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NUCLEAR
Nuclear Sub Heads Home After Accident
Uranium Pebbles May Light the Way By Megan Lindow
Israel uses depleted uranium
Australia leaning to $600 million US muscle tanks
Delays Reported in Iran's Return of Nuclear Fuel to Russia
IAEA Likely to Rebuff U.S. on Iran Nukes
Europe to Oppose U.S. Effort to Air Iran Arms Issue in U.N.
U.S. Criticizes Europeans' Iran Plan
Report Chides Governments on Stockpiles
Mini-Nukes and Preemptive Policy: A Dangerous Combination
Spending bill trims funds for pit facility
Nuclear waste in landfills no joke
MILITARY
Resurgent Taliban Threatens Afghan Stability, U.S. Says
U.N. Agency Cuts Back in Afghanistan
Afghan Security Worries Envoy
Japan Heads to Iraq, Haunted by Taboo Bred in Another War
China: Use of force may be 'unavoidable'
Colombia drug program panned
Iran president recognises Iraqi Governing Council
Worse Than Crimes
U.S. aircraft pound suspected hide-outs
U.S. Military Drops Pair of 2,000-Pound Bombs in Iraq
Few Signs of Infiltration by Foreign Fighters in Iraq
Israel Urged to Aid Palestinians
NATO Rolls Out New Strike Force
Three Soldiers Are Charged With Assault on Prisoners
U.S. Plans New Iraq Proposal For U.N. Resolution Will Seek More Aid
Soldier's Death May Be Related to Vaccines
U.S. Soldier's Death Is Tied To Vaccines
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
U.S. Plans to Toughen Rules for Cargo Shipping Industry
Court to FBI: No spying on in-car computers
Police Face Lawsuits Over Tactics at Big Protests
Braun Says Iraq War Hurt Anti-Terror Effort
Top Justice Aide Approved Sending Suspect to Syria
ENERGY AND OTHER
Energy Bill's Ethanol Compromise in Jeopardy
Senate Eyes Showdown on Energy Bill
Investigation Pins Origin of Blackout on Ohio Utility
Judge Decries Pro-Industry Mining Rules
Green Group Offers Good News On U.S. Pollution
ACTIVISTS
More nuclear related opinions from the Pope
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Nuclear Sub Heads Home After Accident
November 19, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/international/europe/19SUBM.html
ROME, Nov. 18 - A nuclear-powered submarine, the Hartford, headed back to the United States on Tuesday after it was damaged in a grounding accident that led the Navy to relieve two officers of their commands.
In the Oct. 25 accident, the fast-attack submarine touched the sea bottom in shallow water near La Maddalena, a tiny island off Sardinia's north coast, which has a naval support base.
No one was injured, and there was no environmental damage.
After an investigation, Rear Adm. P. Stephen Stanley relieved Capt. Greg Parker, commander of Submarine Squadron 22, and Cmdr. Christopher R. Van Metre of their commands.
The six-month deployment of the Hartford, which is based in Groton, Conn., began just last month.
Before leaving La Maddalena on Tuesday, the submarine conducted a sea trial to make sure that it could safely return to the United States, and the navigation team underwent extra training, the Sixth Fleet said in a statement from Gaeta, Italy.
The submarine will undergo further repairs at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia.
-------- africa
Uranium Pebbles May Light the Way By Megan Lindow
Nov. 18, 2003
Wired
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,61088,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html
CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- South Africa seems an unlikely place for the launch of a global revolution in nuclear energy technology.
Africa's only nuclear power plant occupies a desolate stretch of coastline north of Cape Town. Nevertheless, along the southern tip of the continent -- in the shadow of an aging, obsolescing water-cooled reactor -- state-run utility giant Eskom and its international partners want to build the world's first commercial "pebble bed" reactor.
To developers, the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor design promises to deliver an "African Renaissance" -- a rebirth of nuclear energy. The PBMR is safer, cleaner, smaller and more affordable than conventional nuclear power plants, says Tom Ferreira, spokesman for the PBMR consortium. In fact, proponents insist that the reactor's design features make it "meltdown-proof" and "walk-away safe."
"It is physically impossible for it to suffer the kind of accident at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," Ferreira says.
To skeptics, however, the PBMR project sounds like a reckless return to an energy source that was long ago rejected as too dangerous and costly. Construction of new reactors ground to a halt in the anti-nuclear atmosphere that followed the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. A new reactor hasn't been commissioned in the United States since the 1970s, and many environmentalists would like to keep it that way.
Yet as South Africa, the United States and other countries face ever-growing energy demands and mounting concerns over global warming, attitudes toward nuclear power are changing. Finland is building a new reactor, as are Japan and other Asian countries. Anxious to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, the Bush administration also has called for a nuclear energy revival.
South Africa's government, meanwhile, is scrambling to provide a domestic supply of affordable energy to millions of citizens long deprived under apartheid. Coal, which currently supplies 90 percent of the country's power, is cheap and plentiful, but also highly polluting. Renewable forms like solar and wind energy have their limits. Hydropower isn't an option, either. For now, at least, that leaves nuclear power.
Andrew Kadak, a professor in MIT's nuclear engineering department, says that burgeoning interest in the PBMR, and in next-generation nuclear technology, signifies a worldwide nuclear revival. "What needs to be done now is to build the plant and show people how really good it is," he says.
The PBMR's small size and relative simplicity are major advantages, advocates say. A new plant can be constructed in two years, while building a traditional plant requires at least six years. Unlike the typical 1,100-megawatt facility, the PBMR design is adaptable to changing local power needs. Once the core 165-megawatt plant is built, additional power-generating modules can be added to it.
Like conventional reactors, the PBMR produces energy by harnessing the heat of a nuclear chain reaction to power an electricity-generating turbine. The main difference between the two systems lies in the storage of the enriched uranium fuel, and in the delivery of heat to the power plant. Instead of traditional fuel rods, the PBMR reactor is packed with tennis ball-size graphite "pebbles," each containing thousands of tiny uranium dioxide particles. The PBMR system relies on superheated helium gas, instead of the usual steam, to drive the turbines.
The fuel-storage system makes the PBMR inherently safer, Ferreira says, by preventing the radioactive material from overheating to the point of a meltdown. "With a conventional reactor, you've got to do a whole host of things to prevent the chain reaction from running away," he says. "In a PBMR, you've got to do a whole lot of things to keep the chain reaction going."
When the system malfunctions, the reactor simply shuts down, he says. The heat dissipates, and the radioactivity is contained.
The PBMR already boasts a successful track record. A 15-megawatt demonstration model was built in Germany during the 1960s, and it ran without a glitch for 21 years. But the government axed the program in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster.
In 1993, a German scientist took the moribund project to Eskom, where work slowly began to commercialize the technology. Now, the group hopes that the $1 billion project will establish South Africa as the world's leading supplier of PBMR technology.
The PBMR still needs government approval, however, and other potential roadblocks remain. Earthlife Africa, an environmental group, has filed an appeal that could kill the project before it reaches the final approval stages.
Environmentalists have been alarmed by, among other things, developers' claims that the plant's built-in safety features remove the need for elaborate emergency backup and containment systems that are required for conventional reactors. This greater simplicity is what, in theory, makes the PBMR less expensive to build than water-cooled reactors.
"If one could predict with confidence that severe accidents or sabotage attacks were so unlikely as to be incredible, then protection against them might not be justified," wrote Edwin S. Lyman, scientific director of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington. "However, in the case of the PBMR, significant uncertainties remain."
Nevertheless, if the first PBMR proves successful, the consortium hopes to begin tapping the $100 billion global market for new power stations by 2010. Eventually, the PBMR consortium hopes to offer added perks, such as the capacity to desalinize seawater and generate hydrogen using the heat generated from the nuclear reaction, Ferreira adds. The PBMR consortium intends to seek U.S. funding next year to work on producing hydrogen power.
Ferreira acknowledges that South Africa has a limited window of opportunity to realize its nuclear ambitions. While South Africa's program is most advanced, PBMR technology is also being pursued in China and at MIT. Unforeseen glitches and delays could cause this developing nation to miss out on a rare chance to count itself among the world's technological leaders, he says.
"Pebble-bed reactors will be built in the world, regardless of whether we do it or not," Ferreira says. "It's got so many things going for it that I can almost not see it not happening."
-------- depleted uranium
Israel uses depleted uranium
Iran Broadcasting News Network
http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=192762&n=20
Al-Khalil, Nov 19 - An Israeli opposition leader and former minister has threatened to disclose the type of "lethal weapons" the Israeli army used against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip several weeks ago.
Meretz leader Yossi Sarid was quoted by the Israeli media on Wednesday as saying that he might reveal the type of bombs the Israeli army used during an attack on a Gaza neighborhood several weeks ago.
Sarid serves on the powerful knesset committee on security and foreign affairs and is constantly briefed on security matters pertaining to Israeli army operations against the Palestinians.
Observers in Palestine contend that Sarid was likely referring to bombs containing depleted uranium, a lethal substance added to bombs to increase its destructive power.
Depleted uranium is known to cause a number of cancerous illnesses and several other symptoms including fatigue, headache and general frail health as well fetal deformities.
Palestinians have for a long time suspected that Israel had been using ammunition containing depleted uranium in residential areas in Gaza and the West Bank.
----
[Australia chooses to replace depleted uranium armor on new tanks.]
Australia leaning to $600 million US muscle tanks
By Mark Forbes Defence Correspondent Canberra
November 20, 2003
The Age (Australia)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/19/1069027187696.html
An Abrams tank in action in Iraq.
The Australian Defence Force is to introduce the massive American-built M1 Abrams tanks as an armoured strike force to facilitate a frontline role for the army alongside the US in future international conflicts.
Although the choice awaits final approval, senior defence sources confirmed the deal to buy 60 Abrams M1 battle tanks for $600 million was set to proceed.
Defence Minister Robert Hill, force chief Peter Cosgrove and army chief Peter Leahy have supported the Abrams over British and German rivals.
The Government's about-face on buying heavy armour is intended to strengthen the US alliance by boosting "interoperability" for future Iraq-style conflicts. In an indication of the strategic importance of the move, the US Administration will handle the deal, selling the tanks directly to Australia.
Generals Leahy and Cosgrove and Senator Hill have all said the invasion of Iraq proved the value of tanks in modern warfare. Senator Hill said recent operations had demonstrated "the importance tanks have played in the protection of forces".
But critics claim the 70-tonne Abrams are unsuitable for operations along crumbling Pacific roads and bridges. The tanks are too heavy to be airlifted and must be transported by sea.
Hugh White, the director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and author of the Government's defence white paper, said he had been told that the decision to buy the Abrams "has in effect been made".
The $600 million price tag was high and could be better spent on more troops for the army, he said.
"The decision to buy the Abrams only makes sense if you want to upgrade the army's capability to to take part in high-intensity Iraqi Freedom-style operations. I don't think there is a coherent strategic rationale for this move," Mr White said.
An in-principle decision to buy new tanks was announced this month as part of a defence capability review. Senator Hill said the Government would quickly decide between the Abrams, the German Leopard 2 and British Challenger 2, but refused to give details.
The decision to buy tanks is backflip from the Government's white paper outlining the future shape of the Defence Force. The white paper decided against "the development of heavy armoured forces suitable for contributions to coalition forces in high-intensity conflicts".
The army has a 30-year-old fleet of Leopard tanks, which are yet to fire a shot in anger.
Discounts on the Abrams' $6 million price tag have been offered by the US, which is urging Australia to make the purchase. Included in the $600 million total are spare parts, transporters, training equipment, maintenance and support costs.
The Abrams would be modified for Australian requirements, including replacing its depleted uranium armour with ceramic plating.
A spokeswoman for Senator Hill refused to speculate on the tank choice. The decision would be announced "as soon as possible", she said.
Senator Hill was expected to discuss the Abrams deal in talks with US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
General Cosgrove yesterday said the Defence Force "really wanted to move ahead" on the tank purchase, but could not guarantee when a decision would be announced "because we are obviously dealing with foreign governments and foreign military forces".
Mr White said the choice of the Abrams was "not a reflection of a change in the Government's strategic priorities, but of pressure from within the army... A heavier tank is a liability in the region, harder to move and deploy."
The tank purchase must be approved by cabinet's national security committee and an announcement is expected before the end of the year.
Senator Hill has emphasised the need for interoperability with the US, and an Australian fleet of Abrams would facilitate easy training interchange between the two forces and access to ongoing development. It could also allow Australian crews to fight in pre-positioned US tanks.
-------- iran
Delays Reported in Iran's Return of Nuclear Fuel to Russia
Lisa McAdams
Moscow 19 Nov 2003
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=825D1702-9141-4BEB-BB3591304221C110
A senior Russian nuclear official says a long-delayed agreement calling on Iran to return all spent nuclear fuel to Russia faces new delays.
Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev says it could be several months more before Moscow and Tehran sign the deal on spent fuel. The signing has been postponed repeatedly since the beginning of this year.
The agreement is important because it would clear the way for Moscow to complete construction of Iran's first nuclear power reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. In an interview with Russia's Itar-Tass news agency on Wednesday, Mr. Rumyantsev sought to downplay the delay.
He said there is no rush to sign the agreement because Russian fuel shipments to Bushehr are not scheduled to start until early next year. Iranian officials, he said, are too busy opening their nuclear program to closer inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna to finalize the agreement now.
Iran's nuclear energy program is on the agenda of this week's meeting of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which is examining U.S. claims Iran is secretly building a nuclear bomb. Iran has denied the charges, saying its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
Under American pressure, Russia has agreed not deliver any fuel to the Bushehr power plant until Iran signs the agreement, one of whose provisions requires Iran agree to return all of the reactor's spent fuel back to Russia for disposal.
Spent fuel can be used to make plutonium, which can also be used in nuclear weapons.
----
IAEA Likely to Rebuff U.S. on Iran Nukes
GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press
Wed, Nov. 19, 2003
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/7301138.htm
VIENNA, Austria - European nations on Wednesday focused on ways to heal a growing rift with the United States over how harshly to censure Iran for hiding parts of its nuclear program.
The United States had hoped that the 35-nation board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency would find Tehran in noncompliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at its meeting, which opens Thursday.
But American officials were alarmed over a proposed EU-backed draft resolution that would urge Iran to continue cooperation with the agency but refrain from harshly condemning it for concealing elements of its nuclear program, diplomats said.
IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei was also disappointed by the lack of stronger language in the European proposal, a diplomat close to the official said.
Twenty-five European nations met late into Wednesday night to find ways to compromise with the United States and its allies.
No more than three nations on the 35-member board - Canada, Australia and Japan - supported Washington's stance, diplomats said. Instead, the majority favored the proposed resolution authored by France, Germany and one of Washington's closest allies, Britain. Russia and China also supported the European version, the diplomats said.
The rough draft minimized nearly two decades of covert nuclear programs that the U.S. administration says point to an effort to develop atomic weapons. It focused instead on steps taken by Iran over the past few weeks to deflect international suspicions, including suspending uranium enrichment and agreeing to inspections on demand by IAEA inspectors.
A senior diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the main point of Wednesday night's discussion was "how to deal with Iran's past nuclear activities."
The participants discussed stronger language - either including past "noncompliance" of IAEA agreements on the part of Iran, or finding it in "breach of its obligations."
Both would be more acceptable to the United States, said the diplomat. He said the proposed language would likely be discussed by Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush as well as between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer,
The three West European sponsors of the draft "want to see continued cooperation and transparency from Iran," said another senior Western diplomat.
He said the draft would make clear that the board would not accept "repetition of past mistakes, deceit or tricks," and would urge Iran to immediately open its nuclear programs to pervasive inspections even before the agreement is ratified.
It would also ask Iran to maintain its commitment to suspending uranium enrichment.
While the Americans have no dispute with those demands, they were dismayed that the initial proposed draft glossed over activities such as uranium enrichment and experimental plutonium processing that they say violate the Nonproliferation Treaty, the diplomats said.
In Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday, Powell and European foreign ministers failed to agree on how to deal with Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran says is for generating electricity as its oil stocks decline.
Both sides do not want Iran to develop nuclear weapons, but the EU favors "constructive dialogue," said EU foreign policy representative Javier Solana.
IAEA director general ElBaradei also seeks a tougher stance. He took the Iranians to task for effective breaches of the Nonproliferation Treaty in a report that also, however, concluded that there was no proof Iran had a weapons agenda.
ElBaradei wants "a strongly worded report" that stops short of asking for Security Council involvement, a step that could lead to sanctions against Iran, one diplomat said.
The diplomats said the United States was ready to push for a meeting that ends without an Iran resolution rather than agree to something it considered spineless.
The West Europeans fear too much pressure would turn Iran from cooperation to confrontation and hope to help Iran with its peaceful nuclear programs. But several diplomats suggested the dispute also reflected West European independence similar to that shown by the French-German attempt to scuttle the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
The Americans see the draft as "another (European) chance to stick your thumb in the eyes of the United States," said one.
Ahead of the meeting, an Iranian opposition group accused Tehran of continuing to deceive the IAEA. Firouz Mahvi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran told reporters in Vienna that a nuclear site toured by agency inspectors near Karaj was a decoy. IAEA officials said they could not immediately evaluate the claims and said the opposition group had a mixed record of accuracy.
ON THE NET
IAEA, www.iaea.org
----
Europe to Oppose U.S. Effort to Air Iran Arms Issue in U.N.
November 19, 2003
New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/international/europe/19POWE.html
LONDON, Nov. 18 - Europe will resist an American effort to bring the suspected Iranian development of nuclear weapons before the United Nations Security Council, hoping to lure Iran into compliance with negotiations and incentives, European officials said Tuesday.
The stand was a rebuff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who met in Brussels with European foreign ministers and sought a forceful response to a United Nations report that Mr. Powell said had proved that Iran was defying its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Later, he flew here to London to join President Bush.
The Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency is scheduled to take up a resolution this week by France, Germany and Britain that seeks to compel Iran to halt enrichment and reprocessing of uranium and holds out the lure of cooperation, including sharing nuclear technology for civilian use.
Javier Solana, the top European Union diplomat, said Europe would follow a policy of "constructive engagement" directed at inducing Iran to abandon materials that could be used to produce weapons. European officials agreed Tuesday to demand that Iran sign a nonproliferation clause in any future treaties.
Mr. Solana acknowledged that the report, drafted by Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, showed that Iran's past behavior was "not compatible" with its nonproliferation pledge. But he and European colleagues said Iran had shown a new willingness to cooperate.
At a news conference in Brussels on Tuesday, Mr. Powell voiced doubts about whether the European approach was strong enough. "We have some reservations about the draft resolution," he said. "The fact of the matter is Iran has been in noncompliance."
Later on Tuesday, on the flight to London, he said the last draft he had seen lacked "trigger mechanisms" to punish Iran for noncompliance. He said Dr. ElBaradei agreed that the resolution was "inadequate to the report he had prepared."
Bush administration officials have hewed to a tougher line toward Iran in the wake of Dr. ElBaradei's report, which concluded that, despite past transgressions, there was no evidence that Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons. John Bolton, an under secretary of state who is responsible for nonproliferation, declared that conclusion "simply impossible to believe."
An American official said Tuesday that the administration was still considering bringing the Iranian matter before the Security Council, which has the power to authorize sanctions or military action.
The administration has not settled on its strategy, the diplomat said, and it may yield in the short term to the European initiative. One European diplomat said some of the ministers were eager to avoid another Iraq-style showdown at the United Nations. "You will see Europeans united around, `Let's maintain this issue in Vienna,' " the diplomat said, adding that it would "probably create more problems than solve them by taking it to the U.N. Security Council."
Mr. Powell and his counterparts also discussed Iraq, and the European envoys expressed satisfaction that the administration had moved up its timetable for handing over control to an interim government.
Talks With U.N. on U.S. Plan for Iraq
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 - Administration officials said Tuesday that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had begun discussions with Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations about the possibility of a new Security Council resolution that would, in effect, bless the new American plan for a transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government by the middle of next year.
As part of the talks, reported in the Wednesday issue of The Washington Post, American officials said they had asked Mr. Annan to consider appointing a new special representative for Iraq to take part in plans for the transition. There has been no senior diplomat serving in that capacity since Sergio Vieira de Mello was killed in the bombing of United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in August.
-------
U.S. Criticizes Europeans' Iran Plan
Powell Urges Stronger Consequences for Nuclear Noncompliance
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 19, 2003; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59437-2003Nov18.html
BRUSSELS, Nov. 18 -- European leaders are being too lenient in their effort to halt Iran's nuclear program through negotiations, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Tuesday, calling for stricter demands and stronger consequences if Iran does not comply.
Two days before a key meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Powell called a resolution proposed by France, Britain and Germany "deficient," partly because it does not have mechanisms to trigger sanctions if Iran fails to keep its promises.
The Bush administration, citing IAEA evidence that Iran conducted secret uranium processing programs for years, has said the Tehran government cannot be trusted to uphold recent pledges of cooperation. Powell told reporters after meeting European foreign ministers, "We should not declare victory before victory has been achieved."
European officials are wary of a confrontation with Iran and skeptical of the advantages of a tougher U.S. approach. But as one European diplomat said, referring to the bitter disagreements over Iraq, "Frankly, the appetite for another diplomatic showdown is, 'No way in the world.' "
Negotiations are underway in European capitals over a resolution intended by France, Britain and Germany to present Iran with a mixture of enticements and deterrents. Powell said the U.S. administration would prefer that the 35-member IAEA board of governors pass no resolution rather than a "totally inadequate" one.
The Bush administration wants to declare Iran in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and set strong terms for compliance, including the threat of moving the matter to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to order sanctions.
The two-day meeting scheduled to begin Thursday in Vienna will be the first since the IAEA reported last week that Iran had secretly manufactured small amounts of enriched uranium and plutonium and deliberately hid evidence of its nuclear program.
In a 29-page report, the IAEA cited numerous violations by Iran of treaty obligations. The report said that Iran's "policy of concealment" continued until October and that its cooperation was "limited and reactive."
Agency investigators said there was no evidence so far that Iran had tried to build a nuclear weapon, a conclusion that John R. Bolton, the State Department's senior proliferation specialist, dismissed as "simply impossible to believe." To verify that Iran is now telling the truth, the IAEA urged surprise inspections and frequent monitoring.
In response, Iran acknowledged violating international nonproliferation rules, but called the offenses minor. Saying that the failures lay in the past, the Iranian delegate to the IAEA said the "matter is closed." The Iranians also warned the IAEA not to yield to U.S. pressure by referring the matter to the United Nations.
IAEA governors will be asked to weigh the report against indications that Iran is changing its behavior. The foreign ministers of France, Germany and Great Britain won promises last month that Tehran would curb its nuclear program and allow more aggressive inspections in return for dialogue and future assistance. Iran was facing an IAEA deadline at the time.
"We're pleased that Iran seems to be responding to international pressure and trying to meet its obligations," Powell told reporters aboard his plane as he flew from Brussels to meet President Bush in London.
"But this is not something we should be congratulating them about," Powell continued. "We want to be able to satisfy the international community that they have stopped doing anything that would lead to the development of nuclear weapons."
Powell also briefed the foreign ministers on the expedited U.S. effort to return Iraq to Iraqi control by next summer. For some of the diplomats, he reported, the new timetable is still not fast enough. The French have called for sovereignty to be transferred by the end of the year.
Three months after suicide bombers destroyed the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters and killed special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, Powell said he is pressing U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to appoint a new emissary. He described a U.N. role of working with Iraqis to establish an electoral system and draft the country's basic law.
Powell said he would carry home complaints from foreign ministers angered by the continued detention without trial of some European citizens at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He said U.S. investigators must first be sure that the prisoners are not connected to terrorist organizations and have disclosed all they know.
-------- terrorism
Report Chides Governments on Stockpiles
November 19, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/international/europe/19SECU.html
LONDON, Nov. 18 - Western governments and Russia are moving far too slowly to stop terrorists from acquiring deadly ingredients to build unconventional weapons, a major international report concluded Tuesday.
Of a total of $20 billion pledged by the Group of Eight last year to secure stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological materials, "only a tiny fraction" has been spent or even allocated to specific projects, it said.
"The threat is outpacing the response," Sam Nunn, a former United States senator, said in an interview here. Mr. Nunn leads the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an antiproliferation watchdog that largely paid for the study by 21 security research groups.
Mr. Nunn said the war in Iraq had distracted the United States and diverted resources from securing unconventional weapons materials in regions like the former Soviet Union.
According to the study, there are some 100 poorly protected research reactors, spread across 40 countries, containing weapons-usable uranium.
"The global community remains alarmingly vulnerable to catastrophic terrorism," it said. "Around the world, and particularly in the former Soviet Union, materials and weapons of mass destruction are insecure, often protected only by a padlock or an unpaid guard."
"To construct a nuclear bomb, terrorists would need to steal only a small amount of nuclear material, about enough to fit in a suitcase," it added.
Mr. Nunn said terror groups were less likely to acquire unconventional weapons from a government than to get the materials from ill-secured research sites.
"The most likely source of terrorist weapons probably does not come from a state that has spent 10, 15, 20 years trying to get their own weapons - they're not likely to turn around and give it to Al Qaeda," he said.
Apart from money, the report said, "Russian bureaucratic foot dragging" is also hampering progress.
Mr. Nunn said the rate of success in securing such sites was too slow. "At the pace we're going, you're talking about 20 years," he said. "I don't think we've got that long."
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Mini-Nukes and Preemptive Policy: A Dangerous Combination
by Charles V. Peņa
Cato Policy Analysis No. 499,
November 19, 2003
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-499es.html
Charles V. Peņa is director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Executive Summary
Currently, the United States relies on conventional bunker-busting bombs-such as the GBU-28, which was used in both Afghanistan and Iraq-to destroy hardened, underground targets. Legislation is pending in Congress that would provide funding for research-but not engineering or development-for low-yield, earth-penetrating nuclear weapons for targets that cannot be destroyed by conventional bunker busters.
Advocates of these mini-nukes argue that they are needed for underground targets that potential adversaries are building, largely to conceal and protect their weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. They also argue that mini-nukes would deter rogue states from using WMD and even dissuade them from developing such weapons in the first place.
Critics contend that even very small-yield war-heads detonated deep underground will produce significant blast damage as well as fairly widespread radioactive fallout. They also believe that mini-nukes would threaten international arms control and nonproliferation efforts.
The reality is that mini-nukes won't deter countries from taking actions that they perceive to be in their self-interest, such as the acquisition of nuclear weapons thought to be the only way to deter the United States from engaging in preemptive regime change. And neither will arms control agreements and a nonproliferation regime.
In the final analysis, mini-nukes and preemption are a dangerous combination that could undermine deterrence and make the United States less secure. If rogue state leaders believe that the United States has targeted them for regime change-regardless of any actions they might take short of abdicating power to a new leader deemed acceptable by the United States- and is willing to use nuclear weapons preemptively, they may feel they have nothing to lose by using what they can-including WMD-to strike at the United States first.
Furthermore, if rogue state leaders do not possess the long-range military capability to directly attack the United States, and if preemptive regime change is thought to be inevitable, the natural barriers for those leaders to form alliances with terrorist organizations will be eroded and the incentive for them to see terrorism-and possibly supplying terrorists with WMD-as the only way to retaliate against the United States will increase.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- texas
Spending bill trims funds for pit facility
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
By GREG ROHLOFF grohloff@amarillonet.com
The Amarillo Globe-News
http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/111903/new_spendingbill.shtml
"Construction along the interstates is done by TxDOT, not the City. Two different entities. In fact, the City really doesn't have any say in what the State does. The construction on the Washington Street bridge is being done by the State, not the City. All the City is getting from this right now is a pain." - From non-texan
The House of Representatives approved a compromise spending measure Tuesday that trims the request for a new plutonium pit facility.
The measure, which cleared the House by a 387-36 margin with U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry voting in favor of the energy and water development appropriations, was sent on to the Senate.
A House-Senate conference committee last week trimmed a $22.8 million request to $10.8 million for the Modern Pit Facility, for which Pantex is one of five Department of Energy facilities under consideration as a location for the plant.
The measure also includes $6 million for weapons research, but conferees voted to withhold $4 million until the Bush administration files a report detailing which nuclear weapons it intends to withdraw from the nation's stockpile and which new ones it proposes.
"The conferees agree with the House Report that until Congress reviews the revised future Stockpile plan it is premature to pursue further decisions regarding the Modern Pit Facility," the conference report said.
The Department of Energy's National Nuclear Safety Administration wants the new pit facility to build new plutonium pits, the triggers for nuclear bombs, in what would be the first expansion of the weapons stockpile since the end of the cold war.
The bill also provides the requested $24.9 million requested to make the Nevada Test Site ready for nuclear tests, setting a 24-month requirement for testing.
In the facilities readiness portion of the appropriations bill, the conference report recommended another $5 million for Pantex in a $55 million increase over the request of $1.03 billion.
Besides Pantex, the DOE is considering the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., the Nevada Test Site and sites at Los Alamos and Carlsbad in New Mexico as possible locations for the new pit facility. The DOE plans to announce its preferred site in April 2004.
-------- us nuc waste
Nuclear waste in landfills no joke
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
11/19/03
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/1103/19nuke.html
Let's stop kidding ourselves and admit the obvious: The agency once taken seriously as a defender of America's environmental trust has lately become a laughingstock.
Under the Bush administration, it seems that the Environmental Protection Agency has been reduced to providing comic and regulatory relief to corporate interests seeking a freer hand to pollute the nation's natural resources and threaten public health.
The latest punchline from the EPA gag writers involves a proposed rule change that would for the first time allow the nuclear industry to put radioactive materials in ordinary landfills and hazardous waste sites that were not designed for that purpose.
That's right -- radioactive nuclear waste, such as cesium, strontium, cobalt and plutonium, elements used in nuclear power facilities and bomb-making plants. But don't worry; the EPA promises this material would be "low-activity" and only stored in teeny-tiny amounts. In other words, just glow with the flow.
Fortunately, not everyone shares the EPA's bizarre sense of humor.
Charles Sheehan-Miles of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute has formed a coalition with several other environmental groups to oppose the rule change. "This would save the industry a lot of money, and that's the only thing that's driving this," he said.
"Remember, plutonium is plutonium and radiation exposure is a cumulative thing. A little today won't hurt you but the more you're exposed to it the chances of you developing cancer go up dramatically."
All of this would be downright funny if it weren't so sad. But if the nuclear energy industry is allowed to dispose of nuclear wastes in local landfills, then the joke is on us.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Resurgent Taliban Threatens Afghan Stability, U.S. Says
November 19, 2003
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/international/asia/19AFGH.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 - Nearly two years after the Taliban's ouster from Kabul, a resurgence in its activities and cross-border operations have posed a new threat to eastern and southern Afghanistan and a new diplomatic challenge in American dealings with Pakistan, Bush administration officials said this week.
The officials said that they were hopeful that American military operations would push the Taliban back, and that an increase in economic assistance would pull people away from the Taliban. But they said those efforts would take time.
Zalmay Khalilzad, recently confirmed as the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, said Tuesday that the Afghan government under President Hamid Karzai needed to provide "more services and more presence" in eastern and southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban's attacks are occurring.
Speaking to reporters, Mr. Khalilzad said that when he goes to Kabul to take up his post next week, he will try to "accelerate the reconstruction of Afghanistan's security, economic and political sectors."
Other administration officials said that while Pakistan had increased its military and security presence in the Pakistani provinces bordering Afghanistan, much more was needed to prevent the Taliban from using Pakistani territory as a sanctuary and arms supply base.
One senior official said that while Pakistan had given "phenomenal cooperation" in arresting forces of Al Qaeda in its territory, its actions against the Taliban were far less satisfactory.
Also operating in the region is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a renegade militia commander who once received American aid in his effort to oust the Russians from Afghanistan in the 1980's but is now leading what he calls a holy war against Mr. Karzai and American forces.
Many in the Taliban and in Mr. Hekmatyar's militia have close ties with retired operatives of Pakistani intelligence and security forces, which helped install the Taliban in power in Kabul in the 1990's.
The Taliban's strategy, one official said, is to "sow doubt about Karzai's ability to govern" and to "play on cultural and tribal differences." The Taliban base of operations is in the Pashto-speaking parts of Afghanistan. Although Mr. Karzai is a member of the Pashtun ethnic group, the country's largest, his government is dominated by a small group from the Panjshir Valley in the north, where other groups like the Tajiks predominate.
Mr. Khalilzad said that in recent months Mr. Karzai had moved to correct an underrepresentation of Pashtuns in his ministries, particularly the Defense Ministry, but that more steps were necessary.
Administration officials said they expected that with the $1.7 billion in aid recently approved by Congress, the eastern and southern portions of Afghanistan would get roads and other projects to improve farming and get farm products to markets.
Without farm alternatives, Mr. Khalilzad and others said, the Pashto-speaking areas may continue the recent trend of growing more opium poppies for heroin. Opium cultivation has spread in the last year, various aid officials say.
A symbol of the elusiveness of the Taliban and Al Qaeda is the continuing failure to capture Osama bin Laden and others who used to have free run of Afghanistan. Last week Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the United States Central Command, said in a briefing that combat operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban "are every bit as much and every bit as difficult as those that go on in Iraq."
The United States and its allies have 11,000 troops carrying out military operations against hostile forces in Afghanistan, and there are another 5,000 acting as peacekeepers under NATO control.
Recent attacks have occurred in Kandahar, the largest city in southeastern Afghanistan and a stronghold of the Taliban, as well as Paktia Province and other provinces in that region. Those attacks have killed United Nations personnel and forced the withdrawal of relief organizations from some areas.
In another sobering reminder of the grim security situation, a United Nations Security Council mission returned from Afghanistan last week and said the attacks were jeopardizing the entire process of installing a democratic government in Kabul, leading to elections next year.
Most of Afghanistan continues to be under the control of tribal and regional leaders engaged in extortion, corruption and violence. A senior American official said the United States was trying to avoid using the word warlord to describe these figures, "but that is what they are."
--------
U.N. Agency Cuts Back in Afghanistan
November 19, 2003
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/international/asia/19KABU.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 18 - The United Nations refugee agency announced Tuesday that it was temporarily pulling 30 foreign staff members out of large areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan and closing refugee reception centers in four provinces, officials said.
The suspension of operations comes after three attacks on United Nations offices and staff members in the last week by suspected Taliban fighters.
On Sunday, two men suspected of being Taliban members pulled up beside a clearly marked United Nations vehicle in the city of Ghazni, just south of Kabul. One man opened fire with a pistol, killing Bettina Goislard, a 29-year-old Frenchwoman working for the refugee agency.
"We cannot do this alone," Filippo Grandi, the head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees mission in Afghanistan, said in a statement. "This murder tragically proved it." Mr. Grandi said his agency would review the situation in two weeks.
On the day Ms. Goislard was killed, a homemade bomb detonated near a United Nations vehicle in Paktia Province, in eastern Afghanistan. On Nov. 11, a car bomb detonated outside the United Nations office in Kandahar. On Tuesday, other aid groups met in Kandahar to decide whether to withdraw their foreign workers.
Ms. Goislard was apparently aware of the danger she faced. United Nations officials said she had told friends and relatives that if she were killed she wanted to be buried in Afghanistan.
--------
Afghan Security Worries Envoy
Incoming U.S. Ambassador Seeks More Vigilance Along Pakistani Border
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 19, 2003; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59191-2003Nov18.html
Zalmay Khalilzad, who takes up residence as U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan next week, said yesterday that Pakistan is not doing enough to deter attacks on U.S. soldiers by militants operating along its mountainous border.
Khalilzad gave the administration's bleakest assessment yet of security conditions in Afghanistan, saying that a regrouping of the Taliban and al Qaeda, increased drug trafficking and even common criminals are hampering President Hamid Karzai and the transition to democracy.
"There are Taliban leaders and people that are using Pakistani territory to come across and carry out attacks in Afghanistan," Khalilzad told a small group of reporters. "We would like Pakistan to do more."
Khalilzad, noting that Pakistan is an ally and has been helpful in arresting al Qaeda leaders, said the United States would give Pakistan more assistance in return for more cooperation. President Bush met Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf at Camp David in June and agreed to a five-year military and economic aid package tied to annual reviews of Pakistan's cooperation in the war on terrorism.
Khalilzad said Osama bin Laden, who is thought to be hiding in the tribal regions along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, remains dangerous. "My own sense is that he's alive and that he is . . . encouraging the Taliban and others," Khalilzad said. He said the United States will "redouble our efforts to take the fight to the Taliban extremists and to go after the al Qaeda leadership."
Taliban rebels have dramatically stepped up operations in recent months, and Khalilzad said common criminals and al Qaeda followers are increasingly active. He said Bush has ordered him to accelerate improvements in security conditions and infrastructure construction. Khalilzad said a few hundred armed opponents were attacking 11,000 allied troops, operating mostly in "onesies and twosies."
"It's clear that their activity has increased in recent weeks and months," he said. "Their strategy is to be able to hold territory. . . . What they do, since we're not everywhere all the time, is to go after soft targets in particular areas with a handful of people."
On May 1, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced at a news conference in Kabul that major combat operations were over in Afghanistan, marking a formal transition to stability and reconstruction missions.
Khalilzad, 52, was born in the northern Afghanistan city of Mazar-e Sharif. He was a National Security Council senior director and then became special presidential envoy to Afghanistan, a title he will retain. In Kabul, his office will be in the former U.S. embassy building. For security reasons, his living quarters will be a metal container while housing is built.
Khalilzad said opium cultivation, processing and transportation have increased in the past year and he believes the Taliban remains involved in narcotics trafficking. He said the British have led counternarcotics operations and the United States will be more active in helping them.
Khalilzad noted progress, saying the coalition had planned for half as many pupils as showed up for school. He said the allies have distributed 25 million books and said the paving of the dangerous 300-mile highway from Kabul to Kandahar, Afghanistan's two major cities, should be finished by year's end.
Khalilzad said a variety of countries continue to help the United States in Afghanistan, and he noted that France and Germany have helped build schools. "I shouldn't go too long praising some of the Europeans," he said with a laugh. "Certainly we want them to do more."
Khalilzad is to be sworn in Monday and is scheduled to depart for Afghanistan the next day.
-------- asia
LETTER FROM ASIA
Japan Heads to Iraq, Haunted by Taboo Bred in Another War
November 19, 2003
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/international/asia/19LETT.html
TOKYO, Nov. 18 - Not one Japanese soldier has been killed, or has killed, in combat since the end of World War II.
That remarkable fact is being repeated here often these days, precisely because, as Japan prepares to send ground forces to Iraq, things could change in the near future. The death of a soldier, a sad though common reality for most nations, would be a pivotal point in Japan's postwar history.
The government twice pushed back the date of deployment because of mounting violence in Iraq, evidently wary of the public's reaction to any casualty. But the government's hesitation runs deeper than that. While Japan's wartime leaders sent more than two million soldiers to their deaths, its postwar leaders are proud of having avoided a single combat fatality. A single casualty would tarnish that record and, some fear, reopen the Pandora's box of ultranationalism, which thrived more than a half-century ago.
Especially toward the desperate final stages of World War II, Japan used its men as if they were mere ammunition, dispatching countless numbers on suicide missions. "Duty is heavier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather," went the imperial rescript to soldiers.
Contrast that to the saying that came to symbolize postwar Japan's official attitude toward death.
In a 1977 hijacking of a Japan Airlines plane, the government gave in to demands in order to win the release of the 156 passengers. As the prime minister at the time explained, "Human life is weightier than the earth."
Now, Japan seems to be groping its way somewhere between these two extremes, cautiously, hesitatingly.
"The legacy and trauma of World War II still lingers," said Ikuhito Hata, a professor emeritus of history at Nihon University here. "It is said that Japan has 2,000 years of history, but it had never experienced defeat, whereas Western countries had experienced cycles of defeats and victories."
The government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi passed a law last summer allowing the country's military, the Self-Defense Force, to send troops to Iraq. On Tuesday, Mr. Koizumi said he had not changed his position and pledged that Japan would not "give in" to terrorist threats after the Qaeda network supposedly threatened Japan over its support of the United States. Shots were fired outside Japan's embassy in Baghdad early on Tuesday.
Yet turning back at this point would mean a loss of credibility, and so deployment is said to be on track for early next year.
In keeping with Japan's war-renouncing Constitution, the troops will engage in unwarlike activities and operate under strict guidelines, firing, for example, only when fired upon. Mr. Koizumi has said he may even request United States protection for the troops. Civilians will be sent to Baghdad, far more dangerous than the area to which the troops are expected to be assigned.
Still, Iraq is Iraq, and the government is preparing, quietly, for the possibility that some troops may not come back alive. It raised compensation for the families of service members killed in Iraq to $926,000 - up from the $556,000 now paid for on-duty deaths.
Such squeamishness is rooted, of course, in World War II, and the militaristic nationalism that led up to it. The military code issued to soldiers in 1941 forbade retreat or surrender, leading to kamikaze air attacks or large suicide missions involving entire ships. As Japan anticipated an American invasion of the main island in 1945, copies of the code were distributed to civilians, as the country prepared to fight to the last man, woman and child. "It had always been a virtue in Japan to sacrifice oneself for someone of higher status, and the government at the time exploited that sentiment," said Shinichi Nakazawa, 54, a professor of religious studies at Chuo University here.
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and its defeat, Japan embraced another document with the same fervor, the American-imposed Constitution, including the Article 9 peace clause, which prohibits the use of force in the resolution of disputes.
Mr. Koizumi wants to consider revisions to the Constitution in 2005, a position supported by about 60 percent of the public.
Revisions would be likely to get Japan more involved in the world's messy affairs and, by implication, to the deaths of troops.
Masahide Ota, 77, a Social Democratic Party member of the upper house of Parliament and a former governor of Okinawa, fought against the Americans in Okinawa, site of one of the grisliest battles. Like many of his generation, Mr. Ota opposes any change to Article 9, which he says is the only safeguard against a revival of Japanese nationalism. "I can't trust Japanese nationalism," Mr. Ota said. "Look at how Japanese are now getting excited about North Korea. It takes only a small incident to get everybody roused. Japanese nationalism is very frightening."
America's tolerance for deaths fell after Vietnam, and in Japan there have been no Sept. 11 attacks to change the mindset overnight. But public opinion is changing gradually here. In the last decade, the Self-Defense Force and other Japanese have been involved in modest United Nations peacekeeping operations. In 1993 in Cambodia, two civilians, including a policeman, were killed. North Korea and its nuclear ambitions loom as a threat.
Yasuo Kimura, a 35-year-old salaryman standing in the Otemachi section of Tokyo, said he was not prepared to put the lives of Japanese troops at risk in Iraq.
"During the gulf war, we paid a huge amount of money," Mr. Kimura said, referring to the $13 billion Japan gave in 1991. "We can pay money instead of sending people."
While Tokyo's reluctance to get involved in the Persian Gulf war drew accusations of checkbook diplomacy, Mr. Kimura's opinion was still the prevailing one. Nowadays, there are also people like Mitsuru Toba, another 35-year-old salaryman in Otemachi, who happened to be in New York during the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I changed that day," he said. "Before then, to be honest, I didn't think anything. I had a vague secure feeling that no one would attack us."
He backed sending troops to Iraq despite the risk of casualties.
"Is it O.K. only to pay money," he asked, "sacrificing the lives of other countries' soldiers?"
-------- china
China: Use of force may be 'unavoidable' if Taiwan pursues independence
11/18/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-11-18-china-taiwan_x.htm
BEIJING (AP) - In unusually strong language, China ratcheted up the rhetoric against Taiwan in remarks published Wednesday and threatened that "the use of force may become unavoidable" if the island's leaders pursue independence.
The warning from Beijing came as Taiwan prepares to elect a new leader in March. President Chen Shui-bian, running for office again, has won over more voters since he came up with plans for a new constitution and a law on referendums that could conceivably lead to citizens voting on Taiwanese independence.
Wang Zaixi, a top mainland official who deals with the Taiwan issue, said curbing any efforts the island makes toward independence is the ultimate goal of the mainland, which will go to war if necessary.
"If the Taiwan authorities collude with all splittist forces to openly engage in pro-independence activities and challenge the mainland and the one-China principle, the use of force may become unavoidable," Wang was quoted as saying in China Daily, an English-language newspaper with a wide foreign audience.
Separatists will "pay a high cost if they think we will not use force," said Wang, vice minister of the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's Cabinet. "Taiwan independence means war."
Wang, who was speaking at a seminar on cross-straits relations, also tempered his remarks by adding that "the people of Taiwan are our brothers and sisters. We are not willing to meet at the battleground."
The Chinese Cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing had no immediate comment on Wednesday. The Mainland Affairs Council in Taipei was silent hours after Wang's remarks were published - a rare move from a normally responsive government.
The United States, which has relations with China but supplies arms to Taiwan, called for calm.
"The United States continues to urge Taiwan as well as the People's Republic of China to refrain from actions or statements that increase tensions or make dialogue more difficult to achieve," the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said in a statement. "The United States does not support Taiwan independence."
Beijing has long threatened the use of force against Taiwan if it formally declares independence, but rarely so dramatically. The two sides split amid civil war in 1949, and Beijing insists that Taiwan belongs to China and must accept eventual unification.
But the language, the strongest in years, was unusual even in that context.
Yan Anlin, a professor with the Shanghai Institute of Taiwan, said China has been forced to underscore its position in recent weeks.
"China's message to Taiwan is very clear: Independence is intolerable," Yan said. "Both Chen Shui-bian and his party should know that Beijing had no other choice but to warn Taiwan's leaders because of Chen's recent remarks on independence."
In his speech at a seminar on cross-straits relations, Wang also condemned Chen's introduction of a new constitution and referendums as "extremely dangerous behaviors."
Chen is using campaign tools "to get himself re-elected and to push our Taiwanese compatriots to the brink of conflict with the motherland," Wang was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.
When Chen ran for president in Taiwan in 2000, he was the candidate that Beijing disliked most because his opposition party had called for independence. Then-Premier Zhu Rongji warned Taiwan voters that a Chen victory could lead to war.
Bruce Jacobs, a professor of Asian languages and studies at Monash University in Victoria, Australia, said China risked doing itself more harm than good with its saber-rattling.
"Every time they've made threats, the people of Taiwan have voted against what China wants," he said.
He added: "What's happening in Taiwan is major change. The leaders and the people are exploring different options for a future. ... They're moving away from a sense of China."
Last month, Beijing condemned Taiwan's leaders for flirting with independence but stopped short of threatening war.
On Tuesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said the U.S. government would deploy sufficient force in the Asia-Pacific area to lower tensions between China and Taiwan. He also offered assurances that President Bush's administration would provide Taiwan with "sufficient defense articles for her self-defense."
The United States closed its embassy in Taiwan in 1979 when it cut formal ties and recognized China. But Washington has also implicitly promised to help the island defend itself and is Taiwan's biggest arms supplier.
"We have full faith that the question of Taiwan will be resolved peacefully," Armitage said.
-------- colombia
Colombia drug program panned
November 19, 2003
By Jerry Seper and Tom Carter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031118-113126-5087r.htm
Mismanagement by the State Department has "seriously jeopardized" the U.S. airborne drug-eradication program in cocaine- and heroin-rich Colombia, the program's former director says.
The department's inability to provide "consistent competent oversight" has contributed to the death of one pilot who was shot down, two others killed in separate crashes and the capture of three others by Marxist rebels, John McLaughlin said in a recent letter to a House committee.
Mr. McLaughlin, who retired last month after 25 years as head of the Office of Aviation in the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, said the program is in such disarray it should be transferred to a federal law- enforcement agency.
He said the program is losing aircraft "at the rate of one a month" and without the "exceptional skill of the pilots, the commitment of our mainstream recovery teams and the dedication of our Combat Search and Rescue crews," several more pilots and crew would have died or been captured.
"Intelligence sharing has been a real problem," Mr. McLaughlin said in a telephone interview yesterday from his home in Florida. "We'd fly over an area, take a real shellacking, come back and report, and they'd tell us 'Yeah, we knew something was there.'
"If that were the case, why would they send an airplane in, knowing the area was heavily defended?"
While there have been no aircraft lost during the past month, Mr. McLaughlin said it was not due to improvements in safety, but because the department is "avoiding flying and have moved the aircraft to areas that have already been cleared.
"They are trading off productivity. If you don't fly, you don't get hit," he said.
The State Department declined this week to address specifics of the McLaughlin accusations, except to say that "safety has been a number one priority of this program since the beginning.
"It is a measure of our success that the environment has become more dangerous," said a department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
He said aircraft involved in spraying had taken 350 "hits" from ground fire this year compared with 190 last year because, in part, much of the remaining coca is growing in guerrilla-controlled areas.
Safety precautions had been "ratcheted up" to meet those challenges, he said.
Mr. McLaughlin dismissed the department's explanation that the only places left to spray were heavily defended. He said he doubted the department had "good intelligence" showing what areas of the country were heavily defended.
He also said that while the program had sought to spray 160,000 acres of coca, "they'll be lucky if they kill 110,000. State is drawing into a protective stance and the tragedy is that this is the only way to stop drugs from coming into the country."
The U.S. government has spent $2.5 billion since 2000 for aircraft, military equipment and training to protect drug spraying and other counternarcotics operations in Colombia. Leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries finance their insurgencies through drug sales.
Senior congressional staff members are investigating the accusations and, according to one Capital Hill source, several have recommended the State Department be stripped of the program in favor of another agency.
"McLaughlin's views track what many now believe and, based on the ongoing relationship between terrorists and drug dealers, we can't afford not to fix the program," said a senior staffer, who asked not to be identified. "We've got to move it to a law-enforcement agency capable of proper oversight."
In his letter last month to Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, Virginia Republican, Mr. McLaughlin said high-ranking State Department officials were unwilling and unable to correct program problems, despite numerous warnings. As a result, he said pilots and crew members were at risk.
"Costly resources are being wasted. Morale is declining. A very important national program is in serious jeopardy," he said.
David Marin, spokesman for Mr. Davis, confirmed that the matter is under investigation, adding that proper oversight of the program has become "a top priority."
Mr. McLaughlin said that had the Costa Rican pilot employed by the U.S. government survived his Sept. 21 shoot-down, he would have been captured by members of the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). He said search crews looking for the twin-engine OV-10 plane "found a heavy concentration of FARC."
He also said that after the February crash of a plane operated by a separate U.S. contract agency, which was not identified, State Department officials declined to clear two of his air crews for an immediate rescue attempt, holding them on the ground for 15 minutes.
"The gunships arrived overhead after two of the crew had been executed and just in time to see the three surviving ... captives being led off by their FARC captors," he said. He said the crew members included four Americans, one of whom was killed, and a Colombian, who also was executed.
An investigation of the crash by the State Department and the Federal Aviation Administration concluded a lack of intelligence about the area led to the crash.
-------- iran
Iran president recognises Iraqi Governing Council
November 19, 2003
(AFP)
http://www.brunei-online.com/bb/wed/nov19w26.htm
TEHRAN - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami for the first time Monday expressly recognised the US-backed interim Governing Council in Iraq, after meeting with Jalal Talabani, a senior Iraqi Kurdish leader and current chair of the US-appointed body.
"We recognise the Iraqi Governing Council and we believe it is capable, with the Iraqi people, of managing the affairs of the country and taking measures leading toward independence," Khatami said in a statement carried by the student ISNA news agency.
Previously, the Islamic republic has been content to officially consider the council a "step" toward putting power back in the hands of Iraqis and refused to recognise an authority installed by a foreign occupation.
Khatami's statement follows stepped up moves by Washington to transfer power in Baghdad to Iraqis amid deteriorating security and rising US troop deaths.
The council announced Saturday that a new government would be elected and that a constitution would be drafted before the end of 2005.
Under the agreement between the council and the US envoy to Iraq, Paul Bremer, a provisional Iraqi government is to be formed by June. It is to be named by a transitional assembly to be elected by the end of May.
In his statement, Khatami, who has repeatedly come out against US policies in Iraq, said that timetable for the transition was workable. "The consecration of this accord will help with the reconstruction and security in Iraq," he said, while insisting it needed to be voted on by all Iraqis and taking a swipe at the Americans.
"No country has the right to interfere in the affairs of Iraq," he said.
He also expressed concern at the "growing insecurity" in the country, noting that security in neighbouring countries is linked. He repeated a pledge that Iran was prepared to help in Iraqi reconstruction.
Talabani, who is leading a high level delegation of seven ministers and 10 members of the Governing Council, had said his two-day visit was aimed at boosting bilateral relations and would also touch on security issues.
-------- iraq
Worse Than Crimes
Exclusive commentary by William S. Lind
Nov 19, 2003
Washington Dispatch
http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_7173.shtml
It is increasingly evident that U.S. Army commanders in Iraq know nothing about guerilla warfare. Over and over, they are ordering actions that are counterproductive. Three recent examples include:
- U.S. forces have sealed off Saddam Hussein's little home village of Auja, Iraq, ringing the town with barbed wire and forcing locals to show identity cards to enter or exit. One of the rules of guerilla war is that tactical actions can have strategic effects. When images of sealed-off Auja appear in the Islamic press all over the world - and they will - who do we look like? Israel in the West Bank.
- As if sealing off towns were not enough, the British newspaper The Independent carried a story by Patrick Cockburn titled, "U.S. soldiers bulldoze farmer's crops." The lead paragraph states,
US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.
Why not just start flying the Israeli flag? The parallel with what Israel does to the Palestinians is one nobody can miss. That, in turn, hands the guerillas a massive propaganda victory. Ironically, the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces recently denounced these same tactics as ineffective and counterproductive.
- Across Iraq, American troops last week began Operation Iron Hammer, described by The Washington Times as a "new 'get tough' strategy of going after insurgents before they strike." Thus far, Operation Iron Hammer has included calling in F-16s to drop bombs and using heavy artillery on targets in Baghdad itself. If sealing off towns and bulldozing orchards did not do enough to encourage our enemies, Operation Iron Hammer certainly will. Not only does it telegraph desperation, not strength, but it also drives uncommitted Iraqis straight into the arms of the resistance. As Robert Kennedy said in a speech he delivered in 1965, just as the Vietnam War was ramping up, success in guerilla war comes not from escalation but from de-escalation.
The Army didn't get it then, and it doesn't get it now (the Marine Corps did get it then, as evidenced by its CAP program in Vietnam, and it seems to get it better now as well). Why is it that the American Army repeatedly proves so inept and so plain ignorant when it comes to guerilla warfare?
Some Army history offers an answer. After the Korean War, the Army said, "We're never going to do that again." It refocused itself on preparing to fight a conventional war against the Warsaw Pact in central Europe. Then, that conventional Army got sent to Vietnam, to a war it had not prepared for and did not know how to fight. The old saw, "You fight the way you train," is a double-edged sword: you will fight the way you have trained whether it is appropriate to the situation or not. Attempting to fight a conventional war in Vietnam, the Army lost.
However, the Vietnam War did leave a usable legacy of experience in guerilla war - experience bought at a terrible price. But in the mid-1970s, the Army once more said, "We're never going to do that again," and once more it focused on fighting the Soviets in central Europe, first in "the Active Defense," then in "AirLand Battle." All the learning from Vietnam was thrown away, along with most of the people who had developed a genuine understanding of how guerilla war works.
Now, just as in 1965, a U.S. Army trained for conventional war in Europe is fighting a guerilla war. And, just as in 1965, it doesn't know how. Actions such as sealing off Auja, bulldozing farmers' orchards and Operation Iron Hammer are worse than crimes; they are blunders. They may result in some small gains at the tactical and physical levels of war, but at tremendous cost at the strategic and moral levels, where guerilla war is decided.
Successful militaries learn in a stair-step process. Unsuccessful militaries find themselves on an endless sine-wave, where lessons are learned, then quickly forgotten as everything goes back to where it was before. Will the U.S. Army ever succeed in breaking out of its sine-wave pattern where guerilla warfare is concerned?
----
U.S. aircraft pound suspected hide-outs
November 19, 2003
By Bassem Mroue
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031118-092306-8308r.htm
BAGHDAD - U.S. jets and helicopter gunships launched the biggest air operation in central Iraq since active combat ended, blasting suspected ambush sites and hide-outs with 500-pound bombs yesterday.
Explosions rocked western Baghdad as American troops mounted fresh attacks against insurgents.
While the U.S. military stepped up its campaign to put down guerrillas, it also claimed progress on another front - preventing foreign fighters from entering Iraq from neighboring nations to carry out attacks on American forces.
Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, said the number of U.S. soldiers in Anbar province, bordering Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, has been tripled in the past two months to 20,000. That, he said, has curbed infiltration.
"We are not fighting foreign fighters coming across the border in significant numbers," Gen. Swannack said. "We are fighting mostly locals" loyal to Saddam Husseinīs ousted regime.
Insurgents struck again yesterday, wounding two U.S. soldiers with a roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul. The military also said a U.S. civilian contractor was killed Monday by a land mine near Baghdad.
Meanwhile in New York, diplomats at the United Nations said yesterday the United States wants a new U.N. resolution to endorse the agreement between the Iraqi Governing Council and the U.S.-led coalition for a transfer of power to a provisional Iraqi government in June 2004.
The State Department plans to start work on drafting the new resolution and close ally Britain may also be preparing language, the diplomats said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
After months of arguing that the Governing Council should draft a constitution and hold elections before a transfer of power, the United States dramatically shifted its policy last week in the face of growing anti-American sentiment and attacks in Iraq.
The air activity yesterday focused on Baqouba, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad. U.S. jets and Apache helicopter gunships blasted abandoned buildings, walls and trees along a road where attacks have been so common that troops nicknamed it "RPG Alley" after the rocket-propelled grenades used by insurgents.
Warplanes dropped 500-pound bombs and battle tanks fired their 120 mm guns at suspected ambush sites, the military said.
Elsewhere, F-16 fighter aircraft bombed insurgent targets near the town of Samara, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, the military said.
The stepped-up military operations followed an escalation in insurgent attacks over the past three weeks. In response, the U.S. military announced "Operation Iron Hammer" to strike at suspected rebel targets before insurgents have the chance to attack.
The strategy appeared an effort to show U.S. resolve as Washington prepares to hand over political power to a new Iraqi provisional government by the end of June. However, the offensive risks further alienating an Iraqi population chafing under foreign military occupation.
During a news conference in Baghdad, Gen. Swannack, whose division is responsible for Anbar province, said the robust tactic "demonstrates our resolve."
"We will use force, overwhelming combat power when itīs necessary," he added.
Gen. Swannack, whose troops patrol such trouble spots as Fallujah, Ramadi and the borders with Syria and Saudi Arabia, believes most of the insurgents are Iraqis.
"Ninety percent of the cases are from regime loyalists and [Iraqi] Wahhabis," he said. Wahhabis are members of a strict Islamic sect that dominates Saudi Arabia and has followers in Iraq.
--------
U.S. Military Drops Pair of 2,000-Pound Bombs in Iraq
November 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The U.S. Air Force used some of the largest weapons in its inventory to attack targets in central Iraq in an escalating crackdown on suspected guerrilla strongholds, the military said Wednesday.
A pair of 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs were dropped late Tuesday near Baqouba, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, on ``camps suspected to have been used for bomb-making,'' said Maj. Gordon Tate, a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division.
Near the northern city of Kirkuk, fighter-bombers dropped 1,000-pound bombs on ``terrorist targets,'' he said without elaborating.
It was unclear whether the airstrikes caused any casualties, Tate said.
The military said the bombings were part of Operation Iron Hammer, the new aggressive tactic of initiating attacks against insurgents before they strike.
Insurgents fired on a U.S. supply convoy north of Samara on Wednesday, witnesses said. American troops returning fire killed two Iraqis, including a teenager, the witnesses said.
There was no confirmation from the U.S. military, but the sounds of gunfire could be heard during a telephone conversation with witnesses.
Meanwhile, gunmen assassinated a local Iraqi official in the southern town of Diwaniyah, authorities said Wednesday. Hmud Kadhim, the Education Ministry's director general in Diwaniyah province, was gunned down Tuesday, a ministry spokesman in the capital said.
Guerrillas have warned they will assassinate Iraqis collaborating with occupation authorities.
An Arabic language newspaper, meanwhile, published a statement signed by Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party declaring that armed resistance would continue despite plans by the U.S.-led coalition and chief administrator L. Paul Bremer to accelerate the transfer of power to Iraqis.
The statement, which appeared Wednesday in the Web edition of the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat, said the new U.S. timetable for handing over sovereignty ``will not influence the nature of the confrontation and its course set forth by the Iraqi resistance.''
``Those who occupy Iraq, be it through multinational forces under whatever arrangements, will be treated as occupiers that should be legal targets for resistance,'' the statement said.
Police said Wednesday that two policemen were wounded the day before when assailants tossed a grenade at a police station in the northern city of Mosul.
Also, a roadside bomb went off in the southern city of Basra as a British civilian convoy was passing by, damaging a vehicle, British spokesman Maj. Hisham Halawi said.
On Tuesday night, U.S. forces again targeted an abandoned dye factory in southern Baghdad that was hit twice last week by artillery and airstrikes. Aerial attacks also were reported on orchards and empty farmland surrounding the military base on Baghdad's western outskirts.
In recent days, U.S. forces have used heavy artillery, battle tanks, attack helicopters, F-16 fighter-bombers and AC-130 gunships to pound targets throughout central Iraq, including Tikrit, Baqouba and Fallujah. The show of force came in response to an upsurge in guerrilla activity and a significant increase in the number of coalition casualties since Nov. 1.
But residents expressed bewilderment at the offensive and the choice of targets in territory fully controlled by coalition forces, and said there was no sign of any guerrilla activity in the area before the strikes.
``They (the Americans) called on us from the tanks to stay at home because they were going to hit targets and they also said: 'If you want to watch our show you can go to the rooftops,''' Hamziya Ali, a housewife living near the plant, said Wednesday.
``But me and my children spent the night shaking. We do not want to be their targets. Yesterday, they hit the factory and open fields which have not been used by any resistance members.''
Still, a top U.S. commander insisted that coalition forces would use ``overwhelming combat power when it's necessary.''
``We are going to take the fight to the enemy using everything in our arsenal necessary to win this fight,'' Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr. said Tuesday.
In Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, huge explosions were heard from the edge of town late Tuesday as troops from the 4th Infantry Division fired mortars on areas allegedly used by insurgents to launch mortar and rocket attacks against coalition forces.
Fifty-five targets were struck overnight with mortar and artillery fire, and by infantry raids supported by Bradley armored vehicles, a military spokesman said Wednesday.
Targets included an abandoned bunker that was part of Saddam's former military defenses south of the town and a farming area to the north.
Al-Hayat, the London-based newspaper, said it received the Baath Party statement by e-mail.
The resistance is being mounted by former members of Saddam's Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard, Saddam's Fedayeen militia and ``noble Arab volunteers,'' the statement said.
``The political and strategic program of the Iraqi resistance, led by the Arab Baath Socialist Party, has defined its aim ... to liberate Iraq and dismiss the occupying forces,'' the statement said.
Associated Press reporters Jim Gomez in Tikrit and Mariam Fam in Mosul contributed to this report.
-------
Few Signs of Infiltration by Foreign Fighters in Iraq
November 19, 2003
By JOEL BRINKLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/international/middleeast/19IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 18 - The commanding general of the United States Army division that patrols much of Iraq's western borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that his men had encountered only a handful of foreign fighters trying to sneak into the country to attack American and allied forces.
"I want to underscore that most of the attacks on our forces are by former regime loyalists and other Iraqis, not foreign forces," said the officer, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.
His view was echoed by Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, which controls northern Iraq and parts of its borders with Syria, Turkey and Iran.
During a briefing on Monday for a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, he said that since May, his men had captured perhaps 20 foreign fighters trying to slip into the country from those three countries.
During a period in which border patrols have been intensified and new technology is being used, that number suggests only modest foreign incursions into Iraq, in contrast to estimates by the Bush administration.
In Washington late last month, officials estimated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq at 1,000 to 3,000, and the White House has been suggesting that foreign fighters are continuing to enter the country and are behind many of the attacks, linking the war in Iraq to the global campaign against terror.
In a news conference on Oct. 28, President Bush said: "We are mindful of the fact that some might want to come into Iraq to attack and to create conditions of fear and chaos. The foreign terrorists are trying to create conditions of fear and retreat because they fear a free and peaceful state in the midst of a part of the world where terror has found recruits."
During a news briefing on Tuesday evening, General Swannack, who took over the region two months ago, said his men had captured 13 foreign guerrillas and killed 7 others. Ten days ago, Col. David A. Teeples, who is part of General Swannack's command, said only a small number of the foreigners were among the 500 to 600 people his forces had captured in attacks on coalition forces.
American efforts to prevent attacks continued Tuesday, when American fighter jets bombed suspected guerrilla positions near Tikrit, in central Iraq. Commanders called in AC-130 gunships, A-10 attack planes and Apache helicopter gunships, as well as Air Force F-16 and F-15E fighter-bombers with 500-pound bombs, the military said, in the largest bombardment in the area since President Bush declared the end of major combat on May 1.
In Baghdad on Tuesday night, the military said it had fired heavy artillery at a suspected insurgent position.
In Washington, a military official disclosed that the Army's Fourth Infantry Division had destroyed a house that belonged to Gen. Izzat Ibrahim, one of Saddam Hussein's closest aides, who American officials believe is playing a significant role in the insurgency. It is not yet known whether General Ibrahim was inside when a satellite-guided missile destroyed his home, about 10 miles southwest of Tikrit, Mr. Hussein's ancestral home, the official said.
But the strike illustrated what military officials said was a new twist to their counterinsurgency campaign: attack bomb-making factories, weapons warehouses, guerrilla meeting places and insurgents' homes with no warning, using high-altitude bombing or long-range missile strikes. Officials indicated that it was clear the general's house was being used as a meeting place.
"This approach gives us more tactical surprise," a military official said. "They're still using houses and neighborhoods, but we've been removing sanctuaries and keeping them off balance."
Without speaking of those operations specifically, General Swannack said the stepped-up offensive "demonstrates our resolve, and we are not going to fight this one with one hand tied behind our backs." Echoing a historical quote from the British military, the general said the Army was going to "use a sledgehammer to smash a walnut."
Military officials in Iraq also reported the arrest of eight Iraqis during searches in Mosul. Soldiers seized a five-gallon container of gunpowder, three grenades, five fuses, two cases of rifle ammunition and two rifles, the United States Army said.
The military has made a rather public effort in recent days to tamp down speculation that they are fighting a guerrilla war against foreign terrorists. Late last week, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior American military commander in the Middle East, said loyalists to Saddam Hussein - not foreign terrorists - posed the greatest danger to American troops and to stability in Iraq.
General Swannack said Iraq's borders had been "porous" in the months before he took command of the region. The number of soldiers patrolling the borders has almost tripled, to 20,000, he said.
General Petraeus, in the north, said his men had deployed new technology along the border that can locate anyone or anything trying to cross it. With that, he said, "if you don't see anything moving, then you know you have got control."
A few days ago, General Swannack said, his men came across their largest group of foreigners trying to sneak across from Syria. "We identified six of them at the border," he said. "One pulled a knife, and he was killed. We secured the other five."
Eric Schmitt in Washington contributed reporting for this article.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Urged to Aid Palestinians
Ways to Push Peace Process Forward Discussed With U.S.
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 19, 2003; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59199-2003Nov18.html
White House officials have held intense discussions with Israeli officials in recent weeks on ways to ease the plight of the Palestinians, lift roadblocks in the occupied territories and deal with other vexing issues that have created a chill in the generally warm relations between President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, U.S. officials said yesterday.
A key goal is to encourage the Israeli government to take steps that would help the new Palestinian government establish itself, or at least not take actions that would undermine it. U.S. officials are concerned by Israel's proposed route for a fence separating Palestinians and Israelis, which the Bush administration fears could be used to establish the borders of a potential Palestinian state.
A senior administration official, briefing reporters yesterday on Air Force One as Bush flew to Britain, said it was necessary for the Palestinians to build security forces that would fight terrorism. "But it's also still necessary for Israel to create conditions in which a partner can emerge, and that means not prejudging the outcome of a final status agreement with settlements or with the route of the fence," the official said. "It means trying to do something about the kind of daily difficulties that Palestinian people experience at any given checkpoint."
"There is a lot of discussion going on with the Israelis about how they might use this period to give another push" to the peace process, the official added. "We have a new Palestinian prime minister, and I think everybody is prepared to give it a chance."
Sources close to the U.S.-Israeli discussions said the recent tensions did not signify a change in the common strategic outlook of the two countries. But they said there was a growing recognition by Sharon and his government that steps must be taken to accommodate U.S. concerns, particularly on the humanitarian front.
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz brought a package of proposals when he visited Washington last week, including creating 100,000 to 200,000 jobs for Palestinians in industrial centers on the border, pulling Israeli troops out of key Palestinian cities and lifting a number of roadblocks, an Israeli official said.
"There is frustration with Sharon at the White House," a U.S. official said yesterday. "Issues don't go away and don't get resolved."
Still, European and Arab leaders have argued that the administration has been much too reluctant to pressure Israel in the past. The European Union sharply condemned Israel yesterday for its treatment of the Palestinians, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to raise the issue with Bush in their meetings this week.
Over the summer, after Bush held two summits to promote a U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map," the administration heavily promoted Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister at the time, as the new face of the Palestinian people. But neither Israelis nor Palestinians took more than token steps to fulfill the obligations in the road map. Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, resigned in September, saying he had been thwarted by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's actions and Israeli and American inaction.
The Israeli official acknowledged the administration has held detailed and often technical discussions with Israelis on the route of the fence -- a 60-yard-wide complex of ditches, 25-foot-high walls, electronic sensors, roads and steel barriers -- as Israel has proposed to have it veer into Palestinian territories to protect Israeli settlements. The discussions have also centered on such issues as the number of gates in the fence, the number of hours a day they are monitored by Israeli soldiers and whether a fence near Ben-Gurion International Airport is necessary.
"Everyone is cognizant that Abu Mazen failed, and no one wants to let Arafat off the hook," the Israeli official said. "But could the Israelis and the Americans have been more attuned? We do not want to make the same mistake."
U.S. officials are debating whether to deduct the costs of the fence from U.S. loan guarantees to Israel. Some officials say the United States is close to doing so, but one said yesterday that was "wishful thinking in an election year."
-------- nato
NATO Rolls Out New Strike Force
By PAUL AMES
Associated Press Writer
Nov 20, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NATO_NEW_FORCE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
DOGANBEY, Turkey (AP) -- NATO on Thursday rolled out its new strike force designed to spearhead the transformation of the Cold War alliance into a 21st-century peacemaker.
War games involving air, sea and land forces from 11 nations mark the debut for the NATO Response Force which brings together elite troops from around the alliance into a single unit to tackle threats from terrorists, rogue states or regional crises.
French paratroopers, Spanish marines, Turkish special forces and German ground-attack planes will team up to deal with a fictional threat to U.N. personnel and civilians from terrorists and hostile soldiers on the coast close to this Aegean Sea city.
The exercise aims to show off the potential of the prototype response force, which should be fully operational in 2006 with a strength of 20,000.
NATO's military commander, U.S. Marine Gen. James L. Jones, believes setting up the new force is one of the most important decisions in the 54-year history of the alliance.
"It marks an important recognition on the part of the alliance that the international security environment has changed dramatically," said U.S. Marine Gen. James L. Jones, NATO's supreme military commander.
Jones said the force, combined with other technological and institutional changes at NATO "will ensure the relevance of the alliance in the 21st Century and will provide a credible means to face and defeat the threat than now faces all our peoples."
In times of crisis, the force should be ready to deploy within five days for missions ranging from evacuations and peacekeeping to counterterrorism or high-intensity combat.
Currently, it comprises about 9,000 soldiers, sailors and aviators run out of NATO's northern command based in the southern Netherlands.
About 1,000 will participate in the Turkish exercise that involves an amphibious landing, helicopter raids and the intervention of Czech specialist troops who provide defenses against chemical, biological or nuclear attacks.
Spain is the biggest contributor to the prototype force with 2,200, plus ships, aircraft and helicopters. It is followed by France with 1,700 and Germany at 1,100.
The United States is contributing 300 troops plus a ship and aircraft, but they are not participating in the exercise.
Nations will offer units on rotations of around six months, with the next change of command and expansion of the force scheduled for July.
Although proud of their speed in setting up the force - just 14 months since Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld first suggested it - NATO nations still have to resolve doubts that its effectiveness could be weakened by political differences like those that divided the alliance over Iraq.
-------- prisoners of war
Three Soldiers Are Charged With Assault on Prisoners
November 19, 2003
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/politics/19ARMY.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 - The Army has charged three Reserve soldiers with assaulting Iraqi prisoners in southern Iraq six months ago.
In an arraignment at an Army base in Kuwait on Saturday, three members of the 320th Military Police Battalion of Ashley, Pa., were accused of kicking and punching Iraqi prisoners that they were taking to a camp near Basra on May 12, Army officials said Tuesday.
The three soldiers, Master Sgt. Lisa M. Girman, Staff Sgt. Scott A. McKenzie and Specialist Timothy F. Canjar, were accused of cruelty and maltreatment of enemy prisoners, dereliction of duty, obstruction of justice and giving false statements. If convicted, they would each face up to more than 20 years in prison, loss of pay and a dishonorable discharge.
Military lawyers for the soldiers said at the arraignment that they would enter pleas at their courts-martial, which are scheduled to begin in late January, an Army spokesman said Tuesday.
A fourth soldier, Sgt. Shawna Edmondson, was granted an other-than-honorable discharge instead of facing trial, an Army statement said.
Army officials offered few details about the case. An investigation was started on the night of the reported incident after soldiers from another unit said they had seen what they believed was inappropriate treatment of Iraqi prisoners while they were being taken to Camp Bucca, an American prison camp near Basra. The three accused soldiers have said they acted in self-defense after being attacked by the prisoners.
It was unclear whether the prisoners were soldiers or other fighters. Army officials said that the prisoners' injuries had not been life threatening and that they had been treated by medics at the prison camp.
The accusations became the third set of charges of mistreating Iraqi prisoners that military authorities have brought against American service members.
The Army has charged Lt. Col. Allen B. West with firing a pistol near a suspected supporter of guerrillas during an interrogation in August to scare him into giving up information on pending attacks against soldiers near Tikrit. Colonel West has defended his actions as necessary to protect his troops. Through his lawyer, he has rejected an offer from the staff judge advocate for the Fourth Infantry Division to quit without retirement benefits to avoid court-martial.
In addition, the Marine Corps has charged eight Marine reservists in the death of an Iraqi prisoner near Nasiriya last June. Two of the eight marines faced charges of negligent homicide, while others faced lesser charges, Marine officials said.
-------- un
U.S. Plans New Iraq Proposal For U.N. Resolution Will Seek More Aid
By Robin Wright and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 19, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59442-2003Nov18.html
The United States is preparing to seek another U.N. resolution to back its new plan for Iraq and ensure that the first postwar Iraqi government does not fail for lack of international recognition, according to U.S. officials and European and U.N. diplomats.
A new resolution could also help win commitments for additional troops and reconstruction aid from other countries, which Washington has been unable to secure with three previous resolutions, U.S. officials said. In addition, it might lead to a renewed U.N. role in Iraq in helping oversee the selection of a new provisional government.
"We want to pave the way for international acceptance for a new government and get a blessing for its legitimacy. We can't afford to set up a government for failure and let the international community later say it doesn't recognize it," a senior U.S. official said yesterday.
An administration official added: "In the end, we will need a new resolution to bless our exit strategy. We could go into Iraq without the United Nations, but it'll be much harder to get out and leave behind a viable government if it doesn't have some form of U.N. approval."
In a choreographed sequence, the United States will wait until after the Iraqi Governing Council has presented its timetable for the transition to a provisional government. Under the most recent U.N. resolution, passed in October, the council must present its plan by Dec. 15, although the Iraqis may do it sooner because of the momentum behind a transfer of power, diplomats at the United Nations said yesterday.
In Europe, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told reporters that any resolution now would be "premature." And a senior administration official traveling with President Bush in Britain said that the U.S.-led occupation does not need an additional U.N. resolution.
But Powell discussed the need for a new U.N. resolution yesterday with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. governor of Iraq, U.S. officials said. And the language from U.S. officials and key U.N. members strongly signaled a return to the world body.
"I think we will want to discuss what more is needed, in terms of the United Nations, in terms of its functions, in terms of its ability to support the political transition that will now be underway, and then you can work back from that to say, is a Security Council resolution a good thing," the senior administration official traveling with Bush told reporters. "I believe if there's something welcoming this political transition, that that would always be useful."
Even though U.S. officials have not decided exactly what a new resolution would stipulate, the United States and Britain have already begun putting out feelers. Deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley traveled Monday to New York to brief U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and Security Council members on U.S. plans. U.N. envoys said that they were receptive to a resolution endorsing the new U.S. strategy, although countries were cautious about the prospect of committing troops or resources.
Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya said Hadley conveyed Washington's desire to enlist U.N. support during the transition to a provisional Iraqi government next summer. Council members responded positively, he added.
"We asked what sort of assistance or help they might need during this period," Wang said. "The Americans have a change of their approaches to the Iraq issue. Certainly for China and for many others we welcome it. Because now you have the intention of giving back sovereignty to the Iraqi people earlier."
Germany and France, which opposed the U.S. war on Iraq, are also willing to consider a new resolution, which the administration is seeking to expedite an exit from Iraq, partly to diminish the occupation as an issue in the 2004 elections.
"Losing the peace is not an option," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told reporters in Washington yesterday. "We don't exclude another U.N. resolution."
Some countries opposed to U.S. policy in Iraq noted that the new plan to transfer authority by June mirrors earlier proposals from Germany, France, Russia and the U.N. secretary general.
The United Nations also appears to be receptive to renewing its role in Iraq, cut short by two bomb attacks that led to the withdrawal of its staff. In New York, Annan told reporters this week that he is close to appointing a new special representative to oversee the U.N. activities there, after appeals from Powell to reengage in Iraq.
But Gunter Pleuger, Germany's ambassador to the United Nations, Annan and other envoys warned that any agreement on a political handover may not be enough to get the United Nations to return or to prompt governments to commit troops if the violence does not diminish.
In turn, Washington and London have also made clear that they are not prepared to engage in a prolonged rehash of earlier Security Council clashes over Iraq policy in exchange for a new resolution.
Staff writer Peter Slevin contributed to this report from London.
-------- us
Soldier's Death May Be Related to Vaccines
November 19, 2003
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/national/19VACC.html
A 22-year-old Army reservist who died in April may have succumbed to a combination of vaccinations, including those for smallpox and anthrax, the Pentagon said yesterday.
But an Army medical expert, calling the death "a rare and tragic case," said the military's vaccination policies would not be changed.
The soldier, Specialist Rachel Lacy, a reservist at Fort McCoy, Wis., died of "a complicated illness, diagnosed as `like lupus,' " said the expert, Col. John D. Grabenstein of the Army surgeon general's office.
A month earlier, Specialist Lacy had received five shots to protect her against smallpox, anthrax, hepatitis B, typhoid, measles, mumps and rubella. Receiving that many shots at once is not unusual, Dr. Grabenstein said.
"Infants can get five in one day," he said. "It's considered safe practice."
Specialist Lacy had no skin problems or immune system problems that would have excluded her from smallpox vaccine, he added.
She later fell sick with aches and fever resembling the cold that other members of her unit had. When the symptoms worsened, they resembled lupus, in which the body's own immune system attacks it. Eventually, she died from bleeding in her lungs.
The Army said two civilian medical panels that looked into the case agreed that the death was "probably" or "possibly" an adverse reaction to vaccines, though they did not single out one.
Lupus may be touched off by a viral infection, and vaccinations, which use killed or weakened viruses, resemble viral infections, so it was a possible explanation, Dr. Grabenstein said.
-------
U.S. Soldier's Death Is Tied To Vaccines
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59188-2003Nov18.html
A 22-year-old female soldier who died last spring after getting multiple vaccines, including the one against smallpox, succumbed to an immune system disease apparently triggered by the immunizations.
That is the conclusion of a panel of experts reviewing the military's experience with smallpox vaccine, which has been given to about 515,000 troops in the past year. A second panel believes that vaccination "possibly" caused the young woman's death.
The woman received smallpox, typhoid, anthrax, hepatitis B and measles-mumps-rubella vaccine on March 2. On April 4, she died of lung complications caused by an acute attack of the autoimmune disease lupus.
She had never shown symptoms, but analysis of two blood samples stored in the military's 30-million-sample repository showed that she had abnormalities associated with lupus as far back as 1998.
The vaccinations apparently triggered a first "flare" of lupus, which an Army official, Col. John D. Grabenstein, said has been observed a few times in civilians. Neither panel cited a specific vaccine as the cause.
A panel of scientists from the government's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and Armed Forces Epidemiology Board said the evidence "strongly favors" the theory that vaccination led to the death. A committee convened by the Health Resources and Services Administration split on the issue, with three members saying it was "possible" and two that it was "probable."
William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said there are no plans to change the vaccination program.
A study published last summer reported 18 nonfatal cases of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, among troops getting smallpox vaccine.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
U.S. Plans to Toughen Rules for Cargo Shipping Industry
November 19, 2003
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/national/19CARG.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 - The Bush administration will try to force the nation's largest shipping companies to install electronic tamper sensors and use reinforced metal seals on millions of steel-box cargo containers in an effort to keep terrorists from trying to ship nuclear or other catastrophic weapons into the United States, senior officials said Tuesday.
The decision, which is expected to be announced later this week by the Department of Homeland Security, will not mandate the overhaul of the containers.
But under the administration's plan, shipping companies will have a choice of installing the sensors and using the high-quality seals on their current stock of cargo containers or facing an onerous, time-consuming customs inspection when their cargo arrives at American ports.
The "smart box" program, as it is being called, is unlikely to satisfy critics of the administration who say that the government has done too little to step up cargo security and the safety of the nation's seaports. But administration officials say the move will greatly improve cargo security at limited cost to the government and the shipping industry.
"The technology is here to do this," said Robert C. Bonner, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, whose office is overseeing the project. "This is about building a more secure supply chain, protecting against the potential that terrorist weapons could be concealed or smuggled into the U.S. in a cargo container."
A spokesman for the World Shipping Council, the shipping trade association, said the industry supported the government's antiterrorism efforts but would withhold comment on the full cargo-security program until it saw the results of a pilot program.
The move comes as the Homeland Security Department announced plans this week for tighter controls on the air cargo industry, which the administration's critics say is also highly vulnerable to terrorists.
On Monday, the Transportation Security Administration, another agency in the department, announced that cargo and passenger airlines had been told that they must carry out random inspections on freight before it is loaded on planes.
There has long been concern that Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups would try to smuggle nuclear, chemical or biological weapons into the United States through one of the estimated seven million steel-box cargo containers that arrive in American ports each year, most of them without any close inspection. The containers are known in the industry as "cans" and are typically 8 feet tall by 20 or 40 feet wide.
Mr. Bonner said in an interview that under the smart-box program, the government had established manufacturing standards for a small, hand-sized electronic sensor priced at less than $20 each that could be installed in cargo containers and capable of determining if a container's doors had been opened.
Officials said the sensor was a small box of electronics with an internal battery that would be outfitted on the corner of a container's door and attached to a rubberized antenna along the door capable of determining an intrusion.
Shipping companies will also be expected to replace the flimsy aluminum or plastic tags that are often used to seal containerized cargo with high-quality one-use-only metal seals that would be numbered, with the numbers relayed electronically to customs agents in the United States before the containers arrived at an American port.
Shipping companies that meet the new security requirements, Mr. Bonner said, would be invited to send their containers through a customs "green line" that are being established at major ports for quick processing of cargo. "This will truly be a fast lane for containers arriving in the U.S.," he said. "The shipping companies can continue to use the dumb containers - but those containers will be inspected."
Christopher L. Koch, president of the World Shipping Council, the industry trade association in Washington, said that his members supported the use of better-quality metal seals on containers, although it would await the results of a pilot program on the electronic anti-tamper sensors before endorsing their use.
"We are looking forward to understanding the pilot program and what it may show us," he said. "We clearly support working with Customs to examine how to enhance supply-chain security."
-------- justice
Court to FBI: No spying on in-car computers
November 19, 2003
By Declan McCullagh Staff Writer,
CNET News.com
http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-5109435.html?tag=nefd_top
The FBI and other police agencies may not eavesdrop on conversations inside automobiles equipped with OnStar or similar dashboard computing systems, a federal appeals court ruled.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday that the FBI is not legally entitled to remotely activate the system and secretly use it to snoop on passengers, because doing so would render it inoperable during an emergency.
In a split 2-1 rulingthe majority wrote that "the company could not assist the FBI without disabling the system in the monitored car" and said a district judge was wrong to have granted the FBI its request for surreptitious monitoring.
The court did not reveal which brand of remote-assistance product was being used but did say it involved "luxury cars" and, in a footnote, mentioned Cadillac, which sells General Motors' OnStar technology in all current models. After learning that the unnamed system could be remotely activated to eavesdrop on conversations after a car was reported stolen, the FBI realized it would be useful for "bugging" a vehicle, Judges Marsha Berzon and John Noonan said.
When FBI agents remotely activated the system and were listening in, passengers in the vehicle could not tell that their conversations were being monitored. After "vehicle recovery mode" was disabled, the court said, passengers were notified by the radio displaying an alert and, if the radio was not on, the system beeping.
David Sobel, general counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the court's decision "a pyrrhic victory" for privacy.
"The problem (the court had) with the surveillance was not based on privacy grounds at all," Sobel said. "It was more interfering with the contractual relationship between the service provider and the customer, to the point that the service was being interrupted. If the surveillance was done in a way that was seamless and undetectable, the court would have no problem with it."
Under current law, the court said, companies may only be ordered to comply with wiretaps when the order would cause a "minimum of interference." After the system's spy capabilities were activated, "pressing the emergency button and activation of the car's airbags, instead of automatically contacting the company, would simply emit a tone over the already open phone line," the majority said, concluding that a wiretap would create substantial interference.
"The FBI, however well-intentioned, is not in the business of providing emergency road services and might well have better things to do when listening in than respond with such services to the electronic signal sent over the line," the majority said.
In a dissent, Judge Richard Tallman argued that a wiretap would not create unnecessary interference with emergency service and noted that "there is no evidence that any service disruption actually occurred. The record does not indicate that the subjects of the surveillance tried to use the system while the FBI was listening. One cannot disrupt a service unless and until it is being utilized.
"The record indicates that the only method of executing the intercept order in this case involved activating the car's microphone and transferring the car's cellular telephone link to the FBI. This conduct might have amounted to a service disruption, had the subjects of the surveillance attempted to use the system, but there is no evidence that they did."
The majority did point out that the FBI cannot order the system to be changed so that the emergency functions would work during surveillance. Congress ordered telephone companies to do just that in the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, but current law does not "require that the company redesign its system to facilitate surveillance by law enforcement."
General Motors did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Its OnStar privacy policy says: "OnStar may disclose personal information if required to do so by law on (sic) in the good faith belief that such disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with the legal process...OnStar cannot accept any responsibility for accidental or inadvertent disclosure, unauthorized access or for other disclosure as required by law or described in this policy."
The decision is binding only in California, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, Hawaii, and other states that fall within the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction. No other appeals court appears to have ruled on the matter.
-------- police
Police Face Lawsuits Over Tactics at Big Protests
November 19, 2003
By IAN URBINA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/nyregion/19SUIT.html
The New York Civil Liberties Union plans to sue the Police Department today in an effort to bar officers from using certain tactics to control large protests.
The group said yesterday that it planned to file three lawsuits challenging five tactics that it said the police had been using at large demonstrations like the antiwar rally in Manhattan last February.
The suits are being filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan in preparation for protests planned during the Republican National Convention, which will be held at Madison Square Garden from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2.
In its suits, the civil liberties group outlines its criticism of the tactics, which it says were used during the February rally, and claims that they violated protesters' legal rights. The tactics include the use of mounted police officers, who the group said charged at protesters trying to join the rally and injured them. The group also said the police used barricades to restrict access to demonstration sites while failing to provide information about alternative means of access.
The suits will also cite the department's use of interlocking metal barricades, or pens, in which protesters say they were trapped during the demonstration; and widespread searches, which the group says were conducted without justification. The plaintiffs also say that the police detained demonstrators for many hours in vans without access to bathrooms or food after arresting them on minor charges.
The Police Department has declined to comment on the suits until officials have a chance to review them. But in a recent interview, police officials defended their handling of large demonstrations and their plans for the protests against the Republican convention. "The vast majority of demonstrators here will be peaceful," Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said last week. "They'll want to make a statement. And we want to help them do that. There will be some, we believe, that will be here to cause problems."
A spokeswoman from the city corporation counsel's office said that it had not seen the lawsuits, but would review them closely when it had.
All three suits are being filed jointly by the civil liberties group and individual plaintiffs. One lawsuit is being filed with an 80-year old protester, Jeremiah Gutman, who said the police had prevented him from joining the February demonstration and would not offer him information on how could reach the rallying point. The suit claims he was injured when mounted police rode into the crowd where he was standing.
In the second suit, Ann Stauber, 60, of Manhattan, who uses a wheelchair, says she tried to join the demonstration but was directed into a pen and forced to stay there for hours, even though she explained that she is diabetic and needed to check her blood sugar.
In the third suit, Jeremy Conrad, 27, a Brooklyn law student, says that when he had complained to officers that the crowd could not move, he was beaten by officers and detained for seven and a half hours in the back of an unheated van without access to food, water or a bathroom.
"These are not unique stories," said Chris Dunn, a lawyer from the civil liberties union, which plans a news conference on the suits today. "Tens of thousands of protesters were simply trying to attend a peaceful, lawful demonstration."
-------- terrorism
Braun Says Iraq War Hurt Anti-Terror Effort
U.S. Must Restore Stability, She Says
By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59186-2003Nov18.html
Democratic presidential candidate Carol Moseley Braun said yesterday that the United States has an obligation to remain in Iraq long enough to stabilize that country and ensure that it is not worse off than it was before the U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Braun, a one-term U.S. senator from Illinois and former ambassador to New Zealand, said the Bush administration's "bravado and arrogance" had undercut the war against terrorism by alienating U.S. allies whose help is vital to that effort.
"It's just astonishing how badly they have bungled our international relations that we have historically enjoyed," Braun said in an interview with reporters and editors of The Washington Post.
But Braun, who opposed going to war in Iraq, added that "at this point we have an obligation not to cut and run, to stay and at least leave Iraq in no worse condition than we found it." She said that could be accomplished by persuading the United Nations and NATO to join the United States in stabilizing Iraq and rebuilding its civil society.
In the interview, Braun also said she has a strategy to win the Democratic presidential nomination, defended her advocacy of a national, single-payer health care system and said that same-sex marriage should be recognized in law.
Braun is widely regarded as having little chance of winning the nomination. As of Sept. 30, she had raised only about $350,000, far less than most of her rivals. She has only a skeleton campaign staff and said yesterday that she is relying on "volunteer organizations" in the key early test states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
The Braun campaign has also been wracked by turmoil. Two key advisers resigned Friday, and yesterday Braun announced that she had hired Patricia Ireland, former president of the National Organization for Women, to run the campaign. NOW and the National Women's Political Caucus have both endorsed Braun, but that so far has not translated into an infusion of campaign contributions.
But Braun said in the interview that she expects to win convention delegates in all the states and to "cobble together a group of delegates that are g