not be here. That is about what Rumsfeld says, too. They might not be "terrorists," but they are troublemakers.
Previous efforts to get some legal relief for these men--to require that they be charged and tried or freed, to provide them with attorneys, to provide them with meaningful contact with families--were stopped at the courthouse door. A federal judge said, in one of the more idiotic catch-22 lines of logic, that they were not on American soil, so they could have no access to American courts. Forget that we control Guantanamo Bay. So the prisoners are in a legal nether world--subject only to the ad hoc, ex post facto regulations Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz make up as they go along.
But the Center for Constitutional Rights is trying once to get the plight of these men before the U.S. legal system.
On Tuesday, the Center for Constitutional Rights asked the Supreme Court to review the controversial decision by the DC Circuit denying counsel to alleged terrorists being detained by the United States at its naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The issue presented in the case, Rasul v. Bush, is whether enemy combatants being tried in military tribunals are entitled to any of the due process rights to which they would be entitled in U.S. courts. The Court has already rejected one petition to review the case, on procedural grounds. Its decision on this petition is expected this fall.
-------- russia / chechnya
Most Chechens 'want to remain part of Russia'
By Tom Parfitt in Moscow
07/09/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/09/07/wchec07.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/09/07/ixworld.html
Almost four out of five people living in Chechnya believe that the disputed republic should remain part of Russia, according to the first professional opinion poll to be conducted in the war-torn region.
The surprising result comes as Chechens prepare for a presidential election, touted by the Kremlin as a step on the road to ending the 10-year civil war between Russian federal forces and rebel groups fighting for a breakaway state.
The civil war has resulted in thousands of deaths, heavy casualties among Russian soldiers, accusations of atrocities by both sides against civilians and a fierce anti-Russian terrorist campaign, including suicide bombings, by the rebels.
More than 1,000 Chechens were surveyed in the independent poll organised by the Moscow-based research organisation Validata, in partnership with Russia's respected Public Opinion Foundation. Interviewers fanned out into the warring republic with questionnaires, working without security guards and talking to people in the privacy of their homes. They found that 78 per cent of respondents thought that Chechnya should stay as one of Russia's 89 regions.
Sergei Khaikin, head of the research team, said that the results bucked the "stereotype" of Chechens as committed separatists. "The attitude of the international community towards the Chechen problem must change," he said.
Mr Khaikin said that researchers found that Chechens had some practical reasons for wanting to remain Russia citizens, such as the elderly continuing to receive their pensions - but that the overriding argument "for Russia" was bad experience of Chechnya's previous brush with independence.
The republic was briefly independent between 1994 and 1996, after Russian troops withdrew, but sank into lawlessness and infighting. Although 73 per cent of those polled said that the main threat to Chechens' personal safety was from federal forces, 54 per cent said that they looked to the future "with hope".
The Kremlin is expected to latch on to the findings as evidence that Moscow can bring peace to the region as an integral part of the Russian Federation. Political commentators warned, however, that the poll should be treated with scepticism.
Critics of the poll noted that Validata's interim findings, published before all 1,000 face-to-face interviews were complete, were given wide coverage on television channels controlled by Akhmad Kadyrov, the Kremlin-appointed chief of the Chechen administration. Mr Kadyrov is one of 10 candidates contesting the presidential election on October 5.
President Vladimir Putin is to meet President Bush at Camp David later this month, ahead of the vote, and is likely to use the result of the opinion poll to bolster his argument that Chechen separatists are terrorists with very limited popular support.
-------- un
U.S. Offers to Revise Iraq Resolution
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
Sep 6, 8:26 AM EDT
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Jones Parry says U-N Security Council members want to work together as they consider a U-S resolution to get more outside help in Iraq. (Audio)
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Facing opposition from France and Germany, the United States has offered to revise a U.N. resolution aimed at getting more peacekeeping troops into Iraq.
At Friday's first informal meeting of the 15 Security Council members to discuss the draft resolution, diplomats said the differences could be bridged if the United States agreed to move faster to restore Iraq's sovereignty and give the United Nations more power to rebuild the country.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed a meeting of key foreign ministers to work out a compromise.
The United States took a more flexible stance than it has on previous Iraq-related issues that have come before the council. Supporters and opponents of the U.S. draft said Friday's closed-door session was constructive.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte welcomed the "good discussion" at the meeting and stressed the U.S. proposal was only a "working draft."
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell offered to "adjust and adapt" the draft resolution to demands by European governments for a quick transition to Iraqi rule in Baghdad. But in a swipe at France and Germany, Powell told reporters, "If you would like to see something different, then make a proposal in addition to an editorial comment."
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said in an interview published Friday that "we will make proposals, together with our partners on the Security Council." Germany, Russia, Chile and Mexico also have suggested changes.
De Villepin said France intends "absolutely" to cooperate with the United States to reach a consensus. "We're entering this new stage in a constructive and open spirit," he was quoted as saying in Le Figaro.
Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, the current Security Council president, said he plans further meetings of the 15 members next week.
Annan, meanwhile, said in a CNN interview that he has suggested foreign ministers of the five permanent council nations with veto power - the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France - meet with him soon, perhaps in Europe, "to explore a common ground and the way forward."
The U.S. draft would transform the U.S.-led force into a U.N.-authorized multinational force under a unified command, which the United States insists must be led by an American general. It also would invite the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council to work with the United Nations and U.S. officials to produce a timetable for drafting a new constitution and holding democratic elections - keys to restoring Iraq's sovereignty.
However, the draft resolution gives no concrete timetable and doesn't relinquish U.S. political or military control of Iraq, and many council nations are demanding a much stronger U.N. role.
France and Germany, which opposed the war on Iraq, are conditioning their approval of the resolution on a more rapid transition of power from the Governing Council to a new government elected by Iraqis.
France wants some responsibilities now in U.S. hands transferred to the Governing Council immediately, to show the Iraqi people that the international community is serious about restoring their sovereignty, council diplomats said.
France also would like to see the United Nations replace the United States as Iraq's interim administrator, as would Mexico. Syria and Germany want a U.N.-led force, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov gave cautious approval to the resolution on Friday but reaffirmed Russia's push for a quick restoration of Iraq's sovereignty, adding that the draft will need "serious work" to win approval.
Chile's U.N. Ambassador Heraldo Munoz said he proposed that Annan be asked to consult and agree with the Governing Council on a concrete timetable.
Munoz said he was "moderately optimistic" that an agreement could be reached on the resolution.
While many countries want a stronger U.N. role, Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry conceded there is "a contradiction" at the moment because the United Nations has drastically reduced its international staff in Iraq following the Aug. 19 bombing of U.N. headquarters, which killed 22 people.
The council "underlined that we would do everything possible to deliver proper security," Jones Parry said.
----
Russia, France, Germany soften stance on Iraq proposal in U.N.
September 06, 2003
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030905-105637-1259r.htm
Several leading U.S. allies yesterday softened their opposition to a Bush administration draft proposal to expand the United Nations' role in the troubled effort to rebuild Iraq.
Russia, France and Germany, who all opposed the U.S.-led war to oust Saddam Hussein, yesterday signaled they were willing to use the American text as the basis for intensive talks on a new resolution, while British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he was "optimistic" a compromise could be worked out soon.
Ambassadors from the 15 U.N. Security Council nations met behind closed doors yesterday in New York to discuss the draft resolution, which the United States hopes will induce more nations to contribute troops and resources to the reconstruction of Iraq.
"We think that there was a good discussion," U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte told reporters as he left yesterday's meeting at the residence of the British ambassador. "I think there was satisfaction on the part of many delegations with the way in which we're going about this process."
The administration initially resisted a bigger role for the world body after the Security Council failed to support the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq, but has changed course with the mounting expense and manpower requirements of the postwar period.
In another bid to win international support, the Bush administration yesterday said it now backs a plan that would channel more lucrative reconstruction contracts in Iraq to non-U.S. firms.
Undersecretary of State Alan Larson told a news conference with foreign journalists that a World Bank-managed trust fund "should be separate but coordinated with the budget decisions that are taken by the authorities in Baghdad."
France, Russia and Germany all want to see a larger political role for the United Nations in Iraq, and have pushed for a clear, quick deadline for returning control of the country to an Iraqi government.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, talking to reporters while on a trip to Uzbekistan, said yesterday the draft "needs very serious work."
But the Russian diplomat added the American text "deserves attention because it reflects the principles Russia has been repeatedly fighting for."
Both Paris and Berlin appeared yesterday to step back from the harsh initial assessments offered by President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder when the resolution was first released Thursday.
Mr. Schroeder, while insisting German troops would not take part in any Iraqi peacekeeping mission, said of the U.S. draft: "There has been movement and that must be recognized."
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, another outspoken critic of the Iraq war, said in a radio interview yesterday that he "will come to the table in a constructive and open spirit" to discuss the resolution.
A Chinese government spokesman said Beijing was "taking a constructive attitude, and hopes all sides can reach a consensus as soon as possible."
But the dispute over Iraq's future spilled over into a summit of European Union foreign ministers in Italy yesterday, with one EU diplomat saying France has prepared as many as 10 amendments to the U.S. draft, including one calling for a "dramatic" gesture aimed at ending the U.S. occupation.
Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, another opponent of the war, said, "You cannot have a situation where the United States remains in control over what happens in Iraq; and at the same time, others have to move in and take care of security and reconstruction."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in a speech at George Washington University yesterday, acknowledged that U.S. officials still have work to do to win over a majority of the Security Council and avoid a veto from the major powers - France, Russia, Britain and China.
"There are some of my Security Council colleagues who would like to move faster [and] some who say: 'Be a little more careful,' " Mr. Powell said.
"We will listen to all of the comments that will be coming in, and we will try to adjust and adapt to those comments as long as it is consistent" with U.S. goals to rebuild Iraq and turn over political control in time to the Iraqis.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the reaction to the U.S. proposal in early discussions Thursday and yesterday was "generally positive," although no nation has fully endorsed the U.S. resolution.
More critical than the French or German reaction may be those of India, Pakistan, Turkey and other countries who have been reluctant to contribute peacekeeping forces to Iraq without a clear U.N. mandate.
An Indian foreign ministry spokesman said the country is studying the U.S. draft intensely, but would not comment on whether India supported the U.S. plan.
U.S. officials say they plan to aggressively lobby for the resolution next week, although Mr. Boucher refused to offer a date on when a vote on the resolution might be held.
Mr. Powell in his address sketched a picture of an Iraq making good progress to recover economically and politically from three decades of misrule under Saddam. He cited rebuilt schools and hospitals, improving power delivery, and reviving oil exports.
But Mr. Ivanov attacked U.S. claims that things are getting better in Iraq.
"Day by day, the situation gets worse and worse, and this requires the help of the international community," he said.
•This article is based in part on wire service reports.
--------
DIPLOMACY
Envoys Urge U.S. to Cede More Power to U.N.
September 6, 2003
The New York Times
By FELICITY BARRINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/international/middleeast/06NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 5 - Despite swift opposition from France and Germany, diplomats here and around the world said today that the American draft of a Security Council resolution on Iraq could be a basis for consensus if Washington would cede more political power to the United Nations and speed up the timetable for transferring authority to Iraqis.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the United States might well accommodate some of the concerns. In a speech at George Washington University this morning, he said, "We will listen to all of the comments that will be coming in, and we will try to adjust and adapt to those comments as long as it is consistent" with Washington's "overall goal."
At a later news conference, Mr. Powell said: "It is a draft resolution. We are coordinating with our colleagues and in consultation. That's the way resolutions are developed."
He added pointedly that he would like to see specific suggestions from Berlin and Paris.
In comments both to journalists and to each other, diplomats from several Security Council nations began to sketch out the changes their governments want before offering their support - in particular, giving the United Nations more independent authority to help form a new government in Iraq and establishing a short schedule for transferring power back to Iraqis.
"We must, with little delay, transfer power - which is to say, the civil and financial administration of the country - to the current Iraqi officials," the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, said in an interview with Le Figaro.
The Russian foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, speaking at a news conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, said, "The initiative itself is worthy of attention because the provisions contained in the draft reflect movement toward those principles" that Moscow has advocated, particularly returning political power to Iraqis quickly and giving the United Nations a leading role in the process.
Heraldo Muñoz, the Chilean envoy here, echoed that sentiment, saying, "If we achieve two things - first, a greater role for the U.N. and, second, a more concrete timetable to get sovereignty back to the Iraqi people - I think we will have crossed a good part of the bridge."
At an informal private meeting of Security Council ambassadors this morning, these two points were made to the United States envoy, John D. Negroponte. The session was described by three people who took part as constructive.
During the meeting, participants said, the Mexican envoy suggested that Secretary General Kofi Annan be given responsibility for developing the timetable for a transfer of power, in consultation with the Iraqi Governing Council, other elements of Iraqi society and the Arab League.
Mr. Muñoz said he was "moderately optimistic" that the Council might be ready to vote on the resolution in two weeks' time.
Washington, in a policy reversal presented by the administration as a simple expansion of earlier Security Council resolutions, circulated its draft this week in a bid to get more countries to provide military and financial aid to the occupation. Turkey, India and Pakistan, for example, have balked at providing troops unless the force is sanctioned by the United Nations.
The draft incorporates the troops now in Iraq under the mantle of a United Nations multinational peacekeeping force led by the United States.
The resolution could also give impetus to an international donors' conference planned for Madrid in late October.
Contributions would be held in a fund distinct from the Iraq Development Fund, which is controlled by the occupation authorities. So far, no one has been appointed to the independent advisory and monitoring board that the current fund is supposed to have.
The American draft would give the United Nations the same kind of vague political mandate that it has under the existing resolution: "Providing humanitarian relief, promoting the economic reconstruction of and conditions for sustainable development in Iraq, and advancing efforts to restore and establish national and local institutions for representative governance."
This afternoon, a top United Nations official also warned Council members that any mandate they issue should not require staff members to take unreasonable risks in order to reach out to various segments of Iraqi society, according to a diplomat who attended the closed session.
The United Nations official, Kieran Prendergast, under secretary for political affairs, also warned that any mandate should be worth the risks that staff members would take simply by going to Baghdad, where 23 people were killed in a bombing last month at United Nations headquarters.
-------- us
Hard homecoming
By RICK FOSTER
ATTLEBORO (MA) SUN CHRONICLE STAFF
September 6, 2003
http://www.thesunchronicle.com/display/inn_reports/special098.txt
When Sgt. Cherie Davis was serving with the Army Reserve 399th Combat Support Hospital in Kosovo, one of her proudest moments was meeting President and Mrs. George W. Bush.
`` It was exciting to be able to meet them,'' said the former South Attleboro resident, who still has a picture of herself with the first lady.
On a July 2001 visit to Camp Bondsteel, where Davis' unit was based, the president spoke to the troops and expressed gratitude for their work.
`` Especially here, seeing you in a foreign land, brings home the true meaning of the sacrifices you make for our freedom,'' Bush said.
At the time, Davis had no idea just how large a sacrifice she was making.
An illness she contracted while serving overseas would seriously threaten her health. Worse, Davis says, Army red tape and delays kept her from receiving adequate medical treatment and service pay for months.
The 30-year-old Army reservist began to feel seriously ill after arriving in Kosovo and continues to suffer from chronic fatigue, fainting spells and other symptoms.
Long after she returned from the war zone, she is still unable to resume her career as a mental health care worker.
Collapsed twice
Lightheadedness and exhaustion stemming from what was then an undiagnosed illness caused Davis to collapse twice while in Kosovo, at one point resulting in her being evacuated to the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland.
But Davis had to wait a year and a half before receiving compensation from the military, and still has not gotten all the pay she says is owed her for the time she was incapacitated. She only recently earned official disability status from the federal government.
At a time when the United States is growing more dependent on its reserve forces for critical defense missions, Davis' treatment raises questions about the military's support for its citizen soldiers.
`` Essentially, we patted her on the head and kicked her in the ass,'' said an Army Reserve official who spoke on condition of anonymity. `` We screw up a lot of times.''
The official also said reservists and National Guard personnel often appear to be treated with less priority than their regular Army counterparts.
Such attitudes are not unknown within the military bureaucracy says John Goheen, communications director for the National Guard Association of the United States.
`` Unfortunately there are folks both in uniform and civilians attached to the military who consider people in the Guard and Reserve second-class citizens,'' said Goheen. `` That's troubling at a time when we're at the height of the largest mobilization of Guard personnel since the Korean War.''
Regional Army Reserve officials declined to comment officially on the local soldier's case, although her unit recently recommended that her Army pay be brought up to date.
Davis, who married a fellow serviceman in May, was diagnosed by Veterans Administration doctors as suffering from neurocardiogenic syncope -- fainting spells caused by a sudden drop in blood pressure -- and chronic fatigue syndrome as well as depression.
She continues to suffer from crippling fatigue, sore throats, muscle pain and headaches. Davis thinks the symptoms could be related to a battery of Army vaccinations she received just before and during the Kosovo assignment.
Last year, a VA doctor pronounced Davis unable to perform either a military or civilian job because of her illness. In May Davis, who plans to open a consulting business at home, was classified by the government as 80 percent disabled.
In the meantime, Davis said, she's seen only modest improvement in her condition.
`` I'm better than I was,'' she said. `` I have good days and bad days.''
Davis joined the National Guard in 1990 out of high school and spent nine years in the service as an administrative specialist and chaplain's assistant. Six months after she retired from the Guard, she learned through friends that the 399th needed a chaplain's assistant and agreed to join the Army Reserve.
The Bridgewater State College graduate entered the 399th just in time, it turned out, to be sent to Kosovo as part of the Clinton Administration's peacekeeping effort in that war-torn country.
In the fall of 2000, she received a series of hurry-up immunizations and medical clearances in order to prepare for the mission. After arriving in Kosovo, however, Davis began feeling ill.
`` While in Kosovo, I began working with the sick locals and soldiers as part of my duties,'' she said. `` I began to feel real exhausted, weak, light-headed at times and basically not feeling quite right.''
Davis received medical attention and was given light duty, but the symptoms did not improve. Finally, at the end of April 2001, she lost consciousness while at Camp Bondsteel.
Davis again received treatment, and this time was ordered back to the States for tests at Walter Reed Medical Center. After two weeks, the local soldier was granted permission to return to her outfit in Kosovo.
Not all of Davis' superiors took her symptoms seriously, however.
According to Sherri MacGlaughlin of Brockton, a former Army Reserve nurse and Davis' roommate in Kosovo, one officer let it be known that he thought Davis' illness was `` all in her head.''
MacGlaughlin said she disagreed, and observed that Davis, who collapsed without warning at a military chow hall in Kosovo, seemed to become more and more exhausted.
`` She had to take a nap every day after a while,'' MacGlaughlin said.
After her treatment at Walter Reed, Davis returned to Kosovo, where she continued to feel ill and passed out a second time. But since her unit was about to return to the United States, she was kept in Kosovo until September.
After she came home, Davis informed Army officials of her chronic medical problems during `` out-processing'' at Fort Benning, Ga., and requested that she be sent back to Walter Reed. Army officials, however, offered her the option of reporting to the Providence Veterans Administration Hospital instead.
But Davis, who had been released from active duty upon her return to the United States, said she did not improve, and again sought an appointment at Walter Reed.
Meanwhile, officials at the Providence VA hospital informed her that there was a problem.
Since her condition began while she was serving in Kosovo, she was told, the Army should have kept her on active duty rather than release her.
In order to fix this, she'd have to obtain a document from the Army called a `` line of duty'' giving a detailed record of her service and her illness. But since Davis' treatment was ongoing and doctors could not provide an `` end date,'' officials at the Army Reserve's 94th Regional Support Command -- parent unit of the 399th -- told her they could not process her line of duty.
`` It was like a Catch-22,'' Davis said. `` In order to get benefits, I had to have a line of duty. But I couldn't get a line of duty because of some technicality.''
In addition, records indicate the 94th did not respond immediately to respond to official requests from Army command at Ft. Drum, N.Y., for critical paperwork on Davis' case, including an appointment order for an officer to verify Davis' records.
While Davis says her struggle with the Army over paperwork had two major effects: The delay kept her from returning to Walter Reed for further treatment. It also held up the restoration of her Army active duty pay, which ended after she returned from Kosovo.
Still sick, Davis was forced to exhaust most of her savings for daily expenses and to pay for appointments with civilian doctors.
Eventually, Davis took her story to the office of U.S. Rep. James McGovern, D-Worcester, who initiated a congressional inquiry on her behalf.
McGovern's office contacted Army Reserve officials, but found the 94th `` terribly unresponsive,'' according to a memo from staffer Matthew Pacheco.
Pacheco eventually brought the matter to the attention of the Army Liaison Office on Capitol Hill as well as Lt. Col. Mary Sherman, an Army troubleshooter in the Pentagon.
According to copies of e-mails provided to The Sun Chronicle, Sherman in effect told the 94th to get going. A line of duty was not needed for Davis to return to Walter Reed, she wrote, because the hospital had already given notice that the soldier needed to be seen again when she returned to the States.
`` This should have happened over a year ago,'' Sherman wrote in a tersely-worded e-mail to the 94th last January.
Following Sherman's intervention, Davis was finally sent back to Walter Reed and also was granted back pay covering the first six months she was incapacitated.
Sherman, when contacted by a Sun Chronicle reporter, referred all comment to the Army public affairs department.
During her week-long stay at Walter Reed, Davis underwent a number of tests. She continues to take several medications, but has been told she can only be treated -- not cured.
She says she does not blame the Army for her condition, and is proud of having been a soldier and to have served in the Kosovo action.
`` It was a good mission,'' she said. `` I think we helped people there.''
She's also grateful to members of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post and city Veterans Agent Thomas Tullie, who she said helped with her case.
Davis still does not know what caused her illness, although a large number of soldiers who served either in the 1991 Gulf War or Kosovo have reported mysterious ailments.
Clinical investigations have centered on possible exposure to depleted uranium from munitions and military vaccinations given to troops to protect them against disease.
So far, however, neither military nor civilian doctors have been able to produce a smoking gun linking the soldiers' symptoms to overseas service.
The former Attleboro sergeant received some satisfaction two months ago when she received her disability classification -- enough to earn her a monthly stipend. And recently, the 94th Reserve Support Command sent a recommendation to the Pentagon seeking to have Davis' military pay extended through Sept. 30, according to Eric Hurwitz, the unit's public affairs spokesman.
Last May, Davis was married to Sgt. First Class John Keeter, whom she met while serving in Kosovo. The couple currently lives in Maryland, where Keeter is serving as an instructor at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. He is due to retire later this year.
Davis, although still disabled, technically remains a member of the 94th. Because of her illness, however, it's doubtful she'll ever perform another drill.
The former Attleboro sergeant says she bears no grudges toward the Army, but hopes her story will focus attention on problems within the system.
`` I'd like to prevent this from happening to any other soldier,'' she said.
RICK FOSTER can be reached at 508-236-0372 or via e-mail at rfoster@thesunchronicle.com.
--------
Rumsfeld Touts U.S. 'Success'
Defense Chief Says Attacks Will Not Deter Forces in Iraq
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32943-2003Sep5.html
BAGHDAD, Sept. 5 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld criticized the U.S. news media today for ignoring "the story of success and accomplishment" in Iraq and said the speed of improvements here "dwarfs any other experience I'm aware of," including Germany and Japan after World War II.
Speaking in a marble-walled palace adjacent to Baghdad's international airport, Rumsfeld said the impact of continued attacks against U.S. forces had been overstated and likened them to isolated terrorist violence "in every country in the world."
Rumsfeld's optimistic assessment was repeated during visits with Iraqi officials in Mosul and chipper members of a newly formed civil defense force in Tikrit, and in a video address to the Iraqi people in which he said, "The changes that have taken place . . . are extraordinary."
"The coalition will not be dissuaded from its mission in Iraq -- not by sabotage, not by snipers, and not by terrorists with car bombs," Rumsfeld said in the taped address.
The secretary's sentiments were echoed by the U.S. civilian administrator and the top U.S. military commander in Iraq. "It is disturbing to me when I watch the news -- the focus on the bad," said Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. "We ought to make sure America knows that their sons' and daughters' sacrifices are for a good cause."
Asked about a spate of car bombings, which included a blast last month at the U.N. headquarters that killed 24, Sanchez said, "There is no tactical threat, no strategic threat to the coalition." But he then went on to describe the situation facing U.S. forces in what is known as the Sunni triangle around Baghdad as a "low-intensity conflict, terrorist threat" that included "more sophisticated" tactics and devices.
"It's definitely a combat zone," he added later.
But Sanchez contended that attacks were low in number -- 14 or 15 a day, down from 20 to 25 two months ago. He acknowledged that there was insufficient intelligence to adequately identify the perpetrators or determine the extent of their organization.
There is likely some "local-level coordination, synchronization and regional command and control being exercised," he said. It is also possible that ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein or his loyalists could be coordinating the attacks across the country, he said, and there was clearly "some support base that exists" within the Iraqi population, but "we don't know whether the base is growing."
L. Paul Bremer, Iraq's civilian U.S. administrator, also listed accomplishments, including the election of town councils in 85 percent of Iraq's cities and the completion of 6,000 reconstruction projects. But Bremer, who recently estimated it would cost "several billions of dollars" to adequately help Iraq in the near future, said revenue generated from the sale of 3 million barrels of oil a day would not be enough to pay for the badly needed repairs to water, electricity and other essential services.
Bremer said he also hoped a request to Congress for additional funds would be approved so that 45,000 trained security forces could be added to the current 55,000 within a year.
On the issue of Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which was the principal argument put forth by the Bush administration for going to war, local commanders said they had yet to receive information from Iraqis leading them to such weapons. Asked where the weapons could be, Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division occupying Mosul and environs, shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know," he said, speaking on the hot, dusty tarmac as Rumsfeld's entourage prepared to return to Baghdad after two helicopter rides. "It's like finding Saddam. You've got to find that one person who's going to crack."
Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit, Hussein's ancestral home and the stronghold of his supporters, said he thought Hussein was in that vicinity, "moving constantly around the area. If he makes a mistake, we're going to be there and that's what we're waiting for."
Odierno said he drew his conclusion from the historic tribal support for the Iraqi leader in Tikrit and from the fact that several of Hussein's low-level bodyguards had been captured in the last 30 days. Other defense officials said Hussein's "personal effects had been found in safe houses."
Other defense officials, however, believe Hussein could be in the Mosul area.
-------- propaganda wars
Anger at top Arab reporter's arrest
Saturday, 6 September, 2003
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3085562.stm
Alouni shot to fame during the US-led Afghan conflict Arabic news channel al-Jazeera has condemned the arrest of its correspondent Tayseer Alouni by police in the southern Spanish city of Granada.
Mr Alouni was detained at his home on the orders of Judge Baltasar Garzon on suspicion of links with al-Qaeda as part of an investigation into Islamic militant operations in Spain.
The Qatar-based television channel said it had contacted human rights organisations for support
"There are other journalists who have relations with al-Qaeda suspects and there are other networks who air tapes and statements from al-Qaeda," the channel's editor-in-chief, Ibrahim Hilal, told the Associated Press.
"Why is al-Jazeera's correspondent the one arrested then?"
Bin Laden interview
A celebrated correspondent, Mr Alouni became well-known throughout the Arab world for his work in Afghanistan during the US-led war there.
He was one of the few reporters allowed to work under the Taleban regime and interviewed Osama Bin Laden in October 2001.
"Anyone can have acquaintances who are linked to al-Qaeda, and this is not a crime," Mr Hilal said of his correspondent.
"It is only a crime when these relations are used in an illegal way and not when they are used for journalistic purposes."
Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Blut told the AFP news agency that the network had appointed a lawyer to defend Mr Alouni.
Denial
Mr Alouni, Syrian by birth but now holding a Spanish passport, was arrested at his home by police with a warrant, his wife Fatima said.
"Police in civilian clothes came to our door with a warrant to search the house and to arrest Tayseer..." she said.
She dismissed the allegations against him and saying: "This is not true."
Police sources said Mr Alouni had been taken to Madrid after his arrest at noon on Friday.
The sources said Mr Alouni was suspected of giving support to Edin Barakat Yarkas, also known as Abu Dahdah, who was arrested in Spain in November 2001 on suspicion of being the leader of an Islamist fundamentalist cell in the country.
Mr Alouni is expected to appear in court on Monday.
A report on al-Jazeera's website said the organisation had been informed by Spanish intelligence sources that Mr Alouni was being held under anti-terrorist laws and so could be held for three days while being questioned without access to a lawyer.
A number of suspected al-Qaeda members have been arrested in Spain since the 11 September attacks in New York and Washington.
Some have been accused of links to the attack and remain in custody but others have been released because of lack of evidence.
----
Rumsfeld to Iraq: 'Remarkable changes'
'I know that life remains difficult for many of you'
Saturday, September 6, 2003
(CNN)
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/09/06/sprj.irq.rumsfeld/
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Saturday outlined a bright future for Iraqis, saying he has seen "truly extraordinary" political, economic, social changes in the country since his last visit four months ago.
He reminded the war-weary nation that the "coalition is committed to helping you succeed."
In a taped address to the nation, aired Saturday afternoon on the Iraq Media Network -- a day before U.S. President George W. Bush is to make an address on Iraq and terrorism in Washington -- Rumsfeld said that the Saddam Hussein regime is "finished." He urged Iraqis to help security forces root out the regime's remnants responsible for the guerrilla attacks against U.S. troops.
"Baghdad is bustling with commerce. Universities and hospitals are open for business," Rumsfeld said. "A free press is flourishing, Iraqi banks have started taking applications for small business loans so Iraqi entrepreneurs can create jobs."
The political infrastructure is steadily being transformed, he said. In cities and towns, "municipal councils are making decisions about local matters."
The Iraqi Governing Council, Rumsfeld said, is striving to develop a constitution and pave the way for free elections "where you, the Iraq people, will choose your own leaders."
"These are remarkable changes."
He acknowledged the hardships and the instability Iraqis must cope with.
"I know that life remains difficult for many of you. But visiting your country I can see the determination of so many brave Iraqis who are stepping forward to create a new nation where there is freedom and opportunity for all of the Iraqi people."
He said the persistent violence in the country, including the recent bombings at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and the Shiite mosque in Najaf, is a sign of weakness and desperation of those who oppose the new Iraq and said the "Hussein regime is finished."
"The regime remnants see you, the Iraqi people, putting the era of Saddam Hussein behind you. They see you policing the streets, publishing newspapers, worshipping freely, and governing your towns and cities.
"With each step forward that you take, they see any remote chance of returning to power slip further and further away, and they are right. The coalition will not be dissuaded from its mission in Iraq, not by sabotage not by snipers and not by terrorists with car bombs."
He reminded Iraqis of the many senior leaders who have been captured, such as Saddam associate Ali Hassan al-Majid, the Iraqi general known as "Chemical Ali," and Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, who have been killed.
"It's only a matter of time before the rest are dealt with," Rumsfeld said. "To find the rest you can help those who lead coalition forces to Baathists, fugitives or terrorists" and "will receive substantial reward and protection. Terrorist threats will not dissuade the coalition from helping Iraqi people rebuild."
"We found Uday and Qusay and Chemical Ali because Iraqis like you came forward with the information," he said.
Rumsfeld said nearly 50 nations have pledged almost $4 billion for reconstruction and "the 1.7 billion dollars the Baathists stole from you has been recovered -- money that is now being used for the benefit of the Iraqi people."
"Those who sabotage the efforts to restore power and water and other services are not attacking the coalition, they are attacking you, the Iraqi people. With your cooperation we're dealing with them."
Rumsfeld said that during his stay he plans to visit a mass grave site, "where the regime piled the bodies of its victims," and a prison where the Saddam regime "tortured innocent Iraqis."
----
Dull Paean
Showtime's 'DC 9/11' Is A Shameless Bush Booster
By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33336-2003Sep5?language=printer
Simultaneously dull and disgraceful, "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis," a new Showtime movie, uses the tragic attack on America in 2001 as the basis for a reelection campaign movie on behalf of George W. Bush.
The film is an insult to those who perished in the attacks and, really, an insult to America generally, but it's so insanely boring that people aren't likely to become very outraged over it. Written by conservative Republican Lionel Chetwynd, who admits to a bias in Bush's favor, the film -- premiering on Showtime tomorrow night at 8 -- is primitive propaganda that portrays Bush as the noblest hero since Mighty Mouse.
Nothing in historical record suggests Bush acted particularly heroically Sept. 11, 2001, but Chetwynd's script has him all but saddling up a horse and riding over to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban man-to-man. When Bush announces he will give a speech to the nation from the White House and aides try to talk him into seeking a safer location, Bush bellows, "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come on over and get me. I'll be home!"
Bush repeatedly demands he be taken to the White House as Air Force One flies aimlessly about on that horrible September day: "I've got to get back to Washington because I'm not going to let those people keep me from getting home," he barks. And earlier: "Get me home! . . . The American people want to know where their damn president is." And still earlier: "People can't have an AWOL president!"
All this may be pure fantasy that occurred only in Chetwynd's head, or wishful thinking by members of the Bush administration, who cooperated with Chetwynd in his research. Actual footage of the World Trade Center towers burning and collapsing is used as part of this love letter to the president, an especially unseemly touch.
Even those predisposed to accept the movie's fanciful version of what happened will be hard-pressed to see it through to the end. Overlong at two hours-plus, the film bogs down repeatedly in meetings -- meetings of the Cabinet, meetings of the war cabinet, meetings at Camp David, meetings in the Oval Office, meetings, meetings everywhere. In his zeal to proselytize, Chetwynd forgot how to dramatize.
He tries to make Bush's speech to a joint session of Congress, with the nation watching on television, the climax of the film. So there are repetitious scenes of Bush speechwriters fretting over the address, and then Bush himself fussing and fine-tuning it. During a scene in which Bush and wife Laura make pillow talk, she tells him, "Don't ever forget about how they treat women. That's a big part of this."
Who does she mean by "they" at this point? Terrorists? Islamic radicals? Arabs generally? It's left vague, and it sounds like one of those remarks that probably never got remarked in the first place.
Chetwynd is so enamored of the president's speech, delivered Sept. 20, that he includes a huge portion of it in the film, a sure-fire snooze inducer. We see Timothy Bottoms as Bush delivering the speech intercut with news footage of real people in the House chamber listening and applauding -- even a shot of Hillary Rodham Clinton clapping in rapt approval. It was a good speech -- but good speeches do not make good drama, especially when we've already seen the real thing.
Suddenly, Bottoms vanishes and the director, Brian Trenchard-Smith, cuts to footage of the real Bush finishing the speech, adding to the impression that the film's first mission is Bush-boostering.
Chetwynd has a checkered but not undistinguished career. One of his best TV scripts was turned into a moving story about real heroism, "Falling From the Sky: Flight 174," in 1995. This time, his priorities are all screwed up. Trenchard-Smith tries to enliven the replicated meetings with such gimmicks as overhead shots, but nothing helps. A couple of very pretty overhead shots of Air Force One are rigged up by the special-effects department, but otherwise the film is visually inert.
Obviously some of the most troubling issues raised by the attack -- including the horrendous failure of U.S. intelligence -- are not mentioned or are briskly glossed over. Chetwynd is determined to show Bush and all the little Bushkins behaving like living saints. Even sinister adviser Karl Rove, the Dr. Strangelove (Strangerove?) of the administration, is turned into a human platitude, though at one point he does dare to note it would be "politically wise" for the president to make his speech to the joint session of Congress.
Rove also gets to utter such glowing estimations of his boss as, "This is a man who feels very deeply." It's one more encomium in a movie already so slanted that it risks sliding right off the screen.
--------
Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds
By Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32862-2003Sep5.html
Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.
Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents.
The main reason for the endurance of the apparently groundless belief, experts in public opinion say, is a deep and enduring distrust of Hussein that makes him a likely suspect in anything related to Middle East violence. "It's very easy to picture Saddam as a demon," said John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University and an expert on public opinion and war. "You get a general fuzz going around: People know they don't like al Qaeda, they are horrified by September 11th, they know this guy is a bad guy, and it's not hard to put those things together."
Although that belief came without prompting from Washington, Democrats and some independent experts say Bush exploited the apparent misconception by implying a link between Hussein and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the months before the war with Iraq. "The notion was reinforced by these hints, the discussions that they had about possible links with al Qaeda terrorists," said Andrew Kohut, a pollster who leads the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
The poll's findings are significant because they help to explain why the public continues to support operations in Iraq despite the setbacks and bloodshed there. Americans have more tolerance for war when it is provoked by an attack, particularly one by an all-purpose villain such as Hussein. "That's why attitudes about the decision to go to war are holding up," Kohut said.
Bush's opponents say he encouraged this misconception by linking al Qaeda to Hussein in almost every speech on Iraq. Indeed, administration officials began to hint about a Sept. 11-Hussein link soon after the attacks. In late 2001, Vice President Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that attack mastermind Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official.
Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," Cheney was referring to a meeting that Czech officials said took place in Prague in April 2000. That allegation was the most direct connection between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks. But this summer's congressional report on the attacks states, "The CIA has been unable to establish that [Atta] left the United States or entered Europe in April under his true name or any known alias."
Bush, in his speeches, did not say directly that Hussein was culpable in the Sept. 11 attacks. But he frequently juxtaposed Iraq and al Qaeda in ways that hinted at a link. In a March speech about Iraq's "weapons of terror," Bush said: "If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force, even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks. The attacks of September the 11th, 2001, showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction."
Then, in declaring the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1, Bush linked Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions."
Moments later, Bush added: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th -- the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."
A number of nongovernment officials close to the Bush administration have made the link more directly. Richard N. Perle, who until recently was chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, long argued that there was Iraqi involvement, calling the evidence "overwhelming."
Some Democrats said that although Bush did not make the direct link to the 2001 attacks, his implications helped to turn the public fury over Sept. 11 into support for war against Iraq. "You couldn't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein," said Democratic tactician Donna Brazile. "Every member of the administration did the drumbeat. My mother said if you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes a gospel truth. This one became a gospel hit."
In a speech Aug. 7, former vice president Al Gore cited Hussein's culpability in the attacks as one of the "false impressions" given by a Bush administration making a "systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology."
Bush's defenders say the administration's rhetoric was not responsible for the public perception of Hussein's involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. While Hussein and al Qaeda come from different strains of Islam and Hussein's secularism is incompatible with al Qaeda fundamentalism, Americans instinctively lump both foes together as Middle Eastern enemies. "The intellectual argument is there is a war in Iraq and a war on terrorism and you have to separate them, but the public doesn't do that," said Matthew Dowd, a Bush campaign strategist. "They see Middle Eastern terrorism, bad people in the Middle East, all as one big problem."
A number of public-opinion experts agreed that the public automatically blamed Iraq, just as they would have blamed Libya if a similar attack had occurred in the 1980s. There is good evidence for this: On Sept. 13, 2001, a Time/CNN poll found that 78 percent suspected Hussein's involvement -- even though the administration had not made a connection. The belief remained consistent even as evidence to the contrary emerged.
"You can say Bush should be faulted for not correcting every single misapprehension, but that's something different than saying they set out deliberately to deceive," said Duke University political scientist Peter D. Feaver. "Since the facts are all over the place, Americans revert to a judgment: Hussein is a bad guy who would do stuff to us if he could."
Key administration figures have largely abandoned any claim that Iraq was involved in the 2001 attacks. "I'm not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a leading hawk on Iraq, said on the Laura Ingraham radio show on Aug. 1.
A top White House official told The Washington Post on July 31: "I don't believe that the evidence was there to suggest that Iraq had played a direct role in 9/11." The official added: "Anything is possible, but we hadn't ruled it in or ruled it out. There wasn't evidence to substantiate that claim."
But the public continues to embrace the connection.
In follow-up interviews, poll respondents were generally unsure why they believed Hussein was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, often describing it as an instinct that came from news reports and their long-standing views of Hussein. For example, Peter Bankers, 59, a New York film publicist, figures his belief that Hussein was behind the attacks "has probably been fed to me in some PR way," but he doesn't know how. "I think that the whole group of people, those with anti-American feelings, they all kind of cooperated with each other," he said.
Similarly, Kim Morrison, 32, a teacher from Plymouth, Ind., described her belief in Hussein's guilt as a "gut feeling" shaped by television. "From what we've heard from the media, it seems like what they feel is that Saddam and the whole al Qaeda thing are connected," she said.
Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University professor of linguistics who has studied Bush's rhetoric, said it is impossible to know but "plausible" that Bush's words furthered such public impressions. "Clearly, he's using language to imply a connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11th," she said.
"There is a specific manipulation of language here to imply a connection." Bush, she said, seems to imply that in Iraq "we have gone to war with the terrorists who attacked us."
Tannen said even a gentle implication would be enough to reinforce Americans' feelings about Hussein. "If we like the conclusion, we're much less critical of the logic," she said.
The Post poll, conducted Aug. 7-11, found that 62 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of independents suspected a link between Hussein and 9/11. In addition, eight in 10 Americans said it was likely that Hussein had provided assistance to al Qaeda, and a similar proportion suspected he had developed weapons of mass destruction.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- drug war
Results Retracted On Ecstasy Study
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33096-2003Sep5.html
Scientists at Johns Hopkins University who last year published a frightening and controversial report suggesting that a single evening's use of the illicit drug ecstasy could cause permanent brain damage and Parkinson's disease are retracting their research in its entirety, saying the drug they used in their experiments was not ecstasy after all.
The retraction, to be published in next Friday's issue of the journal Science, has reignited a smoldering and sometimes angry debate over the risks and benefits of the drug, also known as MDMA.
The drug is popular at all-night raves and other venues for its ability to reduce inhibitions and induce expansive feelings of open-heartedness. But some studies have indicated that the drug can at least temporarily damage neurons that use the mood-altering brain chemical serotonin. Some users also have spiked fevers, which rarely have proven fatal.
Last year's research, involving monkeys and baboons, purported to show that three modest doses of ecstasy -- the amount a person might take in a one-night rave -- could cause serious damage to another part of the brain: neurons that use the brain chemical dopamine.
Two of 10 animals died quickly after their second or third dose of the drug, and two others were too sick to take the third dose. Six weeks later, dopamine levels in the surviving animals were still down 65 percent. That led Hopkins team leader George Ricaurte and his colleagues to conclude that users were playing Russian roulette with their brains.
Advocates of ecstasy's therapeutic potential, including a number of scientists and doctors who believe it may be useful in treating post-traumatic stress disorder or other psychiatric conditions, criticized the study. They noted that the drug was given in higher doses than people commonly take and was administered by injection, not by mouth. They wondered why large numbers of users were not dying or growing deathly ill from the drug, as the animals did, and why no previous link had been made between ecstasy and Parkinson's despite decades of use and a large number of studies.
The answer to at least some of those questions became clear with the retraction, which is being released by Science on Sunday evening but was obtained independently by The Washington Post. Because of a mislabeling of vials, the scientists wrote, all but one of the animals were injected not with ecstasy but with methamphetamine, or "speed" -- a drug known to damage the dopamine system.
The researchers said they discovered the mistake when follow-up tests gave conflicting results, and they offered evidence that the tubes were mislabeled by the supplier, identified by sources as Research Triangle Institute of North Carolina. A spokesman for the company said last night that he did not know whether the company had erred.
The error has renewed charges that government-funded scientists, and Ricaurte in particular, have been biased in their assessment of ecstasy's risks and potential benefits.
Rick Doblin, president of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a Sarasota, Fla.-based group that funds studies on therapeutic uses of mind-altering drugs and is seeking permission to conduct human tests of MDMA, said the evidence of serotonin system damage is weak.
"The largest and best-controlled study of the effect of MDMA on serotonin showed no long-term effects in former users and minimal to no effects in current users," he said.
Una McCann, one of the Hopkins scientists, said she regretted the role the false results may have played in a debate going on last year in Congress and within the Drug Enforcement Administration over how to deal with ecstasy abuse.
"I feel personally terrible," she said. "You spend a lot of time trying to get things right, not only for the congressional record but for other scientists around the country who are basing new hypotheses on your work and are writing grant proposals to study this."
But she and Ricaurte emphasized last night that the retraction had not changed their feelings about the danger of taking ecstasy.
"I still wouldn't recommend it to anybody," McCann said.
-------- homeland security
Ashcroft Defends Patriot Act Secrecy
By CASSIO FURTADO cfurtado@tampatrib.com
Sep 6, 2003
http://tampatrib.com/floridametronews/MGANB5069KD.html
TAMPA - Kicking off a two-day Southern leg of his tour to defend the USA Patriot Act, Attorney General John Ashcroft told a Tampa audience that the 2001 law is a common sense tool to combat terrorism.
``America is not sitting back while terrorists wage war against us,'' Ashcroft told about 200 local, state, and federal law enforcement officers crowded into a main ballroom at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay on the Courtney Campbell Parkway. ``We are waging war on them.''
The Patriot Act, passed a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, has made cooperation among government agencies easier, Ashcroft said, and has made law enforcement more aggressive and equipped to investigate terrorists.
Without it, Ashcroft said, the government investigation of Sami Al-Arian could not have proceeded. The former University of South Florida computer science professor is accused of being a chief organizer of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which authorities have said is responsible for the deaths of more than 100 people, including two Americans staying in Israel.
Much of the proposed evidence in the case comes from secret federal wiretaps and surveillance warrants that were not allowed before the Patriot Act.
Ashcroft's visit is part of a tour aimed at promoting the Patriot Act and combating the mounting criticism from civil liberties groups that say it gives too much power to law enforcement.
To date, 152 communities and the legislatures of Alaska, Hawaii and Vermont have approved resolutions condemning the act.
But the attorney general said Friday that the law is designed to allow agents to investigate and track terrorists without tipping them off, and streamlining the cumbersome process of having to apply for several warrants to monitor suspects.
The law allows for ``roving wiretaps'' on cellular and satellite phones, enabling prosecutors to track suspects who use several phones to avoid detection.
Issued against specific people instead of the phones and computers they use, the wiretaps prevent the FBI and CIA from having to apply for warrants for each phone or computer. The so-called FISA wiretaps are secretly issued by federal judges under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Ashcroft said the Patriot Act has enabled federal agents to dismantle alleged terrorist cells in Buffalo, N.Y.; Detroit; Seattle; and Portland, Ore. It also made it possible to bring criminal charges against 255 individuals, and to convict attempted shoe-bomber Richard Reid and American Taliban John Walker Lindh, Ashcroft said.
Using the Patriot Act appropriately and combating terrorists, Ashcroft said, was the best tribute the United States could pay to those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks.
``The terrorists believed this nation would retreat when lives were threatened and liberty was attacked,'' Ashcroft said.
``But we have shown them, we have shown the world that Osama bin Laden is wrong. All who support and fight for terrorism are wrong.''
Ashcroft also traveled to Atlanta on Friday. Today, he will speak in Norfolk, Va., and Durham, N.C.
Reporter Michael Fechter contributed to this story. Reporter Cassio Furtado can be reached at (813) 259-7616.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Saudi-U.S. Meeting Touches on Detainees
By Tania Branigan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32467-2003Sep5.html
Hoping to win the release of Saudis detained at the Navy prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a government delegation from Saudi Arabia met this week with State Department officials, a spokesman for the kingdom's embassy said yesterday.
Nail Jubeir, spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, said that the future of the 124 men held at the U.S. Navy prison was raised in wider talks on U.S.-Saudi relations. Saudi nationals form one of the largest contingents among the approximately 660 detainees from 42 nations at the prison, most of whom were captured in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the war in 2001.
In May, the United States took the unique step of transferring four Saudi nationals from Guantanamo Bay to Riyadh on the condition that they remain in detention in Saudi Arabia. Sixty-four men have been released and repatriated, while the rest continue to be held without charges.
Jubeir declined to comment on the precise content of this week's talks, but confirmed that the Saudi government is seeking the return of all its nationals to Riyadh.
"We have made no secret of it: We want them to be handled in the Saudi courts. That's our position, and we will make our point whenever we have the opportunity," he said. "We will take them whenever the U.S. government has done with them."
But a spokeswoman for the State Department said officials had not discussed specific cases or explored the topic of extradition with the visiting legal team, which was appointed by the Saudi government to advise the families of detainees.
Mindy Sofen said there are no current plans for legal proceedings against the Saudi prisoners. Six detainees have been designated for trial before military tribunals, but proceedings against three of them have been suspended pending talks with their governments in Britain and Australia. The United States has also said the trio will not face execution.
Sean Murphy, a professor of international law at George Washington University and a former State Department official, and other legal experts suggested that the future of the Saudi detainees would rest on delicate diplomatic negotiations as well as on evidence against the individuals.
Murphy said the Bush administration wants to maintain good relations with its long-term ally, without prompting more criticism at home, where Saudi Arabia has been the target of repeated charges in recent months that it supports terrorism. A congressional report issued in July alleged that Saudi officials had helped finance terrorism, an assertion strongly denied by Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia could probably assure U.S. officials that detainees would not be freed on their return, and that continued detention would be unlikely to be successfully challenged in the Saudi courts. "There is probably a level of comfort that they won't simply release individuals in the way other governments would," Murphy said.
Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of international law at Yale University and an assistant secretary of state for human rights under President Bill Clinton, suggested that the administration is struggling to develop a policy for the Guantanamo Bay detainees.
"The State Department views this as a major diplomatic problem and would like to find a solution and seize an exit strategy. The Defense Department is settling in for quasi-permanent facilities. They have very different approaches to this problem," he said.
-------- terrorism
FBI Issues Alert for Four Terror Suspects
Men Suspected of Plotting Against U.S.
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32736-2003Sep5.html
The FBI yesterday issued a worldwide alert for four Middle Eastern men believed to be planning terrorist acts against the United States, two of whom are suspected in recent bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Casablanca, Morocco.
Law enforcement officials said the bulletin was issued in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security's warning Thursday of possible hijacking plots against commercial airliners bound for Mexico and Canada.
FBI officials said that they have intelligence that the four men are involved in terrorist activities directed at the United States but that officials do not have specific information that the men are involved in planning an imminent attack. An FBI spokesman said the information that led to the bulletin came from a variety of intelligence sources, including "our partners overseas and other means."
One of the men, a Saudi Arabian named Zubayr Al-Rimi, has been identified by Saudi authorities as a member of the al Qaeda cell responsible for the May 12 bombings in Riyadh that killed 25 people in residential compounds, along with nine attackers. Rimi's wife, Hanan Raqib, a Moroccan, was arrested in June raids by Saudi security police that turned up caches of weapons and explosives.
Another man, Moroccan-born Karim El Mejjati, is suspected in May terrorist bombings in Casablanca that killed more than 30 bystanders and 12 attackers, an FBI spokesman said. Mejjati previously has traveled in the United States and has a French-issued passport.
The other two men named in the bulletin have been sought for months by U.S. authorities, who have intensified their interest after receiving new intelligence.
Abderraouf Jdey, a Tunisian, has been sought since January 2002, when he surfaced on an al Qaeda video with four other men pledging suicide martyrdom. He may be using a passport issued in Montreal, authorities said.
The fourth man, Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, is a Saudi first identified as a possible terrorism organizer in March by captured al Qaeda operations planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Shukrijumah previously lived in south Florida, where he still has family.
The FBI is especially concerned about Shukrijumah, a spokesman said, "because of his particular skills: He is a pilot, speaks English, has false documents and knows the country."
U.S. authorities previously said they had linked an alias used by Shukrijumah to an Oklahoma flight school where Zacarias Moussaoui, charged as a conspirator in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, received flight training. But they said then that they had no evidence Shukrijumah had received pilot training in the United States.
Yesterday, FBI officials said they have received information indicating that Shukrijumah is a pilot, though he did not train in the United States. Shukrijumah is also believed to have a connection to Jose Padilla, an American accused of plotting with al Qaeda to set off a radiological bomb here.
Shukrijumah's family lives in a Miami suburb, and his father has served as head of a prayer center, Masjid al Hijrah. Neighbors have said that Shukrijumah sold Islamic books, that they had not seen him in several years and they believed he was off doing missionary work.
The FBI has said that Shukrijumah may be traveling on passports from Guyana, Trinidad, Canada or Saudi Arabia and could be in Morocco. He is being sought on a material witness warrant by federal authorities in Virginia.
Research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Inquiry Opens Into Effects of 9/11 Dust
September 6, 2003
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/nyregion/06AIR.html
One of the biggest public health investigations in history opened yesterday in Lower Manhattan, aiming to follow the long-term physical and mental journeys of up to 200,000 people who were exposed to fire and smoke on Sept. 11, 2001.
New York City and federal health officials said that depending on the public's response, the project, called the World Trade Center Health Registry, could end up as much as five times the size of the investigation after the Three-Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. That study tracked 38,000 people.
But size is just the beginning.
The $20 million federally financed project, which has been in the planning stage for more than a year, aims to create a portrait of a place that fundamentally no longer exists: the city-within-the-city that emerged on and around ground zero. Unlike Three Mile Island, or Oklahoma City after the bombing in 1995, where a health registry was also created, the city that was forged from New York's disaster largely dispersed over time.
Volunteers from all over the region and the nation came for a day or a week or a month and returned home. Tens of thousands of jobs moved out of Lower Manhattan or disappeared altogether. Many residents picked up and left, even as others moved back downtown after the cleanup was completed last year. And no one has a clue about how many business travelers or tourists were near the trade center that day.
But the biggest wrinkle, organizers of the registry say, may be motivating people to participate. Since the registry is voluntary, the people eligible for participation will have to want to come forward and relive what they went through in those horrendous days - where they were, what they felt and what, if any, health effects they experienced, then or in the time since. The study's organizers will then want to stay in touch, off and on, for the next 20 years. Much of the project's start-up budget will pay for the billboards, direct-mail solicitations, Internet ads and brochures that will urge people to step forward.
"Certainly there will be people who don't want to deal with it any more," said New York City's commissioner of health and mental hygiene, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who announced the project's start at a news conference in Manhattan. "But there will also be people who wonder what impacts it might have had on their health. This is an important way to answer that question."
There is no doubt that the disaster had wide short-term health consequences. The coarse alkaline dust and ash from the collapsing towers and subsequent fires produced coughs and asthma that for some people, especially those who worked directly in the rubble, have yet to go away even after two years, doctors say. A recently released study also found a slight but significant increase in the number of smaller babies born to pregnant women who were downtown on 9/11 compared with a group of pregnant women who were elsewhere at the time.
Most medical experts have said that they do not expect long-term health effects or higher cancer rates in the general population, primarily because for most people, exposure to the trade center's pollutants was fairly brief. Most health research suggests that chronic long-term exposure is usually the way people get sick from pollution. But total certainty, the experts say, is not possible.
"The truth is we don't know," Dr. Frieden said. "What we're saying here is that this is our best way to find out."
People accepted into the registry will be given a 30-minute confidential interview to establish where they were in those days and the condition of their health after the towers fell and in the time since. Organizers stress that they are looking for the 200,000 who were most exposed, so some people could be turned away.
In general, registry organizers are looking for people who were living, working, visiting or going to school in the area of the trade center on Sept. 11, 2001, or who worked or volunteered in the recovery operations at ground zero or on Staten Island. More specific information is available at (866) 692-9827, or by calling 311, the city's information line. It is also online at wtcregistry.org.
Other health experts say that finding patterns will also have to take into account the way the disaster changed elements of life in the region.
"People have had two years of exposure to other stuff," said Peter Iwanowicz, the director of environmental health at the American Lung Association of New York State. A person who took the low-polluting electric-powered PATH train into Lower Manhattan before 9/11, for example, he said, might have since switched to commuting by ferry. And many ferry boats, he said, are not particularly healthy places to be, spewing out exhaust from dirty marine fuels that can get blown back into the passengers' faces.
--------
Scientists spot 'Serengetis' of the sea
September 06, 2003
By Lidia Wasowicz
UPI Senior Science Writer
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030905-123837-9620r.htm
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 5 (UPI) -- Scientists who earlier exposed a 90-percent plunge in the world population of large ocean fish now have uncovered pockets of subtropical waters that still teem with diverse wildlife and may hold the solution to sustaining a healthy state of the seas.
The previously uncharted regions off the coasts of Florida, Hawaii and Australia attract 146 species, including large tuna, marlin, sharks and turtles -- many of them endangered -- the international team reports.
Turning these areas, which now are open to commercial fishing, into prime targets for conservation could yield big benefits at a low cost, the investigators propose. The four spots, which span thousands of square kilometers each, rate high in biodiversity but low in catch rates, they note. Most of the congregating species hold little commercial value and those that do, notably tuna and swordfish, are caught in small numbers there, they point out.
Surprisingly, these gathering spots for predators as diverse as those that flock to Africa's famed Serengeti plain, in northwestern Tanzania, escaped previous scientific attention, the researchers said.
"These Serengetis of the ocean were unknown, even though they are located in national U.S. and Australian waters, relatively close to shore," Boris Worm, Emmy-Noether Fellow in Marine Ecology at the Institute for Marine Science in Duesternbrooker, Germany, told United Press International.
The marine specialists discovered the hot spots of pelagic, or open-sea, life because they were the first to look at the fish picture on a global scale, team member Ransom Myers, Killam Chair of Ocean Studies in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, told UPI.
"The finding was a complete surprise," Worm recalled. "Our ignorance of the open ocean is so profound that we cannot even tell where the key areas for oceanic wildlife are."
Myers' research group, for example, found the Oceanic White Tip -- once the most-common shark in the Gulf of Mexico, has declined in number by a factor of 1,000 -- without anyone realizing it.
"What we have done ... is to try to understand long-term changes in the ocean by careful analysis of large data sets," he explained. "We have found very large changes, as well as a new pattern, e.g. the hot spots."
The team pored over scores of records from long-lining fisheries in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In the technique, particularly favored by Japanese fleets, single-stranded fishing lines hoist endless rows of baited hooks over vast stretches of open ocean that can extend thousands of kilometers. Their haul contains not only species favored by fish-loving consumers but also unintended "bycatch," or marine creatures of no commercial value.
Scientists keep such tabs on fish populations as part of programs run by the U.S. National Marine Fishery Service and the Australian Fishery Management Agency.
"These are the most valuable data we have from the open ocean," Worm said. "(The species of) each individual that is hooked is determined ... by an independent, scientifically trained observer."
The programs are key to locating other hot spots around the world, scientists said.
The analyses showed ocean life diversity peaks at distinct locations where tropical and temperate species overlap. The hot spots, whose diversity rivals that of a rain forest, can adjoin reefs, shelf breaks, island chains, seamounts or other prominent geographic features. The four areas the team identified lie off the east coast of Florida, south of Hawaii, just east of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and near Lord Howe Island, off southeast Australia.
Researchers recorded 146 species frequenting the areas, including 82 bony fish, 37 sharks, three rays, five turtles, 13 marine mammals and six large seabirds. Because of the scarcity of records on the promulgation of ocean life, they are uncertain exactly how many of these are threatened.
"Clearly endangered are all the turtles and the large coastal sharks -- great white, scalloped hammerhead," Worm said. "Many species are of special concern -- bluefin tuna, white marlin and some of the albatrosses."
Making the areas off limits to fishing could help head off the threat of extinction for many ocean inhabitants, said Scott Parsons, adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa and former chief scientist in Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
"The chief action necessary is to drastically reduce the 'killing power' of the world's fishing fleets," said Parsons, past president of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. The group of 1,600 scientists from 19 countries advises governments and international regulatory bodies about marine management matters pertaining to the North Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas.
"So far, most governments have been generally ineffective in addressing this problem," he told UPI. "Closed areas (marine protected areas) can be a useful adjunct to a program of fishing effort reduction."
With seasonal migration, the composition of the areas' population fluctuates -- but not their overall concentration of biodiversity, scientists said.
"(The) solution is to protect enough hot spots so that we can sustain the most vulnerable (low reproduction and growth rates, such as turtles and albatross and sharks) rather than the least vulnerable, such as the present system does at its best," said renowned marine ecologist Paul Dayton of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.
Even well-managed fisheries focus only on single species, leaving others, such as the Pacific Leatherback turtle, to their oftentimes fatal fate, he noted. In contrast, preserving a hot spot would spare a host of species all at once, scientists said.
The regions lure such a variety of wildlife because they can accommodate a wide range of pelagic tastes, scientists speculate.
Large eddies common to hot spots -- such as the whirlpools swirling around the Gulf Stream off Florida -- suck up nutrients from deeper layers, fertilizing the ocean, and "round up" tiny crustaceans, small fish and other zooplankton, offering an impressive menu.
"These areas may support very species-rich food webs, from the top predators, to the tiniest animals," Worm said.
Many of the predators that gather at the hot spots, including tuna, sharks, billfish and sea turtles, are susceptible to overfishing -- either as target catch or bycatch -- the investigators note. Although terrestrial conservation efforts have focused on identifying and preserving concentrations of vulnerable land species, little has been known about similar congregating spots for marine organisms, they point out.
The research indicates human activity might be dooming ocean's residents to the same fate that befell large mammals, 75 percent to 80 percent of which went extinct a few centuries after man's arrival in North and South America and Australia, Myers said.
In their earlier report, in the May 15 issue of the British journal Nature, Myers and Worm presented the results of a global survey spanning nearly half a century, which revealed a 90-percent dive in the number of large ocean fish, from tuna to cod, since commercial fishing vessels took to the high seas. Some industry scientists took exception to the sobering statistics, conceding a problem of overfishing exists in certain unregulated corners of the world but minimizing its magnitude.
In their new study, the team used computer simulations to predict that protecting the havens of oceanic life from fishing would yield greater benefits for threatened species than enacting conservation measures in any other marine area.
"The significance is that we now have a recipe for solving the huge problems we are facing with respect to open-ocean overfishing; protect the key areas, and reduce fishing pressure at the same time," Worm said. "Importantly, we can do this with existing, national legislation."
Extending existing protected areas to cover the open-ocean could preserve the hot spots, which lie close to or within closed areas off Florida where juvenile swordfish are safeguarded, Hawaiian coral reefs and Australia's Great Barrier Reef marine park.
Because of their proximity to key recreational centers, the hot spots could serve as tourist attractions if turned into marine parks. "They could become a marine Yellowstone," Worm envisioned. "In New Zealand, for example, the Leigh Marine Reserve attracts 200,000-plus tourists every year. "
The scientists urged the United States to take a lead in setting up open-ocean preserves, a step that could pave the way for the establishment of international reserves comprising national and international waters.
"If you want to protect the 'lions and tigers of the sea' -- the large threatened predators -- you have to duplicate what you did on land: reduce hunting pressure and establish large protected areas (such as national parks)," Worm said. "If you choose such protected areas, it is wise to choose those that concentrate as many threatened species as possible in a small area."
Protecting the hot spots not only would have immediate benefits for threatened species, but also might help rebuild depleted target stocks, such as swordfish, the researchers argue.
They already have secured a Congressional ear or two, with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., calling a hearing in response to the Nature report.
"I think there is a general concern about the state of the ocean worldwide, and an enormous interest in doing something soon," Myers said.
The researchers recently briefed the House Oceans Caucus on the worldwide decline of predatory fish and the collapse of shark populations in East Coast waters, and they proposed hot spot protection as a policy option to halt and reverse the trends.
"The most important thing about this hot-spot paper is that it contributes to the growing literature that shows that there is a strong scientific basis for ... concern," said Dayton, who detailed the plight of the fish and offered his own solutions in a 2002 report for the Pew Oceans Commission, an independent group charged with assessing the condition of America's oceans and marine resources, and setting priorities to restore and protect them.
"The issue is not whether the large fish have lost 91 percent or 84 percent of their original reproductive stock. The issue is that almost all of these large animals are massively depleted, and it is time for the public to wake up and deal with it," he declared.
Worm, who already knows of two such efforts, expects the paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, to inspire other scientists to study -- and discover -- hotspots in other regions. On the political front, he hopes marine oceanic reserves can be established within five years.
"The situation is serious," Dayton concluded, "but there is still hope, and this paper shows some means of recovering our heritage."
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Research Lab Falsified Tests on Toxins, Reports Say
September 6, 2003
The New York Times
By STACEY STOWE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/nyregion/06LAB.html
HARTFORD, Sept. 5 - Employees of an environmental research laboratory at the University of Connecticut routinely fabricated test results for soil, water and air samples they analyzed for private, state and federal agencies, according to state and university reports released this week.
The data were falsified in one of several laboratories at the Environmental Research Institute, in Mansfield Depot near the main university campus at Storrs. It is not yet known how or to what extent results were falsified, leaving open the question of whether public policy developed by the State Department of Environmental Protection in response to the data was compromised. State environmental officials said they were confident that the results would not affect public health or pose environmental danger because such data would be subject to more than one analysis.
The reports, released on Thursday by the university and the attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, were the subject of an article today in The Hartford Courant. The reports characterize the laboratory as a place where sound scientific research and practices were often abandoned for convenience. For example, the university report describes Jianshi Kang, the laboratory manager, changing the results for a toxic compound in air, soil or water samples from unacceptable to acceptable levels.
"Artificially manipulating scientific data has become a routine practice of Dr. Kang to avoid `extra work,' " the report said. Dr. Kang, who the report said admitted to marginally falsifying data, retired on June 1, said Karen Grava, a university spokeswoman. His retirement came after an investigation found evidence of scientific misconduct at the lab, she said. Mr. Kang did not return calls for comment.
A preliminary list released by the Department of Environmental Protection cites more than 60 research projects done by the lab, which specializes in volatile organic substances, for public agencies and private companies, including tests for airborne toxins and soil contamination from underground storage tanks.
"Our task is to identify specific studies impacted by the manipulated data, data that we may have used to develop public policy," said Jane Stahl, deputy commissioner for the state environmental agency. John Millet, a spokesman for the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which also hired the laboratory, said that he was unfamiliar with the reports' findings, but that "falsification of data is acted upon aggressively by the agency."
One report, released by the office of the Connecticut attorney general, said the director of the laboratory, George Hoag, a tenured university professor, devoted his time to a private consulting business, leaving the day-to-day operations of the laboratory to three subordinates. In December, two of them were charged with larceny after the university police discovered a cash-filled cabinet in the laboratory. The police said the men had been collecting rent from exchange students whose housing was already provided by the university. The report said the staff, using donations solicited in the name of scientific research, had also created a $173,000 "slush fund" for travel.
The investigations began after a whistle-blower described various misdeeds at the laboratory to the university, Ms. Grava said.
Mr. Hoag, the laboratory director, was found to have "abandoned his duties, leaving the laboratory in the care of staff members while he earned more than $1.3 million for 5,523 hours of private consulting work from 1999 to 2002," according to the attorney general's report.
The attorney general said criminal charges are under consideration.
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22 million Americans are addicts
September 06, 2003
By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030906-120039-1281r.htm
Around 22 million Americans were addicted to alcohol or drugs last year, according to a federal survey designed to capture more accurate data about substance abuse.
More than 9 percent of the population aged 12 and older has a serious substance-abuse problem, Charles G. Curie, administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), said at a press conference yesterday.
The most common addiction - with 14.9 million people - was alcohol. Another 3.9 million people were addicted to illegal drugs and the remainder were addicted to both drugs and alcohol, SAMHSA said in its new National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
The survey collected data from 68,126 persons in their homes and some who live in homeless shelters. The new findings are more accurate than the old "household survey" on drugs owing to better collection techniques, quality control and incentive payments to respondents, Mr. Curie said.
In most categories, he said, the new survey sets a baseline and cannot be compared to data from previous surveys. However, in two areas - first-time use and lifetime use - trends can be identified.
For instance, around 2.6 million people tried marijuana for the first time in 2001, which is comparable to the number of new users each year since 1996. First-time cocaine users numbered 1.5 million in 2001, which is about the same since 1999.
As of 2002, around 21 percent of teens and 54 percent of young people aged 18 to 25 said they had used marijuana at least once. This is also about the same as 2000 and 2001 data.
Marijuana remains the most commonly used illegal drug, with 14.6 million users, the survey found. There were also 2 million people who used cocaine and 1.2 million who used hallucinogens, including the club drug Ecstasy.
Of those people with a certifiable drug or alcohol addiction, around 3.5 million received treatment between 2001 and 2002.
However, many addicts didn't receive treatment, either because they didn't believe they needed treatment or because treatment was unavailable. Neither of these scenarios is acceptable, federal officials said.
Americans need a better understanding of the addictive nature of drugs and alcohol, and family and friends shouldn't always presume their loved ones are "all right," said John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Getting people into treatment can save lives, he said.
He and other officials urged Congress to allocate $600 million to the administration's "Access to Recovery Initiative," which would open treatment slots to 300,000 people.
"There is no other medical condition for which we would tolerate such huge numbers unable to obtain the treatment they need," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said.
Earlier this week, another survey of teens showed that drug use has persisted at a rate of around 24 percent for the last five years.
"The question is how much teen-age drug use is acceptable to the nation," said Thomas J. Gleaton, author of the Pride Survey, which collected data on 14,182 students in grades 6 to 12. "If one in four teens using drugs is acceptable, we have done well in controlling drugs over the past decade," he said. If not, "we need stronger action to truly dent teen problems."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Red Cross: Suu Kyi Not on Hunger Strike
By AYE AYE WIN
Associated Press Writer
Sep 6, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MYANMAR_SUU_KYI?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Detained Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is not on a hunger strike as reported by the United States, a Red Cross spokesman said Saturday after group officials visited the Nobel laureate.
The officials met with Suu Kyi for about an hour, said Jean Pascal Moret, a communications officer at the International Committee of the Red Cross mission in Yangon.
"She is well and not on hunger strike," he said, declining to say where Suu Kyi was being held.
A State Department spokesman said last week the agency received "credible reporting from our embassy" that Suu Kyi was on a hunger strike to protest her detention by the country's military regime.
Spokesman Richard Boucher would not elaborate on the sourcing of the report about Suu Kyi but said the United States was "deeply concerned for her safety and her well-being." Latest News Red Cross: Suu Kyi Not on Hunger Strike
Myanmar had dismissed the report as "groundless" and "quite odd," and denied that Suu Kyi was refusing food.
Suu Kyi, who was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, was arrested May 30 along with a group of her supporters while on a political tour of northern Myanmar.
The government of Myanmar, also known as Burma, refuses to say where she is being held or how long she will be in detention.
Moret said a doctor did not accompany the two Red Cross officials because one was not requested. He added that Suu Kyi is aware of the reports she was on a hunger strike.
Myanmar's military seized power in 1988 after crushing a pro-democracy uprising. It held elections in 1990 but annulled the results after Suu Kyi's party won.
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Court overrules campus speech code
September 06, 2003
By Lou Marano
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030905-035025-6439r.htm
WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 (UPI) -- A federal court has ordered the president of a state university not to enforce provisions of what the court termed the school's "speech code" on the grounds that its provisions inhibit free expression in ways that do not withstand First Amendment scrutiny.
On Thursday Judge John E. Jones III, of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, enjoined Shippensburg University President Anthony F. Ceddia from enforcing the code's "overbroad" prohibitions against "acts of intolerance," "subordination," speech that "provokes" or "intimidates," and the requirement that everyone on campus must "mirror" the administration's views on "social justice" and "cultural diversity."
Jones let stand two sentences the court found to be "aspirational" rather than operational, and thus not binding on the students. He also denied the university's motion to dismiss the case, allowing it to proceed to trial.
Jones cited Justice Robert Jackson's opinion in the landmark 1943 case of West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, which upheld the right of Jehovah's Witnesses schoolchildren not to salute the U.S. flag during World War II:
"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what will be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."
On April 22 Walter A. Bair, who is entering his senior year at Shippensburg, and Ellen Wray, a recent graduate, challenged the constitutionality of the university's speech policies. Wray said she had been reluctant to discuss certain issues, and both plaintiffs said they were members of student organizations whose tenets might be sanctionable under the code.
The suit was brought by David A. French and William Adair Bonner, attorneys in the Legal Network of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a Philadelphia-based campus watchdog group founded in 1999 by University of Pennsylvania historian Alan Charles Kors and Boston civil rights lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate.
"This is a great victory and a vital step in the struggle against the scandal of unconstitutional campus censorship at public colleges and universities," said Thor L. Halvorssen, FIRE's chief executive officer. "FIRE will now seek to make this preliminary injunction permanent."
The court's ruling is not final. Ceddia may appeal Jones' decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Pennsyalvania and several surrounding states.
"We are confident that our First Amendment position will survive an appeal," said Silverglate, "because the Third Circuit has been a national leader in protecting First Amendment rights from efforts to censor speech in the interests of perceived ideological correctness.
"The fundamentally important message that Judge Jones is sending to the administrators of Shippensburg and, by implication, to other administrators of public universities around the country is that student speech may not be banned because the listener takes offense at what is said or because student speakers wander from an official line," Silverglate said.
--------
"Aftermath: Unanswered Questions From 911"
http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/calendar.cfm?issue=09-05-03
September 9, 2003:
"Aftermath: Unanswered Questions From 911"
A film produced by the Depleted Uranium Education Project,
at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, Community Room,
2090 Kittredge.
http://www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil
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Protests Thwart Security Rules in Hong Kong
September 6, 2003
The New York Times
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/06/international/asia/06HONG.html
HONG KONG, Sept. 5 - Hong Kong's chief executive, bowing to public pressure, announced today that he was withdrawing internal-security legislation that had provoked huge protests in July. The retreat by Tung Chee-hwa, the chief executive, is a startling setback for Beijing, which rarely yields to popular demand. Advertisement
Beijing had insisted for much of the last year that Hong Kong pass stringent security laws as soon as possible. Mr. Tung mounted a campaign to persuade the public that the bill's opponents were unpatriotic people who disliked China and, in the words of Qian Qichen, until recently China's deputy prime minister, had "devils in their hearts."
But when 500,000 people, nearly a 10th of the population, turned up to march against the legislation on July 1, in China's biggest protest since the Tiananmen Square rallies in 1989, Beijing's reaction was mostly silence. In the weeks since then, the official reaction has been unexpectedly pragmatic, leading some experts to suggest that China's new president, Hu Jintao, and his top aides may be somewhat less quick to crack down on dissent than their predecessors were.
"The voices of moderation have been pretty consistently in the ascendancy," said William Overholt, an expert on Hong Kong and China at the RAND Corporation, a research and policy institute in Santa Monica, Calif.
Hong Kong has preserved its economic system and many of its laws since Britain handed it over to China in 1997. Many here described the security legislation with its broad police powers, vaguely worded definitions of crimes and long prison sentences as the true transfer to Chinese rule.
Hong Kong's protesters differed from the Tiananmen Square protesters in significant ways. The marchers here were mostly seeking to preserve the status quo, not change it. They also had the discipline to hold three mass rallies over two weeks and then stop to wait for Mr. Tung's response instead of demonstrating continuously, as happened in 1989.
Mr. Tung began to retreat on July 7 when he dropped his original goal of winning passage for his security bill on July 9. He said today that while he still believed legislation was needed here to protect China's national security, he would not introduce a new bill until a clear public consensus supported the legislation.
Mr. Tung today canceled the government's plans to issue a "consultation document" that would have asked the public what if any amendments the bill should include.
Lawmakers said the bill's withdrawal made it unlikely that any security bill could be enacted before next summer's Legislative Council elections. Pro-government parties feared that their support for the security bill could cost them seats in those elections if the bill remained the subject of controversy until then.
The main pro-Beijing party here, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, called on Aug. 21 for Mr. Tung to postpone the security bill until after those elections. It welcomed Mr. Tung's postponement today. "With this move I think the people in Hong Kong will concentrate more on the economy, and it will make the election not that politicized," said Ma Lik, the secretary general of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong.
Democracy advocates here were pleased by Mr. Tung's decision but suspicious of his long-term plans. Mr. Tung had tried over the past year to push the legislation through using a "fast track" process that limited opportunities for amendments. Asked repeatedly during a news conference today whether he would use the same process if the legislation were re-introduced later, Mr. Tung declined to answer.
Yeung Sum, the chairman of the Democratic Party, the main opposition party here, said the government might try to obtain the re-election of a pro-government majority in the Legislative Council next summer and then quickly push the legislation through in the next session.
As late as mid-August, state-controlled newspapers in China were still calling for passage of the security bill. But after Chinese intelligence and security agencies sent representatives here in late July and early August to interview community leaders, the tone of remarks from Chinese officials began to change, quickly followed by changes in the official news organizations. The only reaction today from Beijing to Mr. Tung's announcement was a terse statement by the New China News Agency reporting the bill's withdrawal.
Beijing has made a series of economic concessions to Hong Kong this summer in an effort to allay public anger, including some concessions that have angered officials in other Chinese cities, notably Shanghai. Today's decision eases the pressure on Beijing to offer yet more concessions to Hong Kong in order to buy support for the security legislation.
Beijing and Hong Kong concluded a free-trade agreement on June 29, partly in an unsuccessful bid to discourage attendance at a march against the security legislation on July 1. But the rally still attracted about 500,000.
Since then, Beijing has relaxed some of its remaining restrictions on visits here by mainland citizens. This has produced a flood of tourism that is lifting retail sales and even reviving the moribund property market, as affluent mainlanders seek a safe place to invest.
Beijing and Hong Kong also agreed in July that Hong Kong would be the first city where offshore banking would be allowed for China's currency. But that arrangement provoked protests by municipal officials in Shanghai, which has considerable influence because it is the hometown of many top Communist officials and reportedly hopes someday to become a financial center to rival Hong Kong. Mr. Tung said today that while Hong Kong would still be the first city to have offshore banking in China's currency, "the time is not ripe yet" for offshore banking anywhere.
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