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NUCLEAR
Nuclear Weapons - The Good, the Bad and the Ignored
Nuclear plant 'not a cancer risk'
France chosen as EU candidate for thermonuclear project
Spanish opposition slams Aznar over thermonuclear project failure
U.N. Agency Censures Iran for Nuclear Cover-Ups
Atomic Agency Warns Iran for Secrecy on Nuclear Activities
ElBaradei Says Iran Resolution Strengthens IAEA Hand
Text of IAEA Resolution on Iran
Israel vows to continue to study Iranian nuclear activities
S. Korea Says Powers Tuning Stances on North Talks
US Softens Stance on Russian Nuclear Work with Iran
Scary and scandalous
U.S. Nuke Development Concerns Russia
Rochester Utility Sells Nuclear Power Station
Documents say 60 nuclear chain reactions possible
Powell 'happy with' nuke compromise
MILITARY
The Lesson of Somalia: Just a Humpty Dumpty Story?
Boeing Deal On Tankers Again on Hold
800 in Colombia Lay Down Arms, Kindling Peace Hopes
Colombian Militiamen Turn In Weapons
'This is war'
Indian and Pakistani Forces Agree to Cease-Fire in Kashmir
Pakistan, India Agree On Kashmir Cease-Fire
How Cleric Trumped U.S. Plan for Iraq
Powerful Cleric Opposes U.S. Plan for Elections in Iraq
No regrets or culprits, just cash
U.S. Rescinds Part of Loan Guarantees to Israel
U.S. Uses Loan to Punish Israel for West Bank Construction
Army Says Troop Rotation Into Iraq Poses Increased Danger
Security Posts Filled
Raid On Arab TV Network Hardly A Democratic Move
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Pentagon To Review Rules for Tribunals
20 Airport Workers Held in Smuggling of Drugs
One Man Against Secrecy
Ridge Sees Long-Term Role for Air Marshals
Guantanamo security being enhanced, general says
Chaplain Held in Espionage Case Is Freed
Chaplain's Release Comes With New Charges
Canada Is Said to Keep U.S. Detainee From Returning
U.S. Adds to Detained Australians' Rights
OTHER
HIV Infected 5 Million Worldwide
Spread of AIDS Fast Outpacing Response
Africa Has More Than 11 Million AIDS Orphans
Hunger Worsens in Many Lands, U.N. Says
ACTIVISTS
FBI Publicly Denies Spying on Protesters
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear Weapons - The Good, the Bad and the Ignored
Extra! -- FAIR.org
November/December 2003
By Michelle Ciarrocca
http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/news/ExtraFair.html
Hardly a day goes by without some mention of "North Korea's revival of its nuclear program" (New York Times, 9/6/03) or how the "U.S. aims to put pressure on Iran" over its nuclear activities (London Financial Times, 9/4/03). Iraq's "development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons" (USA Today, 9/8/03) was a media staple in the run-up to the invasion of that country, and the so-far fruitless search still makes headlines. Yet within the abundant news coverage on weapons of mass destruction, there is rarely a reference to the thousands of nuclear weapons possessed by the major nuclear weapons states: the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China.
When it comes to mainstream media coverage on the proliferation of nuclear weapons, there are three kinds of nukes: good, bad and ignored. The "good" ones number almost 30,000 and make up the arsenals of the major nuclear powers. The "bad" nukes are the real or imagined weapons of Iraq, North Korea and Iran--George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil." The 100 to 200 ignored--or tolerated--nuclear weapons are in the hands of Israel, India and Pakistan.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entered into force in March 1970, and "ultimately seeks to eliminate weapons of mass destruction" (Japan Times, 08/23/03). More than 180 non-nuclear states agreed to forgo the pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for the declared nuclear states agreeing to share the peaceful applications of nuclear power and eliminate their nuclear arsenals. The nuclear states also assured non-nuclear nations that they would not use nuclear weapons against countries that have given up the option to develop weapons of their own.
Clearly, the NPT is far from perfect. However, a number of countries, including Brazil, Egypt, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, South Africa and Argentina did give up significant nuclear weapons programs upon signing the treaty, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted (7/6/03).
None of the countries in the "good" or "bad" categories, though, are living up to their commitments as outlined in the NPT. But just as the Bush administration has selectively chosen when and how to interpret and comply with the NPT, the media have been equally selective in coverage of treaty violations.
Focus on the "Axis"
Iraq: The bad nuclear weapons have yet to be found in Iraq. After more than four months of searching, "the team of U.S. military officers and intelligence agents headed by former U.N. arms inspector David Kay has not produced hard evidence of weapons of mass destruction," reported the Boston Globe (8/28/03).
As Extra! pointed out (7=8/03), despite years of United Nations inspections, the idea that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction became an article of faith to much of the media, and in turn much of the public. The belief that possession or pursuit of these weapons by a country not to the Bush administration's liking is grounds for war has also become something of an article of faith. While that notion may be part of Bush administration policy
In the case of the Bush administration's preemptive attack on Iraq, justified in part by warnings of nuclear proliferation, the American Prospect (7=8/03) was in the minority of outlets that noted how the policy "may well have convinced other nervous nations that nukes are their only hedge against a similar fate." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (4/6/03) agreed that the Bush policies have indeed encouraged proliferation. "Today's 'hot spots' of proliferation are North Korea and Iran--the second and third points on President Bush's 'axis of evil.' Since Bush coined that label in January 2002, both countries have stepped up their nuclear programs."
North Korea: When North Korea announced its intention to become the first country to withdraw from the nonproliferation treaty, NBC Nightly News (1/10/03) described the country as "defiant." But according to Article X of the treaty, any nation has the right to withdraw if it decides that extraordinary events have endangered the supreme interests of its country. Not one article covering North Korea's withdrawal mentioned this stipulation.
One could certainly argue that the dramatic changes in U.S. nuclear policy, as part of the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review, were "extraordinary events" in the meaning of the treaty. As part of the review, submitted to Congress at the end of 2001, the Pentagon expanded its nuclear "hit list" to include a wide range of potential adversaries, such as North Korea, Iraq, Libya and Syria, whether or not those nations possessed nuclear weapons. The circumstances under which the use of nuclear weapons might be considered was also expanded beyond situations threatening the national survival of the United States, to include retaliation for a North Korean attack on South Korea, or simply as a response to "surprising military developments." The new Bush doctrine also sanctioned the first use of nuclear weapons to "dissuade adversaries from undertaking military programs or operations that could threaten U.S. interests or those of allies and friends."
Such changes violate at least the spirit, if not the letter, of the NPT. Yet the Far Eastern Economic Review (11/21/02) was one of the few outlets that commented on the connection between U.S. nuclear policies and the nuclear stalemate with North Korea, saying, "North Korea's rejection of full-blown IAEA inspections and a perceived reluctance by the U.S. to back international security treaties has weakened the NPT's moral force."
Iran: There are no known nuclear weapons in Iran as of yet. Marking a challenge to the Bush administration, however, is the fact that Iran's nuclear program is "being built not in the shadows but in plain sight, and just inside most of the rules designed to foil nuclear proliferation" (Wall Street Journal, 06/19/03). Signatories to the NPT are allowed to acquire most nuclear technology, as long as it is used for peaceful purposes and under international monitoring. Glossing over this distinction, headlines such as "Bush Steps Up Pressure on Iran Over Nuclear Plans" (Washington Post, 09/26/03) and "Iran Has Even Larger Nuclear Weapons Program Than Previously Thought" (CBS Evening News, 10/14/03) may be a bit misleading.
Fox News' Bill O'Reilly (O'Reilly Factor 05/08/03) was among those quick to compare the situation in Iran to the one in Iraq, saying, "It is almost eerie--we have weapons of mass destruction." Aside from there not being any weapons of mass destruction yet found in Iraq, the differences between Iraq's situation and Iran are profound--notably, Iraq under Saddam Hussein agreed to intrusive regulation of its weapons-making capacities under a ceasefire agreement with the U.N., whereas Iran is not under the same obligations.
Looking the other way
Of particular concern should be the nuclear nations that are entirely outside of the treaty: Israel, India and Pakistan. Instead of demanding inspections, threatening sanctions, or all-out attack, Washington rewards those nations with arms sales and military assistance.
The Christian Science Monitor (5/6/03) wrote that the U.S. "has made clear its main concern in the region is nuclear proliferation--India and Pakistan announced themselves as nuclear powers in 1998 and came under U.S. sanctions thereafter." But the article goes on to note that the sanctions have since been lifted. Bush is requesting more than $3 billion in military aid for Pakistan over the next five years, in addition to the $1 billion Pakistan received after September 11 for its help in the war on terror (L.A. Times, 6/25/03). For balance, military aid to India has also been increased to $50 million (Melbourne Age, 2/6/02).
Israel, the largest recipient of U.S. aid, is expecting about $1 billion in military aid and $9 billion in loan guarantees in over the next three years to offset the economic impact of the war in Iraq (Boston Globe, 4/12/03), in addition to the almost $3 billion a year in aid it regularly receives. None of the news coverage mentioned nuclear reductions or disarmament as a condition to receiving aid.
The "ignored" nukes in the arsenals of Israel, Pakistan and India encourage proliferation. Iran points to its nuclear neighbors--Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel--to justify its nuclear program (London Guardian, 6/16/03). Pakistan (along with Iran) is believed to have sold various weapons technologies to North Korea (San Francisco Chronicle 8/3/03).
No good nukes
As much as the nuclear developments of North Korea, Iran and potentially other nations deserve media attention, so too do the thousands of existing nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the declared nuclear states. As stated in the original treaty and reaffirmed during the 2000 NPT review conference, the U.S. and 186 other countries came to a global consensus on nuclear disarmament, declaring it the "only absolute guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons."
But rather than pointing out the major nuclear powers' obligation to work for disarmament, articles such as "U.S. Sees Renewed Role for Nukes in Military Arsenal" (Christian Science Monitor, 5/27/03) and "Bush Pushes for New Nukes" (USA Today, 7/7/03) treat the United States' efforts to develop new forms of nuclear weapons as legitimate, potentially necessary military policies. The debates over these new weapons, which could include low-yield mini-nukes and bunker-busters that target underground military facilities or arsenals, are reported and acknowledged, but there's not a peep in daily news coverage about these being counter to the NPT.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told Germany's Stern weekly (Reuters 08/26/03), "The U.S. government demands that other nations not possess nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, it is arming itself." He continued with a point seldom included in U.S. media discussion: "In truth there are no good or bad nuclear weapons. If we do not stop applying double standards we will end up with more nuclear weapons."
Footnote:
And not just the Bush administration: Citing the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Los Angeles Times (10/14/03) reported that Israel "had identified several hidden nuclear weapons installations in Iran and was making plans to destroy them if necessary." The newspaper's formulation accepts the idea that it is sometimes necessary to attack other countries to prevent nuclear weapons development.
-------- britain
Nuclear plant 'not a cancer risk'
Wednesday, 26 November, 2003
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/3236260.stm
There is no evidence of excess risk of cancer for people living near Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station in Somerset according to a new report.
The analysis, by The Committe on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (Comare), contradicts a survey carried out in 2002 which argued that cancer rates in a ward near the station are up to five times higher than the national average.
Comare says this report, carried out in Burnham-on-Sea for the environmental group Green Audit, was "seriously flawed" as it only covered a small sample of cases.
In a statement, the pressure group Stop Hinkley said the survey sampled 1,500 people, which "was more than adequate".
It added that a second report carried out by South West Cancer Intelligence Service confirmed the substance of their doorstep-survey findings.
Confusingly, Comare says this report shows that the Green Audit study only covered a small sample of cases.
Comare added: "Using the complete cancer registration data set for the ward the data showed no cancer excess other than for leukaemia.
'Pioneering'
"When this excess of leukaemia cases was studied, the majority of the extra cases proved to be chronic lymphocytic leukaemia - a cancer not considered by any previous investigators... to be associated with exposure to radiation."
Comare also calls for Green Audit to withdraw its report "so as not to cause further unjustified local concern."
Jim Duffy, spokesman for Stop Hinkley, said: "Comare have a cheek. It was because of the very secrecy of the authorities that we ended up undertaking this project.
"We found excess breast, cervix and kidney cancers, plus leukaemia.
"Comare are supposed to be doing this research and should have applauded the local residents for this pioneering work."
-------- europe
France chosen as EU candidate for thermonuclear project
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Nov 26, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031126150405.6o2ymy9e.html
EU research ministers on Wednesday chose France as the bloc's candidate to host an ambitious international project to replicate the sun's nuclear fusion, beating a Spanish bid, diplomats said.
The southern French town of Cadarache is widely expected to compete with a Japanese bid for the 4.5-billion-dollar (5.3-billion-euro) International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, to be decided before the end of the year.
Paris had been bidding against Spain's proposal of Vandellos in the northeastern Catalonia region, but experts determined that the French site had better infrastructure.
French minister Claudie Haignere said she was confident that Paris will win the race to host the ITER project.
"It is a European team which has won today," she told reporters. "I think we have a very good chance... for a team to secure for Europea an important and difficult project."
She saluted Spain's decision to back the French bid, saying her counterpart from Madrid Juan Costa had shown "not only a sense of fair play but also of acting in the interests of Europe."
Spain had launched a last-minute drive to win the candidacy, with Foreign Minister Ana Palacio flying to Rome this week to meet Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose country currently holds the EU's presidency.
Madrid also announced that it was doubling its contribution to the Iter energy project to 900 million euros (1.07 million dollars).
But in the end the EU ministers chose the French site unanimously. EU Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin hailed the decision as "a positive act, a joint decision to defend (the chosen candidate) unanimously."
Spain was persuaded to throw its weight behind the French bid after its EU partners promised to base a future agency which will coordinate EU contributions to the ITER project in a Spanish town close to the French site, according to one diplomat.
The EU ministers also agreed that one of two directors' posts in the international consortium running the project will be held by a Spaniard, sources said.
A study ordered by the European Commission rejected the idea of a joint Franco-Spanish EU bid.
The final negotiations on which country will host the ITER project are due to start in Washington on December 4. The decision is expected to be taken at a meeting on December 19-20, also in the US capital.
Project partners, which include the EU, Japan, the United States, Canada, China, Russia and South Korea, are expected to announce their chosen site for the reactor next month.
Canada and Japan are also pitching for the 4.5-billion-euro project, which will seek to replicate the kind of nuclear fusion seen in the sun to deliver clean energy from hydrogen.
But amid funding problems in the Canadian bid, France is widely expected to face the Japanese candidate site of Rokkasho-mura -- in the north of the country -- in the run-off.
France has so far pledged to invest 400 million euros of state funding in the project.
Spain's opposition Socialist Party (PSOE) reacted angrily to the decision, saying through a spokesman that it was "a clear failure of government policy and diplomacy" by Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.
Local leaders in Catalonia were also angry.
"It's the worst thing that could happen to us," said Pasqual Maragall of the Catalan Socialist Party, calling the news "the worst technological and political news of the past 25 years."
----
Spanish opposition slams Aznar over thermonuclear project failure
MADRID (AFP)
Nov 26, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031126154342.3shwxlxf.html
Spain's opposition socialists on Wednesday blasted conservative Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar after EU research ministers chose France as their candidate to host a nuclear project that will replicate the sun's nuclear fusion.
Speaking shortly after Vandellos in the northern region of Catalonia lost out to Cadarache in southern France, the Socialist party (PSOE) decried what it termed the "clear failure" of the Spanish bid and blamed Aznar's administration.
France will now seek to win final approval next month in Washington from project partners, including the EU, Japan, the United States, Canada, China, Russia and South Korea, with Cadarache still facing challenges from Canada and Japan.
Amid funding problems in the Canadian bid, France is widely expected to face the Japanese candidate site of Rokkasho-mura -- in the north of the country -- in the run-off.
Jordi Sevilla, PSOE spokesman on economic policy, accused Madrid of having been overly optimistic regarding the siting of the 4.5 billion eurobillion dollar) project in Spain.
"The PSOE wants to make known its consternation at this clear failure of government policy and diplomacy," Sevilla told radio station Cadena Ser.
The leader of the Catalan Socialist Party, Pasqual Maragall dubbed the news as the "the worst technological and political news of the past 25 years.
"It's the worst thing that could happen to us," said Maragall, who saw in the decision a move to punish Madrid for its "policy of alliances," an oblique reference to backing the US-led intervention in Iraq.
The Spanish setback comes after an intense diplomatic campaign for Vandellos to be chosen for the nuclear project.
A week ago the government had told its EU partners it was doubling its contribution to the project to 900 million euros (1.07 million dollars) to take Spain's share to one fifth.
Then Foreign Minister Ana Palacio stepped into the fray, lobbying Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Aznar and Palacio, speaking just prior to the announcement that the Spanish town had lost out, said Spain should not be despondent.
Aznar said the fact Spain had been in the running showed the "credibility" of its candidature given that "a few years ago it would have been impossible" to even come close to being selected.
"The mere fact we were competing for a project which only about 10 countries were in line for... is palpable evidence of the change" wrought by his government since it took office in 1996, he said.
Palacio echoed that sentiment.
"To be where we are is reason for some satisfaction," said Palacio, who admitted that the French scientific community's tradition was "superior" to Spain's.
The ITER project aims to produce within 30 years clean energy at the pre-industrial stage, notably from hydrogen, through controlled reproduction of the kind of fusion that occurs in the sun and other stars.
-------- iran
U.N. Agency Censures Iran for Nuclear Cover-Ups
November 26, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html?hp
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- The U.N. atomic agency Wednesday censured Iran for 18 years of secrecy, issuing a resolution that its director said gives him more muscle in policing the country for evidence of nuclear weapons ambitions.
Warning Tehran to stay in line, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said the measure sends an ``ominous message that failures in the future will not be tolerated.''
``This is a good day for peace ... and nonproliferation,'' ElBaradei told reporters, saying the resolution, ``strengthens my hand in ensuring that Iran's program is for peaceful purposes.''
The resolution, adopted by consensus by the 35-nation IAEA board of governors, did not confront Iran with a direct threat of U.N. sanctions as the United States had initially sought. Key European powers opposed a direct threat, worried that Tehran would stop cooperating in retaliation.
The final resolution was a compromise, with a more implicit threat. It says that if ``further serious Iranian failures'' arise, the IAEA board would meet to consider actions allowed by its statute -- which include U.N. Security Council action. If the IAEA turned to the Council, the body would likely move to impose sanctions on Iran.
Despite the lack of a direct threat in the resolution, White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said that ``there is no doubt ... further failures,'' by Iran would result in Security Council involvement.
While welcoming Iran's ``offer of active cooperation and openness'' -- including suspending uranium enrichment and agreeing to thorough inspections on IAEA demand -- the measure calls for a ``particularly robust verification system'' to test Tehran's honesty.
Under intense international pressure, Tehran suspended enrichment recently and agreed to allow the implementation of stringent IAEA spot checks of its nuclear activities to demonstrate openness and cooperation with the agency.
The United States, which alleges that Iran plans to develop nuclear arms, had insisted last week it would hold out for at least a threat of Security Council action over 18 years of clandestine activities by Iran including uranium enrichment and plutonium processing.
But France, Germany and Britain opposed a direct Security Council threat, fearing Iran could backtrack on its cooperation were it too strongly pressured.
Backing the three European countries, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov speaking in Warsaw, Poland, agreed Wednesday, saying it ``would have further complicated an uneasy situation.''
In a slap at the United States and its allies, an Iranian statement said the resolution offered only ``marginal relief to the few hard-liners'' on the board.
``Iran's nuclear program is exclusively peaceful and will remain peaceful,'' said the statement.
ElBaradei said a new report on Iran will be ready in February, adding that the IAEA still has ``a lot of work to do before we can conclude that Iran's program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.''
U.S. envoy Kenneth Brill asserted that the resolution already found Iran in ``noncompliance'' -- and therefore pulled the ``trigger'' needed for Security Council involvement.
``The board will not countenance further evasive maneuvers by Iran,'' Brill told the meeting.
Later, he described Iran as being at a ``crossroads.''
``They can decide to continue down the well-worn path of the past -- almost 20 years of denial, deception and deceit -- or they can turn toward the path of a new chapter, wherein they really do come clean,'' he told reporters.
The United States, the European Union and most other members of the 35-nation board would like a permanent stop to Iranian uranium enrichment, but Iranian envoy Ali Akbar Salehi said that would not happen, describing the recent halt as temporary.
On the Net:
IAEA Web site: www.iaea.org.
--------
Atomic Agency Warns Iran for Secrecy on Nuclear Activities
November 26, 2003
By MARK LANDLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/26/international/middleeast/26CND-IRAN.html
VIENNA, Nov. 24 - The International Atomic Energy Agency passed a much-debated resolution today that condemns Iran for covering up its nuclear program for nearly two decades.
But the resolution, which stopped short of urging action by the United Nations Security Council, sets the stage for a verification process that could be every bit as contentious as the talks here over the last week.
The resolution, drafted by Britain, France and Germany, warns that Iran would face unspecified action if the agency's inspectors uncover "further serious failures" in its disclosures about nuclear activities.
While the United States and Britain say further deception by Iran would trigger a referral to the Security Council, the wording in the resolution is vague. What constitutes a serious failure is also open to debate, though the agency said it planned to hold Iran to a strict standard.
"The board is sending a very serious and ominous message that failure in the future will not be tolerated," said Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the agency, after the measure was adopted by consensus. "Our work in the next few weeks will be very intensive."
Noting that the agency wanted to do that work without interference, Dr. ElBaradei said in an interview at his Vienna headquarters, "I would like to ask the member states to sit back and relax."
The United States is unlikely to take him up on his invitation. Having pushed unsuccessfully for a much stronger resolution, diplomats said Washington would track the inspections closely, and seize on any evidence of Iranian deception as a way to ratchet up the pressure on Tehran.
"There must be a very robust verification," said Kenneth C. Brill, the United States ambassador to the agency. "The international community rejects 18 years of Iran's denial, deceit and deception."
Privately, American officials say they expect further disclosures of hidden nuclear activity by Iran, pointing to unexplored areas in Iran's recently disclosed use of laser technology to enrich uranium.
Iran reacted calmly to the resolution, but said it was disappointed the text left out what it claimed was the most important conclusion of a recent agency report on Iran: that there is "no evidence" of a weapons program.
For the United States, which had called on the 35-member board to recommend Security Council action, the resolution capped a frustrating week in which Washington found itself again at odds with Germany and France, as well as with its usually stalwart ally, Britain.
In talks with his European counterparts over the weekend, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was able to win a tougher condemnation of Iran. The resolution "strongly deplores Iran's past failures and breaches of its obligation" under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Mr. Powell, however, could not persuade the foreign ministers - Jack Straw of Britain, Dominique de Villepin of France and Joschka Fischer of Germany - to include an explicit threat to go to the Security Council.
A senior European diplomat said Iran had put heavy pressure on the three countries to leave out such a warning.
The Europeans, he said, did not want to jeopardize the diplomatic overture they made in October to Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, which resulted in a pledge by Iran to suspend its enrichment of uranium, which is critical in the manufacturing of nuclear weapons.
Britain, France and Germany contend that the best way to police Iran is to take advantage of its pledges to be more open and cooperative. Only Britain raised the threat of taking Iran to the Security Council.
The main beneficiary of the trans-Atlantic haggling appeared to be Dr. ElBaradei, who had appealed for a strongly worded resolution that nevertheless did not elevate the Iran dispute to the United Nations.
An Egyptian diplomat with a methodical manner, Dr. ElBaradei has often had tense relations with the Bush administration. Some Bush officials believe he was not aggressive enough in hunting down evidence of a weapons program in Iraq in the months before the war.
With no weapons of mass destruction having been uncovered so far, however, Dr. ElBaradei's cautious approach has been vindicated, in the opinion of some delegates here. He regularly invokes the Iraq example.
"Iraq has been a very sobering experience," he said. "Everybody is learning from that experience."
Among the lessons, Dr. ElBaradei said, is that people should not jump to the conclusion that having an atomic research program is proof that Iran is seeking a bomb. Another lesson is that "inspections take time," he said. "Even if you have 1,200 people and $1 billion, it can take over a year."
His reference is to the vast weapons search being conducted by coalition forces in Iraq. Dr. ElBaradei said he would send no more than 10 inspectors to Iran for the next phase of the verification process.
Another difference between Iran and Iraq, according to officials here, has been the quality of intelligence. The agency said it received little "actionable" intelligence about facilities in Iraq. In Iran's case, dissident groups and governments gave inspectors a wealth of leads.
When the inspectors return to Iran next week, they are expected to conduct a range of projects: interviewing Iranians who were involved in the nuclear program, taking environmental samples, and monitoring Iran's pledge to cease its uranium-enrichment activities.
As they scour the countryside, the question is: what would lead them to declare Iran in violation?
"A small piece of equipment would probably not be a serious failure," Dr. ElBaradei said. "A lab working on nuclear activities would."
--------
ElBaradei Says Iran Resolution Strengthens IAEA Hand
November 26, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear-elbaradei.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday he was pleased with a resolution from the agency's board that condemned Iran for past breaches of nuclear non-proliferation but welcomed Iran's new openness.
``I'm very pleased with today's resolution...It strengthens our hand in fulfilling our task,'' Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told a news conference.
``It is pretty clear that the board is sending a very serious and ominous message that failures in the future will not be tolerated and that the board will use all options available to it to deal with these failures,'' he said.
--------
Text of IAEA Resolution on Iran
November 26, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran-Resolution.html
Text of U.N. nuclear agency's resolution adopted Wednesday on Iran:
---
``The Board of Governors ...
-- Expressed concern over failures by the Islamic Republic of Iran to report material, facilities and activities that Iran is obliged to report pursuant to its Safeguards Agreement;
-- Decided it was essential and urgent, in order to ensure IAEA verification of non-diversion of nuclear material, that Iran remedy all failures identified by the Agency and cooperate fully with the Agency by taking all necessary actions by the end of October 2003;
-- Requested Iran to work with the Secretariat to promptly and unconditionally sign, ratify and fully implement the Additional Protocol, and, as a confidence-building measure, to act thenceforth in accordance with the Additional Protocol; and
-- Called on Iran to suspend all further uranium enrichment-related activities, including the further introduction of nuclear material into Natanz, and any reprocessing activities ...''
--- ``Noting with deep concern that Iran has failed in a number of instances over an extended period of time to meet its obligations under the Safeguards Agreement with respect to the reporting of nuclear material, and its processing and use, as well as the declaration of facilities where such material has been processed and stored...
-- Noting in particular with the gravest concern that Iran enriched uranium and separated plutonium in undeclared facilities, in the absence of IAEA safeguards,
-- Noting also, with equal concern, that there has been in the past a pattern of concealment resulting in breaches of safeguard obligations and that the new information disclosed by Iran and reported by the Director General includes much more that is contradictory to information previously provided by Iran,
-- Noting that ... Iran has begun cooperating more actively with the IAEA and has given assurances that it is committed to a policy of full disclosure, ...
-- Emphasizing that, in order to restore confidence, Iranian cooperation and transparency will need to be complete and sustained so that the Agency can resolve outstanding issues and, over time, provide and maintain the assurances required by the Member States,
-- Noting with satisfaction that Iran has indicated that it is prepared to sign the Additional Protocol, and that, pending its entry into force, Iran will act in accordance with the provisions of that Protocol, ...
-- Stressing that the voluntary suspension by Iran of all its uranium enrichment-related activities and reprocessing activities remains of key importance to rebuilding international confidence, ...
-- Strongly deplores Iran's past failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with the provisions of its Safeguards Agreement, as reported by the Director General; and urges Iran to adhere strictly to its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement in both letter and spirit;
-- Endorses ... that the Agency must have a particularly robust verification system in place: an Additional Protocol, coupled with a policy of full transparency and openness on the part of Iran, is indispensable;
-- Reiterates that the urgent, full and close cooperation with the Agency of all third countries is essential in the clarification of outstanding questions concerning Iran's nuclear program;
-- Calls on Iran to undertake and complete the taking of all necessary corrective measures on an urgent basis, to sustain full cooperation with the Agency in implementing Iran's commitment to full disclosure and unrestricted access, and thus to provide the transparency and openness that are indispensable for the Agency to complete the considerable work necessary to provide and maintain the assurances required by the Member States;
-- Decides that, should any further serious Iranian failures come to light, the Board of Governors would meet immediately to consider, in the light of the circumstances and advice from the Director General, all options at its disposal, in accordance with the IAEA Statue and Iran's Safeguards Agreement;
-- Notes with satisfaction the decision of Iran to conclude an Additional Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement, and re-emphasizes the importance of Iran moving swiftly to ratification and also of Iran acting as if the Protocol were in force in the interim, including by making all declarations required within the required timeframe;
-- Welcomes Iran's decision to voluntarily suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities and requests Iran to adhere to it, in a complete and verifiable manner; and also endorses the Director General's acceptance of Iran's invitation to verify implementation of that decision and report thereon.''
-------- israel
Israel vows to continue to study Iranian nuclear activities
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Nov 26, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031126152305.oba09cio.html
Iran's arch-enemy Israel said Wednesday it would continue to carefully monitor Tehran's nuclear activities after the UN's atomic watchdog condemned Tehran for two decades of covert nuclear activities.
"We are still studying this resolution but we will continue to follow closely the worrying attempts by Iran to develop weapons of mass destruction, as is the international community as a whole," foreign ministry spokesman Jonathan Peled told AFP.
"We will have to see if Iran reveals, or if it is revealed, what it has been up to," Peled added.
A resolution adopted Wednesday by the 35-nation board of directors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna balanced US calls to condemn Iran for 18 years of hidden nuclear activities that included making plutonium and European demands that Iran be rewarded for cooperating since October with the IAEA.
The United States dropped demands to take Iran immediately before the UN Security Council for "non-compliance" with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
However Washington secured a guarantee, considered a "trigger mechanism" in the resolution, which says that if "any further Iranian failures come to light, the Board of Governors would meet immediately to consider ... all options at its disposal."
Since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, Israel has come to regard the Islamic fundamentalist administration in Tehran as its number one enemy.
Earlier this month, Meir Dagan, head of Israel's Mossad overseas intelligence service, told MPs that Iran's nuclear programme posed the biggest threat to Israel's existence since the country was created in 1948.
Dagan also said Israel had discovered in the last three months that Iran was close to finishing construction of a uranium enrichment plant in the central Kachan area which could eventually give it the capacity to build around a dozen nuclear bombs.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is personally supervising efforts to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear arsenal, Israeli army radio reported on Sunday.
A plan of action had been drawn up during a special meeting Sharon convened with Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom, Defence Minister Shaoul Mofaz and Mossad agents, the radio said.
Iran on Tuesday slammed Israel's campaign to convince the world that the Islamic republic is intent on acquiring a nuclear weapon.
"The falsification of the facts and negative propaganda about Iran's civilian nuclear activities are totally motivated by the hostility of the Zionist regime," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi said.
-------- korea
S. Korea Says Powers Tuning Stances on North Talks
November 26, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - The five countries seeking to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions are fine-tuning their positions, South Korea said on Wednesday amid reports of potential progress on resolving the year-old crisis.
In Tokyo, the Kyodo news agency reported that the United States was devising a plan for North Korea to dismantle its arms program that would involve the five declared nuclear states -- the United States, France, Russia, China and Britain.
A South Korean newspaper, the English-language Korea Herald, quoted diplomatic officials as saying North Korea and the United States had narrowed their differences in the run-up to talks that are expected to take place from December 17 to 19 in Beijing.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan had no comment on either report at a briefing, but noted that there had been brisk diplomatic activity in recent days across the region.
Japan's delegation chief to the first round of talks was in Seoul on Wednesday. South Korea's defense minister was in Tokyo.
``We haven't finalized the date yet because of diplomatic schedules,'' Yoon said. ``We are trying to hold the six-way talks within this year and the fine-tuning process is under way.''
A first, inconclusive round in August was attended by the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
In an attempt to defuse the crisis, Washington said last month it was willing to give Pyongyang unspecified security assurances in exchange for the North putting a verifiable and irreversible end to its suspected weapons program. JOINT DECLARATION?
The Korea Herald said North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong-il had given a positive response to the idea of working out an agreement along U.S. lines during weekend talks in China.
The newspaper said the next round of talks would conclude with a joint declaration in which the North promises to scrap nuclear weapons development and the United States pledges to provide a documented security assurance.
The South's Yoon appeared to play down the scope of such an assurance when asked whether North Korea's communist system could be guaranteed.
``I don't know any international precedent where a country guarantees another country's political system,'' he said.
The nuclear crisis began in October 2002 when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted to having a covert weapons program despite having agreed earlier to freeze its atomic activities.
Kyodo quoted U.S. officials and diplomats close to the multilateral talks as saying fundamental aspects of the plan could be presented to North Korea during a fresh round of talks.
They said the expertise of all the declared nuclear powers was believed needed to verify the complete scrapping of the North Korean nuclear program. Britain and France are not involved in the six-way talks and France, like the United States, has no relations with the North.
The five-power plan would build on deals Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan made after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons to Moscow, for example. The United States, Britain and Russia -- as repositories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- guaranteed they would not attack Ukraine. China and France were not party to that deal.
Kyodo said North Korea would first have to declare all its nuclear activities. This would be followed by Pyongyang rejoining the NPT, from which it withdrew in January, and allowing its nuclear sites to be inspected.
-------- russia
US Softens Stance on Russian Nuclear Work with Iran
November 26, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iran-nuclear-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department softened its public stance on Russian nuclear cooperation with Iran on Wednesday, saying it was up to Moscow to decide how to proceed for now after earlier demands it end all cooperation.
``They would have to decide how to handle their cooperation during this particular period ... while we're waiting to see whether Iran carries out its promises or not,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
``Our view is that people ought to ... continue to be careful about their programs, particularly at this moment when Iran has not yet implemented all its commitments,'' he added.
Boucher made the comment after the U.N. nuclear watchdog, with Russian support, condemned Iran for an 18-year cover-up of sensitive atomic research and said any future breach of its nonproliferation obligations would not be tolerated.
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency stopped short of reporting Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions on Iran. Washington accuses Tehran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons despite Iranian denials.
In an effort to defuse the standoff, Iran has promised to sign a protocol giving the IAEA the right to conduct more intrusive, snap inspections of its atomic sites but has yet to do so.
Washington has long been troubled that Moscow is helping Iran to build a nuclear reactor in the Iranian town of Bushehr but its concerns have been eased somewhat by Moscow's efforts to sign an agreement under which Tehran would return spent nuclear fuel that could be used to produce atomic bombs.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told lawmakers on Oct. 28 Russia had taken ``a step in the right direction'' by seeking to work out an agreement to take back the spent fuel.
``But our affection for Bushehr is still very much under control,'' he added, saying Iran had to do much more to prove it was abiding by the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
As recently as May, the State Department demanded that all countries stop their nuclear cooperation with Iran. ``Our view remains that it's important for everybody to end nuclear cooperation with Iran,'' Boucher said on May 27.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Scary and scandalous
Leader
Wednesday November 26, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1093202,00.html
The US administration's defence authorisation bill for fiscal year 2004 was signed into law by George Bush this week. In all, it totals $401.3bn. Amazingly, this figure does not include one-off appropriations for US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan of approximately $150bn. Overall US defence expenditure under Mr Bush is at record levels. It is higher, in relative terms, than equivalent, average American spending during the cold war years when a hostile Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact confronted the US and its allies with thousands of nuclear warheads deployed on land, at sea and in the air, as well as chemical and biological weapons and vast conventional forces. Yet Mr Bush suggested that terrorism now represented the most potent threat in the history of the US. "The war on terror is different than (sic) any war America has ever fought," he said. "This threat to civilisation will be defeated. We will do whatever it takes." So much for the peace dividend.
Mr Bush's knowledge of history is not a matter that should detain us here, no more than is the meaning in this context of the word civilisation which, like Jack Straw, he presumably uses "advisedly". It is clear that Mr Bush senses a very great menace; and that he will take every opportunity between now and the next election to tell American voters how much they have to fear. This is an unusually disconcerting, manipulative message. His campaign slogan could almost be: "Vote for Bush. It's really scary".
Whatever the actual, unexaggerated threat level may be, some elements of the defence bill are really scary, too - or just plain scandalous. They include exemptions for the military from provisions of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Apparently unpatriotic dolphins and various pacifist fish have been thoughtlessly obstructing training exercises. The bill gives $9.1bn for the further development of Mr Bush's "Star Wars" global ballistic missile defence wheeze. And it authorises spending on research into a new generation of battlefield nuclear weapons, so-called "mini-nukes" and "bunker-busters" that, if built, will make nuclear warfare both more doable and more likely. This project breaches the spirit if not the letter of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which, in a developing world context, the US righteously and noisily insists upon. It is itself a potentially egregious act of proliferation. Japan, the world's only nuclear victim so far, protested yesterday that the future US deployment of such weapons is "something which cannot be allowed". Yes, but can it be stopped?
--------
U.S. Nuke Development Concerns Russia
November 26, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US-Nuclear.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- A senior Russian military official voiced strong concern Wednesday about U.S. plans to develop low-yield nuclear weapons, saying that Moscow might be forced to review its own nuclear doctrine.
Col.-Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the first deputy chief of staff of the Russian General Staff, told reporters that the Pentagon's plans to develop such weapons would be destabilizing.
``We are witnessing that nuclear weapons, which have served as a political deterrent, are being transformed into a battlefield instrument,'' Baluyevsky said. ``It's very scary, extremely scary.''
A defense bill signed by President Bush on Monday lifts a decade-old ban on research into low-yield nuclear weapons and authorizes $15 million for continued research into a powerful nuclear weapon capable of destroying deep underground bunkers.
``That causes us concern,'' Baluyevsky said. ``Should we somehow review our nuclear strategy? Yes, I believe we should.''
He wouldn't say whether Russia would work to develop similar weapons, but said that it would hold onto its stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons.
Baluyevsky said Russia was concerned about the United States maintaining its tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, where they could be used against targets in Russia.
``We are asking why,'' he said. ``We understood that it was necessary as a deterrent in the past when the Warsaw Pact existed and we had huge armies stationed in Eastern Germany. But now there is no Warsaw Pact and Russia pursues a different policy.''
Russia's relations with the United States and NATO have improved dramatically in recent years thanks to Putin's strong support for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Last year, the alliance signed a partnership agreement with Russia envisaging cooperation in counterterrorism, nonproliferation, peacekeeping and other fields.
Yet in spite of the warmer ties, Russian officials warned the alliance against deploying weapons close to Russian borders. Last month a Defense Ministry policy paper warned that Moscow might rethink its nuclear strategy if NATO maintains its current doctrine, which Russia says remains rooted in the Cold War.
During a meeting between Putin and the top military brass, where the paper was presented, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov also warned that Russia would not rule out the preventive use of force if its interests and alliance obligations demand it.
The Russian statements have troubled NATO, which asked for explanations. Baluyevsky on Wednesday echoed Ivanov's assertions that a possible pre-emptive strike would not involve nuclear weapons.
``There hasn't been any talk about the preventive use of nuclear weapons,'' he said.
Baluyevsky also emphasized that Russia remains committed to cooperation with NATO. He said Russia and the alliance were planning a joint military exercise next year, which he said was intended to convince NATO that Russia's nuclear weapons were well-protected.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new york
Rochester Utility Sells Nuclear Power Station
November 26, 2003
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/26/business/26power.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 - A Baltimore-based electric company said Tuesday that it would buy the Robert E. Ginna nuclear plant from Rochester Gas and Electric for $401 million.
The deal struck by Constellation Energy is notable because the price is nearly 50 percent higher, per watt of capacity, than it agreed to pay for the nearby Nine Mile Point reactors three years ago. It is also noteworthy because of the advanced age of Ginna, which entered service in July 1970 and is running on a license that expires in six years. The deal is contingent on winning a 20-year license extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Ginna plant is about 20 miles north of Rochester, in Oswego, on the shore of Lake Ontario.
Of the five other reactors in New York State, two have already been bought by Constellation and three by another national nuclear operator, Entergy.
Mayo A. Shattuck III, the chairman, president and chief executive of Constellation, said that one reason his company saw value in the plant was the expectation of high power prices in New York. Constellation will sell 90 percent of the output to Rochester Gas and Electric for the first 10 years, at an average price of $44 a megawatt-hour, he said, and expected to make a profit on that and on the remaining 10 percent, because of the way that "the New York region is likely to evolve," he said.
Rochester Gas and Electric is a subsidiary of the Energy East Corporation of Ithaca, N.Y.
Michael J. Wallace, the president of the Constellation Generation Group, a subsidiary of Constellation Energy, said that market prices today in New York were " quite a bit higher than they were three years ago." Constellation, in addition, has signed numerous contracts to supply power in New York and New England.
Mr. Wallace said that the 20-year license extension was nearly certain and that "it's a slam-dunk till 2029 - the question is how many years beyond."
In 1982, Ginna experienced a rupture in a steam generator tube; a similar rupture occurred at Indian Point 2 in 2000. Ginna replaced its steam generators in 1996. Ginna has also replaced numerous parts that have caused problems at other plants including pumps and valves, and the vessel head.
In addition, the political climate seems favorable, said Paul J. Allen, vice president for corporate affairs. "There is a high understanding of the safety and security of the plants and a lot of public acceptance," he said.
Constellation is counting on increasing the power output of the plant by about 17 percent. Crucial components of the plant replaced in the 1990's were sized to allow more heat production in the reactor and more electricity production from the generator. The plant was rated at 470 megawatts when it entered service, is now listed at 495 megawatts and is seeking permission to go to 580.
If it succeeds in increasing the plant's power output, Constellation will be paying about $667 per kilowatt of capacity. A kilowatt is about enough energy to run a single window air-conditioner. Consumers buy electricity by the kilowatt-hour, so a kilowatt-hour is what is required to run a typical air-conditioner for an hour. Constellation paid $415 for each kilowatt of capacity at Nine Mile, which is about 50 miles to the west, also on the shore of Lake Ontario. The two plants can share some resources, company officials said.
-------- us nuc waste
Documents say 60 nuclear chain reactions possible
But federal officials say report refers to reactor sites and not to Yucca Mountain waste repository
By KEITH ROGERS,
November 26, 2003
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/Nov-26-Wed-2003/news/22674149.html
Canisters of deadly radioactive waste would corrode inside the planned Yucca Mountain repository and cause up to 60 uncontrolled nuclear chain reactions, raising safety concerns about the federal project for disposing of the nation's spent reactor fuel, state officials claimed Tuesday, citing once-secret documents.
A Department of Energy spokesman discounted the state's claims, however, saying the 1998 report in question dealt with long-term storage of spent fuel assemblies at more than 100 U.S. reactor sites and not the maze of tunnels DOE wants to carve inside Yucca Mountain to entomb highly radioactive waste for at least 10,000 years.
"The report speaks to criticality at reactor storage sites instead of at the repository," Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson said Tuesday, adding, "There's nothing secret about the report either."
But in a statement earlier in the day, Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency chief Bob Loux said he sent a letter to Micahel Corradini, chairman of an independent nuclear waste review panel, claiming, "If the repository operates as is now planned, up to 60 nuclear criticalities may plausibly occur inside the mountain, and that the conditional probability of occurrence may be greater than one in 1,000 per year.
"The discovery of these once-hidden documents indicates that DOE was well aware of the risk of waste package damage and radioactive releases into the environment but attempted to hide it, knowing that internal criticality may be one of the most, if not the most, significant safety issues in repository licensing," according to the letter Tuesday to Corradini, chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.
The documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, were revealed less than two months before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia begins hearing the state's consolidated cases for blocking the project, and while DOE is preparing a license application for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to begin reviewing in December 2004.
Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval has asked the court to enter the documents into the court record.
According to Loux's statement, the documents "show that if the waste packages stored in the repository corrode and permit water to enter, a spontaneous nuclear chain reaction is a great enough possibility that up to 60 such events could be expected in the repository, with a likelihood of occurrence of more than one in 1,000."
That assumption contradicts DOE's final impact statement for the project that claimed a chance of a criticality occurring would be less than two in 10 million over the entire 10,000 years that the repository loaded with 77,000 tons of nuclear waste and spent fuel must comply with safety regulations.
Criticality is the point at which a nuclear chain reaction becomes self-sustaining, posing catastrophic consequences.
Loux noted that, if a terrorist fired an armor-piercing missile at a nuclear waste shipment, "a criticality even could occur, especially if water was able to enter the cask. Such an event would almost certainly cause what DOE called a 'violent event,' exploding the cask and dispersing its radioactive contents into the environment."
The criticality issue has surfaced occasionally during the 20-year dispute between the state and DOE over saddling Nevada with the burden of storing nuclear waste in the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
In 1999, a Nevada scientist asserted that an uncontrolled, nuclear chain reaction could slowly cook inside the mountain canisters over hundreds of thousands of years, releasing lethal radionuclides into the environment.
A Yucca Mountain Project policy adviser at the time, Abe Van Luik, defended the repository design, saying there is "essentially no possibility of a criticality while waste packages are still intact. Beyond 10,000 years, there is a very slight chance of criticality. It's so very slight, we probably won't analyze it."
-------- us politics
Powell 'happy with' nuke compromise
November 26, 2003
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031125-093127-6338r.htm
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday he was "happy" with a U.S.-European compromise on Iran's nuclear programs even though it stopped short of referring Tehran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
Other U.S. officials said, however, that, given Iran's past attempts to conceal its nuclear ambitions, there is a good chance that it might get caught in noncompliance again soon.
This is why the United States insisted on a so-called "trigger" paragraph in the resolution, which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to adopt today.
That paragraph - the main source of contention in the document's final drafts - says Iran's case will be sent automatically to the IAEA Board of Governors in the event of any future violations of its nonproliferation obligations.
Mr. Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw - the principal European negotiator - labored over the "trigger" text in several phone calls over the weekend, a senior State Department official said.
"The resolution notes all that Iran has been doing over the years, with respect to its nuclear programs," Mr. Powell told reporters yesterday. "It notes that Iran has been in breach of obligations."
The United States gave up its demand that the IAEA declare Iran guilty of noncompliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) after it became clear that the Europeans would not drop their opposition.
A recent IAEA report found that Iran had been violating nuclear safeguards for the past 18 years, Europe argued that it would be counterproductive to antagonize Tehran at a time when it is offering unprecedented cooperation with the international agency.
The European nations on Oct. 21 secured an agreement with Iran that led to its filing a comprehensive report on its nuclear programs, pledging to allow wider inspections and suspending the enrichment of uranium.
The compromise reached between Mr. Powell and Mr. Straw "was the best deal we could get," a U.S. official said. "We had to give [the Europeans] some of the things they wanted."
A Western diplomat in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, said in an interview that, while the Bush administration maintained a tough public position against Iran, in private its negotiators "were becoming more practical."
"I'm very happy with the resolution," Mr. Powell said. "I'd like to thank my European Union colleagues who worked so hard on it, especially the EU three, as well as other members of the IAEA Board of Governors, that we've worked closely with."
The "EU three" - Britain, Germany and France - tabled the draft Monday. It is expected to be adopted without a formal vote today, the diplomat said.
The IAEA board began a series of meetings Thursday to consider its response to a report from the IAEA director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, saying Tehran had violated nuclear safeguards for 18 years, including making small amounts of plutonium and enriched uranium.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
LETTER FROM AFRICA
The Lesson of Somalia: Just a Humpty Dumpty Story?
November 26, 2003
By MARC LACEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/26/international/africa/26LETT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGATHI, Kenya - The recent sight of Black Hawk helicopters falling from the sky in Iraq prompts comparisons with Somalia, where the downing of a Black Hawk in 1993 spelled the end of an earlier experiment in stabilizing a divided, violence-racked nation.
A decade after the American withdrawal from Mogadishu, Somalia remains an anarchic country without a central government, a reminder that the conditions that breed terrorism will still exist even if Iraq is eventually stabilized.
A recent report prepared by the United Nations, for example, says that the terrorists who carried out the bombing last year of an Israeli tourist haven on the Kenyan coast used Somalia as a training ground, transit point and escape route.
In a series of recent peace conferences, African nations have been taking increasing responsibility for fixing their own problems. Somalia, too, is conducting peace negotiations, on a college campus here outside Nairobi.
But that's nothing unusual - this is the 14th round of talks in the 13 years since Somalia's last government collapsed. The talks, punctuated by the occasional fistfight, underscore just how hard it will be to rebuild economic, legal and social structures that were long ago destroyed.
This fall, two delegates to the peace conference have died in mysterious circumstances, one by gunshot and the other by strangulation. While investigators have yet to tie the murders directly to the talks, they filed charges this week against a former member of the Kenyan Parliament in connection with the shooting.
Historically, Somalia has always been more a collection of widely scattered settlements and clans than a unified country. During the 19th century, the British took one chunk and the Italians another. Upon independence in 1960, Somalia became one, at least on the map. In 1969, after years of instability, an autocratic army general named Mohamed Siad Barre seized power and kept Somalia together from 1969 to 1991, until the cold war ended.
Today, the clannishness is back in force with at least five different men claiming to be president of various portions of the country and scores of warlords who have divvied up virtually every city block and remote village for themselves. American attention is now focused elsewhere, but the problems that haunted Somalia a decade ago have festered.
One of the supposed presidents is Abdinur Ahmed Darman, a businessman who staged a large rally in Mogadishu in July 2003, during which he declared himself Somalia's head of state. Mr. Darman's business activities are diverse, including the printing of fake Somali shillings, according to the United Nations report.
Before Mr. Darman held his presidential rally, he took care of some key details: he hired a group of militiamen to protect him, a prerequisite for any leadership position in Somalia, and he opened an e-mail account with the address somalipresidency@yahoo.com.
Who can argue with that?
Well, Abdikassim Salad Hassan, for one. He was elected president of Somalia at an earlier peace conference in Djibouti in 2000 that drew thousands of delegates, but was nonetheless boycotted by some top clan leaders.
Mr. Salad has acted as president for the past three years. He has appointed ministers, moved into a mansion in Mogadishu and insisted that he be granted the same level of respect as other presidents during his world travels.
But Mr. Salad has had a difficult tenure. The warlords who really control Somalia ceded him no more than a portion of Mogadishu. In October, as Mr. Salad headed overseas, his own bodyguards refused to let him leave the country unless he paid them back wages.
Several months ago, Mr. Salad's transitional government, which was given authority for three years, reached the end of its term. But with no clear president to replace him, Mr. Salad has hung onto the job.
Then there are what might be called the regional presidents. Puntland, a breakaway region in northeastern Somalia, is ruled by Abdullahi Yusuf. But his vice president, Muhammad Abdi Hashi, recently declared himself president.
Another autonomous region, Somaliland, held elections in April 2003 that gave the presidency to the incumbent, Dahir Rayale Kahin. He won an election Americans can relate to, edging his opponent by just 80 votes of nearly 500,000 cast. The election was decided by Somaliland's Supreme Court.
Dozens of other Somalis who do not currently assert that they are the president would nevertheless like to lay claim to the title by the close of the current peace negotiations. Delegates to the talks are going to decide first on the makeup of the 351-member parliament. The lawmakers, carefully balanced to reflect Somalia's numerous clans, will then decide on the next leader.
Selection Day is a moving target. It was supposed to happen in the summer. It might still occur this fall. If not then, next year is a distinct possibility. Nothing is a sure thing.
The candidates are a colorful lot.
There is Hussein Aidid, a former United States marine who is son of Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, whom American troops were seeking during the ill-fated intervention in Mogadishu. He does not appreciate the term warlord that is typically attached to him.
Abdurahman Barre Osman, the younger brother of Somalia's last leader, also has aspirations. It was the collapse of Mr. Siad Barre's rule that gave rise to Somalia's 13 years of chaos. Most considered the former leader a dictator, but his brother does not speak ill of him.
The lone woman in the race is Asha Ahmed Abdalla, who lived in the United States for 30 years and ran the Washington-based Somali Relief Agency. She faces an added challenge. It seems the men who have run Somalia into the ground do not think women are up to the job.
Of course, whoever emerges as the next leader will simply enter a crowded field of would-bes, has-beens, pretenders and outright frauds. Somalia will almost certainly remain divided, a haunting reminder that the campaign against terror will not be over even if calm some day replaces chaos in Iraq.
-------- business
Boeing Deal On Tankers Again on Hold
Rumsfeld Orders Review After Executives Are Fired
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 26, 2003; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14842-2003Nov25.html
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that his senior staff would conduct a fresh review of an Air Force deal to lease and buy 100 Boeing Co. tankers, after Boeing's dismissal of two top executives for unethical conduct.
"We're the custodian of the taxpayers' dollars. We have an obligation to see that things are done properly," Rumsfeld said. The review, which has no deadline, will probably extend the two-year debate on the tanker contract.
Boeing fired Michael M. Sears, its chief financial officer, and Darleen A. Druyun, a Boeing senior vice president and former Air Force deputy procurement officer, on Monday, the same day President Bush signed the 2004 defense authorization bill giving the Air Force authority to lease 20 and buy 80 of the planes.
An internal Boeing investigation found that Sears approached Druyun about joining the company while Druyun was overseeing hundreds of Boeing contracts for the Air Force. The recruitment effort violated company policy. Druyun may have also violated federal procurement laws by talking with Sears, according to industry and government sources.
Sears and Druyun did not comment on their firings.
Boeing discovered two weeks ago the inappropriate contacts and Sears and Druyun's effort to cover them up, the company said. The revelations are the latest blow to the Chicago-based firm which was trying to regain Air Force trust after acknowledging it had thousands of pages of proprietary Lockheed Martin Corp. documents during a rocket-launch competition.
Boeing declined to comment on Rumsfeld's announcement, but said Monday that it did not believe that the company benefited from Druyun and Sears's improper communications.
Sprint Corp. said yesterday that Sears resigned from its board after he was fired from Boeing.
The dismissals have raised the prospect of more hearings on the tanker contract next year. The lingering questions about the deal are also stalling the nomination of Michael W. Wynne to the position of chief weapons buyer for the Pentagon. Wynne faced tough questions before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week on the Pentagon's refusal to turn over documents and e-mails related to the tanker negotiations, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has said he would hold up the nomination until the agency complied.
"I would believe we need to hold Mr. Wynne's nomination until we get the full information surrounding this situation," McCain, a longtime critic of the plan, said in an interview Monday.
The Pentagon has said it turned over enough documents and the rest were part of the internal debate.
Druyun's dismissal is expected to add fuel to a Pentagon Inspector General investigation into whether she gave Boeing a competitor's proprietary information during the tanker negotiations. According to an internal Boeing e-mail, Druyun told the company that a proposal from Airbus, which is owned by European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co., was cheaper than Boeing's bid.
If Druyun did relay proprietary information to Boeing, that could also influence a competition under way in Britain for same kind of tankers, Douglas Fellman, an EADS attorney said in a Oct. 31 letter to the inspector general's office. The information could give Boeing an "unfair advantage in the UK procurement," the letter said.
Boeing has said the information was not proprietary and was communicated after the Air Force eliminated EADS from the competition.
-------- colombia
800 in Colombia Lay Down Arms, Kindling Peace Hopes
November 26, 2003
By JUAN FORERO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/26/international/americas/26COLO.html
MEDELLÍN, Colombia, Nov. 25 - After a minute of silence in memory of the thousands killed in Colombia's conflict, 800 fighters from an urban band of a right-wing paramilitary group laid down their weapons on Tuesday in a disarmament ceremony the government says could bring the country closer to ending its 39-year-long war.
The ceremony was choreographed by President Álvaro Uribe's government and clearly did not mean the end of the group, the United Self-Defense Forces, a 13,000-member federation of paramilitary factions. But it did suggest that the Colombian authorities might be making some headway in their new, two-pronged strategy to end the war: co-opt the right, defeat the left.
Critics were quick to dispute the idea that the disarmament represented real progress. But Mr. Uribe hopes the laying down of arms will represent the first step in the complete demobilization of the United Self-Defense Forces, which is planned as a two-year process.
If successful, it would be the first time in Latin America that a far-right antiguerrilla force has demobilized through a formal process before the end of a conflict. The government's hope is that this will in turn put pressure on two rebel groups that are the paramilitaries' longtime adversaries - the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army - to negotiate peace accords.
"Today, after a long stretch, we have a first important accomplishment," Luis Carlos Restrepo, Mr. Uribe's top negotiator with insurgent groups, told rows of young fighters in the Medellín convention hall. "Welcome to civilian life."
The ceremony, involving a Medellín faction called Cacique Nutibara, was carefully prepared. Inside a cavernous hall in the convention center, rows of young men - their hair cropped, wearing newly pressed camouflage fatigues, some holding rifles - sang the national anthem.
Then they formed long rows and laid down their AK-47's, sawed-off shotguns, old carbines and revolvers - fewer than 200 weapons in all. They dropped ammunition vests and armbands stamped with the paramilitary logo into a heap before Mr. Restrepo. Reporters were boxed off to the sides, barred from interviewing the fighters.
A videotaped greeting from three top paramilitary commanders played on a giant television screen. The three - Carlos Castaño and Salvatore Mancuso, both of whom have been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges, and Diego Fernando Murillo, a reputed cocaine lord who heads Cacique Nutibara - hailed the moment as the start of a new attempt at reaching peace.
After the ceremony, the young men were bused to La Ceja, a town outside Medellín. They are to stay at a recreation center for three weeks, and then enter job training or educational programs.
A range of critics, from human rights groups to some members of the United States Congress, condemned the disarmament as a half-baked process that would let mass murderers and cocaine traffickers go free. They said the demobilization would not weaken the overall paramilitary group, with top commanders remaining free to recruit and to oversee operations.
"There's no transparency and no accountability," said José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch. "How can we trust this process? Not a single international agency is participating."
Mr. Uribe is pushing legislation in Congress that would allow the government to strike deals with the leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces, with the paramilitaries disarming in exchange for incentives that include suspended jail time for top commanders. Several commanders are wanted for some of Colombia's worst war atrocities.
Those who demobilized on Tuesday did so under the framework of earlier legislation allowing insurgent groups to demobilize and members to be reincorporated into society.
With the support of the military, wealthy landowners and cocaine trafficking, the United Self-Defense Forces have grown exponentially in recent years, its various member groups taking control of wide swaths of territory, wiping out whole villages and killing union organizers and leftist politicians.
But under President Uribe, paramilitary demobilization became one crucial component in a plan that also involves waging relentless war against Marxist rebels.
A year ago, the government embarked on secret talks with the United Self-Defense Forces. After the talks became public earlier this year, the government said disbanding the group would save lives and curtail the drug trade.
The process has largely been cloaked in secrecy and critics have suggested that there is no way to determine if demobilized fighters will return to the war or enter a life of crime. "If they find work, that will be good," one midlevel commander said Monday in a Medellín slum long controlled by the paramilitaries. "But if not, well, no one will simply allow themselves to go hungry."
The mood was giddy in the vast slums around Medellín the day before, as young men in baggy jeans and high-tops gathered in preparation for turning themselves in.
"I am a survivor - that's how I see myself," said a 23-year-old, Andrés. "Maybe one day I can go to a university, or just get a job."
Later, after being fitted for new uniforms, the men filtered to local community centers and schools, to be bused to the convention center.
The United Self-Defense Forces, led by Mr. Castaño, has been angling for a deal since the United States labeled the group a terrorist organization and indicted Mr. Castaño and two other leaders on drug trafficking charges. Those leaders fear extradition to the United States and say the threat of it, in large part, led them to negotiate with the government.
Bush administration officials say the extradition requests will not be dropped, so the paramilitary commanders are trying to obtain government assurances that they will not be arrested during negotiations, a close adviser to Mr. Mancuso said in an interview on Monday.
To show that they are negotiating in good faith, the adviser said, the paramilitaries will demobilize a group of as many as 1,500 paramilitary fighters in northern Colombia as early as January. "We are willing to give all guarantees to show that this is an irreversible process," he said.
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Colombian Militiamen Turn In Weapons
Amnesty Provision Of Demobilization Draws Criticism
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 26, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14576-2003Nov25.html
MEDELLIN, Colombia, Nov. 25 -- More than 800 members of Colombia's private paramilitary force surrendered their weapons Tuesday in a ceremony that highlighted the promise and challenges facing the government as it works to disarm a group that has served at its side for years.
The event marked a first step in President Alvaro Uribe's plan to remove the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia from a crowded battlefield. The 18,000-member confederation of paramilitary groups, known as the AUC, has fought alongside Colombia's army against two Marxist guerrilla groups engaged in a decades-long war against the state.
Uribe's plan, which includes an amnesty provision, has been criticized by activists and others as offering impunity to those who have committed human rights violations.
In a heavily guarded, cavernous assembly hall, a long line of crew-cut young men piled ammunition vests, assault rifles and pistols on a long white slab, shaking hands with government officials as they passed. Despite the pageantry, officials and paramilitary leaders warned that daunting problems lie ahead for a process that commits most of Colombia's paramilitary forces to disarm by the end of 2005.
"This effort will not be in vain," Luis Carlos Restrepo, Uribe's peace commissioner, told the camouflage-clad ranks stretching to the back of the hall. "The road ahead is not easy. Many times you will find it harder to build relationships in a civil society than it has been to live inside an armed group."
The AUC's main fighting force agreed in July to demobilize 11,000 troops by the end of 2005, beginning a process that Uribe said he hoped would serve as a template for future negotiations with guerrilla groups to end a 39-year civil war. Several other paramilitary factions have started talks with the government to begin formal independent negotiations.
The ceremony began Colombia's seventh demobilization of an armed group since the late 1980s, although whether it will end successfully is uncertain. The 855 paramilitary troops who put down their rifles are the first to do so from a group that considers the government an ally rather than enemy.
By pushing back the guerrillas in a number of regions, the AUC has achieved political support from much of the war-weary population, despite its use of brutal counterinsurgency tactics that fall hardest on civilians. Many within Colombia's military, which has received nearly $2 billion from the United States since 2000, have also looked on the group as the enemy of their enemy and rarely moved against its leaders.
Uribe, highly popular after 15 months in office, has argued that disarming the AUC would simplify the conflict and make guerrilla peace talks more likely. To that end he has proposed legislation that would allow AUC leaders to avoid jail time -- even for grave human rights violations -- by paying restitution to victims. The plan has raised objections from human rights groups and some members of Congress in Washington who said it would allow combatants to avoid punishment for their crimes. Lower-ranking paramilitary troops already receive amnesty unless they are implicated in larger crimes.
"Any man who is leaving this war you must support, whether from the left or the right," said Luis Fernando Quijano, director of Corpades, a human rights group, after the ceremony. "My concern is that we have made very little progress toward actual reconciliation."
The men who gave up their weapons Tuesday also gave up a way of life that brought them money, friendship and a measure of power. All of them operated in Medellin, Colombia's second-largest city and a violent crossroads for guns and drugs in the rugged northwest. Now they are entering civic life with little education and scant resources.
The government has turned to U.S. polling techniques to obtain information about members of the paramilitary forces. A survey of 674 foot soldiers paid for in part by the U.S. Agency for International Development sought to determine what demobilized paramilitary troops will need to make a new life within the law. The survey found that a typical soldier is a man, 18 or 19 years old, with less than a year in the organization. Most respondents said they had some work experience, but more than half had not finished high school. A majority of them have children who depend on them financially.
In questions regarding what they intend to do, more than a third said they hoped to start a small business with financial help. Following Tuesday's event, buses shuttled the men to a recreational club in La Ceja, a town 35 miles east of Medellin, where they will begin several weeks of education under armed guard.
Luis Perez, Medellin's mayor, said the city plans to spend roughly $550 a month to support each demobilized soldier in the program, including 48 minors who turned themselves in last week. After three weeks in La Ceja, those who have firm plans to work or continue their education will move into private homes in Medellin.
"The science of peace is patience," Perez told the troops.
The demobilization on Tuesday removed some, but not all, of the paramilitary forces from this city 150 miles northwest of the capital, Bogota. Some powerful commanders within the AUC are skeptical of demobilization, partly out of fear that the army is not prepared to defend the territory that the paramilitary forces have won from the guerrillas in recent years.
"The AUC is not demobilizing to give up space to the insurgency, but to the legitimate forces of the state," paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño, who is wanted in the United States on drug trafficking charges, said in a videotaped message shown during the ceremony.
High in Medellin's eastern hills, a 25-year-old paramilitary soldier who calls himself Edison continues patrolling the warren of concrete houses and steep staircases in the neighborhood of Santa Lucia.
His enemies remain nearby, Edison said, gesturing toward a green valley running toward guerrilla territory to the east. He said about a dozen paramilitary troops from the neighborhood turned in their weapons, leaving 50 others to keep the guerrillas out of a place they ran as recently as two years ago.
"These were people who were tired and want to live another way," said Edison, who joined the paramilitary force four years ago after serving in the army. "My life is to fight. I'm not putting anything down. I'm standing watch."
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'This is war'
26 Nov, 2003
Aftenposten English Web Desk Jonathan Tisdall
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article.jhtml?articleID=678337
Norwegian soldiers serving in Iraq are baffled by politicians calling their mission a "humanitarian action". Norway's forces consider themselves at war and report that they have been instructed to fire if they feel threatened, newspaper VG reports.
"This is a lack of decency from Norwegian politicians," Didrik Coucheron of the BFO (Officers Organization).
On the BFO's web site there is a presentation of e-mails received from Norwegian soldiers serving in Iraq, and the group concludes that their reality has very little in common with how the situation is being presented.
"The mission in Iraq is not a humanitarian one, here war continues, no matter what some politicians have said about the war being over," one soldier wrote.
Other reports express bafflement about the expression "humanitarian mission", describe battle conditions and explain that their Rules of Engagement include combat if threatened.
The BFO report questions media and political reports that cover the Norwegian military effort in Iraq as an important and humanitarian mission, voicing concerns that information is being covered up to avoid the embarrassing admission that the country is once again involved in a war.
"Anyone can see that a uniformed soldier with a helmet, shrapnel vest and an AG3 across his stomach is a soldier and not a humanitarian construction worker," Coucheron told VG's web site.
Coucheron now wants Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik to publicly admit that Norwegian forces in Iraq are at war, in line with the PM's admission earlier this year that he should have called their Kosovo effort a war.
Norway's soldiers in Iraq do not earn a basic risk bonus of NOK 3,000 () a month - as their colleagues in Afghanistan do - since their mission is defined as humanitarian.
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Indian and Pakistani Forces Agree to Cease-Fire in Kashmir
November 26, 2003
By HARI KUMAR
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/26/international/asia/26KASH.html
NEW DELHI, Wednesday, Nov. 26 - Indian and Pakistani military commanders agreed Tuesday to a cease-fire along their common border, including the volatile and heavily militarized front line in the disputed territory of Kashmir, officials in both countries said.
The truce, which took effect at midnight Tuesday, is the first formal cease-fire since an insurgency began in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir 14 years ago.
India accuses Pakistan of arming, training and financing Islamic militants who are carrying out the insurgency, which has killed at least 35,000 people. Pakistan says it provides only political and moral support for the campaign.
A spokesman for the Indian Foreign Ministry, Navtej Sarna, announced the cease-fire agreement on Tuesday in New Delhi. A Pakistani military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, confirmed it.
"We too hope that the cease-fire remains," General Sultan said in an interview on Geo Television in Pakistan.
In a nationwide address on Sunday, Pakistan's prime minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, declared a unilateral cease-fire along the line of control to celebrate Id al-Fitr, the Islamic festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
On Monday, Indian officials said they welcomed the Pakistani declaration. Military leaders formalized the agreement on Tuesday in their weekly phone call.
Experts took a wait-and-see approach to the agreement, citing the rivals' long record of failed peace efforts. "One can only hope that there is a degree of seriousness about this cease-fire," said Satish Nambiar, a retired Indian Army general in New Delhi.
India, which is predominantly Hindu, and Pakistan, which is mostly Muslim, have fought two wars over Kashmir, India's only state with a Muslim majority.
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Pakistan, India Agree On Kashmir Cease-Fire
Accord Is Latest Step By Nuclear Powers To Improve Relations
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 26, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14483-2003Nov25.html
NEW DELHI, Nov. 25 -- India and Pakistan agreed Tuesday to a cease-fire in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, adding a significant boost to a halting peace effort.
The Indian Foreign Ministry said senior military officers from both countries had agreed to a cease-fire along the Line of Control, which separates their forces in Kashmir, as well as on the Siachen Glacier in the Himalayas, where fighting has flared sporadically since 1984.
The cease-fire, proposed Sunday by Pakistani Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, was scheduled to take effect at midnight Tuesday. India and Pakistan routinely trade artillery and small-arms fire across the Line of Control, often killing civilians.
The agreement was the latest in a series of initiatives -- in trade, transportation and sports -- aimed at improving relations between two countries. Last year the nuclear-armed neighbors seemed headed for war following a December 2001 terrorist attack on India's Parliament that the government in New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-backed Islamic militants.
The cease-fire came amid rising hopes in the region for progress in resolving the long-running Kashmir dispute, perhaps when Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee travels to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, for a regional economic summit in early January.
"It's the kind of thing that allows things to move," said C. Raja Mohan, a professor of South Asian studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a diplomatic columnist for the Hindu, a leading English-language newspaper here. "By getting the guns to fall silent, it creates space for the rest of diplomacy to take over."
But Indian officials have not dropped their demand that Pakistan end its support for the Kashmir insurgency, a condition they say has not been fulfilled, in exchange for any dialogue on the future of the region. They also said that the army has reserved the right to fire on militants who attempt to cross the Line of Control, although such incursions typically diminish at this time of year as winter snows make mountain routes impassable.
Pakistani officials say that Kashmir is the "core issue" between the two countries and that relations can never be normal until it is resolved. India maintains that Jammu and Kashmir, the only Indian province where Muslims are a majority, is an integral part of the predominantly Hindu nation.
Just hours before the cease-fire was to take effect, the two sides were still trading machine-gun fire in Kashmir, and Pakistani police reported that Indian shelling had wounded three children in the Pakistani-controlled part of the region, according to the Reuters news agency. The two sides last observed a brief cease-fire in Kashmir in the spring of 2000 following a U.S. diplomatic initiative linked to President Bill Clinton's visit to the region.
Following the attack on Parliament the next year, India mobilized its army, prompting Pakistan to do the same. The escalation raised fears of the world's first nuclear exchange and was defused only after intense U.S. and British diplomatic pressure, culminating in a June 2002 pledge by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, to stop militants from crossing into Indian-held Kashmir. The two armies then withdrew from the border.
On Dec. 1, aviation officials from both countries are scheduled to discuss the restoration of commercial air links severed after the Parliament attack.
Indian officials have suggested that Vajpayee will not travel to Islamabad unless Pakistan agrees to restore the air links, raising hopes of a breakthrough next week.
-------- iraq
How Cleric Trumped U.S. Plan for Iraq
Ayatollah's Call for Vote Forced Occupation Leader to Rewrite Transition Strategy
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 26, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14718-2003Nov25?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Nov. 25 -- The unraveling of the Bush administration's script for political transition in Iraq began with a fatwa.
The religious edict, handed down in June by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite Muslim cleric, called for general elections to select the drafters of a new constitution. He dismissed U.S. plans to appoint the authors as "fundamentally unacceptable."
His pronouncement, underestimated at first by the Bush administration, doomed an elaborate transition plan crafted by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer that would have kept Iraq under occupation until a constitution was written, according to American and Iraqi officials involved in the process. While Bremer feared that electing a constitutional assembly would take too long and be too disruptive, there was a strong desire on his own handpicked Governing Council to obey Sistani's order.
With no way to get around the fatwa, and with escalating American casualties creating pressure on President Bush for an earlier end to the occupation, Bremer recently dumped his original plan in favor of an arrangement that would bestow sovereignty on a provisional government before a constitution is drafted.
Bremer's unwillingness to heed the fatwa until just a few weeks ago may have delayed the country's political transition and exacerbated popular anger at the occupation, Iraqi political leaders said.
"We waited four months, thanks to Bremer," said one council member, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We could have organized this [transition] by now had we started when Sistani issued his fatwa. But the Americans were in denial."
People familiar with the discussions among U.S. officials about the fatwa said American political officers were too isolated to grasp the power of the edict right away, assuming that secular former exiles backed by the U.S. government would push Bremer's plan. Even when Sistani's clout became clear, they said Bremer remained reluctant to rework his transition plan right away. "He didn't want a Shiite cleric dictating the terms of Iraq's political future," one U.S. official with knowledge of the process said.
U.S. officials said it took months even for Iraqis to grasp the influence of Sistani's fatwa. Bremer's deputies also hoped the edict could be countered by statements from other Shiite clerics supporting approaches other than general elections, but few of those materialized.
"What we thought was necessary was for there to be a broad consultation to find out what the Iraqi public wanted," said one official involved in the political transition. "In hindsight," another official added, "we should have done it differently."
Who Would Draft Constitution?
Sistani is a frail man with a black turban, a snowy beard and unquestioned clout among Iraq's Shiite majority. Born in Iran but schooled in Iraq, he lives in the holy city of Najaf, about 90 miles south of Baghdad. Although he works out of a modest office on a decrepit alley, he has enormous authority to interpret Islamic law in everyday life.
During the years former president Saddam Hussein was in power -- when the government deemed activist Shiite clerics subversive and ordered many of them killed -- Sistani remained largely secluded from politics. Even after Hussein's government was toppled in April, Sistani shied away from political pronouncements and public appearances.
At the end of June, when Arab satellite television networks erroneously reported that Iraq's constitution would be written by American and British experts, Sistani broke his silence. In a two-page fatwa issued on June 28, he declared that he would only support a constitution written by Iraqis chosen through a general election, not by a council selected by the Americans.
The fatwa declared: "There is no guarantee that the council would create a constitution conforming with the greater interests of the Iraqi people and expressing the national identity, whose basis is Islam, and its noble social values."
In Baghdad, Sistani's pronouncement did not raise immediate alarm among U.S. officials. Bremer's aides assumed the fatwa would be revised or rescinded once they told Sistani how difficult it would be to hold elections right away. There were no voter rolls, constituent boundaries or electoral laws. "There is simply no way to conduct national elections today," Bremer said at the time.
Bremer also feared that elections would create too much uncertainty. The Bush administration wanted an orderly process it could control, including a constitution that would be a model for its efforts to democratize the Arab world, enshrine individual rights, and establish a secular government, religious freedom and equality of the sexes. Bremer believed that holding a vote before political parties had time to establish themselves would result in Baathists and Islamic extremists, the two best-organized forces in the country, dominating the outcome.
Speaking to reporters a few days after the fatwa was issued, Bremer expressed confidence that he would be able to implement "a process that produces a constitution that meets the general concerns that I understand Ayatollah Sistani mentioned."
Bremer was vague about how the authors would be selected. At the time, his aides privately said Iraqi political leaders and Americans would select the writers. But he pledged that the document was "not going to be written by the United States. It's not going to be written by the British. It's not going to be written by the U.N. It's going to be written by Iraqi people."
Overtures to the Ayatollah
Hoping to change Sistani's mind, political officers with the occupation authority sought a meeting. But every overture was met with a polite rebuff. "He didn't want it to look like he was cooperating with the Americans," said Mowaffak Rubaie, a member of the Governing Council who is close to Sistani.
By early July, Bremer had shifted focus to formation of the council, a 25-member body composed of American allies and political neophytes. In last-minute negotiations before the council was named, the prospective members demanded more authority for a variety of issues, including the drafting of a constitution. As a compromise, Bremer offered to let them form a commission that would identify the best way to select the drafters.
Soon after the council was formed, Bremer asked leaders of the country's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, to meet with Sistani to see if a compromise could be reached on the constitution, said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, director of the party's political bureau. He said the party's leader at the time, Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, who was killed in an August car bombing in Najaf, talked to Sistani about backing away from the fatwa.
"We told Bremer there was no hope for compromise," Abdel-Mehdi said. "Ayatollah Sistani was firm in his position."
Bremer's Power Challenged
Upon hearing back from Abdel-Mehdi and other intermediaries, Bremer and his aides figured there was still a way to reach a compromise. They talked about recruiting other ayatollahs, such as Hakim, to issue statements warning about the dangers of immediate elections, U.S. officials familiar with the process said. And they sought to hammer out a middle-ground solution with Governing Council members, the officials said.
"There was still a lot of confidence we would find a way around the fatwa," one U.S. official said.
By August, after lengthy discussions, American political officers and several council members settled on the idea of a "partial election." Instead of allowing anyone to stand as a candidate and having to compile voter rolls for general elections, the occupation authority would organize caucuses in each governorate, or province, that would be limited to political, religious, tribal, academic and trade union leaders as well as other influential local figures approved by the Americans. The caucus would select the drafters of the constitution.
Although holding caucuses would take longer than directly appointing the authors, Bremer accepted the idea, as did several influential members of the Governing Council. "It was the ideal compromise," said council member Samir Shakir Mahmoud Sumaidy. "The process would be more democratic, but it would avoid the problems of a general election."
Despite their confidence, they had no idea what Sistani thought of the plan. The ayatollah remained silent.
In mid-August, the Governing Council selected a 25-member constitutional commission that began discussing ways to choose the drafters. Composed of lawyers, judges and academics, the commission held meetings with influential figures around the country, including Sistani.
What they heard in their meetings was strong support for general elections, several commission members recalled. In their conversation with Sistani, the commission did not even broach the idea of partial elections, said law professor Hikmat Hakim, one of the commission members.
"We told him his fatwa would be respected," Hakim said. "We didn't ask him about the partial elections."
On Sept. 8, the commission voted 24 to 0 to endorse general elections. "It was very difficult, if not impossible, to disregard the fatwa of Ayatollah Sistani," said Yass Khudier, another commission member.
Concerned that a unanimous endorsement of general elections would interfere with Bremer's timetable to wind up the occupation by the end of 2004, U.S. officials grew impatient and urged the council to press the commission for a compromise. "We told them to come up with other ideas," one council member said. "We told them to consider partial elections."
When the commission submitted its final report to the council on Sept. 30, it failed to resolve the impasse. The panel suggested the same three approaches that everyone had been talking about -- direct appointment, partial elections and general elections -- without choosing one of them.
As the report was being completed, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell sought to push the council to endorse partial elections, saying Iraqis should be given a six-month deadline to complete their constitution. Members bristled. "It was an unreasonable demand," said Dara Noureddine, the council's liaison with the commission. "We needed time to achieve consensus."
But consensus was elusive. The council had split into two factions. Sunni Arabs, Sunni Kurds and some moderate Shiites, such as Ahmed Chalabi, favored the partial elections. Other traditionalist Shiite groups, among them the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution and the Dawa party, cited Sistani's fatwa as a mandate and insisted on general elections.
"We felt elections were the only legitimate way to proceed," the Supreme Council's Abdel-Mehdi said. His party and several other Shiite council members told Bremer that they would not be able reach a consensus on partial elections.
Bremer refused to give up. He chafed at the idea that a cleric would be able to dictate Iraq's democratic transition. "Is the political structure of Iraq going to be in the hands of one man?" Bremer said to a group of visitors in October.
He urged the council's five traditionalist Shiites to try to persuade Sistani to support partial elections, said Rubaie, one of the five. Rubaie said he met with Sistani in October and explained the problems with general elections and the benefits of partial elections. Sistani was unmoved, Rubaie said. "He would not have it."
Shortly thereafter, Sistani delivered his first public pronouncements on partial elections. In written comments provided to The Washington Post, he said there could be "no substitute" for a general election.
Fatwas from other clerics in support of partial elections never materialized. Nobody wanted to take on Sistani.
Occupation Chief Yields
Shiite political leaders insisted an election could be organized in less than six months using food-ration rolls as a voter registry. But Bremer and his aides dismissed that, insisting an election could not be pulled off in less than two years.
But as U.S. military casualties escalated, Bremer and other Bush administration officials realized their plan would have to be rewritten. "Once it became clear we couldn't get around the election, we knew we had to do something else," one American involved in the process said.
On Nov. 9, Bremer called national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who was at FedEx Field for a Washington Redskins game. With no viable way to draft a quick constitution, both agreed a major change was needed, according to officials familiar with the talks.
The next day, Bremer hurried back to Washington. After two days of White House discussions, he returned to Baghdad with a new plan in hand.
On Nov. 14, he met with the council's nine rotating presidents to outline the administration's new approach: Iraq would be given sovereignty before it drafted a constitution. It was a dramatic concession.
The next day, he detailed the plan to the full Governing Council at the home of Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader serving as this month's council president.
In place of a permanent constitution, Bremer said, the council would be able to draft a basic law that would serve as an interim constitution to enshrine basic rights such as freedom of speech and worship, the separation of powers and civilian control over the military. Once the law was completed, he said, each province would hold caucuses to choose representatives for a 250-member transitional assembly whose members would serve as a provisional legislature. The assembly would also elect members for an executive branch from within its ranks, he said.
Bremer said he wanted the process to be completed by June 30, after which he would bestow sovereignty on the interim government. That government then would be responsible for drafting a constitution.
Although there was general support for Bremer's plan, members pressed him on details. Some protested his requirement that 15-person organizing committees would screen participants in the caucuses. Others questioned whether a 250-member assembly would be able to agree on a government. Others objected to the dissolution of the council after the new government is formed, saying the council should remain as an advisory body.
"The Governing Council has been recognized by the United Nations, the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference," Abdel-Mehdi said. "Why disband it? And what happens if the new government runs into trouble? We need the GC as a safety valve."
Several Shiite leaders expressed concern that the organizing committees might exclude candidates because they were Islamic activists. "The veto power should only apply to people who are Baathists or criminals," one Shiite member said.
Bremer did not want to delve into details, according to several members who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Instead, they said, Bremer wanted the council members to accept the plan and announce it to the news media as if they had created it themselves.
"He brushed aside the details. He just wanted an agreement," one member said. "It was 'my way or the highway.' "
In response, occupation authority officials insist the council had plenty of time to discuss the plan, which the officials said reflected the council's desire that the handover of sovereignty be accelerated.
Before his Nov. 10 flight to Washington, Bremer called Abdel-Mehdi in for a meeting.
"If we go for this option, do you think Sistani will accept?" Abdel-Mehdi recalled Bremer asking him.
"I'm sure," Abdel-Mehdi responded.
While Bremer was flying back from Washington, Abdel-Mehdi said he met with Sistani, who endorsed the broad contours of Bremer's new plan to hand over sovereignty to a provisional government, which would convene elections for a constitutional council.
But Abdel-Mehdi said Sistani never passed judgment on the details, particularly those that have concerned other Shiite leaders involving how members would be selected. In response to written questions about Bremer's new approach, Sistani's office said the ayatollah would not comment.
"He certainly has not blessed the plan," Abdel-Mehdi said.
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Powerful Cleric Opposes U.S. Plan for Elections in Iraq
November 26, 2003
By JOEL BRINKLEY and IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/26/international/middleeast/26CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 26 - The nation's most powerful cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, made public today his opposition to a new American plan for indirect elections of an Iraqi government, dealing a possibly fatal blow to the United States initiative to turn power over more quickly to Iraqis.
Spokesmen for Mr. Sistani, who exercises strong influence over Iraq's majority Shiites, said he was insisting that the election planned for next June must be a direct, popular ballot - not the indirect caucus election called for in the already-troubled American plan. He is also insisting that any new Iraqi government have a more overtly Islamic character, aides said today.
"The people should have a basic role in issues concerning the destiny of their country," said Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite cleric and Iraqi politician, who discussed the American initiative with Mr. Sistani on Tuesday. This afternoon, Mr. Hakim also spoke at a news conference in Najaf, Mr. Sistani's home, and said Mr. Sistani "expressed concern about real gaps that must be dealt with, or the plan will lack the ability to meet the hopes of the Iraqi people."
Mr. Hakim's news conference was significant on its own as a sign of trouble for the American plan. He is a leading member of the Governing Council, the interim body appointed by the U.S. to carry out some of the day-to-day business of running Iraq - and recent experience has shown that the council is unwilling to act in contravention to Mr. Sistani's edicts.
Mr. Sistani's unexpected objections were a further blow to a plan that had already begun to unravel. Earlier this week, leaders of the Governing Council said they wanted to back away from their agreement to dissolve the council as soon as the elections are held in June and instead maintain it as a second legislative body of government.
But there were signs today that other members of the council were unwilling to give up on the plan, in part because Mr. Sistani's call for direct elections would likely mean that any new Iraqi government would be dominated by the Shia, a fear among many Sunni Arabs and Kurds. The Shia make up roughly 60 percent of Iraq's nearly 25 million people.
This evening, Kubad Talabani, a senior aide to Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who is serving as president of the Governing Council this month, said the council and American authorities "are going to great lengths to meet Sistani's request for an Iraqi constitution by direct elections."
"I do not see any reason for concern from his eminence Sistani or anyone else about the process we have," Mr. Talabani said.
And American officials left room for compromise.
"We have said all along that this was a framework, and we would have to work out the details, and that is what we are going to do going forward," said Dan Senor, a spokesman for Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, the interim governor of Iraq.
Under the plan accepted by both the United States and the Governing Council on Nov. 15, council members and local governments are in the coming months supposed to choose a "transitional assembly" - several hundred Iraqis from every region and sector of society. That assembly is supposed to choose an interim government in June, and that indirectly elected interim government is supposed to draft the constitution.
It was Mr. Sistani's earlier objections that forced the Governing Council to abandon the original plan, pushed by Washington, to write a constitution and then hold elections. Mr. Sistani issued a fatwah, or religious edict, in June saying that a constitution must be drafted by an assembly directly elected by the Iraqi people. Thirteen of the council's 25 members are Shiite, and many of them refused to go along with a plan Mr. Sistani did not endorse. That same edict, it appears, is behind the objections made public today.
American officials have insisted that a direct election cannot be held now because there are no voter rolls. A census must be taken first, and that cannot be completed until late next year at the earliest.
But a senior Shiite leader, in an interview today, pushed a proposal that he said was first offered by the United Nations, to use the organization's food-rations registry as a voter list so that elections could be held by as early as next spring.
Both American and Iraqi officials have said they believe the real motivation for insisting on direct elections is that the clerics hope the nation's Shiite majority will empower religious leaders to form an Islamic government - an idea the United States opposes. And in fact, Mr. Hakim said one of Mr. Sistani's objections was that "there is no emphasis on the role of Islam and the identity of the Muslim people."
"There should have been a stipulation which prevents legislating anything that contradicts Islam in the new Iraq," Mr. Hakim said.
In their public statement announcing the agreement on Nov. 15, the Governing Council proclaimed that the new Iraqi state would respect "freedom of religion and religious practices." But it added that the government would also "respect the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people."
When the Governing Council announced the governance plan 11 days ago, its leaders said the council had reached unanimous agreement - including Mr. Hakim and others who are close to Mr. Sistani. At the time, Shiite leaders seemed to be saying that Mr. Sistani supported it, but he issued no direct statement
A senior Shiite leader, in an interview, said Mr. Sistani did not make his objections known before now because "it was misrepresented by whoever saw him" and until recently he did not have an Arabic version of it.
"He has been following the subject," Mr. Hakim said in a telephone interview. "When the draft was submitted to him, he wrote several notes on it. But when I saw him yesterday, he discussed with me the objections that he had."
Unlike some other Shiite clerics, Mr. Sistani has been tolerant of the United States occupation and has refrained from openly criticizing the occupation authorities. But today his aides took cautious steps in that direction. Mowaffak al-Rubaie, another member of the Governing Council who is close to Mr. Sistani, said: "Some Iraqis perceive the process as being too rushed to fit the American presidential elections. We don't mind helping our partners. We understand their requirements. And we will consider helping them."
The view that the American elections play a major role in shaping Iraq's political future is widely held among Governing Council members. Ahmed Chalabi, another council member, said: "The whole thing was set up so President Bush could come to the airport in October for a ceremony to congratulate the new Iraqi government. When you work backwards from that, you understand the dates the Americans were insisting on." American officials have denied that electoral concerns played into their plans. Jack Straw, the British foreign minister, endorsed the self-governance agreement while here on a visit.
"I'm absolutely sure that a more rapid political process will assist the security situation," he said. "The more that we can give all Iraqis a stake in their future and a stable political architecture in which to work, the more I believe more Iraqis will become committed to that future and fewer will think that terror and acquiescence in terror is the way forward."
He spoke at a news conference this morning, before the Shiite clerics spoke out.
Also this morning, a military spokesman said soldiers had captured a wife and daughter of a close aide of Saddam Hussein, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. They were being held for questioning, said Mstr. Sgt. Robert Cargie, a spokesman for the Fourth Infantry Division. American officials have said they believe Mr. al-Douri is organizing some of the guerrilla attacks and last week offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture. Sergeant Cargie said the family members were picked up at a residence in Samarra on Tuesday.
Edward Wong contributed reporting for this article from Baghdad.
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No regrets or culprits, just cash for series of random killings
American officers are quietly paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars to relatives of those killed or injured in arbitrary shootings by troops
Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Wednesday November 26, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1093186,00.html
For more than an hour Siham al-Tamimi has been waiting in a muddy field marked "holding area" at the entrance to an American military base. A forlorn figure, she is surrounded on three sides by barbed wire and sits perched on a small breeze block. She is dressed in black, her head covered with a black scarf, her hands in small black gloves neatly clasped together.
Siham has come, like so many others be fore her, to the headquarters of the Second Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division in south-western Baghdad to understand why American soldiers shot dead her husband 12 days earlier.
In the months since America's war in Iraq, an uncounted number of ordinary Iraqis have been killed or maimed by the army that boasts daily of its swift "liberation" victory.
The US military has not punished any soldier for shooting an unarmed civilian and refuses even to keep count of the civilians its soldiers kill. Yet for several months now, American officers have been quietly paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to relatives of the dead and injured, offering polite but carefully-worded condolences and promising investigations that lead nowhere.
In a report last month, Human Rights Watch concluded that "US soldiers at present operate with virtual impunity in Iraq" and accused them of over-aggressive tactics, indiscriminate shooting and a quick reliance on lethal force.
It found that the US military was not doing enough "to minimise harm to civilians as required by international law". Human Rights Watch collected evidence that the US military killed 94 civilians between May and the end of September in "questionable circumstances. Taken as a whole," it said, "they reveal a pattern of alleged illegal deaths that merit investigation."
It is a largely unreported toll of death and injury, excused by the army's broad and secret rules of engagement, but one that has pushed many once-accepting Iraqi families into disgust at their occupiers.
Siham's case speaks volumes of the arbitrary nature of death in the new Iraq. Her husband Sami Shakir al-Safar, 57, was driving home at 9pm on October 31 in his white Volkswagen Passat. In the front seat next to him was Emad, 25, the eldest of the couple's four sons. In the back was the youngest boy, Ammar, 11.
Sami, a physicist, took his usual route past the al-Dorah police station in western Baghdad. On the roof of the station house, as always, was a team of American soldiers manning an observation post. Without warning, the car came under fire. Two bullets hit Sami in his left side, blasting open a horrific wound in his abdomen. Another bullet hit Emad, badly wounding him and lodging four pieces of shrapnel in his diaphragm.
"We didn't hear anything before the shooting started," said Ammar, who survived unhurt. "Suddenly we heard a lot of shooting aimed at us. It broke the windshield and hit my father and then it hit Emad." Though he was losing blood fast, Sami managed to drive for a few minutes more before he collapsed over the wheel. Emad, although badly wounded, took over and drove home. "My father tried to walk into the house but he fell down in the garage. Emad walked through the garden but fell when he reached the kitchen," said Ammar.
Shortly after midnight the boys' father died in hospital. Emad survived and is resting at his uncle's house because his family have not dared tell him his father is dead. No American soldier has come to the house to account for the shooting.
"The Americans came here to eliminate terrorism but they are causing terrorism. That is why they killed a man who wasn't guilty of anything," said Siham.
First Lieutenant Rafid Azideen, the Iraqi police officer at al-Dorah police station who is investigating the case, said he believes the family was mistakenly targeted and American soldiers fired the lethal shots.
Five mortars were fired at the police station minutes before the shooting, he said. Sami was driving from the approximate direction from which the shells were launched and that may have encouraged the Americans to shoot. "I believe it was the American soldiers who shot from the roof," he said. "There was no one on the roof except them and I know the shots were fired from the roof."
Bullets
Lt Azideen has a la