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NUCLEAR
Marshall Islanders unhappy at closing nuclear victim's health programme
Researchers pull cargo into 'nuclear carwash'
China to support "non-discriminatory" non-proliferation regime
China Outlines Nonproliferation Plans
China Reaffirms Non - Proliferation Ahead of U.S. Trip
Health a casualty of war and occupation
Scientists ramping up cargo snooping
North Korea Nuclear Talks May Be Delayed
Powell Optimistic on N.Korea Talks, Denies Deadlock
Australia OKs U.S. Missile Defense Role
42 A-Plants Found to Lack Enough Cash for Cleanup
Officials Permit Nuclear Waste Shipment
MILITARY
Lockheed Martin Delivers First Aegis Weapon System to Norway
ISRAEL WINS APPROVAL FOR U.S. MILITARY TRUCKS
UN Security Council urges nations to tighten Somalia arms embargo
India insists price deal done for Russian for aircraft carrier
Report: Japan to Introduce Missile Defense System
Thailand may withdraw troops from Iraq
Northrop Grumman chosen for missile defense contract
Northrop Grumman Gets $4.5B Defense Deal
Northrop Team Wins Antimissile Deal
Pentagon Delays $20 Billion Boeing Deal
Pentagon Delays Tanker Contract
New Chief Brings Old Style to Boeing
Canada's military becoming obsolete, report warns
US cancels computer war games with Taiwan: report
Beijing Warns That Taiwan Referendum Could Lead to War
Rumsfeld Criticizes EU Defense Plan
Pentagon Official to Visit Europe on Force Changes
U.S. to Form Iraqi Paramilitary Force Unit Will Draw From Party Militias
Israel Approves Construction Of More Homes At Settlements
Israeli Warns Powell on Peace Team; He Rejects Criticism
Powell Effort Aims To Pressure Sharon On Peace Accord
In reversal, Pentagon grants detainee of Saudi descent access to lawyer
Powell Sends Russia Warning About Georgia
Space wars: apocalypse soon?
Blair defends intelligence on Saddam weapons
CIA stands firm on Iraq assessment
Taiwan Arrests Officer on Spy Charges
CIA Agent With Leaked ID Poses for Photos
U.N. Plans Long - Term Monitoring of Iraq
Military establishing global network
White House Changes Story on Bush Plane Incident
Court Finds Rwanda Media Executives Guilty of Genocide
War Crimes Judges Sentence Serb to 27 Years in Massacre
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
U.S. Court Strikes Down Part of Anti-Terrorism Law
Think Tank Urges Information Sharing Network Could Help Combat Terrorism
Ridge: Tech Cos. Must Help Fight Terror
FBI Urges Keeping Anthrax Probe
FBI defends secrecy in anthrax probe
U.S. Allows Lawyer For Citizen Held as 'Enemy Combatant'
Two U.S. Embassies Sound Terrorist Alerts
Embassies in Kenya and Saudi Arabia Issue Warnings
OTHER
Russia to Reject Pact on Climate, Putin Aide Says
White House, EPA Move To Ease Mercury Rules
China Tells Its Public of Enormity of AIDS Toll
ACTIVISTS
German Greens blast proposed plutonium plant sale to China
-------- NUCLEAR
Marshall Islanders unhappy at closing nuclear victim's health programme
MAJURO (AFP)
Dec 03, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031203092738.zwaxxdoq.html
A United States-funded health program at nuclear test-affected areas in the Marshall Islands is to close at the end of the month, angering local officials.
Funding for the 177 Health Plan, named after the section of the Compact of Free Association between the United States and Marshall Islands that funded it, expires on December 31.
The program, funded by an annual two million dollar grant from the United States, provides health care services to up to 16,000 islanders, about 25 percent of the country, from the nuclear test-affected atolls of Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and Utrik.
"It's a very big concern to Rongelap (that the program is closing)," Rongelap Senator Abacca Anjain-Maddison said.
The United States carried out 67 nuclear tests at Bikini and Enewetak from 1946-1958, with nuclear fallout dusting atolls in the area.
The 15 megaton Bravo hydrogen bomb test of 1954 spewed high levels of radioactive fallout over dozens of islands and hundreds of unsuspecting islanders.
Anjain-Maddison said Rongelap leaders would meet later this month to discuss ways to maintain the program, including the possibility of the local government picking up the costs of having a doctor stationed on Mejatto, where the displaced Rongelap Islanders live.
On Bikini Atoll, liaison agent Jack Niedenthal said locals were "really unhappy" about the pending closure.
"The biggest advantage of the program for nuclear victims is not the off-island care, but the primary care offered. This is the most important aspect of the program because it eliminates the need for many off-island referrals."
Anjain-Maddison said efforts were ongoing for the Marshall Islands to lobby the US Congress to extend additional funding to continue the four-atoll health program and to seek health care funding through a petition that has been pending with the US Congress for more than three years.
However, Niedenthal said he was not very optimistic about efforts in Washington, and as the health care program winds down its assets were already being divided up among the four atolls.
-------- accidents and safety
Researchers pull cargo into 'nuclear carwash'
Scientists test new technological twist to locate nukes in container searches
By Ian Hoffman,
TRI-VALLEY STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~1805823,00.html
Despite massive federal investment in radiation detectors and X-ray machines for U.S. maritime ports, security officials still can't be sure of finding a nuclear weapon hidden in a cargo container.
The problem is that plutonium and enriched uranium -- the essential ingredients of atom bombs -- are just weakly radioactive and their emissions can be shielded or absorbed by cargo as common as food, wood and plastics.
Scientists think the answer is a new twist on technologies used to search for solar neutrinos and the illegal diversion of nuclear fuel.
Their "nuclear carwash" would fire neutrons into cargo containers and, if weapons materials are present, trigger a tiny amount of nuclear fission. For a minute or so, byproducts of those split atoms release gamma rays that specifically identify the original source as weapons-grade uranium, plutonium or other man-made elements.
"You can irradiate this cargo and not worry about the radiation at all and -- bingo -- seconds later see this stuff," said Stanley Prussin, a nuclear engineering professor at University of California, Berkeley. "They are in some circumstances unique signatures to nuclear (weapons) materials."
Scientists tested the idea at Lawrence Berkeley lab's 88-inch Cyclotron and were encouraged. Now colleagues at Lawrence Livermore lab are performing experiments and computer modeling to see precisely how well the "carwash" will work. Livermore already has tested an array of technologies for looking into cargo containers.
"This is the best game in town, I think," said Dennis Slaughter, lead scientist of the Berkeley-Livermore team.
Using neutrons to peer into cargo has a few potential drawbacks. The process, known as active neutron interrogation, takes a minute or so -- a fairly short time but too long to scan all 7 million containers flowing into the United States every year. Also, it would make some cargo radioactive for up to a few hours.
So far, scientists say calculations show the amounts of residual radioactivity will be low and vanish quickly. Most will disappear seconds after the container is scanned.
"My nightmare -- the place I don't want to be -- is to do an interrogation of a container of French wine and then have to tell the importer, 'What you've got is a container of radioactive waste,'" Slaughter said.
The worry isn't just wine. People use cargo containers to smuggle themselves into the United States every year. Earlier this year, port inspectors found an Italian man holed up in a U.S-bound container equipped with a computer, food and reading material.
Slaughter says the neutron beam is weak enough that scientists working on the project wouldn't be too worried if they inadvertently walked through it. Prussin says the "carwash" probably would be designed with shielding so port workers and federal agents would not receive a significant dose of radiation while scanning cargo.
The U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection wants cargo scanners that can find nuclear weapons and radiological dispersal devices -- "dirty bombs" -- but at minimal risk of hurting stowaways, said spokesman Jim Michie.
Customs agents now carry belt-mounted radiation detectors and use their experience with shippers to judge which containers need extra scrutiny. They use portable X-ray or gamma-ray machines to take pictures of suspect cargo in a few percent of containers, sometimes resorting to hand search-es. The bureau now is installing radiation detection portals at all ports and borders.
Michie says this layered defense of intelligence on cargo, port security and scanning technologies make smuggling difficult.
"We're fairly confident with the system we have," he said.
"It would be extraordinarily difficult to get something into one of those containers. And it would be impossible for us to come across one of those (suspect) containers and not check it. We must be doing a pretty good job. The system appears to work."
Most of Customs' technologies use passive detection. They rely on radiation escaping the container to work or on radiographs that depict the density and shape of the cargo inside. But scientists say they are not guaranteed to detect the relatively small masses of nuclear material useful for a weapon. A fairly primitive nuclear weapon could be fashioned from 10 kilograms of enriched uranium that is about the size of a baseball.
Last fall, an ABC news team working with the Natural Resources Defense Council smuggled depleted uranium into a U.S. port aboard a cargo container. Michie says the container was scanned and found not to contain troubling amounts of radiation and allowed to go its way.
Thomas Cochran, a physicist who heads NRDC's nuclear program, says the best strategy for keeping nuclear and dirty bombs out of the United States is to lock them down at their source abroad. But he says neutron interrogation probably will do well at detecting terrorist devices -- as long as terrorists aren't smart enough to devise ways around it.
"In theory, it's doable -- for a significant cost," he said. "You certainly can catch the Richard Reids but not the Mohammed Attas."
-------- china
China to support "non-discriminatory" non-proliferation regime
BEIJING (AFP)
Dec 03, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031203120633.x64sxs22.html
China voiced strong support Wednesday for the establishment of an effective international mechanism to curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but remained non-committal about joining a US-backed plan.
A government position paper was issued a day after the United States urged beefed up measures to intercept nuclear, chemical and biological weapons on the high seas or in international airspace.
"China maintains that a universal participation of the international community is essential for progress in non-proliferation," said the State Council (cabinet) white paper on "China's Non-proliferation Policy and Measures".
"Unilateralism and double standards must be abandoned, and great importance should be attached and full play given to the role of the United Nations.
"It is highly important to ensure a fair, rational and non-discriminatory non-proliferation regime."
Foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said the white paper marked the continuation of endeavors by the Chinese government to boost global cooperation in the field.
"We are willing to make concerted efforts with all parties concerned to enhance the non-proliferation process and promote the peace, stability and development of the world," he said, according to Xinhua news agency.
While maintaining the right of developing countries to use and benefit from dual-use technologies -- those which can be used for both military and civilian purposes -- the paper said their spread should be balanced with "non-proliferation goals".
"It is also necessary to prevent any country from engaging in proliferation under the pretext of peaceful utilization," it said.
"China does not support, encourage or assist any country to develop WMD and their means of delivery. China stands for the attainment of the non-proliferation goal through peaceful means."
The paper was published a day after Washington announced the addition of four new countries to the 11 nations already signed up to a "proliferation security initiative" (PSI), which aims to implement widespread powers to seize suspected WMD in international waters and airspace.
John Bolton, the top US diplomat for arms control, said Canada, Denmark, Norway and Singapore would participate in the next meeting of countries involved in the PSI, which was first announced by President George W. Bush in May.
Military and law enforcement experts from those countries will join officials from Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United States at that meeting, which is set to be held in the United States later this month, he said.
China has not announced its backing of the initiative, apparently due to concerns that the effort is largely aimed at containing its close ally North Korea.
Pyongyang is currently threatening to develop nuclear weapons to defend itself against the alleged threat of a US-backed Iraqi-style attack to remove Stalinist leader Kim Jong-Il.
North Korea's other neighbours, South Korea and Russia, have also refrained from backing the PSI.
China, which has joined most of the major international non-proliferation treaties, has also established an extensive export control regime aimed at preventing Chinese entities, including the military, from exporting WMD, their means of delivery and dual-use technologies, the paper said.
Missile proliferation has been a key bone of contention in Sino-US relations in recent years, and Beijing has made repeated assurances that it has stepped up monitoring to prevent the trafficking of such technologies.
----
China Outlines Nonproliferation Plans
By TED ANTHONY
Associated Press Writer
Dec 3,
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHINA_WEAPONS_PROLIFERATION?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BEIJING (AP) -- China pronounced itself a responsible global citizen Wednesday, saying it would follow all international rules to prevent weapons from falling into the wrong hands and implicitly criticizing the United States for "unilateralism and double standards."
At the same time, the communist government cited its own motivation to prevent its technology from being exported to create weapons of mass destruction: its desire to encourage the peace and stability that will keep its all-important development on the fast track.
The comments, in a "white paper" on nonproliferation, dovetailed with a major theme of Beijing's foreign policy in recent years - to establish China as a respectable country that is worthy of trust and, by extension, foreign investment.
They also offset accusations that Chinese support for allies in the past has included ballistic missiles and help for their nuclear weapons programs - charges that China denies. Washington has imposed sanctions on several Chinese companies, accusing them of improperly exporting missile-related technologies.
"The proliferation of WMD and their means of delivery benefits neither world peace and stability nor China's own security," the report said. "A developing China," it said, needs "long-term peace."
The document's release coincides with Premier Wen Jiabao's upcoming trip to the United States. Wen visits Washington next week and is expected to raise with President Bush the issue of U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan, which Beijing has referred to in the past as "proliferation."
The report made no specific mention of North Korea, China's neighbor and communist ally, which is embroiled in a dispute with the United States over its nuclear program. China has hosted one six-nation meeting to resolve the disagreement, and another could take place later this month.
China has become a key manufacturer of machinery and technology, and progress made during two decades of convulsive development has made its products more valuable worldwide - including to groups and nations seeking weaponry and weapons technology.
On Wednesday, a Pakistani government official said his nation would purchase a second nuclear power plant from China, to be built southwest of Islamabad. China sold Pakistan another nuclear plant in the 1990s.
In the report, Beijing said it had made sure an array of procedures and penalties was in place to prevent companies from transferring technology or materials that could be made into chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. "No license, no exports," it said.
"We are willing to make concerted efforts with all parties concerned to enhance the non-proliferation process and promote the peace, stability and development of the world," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said.
In a clear swipe at the U.S. approach in Iraq, China said many nations must work together through established channels to make sure that prevention of proliferation is "democratic."
"Unilateralism and double standards must be abandoned, and great importance should be attached and full play given to the role of the United Nations," it said.
On Tuesday, U.S. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton said the United States, in rooting out weapons of mass destruction, would seek diplomatic solutions whenever possible but is "also willing to deploy more robust techniques such as the interdiction and seizure of illicit goods."
In a statement Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said it was examining China's export policies as they related to weapons.
"We welcome efforts by China to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, missiles, conventional weapons and related materials and technologies through stricter export control regulations," the embassy said.
China opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and said any punishment of a sovereign nation's leader should go through the U.N. Security Council, where China is a permanent member and wields veto power. The United States cited Saddam Hussein's purported weapons of mass destruction as justification for its military action.
In the document, China also took a step that was striking for a government known for its opaque methods of operating: It detailed the particular departments responsible for monitoring technology exports that could be used for weapons.
Such agency-by-agency citations suggested China is trying to show it has the apparatus in place to prevent transfers of sensitive technology.
"It is an inevitable demand of the times to strengthen international cooperation and seek common security," the Chinese government said. "The non-proliferation efforts of all countries," it said, are "inseparably linked."
----
China Reaffirms Non - Proliferation Ahead of U.S. Trip
December 3, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-china.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has reaffirmed its opposition to the spread of weapons of mass destruction ahead of a trip by Premier Wen Jiabao to the United States, which has in the past expressed concern at Beijing's arms sales.
``China does not support, encourage or assist any country to develop WMD and their means of delivery,'' the government said Wednesday in a policy paper published by the State Council, or cabinet.
Wen is due to travel to the United States for a four-day visit Sunday.
The paper highlighted China's new export control laws, its ``resolute support'' for international non-proliferation efforts and its recognition that national and global security were linked.
The United States and others have expressed concern about what they see as unchecked Chinese arms sales to the developing world, including North Korea and Iran, branded by Washington as part of an ``axis of evil'' along with pre-war Iraq.
U.S. officials have also said China, along with Russia, helped North Korea develop an enriched uranium program, although China denies exporting nuclear materials.
The international community has been entangled in a crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs since October 2002 when U.S. officials said Pyongyang had admitted efforts to try to build nuclear arms, violating previous agreements.
Analysts say China has also been a top supplier of missile technology to Pakistan and a key source of information for its nuclear program.
The paper said China had always stood for the ``complete prohibition and thorough destruction of all kinds of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.''
Tuesday, China's Commerce Ministry issued new rules to control the export of ``sensitive'' materials and technologies to take effect on January 1.
A U.S. embassy spokesman said Wednesday the United States welcomed and was studying the rules.
``We welcome efforts by China to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, missiles, conventional weapons and related materials and technologies through stricter export control regulations,'' he said.
-------- depleted uranium
Health a casualty of war and occupation
Wednesday December 3, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1098552,00.html
I was one of the many Iraqi British doctors who attended the recent meeting with the appointed Iraqi health minister, Khdair Abbad Fadil, organised by the Iraqi Medical Association in the UK, to find out how to help the ailing health care system. The minister confirmed the resurgence of "social diseases", such as chronic diarrhoea, which can only be conquered if the basic social conditions of the deprived communities in Iraq are fundamentally improved. The termination of the oil for food programme in the current climate will only exacerbate the problem.
In my questions to the minister, I brought up two issues: the clear-up of cluster bombs and dealing with the effects of depleted uranium; and the restoration of free medical care at the point of demand, as was the case before the economic sanction years. I did not receive satisfactory answers to either question.
The minister seems to put the blame for the first issue on the World Health Organisation for not doing its job. Did the WHO drop those bombs? Then the minister told us about the need for a complete overhaul of the basic medical services. He said the fact that their cost was beyond the means of many Iraqis had contributed to the dire health situation in Iraq.
So I was puzzled when he went on to advocate setting up more private hospitals in Iraq. I found the talk about making profit out of people's misery too sickening to bear and had to walk out before the end of the meeting. Dr Naseer Nuaman (GP), Maidstone, Kent
November may indeed have been "the bloodiest month for the coalition forces since the invasion" (Body bag counts put strains on coalition, December 1), with 111 members of the occupying forces killed, but why no mention of the Iraqi civilian casualties in the same period - let alone the overwhelmingly larger number of Iraqi civilians killed since the invasion began? Iraqi civilian deaths are reliably put at between 7,900 and 9,700 (see www.iraqbodycount.net). Total casualties for the occupying forces stand at 524. We need a constant reminder of what the war and occupation mean for the people of Iraq. Otherwise it looks suspiciously like blinkered ethnocentrism.
Prof Eric Clarke Sheffield
----
Scientists ramping up cargo snooping
Researchers test new technological twist to locate nukes in containers
By Ian Hoffman,
TRI-VALLEY STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, December 03, 2003 - 2:54:50 AM PST
http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~1805826,00.html
Despite massive federal investment in radiation detectors and X-ray machines for U.S. maritime ports, security officials still can't be sure of finding a nuclear weapon hidden in a cargo container.
The problem is that plutonium and enriched uranium -- the essential ingredients of atom bombs -- are just weakly radioactive and their emissions can be shielded or absorbed by cargo as common as food, wood and plastics.
Scientists think the answer is a new twist on technologies used to search for solar neutrinos and the illegal diversion of nuclear fuel.
Their "nuclear carwash" would fire neutrons into cargo containers and, if weapons materials are present, trigger a tiny amount of nuclear fission. For a minute or so, byproducts of those split atoms release gamma rays that specific-ally identify the original source as weapons-grade uranium, plutonium or other man-made elements.
"You can irradiate this cargo and not worry about the radiation at all and -- bingo -- seconds later see this stuff," said Stanley Prussin, a nuclear engineering professor at University of California, Berkeley. "They are in some circumstances unique signatures to nuclear (weapons) materials."
Scientists tested the idea at Lawrence Berkeley lab's 88-inch Cyclotron and were encouraged. Now colleagues at Lawrence Livermore lab are performing experiments and computer modeling to see precisely how well the "carwash" will work. Livermore already has tested an array of technologies for looking into cargo containers.
"This is the best game in town, I think," said Dennis Slaughter, lead scientist of the Berkeley-Livermore team.
Using neutrons to peer into cargo has a few potential drawbacks. The process, known as active neutron interrogation, takes a minute or so -- a fairly short time but too long to scan all 7 million containers flowing into the United States every year. Also, it would make some cargo radioactive for up to a few hours.
So far, scientists say calculations show the amounts of residual radioactivity will be low and vanish quickly. Most will disappear seconds after the container is scanned.
"My nightmare -- the place I don't want to be -- is to do an interrogation of a container of French wine and then have to tell the importer, 'What you've got is a container of radioactive waste,'" Slaughter said.
The worry isn't just wine. People use cargo containers to smuggle themselves into the United States every year. Earlier this year, port inspectors found an Italian man holed up in a U.S-bound container equipped with a computer, food and reading material.
Slaughter says the neutron beam is weak enough that scientists working on the project wouldn't be too worried if they inadvertently walked through it. Prussin says the "carwash" probably would be designed with shielding so port workers and federal agents would not receive a significant dose of radiation while scanning cargo.
The U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection wants cargo scanners that can find nuclear weapons and radiological dispersal devices -- "dirty bombs" -- but at minimal risk of hurting stowaways, said spokesman Jim Michie.
Customs agents now carry belt-mounted radiation detectors and use their experience with shippers to judge which containers need extra scrutiny. They use portable X-ray or gamma-ray machines to take pictures of suspect cargo in a few percent of containers, sometimes resorting to hand search-es. The bureau now is installing radiation detection portals at all ports and borders.
Michie says this layered defense of intelligence on cargo, port security and scanning technologies make smuggling difficult.
"We're fairly confident with the system we have," he said. "It would be extraordinarily difficult to get something into one of those containers."
And it would be impossible for us to come across one of those (suspect) containers and not check it. We must be doing a pretty good job. The system appears to work."
Most of Customs' technologies use passive detection. They rely on radiation escaping the container to work or on radiographs that depict the density and shape of the cargo inside. But scientists say they are not guaranteed to detect the relatively small masses of nuclear material useful for a weapon. A fairly primitive nuclear weapon could be fashioned from 10 kilograms of enriched uranium that is about the size of a baseball.
Last fall, an ABC news team working with the Natural Resources Defense Council smuggled depleted uranium into a U.S. port aboard a cargo container. Michie says the container was scanned and found not to contain troubling amounts of radiation and allowed to go its way.
Thomas Cochran, a physicist who heads NRDC's nuclear program, says the best strategy for keeping nuclear and dirty bombs out of the United States is to lock them down at their source abroad. But he says neutron interrogation probably will do well at detecting terrorist devices -- as long as terrorists aren't smart enough to devise ways around it.
"In theory, it's doable -- for a significant cost," he said. "You certainly can catch the Richard Reids but not the Mohammed Attas."
-------- korea
North Korea Nuclear Talks May Be Delayed
December 3, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/asia/03KORE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - Planning for six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program has hit a snag that may delay the sessions until next year, United States officials said Tuesday.
One main obstacle is North Korea's reluctance to agree to an American demand for an "effective and irreversible verification regime," which experts have said would open the North to unprecedented intrusive inspections.
American officials said the United States and the other countries involved - China, Russia, South Korea and Japan - were trying to agree in advance on a statement that would be issued at the end of negotiations.
Washington wants the statement to at least include agreement on the principle of verification and a system of inspections and monitoring that would give the world reasonable confidence that the North Korean government has halted its plutonium and uranium programs.
The talks originally had been planned for this month, but one official said planning for the second round was "not going well."
"It's not going to happen in December, the official said, "but maybe January or February."
--------
Powell Optimistic on N.Korea Talks, Denies Deadlock
December 3, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-korea-north-powell.html
MARRAKESH, Morocco (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday he was optimistic six-way talks to defuse the North Korean nuclear crisis will take place soon and denied the process was deadlocked.
U.S. officials in Washington told Reuters on Tuesday that planning for a second round of talks had hit a snag and they may not take place until January or February instead of this month as expected.
``I am still optimistic that they will take place in the near future,'' Powell told a news conference in Morocco, the second stop of a North African tour.
``There is no deadlock. I don't recall someone announcing when the talks will take place,'' he added.
He gave no date, however, for the talks which include North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia, the United States and host China. An inconclusive first round was held in Beijing in August.
The crisis on the Korean peninsula has been simmering since last year, when the United States said Pyongyang had secretly admitted to an illicit nuclear weapons program, in breach of international conventions.
North Korea wants security guarantees from Washington which, for its part, insists on an ``irreversible verification regime'' to end Pyongyang's nuclear programs, including production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear fuel.
Kyodo news agency reported on Wednesday the United States, Japan and South Korea had rejected a Chinese-backed draft of a proposed joint statement for the next round of talks, saying it was too advantageous to North Korea.
The disagreement over the proposal could delay the next round of six-way talks until next year, the agency said.
But South Korean and Japanese officials said on Wednesday it was too early to rule out a further round of talks this year.
``It is still not clear whether a second round of six-way talks will be held within this year,'' a senior Japanese government official told Reuters in Tokyo on condition of anonymity.
``We will see by the middle of next week whether the talks will be held within this year.''
A South Korean Foreign Ministry official agreed.
``Nothing is fixed. Let's wait for a couple of days,'' he said. ``It's just speculation.''
The Chinese-backed draft statement envisaged a security guarantee for North Korea in exchange for a declaration from Pyongyang that it would abandon its nuclear development program, but before implementation is confirmed, Kyodo said.
But Washington says no such guarantee would be forthcoming until Pyongyang verifiably scrapped its nuclear program.
Working-level officials from Japan, South Korea and the United States are to discuss the crisis on Thursday in Washington.
The South Korean official said by telephone it was significant North Korea had remained publicly silent so far about the timing of the next round of talks.
``The important thing is that North Korea has not denied the opening of the six-party talks, the second round. But recently they emphasized the simultaneous action principle,'' he said.
-------- missile defense
Australia OKs U.S. Missile Defense Role
December 3, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Australia-US-Missile-Defense.html
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Australia has agreed to participate in the U.S. missile defense program, the government announced Thursday.
``We believe that taking part in the U.S. program will serve our strategic interest, help us defend Australia and allow us to make an important contribution to global and regional security,'' Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in a statement.
Washington hopes to develop a shield against ballistic missiles, arguing that ``rogue states'' like North Korea could soon have missiles to threaten the United States. It wants allies such as Britain and Australia involved in the project, particularly for the use of satellite tracking stations in their countries.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
42 A-Plants Found to Lack Enough Cash for Cleanup
December 3, 2003
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/national/03NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - The owners of nearly half the nuclear power reactors in the United States are not reserving enough money to decommission them on retirement, according to Congressional auditors, who also say the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not tracking the money carefully.
The report, which the General Accounting Office issued on Monday, said that money over all was accumulating faster than required, but that it could not easily be shifted from plant to plant or even from one partial owner to another at the same plant.
A spokesman for the commission said on Tuesday that his agency was confident that the companies it licenses were, in fact, saving fast enough to clean up the reactors on retirement. But the commission has not evaluated the Congressional auditors' methods and cannot explain the differences, he said.
Money is accumulating too slowly at 42 plants, including some shut for years like Indian Point 1, in Buchanan, N.Y., and Millstone 1, in Waterford, Conn., the report said. Those plants and some others are probably decades from decommissioning, because they are next to plants that are still operating and their owners have decided not to act until all plants at a site have been retired.
Some plants for which insufficient money is available are already being decommissioned.
"In theory, they could wait until the end of the road and pay it all at once," Timothy J. Guinane, the assistant director of the agency, said.
But, Mr. Guinane added, it would be "a more prudent path to pay it into the fund gradually, as you go along and as the plant is used up."
Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who requested the report, said in a statement, "While happily pocketing their profits today, many plant owners are shirking their duty to save for tomorrow."
Taxpayers could be left with billions in costs, Mr. Markey said.
As plants have changed hands, critics of nuclear power have expressed concern that a few utilities are acquiring enormous liabilities in buying reactors. The critics say that in a more competitive marketplace payment by these companies is not as assured as it had been by the utilities that built the plants, by virtue of their captive customers in the old regulated system.
Over all, the accounting office found, the combined total of savings for decommissioning by 2000 had reached $26.9 billion, "about 47 percent greater than needed at that point to ensure that sufficient funds will be available to cover the approximately $44 billion in estimated decommissioning costs."
In contrast, in 1999 the office found that the reactor owners were collectively 3 percent short.
In the new report, some companies were in both categories. For example, at Indian Point, the auditors said that Unit 1, which last ran in the 1960's, was underfinanced but that Units 2 and 3 were overfinanced.
At the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group, a spokesman, Steve Kerekes, said the analysis was conducted when interest rates were low and stock prices were down, making the sum look smaller.
"I would dare say that even Bill Gates's financial picture may have been dampened a bit over the last couple of years," Mr. Kerekes said.
But in the long term, he added, the money would grow and enough would be available. Mr. Kerekes said most plants would obtain 20-year extensions on their initial 40-year operating licenses, leaving them more time to accumulate money.
At Entergy Nuclear, listed as having several underfinanced plants, a spokesman, Carl Crawford, said that for one of them state regulators had found the fund to be adequate and had told the utility to stop billing ratepayers for more.
At Exelon, which owns 42 percent of the twin Salem reactors in Lower Alloways Creek, N.J., a spokesman, Craig Nesbit, said the utility would move money from overfinanced accounts like the one at Peach Bottom, in the Pennsylvania town of the same name, to underfinanced sites like Salem.
-------- us nuc waste
Officials Permit Nuclear Waste Shipment
December 3, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Reactor.html
SAN ONOFRE, Calif. (AP) -- A plan to get a 770-ton piece of nuclear waste to an East Coast burial site by shipping it around South America has been approved despite concerns from environmentalists.
Southern California Edison was cleared to ship a decommissioned nuclear reactor vessel from its San Onofre plant to a dump for low-level nuclear waste in Barnwell, S.C. The 11,000-mile trek around the tip of South America will be the longest journey for a piece of nuclear waste in U.S. history.
The reactor can't go through the Panama Canal because it is over the canal's weight limit for nuclear waste, and Edison said shipping it by rail would be too expensive.
The federal Department of Transportation issued the final permit on Monday, saying Edison had satisfied safety requirements.
But the environmental group Greenpeace International called for regulators to assess the possible effects of an accident.
``There are definitely some environmental risks if the barge were to sink,'' Tom Clements of Greenpeace's nuclear campaign said Wednesday. ``Those waters off Cape Horn are very treacherous. We just think it would be safer to leave it on site.''
Edison did not say when the move will take place. Several contractors will need time to prepare, spokesman Ray Golden said.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms sales
Lockheed Martin Delivers First Aegis Weapon System to Norway
The Aegis Missile Ship introduces a new concept in "capital ships"
Dec 03, 2003
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/bmdo-03z.html
Moorestown - Lockheed Martin marked the completion of the first Aegis Integrated Weapon System (IWS) with the SPY-1F radar for the Royal Norwegian Navy today with a pull- the-plug ceremony at its Moorestown facility. The system will be packed and shipped to Spanish shipbuilder IZAR for installation on the Fridtjof Nansen, the first ship of the F310 Norwegian frigate program, now under construction in Ferrol, Spain.
The system, which includes Lockheed Martin's SPY-1F radar, successfully completed a full range of acceptance tests during the past several months to verify system performance. Today's pull-the-plug ceremony marks the completion of testing and symbolizes the system is ready for shipboard installation.
"The work done by all parties in connection with the design, construction and testing that has taken place here is amazing," said Capt. Per Erik Goransson of the Norwegian Defence Logistics Organization. "Many skeptics declared that the plan was too ambitious when the program started. But you have proved them wrong!"
In all, five Norwegian New Frigates are currently under contract for production.
"The Nansen-class frigate program is a tremendous international partnership that will provide the people of Norway with proven state-of-the- art capabilities at sea," said Fred P. Moosally, president of Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors. "The sailors of the Fridtjof Nansen can operate with the confidence that the SPY-1F and its Integrated Weapons System is ready for all missions."
The SPY-1F system is an important element of Lockheed Martin's responsibilities on the Norwegian Frigate program, which includes integration of the entire IWS encompassing all sensors, weapons, software development, communications, and navigation. The system is based on the Aegis Weapon System, originally developed by Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Navy.
The SPY-1F multi-function radar is a scaled version of Lockheed Martin's SPY-1D radar, which is the most advanced naval surveillance, anti-air warfare and missile defense radar in the world. The SPY-1F is designed to meet the mission needs for a range of ships from corvettes to aircraft carriers.
"This pull-the-plug ceremony will allow the Lockheed Martin and IZAR partnership to safely proceed with the coming F-310 activities, with the common aim to fulfill the Royal Norwegian Navy requirements and expectations," said Jose M. Herranz, IZAR's New Norwegian Frigates director. "This is part of both front-end companies' willingness to succeed in this and future achievements."
The Aegis Weapon System is currently deployed on 71 ships deployed around the world, and 26 more ships are planned. In addition to the U.S. and Norwegian navies, Aegis is aboard Japanese and Spanish warships and the Republic of Korea recently selected Aegis for its newest class of destroyers.
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ISRAEL WINS APPROVAL FOR U.S. MILITARY TRUCKS
Wed, 03 Dec 2003
[MENL]
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/december/12_04_4.html
WASHINGTON -- Israel has won approval for the sale of U.S. military trucks.
The Bush administration has approved an Israeli request for 256 military trucks in a $65 million deal. The trucks will come in a range of configurations.
The Defense Security Cooperation Agency has notified Congress of a proposal to sell Israel 256 military trucks from American Truck Co. The agency said in a statement that they consist of 6x6 High Mobility Medium Tactical [HMMT] trucks without cranes, 49 ATC 6x6 High Mobility Medium Tactical [HMMT] trucks with cranes, 10 ATC 6x6 HMMT driver training trucks. American Truck is based in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
"The proposed sale of the HMMT trucks will upgrade and enhance Israel's fleet with a Medium Tactical Truck between the High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicles and Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks in their inventory," the agency said in a statement. "Israel will have no difficulty absorbing these trucks into its armed forces."
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UN Security Council urges nations to tighten Somalia arms embargo
UNITED NATIONS (AFP)
Dec 03, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031203210049.a3imznh9.html
The UN Security Council Wednesday called for nations to tighten the arms embargo on Somalia, which has been linked to the shipment of weapons used in terror attacks.
The council called for a "united approach and stronger support from the international community for enhanced implementation of the arms embargo," said a statement read by current council president, Stefan Tafrov of Bulgaria.
It said the lack of an effective central government was allowing international terror groups to operate in the east African nation.
The council met to discuss a new UN report which found a "disturbing" amount of continuing arms trafficking that it said was linked to "armed groups and extremists beyond Somalia's borders."
The report recalled that an al-Qaeda cell behind last year's bombing of a Kenya hotel frequented by Israeli tourists, and an attempted missile attack on a flight from Kenya to Israel, used weapons shipped via Yemen and Somalia.
"It remains relatively easy to obtain surface-to-air missiles and import them into Somalia," the report said.
"Additional weapons may have since been imported into Somalia solely for the purpose of carrying out further terrorist attacks."
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India insists price deal done for Russian for aircraft carrier
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Dec 03, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031203130930.ut09abwf.html
India on Wednesday insisted it had completed price negotiations with Russia to buy the 44,500-tonne Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov for 30 billion rupees (652 million dollars).
Russian media reports published in Indian papers Wednesday, however, said the price had still not been finalised as "several issues" remained over the supply of foreign weapons systems.
India, however, stuck to its side of the story.
"Price negotiations in a comprehensive manner as stated by the Chief of Naval Staff have been completed and have been agreed by the negotiating teams of both sides," said a defence ministry statement.
"In respect of anti-missile defence system a number of systems are under evaluation. As soon as the evaluation is complete, the chosen system after due approvals will be fitted either during the refit in Russia or on delivery of the ship," it added.
Indian navy chief Admiral Madhvendra Singh had told reporters on Tuesday that India and Russia had agreed on a 30-billion-rupee price tag for Admiral Gorshkov which included two squadrons of MIG 29 K fighter jets
He said the deal was likely to be signed within the next few months but added the carrier would only be brought into the Indian navy in four-and-a-half years time.
Negotiations for the Russian ship have dragged on for three years due to differences over the price and other terms.
Russia offered the Admiral Gorshkov free of charge to India three years ago, with the string attached that New Delhi cough up millions of dollars to refit the ageing hulk.
According to defence experts, the Russians are very unhappy with India's decision to now look around for military hardware from other countries for the Russian aircraft carrier.
"The Russians are now trying to throw a spanner in the works as they just presumed India would buy their anti-missile defence system for Gorshkov. They cannot beleive that they could now lose out to Israel or some other foreign country," said the source.
India's Hindu newspaper also suggested New Delhi wanted to deploy Israeli Barak missiles on the Russian aircraft.
Russia still accounts for more than 70 percent of the military hardware used by India, although New Delhi has increasingly been looking to Europe, Israel and the United States for defence equipment.
The Indian navy decommissioned one of its two aircraft carriers in January 1997, while the second is due to be retired in a couple of years.
-------- asia
Report: Japan to Introduce Missile Defense System
December 3, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-japan-usa-missile.html
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi intends to introduce a missile defense system to protect Japan from the threat posed by North Korea's ballistic missiles, a Japanese newspaper said on Thursday. Japan has conducted joint research with the United States on developing a missile defense system since North Korea fired a ballistic missile that flew over Japan in 1998.
The government will hold a meeting of cabinet ministers or convene a national security meeting soon for a formal decision on introducing the system, the Mainichi Shimbun daily said.
The missile defense system is controversial in Japan due to questions it raises in connection with the country's pacifist constitution as well as the cost, and the government has so far stopped short of moving the project to the development stage.
The system could violate Japan's constitutional ban on ``collective self-defense'' -- the use of force to counter an attack on a foreign ally -- if it is used to shoot down a ballistic missile fired toward a third country, Mainichi said.
Under a Defense Ministry plan, Japan would spend $4.62 billion from fiscal 2004/05 to 2007/08 to buy a two-stage system developed by the United States, Mainichi said.
The newspaper said part of the system would come into operation in 2007 and that it would be fully deployed in fiscal 2011/12 or later.
The Defense Ministry has already requested 142 billion yen in funding for fiscal 2004/05 starting next April to buy the system.
A ministry official told reporters in August that the first stage of the system consisted of Standard Missile-3equipment, which would be fitted to Japan's four existing high-tech Aegis destroyers starting next year.
The second line of defense would be provided by ground-to-air Patriot PAC-3 missiles, upgrading the PAC-2 system Japan's armed forces already possess.
The official declined to comment on how many PAC-3 missile systems the ministry wanted to buy, but said it planned to begin deployment in 2007.
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Thailand may withdraw troops from Iraq
Wednesday, December 3, 2003
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=7&id=280850
BANGKOK - Thailand may consider withdrawing troops from Iraq if the country's security situation worsens, Foreign Minister Sathianthai Surakiat said Tuesday.
He told reporters in Bangkok that he will discuss with Prime Minister Chinnawat Thaksin the possibility of withdrawing troops if they can no longer perform their duties smoothly due to worsening security in Iraq. (Kyodo News)
-------- business
Northrop Grumman chosen for missile defense contract
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Dec 04, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031204001549.6747gjv2.html
Northrop Grumman Corporation has won a 4.5-billion-dollar contract to develop and test a key component of a future US national missile defense system, as the administration of President George W. Bush prepares to begin deploying parts of the system next year, the Defense Department announced Wednesday.
The eight-year deal calls for putting together a concept for the so-called kinetic energy interceptor designed to destroy ballistic missiles in their boost phase, or three to five minutes after launch.
This ground-based interceptor features a design that used to be prohibited under the now scrapped 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, according to defense officials.
The United States formally withdrew from the treaty in June 2002, despite protests from Moscow.
"The objective of the contract award announced today is to develop and test a land-based interceptor for use in a 'layered' ballistic missile defense system, possibly in 2010-2012," the Pentagon said in a statement.
The weapon will consist of a mobile launcher built mainly by Northrop Grumman, Raytheon-built interceptor missiles, a battle management and communications system, and satellite receivers necessary to process information about hostile missile launches, according to industry officials.
The equipment is highly mobile and can be easily loaded onto a C-17 transport aircraft and taken to any flash point of the world.
"We are proud of this contract win, which firmly establishes Northrop Grumman's position as a top-tier systems integrator for missile defense," said Ronald Sugar, Northrop Grumman's chairman and chief executive officer.
While the initial interceptor would be land-based, defense officials hope the concept of the weapons will quickly evolve to allow its basing aboard ships to enhance the US capability to deploy them to threat areas.
The Bush administration has long insisted a national missile defense system was necessary to counter threats coming from unfriendly nations such as Iran and North Korea that feverishly working to boost their missile arsenals.
The United States is also developing and testing a ground-based system designed to intercept long-range missiles in their mid-course flight and is expected to begin deploying them next year.
Ship-based Aegis missile defenses are expected to become operational in
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Northrop Grumman Gets $4.5B Defense Deal
December 3, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense-Contract.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon on Wednesday awarded a $4.5 billion contract to a Northrop Grumman subsidiary to develop a weapon that would destroy enemy missiles shortly after their launch.
The eight-year contract for the defense giant's space and mission systems subsidiary covers the development and testing of an interceptor to destroy a missile in its boost phase.
The boost phase is the time when the missile's engines are firing, before it reaches space.
Ronald D. Sugar, chairman, Northrop's chief executive officer and president, said the work would create nearly 3,000 jobs by 2007.
The Northrop team includes more than 14 subcontractors, including Raytheon Corp. Raytheon is expected to build the actual interceptor or kill vehicle.
The company said significant amounts of work will be performed at these sites: Huntsville, Ala., Tucson, Ariz., Chandler, Ariz., Elkton, Md., St. Louis, Mo., Sunnyvale, Calif., and Naval Base Ventura County, Calif.
Northrop Grumman beat out defense rival Lockheed Martin for the project. The Pentagon had given both companies $10 million to come up with a concept design for the interceptor.
The contract calls for an interceptor designed to be based on land or on a ship or submarine at sea to knock down a missile shortly after launch. Such a defense would have been banned by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the United States withdrew from last year.
The Pentagon also is developing two systems to knock out enemy missiles in their midcourse phase, when they are traveling through space. The Defense Department hopes to have six prototype interceptor rockets for the land-based system installed in silos in Alaska by the end of next year.
The Bush administration says the United States needs to develop missile defenses to guard against rogue nations such as North Korea which could fire missiles loaded with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads. Critics say the missile defense plan is too costly and relies on unproven technology.
Among the advantages that the Pentagon cites for destroying missiles shortly after launch is the fact that the missile and its deadly payload ``may fall back on the country from which it was launched.''
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Northrop Team Wins Antimissile Deal
December 3, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-missile-northrop.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Northrop Grumman Corp. -Raytheon Co. team has won a contract worth as much as $4.5 billion over eight years to develop an antimissile rocket capable of knocking out warheads in their first five minutes of flight, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
The winners beat out a rival team made up of Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. to build the ``kinetic energy interceptor,'' part of President Bush's planned multilayered shield against ballistic missiles such as those that could be launched by North Korea.
The interceptor would destroy a target by smashing into it when a missile is most vulnerable, during its boost or early-ascent flight stages, before decoys may be deployed.
In a successful intercept, the missile and its warhead, possibly tipped with chemical, nuclear or biological weapons, might fall back on the attacking nation.
The Bush administration has earmarked $50 billion over the next five years to build a missile defense with an initial, rudimentary, capability to shoot down incoming warheads by next Sept. 30.
Los Angeles-based Northrop will lead the team. Raytheon, based in Lexington, Massachusetts, will be the chief subcontractor responsible for developing and integrating the interceptor and a significant portion of weapon system engineering, the companies said.
The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said it had awarded the contract without regard to a recent management shake-up and ethics issues dogging Boeing, which won the prime contract for integrating the overall ground-based leg of the missile defense system in 1998.
Chicago-based Boeing had competed ``without any stigma,'' said Rick Lehner, a missile agency spokesman. ``Recent events had nothing to do with the fact that they were not selected.''
The winners wisely relied on a ``proven'' design that adapted technology already being used on the Standard Missile 3, the interceptor on Aegis cruisers, Air Force Maj. Gen. Henry Obering, the missile agency's deputy chief, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
'IMPORTANT WIN' FOR NORTHROP
The initial installment of the contract is worth about $56 million, Northrop Chief Executive Ron Sugar said in a conference call with reporters, not enough to change the company's earnings guidance for the coming year.
``This is a very important win for Northrop Grumman,'' he said. ``It solidifies our position as a prime contractor in missile defense. It firmly establishes our company as the top-tier systems integrator.''
In addition, Sugar said, it validated the acquisition last year of TRW Inc. to bolster Northrop's position in missile defense. The single interceptor design chosen for this contract is compatible with both land- and sea-basing, the Pentagon said.
The first flight test of the new land-based interceptor is scheduled for 2009, Northrop officials said. It could be used in a ``layered'' defense as early as 2010, the Pentagon said.
The competing teams each had won $10 million contracts for conceptual design work on the interceptor.
The kinetic energy interceptor complements other missile defense programs now in development and testing.
Among these are ground-based interceptor missiles and their ``kill vehicles'' that could attack warheads in the middle of their flights, when they are coasting through space.
After being released, an exo-atmospheric kill vehicle is supposed to be guided to the hostile warhead by onboard infrared sensors and to destroy it by direct impact.
Boeing had also come in for criticism of its handling of the ``kill vehicle,'' analogous to the contract awarded Wednesday, for the ground-based midcourse missile defense.
The contract to build that interceptor was awarded mainly for reasons other than technical merit after the misuse of proprietary information by Boeing employees, the General Accounting Office, Congress's investigative arm, said on Jan. 30.
Raytheon won that contract on or about Dec. 1, 1998, after Boeing workers, who had a rival design, came into possession of Raytheon's proprietary data and improperly used it to study Raytheon's approach, the General Accounting Office found.
No formal criteria were used to evaluate the competing systems ``and there was no formal technical comparison or analysis used by the decision maker to select the EKV,'' said the report prepared for Rep. Howard Berman, a California Democrat.
Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. said it had been awarded a contract by the Northrop-led team valued at up to $400 million for booster vehicle design, development, test and early production for the kinetic energy interceptor.
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Pentagon Delays $20 Billion Boeing Deal
December 3, 2003
New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/business/03boeing.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 - The Pentagon has delayed a $20 billion contract from the Air Force to the Boeing Company and directed its inspector general to determine whether there is any reason the deal should not go forward, Defense Department officials said on Tuesday.
The action, ordered late Monday after Boeing's chief executive resigned, could lead to the deal's being scrapped and to new bids from Boeing's competitors, the officials said.
The contract, for Boeing to provide 100 refueling aircraft to the Air Force, was authorized in legislation signed by President Bush late last month. But the contract itself has not yet been signed, and the ouster last week of two Boeing executives over their conduct has intensified calls in Congress for the contract to be reopened.
Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned the Pentagon on Tuesday not to proceed with the sale or lease of any tankers under the deal until Congress had a chance to review the results of the Pentagon investigation.
The move by the Pentagon was ordered by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, and spelled out in a letter from Mr. Wolfowitz to Senator Warner and other senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator Warner issued his warning in a response to Mr. Wolfowitz, a spokesman for the senator said.
A separate letter by Mr. Wolfowitz to the Defense Department inspector general, Joseph E. Schmitz, directed him to "determine whether there is any compelling reason why the Department of the Air Force should not proceed with its tanker lease program," a Defense Department official said. The review will not be concluded until next month at the earliest, officials said.
A spokesman for Boeing said the company would have no immediate comment on the Pentagon action.
The tanker deal is the second controversy this year to involve Boeing, the world's largest aerospace company, and the Pentagon. Its reputation tarnished and its share of the world aircraft market falling, Boeing announced on Monday that its chief executive, Philip M. Condit, had resigned.
In July, the Pentagon punished Boeing for stealing trade secrets from Lockheed Martin, its rival, to help win rocket contracts. Boeing has been banned from bidding indefinitely on military satellite-launching contracts, a punishment that officials say has already cost it seven launchings worth about $1 billion.
The tanker deal is authorized under an appropriations bill that directs the Air Force to lease 20 Boeing 767's for use as tankers and to buy 80 more tankers from the company. But Senator Warner has said his panel will hold a hearing on the deal next year, and Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, wrote a letter Friday to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asking that the Pentagon reconsider its decision to award the deal to Boeing.
For months, the deal has been criticized as beneficial to Boeing at the expense of taxpayers. The criticism intensified after it emerged that Boeing's chief financial officer, Michael M. Sears, had been talking to a Pentagon official, Darleen Druyun, about a job for her at Boeing at the same time that she was representing the Pentagon in financial negotiations over the tanker.
The Air Force began an investigation earlier this year into whether Ms. Druyun improperly disclosed information on a competing bid for the tankers while she was working as the No. 2 acquisition official for the Air Force. Ms. Druyun was hired by Boeing in January and fired last week by the company, along with Mr. Sears.
If Mr. Wolfowitz had not taken action, the contract between Boeing and the Air Force probably would have been signed this week, Defense Department officials said. Asked about the Boeing deal at a news conference on Nov. 25, Mr. Rumsfeld said that the company's decision to fire Mr. Sears had convinced him that it was important to look further into the allegations of improprieties.
"We're the custodian of the taxpayers' dollars," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "We have an obligation to see that things are done properly."
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Pentagon Delays Tanker Contract
Review of Boeing Behavior Ordered
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 3, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29805-2003Dec2.html
The Pentagon delayed approval yesterday of a controversial contract to lease and buy Boeing Co. refueling tankers and ordered its inspector general to review the deal, delivering another blow to the aerospace and defense giant as it attempts to recover from a series of alleged ethical lapses.
In a letter to members of Congress, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz called for a "pause in the execution of the contracts" to allow the inspector general to determine whether the actions of two fired Boeing executives tainted the $18 billion deal. The inspector general already is investigating whether a former Air Force official gave Boeing a competitor's proprietary information during the tanker negotiations. The Pentagon's move yesterday broadens the probe and formalizes a review of the deal ordered last week by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
The delay comes after Philip M. Condit, Boeing's chief executive and chairman, resigned Monday. Condit's departure followed the firing last week of Michael M. Sears, Boeing's chief financial officer, and Darleen A. Druyun, a senior vice president and former Air Force procurement officer, for violating company hiring policies. Sears denies wrongdoing, but Boeing's internal inquiry found that he began discussing a job with Druyun while she was still supervising Boeing contracts at the Air Force.
"The Air Force was on the verge of signing this contract if not for Sears and Druyun," said Rep. Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.), a long-time supporter of the program. "I am disappointed. A lot of effort has been put in by myself and many others."
It is unclear how long the inspector general review will take, but if the delay drags on it could threaten the future of Boeing's 767 line, which has suffered from dwindling orders. The Air Force has said that Boeing might be forced to shut down production of the aircraft if the tanker deal is slow to evolve.
"This doesn't do [Boeing] any favors. They would love the revenue stream sooner rather than later," said Richard L. Aboulafia, aviation analyst for the Teal Group, a defense research firm.
The delay and the expanded investigation raise the prospect that the deal could be killed altogether, said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group that opposes the lease. "It's great to see that they're finally seeing the light in this," she said. "The support for this deal is dissipating because of the ongoing revelations of obvious misconduct taking place."
Boeing has spent millions developing the technology to build the planes and has said if the program were cancelled the company would incur a charge of $180 million to $270 million. Boeing was scheduled to begin building the first wing for the first plane on Dec. 12 at its plant in Everett, Wash., before Wolfowitz ordered the review.
Boeing declined to comment yesterday but in a conference call with analysts, Harry C. Stonecipher, Boeing's new chief executive, said: "I'm [concerned] that we'll see more and more delays on achieving success with the tanker deal."
The program already has been stripped of many of the features sought by the Air Force. Congress gave the Air Force the authority to lease 20 tankers and buy 80, rather than leasing the entire 100, as requested. The revision reduced the government's overall cost of the contract but buying 80 planes would require high upfront costs. The Air Force hasn't said how it will pay for the planes.
The Pentagon was within weeks of signing the contract when Boeing dismissed Sears and Druyun. Negotiations already have taken more than two years and now another round of congressional hearings is likely along with the inspector general probe.
"I am confident that another round of scrutiny will show us again that this is a good deal for taxpayers," said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a long-time supporter of the lease.
Some Pentagon officials consider Sears and Druyun's alleged unethical behavior unrelated to the tanker deal. They contend that the program was altered significantly after Druyun left the Air Force in 2002. The price of the planes fell $20 million to $131 million each and the Air Force added language that required Boeing to lower the price further if it ever offered the planes cheaper to another customer, industry and government officials said.
Boeing has said it did not receive preferential treatment because of Sears and Druyun's improper conduct.
The Pentagon's action yesterday still hasn't mollified critics of the program. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called on the Pentagon to turn over documents related to the lease. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said the inspector general investigation should delve into the entire program -- not just the conduct of Sears and Druyun -- and that the Pentagon should not sign the contract until Congress reviews the results.
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New Chief Brings Old Style to Boeing
Stonecipher Described as Tough Leader
By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29806-2003Dec2?language=printer
New Boeing Co. chief executive Harry C. Stonecipher is a gruff executive who understands Washington and who insiders hope will lead the company out of scandals and sagging fortunes. But he is also a leader whose last company, McDonnell Douglas Corp., suffered serious problems and whose harsh style could irritate Boeing's wounded morale, say long-term observers of the industry.
Boeing announced Monday that Stonecipher, 67, will replace Philip M. Condit, who resigned in the wake of investigations into Boeing's behavior in both defense contracting and in hiring a former Pentagon official.
Stonecipher had remained on Boeing's board after retiring last year as president and chief operating officer. He was chief executive of McDonnell Douglas when Boeing bought that company in 1997 -- a merger that made Boeing a global aerospace powerhouse but left it with an internal clash of cultures that still festers.
"The battle for the future of the company has been going on for years," J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. aerospace analyst Joseph B. Nadol III wrote. "Boeing may have won some of the battles, but it appears that McDonnell Douglas won the war for the future of the company."
At the time of the acquisition, Boeing was focused on commercial business and respected worldwide for its management practices. McDonnell Douglas was mired in a lawsuit with the Pentagon over a canceled bomber program, had just lost a major fighter plane competition and was watching its commercial aircraft business fade into oblivion.
Boeing now finds itself facing some of the same problems. Its sales of commercial aircraft will trail European rival Airbus SAS this year for the first time. Also this year, government contracting will account for more than half of Boeing's business for the first time -- but that is clouded by allegations of unethical behavior.
"Some people may be speculating that Stonecipher is carrying the Douglas curse with him," said Roger E. Bilstein, a retired professor who specializes in aviation history.
"I view this as a desperation move," said Robbin Laird, a defense industry consultant. With Boeing morale suffering and the commercial jetliner business sagging, the military-oriented Stonecipher "would strike one as not being the best guy at this time."
Stonecipher is one of the few outsized figures in an aerospace industry populated with cautious, circumspect leaders. Known to get by on four hours of sleep, Stonecipher made his mark at McDonnell Douglas by cutting jobs and confronting employees he felt were not up to snuff.
"My style comes across as tough and harsh. It's in the interest of decisiveness," he said in a recent interview. "It's really easy to get along with Harry Stonecipher. You just have to do exactly what you said you were going to do. It's failure to meet expectations that brings out the tough side of Harry."
Stonecipher learned the aerospace industry during 27 years with the aircraft engines business of General Electric Co., work that also put him in touch with a rising Boeing executive named Condit. After rising to the top spot at the engines business, Stonecipher left to run Sundstrand Corp., an aerospace parts supplier.
That job was remarkably similar to what he is now undertaking at Boeing. In the late 1980s, Sundstrand was temporarily suspended from Pentagon contracting for allegedly overcharging the government. Stonecipher worked to restore its credibility and cut jobs to improve efficiency.
"That was a company in trouble, and he turned it around," said defense industry consultant Brett Lambert. Today, as Hamilton Sundstrand Corp., the company is a top aerospace parts supplier owned by United Technologies Corp.
Stonecipher's reward came in 1994, when McDonnell Douglas hired him as chief executive. The company's venerable commercial aircraft business was dying against competition from Boeing and Airbus, and Stonecipher steered McDonnell Douglas further into military work.
But some experts say the company's engineering talent was waning. It couldn't control costs on the controversial A-12 stealth bomber program, which the Pentagon canceled, leading to a lengthy lawsuit. And when McDonnell Douglas lost out to Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp. in the selection of finalists for the Joint Strike Fighter warplane program, the company threw in the towel and merged with Boeing.
McDonnell Douglas brought a new culture into Boeing -- government contracting, schmoozing bureaucrats and politicians, focusing on the needs of a single giant customer. Boeing had no skybox at the Redskins football stadium, for instance, and inherited McDonnell Douglas's.
That government contracting arena is where the new Boeing is running into trouble. The Justice Department is investigating how two Boeing employees -- who originally worked for McDonnell Douglas -- came to possess secret documents from Lockheed Martin as the companies competed for an Air Force rocket contract. The Air Force is looking into Boeing's efforts to hire a former Pentagon official before the official left public office and whether the official gave the company inside information on a contract for tanker aircraft.
Boeing fired its chief financial officer last week over the hiring probe, and Condit resigned Monday to help rid the company of "distractions," he said. Now Stonecipher has pledged to set things straight for as long as his the board of directors allows.
"The great irony is that the whole McDonnell Douglas way of thinking helped lead them to this problem," said Richard L. Aboulafia, an industry expert with consulting firm Teal Group Corp. "The cynical joke was that McDonnell Douglas used Boeing's money to buy Boeing, and there's an element of truth there."
Staff writer Renae Merle contributed to this report.
-------- canada
Canada's military becoming obsolete, report warns
OTTAWA (AFP)
Dec 03, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031203183328.3n6ql1ah.html
An influential study warned Canada's incoming prime minister Paul Martin on Wednesday that he would have to massively increase defence spending to replace antiquated military equipment.
The report by the influential School of Policy Studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, said Canada's armed forces will face "massive obsolescence" within two years.
According to the study: "Over the next five years, major platforms -- the Hercules CC-130 (military airlift plane), the medium logistics vehicle wheeled (armoured vehicle), the main battle tank, the M-109 howitzer and the maritime helicopter -- will have reached (or be close to) obsolescence."
But capital spending for the military already budgeted will fall short over the next five years by 15 billion dollars (11.5 billion US), said military analyst Brian MacDonald, one of the researchers involved.
MacDonald told a press conference: "many of the Canadian forces' major platforms are at or close to the end of their effectiveness. As a consequence, Canada's military equipment is facing massive obsolescence beginning around
Martin, who takes office next week, could hold off a general election until November 2005.
Even if he does that, the panel warned: "the time required to replace major equipments, develop coherent military capabilities, and rebuild the trained effective strength of the armed forces simply exceeds the mandate of the next government, even it it were to serve a full term."
Canada is heading for "a long period ... without effective military resources, even for domestic and territorial surveillance," said MacDonald.
Following reports that Canada's search and rescue Labrador helicopters and Sea-King shipboard helicopters -- all built in the 1960s -- require more than 30 hours of servicing for every hour of flight, MacDonald said trying to extend their service "is plainly too expensive to contemplate."
Even Canada's four Iroquois-class destroyers and two auxiliary oil refeuling vessels, commissioned in the 1970s, were running out of useful service time, said the report.
-------- china / taiwan
US cancels computer war games with Taiwan: report
TAIPEI (AFP)
Dec 03, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031203051729.phe36ue0.html
The United States has cancelled planned computer war games with Taiwan because of rising tension between the island and China over contentious referendum legislation, reports said Wednesday.
CTI television said the reason given for the cancellation was media leaks, but that behind the scenes it was seen as an attempt by Washington to warn the the Taiwanese government.
"Washington scrapped the plan to avoid misleading the Taiwanese people in their judgement of the current situation," the television reported.
Analysts said the United States was trying to give the impression it did not support the maneuvering by the pro-independence movement in Taiwan, which has called for new legislation to be used to hold a referendum on independence.
Statements by President Chen Shui-bian that he would like to hold the referendum during March presidential polls have infuriated Beijing, which considers the island part of China.
Taiwan's vice-defense minister was scheduled to leave for Washington over the weekend, leading a high-profile military mission for comprehensive talks on arms deals and Taiwan's security.
The computer war games were scheduled for Hawaii from December 15 to 17.
Taiwan's defence authorities were not immediately available for comment.
Chen has pledged to hold a vote on the island's presidential election day, March 20, to safeguard Taiwan's sovereignty. He accused China on Sunday of aiming 496 ballistic missiles at the island.
Beijing has considered the island part of Chinese territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary, since the two sides split in 1949 at the end of a civil war.
The CTI report came one day after Washington called on the two sides to refrain from any provocative action.
US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that Washington "would be opposed to any referenda that would change Taiwan's status or move towards independence".
Washington has observed the "One China" policy - accepting Taiwan as part of the Chinese territory -- since it switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. But it has remained the island's leading arms supplier.
--------
Beijing Warns That Taiwan Referendum Could Lead to War
December 3, 2003
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/asia/03CND-CHIN.html
BEIJING, Dec. 3 - Chinese military officers said today that Taiwan's leadership had pushed the island toward the "abyss of war" with its independence drive, making clear that China would consider a popular vote on Taiwan's political status as cause for war.
In lengthy interviews carried prominently by the official New China News Agency and other news outlets, the military officials also said that China would prevent Taiwan from formally declaring independence even if that meant pushing the mainland economy into a recession or destroying its plans to be host to the 2008 Olympics.
"Chen has reached the mainland's bottom line on the Taiwan question," said Luo Yuan, a senior colonel with the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, referring to Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-Bian. "If they refuse to come to their senses and continue to use referenda as an excuse to seek Taiwan independence, they will push Taiwan compatriots into the abyss of war."
Maj. Gen. Peng Guangqian was quoted as saying that the mainland would attack without hesitation if Taiwan sought a formal split. "Taiwan independence means war," Mr. Peng said. "This is the word of 1.3 billion people, and we will keep our word."
The comments were the most strident in a barrage of explicit threats directed toward Taiwan in recent weeks by mainland leaders, and they may indicate a decisive shift in Beijing's approach to managing Taiwan affairs.
For the past several years, China has sought to downplay what it considers political provocations by Mr. Chen. Beijing has courted Taiwanese businessmen and promoted economic integration between the two adversaries, which have been politically divided since the Communists won a civil war in 1949, hoping to create a broader popular constituency in Taiwan that favors eventual reunification.
But mainland leaders, who regard Taiwan as a renegade province, now seem alarmed that softer cross-Straits diplomacy, and China's preoccupation with its extensive leadership transition, may have sent the wrong signals. They have now resumed making bellicose threats whenever they see Mr. Chen tip-toeing toward the edge of declaring independence, the kind of aggressive posturing that some American officials fear could spiral into armed conflict.
At issue is whether Taiwan will hold some kind of referendum, possibly in tandem with its presidential elections in March, that would broach the delicate subject of sovereignty.
Mr. Chen, fighting a tough battle for re-election, has promoted just such a referendum to invigorate his supporters, many of whom favor formal independence from the mainland.
The issue appeared to be defused last week, when Taiwan's Parliament, controlled by the main opposition party, stepped back from a direct confrontation with Beijing. The legislature passed a bill that would permit referendums on constitutional and sovereignty issues, but only under narrow circumstances. The law denies the president the authority to call a referendum on such issues himself, except in matters of national defense.
But Mr. Chen said over the weekend that he saw the law as giving him leeway to organize a referendum because doing so "would protect our country's sovereignty." He did not elaborate, but Mr. Chen has argued in the past that Taiwan must take active steps to protect its de facto independence against encroachment from the mainland.
Chinese military officers do not write articles or speak out in official interviews without clearance from the highest levels, and the comments of General Peng and Colonel Luo were clearly orchestrated to send the firmest possible message about China's agitation ahead of a visit to Washington next week by China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao.
General Peng listed the Olympics, loss of foreign investment, deterioration in foreign relations, economic slowdown or recession and "necessary" casualties by the army as costs China would willingly bear to reunify the mainland. He belittled the idea that China would not dare use military force against Taiwan in advance of the 2008 Olympics, which it campaigned for many years to play host.
The officers are directing the comments at the United States as well as Taiwan. Beijing officials and analysts say the Bush administration needs to take a firmer line against Taiwanese independence, an issue Mr. Wen seems certain to press during his meeting next week with President Bush.
-------- europe
Rumsfeld Criticizes EU Defense Plan
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29688-2003Dec2.html
BRUSSELS, Dec. 2 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld expressed continuing concern Tuesday about an emerging European proposal to establish a separate military planning group outside NATO's structure, suggesting that such a move could be a step toward undermining the Atlantic alliance.
Ending two days of meetings in Brussels with other NATO defense ministers, the Pentagon leader said the issue of the planning group had not been resolved and indicated it would likely need to be addressed by President Bush and European leaders.
"This is going to be wrestled with at a level higher than mine," he told a small group of European reporters.
In general, Rumsfeld voiced satisfaction with the NATO meeting, noting progress in filling equipment and personnel shortfalls for alliance forces in Afghanistan, shoring up allied support in Iraq and beginning discussions on a possible wider NATO role in both combat zones.
But friction over how to strengthen the 15-nation European Union's defense arrangements and still maintain NATO's dominant role as protector of European security remained an irritant, not just for the United States but among European governments that are divided on the issue.
U.S. officials said they thought the matter had been settled last March when, after four years of negotiations, NATO and the EU signed agreements stipulating that any planning for European military operations would be done within NATO. A month later, however, France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg outlined plans for a full-blown military planning headquarters.
The latest proposal, which French, German and British officials drafted last week, envisions a smaller planning "cell" of perhaps a few dozen people. But U.S. officials still worry the move could lead to duplicated effort and competition with NATO, and open the door to a further erosion of the alliance's importance.
Seeking to avoid a public clash, Rumsfeld gave guarded responses when pressed for his views earlier in the week. But Tuesday, he rejected suggestions that he had meant to convey acquiescence or that his muted criticism had been offered as a tradeoff for greater European support in Iraq.
Referring to NATO, he said "anyone who wants to change it or tear it down or inject an instability into it has to recommend something better, it seems to me." Later he added: "This issue is something that is going to affect the North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- how it's handled -- over the coming decades. It is a critically important question."
On Iraq, Rumsfeld reported that "most if not all" of the NATO members or soon-to-be-NATO members that have troops in the country "have pledged to stay on" in the face of recent attacks on non-U.S. forces.
--------
Pentagon Official to Visit Europe on Force Changes
December 3, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-security-usa-changes.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will begin talks with Germany and other allies next week on plans to change the U.S. military presence worldwide to better combat terrorism and other unpredictable threats, a top Pentagon official said on Wednesday.
Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith said he and State Department Undersecretary Marc Grossman would discuss how to accomplish the U.S. goal of repositioning troops away from a defensive Cold War stance toward a more agile posture necessary to confront the new challenges.
Besides Germany, he did not say what other countries they would visit.
Feith also offered no specifics on how the long-standing U.S. force structures in Germany and South Korea would change, saying no final decisions would be made until after the consultations.
The United States is seeking to abandon its Cold War strategy crafted to answer threats from known adversaries and instead put air, naval and ground forces in key spots globally so they can quickly go to trouble spots.
``Terrorists as well as rogue states can command formidable destructive power including through access to chemical, biological or nuclear weapons,'' Feith said. ``Threats from these sources may require immediate military responses.''
Feith said the changes were being contemplated for long-term strategic reasons and not in response to current events such as to shift forces for example, to Iraq, where U.S. soldiers remain under attack more than six months after the government of Saddam Hussein was toppled.
``We are not aiming at retrenchment, curtailing U.S. commitments, isolationism or unilateralism,'' Feith said.
``We are not focused narrowly on force levels, but are addressing force capabilities. We are not talking about fighting in place, but moving to the fight. We are not talking only about basing, we're talking about the ability to move forces when and where needed,'' he added.
Feith said a more nimble military force was required since intelligence was imperfect about where the threats may come from.
``We need to be able to hedge against errors regarding emerging threats. We need to plan, but we must plan to be surprised,'' he said.
``Nothing is going to stay unchanged. We are going to be realigning our posture at home and abroad.''
Washington has withdrawn its forces from Saudi Arabia and signaled it intends to reduce a major presence in Germany, moving troops into former Soviet bloc states in Eastern Europe such as Poland in order to deal better with potential threats in the Middle East.
It is also looking at how to realign the 100,000 U.S. troops in the western Pacific, South Korea and Japan.
The Pentagon is planning to move its 37,000 troops in South Korea away from the demilitarized zone with North Korea.
-------- iraq
U.S. to Form Iraqi Paramilitary Force Unit Will Draw From Party Militias
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29753-2003Dec2?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Dec. 2 -- The U.S. civilian and military leadership in Iraq has decided to form a paramilitary unit composed of militiamen from the country's five largest political parties to identify and pursue insurgents who have eluded American troops and Iraqi police officers, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Tuesday.
The five parties will contribute a total of 750 to 850 militiamen to create a new counterterrorism battalion within the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps that would initially operate in and around Baghdad, the officials said. They said U.S. Special Forces soldiers would work with the battalion, whose operations would be overseen by the American-led military command here.
The party leaders regard the formation of the paramilitary force, which had initially been resisted by the occupation authority, as an acknowledgement that the Bush administration's strategy of relying on Iraqi police officers and civil defense forces has been insufficient to restore security. The leaders contend Iraq's municipal police departments and civil defense squads are too ineffective to combat resistance fighters.
Although the new battalion is significantly weaker than the force the party leaders had hoped to create, the unit would nevertheless give the five political organizations an unrivaled role in the country's internal security. That advantage has riled some independent members of Iraq's Governing Council, who fear that it could be used after the U.S. occupation ends to suppress political dissent or target enemies.
"This is a very big blunder," said Ghazi Yawar, an independent council member. "We should be dissolving militias, not finding ways to legitimize them. This sends the wrong message to the Iraqi people."
U.S. officials said the battalion would be subject to rigorous conditions aimed at ensuring that the new unit does not become a collection of autonomous militias loyal to their party leaders instead of a unified commander.
"They will have to leave their political identity at the door," a senior U.S. military official said.
American military and civilian officials acknowledge the risk in forming a new force with members of militia organizations, but they have agreed to support the venture largely because of pressure from the five parties, which have long argued that Iraqis should be given more responsibility for security. The parties contend their militiamen are better trained than existing Iraqi security forces and possess a degree of local knowledge that American soldiers lack.
Ayad Alawi, the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, said in a recent interview that the five parties "all have people who are much better suited to fight Baathists and terrorists."
Backing for the force has gathered momentum since a Nov. 15 agreement between the Governing Council and U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer that calls for the occupation to end by summer. Top officials of the parties insisted an independent Iraq will need a security force other than the three that already have been established: the police, the civil defense corps and the new army.
Although more than 50,000 police officers are back at work, many lack firearms, training and vehicles. The civil defense corps assists U.S. troops, but it has not been trained to take a lead role in offensive operations. And the new army is supposed to focus on border security, not domestic issues.
With attacks on U.S. troops increasing and fewer nations contributing soldiers than the Pentagon had expected, the Bush administration has sought to speed the training and deployment of Iraqi security forces. The new battalion is regarded by some administration officials as an attempt to further accelerate that process by giving Iraqis the power to conduct full-fledged counterinsurgency operations.
The five parties that will contribute militiamen are Alawi's Iraqi National Accord, Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, the Shiite Muslim Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and two large Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Kurdish members will be drawn from the ranks of pesh merga fighters who defended autonomous Kurdish areas from former president Saddam Hussein's army, officials said.
A senior official with the U.S. occupation authority insisted the plan was still "very fluid." But a senior U.S. military official said there was agreement in principle among senior American civilian and military leaders in Baghdad to implement the plan.
"We're moving forward with it," the military official said.
Officials with the five parties briefed members of the Governing Council over the weekend, members said. "It's a done deal," said an official with one of the parties.
The five parties each will contribute between 150 and 170 militiamen to the battalion, the U.S. military official said. The participants will be trained for more than a month before they will be allowed to conduct operations, the official said.
The battalion, equipped with light arms and vehicles, will be divided into five companies, each of which will work with a 10-man U.S. Special Forces A-team, which will provide logistics support and communications links with the American military command, the official said.
The battalion's initial missions will be approved by American commanders, but as the group matures and the planned handover of sovereignty nears, it could begin to execute operations on its own, officials said. The group's initial missions would focus on apprehending Hussein loyalists and other insurgents around the capital
The parties had wanted the paramilitary force to be significantly larger than a battalion and fully under the control of the country's Interior Minister. American officials rejected those demands, saying they wanted to start with a small group under U.S. control.
Party leaders are also pushing for the creation of a domestic intelligence-gathering unit that would be charged with identifying targets for the new battalion, but American officials have not yet agreed to that component of the plan, Iraqi officials said.
To prevent the battalion from appearing to be a collection of rival militias, U.S. military officials intend to mix members in each of the five companies. But they also recognize that they likely will not be able to blend individual squads or platoons.
U.S. officials will also insist that each militiaman commit to working under the command structure, even if it means reporting to an officer from a rival militia. "They have to come in as individuals," one U.S. official said.
American officials also said participants will be screened for links to Hussein's Baath Party and trained in human rights.
But several independent council members said they worry that the battalion will not be free from the sway of the five parties. "When you ask them, 'Who are you loyal to?' they will not say Iraq. They will say Alawi or Chalabi or [Kurdish leader Jalal] Talabani," one independent member said.
"There a risk here," the senior military official acknowledged. "But we're willing to explore different ideas and take risks in turning more responsibility for security to Iraqis."
In other developments on Tuesday, a U.S. soldier attached to the Army's 4th Infantry Division was killed in a roadside explosion near the town of Samarra, where American troops killed 54 Iraqis in a pitched battle on Sunday afternoon. In the northern town of Hawija, troops captured more than 100 people, including a senior former member of Hussein's elite Republican Guard, in a large raid. In Baghdad, workers began removing gigantic bronze busts of Hussein that sit atop the Republican Palace, which now serves as the headquarters of the occupation authority.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Approves Construction Of More Homes At Settlements
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29686-2003Dec2?language=printer
JERUSALEM -- The government of Israel has approved the construction of more than 1,720 new houses in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip this year, according to critics of the settlements who say they undercut a U.S.-backed peace plan that mandates a freeze on settlement expansion.
The planned building is in addition to at least 1,000 homes and other infrastructure projects under construction in the West Bank, which Israel is also encircling with a massive fence complex, according to groups and officials that monitor settlement activity.
Two weeks ago, Israeli soldiers began expanding the boundary of Beitar Ilit, a community of more than 20,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews about five miles southwest of Jerusalem. Beitar Ilit is one of the fastest-growing settlements in the West Bank; it added 2,900 residents last year.
Last week, Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim announced that several unauthorized settlement outposts -- many of them just a trailer on a remote hilltop between existing settlements -- would soon be categorized as legitimate settlements.
"I've never seen settlement expansion at such a rate, ever," said Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian political analyst, who claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is pushing ahead with settlements while the peace process drags on. "He's stealing time to impose his own facts on the ground by practically annexing more than half the West Bank" with the fence project, Barghouti added, "and imposing ghettoization on Palestinian villages that will mean the destruction of a two-state solution."
The Jewish settlers acknowledge their goal is to add more housing. "Our target is to grow and expand as much as possible," said Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a spokesman for the Yesha Council, the settlement umbrella organization.
In recent weeks, U.S. officials have criticized Israel's refusal to stop building both settlements and the barrier snaking through the West Bank. The officials have said the moves complicate the revival of the peace plan known as the "road map," and could undermine a final accord. The road map, which was adopted by the Israelis and Palestinians at a summit meeting in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4, obligates Israel to freeze "all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)" and "immediately" dismantle the estimated 56 outposts established since Sharon took office in March 2001.
"Israel should freeze settlement construction, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people and not prejudice final negotiations with the placements of walls and fences," President Bush said in a speech two weeks ago in London.
Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin, said Israel was committed to removing a few dozen outposts but added, "We can't evacuate them when we're under attack. That only encourages more terrorist activity."
Israel has also agreed to freeze the number, but not the size, of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Gissin said. He said Israel has an "understanding" with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that natural growth is permitted. "People have the right to live and multiply and give birth, and we are not going to throw them out," he said.
U.S. officials have denied that Powell made any agreement permitting the natural growth of settlements.
In addition to 635 new homes approved before the Aqaba summit, the Israeli government has approved the construction of at least 1,092 more in the West Bank since adopting the road map, according to Peace Now, a group that is critical of settlements and that monitors housing construction contracts. The total of 1,727 homes approved so far this year is roughly the same as in the previous two years, before Israel adopted the road map, according to the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a Washington-based research group that monitors settlement policy.
Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz have been quoted in the Israeli press in recent days as saying that Israel has dismantled 43 outposts since the Aqaba summit. The government refused several requests to provide a list of the outposts. Instead, it referred a reporter to testimony in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, two weeks ago in which Gideon Ezra, a minister without portfolio in Sharon's government, named 10 outposts that had been evacuated.
Peace Now, which keeps authoritative settlement data, claims that 15 outposts have been dismantled since Aqaba, including seven that were built after the summit. Five outposts established after Aqaba have not been dismantled, according to the group, for a net decrease of three outposts since the peace plan was adopted.
Israel's settlement program is highly controversial and over the years has proven difficult to curtail. Many Israelis citizens oppose the settlements, believing they are expropriation of Palestinian land, a drain on Israel's budget and military resources and the main obstacle to reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians.
But other Israelis believe the lands, particularly in the West Bank, were promised to the Jewish people in the Bible and that they have a religious duty to live there. Since seizing the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, the Israeli government has encouraged the growth of settlements by subsidizing their development and offering tax breaks, low interest rates and other financial incentives to Israelis who move to them. The large growth in settlements came in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Israeli military, eager to occupy the strategic hilltops where most settlements are located, helped guide the expansion, and Sharon was one of its chief architects. Since he became prime minister, the number of settlers has grown almost 20 percent -- totaling about 230,000 today -- and the number of settlement outposts has more than doubled, to 102, according to data compiled Peace Now.
Today, some of the settlements are small, modern cities, and Israeli and Palestinian analysts and politicians say it is unlikely that Israel will ever relinquish the biggest and oldest of those.
Israelis say that some settlement expansion is for security, citing numerous attacks on settlements by Palestinians. In the rapidly growing settlement of Beitar Ilit, for instance, the Israeli military recently began moving the boundary fence outward about 200 feet to widen the buffer zone around the settlement and give security officials more time to respond to an incursion by armed Palestinians, a military spokesman said. Numerous Palestinian olive trees are being uprooted by the project, and dozens more will now be inside the settlement's fence.
Beitar Ilit's mayor Yitzhak Pindrus, said the newly fenced land will continue to be owned by Palestinians, who will be allowed to enter the settlement through a gate to tend their trees. Settlement experts say they know of no precedent for such an arrangement at any of Israel's 155 settlements.
Dror Etkes, the head of Peace Now's settlement watch program, compared today's settlement and outpost expansion with settlement growth in the 1990s that was one factor, along with Palestinian attacks against Israelis, in undermining the 1993 Oslo peace accords. Since Oslo, the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has more than doubled.
"The Palestinians understood there was no point in negotiating with Israel when the circumstances were creating such a growth in settlements, and that eventually created this explosion," Etkes said, referring to the three-year Palestinian uprising against Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But Gissin, the Israeli government spokesman, said complaints about settlement growth were excuses to let the Palestinians off the hook for not combating terrorism. "Every time they come to a difficult stage, they want to move the goal post," he said. "They can't fight terror, so they say Israel is not doing this or that. We are trying to do our part, but it is extremely difficult to remove settlements when the ground is infested with terrorism."
--------
Israeli Warns Powell on Peace Team; He Rejects Criticism
December 3, 2003
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/middleeast/03MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Dec. 2 - In a rare Israeli criticism of the United States, a senior official said Tuesday that it would be a mistake for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to meet Israeli and Palestinian politicians who negotiated a symbolic Middle East peace plan.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government has been fiercely critical of the so-called Geneva Accord, calling it subversive, freelance diplomacy.
The self-appointed Israeli and Palestinian negotiators held a signing ceremony on Monday in the Swiss city, saying the document could serve as a blueprint for formal talks between the governments.
The Bush administration says it remains committed to the official Middle East peace plan, known as the road map, which was introduced in June but quickly stalled.
However, Mr. Powell sent a letter last month encouraging the Israelis and Palestinians involved in the Geneva initiative, and is expected to meet them within a week, according to officials and diplomats.
"I think he is making a mistake," Ehud Olmert, Israel's vice premier, said of Mr. Powell in an interview on Israel radio. "I think he is not helping the process. I think this is a wrong step by a representative of the American administration."
Mr. Powell, speaking in Tunis on Tuesday, rejected the Israeli criticism. "Why should we not listen to others who have ideas, such as the ideas that were presented in Geneva yesterday, and other ideas that have been presented?" he said. "What people are saying is that the current situation has to change."
Mr. Sharon sets great store by his close ties with President Bush, whose administration has been largely supportive of Mr. Sharon while boycotting the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat.
The American overtures to the unofficial peace negotiators are seen as a way of prodding the Israeli and Palestinian governments toward the negotiating table. But Dore Gold, an adviser to Mr. Sharon, said the Geneva proposal ignored crucial elements of the current peace plan.
He called it "an end run around the opening phase of the road map, which calls first for a termination of violence."
Mr. Sharon has always insisted that the bloodshed must stop before peace negotiations can resume. But many Palestinians claim that Mr. Sharon is not serious about negotiations, and has stepped up Israeli military operations when political progress has appeared to be within reach.
Meanwhile, it was Palestinians who took to the streets in the Gaza Strip on Monday to condemn the Geneva plan.
In a protest in Gaza City, about 1,000 Palestinians from various factions rallied against the proposal and denounced Yasir Abed Rabbo, the former Palestinian information minister who led the Palestinian delegation to Switzerland.
"Abed Rabbo, you coward, you are a collaborator with the Americans," the crowd chanted.
Many Palestinians are angry that the document effectively drops the longstanding Palestinian demand that refugees from the 1948 war be allowed to return to their old land, which is now part of Israel.
The refugees and their descendants now number around four million, but the Geneva document would give Israel the right to block any large-scale return.
"What can I tell my grandchildren?" asked Hikmat Adwan, 60, a Gaza resident who said his family was driven from its village in 1948. "That I gave up my rights? That I gave up my land?"
Mr. Arafat has been sending mixed signals about the document. A statement read in his name at the Geneva ceremony called it "a brave initiative that opens the door to hope." Bur Mr. Arafat has not endorsed the actual plan.
"The Palestinian Authority is encouraging the dialogue that led to this document," said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian cabinet member. "But the Palestinian Authority cannot be committed to the content, because it differs from official positions."
Mr. Gold, the Israeli adviser, accused Mr. Arafat of playing a "double game."
"He is encouraging opposition to the accord in order to prop himself up domestically, while at the same time signaling his blessing of the accord abroad," Mr. Gold said.
A poll released Monday by Israel's liberal Haaretz newspaper found that 38 percent of Israelis oppose the Geneva plan while 31 percent support it and 31 percent have no opinion. The survey of 876 Israelis had a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points.
Meanwhile, religious hard-liners on both sides denounced the accord.
A committee of some 250 rabbis, called Pikuah Nefesh, or Preservation of Life, said Israelis who signed the Geneva document should be considered traitors who deserved to be "cast out from human society and brought to trial."
Dar al-Fatwa, a Palestinian institution that specializes in Islamic law, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, saying it would be improper for Muslims to relinquish claims to land lost in wars with Israel.
In violence on Tuesday, the Israeli Army said it had killed two Palestinian militants in the West Bank. One was gunned down during an exchange of gunfire in the town of Jenin, while the other was fatally shot after he threw a firebomb at soldiers outside Ramallah.
--------
Powell Effort Aims To Pressure Sharon On Peace Accord
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29520-2003Dec2.html
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell plans to meet Friday with the authors of an unofficial Israeli-Palestinian peace accord as part of a Bush administration strategy to put increasing pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, U.S. officials said yesterday.
The administration had not previously embraced the initiative, known as the Geneva Accord, but officials said in recent weeks that the administration had become increasingly frustrated with Sharon and decided to use it to prod Sharon to take steps to deal with Palestinian grievances. Sharon has denounced the document, which tackles many of the most contentious issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians.
In a choreographed sequence, the chief negotiators of the agreement -- Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli justice minister and longtime peace negotiator, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, former Palestinian information minister -- will meet with William J. Burns, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and Elliott Abrams, the senior National Security Council official for Israeli-Palestinian issues. Then Powell is scheduled to drop by the meeting, U.S. officials said.
"It is part of an effort to put more pressure on Sharon," an administration official said. "It is as much an endorsement of the Geneva plan as a signal to the Sharon government to get in a more cooperative posture."
Abrams met with Sharon in Rome two weeks ago to urge him to take unilateral actions on the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map." But U.S. officials said President Bush's trip to London that week also spurred the administration to press harder for action by the Israelis. British Prime Minister Tony Blair raised the Geneva Accord in his discussions with Bush.
The accord was drafted by a group of Israelis and Palestinians frustrated by the inability of their governments to engage in peace efforts after more than three years of military conflict. The authors held a ceremony Monday in Geneva to promote the document, and international figures such as former president Jimmy Carter and former Polish president Lech Walesa attended.
Some experts have said a flaw in the road map is that it offers the promise of a Palestinian state but does not tackle the hard questions needed to create it. Although President Bill Clinton at the end of his term laid out the parameters of a final deal, Bush rejected doing something similar, arguing that the agreement must come from the parties themselves. Some U.S. officials now believe the Geneva agreement might act as a useful proxy, giving hope to the moderates in both camps that a Palestinian state could be created from Israel-occupied territories.
But the planned meeting drew sharp criticism from Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "I think that he is not being useful to the peace process," Olmert said, referring to Powell. "This is an incorrect step by a senior representative of the American administration."
Powell, who was in Tunis yesterday, told reporters that a meeting would not undercut the administration's support for the road map. "I do not know why I or anyone else in the U.S. government should deny ourselves the opportunity to hear from others who are committed to peace and who have ideas," he said.
-------- prisoners of war
In reversal, Pentagon grants detainee of Saudi descent access to lawyer
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Dec 03, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031203033557.it6w9p5q.html
In a sudden reversal, the Pentagon late Tuesday allowed a US citizen being held as an "enemy combatant" access to a lawyer in what legal experts see as an attempt to ward off US Supreme Court review of the case.
After denying him access to counsel for two years, the Department of Defense said Yaser Esam Hamdi, a US citizen of Saudi descent captured by US forces in Afghanistan in late 2001, "will be allowed access to a lawyer subject to appropriate security restrictions."
The department "decided to allow Hamdi access to counsel because Hamdi is a US citizen detained by DoD in the United States, because DoD has completed its intelligence collection with Hamdi, and because DoD has determined that the access will not compromise the national security of the United States," the Pentagon said in a statement.
It argued the decision was be viewed "as a matter of discretion and military policy" and "should not be treated as a precedent."
Practical arrangements for an attorney to visit the 22-year-old Hamdi at a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, will be finalized over the next few days, according to defense officials.
Designated an enemy combatant, Hamdi was first shipped off to a prison camp on the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but was moved to the United States after it was determined he was a US citizen.
He was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Saudi parents in 1980, but taken to Saudi Arabia as a child and raised in the desert kingdom.
Under an executive order signed by President George W. Bush in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, US citizens who fought for the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere cannot be tried by military tribunals or confined at Guantanamo Bay.
But the Pentagon has been denying them access to lawyers, insisting that under the rules of war enemy combatants may be detained without charges until the end of hostilities.
That approach has been challenged in US courts. Hamdi's case is pending before the US Supreme Court, which is expected to decide soon whether to take it, according to Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a non-profit advocacy group.
-------- russia / chechnya
Powell Sends Russia Warning About Georgia
Reuters
Wednesday, December 3, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29620-2003Dec2?language=printer
MAASTRICHT, Netherlands, Dec. 2 -- The United States issued an indirect warning to Russia on Tuesday not to back Georgia's breakaway regions and exploit instability in the former Soviet republic after last month's bloodless change of government.
Georgia, which has three restive regions, plans to hold presidential elections Jan. 4 to replace Eduard Shevardnadze, who was toppled during mass protests last month triggered by allegations of fraud in parliamentary elections.
"The international community should do everything possible to support Georgia's territorial integrity throughout and beyond the election process," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
"No support should be given to breakaway elements seeking to weaken Georgia's territorial integrity," he told OSCE members gathered for the meeting in Maastricht.
Officials in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, were angered last week when Russian officials met leaders from South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which broke free of Georgian control more than a decade ago and want to join Russia -- and from Adzharia, which has not stated a desire for secession but is hostile to Georgia's interim rulers.
Later Tuesday, Powell flew to Tunisia, where he met with President Zine Abidine Ben Ali and urged the government to pursue political reforms. It was the first stop on a rapid swing through North Africa aimed in part at promoting democracy in a region marred by human rights abuses.
-------- space
Space wars: apocalypse soon?
Bogged down on earth, the US looks toward space as battleground of the future
by Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange
12.03.03
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16092
October was a busy month for two U.S. Lieutenant Generals, and they weren't even in Iraq. Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin hit the headlines when it was discovered that he had been visiting fundamentalist Christian churches across the country delivering speeches sprinkled with anti-Muslim bigotry. Dressed in full military regalia, Lt. Gen. Boykin equated the "war on terrorism" with the "war against Satan," disparaged Islam, and claimed that President Bush was "appointed by God."
While Lt. Gen. Boykin's remarks had an Apocalypse Now vibe to them, the other Lieutenant General -- Lt. Gen. Edward Anderson, a deputy commander of US Northern Command -- was more focused on Apocalypse Soon: He told an audience at a geospatial intelligence conference in New Orleans that war in space was, well, pretty much inevitable.
Lt. Gen. Boykin's defenders claimed that he's a "true believer" who was merely exercising his free speech rights. Critics argued that Boykin's anti-Muslim remarks made him a poor choice to be part of the new secretive Pentagon squad set up to coordinate intelligence on terrorists and hunt down Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other high-profile targets. As of this writing Lt. Gen. Boykin's fate has yet to be decided.
Lt. Gen. Anderson's remarks stirred up only a few headlines, caused a slight rumble on the Internet, and then drifted off into the media-saturated ether.
In this day and age, anti-Muslim-war-against-terrorism speechifying trumps warnings of real wars just about every time.
China's space program: The irritability factor
The New Orleans conference was held about the same time China became only the third country to put a man into space. When asked about this development, Lt. Gen. Anderson told his audience that in his view, "it will not be long before space becomes a battleground."
"Our military forces ... depend very, very heavily on space capabilities," Lt. Gen. Anderson, who was formerly a Deputy Commander-in-Chief of US Space Command, said. The Chinese "can see that one of the ways that they can certainly diminish our capabilities will be to attack the space systems."
At the same conference, former defense department official Rich Haver pointed out that the day when the US commonly uses space as a launching pad for all types of exotic weapons is not that far off. Haver, who worked for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before becoming the vice president for intelligence strategy at Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, told the conferees: "I believe space is the place we will fight in the next 20 years."
While "there are executive orders that say we don't want to do that... [and] there's been a long-standing US policy to try to keep space a peaceful place... we have in space assets absolutely essential to the conduct of our military operations, absolutely essential to our national security," Haver added.
"When the true history of the Cold War is written and all the classified items are finally unclassified," Haver continued, "I believe that historians will note that it was in space that a significant degree of this country's ability to win the Cold War was embedded."
Responding to a question about the Chinese space launch, Haver pointed out that "the Chinese are telling us they're there, and I think if we ever wind up in a confrontation again with any one of the major powers who has a space capability we will find space is a battleground."
In mid-November, Chinese state media announced further plans to launch up to 11 satellites in the next 14 months and to launch a second manned space craft by 2005.
In some Washington circles, China has always been seen as a potential military threat. Earlier this year, Aaron Friedberg, a China specialist and Princeton University professor, was added to vice president Dick Cheney's staff as deputy national security advisor and director of policy planning. "He's a China-threat person without being hysterical about it," said John Gershman, an Asia specialist at New York University. "But his appointment is a clear sign that the cooperation that has emerged between the US and China on the war on terrorism and North Korea is entirely tactical, and that Cheney is still inclined to see China as a strategic competitor."
Friedberg, who has received nearly $300,000 from two conservative foundations -- the Smith-Richardson Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation -- wrote in a November 2000 piece for "Commentary" magazine ("The Struggle for Mastery in Asia"), that "over the course of the next several decades there is a good chance that the United States will find itself engaged in an open and intense geopolitical rivalry with the People's Republic of China (PRC)." Economic competition could give way to a military conflict if "a single catalytic event," occurred "such as a showdown over Taiwan," which "could transform the U.S.-China relationship virtually overnight."
Friedberg was a co-signer of the 1997 founding charter of Bill Kristol's Project for the New American Century (PNAC) which among other things called for a new "'Reaganite' policy of military strength and moral clarity."
In the fall of 2002, the Washington Times' Bill Gertz wrote of a report sent to Congress by the Pentagon which claimed China was developing "exotic weapons" including "high-technology arms" such as "laser weapons and radio-frequency bombs, to boost its [China's] ability to successfully carry out warfare against the United States and other advanced military powers."
But the US may not only have China's space program to contend with. In early November, the European Union published a 60-page white paper titled "A New European Frontier for an Expanding Union," urging the allocation of more resources on space technologies.
"Space is not only an adventure, it is also an opportunity. Europe cannot afford to miss out," the white paper read. According to European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin, Europe faces two real risks if it does not adopt a new approach to space policy: "Europe may run the risk of declining as a space power and space companies could also suffer because of weak commercial markets, and critical knowledge and skills could be permanently lost to Europe."
Booting up the Chinese threat is as old as, well, China itself. Conservatives and neoconservatives have long been wary of China and apprehensive about its superpower potential. Lev Navrozov, who founded the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies in 1978, recently wrote of his intent to establish "a unique Chinese geostrategic research institute employing the most sophisticated Chinese scientists, scholars and thinkers from among the Chinese emigre dissidents in the United States" whose "purpose is to convince the public that China is a geostrategic successor" to the former Soviet Union.
And Charles R. Smith, President and CEO of SOFTWAR, a consulting company specializing in cyber technology and security issues, and a columnist for the right wing NewsMax.com, recently charged that the Chinese space program "is designed for war" and Chinese leaders will be sharing its "space images with its allies, including North Korea."
Seeking the strategic high ground
Since the beginning of armed conflicts armies have struggled to control the high ground to more easily rain down death upon their adversaries. From the Reagan Administration onward, the US has been developing a space-based missile defense system -- the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as "Star Wars" -- that would employ laser weaponry orbiting the earth to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles. While billions have been spent on testing nuclear physicist Edward Teller's dream-child, many scientists claim that not much has been concretely accomplished.
During the first Gulf War, the US "used sophisticated satellite technology to pinpoint Iraqi targets" which gave it "an unprecedented view of the battleground, showing every move that the Iraqi armies were making during the war," writes Kevin Bonsor in a piece called "How Space Wars Will Work." "Satellite imagery became the main source of information on the Iraqi army during the war" and the Global Positioning System (GPS) -- a constellation of satellites orbiting Earth -- "was used by soldiers on the ground to determine their bearings."
Now, writes Bonsor, "The new high ground is space." According to Bonsor, the U.S. Space Command's Vision for 2020 report recommends "that space weapons must be developed to protect U.S. satellites, and other space vehicles, as other countries develop the ability to launch spacecraft into space."
Lt. Gen. Anderson's message at the New Orleans confab may have been surprising in its directness, but he wasn't staking out new ground. Two years ago, he told the House Armed Services Committee that "We must prepare now to ensure our continued access to space and deny space to others if necessary."
Back in 1996, Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Space Command, Joseph W. Ashy, was quoted in Aviation Week and Space Technology: "Some people don't want to hear this, and it sure isn't in vogue, but-absolutely -- we're going to fight in space. We're going to fight from space and we're going to fight into space. . . . We will engage terrestrial targets someday -- ships, airplanes, land targets -- from space."
A year later, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space, Keith R. Hall, speaking at the National Space Club said, "With regard to space dominance, we have it, we like it and we're going to keep it."
-------- spies
Blair defends intelligence on Saddam weapons
LONDON (AFP)
Dec 03, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031203152456.tslk233q.html
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday he had confidence in intelligence produced by his government before the Iraq war which claimed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
"I believe entirely in the information that was given to us at the time," Blair told parliament when asked by a deputy from his own Labour party if a failure to find such weapons would lead to high-level resignations.
"We will carry on the search for those weapons through the Iraq Survey Group," said the prime minister, referring to the Anglo-American body of 1,400 scientists and military experts scouring Iraq.
"I think they should be allowed to complete their work before anyone makes up their mind."
Blair used concerns that Saddam was pursuing the development of banned weapons as the main justification for the US and British invasion of Iraq in March, but that argument has been strongly disputed ever since.
In May, a BBC report alleged that Blair's office had "sexed up" intelligence in the run-up to the war.
The subsequent suicide of David Kelly, the British weapons expert who was the source of the BBC report, and a judicial inquiry into his death, plunged Blair into the biggest crisis of his six years in office.
Speaking during his weekly question-and-answer session in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Blair said the security situation in Iraq "has been very difficult".
"Despite the terrorist attacks there is much that is valuable that has been actually done for the Iraqi people and that is why it is important that we continue to fight the terrorists," he said.
Blair added that it was vital "to make progress for the Iraqi people and then to prepare for the handover of power to the Iraqi people which will give Iraq democratic government for the first time".
----
CIA stands firm on Iraq assessment
By PAUL KORING
Globe and Mail,
Dec. 3, 2003
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031203.wxcia1203/EmailBNStory/Front/
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has issued a spirited defence of the now-suspect assertions that Iraq had secret arsenals of germ and chemical weapons, and says second-guessing its work may undermine analysts' willingness to make bold assessments in the future.
Although the CIA now concedes that it may have been completely wrong, its wide-ranging defence maintains that the conclusions it reached in its October, 2002, National Intelligence Estimate were justified and credible. The report served as the basis for Washington's efforts to persuade the world of the real and imminent danger posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime and underpinned U.S. President George W. Bush's justification for waging war to topple the dictator.
"If we eventually are proven wrong -- that is, that there were no weapons of mass destruction and the WMD programs were dormant or abandoned -- the American people will be told the truth; we would have it no other way," writes Stuart Cohen, a senior CIA official and acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which produced the report.
"I remain convinced that no reasonable person could have viewed the totality of the information that the intelligence community had at its disposal -- literally millions of pages -- and reached any conclusions or alternative views that were profoundly different from those that we reached," Mr. Cohen says in a statement posted on the agency's website.
Iraq didn't use chemical or biological weapons against invading U.S. forces last spring. In the seven months since the fall of Mr. Hussein's regime, no trace of active programs to produce banned weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological or nuclear -- has been unearthed, despite a massive U.S. effort and now-unfettered access. Only a single mobile laboratory, which may or may not be linked to germ-warfare production, and some components buried since the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf have been found.
Mr. Cohen also warns of the risks to future intelligence estimates if the spy community becomes preoccupied with allegations about past failures.
"The need to confront these charges [has] forced senior intelligence officials throughout U.S. intelligence to spend much of their time looking backward," he says in the statement. "I worry about the opportunity costs of this sort of preoccupation, but I also worry that analysts labouring under a barrage of allegations will become more and more disinclined to make judgments."
Mr. Cohen seeks to defend the U.S. intelligence community by debunking what he calls "10 myths" that have arisen since the war.
Myth No. 1 is that the "NIE favored going to war." Myth No. 10 is that the "NIE asserted that there were 'large WMD stockpiles' and because we haven't found them, Baghdad had no WMD."
He blames "media frenzy" for the now-widespread view that the spies were wrong.
Mr. Cohen's "debunking" essentially rests on two broad justifications: that the whole world, not just U.S. spies, had for the past 15 years been agreed that Mr. Hussein's regime was concealing weapons of mass destruction; and that no political pressure was applied to the CIA or other agencies to spin its findings and thus underpin the President's decision to go to war.
"The NIE judged with high confidence that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of the 150 kilometres limit imposed by the UN Security Council, and with moderate confidence that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons," Mr. Cohen says in the statement. "These judgments were essentially the same conclusions reached by the United Nations and by a wide array of intelligence services -- friendly and unfriendly alike. The only government in the world that claimed that Iraq was not working on, and did not have, biological and chemical weapons or prohibited missile systems was in Baghdad."
Mr. Cohen also challenges critics who suggest that U.S. intelligence agencies -- which had been proved woefully wrong after the 1991 Persian Gulf war when it emerged that Iraq had an advanced nuclear-weapons program about which U.S. spies knew nothing -- were determined not to get caught flat-footed again.
"In no case were any of the judgments 'hyped' to compensate for earlier underestimates," he says.
Finally, he credits the brutal effectiveness of the now-fallen Baathist regime for the failure -- so far -- of U.S. and international weapons experts to find any evidence of poison-gas or germ-warfare arsenals.
----
Taiwan Arrests Officer on Spy Charges
December 3, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Taiwan-China-Spy-Case.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Taiwan has arrested an intelligence officer on charges of spying for rival China to raise money to pay off stock market debts, the military said. It was the third espionage case announced by the military in less than a month.
The Defense Ministry identified the intelligence officer as Maj. Pai Chin-yang, 42, who grew up in Hong Kong and worked in the military's intelligence bureau for about two decades.
Pai, arrested Nov. 26, did not immediately comment.
A military statement, issued late Tuesday, did not describe the secrets allegedly stolen by Pai for China. The military also didn't provide details about his work, saying only that he was involved in administrative affairs and didn't have a record of ``outstanding performance.''
But the mass-market United Daily News quoted unidentified sources as saying that because Pai could speak the Cantonese dialect popular in Hong Kong and Chinese communities worldwide, he was trained to infiltrate overseas Chinese groups.
The military said that in 2002, Pai ``began indulging in stock trading and had lost control, resulting in financial mismanagement and massive debts he couldn't repay.''
In early 2003, Pai went to Thailand on a holiday and made contact with Chinese agents, the military said. After returning, his ``financial situation showed clear improvements,'' the military said.
Last month, the military announced two other alleged spy cases. One case involved a former intelligence officer and an official still in the service. Details weren't provided about what kind of secrets they allegedly stole.
The other case involved an engineer working on missile development who was accused of selling technology secrets to China.
China and Taiwan have been locked in a tense standoff since the Communists took over the mainland in 1949. Taiwan has refused to submit to Beijing's rule, and Chinese leaders have threatened to use force to take over the island, 100 miles off China's coast.
Both sides are believed to have extensive spy networks on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan's military said that there has been an increase in Chinese spying since the rivals have relaxed restrictions on relations in recent years.
The military statement also said that democratic reforms have made Taiwan a freer society and an easier target for spies.
``We must also add that the public's awareness of the enemy's threat has also become relaxed'' amid greater social exchanges, the statement said.
--------
CIA Agent With Leaked ID Poses for Photos
December 3, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-CIA-Leak.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- A CIA agent whose identity was leaked to the media sat for Vanity Fair photographs with her ex-diplomat husband in their Jaguar convertible near the White House.
In the picture, taken Nov. 18, Valerie Plame is wearing a head scarf and sunglasses to obscure her image.
``Ms. Plame came home while the photo shoot was being set up at their home in Washington and she became comfortable with the idea of being photographed, as long as she could maintain her anonymity,'' said Beth Kseniak, a Vanity Fair spokeswoman.
In addition to the car photo, the magazine has a smaller photo of Plame at home, reading a newspaper, in which the 40ish blonde's face is obscured. The photos and accompanying article were on New York newsstands on Wednesday and comes out elsewhere next week.
Investigators want to know who leaked the undercover CIA officer's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in July. Plame is married to former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who has said he believes his wife's identity was disclosed as retribution for his assertions that the Bush administration exaggerated Iraq's nuclear capabilities to build the case for war.
The leaker could be charged with a felony if identified.
-------- un
U.N. Plans Long - Term Monitoring of Iraq
December 3, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Weapons-Inspectors.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- U.N. weapons inspectors are planning for possible monitoring of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile programs despite being barred from the country by the United States, according to a report to the U.N. Security Council.
The quarterly report released Wednesday by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, outlines a range of activities undertaken by the U.N. inspectors to seek new information about Iraq's weapons programs and to prepare for a possible future role.
U.N. inspectors were pulled out of Iraq in March, just before the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. After the war, the United States deployed its own search teams and refused to allow U.N. inspectors to return.
The Security Council has said it will discuss UNMOVIC's mandate at a future date. But American officials have said the United States doesn't want to take up the issue until the U.S. hunt, now led by former U.N. inspector David Kay, is completed, probably in June.
Despite being barred from Iraq, UNMOVIC said it continues to seek information about Iraq's banned weapons programs from governments, from material in the media, and from post-war commercial satellite imagery. These photos of Baghdad, Mosul and other areas ``where there have been concentrations of inspection sites'' were compared with pre-war images, it said.
The commission also described what it knew about various Iraqi missile programs.
It noted that Iraq had considerable capabilities, but that there was little evidence that Iraq had tried to go beyond the Al-Samoud 2 missile, which had a range beyond the 92-mile limit allowed under U.N. resolutions.
The report assesses ``what Iraq could have developed in the future with such knowledge and technology,'' and says UNMOVIC would have liked to investigate the possibility that Iraq was trying to use a first-stage boost motor with the Al-Samoud 2 to increase its range.
On another issue, UNMOVIC said advanced testing and analysis had indicated that the strain of anthrax found on R400 bombs that Iraq declared that it unilaterally destroyed was the same strain that it had earlier declared to have weaponized.
-------- us
Military establishing global network
12/3/2003
by Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service
http://www.af.mil/stories/story.asp?storyID=123006134
WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- The U.S. military is working to establish a state-of-the-art global communications network designed to provide real-time information to warfighters.
The network will gather massive amounts of information and provide users "the right information at the right time," said Ron Jost, Department of Defense director of wireless communications.
The backbone of the system will be an Internet-based Global Information Grid that will feature 101 satellite-supported communications sites set up worldwide, Jost said.
Another component of DOD's future communications system is the Joint Tactical Radio System -- a single family of radios designed to replace incompatible units currently in use by each of the services, Jost said.
Advanced computer systems and sophisticated software will allow users in the field to "ask" the system for real-time battlefield information, Jost said.
"If I'm out in the field, and I need to know what's on the other side of the hill, rather than get data that's 24 or 48 hours old, I can actually make that request to get (current) information that might have come from (an unmanned aerial vehicle)" or other sources, he said.
Information security "is (designed) within the fabric of the system," Jost said. Passwords and other safeguards will be used to restrict access and monitor system usage, he said.
-------- propaganda wars
White House Changes Story on Bush Plane Incident
December 3, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-bush-iraq-pilot.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Wednesday changed its story of a British Airways pilot's spotting of Air Force One during President Bush's stealth trip to Iraq last week.
The original story -- which held that the airline's pilot had talked to Air Force One and that he kept the secret of Bush's Thanksgiving Day flight to Baghdad -- had been told by White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett to reporters as he sought to portray the drama of Bush's trip.
But after British Airways denied such a conversation took place, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on Wednesday the airline's pilot never contacted Air Force One. ``The conversation was between the British Airways plane and the London control tower,'' McClellan said.
It was also the London control tower, not an Air Force One pilot as in the original story, that misidentified Air Force One as a much smaller ``Gulfstream 5'' aircraft, McClellan said.
He said Air Force One pilots overheard the conversation while flying over the west coast of England, and the British Airways plane could be identified by its call sign when it spoke to the tower.
McClellan declined to say whether Air Force One had sent a false electronic identification or whether controllers were in on the deception.
British Airways said it could not confirm the new account.
White House officials have said the elaborate secrecy surrounding the trip was needed to ensure Bush's security in Iraq, but some critics accused the administration of dramatizing the trip for political purposes.
CHANGE OF STORY
McClellan explained the change in the White House story by saying, ``I don't think everybody was clear on exactly how that conversation happened.''
The White House has come under criticism for backtracking on its account of other high profile events.
In October it conceded it had helped with a large ``Mission Accomplished'' banner on an aircraft carrier where Bush announced in May that major fighting had ended in Iraq.
Bush had initially said his advance team did not put up the banner, whose message critics viewed as premature given continued attacks on occupying forces in Iraq.
The White House also acknowledged in July that a claim by Bush in his State of the Union address last January that Iraq tried to buy African uranium was based partly on forged documents.
British Airways said it could not confirm the White House's new version of the Air Force One story. ``We've had no reports from any of our pilots with regard to Air Force One,'' airline spokeswoman Honor Verrier said.
------- war crimes / genocide
Court Finds Rwanda Media Executives Guilty of Genocide
December 3, 2003
New York Times
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/africa/03CND-RWAN.html
ARUSHA, Tanzania Dec. 3 - In the first verdict of its kind since the Nuremberg trials, an international court today convicted three Rwandan news media executives of genocide for helping to incite a killing spree by machete-wielding gangs who slaughtered about 800,000 Tutsis in neighboring Rwanda in early 1994.
A three judge panel found that the three defendants used a radio station and a twice-monthly newspaper to inflame ethnic hatred that eventually led to massacres at churches, schools, hospitals and roadblocks. The radio station, dubbed Radio Machete in Rwanda, guided killers to specific victims, broadcasting the names, license plate numbers and hiding places of Tutsis.
The Rwanda genocide is considered the worst ethnic killing since the Holocaust. In 100 days, an estimated 10 percent of the Tutsis in Rwanda were wiped out, along with many moderates among the Hutus, who make up the majority of the population. The efficiency of the killers, who chased down the Tutsis at roadblocks and in the streets with sharpened sticks, nail-studded clubs and grenades, surpassed even that of the Nazis, some historians contend.
The United Nations, which failed to intervene during the genocide, set up the tribunal three months afterward to bring those who led the massacres to account.
Today's verdict was the first conviction of news media executives for crimes of genocide since 1946, when the famous Nuremberg tribunal sentenced the Nazi publisher Julius Streicher to hang for his vitriolic campaign against the Jews. The Arusha judges sentenced two defendants to life in prison and the third to 27 years, reducing it from the life term they said he deserved because his rights were violated early in the case.
"The power of the media to create and destroy human values comes with great responsibility," the court said in a 29-page summary of its judgment. "Those who control the media are accountable for its consequences."
Elated prosecutors heralded the decision as a significant victory. "This is really a ground-breaking decision," said Stephen Rapp, the prosecutor in the case.
"This is going to change things," said another prosecutor, Simone Monasebian.
John Floyd, who defended one of the executives, a newspaper editor named Hassan Ngeze, denounced the verdict as a major setback for free speech and an invitation to dictators to close down any media outlet that is out of favor.
"This is a terrible, terrible decision, the worst decision in the history of international justice," Mr. Floyd said. "This is very, very dangerous. This case would have been laughed out of an American court."
Two of the defendants, Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, were founders of RTLM radio station, which prosecutors said had a huge influence in a country where people primarily rely on the radio for news. The case against the two turned on the question of whether they intended to create a frenzy of violence, or simply failed to control the station.
The judges found that both men, as well as Ngeze, the newspaper editor, had to know that the broadcasts and articles would unleash violence given the political climate in Rwanda at the time. They cited the words of one witness who testified: "What RTLM did was almost to pour petrol, to spread petrol throughout the country little by little, so that one day it would be able to set fire to the whole country." Nahimana's attorney, Jean- Marie Biju-Duval, said the judges disregarded a raft of witnesses who testified that his client had only a slender connection to RTLM. "He was convicted as a symbolic scapegoat," he said.
Besides drawing a legal boundary between protected speech and criminal incitement to mass murder, the tribunal's judges and prosecutors said the case vindicated the court's painfully slow and hugely expensive approach to delivering justice in a region where impunity of the powerful has long been the rule.
The international court, one of three or four ad-hoc United Nations tribunals, has struggled in recent years to justify itself in the face of intense criticism of its handling of genocide cases. In nine years of adjudication, it has produced only 17 convictions despite having a staff of 872 and an annual budget of $88 million. By contrast, the criminal court at the Hague, set up to investigate alleged war crimes by the former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic and others during the Balkans war of the last decade, has achieved more than 30 convictions and guilty pleas in a decade of work.
Officials here say the Arusha court has suffered from a shortage of judges, lack of leadership in the prosecutor's office and periodic resistance from the Rwandan government. The tribunal hit a low point in 2002, when two organizations of genocide survivors in Rwanda urged people who had witnessed acts of genocide to withhold their testimony in the trials. The groups complained the court was too slow, that it failed to pursue rape charges and that it had hired defense investigators who had themselves participated in the killings.
But the tribunal officials said today's verdict, the second in a week, was a sign that the tribunal has overcome most of its troubles. The pace of trials has clearly picked up: in the past month, two new cases have begun against eight ministers of the interim Hutu regime that ruled during the course of the genocide. Four more verdicts are expected later this year.
Since August, the United Nations has given the court more judges and appointed a new lead prosecutor, Hassan Jallow, to replace Carla del Ponte, who was splitting her time between the Yugoslavia and Rwanda cases. Mr. Jallow has at least temporarily patched up relations with the Rwandan government and the survivor groups and is reviewing all the ongoing investigations in hope of meeting the United Nations' 2008 deadline for the tribunal to finish.
Still unresolved, however, is the contentious issue of what legal authority will pursue charges that members of Rwanda's current Tutsi-controlled government engineered the revenge killings of thousands of Hutus after they overthrew the Hutu's regime in the summer of 1994. Rwandan officials say they want to handle that inquiry themselves. Should the tribunal relinquish that investigation, some critics say, it will undermine trust that it delivers even-handed justice.
Moreover, one intrinsic flaw in the tribunal was underscored in the process. Today's proceeding, like all the others, took place at an international conference center in Arusha, one nation and 1,200 miles from the capital of Rwanda. The tribunal set up shop here because the United Nations considered post-conflict Rwanda to be too unsafe and too traumatized to host an international court.
But as a result, few Rwandans feel like they are a part of the process, except for the witnesses who are flown back and forth in the United Nations's twin-engine Beechcraft airplane.
What today's verdict will do, according to Rapp, the prosecutor, is make clear that the media directors are responsible for broadcasts and articles that incite violence, even if they are not in day-to-day control of their news outlets. In closing arguments, he argued that the defendants each caused more deaths than any single, machete-toting Hutu because they whip up a mass hysteria which fostered thousands of killers.
"The media was every bit as important as the weapons of war," he said in an interview.
--------
War Crimes Judges Sentence Serb to 27 Years in Massacre
December 3, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/europe/03TRIB.html
AMSTERDAM, Dec. 2 - War crimes judges for the United Nations jailed a Bosnian Serb army commander for 27 years on Tuesday for his confessed role in the notorious Srebrenica massacre in 1995. It was a stiffer sentence than prosecutors had requested.
Momir Nikolic, who pleaded guilty in May to persecuting non-Serbs in Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, wept and covered his face with his hands on hearing the judgment.
Mr. Nikolic, 48, was an assistant intelligence commander in the Bratunac Brigade, which encircled the United Nations safe area of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia. Serbian troops killed up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys after overrunning the enclave.
Under the plea deal, in which Mr. Nikolic agreed to testify against other commanders, he admitted one count of crimes against humanity, and prosecutors dropped four other charges. The prosecution recommended 15 to 20 years in prison; the defense sought a 10-year sentence.
But Judge Liu Daqun said either punishment would have been too light.
The tribunal said it was the first time a sentence imposed after a plea deal had deviated from the suggestions.
Mr. Nikolic "saw with his own eyes the separation of men from their families; he heard the cries of children as they saw their fathers taken away; he saw the fear in the eyes of the women pushed on to buses as they knew that the fate of their fathers, husbands and sons was beyond their control," Judge Liu said.
Tribunal judges have already established that Serbs committed genocide in Srebrenica. Mr. Nikolic admitted to attending army meetings that July at which plans to execute Muslim men were openly discussed.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
U.S. Court Strikes Down Part of Anti-Terrorism Law
Wed December 3, 2003
(Reuters)
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3934607&fromEmail=true
SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down part of a 1996 federal anti-terrorism law, saying the government's definition of what constituted "material support" to foreign terror groups was too vague.
At issue is a statute that was the first to criminalize offering "material support" to foreign terror groups. That law was the precursor to the controversial 2001 Patriot Act which expanded the government's intelligence-gathering powers and increased penalties for activities classified as terrorist.
In their decision, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an earlier preliminary ruling that prohibited the provision of "personnel" and "training" to groups designated by the United States as "terrorist organizations."
The court also ruled that before applying the law the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a donor to a group branded as a "foreign terrorist organization" knew of its unlawful activities.
"The prohibition on providing "training" and "personnel" is impermissibly overbroad and thus void for vagueness under the First and Fifth Amendments," the court ruled.
That "personnel" provision was used to indict "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh and six people in Buffalo, New York knows as the "Lackawanna Six," said David Cole, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights which brought the case.
He added the ruling that covers the Western states in the 9th Circuit could make it tougher for the Bush administration to prosecute individuals charged with aiding designated terrorist groups.
"Virtually all of the terrorism criminal prosecutions since 9/11 have relied on this material support statute and many of them have relied on the provision regarding 'personnel." Cole said.
U.S. Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said the decision was being reviewed.
The case stemmed from a lawsuit brought by a human rights group and two individuals who sought to provide "material support" to the nonviolent humanitarian and political activities of Kurdish and Tamil groups designated as "foreign terrorist organizations" by the Secretary of State.
That lawsuit challenged the 1996 law which made it a criminal offense punishable by 10 years in jail to train representatives of "terrorist" organizations in the United States to lobby peacefully for their cause.
-------- homeland security
Think Tank Urges Information Sharing Network Could Help Combat Terrorism
By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29572-2003Dec2?language=printer
Crucial data about individuals that could thwart terrorist attacks are not being sufficiently shared among local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, according to a report released yesterday by a task force of business executives, technologists, academics and security experts.
Too many federal government agencies remain trapped in a Cold War mind-set of keeping information closely guarded, the report says, rather than sharing it among organizations.
The result: The complex but vital task of spotting potential terrorists before they strike is undermined because investigators cannot quickly reach across jurisdictional boundaries to examine such things as state driver's license records and financial transaction data.
The report, sponsored by the Markle Foundation, a New York-based think tank that focuses on technology policy, calls on President Bush to issue a series of executive orders directing rapid deployment of an information-sharing network that can be easily used by all investigators.
The Department of Homeland Security "does not appear to have taken the necessary steps to build the communications and sharing network required to deal with the threat," the report says. "Indeed, the DHS has yet to articulate a vision of how it will link federal, state and local agencies."
But the report also calls for clearer guidelines on how to share data more broadly without compromising personal privacy. The authors, who include privacy advocates, argue that privacy concerns need not conflict with the need for more data sharing, as long as individual protections are firmly in place.
The report laments that controversy over privacy issues helped kill some government efforts to use some privately held data, such as consumer purchasing records, to help anticipate terrorist activity. Had the administration led a national dialogue to craft strong privacy guidelines to prevent abuse of such data, a controversy might not have erupted over JetBlue Airways' recent decision to release passenger lists to help develop terrorist tracking systems, the report says.
"But our nation's efforts continue to suffer from the absence of the national vision and public discussion called for in our first report" issued last year, said the authors.
A DHS spokesman did not return a call seeking comment on the report.
Authors of the report include Eric Benhamou, chairman of 3Com Corp.; John Gage, chief researcher of Sun Microsystems Inc.; Morton H. Halperin, director of the Open Society Institute; Gilman Louie, chief executive of In-Q-Tel, a venture fund for CIA projects; and Mike Leavitt, recently named head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who was the Republican governor of Utah during the task force's work.
The project was headed by Markle President Zoe Baird and venture capitalist James Barksdale, and was done in conjunction with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Brookings Institution.
The report argues that current efforts seem more focused on pushing data up the ladder to small groups of federal decision makers than on spreading the information around the country so local agencies can effectively analyze and use it.
The report cites a recent General Accounting Office study that was critical of the inability of states to electronically link their driver's license databases, which offers one of the easiest ways to counter efforts to obtain false identities.
State motor vehicle administrators have been seeking federal funding for a modernization project for driver's license data, but so far Congress has not provided it.
"At the present . . . we're not seeing enough sharing to develop relationships on terrorist intentions," Baird said in an interview. "Each agency is concerned about losing control over the information and concerned about privacy. Both of those can be solved with an executive order."
The report acknowledges that one of the most controversial areas is the use of private-sector data. That might include health records, credit data or information about Internet use that can be electronically monitored. The original Total Awareness Program envisioned potentially broad use of such data to help develop behavior-prediction tools to thwart terrorist activity.
The report argues that even if some of that information is available in the public domain, the government should not gather or use the data unless it can demonstrate strong connections to possible threats.
"At a minimum, there should be a requirement that the information be relevant to the counterterrorism mission, and that this showing be documents and subject to periodic audit," the report said.
--------
Ridge: Tech Cos. Must Help Fight Terror
December 3, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Computer-Security-Lobbying.html
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) -- Technology companies must cooperate in the battle against cyberterrorism -- or submit to government-imposed security regulations -- Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and other senior officials said Wednesday.
``The enemies of freedom use the same techniques as hackers do,'' Ridge said to 350 industry executives gathered for the first National Cyber Security Summit. ``We must be as diligent and determined as the hackers.''
The two-day conference, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security and more than a dozen tech companies and trade groups, was the first formal brainstorming session to draft security guidelines and cyberattack warning systems.
Ridge said the department intends to educate security managers in industries ranging from banking to transportation, as well as at least 50 million Americans with home computers, about the potential dangers.
The conference comes amid debate about the best way to protect the nation's vast computer network against attacks that range from time-wasting and costly worms and viruses to terrorists who might break into government servers in search of sensitive data about nuclear programs or the president's travel schedule.
Silicon Valley, which generally takes a hands-off approach to regulation, is opposed to formal policies and guidelines.
The Business Software Alliance trade group introduced a survey Wednesday claiming that at least 78 percent of information security managers believe their organizations are already able to defend themselves against a ``major cyberattack.'' The organization also released a detailed checklist for companies to ensure that their computer and telecommunication equipment was adequately prepared for what one government official called a ``cyber 9/11.''
The Bush administration has generally been receptive to Silicon Valley's lobbying efforts. But Bob Liscouski, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection -- a new agency within the Department of Homeland Security -- said the government reserves the right to wield the stick rather than dangle the carrot when it comes to cybersecurity.
``We need demonstrable results so we can say the private sector is taking the problem seriously,'' Liscouski said. ``If we can't say that, I can tell you there are a lot of people who will legislate to tell you what to do.''
Given the daunting potential scope of cyberterrorism, even some technology industry leaders say that government regulations might make sense. Although suggested guidelines and recommendations are a step in the right direction, an attack could come if a single laptop containing sensitive data is lost or stolen from a national weapons laboratory.
``Everyone in business says they want to or should be secure, but that's like everyone saying they want to or should be thin,'' said Ira Winkler, chief security strategist for Hewlett-Packard Co.
``If recommendations are not mandatory, companies will say they don't have the $10 million to invest in security, especially in this economy,'' Winkler said. ``But if you can tell shareholders that the expenditures are mandatory, the shareholders will understand.''
Executives at the conference met yesterday in working groups to advise the Homeland Security Department on subjects that include how to set up early warning networks and encourage companies to design better software. One early idea under consideration: professional licenses for software writers, similar to those for doctors and engineers.
The executives said they hope they'll be able to share ideas with government officials in more formal meetings, including quarterly conferences and an annual summit.
AP Technology Writer Ted Bridis in Washington contributed to this report.
On the Net:
U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team: http://www.us-cert.gov
-------- police
FBI Urges Keeping Anthrax Probe
Secret Information Could Be Disclosed in Lawsuit
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29965-2003Dec2.html
Disclosing information about the FBI's investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks as part of a lawsuit could compromise the probe, alerting potential suspects that they are being watched and possibly leading to the destruction of evidence, the FBI has warned in court papers.
FBI supervisor Richard L. Lambert, responding to a lawsuit filed by a scientist labeled "a person of interest" in the anthrax investigation, told a federal judge that releasing information about the widespread probe would afford possible suspects "a voyeur's window into an active, pending and ongoing criminal investigation."
Lambert, in a declaration filed last month, also said release of the information sought by lawyers for Steven J. Hatfill could reveal secrets about the government's bioweapons defenses, possibly giving terrorists crucial assistance.
The government asked U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to stop the lawsuit filed by Hatfill, who alleged that the nation's top law enforcement officials violated his privacy and ruined his chances of getting a job by insinuating publicly that he was behind the deadly mailings of envelopes containing anthrax spores to media and government offices. Five people were killed and 17 others fell ill in the attacks during September and October 2001.
Hatfill's attorneys argued yesterday that the government's predictions were overblown, calling the government's desire to keep the investigation secret a "monumental irony."
In court papers filed late yesterday, they noted that Hatfill, a former researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., sued the government after Attorney General John D. Ashcroft publicly labeled him "a person of interest" in the investigation last year.
"It was Mr. Ashcroft, not Mr. Hatfill, who decided to speak publicly about investigators' interest in Mr. Hatfill," attorney Thomas Connolly wrote. "Now, however -- now that they have been called to answer for their illegal actions -- the defendants suddenly express grave concern for the secrecy and integrity of the investigation they themselves turned into one of the premier media circuses of 2002-2003."
The Justice Department wants Walton to stop Hatfill's privacy violation claims while the agency moves to dismiss his other remaining allegations, most of which involve alleged violations of his constitutional rights and of Justice Department policy.
Hatfill's "complaint is rife with purported details from the investigation that the agency defendants cannot admit or deny without revealing sensitive investigative information," the government lawyers argued in one court document. In his declaration, Lambert told Walton that the investigation is "unprecedented in the FBI's 95-year history" and has already required 231,000 agent hours.
Connolly responded that Hatfill has simple questions about the official leaks and the lack of evidence against him. He said the Justice Department was predicting a panoply of discovery questions that Hatfill has no interest in asking.
"The agency defendants simply have not established, nor can they, that Dr. Hatfill's lawsuit will disclose any more sensitive information than they themselves have already disclosed."
--------
FBI defends secrecy in anthrax probe
December 03, 2003
By Curt Anderson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20031202-100815-6813r.htm
Disclosure of what the FBI knows about the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks could enable terrorists to engineer biological weapons to escape detection, the FBI says in documents filed in response to a lawsuit by a scientist labeled a "person of interest" in the case.
Citing the criminal investigation and national security concerns, the Justice Department is trying to persuade a federal judge to delay the lawsuit filed by Stephen J. Hatfill, who contends that the government invaded his privacy and ruined his reputation by leaking information to reporters implicating him in the attacks.
Mr. Hatfill once worked as a researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md. Mr. Hatfill says he never worked with infectious diseases such as anthrax, however.
Mr. Hatfill has denied any role in the attacks, and his lawsuit seeks to clear his name and recover unspecified monetary damages.
Richard L. Lambert, the FBI inspector in charge of what is being called the "Amerithrax" investigation, says in a court document Mr. Hatfill's lawsuit could jeopardize the probe and expose national secrets related to U.S. bioweapons defense measures.
"In the hands of those hostile to the U.S., this valuable intelligence could aid state sponsors of terrorism or terrorist organizations in their efforts to genetically engineer or alter their anthrax bioweapons to 'spoof' or escape detection," Mr. Lambert said.
Disclosure also would make public the vulnerabilities and capabilities of U.S. government installations to bioweapons attacks and expose sensitive intelligence collection sources and methods, Mr. Lambert said.
There is no proven link between terrorist groups and the October 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five persons and sickened 17 others. The government, however, repeatedly has warned of al Qaeda's interest in using anthrax or other chemical and biological weapons to mount attacks.
In the FBI document, filed Nov. 21 in U.S. District Court in the District, Mr. Lambert calls the anthrax probe "unprecedented in the FBI's 95-year history" because of its scope and complexity. In all, the investigation has consumed about 231,000 agent hours, he said.
Mr. Lambert described the investigation as "active and ongoing" and said agents' work is divided between checking into individuals who could be linked to the attacks and an intensive scientific effort to determine how the spores were made using "cutting-edge forensic techniques and analysis."
The court papers stop short of confirming that Mr. Hatfill is among those being investigated.
Mr. Hatfill was labeled a "person of interest" in the probe in August 2002 by Attorney General John Ashcroft and says in his lawsuit that FBI agents have had him under surveillance around the clock.
That surveillance - which once led agents in a vehicle to run over Mr. Hatfill's foot on a D.C. street - has dropped off in recent weeks, according to one person close to Mr. Hatfill and two federal law-enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The officials, however, cautioned against drawing the conclusion that Mr. Hatfill no longer was of interest to investigators.
Mr. Lambert said in the court document Mr. Hatfill's lawsuit could force the FBI to divulge its "interest in specific individuals," who could then destroy or hide evidence, flee the country, intimidate witnesses or make up alibis. None of these individuals are identified.
The Justice Department is seeking to delay Mr. Hatfill's case until a decision is made on a forthcoming government attempt to dismiss the lawsuit entirely. Mr. Hatfill's lawyers were preparing a response yesterday opposing the delay.
Mr. Hatfill's lawsuit is seeking unspecified monetary damages from Mr. Ashcroft, the FBI and Justice Department and other current and former officials. His attorneys contend that the government linked him to the attacks to make it seem as if the investigation was making progress.
-------- prisons / prisoners
U.S. Allows Lawyer For Citizen Held as 'Enemy Combatant'
Reversal Comes on Eve of Court Filing
By Jerry Markon and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29796-2003Dec2.html
The Bush administration reversed course last night in one of the most closely watched cases in the war on terrorism, saying a U.S. citizen jailed after being captured with Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan would be allowed access to a lawyer.
Government officials had argued for more than a year that Yaser Esam Hamdi was not entitled to counsel after they had designated him an "enemy combatant." The change in policy came on the eve of a government filing due today at the U.S. Supreme Court, which had been asked by a federal public defender in Virginia to review Hamdi's detention.
In a brief statement, Defense Department officials said Hamdi would be allowed to see a lawyer "as a matter of discretion and military policy." But the statement emphasized that the government did not feel obligated to make a lawyer available and that the decision "should not be treated as a precedent." While it is rare for the administration to reverse itself on a major component of the anti-terror crackdown begun after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the decision likely will improve the government's position before the Supreme Court.
Hamdi's case has come to symbolize the conflicting arguments in the ongoing anti-terror efforts. The government convinced a federal appeals court in Richmond that the military -- and not the courts -- had the sole authority to wage war and that courts should defer to battlefield judgments. More than 100 law professors and other legal experts argued that no U.S. citizen could be held without a lawyer.
The public defender seeking to represent Hamdi, Frank W. Dunham Jr., said he intends to press forward with his Supreme Court petition because it also calls for Hamdi to be allowed to contest his combatant designation in a civil or military court.
"I think this takes some of the sizzle out of our petition, but it doesn't moot it," Dunham said last night. He was told late yesterday that he would be allowed for the first time to see Hamdi in the next several days. Hamdi is being held at the Charleston Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, S.C., after a transfer from the brig in Norfolk.
Erwin Chemerinsky, one of the law professors who had joined Dunham in arguing Hamdi's case before the courts, praised the government's decision but said Hamdi's effort to challenge his detention packs more legal significance.
"If the government wins and can hold Hamdi without any due process, then having a lawyer doesn't mean very much," he said.
The move does not affect the cases of the two other men still known to be held as so-called enemy combatants: Jose Padilla, who allegedly plotted to detonate a dirty bomb, and Bradley University graduate Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who was placed under military control in June after President Bush said he was an al Qaeda sleeper agent.
One administration official said the Pentagon's reversal came after months of pressure from Justice Department lawyers, who felt that Hamdi or any other U.S. citizen detained as an enemy combatant should be provided a lawyer after national security concerns have waned. "There's a general understanding that this is the correct policy for U.S. citizens," the official said. "It's the right thing to do."
The Defense Department had argued against such a policy, the official said, but apparently reversed course. Pentagon officials acknowledged in the statement that the department had "completed its intelligence collection with Hamdi" and had determined that giving him access to a lawyer would not harm national security.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to comment on any aspect of the agency's deliberative process or whether Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had signed off on it. He also declined to say whether the new policy was intended to head off the Supreme Court appeal.
A change in policy was first hinted at two weeks ago during a federal appeals court hearing in New York for Padilla.
Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, arguing for the government, suggested that Padilla might be granted access to a lawyer once his value as an intelligence source ended, although he said the decision should be up to the executive branch and not the courts.
While fighting with Taliban troops in Afghanistan, Hamdi was captured by Northern Alliance forces in November 2001. He was placed in the Navy brig in Norfolk when it was learned that he was born in Baton Rouge, La. His case entered the legal system after Dunham saw news reports about Hamdi's arrival in Virginia and tried to see him.
The government objected and justified Hamdi's detention with a Defense Department declaration that Hamdi had joined a Taliban military unit, received training, and acknowledged loyalty to the Taliban when captured.
A federal judge twice ordered the military to grant Dunham access to Hamdi, but a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond ruled in January that the Constitution gives the executive branch the responsibility to wage war and that the courts must yield to the military. It was considered an important victory for the government in the war on terrorism.
By an 8 to 4 vote, the full slate of active 4th Circuit judges let the decision stand in July, which paved the way for the appeal to the Supreme Court.
Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this report.
-------- terrorism
Two U.S. Embassies Sound Terrorist Alerts
December 3, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/africa/03WARN.html
NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec. 2 - Two American embassies warned Tuesday of possible terror attacks against two hotels in Kenya and a housing compound for Westerners in Saudi Arabia.
The Kenyan police said they were investigating reports that terrorists had packed a truck with explosives for an imminent attack.
In one case, Jonathan Koskei, the senior police official for Nairobi, said the American Embassy had alerted Kenyan authorities three days ago about reports that terrorists were planning to bomb a hotel.
In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, terrorists had a housing compound under "active surveillance," said the American Embassy spokeswoman, Carol Kalin. She said other housing complexes may also be targets.
--------
Embassies in Kenya and Saudi Arabia Issue Warnings
By Emily Wax and Robin Wright
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A30
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29571-2003Dec2.html
NAIROBI, Dec. 2 -- The U.S. Embassy in Kenya warned American citizens to stay out of downtown Nairobi on Tuesday after receiving information about a potential terrorist attack on two popular hotels "within the next several days."
Another U.S. Embassy warning was issued Tuesday to the 37,000 U.S. citizens living in Saudi Arabia, saying that compounds housing Westerners had come under surveillance by terrorists, indicating the possibility of another attack. The embassy mentioned Seder Village in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
Saudi intelligence found a video surveillance tape of Seder Village, along with a list of other compounds housing Westerners, according to U.S. officials in Washington.
"The U.S. Embassy has restricted its American employees and dependents from visiting housing compounds in the Riyadh areas," Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman, said. The tape was found after Saudi intelligence intercepted and thwarted a suicide bomber on Nov. 25, U.S. officials said. The bomb, with about 1.2 tons of explosives, was ready to be deployed. It was four times larger than the explosive that was detonated on Nov. 8, killing 17 and wounding more 100, at another foreign housing compound in Riyadh.
In a statement to U.S. citizens in Nairobi, the embassy warned of threats aimed at U.S. and Western interests downtown, specifically at the Stanley Hotel and the Nairobi Hilton.
American citizens in Kenya should remain vigilant, particularly in public places frequented by foreigners such as hotels and shopping malls, and should avoid demonstrations and large crowds, it said.
The Stanley Hotel, one of the city's oldest tourist haunts, remained open, but a number of guests from the United Nations, who said they were told by their security offices to leave, had checked out, said Grace Ouanjiro, who works for the hotel in guest relations.
The Hilton also stayed open. Sharon Juma, head of security, said the hotel was picking through every piece of luggage and monitoring everyone who entered.
Also Tuesday, the Barclays Bank building and a Barclays branch office in downtown Nairobi were evacuated because of a bomb threat, but no explosives were found. The Barclays Bank building was home to the U.S. Embassy public affairs office until it was moved this year.
The U.S. Embassy in downtown Nairobi was reduced to rubble in a 1998 attack, which killed 219 people, including 12 Americans, and injured more than 5,000, almost all of them Kenyans. A near-simultaneous blast in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, killed 11.
Earlier this year, the new U.S. Embassy in Nairobi was shut down for several days after the United States received what officials described as a "serious terrorist threat." The $68 million embassy, whose walls are able to withstand a blast from a 1,000-pound bomb, was unveiled March 4 as a symbol of the U.S. fight against terrorism.
Also Tuesday, British police arrested 14 people on suspicion of terrorism offenses in raids in London and other cities, the Associated Press reported. The suspects' names and nationalities were not released.
Wright reported from Washington.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Russia to Reject Pact on Climate, Putin Aide Says
December 3, 2003
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ANDREW C. REVKIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/europe/03KYOT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
MOSCOW, Dec. 2 - A senior Kremlin official declared Tuesday that Russia would not ratify the international treaty requiring cuts in the emissions of gases linked to global warming, delivering what could be a fatal blow to years of diplomatic efforts.
The official, Andrei N. Illarionov, said in remarks to reporters and in a subsequent interview that President Vladimir V. Putin had told a group of European businessmen on Tuesday that the treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol, ran counter to Russia's national interests.
"We shall not ratify," said Mr. Illarionov, the senior Kremlin adviser on economic affairs and an outspoken critic of the treaty, apparently ending more than a year of uncertainty about Russia's position.
The treaty, completed in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 after two years of intense diplomatic wrangling, would require major industrialized countries, as a group, to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases. By 2012, the countries would have to reduce the gases by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels.
While 120 countries have ratified the treaty, it can take effect only when approved by enough countries to account for 55 percent of 1990 emissions from the industrialized world. Without Russia or the United States, that threshold cannot be met. In 1990, the United States accounted for 36.1 percent of emissions, and Russia for 17.4 percent.
Russia signed the treaty in 1997, as the United States did under President Bill Clinton, and expressed support for it until about a year ago. The Bush administration rejected the pact, essentially giving Russia veto power over its enactment.
Barring a reversal by Russia, the treaty appears all but dead, leaving uncertain the future of international cooperation on the question of global warming.
Russian officials had increasingly voiced concerns about the economic costs of curtailing such emissions, which come mainly from burning fossil fuels. They had also questioned whether the warming was caused by human activities and, even if it was, whether it posed any great risks.
But this was the first time a seemingly unequivocal statement rejecting the treaty has been made by a top official citing Mr. Putin.
"A number of questions have been raised about the link between carbon dioxide and climate change, which do not appear convincing," Mr. Illarionov said in the interview. "And clearly it sets very serious brakes on economic growth which do not look justified."
Echoing President Bush and many in Congress, Russia has also complained that major polluters like China and India are not bound by the treaty, giving them an unfair economic advantage. But mostly, experts say, Russia is bothered by its declining financial return from joining the treaty.
After the collapse of Soviet-era industry, Russia's emission of gases fell to an estimated 30 percent below 1990 levels. But its Kyoto target for 2012 was its 1990 levels - meaning it already far exceeded its required reductions. Thus, Russia stood to gain financially from selling credits that would allow other countries to exceed the treaty's limits. Some major Russian industries lobbied for the protocol, seeing it as a way to use the credits to modernize aging plants.
Without the participation of the United States - which would have been a major buyer of credits - many officials here concluded that the potential economic gains were sharply reduced. With the Russian economy increasingly reliant on oil and gas production and exports, the officials concluded that the treaty's limits could become a drag on economic growth in the future.
Some independent analysts agreed that there was now little economic incentive in the treaty for Russia. "Their stake has been transformed from tens of billions of dollars over five years to tens of millions, if that," said Prof. David G. Victor of Stanford University, an expert on the treaty.
The Russian statements reverberated on Tuesday in Milan, where hundreds of delegates from around the world were in the second day of a two-week meeting on the pact and an underlying 1992 climate treaty that contains no binding provisions.
Some participants said Russia's apparent retreat necessitated a re-appraisal of the Kyoto-style approach, which requires prompt emissions curbs in wealthy countries while excusing all developing countries from obligations.
But some environmentalists and European and United Nations officials said they remained hopeful that Mr. Illarionov's remarks did not reflect Russia's official position.
"This is just the latest statement in a long line of predictions by Illarionov which have failed to eventuate," said Aleksei Kokorin, the head of climate change programs in Russia for the World Wildlife Fund. "He opposed the Russian energy strategy, which was then adopted in May."
Jos Delbeke, who leads the climate change unit of the European Commission, noted that Russia stood to lose the chance for big new investments by Western European countries in improving its power plants, pipelines and other facilities as part of what are called joint implementation projects under the treaty.
"Our private sector is lining up for this," he said. "It seems against the interests of Russia not to go into these."
But it would be highly unusual for the government to have left Mr. Illarionov's remarks - which were carried by the official Russian Information Agency, a state propaganda arm - uncorrected if they were not representative of its position.
His statements brushed aside impassioned appeals from the United Nations and from countries, especially in Europe, that have embraced the protocol as the best way to reduce emissions that many scientists link to harmful climate change.
If Russia's rejection is indeed final, countries could proceed independently with projects to curb emissions or enter into new talks toward ways to spur international efforts, experts said. The European Union has said that, with or without the protocol, it will proceed in 2005 with a trading plan allowing member states to reach targets by investing in emissions-curbing projects in other states. But the overall effect would almost assuredly be to delay any significant new initiatives to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Although the Russian statements appeared to align Russia with the American position on the treaty, Bush administration officials declined to comment Tuesday. Previously, administration officials have said they have not urged Russia to join in rejecting the pact.
But senior administration officials have been using the new round of climate talks to strongly criticize the Kyoto treaty and promote their alternate vision of how to deal with climate change. In several statements in recent days, American officials said that the science pointing to risks remained murky and that the only way to solve the problem was with long-term research on new nonpolluting energy options.
Many climate experts have concluded that there is ample evidence that substantial increases in concentrations of the gases could disrupt ecosystems, storm patterns and agriculture in many parts of the world.
Despite having rejected the Kyoto Protocol, the administration sent more than 60 officials to Milan - one of the largest American delegations ever to the climate-treaty talks - to promote alternative approaches to curbing emissions growth.
The protocol is an outgrowth of the first international climate treaty, the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, which committed industrialized nations to work voluntarily to avoid "dangerous" interference with the climate system, but never defined "dangerous."
After signers in 1995 recognized that emissions were continuing to grow, negotiations began toward a binding agreement, culminating in 1997 with the current protocol. The targets for individual countries varied depending on their contribution to the problem, and intensive bargaining was aimed at being sure no country was getting too great a competitive advantage.
As recently as last year, President Putin indicated Russia's willingness to ratify the accord. Since then, however, he and other officials have wavered and stalled, raising questions about whether the country stood to benefit from ratification, especially without the participation of the United States and without mandatory limits on developing countries.
At a climate conference in Moscow in September, Mr. Putin said Russia remained committed to addressing climate change, but he also shocked many conferees with a quip suggesting global warming could benefit a country hardened by its harsh winters. "We shall save on fur coats and other warm things," he said.
Steven Lee Myers reported from Moscow and Andrew C. Revkin from New York.
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White House, EPA Move To Ease Mercury Rules
More Flexible Enforcement System Sought
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29807-2003Dec2.html
The Bush administration is working to undo regulations that would force power plants to sharply reduce mercury emissions and other toxic pollutants, according to a government document and interviews with officials.
The Nov. 26 document makes the case that the Environmental Protection Agency, under President Bill Clinton, misread the Clean Air Act's requirements and that there are less onerous ways to reduce the emissions.
Until recently, the EPA was on track to issue new rules this month requiring the nation's 1,100 coal- and oil-fired power plants to install equipment to achieve the maximum possible reductions in mercury and nickel emissions, which can cause severe neurological and developmental damage in humans. The plan has drawn fierce resistance from industry groups and their congressional allies, who say the new regulations would be excessively costly and should be softened or delayed beyond the 2007 target date.
Now, the White House and EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt are considering rescinding a December 2000 EPA ruling, which concluded that mercury emissions are a public health menace that requires power plants to meet a "maximum achievable control technology" (MACT) standard to sharply reduce toxic pollutants.
Last night Leavitt confirmed that the EPA is considering reversing the Clinton administration's finding in favor of a more flexible enforcement system.
The alternative, the document says, would be a mandatory "cap and trade" program, similar to the successful program to combat acid rain that was begun in 1990. It would allow utilities to buy emissions "credits" from cleaner-operating plants to meet an overall industry target.
Environmentalists say the approach would save the utility industry hundreds of millions of dollars while ensuring a relatively high level of mercury pollution for years to come. Most utility companies, they say, could achieve the reduction targets as a "co-benefit" or byproduct of reducing carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, without having to add special equipment to cut mercury emissions.
Coal-fired power plants are the nation's largest source of unregulated airborne mercury pollution, sending an estimated 48 tons into the atmosphere annually. The mercury can enter the food chain and threaten public health, especially for children and pregnant women who eat tainted fish. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently found that 8 percent of women of childbearing age had mercury in their blood exceeding levels deemed safe by the EPA.
A reporter was provided documents from opponents of the rollback that said the draft EPA proposal, under review by the Office of Management and Budget, would limit mercury emissions nationwide to 34 tons a year by 2010. That is about 30 percent below current levels, but far less than the 26-ton limit originally proposed by the Bush administration as part of its "Clear Skies" initiative. Administration officials say the alternative "cap and trade" approach would achieve 70 percent reductions by 2018.
Environmental leaders yesterday called the administration's efforts a huge favor to the utility industry. They predicted that courts will eventually overturn the decision but said the industry meanwhile could postpone for years significantly reducing mercury emissions.
"It looks as if the administration is going totally in the tank with the utility industry, in a flat-out violation of the law," said David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We know this stuff is bad for kids, but they don't care."
S. William Becker, executive director of two bipartisan associations of state environmental officials, called the administration proposal "an insult to public health and the environment."
"At a time when 41 states have fish-consumption advisories due to mercury poisoning, it is unconscionable that EPA is proposing to postpone and weaken regulatory protection," Becker said.
In an interview last night, Leavitt defended the administration turnabout. The "cap and trade" approach, he said, would result in substantially greater mercury reductions in the long run than would the MACT standard requiring individual plants to meet specific targets. He said the EPA would announce both proposals this month and then conduct a series of public hearings to get reaction.
"Frankly, we're just not satisfied with the level of reduction you get from the mercury MACT, so we're making the dual proposal," Leavitt said. "This all fits into the construct of aggressively making the next decade the most productive period in U.S. history in terms of air-quality improvement."
The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act exempted the utilities from having to clean up hazardous air pollutants including mercury and nickel. But under legal pressure from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice, the EPA conducted studies that led to its December 2000 decision to regulate mercury and toxic pollutants. The EPA must detail the new standards by Dec. 15.
According to the Nov. 26 draft EPA document, the agency instead plans to revise the December 2000 finding and cite a different section of the Clean Air Act to pursue a regulatory approach more acceptable to industry. The draft document says the EPA's original conclusion -- that imposing tough new MACT standards for mercury emissions was "appropriate and necessary -- amounted to an improper reading of the Clean Air Act, which offers other avenues for the states and federal government to regulate mercury.
-------- health
China Tells Its Public of Enormity of AIDS Toll
December 3, 2003
By JIM YARDLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/asia/03AIDS.html
BEIJING, Dec. 2 - With China taking its first real steps toward a full-scale public awareness campaign about AIDS this week, the degree of ignorance caused by past government denial is evident in the dazed expression of Zhao Pingyuan.
Pedaling his bicycle along a narrow alleyway in the graceful old Houhai neighborhood, Mr. Zhao, 33, stopped beside a new government AIDS poster. He had not noticed the poster, or AIDS, before.
"I've never heard of it," he said. "I'm from Henan Province. We don't have it in Henan." Told that Henan is an epicenter of AIDS, with huge numbers of cases and deaths, Mr. Zhao shook his head. "There is nothing like that," he said. "It would have been on television if people had died of AIDS."
This week, in a flurry of publicity coinciding with World AIDS Day, AIDS is finally all over television in China. New public service announcements promote awareness and even recommend condom use.
The most dramatic moment came on Monday night when Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was shown comforting AIDS patients and pledging support, the first such public appearance by a top government leader.
Mr. Wen also promised that the government would provide free AIDS drugs to all people who needed them.
Elated AIDS advocates praised Mr. Wen's appearance as a pivotal moment that could reduce the stigma surrounding the disease and send an important signal to lower officials. Yet those same advocates also warned that symbolism was not enough, and that the government must dedicate major resources to curtailing the spread of AIDS and educating people like Mr. Zhao.
"This was like breaking the ice," said Joel Rehnstrom, the coordinator in China for Unaids, a United Nations agency. "It's something that a lot of people working in the AIDS field inside China and outside have been hoping for and waiting for."
China is thought to have slightly more than one million people who are infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, or who have already died of AIDS. Experts say there could be 10 million cases by 2010.
The disease was initially confined to intravenous drug users, sex-trade workers and farmers infected by a tainted blood-selling operation in central China, but it is now spreading into the general population.
Part of the problem is a widespread lack of public awareness. A recent poll by Futures Group Europe and Horizon Market Research found that roughly 19.9 percent of those responding had never heard of AIDS, the state news media reported.
Only 13.4 percent knew the three methods of transmission - through sex, blood and mother-to-child breast-feeding. Only 21.4 percent of people knew they could be infected with AIDS by having sex, and only 2.6 percent realized that condoms could prevent transmission.
For years the government blocked Chinese media coverage of the country's AIDS problem. Even now, Chinese and foreign reporters are detained in Henan if they are caught interviewing AIDS patients. But AIDS advocates say the public relations push this week represents a significant shift in attitudes about basic awareness.
"They were talking to the Chinese people," said Odilon Couzin, whose Hong Kong-based nonprofit group, China AIDS Info, disseminates information about the disease. "It's both symbolism and hopefully the beginning of real action."
Building public awareness is one thing. The more difficult task, experts agree, is creating an adequate nationwide health system to confront the disease and fulfilling the promise to provide free antiretroviral drugs to poor AIDS patients.
On Monday night a top health official, Gao Qiang, used a television talk show to publicly repeat an earlier pledge that a free drug program would be quickly expanded next year to cover all people who had tested positive for the disease.
Of the estimated one million cases of H.I.V., Chinese officials say only about 80,000 people have tested positive for the virus. They have not provided any figures about how many have been tested.
About 5,000 people are already getting antiretroviral drugs under a pilot program in more than 100 counties, though 20 percent have dropped out of the program because of harsh side effects. Many experts do not think that the program can possibly be expanded by next year to cover all of the 80,000 H.I.V.-positive people.
Other tough issues also remain. The government is still weighing a needle exchange program to reduce risks of continued spread among drug users. Public condom dispensers are available on college campuses and outside some public bathrooms. But experts say condoms are not available in hotels because the police believe that they encourage prostitution. Prostitution, meanwhile, is growing quickly.
-------- ACTIVISTS
German Greens blast proposed plutonium plant sale to China
BERLIN (AFP)
Dec 03, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031203093222.y352qct9.html
A leader of Germany's Greens, partners in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's ruling coalition, Wednesday slammed the proposed sale of a German plutonium facility to China as "politically unwise."
The criticism came from Angelika Beer, one of the environmentalist party's two co-leaders, after news emerged that technology group Siemens had launched talks with Chinese officials.
"It is contradictory if on the one hand we have decided to phase out atomic energy and on the other we want to export a facility that, moreover, also has the capability to produce weapons-grade plutonium," she said.
Even its sole use for civilian purposes would contravene the principles of the Greens, Beer told WDR television.
She said the matter would be discussed at coalition level with Schroeder's Social Democrats.
A previous proposal to export the facility to Russia collapsed in 2001 amid the political concerns of, among others, the Greens.
The Siemens plant at Hanau, western Germany, was completed in 1991 to produce fuel for nuclear reactors, but never went into operation.
It is estimated to be worth about 50 million euros today.
Siemens said Tuesday that the talks with interested Chinese parties were on exporting the factory's technical equipment.
An application has already been lodged with Germany's exports office which said it would be examined at a ministerial level.
Schroeder is on the final leg of a trip to China designed to boost economic ties. The subject of the Hanau plant came up in his talks Monday with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
Siemens said Schroeder was unopposed in principle to its potential sale.
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