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NUCLEAR
International conference on radioactive waste in Stockholm
Fly Vietnam
Argentina says Britain admits nuclear weapons were in Falklands war zone
British Falklands War Ships Had Nuclear Weapons
Canada power chiefs sacked over nuclear plant upgrade costs
Bush's alleged Afghan war crimes face 'tribunal'
Germany's Schroeder under pressure over atomic energy exports
India Develops Advanced Rocket Engine
France: Iran nuclear freeze should be permanent
Powell Says Still No Date for North Korea Talks
Koizumi ponders missile defense
Ballistic Missile Launched in Kazakhstan
Bush Names Baker Envoy on Iraqi Debt
Perle lobbied for Boeing's tanker bid
MILITARY
Rumsfeld Confers With Afghan Leader and Warlords
Rumsfeld Meets Warlords
Taylor Put on Interpol List Of World's Most Wanted
French or American?
Indonesia negotiating purchase of four warships with the Netherlands
Japan Nears Iraq Troop Move
Bush rescinds steel tariffs
Military equipment suffers in Iraqi heat
Taiwan Referendum to Focus on Missiles, Not Independence
Taiwan to Vote on China Missile Threat
Poland ready to consider US bases on its territory: defense minister
Powell Calls for Increased NATO and U.N. Roles in Iraq
A Tale of War: Iraqi Describes Battling G.I.'s
U.S. Presses Counteroffensive, But Guerrillas Strike Again
Bush and Jordanian King Confer on Palestinian Plan
Israelis Conclude Hamas Has Suspended Its Suicide Attacks
Bush Says Peace Plan May Be 'Productive'
Powell Reopens NATO Debate on Iraq
Rumsfeld points Georgia towards Nato
Powell Appeals to Allies for an Expanded NATO Role in Iraq
36 Killed in Train Blast Near Chechnya
Dozens Killed in Suicide Bombing Aboard Russian Train
U.S. intelligence officials take look at 2020
CIA on Flight 800
Israel Shares Blame on Iraq Intelligence, Report Says
Army suspends training after death
A warning from deep inside the Pentagon.
Pentagon and Bogus News: All Is Denied
Another Course Change in the Air Force One Story
Iraq to create war crimes tribunal in coming days
A Look at War Crimes Tribunals Worldwide
Eight Are Indicted for War Crimes in Serbia
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Bill seen as threat to civil liberties
South Africa disrupts body part ring
OTHER
EPA Aims to Change Pollution Rules
ACTIVISTS
Bush's alleged Afghan war crimes face 'tribunal'
Vietnam vet takes aim at war
-------- NUCLEAR
International conference on radioactive waste in Stockholm
STOCKHOLM (AFP)
Dec 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031205181646.vqdzixwa.html
Sweden will next week host a three-day international conference on global progress in disposing of radioactive waste material in geological repositories, organizers said.
Decision-makers from international, national, regional and local governments will together with various agencies discuss the political and technical progress made on the issue.
"There has been a positive development with regards to radioactive waste management in many countries," said Claes Thegerstroem, the head of the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company.
"Sweden, Finland, France and the United States have all made important decisions in order to pursue long-term and safe solutions," she said.
The conference, which is being hosted by the company, opens on Monday until Wednesday.
Among those scheduled to attend are Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, as well as the head of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, Luis Echavarri.
The meeting, which is a follow-up to a November 1999 conference held in Denver in the United States, will also discuss various sociological aspects, such as issues involved in deciding to where to place radioactive materials.
-------- asia
Fly Vietnam
December 04, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
Embassy Row
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031203-093027-1152r.htm
The United States and Vietnam today sign a landmark agreement to resume direct flights between the two countries for the first time since the end of the Vietnam War.
Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta and Vietnamese Transport Minister Dao Dinh Binh will sign the agreement that will allow passenger and cargo flights to begin as early as the spring. Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan will witness the ceremony.
Washington will select two U.S. passenger airlines and Hanoi will pick two Vietnamese airlines to provide service for the first two years of the pact, with a third carrier from each side added in the third year of the agreement.
-------- britain
Argentina says Britain admits nuclear weapons were in Falklands war zone
BUENOS AIRES (AFP)
Dec 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031205142731.6l03pq74.html
The Argentine government on Friday said Britain has admitted that nuclear weapons were on some navy vessels used during the 1982 Falklands war.
Defence Minister Jose Pampuro said that President Nestor Kirchner held meetings with concerned ministers "into the early hours" of Friday to examine the reports.
Pampuro said the information had been received with "a lot of concern," the government's Telam news agency reported.
According to the minister, British authorities had confirmed for the first time what Argentina had long suspected.
The Clarin newspaper said the British government had informed the Argentine embassy in London that nuclear arms were on some vessels but had highlighted that Britain had never had any intention to use the arms.
Britain dispatched a naval task force to the South Atlantic in 1982 after Argentine forces invaded the Falkland Islands, which Argentines call the Malvinas.
Clarin, which said it had seen the British foreign ministry's message, reported that Britain had informed the Argentine authorities that the weapons had stayed on the vessels because the fleet had been sent so quickly.
Argentina still claims the islands, which have been in British hands since
The 1982 war cost the lives of 648 Argentine soldiers and 255 British.
--------
British Falklands War Ships Had Nuclear Weapons
December 5, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-britain-falklands-nuclear.html
LONDON (Reuters) - British warships during the Falklands War in 1982 carried nuclear depth charges, but the weapons never entered the territorial waters of any Latin American nation, the ministry of Defense said on Friday.
``The weapons were type WE177 nuclear depth charges. They were on the task force when it sailed south but never entered the territorial waters of the Falkland Islands or any South American country,'' a spokesman told Reuters.
``The decision was taken to transfer them to other ships heading back home,'' he added, stressing that there had never been any intention of using the weapons.
He said it was the first time the British government had admitted that the task force assembled to retake the Falkland Islands after Argentina invaded and reclaimed the islands it knows as the Malvinas was equipped with nuclear weapons.
He stressed that it was routine for British naval surface ships to carry nuclear weapons during the 1980s. The practice was finally ended in 1993.
The Argentine government issued an angry statement in response, seeking assurances from Britain that no nuclear weapons had been left in the Southern Atlantic, in sunken vessels or on the seabed.
``This incident could have had huge consequences for the inhabitants, natural resources and environment of the region,'' the statement read. ``It is unacceptable to try and justify it ... during an operation aimed at preserving a colony in the Southern Atlantic.''
The information came to light after a reporter asked for information about nuclear incidents.
Included in that information were details of several incidents involving damage to containers carrying the depth charges as they were transferred from the task force to the returning ships.
None of the damage to the containers was serious and none of the weapons was damaged, the spokesman stressed.
-------- canada
Canada power chiefs sacked over nuclear plant upgrade costs
TORONTO (AFP)
Dec 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031205013953.8h1ukg14.html
Three executives who ran Ontario Power Generation Inc. were fired on Thursday after the bill for upgrading a nuclear power plant more than doubled.
The executives were sacked by the province of Ontario, owner of Ontario Power Generation (OPG), after a commission investigating upgrading work at OPG's Pickering nuclear power plant, east of Toronto, discovered the mounting multi-million-dollar bills.
"It's a horrible mess. This is an affront to the people of Ontario," said Dwight Duncan, the province's energy chief.
Duncan spoke after upgrading costs on one of Pickering's four nuclear reactors, idled since 1997 amid security concerns, more than doubled estimates.
The first reactor returned to service in September at a cost of 1.25 billion Canadian dollars (962 million US dollars) rather than the 457 million Canadian (347 million US) that was estimated.
The plant is one of the world's largest nuclear generating facilities. It has a potential output of over 4,000 megawatts, or enough power for a population of two million.
The inquiry said it would now cost around four billion dollars (three billion US) to put all four reactors back on line. It said this is unlikely before August 2008, compared with an original deadline of December last year.
-------- depleted uranium
Bush's alleged Afghan war crimes face 'tribunal'
The Japan Times:
Dec. 5, 2003
The final hearings of a citizens' tribunal trying the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush over its military operations in Afghanistan will be held in Tokyo over two days ending Dec. 14.
The indictment charges Bush with aggression, attacks against civilians and nonmilitary facilities, and torturing and executing prisoners. The hearings have been organized by criminal jurist Akira Maeda and others.
Testimony will be heard from the mother of an Afghan who was killed in an air raid, and a Pakistani who was held in the Guantanamo base in Cuba. Scientists will present reports on the effects of depleted uranium bullets on humans.
A ruling will be handed down by five legal experts from Japan, the U.S., Britain and India.
The hearings will be held between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on both days at Kudan Kaikan, which is a one-minute walk from the Kudanshita subway station. English translations will be available.
Admission is 2,000 yen per day or 3,000 yen for both days.
For tickets and information, contact the secretariat at (03) 3261-5521.
-------- europe
Germany's Schroeder under pressure over atomic energy exports
BERLIN (AFP)
Dec 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031205164610.y5dee9jm.html
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder came under heavy fire Friday as his government appeared to back the sale of nuclear know-how to Finland and China despite phasing out atomic energy at home.
Much of the criticism came from members of his ruling coalition angered at apparent plans to approve the export of a plutonium facility to China.
Some, evidently including Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, worry that the facility could be used to help produce weapons-grade plutonium.
More fundamentally, many question why Germany appears willing to support an energy source abroad that is deemed too risky for its own backyard.
The row has drawn in a bid to secure government support for a Franco-German consortium, including the German technology giant Siemens, to build an atomic power station in Finland.
A decision on that bid is due to be made in the next two weeks, government spokesman Thomas Steg said Friday.
He pointed out that Finland, unlike Germany, had opted to use atomic power for its energy needs and that contracts to build power plants "bring jobs with them."
Schroeder has talks here Tuesday with Finnish counterpart Matti Vanhanen.
Heiko Maas, lead of Schroeder's Social Democrats in Saarland state, called it a "credibility issue."
"You cannot phase out nuclear energy at home and at the same time encourage it abroad," he told a local newspaper. "It's not logical."
But it is the China link that more worries some of Schroeder's SPD and, in particular, the Greens, junior partner in the centre-left government.
Last month, Trittin, one of three cabinet ministers from the Green party, celebrated the closure of Germany's oldest atomic power station, the first to cease operations since the government decided to phase out nuclear energy by
"The coalition partners have to discuss this issue," said Krista Sager, the parliamentary group leader of the Greens.
She said news of the proposed sale, which came during Schroeder's visit to China earlier this week, had surprised her party.
Greens co-leader Angelika Beer said any sale would be "politically unwise," while the party's environmental expert Winfried Hermann said the proposal was "explosive" for the coalition.
"No one understands the chancellor," said Hermann, who will raise the issue in parliament.
The tensions were evident at Friday's regular government press briefing.
"This facility cannot be used to make weapons-grade plutonium," Steg said.
"This is a facility with dual-use problems," retorted Trittin's environment ministry. "It could be used as part of a production chain for the manufacture of weapons-grade plutonium."
Steg then referred to it dismissively to "a virtual chain."
The plant at Hanau, western Germany, was built by Siemens in 1991 but never went into production, although the technical equipment remains on site.
A previous bid to sell it to Russia collapsed two years ago under pressure from, among others, the Greens.
But while officials insist no decision has been made, Schroeder, who views China as a strategic and booming market, has said he sees no objections.
Defence Minister Peter Struck said China must promise it would not be used for military purposes, but otherwise there was no reason to refuse.
Chinese officials have said that it is for purely civilian use.
Even Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the Greens most recognisable figure, said sometimes "bitter decisions" have to be made.
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a lobby group, accused Berlin of "undercover tactics" and said its much-trumpeted commitment to phase atomic energy was "not credible."
Meanwhile, Greenpeace environmental activists projected the Chinese letters for "danger" onto the building at Hanau.
-------- india / pakistan
India Develops Advanced Rocket Engine
December 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Rocket-Engines.html
BANGALORE, India (AP) -- India said Friday it has developed a rocket engine that uses supercooled liquid fuel, a technology that would allow it to launch high-altitude satellites, send a man to the moon -- or build intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The engine proved its endurance by firing for nearly 17 minutes on the ground, the Indian Space Research Organization said in a statement.
In a typical flight, the engine would need to burn only for about 12 minutes.
Such engines, known as ``cryogenic'' engines, are fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Rockets using these materials are primarily used to launch 2.5-ton communications satellites to orbits 22,000 miles above the earth. At that altitude, they match the speed of the rotating Earth and therefore stay fixed at one point above the ground.
Only a few countries -- including the United States, Russia and France -- can build cryogenic engines.
``It is a great milestone. I was never in doubt it would happen and I am happy it has happened now,'' said Rakesh Sharma, who traveled on a Russian spacecraft in 1984, becoming India's first man in space. Sharma said the technology was ``crucial to the ultimate moon shot,'' alluding to India's plan to send a manned mission to the moon before 2015.
The advance could also give India the ability to build intercontinental ballistic missiles. India has nuclear weapons and tested them in 1974 and 1998.
A cryogenic missile cannot be fired at a moment's notice. The fuel cannot be stored in a rocket indefinitely because it is highly explosive, so a missile would have to be fueled before launching.
India's bid to develop its own cryogenic engines suffered several setbacks. In 1992, Russia agreed to give India the technology but reversed the decision after Moscow signed the Missile Technology Control Regime with the United States. Washington objected to giving India the technology because of its potential use for nuclear missiles.
Russia later agreed to sell fully built engines, without passing on the technology, to India.
India developed a rudimentary form of its cryogenic technology in 2001 and several tests were held after that to fine-tune it.
On the Net:
http://www.isro.org
-------- iran
France: Iran nuclear freeze should be permanent
By Reuters
Dec 5, 2003
http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_877.shtml
Iran news - France is determined to ensure that Iran permanently freezes experiments to make enriched uranium and plutonium, which could be used in nuclear weapons, its foreign ministry spokesman said on Thursday.
The spokesman, Herve Ladsous, said he believes a permanent freeze is still possible, despite a senior Iranian official's recent assertion that "there has been and will be no question of a permanent suspension or halt at all."
Ladsous, in Washington to meet U.S. officials, discussed the situation in Iran and Iraq and other issues of concern to both nations at a breakfast with a small group of reporters.
The U.N.'s watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week condemned Iran's 18-year cover-up of sensitive nuclear research, including uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, and said any further serious breaches of non-proliferation obligations would not be tolerated.
-------- korea
Powell Says Still No Date for North Korea Talks
December 5, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-usa-talks.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell discussed North Korea with his Chinese counterpart on Friday but there is still no firm date for a second round of six-party nuclear talks.
In a telephone call to Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, ``we had a discussion about the progress we were making toward the next six-party meeting, which we hope will be in the not-too-distant future,'' Powell told reporters after escorting Jordan's King Abdullah from the State Department.
But asked about a firm date for the talks, he replied: ``Not yet, no.''
President Bush and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao are expected to discuss the issue when they meet at the White House next Tuesday.
The United States, South Korea and Japan held working level discussions in Washington this week on North Korea but those did not produce a breakthrough either.
State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said that despite the lack of a date, the U.S.-hosted meetings were useful. The United States, South Korea and Japan are ``ready to convene a second round before the end of the year and believe that is possible,'' he said.
``I think it was understood that the timing of the talks is a decision on which all parties must agree and that North Korea has not yet agreed to specific dates for the talks,'' he said.
But other U.S. and Asian officials, while not ruling out a second round this month, have said it looks likely the next round will be delayed until January or February.
U.S. officials said the United States and other countries involved in the planning -- China, Russia, South Korea and Japan -- are trying to agree in advance on a statement that would be issued at the conclusion of a second round of talks.
This means the results would be ``pre-cooked'' even before the parties convene.
A first round of six-way talks was held in Beijing in August but ended inconclusively.
The current nuclear crisis began in October 2002 when U.S. officials said Pyongyang had privately admitted pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program that violated its international agreements.
-------- missile defense
Koizumi ponders missile defense
December 05, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/briefly.htm
TOKYO - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said yesterday that his government would consider introducing a missile-defense system, boosted by U.S. technology, for protection from North Korea's ballistic missiles.
"I understand there will be a move in that direction in the course of budget planning," Mr. Koizumi told reporters at his official residence. "We will make a full study." He made the comment after the newspaper Mainichi reported that he would convene a meeting shortly to make a formal decision.
His government is to compile a draft budget by the end of the year for the next budget year to March 2005. Japan has been conducting joint research with the United States on developing a missile defense since 1999, a year after North Korea rattled Tokyo by launching a ballistic missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean.
-------- russia
Ballistic Missile Launched in Kazakhstan
December 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Missile-Test.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- An intercontinental ballistic missile lifted off from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday as part of a test to determine if it was still combat ready.
``The missile was launched to test whether all its parameters were in order and whether it was safe to use,'' the Russian Space Forces spokesman told The Associated Press.
The launch was carried out successfully. For test purposes, the missile did not carry warhead.
The RS-18 missile has a range of over 6,200 miles. It has been used since 1980 and was last tested a year ago.
-------- us politics
Bush Names Baker Envoy on Iraqi Debt
December 5, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Baker.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Friday called on a longtime family troubleshooter, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, to oversee the job of getting Iraq out from under its crushing $125 billion debt.
``Secretary Baker will report directly to me and will lead an effort to work with the world's governments at the highest levels, with international organizations and with the Iraqis in seeking the restructuring and reduction of Iraq's official debt,'' Bush said in a statement read by White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
As the president's personal envoy on the issue, Baker will tackle a major problem in the rebuilding of Iraq. Iraq's debt carries annual servicing charges of $7 billion to $8 billion.
``The regime of Saddam Hussein saddled the Iraqi people with the debt because they were more interested in building palaces and torture chambers and mass graves than helping the Iraqi people,'' McClellan said.
Bush said he made the appointment in response to a request by the Iraqi Governing Council.
``The future of the Iraqi people should not be mortgaged to the enormous burden of debt incurred to enrich Saddam Hussein's regime,'' Bush said.
With experience in diplomacy and world finance, Baker ``will help to forge an international consensus for an equitable and effective resolution of this issue,'' Bush said.
Baker will serve as a volunteer, working out of an office at the White House and traveling to other countries.
``This debt endangers Iraq's long-term prospects for political health and economic prosperity,'' Bush said. ``The issue of Iraq's debt must be resolved in a manner that is fair and does not unjustly burden a struggling nation at its moment of hope and promise.''
Baker, a Houston attorney, is a longtime Bush family friend who has held several high government posts.
In the closely fought 2000 election, Baker headed up Bush's strategy team during the recount battle in Florida, which eventually ended up in the Supreme Court and delivered the presidency to Bush.
He oversaw the presidential campaigns of Bush's father in 1980, 1988 and 1992.
He served as President Reagan's first chief of staff, and as treasury secretary in Reagan's second term.
He left his post of secretary of state to serve as campaign manager in the first President Bush's unsuccessful 1992 re-election bid.
Dan Senor, a spokesman for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, said in Baghdad that estimates of Iraq's foreign debt range as high as $125 billion.
Reducing Iraq's foreign debt is a high priority both of the coalition and of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Senor said.
Of the total Iraqi foreign debt, some $40 billion is owed to the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and other countries who are among 19 nations belonging to the Paris Club, an umbrella organization that conducts debt negotiations.
At least $80 billion more is owed to other Arab countries and nations outside the Paris Club.
----
Perle lobbied for Boeing's tanker bid
By Joshua Chaffin in Washington and Stephanie Kirchgaessner in New York
December 5 2003
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1069493745090
Richard Perle, a prominent Pentagon adviser, lobbied on behalf of Boeing's bid for a controversial $18bn government contract a year after the aerospace company made a $20m investment in the venture capital fund he runs.
Mr Perle, a former Reagan-era assistant defence secretary, is considered one of the most influential civilian members of Washington's defence establishment.
He was appointed in 2001 by Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, to chair the Defence Policy Board, a group of former military and policy experts who meet regularly with Mr Rumsfeld and top Pentagon officials.
In August, Mr Perle co-authored an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing in favour of a deal in which the Air Force would lease 100 767 aircraft refuelling tankers from Boeing. The piece was published at a time when the deal was under intense attack by critics who claimed the tankers were unnecessary and the deal too expensive.
Mr Perle and Thomas Donnelly, both members of the American Enterprise Institute think- tank, wrote that a "special government green-eyeshade mentality" was holding up a crucial deal.
Mr Perle did not disclose that Boeing had committed to invest $20m in his venture capital fund, Trireme Partners, in mid-2002. The investment marked one of the largest early stakes taken in the fund by a corporate partner.
Mr Perle on Thursday denied he had received any compensation from Boeing or any benefit related to the article. "The people involved in Trireme have nothing to do with the tanker deal," Mr Perle said. "I never discussed the tanker issue or my views on the tanker issue with anyone at Boeing that had anything to do with Trireme." He added that Trireme's relationship with Boeing was "fundamentally" handled by Gerald Hillman, a partner in the fund, who is also a Defence Policy Board member.
Boeing said it briefed Mr Perle on the tanker deal on July 14, giving him the same presentation it had made to several journalists, policy analysts and watch-dog groups.
But the company said it had "no hand" in writing or placing Mr Perle's Op-Ed piece. In addition to Trireme, Boeing said it had invested $250m in 29 similar funds.
Internal Boeing e-mails portray a lobbying campaign the company undertook to have "friends on the Hill" and "think tanks" drum up support for the deal. One Boeing e-mail refers to an Op-Ed article in support of the company by retired Admiral Archie Clemins as being "ghost-written".
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Rumsfeld Confers With Afghan Leader and Warlords
December 5, 2003
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/international/asia/05RUMS.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 4 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld returned on Thursday to Afghanistan, the opening front in America's campaign against terrorism, and urged Afghan warlords to surrender heavy weapons, discussed plans for quelling a lingering insurgency and pressed for economic development.
The unspoken theme of his mission, however, was to prove to the people of Afghanistan, and to its sometime quarreling leaders, that the United States has not forgotten its unfinished business here even as the military focuses on its far larger effort in Iraq.
The mission to stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan faces significant hurdles. Guerrilla attacks are directed against allied forces, international aid workers and Afghan government officials, especially in the eastern and southern parts of the country, and some of the rebel activity is reportedly financed by an increased trade in opium and heroin.
In addition, roadwork intended to ease cargo transports and improve the economy has moved slowly. Above all, the central government's influence is weak outside Kabul, the capital, a result of an ineffective civil administration, the historic feudal structure of the provinces and an economy that still defies central regulation.
Mr. Rumsfeld's daylong visit to Kabul and to Mazar-i-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, where his convoy jousted for space along the dusty roadway with donkey carts and bicycles, was in effect a tour of the reconstruction effort's successes and its challenges.
The Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, acknowledged the challenges at a news conference here with Mr. Rumsfeld. "We have now reached 40 to 50 percent of the administrative capability that a normal government of a country like ours should have," Mr. Karzai said.
The threats posed by "armed groups, the question of fighting and warlordism hurting the Afghan people" remain, he said, but are "being tackled more aggressively."
Those threats were underscored when a rocket exploded in a field near the United States Embassy two hours after Mr. Rumsfeld met with Mr. Karzai at the presidential palace, in another part of the city, The Associated Press reported. No one was injured.
Mr. Rumsfeld was the first member of the Bush cabinet to visit Afghanistan, two years ago, as the war to oust the Taliban government raged.
On Thursday, his third visit to the country this year, Mr. Rumsfeld was asked whether the increase in sporadic attacks against the government meant that the Taliban was regrouping, as some military experts have suggested.
"They'll not have that opportunity," he replied.
While in Mazar-i-Sharif, Mr. Rumsfeld met with two warlords - Pentagon officials call them "regional leaders" - Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum and Gen. Atta Mohammad.
During the war, the two joined forces to take Mazar-i-Sharif, the first capture of a strategic Taliban stronghold. But since then, they have skirmished politically and their militias have occasionally clashed as well.
Both have agreed to place their heavy weapons under international supervision and to demobilize their forces, though they have been slow to actually do so.
At the meeting with Mr. Rumsfeld, according to a senior Pentagon official who was present, General Mohammad expressed pride at how quickly he was complying, while General Dostum smiled and said: "Our side is a little slower. But we'll cooperate without any doubt."
In comments to the two menbefore taking them into private session, Mr. Rumsfeld described how he had followed their military progress from the Pentagon during the early days of the Afghan war, when their forces linked up with American Green Berets, summoned Air Force and Navy bombers and sent their troops to capture Mazar-i-Sharif.
During his visit on Thursday, Mr. Rumsfeld also sought to highlight the work of the six so-called provisional reconstruction teams that are now operating across Afghanistan, each averaging 60 to 100 people drawn from the military, diplomatic services, government aid agencies and intelligence agencies.
The task of the reconstruction teams is to carry out security operations, as well as train local police, guide municipal governments, assist in reconstruction and gather information on the Taliban or other terrorist activity.
The small teams are designed to carry out this broad range of security and stabilization tasks with small numbers, which Pentagon officials say is important in a nation with a historic animosity to foreign troops.
The United States operates four teams. One of those, in Kunduz, is to be handed over to German command. In addition, New Zealand and Britain operate one each, the latter in Mazar-i-Sharif.
Mr. Rumsfeld said he supported NATO's discussion to set up and operate additional teams.
The commander of the team in Mazar-i-Sharif, Col. Richard R. Davis of the British Army, said that "criminality and thuggery" remained serious obstacles to securing and rebuilding northern Afghanistan.
Recent studies by the White House and the United Nations found that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan increased from 2002 to 2003. The opium trade provided both the money and the incentive for rivals to challenge the central government.
"It's always a factor," said one senior Pentagon official.
Military officers said the United States provides just under 10,000 of the 11,500 troops in the coalition force in Afghanistan. The NATO-led international security force in Kabul numbers another 5,700.
--------
Rumsfeld Meets Warlords
Feuding Afghans Urged to Disarm, Yield to Rule From Kabul
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34723-2003Dec4.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 4 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sat down with two powerful and long-feuding Afghan warlords Thursday and encouraged them to surrender their arsenals of tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons, a step that would help consolidate the authority of the country's struggling national government.
The scene of the tailored Pentagon leader huddled with two toughened Afghan militia leaders in a dusty compound in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif reflected an intensified effort by the Bush administration to move the fractured country toward central rule.
It was the first time that Rumsfeld had met Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek leader, and Gen. Attah Mohammad, an ethnic Tajik. The two men and their militias, working closely with U.S. Special Operations troops, proved instrumental in routing Taliban forces from northern Afghanistan in the early weeks of the war two years ago.
But tensions between the two have threatened to undermine stability in the north and stall a program, launched in October by President Hamid Karzai with U.N. assistance, to disarm tens of thousands of militiamen and retrain them for civilian life.
"I spent many weeks in the Pentagon following closely your activities, I should say your successful activities," Rumsfeld told Dostum and Mohammad at the outset, recalling their war exploits.
After a 45-minute closed-door meeting in a onetime hostel now occupied by British forces, Rumsfeld emerged saying he was pleased by renewed commitments from the militia chiefs to disarm. But mindful of the depth of hostility between them and their inability at times to control subordinates, he added a cautionary note: "At what pace it will proceed, I guess, remains to be seen."
Dostum and Mohammad have vied for control in the north for more than a decade. After clashes between their forces escalated in October, they agreed, under strong pressure from the central government and Western military officials, to begin surrendering their weapons. While Mohammad's militiamen started to comply, Dostum's forces resisted.
Afghanistan has a long history of strong regional warlords, reflecting deep ethnic rivalries, weak central governments and an unregulated economy in which militia leaders can levy their own taxes and build large treasuries. Their continued existence and power is regarded by the Karzai government and its international backers as a threat to the creation of a new Afghan national army and overall stability in the country.
"There have been logistical problems and delays" in the disarmament program, "but the government will not go one step back in its plan," Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jamali said Thursday.
Rumsfeld raised the demobilization issue again in a meeting in Kabul with Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, who has long balked at drawing down thousands of ethnic Tajik militia fighters who remain in the capital area despite a U.N. ban. Fahim promised Rumsfeld he would remove the forces, and he extended the pledge to heavy weapons in the Panjshir Valley, a Tajik stronghold, although he gave no timetable, according to a U.S. official who attended the meeting.
The official also noted that the test of wills between Karzai and the warlords in the north has extended beyond disarmament. In recent weeks the Afghan president has moved to curb their power by replacing the governors and police chiefs of four northern provinces.
"It's a very difficult political problem for him," the official said. "But slowly and surely and deliberately, he's beginning to extend the influence of the government into the regions."
Karzai, speaking at a news conference with Rumsfeld in Kabul, acknowledged the difficulty of asserting his administration's authority outside the capital. He cited a lack of administrative personnel as a major impediment.
"That has improved a lot," Karzai said. "We have reached 40 to 50 percent of the administrative ability that a government in a country like ours should have."
The Rumsfeld visit took place against the backdrop of resurgent Taliban rebels, who have stepped up attacks in the south and east. But Rumsfeld and Karzai dismissed suggestions that Taliban attacks could disrupt presidential elections scheduled for next summer. After the defense secretary left Afghanistan, a rocket exploded at about 7 p.m. in a field near the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul. It caused no injuries or damage, and its source was not immediately known.
Correspondent Pamela Constable in Kabul contributed to this report.
-------- africa
Taylor Put on Interpol List Of World's Most Wanted
By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36806-2003Dec4.html
Interpol, the international police organization, issued an arrest notice Thursday for the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, who is charged with crimes against humanity, and placed his mug shot among the world's most wanted criminals. But Nigeria, where Taylor is living in exile, indicated that it would not arrest him.
"The president has said before that he will not be harassed about Taylor. The action that Nigeria will take will not lean toward handing over Taylor to Interpol," said a spokeswoman for the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, according to the Reuters news agency. Obasanjo told reporters last week that he would surrender Taylor if Liberia requested it.
Taylor sought asylum in Nigeria in August after resigning as president of his impoverished and war-torn West African nation. He currently maintains an opulent lifestyle in Nigeria as a guest of the state.
The Interpol notice obligates Nigeria, as a member, to take action against Taylor. The notice is not an arrest warrant but can be used by national police to make a provisional arrest of the wanted person. Some countries, however, simply treat the notice as a request for information about the individual.
The announcement of Interpol's move could prove embarrassing to Obasanjo. It came as Nigeria was preparing to host a Commonwealth summit of Britain and its former colonies.
The 17-count indictment against Taylor was issued in March by the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, which borders Liberia and fought a long, brutal civil war. The indictment includes charges of murder, mutilation, abduction of children and mass rape and alleges that the crimes took place under Taylor's orders as part of a "joint criminal enterprise" to loot Sierra Leone's diamond mines. The special court is charged with prosecuting those most responsible for the violence in Sierra Leone.
The arrest request, called a Red Notice, was issued at the behest of the special court, Interpol said in a statement announcing the move.
"What Interpol has effectively said is that there is a proper, valid warrant for Taylor's arrest, and any country that has him must arrest and detain him," David Crane, the chief prosecutor for the special court, said in a telephone interview.
Last month, Congress authorized a $2 million reward for the capture of anyone indicted by the special court, a move aimed at Taylor. It drew sharp condemnation from Nigeria, which accused the United States of an act bordering on state-sponsored terrorism.
"What the world must understand is that war criminals must be tried, fairly and justly, for their crimes," Crane said. "We cannot have an African exception to international law. We cannot say, 'If you are African, you get a pass.' That is not what the vast majority of Africans want."
But there are also signs that Taylor, who diplomats and investigators say retains access to hundreds of millions of dollars he plundered from Liberia and Sierra Leone, is wearing out his welcome in Nigeria. In September, Obasanjo rebuked Taylor for interfering in Liberian politics despite pledges not to do so as a condition for asylum.
Jacques Klein, the U.N. representative in Liberia, told the BBC that he believed that Taylor would eventually be forced to leave Nigeria. At that point, Klein said, "both the arrest warrant is valid and the reward is valid."
-------- arms
French or American?
December 05, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
Inside the Ring
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
The Army will soon have to make a multibillion-dollar decision on whether to buy a made-in-America surveillance jet or one produced by a Brazilian company, partly owned by the French.
The Army needs a new surveillance plane to aid ground troops during battle. The small jet, called the Aerial Common Sensor (ACS), would fly on the edge of the fighting, collecting intercepted communications and photo images to pass on to ground commanders. The program is worth an estimated $6 billion for 38 planes. Most of the cost is dedicated to the ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) electronics package supplied by Lockheed or Northrop Grumman, the competing prime contractors.
There are two contesting teams: Lockheed Corp. and team member Embraer of Brazil versus Northrop Grumman Corp. Northrop Grumman's entry is the Gulfstream G450 jet produced by General Dynamics Corp. in several states, with assembly in Georgia.
Some on Capitol Hill are whispering that if Lockheed wins it will be a victory for two foreign adversaries at the expense of American companies. Brazil opposed the United States on the war in Iraq and on trade issues. A stake in Embraer is owned by the French company Dassault. French opposition to the war in Iraq angered many members of Congress.
Lockheed points out that Embraer is opening a plant in Jacksonville, Fla., to qualify as a U.S. contractor. "It will be built by Americans with American parts," said Judy Gan, spokeswoman for Lockheed's Integrated Systems and Solutions division in Gaithersburg. Miss Gan said there are safeguards to protect the American know-how in the sensor suite that would be installed in the Embraer ERJ145 jet.
----
Indonesia negotiating purchase of four warships with the Netherlands
JAKARTA (AFP)
Dec 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031205085314.no4swp66.html
Indonesia is negotiating the possible purchase of four warships from the Netherlands, its navy chief said on Friday.
"If in the negotiations we fail to agree (on the price), we will look for other suppliers," Admiral Bernard Kent Sondakh was quoted as saying by the Antara news agency.
Detikcom online news service said the navy wanted to buy corvettes, a small and fast type of warship, from the Netherlands.
China, South Korea and Italy have also offered warships to Indonesia, Sondakh said.
Sondakh earlier this year said the navy would acquire two submarines equipped with dozens of torpedoes from South Korea, with the first delivery expected in 2008. Each submarine is worth about 270 million dollars.
-------- asia
Japan Nears Iraq Troop Move
Premier Prepared to Overlook Opposition and Back Bush
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34992-2003Dec4.html
TOKYO, Dec. 4 -- Japan is set to give final approval next week to a plan dispatching nearly 1,000 troops to Iraq, government sources and local media said Thursday.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi reportedly signed off on most details of the plan -- Japan's first military deployment since World War II -- after receiving a briefing on security in Iraq from Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba late Wednesday. The reported decision to mobilize the Self-Defense Forces comes on the heels of the killings of two Japanese diplomats in Iraq on Saturday.
Government sources said Thursday that Koizumi, the Bush administration's leading ally in Asia, is determined to join the reconstruction effort, and that Japan "is now in the final stretch" toward sending troops.
Koizumi is expected to announce the deployment after a cabinet meeting Monday or Tuesday.
"The prime minister's desire is to start the deployment as early as possible," said a high-ranking government official. "We have seen the polls that indicate 70 to 80 percent of the public is opposed to the dispatch, but the prime minister will be explaining his decision to the people and he believes they will understand."
The Japanese troops will carry out support roles such as distributing water and transporting supplies, officials have said. They will also have strict rules of engagement prohibiting them from taking offensive action.
Howard H. Baker Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Japan, said Thursday that sending the troops to Iraq "has enormous symbolic significance as well as practical" significance. Japan's participation would mean the "coalition against terrorism has gained the full participation of the second-largest economy in the world. . . . I don't think it matters so much whether it's 300 people or 1,000 or 30,000."
Koizumi is reportedly considering sending an advance team of airmen in two or three weeks. A total of 150 airmen, along with C-130 transport planes, would arrive by the end of January. Their primary mission would be transport operations between Kuwait, Baghdad and the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
By February, Japan would send as many as 700 ground troops to the Samawah area in southern Iraq, which a Japanese scouting mission last month determined to be relatively safe.
Japan has pledged $5 billion in reconstruction aid to Iraq, but many here argue that it must do more than write checks. Especially with the threat of a nuclear North Korea just across the Sea of Japan, proponents of sending troops say that action is more important than ever to cement Japan's security alliance with Washington. But opinion polls have shown that most Japanese oppose sending troops to Iraq. Opponents of the dispatch, especially in the opposition Democratic Party, which made significant gains in last month's elections for the lower house of parliament, say Koizumi is gambling with his political future. Although Japan revised its laws in July to allow it to send troops abroad, that resolution stated they must be sent only to non-combat zones, which opponents say do not exist in Iraq.
"This dispatch will not only be wrong, but illegal," said Yoko Komiyama, a Democrat in the lower house. "I think we need more time to decide first whether Japan is really prepared to have an army again. The current rules of engagement are too strict for our Self-Defense Forces to properly defend themselves in Iraq. The Japanese public will react strongly against Koizumi if even one soldier is killed."
-------- business
Bush rescinds steel tariffs
December 05, 2003
By Joseph Curl and Jeffrey Sparshott
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031204-111447-5080r.htm
President Bush yesterday lifted steep tariffs on imported steel, citing new evidence that the 21-month program had enabled sagging U.S. steel companies to restructure and become more competitive with foreign producers.
"These safeguard measures have now achieved their purpose and as a result of changed economic circumstances, it is time to lift them," the president said in a statement.
While Mr. Bush rescinded tariffs that the White House had planned to keep in place until 2005, he announced a stepped-up monitoring program to guard against a surge of foreign steel entering the country.
The removal of the tariffs ended the threat of a trade war with Europe and Japan and threw into flux the president's re-election campaign strategy in steel-producing states, which supported the tariffs, and steel-consuming states, which opposed them.
Minutes after the president lifted the tariffs, effective at 12:01 this morning, the 15-nation European Union announced it would lift its threat of sanctions on $2.2 billion of U.S. products that would have taken effect Dec. 15.
The move has wide political impacts for next year's presidential campaign, especially in states in the Rust and Steel belts - all targets of the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election team. The tariffs had pleased the $50 billion steel industry in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, but angered small manufacturers and their workers in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Thomas J. Usher, head of the Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel Corp., said: "The tariffs were working as planned, and have been instrumental in bringing about the improvements in the industry that we've seen over the last two years. This decision will complicate the historic restructuring that is ongoing in the industry."
Said Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America: "His unwillingness to defend U.S. trade laws is an affront to all American workers."
But William Gaskin, president of the Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition steel task force, called the end of the tariffs the "right decision for the 13 million workers in steel consuming industries, for the manufacturing sector that is just beginning to recover from tough economic times, and the overall U.S. economy."
The watchdog group Council for Citizens Against Government Waste said the tariffs shored up the U.S. steel industry on the backs of average Americans.
"They were imposed at a high cost to consumers and taxpayers," group President Tom Schatz said. "The only benefit to the U.S. economy ... was the approximately $650 million collected in tariff 'revenues' from U.S. consumers."
In March 2002, after the International Trade Commission had reported to the White House that a surge of imports was costing the industry as much as $2 billion a year, the president imposed tariffs ranging from 8 percent to 30 percent on 10 categories of steel products. At the time, Mr. Bush said he was doing so to "help give America's steel industry and its workers the chance to adapt to the large influx of foreign steel."
The proclamation establishing the tariffs said the restraints "shall not terminate until the earlier of March 21, 2005, or such time as the secretary of commerce establishes a replacement program."
But in the official declaration yesterday rescinding the tariffs, the White House said the president is authorized "to reduce, modify, or terminate a safeguard action if ... he determines that changed circumstances warrant such reduction, modification or termination."
The president removed the tariffs after the European Union threatened to impose billions of dollars in sanctions on products from states ranging from Florida to California. But he did so not out of political expediency, he said, but because the tariffs had had their desired effect in a short time.
"The U.S. steel industry wisely used the 21 months of breathing space we provided to consolidate and restructure," Mr. Bush said is his statement. "The industry made progress increasing productivity, lowering production costs and making America more competitive with foreign steel producers."
U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick agreed, saying sales of domestic steel and company profits are up dramatically.
"Not only is the industry much stronger today than it was 21 months ago, but the economic circumstances that justified the safeguard have changed," Mr. Zoellick said.
He noted that production has risen across the board on more than a dozen major steel products and said "prices today are about 15 to 30 percent higher than in February 2002, the month before the safeguard."
From 1998, 42 steel companies went into bankruptcy, more than 50,000 steelworkers lost their jobs, and the government was forced to take over pension plans for 17 steel companies with 240,000 participants and nearly $7 billion in benefits, according to the steelworkers union.
But the tariffs helped stabilize steel companies.
"After losing nearly $5 billion in the 24 months before the safeguard was initiated, the flat-rolled [steel] industry posted profits of $400 million during the first 12 months of relief," Mr. Zoellick said, adding imports "are at their lowest levels in a decade."
Continuing the tariffs, he said, would place an undue burden on taxpayers.
"In the first 21 months of the safeguard, the benefits to the industry outweighed the marginal cost to consumers. Going forward, however, this is not the case."
Mr. Zoellick also said the decision to rescind the tariffs was "independent" of politics, despite the fact that the EU had carefully chosen its target list to cover a range of products from oranges to pajamas that would inflict maximum political pain in key swing states that Mr. Bush is hoping to win in next year's presidential race.
"The industry's much better off. We're not facing retaliation. That strikes me as a good combination," he said.
While the tariffs are over, Mr. Bush announced he was continuing early reporting requirements that had been imposed when the tariffs were levied in 2002 to detect any big influx of steel into the United States.
The reporting program requires steel importers to apply for import licenses, giving the government a quicker way to detect import surges than waiting for Customs Service data when the steel arrives at U.S. ports.
"We're very grateful to him for the help he did give, and we accept that he will step in again if necessary," said Wilbur Ross, financial backer for International Steel Group, a Cleveland company that has bought the assets of former giants LTV Steel, Acme Steel and Bethlehem Steel.
----
Military equipment suffers in Iraqi heat
December 05, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031205-113550-4563r.htm
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 -- U.S. military officials are battling to keep equipment functioning in Iraq and Afghanistan as heat and fine sand wears it down prematurely.
Gen. Richard Cody, the army's deputy chief of staff for operations, said his service requires additional armored Humvees as well as ceramic-enhanced body armor. He added the army needs repair or replacement of some 250,000 pieces of equipment, including aviation systems, communications and electronics systems, tracked and wheeled vehicles and missile systems.
One example was the operation of the CH-53E, or the Super Stallion heavy-lift helicopter, World Tribune.com said. Officials said the helicopter, deployed by the Marine Corps, was found to have contained an average of 150 pounds of fine sand throughout the aircraft.
The Defense Department has been awarding contracts to a range of companies for the supply of spare parts. Parker Aerospace, based in Irvine, Calif., was awarded an $11.1 million contract for delivery of parts for the AH-64A Apache attack helicopter, the UH-60 Black Hawk, the CH-47 Chinook and the OH-58 Kiowa helicopters.
-------- china
Taiwan Referendum to Focus on Missiles, Not Independence
December 5, 2003
By KEITH BRADSHER and JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/international/asia/05CND-TAIW.html?pagewanted=all&position=
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Dec. 5 - President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan said in an interview here today that he planned a referendum next March calling on China to withdraw ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan and demanding that China renounce the use of force against the island.
President Chen's insistence on holding a referendum is likely to heighten tensions across the Taiwan Strait - already at their highest point in several years - and comes at an awkward time for President Bush, who will receive China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, at the White House next week.
China has urged Washington to oppose more firmly what Beijing sees as Mr. Chen's desperate election season effort to excite antimainland sentiment in Taiwan. The Bush administration has made clear that it does not want a fresh crisis when it is deeply engaged in other hot spots, and depends on China's assistance to shut down North Korea's nuclear program.
In the interview, President Chen said that the planned referendum would not involve independence, the touchiest issue from the perspective of mainland China. But Beijing has expressed alarm about the precedent of holding any plebiscites on sensitive political topics.
On Wednesday, senior Chinese military officers publicly warned that Taiwan was facing an "abyss of war" and said that China was willing to accept boycotts of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, reduced foreign investment and military casualties to prevent Taiwan from using a referendum to advance the cause of independence.
President Chen contended that a referendum would help make people here and countries around the world more aware of what he described as an imminent and growing military threat from China, and that this would reduce the risk of a conflict. "Some argue that holding such a defensive referendum might send our children to the front line," he said. "In fact, the opposite is true."
Many people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait say that the political confrontation between the two sides has reached the highest level since 1996, when China lobbed missiles into Taiwan's shipping lanes in an unsuccessful effort to dissuade voters from choosing Lee Teng-hui, a presidential candidate seen by Beijing as seeking greater independence.
President Chen said that he planned to hold the referendum on election day, March 20. He is seeking re-election and his race with the Nationalist Party candidate, Lien Chan, who favors a less confrontational approach to mainland China, is too close to call.
President Chen said that he had informed the United States of his plans for the referendum, and he appealed for support on the grounds that Taiwan's democratic development needed strong American backing. That argument seems likely to elicit sympathy from Taiwan's supporters in Congress and among some neoconservative supporters of the Bush administration.
The State Department has bluntly discouraged Mr. Chen from holding a referendum on independence issues. But the administration has yet to respond to his new initiative to focus the referendum on China's military posture, especially as the precise wording has not yet been set.
In an interview late this morning in the reception hall of presidential offices used since Chiang Kai-shek's day, Mr. Chen devoted more than an hour to explaining his plans for the referendum. He said that the question posed on ballots "could be for the 23 million people of Taiwan to demand that China immediately withdraw the missiles targeting Taiwan and openly renounce the use of force against Taiwan."
Investing some of the extra money available from a booming economy, China has rapidly increased its arsenal of ballistic missiles and positioned many of them in easy striking range of Taiwan.
Although American and Taiwanese experts believe the missiles to be conventionally armed, Mr. Chen compared the danger they posed to Taiwan with the threat faced by the United States during the Cuban missile crisis, when the Soviet Union built missile storage and launching facilities in Cuba that could have been used for a nuclear-tipped arsenal.
"In 1962, the U.S. faced the 13 alarming days of the Cuban missile crisis," he said. "With 496 ballistic missiles aimed at the 23 million people of Taiwan, every day for us is an alarming day."
Mr. Chen repeatedly spoke of Taiwan's struggle to build a full democracy and called the referendum a historic first for Taiwan. He pointed out that efforts to bring democratic institutions to the island, suppressed for decades under martial law, were always met with opposition from mainland China and the ruling Nationalist Party.
"The holding of a referendum is a milestone in our democratic consolidation and the deepening of Taiwan's democracy," he said.
But Mr. Chen's critics at home and abroad accuse him of taking dangerous risks with Taiwan's security to bolster his own re-election prospects. Mr. Chen's Democratic Progressive Party has not gone as far in pursuing formal independence for the island as some of the party's core supporters would like, and the referendum could increase turnout among such voters.
China is unlikely to back down in the face of Mr. Chen's referendum, a Chinese expert said.
"If he wants China to remove the missiles, it's very easy," the expert, Xu Shiquan, a former head of the Taiwan Research Institute in Beijing and a prominent adviser to China's leaders on Taiwan issues, said in a telephone interview when told of President Chen's plans for the referendum. "He needs to forswear independence."
Mr. Xu added that "the impact of a referendum may be the opposite - we may need to increase our military strength because of growing fears that Taiwan is moving toward independence."
China had no official comment tonight.
Mr. Lien, the Nationalist Party's chairman and presidential candidate, criticized Mr. Chen in a separate interview today, saying that "this is no time for our government to provoke the Chinese communists on the mainland and create a situation of tension that will endanger the 23 million people on this island."
Advocates of independence have for years pressed for referendums as a way to bypass constitutional barriers to legal independence. After months of discussion this autumn, the legislature passed a bill mostly written by the Nationalist Party that severely limited the ability of the president to call a referendum except when the country is "facing an external threat which may jeopardize national sovereignty."
President Chen said that the missiles, which were also protested in rallies across Taiwan last year, posed just such a threat. Mr. Lien said that the Nationalist Party disagreed and had been surprised that President Chen was moving so swiftly to make use of the clause, which the Nationalists had only supported in the legislature as a last resort in a genuine crisis.
"We have a sense of betrayal," he said.
Mr. Chen asserted that personal ambition was not a factor in his decision.
"I'm already a president and it doesn't make a big difference to me whether I serve for one term or two terms," he said. "A referendum represents a concept and belief that I have pursued throughout my more-than-20-year political career. It is a universal value and a basic human right."
--------
Taiwan to Vote on China Missile Threat
December 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Taiwan-China.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Taiwan's president has decided to hold a referendum on March 20 to ask voters to demand that China remove hundreds of missiles aimed at the island, a presidential spokesman said Saturday.
Until now, the president had not said what issue would be on the referendum authorized under a new law that angered China.
``The missile issue will be on the referendum. That's for sure,'' the spokesman, James Huang, told The Associated Press.
President Chen Shui-bian announced last week that he planned to use a new law that gives him the power to hold a ``defensive referendum'' when the island's sovereignty faces an imminent threat.
China and Taiwan split during a civil war in 1949, and Beijing has threatened to use force to make the island unify. To back up its threats, China has deployed hundreds of missiles across from Taiwan, just 100 miles off China's coast.
-------- europe
Poland ready to consider US bases on its territory: defense minister
WARSAW (AFP)
Dec 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031205161234.oiacs21y.html
Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski said Friday that Poland, a former Soviet satellite, was ready to consider allowing US bases on its territory if such a request was made.
"US Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith arrives in Poland Monday to discuss the issue of US bases overseas," defense ministry spokesman Colonel Adam Stasinski told AFP without elaborating.
Szmajdzinski said the government and President Aleksander Kwasniewski must also discuss the base issue with Poland's political parties and listen to public opinion.
Consultations should also be held with Poland's allies and neighbors, PAP news agency quoted him as saying.
"(US Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld's deputy will visit us Monday. There will be talks, we'll see whether a proposal is made because so far there has not been one," Szmajdzinski added.
US President George W. Bush announced last month that the United States was stepping up discussions with key European and Asian allies about the overhaul of US global military deployments.
A senior US administration official said the president was not accelerating the process of revamping deployments, just moving ahead with planned consultations with key allies on where best to position US forces.
Bush came to office in January 2001 with plans to overhaul US forces to make them more mobile as well as revamp where they are stationed abroad.
"We will invite the full participation of our friends and allies" in the process, said the president, who has drawn fire for launching the US-led invasion of Iraq in March without explicit UN approval.
"A fully transformed and strengthened overseas force posture will underscore the commitment of the United States to effective collective action in the common cause of peace and liberty," he said.
-------- iraq
DIPLOMACY
Powell Calls for Increased NATO and U.N. Roles in Iraq
December 5, 2003
New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/international/europe/05POWE.html
BRUSSELS, Dec. 4 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Thursday urged NATO to consider expanding its activities in Iraq, in the Bush administration's most pointed appeal for international help since it went to war in the spring. He also called for more involvement from the United Nations.
"The United States welcomes a greater NATO role in Iraq's stabilization," Mr. Powell said in a speech to fellow NATO ministers. "We welcome a more robust United Nations role as well."
The secretary stopped short of making any specific requests. NATO currently provides logistical support to the Polish-led multinational division operating in south-central Iraq. In recent days Mr. Powell and other administration officials have suggested that NATO consider taking that division over.
Ministers in the 19-nation security alliance - some of whom strongly opposed the war that toppled the government of Saddam Hussein - reacted coolly, with some suggesting that NATO already had its hands full in Afghanistan.
Some countries, like France and Germany, have long made it clear that they will contribute troops only under United Nations command. But none of the ministers opposed Mr. Powell's suggestion outright on Thursday, the ministers said.
Mr. Powell's remarks, at a regularly scheduled meeting of NATO diplomats, were an indication of the strength of Bush administration's intent to find help in handling the costs and sacrifices of rebuilding Iraq with international partners.
Faced with a self-imposed deadline of this summer to transfer authority to an interim government, American officials also appear eager to increase the international legitimacy of their efforts in Iraq.
Washington is testing the waters after a series of attacks on its allies in Iraq that brought recent casualties to Italy, Britain, Turkey, Spain and Japan. The governments of those countries have said that despite rising public opposition, their support will not waver.
In Brussels, Mr. Powell, citing a United Nations resolution encouraging multilateral and regional groups to help rebuild Iraq, pressed NATO ministers to prepare for decisions by June, when NATO heads of state meet in Turkey to welcome seven new members.
Some diplomats expressed concerns that discussing more NATO involvement could revive the international rifts that opened in the prelude to the invasion of Iraq.
But some American officials seem certain of NATO's eventual willingness. Also in Brussels on Thursday, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said a larger role for NATO in Iraq was all but inevitable. "Within the next year you will see NATO getting involved in taking over the operations in Iraq, at least the start of such an involvement," Mr. Biden told a group of policy analysts.
Mr. Powell suggested that the United Nations, which drastically scaled back its operations in Iraq after its Baghdad headquarters were bombed in August, could claim a more prominent role without a new Security Council resolution. In a meeting in his home last month, Mr. Powell said, he prodded the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, to find a way back into the country.
The Polish foreign minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said the United Nations role should be expanded before NATO increased its efforts. "It's still too early," he said, according to The Associated Press. "However, we should keep in mind the fact that most of the NATO member states are present in Iraq." He added that "we believe that it would be wise if NATO engages itself deeper."
Some foreign policy experts said the administration, facing elections next fall, was moving to extricate itself from the reconstruction of Iraq.
Lord Robertson, NATO's secretary general, confirmed that no NATO member had ruled out playing a bigger role in Iraq. But he said several ministers had expressed concern that NATO might be stretched too thin as it expanded its activities in Afghanistan, which an American-led force invaded in October 2001 as part of the campaign against terrorism prompted by the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
A NATO-led international force of 5,700 is to be expanded to operate beyond Kabul, the Afghan capital. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, on a visit to Afghanistan on Thursday, said he supported NATO's discussions on setting up provisional reconstruction teams, which carry out security operations, train local police officers and help in rebuilding.
In another sensitive matter on both sides of the Atlantic, European ministers continued to struggle with efforts to adopt a common defense policy. The nations struck a deal to guarantee mutual assistance in case of an attack and to create a special unit, but not a headquarters, to handle planning and operations.
Thomas Fuller of The International Herald Tribune contributed reporting for this article.
--------
THE FOE
A Tale of War: Iraqi Describes Battling G.I.'s
December 5, 2003
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/international/middleeast/05IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
HAWIJA, Iraq, Dec. 4 - The man was in the car for less than two minutes Thursday when he pulled out a hand grenade. He had been carrying it, like an apple, in a little red shopping bag. He smiled. The other passengers winced.
"If you don't pull the pin," he explained calmly, "it won't explode."
The grenade was not, apparently, a threat but the man's way of trying to establish that he was, as he claimed, a member of the "resistance." Little is known about these forces except that they keep killing anyone associated with the American-led occupation and are making the American mission in Iraq very dangerous and difficult.
It was unclear why this man, who said he was a former soldier, and appeared sturdy and fit, perhaps 35 years old, was willing to talk to a Western reporter. His account could not be verified. He readily agreed to an interview after being introduced by a man who identified himself to The New York Times as a local reporter. The local reporter offered to make contact with what he termed the local resistance in this city in the Sunni Muslim heartland, the center for violence against Americans in Iraq.
American commanders say the people fighting them appear more brazen recently, and in recent weeks they have even circulated leaflets in Hawija asking all Iraqis to join them. Grenade still in hand and with a nerve-racking politeness, this fighter steered the car's driver to a cemetery here where he said several of his comrades, killed by American soldiers, were buried.
There, in almost an hour of conversation behind a wall, keeping an unending vigil for American soldiers on patrol, the man described what he said were operations of his cell, which he said consisted of some 15 men, mostly former soldiers, who take no direct orders from anyone, but are in contact with other similar groups.
"People with more military experience than me set the targets and make the plans," he said.
"It is like, `I have a friend, who has another friend,' " he said. "We have contacts between the cells but there is no real organization."
Some of the details given by the man - whose full story could not be independently corroborated - dovetailed with comments from the American military. The man said, for instance, that six insurgents were killed in an Aug. 30 firefight with the Americans, the same number given by Maj. Douglas Vincent, a spokesman for the 173rd Airborne Brigade, which has responsibility for Hawija.
Major Vincent dismissed as "very creative" the man's assertion that his cell had killed a total of 500 Americans. Six Americans have been killed in the area since late March, the major said.
The man's description squared largely with that of American military officials, who say they believe the attacks are carried out by loosely organized groups, composed of soldiers and others loyal to Mr. Hussein, as well as by Muslims from other countries who have come to Iraq to fight Americans. This fighter said he had seen no foreigners in the ranks of the resistance.
He said his group had mounted about 35 attacks locally, of which he participated in "more than five." His comments suggested a good knowledge of weapons, and he said his cell used Katyusha rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, large machine guns, AK-47's, mines and homemade bombs detonated by remote control (though he would not say exactly what kind of remote was used). He said they bought some weapons with their own money and looted others from unguarded ammunition dumps left over from before the war.
"We want the world to know that Bush, the biggest criminal of all, and Blair, that monkey of the desert, will not be able to control the Iraqis," he said. "We will not allow them to kill Iraqis. I am speaking before God, on my behalf and that of the other mujahedeen."
His choice of the word "mujahedeen" was perhaps one of the most telling details about what this insurgency would like to be.
The word means "holy warrior," and for many Muslims it connotes brave struggles against occupiers over centuries, against the crusaders a millennium ago or against the Russians in Afghanistan a mere two decades ago. These resisters would like that honorable title bestowed on them. The recruiting leaflets the American military says were found here called for Iraqis to join them on a "jihad," or holy war, against the Americans - prompting a large United States military raid on the town this week.
But the Americans increasingly use a different word: "fedayeen."
In Iraq, the fedayeen were Sadddam Hussein's dark-uniformed storm-troopers, who, unbroken after the American-led alliance invaded Iraq last spring, appear to be among the most potent force behind the attacks on Americans and their allies here, American officials say.
Many Iraqis also consider the resisters fedayeen, even those Iraqis who strongly oppose the American occupation here, and worry that Mr. Hussein would return if the resisters win.
"If it were not for Saddam, I think more people would have joined already," said Kashid Ahmad Saleh, 48, a farmer here who is deeply angry at the American presence.
It was hard to pin down any single motive for the fighter here, who said he served in the Iraqi Army for six years, ending in 1998, and who gave the nickname "Fighter for the Sake of God." In compact and articulate answers, the man seemed a fanatic neither for God nor for Mr. Hussein.
"We are not fighting for Saddam," he said. "We are fighting for freedom and because the Americans are Jews. The Governing Council," he said, referring to the body of Iraqis appointed by the Americans, "is a bunch of looters and criminals and mercenaries. We cannot expect that stability in this country will ever come from them."
"The principle is based on religion and tribal loyalties," he added. "The religious principle is that we cannot accept to live with infidels. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be on him, said, `Hit the infidels wherever you find them.' We are also a tribal people. We cannot allow strangers to rule over us."
But much as he protested that Mr. Hussein was not the reason for fighting, he nonetheless said that "Saddam never did any bad things."
Then he defended two of the actions Mr. Hussein is often blamed for here in Iraq and abroad: "The Kurds deserved all that happened to them because they are traitors and criminals. Kuwait deserved what it got because it stole our oil."
In 1990, Mr. Hussein invaded Kuwait, prompting an American-led invasion the next year that pulled back, at the last moment, from toppling him from power.
In the 1980's, Mr. Hussein, an Arab, waged war against the Kurds of the north, removing many from their land in favor of his fellow Arabs. A fear of reprisals from the Kurds now empowered by the American victory - a fear echoed in this Sunni Arab town - seemed yet another reason this fighter, a Sunni Arab, has chosen to fight.
So far, he said, 10 of his comrades have been killed, and at the cemetery he knelt down to pay his respects at the flag-covered graves of two of those killed Aug. 30.
Major Vincent cited the Aug. 30 attack, in which he said two American soldiers were wounded, as the "perfect" example of the resistance's weakness.
"If they were truly winning the struggle, they wouldn't be scared to operate in the day, they wouldn't attack innocent aid organizations and Iraqi citizens, but would have the courage to face the U.S. Army directly, which they don't, because when they do, they die," Major Vincent said in an e-mail message on Thursday.
The man said the insurgents' overall strategy was just what American commanders say it is: To kill so many soldiers that America has no political choice but to leave Iraq. The recent American decision to speed up civilian control to Iraqis, he said, was one indication their strategy is working - an assertion Major Vincent and other Americans strongly reject.
"They are beginning to be defeated," the man said. "I want my message to reach the world. We will stop killing Americans if they withdraw. As we are precious to our families, American soldiers are precious to their families."
Attack on Police Station
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 4 (Reuters) - Rocket-propelled grenades were fired at a police station in the town of Ramadi, 68 miles west of Baghdad on Thursday. Six people were wounded as officers gathered to receive their monthly salaries.
Last month, 17 policemen were killed in twin bomb blasts north of Baghdad as insurgents stepped up actions against security forces seen to be cooperating with the Americans.
Also on Thursday, an American armored personnel carrier erupted in flames after hitting a roadside mine in Baghdad. American forces said no one was hurt.
--------
U.S. Presses Counteroffensive, But Guerrillas Strike Again
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35822-2003Dec4.html
BAGHDAD, Dec. 4 -- Two Iraqi policemen and four civilians were wounded Thursday when insurgents fired two rockets at the police station in Ramadi, about 70 miles west of the capital, as officers were gathering to collect their monthly pay, officials said.
Though the attack caused no fatalities, it demonstrated the guerrillas' continuing ability to strike Iraqi security forces working with the U.S. occupation after bombings last month outside two police stations north of Baghdad killed 17 people.
In a separate incident, an ammunition transport truck burst into flames Thursday afternoon when it hit a land mine in Baghdad, U.S. military officials said. No U.S. troops were hurt in the incident.
Minutes after the explosion, flames billowed from the armored vehicle as dozens of U.S. forces closed down the road, a major highway connecting the city with the international airport to the southwest. Two helicopters circled overhead while Iraqi motorists on a nearby bridge slowed down to look, snarling rush-hour traffic.
The attacks came as U.S. officials said they have sharply reduced the number of strikes against allied forces by pressing an offensive against suspected loyalists of the ousted president, Saddam Hussein.
U.S. paratroops from the 82nd Airborne Division on Wednesday captured a former brigadier general in Hussein's Republican Guard during an early morning raid in Fallujah, a city near Ramadi in the heartland of anti-U.S. resistance, military officials said.
According to the officials, Brig. Gen. Daham Mahemdi was suspected of maintaining indirect contact with Hussein and directing guerrilla activities in Fallujah. He was seized at his home with two Kalashnikov assault rifles, a pistol, a shotgun and ammunition.
U.S. forces also detained a Shiite Muslim activist, Amar Yassiri, for alleged involvement in an Oct. 9 ambush that killed two U.S. soldiers in Sadr City, a vast, mainly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. A spokesman for a prominent Shiite cleric, Moqtada Sadr, a harsh critic of the U.S. occupation and the most influential figure in Sadr City, denied Yassiri was connected to Sadr.
At the same time, Abdel Hadi Daraji, a close Sadr associate, sharply criticized the U.S. troops for arresting Shiite activists, accusing the occupation forces of copying Hussein's tactics of detaining and intimidating critics.
While many Iraqi Shiites welcomed Hussein's ouster and the end of years of official repression of their religion, those around Sadr said they were concerned that U.S. forces may now be planning to remain in Iraq for a long time.
-------- israel / palestine
Bush and Jordanian King Confer on Palestinian Plan
December 5, 2003
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/politics/05DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 - President Bush and King Abdullah of Jordan discussed a Palestinian proposal on Thursday in which Israel would refrain from killing terrorist suspects and stop construction of its barrier in the West Bank in return for a cease-fire by militants, Arab diplomats said.
In a second phase, the Arab diplomats said, the Palestinian Authority would take more concrete steps to disarm Hamas and other militant groups, once Israeli restraint was established. In addition, the Palestinian leadership would pledge that, this time, the cease-fire would last.
Administration officials said they could not comment on the specifics of the meeting between Mr. Bush and the Jordanian king.
These officials added, however, that they viewed the recent talk from the Palestinian side - aimed at re-establishing a cease-fire similar to the one that collapsed in August - with considerable skepticism.
"A cease-fire is not a renunciation of violence," said an administration official. "By definition, it's just a pause, leaving terrorist capabilities in place, and letting them continue their planning for more attacks when the cease-fire ends."
Seeking to re-energize the stalled talks, King Abdullah took time out from a private visit to the United States to bring details of the latest proposal from the new Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, the Arab diplomats said.
The proposal is also being discussed among Arab leaders and leaders of various Palestinian factions in Cairo.
Siding with Israel, administration officials said that any peace plan must be accompanied by concrete actions by Palestinian authorities to disarm militants, dismantle weapons and rocket launchers and move against the infrastructure of the militant groups.
As the discussions proceeded, President Bush confirmed something that had been in the air for days - that despite Israeli objections, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell would meet on Friday with self-appointed Palestinian and Israeli negotiators who have worked out an unofficial peace agreement announced in Geneva this week.
The agreement - put together over the last two and a half years by teams led by Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli justice minister, and Yasir Abed Rabbo, a former information minister for the Palestinian Authority - calls for a nonmilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza in return for peace with Israel.
Palestinians would be granted sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and over the Temple Mount, with access by Jews. Israelis would keep most of their settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and his cabinet have made no secret of their antipathy to the document and the process that led to it. That created an awkward situation for the Bush administration, which was unenthusiastic about the Geneva discussions but did not want to seem to be kowtowing reflexively to the Israeli line.
Mr. Beilin, a critic of the Bush administration as well as of Mr. Sharon, has few fans among those around Mr. Bush. Mr. Rabbo is viewed equally skeptically as being overly close to Yasir Arafat, who praised the Geneva process while not endorsing the concessions the Palestinian side would have to make.
Secretary Powell, asked several times about the Geneva discussions, generally has sounded a cautious note, saying that anyone trying to bridge the Palestinian-Israeli divide should be commended. He had been careful not to say that he would meet with the negotiators.
That situation changed, however, when top Israeli leaders denounced Mr. Beilin as a traitor and demanded that Mr. Powell not meet with him or other negotiators. The secretary made clear that his schedule was up to him to determine, not the Israelis, and a meeting was put on it.
Mr. Bush, at his meeting with King Abdullah, reiterated that none of the peace proposals floating around would deter the United States from its basic position favoring a three-year step-by-step process known as the road map.
He repeated that the Palestinians would have to stop attacks on Israelis before Israel could be expected to make significant concessions.
Asked about whether he approved of a meeting between Mr. Powell and the Geneva negotiators, he said it could be "productive," as long as it adhered to these principles.
"We appreciate people discussing peace," he added. "We just want to make sure people understand that the principles to peace are clear."
--------
Israelis Conclude Hamas Has Suspended Its Suicide Attacks
December 5, 2003
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/international/middleeast/05MIDE.html
TEL AVIV, Dec. 4 - Israeli officials have concluded that the Islamic movement Hamas has suspended its suicide bombing campaign in recent months, a senior Israeli military officer said Thursday, citing that as one reason Israel has not suffered any deadly bombings in the past two months.
Hamas has not announced a suspension of bombings, though a Hamas official on Thursday restated what other group leaders have been saying in recent weeks - that Hamas will stop attacking civilians when Israel does.
Israel's security forces have foiled 20 attempted suicide bombings by other Palestinian factions over the past two months, including an attack that was already in motion when two suspects were arrested Wednesday in the West Bank, said the Israeli official, who briefed journalists.
The last suicide bombing that killed Israelis was on Oct. 4, an Islamic Jihad attack in Haifa that left 21 dead. Since then, no Israeli civilian has been killed in violence, the longest stretch since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.
The Israeli security forces have killed dozens of Palestinians, both militants and civilians, during frequent raids into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the period, while Palestinians have killed 10 Israeli soldiers and security guards.
Palestinian factions have carried out more than 100 suicide bombings in the last three years, and Hamas has been responsible for more attacks, and more Israeli deaths, than any other group.
The Israeli officer said Hamas suspended suicide bombings after Israel carried out a series of helicopter strikes on four of the group's top leaders from June to September, killing one and wounding three. Hamas still makes rocket and mortar strikes from Gaza.
"Hamas has stopped for the time being," the officer said, "but that might change overnight."
The last suicide bombings by Hamas were a pair of attacks several hours apart on Sept. 9, that killed a total of 15 people.
"Hamas has suspended attacks before when the organization faced threats," said Ariel Merari, a counterterrorism expert at Tel Aviv University. "Individuals are willing to die for the cause, but organizations are not suicidal," he said.
The Israeli official cited the European Union's move to put Hamas on its list of terrorist groups and the freezing of its assets as factors in the organization's cutting off suicide bombings.
Despite the lull, Israeli forces continue to pursue Hamas. Three wanted Hamas militants, along with a 9-year-old boy, were killed during an Israeli raid on Monday in Ramallah, in the West Bank.
Hamas leaders, who previously spoke at rallies and gave frequent interviews, have been in hiding.
Meanwhile, two other Palestinian factions, Islamic Jihad and the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, have continued to attempt suicide bombings, the Israeli officer said.
In Wednesday's operation, two would-be bombers from Islamic Jihad wanted to hit a school in northern Israel, the officer said. According to the officer, the attempted attack was ordered by the Islamic Jihad leadership in Damascus, Syria, where the group has offices.
--------
Bush Says Peace Plan May Be 'Productive'
Geneva Accord Already Denounced by Israel
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36807-2003Dec4.html
President Bush said yesterday that an unofficial peace plan denounced by the Israeli government is a "productive" contribution to ending the long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Choosing his words carefully, the president said he is still committed to the principles for resolving the conflict he first outlined a year and half ago. But, answering questions from reporters as he met with Jordan's King Abdullah, Bush said the new initiative known as the Geneva Accord is "productive so long as they adhere to the principles I've just outlined, and that is we must fight off terror, that there must be security, and there must be the emergence of a Palestinian state that is democratic and free."
The administration has forged an extraordinarily close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, often coordinating policies and positions. Yet in recent weeks, U.S. officials have become frustrated that Sharon has failed to ease Palestinian suffering and continued to allow settlement growth in Palestinian territories.
But it was not clear yesterday whether Bush's comments were intended as a slap at Sharon. He avoided mentioning the Geneva Accord by name, and his remark that it is productive appeared to be off the cuff and open to interpretation.
The Geneva Accord, negotiated by Israelis and Palestinians who have been involved in years of failed negotiations, attempts to leapfrog the current stalemate by dealing with tough issues long deferred by the official efforts, including the U.S.-backed "road map." The Geneva plan would require the removal of most Jewish settlements from the Palestinian territories, divide Jerusalem into the capitals of both Israel and a Palestinian state, and require that most -- but not all -- Palestinians give up their claim to return to land in Israel they left during and after the creation of the Jewish state in 1948.
Sharon has denounced the initiative as subversive. While the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, did not endorse the proposal, he has called it "a brave and courageous initiative . . . that opens the door to peace."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell angered Israel this week when he said he would meet with the plan's authors Friday, planning to "drop in" a meeting with two lower-level officials. But in a sign the administration is treading carefully in its relations with Sharon as Bush enters a reelection campaign, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz yesterday abruptly canceled his own planned meeting and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice refused to meet with the authors.
An administration official last night sought to play down expectations that the administration will embrace the initiative. "In the meeting we will explain clearly our policy [and] the president's vision based on the June 24 [2002] speech, and that that is our focus and that of the parties in the region," he said.
The administration intends to issue a statement after the meeting that will reiterate its determination to stick to its current course, sources said.
The Geneva Accord was initially ignored by the administration. While Powell's meeting heightens the accord's visibility and could put pressure on Sharon, U.S. officials are also wary of it because they fear it could overshadow the quiet efforts to restart the peace process outlined in the road map. Palestinian militants and officials met in Cairo yesterday to discuss a possible cease-fire; the administration has pressed Israel to respond with a series of initiatives if the cease-fire is achieved. U.S. officials have also held detailed negotiations with Israeli officials over the parameters of the settlement freeze required by the road map.
One U.S. official said the agreement on the settlement freeze, if achieved, is likely to be extremely detailed, "almost settlement by settlement, subsidy by subsidy," to leave the Israelis as little wiggle room as possible to interpret it differently.
U.S. officials, focusing on the postwar struggle in Iraq, have also pressed Israel not to take steps that would create a new crisis in the region, such as action against Arafat or building a security fence so deep in Palestinian territory that it appears to negate the possibility of a Palestinian state.
In an interview Wednesday, the chief negotiators of the Geneva Accord -- Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli justice minister and longtime peace negotiator, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, former Palestinian information minister -- said their efforts were intended to complement and in fact enhance the road map.
In the Geneva document, "we refer very seriously to road map," Beilin said. "We understand the importance of the road map. The road map is the only game in town. The only problem with this game is that nobody plays it."
Rabbo said that because the road map is fuzzy on some of the contours of a final deal, "no one [in the region] is convinced" by it. The Geneva Accord, he said, is intended to fill this gap.
Rabbo said that in their meeting with Powell today, he and Beilin will not be looking for "an official yes" but also didn't want their efforts regarded as a "a mere civil society initiative." He said their goal for the meeting is to make three things clear to Powell -- that the Geneva Accord is complementary to the road map, that it could be used as "pressure to start implementing the road map" and that it could educate Palestinians and Israelis about the trade-offs needed to achieve a peace agreement.
The Geneva Accord builds on the failed negotiations led by President Bill Clinton. Some experts say those talks collapsed because neither side had done enough to educate their constituents about the parameters of a deal.
-------- nato
Powell Reopens NATO Debate on Iraq
By PAUL AMES
Associated Press Writer
Dec 5, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/POWELL_NATO?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell has reignited a debate on NATO assuming a direct military role in Iraq, but it's unlikely to bring an immediate increase in the alliance's involvement.
Powell himself acknowledged Thursday that NATO's immediate focus for the coming months will be on Afghanistan, where the alliance has agreed to expand its peacekeeping force of 5,700 from the capital, Kabul, to several provincial cities.
Powell said, however, he sees hope of greater NATO willingness to take on an expanded role in Iraq at some point.
Although Powell said none of the allies had objected to his call for a wider NATO role, diplomats suggested the silence of France and Germany did not necessarily signal acquiescence from the two allies most critical of U.S. intervention in Iraq.
Berlin and Paris are likely to demand the United States cede more control of the military operation to the United Nations before they agree to sending NATO troops. However, Powell did win immediate backing from Spain, Italy and Poland, who supported the U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein and have sent troops to help stabilize the country.
"The time has come to consider a more direct role of the alliance in providing a framework of security for ... Iraq," said Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.
Poland and Spain are particularly keen to secure a NATO commitment to take over the peacekeeping operation in a sector of south-central Iraq currently run by a Polish-led multinational division.
Spain is due to replace Poland as the lead nation in that operation next year and both countries would like to have NATO ready to assume command after that, allowing them to send troops home.
NATO's involvement in Iraq is currently limited to providing logistics backup to the Polish-led division, which has 9,500 troops from 17 countries.
Diplomats said the alliance would move cautiously to avoid a repeat of the bruising internal divisions before the start of the Iraq war, when France, Germany and Belgium for weeks blocked the deployment of alliance defensive units to Turkey.
U.S. supporters see a gradual deepening of involvement in Iraq following the path NATO has taken in Afghanistan. There, alliance military planners first gave support to a Dutch-German operation in Kabul, then NATO took full charge of peacekeeping in the capital and is now preparing to fan out into other cities.
Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested this week that NATO could go still further, taking over all military operations in the country - including the combat missions against holdouts from the Taliban regime and their al-Qaida allies which are now run by a U.S.-led force of 10,000.
During their separate visits to NATO headquarters this week, Rumsfeld and Powell avoided criticism of new plans from the European Union to run its own military operations independent of NATO.
Washington had denounced previous proposals - suggested by France and Germany - as wasteful and a potential threat to NATO unity.
The new plan, which has the backing of Britain, tones down the original Franco-German call for a separate EU headquarters.
Diplomats said Washington was holding off from passing judgment on the latest proposal pending telephone talks between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush.
----
Rumsfeld points Georgia towards Nato
By Tom Warner in Tbilisi
December 5 2003
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1069493769481&p=1012571727166
Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, said on Friday during a visit to Georgia that the US was interested in expanding military co-operation and helping the new leadership start reforms aimed at joining the Nato military alliance.
Mr Rumsfeld also called on Russia to withdraw military forces from the former Soviet republic, but he reminded Georgia's new leaders that a credible election was critical to maintaining stability and that a range of reforms were needed.
"Nato of course is an alliance of democracies. We look at political, economic and military reforms," Mr Rumsfeld said. The visit by the defence secretary, just 12 days after Georgia's "rose revolution", underlined American concerns about security in the small but strategically important country.
Wedged between Russia and the Middle East, Georgia also lies on the route of a oil pipeline being built from the Caspian Sea to Turkey's Mediterranean coast. Georgia's interim president, Nino Burdzhanadze, part of a group of pro-western politicians who took over after protests forced former president Eduard Shevardnadze to resign, said relations with the US were of "principal importance" to her and her allies.
Mikheil Saakashvili, the Tbilisi city council chairman who led the protests, also took part in the meetings and stood with Mr Rumsfeld and Ms Burdzhanadze at the press conference. US diplomats said Mr Saakashvili's participation was important because he was the most likely candidate to win a presidential election scheduled for January 4.
The interim administration is struggling to maintain order in a country that has long been regarded as lawless. In the last week explosions have struck a television building and a political party office, a top banker has been kidnapped and a Russian diplomat fell victim to a violent car- jacking.
With a two-year, $64m (?53m, £38m) programme to train and equip an elite brigade of the Georgian army coming to an end next spring, the US hopes to spread reforms to the whole of Georgia's armed forces.
----
Powell Appeals to Allies for an Expanded NATO Role in Iraq
From News Services
Friday, December 5, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36696-2003Dec4.html
BRUSSELS, Dec. 4 -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called on NATO allies Thursday to consider a more prominent role in Iraq for the alliance, which currently provides only low-level and indirect support to a Polish-led force.
In a speech to fellow NATO foreign ministers, Powell urged the alliance "to examine how it might do more to support peace and stability in Iraq, which every leader has acknowledged is critical to all of us."
The statement by Powell was among Washington's strongest appeals for NATO help in the Iraq conflict, which sparked one of the deepest crises in the alliance's 54-year history when some allies opposed the war.
NATO now provides logistical support for the Polish-led contingent that patrols one of three military sectors in Iraq. Powell suggested Thursday that NATO could take over for the Poles.
Some ministers voiced support for the proposal, but the alliance as a whole took no action on it.
Powell said that NATO officials appeared to be interested in first forming a plan to expand the alliance's role in Afghanistan, from the capital, Kabul, to one or more provinces. Powell said NATO should consider eventually taking over all military operations there.
Currently, NATO's peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, with more than 10,000 troops, is separate from the U.S.-led combat operation against remnants of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Speaking to reporters after meetings Thursday at NATO headquarters, Powell said he was surprised "not a single member spoke against" his proposal on Iraq.
Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, whose government has sent 3,000 police officers to southern Iraq, endorsed a higher profile for NATO in Iraq. "I think that the time has come to consider a more direct role of the alliance in providing a framework of security for the midterm term stabilization of Iraq," Frattini said. Spain and Poland also support a more robust NATO role.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer both attended the NATO session. Neither was reported to have commented publicly on Powell's proposal.
The United States suggested an expanded NATO role in Iraq as far back as a year ago, months before the war, but encountered stiff resistance, particularly from France and Germany.
Powell has pushed the issue in telephone conversations and at international conferences since then, but has received little positive feedback.
Although the alliance has had only a small role in Iraq, many of its members have sent forces there on their own. Powell pointed out Thursday that more than half of the current or pending NATO members have troops in Iraq.
-------- russia / chechnya
36 Killed in Train Blast Near Chechnya
By SERGEI VENYAVSKY
Associated Press Writer
Dec 5, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/RUSSIA_EXPLOSION?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (AP) -- A suicide attacker set off an explosion that tore through a commuter train Friday near the separatist region of Chechnya, killing 36 people and wounding scores of others in a bombing that President Vladimir Putin said was intended to disrupt this weekend's parliamentary elections.
Authorities said a man triggered the bomb and three other attackers - all women - also were involved. At least two of the women may have jumped from the train before the blast.
The rebel Chechen government denied it was responsible for the blast, the second fatal attack on the rail line near the breakaway republic since September.
The 8 a.m. explosion ripped open the side of train as it approached a station near Yessentuki, about 750 miles south of Moscow, hurling passengers to the ground. Others were trapped under a mound of twisted, burning wreckage for hours.
At least 148 wounded were hospitalized, and another 29 suffered only slight injuries, said Maj. Gen. Nikolai Lityuk of the Emergency Situations Ministry.
Authorities found undetonated grenades still strapped to the legs of a male suicide attacker, the Interfax news agency quoted Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Federal Security Service, as saying. Experts gingerly entered the wreckage to remove the explosives and later detonated them, Russian television reported.
Patrushev said two women jumped from the train just before the explosion, Interfax reported. The male suicide bomber has not been identified. Patrushev did not say what happened to the third alleged female attacker.
They also found the remnants of a bag believed to have carried the bomb, the security agency said. The device was estimated to have the force of 22 pounds of TNT, said Vladimir Rudyak, a spokesman for the local prosecutor's office, and blew one of the train cars onto its side.
It was not known if the death toll of 36 included the male attacker.
Putin called the attack "an attempt to destabilize the situation in the country on the eve of parliamentary elections" on Sunday.
"The international terrorism that has challenged many countries continues to represent a serious threat for our country," Putin said. "It is a ruthless, serious, treacherous enemy. Innocent people suffer from their activity."
Although Putin didn't identify who he believed was responsible, he was "sure they won't succeed." He also promised to help all those affected by the attack.
The rebel Chechen government led by President Aslan Maskhadov issued a statement denying its involvement.
"We repeat that the Chechen government is guided by the principles of international humanitarian law," the statement said. "We therefore condemn any acts of violence that directly or indirectly target the civilian population anywhere in the world."
The rush-hour attack seemed calculated to kill and injure a large number of people, and local health officials said the train was carrying a large number of students from schools and universities.
Hours after the blast, firefighters continued to pull dead from beneath the carriage.
"We will find those who did it, " Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said, according to the Interfax news agency. "The earth will be burning under their feet."
Six people were killed in two blasts on the same train line in September. No group claimed responsibility for those attacks.
A series of suicide bombings and other attacks have rocked the region in and around Chechnya and Moscow this year.
In June, a female suicide attacker detonated a bomb near a bus carrying soldiers and civilians to work at a military airfield near Mozdok, the headquarters for Russian troops in the Caucasus region, killing at least 16 people. A month earlier, a suicide truck-bombing in Chechnya killed 72 people and a woman blew herself up at a religious ceremony, killing at least 18 people.
A double suicide bombing at a rock concert in Moscow on July 5 killed the female attackers and 15 other people. Soon after that, bomb experts said a woman from Chechnya left an explosive on a Moscow street that killed a bomb disposal expert.
In October 2002, Chechen rebels seized a Moscow theater for nearly three days before Russian authorities ended the siege by spraying a powerful gas in the building. More than 120 of the 800 hostages were killed.
Russian forces have been bogged down in Chechnya since 1999, when they returned following rebel raids on a neighboring Russian region. Earlier, they fought an unsuccessful 1994-96 war against separatists that ended in de facto independence for the region.
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Dozens Killed in Suicide Bombing Aboard Russian Train
December 5, 2003
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/international/europe/06RUSSIA.html?hp
MOSCOW, Dec. 5 - A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a crowded commuter train in southern Russia today, killing at least 40 people in what President Vladimir V. Putin denounced as a terrorist act intended to disrupt parliamentary elections here this weekend.
The explosion, which occurred at 7:42 a.m., wrenched apart the second carriage of the train only moments after it left the station in Yessentuki, near the foothills of the Caucasus, not far from Chechnya.
The force of the bomb, which one official estimated to contain more than 20 pounds of plastic explosives, hurled bodies and body parts dozens of yards from the carriage. More than 150 other passengers, many of them students on their way to school in the resort city of Mineralniye Vodi, were wounded, some of them gravely. Officials warned that the death toll could rise higher.
It seemed unlikely that today's suicide attack would drastically affect the outcome of Sunday's elections, in which the party loyal to Mr. Putin, United Russia, is expected to win a comfortable majority.
"The crime committed today is of course an attempt to destabilize the situation in the country on the eve of the parliamentary elections," Mr. Putin said in remarks broadcast on national television. "I am sure the criminals will not succeed in this."
The bombing nevertheless underscored the bloody price that the smoldering conflict in Chechnya continues to exact on Russia, despite the Kremlin's efforts to write a new constitution and elect a new president in the battered republic.
There were cryptic and unconfirmed reports last week that one of Chechnya's most notorious rebel commanders, Shamil Basayev, had threatened to initiate a new wave of terrorist attacks leading up to Sunday's elections and the New Year holidays. In addition to the bombing, officials said they discovered a car loaded with explosives in Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya, foiling another potential attack.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, Sergei N. Ignatchenko, chief spokesman for the Federal Security Service, said in an interview that it bore all the characteristics of terrorist acts by Chechnya's separatist fighters.
In the train's twisted wreckage, investigators found the body of a man believed to have been the suicide bomber, as well as grenades strapped to his legs and a bag believed to have carried the explosives, he said.
Nikolai P. Patrushev, the director of the security service, who appeared on television with Mr. Putin, said the bomber appeared to have worked with three accomplices, all women. Two of them, he said, are believed to have leapt from the train shortly before the explosion. A third, who he said might have detonated the explosive by remote control, was gravely wounded and not likely to survive.
Boris V. Gryzlov, Russia's interior minister and leader of United Russia, vowed to punish those responsible for the bombing.
"The earth will burn under their feet," he said, according to the Interfax news agency. "These animals will not feel safe anywhere."
Over the spring and summer Russia suffered a wave of terrorist attacks, many of them carried out by suicide bombers. The attacks - at a rock concert in Moscow, a bus stop and military hospital in Mozdok and government buildings in Chechnya - killed more than 250 people.
In recent months, however, the attacks appeared to wane. The last occurred in early September when a bomb exploded on a train on the same commuter line as today's attack, killing six people.
Officials have attributed the attacks - as well as the siege of a theater in Moscow last October that ended with the deaths of 129 hostages and 41 guerrillas - to Chechens aided by international Islamic extremists.
"The crime committed this morning also says that the international terrorism that has launched a challenge to many countries of the world continues to remain a serious threat today for our country as well," Mr. Putin said in his remarks today. "It is a cruel, cunning, dangerous enemy. First of all, it is the innocent people who suffer from its crimes."
In an interview at the Federal Security Service's headquarters on Lubyanka Square, Mr. Ignatchenko said that intelligence reports suggested that separatist fighters in Chechnya continued to receive financial support from abroad, including Islamic charities in Saudi Arabia. He cited evidence of a $3 million payment in March that may have bankrolled the wave of attacks over the summer.
He acknowledged the difficulty of tracing the organization of the bombings, saying many are planned and carried out locally. "It is hard to determine if a person who works as a cook or sells something in a market is a terrorist," he said. "At some point he gets a command."
While Mr. Ignatchenko said Russia had had recent success in fighting terrorism stemming from the wars in Chechnya, he warned of a new threat. After nearly a decade of conflict, including two wars and the destruction of the republic's economy, industry and schools, he said, "a new generation has grown in Chechnya that has not seen anything but war."
"Many cannot read," he added. "Many cannot speak Russian, but they know very well how to disassemble a Kalashnikov and how to set up a mine."
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U.S. intelligence officials take look at 2020
December 05, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031204-111446-4937r.htm
It's 2020 and the United States, Europe and Japan struggle to maintain a decent quality of life for masses of elderly people.
China faces a choice between belligerence and joining Western nations as an economic superpower. India, Brazil and Indonesia are emerging powers.
That's one future being contemplated by U.S. intelligence officials as part of a long-range forecasting endeavor just getting under way. The effort, called the National Intelligence Council 2020 Project, aims to come up with a range of scenarios the world could face.
The product will be unclassified, which is unusual for the U.S. intelligence services. Council Chairman Robert L. Hutchings, in a recent interview at CIA headquarters, said he expects to publish the paper in December 2004, timed between the presidential election and the beginning of either President Bush's second term or a new administration.
"It's a time when people inside government are more ready to think very broadly," Mr. Hutchings said.
With so much of the nation's intelligence community focused on the next car bomb, Mr. Hutchings said looking years ahead would help policy-makers navigate what he described as a "period of profound flux in world affairs."
The council is made up of senior analysts who advise Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet. It is not part of the CIA but is located at the agency's headquarters.
The project held its first conference in November. Over the next year, it will bring together specialists on demographics, technology and regional affairs. Foreign scholars will be consulted for their views on their home regions as well as the United States.
At the start, Mr. Hutchings and his colleagues have mostly questions:
•Will mass retirements in North America, Europe and Japan strain national economies to the point there's a global slowdown?
"That's not inevitable," Mr. Hutchings said. "It's possible that these creative societies will be able to take policy measures to accommodate an aging work force and move toward a new era of economic growth."
• What countries are most likely to fall apart and become potential terrorist havens?
•Will poorer nations create a backlash that undermines the global trading system?
•Will economic forces lead to major change in China, the world's most populous nation?
"What would it take for the Chinese Communist Party to evolve so much that it could accommodate all these new political, economic and social forces that have been unleashed by economic growth?" Mr. Hutchings asked. "What other forms of political expression might pop up? Greater regional identity? New social movements? Even new political parties?"
Whatever happens, Mr. Hutchings said the nation is unlikely to be just like the China of today.
"I'm personally attracted by the theory that China can either become aggressive or powerful, but not both," Mr. Hutchings said. "A China that was reverting to threatening behavior would be a closed China that wouldn't be open enough for economic growth."
The aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq will still be felt in the Persian Gulf region in 2020, he predicted.
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CIA on Flight 800
December 05, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
Inside the Ring
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
The CIA recently declassified a once-secret report on eyewitnesses to the crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, N.Y., on July 17, 1996. CIA analyst Randolph M. Tauss, who won an intelligence medal for his work on the crash, concluded that numerous eyewitnesses who saw a streak of light heading toward the Boeing 747 jetliner were wrong if they believed it was surface-to-air missile going toward the jet.
Based on sound-travel analysis and a spy satellite sensor, Mr. Tauss stated: "Any eyewitness who thinks he may have seen a missile shoot down Flight 800 needs to have seen something that occurred more than 42 seconds before the aircraft broke into 'two distinct fireballs' and more than 49 seconds before the plane hit the water," he wrote. "CIA analysts are not aware of any eyewitness who did."
Evidence that the streak was burning fuel from the aircraft, which is believed to have exploded shortly after takeoff from a spark inside a center-wing fuel tank, is "extensive and compelling," Mr. Tauss stated.
"Nevertheless, a few people, driven by what they perceive to be an overwhelming number of eyewitnesses who 'saw' a missile attack the plane, persist in thinking otherwise," he said. "Confident that so many eyewitnesses cannot be 'wrong,' they have concluded that the government, for whatever reason, is covering up the true cause of the crash."
Some U.S. officials blame former FBI New York Director James Kallstrom for propagating the terrorist theory. Mr. Kallstrom took control of the crash investigation from the National Transportation Safety Board for months by insisting the crash was a terrorist attack. He gave up the theory after the agency's deputy director for intelligence wrote him a note in March 1997 stating that "the total absence of physical evidence of a missile attack leads CIA analysts to conclude that no such attack occurred."
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Israel Shares Blame on Iraq Intelligence, Report Says
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36694-2003Dec4.html
JERUSALEM, Dec. 4 -- Israel was a "full partner" in U.S. and British intelligence failures that exaggerated former president Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a report by an Israeli military research center has charged.
"The failures of this war indicate weaknesses and inherent flaws within Israeli intelligence and among Israeli decision-makers," Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom wrote in an analysis for Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.
Israeli intelligence services and political leaders provided "an exaggerated assessment of Iraqi capabilities," raising "the possibility that the intelligence picture was manipulated," wrote Brom, former deputy commander of the Israeli military's planning division.
David Baker, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, declined to comment on the report.
The allegations parallel those raised in the United States and Britain. Officials have combed Iraq and interrogated former authorities for months, but have turned up little evidence to support the prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs.
"In the questioning of the picture painted by coalition intelligence, the third party in this intelligence failure, Israel, has remained in the shadows," the report said. "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities."
The report added, "A critical question to be answered is whether governmental bodies falsely manipulated the intelligence information in order to gain support for their decision to go to war in Iraq, while the real reasons for this decision were obfuscated or concealed."
The study did not cite specific exchanges of intelligence. Israeli officials frequently told foreign journalists before the war that Israel and the United States were sharing information, particularly regarding Iraqi missiles and nonconventional weapons that could possibly be used against Israel.
The report accused intelligence agencies of being blinded by a "one-dimensional perception of Saddam Hussein."
"At the heart of this perception lay the colorful portrait of an embodiment of evil, a man possessed by a compulsion to develop weapons of mass destruction in order to strike Israel and others, regardless of additional considerations," the report said.
The analysis said a "certain degree of intelligence wariness is justified," but added, "the problem lies in getting carried away to extremes, as was clearly the case with Israeli intelligence on Iraq."
The report said that when "Israeli intelligence became aware that certain items had been transferred by the head of the regime from Iraq to Syria, Israeli intelligence immediately portrayed it -- including in leaks to the media -- as if Iraq was moving banned weapons out of Iraq in order to conceal them."
The analysis faulted intelligence officials for discounting the more likely scenario that Hussein and his aides were moving cash or family members out of the country in anticipation of the attack.
The study noted that Israeli and U.S. governments have disagreed over the past decade on the "weight of various threats in the Middle East." The report said Israel has generally claimed that Iran poses a more serious threat than Iraq, because the latter was "contained and under control."
But, the author added, "Once the Bush administration decided to take action against Iraq, it was more difficult for Israel to maintain its position that dealing with Iraq was not the highest priority, especially when it was obvious that the war would serve Israel's interests."
The report prompted one Israeli lawmaker, Yossi Sarid, a member of the Meretz party, to renew demands for an investigation. The analysis said that creating an "inflated, overly-severe intelligence picture" undermined public and international trust in Israel's security services. The report also said the Israeli defense establishment was forced to spend "a great deal of money on addressing threats that were either non-existent or highly unlikely."
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Army suspends training after death
December 05, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/aroundnation.htm
FORT JACKSON SOUTH CAROLINA - The Army has suspended night training exercises that use live ammunition after a soldier was fatally shot this week.
Pvt. Joseph E. Jurewic, 18, of Altamonte Springs, Fla., is the first soldier to die during Night Infiltration Course training since it was opened at Fort Jackson 20 years ago, the Army said.
The night training exercise has recruits crawling 100 meters on their bellies while bullets are fired above their heads and explosions occur nearby.
M-60 machine guns fire tracer rounds that are visible at night and are supposed to be fixed into position so that the bullets fire at least 8 feet above a standing soldier, said Col. Steve Fondacaro, the fort's deputy commander.
From wire dispatches and staff reports.
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A warning from deep inside the Pentagon.
PBS This Week:
Inside the Pentagon
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript245_full.html
Transcript NOW WITH BILL MOYERS...
SPINNEY: If you look at the weapons that we're buying, they're not for the war on terrorism. The best you can say about them is that they are not designed for the threats that we face. Some of them may not work at all.
ANNOUNCER: The new defense budget is crammed full of high-tech super weapons. But with so many of our men and women now on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq, are our tax dollars buying them what they need most? An exclusive interview with a Pentagon insider.
MOYERS: You've said it's a moral sewer there on the Potomac.
SPINNEY: That's correct.
MOYERS: What do you mean, "moral sewer"?
SPINNEY: Well, we are, in fact, in effect, undermining the Constitution because we won't address this issue of accountability.
ANNOUNCER: And we also could be undermining our national security.
Tonight, "Inside the Pentagon."
All that tonight on NOW WITH BILL MOYERS, the weekly newsmagazine from PBS.
ANNOUNCER: From our studios in New York, Bill Moyers.
MOYERS: Welcome to NOW. The president of the non-profit organization Public Citizen keeps a close and increasingly bloodshot eye on Capitol Hill.
She watched the debate on the big energy bill late last month as if it were déjà vu all over again.
A filibuster staved off passage of the bill for the time being, but, said Joan Claybrook, it's part of a dangerous trend in which citizens are shut out and corporations dictate policy in Congress behind closed doors.
Which brings us to the defense budget, our subject in this hour.
Congress this fall gave President Bush even more money for the Pentagon than he had requested, over $400 billion.
And as with the energy bill, only a small number of privileged politicians and lobbyists knew what all that money was for or how it would be spent.
As we reported a few months ago, however, some of that money for defense may actually be putting the country and our combat troops in even greater danger.
It happened in Vietnam. It's still happening.
Remember what Jessica Lynch told ABC's Diane Sawyer the other night:
SAWYER: How did you find out your gun was jammed?
LYNCH: When we were told to lock and load, that's when my weapon jammed. I mean, all the bullets and stuff just jammed up inside.
MOYERS: In this hour, you'll hear more about the problems involving the M-16 rifle.
Now, we take another look at a system spinning out-of-control, as President Eisenhower feared might happen many years ago when he warned of a military-industrial complex that would make its own rules and serve its own ends.
Sure enough, in the 1970s, a handful of Pentagon bureaucrats, most of them former military officers, discovered that the Defense Department was spending more money for fewer weapons and underestimating their costs.
This small group has since waged a relentless campaign to reform the system.
The most outspoken of them is Franklin C. ("C" for Chuck) Spinney.
Peter Meryash produced our report.
MOYERS: Chuck Spinney worked inside the Pentagon for almost 30 years, committed to a strong national defense. It's a conviction ingrained in him, as the son of an Air Force colonel and a former Air Force officer himself. But he has a shocking story to tell - one he wants every American to hear.
MOYERS: Are we getting the best weapons at the lowest prices?
SPINNEY: No. No way at all. We could get... The weapons we're buying, we could get at lower prices if we held the contractors' feet to the fire. And I submit that many of the weapons we're getting, the best that you can say about them is that they are not designed for the threats that we face. Some of them may not work at all.
MOYERS: Spinney should know. His job at the Pentagon for the last three decades: to analyze the cost and effectiveness of America's weapons. And he says, national security is at risk because the country's not getting what we're paying for.
SPINNEY: I think it's out of control. I think a lot of people have just thrown up their hands.
MOYERS: So out of control, says Spinney, that the Pentagon can't account for billions upon billions of the dollars it's spending while its financial books border on pure fiction.
SPINNEY: We have an accounting system that is unauditable. Every year, they do an audit and the inspector general would issue a report saying we have to wave the audit requirements, issue a disclaimer of opinion because we can't balance the books. We can't tell you how the money got spent.
MOYERS: Case in point: since 1995, the General Accounting Office has ranked the Defense Department's financial management among the worst in the federal government "... on [the] GAO's list of high-risk areas vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement."
What's more, in fiscal year 2000, the Defense Department's own inspector general found that the Pentagon could not account for more than $1 trillion - trillion with a "t."
Spinney says this amounts to a constitutional crisis.
SPINNEY: We have all, every member of the federal government has taken an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution. It's our fundamental oath of office. We don't take personal loyalty oaths in this country, we take oaths to the Constitution. And the rock solid foundation of the Constitution is accountability.
That the government represents the will of the people. And if it can't account for its own activities then there's no way the people can enforce its will on the government. Because they don't know what's happening.
MOYERS: Spinney's truth telling has long angered the military establishment. It began with his groundbreaking report in the late 1970s. The title was simple - DEFENSE FACTS OF LIFE - but it soon earned a reputation as "one of the most important documents ever to come out of the Pentagon."
The report documented a crisis in national defense - how an obsessive pursuit of ever-more complicated weapons threatened to wreck the budget and impair our security.
It brought Spinney to the attention of such reform-minded members of Congress as Senators Sam Nunn and Gary Hart, as well as journalists who wrote about a dysfunctional Defense Department.
Enter Ronald Reagan.
President Reagan promised a massive military build-up, leaving Congress to figure out how to pay for it.
At the same time, Spinney was working on his next report and it would prove to be a bombshell.
By 1983, Senator Chuck Grassley, a conservative Republican from Iowa, wanted to hear what Spinney had to say but the Pentagon was so rankled by Spinney's findings, it refused Grassley's request.
Only under threat of subpoena did the Pentagon give in. Congress scheduled hearings, but even then, Pentagon allies tried to bury Spinney's testimony in a small hearing room on a Friday afternoon.
So many members of Congress and journalists demanded to hear Spinney that his testimony was moved into a much larger room - the very place where the Watergate hearings had been held almost a decade earlier.
Spinney made big news.
DAN RATHER: When Chuck Spinney talks about defense costs overruns, Congress listens.
MOYERS: The country heard from Spinney how the Pentagon routinely underestimated the true costs of weapons.
SPINNEY [before Congress 2/25/83]: We projected that our modernization costs in 1982 would be here. It actually turned out to be here. That's a mismatch of 100 percent.
MOYERS: The Pentagon low-balled initial costs, Spinney told Congress, well-aware that hundreds of billions of dollars more would have to be spent in the future.
SPINNEY [before Congress 2/25/83]: If we don't face these structural problems and try to resolve them, we could hurt the consensus for a strong defense that has been so painstakingly built over the last 6 years.
MOYERS: Underestimating costs, Spinney testified, left less money for other weapon systems and slowed modernization. It even hampered military readiness.
GRASSLEY: If what you are saying is true, then we not only have a budget problem, but I think that we frankly have a major problem in national defense.
MOYERS: That was 1983. Spinney's courage and candor landed him on the cover of TIME magazine which called him "the unlikely hero" of the Pentagon reform movement.
Now, fast-forward 20 years. The defense budget continues to climb and Spinney is still speaking out.
MOYERS: President Bush has the military budget he wanted, $400 billion in one year alone. Is that enough?
SPINNEY: It's too much. And you have to remember that the way we do our budgeting, this is a peace time budget. When we fight wars we ask for extra money. It's a little bit like a fire department spending all this money on new equipment and then a fire alarm goes off and they say, "Well, we'd be happy to put out the fire but you got to send us some money so we can pay for the gas and the extra duty hours and the hazardous duty pay."
MOYERS: And that's just what has happened. The new $400 billion defense budget doesn't include the $31 billion in additional funds for homeland security or the $87 billion the administration says it needs to stabilize and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.
BYRD [Senate floor statement 5/22/03]: Our country spends more on defense than all other 18 members of NATO plus China, plus Russia, plus the six remaining rogue states combined. In an age when we talk about smart bombs, smart missiles, and smart soldiers, any talk of smart budgets has gone out the window.
MOYERS: How's the public to make up its mind? I mean, you get a senator like Byrd of West Virginia, a Democrat who says, quote "Our defense budget seems more the same as ever. Not more bang for the buck, just more bucks. Then you get the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator John Warner, a Republican, saying quote "This sends a strong signal throughout the world that we are unified in the war against terrorists." Who are we to believe?
SPINNEY: Well, I'm not sure what the signal that it sends to the world is. It sends a big signal to the defense industry that we're unified to convert the war on terrorism into a big spend-up in defense. If you look at the weapons that we're buying, they're not for the war on terrorism. New aircraft carriers, new submarines, F-22 fighters, Comanche helicopters. That's not about Osama bin Laden, that's about some sort of vestige of the Soviet Union.
These are basically legacy systems. Even though some of them may have started after the Cold War, they reflect the Cold War mentality of preparing a defense program to deal with a massive national power.
MOYERS: Look no further, says Spinney, than ballistic missile defense - so-called star wars - a protective shield made popular by President Reagan, who believed it would stop incoming missiles from hostile powers.
President Clinton was not convinced it would work.
CLINTON: I simply cannot conclude with the information I have today that we have enough confidence in the technology and the operational effectiveness of the entire system to move forward to deployment.
MOYERS: Nonetheless, Clinton refused to kill it. And less than a year later, his successor declared full speed forward.
BUSH: When ready, and working with Congress, we will deploy missile defenses to strengthen global security and stability.
MOYERS: But there's one little problem, says Spinney. Ballistic missile defense doesn't work. The only tests in which missiles have ever hit their mark turned out to have been rigged. For example, the incoming dummy targets were often equipped with homing beacons, making them easier to hit.
And yet, there have been several, high-profile failures, including this one in June.
In an April report, the General Accounting Office called missile defense, quote, "...an expensive and risky endeavor..." that has so far relied on "...immature technology and limited testing."
With failure after failure of even limited testing, the White House has nonetheless plunged ahead, deploying the unproven system which, by some estimates, could eventually add up to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
MOYERS: Is it conceivable to you that the powers that be will not allow the ballistic missile to be tested because they know it won't work?
SPINNEY: Well, yes. I'm not sure the cause and effect things. They don't want it to be tested, there's no question about that. And in fact, they have concocted this whole theory of development called spiral development, which means we deploy a program before it is fully tested. And this isn't just ballistic missile defense, this is gonna be everything. And then we'll work the bugs out of it after it's in the field.
MOYERS: And look at what's happening. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testified before Congress recently, he was challenged about the lack of testing.
LEVIN [2/13/03]: How do you justify bypassing operational testing requirements?
RUMSFELD [2/13/03]: I happen to think that thinking we cannot deploy something until you have everything perfect, every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed, is probably not a good idea. In the case of missile defense, I think we need to get something out there, in the ground, at sea, and in a way that we can test it, we can look at it, we can develop it, we can evolve it and find out, learn from the experimentation with it. It happens that it also provides a minimal missile defense capability.
LEVIN: If it works.
RUMSFELD: I beg your pardon?
LEVIN: If it works.
RUMSFELD: If it works, of course.
SPINNEY: Nobody, no manufacturer would spend his own money this way. It is economically suicide. So it's...
MOYERS: But we're talking about huge...
SPINNEY: ...suicidal.
MOYERS: ...weapons.
SPINNEY: Right. Right.
MOYERS: If they don't work, we're in jeopardy.
SPINNEY: Absolutely. I agree with that.
MOYERS: You're putting the United States at risk.
SPINNEY: That's right.
MOYERS: And implausibly, says Spinney, the war on terror has been used to justify the need for ballistic missile defense.
SPINNEY: The war on terror is in some ways a marketing device to continue the thing going. Like for example, there were people in the U.S. government right after September 11th that basically went before Congress, they went before the American people, that said, "This proves we need ballistic missile defense."
Now that's ridiculous. Basically what you had was some guys took advantage of a lax security system at the airlines. They took advantage of cell phones to coordinate attacks. They taught themselves how to fly. It was a brilliantly simple operation. Basically all they had to do was take off planes from the east coast at roughly the same time. Then they flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Now that doesn't have anything to do with ballistic missile defense. In fact, if we had a fully functional ballistic missile defense system at that time, they'd have been sitting there with their thumbs in their mouth watching it on the tube just like we were watching it on the tube at the time.
MOYERS: And yet, this was used as an excuse...
SPINNEY: Absolutely.
MOYERS: ...to escalate the spending on the missile defense?
SPINNEY: Absolutely.
MOYERS: The Bush administration has budgeted $9 billion next year alone for missile defense and says it will need a total of $50 billion over 6 years for further research and development.
But many experts predict it will cost far more, making it the most expensive weapons system in the history of American defense. And that without even knowing whether it works.
And now, the Pentagon has shrouded the program in greater secrecy, classifying details about future tests and cost estimates, keeping information from the press, from taxpayers, and from Congress.
And that's not all. Last May, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz went before Congress with a startling request:
WOLFOWITZ [May 6, 2003]: We have proposed more flexible rules for the flow of money through the Department. We have proposed elimination of onerous regulations...
MOYERS: Translation: the Defense Department wants even less oversight on how it's spending the public's money.
WOLFOWITZ [May 6, 2003]: The bill before you will also give the Armed Forces the flexibility to more efficiently react to changing events...
MOYERS: Among other things, what Wolfowitz asked for would have reduced Pentagon accountability by eliminating more than 100 reporting requirements Congress can use to oversee how taxpayer money is spent.
The Pentagon's request for even less oversight and accountability infuriates Chuck Spinney. He knows it can lead to dire consequences. And he gives a chilling example.
SPINNEY: During Vietnam, the infantrymen's rifle was the M-16. And it jammed. And basically it went into production and was deployed with known defects, that it jammed under an enormous number of circumstances likely to be found on the battlefield. And soldiers were writing home about how bad this gun was. Some of our soldiers and marines were actually taking AK-47's off of dead Vietcong and using them 'cause the weapon was preferred.
And basically this problem went on for years and years and a lot of guys died because they couldn't reload the gun and fire in the middle of a firefight.
MOYERS: A young Ted Koppel interviewed a soldier in Vietnam in 1967.
KOPPEL: Just about everyone who has served out here for any length of time has heard one story or another about the M-16 not firing under combat conditions. Have you heard any of those stories or do you know of any such instances?
SOLDIER: Yes sir, I have. A matter of fact, there's a guy out here and his rifle jammed on him. And uh, that's the only one I've heard of really jamming on him, but I've heard a lot of stories about the M-16.
SPINNEY: Eventually, the letters that were going home where they were pleading to their parents to get Congress to do something finally had some resonance in Congress, and they had a series of hearings.
MOYERS: Those hearings found that over the 3 years the M-16 had been in the field, the gun had experienced "serious and excessive malfunctions."
The chairman of the investigating committee told a reporter at the time:
ICHORD: There have been many instances where the gun has jammed on them while in combat, and that could be the cause of their death.
MOYERS: Moreover, according to the Congressional report, the gun's manufacturer, Colt, had warned the army "...more than half of the rifles would not pass [an] acceptance test..." if standard ammunition was used.
And yet, soldiers were sent into combat in Vietnam with the M-16, even though army ammunition at the time was likely jamming the gun.
The report concluded: the army's behavior in this case "...border[ed] on criminal negligence."
What happened with the M-16 preys on Spinney's mind as he considers what's happening now with the ballistic missile defense program deployed without proof it will work.
MOYERS: This is like an ammunition maker selling someone ammunition that he knows is a blank but he doesn't tell you?
SPINNEY: Absolutely. Absolutely. When it's not tested, it is morally equivalent in my opinion. And you're putting people's lives at risk as a result.
MOYERS: Where is the outrage over this? I mean, the people in this room who are taping and filming and lighting this interview are ordinary working people in America. They're being taxed in order to build a multi-billion dollar system that won't work.
SPINNEY: One of several that won't work.
MOYERS: Where's the outrage? Why are we so complacent about this?
SPINNEY: I, you know, I don't know. I can't answer the question.
MOYERS: But Chuck Spinney does have more things to say about how the military industrial Congressional complex can put soldiers like Jessica Lynch in harm's way. We'll get back to him later.
But it's time now for our public television stations across the country to ask for your support.
The station you're watching considers its mission to be public service. That means it provides something the market does not. If what this station offers matters to you, your pledge is how we know.
MOYERS: For those of you staying with us, we bring you an encore of a photo essay from last June, when the U.S.N.S. Comfort, a navy hospital ship, steamed back into port after five months in the Persian Gulf.
During Comfort's tour of duty, the crew took care of hundreds of wounded and sick from the invasion of Iraq, including some 200 Iraqi POWs and civilians.
The photographer Lori Grinker was aboard Comfort for some of that time.
GRINKER: When you see the wounded come in, it really brings home the reality of the war.
And it's kind of a nightmare, when you see these people coming in off the helicopters with all this apparatus, respirators.
And as one of the orthopedic surgeons, Dr. Jeff Headrick said the injuries we're seeing in this war were different than anything they had seen before because of the velocity of the weapons. And the bodies were pulverized.
These are two of the surgeons, two women who are treating an Iraqi man. They're performing surgery on his hand, and then the people in the background are putting the iodine on his leg. They're going to operate on his leg.
I think what happened was so many Iraqis began to come aboard because it was one of the best places to treat people. And there were many more wounded Iraqis than there were coalition forces.
This is in the area known as casualty receiving.
And it's an Iraqi man who was brought on as a POW and had a head injury.
The surgeon who treated him said that he would kiss her hand every time she went to check on him to thank her.
He was one of the Iraqis who were grateful to receive care.
It's part of the Geneva Convention. It says, "all the wounded, to whichever party they belong, shall be respected and protected."
Jose Torres is a sergeant in the Marines based in Camp Lejeune. And he's 26 years old. He was wounded in the now famous battle in Nasiriyah. He's gone through more than a dozen surgeries. It will take him about a year to recover.
There were several of the marines who were in the battle in Nasiriyah on the ship. And the Marine General came on one day to give them Purple Hearts. So they went around to each young man. And Jose was in really bad shape. And since we wasn't wearing a shirt, they had to figure out where to pin his Purple Heart. And they put it on the sheet.
He said, "Anybody who tells you that war is fun or that it's exciting is a liar." He said, "It's frightening. It's horrible." And you know he told me that he and his wife want their son to go to college. So that he has a choice, that joining the military wouldn't be the only alternative.
This is a 21-year-old army sergeant, Kevin Cruise.
Everybody has e-mail now. So more often than not, they're e-mailing their families. His family did not have e-mail and he was one of the few people who still writes letters, and he was writing a letter to his wife in Chicago.
It was quite an amazing experience for me to be able to report this small part of the war story.
I was extremely impressed with the medical care, with the technology that exists on the ship, with their abilities to treat the most horrendous wounds.
But it's quite upsetting to see what the war machine does to these human beings. And that's what the pictures represent for me, the human cost of war.
MOYERS: NOW has continued to report on the soldiers badly wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq and their struggle to get medical care and money to support their families when they return home.
After our broadcast last month, we heard from many of you.
"I have a great idea: Mr. Moyers said that corporations used tax shelters to avoid paying 85 billion dollars in taxes, so, let's get the money from the corporations who owe it... and put a couple of billion dollars aside for our returning troops!!" - Wendy Baird
And this from a veteran:
"...it took me eleven years and a lawsuit to get the VA to listen to me...following the Vietnam War. You can pretty much guess the same will be 'normal' for better than 80% of our returning Iraqi vets." - Steve Mungie
And then this:
"How can we as a nation give $87 billion to Iraq while our soldiers can't get even the most basic care right here at home?" - Jeanne Zindorf
We know we've touched a nerve when you write. So keep sending us your thoughts at pbs.org.
ANNOUNCER: Next week on NOW WITH BILL MOYERS...
A veil of secrecy descending on democracy.
In the name of the war on terror, is the government closing the door on our rights as citizens to find out what our leaders are up to?
SCHMITT: The valuable information that people need about their safety, about their daily lives, whatever, is now being withheld from them.
ANNOUNCER: Is the security blanket we've pulled up around us too much to bear? Next week on NOW.
ANNOUNCER: And connect to NOW WITH BILL MOYERS Online at pbs.org.
Find out how America's spending on defense compares to other countries. Track the cost of the Iraq war moment by moment. See where your state ranks in defense contracts. Connect to NOW at pbs.org.
MOYERS: We return now to questions about our national defense raised by Pentagon insider Chuck Spinney.
With so many of our men and women on duty now in Afghanistan and Iraq, all of us want to make sure our money buys them the very best support.
But are we getting what we pay for? We asked that question of Chuck Spinney on the eve of his retirement.
In a way, our conversation was his exit interview from the Pentagon after 30 years of service.
MILLER: For a lifetime of hard work and unyielding integrity, we're proud to present you with POGO's Good Government Award.
MOYERS: Last May, Chuck Spinney was recognized for his work by the watchdog group POGO, Project On Government Oversight.
MILLER: It's hard not to be impressed with a guy like Chuck who can accuse the Department of Defense of cooking the books on national television and then return to his Pentagon office without the locks being changed.
MOYERS: They never did change the locks. Though at times they may have wanted to. Now there's no need. Chuck Spinney retired this summer. The "last man standing" closed the door to his office, ending his long career in public service.
MOYERS: Why did you do it? Why did you spend all this time a voice in the wilderness, and things kept getting worse? Why didn't you quit?
SPINNEY: Well, that's a really good question. I don't know.
It hasn't been a negative experience in any sense of the term. It's been a very, very positive experience. And I have to be honest, I love a good bureaucratic fight. You know? So I don't feel abused or anything like that. And I would hate for anybody to think that, you know, I'm one of these guys who thinks he's a martyr or anything. I don't feel that way at all.
MOYERS: Show me your scars. I mean, pull...
SPINNEY: Yeah. No, I've got the battle scars, but battle scars are a sign of honor. I'm proud of 'em.
MOYERS: How did your superiors treat you after you appeared on the cover of TIME?
SPINNEY: Well, depends on which superior you're talking about. My immediate superiors and his supervisor were basically supporters of mine. They knew I was... they agreed with what I was doing. They might wished I hadn't done it 'cause it made their life a little more difficult. But they basically agreed with what I was saying and they thought it should be said. They sort of wished they weren't in the line of fire, I expect.
Above them, there was a political appointee who was an Assistant Secretary of Defense and he basically tried to put pressure on my two intermediate superiors to reduce my performance rating.
Now, they couldn't fire me because it would just create too overt a thing. So the idea was to put... the way I surmised it, the idea was to put into place a plan to gradually reduce my performance rating. Build a track record of non-cooperative and bad behavior. And then fire me three or four years down the stream. That's the way you do things in the government.
And anyway, I decided to nip it in the bud. We... I had several of my friends go in and talk to these guys. They all... the two guys admitted that they were being pressured to reduce my performance rating, it was unfair. So essentially we had a case for a conspiracy to do an illegal act because it's illegal to take retribution to a person who just appeared before Congress, who had testified to Congress.
MOYERS: And you told the truth?
SPINNEY: And I to... oh, sure, and no one could rebut it. No one could rebut it. In fact, if you look at my big studies, there's never been a rebuttal that has taken, all these years.
MOYERS: You've always been vindicated?
SPINNEY: Yeah. Right. And so...
MOYERS: Your studies.
SPINNEY: Right. So anyway, what happened was we created a stink and they backed off. And actually, they actually increased my performance rating after it was all over.
MOYERS: Let me come back to your first concern. I mean, why aren't these military budgets not watched as carefully by the Defense Department as a corporation? Why isn't the Department of Defense being held accountable?
SPINNEY: Well, you raise a very good point there. The President is holding education people accountable for standards. He says, "I want to have measures, performance measures for accountability." He also tried to do the same for foreign aid if you recall.
Over in the Pentagon, we're not holding people accountable.
I think basically here is you have in Congress the oversight committees for defense, which are essentially the Armed Services Committee. And the Defense Appropriations subcommittees in both houses are so tied in to the Pentagon and the defense contractor base that essentially oversight has been displaced by what some of us call "overlook." They're basically watching the money flow out the door and encouraging it to go.
And basically it's in members of the Senate Armed Services Committee's best interest to keep the money flowing. It's in the Pentagon's best interest to keep the money flowing.
MOYERS: Because?
SPINNEY: It's in the defense contractors' best interest to keep the money flowing. Because it's the military industrial Congressional complex and this is their way of life. They live on the money flow.
MOYERS: The military industrial Congressional complex?
SPINNEY: Right. Which I believe was a term that Eisenhower considered using in his speech, but he dropped the reference to Congress.
MOYERS: He talked about the military industrial complex. But you say Congress is the driving force here?
SPINNEY: I don't think there's any simple villain that you can point to and say, "If we fix this, everything's gonna change. In my opinion it's the product of a long-term evolution that occurred in the 40 years of Cold War. If you think about it those 40 years were a very unique period in our nation's history. Now what happened was during that period the different players in the military industrial Congressional complex basically fine-tuned their bureaucratic behavior to exist in that environment. It was almost like this self-contained environment in which a peculiar evolution took place.
A lot like the Galapagos Islands and how the beaks on finches changed from island to island. And we developed certain practices in order to generate budgets that were more inwardly focused toward distributing defense pork to our allies around the country.
And one of the most pernicious effects of this trend was the gradual buildup of what an anthropologist might call habitual modes of conduct. Sort of almost like an innate response of threat inflation. We literally exaggerated the threat to jack up the budgets.
MOYERS: The threat from abroad, from the Soviet Union.
SPINNEY: The threat from the Soviet Union.
MOYERS: Yeah.
SPINNEY: Well, those habits became so ingrained in our system the Soviet Union evaporates and you still have this acculturated response going on.
MOYERS: Help me to und...
SPINNEY: And that's what makes it scary.
MOYERS: Scary?
SPINNEY: Yeah, because you can't control it.
MOYERS: The people who are supposed to control it benefit from it?
SPINNEY: Exactly.
MOYERS: Tell me how members of Congress benefit from increasing costs like this, driving weapons systems that the country doesn't need, spending money that puts us deeper and deeper in deficit. How does Congress gain?
SPINNEY: They gain because they get money flowing to their Congressional districts. It's in the way Congress gains from controlling the federal budget. They get money flowing to the districts, that helps build your power bases.
MOYERS: Give me an example.
SPINNEY: Back in 1990, and this may sound like ancient history but I was there. The Senate Armed Services and the House Armed Services Committee took opposing views on the F-16 fighter. One committee said, "We're gonna terminate production."
The other committee said, "Let's fully fund the Pentagon's request." And of course they were just setting the stage for a part... for reducing the Pentagon's request but keeping the program alive. That's the way Washington works.
But as soon as those two positions came out, the Lockheed lobbyists... at that time it was General Dynamics... The General Dynamics lobbyists hit the streets. And I found out about this through a very personal way. I had a very good friend who was a Congressional staffer working for Andy Ireland who was a member from a small citrus growing district in Florida. Had almost no defense business in his district.
And they received a letter. And the letter basically had about three or four pages. The first page was a text which said, "The F-16 is absolutely vital for national security." And that was the first paragraph. And then it basically extolled the economic benefits of the F-16 for the remainder of the letter.
Attached to that letter were two maps. The first map was the spending for government financed equipment across the United States. So you saw the dollars in each state scattered around there. It sort of looked like a bombing chart for the strategic bombing campaign of identifying the critical targets in Russia back in the old days of nuclear war.
And then the second page was tailored for the particular person who received the letter. In this case, Andy Ireland was from Florida so it had a map of Florida and it had each Congressional district in there with the money going by Congressional district.
Well, my friend was just outraged by this. He says, "This is just blatant influence peddling, you know. And they're just trying to, you know, put the pressure on us." And he was cursing and rant... he was literally ranting and raving. And I for one of the few times in my life actually tried to calm someone down. I said, "Wait a minute." I said, "If they sent one to you, they sent it to everybody. What you ought to do is call 'em up and say, 'This is really a great display. We can really use it. Could you send us the whole atlas?'"
And he said, "Yeah, you're right." He understood immediately. And he goes, "Yeah, that's what to do." And so he does it. And within an hour, he had the whole atlas, which then I had in about two or three hours. It was about this thick. It was for I think 45... 43, 45 states. And it had each state with all this thing down... all the money listed by Congressional district, plus of course the national map. And it was down to the dollar. And like in California, I mean the list was... they had to print small because there was so much money going to so many Congress... there was just table after table down to the dollar.
Now this is, you know, in the Pentagon we can't account for any of our money. Meanwhile, the contractors know exactly where it's going, or at least they say they do.
MOYERS: Every Congressman could know what part of the pork was coming into his district?
SPINNEY: Right. Let's say I'm the program manager for the F-16 in the Pentagon. I get a call from one of my wholly owned subsidiaries over on the Hill on the Armed Services Committee. "We got it funded for you guys, but those guys in the House are gonna screw us." So you know, "You got to do something."
So all I have to do is I call up the program manager at the prime contractor, who I know because I work with him on a daily basis. And say, "Hey, we got a problem. The House is gonna kill our program. The Senate's on board. Turn on the pressure."
Well, at that point, I don't have to do anything in the government. The rest of it takes care of itself because the people whose future it...are at hand are gonna work overtime to solve that.
The contractors then start calling up the subcontractors. They unleash the fax attacks. They unleash the emails. And then of course they start calling the lobbyists, the Gucci shoe crowd on K Street, and say, "Hey, you got to start beating the... beating the pavement in the halls of Congress. We need some newspaper op-eds." The whole process takes care of itself. One phone call turns it on.
MOYERS: Who gets the money?
SPINNEY: The contractors get it. The Congressmen get it, you know through... they get the power because they keep getting voted back in office. They may also get some Congressional contributions. But I think the bigger benefit is the power, the stability of their job.
And remember the people in the Pentagon that are promoting this thing are basically... they're also creating a situation where they can roll over and get into that sector and make the big bucks. All you have to do is look at the number of retired generals working for defense contractors.
MOYERS: The revolving door?
SPINNEY: Yeah, yeah. The revolving door.
MOYERS: Have you seen these figures that CEO pay at Lockheed Martin went up from $5.8 million in 2000 to $25.3 million in 2002? I mean, that's five times increase in less than three years. CEO pay went up at General Dynamics from $5.7 million in 2001 to $15.2 million in 2002. It went up at Honeywell from $12.9 million in 2000 to $45 million in 2002. It went up from Northrop Grumman from $7.3 million in 2000 to $9.2 million in 2002. What do those figures say to you?
SPINNEY: Well, that's Versailles on the Potomac in action. It doesn't surprise me. The Defense Department if you think about how we really operate, we essentially operate according to an internal political economy. It's this closed cell that I mentioned earlier. In this bubble that developed during the Cold War. And all economies are political economies.
The military industrial Congressional complex is a political economy with a big P and a little E. It's very political in nature. Economic decisions, which should prevail in a normal market system don't prevail in the Pentagon, or in the military industrial complex.
So what we have is a system that essentially rewards its senior players. It's a self... what we call it, we call it, we have a term for it, it's a self-licking ice cream cone. We basically take care of ourselves. And that's also why we have this metaphor "Versailles on the Potomac." It basically is internally self-referencing.
MOYERS: But is...
SPINNEY: So when I see those salaries that you mentioned, it's perfectly predictable that money goes into the defense budget and it gets reflected in these things. While the people doing the fighting are basically... they're getting more money then they used to get but they're not participating in this.
MOYERS: Where... and your specialty is the defense budget. Where is the money going?
SPINNEY: Well, it goes into cost growth.
MOYERS: Cost growth.
SPINNEY: Cost growth. We... basically, if you want to understand how the Pentagon operates - like everything else in Washington - you follow the money.
MOYERS: I don't understand the term cost growth.
SPINNEY: Basically the cost of weapons increases faster than the budget. And this has been going on for 40 years. And when the budget increases, that basically creates an incentive structure to jack up the cost even further.
Now we saw this in the 1980's. You can think of the 1980's as the mother of all experiments. And when Ronald Reagan poured money into the defense budget, the cost went through the roof.
MOYERS: Are you saying that costs went up because the...
SPINNEY: The money went in.
MOYERS: The money went in.
SPINNEY: I have data showing that when we reduce the budget the contractors cut their costs. In some cases they come in under cost estimates when the money dries up. Producing the same product. It makes no economic sense in any kind of commercial context. It makes perfect political sense.
MOYERS: Someone could say that war is not a commercial venture. That it's the... it's not driven by markets. The markets don't exist in a military economy.
SPINNEY: I agree. And that's why we ought to treat the defense industry as a public sector. And that would be... and if we did that then you wouldn't see these gross disparities in salaries creeping in. But essentially if you try to understand what's going on in the Pentagon and this is the most important aspect, and it gets at the heart of our democracy. Is that we have an accounting system that is unauditable. Even by the generous auditing requirements of the federal government.
Now what you have to understand is the kind of audits I'm talking about, these are not what a private corporation would do with a rigorous accounting system. Essentially the audits we are required to do are mandated under the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, and a few amendments thereafter. But it's the CFO Act of 1990 that's the driver.
And it basically was passed by Congress that required the inspector generals of each government department, not just the Pentagon, but NASA, health, education, welfare, all the other departments, Interior Department where the inspector general has to produce an audit each year. Saying, basically verifying that the money was spent on what Congress appropriated it for. Now that's not a management accounting audit. It's basically a checks and balances audit.
MOYERS: But in layman's terms explain that.
SPINNEY: It's to enforce the accountability clause of the Constitution. Which means that you can't spend money unless Congress specifically appropriates it. Well, the Pentagon has never passed an audit. They have 13 or 15, I forget the exact number, of major accounting categories. That each one has it's own audit. The only one of those categories that's ever been passed is the retirement account.
Now under the CFO Act of 1990 they have to do this audit annually. Well, every year they do an audit and the inspector general would issue a report saying we have to waive the audit requirements, because we can't balance the books. We can't tell you how the money got spent.
Now what they do is try to track transactions. And in one of the last audits that was done the transactions were like... there were like $7 trillion in transactions. And they couldn't account for about four trillion of those transactions. Two trillion were unaccountable and two trillion they didn't do, and they accounted for two trillion.
MOYERS: So, you mean, they're...
SPINNEY: They don't know where the money's going.
Well, guess what the Senate Armed Services and the House Armed Services agree to do in their infinite wisdom? They decided to waive the Pentagon's requirement for these annual audits in their authorization bills. So the Pentagon no longer has to do it.
Now the rationale was that we all know that this is a problem, we don't need to be told every year. Of course the one good thing about these audits was it would generate a small burst of news stories every April or May when the audits were due saying the Pentagon can't follow it's money. You know, there's a trillion dollars unaccounted for.
MOYERS: What does this do to the national ethos?
SPINNEY: Oh, I think it corrupts it. I think it corrupts it. Essentially you have all the pretensions of a democracy, we're really a democratic republic where you have representatives of the people in the government, and you have the representatives are under certain strictures to behave in a certain way. And in fact they're not behaving that way.
MOYERS: Your own...
SPINNEY: It's a fundamental moral issue.
MOYERS: Yeah, you've said it's a moral sewer there on the Potomac.
SPINNEY: That's correct.
MOYERS: What do you mean "moral sewer?"
SPINNEY: Well, fundamentally we take an oath of office to preserve the Constitution and we are in fact... in effect undermining the Constitution because we won't address this issue of accountability.
A lot of the people that are involved in this don't realize the moral implications of what they're doing. They regard what they're doing as being for the most patriotic of motives.
You know, "We've got to get the money out of Congress. And if we have to lie to get it, we'll do it. If we have to cook the books in order to sell a program, we'll do it because we're trying to save the country from the hoards," the Communist hoards or whatever...
MOYERS: And don't you think most people, most ordinary citizens say, "Well, if we have to endure some waste and some corruption just to be safe, we'll do so"?
SPINNEY: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And particularly when you have a political system. It gets really out of control when you have a political system that caters to fear which is what I think is going on now.
MOYERS: But the fear is legitimate today, given 9/11 and the war on terror?
SPINNEY: Absolutely. I don't want to diminish the terrorist threat in people's minds.
The problem is that if you start thinking about how you deal with these kinds of threats, you don't need B-2's. You don't need ballistic missile defense. You don't need Comanche helicopters. Basically what you need are really highly trained individuals that are basically... understand economics, anthropology, and... as well as fighting, particularly in close quarters combat which is the most difficult form of fighting.
And basically that these guys can insert themselves and infiltrate these nodes at lower levels of distinction. Not this nation v. nation conflict.
MOYERS: But wouldn't you con...
SPINNEY: And my point here is those kind of solutions don't generate big budgets. And that's the problem.
MOYERS: So we keep spending big money on those old systems even...
SPINNEY: For the wrong threat.
MOYERS: But America has just won a war against Iraq. I mean, some people would say, "Look, somebody must be doing something right."
SPINNEY: Well, the first thing I would say is Iraq has been under sanctions for ten years or so. They have a defense budget of 1.8 billion. Most of their equipment is vintage Soviet equipment. They're untrained. We spend $460 billion when you count the supplemental for fighting the war to take out Iraq in a month. If you can't do that for $460 billion, what can you do?
MOYERS: Is this $400 billion Congressionally approved budget a scandal in your mind?
SPINNEY: Yes. It isn't gonna fix our problems. It's certainly unnecessary. And you can't look at this budget in isolation. This budget is being put into place, and it's gonna generate an enormous tail in the out years because we're politically engineering all these programs and building up all this support in the Congressional districts. It's gonna be very difficult to turn this spending off.
MOYERS: This strikes me as somewhat mad.
SPINNEY: It is. We're in Versailles on the Potomac. It's Ver... we basically exist for ourselves. And we live in a hall of mirrors. It's a good metaphor.
MOYERS: Like Versailles.
SPINNEY: Like Versailles. And you have to remember, our decisions basically are to spend other people's money, and ultimately to spill other people's blood. We don't pay the price for these decisions. There's an asymmetric burden of risk.
The risk that the promoters of something like Star Wars or an F-22 or you name it, whatever kind of weapon bears is a risk that the program might be canceled. But if you look at the other risk, the other risk, the taxpayer bears the economic risk. Not the program manager. And the soldier who may have to use this piece of equipment in a serious war. You know, his life is on the line.
Well, those risks don't really have much of an impact on decision-makers who are more interested in the preservation of their program.
MOYERS: Chuck Spinney, thank you very much.
SPINNEY: Thank you.
MOYERS: That's it for NOW. If because of fundraising, you missed some of our program tonight, you can watch NOW in its entirety online starting Monday. Go to pbs.org for details.
I'm Bill Moyers. Thanks for joining us, and good night.
-------- propaganda wars
Pentagon and Bogus News: All Is Denied
December 5, 2003
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/politics/05STRA.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 - Early last year Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disbanded the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence after it became known that the office was considering plans to provide false news items to unwitting foreign journalists to influence policymakers and public sentiment abroad.
But a couple of months ago, the Pentagon quietly awarded a $300,000 contract to SAIC, a major defense consultant, to study how the Defense Department could design an "effective strategic influence" campaign to combat global terror, according to an internal Pentagon document.
Sound familiar?
Senior Pentagon officials said Thursday that they were caught unawares by the contract and insisted its language was a "poor choice of words" by a low-level staffer. They said the work did not reflect any backdoor effort to resurrect the discredited office and was merely a study to understand Al Qaeda better and find ways to combat it.
"We are not recreating that office," said Thomas O'Connell, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, the policy arm of the Pentagon that deals with the military's most secretive operators and whose staff wrote the document.
But some critics of the former office voiced skepticism, saying that the contract amounted to a veiled attempt to create a low-budget copy of its ill-fated predecessor. A spokesman for SAIC referred all questions to the Pentagon.
"It sounds very similar," said a senior military official who opposed the former office. "To run a perception-management campaign at the strategic level is the wrong thing for D.O.D. to be involved in."
The military has long engaged in information warfare against hostile nations, but the ill-fated Office of Strategic Influence proposed to broaden that mission into a strategic "perception management" campaign in allied nations in the Middle East, Asia and even Europe. That would have given the office a role traditionally carried out by civilians.
Mr. Rumsfeld and other administration officials have voiced concern that the United States is losing public support overseas for its war on terrorism, particularly in Islamic countries. The document, which describes details of the SAIC contract and is entitled "Winning the War of Ideas," describes a bleak picture of how that battle is going.
"Our inability to seize the initiative in the `War of Ideas' with Al Qaeda is perhaps our most significant shortcoming so far in the war against terrorism," said the document, dated Sept. 17, 2003. "We do not fully understand Al Qaeda and its relationship to supportive communities in the Islamic world, and so are not yet able to develop an effective strategy for countering its propaganda in those communities, let alone for winning the information campaign in the war against terrorism."
The document said one goal was to establish a "road map for creating an effective D.O.D. capability to design and conduct effective strategic influence and operational and tactical perception-management campaigns."
When read that sentence, a senior defense official winced at the wording. "We're asking for a menu of thoughts on how to approach this," the official explained. "This is not a secret document on how we're going to change the Arab world's perception of the U.S."
--------
Another Course Change in the Air Force One Story
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36688-2003Dec4.html
The White House yesterday made a third approach in its attempt to land the controversy about whether a plane spotted Air Force One on its secret flight to Baghdad on Thanksgiving Day.
The story gained altitude when White House communications director Dan Bartlett walked into the media cabin on the return flight from Baghdad and announced that Air Force One had come within sight of a British Airways flight over water. The British Airways pilot, Bartlett said, radioed to ask, "Did I just see Air Force One?," and, after a pause, the Air Force One pilot radioed back, "Gulfstream 5." After a long silence, Bartlett said, the British Airways pilot seemed to realize he was in on a secret and said, "Oh."
A gripping account, except: There was no British Airways flight involved. And President Bush's pilot had no such conversation with any aircraft.
The trouble began earlier this week when British Airways told Reuters that two of its planes were in the area at the time and that neither radioed the president's plane, nor did either hear another aircraft make such an inquiry.
The White House then brought out Version 2.0: Bartlett said the pilot of a British Airways plane had the conversation with air traffic control in London, not Air Force One, while the two planes were flying off the western coast of England just before daybreak. But British Airways said that did not happen either. And Britain's National Air Traffic Services agreed.
This wrinkle forced the White House to come out with Version 3.0 yesterday. Press secretary Scott McClellan said that the aircraft inquiring about Air Force One was, in fact, "a non-UK operator." The spokesman said there had been a British Airways plane "that was in the vicinity of Air Force One as it was crossing over for a good portion of that flight." The presidential pilots thought the query "was coming from a pilot with a British accent, and so that's why they had concluded that it was a British Airways plane."
The White House released a statement from Britain's air traffic service confirming that a "non-UK operator" radioed the control center in Swanwick, England, at "0930 Zulu" time to ask if the aircraft behind it was Air Force One.
That seems to check out, but mysteries remain. Who was this "non-UK operator"? And how is it that a British Airways plane could have been with Air Force One "for a good portion" of the flight if the president's plane was averaging 665 mph -- far beyond the speed of commercial aircraft?
-------- war crimes
Iraq to create war crimes tribunal in coming days
12/5/2003
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-12-05-iraq-tribunal_x.htm
BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq's U.S.-appointed government will establish a tribunal for crimes against humanity in the coming days that could try hundreds of officials, including Saddam Hussein and his top aides, Iraqi and American officials told The Associated Press on Friday.
Some human rights groups criticized the plans, saying Iraq's U.S. occupiers have too much of a hand in them and that Iraqi judges and prosecutors may not have the experience needed to try the cases.
The law creating the tribunal - which could be passed as early as Sunday - will be similar to proposals made in Washington in April, one member of Iraq's Governing Council said. The law calls for Iraqi judges to hear cases presented by Iraqi lawyers, with international experts serving only as advisers.
That would be starkly different from U.N.-sponsored tribunals set up to consider war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. In those cases, international judges and lawyers have argued and decided cases.
Governing Council member Mahmoud Othman said the tribunal would hear hundreds of cases involving members of the former regime.
"There will be more trials than only the 55 deck of cards," he told AP, referring to the U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis. "Anybody against whom a complaint is filed with evidence against them could be tried."
Already, thousands of family members of the disappeared have filed complaints against members of the former regime. One group in Baghdad, the Iraqi Human Rights Society, took in 7,000 complaints before the paperwork overwhelmed its staff.
The Governing Council has been discussing the law for months, and it was not expected to encounter major opposition within the governing body. The U.S. occupation authority also must sign off on the plan.
It remained unclear when the trials would begin. The coalition authority now holds at least 5,500 people in prisons, but it isn't known how many of those are war crimes suspects and how many are accused of common crimes.
Those in custody include Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for his role in chemical attacks on Kurds in the 1980s; Saddam's secretary Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti and Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, a leader of 1991 suppression of Shiite Muslim rebellion. If Saddam himself is captured, he presumably would be tried by the special tribunal as well.
As evidence, prosecutors will use a growing cache of documents seized from the former regime. The coalition now has an estimated nine miles of paperwork, and Iraqi human rights groups and political parties have even more.
Evidence also will come from the excavation of mass graves that dot the Iraqi landscape. There are some 270 mass graves believed to hold at least 300,000 sets of remains. Forensic teams are expected to start excavating a few for evidence in late January, according to an AP investigation.
Human rights workers said the trials could include two genocide cases - for a campaign against Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s, and for the draining of southern Iraqi marshes in 1992 that drove many Marsh Arabs from their homes.
They also could include cases against former Iraqi officials for the massacres of Shiites and Kurds in 1991, when those communities rose up against Saddam at the end of the Gulf War.
The tribunal will use a combination of laws, according to people who have seen a draft of the plan, including the Iraqi penal code of 1969 and the Iraqi criminal code of 1971. In addition, the new charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity - taken from international courts - will be added, they said.
Human rights groups have criticized the draft, but Othman said the only differences to the draft are some small changes in legal wording.
Some groups said the United States has dictated the terms of the tribunal - down to who would be prosecuted, and how - and worry that Iraqi judges and lawyers may not be up to the task.
Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch, said he was concerned officials didn't consider bringing in judges who have worked on major war crimes trials in other countries.
"After three decades of Baath Party rule, the capacity of Iraqi judges to conduct incredibly complicated trials has been greatly diminished," he said by telephone from New York. He said he worried about the tribunal's ability to provide fair trials.
Two recent studies of the Iraqi judicial system, obtained by AP, describe a legal system riddled with corruption and incompetence. One was conducted in August by the United Nations; the other in June by the U.S. Department of Justice.
"A degraded justice system and inadequate and outdated legal framework is not capable of rendering fair and effective justice for violations of international humanitarian law and other serious criminal offenses involving the prior regime," the U.N. study said.
But Sandra Hodgkinson, director of the coalition authority's human rights and justice office, said she believed an Iraqi court system - with some training from international experts - will work.
"Iraqis want it that way, and they're capable of doing it that way," she said. "There is no need to have an international tribunal when the local population is willing and able to do it."
Adnan Jabbar al-Saadi, a lawyer with the new Iraqi Human Rights Ministry who said he expected to argue some of the tribunal cases, agreed.
"I think it's very important for people to see the criminals who killed their families in court," he said. "The United Nations asked us if they should give money to people so they would feel better, and I told them nothing will make them feel better except seeing the responsible criminals in prison."
Some groups questioned the legality of the tribunal. Under the Geneva Conventions, an occupying power can't create new laws, except when needed to restore order.
Hodgkinson said she wasn't concerned about questions of legality.
"I would be surprised if anybody would ever raise this as an issue," she said.
----
A Look at War Crimes Tribunals Worldwide
By The Associated Press
December 5, 2003
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-tribunals-glance,0,6166660,print.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
Iraq's Governing Council plans to create a war crimes tribunal to try members of Saddam Hussein's former regime for crimes against humanity. Some similar tribunals worldwide:
- Yugoslavia: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was formed in 1993, the first such court since the military tribunals that judged Nazi and Japanese leaders after World War II. The tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands, has tried 43 people for atrocities during the Balkan wars of the 1990s; former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is now on trial.
- Rwanda: The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a United Nations court based in Tanzania, is trying dozens of people for the 1994 genocide that killed 500,000 people. Local courts are trying other suspects in Rwanda.
- Worldwide: The International Criminal Court, inaugurated March 12, is the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal. The United States bitterly opposes it, fearing that Americans will be singled out for frivolous cases. U.S. officials have signed deals with more than 30 countries to prevent Americans from being extradited to the court in The Hague.
- Sierra Leone: A tribunal being planned jointly by the United Nations and the Sierra Leone government will have a mix of local and international prosecutors and judges. It will try war crimes from the African country's 1991-2000 civil war.
- Cambodia: A joint U.N.-Cambodia tribunal is being assembled after nearly five years of negotiations. It will try members of the Khmer Rouge, which ruled from 1975-79.
- Peru: a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is examining crimes committed during fighting between government forces and Shining Path rebels from 1980 to 2000.
- South Africa: A Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up after South Africa's first all-race elections in 1994, investigated crimes committed during decades of white-minority rule and submitted a report in March.
----
Eight Are Indicted for War Crimes in Serbia
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
December 5, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/international/europe/05SERB.html?ei=1&en=1f09b1cee8dfd05f&ex=1071652028&pagewanted=print&position=
BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 4 (Agence France-Presse) - Serbia's special war crimes prosecutor issued his first indictments on Thursday, charging eight men with committing atrocities near the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar in 1991.
The prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, who was elected to the newly established post in July, said the men were accused of committing "war crimes against prisoners" in Ovcara, near Vukovar, on Nov. 20 and 21, 1991.
The accused were not identified, and Mr. Vukcevic's statement did not say when they would be brought to trial.
The Serbian government in July set up a special war crimes prosecutor's office, which is backed with police and detention units, to deal with allegations arising from the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990's.
The authorities hoped the move would allow local authorities to take over some of the cases instead of leaving the cases for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which is considered by many Serbs as biased and politically motivated.
It is unclear whether the eight suspects indicted here on Thursday, all of whom are in police custody, also face parallel indictments by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic of Serbia said this year that "several people" suspected of committing war crimes at Ovcara had been arrested during investigations into the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic in March.
Mr. Mihajlovic said the arrests had shed "new light" on the Ovcara events, providing fresh evidence that might help with the defense of three former Yugoslav Army officers who have been indicted by the United Nations tribunal.
The international tribunal has charged the officers with war crimes committed in Vukovar.
The three officers, identified as Veselin Sljivancanin, Miroslav Radic and Mile Mrksic, are all awaiting trial.
More than 200 Croatian patients from the Vukovar hospital were executed by Yugoslav security and paramilitary forces in Ovcara in November 1991.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- justice
Bill seen as threat to civil liberties
December 05, 2003
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031204-111437-5659r.htm
Tucked inside a intelligence spending bill awaiting the president's signature is a provision that allows the FBI to obtain an individual's financial records from pawn shops, casinos, car dealers and travel agents without a court order.
The measure was included in the intelligence authorization bill and expands on who can be served with "national security letters" that demand financial information on investigations relating to terrorism or counterintelligence. The letters, or subpoenas, do not require judicial review or approval.
Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter, Idaho Republican, said the provision is a "thinly veiled expansion of the Patriot Act" that will have "far-reaching consequences for Americans' civil liberties."
"With this legislation, we eliminate the judicial oversight that was built into our system for a reason - to make sure that our precious liberties are protected," Mr. Otter said.
The authorization bill was sent to President Bush's desk Tuesday for his signature, and he has until Dec. 13 to sign the measure into law, a White House spokeswoman said. It passed Nov. 20 in the House 264-163, and in the Senate Nov. 21 by voice vote.
The measure redefines "financial institutions" that was previously limited to banks, credit unions, and savings and loan organizations.
Now the definition also includes brokers and dealers registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, investment bankers, operators of credit-card systems, insurance companies, dealers in precious metals, stones, or jewels, licensed senders of money, telegraph companies, airplane and boat dealers, Realtors and estate closings, and the U.S. Post Office.
Financial institution also means "any other business designated by the secretary [of the Treasury] whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters."
Once a national security letter has been issued to search an individual's financial records, the company is prevented by law from notifying the person being investigated.
Administration officials support the bill because it allows law enforcement to pursue investigations with greater speed and flexibility.
Senate committee staffers said the investigative tool is not new and was used in the past for money-laundering investigations.
Those same tools should be available to investigate terrorism, they said, and were requested by the administration.
Not only are the national security letters exempt from traditional court reviews, but also from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, said Tim Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
"We see this as one step closer towards a broad records power, with no judicial review, that was a major part of the proposal to expand the Patriot Act," Mr. Edgar said. "It's a very sneaky provision, and not something most people were aware of until right before the bill passed."
The committee staffers said it would not be accurate to describe the provision as "Patriot II."
"It's not Patriot or an expansion of Patriot authorities," an aide said. "Patriot was one bill and was all on the table at the same time, not piecemeal like other new authorities."
The aide also said the intelligence provision was "discussed and agreed to in a bipartisan way and reported openly, not hidden."
Mr. Otter said protecting America is priority one, but "we must never turn our backs on our freedoms."
"Expanding the use of administrative subpoenas and threatening our system of checks and balances is a step in the wrong direction," he said.
-------- police
South Africa disrupts body part ring
December 05, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031204-091229-9008r.htm
PRETORIA, South Africa, Dec. 4 -- Two people appeared in a South African court Thursday, charged with the international trafficking of human organs.
The BBC said the defendants are accused of being part of an international syndicate that buys body parts from poor people in Brazil and Israel for use in South Africa.
The ring allegedly supplies kidneys and other organs to surgeons who perform illegal transplants at South African hospitals. Police officials told the BBC the syndicate offers donors about $10,000 per organ, which are then sold for up to $120,000.
Nine Brazilians and two Israelis have also reportedly been arrested in Brazil in connection with the organ ring.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
EPA Aims to Change Pollution Rules
Utilities Could Buy Credits From Cleaner-Operating Power Plants
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36898-2003Dec4.html
The Bush administration yesterday proposed rules that would set new targets for the utility industry to reduce overall air pollution in the next 15 years. Under the plan, major polluters could buy credits from cleaner-operating plants as long as the overall industry targets were met.
Mike Leavitt, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the plan to slash emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury by 70 percent would cost the industry $5 billion or more to implement and would represent "the largest single investment in any clean air program in history."
The proposed rules, largely targeted to 30 northeastern and midwestern states with the greatest problems of smog and acid rain, closely match provisions of President Bush's "Clear Skies" legislation, which has languished in Congress for a year. With dim hopes of getting any action on that plan before the 2004 election, Leavitt and White House officials have decided to take a regulatory approach.
"We still believe that the Clear Skies Act is the best approach and will work for its passage, but we didn't feel like we could wait and that we need to move forward now," Leavitt said in an interview. "We'll achieve many of the same benefits, and we're clearly deploying many of the same strategies."
Yesterday's announcement consolidates key elements of the administration's clean-air efforts, which are certain to become hot issues in the presidential campaign. While some environmental groups support the general thrust of the proposals for combating nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide -- major sources of smog and dangerous fine particles that contribute to asthma and lung disease -- they overwhelmingly oppose administration plans for dealing with highly toxic mercury emissions, which cause severe neurological and developmental damage in humans.
The administration is trying to undo regulations that had been in the works to force power plants to sharply reduce mercury emissions within three years by installing expensive, state-of-the-art equipment.
That plan drew fierce resistance from industry groups and their congressional allies, who say the new regulations would be excessively costly and would force plants to switch from coal to more expensive natural gas to run their facilities.
Now the White House and Leavitt are trying to rescind a 2000 EPA ruling, which concluded that mercury was among the most toxic chemicals that needed to be placed under the most stringent standards. Instead, the administration intends to place mercury under a less stringent category of the Clean Air Act. Mercury is a dangerous pollutant, on a par with asbestos, chromium and lead. Mercury accumulates in the environment and can cause long-term damage if it gets into the food chain.
By reclassifying its category, mercury emissions would be subject to 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 emission "credits" from cleaner-operating plants to meet an overall industry target.
Critics charge that the net effect of the move would be to require smaller reductions in mercury emissions that otherwise could be achieved and add nearly a decade to the time it would take the industry to implement mercury reduction technology.
"This allows industry to pollute more and longer," said Frank O'Donnell of the Clean Air Trust. "It takes the Clear Skies plan and puts a big Christmas bow around it for industry polluters."
Other environmentalists, citing records of White House meetings with industry representatives, charged that the White House forced the mercury plan on Leavitt within weeks of his taking charge. "The EPA is following the script written by the country's largest polluting industry," said David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It will slow pollution reduction, not speed it up."
Leavitt and a senior aide denied that the mercury plan was foisted on them and argued that the revised proposal will force industry to spend far more and achieve greater pollution reductions than was likely to occur under the previous plan.
"This, like all other policies that affect broad ranges of society, received broad discussion" within the administration, Leavitt said. "But the rules are ultimately made and signed here" at the EPA.
The proposed rules are expected to become finalized in a year, Leavitt said, although legal challenges might delay the process.
An industry spokesman responded cautiously to the plan. Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Counsel, said: "As with many complex environmental issues, the devil is in the details. Any proposal that forces further switching from coal to natural gas may only exacerbate the already desperate gas price and supply situation gripping the nation."
One environmental group, the Adirondack Council, hailed the administration plan, saying it would lead to the elimination of acid rain in upstate New York. "This is the best news we've seen on acid rain since the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990," said council Executive Director Brian L. Houseal.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Bush's alleged Afghan war crimes face 'tribunal'
The Japan Times:
Dec. 5, 2003
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20031205b6.htm
The final hearings of a citizens' tribunal trying the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush over its military operations in Afghanistan will be held in Tokyo over two days ending Dec. 14.
The indictment charges Bush with aggression, attacks against civilians and nonmilitary facilities, and torturing and executing prisoners. The hearings have been organized by criminal jurist Akira Maeda and others.
Testimony will be heard from the mother of an Afghan who was killed in an air raid, and a Pakistani who was held in the Guantanamo base in Cuba. Scientists will present reports on the effects of depleted uranium bullets on humans.
A ruling will be handed down by five legal experts from Japan, the U.S., Britain and India.
The hearings will be held between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on both days at Kudan Kaikan, which is a one-minute walk from the Kudanshita subway station. English translations will be available.
Admission is 2,000 yen per day or 3,000 yen for both days.
For tickets and information, contact the secretariat at (03) 3261-5521.
----
Vietnam vet takes aim at war
Purple Heart-winning officer a prominent peace activist in Colorado
By Kit Miniclier
Denver Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 05, 2003
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%7E6439%7E1808983,00.html
BRIGHTON - In his youth, Vietnam War veteran Charles Elliston recalls, "I was a conservative. I used to think war protesters were nut cases - agents of the enemy."
Today, former Chief Warrant Officer Elliston, 55, is an outspoken anti-war activist who proudly wears his Army uniform to give himself credibility.
The uniform is immaculate, as are his Vietnam combat ribbons, his Purple Heart, and the silver wings with wreath and star that identify him as a senior Army aviator.
Elliston also wears pins on his uniform. One reads "NO perpetual war for perpetual peace." Another reads: "Vietnam Veterans Against the War."
Fourteen months ago he attended his first anti-war rally in Denver, in full uniform. Another vet handed him a "No Blood for Oil" sign and one reading "Bush Lied. Our Soldiers Died. End of Story."
Although he is increasingly strident in his opposition to war, Elliston is quick to say "this isn't about me, or my wound or my story. It's about the message. I only wear the uniform because I think military service gives me some additional credibility to speak about war and its consequences.
"Without the uniform, I'm just another guy with an opinion. With the uniform I'm a former warrior with an opinion. I think that makes a difference."
Elliston arrived in Vietnam on April Fools' Day 1970 and was flown home precisely three weeks later, after his jaw was ripped apart and his teeth torn out by an enemy machine-gun bullet. He was hit on his seventh day of combat flying, in the co-pilot's seat of a Bell UH-1 series Iroquois, better known as a "Huey," which eventually became the most widely used military helicopter in the world.
The chopper was third in line to deliver reinforcements to a besieged special-forces team. The landing zone had been carved out of the jungle and, unknown to them, was now ringed by the 57th North Vietnamese Rifle Regiment. Two days earlier they had delivered 400 reinforcements to the same landing zone and met no hostile fire.
The first chopper got in and out safely, but the second one was shot down in a ball of fire, its wreckage blocking the landing zone.
"We were on a final approach when (the second helicopter) went down. They say 'never fly over enemy guns,' but we had no choice," Elliston said.
Hostile fire that hit his chopper killed one crew member and wounded him and another.
By then, after less than a month "in country," Elliston said, "I had a vague understanding that it makes no difference to the peasants who wins a war. Their lives improve when the fighting stops."
After his jaw was wired shut at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, he read about the shootings at Kent State University, where a contingent of Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on May 4, 1970, killing four students and wounding nine others.
"I was overwhelmed with the fact I was wounded in combat fighting to preserve democracy while troops (at home) were firing on student protesters who considered Vietnam an illegal, immoral war," he says.
His rehabilitation at Fitzsimons lasted about two years.
"I lost virtually all my teeth, but I learned to talk with my jaws wired shut. I feared there would be years of speech therapy," he said. However, he soon knew he wouldn't need that, after he learned how to say "chrysanthemum."
"It took another 30 years of studying," he said, before he concluded "we will have to answer someday for what we did" in Vietnam.
"What is relevant is that I am trying, although I'm not convinced I am having any impact," he said.
"We as a nation must stop thinking of ourselves as exceptional and worthy of special privileges above other nations and peoples. We must stop glorifying war. We must stop praising institutional murder."
Elliston, a commercial airline pilot who regularly flies to Asia, the Middle East and South America, said he often speaks out at rallies in this country, and on the Internet, in opposition to war. He is listed on the roster of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
"Only when our nation behaves honorably and honestly with all other nations, giving respect as we wish to be respected, seeking only peace and justice for all nations and peoples, will we be worthy of the rigors our military veterans have endured in our name," he said. "I wish I was convinced that most, if not all, wars declared and undeclared were not based on false pretenses, as was the case in Vietnam and now Iraq."
Speaking at a "Support our Troops" peace rally in Colorado Springs earlier this year, he said: "I have come here today to honor our men and women in uniform and to work to prevent them from being sent into harm's way unnecessarily.
"Truly supporting our troops would mean ensuring that they are guaranteed ample, high-quality medical care," he said, adding: "We must not conveniently dismiss the psychological trauma many of them have suffered, and will suffer, as a result of their experience with the horror of war."
He shared the anti-war platform that day with retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Owen Lentz, a 30-year veteran who wore three hats during the 1991 Persian Gulf War as director of intelligence for the U.S. Space Command; the North American American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD; and the Air Force Space Command.
"He is as much of a patriot as I consider myself," Lentz said of Elliston. "I find it hurtful to the entire national dialogue that people in opposition to war are considered unpatriotic by some. Dialogue is important."
Stuart Chase, a Boulder mental-health worker who spent 20 months in Vietnam with the Marines, said he met Elliston at an anti-war rally in Denver.
"He was very impressive in his Army officer's uniform, and he wore peace buttons on his lapels and carried a big American flag," Chase recalled. He introduced Elliston to other groups "working for peace and justice."
Elliston said he is alarmed by familiar-sounding pronouncements from the Bush White House. "This is the same pattern of lies disseminated by the White House during Vietnam, 'Things are really going well."'
The Vietnam War, "like most military adventures, was cloaked in altruistic pretenses of disposing of dictators, of liberating oppressed peoples, of empowering democratic rule and of increasing our own nationally security.
"So far, those lofty goals have seldom been the result," Elliston said, noting that "once again our nation is engaged in an undeclared war."
As the 62nd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor looms Sunday, Elliston noted that some historians concluded that Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt anticipated an attack but "felt it was necessary to have a catastrophic attack like that to mobilize the American public to get into World War II."
"There are also implications that Republican President Bush knows more about 9/11," he said, noting that the White House has been "very secretive" and has refused to release documents, just as FDR did after Dec. 7, 1941.
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