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NUCLEAR
U.S. Warns Global Nuclear Safeguards Under Threat
Iran says it will not manufacture Shahab-4 long range missile
Iran has given the IAEA details on its nuclear enrichment equipment
Iran Hands Over Key Drawings to UN Nuclear Agency
IRAN'S NUKE GAMBIT
Decision delayed on suspending North Korea power project
U.S. Gets Backing to Halt N. Korea Plants
U.S. Persuades Allies to Halt North Korean Atom Project
South Korea Plans to Deploy U.S. Missiles
Musharraf Ends China Visit Without Nuke Plant Deal
Congress Mostly Backs Bush on Nuke Weapons, Waste
Some Nuke Arms Cut in Congressional Talks
Ex - Nuclear Lab Whistle - Blower Sentenced
Issue for Bush: How to Speak of Casualties?
MILITARY
Congo Practices A Wary Peace
Arms sales to Israel breach guidelines
UN protest over suspected arms smuggling in DR Congo
Report: U.S. selling missiles to Thailand
U.S. said to supply missiles to Bangkok
Group Says Guinea Sold Arms Used on U.S. Embassy in Liberia
Sri Lanka's President Declares a State of Emergency
WHO Assails Wealthy Nations on Bioterror
US crackdown on bioterror is backfiring
EU defences must not double up on NATO tasks: Schroeder
Who Comprises the Iraqi Resistance? (Part1 )
Blasts Strike U.S. Compound in Mosul
3 Blasts Seem Aimed at U.S. Compound
U.S. Shifts On Creation Of Security Unit in Iraq
Israel gets apology for peace-threat poll
Israeli Military Easing Restrictions
Arafat Stalls New Cabinet
C.I.A. Needs to Learn Arabic, House Committee Leader Says
Panel to See Prewar CIA Memos on Iraq
N. Korea, Japan in name-calling row at United Nations
Israel Brings Anti-Terrorism Resolution to U.N.
Need for more troops debated
New Battlefield Hospital Prototype a Hit
Government extends its secrecy shield
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
ATF system will let agencies share bombing, arson data
White House Told To Justify Secrecy
Illegally in U.S., and Never a Day Off at Wal-Mart
Intelligence Guide
Deported Terror Suspect Details Torture in Syria
ENERGY AND OTHER
Clean energy brings windfall to Indian village
U.K. urges polluted U.S. "ghost fleet" to turn back
Synthetic 'Good' Cholesterol Helps Clear Arteries
World Bank to Back Oil Pipeline
ACTIVISTS
Protest at Israeli checkpoint in West Bank
-------- NUCLEAR
U.S. Warns Global Nuclear Safeguards Under Threat
November 5, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-usa-russia.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Wednesday called for tighter global nuclear safeguards to prevent countries like North Korea and Iran from using treaties as a cover to build atomic weapons.
Abraham addressed a U.N. General Assembly disarmament committee together with Alexander Rumyantsev, Russia's atomic energy minister, to mark the 50th anniversary of former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's ``atoms for peace'' vision.
The American secretary accused North Korea and Iran of using the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, for weapons purposes.
``The nonproliferation regime's weaknesses become woefully apparent when a state joins the NPT, professes peaceful intentions and then abuses the treaty by using it as a cover to build up a nuclear weapons capability, which it then publicly declares through abrogation of, or withdrawal from, the treaty,'' Abraham said.
Abraham proposed measures similar to ones he announced in September at an IAEA meeting. These include letting the agency implement stronger safeguards, coaxing nations to disclose more information on uranium enrichment, tightening constraints on the acquisition of dangerous materials and doing more to prevent trafficking of nuclear materials.
Russia's Rumyantsev agreed, saying, ``The growing terrorist threat obliges us to try to prevent even the smallest amount of radioactive material from falling into the hands of terrorists.''
Abraham, however, was noncommittal about more radical proposals from IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, although he said they were worth studying.
'OUTSIDE OF THE BOX'
``We would at least commend Mr. ElBaradei for trying to think outside of the box, as they say, and we are also doing that kind of analysis,'' Abraham told reporters.
ElBaradei on Monday urged the 191-nation General Assembly to consider imposing international controls on the production of nuclear material that could be used in weapons.
Among his proposals was restricting the enrichment of material that could be used in weapons to facilities under international control. He also called for stronger international rules on the disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste.
Rumyantsev stressed Moscow's concerns about radioactive waste from nuclear reactors. ``More than 200,000 tons of spent fuel has accumulated, and that amount is growing each year by another 10,000 tons,'' he said.
``The construction of major international centers to deal with spent fuel, equipped with modern technology and protective devices, under IAEA coordination, could ensure we meet our obligation to ensure nuclear safety,'' Rumyantsev said.
The 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty was intended to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. The five acknowledged nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- were obligated to move toward disarmament while all other signatories vowed to give up atomic weapons for good in return for help with nuclear energy programs.
ElBaradei intends to report this month on whether Iran is building nuclear weapons, which Tehran denies. Iranian envoys say they plan to give the agency a letter soon accepting tougher, short-notice nuclear inspections.
North Korea pulled out of the treaty and barred IAEA inspections after disclosing a clandestine uranium enrichment program a year ago.
-------- iran
Iran says it will not manufacture Shahab-4 long range missile
TEHRAN (AFP)
Nov 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031105122356.ffd809xe.html
Iran has no intention of manufacturing a missile more powerful than the Shahab-3, a medium-range missile with a touted range of over 1,500 kilometers that recently went into service, the defence ministry said in a statement carried Wednesday by the student news agency ISNA.
"As we have said on several occasions and contrary to certain statements, Iran has no programme to build a Shahab-4 missile," the statement was quoted as saying.
It was not clear what provoked the defence ministry to issue such a statement.
During a major military parade on September 22, Iran showed off six of its Shahab-3 missiles which were decorated with anti-Israeli and anti-US slogans.
According to a commentary given over loud-speakers lining the parade route, the missiles have "a range of 1,700 kilometers" (1,060 miles) and "are capable of hitting the heart of the enemy".
The development of these missiles has sparked widespread alarm in Israel.
----
Iran has given the IAEA details on its nuclear enrichment equipment
VIENNA (AFP)
Nov 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031105180749.uca7nsqb.html
Iran has given the UN nuclear watchdog drawings of the components used to make centrifuges which the United States claims were used to make weapons-grade uranium, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA said Wednesday.
Ali Akbar Salehi told AFP this was part of Iran's continuing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to disprove allegations it is trying to secretly develop nuclear weapons.
Tehran faces the possibility the IAEA will judge it at a meeting in Vienna November 20 to be in non-compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and send the issue to the UN Security Council, which could then impose sanctions.
The main dispute is over traces of highly enriched uranium IAEA inspectors found at two sites in Iran.
The United States claims that Iran was using centrifuges to make highly enriched uranium that could be used to make the bomb but the Iranians claim the particles came from contamination from equipment they bought aboard.
Salehi said IAEA inspectors have been able to see this equipment. He said Iran had recently "revealed to the inspectors the components (used to make the centrifuges) and the original drawings for these components."
The IAEA wants to know where the equipment came from but Salehi said Iran could not supply this information since it does not know, as the parts were bought on the black market when Tehran had to be "discreet" as it was developing its nuclear program in the face of international sanctions.
Salehi said Iran would honor its promise to agree to sign an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to allow wider, unannounced IAEA inspections.
He said a letter pledging agreement would be handed over to the IAEA before the agency's board of governors meets in Vienna on November 20.
IAEA officials had said the letter would be coming this week but Salehi said it would not be so soon.
He also said Iranian national security council chief Hasan Rohani would be coming to Europe soon but did not say if he would be in Vienna to meet with IAEA officials ahead of the board meeting.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday that the agency is ready in a report it is writing to say that Iran has failed to honor some international nuclear safeguards, his spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.
"We reported breaches in the past and there will be new ones in this upcoming report," ElBaradei said.
It was the first confirmation by the IAEA that new Iranian information, filed ahead of an October 31 deadline for Iran to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons, showed Iranian failures in honoring nuclear safeguards agreements.
A Western diplomat close to the IAEA said the Iranians may be "cooperating until (the IAEA meeting) November 20 in order to avoid a non-compliance ruling" and when they succeed in this, "then they will break all the rules again.
----
Iran Hands Over Key Drawings to UN Nuclear Agency
November 5, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran said on Wednesday it had handed over to the U.N. nuclear watchdog crucial drawings of equipment used in its uranium enrichment program to help prove it was not seeking to make an atomic bomb.
``We revealed all components to the agency, including (original) drawings...so there is nothing which the agency has no information on,'' Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told Reuters.
Salehi said Tehran would deliver a letter accepting tougher short-notice nuclear inspections by the IAEA within a matter of days.
The United States accuses Iran of secretly working on an atomic bomb. Tehran rejects the charge and says its program is solely for peaceful generation of electricity.
Earlier this year, the IAEA found traces of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium on components of uranium-enrichment centrifuges.
Iran says the traces were from contaminated parts purchased abroad, an explanation that met with skepticism in Washington and other capitals that suspect Tehran either bought or enriched the uranium itself for use in an atomic bomb.
SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT
A diplomat familiar with the IAEA told Reuters delivery of the drawings was significant because they represented the ``building blocks of Iran's centrifuge program'' and could help the agency's investigation into the origin of the uranium.
Iran has said it was unable to provide the IAEA with names of the countries of origin of the centrifuge components because it bought them on the black market in the 1980s.
Tehran has repeatedly said it was about to hand over a letter of intent to sign a protocol accepting short-notice inspections, but has yet to do so.
``The letter has been prepared and we are going to hand it over to the IAEA Secretariat,'' Salehi said. ``I would say it's in days.''
Salahi said there was no question about Iran's intention to sign.
``We cannot specify exactly the date. But it's certainly going to be before thebecause they have to be informed before the board so they can put it on the agenda,'' he said.
The main item at the meeting is IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's report on inspections in Iran and Tehran's compliance with an October 31 deadline to make a complete declaration of its nuclear program.
After the board approves Iran's intention to sign the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran can sign the document. Tehran has said it will allow the tougher inspections even before parliament ratifies the protocol.
Salehi said Iran had not halted its uranium enrichment activities, which Washington fears are at the heart of a secret atomic weapons program, but would do so soon.
``It's being studied, but measures are being taken to start this process. (The suspension) hasn't yet started,'' he said.
Diplomats told Reuters there had been disagreement between the Europeans and Iran on what constituted a suspension.
The French, Germans and British want the massive Natanz enrichment plant to halt all operations, whereas Iran wants to only halt its enrichment centrifuges and continue research work.
Salehi said the Europeans and Iranians were close to an agreement on the definition of a suspension and the halt was ``not going to be very late in the future.''
----
IRAN'S NUKE GAMBIT
By AMIR TAHERI,
November 5, 2003
NEW YORK POST
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/9956.htm
REMEMBER you read it here first. Iran is now on course to force its way into the nuclear club within the next two to three years. When it does, it will owe part of its success to a European Union diplomatic maneuver that has spared Iran the prospect of direct confrontation over its illicit nuclear program with the international community.
The maneuver, which led to the signature of a memorandum between the Islamic republic and three EU members in October, appears to have defused the latest crisis.
As things stand, it is almost certain that the International Atomic Energy Agency will soft-pedal the procedure that could have led to a confrontation between Tehran and the United Nations over Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The European Union has exacted no more than a vague promise from the leadership in Tehran to temporarily halt a secret project to enrich uranium and produce plutonium.
The temporary halt, if it does materialize, may be linked more to Iranian domestic politics than to a sudden desire on the part of the Khomeinist regime to honor the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Iran is already in campaign mode in anticipation of the general election next March. A foreign-policy crisis at this time could upset the the establishment, which appears determined to purge the so-called reformist faction and impose a "Chinese-style" system of political repression and economic opening.
The establishment feared that the nuclear issue might force the European Union to line up behind the tougher Iran policy preached by the Bush administration.
Playing the European card against Washington is a tried and true tactic of the Khomeinist regime. Tehran used it in the 1980s by seizing and then liberating European hostages in exchange for pledges by the European powers not to join U.S.-imposed sanctions against Iran. In the 1990s, Tehran used the same tactic by tempting European oil companies with mouth-watering oil and gas contracts.
One other factor may have contributed to Tehran's decision to play the European card again. The selection of Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human-rights lawyer, as this year's Nobel Peace laureate is seen in Tehran as a signal that Europe's "soft powers" are ready to help provide a "soft" face for the opposition against the Khomeinist regime. Such an opposition could make it easier for the European powers to win the support of their own public for a policy of regime-change in Tehran.
Thus the piece of paper that Tehran has just signed with three European foreign ministers is unlikely to affect the Khomeinist regime's strategy of building an arsenal of nuclear weapons within the next two to three years.
There is little doubt that the Europeans know this. So, why did the three European wise men, traveling west to east, agree to get the Khomeinist regime off the hook?
Each of the three had his reason:
- France's Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin is desperately looking for any opportunity to show that Paris still has a say in Middle East politics. He would love to be able to claim that his "soft power" diplomacy did in Iran what American "hard power" tried to do against Saddam Hussein in Iraq - and, according to de Villepin, failed.
- German Foreign Minister Joshcka Fischer had a slightly different motive. While continuing his country's close alliance with France, Fischer is also anxious to avoid a situation in which Berlin finds itself alone with Paris. The presence of the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in the trio helps Fischer avoid such a situation. At the same time Fischer would be able to tell the German public that the Schroeder government is still capable of playing a role in diffusing regional crises.
Fischer and de Villepin also hope to see a change of occupant at the White House in 2005.
- Straw's motives are equally complicated. In his heart of hearts, he knows that the only language that the Khomienists understand and respect is force. But he also knows that Tony Blair's government is passing through its worst crisis since it came to power in '97.
At a moment of crisis over Iran, Blair might find himself facing a choice he wishes to avoid: parting ways with the Americans or risking a political revolt within his Cabinet.
All this means is that the Khomeinist regime may well get yet another chance to have its cake and eat it, too. According to Hassan Ruhani, a mullah who speaks for the High Council of National Security in Tehran, Iran is determined to dot itself with "the entire range of nuclear science and technology at all levels."
Iran's nuclear program started in 1956. The strategic decision to develop nuclear weapons was taken in 1989. The regime has spent an estimated $12 billion on all aspects of this ambitious program so far. It is not something that Tehran will give up after a session of tea and sympathy with the EU trio.
E-mail: amirtaheri@benadorassociates.com
-------- korea
Decision delayed on suspending North Korea power project
05 November 2003
AFP
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/55618/1/.html
NEW YORK : An international consortium set up to build two nuclear reactors for North Korea under a now ruptured 1994 pact delayed a decision on a US request to suspend the project, a spokesman said.
Executive board members of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO) which comprises the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union decided to refer the matter to their governments.
"The executive board discussed the future of the (Light Water Reactor) project including an approach to the question of suspension," KEDO spokesman Roland Tricot said.
"The executive board decided to refer this to capitals. The Executive Board agreed to announce a decision on the future of the LWR project no later than November 21," he said, refusing to answer questions.
The United States said it was seeking a suspension of the project, mandated by the 1994 US-North Korea Agreed Framework, which Washington considers was broken by Pyongyang's renewed attempts to develop nuclear weapons.
"It is our position that the KEDO executive board should agree to formally stop work on the light water reactor project," said State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli.
"But suspension of that project is a matter for the KEDO executive board to decide."
Under the deal North Korea froze a plutonium processing facility in return for regular heavy fuel shipments from the United States. South Korea and Japan were to pay for the bulk of the reactor construction.
The Bush administration signalled its determination to kill the deal in September, when it offered 3.72 million dollars to finance administrative costs for KEDO, but stipulated none of the cash should be used for construction.
It cut fuel shipments to North Korea late last year and no money for KEDO was included in the 2004 US budget.
The five billion dollar project to build two 1,000 megawatt light-water reactors was well behind schedule even before the eruption of the nuclear crisis last year threw it further into doubt.
The executive board meeting opened on Monday, and its timing was sensitive as intense behind the scenes diplomacy continues designed to convene a new round of six-nation talks aimed at defusing the North Korea nuclear crisis.
There are fears, especially in South Korea, that an angry North Korean reaction to a decision to suspend the project could complicate the bid to launch new nuclear crisis talks.
China hosted the last round of inconclusive talks in August also involving North Korea, Russia, South Korea, the United States and Japan.
The reactors would produce significantly less weapons-grade nuclear material than an older nuclear plant built during the Soviet era, and were to be provided under the Agreed Framework, under which Pyongyang undertook to freeze its nuclear program.
----
U.S. Gets Backing to Halt N. Korea Plants
By SANG-HUN CHOE
Associated Press Writer
Nov 5, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KOREAS_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The United States won support from key allies Wednesday to halt construction of two nuclear power plants in North Korea for at least a year because of the communist state's atomic weapons program.
The executive board of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization - a U.S.-based consortium building the reactors in North Korea - met in New York on Monday and Tuesday and discussed suspending the $4.6 billion project for the impoverished nation.
KEDO has been building two light-water reactors as part of a 1994 accord between Washington and Pyongyang in which North Korea promised to freeze its suspected nuclear weapons development. But the deal went sour in October 2002, when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted running such a weapons program.
The four-member executive board of KEDO said it would make its final announcement before Nov. 21 after consulting with the member nations' governments.
On Wednesday, however, the project's halt looked inevitable, as all key members of the board favored pulling out hundreds of workers, many of them South Koreas, who have been building the two light-water reactors at the isolated northeast corner of North Korea. Washington says it sees "no future" for the project.
U.S. officials have been increasingly unhappy with the project, saying they cannot provide North Korea with a cheap and steady source of badly needed energy unless it dismantles its nuclear weapons program.
Other consortium members, notably South Korea, had wanted to keep it alive, fearing a suspension might further provoke North Korea in the yearlong confrontation over its nuclear weapons program. Last week, North Korea agreed "in principle" to return to multination talks aimed at ending the nuclear crisis.
The United States and other KEDO members settled for a compromise at their New York meeting, working out an agreement to "suspend" the project for one year, according to South Korean officials.
"The U.S. made clear its long-standing position that there is no future for the reactor project," the State Department said in a statement Tuesday. But Washington "also indicated that we could agree to a one-year suspension, after which resumption of the project would require unanimous executive board decision."
The European Union - a small partner in KEDO, providing $22.9 million a year - is "leaning towards" a one-year suspension, so as not to aggravate Pyongyang but keep open all avenues of dialogue with the government of North Korea, an EU official said.
"No final decision has been made. ... However, we are listening very carefully to the arguments of a suspension of construction," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
South Korea, which has shouldered 70 percent of the construction costs, insisted that the project not be shelved completely. It wants to use the prospect of reviving the project as leverage to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions.
The light-water reactors are the biggest construction project in the North, coveted by the communist regime. They are for power-generation, and it's extremely difficult to use them for weapons purposes. "Our government's position is suspending the project for one year on the premise of resuming it," South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan. "Resuming the project will be decided then, considering situations surrounding the North Korean nuclear issue."
In Tokyo, Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima indicated his government supports a suspension as well, adding that such an move would not hamper efforts to resume six-nation talks on the North's nuclear arms program, according to the Kyodo news agency.
"In light of the current situation, I doubt a continuation of the project would be effective," Takashima was quoted as saying.
The United States and South Korea said resuming work on the reactors after a one-year suspension would depend on whether North Korea agrees to scrap its nuclear weapons program.
The Bush administration and its allies had already cut off 147 million gallons of annual free oil shipments - also part of the 1994 deal. Pyongyang retaliated by expelling monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. nuclear watchdog. Last month, it said it was building more atomic bombs besides one or two bombs it already is believed to posses.
Representatives of the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia met in August in Beijing to discuss ending the nuclear crisis. But the meeting ended without agreement on a next round.
Last month, North Korea agreed "in principle" to return to the six-nation talks, although no date has been set.
Despite the U.S. doubts, South Korea has kept 605 South Koreans, 353 Uzbeks and 99 North Koreans working to build the two reactors in the North. South Korea has already sunk $850 million into the project, and it fears that scrapping would trigger an uproar at home. Japan has paid at least $393 million so far.
Also Wednesday, South Korea said new U.S.-made missiles would be deployed next month near its border with the North. With a range of about 190 miles, the Army Tactical Missile System Block 1A missiles can hit targets across most of North Korea, including its main nuclear complex in Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang.
--------
U.S. Persuades Allies to Halt North Korean Atom Project
November 5, 2003
By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/international/asia/05KORE.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 - The Bush administration persuaded its Asian and European allies on Tuesday to suspend a multibillion-dollar project to build two nuclear power reactors in North Korea, in what appeared to be the last step in the dissolution of the 1994 accord that temporarily froze North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
After a meeting in New York on Tuesday, representatives from the international energy consortium set up under the agreement said that by Nov. 21, Japan, South Korea, the United States and the European Union would announce the fate of the project. "The executive board decided to refer this to the capitals," the Korean Energy Development Organization said.
But officials who attended the meeting said that the announcement was a formality, and that the decision to suspend the project had been reached. That will probably kill it because, according to senior officials in Washington, Mr. Bush has no intention of ever reviving a nuclear energy program in North Korea, even if an agreement is reached on controlling its nuclear weapons program. The United States has raised the possibility of helping with non-nuclear energy efforts as part of a North Korean accord to disarm.
The State Department made clear on Tuesday that whatever the diplomatic wording about suspension, the project is dead. "Our view is that we want an end to the program," said Adam Early, the department's deputy spokesman.
The announcement would effectively be the death knell for the 1994 accord, the so-called Agreed Framework, which was reached after the Clinton administration and North Korea appeared headed toward a confrontation over the North's nuclear weapons program.
The accord has long been a target of hawks inside the Bush administration, who insist that North Korea began cheating on the agreement almost as soon as the ink was dry. They also were critical of provisions that had American taxpayers financing the supply of fuel oil for North Korea in return for its agreement to freeze, but not dismantle, the program. Still, about 550 workers - about 100 North Koreans and several hundred workers from Uzbekistan and engineers from South Korea - have been busy preparing the ground for the first nuclear reactor.
The South Korean government had argued in favor of keeping the construction going - even at a slower pace - to keep the North talking about dismantling its nuclear programs. Mr. Bush refused, saying that the North abrogated its rights to the reactors when it secretly started a second weapons program, based on uranium-enrichment technology it obtained from Pakistan.
[The South Korean foreign minister, Yoon Young Kwan, said at a press briefing on Wednesday: "The position was based on the premise that the project could resume a year later. It is no more or no less than that. It was not an official decision, which is expected before Nov. 21.
["With no response from North Korea so far, it would be inappropriate to make predictions," he said. "It would be inappropriate to predict what impact this would have on future six-way talks."]
Mr. Bush began the squeeze on North Korea by cutting off the American-supplied fuel oil. North Korea responded by restarting the plant that fabricates weapons fuel. Nevertheless, construction workers kept digging and building at the huge nuclear site in Kumho, on the North Korean coast, because that project, worth $4.6 billion, was largely financed by South Korea and Japan. It is the largest, most expensive construction project in North Korea, a desperately poor country, and it is unclear how the North Korean government will react to its suspension.
While Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has frequently said the Agreed Framework may have prevented North Korea from building scores of nuclear weapons over the past decade, others have criticized it harshly. President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, has often argued that Mr. Clinton erred by not insisting that all nuclear material be shipped out of North Korea, and by offering energy aid before the North had fully disarmed.
The man who negotiated the treaty, Robert L. Gallucci, now dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, said in an interview on Tuesday that the program probably should have been suspended a year ago, when North Korea admitted to violating the nuclear freeze. But he argued that announcing its complete demise was a mistake.
"There is no reason to bury it, and to project a posture of no interest in regenerating the deal," Mr. Gallucci said. "We need every carrot we have with the North Koreans - and saying that it is dead is gratuitous, an appeal to a domestic audience."
A senior Asian official said tonight that while the final announcement later this month will refer to the suspension of the agreement, the United States and it allies understand that if no substitute agreement is reached in six-nation negotiations with the North, "there is no chance this program will be revived."
--------
South Korea Plans to Deploy U.S. Missiles
November 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Korea-US-Missile.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korea will begin deploying U.S.-made missiles next month that can strike most of North Korea, a defense ministry official said Wednesday.
The Army Tactical Missile System Block 1A missiles, made by the U.S. company Lockheed Martin, has a range of 186 miles and will be deployed near the Demilitarized Zone -- a 2 1/2 mile-wide border separating the two nations.
``We plan to start deploying the missiles next month,'' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
South Korea has already purchased an undisclosed number of the weapons and intends to buy a total of 111 Army Tactical Missile System Block 1A missiles by 2004. It bought the early version of the system with a range of 102 miles in 1997.
South Korea has expressed wishes to develop missiles with a longer range. It obtained U.S. approval in 2001 to develop missiles with a range of up to 186 miles.
Under a 1979 accord with the United States, South Korea had been barred from developing missile with a range longer than 112 miles.
Missiles with a range of 186 miles are capable of striking Pyongyang and other parts of North Korea including, Yongbyon, where the North says it is using spent nuclear fuel rods to make atomic bombs.
North Korea is believed to be armed with missiles capable of covering all South Korea and parts of Japan. It alarmed the region by firing a long-range missile in 1998 which flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific.
The Koreas were divided in 1945 and fought the 1950-53 Korean War.
------ pakistan
Musharraf Ends China Visit Without Nuke Plant Deal
November 5, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-china-pakistan.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf bagged a half-billion dollar loan from China and commitments to boost trade, but flew out Wednesday without an expected nuclear power plant cooperation deal in hand.
``No agreement has been signed on nuclear'' plant cooperation, a Pakistan embassy spokesman said. ``It was just speculation.''
Before Musharraf left for China, a Pakistani Foreign Ministry official said it was possible a deal would be finalized whereby China would help Pakistan build a nuclear power plant on the banks of the Indus River.
If it goes ahead, it will be the second nuclear power plant in Pakistan to be built with Beijing's assistance.
``I was surprised it wasn't one of the deals they signed,'' said a Western diplomat.
During Musharraf's visit, his first to Beijing since a sweeping leadership transition in China, seven official agreements, including an extradition treaty and a preferential trade agreement, were signed.
He also secured a $500 million loan for bilateral trade and economic cooperation, the China Daily newspaper said.
About 20 other deals -- joint ventures, letters of intent, memoranda of understanding -- were also signed between Pakistani and Chinese companies.
China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Tuesday the two sides had discussed the power plant and ``reached a consensus,'' but declined to explain what that meant.
Still, Musharraf spoke highly of his trip on the third and final day during meetings with Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan and the head of the powerful Central Military Commission, former president Jiang Zemin.
``We had an excellent time here in China for the last three days. In fact, we feel very much at home here in China,'' Musharraf, a general who swept to power in a bloodless coup in 1999, told Cao.
UNDER PRESSURE
The United States, entangled in a year-old crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, has repeatedly urged China to stop its nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, but Beijing and Islamabad stress their cooperation is for peaceful purposes.
Pakistan has also been accused of helping North Korea with its nuclear arms ambitions in return for missile parts. Washington sanctioned a Pakistani laboratory in March for arranging a transfer of nuclear-capable missiles to Pakistan from North Korea.
Pakistan has also been accused of sharing expertise with Iran that could help Tehran develop nuclear weapons. The United States has grouped Iran, North Korea and pre-war Iraq in an ``axis of evil.''
Pakistan has said the allegations are false and Iran has consistently denied it has plans to build nuclear weapons, saying its program is for peaceful civilian use.
Analysts say China played a crucial role in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.
Energy experts say the 300 megawatt nuclear power project, agreed in principle during a visit by Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali to Beijing in March, is estimated to cost $600 million and will take at least six years to complete.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Congress Mostly Backs Bush on Nuke Weapons, Waste
November 5, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-usa-nuclear.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives and Senate negotiators on Wednesday agreed to give President Bush money to study new types of nuclear weapons, as critics warned the move could spark a new nuclear arms race.
The funds were approved as part of a $27.3 billion bill for energy and water programs next year which also includes spending for a controversial nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert that opponents have vowed to block. Advertisement
Both chambers are expected to clear the spending bill soon and sent to Bush to sign into law.
The bill would give Bush half of the $15 million he had sought to develop an earth-penetrating nuclear warhead for use against deeply buried bunkers and all of the $6 million he wanted to research small, low-yield nuclear weapons.
Critics argued that small nuclear weapons are dangerous because policy-makers may see them as a usable adjunct to conventional arms, heightening risks of nuclear escalation.
``This is just a horrible message to send to the rest of the world,'' said North Dakota Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan.
The House initially cut almost all of the funds for the programs. But most were restored at the Senate's insistence.
``We have compromised rather substantially,'' said New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici.
Both chambers are now expected clear the spending bill soon and send it to Bush to be signed into law.
Congress is scrambling to finish its overdue budget work before it adjourns for the year, and the House was due later on Wednesday to clear the latest in series of stopgap measures to keep the federal government open until Nov. 21.
The spending bill would also provide $580 million for the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal project in 2004, around $11 million less than Bush had requested but far above a $425 million limit earlier endorsed by the Senate.
The plan aims to site the first permanent U.S. nuclear waste repository in the desert northwest of Las Vegas and is bitterly opposed by the state of Nevada, whose senators have generally succeeded in capping its funding in past years.
While Congress has given final approval for the project, scheduled to open in 2010 and hold up to 77,000 tons of radioactive waste, the state has launched multiple lawsuits seeking to block it on safety grounds.
The spending bill would commit around $11 million next year to a proposed new factory to make the plutonium ``pits'' at the heart of U.S. nuclear weapons. The last U.S. facility manufacturing the nuclear triggers closed in 1989.
It also contains nearly $25 million to fund an effort to cut the time it would take to again begin testing U.S. nuclear weapons from three years to two years. The United States has observed a nuclear test moratorium since 1992.
--------
Some Nuke Arms Cut in Congressional Talks
November 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Congress-Spending.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House and Senate bargainers agreed Wednesday to halve President Bush's request for studying ``bunker buster'' nuclear warheads and make other cuts in research into a new generation of nuclear weapons.
The negotiators also decided to provide nearly all of what Bush wanted to continue preparatory work on a nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert.
The money was included in a compromise $27.3 billion measure financing energy and water projects for the government's new budget year. Lawmakers hoped to push it through Congress in the next few days.
The decisions came as legislators struggled to meet a self-imposed Nov. 21 deadline to adjourn Congress for the year. So far, they have approved only four of the 13 must-pass spending bills, although the House voted 417-5 to send the Senate the fifth, a $9.3 billion measure for military construction.
Bargainers on the energy-water bill decided to provide $7.5 million for work on the bunker busters, bombs that would burrow through earth and rock to destroy underground targets. The administration wanted twice that amount.
The bill would provide all $6 million Bush proposed for research into ``mini-nukes'' of less than 5,000 tons of TNT, or one-fourth the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. But $4 million of that amount would be provided only after the administration submits a report on the status of the country's nuclear weapons stockpile.
The lawmakers agreed to provide enough money to shorten the current three-year lead time needed to resume underground testing of nuclear weapons to two years, not the 18 months the administration requested.
They also accepted only $11 million of the $23 million that the Energy Department wanted for preliminary studies for a plant to make plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons. The department says the triggers are needed for the country's aging arsenal of warheads.
The House version of the bill had made even deeper cuts in the nuclear weapons work, while the Senate had agreed to give all the administration had requested.
Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee that wrote the bill, called the decision a compromise. But opponents of nuclear testing complained that the final version went too far.
``I have the most profound objection to this reopening of the nuclear door,'' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
The measure also provided $580 million for this year's work at Yucca Mountain, an underground site envisioned as the ultimate home for 77,000 tons of used reactor fuel and other highly radioactive waste now accumulating around the country. Its cost is expected to exceed $50 billion.
Bush had requested $591 million for this year. Though Bush and Congress decided last year to proceed with the project, Nevada lawmakers are still trying to kill it.
``Yucca Mountain will never come to be,'' predicted Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., one of the bargainers, citing problems in transporting waste to the site.
One of the last disputes that had delayed the military construction bill was resolved when bargainers agreed to split earmarks -- money directed to specific home-district projects -- 53 percent for the Senate and 47 percent for the House. Earlier versions of the bill set aside roughly $700 million for Senate projects and $400 million for House earmarks.
Controlling the House, Senate and White House for a full year for the first time since 1954, the GOP had hoped to efficiently churn out all 13 annual spending bills by Oct. 1. That is when the government's 2004 budget year began.
But five weeks into the new fiscal year, fights over overtime pay for workers, media ownership, school vouchers and other issues have tripped up Republicans hoping to demonstrate their efficiency in running the government.
They are also trying to find about $3.6 billion in additional funds for updated voting equipment, AIDS assistance abroad, veterans health care and education.
The eight unfinished bills cover the budgets of 11 Cabinet level departments and dozens of other agencies.
To keep them functioning, the House voted 418-5 to finance those agencies through Nov. 21. Quick Senate passage also was expected for the third such bill lawmakers have passed this year.
The Senate also debated an initial version of a $17 billion agriculture bill. In one vote, senators rejected a bid by Feinstein to tighten federal controls over energy trading and energy markets.
On the Net:
The energy-water bill is H.R. 2754, the temporary spending bill is H.J. Res 76, and the military construction bill is H.R. 2559. Information on the bills can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- tennessee
Ex - Nuclear Lab Whistle - Blower Sentenced
November 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Whistle-Blower-Prison.html
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- A former whistle-blower who gained national attention more than a decade ago by noting problems at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was sentenced to 41 months in prison for trafficking guns.
Senior U.S. District Court Judge James Jarvis said he found Charles ``Bud'' Varnadore unrepentant.
``I don't know if the man has yet to come to the realization he was violating the law,'' Jarvis said at a sentencing hearing Tuesday.
Varnadore, 61, was convicted in July of conspiring to sell guns without a license at flea markets. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Jennings said Varnadore was responsible for illegally selling more than 200 guns.
Varnadore was among 23 people caught last year in a one-year sting operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that targeted unlicensed dealers at flea markets, gun shops and homes. Federal agents bought more than 600 guns and seized another 1,000 during the operation.
The alleged gun traffickers, most of whom have pleaded guilty, were older men from rural communities, ATF Agent in Charge James M. Cavanaugh said.
Varnadore's alleged co-conspirator, Anthony McCabe, testified against him and told jurors he sold guns at a flea market supplied by Varnadore. McCabe has since received probation.
The judge refused a request to let Varnadore remain on bond pending an appeal of his conviction and sentence.
As a lab technician at the Oak Ridge lab in the early 1990s, Varnadore was among the first people to draw nationwide attention to safety concerns for workers in nuclear facilities. He later claimed he was the target of hostility and retaliation for his whistle-blowing. He won several legal battles on that issue but ultimately lost his case on a technicality.
-------- us politics
Issue for Bush: How to Speak of Casualties?
November 5, 2003
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/politics/campaigns/05STRA.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 - When the Chinook helicopter was shot down on Sunday in Iraq, killing 15 Americans, President Bush let his defense secretary do the talking and stayed out of sight at his ranch. The president has not attended the funeral of any American soldiers killed in action, White House officials say. And with violence in Baghdad dominating the headlines this week, he has used his public appearances to focus on the health of the economy and the wildfires in California.
But after some of the deadliest attacks yet on American forces, the White House is struggling with the political consequences for a president who has said little publicly about the mounting casualties of the occupation.
The quandary for Mr. Bush, administration officials say, is in finding a balance: expressing sympathy for fallen soldiers without drawing more attention to the casualties by commenting daily on every new death.
White House officials say their strategy, for now, is to avoid having the president mention some deaths but not others, and so avoid inequity. (Mr. Bush does send a personal letter to the family of every soldier killed in action and has met privately with relatives at military bases.)
"He never wants to elevate or diminish one sacrifice made over another," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director.
Or, as another White House official put it: "If you're the brother or mother of a soldier who was killed on Saturday, and nothing was said, and then the president says something on Sunday? Unless the president starts saying it for all of them, he can't do it."
Republicans also acknowledge that White House officials, mindful of history, do not want Mr. Bush to become hostage to daily body counts, much as President Lyndon B. Johnson was during the Vietnam War. Concern about being consumed by the headlines, administration officials say, is another reason the president did not specifically address the downed Chinook on Sunday.
"If a helicopter were hit an hour later, after he came out and spoke, should he come out again?" Mr. Bartlett said. The public "wants the commander in chief to have proper perspective and keep his eye on the big picture and the ball. At the same time, they want their president to understand the hardship and sacrifice that many Americans are enduring at a time of war. And we believe he's striking that balance."
So Mr. Bush is continuing to refer as broadly as possible to the sacrifice of all, as when reporters asked him in California on Tuesday to comment directly on the attack against the helicopter.
"I am saddened any time that there's a loss of life," replied Mr. Bush, who added that the soldiers killed had died "for a cause greater than themselves," the campaign against terrorism.
Some Republicans say they are concerned that the White House strategy leaves the president open to accusations from Democrats that he is isolated from the real pain of war.
"I have to say, I think we have to note tragedies of this magnitude," the Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, told reporters on Tuesday, referring to Sunday's attack. "I think it needs to be expressed over and over by the president, and I think all deference ought to be given those dead and wounded who return home."
David R. Gergen, who worked in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton White Houses, called the subject a "tender" one. He said he understood the White House concern about allowing Mr. Bush to be drawn into every death in Iraq, and recalled past presidents who were advised by their staffs not to meet with the families of American hostages.
"Even so," Mr. Gergen said, "we're now encountering deaths at rates we haven't seen since Vietnam, and I think it's important for the country to hear from the president at times like these, and for families to know. I think the weight is on the side of clear expression."
Others say the White House strategy can add to the anguish of families who have lost loved ones in Iraq. Thomas Wilson, an uncle of Staff Sgt. Joe N. Wilson, 30, of Crystal Springs, Miss., who was killed in the helicopter attack, went so far as to tell a reporter on Monday that Mr. Bush and members of his family needed to experience Iraq for themselves. "Then he'll realize what's going on," Mr. Wilson said. "As long as they ain't over there, he don't care."
Mr. Bartlett would not discuss how much concern comments like Mr. Wilson's had created at the White House.
"The president writes a letter to every family of a fallen soldier and meets privately with families of soldiers at military bases," Mr. Bartlett said. "He grieves with them, he understands. I'm not going to judge anybody's comments made in such a difficult period. People say a lot of things."
Some close to the president say another reason he has not expressed more public sympathy for individual soldiers killed in Iraq is his determination to let families have their privacy. He was offended, his friends say, by what he saw at times as President Bill Clinton's exploitation of private grief for political gain.
Like other presidents, Mr. Clinton appeared at some military funerals. In October 2000, he attended a memorial service in Norfolk, Va., for the 17 sailors killed in the bombing of the guided-missile destroyer Cole. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan attended a memorial service at Camp Lejeune, N.C., for 241 marines killed in Beirut. President Jimmy Carter attended ceremonies for troops killed in the failed hostage-rescue mission in Iran.
Marlin Fitzwater, who was White House press secretary to President Bush's father, recalled that the elder Mr. Bush "went to a number of memorial ceremonies" where he met with families of troops killed in action in the Persian Gulf war of 1991.
At the time of that war, the Pentagon barred media coverage of coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The ban was relaxed during the Clinton administration, but then reinforced by the second Bush administration in the run-up to the current hostilities in Iraq.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Congo Practices A Wary Peace
Former Enemies, Still Fearful, Try to Move Country Forward
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 5, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A523-2003Nov4?language=printer
KINSHASA, Congo -- One of Congo's new vice presidents, Jean-Pierre Bemba, keeps a helicopter on his front lawn in case the former Ugandan-backed rebel leader has to make a quick getaway from an assassination attempt.
Another vice president, Azarias Ruberwa, the former leader of the Rwandan-backed rebel group and once the most despised man in Kinshasa, has young rebels armed with guns and binoculars peering out from his riverside office when they aren't wandering the neighborhood in faded T-shirts emblazoned with their leader's face.
The two other vice presidents have their security quirks, too. They have to, they say, to stay alive during a peace process that has everyone afraid of war. No one can be cautious enough, in a country with four vice presidents, 60 ministers, 620 legislators and at least a dozen armed groups and factions all forming a two-year power-sharing government that brings enemies together.
"In Africa, we say there is no room for two male crocodiles to live in the same place. Well, now as the situation stands, we have five male crocodiles -- including the president -- sharing the same swamp," said Arthur Z'Ahidi Ngoma, a vice president from an unarmed political opposition group. Earlier this year, two other vice presidents wanted him removed from the government.
"I would, to be honest, call it a Congolese miracle that we are all committed to coexisting," he said, sitting in his home in the capital, with bodyguards roaming nearby. "Even if some of us wanted to see the others dead at certain points."
This is the unwieldy theater of one of Africa's toughest peace deals. Yet it is clearly one of high stakes that could set the Democratic Republic of Congo, potentially Africa's richest country, on a path to peace and a prosperity for its 55 million people, who have attempted little more than survival for decades.
The latest round in Congo's violent history was a five-year regional war that took an estimated 3.3 million to 4.1 million lives, mostly from disease and hunger, in a human catastrophe fought largely outside the view of the West.
Pockets of fighting continue, and the country must form an army out of enemy fighters. But never before has there been this much hope for a lasting peace in the country formerly known as Zaire. It is in this atmosphere that President Joseph Kabila is visiting the United States this week, talking with World Bank officials and meeting with President Bush on Wednesday. Diplomats say he hopes to benefit from the pressure of the international spotlight.
"Are we out of the woods yet? No. But we are headed to the savanna," Kabila said last week in an interview at the presidential palace here in Kinshasa. "This is quite an important moment. We are turning the page on a very dark chapter. It has given hope after 40 years of misrule. The process of unification is underway. People who at different times were shooting at each other on the front lines, who each believed they had their own kingdom, are now sitting together."
But the complexity of making peace a reality in this vast country is a uniquely Congolese drama, he said. "We have been in more or less a confused state throughout modern history, with a century of abuse and foreign powers launching unjust wars on the Congolese people. Everyone all along has taken Congo's resources," said Kabila, 32, a soldier who came to power after the assassination of his father, President Laurent Kabila, two years ago.
This central African nation is rich in diamonds, gold, coltan, cobalt and other minerals. After a period of rule by the Belgians, who were criticized for exploiting Congo's resources, the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko continued to squander the country's minerals for personal gain.
Laurent Kabila overthrew Mobutu in 1997, and civil war erupted a year later. Rwanda invaded, saying Kabila was protecting Hutu fighters responsible for the 1994 genocide of some 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in Rwanda. Those fighters fled across the border into eastern Congo.
Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia entered the conflict on the side of the Congolese government. Rwanda and Uganda joined forces to help rebels trying to seize power, but their cooperation soon disintegrated into a contest for control of the minerals of the northeast, fought largely by their local proxies.
The plundering is reportedly continuing. Human rights groups say that the Rwandan government has permitted polishing plants to be set up in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, for diamonds taken from Congo. Recent reports say Rwandan troops have been reentering the country after withdrawing a year ago. Rwanda has been silent on the allegations.
"To be very frank, a key issue in peace in the Congo is getting foreign-backed armed groups out of this country," said Lt. Col. Subhash Yadav of the U.N. peacekeeping mission here.
After a failed mission in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province in eastern Congo where ethnic fighting in June led to thousands of deaths, the peacekeeping force added 2,000 troops and beefed up its mandate. Called the Mission of the Organization of the United Nations in Congo and now numbering 10,800, it has the right to use military force in response to any threat to peace. Pakistani-led peacekeepers in still-volatile Ituri province have recently been firing back, and this and similar actions by peacekeepers have served to slow the fighting.
Standing before a map in Bukavu, an eastern city near the Rwandan border, Yadav admitted there were still areas that the peacekeepers were not reaching, and gave a snapshot of his organization's successes and problem areas. "There is still a lot of human suffering," he said. "There are still places where armed groups are operating, and all you see in a village are children and old people without even clothing."
The task of uniting the vast country under a central government is daunting. Some regions haven't been visited by a government minister in 20 years.
Information Minister Vital Kamerhe made a visit to the eastern town of Kindu -- the first by a central government official since the 1980s. He drew thousands of shocked residents when he distributed new radio transmitters to relay broadcasts of the government-owned station. Kamerhe has presented transmitters to towns throughout the east, the cradle of the civil war. For more than a decade, residents of the interior could not listen to the capital's radio station.
The radios may help psychologically, but leaders hope they will also aid in preparing the country for elections in two years. The last time this nation voted was 1960.
In Kabila's offices, the BBC news plays on a television and photos of every Congolese leader except Mobutu hang on the wall. The younger Kabila, who has been largely credited with cementing the peace process, says the Congolese people deserve a chance to vote.
"I'm determined to have elections, whether there are roads or rain," Kabila said. "I think it's a pretty legitimate demand of the people at this point."
Meanwhile, ordinary Congolese are in patriotic limbo.
Moussa Bahiti stood on a street corner in the eastern town of Goma, more than a thousand miles from Kinshasa. He said he was a tax collector for the central government years ago but had not worked since the war began. Still, he proudly wore an orange shirt printed with swirling maps of the country, names of various rebels groups and the title "La Reunification."
"The war is complete. I am Congolese. Slowly, slowly, the country is one," Bahiti said. "From Goma to Kinshasa, the country is uniting. I believe in it working out this time. Maybe. I hope."
-------- arms
Arms sales to Israel breach guidelines
Government turning blind eye to human rights abuses
Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday November 5, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1077800,00.html
Large quantities of British arms and internal security equipment are being sold to Israel despite the government's public criticism of the country's human rights record and growing violence there, the Guardian can reveal.
Export licences for weapons are being cleared even though Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, has admitted that Israel has breached assurances that British equipment would not be used in the occupied territories. Exports approved by the government this year cover categories including leg-irons, electric shock belts and chemical and biological agents such as tear gas. They also include categories covering mortars, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, military explosives, and infrared and radar sensors.
The hitherto undisclosed arms sales are revealed in a letter from Nigel Griffiths, the minister for export controls at the Department of Trade and Industry, to Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman.
The Foreign Office says in its annual human rights report that it is "deeply concerned at the impact that the continuing Israeli occupation and the associated Israeli military operations have had on the lives of ordinary Palestinians".
It says "both Israel and the Palestinian terrorist groups have shown a worrying disregard for human rights".
The report specifically refers to British arms exports. It says: "The outbreak of the intifada, the continued Israeli incursions in the occupied territories and the breach of Israel's 2000 assurance that UK-originated equipment would not be used in the occupied territories, have all been factored into the UK government's export licensing policy."
The human rights report also refers to four Britons who lost their lives or were seriously injured in the past year as a result of the continuing crisis. Yoni Jesner was a victim of a suicide bomb in Tel Aviv in September. Iain Hook, an engineer, was shot by the Israeli army in the Jenin compound where he worked in November 2002. Thomas Hurndall, a peace activist, was shot in Rafah, Gaza, in April this year, while trying to shield Palestinian children. James Miller, a British journalist, was shot and killed in Gaza in May, while filming the destruction of Palestinian homes.
According to the government's arms control guidelines, exports will be blocked "if there is a clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression". The guidelines say licences will not be issued "for exports which would provoke or prolong armed conflicts or aggravate existing tensions or conflicts in the country of final destination." Weapons exports will also be banned "if there is a clear risk that the recipient would use the proposed export aggressively against another country, or assert by force a territorial claim."
Mr Campbell said last night: "The credibility of our contribution to the peace process in the Middle East can only be damaged if we say one thing and do the other."
The government told the Commons last month that Britain "has not sold main equipment such as tanks, aircraft, warships or artillery to Israel since May 1997".
The DTI said last night: "Since the outbreak of violence in the occupied territories in September 2000, the government has taken account of Israeli military tactics in its licensing decisions and keeps the situation under close review."
----
UN protest over suspected arms smuggling in DR Congo
KINSHASA (AFP)
Nov 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031105135815.51t0ilx0.html
The United Nations has protested to the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after being prevented from inspecting a plane it suspected of bringing weapons into the volatile east of the country.
"MONUC (the UN Mission in the DRC) has protested vigorously to the transitional government of the Democratic Republic of Congo for having prevented its verification assignment in Kamina," it said in a statement.
MONUC sent a team of military observers to the military base in Kamina, in Sud Kivu Province, which borders Rwanda, after a plane crashed on takeoff there at the weekend.
The type of plane was not specified in the statement but MONUC said it was operated by a Russian crew.
"There are allegations that the plane was carrying weapons for armed groups in Sud Kivu," MONUC said, stressing that the UN resolution defining MONUC's mandate imposed an embargo "on the supply of weapons and military equipment to all active armed groups in the DRC".
MONUC said its observers had been "prevented from approaching the site, which was guarded by soldiers armed with AK-47 rifles and a number of civilians". They had also been unable to locate the Russian crew or a DRC officer known to be aboard the aircraft.
The authorities in Kamina insist the plane crash, in which no one was injured, was a minor incident "involving a civil aircraft with no secret cargo".
But MONUC said its observers could neither confirm nor deny this version of events and demanded unfettered access to the site of the accident so it could ascertain exactly what had happened.
MONUC is monitoring a ceasefire that took effect in the DRC in April to end a regional war that broke out in 1998 when rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda sought to overthrow the Kinshasa government.
The war drew in half a dozen African countries at its height and claimed an estimated 2.5 million lives, either directly through combat or indirectly through famine and disease.
The presence of armed foreign groups in eastern DRC remains an issue of concern, as seen with clashes late last month between the tribal Mai-Mai warriors and Rwandan rebels in the Mwenga region.
There has also been ongoing fighting in northeastern DRC despite the establishment of an interim government in July.
----
Report: U.S. selling missiles to Thailand
November 05, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031105-101609-5479r.htm
BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov. 5 -- Fearing a regional military imbalance, the United States has supplied Thailand with air-to-air missiles, the Washington Times reported Wednesday.
Eight Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles were delivered because of "an imminent threat" posed by Russian rockets offered to China and Malaysia, according to weapons monitors.
The Bangkok Post said the weapons "arrived two months ago, shortly after the (Thai) air force received 16 second-hand F-16 fighter jets worth a total of $130 million."
Wade Boese, research director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said the United States "committed to sell Thailand AMRAAMs a few years ago, but held off on delivery because U.S. policy regarding AMRAAMs is not to be the first to introduce that particular type of missile into a region unless other comparable missiles already exist there.
Boese said the missiles offer "beyond-visual-range capability," which also allows the AMRAAM-firing pilot to fly away before the missile explodes, an action known as "fire and forget," "launch and leave" or "shoot and scoot."
----
U.S. said to supply missiles to Bangkok
November 05, 2003
By Richard S. Ehrlich
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031104-110816-8044r.htm
BANGKOK - The United States is supplying Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAMs) to Thailand because of "an imminent threat" posed by Russian rockets offered to China and Malaysia, according to weapons monitors.
The Bush administration decided to deliver eight AMRAAMs to Thailand after having earlier said the air-intercept missiles would be exported only if Bangkok suffered a potential military threat.
"We have no comment on arms deliveries to Thailand," a tight-lipped U.S. Embassy spokesman said when asked about the report.
But the respected Bangkok Post reported recently that the missiles have already been delivered to "maintain the military balance in the region," according to an unidentified source in Thailand's air force.
The weapons "arrived two months ago, shortly after the [Thai] air force received 16 second-hand F-16 fighter jets worth a total of $130 million," the newspaper said.
Matthew Schroeder, an Arms Sales Monitoring Project research associate at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, was less certain.
"There were reports that the U.S. planned to deliver the missiles in September or October, but I have not seen any confirmation that they have been delivered," he said in an e-mail interview.
"Raytheon has at least one contract to produce eight AMRAAM air vehicles for Thailand," Mr. Schroeder said.
Wade Boese, research director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said the United States "committed to sell Thailand AMRAAMs a few years ago, but did hold off on delivery because U.S. policy regarding AMRAAMs is not to be the first to introduce that particular type of missile into a region unless other comparable missiles already exist there.
"The strict U.S. policy on exporting AMRAAMs reflects the lethality of the missile," Mr. Boese said in an e-mail interview.
The AIM-120C AMRAAM is prized for being able to knock out an enemy plane or intercept an incoming rocket before the AMRAAM-firing pilot actually sees the target.
The sophisticated air-to-air missile offers "beyond-visual-range capability," which also allows the AMRAAM-firing pilot to fly away before the missile explodes - an action colloquially known as "fire and forget," "launch and leave" or "shoot and scoot."
"Essentially, the missiles are pilot equalizers in the sense that it puts the outcome of a potential dogfight more on the missile's technical capabilities and not the skills of a pilot," Mr. Boese said.
--------
Group Says Guinea Sold Arms Used on U.S. Embassy in Liberia
November 5, 2003
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/international/africa/05AFRI.html
DAKAR, Senegal, Nov. 4 - The cost of befriending the enemy of one's enemy has once again become painfully clear for the United States government: Washington's staunch ally in West Africa, Guinea, supplied mortars to Liberian rebels, who used the gift to shell an American-owned compound in Liberia where thousands had taken refuge during fighting earlier this year, a report to be released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch says.
The arms shipment to Liberian rebels violated a United Nations arms embargo on Liberia, where fighting between the government of Charles G. Taylor, then the president, and two rebel factions pummeled the capital, Monrovia, from June to August.
The warring parties signed a peace agreement in August, shortly after Mr. Taylor left for exile in Nigeria, and a transitional government, composed of their representatives, took over in October. All sides in the conflict have flouted the embargo, generally falsifying the contents of containers stuffed with weapons. Some Guinean weapons, for example, were in containers labeled "detergent," according to a report prepared by a United Nations panel appointed to monitor the embargo.
The panel's report, presented to Security Council members but not yet made public, recommends that the penalties against the trade of arms, diamonds and timber remain in place. The Security Council, of which Guinea is currently a member, is to review that issue this week.
The report by Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, called on the Security Council to hold Guinea accountable for breaching the embargo during the last attacks on Monrovia. "The government of Guinea, which facilitated the illicit supply of mortar rounds, bears an important measure of responsibility for the atrocities," the report said.
The report took note of what people in Monrovia commonly refer to as "World War III," the third and most intense attack on the capital in late July. Human Rights Watch found that the mortar rounds fired on central Monrovia by the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy were Iranian munitions procured by the Guinean Ministry of Defense this year and sent to the rebels.
The report said that some of the mortars, traced to Guinea, a recipient of American military aid, landed in a compound owned by the United States Embassy, where about 20,000 people displaced by the fighting had sought refuge. On July 21, during an intense bout of shelling, two mortar rounds fell on the compound, killing 20 and wounding more than 50.
Embassy officials said the weapons fired on the compound had not been provided to Guinea by Washington. Guinea denied supporting the Liberian rebels.
Human Rights Watch called for a suspension of American military aid to Guinea.
-------- asia
Sri Lanka's President Declares a State of Emergency
November 5, 2003
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/international/asia/05CND-LANK.html
NEW DELHI, Nov. 5 - Sri Lanka's president declared a state of emergency today, a day after she suspended Parliament, fired three top government ministers and deployed troops at key buildings in Colombo, the capital.
"The emergency regulations invest the government with wide-ranging powers to arrest and detain persons and ban political activity," a military spokesman, Col. Sumedha Perera, was quoted as saying by Colombo Page, a Sri Lankan Internet newspaper.
The moves by President Chandrika Kumaratunga touched off a political crisis and fueled fears that a 20-month cease-fire between government forces and ethnic Tamil rebels would collapse.
But a spokesman said today that the cease-fire would stand. "The president has no intention of resuming or provoking the resumption of hostilities," the spokesman, Lakshman Kadirgamar, told reporters, according to Reuters.
Sri Lankan political experts said President Kumaratunga appeared to be trying to weaken her bitter political rival, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. President Kumaratunga has harshly criticized the prime minister for making too many concessions in peace talks with the rebel group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The prime minister was in Washington meeting senior American officials on Tuesday and is scheduled to meet with President Bush today. He issued a statement in Washington accusing the Sri Lankan president of trying to derail peace efforts.
"The irresponsible and precipitate action of the president is aimed at plunging the country into chaos and anarchy," the prime minister said, The Associated Press reported. "I therefore call upon all of the people, the armed forces, police and public service to remain calm and vigilant."
Both the president and the prime minister were elected to their posts, but the president has far more power under Sri Lanka's Constitution. Citing deteriorating security in the country, the president fired the prime minister's appointees in three important ministries - defense, interior and state-run news media. She also suspended Parliament, where the prime minister's party holds a two-seat majority, until Nov. 19.
TamilNet, a Web site with close ties to the Tamil rebels, said the moves had "dimmed" hopes for a negotiated end to a 20-year civil war. Tamils, who are Hindus, said they took up arms to defend themselves from Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority, which is Buddhist.
"We are carefully monitoring and studying the developments," the Web site quoted Daya Master, the rebels' media coordinator, as saying. "Based on this, our leadership will decide what to do."
After six rounds of negotiations led by Norway and backed by the United States, peace talks stalled in April. The Tigers - considered a terrorist organization by the United States - walked out, saying the government had done too little to rehabilitate the war-ravaged northeast, much of which the rebels control.
On Saturday, the rebels made a new proposal in which they dropped their demand for an independent Tamil state and called instead for the establishment of a Tamil-dominated interim administration for the northeast, which would have sweeping power over everything from land to justice.
The prime minister's government responded that the two sides' proposals differed "in fundamental respects," but said talks should continue. President Kumaratunga's party, by contrast, rejected the rebel proposal and said the prime minister was doing too little to ensure that the rebels were not simply rearming to fight another day.
Jayadeva Uyangoda, a political scientist at the University of Colombo, said in a telephone interview from Colombo that the president must be cautious. If war erupts, he said, she could be blamed. The streets of Colombo were calm tonight, Sri Lankan observers said. But they noted that the epic political struggle between the country's two leading politicians was entering a dangerous new phase.
-------- biological weapons
WHO Assails Wealthy Nations on Bioterror
Coordination of Defenses Poor in Simulation; U.S. Support for Agency Questioned
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A496-2003Nov4?language=printer
GENEVA -- A severe lack of funding for surveillance and front-line defenses has left the World Health Organization unprepared to deal with a global bioterrorist attack involving an agent such as smallpox, according to a senior official who monitors disease outbreaks for the agency.
The concerns were underscored by a recent exercise involving a simulated bioterrorist attack in which WHO observers unexpectedly had to be called in to broker breakdowns in coordination among the eight nations taking part.
Several WHO officials also said they believe that U.S. bioterrorism defenses that mainly focus on domestic preparations could be ineffective against an attack involving a pathogen that emerges, or is released, in a remote part of the world and spreads internationally.
More than 100 nations have no surveillance capabilities to detect such an outbreak, several WHO officials said. In an attack, they added, a welter of conflicting national protocols could undermine a swift global response.
Although the United States has sought to vaccinate domestic health workers against smallpox, for instance, no comparable program has been offered to WHO employees who may be the first to respond, said Patrick Drury, project manager of WHO's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defended the level of support for WHO and said the United States is aiming for an optimal balance among unilateral, bilateral and multilateral biodefense strategies.
The recently concluded global bioterrorism exercise, called Global Mercury, was based on a scenario involving a group of terrorists who deliberately infect themselves with smallpox and then travel to various countries, using their bodies to spread the infection on public transportation systems and at car shows and by distributing contaminated business cards.
The exercise underscored the drawbacks of defending against bioterrorism threats on a nation-by-nation basis, said Drury and other WHO officials. Results of the exercise will be discussed this week by officials of the United States and several other industrialized countries at a meeting in Berlin.
"We'd like to see the United States engage in this as a multilateral effort," Drury said. "They seem to be unilateral or bilateral in what they are doing."
WHO, which was supposed to play only an observer role in the exercise, had to be called in to negotiate coordination among the players, Drury said. The countries participating were the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Japan and Mexico.
By the end of the exercise, Drury said, victims had been infected with smallpox in Chicago and the West Coast.
"If you have problems between democratic countries, you can imagine what will happen if you put Iran and North Korea in the picture," said Diego Buriot, director of WHO's Department of Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response in Lyon, France.
Bill Pierce, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said that the United States played a key role in conducting Global Mercury, which he described as only the first step in developing multinational protocols to deal with bioweapons.
Some WHO officials said they were satisfied with the level of U.S. involvement. David Heymann, an American infectious diseases expert working on polio eradication, said that U.S. surveillance systems would complement WHO's multilateral efforts. "The U.S. has been a strong supporter of WHO," he said.
But other U.S. experts said America needs to do more.
"The U.S. has not made an investment in global public health and the World Health Organization that anywhere matches the magnitude of the global health need," said Margaret Hamburg, a physician who is vice president at the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, which studies biological, chemical and nuclear security threats. "We cannot address this problem by going it alone or by developing relationships on a one-on-one and ad-hoc basis."
Several officials at WHO pointed out that the recent outbreak of the new respiratory infection called severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) began in rural China but rapidly spread to industrialized countries. More than 100 countries do not have the laboratory expertise to spot even common diseases, making it unlikely they would detect a new agent until it had claimed many lives or spread to other countries, said Bradford Kay, an American who is helping WHO build laboratory capabilities in developing countries.
WHO officials readily acknowledged that the United States is already a top funder and that American specialists often provide the backbone for international investigations of disease outbreaks. But they said $10 million promised to WHO this year to boost surveillance has not yet been forthcoming, leaving the agency with too few resources to thoroughly investigate the outbreak reports that pour in every day.
"It's understandable for them to say we'll do it ourselves instead of relying on a bunch of U.N. pinkos," Drury said of U.S. biodefense planners. But instead of trying to build a "Great Wall" around the United States, he said, it would be cheaper and more effective to build global networks that could spot and contain outbreaks where they begin, instead of reacting after they had spread.
Pierce rejected that criticism. He said that the United States wants funds set aside for WHO once details of programs have been worked out.
"This is a hollow complaint," he said. "I don't know why they are complaining. Maybe they are covering up for some of their shortcomings."
The Global Mercury bioterrorism exercise, described by Drury and another official, laid out this hypothetical scenario:
A couple arrived in Vancouver on a plane from Tokyo at 4 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 8. The man was deathly sick and collapsed at the airport. A quarantine officer summoned health authorities, who quickly deduced that he had smallpox. Police arrested the woman and interrogated her. A search of her luggage found references to a global bioterrorism attack, and authorities eventually concluded that members of a terrorist cell had deliberately infected themselves and were flying to various countries to start an epidemic of hemorrhagic smallpox, an unusual -- and especially lethal -- form of the disease.
As the game played out, Drury and Buriot said, WHO had to be called in as a neutral broker.
"The practicality of ongoing teleconferences with eight different countries and different cultural backgrounds and different languages and different priorities" were enormous, Drury said. "One talks politics; one talks science."
Missing in the exercise, but certain to complicate matters in a real crisis, was the public panic that such an outbreak would trigger.
There is not a cordon sanitaire that one country can mount to "keep out" infections, said Ann Marie Kimball, professor of epidemiology at the school of public health at the University of Washington. "If wealthy countries are truly interested in the biosecurity of their populations, they would be wise to work with the larger global community to assure that all countries are secure."
----
US crackdown on bioterror is backfiring
05 November 03
New Scientist
Debora MacKenzie
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994345
This week, a respected biologist was led into a Texas courtroom. He faces no fewer than 68 charges and could end up in jail for the rest of his life. Has the FBI finally caught the anthrax attacker?
No. Thomas Butler merely reported that 30 vials of plague bacteria had gone missing from his laboratory at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Many of Butler's colleagues believe the justice authorities are making an example of him as part of a wider effort to ensure that scientists take more care with material terrorists might exploit.
Whatever the outcome of the case, that effort is having repercussions that go far beyond the fate of one scientist. New Scientist has contacted more than 20 prominent figures in the US working in bioterror-related fields.
Some refused to talk, and most who did did not want to be named. Their comments paint a disturbing picture. Some scientists, for instance, are refusing to work on projects involving agents that could be exploited as bioweapons, even though the US government is providing massive funding to boost such research.
Others are considering abandoning existing work. Irreplaceable collections of microbes essential for managing and tracing outbreaks, bioterrorist or natural, are being destroyed simply because labs cannot comply with the new rules.
Cell mate
The climate of fear created by the Butler case is even threatening the US's ability to detect bioterrorist activity. New Scientist has been told that labs in one state are no longer reporting routine incidents of animals poisoned with ricin, a deadly toxin found in castor beans, for fear of federal investigation.
And if any terrorist ever does make off with dangerous bacteria, it will be a brave scientist who tells the FBI. As one put it: "I don't want to end up in a cell with Tom Butler."
In a letter sent to the US attorney-general John Ashcroft in September, Stanley Falkow, a respected researcher at Stanford University in California, goes further: "Trying to meet the unwarranted burden of what the government considers 'biosafety' is simply not coincident with the practice of sound, creative scientific research."
It is now two years since someone killed five people and created widespread disruption by posting envelopes of anthrax around the US. Coming just weeks after 9/11, the attacks shone a glaring spotlight on the risks of disease research.
The authorities decided far tighter control was needed over biologists with access to dangerous pathogens. Their main response was 2002's Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act, which from February 2003 imposed tight controls on "select agents", a list of 82 viruses, bacteria and toxins that could be used as weapons.
The list includes the agents responsible for many significant diseases that affect people, livestock or plants, including foot and mouth disease and the BSE prion that causes mad cow disease. Even botulinum toxin is on the list, though the medical version, Botox, is exempt from the regulations.
Fingerprint records
People working with select agents now have to register with the government, put their fingerprints on record, get security clearances, and have their labs inspected. Extensive controls have been placed on the movement of microbes and researchers, and all samples of select agents must be strictly accounted for or destroyed.
There were controls on transporting some microbes before, but now possessing them is also regulated, and non-compliance is a crime. The scientific community does support tighter controls, says Ron Atlas, former president of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).
"Common sense as well as government regulations dictate that the days of carrying vials of dangerous pathogens in our pockets are gone, as are those of leaving cultures of anthrax in open laboratories," he says. "As scientists we must honour a pact with the public to protect public health and defend against bioterrorism."
The ASM, together with leading journals such as Nature and Science, announced in 2002 a voluntary self-censorship code that requires crucial details that could be exploited by bioterrorists to be removed from scientific papers.
But the regulations the US government has brought in, and the way they are being implemented, are driving some scientists to despair. For example, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta must now give permission to work with human pathogens, while the US Department of Agriculture manages livestock diseases.
This ought to allow diseases such as anthrax that affect both people and animals to be dealt with by either agency. But in practice, some say, one agency will tell researchers they do not have the right paperwork, even if the other gave them clearance.
Search and destroy
Other rules are simply badly thought out or inconsistent. One part of the regulations states that clinical labs that grow new cultures of select agents must destroy them within seven days, one researcher complains. But another part requires labs to get permission before destroying any cultures - and this takes more than seven days.
Such problems leave scientists feeling that compliance is simply impossible. "Every single lab involved in select agents has violated the regulations somehow," says one. "The FBI can come in and find you out of compliance whenever it chooses."
The implications for government control of what scientists can do or say is, in the words of one, "McCarthy-esque". Even when the rules are clear, complying with them can be prohibitively expensive. One state university had to hire five full-time police and an extra secretary just for three moderately sized labs. Institutions that cannot afford this are giving up research involving select agents.
One researcher, again afraid to be quoted, had to drop a proposal for work on ricin because it required a collaborator with particular equipment. "None would work on a select agent without millions of dollars of government money, prepaid," the researcher says. On top of the financial burden, potential partners do not want to risk criminal liability if they accidentally break any rules.
Meanwhile, researchers who have not been able to meet deadlines for registering every single sample of select agents they hold are having to destroy them. Many labs have thousands of samples, and such collections are important for diagnosis, drug and vaccine testing, and for tracing outbreaks. After the 2001 anthrax attacks, for instance, one collection helped investigators to identify the strain used.
"All clinical labs in this country have now dropped select agents and destroyed their archive stocks," says one prominent researcher. Scientists at big government labs say that smaller institutions are appealing to them to take their collections. "We haven't been able to save nearly enough," says one. And the bureaucrats "are not helping".
Even military labs are not immune. "I have had to autoclave three freezers of Venezuelan equine encephalitis," says Peter Jahrling of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, because regulators had wanted a full account of each sample by a deadline he could not meet.
The disease, which can kill people and animals, is considered a prime bioweapon candidate, but it is also endemic in many countries in the Americas and USAMRIID is working on a vaccine.
Lock out
Until last week many researchers faced the prospect of being excluded from their own labs, because after 12 November only people who had passed an extensive government background check were to be allowed access to select agents.
Partly because of initial understaffing, the FBI has not yet approved many staff. Even government scientists who already have high-level security clearances must get new ones to continue working in their own labs, and yet more to visit collaborators.
The deadline was extended last week only after desperate appeals from four university associations and the American Society for Microbiology. Those who have sent in complete applications by 12 November will now have provisional approval. But the FBI has yet to receive complete applications from 2000 of the 9000 researchers listed as needing clearance.
Part of the problem was that the FBI sent out the forms late, and there has been confusion over the exact requirements. Many of the difficulties seem to be teething problems resulting from the introduction of a new security culture to scientists whose work has in the past been largely unregulated, and doing it within very tight deadlines.
But the damage could be permanent. If the current trends continue, many scientists will not be willing to do research that could help protect people - in the US and elsewhere - against natural disease outbreaks or deliberate attacks involving the select agents.
"How could I possibly permit my students and myself to be subject to the same nightmare [as Butler] if we also made an inadvertent mistake?" asks Falkow in his letter to Ashcroft. "I know this fearful feeling is true not only of American scientists but also of colleagues from abroad... You have your regulations but I believe you will have fewer knowledgeable scientific practitioners of infectious diseases research."
"If I am required to inventory every vial, even if it is in a locked freezer behind five layers of security, then be held criminally accountable for any mysterious disappearance when it is almost certainly only sloppy record keeping," says another researcher, "then I'll work on Paramecium [a pond protist] and leave the select agents to someone else."
-------- europe
EU defences must not double up on NATO tasks: Schroeder
BERLIN (AFP)
Nov 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031105160016.z2bkvw9v.html
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder expressed support Wednesday for a European Union defence structure but said that it should be built within NATO and not double up on tasks carried out by the alliance.
The EU must be able to act "in terms of foreign and security policies, and that could and must happen within the transatlantic alliance," he told a European forum in Berlin.
"It's about establishing a European pole inside NATO and not a competitor for NATO," Schroeder said, adding that there should be no duplication of tasks.
Germany, Belgium, France, and Luxembourg -- which sparked an unprecedented crisis at NATO just before the Iraq war by blocking help for partner Turkey -- in April proposed a separate EU defence planning headquarters outside Brussels.
Other EU countries reacted coolly to the idea, saying that NATO remained a cornerstone of defence and should not be weakened, while the United States has been particularly critical.
British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said earlier Wednesday that Britain will not participate in a proposed autonomous EU military planning and command centre which will be separate from the NATO headquarters.
-------- iraq
Who Comprises the Iraqi Resistance? (Part1 )
By Firas Al-Atraqchi
Freelance Columnist
04/11/2003
http://www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/Iraq_Aftermath/2003/11/article_02.shtml
16 US soldiers were killed in an attack on a US CH-47 Chinook helicopter near Fallujah.
In light of a military campaign gone wrong and mounting casualties, the Bush administration in collusion with the Pentagon is masterminding a new wave of media manipulation by consistently suggesting, repeating and insisting that the violence of resistance in Iraq is not domestic in source and nature, but exported by foreign elements.
The media has heard various explanations as to why US and (to a lesser extent) British soldiers are starting to come home in body bags.
The preferred explanation is that the violence in Iraq is due to foreign fighters, or jihadis, as some military officials have seen fit to label them. These jihadis are considered to be disgruntled Muslims (they may come from anywhere in the Arab world) who see Iraq as a battleground against what they term the "evil American Empire." These jihadis, US officials claim, either are directly linked to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda or sympathize with such organizations.
This explanation works wonders for US media. It exonerates the Iraqi people who were meant to have greeted US soldiers with song and dance, flowers, and rice when Baghdad was "liberated." Although the little Hollywood charade never really materialized, blaming foreign insurgents leads one to believe that, at the very least, the Iraqis don't mind having US occupying forces in Iraq, and at the very best, that Iraqis want US forces to occupy their country. By shifting the blame to foreign fighters, the White House and the Pentagon create the illusion that only foreign fighters are in Iraq, thereby discrediting the claim that Iraqis do not want US forces. The public is then led to believe that the invasion of Iraq is going smoothly, that Iraqi society is moving ahead but is being disrupted by foreign Islamic elements.
These foreign Islamic elements are also a convenient scapegoat to connect the invasion of Iraq to the events of September11 . Prior to the war, virtually every White House official barked and bellowed that Iraq was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Vice-President Dick Cheney continues to insist that there is a link despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The bottom line is that Iraq had nothing to do with September11 , one of the principal reasons for invading Iraq (the second was weapons of mass destruction; there is also no evidence to support that claim). When the US public demanded proof and got nothing in return, the White House created a new battleground -Iraq- citing that Iraq was where America was waging war against terrorism.
On November3 rd, President Bush told reporters "We are taking the war over there [Iraq] rather than let them bring it here." Since no Iraqi brought the war to American shores, and no evidence was found to support such a claim, creating the threat of foreign Islamic militants infiltrating Iraq will allay the US public's fears and confusion.
But it won't do the same with the Iraqi people who are not as easily fooled. The US administration is trying to lick its wounds in the US public domain but is forgetting that it is meant to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people first and foremost. In that it has failed miserably.
The second explanation meted out by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and its proxy, the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), is that the violence in Iraq is largely due to ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, his most loyal Baathist supporters or the dreaded Fedayeen fighters. Every time an explosion is heard in Baghdad or an Iraqi civilian dies, members of the CPA and the IGC quickly point to Saddam. In the wake of the downing of the Chinook helicopter near Fallujah, which killed 16 US soldiers, the CPA and the Pentagon were at a loss for words. How could they account for this momentary military defeat? Blame someone that is invisible, of course - Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri, former Iraqi Vice-President and Saddam's most trusted ally who is thought to be hiding in Mosul.
US media was quick to broadcast images of Al-Douri and sound bites from various Arab and regional conferences. "He called the Kuwaitis sons of dogs," said one MSNBC commentator, as if insulting the Kuwaitis was proof enough that Al-Douri was behind the killing of US soldiers. What US media did not mention is that Al-Douri is thought to be an invalid, dying of cancer at the ripe old age of78 .
There is a problem with the second explanation, however, because it does not account for the great depth, veracity, frequency and success of recent attacks. How could Saddam's forces be so mobile, agile and quick? US military commanders have in effect started to admit that they face an invisible enemy, an enemy they have vanquished more than six months ago when President Bush declared the war over. The second explanation on its own presents the White House with a public relations fiasco.
Enters the surefire columnist who knows what Iraqis feel without ever really being in Iraq or talking to Iraqis in their own country. These media pundits introduce yet another explanation - a hybrid of both explanations above; the Baathists are importing foreign fighters. And they are doing it from Iran and Syria.
"We thought we won the first Iraq war in 100 hours, but lost the peace to Saddam and his Baathist followers. We thought we won the second Iraq war decisively in one week, but Saddam's murdering class and his imported terrorists chose to run and fight from underground," William Safire, a proponent of the Iraq invasion, says in The Washington Post (November3 ,2003 ).
The picture now becomes all the clearer. The US is fighting home-grown terrorists (the Baathists) and the Islamic terrorists who brought down the Twin Towers (Al-Qaeda), and Iraq is the proving ground. To any buffoon this simply says that the US must "stay the course," as President Bush said last week, and fight to the last man in Iraq.
Suddenly, the reasons for going to Iraq are no longer about weapons of mass destruction (David Kay has been embarrassed into reclusion because he came up empty.); they are no longer about freeing the Iraqi people or creating the Arab world's first democracy. They are about converting a fertile country into a depleted uranium cemetery for Al-Qaeda. Never mind that Iraqis live there, too.
This explanation might go down well with the common lot in North America, but it is an insult to the Iraqi people themselves. On the one hand, it says that no one really cares about them, and on the other, it insults them by saying they can't fight or fend for themselves.
And that is the precise root of the problem. The grievances of the Iraqi people are being tossed aside, which may better explain why resistance in Iraq is increasing, becoming ever more ferocious, and why more US soldiers die every day.
Firas Al-Atraqchi is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage. Holding an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication, he has eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry. You can reach him at firascape@hotmail.com.
--------
Blasts Strike U.S. Compound in Mosul
November 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. forces in the northern city of Mosul came under attack Wednesday as insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at a convoy and barracks, and a hand grenade exploded near another military convoy in the city center.
Two Iraqi civilians were killed when a rocket-propelled grenade struck their car after apparently missing a military convoy, Sgt. Chris Ryder said. An American soldier also was wounded.
An Iraqi teenager was also killed in a hand grenade blast near Mosul's city hall, hospital sources said. Two others teens and a U.S. soldier were wounded.
No casualties were reported in the earlier attack on the barracks, the U.S. military said.
Separately, a U.S. soldier died of wounds sustained from a ``non-hostile gunshot'' at a Baghdad checkpoint, the military said.
Also, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division captured two former Iraqi Army generals in an early Wednesday raid in Fallujah, the military said. The two men were suspected of being ``key financiers'' and organizers of anti-coalition fighters operating there, the military said.
The continuing attacks by shadowy groups of Iraqi resistance fighters have cast doubt on the ability of the U.S.-led coalition to contain the growing insurgency, and have sparked an exodus from Baghdad of international organizations and diplomats from several Western countries.
Spain, a close U.S. ally, withdrew many of its diplomatic staff on Wednesday because of escalating violence.
Huge explosions thundered through Baghdad Tuesday evening as the insurgents targeted the 2-square-mile ``Green Zone,'' which includes coalition headquarters, the military press center and other key facilities.
Iraqi police said two mortars fell in the zone, but U.S. officials said the headquarters itself, located in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces, was not damaged. A Pentagon spokesman said three people were wounded. It was unclear if they were military or civilians.
The huge detonations sent coalition staffers running into the hallways. It was the second mortar attack against the Green Zone in as many days.
The Spanish withdrawal followed the slaying of a Spanish navy captain in the truck bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19, and the Oct. 9 killing of a Spanish sergeant working for military intelligence. Security at the Spanish Embassy had been stepped up in recent weeks.
The temporary withdrawal was part of a plan to move the Spanish mission to a safer location, Spain's foreign minister, Ana Palacio, told television channel CNN+ on Wednesday. Palacio will travel to Baghdad this weekend and meet with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator for Iraq.
Two other coalition members have withdrawn diplomats from Iraq because of stepped-up insurgent attacks. Last month, Bulgaria and the Netherlands moved their diplomats to Jordan, also citing worsening security.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday the attacks on coalition troops were being conducted by small groups of Saddam supporters and terrorists who had infiltrated the country.
The Defense Ministry said Tuesday a British marine was killed by hostile fire in Iraq last week, bringing the British death toll since the war started to 52.
``There is no inhibition on the progress we are making both in political and in economic terms, other than this small group of people,'' Blair said.
``The answer is to carry on making the effort to make Iraq better.''
Fears about security have increased after a dramatic escalation in attacks, starting with the Oct. 26 missile barrage against the Al-Rasheed Hotel, where many coalition and U.S. military officials lived. One U.S. colonel was killed and 18 people were wounded.
On Sunday, guerrillas near Fallujah shot down a U.S. Army Chinook helicopter, killing 15 soldiers in the bloodiest single strike against American forces since the war began March 20.
Violence persisted Tuesday when a roadside bomb killed a 1st Armored Division soldier and wounded two others in Baghdad.
On Wednesday, the new head of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council said he will visit Turkey to ``mend ties'' with Iraq's northern neighbor after weeks of tension over the possible deployment of Turkish troops in Iraq.
Jalal Talabani, a longtime Kurdish leader who assumed the one-month rotating presidency Saturday, will visit Turkey on Nov. 19.
Separately, officials said Iraq's Oil Ministry has replaced the director of the government's petroleum marketing agency in a bid to accelerate oil exports, considered the key to economic revival.
Shamkhi Faraj was named to head the State Oil Marketing Organization, or SOMO, replacing Mohammed Jibouri, who ran the agency since major combat ended in May.
Faraj, who was in charge of the ministry's economic department, formerly worked at OPEC and is considered knowledgeable in petroleum marketing, one official said.
Other personnel changes were expected, he said.
The oil marketing organization said last month that Iraqi exports tripled from 300,000 barrels a day in June to 900,000 in September, but sabotage of pipelines and smuggling cut into foreign sales.
Before the war began in March, Iraq pumped around 2.1 million barrels a day.
The Middle East Economic Survey, based in London, said Iraq exported an average of about 1.15 million barrels of crude a day in October.
Bremer has said the country loses $7 million a day when the northern pipeline is not in service.
--------
THE OCCUPATION
3 Blasts Seem Aimed at U.S. Compound
November 5, 2003
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/international/middleeast/05IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 4 - Three powerful explosions in rapid succession shook central Baghdad on Tuesday evening in what apparently was a mortar attack on the headquarters of the American civilian authorities here.
Iraqi witnesses standing near the gates said the explosions hit the sprawling, walled-in American compound about 7:45 p.m.
A spokeswoman for American military said Tuesday night that four people had been wounded, but she gave no details.
The witnesses said the mortar shells had come from a neighborhood north of the American headquarters and landed inside.
"I looked up and saw trails of white light, and then they exploded inside there," said Muhammad al-Mayehi, an Iraqi, pointing toward the offices of L. Paul Bremer III, the chief civilian administrator, and his staff.
The explosions, which rattled buildings on both sides of the Tigris River, added to a growing sense of insecurity in the capital and in central Iraq, where guerrillas fighting the American occupation have recently carried out a number of spectacular attacks.
The explosions followed the deaths of at least 15 American soldiers on Sunday, when their helicopter was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over the town of Falluja. (Early reports from the military indicated that 16 had been killed, but the Department of Defense is now confirming only 15.) Last week, suicide bombers struck targets across the capital, killing 34 people.
If reports of witnesses hold true, the attack on Tuesday was the third evening of mortar attacks in Baghdad since Mr. Bremer lifted its nighttime curfew late last month, as a gesture to Iraqi Muslims observing Ramadan. It would be at least the fourth attack in recent months to strike within the American compound, a cordoned-off chunk of downtown Baghdad.
The political fallout from the violence continued Tuesday as well. The Spanish government, one of the Bush administration's most important allies in Iraq, said Tuesday that it had drastically scaled back its diplomatic staff here.
Only four or five people remain in the Spanish Embassy in Baghdad. The rest of the diplomatic and administrative team has been withdrawn to Jordan, the Spanish foreign minister, Ana Palacio, said Tuesday.
She said the Spanish government planned to move the embassy to a more secure building and reduce its staff so that all personnel could be situated in one place.
The steady beat of violence here has hindered almost every aspect of the American effort to rebuild the country and foster democratic government. The lack of security has stifled foreign investment and chased away all but a few relief agencies.
In a separate incident in Baghdad on Tuesday, an American soldier was killed and two others were wounded when the vehicle they were riding in was struck by a homemade bomb. The soldiers were with the First Armored Division, the main occupying force in the capital.
Bombs of the type used against those soldiers, typically fashioned from one of the innumerable stockpiles of ammunition left behind after the collapse of Mr. Hussein's government, have inflicted dozens of casualties on American troops since major combat operations were declared over six months ago.
Within minutes of the explosions, American soldiers and Iraqi police officers with searchlights began combing the desolate strip of land along the eastern side of the Tigris River near the Sheraton Hotel. Sirens wailed, and the rattle of machine-gun fire cut the air in the distance.
In late September, three projectiles cut into another part of the American compound, hitting the 14th floor of the Rashid Hotel. In mid-October, six rockets were launched into the area. Neither attack caused injuries. On Oct. 26, a missile struck the Rashid again, killing an American officer.
Iraqi guerrillas opposed to the American occupation have made hit-and-run mortar strikes one of their primary methods of attacks. American officers say the guerrillas often place the mortars in the bed of a truck, pull over to the side of the road, fire and drive away - before the Americans have time to respond.
Some American military installations employ sophisticated tracking devices that allow them to trace the arc of a mortar shell back to its exact point of launch. But the devices are of little use when the guerrillas run off after firing.
The size of the mortar used to fire the shells was unclear. The crash and thunder of the explosions, far larger than those used in recent mortar attacks in Baghdad, suggested it was quite large.
Also on Tuesday, in the north, Mosul was rattled by two attacks. Guerrillas fired rocket-propelled grenades at the Mosul Hotel, headquarters of the 101st Airborne Division.
Mosul residents reached by telephone said that five rockets were fired at the hotel and that three had struck it. A spokesman for the American military confirmed the incident but gave no details.
In the second attack, gunmen shot and killed a prominent Iraqi judge outside his home, Reuters quoted the police as saying. The Reuters report said the judge, Ishmael Youssef, had served under Mr. Hussein's government and had continued after many of his colleagues had been fired by the Americans.
The killing of Mr. Youssef came a day after gunmen, believed to be associated with Mr. Hussein's government, murdered the chief judge of Najaf, in the south. The judge, Mohan Jaber al-Shoueili. was taken from his home and killed in Najaf's main cemetery, officials said.
Mr. Shoueili had been leading several investigations of local officials who served under Mr. Hussein. Guerrillas have been waging a campaign of murder against those who cooperate with American forces here.
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U.S. Shifts On Creation Of Security Unit in Iraq
Bremer Sets Conditions For Paramilitary Force
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A858-2003Nov4.html
BAGHDAD, Nov. 4 -- The U.S. administrator of Iraq has decided to conditionally support the creation of an Iraqi-led paramilitary force composed of former employees of the country's security services and members of political party militias, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council wants the force, which would pursue resistance fighters who have eluded American troops, to include a domestic intelligence-gathering unit and to have broad powers to conduct raids and interrogate suspects. Such characteristics would make the proposed force different from those created under other security initiatives undertaken by the Americans, who until now had expressed opposition to the idea.
The council leaders contend that Iraq's municipal police departments are too weak -- and American soldiers too lacking in local knowledge -- to combat the supporters of former president Saddam Hussein, Islamic militants and foreign guerrillas who are attacking American forces and Iraqis cooperating with the U.S.-led occupation. "We need a security force that is run by Iraqis, that is more heavily armed than the police and is able to act quickly," said a senior official of the Iraqi National Congress, whose leader, Ahmed Chalabi, has participated in discussions about the new unit.
Although the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, had initially opposed the creation of a paramilitary force under the control of the country's interim interior minister, he has softened his position as attacks, particularly on Iraqi targets, have increased. Bremer no longer has "any objection in principle" to the force, but wants to ensure several conditions are met in vetting, training and supervising the participants, a senior U.S. official here said.
The Governing Council implored the U.S. government Tuesday for more authority to deal with security issues, saying in a letter to President Bush that Iraqis "are more able than others to handle this matter."
"We appeal to you, Mr. President, to transfer more authority to Iraqis, so they can run their own affairs and combat the forces of evil that are trying to destabilize Iraq," Jalal Talabani, the current holder of the council's rotating presidency, wrote in a letter of condolence to Bush in response to the deaths of 15 American soldiers in a missile strike on a transport helicopter.
As the council made its plea to Bush, Iraq was wracked by another day of violence. Three explosions, caused by mortars or rockets, occurred inside the supposedly secure headquarters zone of the occupation authority in Baghdad, wounding four people, military officials said. One soldier from the Army's 1st Armored Division was killed by a roadside bomb in the capital. And in the northern city of Mosul, an Iraqi judge was shot and killed outside his home.
The escalating violence prompted Spain, which is contributing 1,300 troops to the U.S.-led military force, to withdraw most of its diplomatic staff from Iraq. Britain, the second-biggest contributor to the force, said one of its marines was killed by hostile fire on Friday, the first fatality in more than a month among the 10,500 British military personnel in Iraq.
The unit that the Governing Council wants to create would be the most powerful domestic security force in Iraq, fueling concern among some U.S. officials that it could be used for undemocratic purposes, such as stifling political dissent, as such forces do in other Arab nations.
Council leaders said they wanted the force to be drawn primarily from former members of the military and police, as well as members of the security and intelligence wings of five political organizations: the Iraqi National Accord, the Iraqi National Congress, the Shiite Muslim Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and two large Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
"We have very well-established intelligence networks," the Iraqi National Congress official said. "If we can act on that information right away with a strike force, instead of waiting for the Americans to receive our reports and act on it, we can catch a lot more people than the Americans are now."
Occupation authority officials have expressed concern that such a force would give the five political groups unrivaled power in the country's internal security apparatus. But U.S. and British officials involved in security matters here say they believe the risks are outweighed by the potential gain of having Iraqis assume a more active role in hunting down resistance fighters. Until now, Iraqi police officers, most of whom lack adequate training and equipment, have been reluctant to take up that task.
"It would be good to have a group of Iraqis who are well-trained and well-armed and well-disciplined participating in the fight," one occupation authority official said. "Every bit helps."
Bremer would approve, the senior official said, if the members were carefully screened by the Interior Ministry and by the occupation authority, and received police training, not military instruction. In addition, the official said, Bremer would require that command-and-control issues with U.S. forces be resolved and that the force could not grow beyond more than a few thousand members.
Political party security organs and other militias could not join the force en masse, but members could join as individuals, the official said. "We're not going to have a process whereby militias are institutionalized here," the senior official said. If that happens, he said, "we will not have a unified Iraq at the end of the day."
Setting up this force, the official said, "will have to done very carefully."
Although Bush administration officials want to increase Iraqi involvement in pursuing resistance fighters, the entities created so far by the occupation authority -- a police force, a force to guard buildings, border police, a civil defense corps and an army -- are all subservient to Bremer. The civil defense units, which are recruited and trained by American soldiers, take their orders from U.S. commanders. While the police have more autonomy, they usually do not involve themselves in hunting down resistance fighters.
The creation of an Iraqi-run paramilitary unit would be a significant step toward giving Iraqis more power to tackle the escalating guerrilla activity and rampant crime that have shaken the faith of many Iraqis in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct their country and form a democratic government.
"We need to be equal partners with the Americans in promoting security," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a senior leader with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose militia, the Badr Brigades, has been patrolling cities in southern Iraq. "They want us to take responsibility. They need to give us the authority."
In his letter to Bush, Talabani wrote that "Iraqis are more able than others to handle this matter because they are well aware of the course of events in Iraq, more knowledgeable about the situation, the complexities of Iraqi society and the nature of Saddam Hussein's terrorist regime."
-------- israel / palestine
Israel gets apology for peace-threat poll
By Ed O'Loughlin
November 5, 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/04/1067708213036.html
The European Commission has apologised to Israel for an opinion poll wh