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NUCLEAR
North Korea opposes discussing nuclear crisis during APEC
US to make Thailand major non-NATO security ally
Iran Opens Talks on Nuclear Inspections
Khatami Hints Iran May Stop Uranium Enrichment
How North Korea Got the Bomb
Bush Taking New Approach on Negotiations With North Korea
Bush Says He's Open to Security Assurances for North Korea
Bush Taking New Approach on Negotiations With North Korea
U.S. Controls Hamper Foreign Role in Missile Defense
Re: Radiation Monitoring....shouldn't we?
Cadmium suspected in 10 deaths
Panel Raises New Concerns About Yucca Mountain
Bush's Popularity With Older Voters Is Seen as Slipping
MILITARY
New Afghan Constitution Juggles Koran and Democracy
Bush launches state visit to Thailand
Over 5,000 ROK Soldiers Likely to Head to Iraq
Scandinavian truce monitors scuttle navy bid: report
Companies Get Few Days to Offer Bids on Iraq Work
2 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq Ambush
Iraq Resistance Remains Threat to U.S. Forces
State Dept. Study Foresaw Trouble Now Plaguing Iraq
Arrest of Iraqi Cleric Sparks Confrontations With Shiites
Israeli Forces Kill 3 Palestinians in Gaza Strip
3 Israeli Soldiers Reported Killed in West Bank Shooting
Bolivia's New Leader Takes Over a Chaotic and Angry Nation
How the old world rejected the new
Pacific Rim to Step Up Anti - Terror Fight
Marine reservists charged in POW death
Marines Press Charges Against 8 Over the Death of an Iraqi Prisoner
Eight Marine Reservists Face Charges in POWs' Treatment
Forgotten Refugees Are Living 'Like Bugs'
Russian Rocket Heads to Space Station With 3 Aboard
A New Crew Heads For the Space Station
Reduction in U.S. Troops Eyed for '04
Lawyer Seeks Papers on 'Friendly Fire'
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Scientist Says FBI Tricked Him
30 Plague Vials Put Career on Line
THE INNOCENTS
Bin Laden urges terror blitz
Full text of message to Americans
New Tape Promises Attacks On U.S. Voice Purported To Be Bin Laden's
Bush rejects Guantanamo Bay torture claims
ENERGY AND OTHER
Lawmakers Weigh Credit for Hybrid Cars
The New Toxic-Site Cleanup Agent: A Bacterium That Gobbles Up Poison
ACTIVISTS
Protestors detained in Turkey demos against Iraq deployment
UK: Parade for Bush on Mall canceled
Antiwar Activists To Revisit District
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- asia
North Korea opposes discussing nuclear crisis during APEC
SEOUL (AFP)
Oct 19, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031019082622.ft30ftnr.html
North Korea on Sunday opposed any discussion of the ongoing crisis over its nuclear ambitions during the APEC summit, which opens in Thailand this week.
Rodong Sinmun, the North's ruling Workers Party newspaper, lashed out at Japan's push for a statement on the nuclear issue at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to put pressure on Pyongyang.
"The nuclear issue of the Korean peninsula is a matter to be settled between the DPRK (North Korea) and the US," Rodong said in a commentary monitored here.
"The APEC summit meeting is not a venue of debate on the nuclear issue and, furthermore, Japan is not in a position to poke its nose into the issue."
The Rodong commentary followed comments by Japanese officials from Bangkok, where the annual APEC summit opens from October 20-21, that Pacific Rim leaders would negotiate a separate joint statement urging North Korea to disarm.
Japan's Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said Friday in Bangkok that she wanted APEC leaders to send new message to Pyongyang this year "That we want to solve the matter peacefully, with no nuclear weapons on the (Korean) peninsula, and resolve other issues."
But Rodong said that by pushing for the statement Japan was seeking only to put itself more in the favor of the United States and have a say in the handling of the nuclear crisis.
The previous APEC forum in Mexico last year urged Pyongyang to "honor its commitment to give up nuclear weapons."
The two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States met in late August in Beijing to try and resolve the stand-off over North Korea's nuclear weapons drive.
The talks ended inconclusively with no date set for a next round.
On Saturday, North Korea repeated its intention to "prove" its status with regards to nuclear weapons, hinting at conducting a nuclear test.
Pyongyang says it will not disarm until Washington commits to a legally binding non-aggression pact.
The nuclear crisis erupted in October last year when Washington said Pyongyang admitted to having run a clandestine uranium-enrichment program in violation of a nuclear safeguard agreement.
-------- depleted uranium
US to make Thailand major non-NATO security ally
BANGKOK (AFP)
Oct 19, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031019084938.cdmy0lz3.html
The United States is to make war-on-terror partner Thailand a major non-NATO ally, a move that will boost security cooperation between the two countries, US President George W. Bush said Sunday.
"I told the prime minister (Thaksin Shinawatra) that this country is willing to grant major non-NATO ally status to Thailand, which is a very important recognition of your friendship and your strong support," Bush told reporters at the beginning of a state visit to Thailand.
During a speech to members of the Thai military, Bush said he was "confident in the strength of our alliance and I have acted to designate Thailand a major non-NATO ally of the United States".
Bush is in Thailand ahead of a two-day summit of 21 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders which he will attend Monday with the likes of China's Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Thaksin hailed the announcement of greater defense cooperation with the world's lone superpower.
"If we need any weapons assistance, we will be given priority by the United States," Thaksin said.
Thailand is joining an exclusive club of countries that enjoy a privileged security relationship with the United States.
Its members, which include Japan, Australia, Israel, Egypt, South Korea, Argentina, New Zealand and the Philippines, are granted significant benefits in the area of foreign aid and defense cooperation.
Bush bestowed the status on Manila on October 6 ahead of his eight-hour official visit there Saturday.
Major non-NATO allies are eligible for priority delivery of defense materiel and the purchase, for instance, of depleted uranium anti-tank rounds.
They can stockpile US military hardware, participate in defense research and development programs, and benefit from a US government loan guarantee program, which backs up loans issued by private banks to finance arms exports.
However, the designation does not afford them the same mutual defense guarantees enjoyed by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Thailand has steadily strengthened its ties to Washington since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, and this year after prolonged domestic debate committed to sending troops to Iraq.
Nearly 500 Thai troops departed late last month for the Middle East nation, where they are participating in humanitarian efforts to rebuild Iraq under a Polish-led multinational brigade.
Bush also expressed his thanks to Thailand's security authorities for arresting top Southeast Asian terror suspect Hambali in central Thailand in August.
Thailand annually plays host to the largest US war exercises in Asia.
The so-called Cobra Gold maneuvers took place during two weeks in May, with the participation of some 13,000 army, navy and air force troops from the United States, Thailand and Singapore.
-------- iran
Iran Opens Talks on Nuclear Inspections
October 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Under pressure to meet a U.N. deadline, Iran began detailed negotiations Saturday on allowing U.N. inspectors unfettered access to its nuclear facilities.
The talks with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency ``may take several days, (but) I'm optimistic that (we) will reach an agreement,'' Iran's representative to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, told The Associated Press.
The IAEA has set a deadline of Oct. 31 for Iran to prove it has no secret program for producing nuclear weapons. If the agency finds that Iran has failed to respond satisfactorily, it is expected to refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council, which could lead to the imposition of sanctions.
The United States strongly suspects Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program. Iran insists its nuclear facilities are only for generating electricity.
The talks came after IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei met Iranian officials on Thursday to press Tehran on the deadline, saying the agency still has ``outstanding issues'' to resolve over Iran's nuclear program.
ElBaradei said after his meetings that Iran promised greater access for IAEA inspectors. He said inspectors were allowed to visit one military site and that there could be expanded reviews of both military and civilian facilities in the future.
The IAEA has urged Iran for months to sign the additional protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that would give IAEA inspectors access to any site they deem fit without notice.
Under Iran's existing agreement to the NPT, the country is not required to allow IAEA inspectors to visit non-nuclear sites, including military installations.
Two days of talks with IAEA legal experts ended Sunday, Tehran radio reported.
Iran reiterated that the protocols should not interfere with Iran's national sovereignty and its state secrets, Salehi said, according to Tehran radio. The IAEA legal team explained the protocol and will be invited for more discussions if necessary, he said.
In Washington this week, a U.S. State Department spokesman said America wants Iran to comply with the IAEA's resolution setting the Oct. 31 deadline ``in its entirety.''
The head of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy committee, Mohsen Mirdamadi, told the AP on Thursday that ``Iran's case should not go before the Security Council.''
``If allowing inspections of military sites resolves this problem,'' Mirdamadi said, ``then we should do it.''
Iranian hard-liners, however, have urged the government to stand firm against world pressure over the nuclear program and even to withdraw from the nonproliferation treaty.
--------
Khatami Hints Iran May Stop Uranium Enrichment
October 19, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's President Mohammad Khatami indicated on Sunday Tehran may halt uranium enrichment, which some Western governments say could be used to make atomic bombs, if it is allowed to keep its civilian atomic energy program.
Asked by reporters if Iran was prepared to stop enriching uranium as the United States and several European countries have demanded, Khatami said: ``We will do whatever is necessary to solve the problems and in return we're expecting our rights to be preserved which is (the right) to have nuclear technology.''
It was the first indication from a top Iranian official that Iran could mothball uranium enrichment facilities which it began building in 1985.
Iranian officials had previously insisted they had every right to continue enriching uranium to use in nuclear reactors.
Asked if Iran was prepared to meet the demands for tougher inspections and a halt to uranium enrichment, Khatami said:
``We will do what is expedient for society and the nation. We have done our best for talks and exchanging views and we hope it will produce a result.''
Iranian officials have said the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany will visit Tehran this week to discuss a proposal to resolve Iran's nuclear standoff before a looming October 31 U.N. deadline for Tehran to prove it has no atomic arms ambitions.
The three countries wrote to Tehran a few weeks ago offering Iran the prospect of sharing technology if it stops its nuclear fuel enrichment program and accepts tougher inspections of its nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said on Sunday that Iran has invited the three ministers to visit Tehran for talks on the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would allow snap inspections of its nuclear sites.
``Given that the German, French and British foreign ministers had in a letter voiced willingness to cooperate with Iran, we proposed initiating a constructive dialogue with Europe,'' the official IRNA news agency quoted Asefi as saying.
Asefi said the exact date for the ministers' visit had not yet been set but added that ``If things go well, the date for the visit of the ministers will be very close.''
FORCE MIGHT BE NEEDED
Last year, President Bush named Iran as a member of the ``axis of evil'' along with Iraq and North Korea. Bush went to war with Iraq over weapons of mass destruction earlier this year and is in a diplomatic standoff with North Korea over its weapons programs.
He made Iran a top post-Iraq priority, urging the international community to make clear ``we will not tolerate'' construction of a nuclear weapon by Iran.
The European Union agreed that force might be needed if diplomacy failed and joined Washington in demanding Tehran accept tougher inspections by the IAEA.
Khatami said on Friday his country had no plans to build nuclear weapons and predicted that it would reach an agreement on its nuclear program with the U.N. atomic watchdog.
Iran and the IAEA began formal talks on tougher inspections on Saturday.
``The IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has given us the necessary assurances that neither the text of the Additional Protocol nor its implementation will cause any worries for Iran,'' Asefi said.
U.N. inspectors have found enriched uranium, which can be used to make atomic weapons, at two Iranian facilities this year. Iran blames this on contamination from machinery it bought abroad on the black market.
-------- korea
How North Korea Got the Bomb
After 50 years of research, and much outside scientific help, Pyongyang may be close to detonating a nuke
By George Wehrfritz and Richard Wolffe
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL
October 19, 2003
http://www.msnbc.com/news/982249.asp
Oct. 27 issue - Few North Koreans have suffered more directly for Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions than Kimchaek University's class of '62. Shortly before graduation day, the campus began buzzing with news that atomic scientists were needed for a new research lab being built for the "Great Leader," Kim Il Sung. "Our professors really pushed the need for nuclear development," recalls one class member who escaped the country two years ago and recently told NEWSWEEK his story. "The rumor circulating among students was that those of us sent there wouldn't have long to live."
THE DEFECTOR CAN'T be sure how many of his friends died young. He was lucky enough to be assigned elsewhere after college. As years passed, though, he kept running into former classmates who were wasting away from radiation sickness. "It was exactly what we feared," the defector says. "Many of them lost their eyebrows. Some of them had constant nosebleeds. They looked so weak it was hard to even face them." He blames the government's disregard for human lives: "The thinking was, 'If one scientist falls, there will always be others to take his place'." That merciless logic ravaged not only a generation of North Korean physicists but the entire country, consuming billions of dollars that might otherwise have built a functioning economy capable of feeding its citizens. The program itself, however, succeeded: by most accounts, Kim's son and successor, "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, is only a button's click away from detonating a nuclear weapon.
Kim's bomb is one of the most urgent problems facing the Bush administration-and Pyongyang clearly likes the notoriety. "There has been debate recently in the international community on whether [North Korea] has a nuclear deterrent," the regime warned last week, just before President George W. Bush set off on his six-day trip to Asia. "When the time comes, we will take action to physically display [our] nuclear deterrent. At that point, such a debate will no longer be necessary." But the threat goes far beyond North Korea's crude efforts to extort aid and concessions from its neighbors and the Americans. The success of Kim's nuclear program is proof that even the most abject poverty, backwardness and isolation cannot stop a truly determined regime from building a bomb. "If they squeeze their economy hard enough," says Daniel Pinkston, a proliferation specialist at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, "any country with a population of 20 to 25 million will have the core group of people who can do it."
How did Pyongyang get the bomb? In reply to that question, a senior South Korean military official pulls a cell phone from his shirt pocket. "This is a metaphor for North Korea's program," he says. "A few parts from here, a battery from there, and it could work even if the antenna malfunctions." Starting in the 1950s, the North's scientists are said to have gleaned vital components, raw material and information from more than a dozen countries on four continents. They even managed to swipe useful data from the files of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. And yet hardly anyone in the world was ever willing to trust the regime with nuclear weapons-not even the Great Leader's best friends in Moscow and Beijing.
All the same, Western intelligence experts are convinced that Pyongyang is not bluffing. On Oct. 3, the regime announced that it had finished turning its stock of 8,017 uranium fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium, enough to build as many as six bombs. There's no doubt that the North has been extracting bomb fuel. In June, strategically placed sensors began detecting traces of the telltale isotope krypton-85, a byproduct of the extraction process, in North Korea's air. The only question is whether the job is done: national-security experts in Seoul believe that Pyongyang has used special "carbon bed" filters to cut its krypton emissions-and hence keep the West guessing about how much fissile material it has.
All that's left to do is assemble the pieces. And perhaps to load them aboard a ballistic missile or a less conventional delivery system, like a shipping container or minisub. Maybe even sell one to terrorists, if the price is right. "North Korea has the capability of producing three to five basic-level nuclear bombs at this moment," says Kim Tae Hyo of the South Korean government's Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security. "They already have a transportation mechanism to carry those bombs over to Honolulu and Alaska." That would be the Taepodong I missile, with a 2,500-kilometer range.
There are hints that the regime might actually be understating its capabilities. The North reportedly conducted high-intensity explosive tests in the late 1990s-the meticulously calibrated kind of detonations that are required to set off an atomic bomb. "These are the tests you would need to conduct to know that you had a working system," says one Western diplomat in Seoul. Even before the Northerners began reprocessing their spent fuel rods about six months ago, they were believed to have the makings of at least one bomb. "The considered judgment was that they certainly extracted enough material for one or two and probably three or four weapons," the diplomat says. "If you straight-line out the developments over a period of time, by now they should have been able to develop basic working nuclear devices." It sounds plausible when you consider the pace of other developing nations' nuclear programs-as in Pakistan, which appears to have shared nuclear expertise with North Korea.
The origins of Pyongyang's nuclear program are a study in unintended consequences. The first push came not from China or the Soviet Union but from the Japanese Empire. Back when the peninsula was a colonial possession, many of its brightest young scientists studied in Japan. They would become the core of North Korea's scientific elite in the 1950s, when basic nuclear research started. The late scientist and inventor Lee Sung Ki, called the "first father" of North Korea's nuclear program, earned a degree in chemical engineering at Kyoto Imperial University.
After World War II, Japan left behind uranium mining and milling operations in the mountains of northern Korea-the remains of its own secret nuclear program. The Koreans quickly put that equipment to use, exporting uranium to the Soviet Union. "In a way, it was the export of uranium that financed the military buildup that allowed the North to invade the South in 1950," says former Russian diplomat Alexandre Y. Mansourov, a North Korea specialist at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. "That's how North Korea paid for the weapons and grain they got [leading up to the Korean War]."
America inadvertently gave Pyongyang the next boost. In Seoul, the fledgling government of Syngman Rhee undertook a U.S.-designed plan to reorganize the South's education system. Opponents denounced the move as a ploy to get rid of leftist professors, and they warned it would only weaken the country's already feeble science curriculum. Yet the plan went ahead, and Seoul National University alone lost 38 scientists and engineers-among them the eventual brains of North Korea's nuclear-power program.
The best jobs most of those professors could find were miserable instructorships at small vocational schools. Pyongyang sent recruiters to talk to them. The pitch wasn't at all ideological, says Kim Geun Bae, an intellectual historian at Chonbuk University in Chonju. Instead, the recruiters promised only that the North would fund the sciences. "By the time the Korean War ended," Kim says, "about 80 scientists, or roughly 40 percent of all science graduates in the South, had defected to the North."
As long as they avoided trouble with the North's totalitarian government, the professors had a world of new scientific opportunities. In 1956, Moscow invited them to the newly established United Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna. In all, some 250 scientists from the North worked and studied there, according to former Izvestiya journalist Aleksandr Zhebin. Later, back in North Korea, a team of Soviet experts helped the cadre of Korean scientists build an experimental 2-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon that went online in 1965 and jump-started North Korea's nuclear research.
The Russians called it Object 9559 (the Soviets' code number on all technical-aid contracts with Pyongyang). The Koreans called it the Furniture Factory-and over time Yongbyon became the heart of a sprawling nuclear industry linking uranium mines with processing mills, fuel-fabrication facilities and a reprocessing plant capable of extracting weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods. Much of the machinery seems to have been re-engineered by Korean scientists working from Soviet prototypes. "It's very difficult to draw a dividing line between the peaceful and nonpeaceful use of atomic energy," Yuri Federov, deputy director of the Moscow-based Institute for Applied International Research told NEWSWEEK. "But basically the knowledge and expertise in the nuclear field was provided by the Soviets."
Moscow still refused to give Pyongyang a turnkey nuclear program-what's needed to design a plant from scratch-let alone the specific expertise needed to build a bomb. In fact, geopolitics began pushing the two communist countries apart in the 1970s. After India's undeclared nuclear test in 1974, the United States and Soviet Union co-sponsored a global nonproliferation treaty. Kim Il Sung's brutal purge of pro-Moscow factions from the Korean Workers' Party put a further strain on relations. North Korea stopped inviting Soviet scientists to participate in its nuclear projects, preferring to acquire expertise on its own through its philosophy of juche (self-reliance). The North twice expanded the capacity of the Yongbyon reactor in the 1970s. In the 1980s North Korea added a 5-megawatt graphite reactor-in effect, a bomb-fuel factory-based on an old British model. In 1987 Kim Il Sung called for the "fast pursuit of nuclear energy," describing the industry as "futuristic and communist."
The North's program owes much to the work of several North Korean diplomats, including Choi Hak Geun. Posted to IAEA's Vienna headquarters from 1974 to 1978, he scoured the agency's library and other open-source material for nuclear know-how. South Korea didn't discover his activities until the early 1980s. "I was shocked to see what the IAEA gave the North," a senior South Korean scientist told NEWSWEEK. "But then again, it was a time when the agency's primary goal was to spread nuclear technology and not to regulate it."
Pyongyang's most serious push for the bomb began roughly a decade ago-not long after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The aid shipments and the lavish trade subsidies from the Soviet Union and its satellites had stopped flowing. Old security guarantees were gone, too, so North Korea launched new initiatives to bolster its own capabilities. One of these focused on ballistic missiles-both for defense and export-while another radically expanded production of chemical and biological weapons.
Pyongyang had by then shifted its attention from building power plants to developing the bomb. Besides developing plutonium weapons that relied on nuclear power plants for fuel, Korean scientists also sought to build weapons using highly enriched uranium. The latter required reprocessing technologies that breached the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which the North had signed in 1985. As the regime's intentions became increasingly hard to ignore, Russia and China distanced themselves even further from their former comrades in Pyongyang.
Instead, the North found a new partner-Pakistan. Indian intelligence sources say contacts between the two countries began after Benazir Bhutto became prime minister in 1988. None other than the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, reached out to Pyongyang in 1993, according to a Western diplomatic source in Islamabad. The Pakistani physicist needed a delivery system for the arsenal he was creating, and the North Koreans had just what he was looking for. Kim Jong Il, who took command of the North after his father's death, agreed to sell Khan the plans and parts to build a Pakistani version of the Taepodong nuclear-capable ballistic missile. In return, says the diplomat, North Korea asked for Pakistan's centrifuge technology for enriching uranium.
Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, has vehemently denied any such deals. "I guarantee 400 percent that nothing has taken place between us and North Korea," he said in January. "No transfer of nuclear technology has taken place in the past and [it] will not happen in the future."
Khan refuses to talk about any aspect of Pakistan's nuclear program, but he has reportedly made 13 trips to North Korea since his first visit. In addition to supplying plans for Pakistani-style centrifuges (hundreds of -which are needed to extract enough fissile material for a single nuclear device), he is said to have provided the North Koreans with invaluable information on how to buy parts for specialized nuclear equipment. "You can search the world, spending lots of money, and still be unsuccessful," says Pakistani physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy. "So someone who has been actively engaged in buying the necessary electronics, hardware, computer codes, switches and magnets is worth his weight in gold."
The alleged exchanges continued in defiance of the 1994 Agreed Framework signed by Pyongyang and the Clinton administration. That accord stipulated that in exchange for the North's promise to end its nuclear-weapons program, the Americans would help Pyongyang build two 1,000-megawatt reactors and provide North Korea with 500,000 tons of fuel oil annually until 2003, when the reactors were supposed to be finished. The pact crumbled in late 2002 after U.S. intelligence discovered the North's secret enrichment program. Bush administration officials say Pyongyang got caught buying centrifuge secrets from Pakistan and spun-aluminum tubes from Russia. Confronted with the charge, Pyongyang expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors, withdrew from the NPT and announced plans to begin turning fuel rods into bombs.
North Korea probably began cheating on the 1994 deal before the ink was dry. Scores of high-explosive tests done in the late 1990s suggest ongoing work to perfect a nuclear detonator. A female scientist who claims to have been in Yongbyon in the 1990s describes schemes concocted to hide covert weapons research. In a transcript allegedly made after she fled into China last year (and obtained by NEWSWEEK through a humanitarian group that arranged her exile in South Korea), she describes deception at the No. 304 Research Institute where she worked, a facility "involved with making both nuclear and chemical weapons." To dodge IAEA inspections, she says, "we moved all materials and equipment into underground caves." Eventually, a new plant called the August Facility was constructed. "The place is hidden inside a forest and connected with a new railroad from other facilities," she added. "It processed uranium for use in other institutes."
Despite the mounting evidence of bomb-making capabilities, the West keeps hoping Pyongyang will change its ways. Diplomatic observers predict that the North will agree to a new round of talks with Russia, China, Japan, the United States and South Korea, perhaps as early as next month. Pyongyang's nuclear threats can only go so far. The Dear Leader may test his "deterrent," but if he were ever foolish enough to actually use it, he'd lose everything-his power, his perks, his country, his life. Surely he doesn't want to end up like Kimchaek University's class of '62.
With Hideko Takayama in Tokyo, B. J. Lee in Seoul, Ron Moreau and Sudip Mazumdar in New Delhi, Zahid Hussain in Islamabad and Stefanie Mcintyre in Moscow
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Bush Taking New Approach on Negotiations With North Korea
October 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bush.html?hp
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- President Bush said Sunday for the first time that the United States, China and other nations may try to defuse a crisis with North Korea by offering Pyongyang written security assurances in exchange for a commitment to scrap its nuclear weapons program.
Bush rejected North Korea's demand for a formal no-invasion treaty, saying, ``That's off the table.'' But he left the door open for a security pledge, agreed to by several countries, that would fall short of an actual treaty.
Nuclear tensions hung over Monday's opening of a 21-nation summit of Asian-Pacific leaders, along with disputes over trade and the U.S. occupation of postwar Iraq. On the economic front, China refused to give ground in a currency argument with Washington.
Bush was meeting over breakfast Monday with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to explore how to end the North Korea impasse. It was at the top of the agenda Sunday when Bush met with Chinese President Hu Jintao, who pledged to encourage North Korea to return to multiparty nuclear talks soon.
With at least two nuclear weapons in its arsenal, North Korea startled the world last year when it admitted running a secret weapons program. In August, talks between the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas in Beijing ended without agreement on a next round.
The administration fervently wants to avoid Bush having a nuclear crisis on his hands as he heads into a re-election battle next year.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said more nuclear talks could yield ``good, positive results'' if North Korea's security worries were addressed. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi backed the push for new negotiations, while South Korea had no comment on the day's developments.
``I've said as plainly as I can say that we have no intention of invading North Korea,'' Bush said after a meeting with Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. ``And I've also said as plainly as I can that we expect North Korea to get rid of her nuclear weapons ambitions.''
But, he said, short of a treaty, ``perhaps there are other ways to say exactly what I said publicly'' and to put it on paper ``with our partners' consent.''
At a photo session with Hu, the Chinese president said only that he would ``strive for a peaceful resolution.''
North Korea said the meeting in Bangkok was not the place to discuss the nuclear standoff because it ``is an issue to be resolved between us and the United States.''
But administration leaders, following Bush's lead, made themselves available on Sunday talk shows to discuss the new proposed approach, described by one official as an ``agreement with a small `a.'''
``We believe that we could provide the kind of assurances that the North Koreans say they are looking for, without getting it into the formal process of a treaty ... that will require Senate ratification,'' Secretary of State Colin Powell said on CBS' ``Face the Nation.''
He made clear the United States wants to first gain agreement from key regional allies before it would go to Pyongyang. ``I would not want to prejudge right now what other parties might be willing to do,'' Powell said on ``Fox News Sunday.''
Meanwhile, Bush made little apparent progress in his drive to persuade China to stop a policy that keeps its currency undervalued compared to the U.S. dollar, making Chinese goods less expensive than American products.
Neither Bush nor Hu directly mentioned the dispute before reporters. However, Hu said, ``We both stated our readiness to resolve whatever questions that might emerge in our economic exchange through dialogue.''
Privately, Hu told Bush he agreed that market forces should determine exchange rates, but that to do so too quickly would shock to China's economy, said a senior Bush official. The official said Hu agreed to set up an ``experts group'' to study ways China could move more quickly.
But before meeting with Bush, Hu defended the currency policy, telling international business executives that China's rapid ascendance as a major trading nation was benefiting the world.
With financial commitments from Japan and South Korea in hand, Bush said he would use the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum here to encourage more nations to be contribute to Iraq's reconstruction. The U.S.-led attack against Iraq was opposed by many nations here, including Russia and Muslim countries.
Bush, in a speech to troops at the Royal Thai Army headquarters, praised Thailand for sending troops to help with Afghanistan's reconstruction.
``We must stay on the offensive until the terrorist threat is fully and finally defeated,'' the president said.
Bush announced the United States and Thailand would begin negotiations on a free-trade agreement and promised to increase U.S.-Thai military cooperation.
Protests in Bangkok were light as world leaders gathered, partly because unprecedented security and government pressure kept demonstrators far away.
Bush and his wife, Laura, visited the Emerald Buddha, one of the most sacred images in Thailand, marveling at the golden spires and glittering mosaics. ``Inspiring,'' the president said afterward. In the evening, they attended a palace dinner with King Bhumiphol and Queen Sirikit.
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Bush Says He's Open to Security Assurances for North Korea
October 19, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-bush.html
BANGKOK (Reuters) - In a shift aimed at jumpstarting stalled North Korean nuclear talks, President Bush said Sunday he was willing to give Pyongyang security assurances in exchange for it abandoning its nuclear weapons program.
Bush ruled out a formal non-aggression pact with Pyongyang, which North Korea has set as a condition for giving up its nuclear weapons program, but he acknowledged the United States was exploring a possible compromise with key allies China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
A senior Bush administration official said North Korea could get some of what it is seeking under this arrangement before its nuclear program is completely dismantled, so long as it makes ``verifiable progress'' toward meeting U.S. demands.
``We think there's an opportunity to move the process forward and we're going to discuss it with our partners,'' Bush said on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the Thai capital, Bangkok.
``We will not have a treaty, if that's what you're asking. That's off the table,'' he said.
What form the assurances would take was a matter for talks among Secretary of State Colin Powell and his counterparts from China, Japan, Russia and South Korea -- the five nations that have been in talks with North Korea about its program.
``We're saying, in effect, that we have to see progress before we can take steps. We're not saying that everything has to be done before we will do anything. In fact, we're saying just the opposite,'' the senior administration official said.
SIMPLE STATEMENT
Powell said on ``Fox News Sunday'' that U.S. officials have some ideas for security assurances that would not be a treaty or non-aggression pact but would give North Korea the kind of assurances it has been wanting. One possibility was a simple written statement signed by all six parties.
``That's certainly one model that can be looked at but of course it's something that we would have to discuss with all six parties so I would not want to pre-judge right now what other parties might be willing to do,'' he said.
After resisting the idea of security guarantees for months, Bush presented the idea to Chinese President Hu Jintao after deciding on the new approach this past weekend at his Camp David retreat.
Another senior U.S. official said the Chinese were anxious to hold another round of six-party talks before the end of the year.
Mid-November was seen as a target period. No talks have been scheduled with North Korea since an inconclusive round between the six countries in Beijing in August.
``We talked about how to advance the Beijing talks...as well as addressing the security concerns of North Korea within the context of the six-party talks,'' Bush said with Hu at his side.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice stressed that any agreement would not be a bilateral one between the United States and North Korea, but a multilateral accord within the format of the six-party talks. Washington has been eager to avoid being seen as giving in to what it calls North Korean blackmail on the nuclear crisis.
``With all of the stake holders at the table, we're more likely to be able to resolve this issue peacefully and to have any resolution of the issue endure,'' she told ABC's ``This Week'' program.
NO INVASION PLANS
One official described the possible assurances as an ``agreement with a small 'a.'''
Another senior official said, ``Any moves on our part would be conditioned on verifiable progress on their part.''
Answering questions from reporters as he met Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Bush reiterated that the United States had no plans to invade the Stalinist state.
In contrast to his war against Iraq, Bush has been pursuing a diplomatic approach to North Korea over its weapons of mass destruction. The CIA believes the North has produced at least one or two nuclear weapons.
The North Korean crisis is certain to come up at the APEC summit with the five nations all present although North Korea's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper said APEC was not the place to discuss the issue.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said he wanted to discuss North Korea in bilateral talks with China, Russia and South Korea and also at the summit Monday and Tuesday.
Japan wants a statement similar to one issued last year, warning that North Korea might interpret the absence of a communique as a reason not to resume the talks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the interests of all parties, including North Korea, had to be borne in mind in reaching a solution.
--------
Bush Taking New Approach on Negotiations With North Korea
October 19, 2003
By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/international/asia/19CND-PREXY.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BANGKOK, Monday, Oct. 20 - President Bush and President Hu Jintao of China met today to discuss a new, if vague, American plan to offer North Korea the prospect of a five-nation commitment not to invade the country - but not a formal non-aggression treaty - if North Korea freezes and dismantles its nuclear weapons programs.
Mr. Bush's decision to find a way to provide assurances to North Korea - over the objections of hawks in his administration who have made it clear that they do not believe the United States should be negotiating with the North at all - is a subtle but important shift in his approach to the North Korean nuclear crisis.
But in one of his lengthiest public discussions of the issue with reporters here today, Mr. Bush ruled out the main North Korean demand, for a non-aggression treaty with the United States that receives the approval of the United States Senate, and that could legally bind the United States to never attempt an Iraq-like pre-emptive strike against the North's burgeoning number of nuclear facilities.
"We will not have a treaty, if that's what you're asking," he said this morning in a meeting with Thailand's prime minister, Taksin Shinawata. "That's off the table."
But Mr. Bush added that "perhaps there are other ways we can look at" the issue. That is what he talked about this afternoon with China's new president, and on Monday morning at a breakfast with the South Korean president, Roh Moo Hyun, with whom Washington's relationship has been strained as the two countries differ on the strategy for convincing the North to give up its nuclear program.
The meetings are happening on the fringes of the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, where economic development is the ostensible main subject of discussion, but counterterrorism and North Korea are dominating the agenda.
Mr. Bush tucked his dealings with North Korea into a day jammed with sightseeing and a state dinner in the King of Thailand's golden-spired palace, and the naming of Thailand as a "major non-NATO ally" as a reward for its help in tracking down terror suspects.
Mr. Bush's decision to talk to China and other countries about a way to formalize a non-aggression agreement - "agreement with a small `a' " one of his most senior officials told reporters tonight - comes almost exactly a year after Mr. Bush's envoys confronted North Korea with evidence that it is seeking to enrich uranium to make nuclear weapons. (The North's senior-most officials at first acknowledged the project, then later denied having made that statement.) For much of that time, Mr. Bush has refused to budge, saying it is North Korea that created the nuclear tensions, and the North that must move first to end them.
Many administration officials insisted today that Mr. Bush was not changing strategies, even though the White House said in December there would be no negotiations with the North and no discussion of possible concessions or agreements until the North's bomb-fuel supplies are being shipped out of the country.
But time has not been on Mr. Bush's side. Over the past year, as the administration has argued internally about whether to negotiate with the North or seek to cut off its supplies and hope to trigger its collapse, American intelligence agencies have warned that the government of Kim Jong Il is using the slow pace of six-party talks in the region to its advantage. In addition to two suspected nuclear weapons it built in 1991, there is evidence, but no proof, that the North has recently produced enough plutonium fuel to make an additional one or two weapons. Some intelligence analysts believe the number could be higher.
"You learn this stuff after the fact," said Gary Samore, who headed the non-proliferation office of the National Security Council in the Clinton administration and is now at the Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "It's enormously difficult to get real-time information that is reliable," he said. But it is real-time data that the administration desperately needs now, so that it can measure whether the North is just stalling for time in the negotiations so that it can finish building its arsenal.
Until today, Mr. Bush has vowed repeatedly that he would not give in to what he has often called "blackmail" from Mr. Kim, and offer North Korea tangible benefits before it begins dismantling its two active nuclear programs in a way that can be verified. Both his own State Department and many of America's allies have urged a more flexible stance, at least specifying to the North what it might receive if it terminates its program. The deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, described just such an approach to the North in a paper written before he joined the administration, and the announcement on Friday appears to be a mutated version of that strategy.
The essence of Mr. Bush's message today is that, however reluctantly, he has now agreed that the North's security concerns have to be addressed more seriously. He made the decision at Camp David last weekend, one senior administration official said today. If North Korea agrees to accept such a five-nation agreement, the president told Mr. Hu, then it will be under greater pressure not to break that vow, because it would be facing off against China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, in addition to the United States.
That is why Mr. Bush refuses to negotiate alone with the North, and he showed no signs today of backing away.
"We've seen this movie," one of his top foreign policy advisers told reporters tonight. But two officials acknowledged, in separate interviews, that they believe Mr. Bush's latest initiative could easily fail. They argued that the North's reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, may well decide that the price for an agreement - giving up not only its nuclear weapons programs, but all of the weapons it has already developed - is simply too high.
"There are a lot of people in the administration who think that the North is bound and determined to plow ahead with its nukes, no matter what," said one senior official in Washington who has joined the Pentagon and the vice president's office in opposing virtually any meaningful negotiation with North Korea. But he saw merit in the president's approach, he said, because if it fails, North Korea's intentions will be evident to all. "We could demonstrate to the world that it's time to take more decisive action, from cutting off their oil, to seizing their ships, to having unpleasant things happen to their suspected sites" for nuclear research and development.
It is exactly such talk of pre-emption that the North fears most, and Mr. Bush himself has wavered on this point. He has said both that he seeks a diplomatic solution and that he leaves "all options open" if the North proceeds with its nuclear developments, a statement that seems to include military action. But unlike Iraq, there are no viable military plans, according to senior Pentagon officials, and no way to suppress a deadly counterattack on Seoul or even Tokyo.
With so much at risk, South Korea has taken a much more accommodating stand, and political pressure is growing on President Roh, whose popularity has dropped precipitously, to separate himself from the American position.
-------- missile defense
U.S. Controls Hamper Foreign Role in Missile Defense
Bush-Ordered Review of Restrictions Is Running Late and Into Disagreements on Exceptions
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 19, 2003; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46870-2003Oct18?language=printer
President Bush's drive to enlist foreign help in building a missile defense network has begun to attract foreign businesses but is being hampered by tight U.S. controls on technology sharing, according to American and European officials.
The controls, designed two decades ago to limit missile proliferation, make no distinction between offensive and defensive technologies. As a result, U.S. and foreign firms eager to enter detailed talks complain of being caught in the same net meant to keep U.S. technical know-how out of the hands of terrorists or nations hostile to the United States.
Bush ordered an interagency review of the controls, known as the Missile Technology Control Regime, in a presidential directive last December. But the review is months behind schedule and fraught with disagreements over how to carve out exceptions for missile defense technology.
Further slowing foreign involvement has been a dearth of political and financial commitments from European governments, the officials said. While earlier outright opposition has waned, most European governments have yet to formally endorse Bush's ambition of establishing a global missile defense network or provide funds for related research and development.
So far, only one European country -- Britain -- has entered into a cooperative agreement with the United States to pursue missile defense. And although NATO leaders last year ordered a study of options for defending alliance territory against missile attack, public debate of the issue has been nearly nonexistent in Europe.
"We can't continue to invest in an uncertain political environment, and we need a clear financial commitment" from European governments, Phill Blundell, a senior manager with Britain's BAE Systems, said at a conference in Italy earlier this month at which frustrations were aired. "We also need a more streamlined process for gaining access to U.S. technology."
Bush has strategic and political reasons for making foreign participation a central feature of his missile defense vision.
Geographically, basing rights for radars and interceptors are critical to plans for improving warning and reaction times. Technologically, foreign firms offer advances in radar, missile and battle management systems and other capabilities that could complement the work of U.S. contactors. Financially, foreign involvement could lift some of the burden off U.S. taxpayers.
Internationalizing the program would also afford Bush the advantage of blunting the perception of his initiative as simply furthering U.S. strategic hegemony.
To enlist European support, senior Pentagon officials devised a strategy two years ago of targeting foreign industry. By drawing European firms into cooperative agreements, they hoped, the companies would pressure their governments to back the U.S.-led program.
Evan Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to France, said he outlined this approach to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld shortly before Rumsfeld assumed office.
"I told him that business prospects were not very good for the defense industry in Europe and, in my opinion, companies would be very interested in participating in the missile defense development," Galbraith recalled in an interview. "If we established an opportunity for them to participate, then we could have them lobby their governments to have the right to participate. He thought that was a good plan."
So good, in fact, that Rumsfeld appointed Galbraith his special representative in Europe with instructions to help promote foreign participation. Galbraith organized a dinner in November 2001 at a Brussels restaurant, attended by representatives of such European defense giants as BAE, Italy's Finmeccanica, France's Thales and EADS, a German-French-Italian conglomerate. There, Galbraith and Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, the head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, spoke of giving European firms a place at the table in designing a missile defense system.
Since then, several leading European companies have entered into agreements with the Boeing Co., the prime U.S. contractor, and other American firms to explore options. But for deeper technical discussions, the Europeans need U.S. government approval in the form of technical assistance agreements.
Fifteen of 19 requests for such agreements have been approved in the past two years, but the approvals have come with provisos limiting what can be discussed and, company officials say, blocking substantive talks.
"The problem is that the people who administer the process don't seem to understand we're living in a new world," said a senior executive with a large U.S. defense company. "They continue to apply the rules in the strictest manner."
A major impediment to international cooperation was removed last year with the demise of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), which specifically banned transfers abroad of missile defense systems or their components. But the Missile Technology Control Regime, established in the 1980s, remains a stumbling block. It is a voluntary arrangement among 27 countries to restrict exports of longer-range missile systems.
"There's a recognition that we have to improve the way things are done, but the solution is difficult, to say the least," said John C. Rood, a deputy assistant secretary of defense.
In a precedent-setting move three years ago to facilitate foreign participation in the Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter program, U.S. officials devised a "global project authorization," a kind of blanket approval enabling dozens of U.S. firms to work with hundreds of foreign companies on the basis of a single authorization.
"We've talked about doing something like that for missile defense," a senior State Department official said. But doing so would require the Bush administration first to reach framework agreements with European governments.
Another idea that Galbraith is proposing would involve allowing preferential treatment for companies in such closely allied countries as Britain. "We can't be blanket in our denials," Galbraith said.
Behind much of the U.S. reluctance to relaxing export rules is concern that technology shared with the Europeans will end up leaking to less-friendly nations because of lax European controls. Congress also is wary of loosening restrictions on U.S. technology transfers, with some influential lawmakers even pushing "Buy America" provisions in 2004 defense authorization legislation. And U.S. industry, for all its professed interest in furthering international cooperation, also wants to ensure the protection of proprietary technologies.
Under the circumstances, the United States has been left to forge ahead largely on its own. Plans call for the deployment in Alaska and California by next September of as many as 10 antimissile interceptors, and another 10 interceptors in Alaska by 2005. Crucial to expanding the system -- from its initial focus on North Korean missiles to launches from the Middle East -- will be upgrades of early warning radars in Britain and Greenland. Britain has approved the upgrades, but negotiations are still underway with Denmark, which has jurisdiction over Greenland.
Pentagon officials have avoided defining what would come after the initial rudimentary architecture is built, insisting no grand plan exists. Their intention is to continue experimenting with a range of technologies -- land- and sea-based interceptors, airborne lasers and space-based weapons -- and eventually develop a network of layered defenses.
This lack of definition has drawn complaints from European and U.S. firms that want a clearer blueprint to facilitate planning. But Pentagon officials argue that vagueness is necessary, given the technological challenge. Besides, they say, this flexible approach should afford foreign firms more time and opportunity to find ways of contributing.
"We've only been out of the ABM Treaty for a little over a year," Kadish said at the conference in Italy, sponsored by the Aspen Institute of Berlin. "So we're still in the early stages."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- ohio
Re: Radiation Monitoring....shouldn't we?
10/19/2003
Pjelofson@aol.com
Thanks for sending this to us. Our thoughts and prayers are with these people, as they go through the nightmare we have already gone through here, and will again (how do you spell B-R-A-I-N cancer?).
Interesting they thought the RadAlert monitor readings of the high "teens" in counts per minute (CPM) was elevated, with their highest being 30-34 CPM. Our background range here was raised from being in the low teens and single digits to the low to high twenties by the Rocky Flats prescribed burn a few years ago, in addition to the very high doses during the burn that pegged our RadAlert out all the way to the top of 19,999 CPM for days! This was documented in our article "Stop the Nuclear Brushfires", that was published by the Earth Island Journal.
We hope these guys will likewise do a full documentation on this one. We really wonder what kind of readings would be obtained should that reactor vessel be breached in transit, kind of like our prescribed burn that sent open contamination on out to the communities with nary a warning.
Sharyn, we want to encourage you to work with the monitor we got for you, and thank God, the instructions were in English. Perhaps we can come down when Paula has time off to do some RadAlert surveys with you there as well. It is a sad commentary on the state of our government, when every day citizens must arm themselves with scientific equipment to prove harm and intrusion by contaminants and radiation that should never have been allowed in the first place.
Yours,
Paula Elofson-Gardine and Susan Elofson-Hurst Environmental Information Network
From the fallout zone in Denver, CO 303.233.6677
In a message dated 10/19/2003 11:27:07 AM Mountain Standard Time, joanseem@msn.com writes:
Hi Sharyn,
Just wanted to share with you a recent e-mail. Not that I advocate any illegal actions, I find this message below very interesting....all over a little radiation monitoring??? Have you had a chance to do any monitoring with the rad device?
Joan S
Forwarded:
FYI... Please read, this is about people risking themselves for some truthfulness... the only ACTUAL monitoring we get from nuclear, it seems... is from this kind of concern, in ACTION.
Thanks Terry, thanks Kevin & Mike.
Henry
Folks, my friend Kevin Kamps of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), and Mike Ferner of POCLAD were arrested today seeking justice - they tried to advance onto "private" railroad property to measure radiation emanating from the Big Rock Point reactor vessel. Here's Kevin's story...
---Terry Lodge, Toledo
Forwarded:
Hi. Yesterday late afternoon Terry Lodge and company in Toledo got word the Big Rock reactor train had pulled into the Walbridge rail yard near Toledo. Indeed, it spent the night there, and is still there at this time as far as we know. Terry and others watchdogged the reactor yesterday evening for a couple/three hours.
This morning, I was able to get up to Toledo and joined about ten folks, including local Walbridge residents and Toledoans and Mike Keegan from Monroe, MI. We had three Rad Alert radiation monitors with us. Even at 350 to 400 feet away, we detected a slightly higher than background radiation reading, it appears. As opposed to an average background in the low teens counts per minute, where we stood on the side of the road watchdogging the train, the count averaged in the high teens. A neighborhood of houses was just across the street from where we stood (and a welcome to town sign that said "Walbridge, the Town on the Right Track").
As Terry wrote, Mike Ferner and I tried to approach closer to the reactor with a radiation monitor to measure the undoubtedly higher doses there. We also carried a banner: "End Atom Age. Stop Energy Bill. Call Senators (202) 224-3121". A local NBC tv station filmed it. Unfortunately, we were quickly arrested by CSXT railroad police before we were able to make many measurements. The two I got, still 100 feet from the reactor, measured 33 and 34 counts per minute.
We only spent an hour in jail, and will have a court appearance in a few weeks. We plan on pleading not guilty. We had asked the CSXT representative, the town mayor, and tried to get through to the nuclear utility to ask permission to measure the radiation with our own monitors, but were denied permission. That's why we chose to do it anyway.
The last we heard the train may still sit there again tonight as CSXT and Norfolk Southern try to affect the transfer of the train shipment. Incredible they didn't have this worked out in advance. As a consequence, the workers in this railyard, as well as nearby residents, have been provided free gamma radiation doses, compliments of the nuclear power industry and the railroad company, for many long hours. It is not clear when the train will roll, nor which route for sure it will take. We will try to keep you updated. Press conferences on the tracks in opposition to the energy bill may still be worth considering.
---Kevin Kamps, NIRS, 202.328.0002 ext. 14 (I'll be checking voice mail, and
-------- pennsylvania
Cadmium suspected in 10 deaths
October 19, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
Around the Nation
http://www.washtimes.com/national/aroundnation.htm
PITTSBURGH - A coroner has found elevated levels of cadmium in 10 persons who have recently died in a rural Pennsylvania county, adding to the mystery about the presence of the toxic metal.
Ever since 61-year-old Russell Repine was found to have mysteriously died in March 2002 of cadmium poisoning, Coroner Thomas Streams has tested for toxic levels of the metal in all autopsies in Indiana County, in western Pennsylvania.
-------- us nuc waste
Panel Raises New Concerns About Yucca Mountain
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
October 24, 2003
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2003/2003-10-24-09.asp#anchor1
Federal officials have raised concerns that manmade storage containers designed for storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain will probably leak. The warning came in a letter sent this week by Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The panel, which is an independent body designed to scrutinize science and planning for Yucca Mountain, raised doubts about the Energy Department's claims that tightly packing waste into the facility would prevent corrosion of the canisters.
If the containers leak, highly radioactive waste would be released into the environment and could seep out of the facility into surrounding water supplies.
Critics of the Yucca Mountain plan say this finding indicates fundamental flaws in the project and note that some 200 other scientific questions about Yucca Mountain that remain unanswered.
"The board's findings can be added to the long list of problems facing Yucca Mountain including the potential for volcanic activity, earthquakes and a lack of safeguards against accidents or terrorist attacks," said U.S. Representative Shelley Berkeley, a Nevada Democrat. "Anyone who says that nuclear waste can be safely stored at Yucca Mountain is choosing to ignore the very real dangers that this project presents and the unanswered scientific questions that remain."
The Yucca Mountain site was first identified as a possible location for storage of the nation's nuclear waste in 1987, but the project has been beset with criticism and skepticism.
The facility, some 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is not expected to be complete until 2010.
"The storage of high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is, quite simply, scientifically unsound, as we in Nevada have been saying for years," said Nevada Senator John Ensign, a Republican. "This study is just the latest in a long list of scientific reasons for the abandonment of the Yucca Mountain project."
-------- us politics
Bush's Popularity With Older Voters Is Seen as Slipping
October 19, 2003.
By ROBIN TONER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/politics/campaigns/19ELDE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - President Bush's support among older voters has dropped substantially in recent months, eroding recent Republican gains and highlighting the importance of this critical electoral bloc in 2004, political strategists and analysts say.
The trend underscores the stakes for Mr. Bush in the current Congressional negotiations aimed at creating a long-promised prescription drug benefit in Medicare, which covers 40 million elderly and disabled Americans. Negotiators passed a self-imposed deadline on Friday for reaching agreement, but vowed to complete their work before Congress adjourns, which is expected to be sometime next month.
Mr. Bush's popularity has declined over all since early summer, but some recent polls suggest that he lost significantly more ground among voters 65 and older than he did among younger Americans. Politicians in both parties consider older voters to be particularly important because they are much more likely to vote than younger people, and because they are heavily concentrated in states that are often presidential battlegrounds, like Florida and Pennsylvania.
Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, a longtime Republican campaign strategist, said, "It's still a very fluid vote that can swing on a dime."
A poll conducted this month by The New York Times and CBS News showed that Mr. Bush had a 41 percent approval rating among the 65-and-older voters, his lowest among any age group. That was down from 44 percent in July and 63 percent in May.
Similar trends have been reported this fall by the Pew Research Center. The latest Gallup Poll, released this week, showed that even as Mr. Bush's overall approval rating had risen to 56 percent from 50 percent during the past month, voters older than 65 remained his weakest age group. Forty-nine percent of them approved of the job he was doing, compared with 60 percent of those 30 to 49.
Analysts in both parties cite the economy, the stock market and the situation in Iraq as major factors in the slippage, along with more traditional concerns for older Americans like Medicare and the cost of prescription drugs.
Representative Robert T. Matsui of California, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said: "With low interest rates and a sluggish economy, they're the group that's probably harmed the most. They're not getting the rate of return they would have expected with the savings they have."
Mr. Matsui added that while low inflation is generally an advantage for those living on fixed incomes, "health care costs have gone up unabated, and that's the area they're most concerned about."
Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster, said that despite recent improvements in the stock market, which is closely followed by retirees, "there's a lot of ground to make up." That could be hurting Mr. Bush's standing among some older males, or contributing to what Mr. Goeas described as "grumpy old men."
Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who works with Mr. Goeas on a bipartisan survey known as the Battleground Poll, said that the aftermath of the war in Iraq, including the cost of reconstruction, also helped explain the erosion of Mr. Bush's support among older voters. "Seniors had really moved toward Bush on the security issue during the war, and now they're moving back," she said. "They hate spending the $87 billion over in Iraq."
Ms. Lake added that "this is one group that doesn't like deficits, because they feel they jeopardize Social Security and Medicare.'
Democrats, who pride themselves on their advocacy of Social Security and Medicare, have long relied on the votes of older Americans. But that bloc has been increasingly up for grabs in recent years, in part because of the passing of the heavily Democratic generation that came of age with the New Deal, but also, strategists say, because Republicans have grown far more adept at cultivating older Americans.
In 2000, Mr. Bush lost the 60-and-older vote to Vice President Al Gore 51 to 47 percent, but Republicans carried it in last year's Congressional elections, as well as the Congressional elections of 1998, 1996 and 1994. The Republican victory margin was particularly wide in 1998, when President Bill Clinton was in the throes of the impeachment struggle; the margin was widely attributed to older voters' concerns over Mr. Clinton's values.
Mindful of the importance of this group, many Republicans consider it a top priority to deliver a Medicare drug benefit before next year's election. This could be, many Republican strategists have argued, a transformational event in American politics - a Republican president and a Republican Congress producing the biggest expansion of Medicare, a signature Democratic program, since the program's creation.
But the effort to produce a popular benefit with $400 billion over 10 years has not been easy; the bills that emerged from the House and Senate fall far short of what many working people typically receive, with large co-payments and gaps in coverage. Many older Americans have also voiced concerns to their lawmakers that they could end up losing coverage they already get from their former employers, which is sometimes better than what the government would provide.
Jack Banister, a retiree in Hanover, Ind., and a strong supporter of Mr. Bush, who was interviewed for the recent New York Times/CBS News Poll, said: "I'd sure like them to leave the prescription drug thing alone. A lot of us have worked all our lives to prepare ourselves for retirement and put in position our drug care system. And the federal government coming in is likely to screw that all up."
Edward F. Coyle, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, an advocacy group aligned with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., contended that "the more seniors know about the prescription drug benefit, the more they don't like it."
But Charles W. Jarvis, chairman of the United Seniors Association, a conservative group often aligned with the drug industry, said, "Seniors want personal health choices and tangible policy results, not endless policy critiques and unaffordable pie-in-the sky proposals." He said that Mr. Bush's popularity might be "leveling," but that it remained "extremely strong" because "he's maintained an aggressive role on these domestic issues."
Still, a new poll for Emily's List, a Democratic fund-raising group, identifies older voters as a prime area of vulnerability for Mr. Bush, asserting that many are driven by deep concerns about Social Security and the cost of health care. Geoff Garin, the pollster who conducted the survey, said that Mr. Bush's push for private accounts in Social Security would only exacerbate his problems by 2004.
Mr. Davis, the Republican Congressional strategist, countered, "It's way too early to figure out what will happen, except that they will continue to be a critical vote."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
New Afghan Constitution Juggles Koran and Democracy
October 19, 2003
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/international/19AFGH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 18 - The question now facing Afghans is: how to devise a constitution that combines the country's deep-rooted Islamic traditions and its aspirations for democracy?
The answer Afghans find in the next few weeks will be closely monitored by Iraqis, who have to write a constitution of their own over the next year. In Afghanistan, the process has not been easy.
After months of tortuous discussion, consultations around the country and thousands of comments sent in by the public, a commission of lawyers and experts has drawn up a draft constitution to put before the Afghan people.
"This is a moment for Afghanistan to ensure its survival or go back to the darkness," said Prof. Muhammad Amin Ahmadi, a member of the constitutional commission. "The crisis of Afghanistan has its roots in illegitimate power. We must have legitimacy and responsibility."
Last touches are still being made to the proposed constitution at the insistence of President Hamid Karzai, who has followed the drafting closely. The final version will be published within days, his aides said on Saturday. That should allow six weeks or more for public discussion before 500 delegates convene for a constitutional loya jirga, or grand assembly, that is scheduled to convene here in Kabul, the Afghan capital, on Dec. 10 to debate and approve a final version.
The commissioners say they have found a balance between the need for guarantees for both democracy and Islam. The country will be named the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. "If the name did not include Islam, people would not feel confident," said Professor Ahmadi.
The country will be governed by civil laws as long as they are in keeping with Islam. The draft contains the same language as the country's 1964 Constitution to guarantee that "in Afghanistan no law will be made which will oppose Islamic principles."
The chief justice of Afghanistan, Fazel Hadi Shinwari, an Islamic scholar and a conservative, said he was satisfied with the draft. "Previous constitutions have been in keeping with the Koran, and this one is, too," he said. "Afghans and Muslims living in Afghanistan will accept it."
But the fine balance may not survive debate at the 500-member grand assembly, commissioners conceded. Diplomats fear that Islamic hard-liners will try to force a stronger Islamic rule.
The commissioners, who will attend the assembly to defend and explain their draft, will argue that any constitution must recognize that Afghanistan cannot survive without international protection and assistance, and that the Western powers want to see democratic standards and human rights protected in the new constitution.
The constitution will set the parameters for national elections next summer. The commissioners said the draft called for a directly elected president, supported by a vice president and a prime minister, a strong central government rather than a provincial federation, a two-chamber parliament with significant representation for women and an independent judiciary.
There are guarantees protecting the human rights and civil rights of all citizens, democracy and pluralism, as well as recognition of international conventions and measures for an open-market economy with an independent central bank.
The former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, will continue to hold the symbolic title of "father of the nation," but there will be no return of the monarchy.
"The spirit of this constitution will provide an opportunity for the country to move on the path of democracy," said Interior Minister Ahmed Ali Jalali after the draft was put before the interim cabinet and approved a few weeks ago.
A new constitution will be an important milestone. Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan has been ruled under the United Nations-sponsored Bonn accords of December 2001. Those accords laid out a plan for a new constitution and national elections within two and a half years.
President Karzai was named leader of an interim administration and later approved by a traditional loya jirga for an additional two years, until June 2004.
The constitution will not solve all of Afghanistan's problems. Warlords, drugs and the Taliban remain serious threats. But the commissioners said the new constitution was a start.
"The country cannot go on in a legal vacuum," said Prof. Musa M. Maroofi, a constitutional lawyer at Kabul University, who was one of eight co-authors of a first draft. "There should be a constitution. There should be the rule of law."
Members of an expanded commission of 35 people have traveled around the country holding public meetings as they have reworked the draft. Nearly half a million questionnaires were sent out, asking people what principles should guide the state, what rights should be guaranteed and what system of government they wanted.
They received 100,000 questionnaires, 10,000 written opinions and 300 cassettes of ideas recorded by illiterate people, said Abdul Ghafoor Lewal, spokesman for the Constitutional Review Commission.
Standing at their elbow throughout the process were representatives from the United Nations and several foreign experts to advise them.
"People want peace and security, and a government that will stop the gunrunning, warlordism and other crimes," Mr. Lewal said. "Generally, they want Afghanistan to go toward government by the people."
People also expressed an overwhelming desire for Islam to rule their lives. "There was to be no compromise on Islam," said Fatima Gailani, one of eight women on the constitution commission.
There was widespread anxiety that Afghanistan would become a secular state, Professor Maroofi said.
"The collapse of the Taliban regime created the concern for a large number of people that maybe this government, or a future government, would be so secularist that they would completely make religion irrelevant," he said. "So people needed some kind of assurance through this constitution that Islam is still the official religion of the country."
"Afghanistan is a Muslim country that wants freedom, peace and food," said Anwar ul-Haq Ahady, chairman of the Central Bank and leader of Afghan Millat, a political party. "But never such a freedom or peace at the expense of Islam."
Many expect difficult arguments at the national assembly over the structure of government, in particular the powers of the president and prime minister and parliament, as well as ethnic issues like the choice of a national language.
The draft as it stands creates a strong presidency, with powers to appoint the prime minister and cabinet, and to preside over cabinet meetings.
"The reason for this is to create stability," said Professor Ahmadi. But members of the Tajik ethnic group, the second largest group in Afghanistan after the Pashtuns, are pushing to give more power to the prime minister.
The balance of power in Afghanistan is inextricably tied up in the ethnic groups, and language will be a very sensitive issue at the grand assembly.
Pashtuns, the traditional rulers of Afghanistan, will want Pashto named as the national language, even though that means little more than having the national anthem in Pashto. But the Tajiks, who dominate the present interim government, are insisting that the two main languages, Dari and Pashto, are both made official languages, and that the national anthem be sung in both.
-------- asia
Bush launches state visit to Thailand
BANGKOK (AFP)
Oct 19, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031019040856.eczmnzsr.html
President George W. Bush was to upgrade US military ties with Thailand Sunday with an eye on battling terrorism, and seek progress towards defusing the North Korean nuclear crisis in talks with China's leader.
Bush, here with his wife Laura as guests of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit, arrived under tight security late Saturday for a three-day stay anchored on the October 20-21 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
The US president was to meet with Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, thank Thai troops just back from Afghanistan, as well as tour the Grand Palace and the nearby Temple of the Emerald Buddha.
Later, he was to have an evening audience with Thailand's revered king and queen, followed by a state dinner.
Bush, who expanded the Philippines' access to US military assistance by designating it a "major US non-NATO ally" last week, planned to formally extend that privileged status to Thailand on Sunday, an aide said.
After Japan and the Philippines, this was the third stop on a whirlwind six-day, six-nation trip to Asia and Australia aimed at rewarding backers of the war in Iraq and marshalling support for the campaign against terrorism.
Bush was expected to press Chinese President Hu Jintao to let markets decide the yuan's value -- and just as expected not to make any headway -- when the two leaders sit down for a bilateral meeting focused on North Korea.
"They're getting to know each other, and they're getting to work together," a senior US official said of Sunday's hour-long parley, their second since Hu took office in March and their third overall.
Washington says the row with North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs can only be resolved through six-party talks also attended by China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. The next round may take place in November.
Bush, who had a frosty relationship with Beijing when he took office in January 2001, attaches "a tremendous amount of importance" to the role China can play in seeking a peaceful resolution to the dispute, the US official said.
"He sees them as playing a constructive role so far, and he wants to make sure that we consult with them closely and encourage that," according to the US official, who said Bush would also press Hu on the yuan peg to the dollar.
US manufacturers and officials in Washington have blamed China and Japan's foreign exchange policies for hurting US exports and costing jobs -- a headache for Bush as he ramps up his 2004 re-election bid.
The US president also plans to push APEC's 21 member economies to add a security dimension -- the war on terrorism -- to its mostly financial focus.
He is also expected to trumpet a 5.4 million dollar US initiative, run out of the Asian Development Bank, aimed at strengthening the Southeast Asian flank of the global war on terrorism through projects like bolstering port security and combatting money laundering.
APEC is also expected to issue joint statements on the global war on terrorism and North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.
Authorities at each stop on Bush's tour have tightened security amid the threat of protests and fears of terrorist attacks and Thailand has deployed some 20,000 police and soldiers to protect APEC heads of state and government.
After leaving Thailand Tuesday night Bush will visit Singapore and then make a brief three-hour stop on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, before wrapping up his regional swing with a stop in Australia.
----
Over 5,000 ROK Soldiers Likely to Head to Iraq
Kim Ki-tae kt-kim@koreatimes.co.kr
Korea Times
10-19-2003
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200310/kt2003101916480011990.htm
After making up its mind to send more troops to Iraq, the nation is now facing ensuing disputes over how many and what kind of troops it should dispatch to the Middle Eastern nation besieged by constant terrorist attacks.
Some experts contend that countries should send mostly engineers and medics, and that the number of combat troops be minimized, but others indicate that the troops will inevitably become combatants in the wartorn country.
The defense ministry, wary of the issue's sensitivity, has been particular in classifying the mission. Defense Minister Cho Young-kil recently stated that the troops would be peacekeeping forces, not combatants. But some pundits pointed out that there is not a major difference between "peacekeeping activity" and "combat" in the region where Hussein's loyalists still are actively engaging occupation forces.
Other politicians go as far as to claim that the nation should withdraw its decision to deploy troops in Iraq, should it send combatants for possible engagement with local resistance.
The United States asked for a light infantry division, using the term "stabilizing forces," instead of "combat forces" concerning the role of South Korean troops.
The defense ministry also contend the troops should be called "combatants," only when they are made up of infantry, artillery and armored units. As the troops will include only medics, engineers and infantry, they are not combatants, it claimed.
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Scandinavian truce monitors scuttle navy bid: report
COLOMBO (AFP)
Oct 19, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031019075728.suledsqr.html
Sri Lanka's navy has accused Scandinavian truce monitors of jeopardising its attempt to capture a suspected Tamil rebel arms shipment, a press report here said Sunday.
Naval gunboats had set out to check a suspected Tamil Tiger vessel some 250 miles (400 kilometres) east of Sri Lanka's north-eastern Mullaitivu coast on Thursday, but the operation was "leaked" to the rebels, the Sunday Times said.
It said the navy had taken aboard one of the craft a member of the Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) who in turn had been in communication with the SLMM headquarters and given details of the mission.
The navy chief, Daya Sandagiri, had said "he was aware information of the navy's operation had leaked to Tiger guerrillas," the Sunday Times said.
The SLMM declined to comment on the newspaper report.
"We give only facts and figures from our point of view," said the SLMM's spokeswoman Agnes Bragadottir. "We don't want to get involved in an internal discussion in this country."
Navy chief Sandagiri has already attracted the wrath of the government following his presenting a secret military briefing to an opposition legislator from President Chandrika Kumaratunga's party.
Sri Lanka's president, who is from a rival party, is opposed to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's handling of the peace process with Tamil Tiger rebels.
Although the defence secretary and the defence minister are loyal to the Prime Minister, President Kumaratunga is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and in theory can sack the prime minister as well as the defence minister.
-------- business
Companies Get Few Days to Offer Bids on Iraq Work
October 19, 2003
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and NEELA BANERJEE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/international/middleeast/19CONT.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - Hoping to speed up reconstruction work in Iraq, American officials in Baghdad are offering contracts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, but giving companies as little as three days to submit competing bids.
Procurement experts said the extremely short deadlines were legal, but some warned that they could stifle open competition, favor well-connected contractors at the expense of outsiders and lead to higher costs.
"Three days is absurd," said Steven Schooner, a professor of procurement policy at George Washington University's law school. "You can objectively conclude that in the United States we don't do this. It's highly unusual."
Two weeks ago, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq gave companies three days to bid on a contract to supply the Iraqi government as many as 850 personal computers as well as telephones, fax machines and other office equipment.
A week before that, occupation officials gave aspiring contractors seven days to offer a price for up to 14 million boxes of ammunition for Russian-made AK-47 automatic rifles, which are widely used by the Iraqi police and security forces.
Scores of other jobs have been awarded or offered with similarly short bidding periods. They include contracts to provide private security guards, repair buildings, supply heavy electrical equipment and even to destroy gigantic sculptures of Saddam Hussein.
Occupation officials say they have made the process more open. They now post contracting opportunities on the occupation authority's Web site, along with a standard list of rules and conditions for bidding and carrying out work.
But they also say that speed is a top priority, and they make no apologies for giving companies a very short time to respond. "We're here to support the customer, and he has an urgent needs," said Col. Anthony Bell, a spokesman for the occupation on contracting issues, explaining the rationale for the rapid granting of contracts. "All that we're doing is reacting to the urgent requirement that he has provided us."
The current rush of contracts is being financed out of the new Development Fund of Iraq, which holds money received from Iraqi oil exports. Since the fund's inception in mid-July, coalition officials say they have awarded 143 projects worth more than $200 million.
But that is just the beginning. The Bush administration predicts that Iraqi oil revenues will reach $12 billion next year, and President Bush is pressing Congress to approve nearly $20 billion in American money for civilian work in Iraq next year.
Until now, most of the contracts for Iraqi reconstruction have been awarded by the United States Agency for International Development, A.I.D. But administration officials have been openly frustrated by the lack of progress and want to concentrate power at the occupation authority, headed by L. Paul Bremer III.
Mr. Bremer, in an apparent attempt to tighten control over contracting, is creating his own new office to coordinate procurement, headed by a retired admiral, David Nash.
Many aspiring contractors, including Iraqi companies, complain that the process for winning business remains opaque and inaccessible.
"These things are coming out with zero notice, and you get no feedback," said Frances Cook, a procurement expert in Washington who is advising several Iraqi companies. "People out there trying to get contracts are going nuts."
Lawmakers from both parties have complained that the procurement process has been too opaque and too favorable to well-connected companies.
"If we are going to have credibility with the American people, then they need to know that American companies and American workers will have a fair shot at securing contracts," said Representative Jim Kolbe, Republican of Arizona and a key member of the House Appropriations Committee.
A.I.D., which managed most of the initial contracts for Iraqi reconstruction, remains a small agency that has only four contracting officers of its own on the ground in Baghdad.
To handle the supervision, A.I.D. is farming out most of the oversight. It is paying the Army Corps of Engineers $10 million to monitor Bechtel Corporation's $680 million contract. It has also hired a private company, Management Sciences Inc., to evaluate smaller contracts in social and economic development.
In one hint of the stress at the agency, A.I.D.'s inspector general sharply criticized it for a $168 million contract given to Research Triangle Institute of North Carolina.
The contract, for work in building local government institutions, called for hiring about 265 professional advisers from outside Iraq. But the inspector general said the size of the contract had been set "to justify the available funding" rather than on an assessment of actual needs.
Under the current structure, American companies have a clear advantage, because A.I.D. is required to award contracts to American companies. But most of the money actually flows to subcontractors, and administration officials are pushing hard to make sure that Iraqi companies and workers get as much work as possible.
Bechtel executives say they have handed out 102 of 140 subcontracts to Iraqi companies and thus employ about 40,000 Iraqi workers indirectly.
-------- iraq
2 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq Ambush
October 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Attack.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Two American soldiers were killed and one was wounded in an ambush in the guerrilla zone north of Baghdad, the U.S. military reported Sunday.
Other attackers struck what appeared to be a U.S. ammunition truck near the flashpoint city of Fallujah west of Baghdad on Sunday morning, witnesses reported. There was no word on casualties. In a third incident, three apparent Iraqi attackers were reported killed.
In the northern attack, an American mounted patrol was ambushed by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire at 10:45 p.m. Saturday outside the northern city of Kirkuk, 160 miles north of Baghdad, said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division.
The U.S. command in Baghdad earlier reported such an attack occurred southwest of Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, the 4th Division's headquarters city 100 miles northwest of Baghdad. The conflicting reports on location could not be immediately reconciled, although the division said it had no word of a Tikrit-area incident.
The patrol from Task Force Ironhorse -- a force that includes the 4th Division -- returned fire, but there was no further fighting, Aberle said.
In other action in the north early Sunday, U.S. troops returning fire after being attacked by grenades and small arms killed three Iraqis near Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, the 4th Infantry Division reported.
Other American forces detained five attackers north of Beiji, 120 miles north of Baghdad, after a brief firefight.
In the attack on the edge of Fallujah, 35 miles west of the capital, large explosions occurred when the American vehicle was caught by a homemade roadside bomb. The blasts went on for some time, indicating it was carrying ammunition, witnesses said.
The bomb was placed beside a concrete plinth bearing the words, ``Welcome to Fallujah,'' at the eastern entrance to the city.
The U.S. command said it had no immediate word on casualties in that incident.
Resistance forces have mounted an average of 22 attacks a day on the U.S. occupation forces in Iraq in recent weeks, mostly in the so-called ``Sunni Triangle,'' a Sunni Muslim-dominated area stretching from the west of Baghdad to the north. The area was a strong base of support for Saddam's Baath Party regime, which was toppled by the U.S.-British invasion earlier this year.
Saturday's deaths came barely a day after four American soldiers were killed in a roadside explosion in Baghdad and a clash with Shiite Muslim gunmen in the southern shrine city of Karbala.
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DISPATCHES
Iraq Resistance Remains Threat to U.S. Forces
October 19, 2003
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/international/worldspecial3/19MILI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - After American forces killed Saddam Hussein's two sons in a firefight in Mosul, Iraq, in July, United States officials expressed the hope that the episode would take the steam out of the Iraqi resistance.
But three months later the insurgents appear to be as determined as ever. Their attacks have become more sophisticated while terrorist bombings have emerged as a major threat. American commanders insist they are making headway in bringing order to Iraq, but the indications are that the fight will be difficult and prolonged.
A snapshot of the dangers facing American forces in Iraq can be gleaned from a document on the latest threats to allied forces that is prepared by the occupation authority run by L. Paul Bremer III. The document is unclassified, but is marked "for official use only" and is not widely distributed.
One recent warning, dated Tuesday, is a sobering read. The freshly reported incidents included an effort to down a C-130 transport plane with two shoulder-fired missiles, a prison break and an attempted ambush of a local governor. But it is the patterns that are of most concern.
The document, for example, explains that the attacks often involve a fair degree of coordination.
An assault generally begins when an American or allied convoy is attacked by an explosive device or a salvo of rocket-propelled grenades. Then the attackers open up with AK-47's, often retreating under the cover of mortar fire.
As the document puts it, most ambushes "are initiated by a combination of RPG or IED attacks and immediately followed by small-arms fire." RPG refers to rocket-propelled grenades and IED is the term for improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs the guerrillas assemble by drawing on unguarded caches of weapons or explosives they hid during the war. It goes on to say, "in most IED attacks, Coalition Forces have discovered other devices in the vicinity of the attack."
Aside from the type, the number of attacks is a problem.
"The use of small-arms fire and RPG attacks, command detonated IED's, and mortar rounds continues to increase; especially the frequency of attacks which utilize command detonated IED's daisy chained together, buried or hidden along roads and highways," the document says.
As a result, some areas in and around Baghdad are regarded with trepidation. The occupation authority's document cautions its staff and nongovernmental workers that they should avoid 11 "red" zones unless they are on urgent business.
Administration officials caution that it is important to put these sort of warnings in perspective. Much of Iraq is relatively stable, they say.
Southern central Iraq has been generally quiet, with the conspicuous exceptions of the firefight with a Shiite Muslim militia that killed three American soldiers in Karbala on Thursday night and the September bombing in Najaf that killed Ayatollah Muhammad Bakir al-Hakim, a Shiite cleric who was cooperating with the Americans.
The swath of northern Iraq controlled by the Army's 101st Airborne Division has been a success story.
The Bush administration is also making adjustments, however belatedly, to try to better manage the situation in Iraq. It has installed Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, at the helm of a new committee, the Iraq Stabilization Group. The move effectively transfers some of the authority that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had for postwar Iraq to the White House, an understandable move given the difficulties the United States has encountered in Iraq and the prominence of Iraq as an election issue.
At the same time, the administration has won unanimous Security Council support for a new United Nations resolution that is likely to lead to the deployment of a modest number of additional forces from other nations.
But in central Iraq the situation appears to be as perilous as ever and no region is completely free of attacks. The major attack reported in the document was the ambush on Monday of the Diyala Province governor's motorcade, which was attacked by an explosive device and then peppered by small-arms fire. One passenger was wounded.
Other fresh attacks throughout Iraq were reported in the document. Assailants also tried to shoot down a C-130 transport with two shoulder-fired missiles, which missed.
In other episodes, a convoy was attacked by an explosive device north of Mahmudiya, wounding two soldiers. In the north central region, assailants fired two rocket-propelled grenades at an American patrol near Tikrit, killing one soldier. Near Jalula, a three-vehicle American convoy was attacked by an explosive device and small arms, killing one soldier and wounding two others. In the western region, a unit near Al Fathah came under fire by rocket-propelled grenades, and one soldier was hurt.
In the south near Safwan, a driver for an American contractor was shot in the leg by Iraqi assailants driving in a white American sedan. The report also noted that a convoy near Basra was attacked by an explosive device, slightly wounding one person.
For the American military, there was also a fatal traffic accident, a mysterious drowning and an unintended firing of a weapon that wounded a soldier in the foot. This is not combat, but represents the sort of incidents that can be expected when 130,000 troops have to deal with guerrilla fighters in a foreign land. Adding to the allies' problems, 25 prisoners broke out from the Tasferat jail, eight of whom were quickly recaptured.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the commander of American and allied forces in Iraq, said recently that the Iraqi resistance appears to be more sophisticated and capable than originally forecast.
"The enemy has evolved, a little bit more lethal, a little bit more complex, a little bit more sophisticated," he said. "As long as we are here, the coalition needs to be prepared to take casualties."
But General Sanchez also expressed confidence that the United States would ultimately stabilize the country. The general has emphasized American efforts to develop an indigenous Iraqi law-and-order capacity, including the establishment of an 18-battalion Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.
"We continue to make progress on all of the initiatives to bring back security and stability to the country," the general said in a recent news conference.
But some experts monitoring the trends are clearly concerned. Walter P. Lang, the chief Middle East analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Persian Gulf war of 1991, is worried that the guerrilla campaign is intensifying.
"It is my impression that the guerrilla campaign against us is spreading and intensifying and the other side does not seem to be losing enough people in the process," he said. "They are doing well and I am not too happy about that."
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State Dept. Study Foresaw Trouble Now Plaguing Iraq
October 19, 2003
By ERIC SCHMITT and JOEL BRINKLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/international/worldspecial/19POST.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - A yearlong State Department study predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq, according to internal State Department documents and interviews with administration and Congressional officials.
Beginning in April 2002, the State Department project assembled more than 200 Iraqi lawyers, engineers, business people and other experts into 17 working groups to study topics ranging from creating a new justice system to reorganizing the military to revamping the economy.
Their findings included a much more dire assessment of Iraq's dilapidated electrical and water systems than many Pentagon officials assumed. They warned of a society so brutalized by Saddam Hussein's rule that many Iraqis might react coolly to Americans' notion of quickly rebuilding civil society.
Several officials said that many of the findings in the $5 million study were ignored by Pentagon officials until recently, although the Pentagon said they took the findings into account. The work is now being relied on heavily as occupation forces struggle to impose stability in Iraq.
The working group studying transitional justice was eerily prescient in forecasting the widespread looting in the aftermath of the fall of Mr. Hussein's government, caused in part by thousands of criminals set free from prison, and it recommended force to prevent the chaos.
"The period immediately after regime change might offer these criminals the opportunity to engage in acts of killing, plunder and looting," the report warned, urging American officials to "organize military patrols by coalition forces in all major cities to prevent lawlessness, especially against vital utilities and key government facilities."
Despite the scope of the project, the military office initially charged with rebuilding Iraq did not learn of it until a major government drill for the postwar mission was held in Washington in late February, less than a month before the conflict began, said Ron Adams, the office's deputy director.
The man overseeing the planning, Tom Warrick, a State Department official, so impressed aides to Jay Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general heading the military's reconstruction office, that they recruited Mr. Warrick to join their team.
George Ward, an aide to General Garner, said the reconstruction office wanted to use Mr. Warrick's knowledge because "we had few experts on Iraq on the staff."
But top Pentagon officials blocked Mr. Warrick's appointment, and much of the project's work was shelved, State Department officials said. Mr. Warrick declined to be interviewed for this article.
The Defense Department, which had the lead role for planning postwar operations and reconstruction in Iraq, denied that it had shunned the State Department planning effort.
"It is flatly wrong to say this work was ignored," said the Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita. "It was good work. It was taken into account. It had some influence on people's thinking and it was a valuable contribution."
The broad outlines of the work, called the Future of Iraq Project, have been widely known, but new details emerged this week after the State Department sent Congress the project's 13 volumes of reports and supporting documents, which several House and Senate committees had requested weeks ago.
The documents are unclassified but labeled "official use only," and were not intended for public distribution, officials said. But Congressional officials from both parties allowed The New York Times to review the volumes, totaling more than 2,000 pages, revealing previously unknown details behind the planning.
Administration officials say there was postwar planning at several government agencies, but much of the work at any one agency was largely disconnected from that at others.
In the end, the American military and civilian officials who first entered Iraq prepared for several possible problems: numerous fires in the oil fields, a massive humanitarian crisis, widespread revenge attacks against former leaders of Mr. Hussein's government and threats from Iraq's neighbors. In fact, none of those problems occurred to any great degree.
Officials acknowledge that the United States was not well prepared for what did occur: chiefly widespread looting and related security threats, even though the State Department study predicted them.
Senior said the Pentagon squandered a chance to anticipate more of the postwar pitfalls by not fully incorporating the State Department information.
"Had we done more work and more of a commitment at the front end, there would be drastically different results now," said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.
Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Feb. 11, Marc Grossman, the under secretary of state for political affairs, said the working groups were "not to have an academic discussion but to consider thoughts and plans for what can be done immediately."
But some senior Pentagon officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that while some of the project's work was well done, much of it was superficial and too academic to be practical.
"It was mostly ignored," said one senior defense official. "State has good ideas and a feel for the political landscape, but they're bad at implementing anything. Defense, on the other hand, is excellent at logistical stuff, but has blinders when it comes to policy. We needed to blend these two together."
A review of the work shows a wide range of quality and industriousness. For example, the transitional justice working group, made up of Iraqi judges, law professors and legal experts, has met four times and drafted more than 600 pages of proposed reforms in the Iraqi criminal code, civil code, nationality laws and military procedure. Other working groups, however, met only once and produced slim reports or none at all.
"There was a wealth of information in the working group if someone had just collated and used it," said Nasreen Barwari, who served on the economy working group and is now the Iraqi minister of public works. "What they did seems to have been a one-sided opinion."
Many of the working groups offered long-term recommendations as well as short-term fixes to potential problems.
The group studying defense policy and institutions expected problems if the Iraqi Army was disbanded quickly - a step L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American civil administrator in Iraq, took. The working group recommended that jobs be found for demobilized troops to avoid having them turn against allied forces as some are believed to have done.
After special security organizations that ensured Mr. Hussein's grip on power were abolished, the working group recommended halving the 400,000-member military over time and reorganizing Iraqi special forces to become peacekeeping troops, as well as counterdrug and counterterrorism forces. Under the plan, military intelligence units would help American troops root out terrorists infiltrating postwar Iraq.
"The Iraqi armed forces and the army should be rebuilt according to the tenets and programs of democratic life," one working group member recommended.
The democratic principles working group wrestled with myriad complicated issues from reinvigorating a dormant political system to forming special tribunals for trying war criminals to laying out principles of a new Iraqi bill of rights.
It declared the thorny question of the relationship between that secular state and Islamic religion one "only the people of Iraq can decide," and avoided a recommendation on it.
Members of this working group were divided over whether to back a provisional government made up of Iraqi exiles or adopt the model that ultimately was adopted, the Iraqi Governing Council, made up of members from a broad range of ethnic and religious backgrounds. The group presented both options.
The transparency and anticorruption working group warned that "actions regarding anticorruption must start immediately; it cannot wait until the legal, legislative and executive systems are reformed."
The economy and infrastructure working group warned of the deep investments needed to repair Iraq's water, electrical and sewage systems. The free media working group noted the potential to use Iraq's television and radio capabilities to promote the goals of a post-Hussein Iraq, an aim many critics say the occupation has fumbled so far.
Encouraging Iraqis to emerge from three decades of dictatorship and embrace a vibrant civil society including labor unions, artist guilds and professional associations, could be more difficult than anticipated, the civil society capacity buildup working group cautioned: "The people's main concern has become basic survival and not building their civil society."
The groups' ideas may not have been fully incorporated before the war, but they are getting a closer look now. Many of the Iraqi ministers are graduates of the working groups, and have brought that experience with them. Since last spring, new arrivals to Mr. Bremer's staff in Baghdad have received a CD-ROM version of the State Department's 13-volume work. "It's our bible coming out here," said one senior official in Baghdad.
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Arrest of Iraqi Cleric Sparks Confrontations With Shiites
Challenge to U.S. May Usher In Conflict With New Group
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 19, 2003; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47072-2003Oct18?language=printer
BAGHDAD -- The man in the doorway of the mosque had a rifle, and when a U.S. convoy appeared down the street, he ducked inside. To an Iraqi policeman riding with the Americans, the movement seemed suspicious.
So the officer, as witnesses and his own superior told it later, followed the armed man into the Ali Bayaa mosque to attempt an arrest. It was only a few yards, but the action set in motion an escalating series of confrontations -- threats and arrests, mass protests, a grenade attack -- that in the space of two weeks helped push the U.S. military to the cusp of a new conflict in Iraq, one involving a volatile section of the country's Shiite Muslim majority.
The people inside the Bayaa mosque were followers of Moqtada Sadr, a young Shiite cleric lately intent on challenging the legitimacy of U.S. authority in Iraq at every turn. The son of a revered ayatollah whose assassination in 1999 was widely blamed on the government of Saddam Hussein, Sadr, 30, has shown none of the patience that Iraq's most senior Shiite clerics have counseled in the face of the U.S.-led occupation.
In the coming days, Sadr would announce a government of his own to challenge the one established by Washington. Members of his militia, which by law must remain unarmed, would kill two U.S. soldiers in what military officials called an ambush. And a second firefight would break out in the holy city of Karbala between Sadr's fighters and followers of the senior clerics.
But at 10 p.m. on Sept. 29, the conflict was framed only by the blue tiles decorating the recessed doorway of the Bayaa mosque.
As U.S. soldiers waited outside, the zealous Iraqi officer pointed a gun at the head of a cleric, knocking off his turban, according to the officer's chief of police, Salam Alek, who went to the mosque the following morning to apologize for the offending behavior.
It was not enough. Two days later, the imam of the mosque, a fiery preacher named Sheik Moayed Khazraji, sent a memo to the police station. "Subject: A trial." Khazraji warned that the officer must be turned over for trial by an Islamic court or "you will see from us a red day." The phrase indicates bloodshed.
Instead, U.S. commanders three days later lured Khazraji into a circle of armored vehicles and arrested the imam himself.
The 39-year-old cleric awaits trial in Abu Ghraib prison, on the outskirts of Baghdad. The range of charges he faces articulate some of the darkest suspicions U.S. officials harbor against the Sadr organization, which publicly preaches only peaceful opposition to the occupation.
Khazraji was charged repeatedly with "communicating a threat," as well as with murder, kidnapping and conspiring to harbor terrorists.
"He directs the anti-U.S. forces and coordinates activities," the charge sheet alleges, quoting informants "who may not be available for re-contact." The southwest Baghdad office of Sadr's organization, it says, attempts "to gain the trust of U.S. forces while discreetly supporting the anti-U.S. forces."
To the Sadr organization, which controls most of Baghdad's Shiite mosques, the arrest itself was a deep offense. But two large protest marches demanding his release have fallen on deaf ears. So have the demands of fellow clerics that Khazraji, who holds the rank of religious judge, be tried by his fellow "legitimate judges."
"What it's really about is they feel they are not subject to the laws of the nation of Iraq, just to the laws of God," said Col. Kurt Fuller, commander of the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, which arrested Khazraji after months of monitoring. "What these guys would like is to see everyone is answerable to Iraq law except them, and they police themselves.
"And we can see how well they did that with Moayed."
In an Iraq only beginning to address the question of a constitution, the Khazraji case illuminates a central tension awaiting its framers, whoever they turn out to be: Whose law will prevail in a country currently between governments?
A majority of Iraq's 24 million people are Shiites, and the faithful align themselves with senior clerics. What powers -- or constraints -- those religious leaders will face in a new Iraq is the question of overarching importance here, especially given the example of Iran, where unelected clerics control most of the government by controlling its justice system.
"Basically, we don't believe in these courts that the Governing Council declared," said Sheik Hassan Zargani, a Sadr aide, referring to the council appointed by U.S. officials to govern Iraq until a constitution is in place. "And especially since Moayed is a judge."
"Everybody should know that Islamic law is legitimate above everything else," Sadr said Tuesday.
Courts are not the only U.S.-imposed authority under challenge by Sadr. Last week his organization took over the municipal headquarters for Sadr City, a sprawling urban slum named for his late father and another relative. The takeover put services for some 2 million of Baghdad's 5 million residents under Sadr's control -- until Thursday, when U.S. forces reclaimed the building.
On Oct. 10, Sadr announced plans to do the same with the rest of Iraq, saying he would name a cabinet, including a ministry of morality police, to compete with the cabinet the Governing Council named in August.
"If a new justice ministry is formed -- as declared by Sadr -- then Moayed could be tried under it," said Zargani, the Sadr aide.
But in Shiite Islam's hierarchical politics, Sadr appears to be increasingly isolated. He lacks the standing of many more senior clerics, the most prominent of whom, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has indicated no appetite for a political role for Iraq's clergy.
Both sides claim to have no problem with the other. But this week's firefight in Karbala was touched off when Sadr's people arrested a Sistani official.
But if Sadr lacks clerical authority, he commands a formidable organization backed by legions of young, mostly unemployed men. They revere the family name, patrol portions of Sadr City as the Imam Mahdi Army and faithfully follow orders to fill the streets.
The demonstrations can turn violent.
On Oct. 9, two U.S. soldiers and two Iraqis were killed in a firefight that erupted near the Sadr headquarters. The military called it an ambush. Zargani said, "We were provoked."
The clash prompted a warning from the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, to warn that coalition forces may have to move against Sadr's militia.
But the Sadr City deaths were not the first casualties laid to his followers. Several days earlier, outside Khazraji's mosque, 12 Americans were wounded when a grenade was thrown from the crowd assembled to protest the imam's arrest.
"They order these people who have no idea what's going on to show up, and they get them all spun up, saying we're defacing a mosque, all that," said Fuller, a native of Oklahoma. "Then they turn right around and tell us they can't control these people."
U.S. officers say they waited months to arrest Khazraji, and did so only reluctantly after a protest of the Sept. 29 arrest attempt erupted in rock throwing and gunfire. "That really tore it," Fuller said.
The official charge sheet against the imam alleges that Khazraji warned "U.S. soldiers will die" if they arrested religious or tribal leaders. It says he also threatened the U.S.-endorsed local council and local police.
The murder charge blames Khazraji for the deaths of neighborhood alcohol merchants, four of whom police say were killed within hours of being condemned by him in Friday prayers on Oct. 3, boomed over the mosque's loudspeaker from a podium in the street.
And quoting a "human intelligence source," the army says Egyptian and Afghan Islamic guerrillas are "awaiting the order from Sheik Moayed to attack U.S. forces."
The accusations bring blanket denials from Sadr officials, who express dismay at the notion Shiites would support an anti-American campaign widely believed to be championed by extremists from Islam's rival Sunni branch.
Likewise, Alek, the Bayaa police chief, said, "We didn't see any bad behavior from him, any hostility." Until recently his office was about 100 yards from the mosque, where several officers often went to pray, and none carried back reports of skullduggery, Alek said.
"This whole issue is because of one policeman, chasing a guy who was just guarding the mosque," he said.
The local council that U.S. officers say Khazraji repeatedly threatened voted last week to recommend he be freed on bail. "It's very delicate," said Sami Ahmed, the council chairman. "I advised the Americans to ignore this case, in order not to create a big problem.
"The delicate thing is that for the last six months the Shia people have not done anything bad against the American forces, because the senior clerics told them to be quiet and wait. On the other hand, many Sunni clergymen urged people to make jihad against the U.S. forces and to attack city halls.
"So the feeling is that the Americans are trying to find a weak point against the Shia. And this is the talk of the people. It's not just me talking."
Fuller acknowledged the overwhelmingly cooperative attitude of the Shiites, saying that "90 percent of the people in the district" approve of Khazraji's arrest. "In fact, we wouldn't have done it if they hadn't supported it."
The colonel expressed dismay at Sadr's recent confrontational moves. "I think he's definitely thrown down the gauntlet," Fuller said. "He seems to think he's lost some prestige, to do something like this. We're still trying to figure it out."
Yet the U.S. officers said the confrontation may prove instructional. "We don't want to offend cultural or religious sensitivities," said Capt. Patrick Murphy, the unit legal adviser who drew up the charges. "But at the same time, we want to establish the rule of law."
In Khazraji's case, U.S. officers indicated, the law may well be decided by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, newly implemented by the occupation authority. But Murphy said it was also possible the cleric would stay in custody as a U.S. security detainee.
A third option, the captain said, was trial under Islamic law.
The police chief said it all left him confused.
"We are suffering, you know, because the system is not stable," Alek said. "Everyone is saying, 'I have the right to lead Iraq. I have the right to punish the people.' Because we have no constitution.
"We are doing our duty here," the chief said. "But we can't control the whole society without a constitution."
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Forces Kill 3 Palestinians in Gaza Strip
October 19, 2003
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/international/middleeast/19MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 18 - Israeli forces scouring a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip for smuggling tunnels killed three Palestinians early Saturday, including two gunmen from the militant group Hamas and a bystander, the Palestinian authorities and witnesses said.
An Israeli military official said the Israeli troops fired on a group of Palestinians they spotted planting an explosive. The official said other Palestinians then tried to retrieve the bomb, and the soldiers shot at them as well.
Palestinian witnesses said two members of Hamas, including a local leader, Tarek Abu al-Husain, were killed when they attacked Israeli forces raiding the camp.
They described a hail of fire in the densely populated neighborhood that also killed Widad Ajrami, 30, a mother of four. A relative of hers, Muhammad Ajrami, said that she was killed and that her husband and brother-in-law were seriously wounded when their car was riddled with Israeli fire as they tried to carry other people who had been wounded to the hospital.
Some residents of the camp said an Israeli tank fired at least one shell. The military official denied any use of such ammunition.
For nine days, Israeli armored forces supported by helicopter gunships have been searching Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, for tunnels that the Israeli and Palestinian authorities say are used to smuggle weapons and drugs from Egypt, under the Israeli troops stationed along the Egyptian border with Gaza.
So far, the Israeli Army reports finding three such tunnels during this operation, and a total of 48 during the current three-year conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Relief workers in Gaza say soldiers have demolished dozens of Palestinian homes in Rafah during the last nine days.
An F.B.I. investigation continued Saturday into a bombing in Gaza on Wednesday that killed three American guards riding in a diplomatic convoy.
It was the first deadly attack on an official American mission in the Palestinian areas.
Palestinian security officials said they had arrested a total of 10 people in connection with the bombing.
The suspects include four members of the Popular Resistance Committees, a loosely organized Palestinian group in Gaza made up of some members of the mainstream Fatah faction as well as other Palestinian groups.
Those arrested also include six members of another group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Jamil Majdalawi, a political leader of the group, said there was no basis for the arrests, and he warned of violence against Palestinian security forces if the men remained jailed. "If they keep them, we're going to clash," he said.
--------
3 Israeli Soldiers Reported Killed in West Bank Shooting
October 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Attack.html?hp
EIN YABRUD, West Bank -- Palestinian gunmen ambushed an Israeli army patrol in a West Bank town after sundown Sunday, killing three soldiers, Israeli security sources and rescue services said, the most serious attack in the area in months.
The deadly attack came a few hours after Palestinians in Gaza fired rockets at Israeli towns, and Israeli forces wound up a phase of a wide-ranging operation in a Palestinian refugee camp on the Egyptian border.
Security sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Palestinians ambushed an Israeli army foot patrol in the Palestinian village of Ein Yabrud, east of the West Bank town of Ramallah. Three soldiers were killed and another was seriously wounded, they said.
A spokesman for the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, loosely linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, told The Associated Press its members carried out the ambush.
"A group of our fighters attacked an Israeli patrol in Ein Yabrud, killing and injuring many soldiers," he said by telephone, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The area has been the scene of frequent Palestinian gunfire attacks against Israeli military and civilian vehicles.
Israel TV said that because of the severity of the attack, Israeli forces were likely to enter Ramallah, where Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been trapped in his headquarters for nearly two years.
Israel Radio reported that soldiers imposed a curfew on Ein Yabrud and was searching for the attackers, who escaped.
The last serious attack of its kind in the area was in February last year, when four Palestinian gunmen opened fire an Israeli military checkpoint at nearby Ein Arik, killing six soldiers before escaping.
Earlier Sunday, Palestinian militants fired a barrage of homemade rockets from Gaza into Israel, one of the largest salvos in months.
No one was hurt in the barrage of Qassam rockets, relatively small and primitive weapons. Three exploded in the town of Sderot, a frequent target less than a mile from the Gaza border fence, and others fell near smaller communities, the military said.
Palestinian militants make the rockets in Gaza workshops. They have a range of about five miles. Although no one has been killed in the attacks, Sderot residents and officials have called on the government to take action to stop the salvos.
In the past, similar rocket attacks have prompted Israeli military reprisals. An army spokesman declined to discuss plans for an Israeli response but said the military is always prepared to defend its citizens.
The military said last week, militants fired nine Qassam rockets, but only three landed in Israel, causing no damage or casualties.
Also Sunday, Israeli forces wound up another phase of a large-scale operation in another part of Gaza -- near the Egyptian border.
After pulling out of the so-called Brazil section of the sprawling Rafah refugee camp following a four-day sweep, troops continued to operate in other parts of the border area. The troops and tanks redeployed along the Egyptian border, just a few hundred yards from the camp, witnesses said.
Israel launched its broadest military operation in six months in the Rafah area of Gaza on Oct. 10, six days after an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing in a Haifa restaurant killed 21 people.
Israel says the operation aims to uncover and destroy tunnels -- some with entrances hidden in homes -- that the military says the Palestinians use to smuggle arms from Egypt into the Gaza Strip. The military has said it has intelligence warnings that the Palestinians might be trying to smuggle more advanced weapons, such as anti-aircraft missiles.
Soldiers moved into the Brazil camp last Thursday, the third part of the camp to be targeted. Troops demolished at least 15 homes in the Brazil neighborhood, killing four gunmen and four bystanders, witnesses said. So far, in the entire Rafah operation, 14 Palestinians -- including two children and a woman bystander -- have been killed.
About 114 homes were destroyed at the start of the Rafah military operation, leaving some 1,240 Palestinians homeless, according to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which aids Palestinian refugees.
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Cabinet Sunday that troops had so far uncovered four tunnels during the operation and that the raid would continue until other tunnels are uncovered, a senior government official who was at the meeting said.
Mofaz also said that reports on destruction in the Rafah area were exaggerated, the official added.
In the West Bank town of Jenin, meanwhile, troops backed by tanks and armored jeeps raided offices of the militant group Islamic Jihad, confiscating computers and documents, witnesses said. Two militants were arrested, witnesses and the army said. The army said the militants were planning suicide attacks in Israel.
Also Sunday, Israel's army used emergency orders to call up five reserve battalions -- about 1,800 soldiers -- to replace soldiers serving in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Such short-notice call-ups are unusual. Israel Radio said the reason was an increase in intelligence warnings of terror attacks.
-------- latin america
Bolivia's New Leader Takes Over a Chaotic and Angry Nation
October 19, 2003
By LARRY ROHTER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/international/americas/19BOLI.html
A PAZ, Bolivia, Oct. 18 - One of the books that Carlos Mesa wrote when he was a historian is titled "Bolivian Presidents: Between the Voting Booth and the Gun." Mr. Mesa is about to experience that situation himself.
Mr. Mesa was sworn in as president of South America's poorest and most unstable country late Friday night, following the resignation of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who immediately left for the United States. The country has been paralyzed since mid-September by antigovernment protests that Mr. Sánchez de Lozada had tried to quell with force, leaving more than 80 dead.
"Few times has the nation confronted a moment like this," Mr. Mesa, 50, most recently a television journalist highly regarded for his ability to communicate, said after being sworn in. "Give us some space, some time to work," he pleaded.
But his practical political experience is limited. He belongs to no political party and had never held public office until Mr. Sánchez de Lozada, looking for someone to bring an image of independence and probity to a seamy environment, asked him to be his running mate.
Mr. Mesa tried to make a virtue of that deficiency in his inaugural address on Friday, vowing to lead a government that would be above partisan politics. But in his 15 months as vice president, he seemed to clash with old-style political leaders, including his patron, as often as he was able to compromise with them.
During the speech, Mr. Mesa also reiterated several of the concessions that Mr. Sánchez de Lozada had offered this week in a last-ditch effort to remain in power. But legal experts immediately cautioned that the measures were either not constitutional, as in the case of a binding referendum on natural gas exports, or lacking proper guidelines, as in the case of a constituent assembly.
It was also not clear how the indigenous and opposition groups that have been energized by their success in toppling the government would respond to Mr. Mesa's call for national unity. Evo Morales, leader of the Movement Toward Socialism and runner-up in last year's election, took a wait-and-see stance, though some of the coca growers whom he nominally leads vowed to continue with blockades of roads.
"I think it is important to give him a grace period," Mr. Morales told a television network. "He has expressed the thoughts of the Bolivian people" in the inaugural address, Mr. Morales added, so "let's hope that he organizes his cabinet and representatives" accordingly.
In contrast, the country's other powerful indigenous leader, Felipe Quispe, indicated that he would offer no truce at all. As the leader of the federation that initiated the nationwide strike that brought Mr. Sánchez de Lozada down, Mr. Quispe continued to demand that the government meet all 72 of his group's demands and added a new one: that Mr. Mesa not serve out the remainder of his original five-year term but call new elections as soon as possible.
Mr. Mesa agreed to that demand in his inaugural speech, but Mr. Quispe said, "In any case, we are going to continue with the blockades." He added, "We are not going to be with the executive, we are always going to be opposition."
Saturday at least, there were few signs of the recent unrest. Nevertheless, "there is still a lot of rage in Bolivians, which could lead to even more deaths," warned Carlos Toranzo of the Latin American Institute for Research here. The experience of the last month "has produced a lot of radicalism in some people, who want vengeance."
-------- nato
How the old world rejected the new
Nato: Wary of Europe's defence plan, the US prepares global cops.
By Angus Roxburgh in Brussels
19 October 2003
Sunday Herald (UK)
http://www.sundayherald.com/37529
An emergency meeting is to be held at Nato headquarters tomorrow, at the Americans' request, to try to allay Washington's fears that EU plans for a separate defence identity could fatally undermine the alliance and begin to push America out of Europe.
The Americans have good grounds for concern. Their war on Iraq exposed hidden wells of anti-Americanism across Europe - not just among the millions who came out on to the streets to protest, but among previously "loyal" governments. At a crucial point in the preparations for war, France, Germany and Belgium prevented Nato from making any kind of contingency planning.
Worse, in April, those three countries got together with tiny Luxembourg and announced their intention to set up a separate EU defence headquarters in Tervuren, just outside Brussels.
It was, in fact, Tony Blair who had set the ball rolling, when he met President Jacques Chirac of France in St Malo in 1998 to discuss the forging of a European "defence identity". The initiative led to the creation of the EU's rapid reaction force, which has since seen limited action in peacekeeping operations in Congo and Macedonia. But it was never meant to be seen as anything other than a way for the EU to carry out peacekeeping or humanitarian actions in cases where the US explicitly did not wish to be involved. Such actions would still rely on US or Nato intelligence and logistics.
But last month, Tony Blair held a mini-summit with Chirac and Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin, at which he appeared to go along with their new defence plans, which included the notion of "structured cooperation" .
In Brussels last week, the French president made it clear that Paris and Berlin are determined to push ahead with this - preferably with Britain, but not necessarily. "Our British friends have reservations about the creation of a bigger, more independent operation," he said. "We are continuing our discussions, but we are determined to go ahead with this: there cannot be a Europe without its own defence system."
British officials, in a panic, dashed around the touchlines of the EU summit protesting that any new European defence structures would "complement" Nato, not undermine it. "Nothing whatsoever must put at risk our essential defence guarantees at Nato," said Tony Blair.
But the Americans are truly rattled by all this. The US ambassador to Nato, at a tense meeting in the alliance's Brussels headquarters last week, described the French-German moves as "the most serious threat to Nato's future". He demanded an emergency meeting of Nato ambassadors tomorrow, at which he will try to establish where Europe's going on defence.
There are few Americans better placed to understand the transatlantic rift over defence than General James L Jones, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. He is head of all Nato forces here, and consequently the most powerful American in Europe. He has an unusual pedigree, having spent his entire childhood in France, and speaks perfect French. He told me recently he understands European concerns "intuitively", and conceded that his boss, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, might have done well to consult him before condemning the French and Germans as "Old Europe" for their opposition to the Iraq war.
Jones has launched a counter-offensive to European plans for their own defence structures. Last week he inaugurated the "Nato Response Force" . The NRF, which will eventually be 21,000 strong, contains elite units from many Nato countries, ready to be deployed to troublespots anywhere in the world at just five days' notice. The force has its own dedicated battleships, warplanes, troops, logistics and intelligence. Jones refers to it as "global", ready to take on the challenges of the 21st century - primarily terrorist threats.
The NRF's readiness to act in just five days, however, will depend on Nato politicians also being able to take decisions quickly - and given the furious rows over Iraq, which did not even involve Nato as an organisation, that could pose problems. But here Jones has an even more interesting plan. At present, Nato takes all decisions unanimously. "In future," Jones told me, " nations will probably have to consider whether the will of the majority can continually be stymied by the opposition of one or two nations."
That is radical. It suggests the US wants to be able to override opposition and use Nato almost as their global police force . It's the kind of talk that's certain to encourage certain Europeans to go their own way.
-------- pacific
Pacific Rim to Step Up Anti - Terror Fight
October 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Asian-Summit.html
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Terror and security threats overshadowed pressing global economic issues at the Asia-Pacific summit on Monday as the leaders of the United States and South Korea went behind closed doors over a new initiative to break the divided peninsula's nuclear standoff.
And, as President Bush used the annual gathering to promote his war on terror, other leaders pressed ahead with the 21-member grouping's core theme -- promoting free trade. Some complained the meeting had gone off track.
``We are putting obstacles in the way of advancement of our economies,'' said Mexican President Vicente Fox, who wants the World Trade Organization to restart international global trade talks that collapsed last month when many developing nations walked out. ``We should go back to the table, but we should go back with a political will to overcome this problem.''
Others said it was a mistake to change the focus of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
``We know, of course, that security is a very important matter, and we admit that, but it should be discussed in the other forums,'' Malaysia's Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir was quoted as saying in Kuala Lumpur's The Star newspaper.
Security surrounding the summit was tight. Fighter jets escorted the planes of arriving VIPs and helicopters shadowed motorcades through Bangkok's unusually empty streets. Tough action taken by Thailand to prevent the kind of violent demonstrations that have marred other international trade conferences, seem to have worked. There were no sign of protests.
At a morning breakfast meeting, Bush and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun sought ways for their nations as well as China, Russia and Japan to end the North Korean nuclear weapons crisis that has simmered for a year.
Bush told Roh: ``We have a common goal to make sure that the Korean Peninsula is nuclear weapons free.''
Earlier, Bush rejected North Korea's demand for a formal nonaggression pact. But he left the door open for a security pledge, that would fall short of an actual treaty. The president said he would talk with Roh about how to move the process forward.
Chinese President Hu Jintao, meanwhile, is trying to restart six-party talks on the crisis.
Bush's seems to have succeeded in convincing most APEC leaders to step up counter-extremism measures.
APEC leaders will pledge to fight harder against terror groups operating in the region, while committing to be better prepared for any future outbreaks of SARS, other infectious diseases or bioterrorist attacks, according to a draft communique to be issued by leaders on Tuesday when the summit ends. A copy was obtained in advance by The Associated Press.
APEC members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, United States and Vietnam.
-------- prisoners of war
Marine reservists charged in POW death
October 19, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031018-084713-8641r.htm
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 -- Eight Marine reservists have been charged in the death of an Iraqi prisoner near Nasiriya last June, the military announced Saturday.
Marine spokesmen at Camp Pendleton, Calif., said two of the men were charged with negligent homicide while others faced lesser charges, including dereliction of duty, maltreatment and assault, The New York Times reported.
An attorney for one of the accused told the Times that some of the charges involved striking prisoners other than the prisoner who died in custody. Other charges involved failure to prevent harsh treatment of prisoners by other guards, the newspaper said.
The accused Marines were not in custody Saturday and will be subject to a military judicial hearing to see whether they should be court-martialed or otherwise punished, the attorney said.
The death of the Iraqi prisoner had been confirmed previously by the military but officials did not disclose any further information on Saturday.
--------
Marines Press Charges Against 8 Over the Death of an Iraqi Prisoner
October 19, 2003
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/national/19MARI.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - The Marine Corps has charged eight Marine reservists in the death of an Iraqi prisoner near Nasiriya last June, Marine spokesmen and the lawyer for one of the accused said Saturday.
Marine spokesmen at Camp Pendleton, Calif., said that two of eight men faced charges of negligent homicide, while others faced lesser charges, including dereliction of duty, maltreatment and assault.
But the spokesmen released few details, and the lawyer for one of the accused, who provided a copy of the charge sheet against his client, noted that some of the charges in that case involved striking prisoners other than the prisoner who died in custody. Other charges involved failure to prevent harsh treatment of prisoners by other guards.
Marine Corps spokesmen confirmed the charges on Saturday, a day after the case was disclosed by the lawyer, Donald Rehkopf of Rochester, a military law specialist.
The death of the Iraqi prisoner had been confirmed previously by the military.
Mr. Rehkopf said that the accused marines were not in custody, and that they would be subject to a military judicial hearing to see whether they should be court-martialed or otherwise punished.
Those charged include Maj. Clark A. Paulus and Lance Cpl. Christian Hernandez, charged with negligent homicide and other offenses, and Maj. William Vickers, Sgt. Gary Pittman, Lance Cpl. William Roy, Sgt. Albert Rodriguez-Martinez, Lance Cpl. Andrew Rodney and Lance Cpl. Konstantin Mikholap, all charged with lesser offenses.
Mr. Rehkopf said he thought the reservists had not been properly trained in handling prisoners. He said that he had not been told about the evidence in the case, like an autopsy or other information about what caused the prisoner's death, but that his client, Corporal Roy, denied the charges.
--------
Eight Marine Reservists Face Charges in POWs' Treatment
Two Charged With Negligent Homicide in Death of Iraqi
Associated Press
Sunday, October 19, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46523-2003Oct18.html
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 18 -- Eight Marine reservists face charges ranging from negligent homicide to making false statements in connection with the mistreatment of prisoners of war in Iraq, military officials said Saturday.
Two of the men were charged with negligent homicide in connection with the June death of an Iraqi who was held at a detention facility, said Marine Staff Sgt. Bill Lisbon, a spokesman at Camp Pendleton.
Lisbon said Saturday he was unsure how many of the other six reservists had been charged in connection with that incident and would not say whether the man was the 52-year-old Iraqi prisoner of war whose death at a camp run by the 1st Marine Division near Nasiriyah was reported this past June.
Maj. Clark Paulus and Lance Cpl. Christian Hernandez face negligent homicide charges. The other six face lesser charges involving mistreatment of prisoners.
"I think it's surprising, because this is not what Marines do," Lisbon said. "They don't do what these guys are being charged with. Our reaction is that we are going to serve justice."
Paulus also faces two counts of dereliction of duty, one count of cruelty and maltreatment, one count of making a false official statement and one count of assault. Hernandez also faces one count of dereliction, one count of cruelty and maltreatment, and three counts of assault.
The others charged are Maj. William Vickers, one count of dereliction of duty; Sgt. Gary Pittman, two counts of dereliction of duty and five counts of assault; Lance Cpl. William Roy, two counts of dereliction of duty, one count of cruelty and maltreatment, and five counts of assault; Sgt. Albert Rodriquez-Martinez, one count of making false official statements and two counts of assault; Lance Cpl. Andrew Rodney, one count of assault; and Lance Cpl. Konstantin Mikholap, one count of making false official statements and two counts of assault.
The eight, who belong to the 2nd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, are being held at Camp Pendleton. Their hometowns were not immediately released, and it was not known whether all have retained lawyers.
Attorney Donald Rehkopf Jr., who represents Roy, said his client is innocent.
Rehkopf declined to discuss specific evidence, but said the Army is supposed to handle POW facilities, and the Marine reservists were untrained for the job.
"In the rush to war with Iraq, providing the mandatory training to reservists seems to have had little if any priority with the Pentagon," Rehkopf told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle in Saturday's editions.
The reservists "had no training at all. They were given a 30-minute training on the Geneva convention," Rehkopf said, referring to the international accords for treatment of POWs.
Lisbon said the cases will be examined by the military equivalent of a grand jury, which will decide whether the men will be court-martialed.
-------- russia / chechnya
Forgotten Refugees Are Living 'Like Bugs'
Chechens Feel They Are Being Squeezed Out of Nearby Region
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 19, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46698-2003Oct18?language=printer
SLEPTSOVSKAYA, Russia -- Tiny Azamat chose a particularly wretched corner of the world for his arrival. His mother lives in dingy clothes in a dingy tent that has only three narrow metal bunks for the eight people who call it home. His father disappeared weeks after his birth, dragged away by cursing Russian troops in a predawn raid.
"We're little people," said Muslim Chabkhanov, the 3-month-old infant's grandfather. "We live like bugs."
Walk down any of the rutted dirt paths of the Satsita refugee camp, stop at any of the tents flapping in the wind and someone will recount a similar story. They are the refugees the world has largely forgotten. They fled war in Chechnya to neighboring Ingushetia. Now, they are no longer at the top of the agenda of international relief organizations, overwhelmed with places such as Afghanistan and Iraq. The Russian government would just as soon the refugees go back to Chechnya, pressuring them to decamp by periodically cutting off the power or closing a tent city.
Yet as bad as things are here, tens of thousands of homeless Chechens still figure it is better and safer than returning to their shelled and lawless homeland. Among those who remain, few here believe that the war is over, even after last week's Kremlin-orchestrated election ratifying its appointee, Akhmad Kadyrov, as president of the Chechen republic.
"We don't want to go back to Chechnya," said Vera Chabkhanova, 46, who rocks her grandson in a handmade wooden cradle tied by string to a metal bunk. "I'm afraid for my sons. One is 15 years old, almost grown up now. I don't know what would happen to him."
The Satsita camp sits in an open expanse of muddy land in the Ingushetia region near the Chechnya border. It is a hodgepodge of tents, some fairly sturdy ones provided by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, others cobbled together by inventive Chechens from whatever raw materials they could find.
Life, dreary and dreadful, continues despite it all, with the first refugees having fled the renewal of war in their homeland in 1999. For four years, people have made do, waiting for the day they could return. Young boys have grown taller, young women have gotten married and babies such as Azamat have been born.
Human rights groups estimate that as many as 100,000 refugees remain in Ingushetia -- the government counts half that many -- with most staying with local families or in garages, abandoned buildings or other crude housing. The tent cities have become such a sore spot for authorities that they recently set up checkpoints to keep out human rights workers and journalists without official permission to enter, although it is not hard to sneak into the camps by other routes.
The first Russian campaign to close the camps ended abruptly last year after an international outcry at the heavy-handed tactics. This year, authorities have tried a more subtle approach -- promises of cash accompanied by quiet threats -- and the outside world has not complained much.
"It's like a soft form of squeezing them out," said Eliza Moussayeva, head of the local branch of Memorial, Russia's most prominent human rights organization. "They come to the tents and say, 'Get out first because you'll have to go anyway.' "
Authorities finally closed the Bella camp two weeks ago, driving out the last of the 1,000 people there after weeks in which electricity and gas were sporadically cut off. Altogether, authorities boast that 1,200 refugees have left tent cities in Ingushetia in the past two weeks to head home, leaving 7,900 in the camps and 46,000 elsewhere in Ingushetia. But those leaving one refugee center often wind up in another; nearly 25,000 Chechens returning home are now living in two dozen temporary settlement camps in Chechnya instead of Ingushetia.
Many of those who remain see no reason to follow that path. Most of those forced out of Bella simply moved to Satsita, according to refugees, and some of those who do return to Chechnya wind up back in Ingushetia eventually.
"We didn't want to move," said Zarema Alsultanova, 45, who was among the last to leave Bella and now lives in Satsita. "We were forced to."
At one point, several refugees said, officials came to Bella to intimidate them. "I know how to break you and I will," they quoted one official as telling them. They said another warned, "If you don't go of your own free will, we'll bring tanks here and open fire on you."
None of the threats, however, sounded worse than Chechnya, where middle-of-the-night zachistki, or mop-up operations, round up civilians as well as rebels. "When people talk about Chechnya, they feel panicky, scared," said Lorhen Gunter, 43, a Chechen refugee of German heritage. "No one thought of going back."
The Chabkhanov family was in Satsita when the newcomers arrived from Bella, just as they have been since fleeing Chechnya in March 2000 after their home in the capital, Grozny, was bombed and burned with all their possessions. Muslim Chabkhanov, 47, used to be a Chechen police captain, but now he scavenges to provide for his family.
Over the years in Satsita, he has tried to improve their living conditions, using scrap canvas, bamboo sticks and pieces of wood to expand their U.N.-provided tent. They have accumulated a television, several lights that burn bare bulbs, a hot plate, some stuffed animals and toys for the children.
They get a care package once every six months from the Saudi Red Crescent Society, an Islamic relief agency, that includes a few bars of soap, toothbrushes and some detergent. Most nights they eat potatoes or porridge. Just once a year do they get meat, also from the Saudis in celebration of the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
"It's field conditions," Chabkhanov said. "When it's hot here, it's really hot. When it's cold, it's really cold."
"It's not just physically hard," added his wife, Vera. "It's mentally hard."
Even rare moments of joy seem to turn sour, sometimes tragically so. Their daughter, Bella, got married a few years ago to a young Chechen, Ramzan Nakayev. In keeping with Chechen custom, Bella was "stolen" one day while visiting Grozny by Nakayev and his friends, who whisked her away for the beginning of wedding ceremonies.
The marriage led to the birth of a son, Adam, last year and then a second, Azamat, on June 28. The proud new parents took Azamat to show Nakayev's parents in Grozny. They stayed in an empty apartment, but somehow the Russians found out they were there.
"They came at four in the morning, pulled open the door, came in and threw him on the floor," Bella, 23, recalled about what happened to her husband. "They didn't allow him to get dressed. They just put his hands behind his back. They had me at gunpoint and wouldn't let me leave."
That was July 16. Nakayev, 22, hasn't been seen since. "I don't even know if he's alive or not," said Bella.
The family has been to authorities repeatedly without success. Muslim Chabkhanov called on his old friends in the Chechen police to help, but they told him they could not find Nakayev and did not know who took him.
So Muslim Chabkhanov has decided enough is enough. After nearly four years in the tents, he plans to sell everything he has -- the television, the hot plate, the tent itself. He will pack up his family and try to take them away -- not to Chechnya but to Poland, he hopes, or maybe Belgium or Norway, if any country will let them in.
"I want to take my kids abroad. I need to take her out," said Vera Chabkhanova, turning to Bella and starting to weep silently. "She saw the men who took away her husband. There's no guarantee that they're going to let her live."
And then there are her own boys, the 15-year-old and his 12-year-old brother. "I don't want my children to be interested in war."
-------- space
Russian Rocket Heads to Space Station With 3 Aboard
By Mara D. Bellaby
Associated Press
Sunday, October 19, 2003; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46959-2003Oct18.html
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan, Oct. 18 -- A Russian rocket blasted off Saturday carrying a three-man replacement crew bound for the international space station, standing in for a U.S. shuttle program that remains on hold because of the Columbia disaster.
The crew consists of an American, a Russian and a Spaniard, marking the second time a Soyuz capsule has carried a U.S. astronaut to the space station since the Columbia disintegrated in February on its way back to Earth.
Russians and Americans burst into applause as the Soyuz-FG rocket blasted off on schedule from the once-supersecret Baikonur cosmodrome.
"It is huge. It is testament to our partnership and how deep it really is," NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe said at the launch pad deep in the stark Kazakh steppe.
The launch came three days after China became the third nation to launch a manned spacecraft, joining Russia and the United States. But while the Chinese launch was a symbol of national pride, Russia -- which, as the Soviet Union, pioneered space travel -- portrayed Saturday's flight as a demonstration of international cooperation.
The Soyuz spacecraft is taking the next U.S.-Russian replacement crew to the $60 billion space station, and giving a European Space Agency astronaut a ride into space.
Jean Jacques Dordain, the director of the European Space Agency, praised the Russians for providing a path into space for other astronauts.
"Our Russian partners stepped up at a time when we needed them the most," O'Keefe said. "They are shouldering a particularly heavy burden and we are grateful for that."
NASA now depends on Russia to keep its astronauts flying. The Russian Soyuz, whose primary role was to serve as an emergency evacuation craft for the station, is now the only ship capable of carrying crews to and from the 16-nation space outpost.
"We are happy to have the opportunity to help our partners in the space station," said Sergei Gorbunov, spokesman for the Russian Space Agency.
American Michael Foale, making his sixth trip into space, is commanding the flight, which also includes Spaniard Pedro Duque and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri.
The crew blasted off under clear blue skies, shooting across the Kazakh steppe at the start of their two-day trip to the space station. Docking is scheduled for Monday.
Foale will become the only American to serve aboard both the Russian Mir space station and the international space station. He and Kaleri are due to replace American Ed Lu and Russian Yuri Malenchenko, who have been in space since May.
Malenchenko, who left the planet a bachelor, will return as a husband. He got married aboard the space station during a live video hookup with his bride, who was at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
--------
A New Crew Heads For the Space Station
October 19, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/science/19RUSS.html
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan, Oct. 18 (Reuters) - An international crew blasted off and headed to the International Space Station on Saturday for a 200-day mission, days after China's first manned space flight led to speculation that it might join the space station project.
With the United States' space shuttles still grounded after a disaster this year, the station's survival depends on Russian spacecraft. The Soyuz TMA-3 craft, with its three-man crew, is scheduled to dock with the orbital platform early on Monday.
Dr. C. Michael Foale, the American mission commander, and Aleksandr Y. Kaleri, a Russian astronaut, will spend 200 days in space.
A Spaniard, Pedro Duque, is the third astronaut on board. He is heading to the $95-billion station for a 10-day mission devoted to experiments and will then return to Earth with the departing crew.
An American, Dr. Edward T. Lu, and a Russian, Col. Yuri I. Malenchenko, who married his fiancée via satellite video link while he was in space and she was in Texas, have been in orbit for six months.
-------- us
Reduction in U.S. Troops Eyed for '04
Gradual Exit Strategy Tied to Iraq's Stability
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 19, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46852-2003Oct18?language=printer
U.S. military commanders have developed a plan to steadily cut back troop levels in Iraq next year, several senior Army officers said in recent interviews.
There are now 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The plan to cut that number is well advanced and has been described in broad outline to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld but has not yet been approved by him. It would begin to draw down forces next spring, cutting the number of troops to fewer than 100,000 by next summer and then to 50,000 by mid-2005, officers involved in the planning said.
The plan, which amounts to being the first formal military exit strategy for Iraq, is designed to show how the U.S. presence might be reduced without undercutting the stability of the country. Military officials worry that if they do not begin cutting the size of the U.S. force, they could damage troop morale, leave the armed forces shorthanded if crises emerge in North Korea and elsewhere, and help create a long-term personnel shortage in the service.
At the same time, some of the people involved in the discussions said they consider the force reduction plan optimistic, as much a goal as a guaranteed outcome.
If it is implemented successfully, the troop reductions could reduce political pressure on the Bush administration as the presidential campaign gets fully underway.
The cuts are being planned even as other major changes are being set in motion. Most prominently, preliminary steps have been taken to ease out Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who became the top U.S. commander in Iraq slightly more than four months ago, a senior Army general said. The general predicted that Sanchez will not be fired but may be promoted next year into a less challenging slot, such as chief of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees operations in and around South America. Sanchez, senior officials said, is expected to be replaced sometime next year by Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, who earlier this year became chief of the Army's 3rd Corps. That umbrella headquarters is based at Fort Hood, Tex., and oversees several of the major units that are in Iraq now or will go next year, such as the 4th Infantry Division, the 1st Cavalry Division and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
Metz, who is traveling in Iraq, told reporters Friday that he expects U.S. troops to remain in the country until at least 2006. He is scheduled to move to Iraq by the end of this year, first as Sanchez's deputy, but in that position would take command of most military operations and leave Sanchez to focus more on political work, a senior military official said.
Some top officers and Pentagon civilians have expressed concern that Sanchez is overmatched strategically, but a senior official who works closely with him dismissed that, saying that "Sanchez is doing a great job over there." Asked for comment, Sanchez said yesterday that it is "news to me" if any senior officials are unhappy with his performance. He confirmed that he expects Metz to deploy in Iraq around December and eventually to succeed him, but described that as part of a planned rotation of headquarters operations. Metz did not respond to e-mail and telephone requests for comment.
In another shift in the U.S. presence, plans are being made to withdraw U.S. and British forces from some major Iraqi cities, a senior military official said. The first two cities being eyed for this change are Basra in the south and Mosul in the north. Those might be followed by a withdrawal from some "well-policed" neighborhoods in Baghdad, but there would not be a complete pullout from the capital, the official added.
Officials involved in the discussions about troop reductions insist that implementation will be dictated not by a set timetable, but by security conditions in Iraq. Nonetheless, the drawdown is tied to events that are scheduled to begin in January, when a major round of U.S. troop rotations that will last several months is to get underway.
During that period, the U.S. military hopes to turn over as many basic security functions as possible to the Iraqi security forces now being created and to any additional foreign peacekeepers that U.S. diplomacy secures. If the Iraqi security forces can shoulder more of the security burden, it might be possible to replace the departing divisions of about 16,000 troops each with brigades of about 5,000 each.
Over the spring, that changeover would represent a cumulative reduction of more than 30,000 soldiers; along with other cuts, it could lower the U.S. troop level to fewer than 100,000 by mid-2004.
As more units of Iraqi soldiers and civil defense troops are created, and as some additional foreign peacekeepers begin to arrive, cuts in U.S. troop levels would continue next year. Ideally, said one official involved in the planning, by mid-2005 the number of U.S. troops would be as low as 40,000. Army planners consider a presence of that size to be sustainable for years without placing undue stress on the overall force.
"That's what we're looking at right now," an Army general involved in the discussions said last week. He said the key question is, "What will it take to sustain the conditions under which you can have political and economic progress?"
Though the answer has not been reached, he said, the basic equation is in place. Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for Iraq and the Middle East, said last month in congressional testimony, "The more Iraqis that are policing, that are patrolling, that are doing the security work to defend their own country, the sooner we will be able to draw down our forces."
There is deep worry in the Army that if Iraqi security forces cannot shoulder more of the burden, the Army will have to maintain its current troop levels beyond the spring, which could create a personnel exodus that would threaten the viability of the all-volunteer force.
The cutbacks being contemplated would help the Army reduce that stress. "By my estimate, we can sustain six brigades in Iraq indefinitely," said retired Army Lt. Col. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent think tank. With the addition of some Marines, Green Berets and troops from civil affairs, intelligence, military police and other specialized units, he noted, "That would put us in the 40,000 to 50,000 range."
"There isn't going to be any victory parade," said retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who has been advising the Pentagon on the creation of the Iraqi civil defense force. "But slowly, but surely, you might be able to say, we don't need a division, we need a regiment with a mobile reserve."
Some of the advocates of the troop drawdown concede that they consider it a "best-case" scenario. The "mid-case," said one defense expert, is that the security situation continues as it is and Iraqi units prove unreliable, requiring more U.S. troops than the drawdown plan would provide, while the worst case is that conditions worsen and Shiite attacks increase, increasing the number of U.S. casualties and possibly requiring U.S. reinforcements.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Gordon Rudd, a peacekeeping expert and military historian who worked this spring for the Coalition Provisional Authority, the civilian reconstruction administration in Baghdad, called the projection of major cuts "rosy and optimistic . . . but not beyond the realm of possibility -- nor inappropriate as a goal."
Nor would the cutbacks mean an end to the fighting or to U.S. casualties. Planners say they expect that while Iraqi forces would carry out many day-to-day military operations, such as checkpoint duty and patrolling, U.S. forces would continue to execute raids and other more sophisticated combat operations.
"American troops will stay on the offensive -- just smaller numbers, rather than big sweeps," said Eliot Cohen, a Johns Hopkins University expert on strategy who sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel.
An array of Iraqi military and police organizations is being created to take up the burden. Current U.S. planning calls for Iraqi civil defense militiamen working with U.S. troops to number 25,000 by mid-summer, up from about 6,000 now. Also, the new Iraqi army, which now has just three battalions of about 700 men each, is slated to have about 40,000 troops a year from now. And there are supposed to be about 80,000 retrained Iraqi police officers within two years.
There already are 20,000 Iraqi security guards in a hastily created force that is assigned to protect 240 key sites, such as power transmission lines, oil pipelines and other key parts of the Iraqi infrastructure.
U.S. officials believe that having all those Iraqis conduct more front-line work, such as searches of homes and cars, will lessen the resentment Iraqis feel about Americans carrying out such invasive tasks.
"As they field those [Iraqi] battalions, they ought to put them on the street and put the Americans in garrisons -- and so put an Iraqi face on security," said retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, who oversaw the initial U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq this spring.
But some experts doubt that the new Iraqi forces will be capable of picking up those tasks, which could undercut the plan to draw down U.S. troops. "I do not place a lot of hope in the new Iraqi security forces, at least in the time frame" being discussed, said Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst of Middle Eastern militaries.
Also, there is some worry that even if Iraqis can execute tactical missions to provide security, they may not be able to carry out the larger, more difficult task of holding together Iraq as a nation.
"There is a fallacy in the 'turn it over to the Iraqis for security' argument," said retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, who has taught strategy at the National War College. "The strategic problem, and the problem that will demand keeping a large U.S. presence, is the danger of a fractured Iraq." Without a large number of U.S. troops on Iraqi ground, he said, the country could quickly split into a Kurdish north, a Sunni center and a Shiite south.
--------
Lawyer Seeks Papers on 'Friendly Fire'
October 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/national/19PILO.html
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. - The lawyer for a pilot charged with dereliction of duty in the accidental bombing of Canadian troops in Afghanistan last year said on Saturday that he filed a request to force the Air Force to hand over documents related to 17 other so-called friendly fire incidents.
The lawyer, Charles W. Gittins, has said communications problems and poor command decisions are causes of many such Air Force accidents, including that of his client, Maj. Harry Schmidt.
Details of the 17 other incidents were not immediately released, but Mr. Gittins said one of them was similar to Major Schmidt's case.
Major Schmidt faces up to six months in prison if convicted in a court-martial.
Four Canadian soldiers were killed and eight wounded when Major Schmidt dropped a 500-pound bomb near Kandahar in April 2002. He has said he thought the soldiers' live-ammunition exercise was enemy antiaircraft fire.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- police
Scientist Says FBI Tricked Him
Charges Filed Over Report of Missing Plague Bacteria
Associated Press
Sunday, October 19, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47009-2003Oct18.html
LUBBOCK, Tex., Oct. 18 -- A Texas scientist accused of lying to the FBI about destroying 30 vials of bubonic plague bacteria said the agency tricked him into making a confession so it could close the case.
"I feel I was naive to have trusted them," Thomas Butler told CBS's "60 Minutes" in a segment to air Sunday.
Butler is charged with falsely reporting as missing 30 vials of the potentially lethal plague bacteria that he said in a statement he had destroyed. News in January of the supposedly missing vials triggered a terrorism alert.
Butler said government agents pressured him to sign a statement that he had destroyed the vials, even though he did not believe at the time that he had done so. Butler said he cannot account for the vials. "They told me I would not be charged if I were able to confirm the accidental destruction," said Butler, a Texas Tech University professor who was working on an antidote to plague.
The government "wanted to conclude the investigation and, they told me, reassure the public that there was no danger," he said.
He said the FBI believed he must have inadvertently destroyed the vials because there was no evidence of a break-in at his lab.
FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the agency could not comment because of a court's gag order.
The federal indictment issued in April also charges that Butler smuggled plague samples from Tanzania and illegally transported them within the country and overseas. Butler had listed his cargo as "laboratory samples," but prosecutors said they should have been declared. Butler pleaded not guilty in May and awaits trial. In the meantime, he is prohibited from visiting his lab.
Bubonic plague is not contagious, but left untreated it can transform into pneumonic plague, which can be spread from person to person.
About 1,000 to 3,000 people worldwide contract plague each year. The United States reports 10 to 20 cases annually, and about one victim out of every seven dies.
--------
30 Plague Vials Put Career on Line
October 19, 2003
By KENNETH CHANG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/national/19PLAG.html?pagewanted=all&position=
The first reports were terrifying. On Jan. 13, a leading infectious disease researcher at Texas Tech University informed officials there that 30 of 150 vials of plague bacteria in his laboratory had been stolen. Sixty F.B.I. agents swept through the campus and surrounding Lubbock to look for the missing vials.
They found no signs of forced entry into the laboratory, and after long hours of questioning over two days, the researcher, Dr. Thomas C. Butler, reversed himself. In a handwritten affidavit, he said he had accidentally destroyed the samples and had declared them missing "to demonstrate why I could not account for the plague bacteria that had been in my possession."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation then arrested Dr. Butler, chief of the university's infectious diseases division, and charged him with lying to its agents.
To federal officials, there was no danger to the public because the vials had never been missing.
According to court documents, Dr. Butler now asserts that while he may have accidentally destroyed the vials, he has no memory of doing so.
In an exclusive interview with the CBS News program "60 Minutes" that is scheduled for broadcast tonight, Dr. Butler said that the F.B.I. tricked him into a confession so the agency could close the case.
"I feel I was naive to have trusted them," Dr. Butler said in the interview, which was conducted Sept. 12, just before he, his lawyers and federal officials were barred from commenting on the case by the trial judge, Sam R. Cummings of the Federal District Court in Lubbock.
A spokesman for the F.B.I., Paul Bresson, told The Associated Press yesterday that the agency could not comment because of the judge's order.
While the fate of the vials remains a mystery, two things are clear. First, Dr. Butler, 62, is in serious legal and professional jeopardy. In two weeks he is to go on trial in federal court on a 69-count indictment that could result in a long prison sentence and millions of dollars in fines. Texas Tech has begun the process of firing Dr. Butler, who is free on $100,000 bond and on paid leave but banned from his laboratory.
Second, scientists around the country have rallied to his defense, arguing that while Dr. Butler may have mishandled the plague cultures, no one has accused him of being a terrorist or seeking to aid terrorists.
"As far as I can tell, it is based on some kind of misunderstanding or maybe some absent-minded bumbling," Dr. Peter Agre of Johns Hopkins University, a winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, said of the case against Dr. Butler.
Dr. Agre said earlier that he would donate part of his Nobel prize money to Dr. Butler's legal defense.
"I can't imagine he would do anything intentionally malicious," said Dr. Agre, an acquaintance of Dr. Butler. "It looks like there was no bioterror. There was a false alarm. It seemed that might have been the end of it. In Butler's case, that was just the beginning of it."
Some scientists say the rules governing the shipment of infectious disease samples between laboratories are now so stringent and onerous that they could slow public health response to an outbreak, whether natural or the work of terrorists. They add that researchers may turn away from research on bioterrorism or diseases that rack poor countries out of fear that any misstep could put them in legal trouble.
Dr. Stanley Falkow, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, said that because of the new regulations, he destroyed his plague cultures. "It's not going to have that big of an effect on me, because I'm not going to deal with it," Dr. Falkow said of the rules.
Dr. William B. Greenough III, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said Dr. Butler's wife, Elisabeth, told him him a week ago that prosecutors were pressuring him to accept a plea bargain - six months in jail and an $800,000 fine - which Dr. Butler had declined.
"That's probably good news," said Dr. Greenough, a friend of Dr. Butler. "They basically understand this case has little if any merit."
The troubles of Dr. Butler grew out of research he began last year in Tanzania.
The plague bacteria, Yersinia pestis, causes bubonic plague, the "black death" that killed millions in Europe from 1347 to 1350. Outbreaks of the disease, carried by rodents and transmitted to people by fleas, still occur in Asia and Africa. In the Western United States, the disease is widespread among rodents, and typically infects 10 to 15 people a year. Symptoms start with fever and a headache, followed by swollen lymph nodes, and, if untreated with antibiotics, rapidly progress to pneumonia and death.
In a telephone interview from Lubbock on Friday, Dr. Butler would not talk about the court case because of the judge's order, but spoke in general about his research. He said he became interested in plague as a Navy doctor in Vietnam in 1969 when he volunteered to help at a civilian hospital. A 5-year-old boy came in with breathing problems and died soon afterward. A blood sample was full of plague bacteria, he said.
"This made such an impression on me," Dr. Butler said. "This was one of the first children I had seen die in the hospital."
After the war, Dr. Butler continued research on the disease. "It's an acute bacterial infection which kills patients very rapidly," he said. "It was a fascinating disease, because the literature didn't tell us clearly why the patients died."
Plague bacteria could be an attractive weapon for terrorists. If the bacteria could be dispersed through the air, thousands of people might become sick within days. The historically preferred antibiotic against the plague, streptomycin, is no longer manufactured in the United States, and there is concern that if an outbreak did occur, not enough drugs would be available. In 1999, Dr. Butler said, he was a consultant to the Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases on what antibiotic to stockpile against the plague.
Dr. Greenough, who helped Dr. Butler reconstruct his research after he was locked out of his laboratory at Texas Tech, says that in Tanzania Dr. Butler showed that two other readily available antibiotics, doxycycline and gentamicin, were effective in treating plague. Dr. Butler has submitted his findings to the medical journal The Lancet.
That knowledge will be of great help if plague is used in a terrorist attack, Dr. Greenough said. To put Dr. Butler in jail, he went on, would be "a rather bizarre and unusual approach to trying to protect the American public or anyone else."
To identify the particular strains of plague in the Tanzania outbreak, Dr. Butler brought blood and tissue samples from patients back to his laboratory at Texas Tech last year, carrying them on British Airways and American Airlines flights, according to the indictment.
The practice of carrying infectious-disease samples for research on commercial airline flights had been common for decades. Typically, the samples are in vials wrapped in metal boxes that researchers carry on planes. But after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress imposed tighter controls.
In April, a 15-count indictment charged Dr. Butler with violating the new law several times. For example, the government charges that a package he shipped to Tanzania containing plague samples was labeled "laboratory materials."
The indictment also charged him with overreporting expenses on his 2001 tax return by more than $110,000, leading to a tax underpayment of nearly $40,000.
Dr. Butler's legal problems were compounded by his stormy relationship with Texas Tech. In June, the federal indictment was expanded by 54 counts unrelated to the plague case, accusing Dr. Butler of systematically defrauding Texas Tech by not informing the university of consulting contracts he had with two drug companies. Universities often take a percentage of research grants from such contracts to cover overhead. Dr. Butler has pleaded not guilty to all 69 counts.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who is Dr. Butler's lead lawyer, has said that his client paid the taxes in a different year and that grant disputes between professors and their universities are common.
The New York Academy of Sciences' Human Rights Committee sent Attorney General John Ashcroft a letter on Sept. 18 complaining of the "piling on" of charges against Dr. Butler that were unrelated to the missing plague bacteria.
The Federation of American Scientists said, "The government is prosecuting this case in a manner that is grossly disproportionate to the offenses that have been alleged."
Dr. Agre, the Nobel chemistry laureate, said: "This is the kind of thing they threw at Al Capone. Tom Butler, he's headstrong and maybe a little disorganized, but not a criminal."
On Aug. 28, Texas Tech told Dr. Butler it intended to dismiss him, citing neglect of professional responsibilities, moral turpitude and unprofessional conduct.
Mr. Turley, in comments last week restricted to the Texas Tech proceedings, said Dr. Butler would fight the dismissal and might sue the university.
"In our view, Texas Tech failed to take actions that are required of any reputable institution," he said, "and we believe Texas Tech's failure to act responsibly has caused great harm to Dr. Butler."
The university has agreed to suspend the dismissal proceedings pending the outcome of his trial.
-------- prisons / prisoners
THE INNOCENTS
Photographs and interviews by Taryn Simon.
Commentary by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck.
Umbrage Editions, $34.95.
Books in Brief: Nonfiction
October 19, 2003
JAKE MILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/books/review/1019br-briefs.html
The 45 men and women whose portraits appear in the pages of ''The Innocents'' collectively served more than 500 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. The photographer Taryn Simon found and interviewed her subjects by working with the Innocence Project, the legal clinic founded by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld at Cardozo Law School in New York. She provides summaries for each case with its accompanying image -- vividly stylized re-creations of the scene of the arrest or misidentification, portraits with alibi witnesses or vignettes from the newly free lives of the wrongfully convicted. They alone do not tell us much about their subjects -- and that is part of the point. Many of the people portrayed were convicted on the basis of flawed eyewitness testimony, stacked lineups and manipulated photo displays. ''Photography's ability to blur truth and fiction is one of its most compelling qualities,'' Simon writes. The best of the pictures have an ambiguous, dreamlike quality. For example, Walter Snyder, seen from the front, seems furious, but his profile, reflected in the mirrored wall behind him, is tragically sad. It is easy to see -- and believe -- that he would feel both ways.
-------- terrorism
Bin Laden urges terror blitz
Jason Burke, chief reporter
Sunday October 19, 2003
The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1066430,00.html
The world's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, has mounted an unparalleled propaganda offensive calling for renewed attacks on the West and on American and British troops in Iraq.
The Saudi-born leader of al-Qaeda has simultaneously released two audio tapes, a series of videotaped threats and several filmed statements by his group's suicide bombers who died in an attack on Riyadh in May.
The tapes include calls by bin Laden for Muslims to rise up and expel American and British troops from Iraq and an exhortation to attack 'Christians and Jews... who occupy Islamic lands'.
The videos, posted on a website regularly used by al-Qaeda, include undated footage of the leader in which he looks healthy and at ease. They also feature, for the first time, a statement in English, read by a suicide bomber who died in Saudi Arabia, threatening terror against the West.
The new material is a serious blow to security agencies hunting him. They fear that the tapes, which include an audio recording of the al-Qaeda strike in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, last May, may presage new attacks.
In a development that is likely to embarrass the Saudi regime, a suicide bomber, calling himself Fazl bin Mohammed al-Kashmiri, claims he is the son of a retired senior officer in the Saudi intelligence service.
Among the defiant messages in the tapes posted on the internet from five militants who died in the simultaneous strikes in Riyadh that killed 20 and injured 200 in May, is one in clear English. 'We want all Christians and Jews to go out from our Islamic countries and release our brothers from jail and stop killing Muslims or we will kill you,' the militant said.
'We promise we will not let you live safely and you will not see from us anything but bombs, fire, destroying homes and cutting heads. Our mujahideen are coming to you very soon to make you see what you didn't see before.'
All the militants appear in Saudi dress, each with an automatic rifle and a map of the Arabian peninsula behind them.
Bin Laden, who is believed to be in Afghanistan, features regularly in the videos, exhorting Arabs and Muslims to martyrdom. The footage gives no clues about when it was filmed, though it appears to be relatively recent.
In an audio recording of the Riyadh attack, which targeted three foreign workers' compounds, the bombers are heard preparing for their deaths, praying to Allah to 'accept them into paradise'.
They travel to the site of the attack. Prolonged shooting is heard, along with car engines and alarms - then the tape ends abruptly.
The video images carry the logo of 'Sabah Productions', a company title that has been employed often by al-Qaeda militants for propaganda films. The videos also feature commentaries by other 'mujahideen'. Many refer to events in Iraq.
Their release will worry the security agencies who suspect that al-Qaeda uses videos to send coded messages to supporters. The ability of the organisation to arrange such sophisticated propaganda - the videos are professional and polished - is also a cause for great concern.
The claim by one of the bombers that his father is a senior officer in the Mukhabarat, Saudi Arabia's intelligence service, will further damage the increasingly fragile relationship between the kingdom and the US. American officials have long claimed that Islamic militant groups have widespread support at a high level in Saudi Arabia's military and security forces, including those entrusted with the protection of Western residential compounds.
They are convinced the Riyadh suicide bombers had 'insider' knowledge of the compounds that were hit and that al-Qaeda even infiltrated the elite National Guard. Several bombers were wearing National Guard uniforms when they entered the three secure complexes. But Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the UK, denied the allegations last week.
The tapes include a message directed at Omar Abdul Rachman, the blind Egyptian radical cleric in prison in America, and militants incarcerated elsewhere in the West and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba: 'We are proud of you and we will revenge you. We will help you, and our brothers in Chechnya and Indonesia, to defeat your enemies.'
----
Full text of message to Americans
Bin Ladin calls Americans 'vulgar and without sound ethics'
Saturday 18 October 2003
Aljazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/8E8EA580-943C-4FBF-9ABD-21B47627FECD.htm
Usama bin Ladin has issued a message to the American people, broadcast on Saturday on Aljazeera television. A full and exclusive translation follows:
"Oppression will only go against the oppressors.
"This is a message from Usama bin Muhammad bin Ladin to the American people regarding your aggression in Iraq. Peace be upon those who follow the righteous path.
"Some have the impression that you are a reasonable people. But the majority of you are vulgar and without sound ethics or good manners. You elect the evil from among you, the greatest liars and the least decent and you are enslaved by your richest and the most influential among you, especially the Jews, who lead you using the lie of democracy to support the Israelis and their schemes and in complete antagonism towards our religion (Islam).
"These schemes are paid for in our blood and land, and your blood and economy.
"This has been proved by recent events. And the war on Iraq, which has nothing to do with you, is proof of that.
"Bush and his gang, with their heavy sticks and hard hearts, are an evil to all humankind. They have stabbed into the truth, until they have killed it altogether in the eyes of the world.
"With this behaviour they have encouraged hypocrisy, and spread vice and political bribes shamelessly at the level of heads of state.
Blood
"This gang and their leader enjoy lying, war and looting to serve their own ambitions. The blood of the children of Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq is still dripping from their teeth. They have fooled you and deceived you into invading Iraq a second time. And they have lied to you and the whole world.
"Thanks be to God Almighty who has exposed the lies of George Bush and made his term as president a term of continual catastrophe"
Usama bin Ladin "Nations are nothing without ethics and morals. If these are gone, the nations are gone.
Bush has sent your sons into the lion's den, to slaughter and be slaughtered, claiming that this act was in defence of international peace and America's security, thus concealing the facts.
"On one hand he (Bush) is carrying out the demands of the Zionist lobby that helped him to enter the White House. These demands are to destroy the military strength of Iraq because it is too close to the Jews in occupied Palestine, regardless of the harm that will happen to your people and your economy.
"On the other hand, he (Bush) is concealing his own ambitions and the ambitions of the Zionist lobby and their own desire for oil. He is still following the mentality of his ancestors who killed the Native Americans to take their land and wealth. He thought that this time it would be an easy task and a lie that would not be exposed.
Profit into loss
"But God sent him to Baghdad, the seat of the Caliphate, the homeland of people who prefer death to honey. So they (the Iraqis) turned his profits into losses, his joy into sadness and now he is merely looking for a way back home.
"Thanks be to God Almighty who has exposed the lies of George Bush and made his term as president a term of continual catastrophe.
"To Bush I say, you are begging the world to come to your aid, begging mercenaries from every corner of the world, even from small states. This begging has destroyed your pride and revealed how trivial and weak you are after claiming to defend the whole world.
"Now you are like the knight who was trying to protect people from the Sword of Malik, and ended up begging someone to protect him.
"We reserve the right to retaliate at the appropriate time and place against all countries involved, especially the UK, Spain, Australia, Poland, Japan and Italy, not to exclude those Muslim states that took part, especially the Gulf states, and in particular Kuwait, which has become a beachhead for the crusading forces.
Folly
"I say to the American people we will continue to fight you and continue to conduct martyrdom operations inside and outside the United States"
Usama bin Ladin "And to the American soldiers in Iraq I say, now that all the lies have been exposed and the greatest liar has been revealed, your stay on Iraq's land is compounding the oppression and is a great folly.
"It shows you are selling your lives for the lives of others. And you are spilling your blood to swell the bank accounts of the White House gang and their fellow arms dealers and the proprietors of great companies. And the greatest folly in life is to sell your life for the lives of others.
"In conclusion, I say to the American people we will continue to fight you and continue to conduct martyrdom operations inside and outside the United States until you depart from your oppressive course and abandon your follies and rein in your fools.
"You have to know that we are counting our dead, may God bless them, especially in Palestine, who are killed by your allies the Jews. We are going to take revenge for them from your blood, God willing, as we did on the day of New York. Remember what I said to you on that day about our security and your security. Baghdad the seat of the Caliphate, will not fall to you, God willing, and we will fight you as long as we carry our guns. And if we fall, our sons will take our place.
"And may our mothers become childless if we leave any of you alive on our soil."
--------
New Tape Promises Attacks On U.S. Voice Purported To Be Bin Laden's
By Sarah El Deeb
Associated Press
Sunday, October 19, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46696-2003Oct18.html
CAIRO, Oct. 18 -- In a new audiotape aired Saturday, a voice purported to be Osama bin Laden's vowed suicide attacks "inside and outside" the United States and threatened nations that are helping the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
The speaker on the tape, broadcast by the al-Jazeera television network, also warned Iraqis against cooperating with U.S. forces and urged youths in neighboring countries to join a jihad, or holy war, against the Americans.
"We reserve the right to respond at the appropriate time and place against all the countries participating in this unjust war, particularly Britain, Spain, Australia, Poland, Japan and Italy," the voice said.
The voice added that there would be "no exception for those participating from the countries of the Islamic world and the Gulf, especially Kuwait."
It was the first tape since one released on the eve of the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. The message came as President Bush toured Asian nations to rally allies in the war on terrorism.
U.S. officials said they were studying the tape. "We're doing a technical analysis of the tape to try to determine whether or not it's authentic," said Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for the CIA.
Al-Jazeera, based in Qatar, received the recording Saturday from a "trusted source" who called and offered the audiotape, news editor Ibrahim Hilal said.
The message was apparently recorded before early September, because the speaker refers to the government of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned Sept. 6.
In the portion of the recording addressed to Americans, the speaker said, "I tell the American people we will continue fighting you, and we will continue martyrdom operations inside and outside the United States until you stop your injustice, and you end your foolishness."
On Sept. 10, al-Jazeera broadcast a videotape that contained a pair of voiceovers, one purportedly from bin Laden and the other from his deputy Ayman Zawahiri. The CIA said two days later that analysts believed that bin Laden's voice on the tape was probably authentic.
-------- torture
Bush rejects Guantanamo Bay torture claims
19 October 2003
AFP
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/53017/1/.html
SYDNEY : US President George W. Bush denied the military had tortured suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba, during an interview screened on Australian television.
A US-based lawyer acting for two Australians being held at Guantanamo Bay claimed this month that detainees at the camp were subjected to "medieval" torture, including having rubber bullets fired at them.
Bush dismissed the allegation ahead of a whirlwind visit to Australia this week.
"We don't torture people in America and people who make that claim just don't know anything about our country," he told Channel Nine in an interview recorded last week and broadcast Sunday.
He said the Australian men -- Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks -- were being held because "these were people picked up on the battlefield".
"We're trying to learn more about them to make sure we fully understand," he said.
Habib's wife will attempt to stare down Bush when he addresses the Australian parliament Thursday in what she described as a silent protest at her husband's imprisonment.
Security chiefs have ordered the parliament in Canberra closed to the general public for Bush's address but Maha Habib will view it from the gallery after receiving an invitation from left-leaning Greens politicians.
Her husband has been in detention for two-and-a-half years after being was arrested in Pakistan for allegedly training with terrorists.
Habib said she would like to personally ask Bush to send her husband to stand trial in Australia but she would not make a scene during his address.
"When I get there I will stay silent, I am there to support my husband and to show that he is innocent," she told reporters at her Sydney home, surrounded by her four children dressed in orange boiler suits in imitation of the uniforms worn by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
The three Greens politicians in the federal parliament said they would wear pictures of Habib and and another Australian held at Guantanamo Bay on their lapels during Bush's speech.
Howard told reporters in Bangkok, where he is attending an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting, that the Greens were free to invite whomever they liked to parliament.
Thousands of protestors took to the streets of Sydney Sunday to protest at Bush's visit and Australia's involvement in the US-led campaign in Iraq.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Lawmakers Weigh Credit for Hybrid Cars
October 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Energy-Consumers.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House promoted it and there was widespread support in Congress, so a tax credit for buyers of gasoline-saving hybrid cars seemed certain to find a way into the energy bill.
But lawmakers have not decided whether to include the tax break in legislation even though it is one of the few offerings that would directly affect consumers and fuel consumption.
Many Democrats and other critics of the energy policy blueprint developed largely by Republicans say the struggle over the hybrid car tax credit reflects the bill's tilt toward production at the expense of efforts to cut energy use.
When it comes to energy efficiency ``it's a bologna sandwich ... while (energy industry) lobbyists are feasting on steak,'' complains Mark Hopkins, head of the Alliance to Save Energy, a private advocacy group that promotes energy conservation.
More than two years ago, Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force recommended a tax credit for buying vehicles powered by electricity and gasoline. The hybrids can get up to 75 percent better mileage per gallon, but also cost more than conventional vehicles. All the major automakers have plans to introduce hybrids over the next few years.
Last year and again in the summer, the Senate approved a measure that would save consumers an average of $2,000, through a tax credit, for people buying a hybrid vehicle such as the Toyota Prius or Honda Civic, which already are on the market. But the House in its energy bill ignored the credit.
One auto industry lobbyist said he expects some form of tax breaks for hybrids, though probably scaled back considerably from the Senate measure.
An aide Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a leading negotiator on tax issues on the energy bill, said there is no agreement on what to do about the tax credits.
Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, said that even with the tax incentive to buy gas-electric vehicles, the bill now before Congress will represent only a modest effort to reduce domestic use of energy.
An analysis by Nadel's group and the Alliance to Save Energy found few items in the legislation that would help to reduce energy consumption and even fewer aimed directly at consumers. Among them are:
--new minimum energy efficiency requirements for 11 products, including exit signs, traffic lights, refrigerators, ceiling fans and vending machines.
--a tax credit for buying insulation, more energy efficient windows and appliances that meet federal Energy Star efficiency ratings.
--tax credits to builders who construct new homes with a 30 percent to 50 percent improvement in energy savings over conventional homes. Home buyers may save on the cost of the home and lower fuel bills.
--tax deductions for use of efficient lighting, heating and cooling systems in commercial buildings.
The legislation also aims to get government, one of the largest users of energy, to give energy savings greater priority. But many of those measures already are being pursued -- with varying degrees of success -- by executive order, energy efficiency advocates say.
Republican supporters of the legislation cite these programs as evidence they are trying to come up with an energy blueprint that addresses both production and conservation.
But many Democrats, environmentalists and energy conservation advocates argue that the efficiency measures are dwarfed by a broad range of tax breaks, policy initiatives and other incentives to spur production of coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power. The bill is expected to include more than $16 billion in total tax breaks, the overwhelming majority aimed at production, they say.
Despite these efficiency programs, energy demand will grow, Nadel says. The legislation is expected to reduce average energy demand by only about 1.4 percent over what it otherwise would be over the next 16 years, he calculated. ``We really need to do a lot more.''
More significant is what lawmakers are not putting into the bill, argues Kara Rinaldi, legislative director of the Alliance to Save Energy.
There is nothing to significantly increase automobile fuel economy. She said lawmakers never seriously considered creation of a national fund, paid into by electric utilities, with the money used to promote electricity savings. A proposal approved by the Senate that would have set a requirement to curtail the growth in oil consumption by 1 million barrels a day by 2013, was scrapped. The country currently uses about 20 million barrels a day with demand growing.
-------- environment
The New Toxic-Site Cleanup Agent: A Bacterium That Gobbles Up Poison
October 19, 2003
By JONATHAN MILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/nyregion/19BUGS.html
FAIRFIELD, N.J. - The Caldwell Trucking Superfund site, a few miles west of the Willowbrook Mall, is a nine-acre repository of poison-laced sewage, hauled here and dumped until the 1970's, when the threat of drinking-water contamination was recognized.
About 50 private wells and two public wells had to be shut down, and even more drinking water was threatened as contamination spread toward the Passaic River. The contamination has now mostly been contained, but the latest cleanup stage has progressed fitfully at best.
And so three years ago, the federal Environmental Protection Agency started a daring project to pump into the ground a mysterious and little-understood bacterium that munches on the type of pollutants to be found here.
By all accounts, the use of the half-micron-long bacterium with the official name Dehalococcoides ethenogenes has been a success. Technically, the bacterium - a few thousand could fit on the head of a pin - ingests the toxic chemicals the way that people breathe oxygen.
"It looks like the process is really working," said Tom Porucznik, remedial project manager for the E.P.A. The agency will be looking at more results throughout the fall, and will likely decide sometime in the spring whether to continue with the treatment.
The bacterium was discovered in 1997 by a team of scientists at Cornell University. They found that it had a strange natural affinity for devouring dangerous industrial chemicals like the one found at Caldwell Trucking - trichlorethylene, or TCE, which was often used as a heavy cleaner and is suspected of being a carcinogen. The bacteria have an unusual cell wall, and are tiny even by bacterial standards. "They're really weird organisms," said Dr. Stephen H. Zinder, the chairman of the microbiology department at Cornell University.
Using the "bugs" - as both he and others refer to D. ethenogenes - is a vast improvement over the pump-and-treat method, a tactic used at many polluted sites that essentially pumps water to the surface in the hope of removing contamination.
"The bugs flow where the contamination is, because they're following the water," said Peter Herzberg, a lawyer for eight companies responsible for the cleanup at the Caldwell site. "And you're getting to places where you couldn't get to mechanically with a pump-and-treat system."
Once they get where they are going, the bugs find the TCE or other poisons and begin devouring the chlorines from the molecules, leaving as a byproduct a harmless substance called ethene. The procedure, called bioremediation, has been used in pilot programs in California, Delaware, Texas and elsewhere to battle potential groundwater contaminants. Many sites lie near Air Force bases, where a mixture of jet fuel and TCE often seeped into the ground. Here, scientists and government officials have watched with surprise as the bacterium has significantly reduced the levels of TCE, in some places by 90 to 95 percent.
To those who may wonder about replacing poisons with bacteria in groundwater, officials and scientists say that thus far they see no ill effects. David W. Major, a scientist for GeoSyntec, a company that produces a widely used strain of the bacteria used at the site, said that once the feeding of D. ethenogenes stops, the organism simply dies, with little impact on the environment. Still, Dr. Zinder of Cornell, who along with James M. Gossett discovered the organism, said that unintended consequences were always a possibility.
"I'd say, you never know for sure, which makes people nervous," he said, "but I think as technologies go, I wouldn't consider these pathogens. There's just no evidence."
In fact, over the past decade, bio- remediation has been used a number of times. Fertilizer has been used to attack oil spills. In phytoremediation, plants are used to clean up toxic metals.
On a clear, bright day, a little chilly by early October standards, a single propeller plane passes overhead on its way to Essex County Airport, and it seems that little is detectably wrong at this nine-acre spot in northern New Jersey. But the whine of a generator and the site of seven milky-white 55-gallon drums rising from the ground quickly dispel that notion.
These drums are a kind of feed bag for the bacteria. Each day, Joe Huffman, a geologist, sends a concoction of nutrients, including lactate, into the ground. "It's like a buffet for the homeless," he said.
Chris Young, a project manager for the site, is stomping over what was once the "central lagoon," where the heaviest contamination from the septic sludge remains. Now, millions of poison-munching bacteria are burrowing into the soil's convoluted pathways where only a bacterium can go.
"In those tortuous paths," Mr. Young said, "we're just trying to get these nutrients down, get them feeding the organism in place, and get these populations growing."
Obviously, the more they increase, the more they eat.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Protestors detained in Turkey demos against Iraq deployment
ISTANBUL (AFP)
Oct 19, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031019125316.6ftg4uq9.html
Turkish police Sunday detained scores of protestors demonstrating across the country against the government's decision to send troops to neighboring Iraq to help restore security there, Anatolia news agency reported.
In Istanbul, riot police used truncheons and tear gas against some 300 demonstrators, among them Kurdish activists, who resisted orders to disperse from a park on the the city's European side.
"We will tear up the motion in the streets," the demonstrators chanted in reference to a government motion to dispatch troops to Iraq, which parliament approved earlier this month.
Security forces chased the protestors in nearby streets and detained scores of people, Anatolia said. It was not immediately known how many ended up in custody.
Eight people were detained in the central city of Kayseri, where police also used forcibly broke up a demonstration against any Turkish military involvement in Iraq, Anatolia said.
In the capital Ankara, protestors belonging to a pro-Islamist party staged a march to denounce the deployment plan, shouting slogans against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"Let Tayyip go to Iraq," they chanted.
Turkish public opinion is overwhelmingly against sending soldiers to Iraq as part of the US-led operation there to help rebuild the country after the fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
The prospect of a Turkish deployment in the war-ravaged country has also triggered harsh objections from Iraq's interim leadership.
On Saturday, Erdogan conceded for the first time that Ankara might abandon plans to send troops to its southeastern neighbor if they are not welcome.
--------
UK: Parade for Bush on Mall canceled
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
October 19, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031018-111019-2517r.htm
Plans for Queen Elizabeth II and President Bush to make a triumphant procession along the Mall in London during the president's state visit next month have been abandoned because of fears of antiwar protests.
The decision by Prime Minister Tony Blair's office, after consultations with Buckingham Palace, the White House and Scotland Yard, has disappointed the president and his senior aides, a palace official said.
The procession is traditionally the public high point of a state visit by a foreign dignitary to Britain. A senior palace official said yesterday that detailed plans had been made for the parade during Mr. Bush's Nov. 19-21 visit.
"But [the prime minister´s office], anxious about possible antiwar protests from the start, has now decided to pull the plug on it," the unidentified official said. "We are liaising with the White House, and they have made no attempt to hide their disappointment. They saw it, obviously, as a great photo opportunity."
President Bush will travel by helicopter to avoid protesters who may line road routes, and he will not address Parliament because of fears of a boycott by members, officials said.
When the visit was announced last month, antiwar campaigners called on Mr. Bush to stay away from Britain and promised protests during his visit.
----
Antiwar Activists To Revisit District
By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 19, 2003; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47080-2003Oct18?language=printer
Protesters from more than 135 cities in 38 states are expected to converge on Washington on Saturday, as busloads of antiwar demonstrators return to the capital for the first time since the fall of Baghdad in April.
Organizers said the rally and march will draw tens of thousands from across the United States and Canada. It is the first event of its kind co-sponsored by two major antiwar coalitions, International ANSWER and United for Peace and Justice, both of which coordinated some of the country's biggest peace marches this year. The demonstration will coincide with a rally and march in downtown San Francisco.
"The antiwar movement is becoming ascendant again; it's rising once more," ANSWER organizer Brian Becker said. "Our demonstration against the occupation on April 12 drew 30,000 people. We will draw substantially more than that for this demonstration."
The gathering represents a resurgence of sorts of the antiwar movement, which had put its large-scale protests on hold in recent months as activists emphasized education over direct action. No major antiwar rally has been held in Washington since ANSWER's April protest.
ANSWER held a national conference in New York in May that drew more than 850 activists, and United for Peace and Justice sponsored a strategy session in suburban Chicago in June that attracted more than 550. The meetings were designed to focus the movement on charting its future, but the period of relative quiet also allowed some to find new strength to carry on.
"People marched and demonstrated a whole lot to try to stop the war, and we weren't able to," said Leslie Cagan, 56, national coordinator of the United coalition. "That had, I think, for some segments of the activist community, a little bit of a demoralizing effect."
But as the number of U.S. casualties increases and as support for Bush's Iraq policy slips in polls, antiwar activists say the time is right to return to the streets. "Where are those weapons of mass destruction?" Cagan asked. "It turned out to be lies. As strongly as we felt we were right a year ago, we're even stronger in that conviction now."
Activists say they expect several veterans and family members of U.S. soldiers in Iraq to participate. Last October, Wilson "Woody" Powell, a 71-year-old Korean War veteran, filled his scratched 1997 Dodge Caravan with three other veterans -- one each from the first Persian Gulf War, World War II and the Korean War -- for a 14-hour trip from St. Louis to Washington. They headed to a peace rally, stirred by what they felt would be an unjust war in Iraq and hopeful that they and scores of others could make enough noise to stop it before it started.
One year later, with the war fought and declared over, Powell hasn't given up. He and more than 500 members of Veterans for Peace are expected to head to Washington next weekend to call for an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. "Is this how to cohabit on the globe, by just being bigger and badder than everybody else? Or are we much more comfortable being good neighbors?" asked Powell, executive director of the St. Louis-based group.
Nancy Lessin with Military Families Speak Out said spouses, parents and siblings of military personnel stationed in Iraq or recently returned home are planning to attend. She expects 40 or more families. "None of us want our loved ones to be misused in the way that this administration is misusing them, in a war for oil markets and empire building," said Lessin, a co-founder of the group that started with two military families in November and has grown to more than 1,000 members. Lessin's son is a Marine who returned recently from Iraq.
A listing of cities organizing bus and car caravans posted on ANSWER's Web site reads like a map of much of the United States: Wilmington, Del.; Harrisburg, Pa.; Savannah, Ga.; Asheville, N.C.; Kalamazoo, Mich.; Cedar Falls, Iowa; and Milwaukee.
New York's union representing 200,000 health and human services employees, 1199 SEIU, is providing free bus transportation to Washington for its members and their families. And ANSWER has reserved 65 buses for the New York area alone.
"I think that people want the occupation to end," said Mike Shaw, 35, a restaurant supervisor with the ANSWER chapter in Providence, R.I. "I think they feel the war was pursued under false pretenses."
D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said that his force, U.S. Park Police and U.S. Capitol Police will provide security. Ramsey said it was unclear how large the gathering will be.
"We don't expect it to be anything but peaceful," Ramsey said. The organizers' permit application estimates the crowd at 10,000, but activists have told National Park Service officials they expect as many as 30,000.
Organizers have characterized the war in Iraq as "Bush's Vietnam," describing the invasion and occupation as a bloody, costly political quagmire justified by White House lies and deception. But protesters say they hope to illuminate other issues stemming from the administration's policies, including deep cuts in social programs, increases in military spending and America's emergence as a global empire.
They also are using the event to mark the second anniversary of the 2001 USA Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law that activists and some lawmakers have condemned as an infringement of civil liberties.
The protest is scheduled to begin with an 11 a.m. rally on the Washington Monument grounds at 17th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. A march starting at 2 p.m. will pass the White House and the Justice Department.
Organizers initially had intended to march to the Pentagon but decided against it for logistical reasons and to focus attention on the Bush administration. Separate feeder marches are planned in conjunction with the demonstration, including those organized by Muslim Americans and anti-capitalists.
Black Voices for Peace, a national network of antiwar and civil rights advocates, is holding a feeder march that will begin with a 9 a.m. rally at Meridian Hill Park in Columbia Heights. Damu Smith, 51, the group's founder, said hundreds of activists from the East Coast will take part. "We think it's important to make a very visible statement by blacks in this effort," he said.
The D.C. chapter of a grass-roots conservative group, Free Republic, is holding an 11 a.m. counter-demonstration at the West Front of the Capitol, near the reflecting pool on Third Street. About 1,000 people are expected.
Kristinn Taylor, 41, local co-leader of the group, said the rally will show support for troops overseas. "The biggest thing we want to do is give voice to the good things that have been happening over in Iraq, which we think are not getting out," Taylor said.
Among the many antiwar groups, ANSWER, which stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, is one of the most controversial, enraging critics such as Taylor, who say it is a bastion of communists and anti-Semites. Among hundreds of ANSWER's coalition co-signers, including historian Howard Zinn and city council members from Boston and Berkeley, Calif., are the socialist Workers World Party, the New Communist Party of the Netherlands and the German Communist Party.
ANSWER organizers say the group is made up of activists of all political and religious stripes, and they view attempts to paint the group as anti-American or anti-Semitic as groundless accusations aimed at dividing the movement. "We would never consider excluding organizations or individuals who share our opposition to this war," Becker said.
Staff writer David A. Fahrenthold contributed to this report.
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