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NUCLEAR
Nuclear controls: Not just in Iran
CONGO - Opposition sold uranium to al Qaeda
CIA cannot rule out China-Pakistan nuke links
Germany Starts Historic Nuclear Shutdown
Germany's Retreat from Nuclear Energy Begins
EU big 3 draft tough U.N. nuke resolution on Iran
EU to take step closer to creation of weapons agency
Iran pursues plans for heavy water reactor
Annan urges continued cooperation between Iran, UN nukes watchdog
Recipe for Disaster
Pakistan insists it gave no nuclear help to Iran
Iran urged to ratify nuclear test ban treaty
Iran Leader Rips U.S. Occupation of Iraq
Pakistan Insists It Gave No Nuclear Help to Iran
EU Big 3 Draft Tough U.N. Nuke Resolution on Iran
Clinton calls for nonaggression pact with North Korea
N. Korea offers to give up nukes
CIA sounds new warning on North Korea missile that could hit US
U.S., S. Korea to Prepare for Nuke Talks
Nuclear power plants warned
New Indian Pt. Cooling System: Years in the Making, and More to Come
Change at Indian Point
Fuel factory plans might be postponed
Hanford downwinders claims have fallen to 1,816
Rumsfeld will restructure U.S. military forces in Asia
Song For Things That Never Were - America 2003
MILITARY
China, India Hold Historic Naval Exercise
Belgrade apologizes for war atrocities
Science Panel Warns of Bioweapons Future
IBM debuts 73rd fastest machine in the world
U.S. negotiators meet resistance in seeking exemptions to chemical treaty
Shake-Up Spoils Colombia's Effort to Cast Stable Image
Iran Leader Rips U.S. Occupation of Iraq
Contractors' Deaths Add to Iraq Toll
Guerrillas Posing More Danger, Says U.S.
Air Raid Sends Iraqis Message, but What Is It?
New Urgency, New Risks in 'Iraqification'
Iraqi Shiites Move to Fill Security Role
U.S. Intensifies Strikes at Guerrillas in Iraq
U.S. bases in Okinawa remain a divisive issue
U.S. to Reopen Saudi Diplomatic Missions
A Curtain Lifts on the Life of Spies
Pollard Denied Appeal, Chance to Review Papers
Antibiotics provided to combat blindness
Rumsfeld, on Asia Tour, Hints of Shifts in U.S. Forces There
Army National Guard Pay Problems Cited
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Partisan Sniping on Iraqi Review Halts Work on Senate Panel
Deal on 9/11 Briefings Lets White House Edit Papers
Bipartisan Debate on Patriot Act Is Urged
TSA Ponders Cargo Inspection Requirements
Study Calls California Parole System a $1 Billion Failure
U.N. experts warn of al-Qaeda using WMD in the future
ENERGY AND OTHER
DON'T LET THE WHITE HOUSE MISLEAD THE WORLD ABOUT SAFE, CLEAN ENERGY!
House and Senate Said to Reach Deal on Broad Energy Bill
Researchers Create Virus in Record Time Organism Not Dangerous to Humans
Treated Wood Poses Cancer Risk to Kids
ACTIVISTS
NRC seeks to weaken EJ policy, deter public involvement
Opposition to Enola Gay Exhibit Gaining Steam
London cancels police leave to handle Bush protesters
SUDAN - Students protest strike by teachers
Georgia Protests Rattle Shevardnadze
Forum challenges the value of war, Veterans Day
Physicist to speak on uranium threat
Antiwar activist says law on his side
GCHQ whistleblower charged
Sixth day of protests staged in Georgia
1000 demonstrate against Israeli barrier in West Bank
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear controls: Not just in Iran
Friday November 14, 2003
The Guardian
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1084783,00.html
Iran's agreement at last to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over the monitoring of its nuclear programme is an encouraging sign in a region otherwise short of good news. The threat of nuclear proliferation is even more worrying in a world which is now much less secure than it appeared at the end of the cold war. The mounting evidence of Iranian non-compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), coupled with President Bush's wildly exaggerated inclusion of Tehran in his "axis of evil", seemed to presage a new crisis with the potential for a new war. Partly through the sensible intervention of the EU - with Britain playing a positive role alongside France and Germany - that crisis has now been defused. The renewed assurances of the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, that Britain, at any rate, would never support war against Iran, are doubly welcome.
Yet the Iranian case also illustrates the fragility of the international understandings which restrain the world from nuclear proliferation, and any gain which has been achieved may soon dissipate unless much more attention is focused on the need to strengthen them. There is no hard evidence that Iran was actually working on an atomic bomb, in spite of Washington's claims, but it does seem fairly obvious that it was keeping its options open by experimental research in the secret programme which has now been revealed. The argument for doing so, favoured by hardliners in Tehran, included reference to the Israeli nuclear arsenal (notably free from western censure) and to the emerging US doctrine of preventive war.
We need to remind ourselves that the agreement in 1995 of the non-nuclear powers - including Iran - to the indefinite extension of the NPT was only secured in return for specific assurances given by the nuclear powers. These included a clear pledge by those powers "to exert their utmost efforts" to establish a nuclear-free Middle East. There has been mounting frustration even from US allies like Egypt that this pledge has never been followed through. Now that the supposed threat of Iraq is out of the way, there is even less excuse for ignoring it. The other pledge given by the major nuclear powers - to seek "effective measures relating to (their own) nuclear disarmament" is better known - but has been equally ignored.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of IAEA, has recently added his weight to a proposal which might go a long way towards giving the non-nuclear community more confidence in the good intent of the nuclear powers, while specifically addressing the problem of proliferation raised by the cases of Iran and North Korea. This idea is for an agreement to restrict the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium and its processing "exclusively to facilities under multi-national control". This would require an international control regime which has not been seriously contemplated since the abortive post-war Baruch Plan. It would reduce the risk of terrorist acquisition but, crucially, would apply to all facilities in all countries including those of the nuclear powers.
It may sound a tall order to expect the US and the other powers to submit to such controls. But it is the only realistic way by which parity can be restored to the unequal relationship between the nuclear haves and have-nots. The proliferation of the last decade of nuclear weapons in South Asia already shows that non-nuclear restraint can no longer be guaranteed. As Sir Joseph Rotblat, veteran campaigner for disarmament, told the Pugwash Conference in July, the possession of nuclear weapons is "equally unacceptable, whether by 'rogue' or benevolent regimes". With attention again focused on the problem, it is time to grasp this nuclear nettle.
-------- africa
CONGO - Opposition sold uranium to al Qaeda
November 14, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene.htm
LYON, France - A representative of al Qaeda bought enriched uranium capable of being used in a so-called dirty bomb from the Congolese opposition in 2000, according to sworn testimony quoted in a French newspaper yesterday.
An unnamed former soldier from the Democratic Republic of Congo has told investigators looking into the murders of two Congolese opposition figures in France in December 2000 that he had attended a meeting earlier that year at which the uranium was sold, the Lyon-based Le Progres reported.
The man "described a meeting which took place on March 3 in [the German city of] Hamburg between some Congolese men and an Egyptian by the name of Ibrahim Abdul," the newspaper said.
It quoted the man as saying, "I realized it was al Qaeda."
-------- china
CIA cannot rule out China-Pakistan nuke links
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Nov 14, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031114173637.bwta1jnv.html
The CIA says in a new report that it cannot rule out links between Chinese firms and Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, despite Beijing's assurances that it will provide no such help.
The Central Intelligence Agency also cautions that Chinese entities continued to work with Pakistan and Iran on ballistic-missile-related projects during the first six months of this year.
Despite a warming of relations in recent years, the United States and China frequently find themselves at odds over proliferation.
Washington has slapped sanctions on a long list of Chinese firms accused of links to nations including Pakistan, North Korea and Iran.
The unclassified report to Congress notes that Beijing promised Washington in May 1996 not to provide assistance to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities.
"We cannot rule out, however, some continued contacts subsequent to the pledge between Chinese entities and entities associated with Pakistan's nuclear weapons program," the report says.
The report notes that Beijing had taken some steps to educate individuals and firms on new missile-related export control regulations.
But it concludes that "Chinese entities continued to work with Pakistan and Iran on ballistic-missile-related projects during the first half of 2003."
Chinese assistance has helped Pakistan move toward serial production of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. It has also aided Iran's move to become self-sufficient in terms of producing ballistic missiles, the report said.
"In addition, firms in China provided dual-use missile-related items, raw materials and/or assistance to several other countries of proliferation concern -- such as Iran, Libya and North Korea," the report said.
China typically reacts angrily to US criticisms of its proliferation record.
In September, Beijing registered "strong opposition" after the US government imposed sanctions on the Chinese government and a state-run military firm for allegedly selling advanced missile technology to an unnamed country -- thought to be Iran.
In July, Paula DeSutter, a senior State Department official, said Beijing had failed to take serious steps requested by Washington to limit proliferation.
As a result, she argued that gaps in China's proliferation controls and a lax attitude by the government on enforcement were permitting Chinese firms to funnel illegal missile exports out of the country.
-------- europe
Germany Starts Historic Nuclear Shutdown
By TONY CZUCZKA
Associated Press Writer
Nov 14, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GERMANY_NUCLEAR_SHUTDOWN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BERLIN (AP) -- Germany began phasing out nuclear power Friday when a 32-year-old power plant was switched off forever, the first step toward a historic shift in the energy supply of Europe's biggest economy.
Eighteen remaining plants are to be closed over the next two decades under an accord between utilities and the government that bears the stamp of the environmentalist Greens party, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's junior partner.
Germany's second-oldest nuclear plant at Stade in northern Germany, operated by the E.On Kernkraft utility, was powered down at about 8:30 a.m., the Lower Saxony state environment ministry said.
Plans call for the 660-megawatt plant to be torn down starting in 2005, after spent nuclear fuel rods are removed and sent to France for reprocessing. Demolition work is expected to take up to 12 years.
Germany is the largest industrial nation to willingly forego nuclear power, which currently provides nearly one-third of the country's electricity. Alternative energy sources such as gas, but also wind and solar power, are supposed to make up the shortfall.
Schroeder pledged to phase out Germany's 19 nuclear plants during his first election campaign in 1998, which brought his Social Democrats and the Greens to power.
After lengthy and tough bargaining, the deal with power companies was sealed in 2001. Legislation passed by parliament to back up the accord includes a ban on the building of new nuclear power plants.
The shutdown was a key demand of the Greens, a party that grew out of Germany's strong anti-nuclear movement.
Spent fuel from German power plants is sent to France and Britain for reprocessing but returns to Germany for storage, triggering regular protests by anti-nuclear activists when the shipments come back to a disputed storage site.
----
Germany's Retreat from Nuclear Energy Begins
November 14, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-energy-germany-nuclear.html
STADE, Germany (Reuters) - Germany switched off the first of its 19 nuclear power stations on Friday, launching what it calls the world's fastest withdrawal from atomic energy but a policy that may still be reversed if the opposition takes power.
Germany's center-left government struck a deal with industry in 2000 to close all nuclear power plants by about 2025, the Greens making a phase-out a condition for forming a coalition with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats in 1998.
However, it is still unclear if Germany can meet the deadline and how it will replace atomic power, which provides a third of its electricity, while also meeting commitments to cap its emissions of greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuels.
With little fanfare inside the control room, the Stade plant, Germany's second oldest, ceased operations on Friday morning with the simple pressing of two buttons.
``All rods are engaged. We are now out,'' said shift leader Bernd Schroeder as the reactor near Hamburg shut off.
Greens Environment Minister Juergen Trittin said Friday's closure showed nuclear power had no future in Germany.
``No country is pulling out as quickly as Germany. Up until 2020 one nuclear power plant will be closed on average every year in Germany,'' he said in a speech
The Greens held a party in Berlin to celebrate, but operator E.ON said its 32-year-old reactor would have closed anyway on purely economic grounds without government pressure.
Opposition parties have threatened to reverse the withdrawal. Within government, Trittin is at odds with SPD Economy Minister Wolfgang Clement over how much to promote renewable energy as coal subsidies are phased out as Germany seeks alternatives to make up the nuclear power shortfall.
EUROPEAN LEADER
Like Germany, Belgium and Sweden have also announced nuclear phase-out plans. Sweden closed one reactor but postponed further closures after protests from energy-intensive industry.
France, which relies on nuclear power for 80 percent of its electricity, and Britain are keeping their options open to build new nuclear plants to replace aging ones.
Finland, the only country in western Europe expanding its atomic energy production, is soon to start building its fifth nuclear reactor.
``There's little sign of Europe following Germany. If anything it's going more in the opposite direction,'' said Berthold Hannes, analyst at consultancy A.T. Kearney.
``Germany's conservatives could also reverse the decision if they came to power. I don't think there will be any new nuclear plants, but the present ones could have their lives extended from 32 years to, say 50 years, or even 60 years as in the United States,'' he added.
Germany's VDEW electricity association urged the government to extend the lives of nuclear power plants, saying it would help the country keep to greenhouse gas limits. It called Stade's shutdown a routine closure, not an ecological triumph.
German Friends of the Earth was also not celebrating, saying some of Stade's output had been shifted to other nuclear plants.
Despite winning the pledge of an end to atomic power, anti-nuclear protesters are still a force to be reckoned with in Germany, with thousands earlier this week disrupting a shipment of nuclear waste returning to a German storage site.
The reprocessed fuel did complete its journey from France with the help of 13,000 police, but protesters secured extensive media coverage and ensured the nuclear industry remains a costly burden -- at least for the state which footed the policing bill.
Work on dismantling the 672-megawatt Stade nuclear reactor is due to begin in 2005, once its fuel has been removed.
----
EU big 3 draft tough U.N. nuke resolution on Iran
14.11.2003
(Reuters/BGNES)
http://www.bgnewsnet.com/story.asp?st=1969
VIENNA - France, Germany and Britain are preparing a toughly worded resolution criticizing Iran for concealing sensitive nuclear technology for decades from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, diplomats said Friday.
On Nov. 20, the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors meets to discuss an IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program, detailing 18 years of failures by Iran to inform the agency of all its atomic activities and facilities
The United States wants the board to declare Iran in breach of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would require it to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions.
A Western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity that Europe, Latin America and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), who make up a majority of the 35-member board, have "a more or less common opinion" against reporting Iran to the council.
"It would be extremely difficult, or simply impossible to reach a consensus on non-compliance (with the NPT)," the diplomat said, adding most board members favored a "strongly worded resolution that sends a very strong message" to Iran.
Diplomats said France, Germany and Britain had indicated they were already working on such a draft resolution, though they said nothing had been circulated yet.
It was unclear whether the proposal would be enough to satisfy the United States and its allies taking a similarly tough line on the Iran issue -- Canada and Australia.
Tehran warned Thursday that the crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear program could escalate if the IAEA finds it in breach of its NPT obligations and reports it to the Security Council.
"I hope we do not reach such a stage because then things could very easily get out of control," Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Reuters in an interview.
"And then it could lead to unpredictable consequences. We don't even want to think about such a situation," he added, without elaborating.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters on Friday during a visit to Japan: "We are strongly determined on complete transparency. We have cooperated even more than the IAEA expected."
The IAEA's latest report on Iran concluded there was "no evidence" to date that Iran's nuclear program was for anything but peaceful purposes, but said the jury was still out.
It said Iran hid a centrifuge uranium enrichment program for 18 years and produced small amounts of plutonium, useable in a bomb and with scant civilian uses.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, speaking to reporters, said Thursday the report made clear the Iranians had not been truthful about their nuclear activities.
"And I think the issue now is are they going to be truthful in the future? Are they going to come clean about what had been going on Iran, what is going on in Iran?"
These comments were much softer than those of Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who said Wednesday the IAEA report confirmed the U.S. view that "the massive and covert Iranian effort to acquire sensitive nuclear capabilities make sense only as part of a nuclear weapons program."
Bolton also said the IAEA's statement that there was no evidence of a weapons program was "impossible to believe."
The IAEA rejected Bolton's comment. "We stand by the report," spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said. Referring to a deal struck by the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Britain on October 21 in Tehran, Salehi said the three countries should keep their word and not support any U.S.-backed IAEA board resolution.
"We are testing how far we can trust the words of the Europeans on this particular issue. We have taken action on our words. We hope that the Europeans also take action on their words," Salehi said.
Iran had agreed with the Europeans to suspend its controversial uranium enrichment program and sign the NPT Additional Protocol permitting the IAEA to perform more intrusive, short-notice inspections of all its nuclear sites.
Monday, Tehran suspended enrichment and sent an official letter of intent to sign the protocol, as it had promised.
----
EU to take step closer to creation of weapons agency
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Nov 14, 2003
The European Union is set to approve Monday the establishment of a team to oversee the creation of a European weapons agency in 2004, diplomatic sources said.
European foreign affairs and defence ministers meeting in Brussels will likely approve the creation of this team before taking a final decision on the agency itself "when the time comes".
"They will agree in principle on the creation of this agency in 2004," one diplomatic source said.
A European weapons agency was proposed in the draft EU constitution agreed in June, which is now the basis of the constitutional talks being held between EU governments.
EU governments are currently grappling with the proposals to create an EU-wide arms agency which would help boost the bloc's military muscle.
It would notably coordinate purchasing and drum up contributions from member states.
Occar, the current European arms procurement agency formed by Britain, France, Germany and Italy for the management of collaborative armament programmes, has had a limited role, another diplomat said.
"This time we want to give (the EU weapons agency) every chance for success," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity, talking of a "logic of growth in progressive power."
The agency would be managed by the secretariat of the EU council of ministers, with EU defence ministers sitting on its board.
-------- iran
Iran pursues plans for heavy water reactor
By Jack Boureston and Charles Mahaffey,
14 November 2003
Janes
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir031114_1_n.shtml
Iran has admitted it is in the final phase of designing a 40MW heavy water nuclear reactor at Arak. Officials have said that the basic design of the reactor, called the IR-40, has already been completed, and that work has started on a more detailed design. Construction work is due to begin in early 2004. If this is the case, past historical data on the construction of heavy water reactors suggests that the IR-40 could be completed by 2009.
Although the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran has provided technical specifications of the reactor to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for review, the international community remains deeply concerned over the intended purpose of IR-40, its possible configuration and its capabilities.
Iran has stated that the IR-40 will be used for research and development, radioisotope production, and training. One main advantage of a heavy water reactor is the high absorption factor of heavy water (D2O) over other moderators. This translates into a larger number of isotopes being produced to satisfy the increasing isotope requirements in the medical and agricultural industries.
However, a heavy water reactor is among the most dangerous in existence from a proliferation perspective. One reason is that the low neutron cross section of heavy water allows a high number of U238 (uranium-238 isotope) atoms to absorb neutrons, resulting in the production of a greater quantity and better quality of plutonium product from a heavy water reactor compared to a light water reactor. According to David Albright, Director of the Institute for Science and International Security, the IR-40 will be able to produce 8-10kg of plutonium per year - approximately one to two bombs' worth of nuclear material. The IAEA holds that 8kg of plutonium constitutes a "significant quantity" - enough to build a nuclear weapon.
However, such estimates of yield assume that the IR-40 will be running at full power throughout the year and the total amount of spent fuel will be used for plutonium production. Also, such estimates of plutonium yield are not realistic unless the Iranians construct a plutonium separation (reprocessing) facility of sufficient size and capacity to support a plutonium-based weapons programme. That facility, if properly designed, might also accommodate the irradiated fuel from the Bushehr reactor, should Iran decide not to return it to Russia.
It is also possible that the Iranians could separate the spent fuel from the IR-40 and clandestinely hide portions of separated plutonium for use in a weapon at a later date. In this case, it would take longer to finally get to a "significant quantity" of plutonium. Either way, this reactor is a cause for concern, given the fact that similar reactors have been used to produce plutonium in other countries in the past; Israel and India used reactors of comparable design to the IR-40 that were capable of generating similar levels of thermal power to produce their first fission bombs.
----
Annan urges continued cooperation between Iran, UN nukes watchdog
UNITED NATIONS (AFP)
Nov 14, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031114180257.cjq7vna8.html
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Friday urged the UN's nuclear watchdog and Iran to keep working together amid a row over Tehran's nuclear programme.
In a statement from his spokesman, Annan said he "encourages the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), the government of Iran and the other governments that have been working with Iran...to continue their efforts."
He also welcomed Iran's announcement that it has stopped enriching nuclear materials, the spokesman said.
Iran is trying to keep its nuclear programme from being taken up by the UN Security Council, which could impose punitive sanctions on Tehran.
The IAEA board meets next week in Vienna to consider the agency's report on Iran and if it finds the country in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it could refer the matter to the council.
The report was the result of eight months of investigations, including dozens of trips by inspectors to Iran and intensive laboratory analyses of samples, since IAEA director-general Mohammed ElBaradei visited Iran to check out reports of undeclared nuclear facilities.
In it, ElBaradei accuses Iran of covert nuclear activities over the past 20 years, including producing plutonium and enriching uranium, but says there is not yet evidence Tehran is trying to produce an atomic weapon.
The United States accuses the Islamic republic of trying to build an atomic weapon and called the report "impossible to believe."
----
Recipe for Disaster
Asking the right Iran questions.
By Amir Taheri
November 14, 2003
National Review
http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/taheri200311140918.asp
Is Iran producing nuclear weapons?
Tehran says: No.
Washington says: Yes
The European Union says: Maybe. And next week the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to say: Maybe yes, maybe not!
Why are there such divergent views on an issue that, given the wealth of data now at the disposal of the IAEA, should not be so hard to handle?
Part of the confusion is because the wrong question is asked.
Iran is right in saying that it is not producing nuclear weapons. What Iran is doing is to set up all the technical, industrial, and materiel means needed to produce such weapons, if and when it decides to do so.
In other words, while not producing nuclear weapons right now, Iran has a nuclear program designed to make such weapons within 18 months. It is like a chef who brings in all that is needed for making a soup but does not actually start the cooking until he knows when the guests will be coming.
With a brief interruption in the post-Revolution era, this has been Iran's policy since 1970.
In the past three decades Iran has trained and mobilized the scientists and technicians needed, built the research centers required, and set up structures for a complete nuclear cycle, from raw materials to the finished product. In that sense Iran's nuclear program maybe better structured than those of several countries, including Pakistan, Ukraine, Serbia, and Brazil that helped with the various stages of its development. Iran has its own uranium reserves, regarded as among the richest in the world, and has a history of nuclear research that dates back to 1955.
Part of the Iranian national defense doctrine is based on the capacity to produce and deploy nuclear weapons within a brief time span.
Before the revolution Iran regarded its northern neighbor, the Soviet Union, as the sole serious threat to its national security. The Iranian war strategy was based on a scenario in which a Soviet invasion would begin with conventional weapons only. In that case Iran would withdraw its forces from its northern provinces, almost a third of its territory, to regroup them across the Zagross mountain range. After that Iran would threaten to use its nuclear weapons against Soviet occupation forces.
The hope was that Soviet leaders, faced with the high cost of a nuclear exchange would agree to withdraw their troops from the occupied provinces.
That scenario was based on the 1945-46 fight between Tehran and Moscow over the Iranian provinces of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan that had been under Soviet occupation since 1941. At that time the Soviets did not yet have nuclear weapons, and a threat from the Truman administration in Washington was sufficient to persuade Stalin that it was prudent to withdraw from Iran.
After the revolution, Iran's national defense doctrine has been based on the assumption that it will, one day, fight a war with the United States plus its Arab allies and Israel.
The central assumption of Iranian strategists is that the U.S. cannot sustain a long war. It is, therefore, necessary to pin down its forces and raise the kill-die ratio to levels unacceptable by the American public. In the meantime, Iran would put its nuclear-weapons program in high gear, and brandish the threat of nuclear war as a means of forcing the U.S. to accept a ceasefire and withdraw its forces from whatever chunk of Iranian territory they may have seized.
Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani has publicly evoked the possibility of using nuclear weapons against Washington's regional allies, especially Israel.
"In a nuclear duel in the region, Israel may kill 100 million Muslims," Rafsanjani said in a speech in Tehran in October 2000. "Muslims can sustain such casualties, knowing that, in exchange, there would be no Israel on the map."
Iran's top military commander, General Rahim Safavi, and Defence Minister Rear-Admiral Ali Shamkhani have also spoken about a military clash with the United States as the only serious threat to the Khomeinist regime in Tehran.
They believe they have three trump cards to play.
The first is that Iran has a demographic reserve of some 20 million people and is thus capable of sustaining levels of casualties unthinkable for Americans.
The second is that Iran is already the missile superpower of the Middle East and could target all of Washington's allies in the region.
"We have enough missiles for a rain of death the kind of which no one has imagined in this part of the world," Shamkhani claimed in a speech in Tehran in 1999.
Iran's third trump card is its nuclear program. Without it the other two cards will not have the effect desired, especially if the U.S. could unleash its new generation of low-grade nuclear weapons designed for battlefield use.
Hamid Zomorrodi, an Iranian strategy expert says it is unlikely that Iran will cripple its national defence doctrine by abandoning its nuclear aspect.
The real issue is not the bomb," he says. "Regardless of who rules in Tehran, Iran is sure to have nuclear weapons whenever its leaders decide to have them. The real issue is who will be in control of those weapons and who will be their target."
The view is echoed by Gary Samore, the nuclear expert in the Institute for International Strategic Studies in London.
"There is no doubt that Iran has a nuclear weapons programme," he says. "No amount of diplomatic manoeuvring and political pressure is likely to persuade Iran to drop what has become a top national priority."
Washington hawks believe that the only realistic policy towards Iran is one of regime change before the Khomeinists produce their nuclear arsenal. They believe this could be achieved with a mixture of military and diplomatic pressure combined with moral and material support for the pro-democracy movement in Iran.
The Europeans, however, fear that any attempt even at soft regime change may push the Khomeinists on the offensive in Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, Iraq, the Caucasus, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories.
"The Americans are right in asserting that Iran is the world's terrorism superpower," says Zomorrodi. "Strangely, however, they believe that Iran would not use its terrorism resources if and when its back is to the wall. That is a dangerous assumption. "
Olivier Roy, a French specialist on Iran, agrees.
He says it is wrong to believe that the tactic used against Saddam Hussein could also be employed against the Khomeinists in Tehran.
Saddam had no network of support in the region whereas the Iranian regime does and is thus in a position to make a great deal of trouble for the US and its allies.
On November 20, the International Atomic Energy Agency will submit its report on Iran to the United Nations' Security Council. An internal IAEA report on the subject, however, shows that Iran will almost certainly be charged with violating aspects of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) which it signed in 1970. The accumulation of detail in the report and in two previous assessments from Dr ElBaradei this year paints a picture of a long-term, sophisticated program running since the mid-1980s. Only this year did the rest of the world obtain a glimpse of the Iranian projects.
"Iran has now acknowledged that it has been developing, for 18 years, a uranium centrifuge enrichment programme, and, for 12 years, a laser enrichment programme," the report said.
Four unnamed foreign countries had helped the Iranians with know-how and equipment. Other sources have identified the countries as Pakistan, Serbia, Ukraine, and North Korea.
ElBaradei also said his inspectors had not yet resolved the origin of the weapons-grade uranium traces found at a Tehran plant and the Natanz enrichment complex. He insisted that to settle the plethora of open questions about the Iranian programmes, the IAEA would need "a particularly robust verification system," requiring "full transparency and openness on the part of Iran".
At first Iran said it had kept Natanz secret because it had developed the entire project with domestic technology which it feared might be "stolen" by others. But when traces of highly enriched uranium were found, Iran claimed that the machines installed at Natanz had been bought second-hand from abroad, and may have been used to produce weapons' grade materiel in their country of origin. IAEA inspectors also found the following:
Plutonium: Manufactured at a Tehran laboratory between 1988 and 1992, despite previous denials from Iran. Very small quantity extracted, not enough for a bomb. But Iranian scientists now know how to manufacture bomb-grade plutonium. If Iran does not plan to make any bombs there is no reason why it should produce any plutonium.
Laser uranium enrichment: Under U.N. questioning in October, Iran admitted it had built a pilot laser-enrichment facility at Lashkar Abad, northwest of Tehran in 1999. Four unnamed countries have been involved in supplying equipment and know-how for 20 years. The Iranians admit banned experiments there until this year. They say the facility was dismantled in May. Last month U.N. inspectors' requests to examine equipment and talk to the scientists were "deferred by Iran."
Uranium metal conversion: Uranium metal is most commonly used for nuclear missiles. Earlier discoveries of metal conversion work were explained away by the Iranians as "shielding material." In October they said the uranium metal was for use in the previously undisclosed laser-enrichment project.
Weapons' grade uranium: The IAEA's previous report disclosed traces of two types of weapons-grade uranium at the underground centrifuge enrichment plant at Natanz. The IAEA then reported traces of weapons-grade uranium at the Kalaye electric company in Tehran.
Heavy water: Iran has been working on heavy water, needed to manufacture plutonium, at a secret facility in Arak, west of Tehran since 1995. Having denied the existence of the facility, Iran admitted it last month but has refused to allow IAEA inspectors to visit it.
The real question is: Can the world accept the present Iranian regime with nuclear weapons?
It is clear that the answer cannot come from the IAEA.
- Amir Taheri, an NRO contributor, is an Iranian author of ten books on the Middle East and Islam. He's available through www.benadorassociates.com.
----
Pakistan insists it gave no nuclear help to Iran
14 Nov 2003
(Reuters)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL3994.htm
ISLAMABAD, Nov 14 - Pakistan on Friday reiterated its denial of reports that it had assisted neighbouring Iran's nuclear programme, calling them a reflection of "anti-Muslim bias".
A foreign ministry statement issued after a meeting in Islamabad on Thursday between Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Gulam Ali Khoshroo and Pakistan's Acting Foreign Secretary Tariq Osmal Hyder said both sides had rejected a report in that day's London Times as "totally baseless".
"These unsubstantiated reports occur periodically in some sections of the Western media and they reflect their long-standing anti-Muslim bias," the statement said.
The statement said that in Islamabad, Khoshroo had detailed Iran's efforts to resolve outstanding issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog. Pakistan said it hoped these would be amicably resolved.
Earlier this week, Iran brushed off an IAEA report that it had engaged in activities linked to atom bomb making, saying that violations it was accused of by the U.N. agency were "insignificant".
The IAEA said no evidence had so far been found of a bomb programme in Iran, but Tehran had dabbled in possibly linked activities like plutonium production and uranium enrichment.
The Times report quoted unnamed sources familiar with the negotiations as saying that Iran had told the IAEA in the past two weeks that it received crucial help from Pakistan for its controversial nuclear programme.
It said Iran had named Pakistan and several other countries as the source of components and advice used to make centrifuges to enrich uranium, the most controversial part of its research.
It said the IAEA was now trying to confirm exactly when the assistance was given and and whether it came from scientists acting on their own or on behalf of their governments.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan has denied reports that it supplied nuclear technology to North Korea, a country the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency says appears to have built one or two nuclear weapons.
Visiting South Korea earlier this month, President Pervez Musharraf said a reported visit by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's bomb, was connected with the purchase of conventional short-range missiles, not sales of nuclear technology.
A Pakistani firm Khan once headed was slapped with sanctions in March after Washington accused it of transferring nuclear capable missiles from North Korea to Pakistan.
----
Iran urged to ratify nuclear test ban treaty
Friday, November 14 , 2003
(AFP)
http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=19701&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs
VIENNA, Nov 13 - A United Nations commission on Thursday urged Iran, which has been accused by the United States of seeking atomic weapons, to ratify without delay a 1996 treaty banning nuclear testing.
Thomas Selzer, the president of the UN preparatory commission on the implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), said it would be a logical step as Iran appeared ready to heed other calls on its nuclear programme.
"Iran, which now appears ready to sign an additional protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), should ratify the CTBT. It is logical," he said.
Iran, which denies that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, signed the CTBT in September 1996, but has so far failed to ratify the treaty.
The treaty commits countries who have ratified to refrain from any kind of nuclear weapons testing.
The treaty appears likely to collapse as all the countries with nuclear capabilities must ratify it in order for it to come into force, and the United States has indicated that it has no plans to ratify it.
Under strong international pressure Iran recently announced that it was prepared to sign an additional protocol to the NPT that would allow surprise inspections of its nuclear sites.
It is expected to do so after a meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna on November20 .
The IAEA this week in a report accused Tehran of two decades of covert nuclear activities, including making plutonium and enriched uranium, but said it had found no evidence that the Islamic Republic was pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.
----
Iran Leader Rips U.S. Occupation of Iraq
November 14, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-US-Democracy.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's supreme leader said Friday that America's military occupation of Iraq was failing and criticized President Bush's call for greater democracy in the Middle East.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose hard-line Islamic establishment has been accused by the United States of not doing enough to prevent anti-American forces from entering neighboring Iraq, said U.S. troops ``are being slapped in the face every day by Iraqis.''
``They (the United States) invaded Iraq with a promise to free its people but they have created a deplorable situation there,'' Khamenei told tens of thousands of worshippers at Tehran's Grand Mosque during a Friday prayer sermon.
U.S. forces are coming under increased resistance from forces inside Iraq, with more than 50 coalition soldiers killed this month.
Khamenei said the Americans ``overthrew an Iraqi dictator (Saddam Hussein) and installed a foreign dictator (U.S. provisional authority chief L. Paul Bremer) in his place.''
Khamenei's comments come as Iran tries to disprove U.S. claims that it is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The dispute has further aggravated longstanding tensions in U.S.-Iranian relations.
Khamenei also assailed Bush's recent appeal to Middle Eastern states, particularly Iran, to do more to promote democratic reform.
``People who so openly disregard the rights of nations and views are ... mistaken to regard themselves as the custodians of democracy,'' the Iranian leader said.
Khamenei also used his mosque sermon to defend Iranian hard-line authorities who have cracked down on reformist publications, saying U.S. backers in Iran are seeking to use the country's press to bring down the ruling Islamic establishment.
The crackdown has put nearly 100 publications out of operation over the last 3 1/2 years for criticizing the rule of Iran's unelected hard-liners.
``Anybody provoking a psychological war against the (Iranian) establishment works for the U.S., no matter (if) he receives money for this or works (for) free,'' the leader said.
Unelected hard-liners control the levers of power in Iran and have blocked most attempts by the elected government to reform the country's Islamic regime. Khamenei has final say in all matters.
----
Pakistan Insists It Gave No Nuclear Help to Iran
November 14, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-pakistan-iran.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan Friday reiterated its denial of reports that it had assisted neighboring Iran's nuclear program, calling them a reflection of ``anti-Muslim bias.''
A foreign ministry statement issued after a meeting in Islamabad Thursday between Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Gulam Ali Khoshroo and Pakistan's Acting Foreign Secretary Tariq Osmal Hyder said both sides had rejected a report in that day's London Times as ``totally baseless.''
``These unsubstantiated reports occur periodically in some sections of the Western media and they reflect their long-standing anti-Muslim bias,'' the statement said.
The statement said that in Islamabad, Khoshroo had detailed Iran's efforts to resolve outstanding issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog. Pakistan said it hoped these would be amicably resolved.
Earlier this week, Iran brushed off an IAEA report that it had engaged in activities linked to atom bomb making, saying that violations it was accused of by the U.N. agency were ``insignificant.''
The IAEA said no evidence had so far been found of a bomb program in Iran, but Tehran had dabbled in possibly linked activities like plutonium production and uranium enrichment.
The Times report quoted unnamed sources familiar with the negotiations as saying that Iran had told the IAEA in the past two weeks that it received crucial help from Pakistan for its controversial nuclear program.
It said Iran had named Pakistan and several other countries as the source of components and advice used to make centrifuges to enrich uranium, the most controversial part of its research.
It said the IAEA was now trying to confirm exactly when the assistance was given and whether it came from scientists acting on their own or on behalf of their governments.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan has denied reports that it supplied nuclear technology to North Korea, a country the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency says appears to have built one or two nuclear weapons.
Visiting South Korea earlier this month, President Pervez Musharraf said a reported visit by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's bomb, was connected with the purchase of conventional short-range missiles, not sales of nuclear technology.
A Pakistani firm Khan once headed was slapped with sanctions in March after Washington accused it of transferring nuclear capable missiles from North Korea to Pakistan.
--------
EU Big 3 Draft Tough U.N. Nuke Resolution on Iran
November 14, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iran.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - France, Germany and Britain are preparing a toughly worded resolution criticizing Iran for concealing sensitive nuclear technology for decades from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, diplomats said Friday.
On Nov. 20, the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors meets to discuss an IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program, detailing 18 years of failures by Iran to inform the agency of all its atomic activities and facilities.
The United States wants the board to declare Iran in breach of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would require it to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions.
A Western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity that Europe, Latin America and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), who make up a majority of the 35-member board, have ``a more or less common opinion'' against reporting Iran to the council.
``It would be extremely difficult, or simply impossible to reach a consensus on non-compliance (with the NPT),'' the diplomat said, adding most board members favored a ``strongly worded resolution that sends a very strong message'' to Iran.
Diplomats said France, Germany and Britain had indicated they were already working on such a draft resolution, though they said nothing had been circulated yet.
It was unclear whether the proposal would be enough to satisfy the United States and its allies taking a similarly tough line on the Iran issue -- Canada and Australia.
Tehran warned Thursday that the crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear program could escalate if the IAEA finds it in breach of its NPT obligations and reports it to the Security Council.
``I hope we do not reach such a stage because then things could very easily get out of control,'' Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Reuters in an interview.
``And then it could lead to unpredictable consequences. We don't even want to think about such a situation,'' he added, without elaborating.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters on Friday during a visit to Japan: ``We are strongly determined on complete transparency. We have cooperated even more than the IAEA expected.''
TWO DECADES OF CONCEALMENT
The IAEA's latest report on Iran concluded there was ``no evidence'' to date that Iran's nuclear program was for anything but peaceful purposes, but said the jury was still out.
It said Iran hid a centrifuge uranium enrichment program for 18 years and produced small amounts of plutonium, useable in a bomb and with scant civilian uses.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, speaking to reporters, said Thursday the report made clear the Iranians had not been truthful about their nuclear activities.
``And I think the issue now is are they going to be truthful in the future? Are they going to come clean about what had been going on Iran, what is going on in Iran?''
These comments were much softer than those of Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who said Wednesday the IAEA report confirmed the U.S. view that ``the massive and covert Iranian effort to acquire sensitive nuclear capabilities make sense only as part of a nuclear weapons program.''
Bolton also said the IAEA's statement that there was no evidence of a weapons program was ``impossible to believe.''
The IAEA rejected Bolton's comment. ``We stand by the report,'' spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.
Referring to a deal struck by the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Britain on October 21 in Tehran, Salehi said the three countries should keep their word and not support any U.S.-backed IAEA board resolution.
``We are testing how far we can trust the words of the Europeans on this particular issue. We have taken action on our words. We hope that the Europeans also take action on their words,'' Salehi said.
Iran had agreed with the Europeans to suspend its controversial uranium enrichment program and sign the NPT Additional Protocol permitting the IAEA to perform more intrusive, short-notice inspections of all its nuclear sites.
Monday, Tehran suspended enrichment and sent an official letter of intent to sign the protocol, as it had promised.
-------- korea
Clinton calls for nonaggression pact with North Korea
JAE-SUK YOO,
Associated Press Writer (AP)
Friday, November 14, 2003
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/11/14/international0835EST0504.DTL
(11-14) 05:35 PST SEOUL, South Korea -- Former President Bill Clinton urged the Bush administration Friday to sign a nonaggression pact with North Korea to help end a yearlong standoff over the communist state's nuclear weapons program.
Addressing a crowd of South Korean politicians and celebrities, Clinton expressed hope that six-nation talks on the nuclear crisis -- which China is trying to put together, possibly for December -- would produce a "verifiable" agreement in which impoverished North Korea would give up its nuclear and missile ambitions in return for food, energy and other economic aid.
"And I would include an agreement between the United States and North Korea on nonaggression because I don't think our country will ever be aggressive against anyone who did not violate an agreement first," Clinton said.
"I don't think that we'd lose much by giving them an agreement that requires good conduct on their behalf as well as ours," he added. "That is what I hope and believe can be done."
President Bush has ruled out a nonaggression treaty with Pyongyang, but he has offered to provide North Korea with written security assurances in return for the dismantling of its nuclear program.
While Clinton was in office, the United States and North Korea signed an agreement in which Pyongyang promised to freeze its nuclear activities in exchange for better ties and economic aid. The 1994 accord collapsed last year when U.S. officials said Pyongyang admitted running a secret weapons program.
Washington and its allies later cut off shipments of free fuel oil. North Korea then announced that it was extracting plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods to build more bombs.
"If there is no other way (for North Korea) to make a living, the temptations of selling these bombs and missiles are very great," Clinton said.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly plans to meet with Japanese and South Korean officials next week to prepare for a new round of six-nation talks aimed at ending the nuclear crisis.
Kelly arrives in Tokyo Sunday for a three-day stopover before holding three days of talks in Seoul starting Wednesday.
Representatives of the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia held their first six-nation talks in Beijing in August. But the meeting ended without agreeing on when to meet again.
Diplomatic efforts to resume negotiations gained speed after North Korea last month agreed "in principle" to return to the negotiating table.
China, North Korea's major ally, has sent diplomats to North Korea, the United States, South Korea and Japan, to try to jump-start the second round, likely in December.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo pledged Friday to peacefully resolve the standoff and arrange new talks but gave no word on when more negotiations might be held.
Dai, who was in Tokyo to discuss the nuclear dispute, told Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi that China was working to schedule a meeting soon, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
----
N. Korea offers to give up nukes
November 14, 2003
By John Zarocostas
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031113-110713-6969r.htm
GENEVA - North Korean diplomats said yesterday the nation was willing to give up its nuclear deterrent, stop testing and exporting missiles and permit annual inspections as part of a grand bargain with its four neighbors and the United States.
In exchange, the diplomats said, the North expected written security guarantees and compensation for economic losses suffered by a decision to halt construction of two South Korean-made nuclear power plants in the North.
In addition, the envoys said the United States must pledge not to hinder the economic development of the North, particularly its dealings with Japan and South Korea.
Two diplomats, in a rare, wide-ranging interview, reiterated Pyongyang's position that it might be prepared to consider President Bush's proposal for written guarantees on security "positively" if they were linked to simultaneous diplomatic actions demanded by the communist regime.
The envoys said there is so far no confirmation of the date, but the six-way talks involving the United States, Russia, China the two Koreas and Japan are expected to continue, and they underscored that Pyongyang "agreed in principle to the next round of talks."
Until now, North Korea has been adamant it wants a nonaggression pact with the United States, which President Bush and his administration have refused.
On Oct. 22, Mr. Bush said "a treaty is not going to happen, but there are other ways to effect, on paper, what I have said publicly: We have no intention of invading. Obviously, any guarantee would be conditional, on Kim Jong-il doing what he hopefully will say he'll do, which is get rid of his nuclear weapons program."
A few days later, Pyongyang signaled its willingness to consider a written guarantee instead of a formal treaty.
When asked whether Pyongyang was still insistent on a North Korea-U.S. nonaggression pact, or could live with an accord signed by the six parties, one of the envoys, Kim Yong-ho, said yesterday:
"If Mr. Bush's proposal on written guarantees of security is based on the principle of simultaneous action which was proposed by the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea], we can consider positively about that."
The envoy said there is a need for simultaneous action between North Korea and the United States because, as he put it, "between the U.S. and the DPRK there is no confidence or mutual trust, so we cannot do first, and the U.S. cannot do first, so we do simultaneously."
Pressed on what he meant by simultaneously, Mr. Kim said "first guarantee the security, and second do not hinder the economic development of my country."
Kim Song-sol, the other senior North Korean diplomat, added that during the first round of six-way talks in Beijing in April, Pyongyang had proposed a nonaggression treaty, the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two, and the guarantee of the realization of economic collaboration between its neighbors South Korea and Japan.
The envoy added that the North's demands also include compensation for the electricity loss and to complete construction of the two light water reactors.
As part of the bargain in exchange, Kim Song-sol said, Pyongyang would "not manufacture nuclear weapons, allow annual inspections, dissolve the nuclear facilities, and suspend the testing of missiles or the missile export or such kind of things."
Turning to other issues, the diplomats also urged other governments "including the U.S., to push Japan to respond positively" to a proposal by Pyongyang for bilateral talks to discuss reparations for war crimes and other serious human rights violations inflicted by the Japanese military and imperial government during World War II and the period of occupation and colonial rule of Korea.
"Japan should respond positively in any way. It is a very critical issue to solve before the normalization of the relations between the two countries ... therefore the Japanese government should come to the table, as we proposed," Kim Song-sol said.
"We cannot explore any possibilities if Japan refuses the proposal," said Kim Yong-ho.
The envoys stressed that new evidence disclosing 420,000 victims forcibly drafted during the Japanese occupation has renewed calls for action on the past crimes.
This included about 200 women and girls who were sexually abused by the Japanese forces, and many more who were victims of torture or used as guinea pigs for experiments.
"Over 1 million [Koreans] were massacred by the Japanese and also 8.4 million Korean adults and youth forcefully drafted, kidnapped by the Japanese military and government and used as forced labor.
The last round of North Korea-Japan normalization talks were held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in October 2002, just one month after the historic visit to Pyongyang by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
The North says the addition of security preconditions by Japan linked to the nuclear issue and missile posturing led to the breakdown of talks.
However, for Japan the North Korean nuclear threat was a top security issue that had to be addressed in the talks.
----
CIA sounds new warning on North Korea missile that could hit US
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Nov 14, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031114165323.6ttbz7ns.html
The CIA is sounding a new alarm that North Korea may be ready to flight test a nuclear capable multi-stage missile capable of reaching parts of the United States.
The assessment in an unclassified report to Congress gels with another recent analysis of Pyongyang's missile programs by the Defense Intelligence Agency, made public last week, and will fuel fears the Stalinist state may end its missile test moratorium.
"The multiple-stage Taepo Dong-2 capable of reaching parts of the United States with a nuclear weapon-sized payload may be ready for flight-testing," the Central Intelligence Agency said in the report, which analyses weapons of mass destruction production for the first six months of 2003.
It is not the first time that the CIA has warned that Pyongyang may have reached the flight-test stage for the Taepo-Dong 2, but concern is growing with the Stalinist state locked into a nuclear showdown with Washington.
The agency said in previous reports that in a regular two-stage set up, the Taepo Dong-2 could deliver a payload of several hundred kilograms to Alaska, Hawaii and parts of the continental United States.
In an adapted three-stage configuration, the Taepo Dong-2 could in theory ferry a warhead to anywhere in North America.
North Korea has said it will stick to its missile moratorium until the end of this year, but yet to commit to extending it into next year.
Pyongyang's missile program has long worried the United States, and states like South Korea and Japan which are within range of its short and medium range missile arsenal.
Washington has also warned at North Korea's propensity to export missile technology and other ingredients of weapons of mass destruction.
The administration of president Bill Clinton strove to seal a pact with Pyongyang to end its missile program in the dying days of his administration in 2000, but the deal foundered on how it would be verified.
----
U.S., S. Korea to Prepare for Nuke Talks
November 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- A top U.S. envoy will meet with senior South Korean officials next week to prepare for a fresh round of six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the foreign ministry said.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly will meet officials from South Korea's presidential office and the foreign ministry during his three-day visit starting next Wednesday, the ministry said in a statement.
Kelly, who led the American delegation during the first round of multination talks on the nuclear crisis, is expected to visit Tokyo and Beijing before arriving in Seoul.
Earlier this week, South Korea and China expressed optimism that more talks would be held before the end of the year.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo vowed Friday to peacefully resolve the standoff over North Korea's nuclear ambitions and arrange the new talks, but gave no word on when more negotiations might be held.
Dai, who was in Tokyo to discuss the nuclear dispute, told Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi that China was working to schedule a meeting soon, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
Kawaguchi pushed China to include North Korea's past practice of abducting Japanese nationals on the agenda of upcoming talks. The ministry spokesman would not comment on Dai's response.
China hosted the first round of talks -- which also involved the United States, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia -- in Beijing in August. That meeting ended without an agreement on when to resume talks.
China, North Korea's leading ally, has been trying to jump-start the second round. Last month, it helped persuade Pyongyang to agree ``in principle'' to return to the negotiating table.
The nuclear dispute began a year ago when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted running a secret nuclear program in violation of international agreements.
The communist North is believed to already have built one or two atomic bombs and recently said it extracted plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods to build more.
Separately, North Korea on Friday berated South Korea for planning to deploy U.S.-made missiles near the border, calling them part of a U.S. plot to trigger a ``nuclear holocaust'' on the peninsula.
Early this month, South Korea said it would start deploying the Army Tactical Missile System Block 1A missiles next month near the border with the North. The missile, which has a range of 186 miles, can reach Pyongyang and targets further north, including North Korea's main nuclear complex in Yongbyon, where the country says it is using spent nuclear fuel rods to make atomic bombs.
The deployment would exacerbate military tensions on the Korean Peninsula, said KCNA, Pyongyang's official news agency.
North Korea, which often issues such belligerent statements, has deployed missiles capable of covering all South Korea and parts of Japan. It alarmed the region in 1998 by firing a new long-range missile that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific.
The North also urged South Koreans to resist Washington's request for troops to bolster U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.
Officials said Friday that South Korea has ordered its troops in southern Iraq to suspend their operations outside coalition bases, following Wednesday's deadly suicide truck bombing in Nasiriyah.
Last month, South Korea agreed to send additional troops to help U.S. forces rebuild the war-torn Arab nation but said Thursday it will not send more than 3,000.
The Koreas were divided in 1945. Since the 1950-53 Korean War, their border remains sealed and heavily armed.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- massachusetts
Nuclear power plants warned
By Suzanne Colonna,
MPG Newspapers
http://oldcolony.southofboston.com/articles/2003/11/14/news/news05.txt
PLYMOUTH (Nov. 12) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has notified all nuclear power plants, including Pilgrim, of its concerns for an increased threat potential during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Pilgrim spokesman David Tarantino said the Plymouth plant received a lengthy document from the NRC which outlined the commission's concerns about al Qaeda's intentions during Ramadan, which started at the end of October.
The NRC's concern is that al Qaeda members might seek to attack U.S. interests during Ramadan, which is Oct. 26 to Nov. 24, Tarantino said.
"They're telling us to be aware," Tarantino said. "We certainly take all these things seriously."
Tarantino said he could not give any specifics about changes in security protocol at the plant, which is owned by Entergy.
Duxbury resident Mary Lampert, of the group Massachusetts Citizens for Safe Energy, said she believes it was prudent for the NRC to alert plant operators.
"I'm very happy they're concerned and I'm very happy that they told Entergy they're concerned. The reality is they have to do something," she said.
During Ramadan or any other time of the year, Lampert said she believes the plant is vulnerable to attacks by land, air and water. As a "voiced target by the bad guys" the nuclear plant should be carefully protected, she said.
"We know we're highly vulnerable," she said. Many people have cited the fact that Pilgrim could be a potentially symbolic target for terrorist groups, and would have significant consequences. With that in mind, Lampert said she does not believe the proper precautions have been taken to protect the plant.
The issue, she said, is not one of opposing nuclear power plants. "It doesn't matter how I feel, it's there," she said. Ensuring public safety is the primary concern, she said.
Lampert said she would like to see experts from the nuclear industry meet with independent nuclear energy experts to discuss ways to address the potential for terrorist threats against nculear reactors - a threat that she believes exists.
But Tarantino said despite the heightened concern, the Plymouth plant is functioning at normal capacity. Plant security proceedures are designed to protect the plant from terrorist threats by land, air or water, he said.
He added that the public does not need to do anything different other than keeping their eyes and ears open.
"You have to be aware of suspicious activity and don't hestitate to report suspicious activity to the police," he said.
-------- new york
New Indian Pt. Cooling System: Years in the Making, and More to Come
November 14, 2003
By LISA W. FODERARO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/nyregion/14NUKE.html
A day after New York State laid out rigorous requirements for the Indian Point nuclear plant that were intended to reduce fish kills, environmentalists and other critics disputed the plant owner's claims that a new cooling system would cost more than $1 billion.
Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the owner of the plant in Westchester County, said a "closed-cycle" cooling system, which would reduce fish mortality by 97 percent, could be so expensive as to cause it to close the plant.
On one level, that is precisely what plant opponents would like to see. But the environmental groups and the state legislator who sued the State Department of Environmental Conservation to compel the installation of a new cooling system say that they were not motivated by a desire to see the plant shut down.
Rather, long before Sept. 11, 2001, and the concerns about the plant's vulnerability to terrorism, environmental groups were pushing the federal government and then the state to force Indian Point to install a new cooling system. Such a system would use recycled water and avoid sucking in up to 2.5 billion gallons of water a day from the Hudson River, killing millions of fish and their eggs and larvae each year.
The environmental group Riverkeeper - a party to the lawsuit against the state brought last year by Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, the singer Pete Seeger and others - said that over a year, Indian Point's current cooling system withdrew the equivalent of the entire volume of the river from Battery Park to Troy, N.Y.
Riverkeeper's predecessor, the Hudson River Fishermen's Association, along with the Natural Resources Defense Council and Scenic Hudson, have worked for 30 years to get Indian Point and other nonnuclear power plants along the Hudson to adopt closed cooling systems.
In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency, in its enforcement of the Clean Water Act, issued a similar draft permit in 1975 calling for the same kind of cooling technology the state recommended on Wednesday.
Years of hearings followed that draft permit; then the issue was formally delayed for 10 years, beginning in 1981. That was the year the groups signed a landmark agreement with several utilities and state and federal agencies that, among other things, stopped a fiercely contested pumped storage plant that Con Edison wanted to build on Storm King Mountain north of West Point, N.Y.
In exchange for the withdrawal of that proposal, the environmental groups and the regulators agreed that the utilities did not have to install the newer cooling technology for 10 years. After 1991 came more studies and negotiations but no action, and Indian Point was allowed to operate its present cooling system even after its permit expired.
So while environmental groups and Mr. Brodsky applauded the state's move this week, they focused even more on what they saw as a lax timetable for implementation, possibly as long as a decade.
Under the draft permit, which will enter a 90-day comment period, Entergy would not have to build a cooling system until it received a license extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The license for one of the plant's reactors expires in 2013, while the other expires in 2015. Entergy bought the reactors in 2000 and 2001.
A spokesman for the N.R.C., Neil A. Sheehan, said that nuclear operators must apply for renewal at least five years before the license is to expire. The agency then typically takes two years to grant or deny the license, which in Entergy's case, would bring the process to 2010. The new cooling system would then undergo an environmental review, a process that could take months.
"We've had 30 years of delay," said Warren P. Reiss, general counsel for Scenic Hudson. "This is the last ecological insult to the river. There is a remedy that is known and available, and Entergy should be obliged to implement it at the soonest possible time."
Entergy says the new cooling system would be so costly to build - $1.6 billion by its estimate - that it may opt not to renew its license. Jim Steets, an Entergy spokesman, said the figure included about $600 million in lost revenues from a nine-month shutdown of the plant during construction. "We may or may not apply for it," Mr. Steets said of the license renewal. "An order to install cooling towers may preclude it."
But a consultant hired by environmental groups said such a system would cost far less, $200 million to $360 million, said David K. Gordon, a senior lawyer for Riverkeeper. And the groups argue that a long shutdown would not be necessary.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Riverkeeper has been a forceful advocate of Indian Point's closing. While the group says it is not using fish mortality as another weapon against the plant, it does acknowledge a link.
"They have no right to kill over a billion fish each year," said Alex Matthiessen, executive director of Riverkeeper. "If a new cooling system helps make Entergy's enterprise unprofitable and forces them to shut down the plant, all the better."
--------
Change at Indian Point
November 14, 2003
NY Journal News
http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/111403/14eddec.html
The state Department of Environmental Conservation, weighing in on the future of the Indian Point nuclear power plants, spoke Wednesday for the silent denizens of the Hudson River - assorted minnow and anchovies, microorganisms and other aquatic life. The DEC told the facilities' human owners that their years-long free ride on environmental controls was over - sort of.
The agency ordered the embattled plants (1) to stop siphoning billions of gallons of Hudson water for cooling, in the process killing all manner of aquatic life, and instead to spend millions on new, more environment friendly technology, or (2) elect to make no changes, but halt operations in the next decade, when current operating licenses expire.
In other words, barring a major financial investment by owner Entergy Nuclear Northeast, Indian Point may continue its environmentally unfriendly ways on the Hudson until 2013 and 2015 - when the licenses for plants I and II expire, respectively - whereupon it would be forced to close. Either way, welcome change seems unavoidable at the plants in Buchanan, even if change is delayed.
The determination is "an enormous step to finally stop Indian Point from raping the river, which they have been doing for the past 25 years," said Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, D-Greenburgh, who has been pressing the DEC to act.
Plant foes said yesterday they would mount a legal challenge to the DEC's 10-year grace period as a concession warranted by neither the law nor the facts. But even non-action will cost Entergy: The DEC said it would fine the owners $24 million annually and use the proceeds to fund estuary-restoration efforts. Given the impracticality of simply closing the plants tomorrow, the fines seem sensible and proper.
The DEC orders come on the heels of other not-so-good news for Indian Point. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, said earlier this week that her congressional colleagues were poised to approve spending $1 million for a study on how to replace energy produced by a shuttered Indian Point. Last week, 50 local elected officials filed an appeal asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to overturn its laughable conclusion that emergency evacuation plans for the region surrounding the plants can effectively protect the public in an emergency.
But nobody's picking on Indian Point, which has enjoyed a long winning streak against the ecosystem of the Hudson, long stretches of which have been vanquished by Entergy's practice of siphoning river water for cooling, then discharging it into the river in super-heated, life-choking form. Under the federal Clean Water law, Congress requires polluters like Indian Point to utilize the "best technology available to minimize" the deleterious effects of their businesses on the environment. The trouble: Today's "best technology" easily surpasses the antiquated environmental controls employed at Indian Point, which first came on line in the early 1970s, back when mood rings were in vogue. The state has been looking the other way for years, while the plants dodged responsibility. Their state permits expired in 1997.
It took a lawsuit, filed by Brodsky, folk singer Pete Seeger and the environmental group Clearwater to get Albany to do its job. Supreme Court Justice Thomas Keegan had ordered the state to determine by today whether to issue so-called discharge permits for Indian Point, the Bowline Point Steam Electric Generating Station in West Haverstraw and the Roseton Generating Station in Newburgh.
What happens next is unclear. The changes sought by the DEC could cost Entergy $1.4 billion, according to the plants' owners; environmentalists contend the tab would be significantly less. In any event, change is coming to Indian Point and the Hudson River. On behalf of the humans and the fish and all living things, that's very good news.
[Yeah, if the owners opt not to build cooling towers and shut the plant down instead, the local residents can look forward to more frequent power outages, or higher energy bills and more CO2, NOx, So2, heavy metals, particulates, children's asthma attacks and premature deaths from the elderly. Oh, and similar water "use", and even more radiation, but nothing to worry about. References available. - JH]
-------- south carolina
Fuel factory plans might be postponed
The State: Columbia, SC
November 14, 2003
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/7261656.htm
Three antinuclear groups say a recent federal decision could delay plans to build a multibillion-dollar mixed oxide fuel factory at the Savannah River Site, where much of the nation¹s surplus weapons-grade plutonium is being stockpiled for conversion to fuel.
But while acknowledging a recent change in the program, a federal official said Thursday it should not delay construction of the plant or drive up costs, as anti-nuclear activists contend. The fuel program is expected to cost about $4 billion, with construction starting next year.
In a Nov. 3 letter, the U.S. Department of Energy said it wants its chief contractor to move a radiation boundary closer to the site of the mixed oxide fuel plant. That means contractor Duke, COGEMA, Stone and Webster must evaluate how the change will affect design and costs of the plant, the letter said.
Spokespeople for the Union of Concerned Scientists, Georgians Against Nuclear Energy and Greenpeace said Thursday the DOE decision is a major blow to the mixed oxide fuel program. They believe the re-examination will cause delays in the program and higher costs, but they did not have estimates on how long or how much.
-------- washington
Hanford downwinders claims have fallen to 1,816
Friday, November 14th, 2003
By Annette Cary,
Tri-City Herald staff writer
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/4375838p-4384048c.html
SPOKANE -- The number of people suing because they believe Hanford radiation emissions damaged their health continues to drop.
On Thursday, defense attorneys told Judge William Fremming Nielsen in federal court in Spokane that what they initially believed would be 5,500 claims has dropped to 1,816.
That's a decrease of about 300 claims from the last status conference before the judge in September.
However, plaintiff attorneys said after the court proceedings that the 5,500 estimate was inflated and the claims never have totaled more than about 3,500.
Plaintiff attorneys are now interviewing individual clients to assess their claims, some of which were filed 12 years ago.
Many clients have been moved to an inactive list because the science doesn't exist to show that radiation from Hanford could have caused their illness, or because they received too little radiation for a strong case to be made.
At least half of the people still in the suit are seeking compensation for hypothyroidism, or underactive thyroids, which they believe was caused by radiation released from the Hanford nuclear reservation.
During World War II and part of the Cold War, radioactive iodine was released into the air as plutonium was made at Hanford.
It drifted downwind to contaminate food and the milk of cows that grazed on contaminated grass. In humans, radioactive iodine concentrates in the thyroid.
Some other claims are tied to eating fish from the Columbia River that may have been contaminated by Hanford releases into the water.
Difficulty in sorting out the claims also is affecting attorneys' efforts to come up with 15 claims each that would be narrowed to 12 total for a bellwether trial.
Nielsen is hoping that by taking a few of the claims to trial in March 2005, the two sides would have enough information to settle other claims.
The plaintiff attorneys withdrew one of their bellwether claims Thursday, saying it appeared their client was not willing to cooperate.
The defense said it would have to replace several claims because the downwinders have died as the case has dragged on and apparently have no relative continuing the claim.
As work toward a bellwether trial continues, Nielsen also has ordered mediation to start in early 2004.
Defense attorney Kevin Van Wart of Chicago said mediation would be premature before the defense knows what claims will be included in the case. Not only are some claims being withdrawn, but new claims also continue to be added.
However, Nielsen said the case has dragged on so long that mediation will start without delay.
Although past Hanford contractors are the focus of the suit, under the Price-Anderson Act that indemnifies nuclear contractors, the federal government is expected to be responsible for any judgments and is paying defense costs.
-------- us politics
Rumsfeld will restructure U.S. military forces in Asia
November 14, 2003
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031113-110658-6964r.htm
TUMON, Guam - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday he is planning a major restructuring of U.S. forces in Asia and elsewhere to meet changing threats.
The defense secretary told reporters aboard an Air Force KC-10 aircraft on the way here that "we are very systematically reviewing our arrangements in the world." No final decisions on how the new U.S. military force posture will be structured and based have been made, he said.
"But it's been a big effort for the United States and it's something that I believe will undoubtedly take a period of years to complete," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Mr. Rumsfeld said the restructuring will be part of a global adjustment of U.S. forces that will "considerably better position the United States than we have been" since the end of the Cold War.
The defense secretary believes that the static defensive positions implemented by Washington and many of its allies during the Cold War are not well suited to deal with the changing security threats of the 21st century, including terrorism.
In remarks today to troops at Anderson Air Force Base, he reiterated that view while thanking troops for their sacrifice and vigilance.
"It is really a choice between freedom and fear. Free people cannot live in fear," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "The terrorists can attack at any time, in any location and it's not possible to defend everywhere. That's just not doable.
"The thought that you can just kind of defend against and hide is unfortunately invalid, which is why your country, our country, is ... taking the battle to the terrorists."
During a helicopter tour today of Guam, Mr. Rumsfeld visited the U.S. Navy base, several hundred miles northeast of the Philippines and the base for two Los Angeles-class attack submarines. He also ate lunch with a group of airmen and sailors at Anderson.
Mr. Rumsfeld's seven-day visit to Asia, his first since becoming defense secretary in January 2001, also will include visits to Japan and South Korea.
The visit comes amid tensions over North Korea's nuclear arms program, to which Mr. Rumsfeld said the Bush administration is pursuing a diplomatic approach. "That is the path we are on," he said.
But when asked today about the threat from North Korea, Mr. Rumseld said Pyongyang has a million-troop army, ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction, but may be seeing its military strength sapped by its poverty.
"Is it a threat? You bet. It is a danger? You bet," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
"It is not a democracy," he noted, adding that democracies tend to be less warlike.
He called North Korea a "tragedy" because of the repressive communist system.
"It is a country where many of the people starve, many people are trying to leave that country ... there are large concentration camps where people are imprisoned."
The North Korean military recently lowered the height and weight requirements for soldiers because of the starvation around the country made it harder to find qualified recruits, he said.
Also, soldiers appear to be 14 or 15 years old when they join, instead of at least 17 or 18, he said, a sign the military is having trouble.
A U.S. official on the plane to Guam said Pyongyang's communist regime has been trying to limit the talks to a two-way U.S.-North Korea discussion.
"We have to resist attempts by North Korea to bilateralize it, which continues to this day," the official said on the condition of anonymity.
Mr. Rumsfeld is expected to discuss the repositioning of the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea during his visit to Seoul. The U.S. relocation plan calls for pulling back troops farther from the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea.
Mr. Rumsfeld said the end of the Cold War requires changing a "static defense" that successfully deterred the Soviet Union and its allies.
"The Soviet Union is gone and we're moving worldwide from a static defense to a different footprint, a footprint that recognizes that it's not possible today to predict with precision where a threat may come from, or exactly what kind of threat it might be," he said.
Meanwhile, the Air Force's senior military officer told Reuters news agency yesterday that the United States intends to rotate B/A-22 Raptor fighters, which enter service in 2005, to Guam as part of the increasing U.S. military presence in the Pacific.
----
Song For Things That Never Were - America 2003
November 14, 2003
Democratic Underground
By Michael Arvey
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/11/14_song.html
"Over the years, an understanding of what America really stands for is going to count far more than missiles, aircraft carriers, and supersonic bombers." - Robert F. Kennedy
A November again, 2003 - a chill laces the air, brief snow flurries punctuate diminished days, leaves crab over one another as wind sweeps them down the streets, and the moon is a puff of smoke adrift in the sky. Across the nation, soup kitchens overflow, and the homeless haunt the streets along with the leaves. In Iraq, U.S. soldiers, most of them in their early twenties, get picked off one by one by Iraqi resistance fighters. Excuse me, insurgents.
November 24, 1963. I'm huddled with tens of thousands of other mourners thronged along Pennsylvania Ave in Washington, D.C. A horse-drawn carriage rolls John F. John F. Kennedy's flag-draped casket toward the U.S. Capitol Rotunda where he will lay in state, prior to his burial service in Arlington National Cemetery. It is colder than we all know; we are miserable, and look to family and strangers for solace. We are united in our great, national, silent wail of grief. The bullets, at least, accomplished that. Whence, if ever, a unity in joy of community, sans pain? Jackie walks behind the casket with the brothers. She dons a black veil, walks toward a veiled future. Was it really only 40 years ago?
November 2003. A man who claims God speaks to him occupies the White House. Not that God doesn't whisper quietly to men and women in moments of stillness, but George W. Bush's claims are plain phony. False in one thing, false in everything. He and the coterie of officials who encircle him appear to be public waiters serving up buffets of deception. His rhetoric declares love and concern for America. He's not a skillful liar - I don't believe a word he says. His tone, his physical rigidity, belie convincement. He represents the dark side of America that exists solely for its narcissistic self.
June 3, 1968. I am flushed - I have just shook the hand of Robert F. Kennedy at a local mall in Stockton, California - a stump speech before he heads down to Los Angeles. Heads down toward a veiled future. He is charming, dashing, glowing, his eyes are blue as robin's eggs - if I were a woman I could fall for him. He is shorter than I imagined. Now I can't remember what he said, only the mood, the expansive spirit of the moment - tall as the moon.
June 4, 1968. The moon has fallen, as well as the sky. "Bobby" has just been shot at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. after having won the California primary. Surrealism has just dreamt its macabre masterpiece. I think now of Langston Hughes's poem, "A Dream Deferred." A nightmare incurred. Odd, this month is the fortieth anniversary of JFK's death, yet it is RFK my mind broods over.
November, 2003. George W. Bush sat out the Vietnam war in the Texas Air Guard, and for much of that time he was AWOL. Not long ago he snookered the nation by playing a pilot in a Navy flight suit and landing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln to declare, "Mission Accomplished." Mission: Oil and geopolitical control of the Middle East. As president, his policies are those of corporatism and militarism run amok with greed and fascistic overtones, and of bowing to the comfortable, the upper crust. Our president, right or wrong? At least one thing from the 60s hasn't changed - whether Vietnam or Iraq, the poorest members of our society are the ones who do the invading, killing and dying.
1968. RFK speaks on the subject of poverty and violence: "There is another kind of of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions: indifference and inaction and slow decay...This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter."
2002. A General Accounting Office report faults the Bush administration for diverting funds for programs serving poor children. God has blessed America with yet another guns-over-butter president, who oversees America's poaching law of capital accumulation in the Middle East.
May 19, 1968. RFK says in a press release, "If we cannot feed the children of our nation, there is very little we will be able to succeed in doing to live up to the principles which our founders set out nearly two hundred years ago."
November 3, 2003. Three million workers have lost their jobs since January 2001. According to a report by Julian Borger in The Guardian, in 2002, "1.7 million Americans slipped below the poverty line, bringing the total to 34.6 million." And, "The U.S. has the worst child poverty rate and the worst life expectancy of all the industrialized countries, and the plight of the poor is worsening."
Furthermore, he points out that 31 million Americans are "food insecure" - and are experiencing serious hunger. Apparently it's noble and patriotic to invade other countries to snatch their resources and secure U.S strategic military interests, but it's not noble or patriotic for the government to help the homeland. Instead, we are saddled with faith-based charities, which have no money. Patriotism is reserved for killing and stealing, as long as democratic appearances and illusions are maintained.
The president in his State of the Union address unveiled a part of his vision for the future: "Our goal is clear: We must have an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job." He means a minimum wage job, since manufacturers have fled the country and other businesses are outsourcing. Meanwhile, rampant illegal immigration occurs, taking up the few labor jobs left that U.S. citizens can't now fall back on even if they wanted. Unemployment is 6.1%. Bush's main goal was always clear - tax breaks for the already well-cologned. This is a man beholden not to the principles of law and democracy, or to the American public, but to the forces of corporatism and privatization.
I live in a vortex of time where persons on the political right act like terrorist hopefuls, saying they would like to kill liberals and Democratic presidential contenders. And this is a sivilized country, as Mark Twain might say?
June, 1966. RFK writes in a speech, "The essential humanity of men can be protected and preserved only where government must answer - not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, or a particular race, but to all its people."
1968. Asked how he would want to be remembered, RFK said, "I hope it will be because I made some contribution...to those who are less well off." He had joked, "I'm the only candidate who has ever united business, labor, liberals and southerners, party bosses and intellectuals. They're all against me."
October 2001. According to George Bush, "Oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America." By eating cluster bombs, depleted uranium, and vacuous rhetoric. Which America does Bush stand for - the one that rains bombs across the globe, or the one committed to moral idealism and its application? Vera et falsa.
November, 2003. President George W. Bush sees wrong and tries to worsen it; sees suffering and tries to privatize it; sees war and tries to extend it. From my standpoint, America feels vastly impoverished, its hope and dreams not just deferred, but lost on the wings of an ill-wind that blows out of Bush's Washington. The mood is brutal, overwhelmed by negative reality. The bright Quixotism of Robert F. Kennedy has long since evaporated and recycled as cynicism, which is what I suspect certain elements in the government hoped for.
Granted, the Kennedys were elites with their particular shortcomings, but they distinguished themselves by caring for the nation as a whole. I can't help but think that this one-dimensional character ensconced in the White House is only there to grab power and treasures for those that, as Molly Ivins might say, brung him there, and whose only luminescence is what gleams off from his dress shoes. As the looting of the national Treasury whisks forward, so, too, the looting of Iraq.
This is a president who has united nearly the entire planet against the U.S. Conversely, the country itself is a study in angered polarization, each side grinding against the other. What oracle, what oracle, will unveil the future?
It's another gloomy November.
Sources
On His Own, RFK. vanden Heuvel, William J., and Gwirtsman, Milton. 1970. Doubleday & Co.
Make Gentle the Life of this World. Kennedy, Maxwell Taylor. 1998. Harcourt Brace & Co.
"Long Queue at drive-in soup kitchens," Borger, Julian. The Guardian. November 3, 2003.
The Lies of George W. Bush. Corn, David. 2003. Crown Publishers.
-------- MILITARY
-------- asia
China, India Hold Historic Naval Exercise
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
Associated Press Writer
Nov 14, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHINA_INDIA_NAVAL_EXERCISES?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- China and India held their first-ever joint naval exercises Friday off Shanghai's coast, the boldest step yet in the steadily improving relationship between the giant neighbors and former foes.
The guided-missile destroyer INS Ranjit and guided-missile corvette INS Kulish staged maritime safety and search-and-rescue exercises in the East China Sea with the Chinese frigate Jiaxing and tanker Feng Chang, according to a statement from the Indian Embassy in Beijing.
"The joint exercises were conducted successfully," the embassy said.
The embassy said drills included a simulated fire aboard the Chinese tanker that was fought jointly by the Chinese frigate and Indian ships. A helicopter from the Ranjit also practiced evacuating injured. An Indian supply tanker visiting Shanghai remained in port.
The exercises highlighted the commitment of the two countries for increasing trust and understanding, India said. China's navy made no immediate comment on the exercises and foreign media were not permitted to view them. However, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told reporters Thursday at a briefing that China believed they would "further enhance friendly relations and improve further understanding between the two sides."
The day of drills followed similar exercises off Shanghai last month involving the Chinese navy and warships from Pakistan, China's longtime ally and India's nuclear neighbor and rival. Those exercises marked the first joint naval exercises between Chinese ships and the navy of another nation since the founding of the communist People's Republic of China in 1949.
The earlier exercises may have been aimed at reassuring Pakistan that improvements in Beijing's ties with India won't undermine long-standing close relations with Islamabad.
"China has normal state-to-state relations with Pakistan, and this exercise will not affect relations with Pakistan," Liu, the Chinese spokesman, said.
Those exercises were nearly identical to the China-India exercises, involving two Pakistani ships and about 700 sailors and men in a simulated joint search-and-rescue and anti-terror operation.
Underscoring the closeness of ties, Chinese officials met with Pakistan's deputy defense minister on Friday for talks in Islamabad on expanding military equipment purchases.
India and China fought a brief, bloody war along their Himalayan border in 1962. But in recent years, they have worked to increase political and economic ties. Negotiators have met several times to discuss the border dispute, and top officials of the two nations have exchanged numerous visits.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee agreed to the naval exercises during a visit to Beijing earlier this year. The sides also have pledged to open a highway to facilitate trade across the border in northeastern India's Sikkim region.
That new pragmatism reflects both countries' desire to focus on economic development and maintain peace and stability with their neighbors, said Zhao Gancheng, director of South Asia studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies.
The Indian ships arrived in Shanghai on Monday and have been docked off the Bund, Shanghai's riverfront financial district. Indian naval vessels have visited Shanghai four times in all since 1949.
-------- balkans
Belgrade apologizes for war atrocities
November 14, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031113-073234-3392r.htm
BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro, Nov. 13 -- The president of Serbia-Montenegro has apologized to the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina for atrocities committed during the 1992-1995 war.
The BBC said Svetozar Marovic issued the apology -- the first by a Belgrade official -- during a Thursday visit to the Bosnian capital.
Bosnian atrocities form part of the genocide charges at the trial in The Hague of former Serbian and Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Milosevic is alleged to have helped the Bosnian Serbs in the war, but he has denied the charge.
Bosnia is suing Belgrade at the International Court of Justice over the war that killed at least 250,000 Bosnian citizens and more than 7,000 in a single incident at Srebrenica.
Marovic -- a Montenegrin -- and his Croatian counterpart both apologized for the actions of their citizens in the 1991-95 war between the two countries.
During the first post-war visit to Sarajevo three years ago, Marovic's predecessor, Vojislav Kostunica, a Serb, had refused to issue a similar apology to Bosnia.
-------- biological weapons
Science Panel Warns of Bioweapons Future
November 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-CIA-Bioweapons.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Advances in biotechnology could lead to a generation of biological weapons far more dangerous than those currently known, scientists have told the CIA.
The life sciences experts, convened by the agency's Office of Transnational Issues, raised fears of genetically engineered diseases that ``could be worse than any disease known to man,'' according to the CIA's unclassified report on their conference.
The report, ``The Darker Bioweapons Future,'' speaks only generally of the dangers of newly created diseases and does not specify countries that could use them to threaten the United States.
``The same science that may cure some of our worst diseases could be used to create the world's most frightening weapons,'' the report says.
The report, dated Nov. 3, was posted this week on the Web site of the Federation of American Scientists, a government watchdog group. The group said the scientists met with the CIA in January.
Some advanced bioweapons already are possible to make, the scientists noted. They pointed to researchers in Australia who accidentally enhanced the mousepox virus by adding an immunoregulator gene, using a technique that could be applied to anthrax or smallpox, two diseases potentially capable of conversion into biological weapons.
The report also speaks of the possibility of designer diseases that would be immune to treatment, or that linger would inactivated in the body until the passage of a certain amount of time passes or until a specified second substance had entered the body.
Part of the danger of biological weapons, unlike conventional bombs or nuclear weapons, is their use might not be immediately obvious. Without a claim of responsibility or a lucky break by law enforcers, only when medical experts had traced an outbreak to its source would authorities learn that an attack had taken place.
``One panelist cited the possibility of a stealth virus attack that could cripple a large portion of people in their forties with severe arthritis, concealing its hostile origin and leaving a country with massive health and economic problems,'' the report says.
With so many potential threats, the experts proposed developing defenses aimed at strengthening the body's resistance to all disease, rather than creating treatments for individual diseases.
On the Net:
``The Darker Bioweapons Future'':
http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/bw1103.pdf
-------- business
IBM debuts 73rd fastest machine in the world
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
Tri-Valley Herald
Friday, November 14, 2003
http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~1766059,00.html
For scientists to conquer the toughest calculations -- weather forecasting, the knotting of proteins and the detonation of H-bombs -- the merely big supercomputers of today's design will become monstrous.
They will devour acres of offices, need giant cooling towers and consume power enough for more than 11,000 homes -- by some estimates, 60,000. The machine price alone could break $1 billion.
Stung by Japan's sudden rise to the top of the supercomputing world, U.S. researchers are trying leaner, more energy-efficient designs as an alternative to today's Big Iron on the path to astounding computational speed.
Today, IBM is rolling out the first arrival, a TV-sized supercomputer that already has leap-frogged to 73rd fastest machine in the world.
At peak, it runs at two teraflops -- two trillion calculations a second. For an idea of what that's like, consider almost 48,000 people punching calculators tirelessly for a year to match its sustained performance in that second.
It is the first of 128 modules of Blue Gene/L, an experimental speed machine that IBM is building for weapons scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, historically a test bed for the nation's fastest computers.
"We've shown some hardware to people already, and their reaction is it's looking really cool," said Mark Seager, the lab's lead scientist for the Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative.
When fully installed in early 2005 at the lab's TeraScale Simulation Facility, the machine is expected to topple the Earth Simulator, a Japanese machine that has dominated supercomputer rankings since June 2002.
"From where we sit, this is a stunning achievement -- to get so much power in such a small box," said Al Gara, Blue Gene/L's chief architect at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. "We would be shocked if anyone else came close."
IBM workers are hauling a piece of the machine in a briefcase to Phoenix for debut at SC2003, the showcase conference of supercomputing. Hook-ed to a plasma screen, IBM's computer in a briefcase will simulate a protein folding itself into a knot, one of most computationally intensive problems in science today.
The full Blue Gene/L will cover the space of half a tennis court and is expected to reach a peak speed of 360 teraflops, roughly 10 times the power of the Earth Simulator in roughly a fifteenth of the space and less than a third of the cost.
"It's a significant step forward in terms of delivered performance per megawatt of power. It's a step forward in delivered power per square foot of floor space, and it's a step forward in terms of performance per dollar spent," Seager said.
In the pricey world of supercomputing, the innards of Blue Gene/L are fairly blue collar: The wiring is copper, not optical fiber, and the chips are cousins of the low-power microcontrollers essential to cell phones and automobiles.
"What's really unique is a focus on getting very power-efficient, cost-efficient computing," Gara said. "Our basic idea is really to build a supercomputer that had a price comparable to a bargain-basement computer but with supercomputer functionality."
Today, most of the U.S. government's high-end classified supercomputers look like the server farms of Silicon Valley, but can act as a single unit of hundreds of processing nodes. That's the essence of IBM's ASCI White, a 12.3-teraflop machine running at Livermore today, and its successor, ASCI Purple. They're huge, powerful machines, very reliable at running general-purpose scientific simulations. They can run software on 1,000 or more microprocessors at a time for two weeks.
Blue Gene/L is a specially designed machine with more than 65,000 processing nodes, and scientists expect to run a few jobs at a time on it. That means rewriting the big software codes that simulate the physics of a nuclear explosion -- from high-explosive burn to the turbulence of semi-molten plutonium and gases to the behavior of ultra-hot radiation. The lab's software writers will have to learn how to juggle those problems among more processors than ever before and to minimize the kinds of physics that bog down the machine.
Meanwhile, the way Blue Gene/L handles each kind of physics simulation will tell IBM's designers how to rejigger the architectures of more mainstream machines for the U.S. military, intelligence and scientific community.
Beyond unclassified pieces of Livermore's bomb codes, Seager says scientists are itching to put the machine through its paces on climate models, building fire predictions, models of biological molecules such as proteins and supernova simulations.
"Part of what we want to do with this machine is not only make it look good but make it look bad," he said. "So we view this machine as a research vehicle, both for the applications and for software and hardware designers in order to explore this new design space with an eye to going to a petaflop later."
The federal government is hedging its bets. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S Department of Energy and other government funders are financing research into several ideas to reach 1,000 teraflops, known as a petaflop, the goal of Blue Gene/P and several research projects at Stanford, Notre Dame and Caltech. All are aiming beyond a petaflop, perhaps as far as exaflop -- a trillion trillion calculations a second.
Caltech's Sterling says Blue Gene/L's experiment in putting memory so close to processors is "a good incremental step" but computer scientists also are trying custom-design chips and packing them closer together.
"The question is, what is the long-term solution?" he said. "We need more unconventional architectures to do that."
-------- chemical weapons
U.S. negotiators meet resistance in seeking exemptions to chemical treaty
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
By Chris Tomlinson,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-11-12/s_10332.asp
NAIROBI, Kenya - U.S. negotiators met tough opposition Tuesday from both European and poor countries in seeking exemptions to a global treaty requiring nations to stop using chemicals that destroy the ozone layer.
The U.S. delegation was defending a request not only to be exempted from phasing out the insecticide methyl bromide but also to seek permission to increase production of the known carcinogen by nearly 30 percent.
The request was made at the 15th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, a normally routine annual event where politicians and scientists make adjustments to what is considered the most successful international environmental treaty.
The protocol established a system by which nations would gradually eliminate chemicals that destroy the ozone layer, which prevents ultraviolet light from reaching the Earth and harming living things. Methyl bromide is one of the last of the major chemicals to be phased out.
Under the protocol, wealthy nations are required to cut production of methyl bromide by 70 percent in 2003 and eliminate it completely by 2005.
Delegates meeting this week must decide on exemptions for countries that say they have a critical need for methyl bromide and have no alternatives.
The United States has so far complied with the protocol by cutting production to 30 percent of 1991 levels. But in its request for exemptions, U.S. President George W. Bush's administration asked to increase production to 38.2 percent in 2005 and 37 percent in 2006. If the exemption is approved by the meeting, the United States would produce 9,777 tons of methyl bromide in 2005.
"The request was based on our government's survey of the growing community in America and what their needs were and for them to analyze where they use methyl bromide and where they can use alternatives," said Claudia MacMurray, leader of the U.S. delegation. "We went through a substantial review of that ... and our government knocked the number way down."
The U.S. request was reviewed by a technical committee, which recommended that delegates approve one-third of the U.S. request, but it offered only qualified support for the other two-thirds. MacMurray said she would seek approval of the entire request, which she said was critical to American farmers.
During the meeting, the leader of the European Union delegation objected to the size of the exemption, saying that it should not exceed the 30 percent level. While European Union countries have asked to produce 4,154 tons of methyl bromide in 2005, only Italy's exemption exceeds the 30 percent level, and Rome has agreed to scale it back.
Delegates from Japan, Norway, Mexico, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic also criticized the U.S. requests. The head of the Japanese delegation told the meeting that even the 30 percent level was too high.
The chairwoman of the meeting asked the U.S. and E.U. delegations to propose solutions to the impasse. The meeting has until Friday to come up with a compromise.
David Doniger, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, roundly attacked the U.S. position as a major step backward. As a U.S. delegate under then-President Bill Clinton's administration, he helped negotiate the methyl bromide rules, and he described the U.S. position as part of an ongoing effort to subvert environmental protections.
"The Bush administration is catering once again to a powerful industry," he said. "It's the power companies one day, the oil companies another day, and agribusiness here."
-------- colombia
Shake-Up Spoils Colombia's Effort to Cast Stable Image
November 14, 2003
By JUAN FORERO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/international/americas/14COLO.html
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Nov. 13 - After taking office 15 months ago, President Álvaro Uribe said his ministers would remain with him throughout his four-year term, a pledge aimed at casting an image of stability and purpose in a nation where governments are usually scorned.
But in the last seven days, Mr. Uribe's reputation has been tarnished with the resignations, in quick succession, of three cabinet ministers, the armed forces commander and the chief of the Colombian National Police.
Cabinet shake-ups are common here and elsewhere in Latin America after political setbacks, and Mr. Uribe's first political defeat came last month when voters rejected a referendum that would have handed him new powers over state spending.
But the resignations here, announced one day after the other in dour news conferences without explanation, have led many in Colombia to question Mr. Uribe's right-leaning administration.
"The change in ministers, little by little, leaves the image that fires are being put out in an improvised manner," Rodrigo Pardo said in his column on Thursday in El Tiempo, the nation's top newspaper.
Fernando Cepeda, a former interior minister, said the changes will rejuvenate the cabinet and clear out government officials who had become a liability. But Mr. Cepeda said Mr. Uribe should have accepted all the resignations the same day, a tradition that sits well with voters, and offered an explanation.
"It's not a crisis, but the way this is happening - instead of coming naturally in a way that strengthens the government - gives the sensation of crisis," he said.
Officials in Mr. Uribe's administration, which enjoys strong backing from the Bush administration in its war against three insurgencies, said that Mr. Uribe, in his drive to break with the past, did not want to carry out the traditional one-day house cleaning of the cabinet.
They said that the departure of Interior and Justice Minister Fernando Londoño on Nov. 6 was necessary because he failed to win approval of the referendum in an Oct. 25 election. Mr. Londoño's relationship with Congress was also dismal.
The loss of the referendum means Mr. Uribe must try to obtain the fiscal controls he seeks by pushing legislation through Congress, which has been emboldened by the failure of the referendum and is now more likely to challenge his policies.
Mr. Uribe also welcomed the resignation of Defense Minister Marta Lucía Ramírez, whose clashes with several generals and outspoken manner were seen as counterproductive, a government official said.
"I think what the president has done is remove the two most controversial people from the government, people who were creating problems for the government," the official said.
Supporters of the shake-up in the security forces - the resignations of General Jorge Mora, the armed forces commander, and Teodoro Campo, who headed the police - say it will help invigorate the armed forces, particularly a police force scarred by recent scandals.
The cabinet replacements could not have been more at odds with those who left. Sabas Pretelt, the amiable director of the National Federation of Retailers, is taking over the Interior and Justice Ministry from Mr. Londoño, who was seen as arrogant and difficult. The new defense minister is Jorge Alberto Uribe, 63, a respected, American-trained economist and businessman who is a close friend of Mr. Uribe.
-------- iran
Iran Leader Rips U.S. Occupation of Iraq
November 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-US-Democracy.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's supreme leader said Friday that America's military occupation of Iraq was failing and criticized President Bush's call for greater democracy in the Middle East.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose hard-line Islamic establishment has been accused by the United States of not doing enough to prevent anti-American forces from entering neighboring Iraq, said U.S. troops ``are being slapped in the face every day by Iraqis.''
``They (the United States) invaded Iraq with a promise to free its people but they have created a deplorable situation there,'' Khamenei told tens of thousands of worshippers at Tehran's Grand Mosque during a Friday prayer sermon.
U.S. forces are coming under increased resistance from forces inside Iraq, with more than 50 coalition soldiers killed this month.
Khamenei said the Americans ``overthrew an Iraqi dictator (Saddam Hussein) and installed a foreign dictator (U.S. provisional authority chief L. Paul Bremer) in his place.''
Khamenei's comments come as Iran tries to disprove U.S. claims that it is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The dispute has further aggravated longstanding tensions in U.S.-Iranian relations.
Khamenei also assailed Bush's recent appeal to Middle Eastern states, particularly Iran, to do more to promote democratic reform.
``People who so openly disregard the rights of nations and views are ... mistaken to regard themselves as the custodians of democracy,'' the Iranian leader said.
Khamenei also used his mosque sermon to defend Iranian hard-line authorities who have cracked down on reformist publications, saying U.S. backers in Iran are seeking to use the country's press to bring down the ruling Islamic establishment.
The crackdown has put nearly 100 publications out of operation over the last 3 1/2 years for criticizing the rule of Iran's unelected hard-liners.
``Anybody provoking a psychological war against the (Iranian) establishment works for the U.S., no matter (if) he receives money for this or works (for) free,'' the leader said.
Unelected hard-liners control the levers of power in Iran and have blocked most attempts by the elected government to reform the country's Islamic regime. Khamenei has final say in all matters.
-------- iraq
Contractors' Deaths Add to Iraq Toll
UPDATED: Civilians Killed, Wounded in Rebuilding
By Seth Porges
NOVEMBER 14, 2003
Editor & Publisher Online
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2028500
NEW YORK -- Although the total number of American troops killed in Iraq is 397, as of Nov. 13, the overall American death count is higher. One group whose deaths often go unreported are independent contractors from American corporations working in the war-torn country. These fatalities, often from mines and ambushes, are rarely reported by newspapers and are not listed in the Pentagon's official death toll.
"I know contractors are not reported there," Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Joe Yoswa said about the official Operation Iraqi Freedom death toll. "I can tell you the contractors' names are not listed in the roll-up."
The Washington Post reported Friday that nine civilians working for the government have died in attacks in Iraq since the war began. Another 29 have been wounded and dozens have had close calls.
As of Thursday afternoon, three employees of Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton and the largest military contractor in Iraq, have been killed in Iraq since the war began. The contractor deaths were the results of a vehicle accident, an anti-tank mine, and a gunshot wound.
"On 10 July 2003 a KBR employee died as a result of injuries sustained in a single-vehicle accident near the city of Basra in southern Iraq," Halliburton spokesperson Patrice Mingo told E&P Online via e-mail.
The second KBR death occurred on Aug. 5 "as a result of injuries sustained when his truck hit an anti-tank mine," Mingo said. The third KBR employee died on Sept. 3 after being "fatally shot in Baghdad while driving a vehicle that was escorted by military personnel."
"KBR's primary concern is for the safety and security of all personnel, especially those working in such challenging environments and conditions," Mingo said. "We are proud of our many employees who are currently working in the Middle East in support of the U.S. military. These men and women are working hard in the midst of a difficult situation, and are doing a great job."
As a result of cutbacks in personnel, the military has increasingly relied on contractors to perform a wide range of tasks. The size of the United States standing army has shrunk from 2.1 million in 1990 to 1.4 million in 2003, according to an Oct. 30 Associated Press report. In an effort to free up more troops for combat, the military hires independent contractors for just about every other imaginable task.
The total number of contractors killed in Iraq is not known, nor is the number of contractors currently working in Iraq, according to the Oct. 30 AP article. "Estimates range from under 10,000 to more than 20,000 -- which could make private contractors the largest U.S. coalition partner ahead of Britain's 11,000 troops," the AP reported.
On Friday morning, The Associated Press reported that suspected insurgents raked a convoy with automatic gunfire, killing a U.S. civilian contractor and wounding another American.
The attack happened Nov. 13 west of Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad, said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, spokeswoman of the 4th Infantry Division.
The victims were traveling to the north of Iraq in a convoy when the gunmen, who were believed to be loyalists of ousted leader Saddam Hussein, approached from the rear and opened fire at them, Aberle said.
After the attack, a U.S. military rapid response team arrived, secured the area and brought the wounded to a medical facility for treatment. The wounded American was in stable condition, Aberle said.
She did not identify the dead American or his employer pending notification of relatives.
Separately, the U.S. military also is looking into the reported disappearance of an American contractor, Kirk von Ackermann, 37, of Moss Beach, Calif., who went missing last month while driving between Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and Kirkuk.
Von Ackermann's car was found abandoned on Oct. 9 on a roadside with his satellite phone, a laptop computer and a briefcase containing around $40,000, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Von Ackerman is employed by Ultra Services, an Istanbul-based company that provides supplies and logistics assistance for U.S. Army bases in Iraq.
----
Guerrillas Posing More Danger, Says U.S.
November 14, 2003
New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/international/14PREX.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - The senior American commander in the Middle East said Thursday that the Unites States-led occupation in Iraq faces no more than 5,000 guerrilla fighters, but that they are increasingly well organized and well financed, and are gradually expanding their attacks to the previously calm north and south.
His estimate of the scale of the shadowy armed opposition, the most precise from a top commander, came in a broad outline of the military obstacles his forces face.
The officer, Gen. John P. Abizaid of the Army, said loyalists to Saddam Hussein - not foreign terrorists, as some Bush administration officials have said - pose the greatest danger to American troops and to stability in Iraq. He said these militants were capitalizing on the political and economic turmoil to hire unemployed "angry young men" to do much of their "dirty work."
As the general described the challenges, President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, made her own outline of the political steps to be taken in Iraq, acknowledging that the United States was changing course on forming an Iraqi government.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, she said it was important to "find ways to accelerate the transfer of power to the Iraqis."
"They are clamoring for it, they are, we believe, ready for it," she added.
Ms. Rice said the administration had been persuaded by the Iraqi Governing Council that writing a constitution would take so long that Iraq and its American occupiers could not wait until it was complete to transfer more civilian authority.
In brief remarks to reporters, President Bush said the United States was developing a plan to "encourage more Iraqis to assume more responsibility" quickly.
Administration officials said Mr. Bush had approved in broad strokes the formation of a temporary government by the middle of next year.
The urgency has raised new concerns about the administration's policy in Iraq. After a long period of criticism, both here and abroad, that the United States was not moving rapidly enough to hand over power, there is now a growing anxiety that, for domestic political reasons, it may move too rapidly.
General Abizaid, who leads the United States Central Command, offered a sobering assessment of a guerrilla force that is dwarfed by the 155,000 American and allied troops and more than 100,000 Iraqi security forces, but is fighting an increasingly bloody low-intensity war that will claim more American lives.
"The force of people actively armed and operating against us does not exceed 5,000," he said at a news conference at his headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., which was broadcast to the Pentagon. "People will say, well, that's a very small number. But when you understand that they're organized in cellular structure, that they have a brutal and determined cadre, that they know how to operate covertly, they have access to a lot of money and a lot of ammunition, you'll understand how dangerous they are."
Military officials said the general's estimate was based on interrogations of captured fighters and other intelligence.
With the deaths of some 40 Americans in the past two weeks clearly weighing on him - and in the shadow of Wednesday's deadly attack on an Italian military compound in Nasiriya - General Abizaid said United States forces needed better and more timely intelligence to crush those responsible for the roadside bombings, ambushes and mortar attacks.
"Clearly I feel a sense of urgency," he said. "They're a despicable bunch of thugs that will be defeated."
In Nasiriya, the Italian defense minister, Antonio Martino, toured the bombed compound on Thursday. He told Italian state television outside the headquarters that Italy had "some fairly reliable intelligence information" that the bombing was mounted by a combination of "re-grouped Al Qaeda terrorists" and former members of the Fedayeen Saddam, the most brutal of the paramilitary groups that constituted a private army for Mr. Hussein's family. But he offered no evidence.
Investigators said they believed that only one vehicle, a Russian-made tanker truck, was used in the bombing, and that it carried two men.
The death toll in the attack rose to 31, including 18 Italians and 13 Iraqis, and seemed likely to move higher. One of the 22 Italians injured, a 22-year-old soldier, was declared brain dead by doctors at a military hospital in Kuwait. State funerals are planned next week for the Italians, 16 soldiers and military policemen and 2 civilians working with them.
While Italy has insisted that it will keep its troops in Iraq, the Japanese government, a similarly staunch ally of the Bush administration in its campaign in Iraq, suggested that it would delay sending ground troops.
The government had expressed its intention to dispatch a small contingent of noncombat troops from its Self-Defense Forces before the end of the year, followed by a larger force next year, in what would amount to the first deployment of Japanese troops to a country at war since the end of World War II.
But the attack on the Italians, in a zone that had been considered relatively safe and that the Japanese had regarded as a possible destination, caused them to backpedal.
"We have consistently felt that we would like to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq as soon as possible," Yasuo Fukuda, the chief cabinet secretary and the government's chief spokesman, said at a news conference. "But we have to consider the changing situation and respond accordingly."
In one measure of how serious the situation remains in Iraq, six and a half months after Mr. Bush declared major combat operations over, a senior military official confirmed that General Abizaid would soon move about 150 military planners to Qatar from his Central Command base in Tampa, and work from his headquarters in the Persian Gulf state to be closer to the operation in Iraq, where he has been spending most of his time. The move was first reported on ABC and NBC news programs.
General Abizaid said there was increasing evidence that the Baathists were coordinating on a regional level with small numbers of foreign fighters and terrorists, and that the militants might even be close to forming a national leadership to direct the attacks. He did not address the issue of whether Saddam Hussein was directing the attacks.
"There is some level of coordination that's taken place at very high levels, although I'm not so sure I'd say that there's a national-level resistance leadership," he said. elaborating. "Not yet. It could develop."
The general said he believed Mr. Hussein was still alive and in Iraq, but dismissed the notion that he planted the seeds for the current insurgency even before the war began last March.
General Abizaid said the military's strategy for defeating the militants relied on stepping up the pressure on the fighters and turning over more security responsibilities to Iraqis. But he was surprisingly blunt in describing the challenges to achieve those goals.
The 100,000 Iraqi security forces "are not as well trained as American and coalition forces yet," he said. "The police, in particular, need an awful lot of work."
In contrast, Ms. Rice painted a more optimistic picture of how the transfer was going, and said there was a compelling reason to put Iraqi forces on the street.
"I was asked the other day, `What makes you think the Iraqis will be more competent in dealing with foreign terrorists and with Baathists?' " she said. "And one answer is, `They will know that they're Baathists and they will know that they're foreign, which is already a very big step ahead.' "
Ms. Rice described the change in the political landscape in Iraq as chiefly one of timing. "It's the time line on the permanent constitution that's really extended," she said.
But other senior officials said that was a coded way of referring to looming arguments over the constitution, which they said were likely to focus on how much autonomy to allow provices, particularly the Kurds in the North, and the sensitive issue of whether Iraq will be a secular state, an Islamic one or something in between.
John F. Burns, in Nasiriya, Iraq, and Norimitsu Onishi, in Tokyo, contributed reporting for this article.
--------
Air Raid Sends Iraqis Message, but What Is It?
November 14, 2003
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/international/middleeast/14RAID.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 13 - After the start of a well-publicized offensive against Iraqi insurgents, American commanders said Thursday that they were intent on sending the rebels "a message."
But here at the site of one of the operation's primary targets, local Iraqis said they were uncertain what that message was supposed to be.
On the southern edge of the capital, a large building that American commanders said was a "meeting, planning, storage and rendezvous point" for the insurgents still stood, despite the military's claim that it had been destroyed in an airstrike the night before.
American soldiers came to the neighborhood several hours before the attack, local residents said, warning of the impending strike and making sure that everyone in the area was evacuated. Then an American AC-130 gunship strafed the building, knocking holes in the walls and wrecking much of the textile machinery arrayed inside.
After the strike, the Americans came back but detained no suspects, not even the owner of the building, and found no weapons.
The owner, Waad Dakhil Bolane, who said the Americans had warned his guards of the impending air raid, shook his head in befuddlement.
"Does this look like a military base to you?" he asked, standing inside his factory, which was still filled with textile machinery. "The Americans came here, told the guards to leave and then attacked. I don't understand."
American commanders, who have been threatening for days to crack down on the Iraqi insurgents, said later that they were certain that the building had been used to fire mortars at American soldiers. One local Iraqi man seemed to confirm this. Told by a visitor that he intended to visit the factory, the man, Dervish Mohammad, waved his hand in warning. "Look out," he said, "there are bad people in there."
But the commanders conceded that their primary aim had been to impress the guerrillas as much as to kill them.
"We were sending a message," an allied official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The message is, `We're coming.' "
In recent weeks military commanders have seemed to be judiciously choosing targets that provide relatively benign opportunities to remind Iraqis of the firepower they have at their disposal.
Last week, after the downing of American helicopters in Falluja and Tikrit, American F-16 fighter jets bombed rudimentary buildings that were suspected of harboring insurgents and matériel. Such planes had been used rarely, if at all, since May 1, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq.
Similarly, the AC-130 gunship, which was used Wednesday night, seemed to bring far more firepower than was needed to shoot up the textile factory. Even after the attack, the building still stood - readily available, it seemed, to harbor the same enemy meetings and planning sessions that were suspected before.
For all the technologically advanced weaponry employed in recent days, it is not clear what effect it has had on tamping down the insurgency. Wednesday, the day the American offensive began, turned out to be one of the most intense yet for American soldiers, who were attacked 46 times by Iraqi guerrillas.
In the last seven days, an American military official said Thursday, the average number of attacks per day against American forces has risen to 37, a step up from previous weeks.
American officials said they had killed or captured a number of Iraqi insurgents during the current offensive and had foiled a number of attacks. In the coming days, they said, the offensive would kick into a higher gear.
Indeed, by late Thursday, the sound of gun and artillery fire, evidently of American origin, began echoing through the Baghdad streets.
Late Thursday evening, American commanders said they had attacked one building and two suspected mortar sites.
The offensive, which was even given a fierce name, Operation Iron Hammer, was announced Wednesday in Washington shortly after it began. It seemed intended to lift the morale of American soldiers here, who have been the target of frequent hit-and-run attacks, which are difficult to repel.
The American officials said they had scored some notable successes on their first night. One came when they spotted a group of Iraqis firing mortars against American targets.
An Apache attack helicopter strafed the van that carried the group, killing two inside and severely wounding three. Five others were captured. American officials say they found an 82-millimeter mortar tube, three rifles and three cases of ammunition.
American officials said soldiers had also fired on a group of Iraqis who had been preparing to fire mortars at the headquarters of the American administration.
More such attacks, they said, are on the way.
"What you are seeing is offensive operations to go after our enemies in their lairs," an American official said Thursday in Baghdad. "We expect that these kinds of operations will continue for as long as they are necessary."
Remarks by military officials on Thursday echoed those made earlier this week by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who vowed to wage a more aggressive campaign against the insurgents and terrorists. General Sanchez and other American officials said they expected the number of attacks on American forces to rise in the near future as the American stepped up their operations.
By that calculus the American campaign may be a bloody one: in Tampa on Thursday, Gen. John Abizaid, head of the United States Central Command, estimated that the insurgents in Iraq numbered about 5,000.
General Abizaid and other have said the key to winning the war against the insurgents is having access to good information on their whereabouts. American commanders have acknowledged that they have been lacking in that area. But they insist that in regard to the textile factory, they were onto something.
So, apparently, did Mr. Muhammad, who warned of the "bad people" in the textile factory. Mr. Muhammad, moreover, did not count himself a strong friend of the Americans. He was in the spring, he said, just after the Americans had thrown out the government of Saddam Hussein. But since then, he said, too many things have gone wrong.
"In the beginning we were all happy," Mr. Muhammad said. "But security is so bad now, we have all lost hope."
--------
New Urgency, New Risks in 'Iraqification'
By Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 14, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38342-2003Nov13?language=printer
At least four factors forced the administration to overhaul its military and political strategy in Iraq, despite the danger that a new approach might actually diminish U.S. control over the country's future.
The foremost factor is the security risk -- from an Iraqi opposition that has become more intense, more effective, more sophisticated and more extensive. The other three are the failure of the Iraqi Governing Council to act, the Dec. 15 U.N. deadline for an Iraqi plan of action and the U.S. elections just a year away, according to administration and congressional officials and U.S. analysts.
All four factors produced a new sense of urgency in Washington. "In an atmosphere of heightened violence and instability, Iraq urgently requires a new political formula. The U.S. administration, increasingly alarmed at the turn of events, is considering a range of options. This will be its second chance to get it right; there may not be a third," the International Crisis Group, a nonpartisan watchdog, warned in a report issued yesterday.
The new approach amounts to Iraqification, or the handing over of responsibility for both a deteriorating security situation and a stalled political process to Iraqis. The goal, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters yesterday, "is that we find ways to accelerate the transfer of authority to the Iraqi people."
"They are clamoring for it; they are, we believe, ready for it. And they have very strong ideas about how that might be done," she said.
But Iraqification also poses significant hazards -- risks that emerge from the same security and political considerations that drove the administration's decision to change strategy.
As the administration sorts out a plan in talks with the Governing Council over the weekend, the first test may be in averting the appearance that the United States intends to cut and run. U.S. officials already sound defensive.
"We are not in a rush to leave. We will stay as long as we need to to ensure that Iraq is secure, that the hand-over makes sense and that a moderate Iraqi government emerges. And we're very capable of doing that," Army Gen. John Abizaid, the U.S. commander for Iraq and the Middle East, said at a news conference in Tampa yesterday.
Abizaid used the word "prudent" four times to describe his plans for Iraq.
President Bush said yesterday that the revamping of his policy was a "positive development" because it will get Iraqis "more involved" in the governance of their country.
But others were more skeptical. "If the policy is to more rapidly Iraqify the situation -- as in Vietnamization during the Vietnam War -- then that is another version of cutting and running. One way to cut and run is to simply say we're pulling out. Another is to prematurely turn over security to Iraqi forces and draw down American forces. That's a near-term prescription for disaster," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.
"All the political body language coming out of Washington these days seems to show that we are going to cut and run," said Thomas Mahnken, the acting director of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University. "That is precisely the wrong signal to be sending."
For an administration loath to concede it has made mistakes, redirecting U.S. policy is an open admission that the situation has reached a crisis point. Under mounting pressures, the White House had little choice but to effectively jettison the seven-point plan outlined by its own governor in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, just two months ago.
"We so underestimated and underplanned and underthought about a post-Saddam Iraq that we've been woefully unprepared," said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a Vietnam War veteran and member of the Foreign Relations Committee who has frequently visited Iraq. "Now we have a security problem. We have a reality problem. And we have a governance problem. . . . And time is not on our side."
Iraqification includes its own challenges. On the security front, experts worry that it will overburden the new and fragile Iraqi military and police units with limited training as they confront other Iraqis, particularly better-trained loyalists from Saddam Hussein's army.
"I'm not optimistic," said Gordon W. Rudd, a peacekeeping expert who earlier this year served on the staff of the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad. "On the one hand, it's the right thing to do. On the other hand, you simply can't rush it." Rudd said he is especially concerned that the faster the training, the more Iraqi police and other officials will simply be inclined to resume their old corrupt, authoritarian ways.
Some experts say, however, that Iraqification could create a more effective anti-guerrilla force because indigenous units understand their own society and can identify opposition forces. "I think it is logical," said Frances West, who participated in an initiative in Vietnam similar to the creation of Iraqi civil defense forces now. "If our soldiers have six months with such small units, they will turn out Iraqi forces superior to the threat as it now appears."
Accelerating the political transition is also risky -- and it could even jeopardize the goal of creating a democratic government. As part of the new strategy, the United States is prepared to endorse some form of elections before a new constitution is written -- reversing the order outlined in Bremer's seven-point plan -- to ensure that a new governing body would have the legitimacy that the current 24-member council, handpicked by the United States, lacks.
"Elections are always chancy. You don't know the outcome, and some of the wrong people may win out. But if we're advocating democracy, we'll have to take that risk," Hagel said.
There are no guarantees, for example, that either the constitutional committee or a reconstituted provisional government would back democratic ideas for a constitution. The most organized political forces in Iraq are the Islamist parties, particularly among the majority Shiite population, and the former Baathists among Sunni Muslims.
The two greatest U.S. fears are that Iraq will end up with a new autocrat or will become a theocracy rather than a democracy. Some U.S. officials fear that a transfer of authority before Iraq gets a new constitution could pose the danger that an interim leader becomes president for life.
Other dangers include handing over power to people who are not fully prepared to take political office or ending up after elections with a fractious constitutional committee or a provisional government unable to agree on the major political challenges ahead. If the United States draws down forces before political stability has been ensured, the differences among Iraqis could deteriorate into conflict.
"If [a new body] lacks strong grass-roots support, then it will be vulnerable to a violent takeover and Iraq could revert to its violent past," said Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst now at the National Defense University.
As Abizaid described the U.S. dilemma, however, the key question is not whether Iraqis can take over their own security and governance, but whether the U.S. public has sufficient patience to let that happen.
"The goal of the enemy is to break the will of the United States of America," he said. "It's clear, it's simple, it's straightforward. Break our will, make us leave before Iraq is ready to come out and be a member of the responsible community of nations."
Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.
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Iraqi Shiites Move to Fill Security Role
Religious Groups Set Up Checkpoints in Wake of Nasiriyah Bombing
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 14, 2003; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38193-2003Nov13.html
NASIRIYAH, Iraq, Nov. 13 -- Hours after a car bomb devastated the headquarters of the Italian military police here, the relatively tranquil streets took on a different cast. Barricades were thrown up across roads, cars were searched at hastily arranged checkpoints, sometimes marked by rocks in the street, and men in blazers rifled through identity papers.
Police? one of the men was asked. "No," he replied. Party? "Yes."
Religious parties, a wild card in the politics of Iraq's Shiite Muslim south, filled a perceived security vacuum after Wednesday's bombing and deployed dozens of men across Nasiriyah, signaling their intention to take security into their own hands. The show of strength underscored widely held beliefs in this Euphrates River city that occupation forces are incapable of countering an insurgency that has staged 13 vehicle bombings over three months. Only dramatic moves by local leaders can prevent more attacks, people here say.
"If the coalition forces will not do something for us, we'll do something for ourselves," said Abdel-Hamid Hasuri, the representative of the Islamic Current Party, a small, moderate Shiite group.
In contrast with Baghdad, Nasiriyah, a city about 185 miles southeast of the capital, emerged from fierce fighting during the U.S.-led invasion to enjoy a measure of success in reconstruction. Electricity was quickly restored, as was water. A nearby oil refinery is in operation, and a 30-member provisional council was chosen early last month to manage the city's affairs.
The city, one of the largest in a region that celebrated President Saddam Hussein's fall on April 9, had escaped the barricaded feel of Baghdad, where 20-foot-tall concrete barriers surround U.S. installations and local government buildings. Many facilities in Nasiriyah were guarded by little more than coils of barbed wire, and residents said Italian peacekeepers who patrolled the city with Romanian soldiers felt comfortable enough to roam the market unarmed.
In interviews, residents gave much of the credit to clergy and tribal leaders, who still wield great influence in day-to-day life. But Wednesday's bombing, which killed at least 31 people in the deadliest attack on foreign forces allied with the U.S. military in Iraq, sent a shudder through the community, reinforcing a sense that the project of rebuilding a strong Iraqi government is in limbo.
"We want a government that is not just decoration, a government from the Iraqi people," said Taher Feisal Jabr, 49, a businessman who lives just blocks from the blast, which shattered windows in his house and blew doors from their hinges.
The occupation still enjoys goodwill in Nasiriyah, which bore the brunt of much of Hussein's repression, and few here suggested that foreign troops should withdraw. But in a mantra heard often elsewhere in Iraq, many said they had lost confidence in the ability of these forces to deal with the guerrilla campaign. Security, they said, should be turned over to Iraqis. Many also expressed a desire for Nasiriyah and its surroundings to assume authority, given the lack of direction from Baghdad.
"The mission of the Americans now is to protect themselves, not to protect the Iraqi people," said Faris Habib, 51, the representative of the Shiite Dawa party, whose leader sits on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council in Baghdad.
The Dawa party, one of the most influential in Nasiriyah, had the most aggressive response among what Habib estimated were 10 parties reacting to the bombing. It set up 12 checkpoints across the city, he said, and had hundreds of men ready to take part, though they were frustrated by the Italians' refusal to grant them weapons permits. Since the start of the occupation, U.S. officials have repeatedly stated their opposition to militias, and parties like Habib's have been granted only a few weapons permits for personal security details.
"We have young people who won't sleep until morning," Habib said. "If they gave us authority now to control the security of Nasiriyah, I think we could control it 70 to 80 percent by ourselves. But they have to give us weapons."
The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, another mainstream Shiite party whose leader sits on the Governing Council, set up a checkpoint along a main road that was still in place Thursday. The men posted there made no arrests, but registered identity cards and searched cars for weapons and explosives, said the party's representative, Muslim Mohammed Husseini. Two of the party's men patrolled Nasiriyah in a white pickup, stopping cars they deemed suspicious, he said.
Like other party leaders, he was dismissive of the Iraqi police. They were too young, he said, and worried only about their salaries. To provide an alternative, he said, his party needed to arm about 10 men in each of its 16 offices in the city. Since arriving in the summer, he said, Italian forces have confiscated about 25 unregistered weapons from the group's members.
"We are the people of the town. We know the roads, the criminals and the strangers," he said at the party's headquarters, a former Baath Party office. "If the coalition keeps security in its hands, it cannot control it. It will only get worse."
The notion of party militias in the city, while welcomed by some, worried others who feared they might bring lawlessness. Graffiti on a wall read, "No, no to the parties," which number as many as 30, a dizzying variety colored by competing loyalties to senior religious clerics in Najaf, other towns in southern Iraq and the Iranian city of Qom.
The senior cleric in Nasiriyah, Sheik Mohammed Baqir Nasseri, denounced the lack of progress in creating a strong central government and in allowing the provinces to build their own institutions. He insisted that free and fair elections would be the only way to guarantee support for a future government and said the Governing Council remains too beholden to the United States. He ridiculed police, saying they were paid 10 times more than they once were but do 10 percent as much work.
But putting the religious parties in control of the streets would backfire, he said in an interview. They would abuse their power, and they could be infiltrated by the same assailants who carried out the attack on the Italian military police.
"It's a mistake," he said, wagging his finger. "It's a mistake."
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U.S. Intensifies Strikes at Guerrillas in Iraq
Several Targets Around Baghdad Hit; Governing Council Awaits Bremer's Return
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 14, 2003; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38194-2003Nov13.html
BAGHDAD, Nov. 13 -- The distant thump of explosions broke the quiet in Baghdad Thursday night, as U.S. forces made good on commanders' pledges to take the fight to guerrillas who have bedeviled occupation forces for weeks.
Helicopters, mortars and artillery were used to strike at least three targets near Baghdad's airport, near the town of Abu Ghraib just west of the city, and in an eastern neighborhood, military officials said. One target was a building from which guerrillas fired rockets at U.S. troops on Wednesday.
Operation Iron Hammer, the name of the campaign in its second day Thursday, marked another change in U.S. tactics to put down resistance in central Iraq. Since early summer, large-scale raids on towns and villages have been replaced by pinpoint search-and-seizure operations. Hearts-and-minds campaigns were replaced with attacks and roundups. Patrols have been expanded or reduced, depending on the danger.
"This is the same force that came out of Kuwait and won the war. We are able to transit very quickly from stability operations to others," said Lt. Col. George Krivo, a spokesman for occupation forces.
One military official said the aim of Operation Iron Hammer was not so much battlefield advantage as creating a perception that the United States has taken the initiative. "We are using conventional capabilities to shape the information fight," the official said. Managing perceptions is considered critical among top commanders, the official said.
Some American observers here are skeptical. "I don't know that this will impress anyone very much," said a senior civilian official in the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led administration in Iraq, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Maybe it will be good for the troops' morale."
In another indication of concern over security in Baghdad, U.S. officials announced Thursday that the 14th of July Bridge, a major river crossing that funnels motorists toward the occupation authority's headquarters, will soon be closed, only weeks after it was reopened. The move is aimed at keeping attackers who have fired mortars and rockets at occupation installations from getting close to their targets, the senior occupation authority official said.
While the U.S. military sought to show an offensive capability, Iraqi politicians were almost paralyzed in advance of the return of the country's top U.S. civilian administrator, L. Paul Bremer, from meetings in Washington with top Bush administration officials. Officials expect Bremer to arrive in Baghdad with proposals to force the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council to make arrangements for writing a constitution and setting a schedule for elections. The council faces a Dec. 15 U.N. deadline for action.
The council did not meet Thursday, and Friday is the Muslim holy day. So consideration of those key issues will probably not resume until Saturday. In addition, the holy month of Ramadan -- with its daily fasts -- is coming to an end, and Iraqis will soon embark on holidays of family visits and feasting. "It looks like four weeks of work on the calendar, but it's less than that," said an official with the occupation authority.
Council members are pressing Bremer to grant them more authority in governing Iraq. "Sovereignty must be returned to the Iraqis right away," said Intifad Kanbar, a spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, one of the council's component parties. "The answer lies in empowering the Governing Council and forming a provisional government."
Before taking on such responsibility, some members propose expanding the council to include nationalist figures and additional representatives of Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority. Sunnis dominate central Iraq, the area of greatest resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.
"We have to make these people feel involved. This will help isolate the supporters" of ousted president Saddam Hussein, said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the Governing Council.
Staff writer Colum Lynch reported from the United Nations:
Secretary General Kofi Annan and other senior U.N. delegates today praised the Bush administration's decision to speed up the handover of power to a provisional Iraqi government but said it would not be sufficient to attract wider international support for the occupation.
Last month, Security Council diplomats had assured the United States that its chances of obtaining greater military and financial support for its efforts in Iraq would be enhanced if it yielded power to a transitional government. But these diplomats said Thursday that the deteriorating security situation in Iraq and the targeting of Washington's military partners in recent weeks has scared off governments that were considering backing the U.S. effort.
"I think the U.S. is doing the right thing," said Heraldo Muñoz, Chile's U.N. ambassador and one of two Latin American envoys on the 15-nation Security Council. He added that "it may be too little too late. . . . The facts on the ground have gone the other way."
Annan was pleased by the U.S. policy shift, according to his spokesman, Fred Eckhard.
"I think he's gratified and feels it will be better for everyone involved in Iraq as well as for the Iraqis themselves," Eckhard told reporters. "As for whether it will have an impact on the return of U.N. international staff to Iraq, I think that is primarily a security issue. Should there be an improvement in security as a result of the change of approach, I think he would be more willing to consider sending his people back in."
Spain's U.N. ambassador, Inocencio Arias, said the U.S. shift would make it more difficult for insurgents to claim to be fighting to liberate Iraq. "Things will be easier because they will have no alibi to say that they are fighting against an occupation," Arias said in an interview.
-------- japan
U.S. bases in Okinawa remain a divisive issue
November 14, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031113-093531-4495r.htm
Masaaki Gabe, professor of international relations at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan, spoke with Washington Times correspondent Takehiko Kambayashi about the U.S.-Japanese alliance and issues regarding the U.S. military presence on the island. Okinawa comprises less than 1 percent of Japan's land mass but contains 75 percent of the U.S. military installations in the country. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is to visit Tokyo today and the subtropical island on Sunday. It will be the first visit to Okinawa by a U.S. secretary of defense in 13 years.
Question: Many Japanese believe that it was because of the threat posed by North Korea to Japan, which depends on the United States for its national security, that Tokyo agreed to send a detachment of Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) to Iraq to support reconstruction efforts following the U.S.-led ouster of the Saddam Hussein regime.
Answer: Japan has rarely said no to the United States regarding security issues. Thus its support on Iraq is not surprising at all. Japan played its role as a supporter of the U.S. And the rest of the world [would have just] said the move was expected.
Japan has not done anything new, and it was not just because of [Prime Minister Junichiro] Koizumi.
Q: On the subject of the U.S. military presence in Okinawa: During the campaign for last Sunday's election, Naoto Kan, leader of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), said that if his party won and he became prime minister, the new government would send the American troops home. Is that feasible?
A: I would say it's not feasible.
Q: In Tokyo, the threat of North Korea seems to silence debate over the U.S. military presence in Japan. How about in Okinawa?
A: It seems that the majority of the people [in Okinawa prefecture] would like to see some sort of reduction of the American troops. ... However, unless the Japanese government conveys that message to the United States, Washington would not know how to respond. Even if Okinawa and Washington try to look at the issue, it will never be put on the table as long as Tokyo says nothing about it to Washington.
Q: What would they do if the issue were put on the table?
A: In that case, what Tokyo does would be very important. Tokyo would not be able to deal with it unless the government had some sort of a blueprint, such as how to reduce the U.S. military presence in Okinawa and how Japan would respond in terms of commitments to the Japan-U.S. alliance. I don't think Tokyo has anything like that.
Mr. Rumsfeld comes to Japan just to make sure that everything goes well as scheduled on the Japanese side. And then Mr. Rumsfeld will tell Japan what the country can do for its noncombat mission in Iraq. As usual, Japan will meet U.S. requests.
On the other side of the coin, there is a good chance that the U.S. will listen to Japan's demand [as Japan has had more active cooperation with U.S. forces].
Even for a limited time, there seems to be more room for Japan to be assertive and play a proactive role in its diplomacy. I wonder whether the Koizumi government is ready to use this opportunity.
However, when the relations between two countries are too close and Japan does as it is told, Washington ends up not being concerned about anything.
Q: DPJ leaders said they would present their views to Washington if the party held the reins of government.
A: They seem to say so on the premise that they would not gain power. By talking about an impossible change of government, they warmed up the election. That's OK as party strategy, but if they attained power, they would find it impossible to change foreign policies right away.
For example, it would be difficult to stop sending the JSDF to Iraq, since the process is already under way. [Mr. Kan opposed the dispatch of the JSDF to Iraq, saying Japan should send troops to Iraq only under the umbrella of the United Nations. Yesterday, the Koizumi government ruled out rapid deployment of JSDF to Iraq following Wednesday's bomb attack that killed at least 18 Italian military police.]
The most [a DPJ government] could have done would be to reduce the size [of deployment] or put a time limit. As Japan has pledged to contribute $55 billion to the reconstruction of Iraq, it will have to be done.
Because there are so many other promises [to be kept by the government], they would have soon found it is not as easy to change things as they thought before the election.
-------- mideast
U.S. to Reopen Saudi Diplomatic Missions
November 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Saudi-US.html
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- The United States will reopen its three diplomatic missions, including its embassy in Riyadh, on Saturday, an embassy spokesperson said.
The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh and America's consulates in Jiddah and Dhahran were closed last Saturday following terror warnings, hours before suicide car bombers attacked a Riyadh residential compound housing mainly Arabs and Muslims. The attack killed at least 17 people and wounded scores more.
The spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity, urged American citizens to remain vigilant but said the diplomatic missions will resume ``normal operations, including consular services to the public'' on Saturday.
``We can't rule out that other attacks might follow,'' the spokesperson told The Associated Press on Friday. ``But we do want to reopen (our diplomatic missions) and we feel it is safe to do so.''
Americans in Saudi Arabia should avoid places where Westerners are known to congregate, vary their times and routes for essential travel, park their vehicles in protected areas and check their cars before using them, the spokesperson said.
The embassy also has suggested that strict security measures continue for U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia considering the suicide bombing and continuing concerns about future attacks.
During a weekly Friday prayer service at a Riyadh mosque, Saudi Arabia's top Muslim cleric, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheik, did not refer directly to last week's attacks, but denounced those who killed innocent people.
``Killing women, children and innocent people and trying to justify it is in act of evil,'' the cleric told worshippers from a mosque pulpit while being closely guarded by five heavily armed security men.
``Such acts will see (the attackers) end up nowhere but in hell,'' he said.
Last week's attack was portrayed by Saudis as proof of the al-Qaida terror network's willingness to attack even fellow Arabs and Muslims in its zeal to bring down the U.S.-linked Saudi monarchy. At least 13 of those killed were Arabs, with four still unidentified, an Interior Ministry official told the official Saudi news agency. Five were children.
In the attack, gunmen battled security guards at the compound of about 200 houses, located in a ravine surrounded by hills, then they drove into the compound and blew themselves up.
The attack left piles of rubble, hunks of twisted metal, broken glass and a large crater in the compound located not far from the diplomatic quarter and the king's main palace.
-------- spies
A Curtain Lifts on the Life of Spies
Former CIA Agents Adjust to the Overt World After Years of Telling Lies
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 14, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37228-2003Nov13?language=printer
During the first month they dated, Chris Eades told Michele Harris that he was a U.S. government official based in Europe. During the second month they fell in love, and by then Eades was free, for the first time in 22 years, to say what he had really done for a living.
On a rainy afternoon in March, as they were about to get in the car to visit the International Spy Museum downtown, Eades asked Harris to sit down for a minute. Downplay it, he told himself. Don't be dramatic.
"I have to tell you, the explanation I gave you before about my work was not true," he said. "I was under an obligation to lie. I worked for the CIA. I don't anymore."
Harris, a normally talkative person, did not speak. Her eyes widened as she leaned away from him and just stared.
They never made it to the spy museum that afternoon.
Eades was free to divulge his CIA work because the agency had agreed to "roll back" his cover when he resigned in March. His CIA colleague Valerie Plame had no such agreement in July, when a newspaper columnist with a well-placed administration source revealed that she works for the agency. Since then, Plame has declined to comment on the matter, but her case has lifted a curtain on living the covert life, which is at the heart of U.S. intelligence-gathering.
The CIA declined to comment for this article, but interviews with Eades, other former spies and intelligence experts provided a further glimpse into spy life -- how spies gain cover, what they do to maintain it, and how hard it is to come out, even when their departure is planned and voluntary.
Eades and other former CIA officers said there was no immediate psychological relief, but rather a pervasive anxiety over how to tell spouses, future spouses, family, friends and co-workers that they had lied to them.
Telling Harris and his own family the truth, Eades said, "felt like you dropped your pants, like you're naked." His younger sister had been so proud of his cover job that she had broadcast it to all her friends. When he told her it was a cover, he said, "she was stunned and confused." He is now working as a lawyer.
Kathie Ksen, who worked undercover for 25 years as a support staff member for CIA stations around the world, retired in April 2001. She still has not told her mother she was a spy.
"She might say, how could you have lied to me all these years?" Ksen said. "There are people in your life who you really wish you could tell, but you won't, because there's an underlying fear they won't understand. . . .
"You can leave the agency, but you can never quit," she added. "You don't know what that means when you're 21," which is how old Ksen was when she joined the CIA.
Hours before she agreed to be interviewed, Ksen and a friend were having a cup of coffee when he brought up the Plame case and the fact that Ksen had worked for the CIA. "He told me he found it difficult to be with me because I had been at the agency. . . . He told me it was unsettling" to know she had been trained to constantly assess people and to exploit them for information.
About 20 percent of the CIA's workforce is undercover and working for the agency's Directorate of Operations, whose mission is to steal intelligence from foreign countries or individuals and to carry out covert actions to influence or overthrow foreign governments or organizations.
The vast majority of those operatives work under "official cover," meaning they are given cover jobs as U.S. government officials, usually as State or Defense department employees. If caught or accused of spying by a foreign government, they would be accorded government status and protection.
A small but growing number of spies are trained to live under "non-official cover," or NOC, status. NOCs, as they are called, typically work in businesses or nongovernmental organizations overseas or in U.S.-based front companies or legitimate private companies that require frequent travel abroad. If caught or accused of spying, they would not be accorded diplomatic status or rights.
In either case, an operative's cover is created, and rolled back, by the CIA's cover staff.
Most undercover operatives use their real names. The cover staff creates fictitious paychecks and bank accounts, driver's licenses, parking permits, and building passes -- "proof" that the person works somewhere other than the CIA.
For NOCs working in front companies, it creates fake payroll checks, tax forms, incorporation papers, business cards, suppliers, phone lines, employees and whatever else it takes to thwart discovery -- including bankruptcy papers or closing notices when it is time to fold up an operation. "Unless someone deliberately burns them, you'll never find them," said Roy Krieger, a lawyer who represents CIA employees on work-related issues.
In recent years, the agency has rolled back most employees' cover when they leave the agency. The number who join the overt world each year is unknown.
During the Cold War, the CIA kept most retired employees undercover out of fear they would be prey for Soviet and East Bloc counterintelligence services. It was an expensive practice. Maintaining a cover means the false phone line has to work and someone has to be there to answer it. If the cover involved a front company, business records and even fake employees might have to be kept on board to thwart detection.
Even after the Cold War ended, some retired NOCs were required to live undercover until they died. At the same time, during the 1990s, the budget for the Directorate of Operations shrank by 20 percent, according to officials familiar with the CIA's classified budget. Partly with the budget in mind, and partly because many former "target" countries were no longer hostile to the United States, CIA officials decided to roll back nearly all retiring operatives' cover. Even some NOCs have their cover rolled back these days.
Ksen remembers the change. "Some people feared the change in policy because, my God, how do you live if your whole life has been a lie?" she said. "Some people I know have had an extremely difficult time readjusting to the overt world."
The first day Ksen's cover was rolled back, someone asked her where she worked, "and it just wouldn't come out," she said. "I couldn't say it, and when I did I was looking over my shoulder." Still, there were immediate advantages: She could finally give her agency phone number to her home repairman. Before, she always had to say she would call him.
Richard Brennan, who worked undercover for 25 years and now teaches high school history in the Washington area, had a hard time writing it down on his mortgage application. "I found it hard to put anything down on paper," he said.
Telling his children took his emotional vulnerability to a whole different level. His oldest, then 16, said "she didn't think I was that kind of person." Now, with the CIA's higher public standing after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "they are more intrigued with me."
Plame's case is different in that she was burned -- not once, but twice. The first time was by Aldrich H. Ames, the CIA turncoat who is believed to have given the Russians the name of every covert operative in the Soviet/East European Division over 10 years beginning around 1985. Not knowing exactly whom he had outed, the CIA recalled hundreds of operatives, including Plame, for their safety. Still, her undercover status remained intact until July, when syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak identified her by name as a CIA "operative" in a column about her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, whom the CIA had sent to Niger to check on allegations that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium oxide there.
It is difficult to assess the damage to national security from the Plame case without knowing her specific assignments. Between July and October, when the story of Plame's outing took on a much higher profile, the CIA was not officially assessing the damage from Novak's column. Nor was the agency taking, or recommending that Plame take, any particular security precautions.
The CIA has still not launched a damage assessment, but in matters that involve law enforcement, such as the Justice Department's ongoing investigation into who leaked Plame's name and occupation to Novak, the CIA typically waits until the case is wrapped up so that nothing it unearths is subject to discovery in court.
For officers posted in the Washington area, "cover becomes quite fragile," one retired senior CIA officer said. There are social circles -- neighborhoods, soccer leagues, cocktail parties -- filled with overt and covert CIA employees and Defense and State department officials.
Some former spies spoke of how they tried to halt lines of questioning about their work. "I tried to be as boring as possible," Brennan said. Others complained that their diplomatic colleagues too often engaged in games of "spot the spook," and even playfully outed them at cocktail parties. The spies considered it dangerous and irresponsible; the trick, former operatives said, was never to shirk from questions, but to turn them back on the questioner.
"A lot of people handle cover better than others," the retired senior CIA official said. "A few people I replaced walked around blabbing it. I had a hard time revealing my cover even afterwards, when I was allowed to."
So it was with Eades when he told his girlfriend the truth about his past. After staring at him for several awkward seconds, Harris nodded and said, "Oh. Okay."
To herself, she said: Is he nuts? Or just even more intriguing than I thought?
They spent a quiet day at Eades's apartment. She asked him no questions, she said, and just took time to absorb what she had heard. He waited anxiously to see whether their relationship would survive the revelation.
Several days later, Eades brought the subject up again. "Is everything okay?" he asked. "Everything all right?" He offered a little more, just the bare bones, which is all the CIA authorizes its former spies to divulge.
He had spent more than a decade traveling around the world with military intelligence. His subsequent CIA assignments were in Europe. He also worked at the agency's Counterterrorist Center.
"She was still very cool about it," Eades said. Later came questions about trust and lying.
"One of the things he asked me was, do you trust me?" recalled Harris. "My gut feeling was yes, I trusted him."
"It took me a while to get used to the idea, though," she said. But she did.
For Halloween, she taped a small ghost -- a "spook" -- on the front door as an inside joke. And later this year, Eades and Harris are going to get married.
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Pollard Denied Appeal, Chance to Review Papers
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 14, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36213-2003Nov13.html
A federal judge yesterday rejected requests by convicted spy Jonathan J. Pollard to appeal his life sentence and review classified government documents that Pollard contends will prove his spying was not as damaging or extensive as prosecutors had charged.
U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that Pollard, 47, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who admitted in 1987 to selling state secrets to Israel, had lost his chance to object to his punishment. Hogan said Pollard's request came in 2000, more than a decade after a former chief judge handed down the sentence.
Hogan also ruled that Pollard's attorneys have offered no compelling justification that they need to know the contents of sealed intelligence documents, especially "in light of the current security threats faced by our nation since September 11, 2001."
One of Pollard's lawyers, Jacques Semmelman, said yesterday that Pollard will appeal Hogan's decision on access to the classified documents to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and ask the same court for an opportunity to appeal the life sentence. He said Hogan's decisions do not address the merits of Pollard's requests but deny them based on time limits and procedure.
"Jonathan Pollard's life sentence was obtained through egregious violations of his Fifth Amendment right to due process and his Sixth Amendment right to counsel," Semmelman said. "Nothing in this opinion denies that. . . . And we intend to pursue every avenue of relief we are entitled to in order to vindicate our client's position."
In a standing-room-only hearing Sept. 2, Pollard's lawyers argued that Pollard's life sentence was "a stain on the American legal process" because government prosecutors promised not to argue for a penalty that severe and his previous attorneys failed to object when the judge meted out that sentence.
Pollard's new lawyers also told Hogan they believed that a sealed 1987 letter from then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger to the court exaggerated the damage caused by Pollard's sale of the secrets and attributed to Pollard crimes committed by other spies.
-------- un
UNITED NATIONS
Antibiotics provided to combat blindness
November 14, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/briefly.htm
NEW YORK - In a major boost to a U.N. campaign to eradicate an eye infection that causes blindness, Pfizer has announced that it will provide an antibiotic free to treat about 90 percent of the 150 million people afflicted.
The international organization leading the fight against trachoma-related blindness said it is "enthusiastic" that, with the medicine, it now can achieve the goal set by the World Health Organization of eliminating the ancient scourge by 2020.
In the past five years, the pharmaceutical giant has provided 8 million doses of the antibiotic Zithromax to the International Trachoma Initiative to treat sufferers in nine impoverished countries in Africa and Asia.
Hank McKinnell, Pfizer's chairman and chief executive officer, told a news conference on Tuesday that the initial program had been so successful that Pfizer would donate 135 million additional doses of Zithromax during the next five years.
In the past century, trachoma was eliminated in many countries, including virtually all of the Americas, but it is still prevalent in 48 countries in the poorest parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, where clean water and sanitation are scarce.
-------- us
Rumsfeld, on Asia Tour, Hints of Shifts in U.S. Forces There
November 14, 2003
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/international/asia/14RUMS.html
TUMON, Guam, Nov. 13 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld opened a six-day tour of Asia and the Pacific on Thursday, hinting at substantial changes in how American forces are deployed in the region.
Mr. Rumsfeld said the American military was emerging from an era of "static defense" built around a global chain of giant bases. Instead, he said, forces will be repositioned regularly among a potentially larger number of bases as required to meet any threats.
In his first trip to Asia since returning to the Pentagon for a second tour as defense secretary, Mr. Rumsfeld stressed that he was carrying no formal proposals for discussion in coming days with the leaders of Japan and South Korea.
But he said preliminary planning had evolved to the point where it was important to discuss "important conceptual changes" in talks with these two vital American allies.
"The United States has for several years now been very systematically reviewing our arrangements in the world, in various countries, and our force deployments," Mr. Rumsfeld said aboard the KC-10 tanker that flew his delegation to its first stop in Guam, an American territory viewed as an increasingly important base.
The United States has had "some preliminary conclusions," he said, and "we now are at a stage where we can begin discussions with our allies and with the Congress."
Decisions on the size, number and location of American bases in Asia, as well as troop strength and deployments of combat aircraft and warships to the region, cannot be separated from pending questions on the evolving military structure worldwide, he said.
It also is certain that Congress will weigh in, as future deployments abroad will affect the approaching discussion on base closings and realignments in their home districts.
The politically charged question of possible troop contributions by Japan and South Korea to the Iraq stabilization mission is also on the agenda, officials said.
"We'd like assistance," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "We'd like troop assistance, we'd like humanitarian assistance, we'd like financial assistance."
--------
Army National Guard Pay Problems Cited
Errors Affecting Morale, GAO Says
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 14, 2003; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38239-2003Nov13.html
Many Army National Guard soldiers called up to serve in Afghanistan and Iraq have found themselves fighting the Defense Department over incorrect and late paychecks, a new study shows.
In a report released yesterday, the General Accounting Office found numerous problems with Guard soldiers' pay due to poor customer service and cumbersome payroll systems. The errors included inaccurate, delayed and missing paychecks, overpayments and bungled accounting.
Such problems can have a "profound financial impact" on soldiers and their families and could hurt the Army's chances of retaining critical personnel when their enlistments end, the GAO found.
Pentagon officials say they are working to fix the problems, and members of Congress yesterday urged them to do so quickly.
"We're asking an awful lot of these men and women -- way too much for timely and accurate payment to not be a top priority," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee.
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of the panel's subcommittee on national security, said the pay errors represent "a virtual systemic meltdown of a critical support function."
Of 481 soldiers in six Guard units studied by the GAO, 450 had at least one pay problem associated with their mobilization, the report said.
Gregory D. Kutz, the GAO official who supervised the study, said such problems run throughout the Army National Guard, which has 350,000 people, including 90,000 who had been activated as of March 31. (The more than 1 million soldiers on active duty are on different pay systems not studied by GAO, he said.)
In one case, a sergeant stationed in Uzbekistan with a West Virginia National Guard Special Forces unit was ordered to pack up a box of supporting documents and make a four-day trip to Camp Doha, Kuwait, to straighten out the unit's numerous pay problems. In addition to taking him away from his normal duties, the trip proved potentially life-threatening, the report noted, because the sergeant's plane took enemy fire along part of the route. No one was injured.
In another instance, a mix-up in orders for 34 soldiers from a Guard unit in Colorado led to erroneous notices that they owed the government $1.6 million, or about $48,000 each.
In another case, a soldier repeatedly submitted documentation for a housing allowance, only to be told that it would be taken care of when he returned from deployment. When he got back, "he was told that he should have taken care of this issue while he was deployed and that it was now too late to receive this allowance," according to the 125-page report.
The GAO recommended nearly two dozen steps the Pentagon could take in the short term, including requiring unit commanders to get more administrative training and perform a monthly reconciliation of pay and personnel records, and automating some pay systems that depend on manual data input.
Kutz said interviews suggested that as many as 10 percent of soldiers in some Guard units are so fed up that they won't reenlist.
"They take a pay cut to do this, a lot of these guys. All they are asking is that they get paid what they are due," Kutz said. "It just exacerbates an already difficult situation."
Defense officials said in an Oct. 29 letter to Shays that they are working on the problem.
"Paying out soldiers accurately and timely is top priority within the Department of Defense financial management community," wrote Sandra L. Pack, assistant secretary of the Army; Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau; and Thomas R. Bloom, director of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Partisan Sniping on Iraqi Review Halts Work on Senate Panel
November 14, 2003
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/politics/14PANE.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - A bitter partisan dispute on the Senate Intelligence Committee over the handling of a review on Iraq intensified on Thursday, with Republicans and Democrats accusing one another of putting politics ahead of national security.
For the last week, the wrangling has effectively shut down the committee, disrupting work on matters that include negotiations with the House over next year's intelligence budget and oversight of developments in trouble spots like Iran and North Korea.
"There are pressing matters before our committee that need immediate attention," Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the committee's Democratic vice chairman, said in a letter sent on Thursday to Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican chairman.
The letter was signed by all eight Democrats on the panel, and it was intended as a retort to Senator Roberts, who ordered a halt to committee work last week to protest what he described in an article that appeared on the op-ed page of The Washington Post on Thursday as a Democratic effort to use the Iraq review to "conduct a partisan attack on the president."
Both sides say the wrangling within a committee that has prided itself on nonpartisanship is the most rancorous in years. It underscores how much each party believes is riding on the review into why some of the intelligence agencies' most crucial prewar judgments about Iraq and its suspected arsenal of illicit weapons now appear to have been wrong.
With the backing of Senator Bill Frist, the Republican leader, Senator Roberts said last week that all committee business would be canceled until Democrats repudiated an unpublished memo that described a strategy to focus criticism on the Bush administration for its alleged abuse of prewar Iraq intelligence. Republicans have also demanded that the Democratic staff member who drafted the memo be dismissed.
Senator Rockefeller and his fellow Democrats have refused to take that step, saying that the memo was nothing more than a draft.
In their letter to Senator Roberts on Thursday, the Democrats said the committee's work was suffering from a lack of attention on subjects including "the nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran, the insurgency in Iraq, and the growing threat of Al Qaeda around the world."
The Democrats reiterated their view that the committee's review must "explore fully the role of policy makers in the intelligence process, including the use or potential misuse of intelligence" before the American invasion of Iraq last March.
A statement issued by Senator Rockefeller's office said that senators had argued "that the American public and our troops deserve to know if the administration misused intelligence" and that it was the committee's responsibility "to get to the truth." Senator Roberts has consistently opposed that course, and he made clear in his op-ed article that his position would not change.
"The threshold question for the committee should be whether our intelligence agencies produced reasonable and accurate analysis, not how that intelligence was used by policy makers," he wrote.
Republicans on the committee have said they hope to complete the review by the end of the year, and to make its findings public early next year. At that point, Senator Roberts wrote, the Congress and the public "can then decide for themselves whether the intelligence was accurately represented by government officials."
--------
Deal on 9/11 Briefings Lets White House Edit Papers
November 14, 2003
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/national/14TERR.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - The commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks said on Thursday that its deal with the White House for access to highly classified Oval Office intelligence reports would let the White House edit the documents before they were released to the commission's representatives.
The agreement, announced on Wednesday, has led to the first public split on the commission. Two Democrats on the 10-member panel say that the commission should have demanded full access to the intelligence summaries, known as the President's Daily Brief, and that the White House should not be allowed to determine what is relevant to the investigation.
An umbrella group of victims' families joined the criticism, saying the terms of the accord should be public.
While spokesmen for panel refused again to provide the terms, citing the sensitivity of the talks with the White House, its executive director acknowledged that the White House would be able to remove information from the reports unrelated to Al Qaeda and to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"An entire P.D.B. will have articles about China, South Africa, Venezuela," the executive director, Philip D. Zelikow, said in an interview. "The notion that the commission should want to read P.D.B. articles that have nothing to do with Al Qaeda would be a novel suggestion. The commission has not asked to see the country's most sensitive intelligence information on China or North Korea."
A Democrat on the panel who has criticized the accord, former Representative Timothy J. Roemer of Indiana, said in an interview that he believed that the panel had agreed to terms that would let the White House edit the reports to remove the contexts in which the intelligence was presented and to hide any "smoking guns."
"The President's Daily Brief can run 9 to 12 pages long," Mr. Roemer said. "But under this agreement, the commission will be allowed to see only specific articles or paragraphs within the P.D.B.'s. Our members may see only two or three paragraphs out of a nine-page report."
He said the commission should have insisted on access to the full reports, because "you need the context of how the P.D.B. was presented to the president in order to determine whether or not there were smoking guns."
The other Democratic critic on the panel, former Senator Max Cleland of Georgia, has described the agreement as unconscionable.
Administration officials have acknowledged that they are concerned that intelligence reports received by Mr. Bush in the weeks before 9/11 might be construed to suggest that the White House failed to respond to evidence suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning a catastrophic attack. The White House acknowledged last year in response to news reports that a copy of the Daily Brief in August 2001 noted that Al Qaeda might use hijacked planes in an attack.
Commission officials have said that under the agreement the panel will be able to designate four members to read the reports. They will be allowed to take notes on the documents, and the White House will be allowed to review and edit the notes to remove especially sensitive information.
In its statement, the victims' family group, the Family Steering Committee, said the agreement would "prevent a full uncovering of the truth and is unacceptable." The group is led by many advocates who were most responsible for pressuring Congress to create the commission last year over the initial objections of the White House.
"As it now stands, a limited number of commissioners will have restricted access to a limited number of P.D.B. documents," the group said. "The commission should issue a statement to the American public fully explaining why this agreement was chosen in lieu of issuing subpoenas to the C.I.A. and executive branch."
The group said, "All 10 commissioners should have full, unfettered and unrestricted access to all evidence, including but not limited to all Presidential Daily Briefings."
A spokesman for the group, Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband, Ronald, was killed at the World Trade Center, said the families were alarmed that the terms of the accord were kept secret.
`'I think this entire deal needs to be explained to the public," Ms. Breitweiser said. "This is an independent commission that is supposed to be transparent, that is supposed to be open."
-------- homeland security
Bipartisan Debate on Patriot Act Is Urged
Legal Tools to Fight Terrorism at Issue
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 14, 2003; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38234-2003Nov13.html
Former deputy attorney general Larry D. Thompson has proposed that a bipartisan commission debate the legal tools that should be employed in combating terrorism.
In a speech before a judicial conference in Philadelphia on Monday, Thompson said he believes that provisions of the USA Patriot Act that are scheduled to expire in 2005 should be discussed by constitutional scholars and lawyers "outside the partisan wrangling of Congress and outside the unhelpful influence of interest groups."
Thompson, who resigned from the Justice Department in August, praised the new powers granted by the act and said he believes there should be "a reasoned, dispassionate and informed debate" to maintain public confidence in the legal tools used in fighting terrorism.
"We certainly cannot afford to allow the provisions of the Patriot Act . . . sunset without the kind of high-level national discussion I am talking about. Too much is at stake," he said. He suggested the White House or Congress could create such a commission.
Some Democrats in Congress, Democratic presidential candidates, civil liberties groups and others have complained that the Patriot Act, approved six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, poses a threat to privacy and civil liberties.
Michael Chertoff, who worked with Thompson as head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division and is now an appellate judge in New Jersey, told the same Philadelphia conference this week that it may also be time to try to find a systematic legal approach to handling "enemy combatants."
Currently, the government designates "enemy combatants," who include terrorism suspects arrested in this country and U.S. citizens captured with the enemy abroad, case by case. Three such people are being held in military brigs, with no access to visitors or lawyers. The approach has been upheld by an appellate court but has generated considerable controversy.
Chertoff suggested it may be time to develop a system by which enemy combatants could contest such designations.
"Inevitably, decisions of war are made with imperfect information," he said. Now that some of the legal and national security problems of confronting terrorism have become clearer, he said, "perhaps the time has come to take a more universal approach."
--------
TSA Ponders Cargo Inspection Requirements
November 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Cargo-Security.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government is considering whether to require that a certain percentage of air cargo be inspected before it is loaded on planes, the Transportation Security Administration said Friday.
Checks of cargo are spotty now, a situation critics contend leaves open the possibility terrorists could sneak bombs onto planes.
TSA spokesman Brian Turmail said the agency may send a cargo security directive to freight and passenger airlines that would require a minimum amount of cargo to be checked.
Some members of Congress have pressed unsuccessfully for more stringent cargo protection, especially for freight carried aboard passenger planes. They argue it is folly to screen passengers in the cabin but not cargo in the hold.
Criticism intensified in September when a New York shipping clerk packed himself in a crate and flew undetected to Dallas. Last week, the Homeland Security Department warned the al-Qaida network might be plotting to fly cargo planes from another country into such U.S. targets as nuclear plants, bridges or dams.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, said changes in cargo security are needed.
``It makes no sense to screen 100 percent of passengers, 100 percent of the baggage, but only 5 percent of the hundreds of commercial boxes and packages shoved on board every passenger plane every day,'' Markey said.
The agency said in October it would develop regulations to plug holes in air cargo security, based in part on proposals by the cargo industry, pilots and passenger groups.
Turmail said the TSA has briefed Congress on its plan to increase cargo security and plans to begin issuing regulations at the end of the year.
On the Net:
Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov
-------- prisons / prisoners
Study Calls California Parole System a $1 Billion Failure
November 14, 2003
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/national/14PRIS.html
At a time when California faces a record budget deficit, the state is wasting $1 billion a year on a failed system of sending large numbers of recently released inmates back to prison for minor parole violations, according to a study released Thursday by a state watchdog agency.
The study, by the Little Hoover Commission, found that 67 percent of those sent to prison in California were parolees being returned for violating a condition of their release, almost double the national average of 35 percent. Under state law, many of these so-called technical violations, like missing an appointment with a parole officer or failing a drug test, were not considered criminal acts, the report said.
"The bottom line: California's correctional system costs more than it should," the report concluded.
California spends $900 million a year incarcerating parole violators and $465 million on supervising parolees, it said. The bulk of the supervision costs are "for parole agents who spend much of their time filling out paperwork to send parolees back to prison."
That is almost $1.4 billion spent on parole. Because two-thirds of new inmates are being returned for parole violations, "this means that California's parole system is a billion-dollar failure," said Nancy Lyons, the deputy executive director of the commission.
The commission is an independent, bipartisan agency appointed by the governor and the Legislature.
The money could be spent better on drug treatment, job training and education for inmates before release, the report said, greatly reducing the number of people returned to prison. Although three-quarters of the 160,000 inmates have drug or alcohol problems, only 6 percent get treatment. Only one-third take part in job or education programs.
In the past year, 25 states have passed legislation reversing some of the tough sentencing laws of the 1980's and 1990's to reduce the influx of prisoners and close budget gaps. Other states have also closed prisons, laid off guards or released inmates early as emergency measures.
But California, with the largest and most expensive prison system, is one of the few states that has not acted to reduce corrections costs.
A primary reason, experts say, is that the prison guards' union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, is the most powerful union in the state and contributes the largest amount of any political action committee to politicians in the state. The union also represents parole officers, and many of them began their careers as prison guards. Experts say the guards and parole officers have a financial incentive to keep the number of inmates high, helping preserve their jobs and ensure high salaries. "Whether its power is real or imagined, the corrections officers' union is considered to be the major stumbling block to reform in California," said Jeremy Travis, a senior research fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington.
The guards' union did not respond to calls seeking comment.
Ms. Lyons said that with the huge deficit and the election of a new governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has pledged to close the budget gap without raising taxes, there might be an opportunity for reform.
The report found that California was not doing as good a job preparing its inmates for release as it once did. In 1980, only about one of four parolees ended up back in prison, compared with the two of three being sent back now. In 1980, 2,995 parole violators were sent back to prison in California. In 2000, 89,363 were returned.
Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said that parole officers in the state "didn't have options." When an ex-convict violated parole, the officer could only revoke the parole and send the parolee back to prison or do nothing, Ms. Thornton said.
Armed with new money in the 2004 budget, the department is planning a system with more education and drug treatment for inmates about to be released, she said. The new program, similar to recommendations in the report, is to begin in January.
The report also found that the parole revocation process, conducted in hearings behind closed doors by parole officers and the Department of Corrections, also obscured the fact that some parolees were sent back to prison for committing serious crimes. In 2000, 78 parolees were returned to prison for homicides, 524 for robberies and 384 for rapes, but they were not tried in court and served only four to nine months in prison. Ms. Thornton said the department had no information that parole violators sent back to prison for murder, robbery or rape "had actually committed these crimes."
"If they were never tried," she said, "I don't know if they committed these crimes. This is America after all. You aren't guilty until tried and convicted."
Michael P. Jacobson, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and a former commissioner of corrections for New York City, said: "This is insane. The whole California system is begging for reform."
-------- terrorism
U.N. experts warn of al-Qaeda using WMD in the future
11/15/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-11-15-un-alqaeda_x.htm
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The al-Qaeda terror network has decided to use chemical or biological weapons in future attacks, and international efforts to halt the group are failing, a confidential report by a U.N. panel of experts has found.
The report, obtained Friday by The Associated Press, said the only thing holding al-Qaeda back from using chemical and biological weapons is its lack of technical know-how.
"They have already taken the decision to use chemical and bio-weapons in their forthcoming attacks," the report said. "The only restraint they are facing is the technical complexity to operate them properly and effectively."
The lack of technical ability is the reason the panel of experts believes that al-Qaeda is focused on trying to develop new conventional explosive devices such as bombs that can evade scanners.
The report is the second by the expert group established in January by the U.N. Security Council to monitor implementation of sanctions against 272 individuals and entities linked to al-Qaeda and Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime. The sanctions include freezing assets, a travel ban, and an arms embargo.
The experts participated in a series of international and European discussions on efforts to curb trafficking in weapons of mass destruction. They didn't cite any specific new evidence, noting only the recent discovery of several canisters of unidentified chemicals and possible residues of a "tetanus virus-carrying chemical" and a bio-terror manual in a police raid on a Jemaah Islamiyah hideout in the southern Philippines.
"The risk of al-Qaeda acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction also continues to grow," the report said.
In the report, the expert group said the al-Qaeda ideology is spreading worldwide and has found "fertile ground" in Iraq, raising the specter of new terrorist attacks.
While "important progress has been made toward cutting off al-Qaeda financing," the report said serious loopholes remain that enable the terrorist network to funnel money to operatives.
"al-Qaeda continues to receive funds it needs from charities, deep pocket donors, and business and criminal activities, including the drug trade," it said. The report says al-Qaeda has shifted its financial activities to areas in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia that can't track such activity.
Sanctions are also failing because many governments refuse to add names to the sanctions list, even though some 4,000 individuals in 102 countries have been arrested or detained for their links with al-Qaeda, it said.
Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen reported the arrest of individuals linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban yet in most cases they didn't submit the names to be put on the sanctions list, the report said.
Even when people are on the list, the experts said, they have been allowed to travel and evade sanctions.
The report cited an investigation of two men on the U.N. list of terrorist financiers, Ahmed Idris Nasreddin and Youssef Nada, whose bank accounts have been frozen but whose other assets including residential or commercial property in Campione d'Italia and Lugano, Switzerland, and Milan, Italy, has not been touched.
On Jan. 28, it said, Nada traveled from Campione d'Italia to Vaduz, Liechtenstein, in violation of the travel ban and applied to change the name of two of his companies that were on the sanctions list.
Their case reflects the "continued serious weaknesses regarding the control of business activities and assets other than bank accounts" of individuals on the sanctions list, the report said.
The expert group called on the Security Council to adopt a new resolution requiring all 191 member states to enforce sanctions. Otherwise, it said the U.N. role in fighting terrorism "risks becoming marginalized."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
DON'T LET THE WHITE HOUSE MISLEAD THE WORLD ABOUT SAFE, CLEAN ENERGY!
ACT: Urge Energy Ministers to join Green Hydrogen Economy
ACTION ALERT! Please forward to your lists
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003
From: Emma McGregor-Mento <emcgregor@gracelinks.org>
The White House is hosting a meeting of energy ministers from around the world in Washington, DC on November 19-21, to launch an International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy. They plan to sign a landmark agreement to share research and development on hydrogen-related activities and usher in a hydrogen economy over the next several decades. Bush has proposed that the US serve as the secretariat of this first-of-a-kind global research and development effort.
GRACE, Convenor of the Abolition 2000 Working Group for Sustainable Energy, and Secretariat to the NGO Energy & Climate Caucus, has joined the Green Hydrogen Coalition, a new group with eight founding members from some of the leading environmental, consumer, and public policy organizations supporting a clean, green hydrogen future for America and the world. We call on NGOs worldwide to join with us in challenging the proposed International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy next week in Washington, D.C.
We are concerned that the Bush administration will hijack this process in a cynical attempt to promote a polluting, or "black" hydrogen agenda economy, bestowing more favors on its corporate energy supporters from the multinational fossil fuel and nuclear energy giants that have already wreaked havoc on our planet. A safe, clean "green" hydrogen agenda based on renewable energies like the sun, wind and tides is the real promise for the coming hydrogen economy. If the U.S. is successful in steering the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy towards a black hydrogen future, relying on coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power to produce hydrogen, it could lock the global economy into the old energy regime for much of the 21st century, with dire environmental and global security consequences.
TAKE ACTION: CONTACT YOUR HEADS OF STATE AND ENERGY MINISTERS TODAY!
Tell them:
- The new International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy should only promote green sustainable energy sources to develop hydrogen fuel.
- Promoting the interests of the coal, oil, gas, and nuclear industries to produce hydrogen only increases the likelihood of nuclear proliferation and the destruction of earth's habitat.
- We need to employ already existing solutions such as sustainable energy production and conservation while using research and development funds only to perfect a green hydrogen economy.
- We need to shift billions of global taxpayer subsidies away from polluting fossil fuel and nuclear industries, and move full speed ahead to develop further innovations in "green" technology.
- Green" hydrogen will free countries from their dependence on foreign oil and energy insecurity; "black" hydrogen produced from petroleum will not! FAX OR EMAIL YOUR ENERGY MINISTER AND HEAD OF STATE TODAY! ATTACHED IS A LIST OF CONTACT NUMBERS OF ENERGY OFFICIALS WHO MAY ATTEND THE MEETING.
Emma McGregor-Mento Outreach and Development Coordinator Abolition 2000 215 Lexington Avenue, Suite 1001 New York, NY 10016 Ph: 212-726-9161 x17 Fax: 212-726-9160 http://www.gracelinks.org http://www.abolition2000.org
-------- energy
House and Senate Said to Reach Deal on Broad Energy Bill
November 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Energy-Bill.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House and Senate Republicans reached agreement on the first overhaul of national energy policy in a decade, clearing the way for likely final action on the bill next week, congressional sources said Friday.
The GOP energy draft was to be presented to Democrats for review, but is unlikely to be changed significantly given the Republican majority in the House and Senate conference.
The legislation calls for billions of dollars in tax breaks for energy industries and would double the use of corn-based ethanol as a gasoline additive, a boon to farm states.
The compromise bill largely reflects President Bush's energy agenda, although it does not include a Bush proposal to open an Arctic wildlife refuge in Alaska to oil drilling. It became clear that the refuge issue would jeopardize the bill in the Senate, where Democrats and moderate Republicans want the Alaska refuge protected.
An agreement on the bill, which is expected to total more than 1,700 pages, came after weeks of wrangling over tax breaks for ethanol, certain types of petroleum and the nuclear power industry, as well as how much support the government should give a proposed natural gas pipeline in Alaska.
While a clear estimate on the cost of the bill won't be available for some days, House and Senate tax negotiators have been discussing between $16 billion and $19 billion worth of tax incentives, a majority earmarked to boost energy production.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the energy conference, and his House counterpart, Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., scheduled a news conference for later in the day to release some additional details of the legislation.
An aide to Domenici said language of the compromise bill was not expected to be available until Saturday at the earliest.
Democrats have largely been left out of the energy negotiations, although they had some involvement in the tax issues. Domenici said he would give Democrats in the conference 48 hours to review the massive bill before calling a meeting for a formal vote.
Once the bill is approved by the conference it must be given final approval by both the House and Senate.
Energy legislation has been a top priority of the White House. President Bush said he wanted a bill this year, calling it both an economic and national security issue. Pressure on lawmakers to push through a bill increased last August when a power blackout hit all or parts of eight states in the Midwest and Northeast.
But getting a bill has been anything but easy.
Both the House and Senate passed significantly different versions of the bill earlier this year. Sharp differences remained between House and Senate Republicans over the expanded use of ethanol and some of the tax provisions.
Vice President Dick Cheney intervened personally a week ago to get an agreement on ethanol taxes, an issue that threatened for a time to scuttle the bill.
The compromise legislation will largely mirror an energy agenda outlined by the White House more than two years ago and place heavy emphasis on boosting energy production.
But Republicans were forced to abandon a measure that would have opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil development. Domenici said the refuge issue would have prompted a successful filibuster in the Senate, dooming the entire bill.
The bill could still prompt sharp debate in the Senate, however. It includes liability protection for makers of the gasoline additive MTBE, which has been found to contaminate drinking water. At last one senator has promised a filibuster over the issue, although Republicans said they have votes to beat back the MTBE protest.
A majority of the bill's tax breaks would boost development of oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear power. Some tax breaks will go to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy sources such as power from wind turbines.
Democrats have sought more support for renewable energy sources. They criticized the legislation for not requiring electric utilities to produce a certain amount of power from renewables and not taking steps to curtail fuel used by automobiles.
The legislation takes steps to improve the reliability of the nation's electricity grid by for the first time imposing government reliability standards and penalties on the transmission system.
To promote more energy development, the GOP bill will speed up permits and ease environmental restrictions for developing oil and gas on federal land. It also will provide royalty relief for companies that pursue natural gas in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and some tax benefits for construction of a $20 billion pipeline to bring gas from Alaska's North Slope.
-------- genetics
Researchers Create Virus in Record Time Organism Not Dangerous to Humans
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 14, 2003; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38211-2003Nov13.html
Starting with tiny molecular building blocks, researchers in Rockville have made a functioning virus in record time and with unprecedented precision, a significant step toward the goal of being able to make bacteria and other living cells from scratch.
Unlike the polio virus that scientists in New York painstakingly stitched together two years ago -- a feat that triggered a chorus of criticism from experts concerned about its potential to help bioterrorists -- the newly constructed microbe, a replica of the virus "phiX," can infect only bacteria and poses no danger to people. The Maryland team hopes to use the technology to create synthetic microbes that can clean up toxic waste sites, secrete new cancer drugs or crank out hydrogen as a clean-burning energy source.
Nonetheless, the ability to make a fully infectious virus from off-the-shelf ingredients in just two weeks -- compared with the many months of work that went into making the polio virus -- underscores how quickly the field of "synthetic biology" is moving, experts said, and highlights scientists' need to be alert that their work may someday be misused to wreak biological havoc.
"This kind of knowledge is really going to generate all kinds of benefits, but I also think the bioscience community is going to have to take responsibility for creating and maintaining institutions for responsibly managing this knowledge," said Tara O'Toole, director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Biosecurity, in Baltimore.
The National Academy of Sciences recently recommended that certain classes of research with bioterrorism potential be subject to extra layers of scientific review, but it appears that the current work would not have triggered extra cautions under that plan.
The viral synthesis was conducted by a team at the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives, directed by J. Craig Venter, one of the leaders in the recently completed effort to place in order all 3.1 billion letters of human biological code. He was one of the most vocal critics of the polio work last year.
The team started by looking on the Internet to read the entire genetic sequence of phiX -- the exact order of all 5,386 molecular units, or bases, that together constitute the virus's genome. (The polio virus has 7,741.) That information has been public for decades; indeed, the little virus was the first biological entity to have its entire genome sequenced, in 1978.
Then the team ordered from an outside company small pieces of DNA, each about 42 bases long and custom-designed to match a bit of the phiX genome. The goal was to stitch the pieces together in the correct order, thus creating a working replica of the virus. But to do so the team had to make three improvements over existing DNA-linking techniques.
First, they purified the individual pieces to a higher degree than usual, since commercially prepared DNA is often contaminated with spurious pieces of genetic material that, if incorporated into a larger genome, create errors in the overall code. Second, they used precise markers at both ends of every piece so it could connect only to the appropriate next piece. And third, they perfected the laboratory conditions -- including temperature and chemical concentrations -- to maximize the efficiency with which those pieces glued themselves together.
At that point, the researchers had little to do but toss all the ingredients together and wait overnight, as the pieces of DNA assembled into a full-length stretch of DNA that, when put into a living cell, triggered the creation of countless new viruses.
-------- health
Treated Wood Poses Cancer Risk to Kids
EPA Releases Early Findings on Exposure to Lumber Processed With Arsenic
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 14, 2003; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38227-2003Nov13.html
A new Environmental Protection Agency study concludes that children who repeatedly come in contact with commonly found playground equipment and decks made of arsenic-treated wood face increased risk of developing cancer.
The study suggests the risk to children is considerably greater than EPA officials indicated last year in announcing the products were being taken off the market. Although manufacturers have agreed to stop producing arsenic-treated wood products beginning in 2004, such wood remains in many public playgrounds and back yards.
The preliminary findings released yesterday show that 90 percent of children repeatedly exposed to arsenic-treated wood face a greater than one-in-1 million risk of cancer -- the EPA's historic threshold of concern about the effects of toxic chemicals.
The problem appears to be greater in the warmer climates of southern states, where children tend to spend more time playing outdoors. There, 10 percent of all children face a cancer risk that is 100 times higher than children in the general population, according to a review of the EPA data by the Environmental Working Group (EWG).
EPA officials cautioned that the findings are preliminary and are subject to review next month by the agency's Scientific Advisory Panel.
"I think it's premature to speak with [any] degree of certainty," said Jim Jones, director of the EPA's office of pesticide programs, which ordered the study. "The preliminary assessment, I would say, shows there are marginal increases in risk to children who play on decks and play sets, but there's a lot of variables that go into the assessment."
However, the draft "probabilistic exposure assessment" contradicts the agency's assurances last year that existing arsenic-treated wood products did not pose a serious public risk.
In February 2002, the EPA and the chemical and home-improvement industries announced a two-year phaseout of the use of arsenic-based preservatives in pressure-treated wood widely used for fences, decks, playgrounds and boardwalks. Arsenic is a known carcinogen, and some experts and environmentalists have long suspected that children who repeatedly come in contact with the preservative -- known as chromated copper arsenate, or CCA -- face a heightened risk of developing cancer of the lungs, bladder or skin.
While stressing that people should take precautions, such as washing their hands after coming into contact with CCA-laced wood and never placing food directly on a deck or outdoor table surface, then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman declared: "EPA does not believe there is any reason to remove or replace CCA-treated structures, including decks or playground equipment."
Jones said that at the time of the announcement, "We had no reason to believe there was an increase in risk associated with it. . . . At that time, we didn't have a risk assessment."
The EPA's preliminary findings echo the concerns voiced last week by members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, who have conducted hearings and studies into the risks posed by arsenic-treated wood. The commission announced it is initiating studies of wood sealants to give consumers ways to protect their children from arsenic leaching from play sets and decks.
A nationwide survey conducted last year by the EWG and the University of North Carolina at Asheville found that arsenic used to treat outdoor wood products does not dissipate with time and that children who play on decade-old equipment are as likely to be exposed to high levels of the potential cancer-causing agent as those who play on structures manufactured recently.
Jane Houlihan, EWG's vice president for research, said the EPA study "confirms that we need to protect children from arsenic-treated wood at playgrounds around the country."
-------- ACTIVISTS
NRC seeks to weaken EJ policy, deter public involvement
From: Michael Mariotte <nirsnet@nirs.org>
Date: Fri Nov 14, 2003 2:47pm
ALERT! NRC ISSUES DRAFT STATEMENT TO WEAKEN ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE POLICY
PROCESS SEEMS DESIGNED TO DETER PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
YOUR HELP IS NEEDED!
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a draft policy statement that would weaken its environmental justice rules, making it more difficult to effectively bring up environmental justice issues in nuclear siting and operations hearings.
The draft statement is in response to a December 2002 plea from the atomic industry's Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), which would prefer exoneration and immunity from any racist practices. The NRC could, and should, have ignored that plea entirely.
Instead, the NRC has chosen to accommodate the NEI, and is now seeking public comment on its proposal. Unfortunately, the agency is so far providing only a 60-day comment period (it ends January 5, 2004) which includes the busy Holiday season. Moreover, as of November 14, 2003, the NRC's website still says that there are no proposed policies available for public comment, the draft policy itself is nearly impossible to find, and the key background documents, such as President Clinton's original Executive Order on environmental justice and NRC Chairman Ivan Selin's March 31, 1994 letter to Clinton committing the NRC to abide by the Executive Order, are nowhere to be found on the NRC's website.
One would think that the NRC would seek the broadest possible public comment for an issue that is both fundamental to human rights and is non-technical in nature. Instead, the NRC is acting like a dirty old man with a secret to keep, and is trying to sweep its changes under the carpet.
You Can Help: Write to the NRC and demand an extension of the public comment period. NIRS sent such a letter on November 14, and suggested the comment period be extended until July 4, 2004. We also suggested that the NRC hold at least 10 public meetings on its plans. E-mail your extension request to hearingsdocket@nrc.gov or fax to 301-415-1101. Reference the "Policy Statement on the Treatment of Environmental Justice Matters in NRC Regulatory and Licensing Actions, Federal Register, November 5, 2003, V. 68, No. 214, pp 62642-62645). Please send NIRS (nirsnet@nirs.org, fax: 202-462-2183) a copy of what you send to the NRC.
NIRS will be preparing detailed comments on the draft policy statement, and we will publicize them when completed. In the meantime, we also will be preparing pre-printed postcards opposing the policy statement for wide public distribution. We will make these postcards available free to all organizations which want to use them. It would be helpful for us to determine our print run if you would let us know how many you think you will be able to distribute to the public.
Available as of November 14 on the NIRS website (www.nirs.org) are the draft policy statement itself, NIRS' letter requesting an extension of the comment period, and a press release announcing both. We will post other background material as quickly as we can. We will also send this information by e-mail by request.
The nuclear industry wants to change the environmental justice policy because it already cost them Louisiana Energy Services' proposed uranium enrichment plant in Louisiana, and is threatening to cause problems for siting of a new generation of nuclear reactors, waste dumps, and other poisonous facilities. We can't let them get away with it. We hope everyone working on nuclear/environmental/energy issues will join us in this fight.
Michael Mariotte Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
November 14, 2003
----
Opposition to Enola Gay Exhibit Gaining Steam
From: "pjelder_1999" <elder@chesapeake.net>
Date: Fri Nov 14, 2003 6:05pm
An impressive committee of leading intellectuals from around the world has joined forces with veterans, clergy, activists and students to challenge the Smithsonian's plans to exhibit the Enola Gay solely as a "magnificent technological achievement." The planned exhibit, set to open December 15 at the Air and Space Museum's new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles, is devoid of an historical context and discussion of the ongoing controversy surrounding the bombings, and lacks basic information regarding the number of casualties. The "Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy" has formulated a powerful statement of principles, which appears on their website: www.enola-gay.org. The statement has been circulating in the activist and academic communities here and abroad. The statement makes clear that the signatories, who number about 250 now, are not opposed to exhibiting the plane in a fair and responsible manner, but they fear that a "celebratory" exhibit both legitimizes what happened in 1945 and helps build support for the Bush administration's "dangerous new nuclear policies", hence the linkage between past history and current policy. The signers, who include a who's who of the American intellectual left, include Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, famed writers E.L. Doctorow and Kurt Vonnegut, activist Daniel Ellsberg, celebrity Martin Sheen and renowned folk singer Pete Seeger. A list of signers is available on the website.
The Smithsonian recently responded to the statement of principles, http://www.nasm.si.edu/events/pressroom/releases/110703.htm, and defended it's decision to exhibit the plane by arguing that the text and plaque used to describe the B-29 is exactly the same kind used for other aircraft in the museum. The text of the exhibit follows:
Boeing's B-29 Superfortress was the most sophisticated propeller- driven bomber of World War II, and the first bomber to house its crew in pressurized compartments. Although designed to fight in the European theater, the B-29 found its niche on the other side of the globe. In the Pacific, B-29s delivered a variety of aerial weapons: conventional bombs, incendiary bombs, mines, and two nuclear weapons.
On August 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, Bockscar (on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio) dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. Enola Gay flew as the advance weather reconnaissance aircraft that day. A third B-29, The Great Artiste, flew as an observation aircraft on both missions.
Transferred from the U.S. Air Force
Wingspan: 43 m (141 ft 3 in)
Length: 30.2 m (99 ft)
Height: 9 m (27 ft 9 in)
Weight, empty: 32,580 kg (71,826 lb)
Weight, gross: 63,504 kg (140,000 lb)
Top speed: 546 km/h (339 mph)
Engines: 4 Wright R-3350-57 Cyclone turbo-supercharged radials, 2,200 hp
Crew: 12 (Hiroshima mission)
Armament: two .50 caliber machine guns
Ordnance: "Little Boy" atomic bomb
Manufacturer: Martin Co., Omaha, Nebr., 1945 A19500100000"
The Smithsonian's response indicated that 300,000 man-hours were dedicated toward restoring the aged bomber. The museum notes, "In the end, the Enola Gay played a decisive role in World War II. It helped bring the war to an end in that after the bombing of Nagasaki, shortly after the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, surrendered unconditionally." This kind of assertion galvanizes the academic opponents who are driven to dispel this deep-seated contention. In fact, military historians point to thousands of historical manuscripts, among them the memoirs of Admiral William D. Leahy, who was Truman's Chief of Staff. Leahy wrote, "The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . .In being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." Even the famed war hawk General Curtis Lemay, who commanded the Twenty-First Bomber Command, (as reported in THE NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE) said flatly that the atomic bomb "had nothing to do with the end of the war." Many historical figures, including Eisenhower, Macarthur, Nimitz and Halsey were opposed to using the bomb and dispel its contribution toward ending the war.
Opponents to the planned exhibit decry the "celebratory fashion" of the Enola Gay exhibit and point to the Air and Space Museum website http://www.smav.si.edu/ that invites 4,000 aviation veterans on December 9, to a sneak preview of the hangar that will display 200 aircraft and 140 spacecraft. The controversial site displays a photo of the new complex about 25 miles west of Washington and a prominent photo of just one of it's many exhibits, The glistening Enola Gay, parked beneath a huge American flag.
Committee members describe a kind of "arms-length" collaboration with the local Washington activist community. Links on the website www.enola-gay.org describe "Related events sponsored by other organizations." In fact, several groups in the local activist community have been busy organizing events. Karen O'Keefe, a Washington attorney and volunteer with the D.C. Antiwar Network, www.dawndc.net says about 15 DAWN volunteers are working on opposing the Enola Gay exhibit in a creative, nonviolent fashion. "At this point we are sending emails to editorial writers nationwide, distributing flyers to members of Congress, advertising the website nationally and alerting the embassies to get out the word about this exhibit and to announce plans others are undertaking for a social event honoring the Hibakusha (A & H Bomb survivors), a conference, a liturgy service and demonstration", explained the determined activist.
The D.C. Antiwar Network is working with the local chapter of the Gray Panthers to hold a social event honoring Hibakusha on Friday evening, December 12, in Washington. John Steinbach of the Gray Panthers has arranged for at least five delegations of Japanese survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bombing to come to Washington for a weekend of event, culminating in the demonstration at the Air and Space Museum's complex in Dulles on Monday, Dec 15. The Hibakusha are working with Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A & H Bomb survivors. http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hidankyo/nihon/english/ Thousands of Japanese and people around the world have signed an angry petition demanding that General John Dailey, Director of the Air and Space Museum, rethink the exhibit. The petition states in part, "We cannot repress our deep astonishment and anger. What the Enola Gay wrought was the loss of well over 100,000 lives that were cruelly destroyed by the atomic bomb, and the deep wounds and radiation-induced handicaps that continue to afflict victims of the atomic bomb to this day. Of the 140,000 people estimated to have died in Hiroshima within that year, 65% were women, children and elderly people who had no connection to the war. To exalt this Enola Gay - which caused an unprecedented atrocity that violated all norms of morality and international law - as a testimony to "technological achievement" is completely unacceptable to the atomic bomb victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
On Saturday, December the 13th, Committee members are planning to hold a conference in Washington in Kay Chapel at American University. Several renowned scholars, including Paul Boyer, Herbert Bix, Sy Hersh, Larry Wittner, Gar Alperovitz, and Kai Bird, have indicated their willingness to participate. Organizers are deciding whether to hold an evening session featuring Daniel Ellsberg and Jonathan Schell who cannot attend the afternoon conference. On Sunday, December 14, a special liturgy will be held at the historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church near the White House. http://www.enola-gay.org/action/prayer_service.pdf
The service will feature a film showing the devastation caused by the bomb dropped by the Enola Gay. Hibakusha from around the world will share their insight. The hibakusha are radiation victims who were terribly scarred and diseased sufferers of the first atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is, they are atomic survivors who lived but infected and sick for a time or for several years- from the effects of the bomb and, as such, are witnesses to its horror, pain and death. For a time they were shunned by their own Japanese compatriots because they reminded the public, through their disfigurement, of losing the war and the shame at their defeat. But after the Bikini Atol test of the Hydrogen bomb and the deaths of Japanese fishermen nearby, the Japanese people began to change that view and today view the hibakusha as respected witnesses of the continuing nuclear threat.
Rev. Phil Wheaton, who is organizing the special liturgy, prefers the opposition to the Enola Gay to focus on the hibakusha. Wheaton embraces the link between an analysis of history and a discussion of American nuclear policies. He explains, "There are thousands of new radiation victims around the world who have become sick from the fallout of other atomic bomb testings, including Americans known as "down-winders," from the fallout of radiation poisoning here in the US and overseas. They too, have come to be called hibakusha." The Episcopal minister continues, " This growing company of atomic radiation victims/sufferers/witnesses are reminders of the grave threat we are still facing." Wheaton said the service will also address U.S. development of tactical nuclear weapons made of depleted uranium (DU). Many US soldiers returning from Iraq have developed serious diseases from that radiation.
The Committee's Statement of Principles, the bantering back and forth with the Air and Space Museum, the social event honoring Hibakusha, along with the academic conference and the solemn liturgy, will lead to a demonstration being organized principally by members of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House in Washington. The Catholic Workers, an intense group of activists who merge the nonviolent teachings of Christ with cutting edge activist tactics, plan a solemn, respectful demonstration in front of the Enola Gay at 11:00 a.m. on the day of the museum's opening, Monday, December 15. Kathy Boylan of the Catholc Worker House invoked the words of Roman Catholc Pope Paul VI who described the bombing as "a butchery of untold magnitude." Ms Boylan said the purpose of the demonstration is "to express our outrage at the Enola Gay being displayed without reference to the human suffering inflicted." Plans call for demonstrators to congregate near the plane. Demonstation planners say the Smithsonian won't address the suffering unleashed by the Enola Gay - so they will.
----
London cancels police leave to handle Bush protesters
November 14, 2003
By Bruce I. Konviser
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031113-110709-8288r.htm
LONDON - Police are bracing for what could be the largest demonstration ever organized against a foreign head of state when President Bush arrives for a state visit on Tuesday.
Central London streets will be closed for Mr. Bush's motorcades and leave has been canceled for London police, who are expected to spend millions of dollars on security for the visit.
The highlight will come Thursday when as many as 60,000 people gather in Trafalgar Square to pull down a homemade statute of President Bush in a parody of the April 9 destruction of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad.
"Our quarrel is not with the American people but with Bush and his administration," said Ghada Razuki, a organizer with the Stop the War coalition representing more than 400 student, religious and labor groups opposing the war in Iraq.
"American soldiers are over there dying - for what?"
Mr. Bush addressed the planned protests in an interview given to the London Daily Telegraph for publication today.
"I can understand people not liking war, if that's what they're there to protest," he said. "I don't like war. War is the last choice a president should make, not the first. ...
"And, yet, we are at war. That's what September the 11th taught us. It's a different kind of war. And I intend to, so long as I'm the president, wage that war vigorously to protect the American people."
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said people were entitled to demonstrate, but questioned why those planning to march against Mr. Bush had not protested Saddam Hussein's regime.
"What bothers me is the fashionable anti-Americanism that's around," he told British Broadcasting Corp. radio this week.
"Many more people, I guess, will be demonstrating about the United States and the action which the United States has had to take since September 11 than ever demonstrated against the brutal, vicious, horrible regime of Saddam Hussein."
Scotland Yard is concerned that terrorists may mix in with the anti-Bush crowds and attempt an attack on the president, said Andy Trotter, the deputy assistant police commissioner.
He said neither U.S. nor British intelligence had detected any specific plans but he added, "London has been on high alert for some time." He refused to elaborate, saying, "It would be inappropriate to go into details."
Demonstrators are being denied their usual protest routes to Buckingham Palace, past the Parliament or 10 Downing Street, the prime minister's residence.
But Commissioner Trotter rejected reports that demonstrators were being pushed out of sight to avoid embarrassing the president or that the White House had been pressuring police to close off large swaths of London.
"There has been no attempt to spare the president from embarrassment," he said at a news conference on Wednesday. "There is no pressure from anyone for an exclusion zone."
Roads destined for the president's motorcade and adjacent streets will be closed to vehicular traffic, but open to pedestrians. Commissioner Trotter said helicopters may be used to avoid some motorcades.
"The details are still being worked out but any effort to ease the gridlock in London is welcome."
Asked if this would be the largest security operation London police have ever undertaken to protect a visiting head of state, Commissioner Trotter said, "I wouldn't want to put it in those terms."
He did say, however, that 5,000 officers have been designated for security detail and that all leaves had been canceled. He rejected a local newspaper's report that the security operation would cost $6.8 million, but refused to put a price tag on the security arrangements.
The visit comes at an awkward time for Prime Minister Tony Blair with British support for the Iraq war at just 37 percent compared with a high of 64 percent in April.
The opposition Conservative Party has been invigorated with the selection of an aggressive new leader, Michael Howard, while opposition to the war remains high within Mr. Blair's own Labor Party.
"What does Blair get out of [Mr. Bush´s visit] politically? A lot of headaches, that's what he gets," said Michael Cox, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.
Mr. Bush tried to boost the embattled prime minister in his interview with the London Telegraph, saying Mr. Blair "is making decisions for the right reasons."
"In my relationship with him, he is the least political person I've dealt with. And I say that out of respect. He makes decisions based upon what he thinks is right. ...
"He believes it's in his country's interest that we work for a free and peaceful Iraq. He, as much as any world leader, saw the consequences of September 11, 2001."
----
SUDAN - Students protest strike by teachers
November 14, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/briefly.htm
KHARTOUM - High school students in the capital of Sudan's Blue Nile state protested teacher strikes by attacking and setting fire to offices of the state's Education Ministry, police said yesterday.
Students in Ed-Damazine Tuesday were protesting the school closures because of a strike by teachers protesting pay delays, Blue Nile police commissioner Maj. Gen. Mohammed Ahmed al-Jizouli said.
Police have contained the situation and arrested a number of students for involvement in the riots in the city southeast of Khartoum, authorities said.
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Georgia Protests Rattle Shevardnadze
By MISHA DZHINDZHIKHASHVILI
Associated Press Writer
Nov 14, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GEORGIA_PROTESTS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) -- A crowd of 15,000 people marched toward President Eduard Shevardnadze office in Georgia's capital Friday, demanding his resignation and ignoring his warnings that further protests could spark a civil war.
Angered by the alleged rigging of the Nov. 2 parliamentary elections, protesters began moving down the capital's main avenue toward the presidential office, chanting "go away, go away."
Shevardnadze refused opposition calls for him to appear at the rally to respond to their demands he resign and annul parliamentary election results. He says he won't step down and has offered to meet with the opposition.
"The present situation of civil confrontation may develop into a civil war," Shevardnadze said on state TV, several hours before the rally.
"If the leaders of this action believe that the protesters will behave as they want them to, then they are mistaken," he said. "Some people will be drunk, some people will act as provocateurs, and irreparable things may happen." Opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili, the most fiery of the three opposition figures at the center of the protests, exhorted the crowd to stay peaceful.
"Let's not give ground or provocation," said Saakashvili, remaining firm in his vehement denunciations of Shevardnadze.
"Our president is a coward; he failed to meet our request," he said.
Opponents charge Shevardnadze with failing to crack down on corruption or fix Georgia's economic problems. The anger has been fueled by allegations of widespread fraud during the elections.
Election results, still incomplete, show the pro-government bloc For a New Georgia in the lead, followed by the opposition Revival party, which tends to support the government on key issues, and the more radical National Movement. Official results are scheduled to be announced next week.
Demonstrators, ranging for several hundred to several thousand, have gathered outside the Georgian parliament all week.
Shevardnadze and some opposition leaders have said they are ready for dialogue, but after a fruitless meeting Sunday they have not come together. The opposition leaders have repeatedly stated their commitment to achieving their goals peacefully
Before the rally Friday, Shevardnadze reiterated his readiness to talk.
"I am ready to continue dialogue with the opposition leaders. It's possible to negotiate with Burdzhanadze and Zhvaniya," he said, referring to current parliamentary speaker Nino Burdzhanadze and her predecessor, Zurab Zhvaniya, who are among the opposition leaders. "I am even ready to talk with their 'commander in chief,' Saakashvili."
He said he would do everything to avoid civil war.
"As long as I am president, a legally elected president, I won't allow the nation to split and civil war to break out, although the real danger of this exists," Shevardnadze said.
He also said that it would be "irresponsible" for him to step down at this point before parliament convened.
"I can only say one thing: I'll never follow the fate of either Milosevic or Ceausescu," Shevardnadze said.
Nicolae Ceausescu, the Communist dictator of Romania, was overthrown and executed by firing squad. Former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic is currently being tried by the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
Georgia is one of the most Western-leaning of the former Soviet republics and occupies a strategic position on Russia's southern flank and about 200 miles north of Iran.
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Forum challenges the value of war, Veterans Day
by Tess Alverson
November 14, 2003
Western Front Online
http://www.westernfrontonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/11/14/3fb54ebf524fe
Veterans Day was created to honor and respect the men and women who have served and died for the United States, yet at the veterans' forum on Nov. 12, diverse voices came together to challenge patriotism.
Forum audience members held back tears as guest speakers exposed the truths about war and how these truths have changed their views on the meaning of Veterans Day.
"It is (unconscionable) that the government celebrates Veterans Day, glorifying the fact of war and death," retired Navy veteran Mark Polin said. "We should celebrate when we learn to spread peace through non-violence and not when people have lost their lives."
Kevin Terpstra, Western junior and interpreter in the Bosnian War, said no matter why war starts, fighting back only will cause worse actions to happen.
He said when he arrived in Bosnia five years after the war, the violence and destruction did not end.
"After I saw the war, I learned that there are no winners and that there is no glory," he said. "Veterans Day is to honor those who have served, yet it reminds us that if we kill to be victorious, we will never stop killing."
Shirley Osterhaus, world issues forum coordinator for Fairhaven College, said 52,000 American soldiers died in the Vietnam War, 146 American soldiers died in the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and approximately 400 have died in the recent conflict in Iraq.
"These numbers are only growing," said Dr. Robert Olson, a member of Veterans for Peace, a nonprofit organization dedicated the abolishment of war. "Since returning from the Vietnam War, another 70,000 to 80,000 have died due to health issues, and approxiamtely 10,000 have died since returning from the Gulf War."
Olson said these health issues are a serious concern for soldiers and their families. The 20 million gallons of herbicides, otherwise known as Agent Orange, used in the Vietnam War and depleted Uranium are two major warfare weapons that continue affect people after the war.
It took the government 25 years to recognize the relationship between Lou Gehrig's Disease, which paralyzes the body while keeping the mind intact, and these chemicals, Olson said.
Not all health issues are physical. Post-traumatic stress disorder is another common experience for war veterans, he said.
"When a young 19-year-old boy is exposed to civilians with their guts and brains everywhere, they are traumatized for life," Olson said. "The body and mind are not able to cope with this type of distress."
Bellingham resident Rosa Hunter, whose brother is serving in Iraq, is concerned about how he is coping with the sights of war.
"When I ask him what he sees or what he has done, he calmly asks me about my day, even if it is about doing the dishes," she said. "I can tell it is bad because he doesn't want to remember it."
She said she has spoken to him three times since he left in February 2002. He was supposed to be in Iraq for only four months, she said.
"My family prays that a man in a uniform does not knock on our door," Hunter said. "If you ask me, the soldiers are fighting with blindfolds on. It is a suicide mission. My brother did not sign up to kill or be killed; he just wanted to go to school."
Debbie Reece, Bellingham resident and mother of a Persian Gulf War veteran, said she had the same fears. She said her son went to Iraq with the idea he would be there for only six months.
"He had no idea what he was getting into," Reece said. "I just wanted him home. I wanted my hands on my kid."
To most of the forum participants, Veterans Day expresses reasons why men and women should not have to kill to serve their country. It is a day for people to pray that future wars will stop.
"In a perfect world we could just say OK, we don't want to play anymore, and I would not be the mother of a 21-year-old veteran," Reece said. "But this is not a perfect world. Conflict and war will continue. I just hope we educate and prepare those who choose this life."
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Physicist to speak on uranium threat
Friday, November 14, 2003
Pantagraph.com
http://www.pantagraph.com/stories/111403/new_20031114036.shtml
BLOOMINGTON, Illinois -- A former Army physicist will speak on the health risks of using depleted uranium as a weapon at 7 p.m. Monday at Illinois Wesleyan University's Hansen Student Center.
Doug Rokke is the former director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project.
The United States has used depleted uranium weapons in the Persian Gulf. Rokke said there is a link between the weapons and Gulf War Syndrome and birth defects.
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Antiwar activist says law on his side
Brett Bursey cites S.C. Supreme Court ruling, Constitution during emotional testimony
By CLIF LeBLANC Staff Writer,
The State (South Carolina)
Fri, Nov. 14, 2003
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/7258734.htm
Antiwar protester Brett Bursey testified Thursday he was determined to stand up for free speech rights in the face of "brutal" disregard by police during President Bush's visit to Columbia last year.
Bursey said state law and the Constitution were on his side, and police in other S.C. cities had been reasonable in allowing dissenters to get near Bush.
The longtime political activist - in a dark suit and braided, grizzled ponytail - was the last defense witness in his trial on charges of violating the president's protective zone.
If convicted, Bursey could get six months or a $5,000 fine. U.S. Magistrate Bristow Marchant is likely to rule the week of Dec. 8, lawyers in the case said.
About 30 people filled the small courtroom at Columbia's Perry federal courthouse.
In reasoned tones mixed with flurries of passion and flashes of anger, Bursey at times struggled for composure in explaining his actions on Oct. 24, 2002.
As police at Columbia Metropolitan Airport threatened him with arrest if he didn't move to a "demonstration zone" a half mile from Bush, Bursey testified that he thought:
"Am I going to let this cop tell me to do something I know is wrong?
"If everybody backs up, if everybody is intimidated by cops, what on earth is going to come of this country?"
He said he knew a 1970 S.C. Supreme Court ruling allowed protests on public property and that the Bill of Rights permitted criticizing the president.
The protest area, which Bursey alleged the U.S. Secret Service picked, was "out of sight, out of mind."
He was the only protester who chose to stay and be arrested. But the S.C. trespassing charge he initially faced was dropped when the federal government charged him with violating a law that allows the Secret Service to protect the president.
Bursey acknowledged under cross-examination by federal prosecutor John Barton that he can be "aggressive and forceful" in defending his views. But Bursey added, "I also believe I'm reasonable."
Barton, in an often testy exchange, accused Bursey of trying to use the 23-year-old Supreme Court ruling as a shield that protected him from arrest.
Bursey cited three other protests, in Greenville, Charleston and Columbia, where he and other protesters negotiated with police to allow dissenters to be closer to Bush.
His attorney, Lewis Pitts, argued that because of those encounters, Bursey did not go to the Columbia airport with the intent of breaking federal law. Pitts said to convict Bursey prosecutors must prove he intended to break the law.
Bursey said he didn't know there was a federal law that allows the government to keep protesters so far from the president.
Bursey's defense team contends he cannot be found guilty, among other reasons, because the location of the restricted area around the president was unclear.
Though arrested many times in three decades of civil disobedience, Bursey described the situation that day as, "scary. It was brutal."
He testified that U.S. Secret Service agent Holly Abel grew "more strident" during the confrontation even as Bursey moved further from the hangar where Bush was to address supporters. Finally, Abel directed airport police to arrest him for not going to the protest site, Bursey said.
Abel testified Wednesday that she did not order the arrest and treated Bursey no differently than anyone who would not leave a restricted area.
"I don't care if you're a little girl with a bunch of flowers to give the president, I would make you leave," Abel said.
Bursey and six other protesters testified that state and federal officers at the airport either did not know where the "free-speech zone" was located or directed them to at least three sites.
Several witnesses for Bursey said they were ordered away from the hangar as soon as police saw signs like, "Bubbling crude, no blood for oil," objecting to Bush's plans to invade Iraq.
Reach LeBlanc at (803) 771-8664 or cleblanc@thestate.com.
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GCHQ whistleblower charged
Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday November 14, 2003
The Guardian
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foi/story/0,9061,1084993,00.html
A sacked GCHQ employee charged yesterday under the Official Secrets Act said last night that her alleged disclosures exposed serious wrongdoing by the US and could have helped to prevent the deaths of Iraqis and British forces in an "illegal war".
Katharine Gun, 29, of Cheltenham, was charged by Metropolitan police special branch officers under section 1 (1) of the act. The section states that any serving or former member of the security and intelligence agencies is guilty of an offence if they disclose "any information" about their work without official authority.
In a statement last night, Ms Gun said: "Any disclosures that may have been made were justified because they exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government which attempted to subvert our own security services. Secondly, they could have helped prevent widescale death and casualties amongst ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an illegal war."
She said no money was involved in any disclosure. "I have only ever followed my conscience," she said.
Ms Gun, a GCHQ translator, was arrested in March - more than eight months ago - at a time when it was reported that America's national security agency, the US equivalent of GCHQ, was conducting a "dirty tricks" operation.
The operation was directed against UN security council members as part of Washington's battle to win votes in favour of a war against Iraq, the Observer newspaper reported. The story, the paper said yesterday, "exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government".
The secret surveillance operation involved intercepting the home and office telephone calls and emails of delegates to the UN.
The NSA made clear that the particular targets of what was described as an eavesdropping "surge" were the delegates from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan - the six crucial "swing votes" on the security council.
A memo sent by Frank Koza, a senior NSA official, said the information would be used for the US's "QRC" - quick response capability - "against" the key UN delegations.
Yesterday, Ms Gun was accompanied at Cheltenham police station by her lawyer, James Welch of Liberty, the civil rights group which is supporting her case.
She was granted bail to appear at Bow Street magistrates' court in central London on November 27.
It is understood that another person has been questioned in connection with the alleged disclosure.
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Sixth day of protests staged in Georgia
Friday, November 14, 2003
The Daily Herald
http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=6355
TBILISI, Georgia -- Protesters demanding the resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze staged a sixth day of demonstrations outside Georgia's parliament building Thursday, angered by the alleged rigging of this month's national elections.
"We are fighting for us to have a future," said opposition National Movement party leader Mikhail Saakashvili, who called for an even bigger rally for Friday.
He praised the demonstrators, whose numbers swell from hundreds during the day to thousands at night, for keeping the protests peaceful.
"The whole world has seen that we are having a peaceful action, that we have not crossed into aggressive action. No one can label us extremists, radicals, or enemies of the people," he said.
In a sign that anger was spreading outside the capital, the opposition said up to 200 protesters had occupied a government building in Zugdidi, about 150 miles west of Tbilisi, and announced they were beginning a hunger strike, according to several media reports.
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1000 demonstrate against Israeli barrier in West Bank
AFP
November 14, 2003
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/13/1068674320323.html
About 1000 Palestinians joined by Israeli and foreign peace activists demonstrated yesterday against Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank town of Baqa al-Sharqiya.
The 4000-strong Palestinian town, which straddles the Green Line with Israel, was cut off from the West Bank city of Tulkarem and other areas vital to its economy by the barrier.
Residents as well as a group from the International Solidarity Movement staged the demonstration as part of a week of protests and activities against the controversial project.
A small group tried to force open a gate through to the other side of the barrier, but Israeli troops broke up the protesters by firing tear-gas grenades, an AFP correspondent reported.
Israel says the barrier is vital to prevent infiltrations by West Bank militants, but the Palestinians argue that the fence, which cuts deep into the territory, is aimed at pre-determining the borders of their future state and driving them out of fertile areas.
A survey released by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs on Tuesday noted that the barrier conforms to Israel's recognised boundary on only 11 per cent of its planned route.
The report said that it would thus cause the de-facto annexation of 15 per cent of the West Bank and lead to severe humanitarian consequences for more than 680,000 Palestinians.
"Little consideration appears to have been given by the Israeli Government to the wall's impact on Palestinian lives," the report said.
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