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NUCLEAR
Sellafield nuke plant faces walkout
USEC Inc. Reports Third Quarter Earnings
Iraq's real WMD crime
Swedish nuclear agency opens inquiry after blackout incident
France says nuclear defence strategy not changing, just context
Nuclear watchdog raises safety questions over French reactor design
U.N. Still Analyzing Iran Nuclear Papers
Iran's Security Dilemma
Iran: It's not just about nukes
Iran Demands Concessions From U.S. in Return for Cooperation
Weapons Team May Be Used to Seek Insurgents
Iran reportedly seeks talks with Israel
Japanese test 3 missiles at McGregor
China, N. Korea Agree to Nuclear Talks
North Korea Says Crisis Becoming 'Unpredictable'
North Korean Navy Boat Crosses Border, Says South
'35 or 40' countries able to make nuclear weapons: IAEA chief
Report cites massive radiation at plant
Plan for Iraq to Repay U.S. Aid Is Rejected
Powell and Ashcroft Warn of Fallout From Senate Spending Proposal
Senators Overturn Vote on Aid to Iraq
MILITARY
Halliburton keeps no-bid Iraq pact
Report Links Iraq Deals to Bush Donations
Boeing Profit Drops 31% Despite Defense Business
U.S. Hits Obstacles In Helping Taiwan Guard Against China
EU seeks to allay constitution fears
Bush in a Hurry to Train Iraqis in Security Duty
Military Uses Hussein Hoard For Swift Aid
U.S. Slowly Scaling Back Role in Israel
Israel's Chief of Staff Denounces Policies Against Palestinians
Army Accuses Officer in Iraq Of Firing Pistol Near Prisoner
Two Japanese satellites in trouble after solar flares
Senate Panel Demands C.I.A. Data Leading Up to Iraq War by Friday Noon
Women Not Getting U.N. Protection in War
U.N. office in D.C. targeted
U.N. Pulls Staff Out of Baghdad While It Reviews Security
Postwar G.I. Death Toll Exceeds Wartime Total
U.S. lacks direction, cohesion in war of ideas
FREE(DOM) PRESS
Russia's Highest Court Throws Out Restrictions on Media
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Secret 9/11 case before high court
Senate Panel Gives White House Iraq Probe Deadline
Senators Give Tenet Deadline to Provide Prewar Intelligence
War on terror is doing more harm than good, says World Bank
ENERGY AND OTHER
GE Wind to supply turbines for Colo. wind project
University at Buffalo Wins Award for Wind Power Purchase
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
Sellafield nuke plant faces walkout
Story by Victoria Cutler
REUTERS UK:
October 30, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22697/story.htm
LONDON - Shift workers at the country's only nuclear reprocessing plant, Sellafield, have decided to walk off the job within the next two weeks in a pay dispute that threatens to disrupt production at the plant.
The GMB union said it and another union, Amicus, planned a day of strike action within the fortnight.
A BNFL spokesman said there was no question of the plant closing down as a result of a strike, but could not predict the likely effect on individual operations.
"With regard to specific plants, will they temporarily shut down, will those operations temporarily cease? We need to see the precise details of the industrial action before we know the answer to that," the BNFL spokesman told Reuters.
"It's not inconceivable, but we're not in a position to say either way at the moment."
Ireland has been calling for the closure of Sellafield, concerned about radioactive discharges into the Irish Sea, and environmental groups have mounted protests against waste shipments to the plant.
The GMB said it remained committed to providing emergency staffing if the operation was shut down during the dispute and had invited the company to discuss safety cover.
The BNFL spokesman stressed that safety at the plant, which manages the safe nuclear waste as well as reprocessing spent fuel rods for customers in the UK, Japan and Europe, would not be compromised in the event of a strike.
"Safety is guaranteed," the spokesman said.
British Energy, a Sellafield customer, said this week it saw no material adverse impact as a result of any industrial action that may take place at Sellafield.
-------- business
USEC Inc. Reports Third Quarter Earnings of $3.4 Million;
Gross Margin Improves
(BUSINESS WIRE)
October 29, 2003
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20031029005764&newsLang=en
BETHESDA, Md.--Oct. 29, 2003--USEC Inc. (NYSE:USU) today reported net income of $3.4 million or $.04 per share for the third quarter ended September 30, 2003, compared to $1.2 million or $.01 per share in the same period last year. For the nine months ended September 30, 2003, net income was $9.8 million or $.12 per share, compared to $12.6 million or $.15 per share during the same period in 2002. Results for the nine-month period in 2002 included a special credit of $4.2 million (after tax) from a favorable change in cost estimate for consolidating plant operations.
Earnings for the quarter were favorably affected by $9.5 million in fees paid to USEC by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for cold standby and uranium deposit removal services performed since July 2001 at the Portsmouth, Ohio plant and a pension cost adjustment. This favorable impact was partially offset by USEC's accelerated spending on its American Centrifuge technology, which had a significant effect on income.
For the nine-month period, lower production and purchase costs improved gross profit despite a 3 percent decline in the average Separative Work Unit (SWU) price billed to customers and lower SWU volume. The gross profit of $105.2 million was 39 percent higher than in the nine-month period a year earlier, and the gross margin was 11.7 percent compared to 8.2 percent in the previous year. Spending on advanced technology was $18.3 million higher than the same period in 2002 as USEC accelerated its timetable for demonstrating the American Centrifuge.
"Our business is operating well as production efficiency has improved. We have lowered our cost structure and we are working with our customers to provide a reliable supply of low-enriched uranium for years to come. USEC is also moving decisively ahead with the American Centrifuge technology," said William H. Timbers, USEC president and chief executive officer.
Revenue and Cost of Sales
Revenue for the third quarter was $293.6 million, down from $360.8 million for the same quarter a year ago. The decrease reflects a 20 percent lower sales volume of the SWU component of low-enriched uranium compared to the same quarter last year and lower average SWU prices billed to customers. For the nine-month period, the volume of SWU sold declined 6 percent, which is in line with USEC's forecast, and the Company remains on track to reach its annual revenue target. The average SWU price billed to customers has been declining in recent years and is expected to decline by about 1.5 percent in 2003, but USEC anticipates the average SWU price to begin improving by the end of 2004. Revenue from the sale of natural uranium was higher than a year earlier for both the quarter and the nine-month period reflecting higher volumes and prices.
Because USEC's customers place orders under their long-term contracts generally on a 12- to 24-month cycle, quarterly comparisons of USEC's financials are not necessarily indicative of the Company's longer-term results.
Lower purchase costs helped to reduce unit cost of sales per SWU by 5 percent in the quarter. Purchase costs declined this year under new pricing terms for the Megatons to Megawatts program with Russia that went into effect in January 2003. The effect of lower purchase costs will continue to benefit cost of sales in future periods due to the Company's average inventory cost methodology and its significant SWU inventories.
DOE Contract Services
In September 2003, USEC and DOE finalized the cold standby and uranium deposit removal contract terms, and USEC earned fees of $9.5 million for services provided since July 2001 along with a pension cost adjustment. Under the terms of this cost-plus-fixed-fee contract, USEC maintains the Portsmouth plant in a state where it could be restarted in an 18- to 24-month period, if DOE deemed that action necessary. DOE had been retaining a portion of USEC's reimbursable costs and, upon signing the contract, paid USEC $17.8 million for these retained amounts, in addition to the fees. DOE exercised its option to extend the contract through March 2004, and USEC and DOE currently are negotiating contract terms for this extension and further extensions. The pension adjustment results from the differences between pension costs calculated and funded in accordance with government cost accounting standards (CAS) and pension costs determined by generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).
Earnings and Cash Flow Guidance
USEC affirms its previous guidance for 2003 net income in a range of $9 to $11 million. Earnings and cash flow are driven by business performance and are dependent on several key factors, including:
-- Achieving targets for sales and average prices billed to customers.
-- Concluding negotiations as planned with DOE and the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation (OVEC) to resolve issues surrounding the termination of a power purchase agreement.
-- Negotiations progressing as planned with federal and South Carolina environmental regulators over USEC's share of the cost of cleaning up a depleted uranium processing site operated by a bankrupt contractor, Starmet.
Cash flow from operating activities is expected to be in a range from $80 to $95 million in 2003. The upward change in cash flow from operations guidance is due to the timing of customer collections moving into the fourth quarter and payments to Russia moving into the first quarter of 2004. These changes in timing will have the effect of reducing cash flow from operating activities in 2004. USEC ended the quarter with a cash balance of $66.5 million and now projects its year-end cash balance will be in a range of $180 to $200 million. For the nine-month period, cash flow used in operating activities was $52.4 million, compared with cash flow of $135.2 million provided in 2002 when high customer collections followed record revenue in late 2001. The Company has no short-term debt, and debt to total capitalization is a modest 36 percent.
American Centrifuge
During the quarter, USEC requested proposals from the states of Kentucky and Ohio as part of the decision process for locating a commercial plant. Proposals from both states were presented to USEC earlier this month, and a decision on where to site the plant is expected in the fourth quarter. Under the DOE-USEC Agreement, the plant will be located in either Paducah, Kentucky or Piketon, Ohio.
Spending on advanced technology during the quarter totaled $10.6 million, which is in line with prior guidance and $4.6 million more than the same quarter last year. For the nine-month period, advanced technology spending totaled $31.2 million, compared to $12.9 million in the previous year. Because these demonstration costs are expensed, this investment in the American Centrifuge has a substantial impact on net income.
Initial Natural Uranium Remediation Successfully Completed
In September, USEC completed the initial project to remediate a significant portion of the 9,550 metric tons of contaminated uranium that DOE transferred to the Company prior to privatization. USEC exceeded its goal of cleaning up 2,800 metric tons of uranium pursuant to the DOE-USEC Agreement by processing 2,909 metric tons during the 15-month project, which was completed within its $21 million budget. The Company continues the cleanup process, and discussions are underway with DOE to extend the project to remediate the remaining contaminated uranium.
The Company continues to anticipate that DOE will provide the additional 2,116 metric tons of uranium that DOE was obligated to transfer to USEC as of March 31, 2003. DOE is obligated to remedy all of the contaminated uranium under the DOE-USEC Agreement.
Other Business Matters
-- Discussions continue with federal and state environmental regulators regarding USEC's share of the cost of removing and disposing of certain drums and other materials at Starmet's site in Barnwell, South Carolina. USEC has agreed in principle with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on a removal action and has sought bids from contractors to perform removal and disposal activities.
-- USEC has been successful this year in obtaining new, long-term contracts from major U.S. nuclear utilities for the supply of low-enriched uranium. These contracts, with deliveries extending through 2011, will yield more than $1 billion in revenue. These contracts reflect the higher SWU market prices seen in the past few years.
-- The U.S. Court of International Trade affirmed the U.S. Department of Commerce's (DOC) determinations on two of three general issues in trade cases involving imports of low-enriched uranium produced in four European countries. The court affirmed that USEC constitutes the domestic enrichment industry and that countervailing duty law covers enrichment contracts, and reversed DOC's decision that enrichment transactions are subject to the antidumping law. The court's action is another step in an ongoing process of decision and appeal, and all duties on these imports remain in effect until the appeal process is complete. The court is in the process of scheduling further proceedings in the case.
-- Seven of 17 reactors temporarily shut down by the Japanese government over the past year have returned to service and the operator is seeking permission to return the remainder to operation. USEC supplies about half of the low-enriched uranium required by these reactors. USEC's revenue in 2003 has not been affected by the shutdowns, but revenue in 2004 and 2005 will be reduced as future refuelings of the affected reactors will occur later than planned.
This news release contains forward-looking information (within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995) that involves risks and uncertainty, including certain assumptions regarding the future performance of USEC. Actual results and trends may differ materially depending upon a variety of factors, including, without limitation, market demand for USEC's products, pricing trends in the uranium and enrichment markets, deliveries under the Russian Contract, the availability and cost of electric power, implementing agreements with DOE regarding uranium inventory remediation and the use of advanced technology and facilities, satisfactory performance of the centrifuge technology at various stages of demonstration, USEC's ability to successfully execute its internal performance plans, the refueling cycles of USEC's customers, final determinations of environmental and other costs, the outcome of litigation and trade actions, and the impact of any government regulation. Revenue and operating results can fluctuate significantly from quarter to quarter, and in some cases, year to year.
Please refer to our SEC filings, which can be accessed through the Company's website www.usec.com, for a more complete discussion of these factors.
USEC Inc., a global energy company, is the world's leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
For full article with earnings statement see:
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20031029005764&newsLang=en
-------- depleted uranium
Iraq's real WMD crime
Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.7 billion years - that means thousands upon thousands of Iraqi children will suffer
By Lawrence Smallman
Thursday 30 October 2003
Aljazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E8C356F9-E89F-4CD3-88B5-BBBDF9E085C1.htm
Photo: Depleted uranium has caused severe deformities in babies http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/rdonlyres/E8C356F9-E89F-4CD3-88B5-BBBDF9E085C1/15517/5E2D07C4FA4549DCB632AB2B16F4348B.jpg
Photo: Many affected foetuses are so deformed they cannot survive http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/rdonlyres/E8C356F9-E89F-4CD3-88B5-BBBDF9E085C1/15518/19C44F51B98B425EBD103E840B4BF00E.jpg
There are weapons of mass destruction all over Iraq and they were used this year. Iraqi children continue to find them every day.
They have ruined the lives of just under 300,000 people during the last decade - and numbers will increase.
The reason is simple. Two hundred tonnes of radioactive material were fired by invading US forces into buildings, homes, streets and gardens all over Baghdad.
The material in question is depleted uranium (DU). Left over after natural uranium has been enriched, DU is 1.7 times denser than lead - effective in penetrating armoured objects such as tanks.
After a DU-coated shell strikes, it goes straight through before exploding into a burning vapour which turns to dust.
"Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.7 billion years - that means thousands upon thousands of Iraqi children will suffer for tens of thousands of years to come. This is what I call terrorism," says Dr Ahmad Hardan.
As a special scientific advisor to the World Health Organisation, the United Nations and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, Dr Hardan is the man who documented the effects of depleted uranium in Iraq between 1991 and 2002.
But this year's invasion and occupation has doubled his workload.
Terrible history repeated
"American forces admit to using over 300 tonnes of depleted uranium weapons in 1991. The actual figure is closer to 800.
"This has caused a health crisis that has affected almost a third of a million people"
- Dr Ahmad Hardan, scientific advisor to the World Health Organisation
"This has caused a health crisis that has affected almost a third of a million people. As if that was not enough, America went on and used 200 tonnes more in Baghdad alone this April. I don't know about other parts of Iraq, it will take me years to document that."
Hardan is particularly angry because he says there is no need for this type of weapon - US conventional weapons are quite capable of destroying tanks and buildings.
"In Basra, it took us two years to obtain conclusive proof of what DU does, but we now know what to look for and the results are terrifying."
Leukaemia has already become the most common type of cancer in Iraq among all age groups, but is most prevalent in the under-15s. It has increased way above the percentage of population growth in every single province of Iraq without exception.
Women as young as 35 are developing breast cancer. Sterility amongst men has increased ten-fold.
Barely human
But by far the most devastating effect is on unborn children. Nothing can prepare anyone for the sight of hundreds of preserved foetuses - barely human in appearance.
There is no doubt that DU is to blame.
"All children with congenital anomalies are subjected to karyotyping and chromosomal studies with complete genetic back-grounding and clinical assessment. Family and obstetrical histories are taken too. These international studies have produced ample evidence to show that DU has disastrous consequences."
Not only are there 200 tonnes of uranium lying around in Baghdad, the containers which carried the ammunition were discarded. For months afterwards, many used them to carry water - others used them to sell milk publicly.
It is already too late to reverse the effects.
After his experience in Basra, Hardan says that within the next two years he expects to see significant rises in congenital cataracts, anopthalmia, microphthalmia, corneal opacities and coloboma of the iris - and that's just in people's eyes.
Add to this foetal deformities, sterility in both sexes, an increase in miscarriages and premature births, congenital malformations, additional abnormal organs, hydrocephaly, anencephaly and delayed growth.
Soaring cancer rates
"I had hoped the lessons of using DU would have been learnt - especially as it is affecting American and British troops stationed in Iraq as we speak, they are not immune to its effects either."
If the experience of Basra is played out in the rest of the country, Iraq is looking at an increase of over 300% in all types of cancer over the next decade.
The signs are already here in Baghdad - the effects are starting to be seen. Every form of cancer has jumped up at least 10% with the exception of bone tumours and skin cancer, which have only reason 2.6% and 9.3% respectively.
Another tragic outcome is the delayed growth of children.
Skeletal age comparisons between boys from southern Iraq and boys from Michigan show Iraqi males are 26 months behind in their development by the time they are 12-years-old, and girls are almost half a year behind.
"The effects of ionising radiation on growth and development are especially significant in the prenatal child", adds Dr Hardan. "Embryonic development is especially affected."
Action needed
Those who have seen the effects of DU hope the US and its allies will never use these weapons again - but it seems no such decision is likely in the foreseeable future.
"A world famous German cancer specialist agreed to come, only to be told later that he would not be given permission to enter Iraq"
Dr Ahmad Hardan, scientific advisor to the World Health Organisation "I arranged for a delegation from Japan's Hiroshima hospital to come and share their expertise in the radiological related diseases we are likely to face over time," says Hardan. "The delegation told me the Americans had objected and they had decided not to come.
"Similarly, a world famous German cancer specialist agreed to come, only to be told later that he would not be given permission to enter Iraq."
Secondly, Hardan believes, the authorities need to produce precise information about what was used and where, and there needs to be a clean-up operation and centres for specialist cancer treatment and radiation-related illnesses.
Iraq only has two hospitals that specialise in DU-related illnesses, one in Basra and one in Mawsil - this needs to change and soon.
"I'm fed up of delegations coming and weeping as I show them children dying before their eyes. I want action and not emotion. The crime has been committed and documented - but we must act now to save our children's future."
-------- europe
Swedish nuclear agency opens inquiry after blackout incident
STOCKHOLM (AFP)
Oct 30, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031030151357.0zbvu139.html
Sweden's Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI) said Thursday it had launched an inquiry into an incident at one of the country's 11 nuclear reactors during a major power outage in Sweden and Denmark last month.
The incident, which the agency said at no time presented a danger to the public, occurred at the Oskarshamn 3 reactor in southeastern Sweden, which has since been shut down. SKI has not yet given the green light for it to re-start.
On the international INES scale of nuclear accidents that ranges from 1 (anomaly) to 7 (major accident), SKI ranked the September 23 incident as a 1.
However, a report in Swedish daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet said SKI had in a preliminary report sharply criticized Oskarshamn 3 management for its handling of the incident over which employees did not have full control.
SKI would only say that it was currently investigating whether staff and management acted correctly and whether the reactor was damaged during the blackout, in which a chain of events led to a thermal shock in the reactor's tank.
"When operators began to restart the reactor after the quick stoppage and loss of electricity, an unusual but not unknown situation occurred, where 265 degree Celcius (509 degree Fahrenheit) water was in most of the reactor tank and much colder water, 135 degrees (275 degrees Fahrenheit), was in the bottom of the tank," SKI said in a statement.
"During the restart process, the reactor tank's pumps quickly pulled the hot water down toward the cold bottom of the reactor tank. The limit for how quickly temperature changes can occur was thereby exceeded," it said.
The reactor was subsequently stopped, but the situation in the control room during the incident "was stressed", SKI said.
SKI is now investigating whether operators should have refrained from restarting the reactor given the vast temperature difference, which can damage the reactor.
The September 23 blackout, which left four million people in Sweden and Denmark without power for several hours, was caused by valve failure at the Oskarshamn reactor which shut down the power station.
Another nuclear station which should have taken over the power supply, was also shut down following the breakdown of its link to the electricity grid.
----
France says nuclear defence strategy not changing, just context
PARIS (AFP)
Oct 30, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031030203925.hoibf15k.html
France's nuclear defense strategy has not changed since 2001 but the context in which it is applied has altered due to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the defense ministry said Thursday.
"There is no new strategy," ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau told reporters. "What has changed is the environment, the context, in which this deterrence strategy exists. Not the tools, not the concept."
On Monday, the left-leaning Liberation newspaper reported that President Jacques Chirac was planning in the next few weeks to redefine France's policy of nuclear deterrence, something his office immediately denied.
Liberation said the Cold War logic of possessing nuclear weapons -- so France could maintain independence from the United States in the face of the Soviet threat -- appeared to have lived its day.
"Now the French striking force targets, without naming any particular country, what the Americans call 'rogue states'," the paper said.
The French defense ministry spokesman insisted that no policy shift was on the cards and that any "evolution" in policy had been caused by changing circumstances.
Bureau said France's concept of nuclear dissuasion remained that set out by Chirac in a speech in June 2001.
Chirac said in the speech the deterrence theory, under which atomic weapons ensure peace through the threat of devastating retaliation, allowed France "to face threats which might be brought to bear on our vital interests from regional powers armed with weapons of mass destruction". That was interpreted to mean rogue states.
"If they are driven by hostile intentions towards us, the leaders of such states must know that they would expose themselves to harm that they would find totally unacceptable," Chirac warned.
Bureau stressed: "We have a strategy that is adapted to our situation, our capabilities, our assessment of the risks and our definition of our vital interests."
"We are not preparing to wage a classic nuclear battle like some might imagine. Deterrence remains a concept of political ends served by military means."
----
Nuclear watchdog raises safety questions over French reactor design
PARIS (AFP)
Oct 30, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031030185031.hz57ksve.html
France's nuclear watchdog said Thursday it had questioned the safety standards of a cooling system used across the country's nuclear power industry, saying that a design flaw could theoretically unleash a major accident.
The Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), a state agency that vets safety standards in France's nuclear energy sector, said it had told operator Electricite de France (EDF) to give "priority to examining this question" and wanted a reply by the end of the year.
"It is a potential anomaly. It has not been confirmed 100 percent, but we have doubts in the present circumstances," ASN's deputy director-general, Alain Schmitt, told AFP.
The suspected problem lies in part of the cooling system. The system, which draws heat away from the reactor vessel by bathing it in cold water, is vital for controlling the nuclear process.
The water has to circulate all the time; if it stops, an operational reactor can explode or melt down.
Under the French system, there is a primary and backup coolant system, both of which are supplied by tanks that, in turn, are fed from a central reservoir of water drawn from the sea or a nearby river.
If the primary coolant system ruptures, the backup is automatically activated.
The potential problem, said ASN, is in the filters in the tanks.
If these filters are blocked by debris, that could cripple the backup system, it said.
"If the points we raise turn out to be true, safety standards would be affected, because there would not be a reliable long-term cooling of the reactor if the primary coolant system breaks down," it said.
A spokesman for EDF confirmed that "questions had been raised" about the filters.
"We attach importance to this problem, which does not mean however that there is any risk to reactor operations," it said.
French nuclear experts said the filter issue was common to the design of pressurised water reactors around the world.
France derives nearly three-quarters of its electricity needs from the atom.
EDF, a state-owned giant that is the de-facto monopoly supplier of electricity in France, has 19 power stations, with 58 reactors.
-------- iran / inspections
U.N. Still Analyzing Iran Nuclear Papers
Oct 30, 2003
(AP)
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NUCLEAR_AGENCY_IRAN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
VIENNA, Austria -- The U.N. nuclear watchdog won't take any immediate action on Friday, the deadline for Iran to prove its atomic program is peaceful, because it is still analyzing documents handed over by Tehran, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency ordered Iran to prove by Friday that its nuclear activities are not aimed at building a weapons arsenal as the United States contends.
In response, Tehran last week handed over a dossier with information about the program. But the agency can't yet judge whether the country has complied with its demands because it has not yet been able to fully verify the report, spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told The Associated Press.
"There's not going to be any action" on Friday when the deadline expires, Fleming said.
A complete analysis could take weeks, Fleming said, adding it was "difficult" to say when it would be finished. The process will "not necessarily" be completed by Nov. 20, when the IAEA's board meets to assess the situation, she said. "The Iranians have stated that they have already turned over a full and complete declaration of their past nuclear activities," Fleming said.
"The IAEA is intensively working to scrutinize that declaration and verify the claims made. There was no expectation that that work would be done by Friday."
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said in an interview for Friday's editions of the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he hoped Iran's claim that the report is complete would turn out to be true.
"But we're still examining the report," he was quoted as saying. "We're not yet in a position to give a clear judgment."
ElBaradei told the newspaper his agency would be able to answer some questions at the Nov. 20 meeting, but that it "would have to investigate other issues after November."
Fleming told AP that the most difficult part of the analysis was the investigation of the origins of traces of highly enriched weapons-grade uranium found in Iran by agency experts.
Iran insists the traces, found in environmental samples, were inadvertently imported on equipment meant to generate electricity.
"There are a number of very complicated technical issues that require complicated technical processes to fill in the blanks and connect the dots," she said. "We will not be in a position to evaluate the fullness and completeness of that declaration until we have had the chance to fully verify it."
A report to be issued ahead of the agency board's meeting would contain more details, but it "might not necessarily provide the final information," Fleming said.
"The report will certainly offer a great deal of detail and fill in some key blanks," she said. "We have done a tremendous amount of groundwork of our own." Fleming declined to say whether the information in hand would be enough for board members to make a decision on whether to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions.
"It's going to be up to the member states to make a judgment on what they see in the report and how they want to handle the revelations that appear there," she said.
----
Iran's Security Dilemma
The Iran-EU deal last week could be the beginning of a process of reciprocal reassurance that could address the larger issues affecting Iran's nuclear ambitions.
GEORGE PERKOVICH,
Oct 30, 2003
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20031030&fname=iran&sid=1
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20031030&fname=iran&sid=1&pn=2
Iran's apparent willingness to prove it is not seeking nuclear weapons shows that the international security system can function effectively. Encouraged by the United States, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has relentlessly investigated Iran's suspicious nuclear activities. After initial inquiries yielded inconclusive results, the governors of the IAEA imposed a firm deadline for Iran to clarify past actions, allow unfettered future inspections, and suspend work related to producing bomb-quality materials. Faced with potential pariahdom and sanction, Iranian leaders sought a deal. British, French, and German officials then stepped in as Good Cops, insisting that Iran come clean and straighten up, promising benefits if it does. The Bush Administration played the vital role of Bad Cop, looming in the background - almost hoping that Iran would be defiant so the US could punish it.
The agreement reached on October 21 only suspends Iran's most troubling nuclear activity, but does not stop it. As the chief Iranian negotiator, Hasan Rohani, put it, "As long as Iran thinks this suspension is beneficial it will continue, and whenever we don't want it we will end it." The bargaining is just beginning.
Iran's assertion that it wants nuclear technology only to produce electricity and other civilian services offers the easiest path to a resolution. The Europeans already have hinted at a deal whereby Iran would permanently abandon indigenous production of dual-use nuclear fuels. Because this permanent abandonment would go further than any state is required to go under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran would want compensatory benefits. To this end, the international community could accept completion of the Iranian-Russian nuclear power plant at Bushehr, with guarantees that Russia or other international producers would supply the fuel for the reactor. After the fuel has been "burned," it would be shipped back to Russia, removing the plutonium contained within it.
A nuclear-energy based bargain will work only if Iran and the US are willing to treat the nuclear crisis in isolation. However, this outcome is highly unlikely. This is because, among other reasons, the Bush Administration refuses to un-bundle its demands of Iran. It finds even the one reactor at Bushehr intolerable, notwithstanding an arrangement to ship spent fuel to Russia. The Administration also demands that Iran cease all support of terrorist activities and organizations, and stop interfering in what is left of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Some in the Administration go further and say that only regime change in Iran will satisfy the US. By insisting that all of these sensible objectives be met before making any concessions to Iran, Washington could spoil a "win-win" deal on just the nuclear issue.
Iranians also want more than a tidy nuclear-only deal. Despite official claims, Iran's interest in nuclear weapons may be offensive. More likely, though, it is to deter coercion by the US, Israel, a new Iraq or other actors, and to earn the respect that seems to come with nuclear weapons. A wide range of Iranians resent the perceived arrogance and hegemony of the US government, loathe the double standard surrounding Israel's possession of nuclear weapons and treatment of the Palestinians, fear US control and military presence in Iraq, and want the deference now accorded to neighboring nuclear Pakistan.
In the October 21 Iran-EU foreign ministers' agreement, Iran insisted on a clause calling for "security and stability in the region including the establishment of a zone free from weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East." This formulation, overlooked in commentaries on the agreement, shows that Iran sees the nuclear issue as more than an energy problem.
Ultimately, American and Iranian officials want more from each other than a nuclear bargain. However, the appalling state of US-Iran communications and diplomacy leaves both states unable to resolve a number of classic security dilemmas.
One of the most significant such dilemmas is the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was the gravest threat to Iran's security, followed by the Taliban government and its brand of Sunni extremism. The United States removed both threats. Iran should, therefore, feel that its security position has improved significantly. This in turn should reduce Iran's perceived interest in acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities.
However, many Iranians see the same reality from an entirely different viewpoint. Instead of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iran now confronts on its western and eastern borders the most powerful military in the history of the world and a radical ideological government in Washington bent on overturning governments like Iran's. The American presence surrounding Iran has not improved security but rather has put a dagger to Iran's front and back. If ever a country needs nuclear weapons to deter a stronger adversary, it is Iran.
But perhaps the crucial dilemma for Iranian and American officials concerns the question of regime change. Iranian citizens essentially have voted for regime change several times and have not obtained it. The unelected Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamene'I, as well as the judiciary and security apparatus he controls, have prevented the elected president and parliament from directing the state. Unfortunately, these unelected men determine whether Iran will seek nuclear weapons, conduct terrorism, or recognize Israel's right to exist. Few inside or out of Iran believe the US can or should remove this regime. Thus, if vital international problems need to be resolved now, there is little choice but to deal with the people who have power in Iran.
Important members of the Bush Administration disagree and refuse to make deals with an "evil" regime. This raises another acute dilemma for Iranian decision-makers. They ask, "Why should we make concessions to the US, including surrendering nuclear capabilities to which we are legally entitled, if they are going to overthrow us anyway?" The prospect of US-pushed regime change is a reason to seek a nuclear deterrent, not to give one up, from this view.
There is a clear response to this argument, of course. Iran will not face military threats to deter if it does not acquire weapons of mass destruction and abet terrorism. And the US and Iran share interest in a future Iraq that poses no threat to Iran as long as Iran poses no threat to a representative, multi-cultural Iraq. But only diplomacy will be able to resolve the current destabilizing US-Iran security dilemma.
The Iran-EU deal last week could be the beginning of a process of reciprocal reassurance that could address the larger issues affecting Iran's nuclear ambitions. Clearly, though, a broader initiative is needed to involve relevant actors - EU leaders, the US, Iran, and other regional states - in a diplomatic process to clarify intentions and set out principles and practices that will promote regional security at the lowest cost. Buffered by this larger mix, US and Iranian officials could address the specific grievances that fuel their worst-case assumptions about each other.
George Perkovich is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and author of "India's Nuclear Bomb" and other studies on nuclear proliferation in Iran, Pakistan, and India.
----
Iran: It's not just about nukes
By GEORGE PERKOVICH,
OCT 30, 2003 THU
Straits Times
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/story/0,4386,217292,00.html
IRAN'S apparent willingness to prove it is not seeking nuclear weapons shows that the international security system can function effectively.
Encouraged by the United States, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has relentlessly investigated Iran's suspicious nuclear activities. After initial inquiries yielded inconclusive results, the governors of the IAEA imposed a firm deadline for Iran to clarify past actions, allow unfettered future inspections, and suspend work related to producing bomb-quality materials.
Faced with potential pariahdom and sanction, Iranian leaders sought a deal. British, French and German officials then stepped in as Good Cops, insisting that Iran come clean and straighten up, promising benefits if it does. The Bush administration played the vital role of Bad Cop, looming in the background - almost hoping that Iran would be defiant so the US could punish it.
The agreement reached on Oct 21 only suspends Iran's most troubling nuclear activity, but does not stop it. As chief Iranian negotiator Hasan Rohani put it: 'As long as Iran thinks this suspension is beneficial it will continue, and whenever we don't want it we will end it.' The bargaining is just beginning.
A DEAL IN THE MAKING
IRAN'S assertion that it wants nuclear technology only to produce electricity and other civilian services offers the easiest path to a resolution.
The Europeans already have hinted at a deal whereby Iran would permanently abandon indigenous production of dual-use nuclear fuels. Because this permanent abandonment would go further than any state is required to go under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran would want compensatory benefits.
To this end, the international community could accept completion of the Iranian-Russian nuclear power plant at Bushehr, with guarantees that Russia or other international producers would supply the fuel for the reactor.
After the fuel has been 'burned', it would be shipped back to Russia, removing the plutonium contained within it.
A nuclear-energy based bargain will work only if Iran and the US are willing to treat the nuclear crisis in isolation.
However, this outcome is highly unlikely. This is because, among other reasons, the Bush administration refuses to un-bundle its demands of Iran. It finds even the one reactor at Bushehr intolerable, notwithstanding an arrangement to ship spent fuel to Russia. It also demands that Iran cease all support of terrorist activities and organisations, and stop interfering in what is left of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Some in the administration go further and say that only regime change in Iran will satisfy the US. By insisting that all of these sensible objectives be met before making any concessions to Iran, Washington could spoil a 'win-win' deal on just the nuclear issue.
Iranians also want more than a tidy nuclear-only deal. Despite official claims, Iran's interest in nuclear weapons may be offensive. More likely, though, it is to deter coercion by the US, Israel, a new Iraq or other actors, and to earn the respect that seems to come with nuclear weapons.
A wide range of Iranians resent the perceived arrogance and hegemony of the US government, loathe the double standard surrounding Israel's possession of nuclear weapons and treatment of the Palestinians, fear US control and military presence in Iraq, and want the deference now accorded to neighbouring nuclear Pakistan.
In the Oct 21 Iran-EU foreign ministers' agreement, Iran insisted on a clause calling for 'security and stability in the region including the establishment of a zone free from weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East'. This formulation, overlooked in commentaries on the agreement, shows that Iran sees the nuclear issue as more than an energy problem.
BEYOND NUCLEAR ISSUES
ULTIMATELY, American and Iranian officials want more from each other than a nuclear bargain. However, the appalling state of US-Iran communications and diplomacy leaves both states unable to resolve a number of classic security dilemmas.
One of the most significant such dilemmas is the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was the gravest threat to Iran's security, followed by the Taleban government and its brand of Sunni extremism. The US removed both threats. Iran should, therefore, feel that its security position has improved significantly. This in turn should reduce Iran's perceived interest in acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities.
However, many Iranians see the same reality from an entirely different viewpoint. Instead of Saddam's regime, Iran now confronts on its western and eastern borders the most powerful military in the history of the world and a radical ideological government in Washington bent on overturning governments like Iran's.
The American presence surrounding Iran has not improved security but rather has put a dagger to Iran's front and back. If ever a country needs nuclear weapons to deter a stronger adversary, it is Iran.
But perhaps the crucial dilemma for Iranian and American officials concerns the question of regime change. Iranian citizens essentially have voted for regime change several times and have not obtained it.
The unelected Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, as well as the judiciary and security apparatus he controls, have prevented the elected president and parliament from directing the state.
Unfortunately, these unelected men determine whether Iran will seek nuclear weapons, conduct terrorism, or recognise Israel's right to exist. Few inside or out of Iran believe the US can or should remove this regime.
Thus, if vital international problems need to be resolved now, there is little choice but to deal with the people who have power in Iran.
Important members of the Bush administration disagree and refuse to make deals with an 'evil' regime. This raises another acute dilemma for Iranian decision-makers. They ask: 'Why should we make concessions to the US, including surrendering nuclear capabilities to which we are legally entitled, if they are going to overthrow us anyway?'
The prospect of US-pushed regime change is a reason to seek a nuclear deterrent, not to give one up, from this view.
DIPLOMACY REQUIRED
THERE is a clear response to this argument, of course. Iran will not face military threats if it does not acquire weapons of mass destruction and abet terrorism. And the US and Iran share interest in a future Iraq that poses no threat to Iran as long as Iran poses no threat to a representative, multi-cultural Iraq.
But only diplomacy will be able to resolve the current destabilising US-Iran security dilemma.
The Iran-EU deal last week could be the beginning of a process of reciprocal reassurance that could address the larger issues affecting Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Clearly, though, a broader initiative is needed to involve relevant actors - EU leaders, the US, Iran, and other regional states - in a diplomatic process to clarify intentions and set out principles and practices that will promote regional security at the lowest cost.
Buffered by this larger mix, US and Iranian officials could address the specific grievances that fuel their worst-case assumptions about each other.
# The writer is vice-president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and author of India's Nuclear Bomb and other studies on nuclear proliferation in Iran, Pakistan and India. Copyright: YaleGlobal Online, www.yaleglobal.yale.edu
--------
Iran Demands Concessions From U.S. in Return for Cooperation
October 30, 2003
By NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/international/middleeast/30IRAN.html
TEHRAN, Oct. 29 - Iran said Wednesday that it would not share intelligence with the United States on operatives of Al Qaeda or hand over Qaeda suspects in Iranian detention and would resume dialogue only after the United States undertakes what it termed measures to build confidence.
It was not clear whether the United States would first have to restore diplomatic relations broken after the storming of the American Embassy in Tehran in the fall of 1979.
"You cannot threaten from one side and freeze assets from the other side; level accusations from one side and then request dialogue from the other side; we need to see America's practical steps," the government spokesman, Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, told reporters.
"They have leveled too many false accusations against us and they should stop that," he said. "They should also unfreeze our assets and lift the sanctions."
Mr. Ramezanzadeh was responding to comments made Tuesday by Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, who signaled American willingness to hold limited talks with Iran. Mr. Armitage, striking a conciliatory tone, also said that the Bush administration did not favor "regime change" in Iran.
By contrast, President Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address grouped Iran with Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil."
The United States severed talks with Iran after a series of bombings in Saudi Arabia in May which the United States said were linked to groups based in Iran. Iran has denied the assertion.
The United States had also asked Iran to turn over detained senior members of Al Qaeda. Mr. Ramezanzadeh said Wednesday that Iran had no security agreement with the United States to turn over the detainees. He said Iran had returned some detainees to nations with whom it had such security agreements and said the rest would be dealt with according to Iranian laws.
Iran announced this week that it had given to the United Nations the names of 225 Qaeda members it had arrested. It said that nearly 78 of them had been returned to their nations of origin.
"We believe that all countries should deal with terrorism and terrorist groups indiscriminately," Mr. Ramezanzadeh said. "We have also taken necessary measures against terrorism according to international regulations and do not need other countries to interfere in our affairs."
The government of President Mohammad Khatami has come under increasing pressure from hard-liners since last week, when the government reached an agreement with the foreign secretaries of Britain, Germany and France to allow more intrusive inspections of its nuclear sites and to suspend enrichment of uranium.
Hard-line militants, who oppose any restrictions on Iran's nuclear program, have accused the government and influential clerics who have sided with the government of undermining the nation's security.
"We are worried about the kind of guarantees that our negotiators have received over our national security and sovereignty," a group of militant students wrote in a letter, the Jomhouri Islamic daily reported today.
"How do we know that because of the nuclear agency's financial dependence on America, Iraq's experience would not repeat in Iran and American spies would not come under the guise of inspectors?" the letter asked.
The agreement needs to be approved by Parliament before it can be enforced.
-------- iraq
Weapons Team May Be Used to Seek Insurgents
Officials Debate Expanding, Not Changing, the Mission
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 30, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37878-2003Oct29.html
Scrambling for ways to bolster the hunt for insurgents in Iraq, U.S. officials are considering drawing intelligence analysts and other personnel from the search for Iraqi biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, defense officials said yesterday.
Larry DiRita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, ruled out any change in mission for the weapons team, known as the Iraqi Survey Group. But he told reporters that officials have been debating for several weeks whether to reassign some intelligence officers, interpreters and others from the 1,400-member group or expand their activities to involve them in the counterinsurgency effort.
As an example, he said, survey group members interrogating suspects about Iraq's weapons programs might also pose questions aimed at eliciting information that could "enhance the counterterrorism mission."
With the Bush administration still struggling to counter charges that it exaggerated the Iraqi weapons threat to justify last spring's invasion, any move that appears to lessen the search effort would be politically sensitive. But the administration also is under pressure to combat the mounting terrorist attacks in Iraq against U.S. forces, civilians and international workers.
This week, the number of U.S. soldiers killed by hostile fire there since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1 reached 117, surpassing the 115 killed during the fighting that toppled Saddam Hussein's government. Daily attacks in Iraq now number about 25, about a fourfold increase over several months ago, according to Defense Department figures.
While the Pentagon has taken steps to strengthen U.S. defenses -- notably ordering stronger protective vests for more troops in Iraq and tougher armor for Humvees -- U.S. commanders have emphasized the need for improved intelligence gathering. Their appeal reflects a tacit acknowledgment that they underestimated the persistence and extent of the threat posed by Hussein loyalists and non-Iraqi Islamic extremists, whom U.S. authorities are blaming for the continuing wave of ambushes, suicide bombings and rocket attacks.
Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, who as head of U.S. Central Command leads the military effort in Iraq, "feels strongly that he needs more counterterrorism resources, and he's going to get them," DiRita said.
A number of intelligence analysts have been shifted from other assignments and sent to Iraq, DiRita said, without providing specifics. He also noted that Abizaid has broad authority to rebalance the intelligence resources in his region.
In addition to adding personnel, the Pentagon recently announced plans to rush a slew of advanced and, in some cases, experimental spying systems to Iraq. These include tethered blimps equipped with digital cameras, radars that pinpoint mortar locations and electronic jammers aimed at disabling remote-controlled mines and other booby traps. Also being sent are aerial surveillance drones small enough to be carried in soldiers' backpacks, then quickly launched to provide views beyond a unit's line of sight.
These developments emerged from an urgent review earlier this month by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz of security measures that could be put into service in Iraq in the near term. A high-level team headed by the Pentagon's director of research and engineering is continuing to pursue other technological options. Further, both the Army and Air Force have special units in Washington looking for novel ways to combine surveillance aircraft, electronic detectors and computer processors to improve intelligence gathering.
But military officials acknowledge the use of high-tech gadgetry has its limits against enemies such as those in Iraq who are decidedly low-tech.
"We're fully aware there's no silver bullet here," said a senior Air Force officer involved in the search for new approaches, code-named Project Eyes and run by a longstanding planning cell known as Checkmate. "We're going to affect things on the margin. We're trying to predict human behavior, we're trying to determine underlying motivations, we're trying to deal with an insurgency -- these are things that largely have to be dealt with face to face by forces on the ground."
There is some question, too, about the ability of U.S. troops to use even those high-tech intelligence systems already at their disposal. A critical report released last week by the Center for Army Lessons Learned cited misuse of aerial drones and datalink networks in Iraq.
"What they really need is an expanded, old-fashioned effort to gather intelligence by human means, with more Arabic language speakers and the like," said Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. "Abizaid is an Arabic speaker. What you need is to clone him at the sergeant level."
The Pentagon's biggest hope for achieving stability, officials said yesterday, still rests with accelerating the training and fielding of Iraqi security forces, which now number about 90,000 and do not confront the language and culture barriers that have hampered U.S. intelligence gathering.
-------- israel
Iran reportedly seeks talks with Israel
October 30, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031030-101002-2688r.htm
JERUSALEM, Oct. 30 -- The Israeli government has received a message from Tehran saying Iran wants to hold talks, Ha'aretz reported Thursday.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom have been advised of the message, which was not delivered directly. There apparently is uncertainty as to whether the message is genuine.
Sharon has said he sees no signs of moderation in Iran or modification in its hostility toward Israel and its support for terror groups.
Sharon suspects it is convenient for the Iranians to hint at possible flexibility because of other problems they are facing, and their statements regarding the nuclear issue should be put to the test.
European parliament members who visited Tehran recently reportedly warned Iran's supreme national security chief Israel would attack Iran's nuclear installations if Iran rejects the International Atomic Energy Agency's demands that it end its nuclear enrichment program.
-------- japan
Japanese test 3 missiles at McGregor
Laura Cruz
El Paso Times
Thursday, October 30, 2003
http://www.borderlandnews.com/stories/borderland/20031030-38972.shtml
Fujiki - Despite high wind gusts and sandstorms, the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force successfully launched three Patriot missiles Monday afternoon at McGregor Range and further strengthened working relationships between Japan and the U.S. Army, officials said.
"In Japan, we don't have this kind of field range, so it is difficult to practice live fire," Maj. Gen. Kiyokatsu Fujiki, chief of staff for the Japanese Air Defense Command, said before the Patriot live fire. "In El Paso, the climate is very steady and most of the day is clear skies, so we can practice as scheduled."
Maj. Alfred Hawkins, executive officer of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Support Battalion, said the Japanese air force and army have been training annually at Fort Bliss and McGregor Range since 1964.
"It's also a symbol of friendship and keeping a bond with our allies," he said.
Last year, the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force successfully launched 22 Patriot missiles. The force plans to fire the same number this year and train an estimated 100 Japanese airmen.
Lt. Col. Kazuhiro Kojima, Japanese liaison officer at Fort Bliss, said Japan sends about 500 Japanese soldiers and airmen to train on the Patriot and the Hawk missile systems.
Fujiki said, "This practice helps create a background to communicate and know each other and that helps us for combined operations in the Far East."
Hawkins said Japan is one of several allied countries who train and fire air defense missile systems such as the Patriot, the Hawk missile system and the Stinger. This year, Norway, the Netherlands, Britain, Canada, Singapore and Germany conducted a variety of tests at Fort Bliss and McGregor Range.
Laura Cruz may be reached at lcruz@elpasotimes.com
-------- korea
China, N. Korea Agree to Nuclear Talks
By TED ANTHONY
Associated Press Writer
Oct 30, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHINA_NKOREA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3328989,00.html
BEIJING (AP) -- China and North Korea agreed "in principle" Thursday that six-nation talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program should be reconvened, official media in both nations said, reporting on an unusual meeting between a top Chinese official and the North's reclusive leader.
China Central Television, in its national evening newscast, also said both the Beijing leadership and Kim Jong Il agreed the concerns of both sides in the nuclear standoff - the United States and North Korea - should be resolved simultaneously.
State television showed Wu Bangguo, the second-highest Chinese Communist Party leader and head of his country's legislature, meeting with a smiling Kim in Pyongyang. Wu is on a three-day "goodwill" visit to the North at a pivotal time when China is trying to make sure the six-nation summit reconvenes.
"Both sides agreed in principle that the six-way talks should continue," CCTV's anchorwoman said as footage of the two ran. "China and North Korea support the idea of a peaceful resolution to the North Korean issue through dialogue."
The two nations' official news agencies, KCNA and Xinhua, confirmed the report in short order. KCNA used slightly different language, saying the sides "agreed in principle to pursue the course of the six-way talks."
KCNA said the North "expressed its willingness to take part in the future talks if they provide a process of putting into practice the proposal for a package solution based on the principle of simultaneous actions."
It was not immediately clear how concrete a commitment "in principle" meant. But the North's decision to make such a statement publicly alongside China, an ally it does not want to alienate, suggests that this commitment could stick where previous ones didn't. No timeframe was given for future six-nation talks.
North Korea has previously said that "simultaneous actions" include economic and humanitarian aid from the United States, the opening of diplomatic ties and the building of a nuclear power plant. It also demands a signed nonaggression treaty - something the Bush administration has thus far refused.
In exchange, North Korea has said it would declare its willingness to give up nuclear development, allow nuclear inspections, give up missiles exports and finally dismantle its nuclear weapons facilities.
A spokesman who answered the phone at the press section of China's Foreign Ministry refused comment, saying the visit was still in progress.
The presence in the Chinese delegation of Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, China's point man on North Korean affairs, lent credence to speculation that there might be motion in the nuclear issue during the trip.
But if recent weeks are any indication, the North's apparent agreement to join the summit again could change quickly.
After the six nations - the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia - met for the first time in Beijing in August, the North said it would join them again. However, it backtracked hours after the talks adjourned and has gone back and forth in the weeks since.
CCTV also reported that Kim, who rarely travels by air, had accepted Chinese President Hu Jintao's invitation to visit China again. Kim said he would do so "at his convenience," CCTV said.
Earlier Thursday, China's official Xinhua News Agency quoted Wu as saying that "adherence to dialogue should be the correct direction" to end the standoff - a dispute China has positioned itself to help solve, if not mediate outright.
"We want to hold this round of six-party talks as soon as possible," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said at a regular briefing in Beijing.
The dispute began a year ago when the United States said North Korea admitted to a secret nuclear program. In the ensuing months, Washington demanded the program be scrapped and Pyongyang refused, saying only the nonaggression treaty and aid could change its mind.
At home, China used its state-controlled propaganda machine Thursday to drive home its long-held point - that dialogue, and not any rash action, will solve the dispute.
"Neighbors work together for peace," the newspaper China Daily said on its front page. Most every Chinese-language newspaper stressed the need for more talks.
China, Pyongyang's most powerful ally, has struggled to balance its duty to its neighbor with what a nuclear-armed North might mean for Chinese security - and the Chinese economy.
Wu, invited by the North, is the highest-level Chinese official to publicly travel to the insular nation since 2001, when then-President Jiang Zemin paid a state visit.
Pyongyang is believed already to have one or two atomic bombs, and recently said it extracted plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods to build more. Two weeks ago, it threatened to test a bomb.
--------
North Korea Says Crisis Becoming 'Unpredictable'
October 30, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea told China its nuclear standoff with the United States was approaching an ``unpredictably difficult phase'' as Japanese media reported the isolated communist state might be softening its stand on talks.
Underlining tensions on the divided peninsula, South Korea said its navy had fired warning shots on Thursday after a North Korean patrol boat briefly crossed their disputed maritime border in the Yellow Sea.
North Korean parliament chief Kim Yong-nam commented on the nuclear standoff when he met Wu Bangguo, China's Communist Party number two, on Wednesday, the opening day of a goodwill visit to Pyongyang.
Kim ``pointed out that the situation in Northeast Asia centring around the Korean peninsula is reaching an unpredictably difficult phase due to the U.S. invariable hostile policy'' toward North Korea, the North's KCNA news agency said.
For his part Wu, China's parliament chief and its most senior leader to visit the impoverished and isolated North since then president Jiang Zemin in late 2001, urged improved relations on the Korean peninsula.
``He said that the Chinese side supports the improvement of the relations between the north and the south of the Korean peninsula and the realization of its independent and peaceful reunification,'' KCNA said.
Japanese media reports on Thursday said that North Korea was no longer demanding a non-aggression treaty with the United States and would settle instead for a letter of assurance on its security from President Bush.
Bush said this month that the United States and its partners were all willing to sign a document, not a treaty, declaring ``We won't attack you'' so long as North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
WARNING SHOTS
North Korea initially dismissed the proposal as ``laughable'' but said later it was prepared to consider it.
Thursday's naval confrontation was quickly resolved when the North Korean vessel turned back. Seoul's Defense Ministry said it was believed to have crossed the maritime line while monitoring Chinese fishing vessels near rich crab-fishing grounds.''
Nevertheless, with North Korea seemingly edging toward talks, any military action is closely watched.
Wu's visit has raised hopes that Beijing can persuade Pyongyang to attend a new round of six-party talks on the crisis.
China hosted an inconclusive round of talks in late August with North Korea, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia to try to end the standoff.
The crisis erupted a year ago when the United States, which has branded North Korea as part of an ``axis of evil'' along with Iran and pre-war Iraq, said Pyongyang had admitted to having a covert nuclear program.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue dismissed news reports that China had pressured North Korea to come to the negotiating table.
``We don't apply any kind of pressure in diplomacy,'' she told reporters in Beijing. ``This is China's diplomatic style.''
Wu told North Korean Premier Pak Pong-ju on Thursday China ``was willing to provide, within its power, assistance to North Korea's economic construction,'' Zhang said. She did not elaborate.
China would also ``encourage Chinese enterprises to further engage in mutually beneficial cooperation'' with North Korea, she said, adding that Wu had briefed Pak about China's two-and-a-half decades of economic reforms and the current economic situation.
KCNA said on Thursday China had decided to provide ``grant-in-aid'' to North Korea but gave no details.
``This will encourage the Korean people in their efforts to build a great prosperous powerful nation,'' KCNA said.
China, one of the North's few friends, provides more than two-thirds of its food and fuel aid.
North Korea's cereals output has grown this year, helping ease a severe food shortage, U.N. officials said on Thursday.
But the country can only produce about 80 percent of what it needs to feed its 23 million people and malnutrition rates are still ``alarmingly'' high, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program said in an annual report.
Some 6.5 million vulnerable people would require outside aid to survive next year, it said.
--------
North Korean Navy Boat Crosses Border, Says South
October 30, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-boat.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's navy fired warning shots on Thursday after a North Korean patrol boat briefly crossed a disputed maritime border while watching Chinese fishing vessels, the South's military said.
Tensions have been high on the Korean peninsula since last October when the United States said the North had said it had a secret nuclear arms program. Now North Korea seems to be edging toward talks, so any military action is closely watched.
The North Korean boat crossed the Yellow Sea border at 11:37 a.m. (0237 GMT), a defense ministry spokesman said by telephone.
``Our navy vessel fired four warning shots and the North's boat returned at 11:47 a.m.,'' said a statement from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ``The boat was believed to have crossed the border while monitoring Chinese fishing vessels.''
The boat from the North had crossed the so-called Northern Limit Line boundary, the de-facto border the North has declared invalid. Most incursions involve North Korean boats working rich crab fishing grounds in the Yellow Sea, which the Koreas call the West Sea.
There were deadly naval clashes there in 1999 and last year, and in August the South Korea navy fired warning shots for the first time this year in a similar incident to Thursday's.
On Wednesday, the North's official KCNA news agency quoted military sources as saying South Korean warships had crossed the disputed border several times in the past week, most recently that day.
``The South Korean military authorities should not act rashly, mindful that such infiltration into the territorial waters is a dangerous adventure which may spark a new West Sea skirmish,'' it said.
The two Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean war ended with an armed truce rather than a peace treaty. The Demilitarized Zone separating them is one of the world's most fortified land frontiers.
-------- treaties
'35 or 40' countries able to make nuclear weapons: IAEA chief
PARIS (AFP)
Oct 30, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031030184150.247euuhx.html
Up to 40 countries are believed to be capable of manufacturing nuclear weapons, underlining the need to reinforce and update the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei told a French newspaper.
The treaty, which came into force in 1970, has been overtaken by a world in which developing nuclear arms has become attractive not only to many countries, but also to "terrorist groups," ElBaradei told Friday's issue of Le Monde.
The number of countries believed to be able to create such weapons "is estimated at 35 or 40," he said.
"And under the current regime, there is nothing illicit for a non-nuclear state to conduct uranium-enriching activities ... or even to possess military-grade nuclear material," he said.
Should any one of them decide to break their commitment to the non-proliferation treaty, experts believe it "could produce a weapon in just a few months."
He added: "We are already on the verge of catastrophe with North Korea."
Elsewhere in the interview, ElBaradei said his agency was at work verifying Iran's nuclear programme, and said a report would be made at the next UN Security Council meeting.
To cope with the increasing risk of other countries developing nuclear arms, the agency head said a beefed-up version of the non-proliferation treaty was needed, beyond the tweaking that it went through in 1995 after the first Gulf War.
"We have to reach agreement on limiting the construction, in civilian programmes, of nuclear material for military ends by confining this to installations under multilateral control."
A "new safety system" that would treat the causes of international insecurity, not just their symptoms, also should be created that would not be based on "dissuasion, but on fairness and universality," he argued.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- missouri
Report cites massive radiation at plant
October 30, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031030-122032-2568r.htm
ST. LOUIS, Oct. 30 -- Cold War era nuclear workers at a plant near downtown St. Louis reportedly got doses of radiation 2,400 times above today's acceptable standards.
A government report says as high as the exposure level was documented at the Mallinckrodt uranium-processing facility, it actually may have been a lot higher.
The report described dusty, sloppy and hazardous conditions as routine at the plant, which operated from 1942 to 1957, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said. One section described a worker scooping uranium by hand with a piece of cardboard because mechanized equipment had failed.
"I would characterize this as a pretty messy operation," said Jim Neton, a health physicist with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which ordered the report as part of a federal nuclear workers' compensation program.
The 125-page document will help determine whether hundreds of sick, aging Mallinckrodt workers are eligible for $150,000 payments under the program.
-------- us politics
CONGRESS
Plan for Iraq to Repay U.S. Aid Is Rejected
October 30, 2003
New York Times
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/politics/30COST.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 - Congressional negotiators on Wednesday rejected a Senate proposal that would have required Iraq to repay billions in reconstruction aid, ending a brief rebellion against President Bush's $87 billion plan for the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The negotiating committee, with members from both houses, approved a spending plan for Iraq that calls for about $18.5 billion in aid to be given as a gift to Iraq, as President Bush had demanded. The White House, arguing that Iraq is already too burdened with debt, threatened to veto the bill if it included a loan provision, and Republicans on the joint House-Senate conference committee echoed the administration's position.
"If Iraq's economy gets back on track without a huge additional debt load, it could become the model for the future of the Middle East," said Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California. "To suggest the way we can help best is by more debt load is absolutely ridiculous.
"It is time for us to recognize that it's in the interest of America to see that Iraq's economy does well," Mr. Lewis said, "because it will produce benefits for us that will last for generations to come."
Democrats argued that Iraq was well equipped to pay its debts, and noted that the federal government would have to increase its own record-setting debts to provide the aid.
"We believe Iraq can pay its own way," said Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland. "It will add to their national dignity, and it will show that they're ready to enter the world. And quite frankly, our people have sticker shock - they do not want to this be a grant, they want this to be a loan."
But the Democrats on the committee lost the support of two Republican colleagues who had voted for the loan in the Senate earlier this month, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado. Once senators on the committee voted 16 to 13 against the loans on Wednesday afternoon, the provision was permanently dropped from the bill, and neither chamber will be able to restore it when they vote on the measure later this week. The legislation will then go to the president for his signature.
However, in approving a compromise bill, the committee did not give President Bush precisely what he had requested in September. The conference cut about $1.7 billion from the administration's original request for $20.3 billion in rebuilding aid, mostly for projects the committee members considered unnecessary, such as housing developments, a ZIP code program, garbage trucks and new prisons.
And, in a slap at what critics see as the administration's reluctance to share information about Iraq with Congress, Republicans joined Democrats in adding several watchdog provisions to the bill, adjustments that demonstrated unease with the administration's desire to spend taxpayer money freely in Iraq. One powerful Republican on the committee openly accused the administration of arrogance.
"There are a lot of people here who have tried to be a strong supporter of this administration, doing everything they possibly could," said Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee for the Commerce and Justice Departments. "But you bump up against a degree of arrogance over and over again."
Mr. Wolf added: "I want the president to do well, but it's important that you be open when members of Congress on either side, on either party, try to get information. Pride goeth before the fall."
Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, seconded the spirit of Mr. Wolf's remarks, criticizing L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Iraq, for declining to meet with him and other Congressional leaders this week.
The conference committee approved a proposal by Mr. Stevens to create an inspector general to watch over spending by Mr. Bremer's authority in Iraq, one of more than a dozen new oversight requirements added by both chambers to the bill.
The committee raised the overall size of the bill to $87.5 billion by adding $500 million for emergency aid to victims of the California wildfires and Hurricane Isabel.
Over the administration's objections, the committee also improved health care benefits for military reservists and National Guard members who are unemployed or do not have a company health care plan. The improved benefits would also extend the benefits to reservists and Guard members for six months after they return from active duty.
The committee rejected a Democratic proposal to require the Senate to confirm the administrator in Iraq. Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, argued that Mr. Bremer controlled a budget larger than that of nearly half the cabinet agencies, but said the Senate has no role in his selection and insufficient oversight of his actions.
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Powell and Ashcroft Warn of Fallout From Senate Spending Proposal
October 30, 2003
New York Times
By CARL HULSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/politics/30SPEN.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft have raised serious objections to the Senate spending plan for their departments, saying the measure could undermine American counterterrorism efforts and diplomacy.
The concerns raised by the two cabinet officials over the $37 billion spending proposal add new complications to the push by Republican Congressional leaders to wrap up the remaining appropriations bills, now almost a month overdue. The House and Senate are preparing this week to pass another temporary spending bill that would keep all federal agencies open past Friday, when the current stopgap measure expires.
In separate letters to House leaders this month, Mr. Powell and Mr. Ashcroft said the spending proposal now awaiting Senate action would hinder the work of their departments, result in layoffs, and, in the case of the federal prison system, lead to the closing of some units and crowding at others.
"We do not directly control the number of inmates that enter into our prison system," wrote Mr. Ashcroft. "An overall reduction of the magnitude included in the Senate bill - approximately $270 million below the request - would have a dramatic adverse impact on the staff and inmate safety at existing facilities."
Mr. Powell's 10-page letter, which aides said was unusual for its detailed critique, was even harsher on the Senate's effort to reduce the State Department's spending request by $614 million.
"The progress made in the last two years toward rebuilding our diplomatic readiness and providing safe, secure facilities will be severely impacted if these cuts are not restored," the letter said. "The result will leave our nation and this department poorly equipped to carry out our worldwide foreign policy mission."
The complaints from cabinet members over measures written in the Republican-controlled Senate illustrate the problems facing lawmakers as they try to devise a strategy for passing the remaining spending bills so that they can adjourn in the next few weeks.
The Senate must pass 5 of the 13 measures, then negotiate differences with the House, which has passed all 13. But some of the proposals, like the one that allocates money for the State, Justice and Commerce departments, are caught up in controversy and the Senate leadership is hesitant even to bring them to the floor. In addition, incorporated in some measures that have cleared both houses are major policy fights over issues like media consolidation, overtime rules and travel to Cuba. Negotiators are working through those disagreements.
The legislative logjam is vexing Republican leaders as they try to show that under their leadership, Congress is running more efficiently than last year, when Democrats controlled the Senate and the appropriations process broke down. One solution is to combine some of the most contentious measures into one bigger bill and submit it for an up or down vote, but the impasse has not yet reached that point.
"We are making progress," said the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist.
Senate aides said the major problem with the spending plan that Mr. Powell and Mr. Ashcroft objected to was that the bill's authors were given $700 million less to work with than President Bush requested. It was also $900 million below what the House allocated for the same bill.
"They are right, they took a hit," one aide said. "The money had to come from somewhere."
The aide and others said that the legislative staffs at the agencies knew that some of the money would be restored in negotiations, and they said that some of the claims in the letter from the State Department were exaggerated.
For instance, Mr. Powell's letter said that spending on international peacekeeping would be cut by almost $67 billion, but the aide said the department had $100 million left unspent from last year.
"They are going to have windfall of $33 million," the Senate official said.
An analysis by House staff of the allocation for the Justice Department in the Senate proposal predicted substantial layoffs if it were to be adopted, including staff reductions of almost 500 agents for the Drug Enforcement Administration, hundreds of deputy United States marshals and thousands of federal prison workers. The analysis also predicted the closing of 10 to 15 correctional locations. It said the bill also failed to include the $513 million sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the hiring of 1,265 new agents and analysts.
The measure has also raised alarm at the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who heads the Judicial Conference of the United States, warned of a "significant, adverse impact on our judicial system," with cuts of almost 2,900 workers in probation, pretrial and clerk offices under the Senate proposal.
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Senators Overturn Vote on Aid to Iraq
$18.4 Billion to Be in Form of Grants
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 30, 2003; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37405-2003Oct29.html
Key senators reversed course yesterday and voted to make an $18.4 billion reconstruction package for Iraq entirely in the form of grants rather than loans, as House-Senate negotiators worked their way through President Bush's $87 billion request for military and rebuilding operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 16 to 13 vote represented a significant victory for Bush, who had threatened to veto the bill if Congress insisted on making Iraq repay some of the money.
But even as GOP senators sided with Bush -- and overturned an Oct. 17 vote by the full Senate to make some of the Iraq funding a loan -- members from both parties made it clear they expect more White House answers on how U.S. money is being spent to pacify and rebuild Iraq.
Bush's victory on the loan-grant matter was slightly offset by lawmakers' nibbles at other portions of his request, which had called for more than $20 billion to rebuild Iraq. Negotiators signaled their intentions to trim nearly $2 billion from the plan, eliminating money to restore wetlands and upgrade the postal service. Also against Bush's wishes, negotiators voted to expand Pentagon health coverage to National Guard and reserve troops when they come home.
When the negotiators finish their work, perhaps this week, their reconciled bill will go to the House and Senate for final approval, and then to Bush for his signature.
Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) said the largely party-line vote on the loan matter "showed great support for the president. It showed it has dawned on the Republicans that loans at this point by the United States just don't make any sense."
But in a sign of lawmakers' unease over the resources flowing to Iraq, the negotiators gave voice-vote approval to a proposal by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to establish an inspector general for the Baghdad-based Coalition Provisional Authority. The inspector general, who would answer directly to L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, would track money, monitor reconstruction activities and contracting, and provide detailed quarterly reports on the authority's activities in those areas.
"We know we have a lot of questions," said Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.). Establishing such a position, he said, "will keep people out of trouble."
On a 15 to 14 vote, the negotiators rejected Sen. Robert C. Byrd's proposal to make Bremer's appointment subject to Senate confirmation. Byrd (D-W.Va.) said the provisional authority "has not been held accountable for the money that it spends."
Even some Republicans agreed that the administration has not been open enough about its activities in Iraq. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) said the administration worked to block his effort to travel to Iraq and review reconstruction and military efforts.
"Pride goeth before the fall," he said, adding that the administration needs to be more forthcoming "when members on either side want information."
The parties split on whether to require Iraq to repay some of the U.S. aid, with Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii as the only Democrat voting no on the matter.
Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) said Iraq could draw on its oil revenue to fund the rebuilding. "We believe they can pay their own way," she said. "It will add to their dignity."
But Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) said that the U.S. investment now will pay enormous dividends in terms of Middle East peace, and that loans would undermine that effort. "It could become the model for the Middle East," he said. "To suggest the way to get there is through debt is absolutely ridiculous."
In one of the day's more contentious debates, female negotiators insisted that Congress reinsert language earmarking $60 million in aid for Afghan women. John Scofield, spokesman for House Appropriations Committee Chairman C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.), said House GOP leaders had told female lawmakers they planned to eliminate the earmark because it represented 20 percent of all the money going toward Afghanistan and they wanted to make it unrestricted.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) exploded at one point, asking why lawmakers would tinker with money for the "brutalized women of Afghanistan."
"It's been stripped out," she said. "Who ever heard of such a thing?"
After the exchange, lead negotiators said the $60 million would go to Afghan women's needs.
-------- MILITARY
-------- business
Halliburton keeps no-bid Iraq pact
October 30, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20031029-091743-3685r.htm
Vice President Dick Cheney's former company will retain a no-bid contract in Iraq longer than expected, the Bush administration said yesterday, blaming sabotage of oil facilities for delays in replacement contracts.
Halliburton's contract, worth $1.59 billion so far, will be extended until December or January while the government receives and evaluates revised bids for replacement work that could total $2 billion.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which administers the oil industry rehabilitation, already has received competitive bids for replacement contracts, and hoped to announce the winners this month. The Corps said it was forced to revise the workload requirements because of continued sabotage and a need to provide additional security.
Halliburton's contract will be split into two - with a maximum cost of $800 million for work on the northern oil fields and up to $1.2 billion to restore the southern facilities. The contracts are for two years with up to three one-year renewals.
Halliburton's KBR subsidiary has been performing the restoration work under a contract that evolved from emergency firefighting at Iraq's oil wells after Saddam Hussein was toppled, to restoration of Iraq's petroleum production.
Democratic members of Congress have said the no-bid contract showed favoritism to the Houston company that Mr. Cheney led before he ran for vice president. They also accused Halliburton of gouging U.S. taxpayers by paying too much for emergency imports of oil from Iraq's neighbors.
Mr. Cheney's office has said the vice president has no current ties to Halliburton and had nothing to do with the contract. He still receives deferred payments for services performed while he was employed by the company.
Separately, Halliburton reported yesterday that its third-quarter revenue rose to $4.14 billion from $2.98 billion a year earlier, in part because of KBR's government work. However, the company reported that its net income declined because of legal costs and lower-than-expected results from joint ventures.
In a conference call on the earnings report, the company's top executive, Dave Lesar, said he was offended by criticism concerning the Iraq work but believed it was "less about Halliburton and more about external political issues."
Reps. Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat, and John D. Dingell, Michigan Democrat, wrote National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that Halliburton was importing gasoline from Kuwait into Iraq at a "grossly excessive" average price of $2.65 per gallon.
The two have made similar claims before, prompting an angry denial from the company.
"To allege that KBR is overcharging for this needed service insults the KBR employees who are performing this dangerous mission to help bring fuel to the people of Iraq. The drivers transporting the fuel face the real risk of being killed or wounded, and vehicles and contents being destroyed," Halliburton said.
Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, New Jersey Democrat, added: "Halliburton is looting the U.S. Treasury and this administration seems to be happy to help them."
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Report Links Iraq Deals to Bush Donations
October 30, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Contracts.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Companies awarded $8 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan have been major campaign donors to President Bush, and their executives have had important political and military connections, according to a study released Thursday.
The study of more than 70 U.S. companies and individual contractors turned up more than $500,000 in donations to the president's 2000 campaign, more than they gave collectively to any other politician over the past dozen years.
The report was released by the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based research organization that produces investigative articles on special interests and ethics in government. Its staff includes journalists and researchers.
The Center concluded that most of the 10 largest contracts went to companies that employed former high-ranking government officials, or executives with close ties to members of Congress and even the agencies awarding their contracts.
Major contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan were awarded by the Bush administration without competitive bids, because agencies said competition would have taken too much time to meet urgent needs in both countries.
``No single agency supervised the contracting process for the government,'' Center executive director Charles Lewis said. ``This situation alone shows how susceptible the contracting system is to waste, fraud and cronyism.''
J. Edward Fox, an assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, took issue with Lewis' statement and aspects of the report.
``It would ... be incorrect to suggest that there is no overall oversight of this process,'' he wrote the Center. ``The USAID inspector general's review of all Iraq contracts which was requested by USAID Administrator Andrew S. Natsios on April 14th has shown that all Iraq contracts to date have been done in compliance'' with federal regulations.
The top contract recipient was the Halliburton subsidiary KBR, with more than $2.3 billion awarded to support the U.S. military and restore Iraq's oil industry.
Halliburton was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney before he resigned to run with Bush in 2000.
Halliburton's top executive, Dave Lesar, said Wednesday he was offended by criticism of the company's Iraq work but believed it was ``less about Halliburton and more about external political issues.''
``As a company uniquely qualified to take on this difficult assignment, we will continue to bring all of our global resources to bear at this critical time in the Middle East. We have served the military for over 50 years and have no intention of backing down at this point,'' he said.
Bechtel was second with a $1 billion capital construction contract involving Iraq's utilities, telecommunications, railroads, ports, schools, health care facilities, bridges, roads and airports.
The company's Internet site says, ``We do engage in the political process, as do most companies in the United States. We have legitimate policy interests and positions on matters before Congress, and we express them in many ways, including support for elected officials who support those positions.
``We do not expect or receive political favors or government contracts as a result of those contributions.''
The Center's analysis of contractor political donations showed:
--The top 10 contractors contributed $11 million to national political parties, candidates and political action committees since 1990.
--Fourteen of the companies won contracts in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Those companies, combined, have given more than $23 million in political contributions since 1990.
--Most contractors, their political action committees and their employees have contributed just under $49 million to national political campaigns and parties since that year.
--In the same time period, contractor donations to Republican Party committees outpaced contributions to the Democrats, $12.7 million to $7.1 million.
Many of the companies with large contracts have important political connections.
Former Secretary of State George Shultz is a member of Bechtel's board of directors, although he has no management role, according to the company's Web site.
Riley Bechtel, the chairman and chief executive officer, was named early this year to the President's Export Council, which advises the president on programs to improve U.S. trade.
Jack Sheehan, senior vice president in Bechtel's petroleum and chemicals business, served on the Defense Policy Board, which advises the defense secretary on a variety of issues.
Other contractors also had connections. Among those cited by the Center:
David Kay, head of the Bush administration's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is a former vice president of Science Applications International Corp. He left the company in October 2002.
Christopher ``Ryan'' Henry left the same company as a vice president in February 2003 to become principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.
Scott Spangler, principal owner of Chemonics International, was a senior U.S. Agency for International Development official during the first Bush administration. The company receives 90 percent of its business from USAID.
Sullivan Haave Associates Inc. was founded by Carol Haave, currently the deputy assistant secretary of defense for security and information operations.
The Center's findings are based, in part, on 73 Freedom of Information Act requests and an analysis of a federal contractor database.
On the Net:
Center for Public Integrity: http://www.publicintegrity.org
Bechtel: http://www.bechtel.com
Halliburton: http://www.halliburton.com/
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Boeing Profit Drops 31% Despite Defense Business
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 30, 2003; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38431-2003Oct29.html
Boeing Co., the world's largest aircraft maker, reported a 31 percent decline in third-quarter profit yesterday as its flagging commercial aviation business swamped gains in defense contracting.
The company said net income fell to $256 million (32 cents a share) from $372 million (46 cents) in the same period last year. The earnings topped analysts' expectations of 25 cents a share, according to Thompson First Call, sending Boeing's shares up $2.46, or 6.8 percent, to $38.50.
Revenue slipped 4 percent, to $12.2 billion from $12.7 billion. Boeing said it made a $1.2 billion contribution to its employees' pension accounts during the quarter, which weighed on the results.
"All things considered, we had a very good quarter," said Philip M. Condit, Boeing's chairman. "Revenues were on track, with growth in our defense businesses offsetting the continued commercial market downturn."
Defense business revenue grew 12 percent during the quarter, to $7.3 billion from $6.5 billion last year. Boeing, the Pentagon's second-largest contractor, was helped in the quarter by the delivery of orders for Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAMs, which turn "dumb" bombs into precision-guided weapons. The defense business also was aided by contracts for explosive detection systems for airports and advanced communications for weapons systems.
"It looks like their defense side bailed them out," said Michael Doran, an analyst at Victory Capital Management, an investment advisory firm that owns 3.4 million Boeing shares.
On the strength of its defense business, Boeing raised its revenue outlook for the year to $50 billion from its previous estimate of $49 billion. But the company still projects a loss for the year of 2 to 12 cents a share, largely because of charges related to the commercial aircraft business.
The company's 2003 forecast assumes that Congress will approve a $21 billion plan for the Air Force to lease 100 Boeing 767 tankers, which refuel fighter jets in midair, company officials said. The proposal, which has been criticized as too expensive, is in limbo while the Senate Armed Services Committee pushes an alternative plan that would lower the cost by $4 billion.
"We just have to wait and see how the Congress decides to go forward with the program," Michael Sears, Boeing's chief financial officer, said in a conference call with analysts. Boeing expects to receive $350 million in the fourth quarter if the deal is approved.
The lease proposal has gained importance to Boeing as its commercial business has faltered. Backlog for the 767 has dwindled to 31 this year, meaning that without the lease program, the production line could close down by 2008, said Richard L. Aboulafia, aviation analyst for the Teal Group, a defense research firm. The lease would extend the brand's life into the next decade, he said.
Overall, Boeing delivered 65 planes during the quarter compared with 73 last year, driving the commercial unit's revenue down 17 percent, to $5 billion from $6 billion.
The unit's earnings fell 90 percent, to $35 million from $334 million, reflecting a $184 million charge to cease production of the 757 next year. Boeing has delivered more than 1,000 of the planes, which first became available 20 years ago, but demand from domestic airlines has dried up. Company officials said the U.S. airline market remains relatively weak and a global recovery is two years away.
Condit said the commercial unit "is doing a fantastic job in an incredibly difficult market."
-------- china
U.S. Hits Obstacles In Helping Taiwan Guard Against China
By John Pomfret and Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 30, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38079-2003Oct29?language=printer
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The Bush administration has quietly embarked on an ambitious effort to restructure Taiwan's military and improve the island's ability to defend itself against China. But the U.S. plan is foundering because Taiwan's leaders are reluctant to foot the enormous bill and force change upon the island's highly politicized and conservative military, U.S. and Taiwanese officials said.
The officials acknowledge that the program is a major departure from long-standing U.S. policy limiting military relations with Taiwan to avoid a confrontation with China. They describe it as a crash course intended to help Taiwan keep up with China's rapid military modernization and, importantly, avoid being bullied by Beijing if bilateral talks resume.
It is aimed at providing more advanced weapons to Taiwan's military and improving command and control, strategy and force planning, communications and the ability of the island's army, navy and air force to conduct joint operations.
U.S. military representatives, once almost completely banned from visiting Taiwan, are currently involved in dozens of programs on the island, including both classroom seminars and training in the field. U.S. officers are advising Taiwan's military at all levels in policy, implementation and training, U.S. and Taiwanese officials said. In addition, the two militaries have established a hotline for communicating in case of an emergency, a U.S. official and a senior Taiwanese diplomat said. Meanwhile, hundreds of Taiwanese military personnel are now undergoing training and education in the United States, U.S. officials said.
The sharp expansion of military ties risks angering China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory. "China will not tolerate a de facto alliance," said a senior Chinese official, speaking on condition of anonymity. China's defense minister, Gen. Cao Gangchuan, is in Washington for talks that will focus in part on Taiwan.
But many officials acknowledged that the program has thus far done little to improve Taiwan's ability to defend itself. "The United States has put a lot effort into this project, but there's really no improvement," said retired Adm. Nelson Ku, the former commander of Taiwan's navy and now a member of Taiwan's congress.
U.S. officials said many Taiwanese officials, including President Chen Shui-bian, are reluctant to lock horns with the powerful military to push the reforms; others have not acknowledged that Taiwan needs to improve its war-fighting capabilities. Taiwanese government officials and legislators acknowledged the pace of change was glacial.
"It's like the end of the Qing dynasty when the emperors bought fancy weapons but there was no change in thinking," said Shuai Hua-min, a former army two-star general and one of the main advocates of military reforms here. "They don't care whether the weapons systems are useful or not. It's become purely political to show China how close Taiwan is to the United States."
China has vowed to attack Taiwan if it declares independence. The United States is required by law to provide for Taiwan's defense, but for most of the 1980s and '90s, U.S. military relations with Taiwan were limited to arms sales and a few training programs to support those sales. Following the normalization of ties with China in 1979, the United States banned most uniformed personnel from visiting the island and kept Taiwan's military at arm's length.
The expansion of military ties with Taiwan began during the Clinton administration after the 1996 crisis in which China fired missiles into waters off Taiwan. The Pentagon has pushed the relationship to a new level over the past three years because of a growing belief that the Chinese are attempting to develop the capability to undertake a rapid, intense strike against Taiwan to foment mass confusion on the island and decapitate the government before any significant U.S. forces can arrive, U.S. officials and experts said.
The Pentagon has conducted about a dozen assessments, reviews and studies of Taiwanese military capabilities in the past three years, U.S. officials said, including in-depth looks at Taiwan's ability to defend itself against air attacks, naval blockades and military landings as well as its command and control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems. One Pentagon report predicts that the balance of power in the Strait will shift in China's favor by 2005 if Taiwan does not embrace military modernization.
At the Bush administration's request, Congress passed legislation last year that would allow it to assign active-duty military personnel to the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy on the island.
Over the past three years, U.S. officers have begun attending Taiwanese military exercises as observers and Taiwanese officers have begun observing American military maneuvers. Hundreds of Taiwanese military personnel receive training at U.S. military colleges, academies and bases every year. While senior U.S. military officials are still barred from visiting Taiwan, high-level visits of Taiwanese military officials to the United States have become almost routine, U.S. officials said.
In theory, Taiwan should have a formidable defense. The island boasts small, narrow and shallow beaches that make amphibious landings difficult and only two natural harbors, in the north and the south, which could be easily fortified. The weather would also complicate any invasion attempt, with typhoons from May to September and rough seas in the 100-mile Taiwan Strait in the winter.
But U.S. military officers say Taiwan needs to remake its armed forces to keep up with China, which has purchased new weapons from Russia, improved the ability of its army, navy and air force to work together and positioned hundreds of missiles across from Taiwan. U.S. officials have urged the Taiwanese military to simplify its command structure, demobilize thousands of officers, radically shrink the size of its army from 240,000 men and pour the bulk of its resources into its navy and air force, the services most important to countering a Chinese attack.
Taiwan's Defense Ministry has launched a plan to cut troop strength but experts say the changes are too small and too slow. And Taiwan's army has blocked for now a government plan to overhaul the military's command structure by putting the army, air force and naval commands under the control of the joint chiefs, Taiwanese officials said. In addition, Taiwan remains divided into five regional commands and a sixth offshore command, far too complicated for an island only slightly larger than Maryland. The military also remains top-heavy, with almost four times the U.S. ratio of officers to soldiers.
U.S. officials have worked with the Taiwanese on their ability to survive a first strike from China, including one that wipes out senior political and military leaders. But a program to harden the island's command bunkers has stalled. The program has not succeeded in finishing even one facility -- the Hengshan Command Center in Taipei, the capital -- because of allegations of corruption involving the Taiwanese contractor, sources in Taiwan said.
Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, "is seven minutes away from elimination, and he faces that threat every day," said one U.S. official.
U.S. efforts to encourage joint warfare -- cooperation among Taiwan's army, navy and air force -- have run into unexpected political problems. Chen's government wants to merge the three services' command colleges into one academy, arguing that is the best way to promote joint operations. But his opponents fear the move masks a plot to destroy the traditions of such institutions as the army's Whampoa Military Academy, founded in 1924 on mainland China. Those traditions have taught Taiwan's officers for decades that Taiwan is part of China and that reunification is ultimately a good idea. Chen has rejected those traditions and is moving Taiwan toward independence.
"The American officers have walked into a political minefield," said Shuai. "Their ideas might make sense militarily but placed within Taiwan's context they are easily manipulated."
A U.S. program to help Taiwan acquire better weapons has also run into difficulties. More than two years after the Bush administration approved a $20 billion to $30 billion arms package for sale to Taiwan, only a few weapons have been ordered and none have been delivered, U.S. officials said. One problem is Taiwan's defense budget, which has been shrinking as a share of total government spending. This year's $7.5 billion budget accounts for about 2.6 percent of the island's gross domestic product and 16 percent of total spending, compared with 4 percent of GDP and 24 percent of total spending a decade earlier.
The procurement process has also been complicated by Taiwan's increasingly assertive legislature, which is locked in a stalemate between Chen's ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the opposition Nationalist and People First parties. Many legislators believe that U.S. business interests drive U.S. policy regarding weapons sales, resulting in inflated prices or efforts to dump obsolete weapons on Taiwan. Chen recently proposed a special $15 billion allocation to buy U.S. weapons but it has no hope of being approved until next year at the earliest.
Another problem, Taiwanese officials say, is that the United States occasionally proposes weapons sales or ambitious reforms without a road map for carrying them out. The most prominent part of a multibillion-dollar package of weapons proposed by the Bush administration in April 2001, for example, was eight diesel submarines. Bush authorized the sale even though the United States no longer manufactures diesel submarines, which means U.S. contractors would need to purchase the designs from European manufacturers or develop a new one specifically for Taiwan.
China's opposition to such a sale would be "extremely serious," the senior Chinese official said. The Netherlands was the last country that sold Taiwan a submarine and China almost severed relations with The Hague. A U.S. team, led by Gibson Leboeuf, the U.S. Navy's point man on the submarine deal, arrived in Taipei recently to focus on the submarine deal.
Among other items, Taiwan has also balked at the price tag of $4.1 billion for the 12 P-3C Orion anti-submarine aircraft approved for sale by the Bush administration.
The slow pace of arms sales has led some U.S. officials to question Taiwan's commitment to its self-defense. U.S. officials have told the Taiwanese that President Bush's statement in April 2001 that the United States would do "whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself" did not mean Taiwan could stop upgrading its military and depend entirely on U.S. forces. In a speech before Taiwanese officials in February, Richard Lawless, a deputy assistant defense secretary, said Taiwan "should not view America's resolute commitment to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait as a substitute for investing the necessary resources in its own defense."
Some Taiwanese officials warn that too much American pressure risks a backlash from Taiwan -- with potentially serious ramifications for relations with China. Some Taiwanese military officers and officials now say that Taiwan cannot keep up with China's military buildup by purchasing defensive systems so it should develop an attack capability to deter China. Taiwan had a medium-range missile program that was scuttled, along with an earlier secret nuclear weapons program, after pressure from Washington.
"We need something to threaten China with, to make them think twice about attacking us," said Lee Wen-chung, a legislator from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party who sits on the armed services committee. "If the United States doesn't give us the red light, I think we should go forward."
Pan reported from Washington.
-------- europe
EU seeks to allay constitution fears
October 30, 2003
By Delphine Soulas
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031029-084549-4440r.htm
European officials on a visit to Washington have sought to ease fears that a European constitution will turn the continent into a political and military rival to the United States.
Addressing a conference at the American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday, the European officials noted rising concern on this side of the Atlantic as the European Union moves toward closer consolidation and discussions about raising an independent military force.
"Doubts about America's attitude towards a political, and especially military, union in Europe have recently emerged on this side of the Atlantic," said Lamberto Dini, vice president of the Italian Senate and former prime minister.
Guenter Burghardt, the permanent representative of the European Commission in Washington, said a school of thinking in the United States "tends to greet new European initiatives with a mixture of ambivalence, trepidation and skepticism."
Much of that anxiety is directed toward a new EU constitution that was drafted between February 2002 and June 2003 by a European Convention chaired by former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. Negotiators hope the draft will be approved at the Brussels European Council in December.
A compromise still has to be found among the 15 European member states and the 10 countries that will join the union in May. After that, the text must be approved by the individual countries.
John Bruton, an Irish member of Parliament and prime minister between 1994 and 1997, said he did not consider the draft text as a threat to trans-Atlantic relations since it doesn't make the European Union a superstate.
He said the union would be "simply a cooperative arrangement between states" with no specific rights to raise taxes, run a budget deficit or raise a military force.
He described the constitution as an effort "to formally lay down overall norms and structures to govern day-to-day EU legislation."
"I do not think we should conflate the European Union's desire to have a constitution with any EU ambition to become a world power," he said.
Mr. Dini said the constitution will make the European Union "a partner on an equal footing with the United States" and "create a more solid foundation for legitimizing the use of force."
He said the constitution also will enable the union "to cooperate even more effectively with the United States in tackling the new threats," such as terrorism.
"If Europe takes a more coherent posture in world affairs, and develops more streamlined decision-making processes, it could work more efficiently with the United States to tackle crises in real time," Mr. Burghardt said.
-------- iraq
Bush in a Hurry to Train Iraqis in Security Duty
October 30, 2003
By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/politics/30PREX.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 - The Bush administration has told the Pentagon to revamp and accelerate its plans for putting Iraqi security forces on the streets of Baghdad and other areas where American forces have come under attack, even if their training is significantly shortened, according to military and administration officials.
President Bush's desire to speed up - yet again - the rate at which Iraqis are put on the streets to supplement the 130,000 American troops in Iraq was the dominant subject at a meeting of the National Security Council in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday morning.
"He made it clear that it's not happening fast enough," said one senior official familiar with the discussion.
As part of a plan the Pentagon is still developing, thousands of Iraqis who are now acting essentially as security guards - at oil operations, pipelines and other potential terrorist targets - would be given a few weeks of training in Iraq and neighboring Jordan. They would then be put on the front lines as militiamen, chiefly in the Sunni-dominated area northwest of Baghdad where the attacks have intensified the most in recent days, officials say. Later, their old jobs would be filled with recruits.
The reorganization is part of a broader military strategy to change the mix of Iraqi security forces - which include border guards, civil militiamen, police officers and army units - to combat the insurgents. A major goal is to rapidly increase the number of militiamen, and one option under consideration is to recruit former soldiers from the disbanded Iraqi Army, a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday.
But the new strategy, which Mr. Bush alluded to in his Rose Garden news conference on Tuesday, carries some considerable risks, administration officials acknowledged.
In three days of meetings that involved Mr. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the senior American civilian administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, officials debated the difficulty of putting young Iraqis - some just 18 or 19 years old - on the streets with weapons and only a few weeks of formal training. But Mr. Bush and his top civilian and military aides have determined that it is a risk worth taking, because Iraqi forces, who speak the language and know the neighborhoods, are far more likely to see an attack coming than are American troops. Additional Iraqis on the street would free up American forces to hunt down the militants.
The new plans are also driven by two political realities: Only a trickle of new allied foreign troops will be coming into Iraq to bolster the American-led occupation, and soon Mr. Bush will have to begin spending the $87 billion that Congress is about to approve for military operations and reconstruction.
How to allocate the portion earmarked for training Iraqi security forces has been a central part of that discussion, and has dominated the early meetings of the Iraq Stabilization Group, the organization created at the White House to coordinate the entire effort.
"We're looking to match the money with the right mix of Iraqi forces to get the greatest impact on the ground," a second senior Pentagon official said Wednesday. "The question we have been debating is: do we have the right mix of forces now?"
That question has been asked repeatedly in recent weeks by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, who has oversight of the Iraq Stabilization Group.
The commander of American forces in Iraq, Gen. John P. Abizaid, has been pressing for an increase in the Iraqi civil defense forces - essentially a national guard or a militia - that have been going on patrol with American and British forces.
There are now 5,000 of these militiamen, but that is a small part of the 90,000 Iraqi security personnel deployed since major combat operations ended on May 1.
The number of civil defense troops is expected to triple, to 15,000, over the next few months. But General Abizaid would like to accelerate and increase that force, given the increasing sophistication and frequency of guerrilla attacks. The number of attacks against American forces has tripled to about three dozen a day in the past month, officials said.
It was Mr. Bremer, now visiting Washington for high-level consultations and to lobby Congress to approve the reconstruction funds, who called in August for efforts to significantly increase the Iraqi component of the military forces. "For Jerry, this is a second round - even faster," said one senior official, referring to Mr. Bremer.
It has also been General Abizaid's mantra to give Iraqis more and more control of their own security, and to improve the volume and quality of intelligence needed to root out guerrillas and disrupt their attacks.
To bolster the intelligence gathering, the administration is weighing whether to shift resources, including analysts and linguists, from the search for unconventional weapons to the counterinsurgency effort.
Creating more civil defense forces would also serve that purpose. When the military first set up the militia units in July, the recruits were given basic training in human rights, weapons handling and patrol techniques.
Military officials acknowledged the challenge of fielding new militia forces quickly without sacrificing quality, but General Abizaid has been impressed with the progress the militiamen have made, especially in working with American troops.
"The issue has been: is there a way to take advantage of that burgeoning relationship?" a senior Pentagon official said.
-------
Military Uses Hussein Hoard For Swift Aid
Red Tape Cut, Cash Flows to Iraqi Contracts
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 30, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37994-2003Oct29?language=printer
MOSUL, Iraq -- Looters had torn apart the seven-room pediatric wing at the medical center and there was no place to treat the children who were lined up in the streets. Kifah Mohammad Kato was desperate and told a U.S. soldier about it in late June on the off-chance he could help.
Within a week, a Humvee pulled up with the first installment of $9,600 in cash to fix the wing. Within four more weeks, the building was rebuilt and refurnished, complete with fuzzy blankets in primary colors and Mickey and Minnie Mouse decorations.
"It happened so fast I almost couldn't believe it," said Kato, director of the Sinjar General Hospital.
The speed and ease with which reconstruction money is being handed out by the military here contrasts sharply with the delays and controversy surrounding the handling of major reconstruction funds by the Pentagon and U.S. Agency for International Development.
The fact that the money comes from seized Iraqi assets, the Saddam Hussein regime's overseas bank accounts and cash stockpiles found in palaces and the walls of government buildings in Iraq has provided a fortuitous loophole. Since the money was not appropriated by Congress, officials of the U.S.-led occupation government in Iraq believe that it does not have to be disbursed under the usual contracting regulations.
The money for most military projects in Iraq goes through something called the commander's emergency response program. About $100 million has been allocated so far and the 101st Airborne Division, which oversees northern Iraq, has spent about $31 million of it. It has been used, officials said, for more than 11,000 projects such as hiring a civil defense corps, patching roads and fixing an oil refinery and a sulfur plant.
It's a new idea that has allowed soldiers who are patrolling the streets, and have a ground-level view of people's needs, to make a quick impact without having to go through the bureaucratic details that government contracts usually require.
Almost all the money is given to Iraqis, while other reconstruction funds -- about $3 billion so far -- have gone almost exclusively to American companies, which may or may not subcontract with Iraqi companies.
Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st, said the money has been critical to keeping people employed and providing tangible evidence the occupation powers are helping the populace -- which he believes keeps his soldiers safer.
"Money is the most powerful ammunition we have," Petraeus said in an interview.
The cash flow has slowed down somewhat recently, though the interim government says the program will continue. In its supplemental allocation for reconstruction, Congress is considering replenishing the fund with $180 million for 2004. The fact that the money would come from the U.S. government, however, could change how it can be spent.
Some aid groups say they worry that the system is ripe for abuse, that those who control the money can hand it out with only one bid and without doing any research to assess the market.
"Soldiers are not development workers. There is industry skill, a body of knowledge that goes with it. You can't just say 'There's a pothole over there and get it filled' and fix a country," said Dominic Nutt, a spokesman for Christian Aid, a British humanitarian group.
That criticism is a key component of the controversy over what the U.S.-led interim government, the Coalition Provisional Authority, is doing with the $5 billion of Iraqi money that it controls. About $1 billion was left over from the United Nations Oil for Food program, $2.5 billion came from assets seized from the old government and about $1.5 billion is from the oil sales.
L. Paul Bremer, head of the occupation authority, has said accusations about the lack of transparency are unfounded and that all information about the money would be posted on the Internet and given to independent reviewers.
The United Nations last week created an auditing board that will look into how the Oil for Food and oil-sales cash is being spent. But that includes only part of the seized assets.
The Sinjar General Hospital is in one of the most remote parts of Iraq, a mountainous area close to the Syrian border. When soldiers of the 101st reached this point in April, it seemed that their role in the war would soon be over. They were to secure the area. Then they were supposed to go home.
Instead, they were told to stay put. And as security remained precarious, the soldiers had to take on some of the duties of contractors and aid workers.
The commander in this region of 89 villages, 350,000 people and 6,800 square miles is Lt. Col. Hank Arnold. When it comes to contracts in this area, he is pretty much a god.
Since the first week of June, Arnold has received $20,000 to $30,000 each week for local reconstruction projects. It comes in cash -- in $100 bills -- in a bundle that he must count out, sign for and carry. Soldiers pass on requests to his deputies, who pass them up to Arnold during command meetings three times a week. A simple "yes" from him is usually all it takes to authorize money for a project. Bigger projects, of which there are few, require at least three bids and the approval of his bosses -- $10,000 to $50,000 from the brigade commander, $50,001 and above from the general.
If a contract is for less than $10,000, a single bid is sufficient. Paperwork in English and Arabic is drawn up. The work usually begins within days.
Normally in government contracting, officials must draw up "requests for proposals" and then "requests for bids." They must wait a certain time for the offers to come in, evaluate them and inform the winner and losers. The agency must follow up to ensure that contractors are following safety procedures, building codes and other regulations.
Officials with the 101st say they try to stick as closely as possible to the federal acquisition regulations used by executive branch agencies. A high-ranking officer accounts for all the cash. A lawyer who reports directly to the commanding general audits the paperwork. There is a "reasonable degree of rigor and safeguards" built into the process, Petraeus said.
Maj. Daniel C. Evans of the 926th Engineer Group, who reviews bids and contracts, acknowledged that some shortcuts are necessary. "In the states, we'd have a certified contracting officer. Here we don't have one yet," Evans said.
The program makes its impact with visibility and jobs.
"The average Iraqi sees this clinic, not the port or sanitation plant built to capacity by American standards," said Command Sgt. Maj. Rory L. Malloy, with the 2nd Battalion, 187th Infantry.
Arnold passionately believes that local people should be hired to build in their areas. He is not required to give them the work, but almost always does. He was angry recently when he found that a contract for a clinic in the village of Domis had been awarded to a company in Irbil -- 110 miles away. That company in turn contracted with people in the village, adding a layer of cost and bureaucracy.
To fix the Sinjar General Hospital, all Arnold required was one assessment, from a construction specialist that Kato had worked with before. The Army team reviewed the work, concluded that the $9,600 price was reasonable, and gave Kato the green light. The hospital formed an oversight committee of five doctors, which divided the contract into 15 parts, which went to 15 different experts in specialties such as welding and electrical wiring.
For larger projects, the Army hired a team of local Iraqi engineers to audit the work. For smaller ones like the pediatric wing, it depends on those who will use the facility to report problems. Americans later stopped by the hospital to make sure everything was okay. It was.
In general, Arnold said, contractors have been "brutally honest" about cost and time and have lived up to their promises. "Maybe," he mused, "because they are terrified." That could be because their bosses are wearing bulletproof vests and packing semiautomatics.
Arnold said he had to fire several contractors who dawdled or didn't do the work they were supposed to. But perhaps the biggest challenge has been having to learn about so different industries on the fly -- his portfolio includes rebuilding a courthouse and digging wells. He said he will celebrate when the transition is made to Iraqi rule, when there will no longer be a need for military administrators.
"At the end of the day," Arnold said. "I'm not a doctor, I'm not a construction expert. I'm an infantryman."
-------- israel / palestine
U.S. Slowly Scaling Back Role in Israel
Oct 30,
By KARIN LAUB
Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Call us when you're serious about disarming militants - that's the message Palestinians are getting from U.S. mediators who have scaled back their presence in the region.
The apparent disengagement comes amid a deadlock in the U.S.-led "road map" peace plan, Washington's growing troubles in Iraq, and the distractions of the U.S. presidential election campaign.
Israeli and Palestinian critics warn that reduced U.S. involvement will likely lead to more bloodshed, further harm America's image in the Arab world, and in the end bring on another round of U.S. mediation.
The road map was launched with great fanfare in June, but implementation was halting from the start. A turn to the worse came with the Sept. 6 resignation of reform-minded but ineffectual Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. In line with U.S. expectations, Abbas tried to wrest control of the security forces from Yasser Arafat, but was instead outfoxed by the veteran leader.
Abbas' resignation created turmoil, and his successor, Ahmed Qureia, has been unable to form a stable government. The United States says it is reserving judgment on Qureia - who is seen as more accommodating to Arafat than Abbas - until he puts together a Cabinet and takes control of security.
President Bush said last week that Abbas' ouster "stopped good progress toward a Palestinian state."
"And when the Palestinian Authority comes up with a leader who is willing to genuinely fight and dismantle terrorist organizations, the process will pick up where it left off, and move forward."
The Palestinian bombing attack on the U.S. convoy in Gaza may have reinforced that view. Three American security guards were killed, and FBI investigators were stoned by an angry crowd at the scene.
Meanwhile, John Wolf, the head of the U.S. team monitoring compliance with the road map, has been on home leave since before the Gaza attack. A U.S. State Department official said Wolf's return to the region is "not being ruled out."
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration remains in daily contact with both sides.
"There is engagement, but don't forget that in the absence of concrete steps that are not ours to make, there is a limit to what we can do," the official said.
With the sides here so far apart on the issues, many previous peace moves have required active U.S. mediation - or pressure - to move forward.
But an ambitious effort by the former Clinton administration to broker a comprehensive peace settlement collapsed three years ago, and the Bush administration was initially reluctant to get into the Mideast quagmire.
In the wake of the Iraq war, however, the United States hoped that showing a renewed commitment to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would help repair its badly damaged image in the Arab world.
Palestinian officials are now saying they have been told by the Bush administration it is waiting for a crackdown on the militant groups that have killed hundreds of Israelis in the past three years of fighting.
Three Palestinian legislators heard that message last week in a meeting in Washington with David Satterfield, a senior State Department official. "We were able to understand from him that the Americans will stay outside until the Palestinians take some steps," said Kadoura Fares, a member of the delegation from the ruling Fatah movement.
The road map requires a clampdown, but Palestinian leaders, including Abbas, have balked at using force against Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah militants, saying they will not risk setting off civil war.
Qureia has proposed negotiating with the groups to get them to declare a unilateral cease-fire, and then taking modest steps such as shutting down rocket factories and smuggling tunnels, and a ban on carrying arms in public.
Israel has rejected the truce offer, saying it is just a ploy for militants to buy time and replenish their arsenals.
The Americans also oppose the "truce first" approach, Fares said. Satterfield told the visiting legislators that the Palestinians need to take action to show they are serious.
The Palestinians argue they cannot go after armed men while Israel conducts its own hunt. "How can we set up a (police) checkpoint, while there is fire from Israeli tanks and helicopters?" Fares said.
Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said Israel and the United States agree that the deadlock will continue until there is a change in Palestinian leadership.
"The best one can hope for is to bring down the violence and manage the conflict, but conclusive solutions will have to wait for a change on the Palestinian side," Shoval said.
Palestinians accuse Sharon of perpetuating the impasse by rejecting a cease-fire, keeping up army raids, enforcing suffocating travel bans and expanding Jewish settlements in violation of the road map.
They say the Israeli leader is exploiting the vacuum to ram through the idea of a tiny Palestinian state in parts of Gaza and about half of the West Bank.
"He is systematically implementing his vision to destroy the Palestinian national identity," said Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi. "It's a sure recipe for anger, desperation and hostility."
Israeli analyst Joseph Alpher warned that by staying on the sidelines, the United States risks harming its own long-term goals, particularly the vision of a two-state solution to the Mideast conflict.
Partition of the land will become increasingly difficult, as settlements expand and populations become more entangled - a momentum that is impossible to stop without intense intervention, he said.
With Israelis and Palestinians left to their own devices, the conflict is bound to get worse. "If it's worse, it's bad for American interests in the Arab world and Iraq," Alpher said.
"The United States will get blamed."
EDITOR'S NOTE: Karin Laub has been covering the Middle East as AP's news editor in Jerusalem since 1995.
--------
Israel's Chief of Staff Denounces Policies Against Palestinians
October 30, 2003
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/international/middleeast/30MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 29 - Israel's top-ranking soldier said that current hard-line policies against the Palestinians were working against Israel's "strategic interest" and had contributed to the downfall of the previous Palestinian prime minister, Israeli news organizations reported on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was described as "furious" about the comments, attributed to Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, the military's chief of staff, Israeli television stations reported later in the day.
Several leading Israeli newspapers reported the controversial comments, attributing them to a senior military official. But during the day, Israeli reporters identified the source as General Yaalon, who made the remarks to Israeli journalists at a background briefing on Tuesday.
Nahum Barnea, a leading Israeli columnist with the daily Yediot Ahronot, quoted "a military official" as saying comprehensive travel restrictions and curfews imposed on Palestinians were actually harming Israel's overall security.
"It increases hatred for Israel and strengthens the terror organizations," Mr. Barnea wrote, quoting the official.
General Yaalon also said that Israel should have eased punitive measures to bolster the fortunes of the former Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned on Sept. 6 after only four months on the job.
Mr. Abbas expressed frustration that Mr. Sharon never took concrete steps to convince Palestinians that the Middle East peace plan, initiated in June, would bring about any real improvements in their lives.
"There is no hope, no expectations for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, nor in Bethlehem and Jericho," Mr. Barnea quoted the "military official" as saying. "In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
Mr. Sharon, a former general, has said that Palestinian violence must stop before political negotiations can begin, and he has supported tough military action since he came to power in March 2001.
In previous public statements, General Yaalon has supported strong military action.
After a Palestinian suicide bombing killed 21 people on Oct. 4 in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, the military barred all Palestinians from entering Israel and kept most Palestinians confined to their hometowns in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Israel eased the restrictions a bit on Wednesday, permitting 4,000 Palestinian businessmen and workers to enter Israel. Before the violence began three years ago, more than 100,000 from the West Bank and Gaza commuted daily to Israel to work.
In violence on Wednesday, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian man and wounded another in Gaza near a fence that marks the boundary with Israel. The military said the men had planted a large bomb. Palestinians identified the dead man as a member of Islamic Jihad, a group that has carried out many attacks against Israeli targets.
In the northern West Bank, Israeli troops shot and killed a 12-year-old Palestinian boy on Wednesday night during a confrontation in Nablus, Palestinian residents said. The military said troops fired when Palestinians began throwing rocks and firebombs at soldiers on patrol.
Also, Palestinian gunmen fired on an Israeli car, seriously wounding a man and slightly injuring his wife as they traveled near a West Bank settlement outside the Palestinian town of Jenin, the military said.
-------- prisoners of war
Army Accuses Officer in Iraq Of Firing Pistol Near Prisoner
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 30, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37861-2003Oct29.html
The Army has charged one of its battalion commanders in Iraq with abusing a prisoner during an interrogation by firing his pistol near him, the officer's lawyer said yesterday.
Lt. Col. Allen West, who until recently commanded an artillery unit in the 4th Infantry Division, allegedly committed the act in August while trying to acquire information about an assassination plot against him in the town of Saba al Boor.
The incident was first reported in yesterday's Washington Times, which said that West was acting on a tip that a local police officer was involved in the plot, which already had resulted in one attack. West had the police officer detained and interrogated. When the initial questioning failed to produce information, West took over the interrogation and threatened the prisoner with his weapon, firing it twice, but not at him, the article said. At that point, the prisoner offered information about another planned attack.
West was charged by the Army with aggravated assault and relieved of command.
Reached by e-mail in Iraq, West referred all questions to his lawyer, retired Marine Lt. Col. Neal Puckett. Reached by e-mail in Japan, where he said he is just concluding a trial, Puckett said the newspaper account was "accurate."
Puckett also wrote that West's action may have saved the lives of U.S. troops, because "the detainee was not talking until Lieutenant Colonel West demonstrated that time was up." He also said that West "didn't manhandle the detainee or point the pistol in his direction."
After the incident, West reported his actions to his immediate commander, Puckett said. No actions were taken then, but "when his boss was placed under investigation himself, this interrogation suddenly became a big deal." Puckett did not specify what that investigation was, but the Washington Times account said that the Army had conducted an inquiry into the "command climate" in the brigade of which West's unit is part.
A spokeswoman at Army headquarters said she was unable to confirm that West had been charged. Spokesmen for the 4th Infantry Division, which is based in Tikrit, in the heart of Iraq's "Sunni Triangle," could not be reached for comment.
-------- space
Two Japanese satellites in trouble after solar flares
TOKYO (AFP)
Oct 30, 2003
http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/031030131810.n32d2yaz.html
Two Japanese satellites have been in trouble following geomagnetic storms triggered by recent solar flares, one of them the largest in three decades, the Japanese space agency said Thursday.
ADEOS-2, one of the world's biggest earth observation satellites, has lost contact with the earth since last Saturday due to a possible glitch in its electrical system, a spokesman for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.
The communications satellite Kodama has stopped relaying data after its sensor developed trouble early Wednesday after the massive flare, Junichi Moriuma added.
ADEOS-2, known as Kodama-2 in Japanese, is "in a serious situation as it may never be switched on again," Moriuma said. "We are trying to determine whether the problem has been a simple hitch or something caused by a flare."
"Even before the massive flare on Tuesday, there have been activities which are also presumed to be flares in smaller scale," he said.
ADEOS, an acronym for advanced earth observation satellite, was launched last December by Japan's state-of-the-art H-2A rocket along with three other satellites including the Australian FedSat which is geared to conduct various experiments.
The spokesman said that abnormal signals were detected on Wednesday in Kodama's sensor which allows it to keep its position in relation to the earth.
Reacting to the signals, the satellite's computer automatically shifted into a safe mode with Kodama's solar panel oriented to the sun to draw power, not to the earth as in its normal mode, he said.
"The problem is presumed to have resulted from the massive solar flare," he said.
Kodama was put into orbit in September last year, moving into a geo-stationary position over the Indian Ocean.
-------- spies
INTELLIGENCE
Senate Panel Demands C.I.A. Data Leading Up to Iraq War by Friday Noon
October 30, 2003
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/politics/30PANE.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 - In a new clash between Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency, the Senate Intelligence Committee has demanded that the C.I.A. turn over by noon on Friday all of the documents and interviews still being sought by the panel for its inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq.
The demand was spelled out in a letter on Wednesday to George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, from the Republican chairman and the Democratic vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who said that some of the panel's requests have gone unanswered since July.
"In light of the agency's many other responsibilities, the committee has been patient, but we now need immediate access to this information," said the letter, which was released by the chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, and the vice-chairman, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia.
A C.I.A. spokesman, Bill Harlow, said Wednesday evening that the agency had "only just received their letter, shortly after it was provided to the news media." Mr. Harlow said it was too soon to say whether the deadline set by the committee was realistic. "The intelligence community has been working hard to fulfill their request and will continue to do so," he said.
The Senate committee is preparing a critical report spelling out what Mr. Roberts has described as "serious errors" on the part of the C.I.A. in gathering and analyzing prewar intelligence about Iraq's suspected illicit weapons program. In a letter to Senators Roberts and Rockefeller last week, Mr. Tenet complained that the staff members who have been conducting the inquiry had yet to hear a defense of the agency's performance by senior C.I.A. officials.
Mr. Tenet proposed in that letter that John McClaughlin, the agency's No. 2 official, and others present their findings to senators after an internal intelligence community inquiry is completed in late November.
But in their response on Wednesday, Senators Roberts and Rockefeller rejected that, saying that the agency's focus should be on meeting the committee's outstanding requests. They said that if the full committee should meet directly with an agency official, it should be with Mr. Tenet and not a subordinate.
The senators did not say what they would do if the Friday deadline is not met, and some congressional officials conceded that the deadline might not be realistic.
But the committee's confrontational tone and its clear effort to put pressure on the agency echoed demands made to the White House during the last week by Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who is chairman of a national commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
"We appreciate your concern that our oversight of these issues be as `complete and thoughtful as possible,' " the two senators wrote in their letter to Mr. Tenet. "We also believe strongly that it is imperative to be complete and thoughtful. We can be neither complete nor thoughtful, however, without the information we have requested from various elements of the intelligence community."
The request from Senators Roberts and Rockefeller did not spell out in any detail the nature of the documents still being sought by the committee or the identify of those whom the panel is still seeking to interview. But it did say that the committee was seeking from Mr. Tenet "an explanation of the various disconnects and inconsistencies" in assessments by the intelligence community about disputed evidence pointing to possible efforts by Iraq to obtain enriched uranium from Niger.
The failure so far of American investigators in Iraq to uncover evidence of illicit weapons has called into question the Bush administration's prewar assertions that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was seeking to reconstitute its nuclear program.
In describing the inquiry, the two senators said of the panel's inquiry that it is "our desire that the Committee's review will serve to validate the good work of the intelligence community and, where necessary, provide corrective suggestions where the intelligence product might have been better."
-------- un
Women Not Getting U.N. Protection in War
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
Oct 30, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_WOMEN_AND_PEACE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- A landmark U.N. resolution committing governments to protect women from the abuses of war has done little to keep thousands of women in conflict zones from Congo to Colombia from falling victim to rape.
"The law of the gun has devastated the condition of women," Amy Smythe, who advises the U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo on women's issues, told a Security Council meeting marking the third anniversary of the resolution.
Also largely unheeded has been the resolution's call for countries in conflict to give women a major voice at peace talks and for the United Nations to give women top jobs in settling wars, diplomats said.
"In modern warfare civilian casualties are far greater than military casualties. ... so women and children are much more affected than they used to be," U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte asid Wednesday. "No approach to peace can succeed if it does not view men and women as equally important components of the solution."
In eastern Congo "tens, if not hundreds of thousands of girls and women are being raped as a result of the conflict," Smythe said, citing data collected by the U.N. peacekeeping mission, other agencies and local communities.
"The consequences for women throughout the Congo have been devastating, as they have suffered the most" from the war, she said.
Institutions starting with the family have broken down and crops are not grown, while there is "complete impunity for perpetrators of these heinous crimes," she said.
Colombia's U.N. Ambassador Luis Guillermo Giraldo said female soldiers make up half the membership of illegal armed gangs in the South American country and were often victims of sexual violence.
Violence by the gangs often targeted civilians, especially women and children, he said.
Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador Munir Akram accused the Indian army of using rape as a weapon in their conflict over Kashmir. India's U.N. Ambassador Vijay Nambiar denied the accusation and charged that Pakistani fundamentalists had launched a terror campaign targeting women in Kashmir for their so-called nonobservance of moral codes.
Canada's deputy U.N. ambassador Gilbert Laurin lamented that the goal of a 50-50 gender balance in the U.N. system by 2000, which was adopted at the 1995 U.N. women's conference in Beijing, had not been met.
Neither had the 2001 resolution's call for Secretary-General Kofi Annan to appoint more women as special representatives to conflict zones, he said.
"There is only one woman at the level of special representative of the secretary-general out of approximately 50 such positions," Laurin said.
Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno urged member states contributing police and soldiers to U.N. peacekeeping operations to provide more women.
----
U.N. office in D.C. targeted
October 30, 2003
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031029-113301-8303r.htm
NEW YORK - The United States this week proposed shutting down the influential office of the U.N. representative in Washington, prompting complaints from some U.N. officials that the move would curtail the organization's access to Congress.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte suggested closing the $1 million-a-year U.N. Information Center (UNIC) at a meeting of the U.N. budget committee Tuesday, one of several proposed cost-cutting measures.
U.N. officials were aghast at the suggestion, saying they had been assured that UNIC-Washington was not to be included in a planned consolidation of information centers around the world.
"Isn't that a surprise?" Catherine Bertini, the U.N. budget chief, said of the proposal. "They had rolled it around at a junior level, and then said, 'Oh it's just an idea; it's nothing serious.' I'll continue to believe that is their position."
UNIC-Washington, she said, is critical for tracking legislation and briefing congressional staffers and others in the U.S. government and public life on U.N.-related issues.
Other U.N. officials suggested a political motive for the proposed closure.
"The State Department has their own channels, but this is our direct line to brief Congress on all kinds of issues," said one U.N. official, who asked not to be identified.
"I wonder if that has something to do with it. They have questions about peacekeeping, the budget, specific [geographic] areas or issues. I wonder if they are trying to limit our contact with Congress."
American conservatives have long been suspicious of the United Nations as an institution, and particularly the General Assembly, which has often served as a forum for criticism by Third World countries of the United States and Israel.
The distrust has eased only partly since former Sen. Jesse Helms, together with Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, negotiated a deal in 1999 to pay off back dues to the United Nations in exchange for a package of reforms to U.N. budget and management processes.
American liberals, meanwhile, have championed the organization, with philanthropist Ted Turner in 1997 pledging $1 billion to establish a fund that among other things has served as an advocate for the international organization.
Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, rejected the idea of a political motive, saying that UNIC-Washington is redundant and its closure makes fiscal sense.
"There are 700 people in the Department of Public Information in New York, and we are not sure why there has to be a public-information center in Washington as well," he said yesterday. "That center is a waste of money."
But one congressional staffer said he already had heard of resistance to the idea from both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill.
"If the U.S. is serious about staying in the U.N., to pull the U.N.'s best interface with Congress doesn't make a lot of sense," he said. "They're crucial to getting [key figures] together ... because they know who is who.
"We pay, what, 22 percent of a million bucks?" he said.
The Washington office is charged with "ensur[ing] timely and systematic communication exchange with representatives of the U.S. Congress, government agencies and Washington-based research institutions," among other public-information tasks listed on its Web site.
Until two years ago, the office also maintained an extensive library of U.N. documents for the general public, think tanks and lawmakers. But most of those operations were moved online, said UNIC-Washington Director Catherine O'Neill.
The U.N. Information Center's operations cost around $1 million annually, including salaries for nine full-time employees and about $270,000 in rent and overhead.
"In all my recent conversations with a wide range of Americans involved with U.S.-U.N. relations, this has never been mentioned," Mrs. O'Neill said. "We do a jillion briefings for the Hill [and private relief organizations]. If that's a value, then we're worth it."
The United States is the only host government that does not donate office space to a UNIC on its soil, the organization said. Japanese U.N. envoy Toshiharu Tarui said yesterday that his government finds the Tokyo liaison office so important that it underwrites $200,000 a year in expenses.
A decision to close the Washington office would have to be approved by the U.N. General Assembly, which last year agreed to consolidate more than a dozen European UNICs into one, to be based in Brussels.
----
U.N. Pulls Staff Out of Baghdad While It Reviews Security
October 30, 2003
By KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/international/middleeast/29CND-NATI.html?hp
The United Nations is pulling out its international staff from Baghdad while it re-evaluates the security situation, a spokeswoman for the organization said today.
The move comes after a series of deadly suicide bombings in Iraq earlier this week; in August, a bombing at the United Nation's headquarters in Baghdad killed 22 staff members and visitors and injured more than 150 people.
"We have asked our staff in Baghdad to come out temporarily for consultations with a team from headquarters on the future of our operations, in particular security arrangements that we would need to take to operate in Iraq," the spokeswoman, Marie Okabe, said.
She said it was not an evacuation from Iraq, and that staff would remain in the northern part of the country.
On Monday, suicide attackers killed at least 34 people and wounded more than 200 in coordinated attacks at the International Committee of the Red Cross office and four Iraqi police stations in Baghdad.
After the attack, the Red Cross said it would scale back its staff in Iraq but would not pull out entirely. Doctors Without Borders said it would withdraw its non-Iraqi staff of seven.
Other aid groups had drastically reduced their presence in south and central Iraq after the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad were attacked on Aug. 19, and the United Nations now maintains only a small staff there.
An independent panel appointed to investigate that bombing said on Oct. 22 in a scathing report that security breaches, inadequate security analysis and poor management left the organization vulnerable to attack.
"The U.N. security management system failed in its mission to provide adequate security to U.N. staff in Iraq," said the authors, a seven-member committee named by Secretary General Kofi Annan and led by Martti Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland.
The panel said the organization had failed to assess thoroughly security in Iraq or respond to warnings, including intelligence reports that said the headquarters could be a target of an attack.
The United Nations did not refer to that report in announcing its decision to remove personnel from Baghdad.
The Associated Press quoted United Nations officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, as saying that about 20 staff members remained in Baghdad and some 40 others across Iraq.
-------- us
IRAQ
Postwar G.I. Death Toll Exceeds Wartime Total
October 30, 2003
By SUSAN SACHS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/international/middleeast/30IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 29 - American military casualties spiked Tuesday night into Wednesday with a new round of mortar attacks, roadside bombs and shootings that left four soldiers dead and more wounded.
The American death toll since President Bush proclaimed the end of major combat operations now exceeds the 116 American combat deaths in the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The tempo of the attacks has increased as well, to an average of 33 a day over the last week from around 12 a day in July, a military spokesman said.
Military officials said one soldier with the First Armored Division was killed and six others were wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Baghdad on Tuesday. Two soldiers with the Fourth Infantry Division were killed and one was wounded when their tank hit an improvised bomb late Tuesday. They also said a soldier with the First Armored Division was killed and six others were wounded in Baghdad in a rocket-propelled grenade attack.
Seven Ukrainian soldiers were injured Tuesday night when their armored personnel carrier ran over a land mine, military officials said. It was the first attack on the multinational force in central Iraq.
In Baghdad, Iraqi political leaders lined up behind President Bush on Wednesday, blaming foreign terrorists for the latest wave of suicide bombings and calling on Syria and Iran to help control the violence by closing their borders. "Our investigations and inquiries have revealed that a number of those who have executed the terrorist acts in Iraq have entered the country across the borders from neighboring countries," the American-appointed Governing Council said in a statement.
The reproach to Iran and Syria, both opponents of the occupation, signified a sharp new tone in the Iraqis' policy toward their neighbors.
Mr. Bush also blamed outside militants and ousted members of Mr. Hussein's security forces for the attacks. American military commanders on the ground, however, have said they have not seen significant infiltration of foreign fighters into Iraq.
The differing assessments suggest that the occupation forces do not yet have a clear picture of who has organized and carried out the increasingly devastating attacks on coalition troops and Iraqi civilians.
They certainly include some Iraqis from the old security apparatus who may be fighting out of loyalty to the deposed Baath Party or out of a sense of humiliation after Iraq's defeat, according to Iraqis familiar with the capabilities of their country's once powerful military.
A former top Iraqi general and adviser to Mr. Hussein is suspected of coordinating some of the attacks against American forces, a senior American defense official said on Wednesday.
The general, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, is coordinating, financing and recruiting fighters for at least some of the attacks with the help of former Baath loyalists and foreign fighters, the official said. He cited information from a key adviser to the general who was captured recently, as well as from members of the militant group Ansar al-Islam who were seized in recent days.
General Duri, whose possible role in the attacks was reported on Wednesday night by CNN.com, is the highest-ranking former member of Mr. Hussein's inner circle who is still at large. General Duri was the Iraqi military's northern regional commander and a member of Mr. Hussein's inner circle. He is No. 6 on the list of the 55 most wanted Iraqis.
The occupation authority has at least one person in custody who was involved in the five coordinated car bombings in Baghdad on Monday. The suspect was caught running from a sixth vehicle rigged with explosives.
Iraq's health minister, Dr. Khudair Abbas, said the would-be suicide bomber was carrying a Syrian passport, according to a report on Al Jazeera, the Arabic satellite news station.
The bombers in the four other explosions that took place in Baghdad that day, when at least 34 people were killed and 230 were wounded, were apparently burned to death after detonating their explosives.
Forensic analysis of three of the five bombs used in those attacks has found traces of a plastic explosive manufactured in Portugal, a significant departure from past attacks.
Most of the improvised bombs used in the large postwar attacks relied on older military ordnance, like artillery shells and grenades that authorities suspect were taken from stocks belonging to the former Iraqi military. Most of that ordnance was made in Russia.
The complexity of organizing five nearly simultaneous suicide bombings also contrasts with most of the past bombings, which have mainly involved single attacks involving remotely detonated bombs or explosives triggered by timing devices.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, meanwhile, said it would scale back its staff in Iraq but would not pull out entirely. Its office in Baghdad was hit in the Monday suicide bombings. Doctors Without Borders said it would withdraw its non-Iraqi staff of seven.
Other aid groups had drastically reduced their presence in south and central Iraq after the United Nations headquarters here were attacked in August, and the United Nations now maintains only a small staff.
-------- propaganda wars
U.S. lacks direction, cohesion in war of ideas
October 30, 2003
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031030-120602-5737r.htm
The Bush administration's effort to wage a war of ideas against terrorism is hampered by divisions among agencies and by a lack of focus on winning Muslim support.
"On the battle of ideas, we have unilaterally disarmed," said Marc Ginsberg, a former ambassador to Morocco. "We have abandoned the playing field to the [Islamist] radicals and we have failed to empower our allies in the region with the tools they need to confront the radicals by themselves."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in an interview last week with The Washington Times that the United States is not doing enough to counter extremist ideas, and polls have shown that public support for America has declined sharply in the Middle East since 2000.
"We are in a war of ideas, as well as a global war on terror," Mr. Rumsfeld said, noting that "ideas are important, and they need to be marshaled, and they need to be communicated in ways that are persuasive to the listeners."
"In many instances, we're not the best messengers," Mr. Rumsfeld said, adding that the Bush administration should consider setting up a "21st-century information agency."
In Iraq, the Pentagon has spent about $30 million on a ground-based television system known as the Iraq Media Network, but little on programming, or on satellite television, which is the province of anti-U.S. networks.
Arabs in large numbers are watching the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite television network, to which Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network have sent tapes and messages for broadcast. Another major satellite network is Tehran-based Al Alam, which U.S. officials view as anti-American.
"Most Muslims think the global war on terrorism is a war against Islam," said Mr. Ginsberg, adding that more should be done to get Arabic-speaking Americans on Middle East television and radio.
Several recent studies by the Congress and academic institutions have stated that the State Department, the lead agency for promoting American ideas, lacks direction for influencing foreign and especially Muslim publics in ways favorable to the United States.
"Despite the best efforts of American officials, [Iraqi] media are not getting the U.S. story," according to a State Department report on public diplomacy in the Muslim world. It also said that the White House "should provide for more coherent messaging and better overall coordination."
The report, issued Oct. 1 by an outside advisory group, said the department spends about $600 million annually in promoting the United States and $540 million on broadcasting, but only $25 million on attempting to influence the estimated 1.5 billion people in the Muslim world.
The key to defeating terrorism is to "isolate and ultimately defeat al Qaeda" by uniting people of all cultures by informing and educating them that the war against terrorism is aimed at killers and not Muslims, said Shibley Telhami, a Brookings Institution scholar who was a member of the advisory group.
"Most people in the Arab and Muslim world like most of our basic values and in particular democracy and freedom and our technology," Mr. Telhami said. "But they are clearly frustrated with our policies."
Mr. Telhami said recent comments by Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a senior Pentagon intelligence official, reinforced stereotypes about Americans among the publics in the Middle East and undermined U.S. efforts to gain support among Muslims for the war on terrorism.
"We're saying that we're fighting a war of ideas against horrible killers, and we're trying to dissuade people from joining terrorist groups, and [saying] that this is not a religious clash," Mr. Telhami said.
The U.S. government plans to set up an Arabic satellite television network in December, and has set up a radio station known as Radio Sawa, Arabic for "together." Radio Sawa, however, has been overwhelmed on the airwaves by scores of overt and clandestine anti-U.S. radio stations beaming into Iraq and the region.
Tucker Eskew, director of the White House's Office of Global Communications, set up to conduct tactical counter-propaganda, said the president agrees with Mr. Rumsfeld that "we have to continue to improve our message delivery to the rest of the world."
During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing yesterday on the nomination of Margaret Tutwiler to be the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican and panel chairman, said he is "deeply concerned" that U.S. efforts to promote American ideas and values are poorly organized and funded.
Mrs. Tutwiler, a former State Department spokeswoman, told the committee that "we all know that we as a nation have a problem." The administration is "trying to figure out how to best fix the situation we find ourselves in," she said.
The CIA, for its part, is engaged in some covert propaganda to counter pro-terrorist propaganda and activities. But Bush administration officials said the efforts have been far short of what the agency did during the Cold War to counter anti-American ideological attacks by communists and their supporters.
The Bush administration needs to open lines of communications to people in the Muslim world, Mr. Telhami said.
"The silent majority in the Arab world have no interest in being indoctrinated into bin Ladenism, but they are shocked that the United States is not prepared to engage in a dialogue," Mr. Ginsberg said.
Mr. Ginsberg said that among the methods that would help counter Islamist ideas would be to reorient the Peace Corps to work in the slums of major Middle East capitals, where extremist Muslim groups, working through some charities, have succeeded in recruiting terrorists.
He added that Middle Eastern governments need to reform education systems to counteract the Islamist madrassas, which are teaching anti-U.S. lessons.
According to Mr. Ginsberg, tighter immigration policies for Arabs also have hurt by making it more difficult for Middle Eastern students to come to the United States and be exposed to its society directly, rather than through hostile media images.
----
FREE(DOM) PRESS
by David Jagernauth, Critical Mass
October 30, 2003
Oregon Daily Emerald
http://www.dailyemerald.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/10/30/3fa1354c70a76
Apparently the feds are just plain fed up with us media types and our cup-half-empty, if-it-bleeds-it-leads attitude about the war in Iraq.
With 20 to 30 attacks on U.S. soldiers daily -- and, on average, more than 10 injuries and one death per day -- we don't have to look far to find a story that will satisfy our bloodlust.
Since the security situation shows no sign of improvement anytime soon, the Bush administration has decided to launch a pre-emptive strike on bad press and the bad liberal media responsible for it.
According to The Washington Post, the president has banned reporters from covering the arrival of dead soldiers in flag-draped coffins, a staple of wartime photojournalism. And, according to Newsweek, reporters are barred from hospitals and morgues in Baghdad, stymieing any attempt to independently verify the numbers of dead and injured.
Here at home, several members of Congress are doing their patriotic part by starting www.freedom.gov, a new Web site designed to give fair and balanced coverage of the Iraqi reconstruction effort. It looks exactly as one might expect: pictures of happy soldiers, happy Iraqi children and as many American flags as is technologically possible to cram on a single screen.
If you click on "Accomplishments" at the top of the page, you will find eight links to positive articles about the war.
I know what you're thinking: Have there really been eight separate accomplishments in Iraq? That sounds a little high. Well, you're right. I discovered, upon closer inspection, that two of the eight links go to the same article.
You have to get up pretty early in the morning ...
One link is entitled: "Rumsfeld Emphasizes Positive Coalition Accomplishments in Iraq." It is a transcript of the Secretary of Defense's Sept. 5 interview with Dan Rather.
"I'm impressed with the accomplishment that's taken place," Rumsfeld said. "Is it a perfect picture? No. Are there terrorists active? Yes. Are there criminals active? Yes. Are there still people being killed? That's for sure. ... It is a mixed picture."
If that's Rumsfeld emphasizing accomplishments, then I'd hate to hear him de-emphasizing accomplishments! What a minute. That is exactly what he does in a recently leaked memo obtained by USA Today, in which he says that Iraq will be a "long, hard slog" and that America has put little effort into long-range planning. The memo is oddly missing from www.freedom.gov.
Another article on the site -- this one from that pillar of journalistic objectivity, the American Forces Press Service -- shows how happy a group of soldiers are after 15 days of R&R. Said one enthusiastic soldier: "All I can say to the Army is 'thank you, thank you, thank you.'"
I've seen subtler propaganda on Al Jazeera!
What is not included in any story on www.freedom.gov is the almost daily flood of complaints from soldiers and their families, ranging from not having the proper bulletproof vests to the terrible living conditions of wounded soldiers, many of who wait weeks or even months for medical care. One officer told United Press International, "They're being treated like dogs."
In his effort to minimize political backlash, Bush is dishonoring the men and women risking their lives every day in Iraq. Their struggles and ultimate sacrifices deserve to be covered by the media, whether or not it hurts Bush's chances at re-election.
Many of the articles on www.freedom.gov are written by or about congressional Republicans and their recent trips to Iraq.
For example, the article repeated twice is by U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., writing to his local paper: "Flying over this city of 5.7 million people in a Black Hawk helicopter ... Baghdad appeared to be functioning close to normal. Cars, buses and trucks were on the roads. Stores were open. People were walking along the streets."
U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., confirmed Hoekstra's rosy report: "From the air, Baghdad looked remarkably prosperous and totally undamaged."
Hear that liberal media? Both Hoekstra and Frelinghuysen flew over Iraq and it looked normal. People were walking. What more proof do you want?
In the interest of fairness, both of these men eventually landed in Iraq and spent a few days walking around Baghdad. I believe they even spent the night in Iraq, unlike Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who slept in Kuwait during both nights of his trip, according to Newsweek. Who can blame him? U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spent last weekend in Iraq, and his hotel was attacked with six homemade rockets. He survived uninjured.
When Commerce Secretary Don Evans was in Iraq, he saw teenagers selling Coca-Cola on the street. "The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Baghdad," Evans said in an interview with The Washington Post.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was also impressed with Iraq's growing economy. "I saw satellite dishes -- outlawed under Saddam's tyranny -- cropping up on top of homes, the early stages of a free economy."
Satellite dishes and child laborers selling soda: Are you writing this down, liberal media?
Lastly, U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., said in an interview: "Based on what we saw and heard, ninety-nine percent of Iraqis seek and want a U.S. presence, yet the one percent that does not receives the majority of the media coverage."
I don't mean to question the scientific legitimacy of Davis' "what I heard one day" methodology, but that number is closer to 50 percent, according to a new poll from the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies in Baghdad.
Their poll also showed that 60 percent of Iraqis have little or no confidence that the safety situation will improve, and only 14.8 percent view the coalition as liberators, down from 43 percent six months ago. You won't read that on www.freedom.gov.
I've been a vocal opponent of the mainstream media's failed coverage of the Iraq war from the very beginning. They failed to report on the use of depleted uranium weapons, failed to discuss our responsibility for a decade of savage economic sanctions, failed to scrutinize claims about WMDs and failed to inform the world about civilian casualties.
But browsing through www.freedom.gov has given me a new appreciation for how bad it could be, and how bad it might get if we don't continue to fight for true freedom -- the free press -- in America, in Iraq and all over the world.
Contact the columnist at davidjagernauth@dailyemerald.com. His opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Emerald.
----
Russia's Highest Court Throws Out Restrictions on Media
October 30, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/international/europe/30WIRE-MOSC.html
MOSCOW, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Russia's highest court scrapped part of a restrictive media law on Thursday in a move opposition parties said allowed journalists to give them fair coverage in the run-up to December elections.
The law permitted prosecution of news outlets that supported a candidate or mentioned facts about candidates not related to the election campaign. Analysts said rules could be selectively applied to attack opposition media.
"Elections can be free only when freedom of information and the citizens' free expression of their will are assured," said constitutional court chairman Valery Zorkin.
Some 100 deputies, from all main parties except the pro-Kremlin United Russia, appealed against the law, arguing it made reporting the elections impossible since almost any journalist's work could be seen as political.
Press freedom has come back into the spotlight since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000. Several television stations, among them channels critical of the Kremlin, have been forced to close down.
Putin recently backed United Russia and other candidates -- which is theoretically barred by electoral law -- without censure, despite attempts to prosecute under media rules. Minor media slips have been pounced on.
According to Russian media, one newspaper was warned for saying that a candidate was the son of murdered Duma deputy Sergei Yushenkov. Others had complained they could be prosecuted for writing more about some candidates than others.
"Journalists do not do arithmetic, but objectively cover the events of the election period," Konstantin Katanyan, editor of the weekly Vremya MN and a backer of the appeal, told First Channel television.
Opposition politicians said the scrapping of the rules allowed journalists to write what they wished.
But media analysts argued that remaining elements of the law were unclear and left leeway for electoral authorities to act selectively against media organisations.
"Some of the points are still vague, this decision limits the ability of the electoral commission to interpret the law however it wants, but it is still able to interpret it," said Andrei Rikhter of the Media Law and Policy Institute.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Secret 9/11 case before high court
The justices consider a petition for a case with no public record.
By Warren Richey
The Christian Science Monitor
October 30, 2003
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1030/p01s02-usju.html
MIAMI - It's the case that doesn't exist. Even though two different federal courts have conducted hearings and issued rulings, there has been no public record of any action. No documents are available. No files. No lawyer is allowed to speak about it. Period.
Yet this seemingly phantom case does exist - and is now headed to the US Supreme Court in what could produce a significant test of a question as old as the Star Chamber, abolished in 17th-century England: How far should a policy of total secrecy extend into a system of justice?
Secrecy has been a key Bush administration weapon in the war on terrorism. Attorney General John Ashcroft warns that mere tidbits of information that seem innocuous about the massive Sept. 11 investigation could help Al Qaeda carry out new attacks.
Yet this highly unusual petition to the high court arising from a Miami case brings into sharp focus the tension between America's long tradition of open courts and the need for security in times of national peril. At issue is whether certain cases may be conducted entirely behind closed doors under a secret arrangement among prosecutors, judges, and docket clerks.
While secret trial tactics have reportedly been used by federal prosecutors to shield cooperating drug dealers, it's unclear whether the high court has ever directly confronted the issue. But that may change if they take up MKB v. Warden (No. 03-6747). What's known about the case
This is among the first of the post-Sept. 11 terrorism cases to wend its way to the nation's highest tribunal. There was no public record of its existence, however, until the appeal was filed with the clerk of the US Supreme Court.
A federal judge and a three-judge federal appeals-court panel have conducted hearings and issued rulings. Yet lawyers and court personnel have been ordered to remain silent.
"The entire dockets for this case and appeal, every entry on them, are maintained privately, under seal, unavailable to the public," says a partially censored 27-page petition asking the high court to hear the case. "In the court of appeals, not just the filed documents and docket sheet are sealed from public view, but also hidden is the essential fact that a legal proceeding exists."
Despite the heavy secrecy, a brief docketing error led to a newspaper report identifying MKB by name in March. The report said MKB is an Algerian waiter in south Florida who was detained by immigration authorities and questioned by the FBI.
MKB's legal status remains unclear, but it appears unlikely from court documents that he is connected in any way to terrorism. He has been free since March 2002 on a $10,000 bond.
The case is significant because it could force a close examination of secret tactics that are apparently becoming increasingly common under Attorney General Ashcroft. In September 2001, he ordered that all deportation hearings with links to the Sept. 11 investigation be conducted secretly. In addition, the Justice Department has acknowledged that at least nine criminal cases related to the Sept. 11 investigation were being cloaked in total secrecy.
MKB v. Warden is the first indication that the Justice Department is extending its total secrecy policy to proceedings in federal courts dealing with habeas corpus - that is, an individual's right to force the government to justify his or her detention.
The case offers the Supreme Court an opportunity for the first time to spell out whether such secret judicial proceedings violate constitutional protections. It may also offer the first insight into how much deference a majority of justices is willing to grant the government in areas where the war on terrorism may tread upon fundamental American freedoms.
From the perspective of news reporters and government watchdogs, the case marks a potential turning point away from a long-held presumption that judicial proceedings in the US are open to public scrutiny.
The case is one of several currently on petition to the high court dealing with some aspect of the war on terror. Two cases relate to detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and one challenges Yasser Hamdi's open-ended detention as an enemy combatant. A fourth case seeks to force the Justice Department to disclose the names of detainees caught up in antiterror investigations - an issue closely related to the Miami habeas case.
Federal judges have the authority to order sensitive documents or even entire hearings sealed from public view when disclosure might harm national security. Such rulings are usually issued after the judge has explained the need for secrecy in a decision available to the public.
In addition, judges can order that an individual be identified in public court filings only by a pseudonym or by initials, as happened when the MKB case arrived at the US Supreme Court.
What is highly unusual in MKB v. Warden is that lower court judges ordered the entire case sealed from the start - preventing any mention of it to the public. 'Abuse of discretion'?
In her petition to the court, Miami federal public defender Kathleen Williams says the judges' actions authorizing the secrecy without any public notice, public hearings, or public findings amount to "an abuse of discretion" that requires corrective action by the justices.
"This habeas corpus case has been heard, appealed, and decided in complete secrecy," Ms. Williams says in her petition.
A government response to the petition is due Nov. 5. It will mark the first time the Justice Department has publicly acknowledged the existence of the habeas corpus action. The justices are set to consider the case during their Nov. 7 conference.
Justice Department officials have defended the blanket secrecy policy, saying that public hearings and public dockets would undermine efforts to recruit detainees as undercover operatives to infiltrate Al Qaeda cells in the US. According to press reports, similar secret trial tactics have been used by federal prosecutors to shield cooperating drug dealers from mention in public court documents that might blow their cover and end their use as operatives in ongoing undercover narcotics sting operations.
-------- justice
Senate Panel Gives White House Iraq Probe Deadline
October 30, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-intelligence.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday set a deadline for the White House, Defense Department and State Department to turn over documents and allow interviews related to its probe into pre-war Iraq intelligence.
The noon Friday deadline was set in letters to White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. It came one day after a similar demand was made to CIA Director George Tenet.
A senior White House official disputed the ``substance and tone'' of the committee's demands and said officials has already cooperated with the committee and made documents available.
The three letters on Thursday were similar in sentiment but different on the specific information sought from each office for the committee's review of intelligence related to the threat from Iraq's banned weapons before the war.
The accuracy of pre-war intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has become a highly-charged political issue leading up to next year's presidential election.
Critics say the Bush administration may have exaggerated the threat to gather support for the war against Baghdad. No biological or chemical weapons or solid evidence of a resurrected nuclear program have so far been found.
The letters, signed by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, and senior Democrat Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, said the panel could not move forward with its inquiry without the material.
``We must take whatever steps are necessary to assure our nation that U.S. intelligence is accurate and unbiased. The credibility of the government with its people and the nation with the world is at stake,'' the three letters said.
``Incomplete answers and lingering doubts will haunt us for many years,'' the senators wrote.
In the letter to Rice, the senators said: ``We have made numerous requests for documents which we have not yet been provided, and we have sought to interview a member of your staff without success.''
The staff member was not identified. A congressional source said it did not refer to Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley, but someone else responsible for communications between the White House National Security Council and the CIA before President Bush's State of the Union address.
In the January speech, Bush said Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa, a claim that later was found to be based on faulty information and became a source of lingering controversy.
LIFT CIA BLOCK
``You also must lift your objection to the Central Intelligence Agency providing the committee with certain documents and allowing us to interview individuals involved in briefing senior Administration officials,'' the senators wrote to Rice.
A senior White House official said, ``We were surprised at the substance and tone of the letter.''
``The White House has made NSC staffers available to meet with committee investigators and has provided committee investigators access to documents, even though the committee does not have jurisdiction over the White House,'' he said. He added the White House has also given the committee access to CIA documents that had been sent to the White House, but declined to discuss whether it would take any further steps.
The senators told Rumsfeld that the committee had not yet received responses to all the questions submitted by lawmakers to Under Secretary Douglas Feith after his July 10 appearance before the panel. The Pentagon had no immediate comment.
In the letter to Powell, the senators wrote: ``We have made numerous requests for documents which we have not yet been provided, and we have sought to interview certain State Department employees without success.''
``We have every intention of complying. In fact, we have been supporting and responding to their requests for documents and individuals for some time,'' a State Department official said on condition of anonymity.
The department had received 15 document requests, of which 10 had been fulfilled and five were in the process of being handled, the official said, adding that the State Department would make every effort to meet Friday's deadline.
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Senators Give Tenet Deadline to Provide Prewar Intelligence
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 30, 2003; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38256-2003Oct29.html
In a sharply worded letter, the top two senators with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence called on CIA Director George J. Tenet to supply long-sought materials and schedule interviews by noon Friday and to be ready to appear before the panel "at a time determined by the committee."
The letter to Tenet showed that although the committee's chairman, Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), and vice chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), may disagree on whether their investigation of prewar intelligence will examine its use by Bush policymakers, they are together in pressing for the CIA and other intelligence community agencies to produce information they have been seeking since July.
Last Friday, responding to a Washington Post story that indicated the committee was preparing a report about weaknesses in prewar intelligence, Tenet offered to have senior officers involved in producing the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction appear before the senators to present what a senior administration official described as a "comprehensive explanation as to how [the intelligence community] reached their conclusions."
Up to that point, the committee inquiry had consisted primarily of staff members interviewing intelligence analysts who had taken part in the process without senators being present.
"To date, our staff has interviewed dozens of WMD analysts comprising hundreds of hours of testimony. Committee staff was led to believe that the people they have interviewed were all the key individuals involved," the senators wrote.
Roberts and Rockefeller, who have been waiting for information that they said "was to have been provided five months ago," also took offense at another part of Tenet's Friday letter that said there was "additional material" still to be supplied to the panel. "The committee has been patient," the senators wrote yesterday, "but we need immediate access to this information."
Bill Harlow, CIA director of public affairs, said the agency was reviewing the Roberts-Rockefeller letter and was "working hard to fulfill the committee's requests."
Also yesterday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee called on President Bush to "level with the American people" on Iraq with "the good, the bad and the ugly." In a speech before the Center for American Progress, a new liberal think tank, Clinton said she agreed with Bush "that we cannot fail in Iraq." But she added that "what is going right should not delude us about what is going wrong."
-------- terrorism
War on terror is doing more harm than good, says World Bank
Thursday, October 30, 2003
By Jeremy Lovell,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-10-30/s_9914.asp
LONDON - The short-term focus on military action to bring stability in the U.S.-led war on terror is undermining the long-term task of tackling the causes rather than the consequences of poverty, a World Bank expert said on Wednesday.
"The war on terror is shifting attention away from making globalization work for all. It is undermining our ability to drive forward a responsible globalization," said World Bank Environment Director Kristalina Georgieva.
"We need prevention rather than reaction, yet we focus not on the causes but on the cures," she said on the margins of the Environment 2003 conference in London. "Money has an opportunity cost. Money that goes to one place doesn't go to another. The focus on Iraq in terms of those in equally serious or even more serious development need is an issue to be faced."
Georgieva, a Bulgarian national who has spent a lifetime working on environment and development issues, pointed out that world governments annually spent some $600 billion on arms but just $50 billion on development aid.
"For us to make a real dent in the problem of long-term environmental sustainability, a conservative estimate would be that we need probably somewhere between $65 million to $85 billion a year plus another $50 billion to $70 billion for the Kyoto climate change challenge," she said.
While this might seem a large amount of money, it had to be seen in the context of a world economy worth some $40 trillion a year.
"If this is the price we need to pay for the future of our kids, is this really such a lot?" she asked rhetorically.
She said the long-established divide between rich northern nations and poor southern states was becoming more entrenched and more complicated as divisions opened up between the southern hemisphere countries themselves.
Those countries that had embraced globalization had seen all their people get richer while at the same time seeing the gap between rich and poor get wider.
On the other hand, those such as much of sub-Saharan Africa, which had failed to get aboard the globalization gravy train, were sinking without trace, to the extent that they were not even able to tackle their own problems.
Technology transfer could offer a solution, but historically almost every advance brought with it a downside, so it should be adopted with caution.
What was needed was strong leadership through multilateral organizations, but just when it was needed most it was at its weakest for generations.
"What you see now is the growth of bilateralism unilateralism, clubism - the G8s, G20s and so on. If you are not a member of a club you have no voice," she said. "That disenfranchises people who have no hope and nothing to care for. As Karl Marx said, if you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. That is dangerous."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
GE Wind to supply turbines for Colo. wind project
REUTERS USA:
October 30, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22705/story.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - GE Wind Energy will supply wind turbines to a Colorado wind farm now under construction, the General Electric Co. (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) subsidiary said this week.
GE Wind, part of Atlanta-based GE Power Systems, will supply 108 turbines rated at 1.5 megawatts each to the 162 megawatt wind farm - called the Colorado Green Project - near Lamar, Colorado.
The value of the supply contract was not disclosed.
Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy Inc. (XEL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) will purchase the electricity from the farm, enough to power about 52,000 homes.
The project, said to be the fourth largest wind farm in the U.S., is expected to be completed later this year and will be operated by GE Wind.
The project recently was acquired from GE by PPM Energy Inc. and Shell WindEnergy through a joint venture agreement, GE Wind said in a release.
PPM Energy is part of Scottish Power (SPI.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , and Shell WindEnergy is part of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. (RD.AS: Quote, Profile, Research) (SHEL.L: Quote, Profile, Research) .
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University at Buffalo Wins Award for Wind Power Purchase
BUFFALO, New York,
October 30, 2003
(ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2003/2003-10-30-09.asp#anchor7
Environmental Advocates, the New York State affiliate of the National Wildlife Federation, has named the University at Buffalo (UB) its Environmentalist of the Year for becoming the state's largest purchaser of wind power.
"The University at Buffalo has demonstrated two qualities shared by the individuals who have received this award - outstanding leadership and the ability to have a significant positive impact," said Val Washington, executive director of Environmental Advocates.
"Almost as soon as wind energy became available, the university became the largest purchaser in the state, a choice that means cleaner air for all New Yorkers," Washington said. "We are proud to name the University at Buffalo our Environmentalist of the Year."
This year, UB has purchased eight million kilowatt hours of wind energy from Community Energy, Inc. and will purchase 12 million kilowatt hours in 2004.
"The significant dollar savings achieved through UB's energy-conservation program have provided us with the opportunity to make a meaningful purchase of clean wind energy," said Michael Dupre, UB associate vice president for university facilities and a member of the UB Green energy team that made the purchase a reality.
The UB wind energy purchase was facilitated Governor George Pataki's June 2001 exeutive order that directed state agencies, the State University of New York and other state entities to be more energy efficient and environmentally aware. The order by Pataki, a Republican, mandates that 10 percent of the electricity consumed by state agencies be from "green" renewable sources by 2005, and 20 percent by 2010.
"UB's green power purchase will provide significant environmental benefits by reducing pollutants associated with electricity generation," said John Russo, UB utilities manager.
UB estimates that in 2004, its wind energy purchases will reduce carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions by more than eight million, 92,000 and 36,000 pounds, respectively, contributing to reduced smog, acid rain and climate change.
"While the executive order did not formally require us to buy green power at this time, we felt that it was important for UB to step out, buy wind power now and help build the New York green power market," said Walter Simpson, UB energy officer.
Another of UB's newest green initiatives include development of a large, comprehensive energy retrofit project for the South Campus. A similar project on the North Campus in the 1990s resulted in approximately $3 million in energy savings for the university.
A collaborative effort with other state agencies has produced UB's High Performance Building Guidelines, which will direct green building design for new construction at UB and are anticipated to have an impact statewide.
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