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NUCLEAR
Arms Control Racing Time and Technology
U.S. threatening nuke treaty?
Taiwan to Vote on China Missile Threat
Schröder suffers political fallout from plutonium plant deal
U.S., South Korea, Japan agree on nuke proposal for N. Korea
Australia Assures China on Missile Defense Program
Building mini nuclear bombs
Pentagon Adviser Faulted Over Boeing Role
Conservatives Criticize Bush on Spending
MILITARY
Bomb Explodes in Center of Kandahar
9 Children Dead After U.S. Attack in Afghanistan
Afghan Elections Threatened by Violence
Iran woos New Zealand DIY missile builder
Air Force urged Boeing deal despite ethical concerns
Ministers flout arms sales code
N. Korea to Respond to Japan Spy Satellite
South Korea Awaits First Dead From Iraq
Air Force urged Boeing deal despite ethical concerns
Air Force Pursued Boeing Deal Despite Concerns of Rumsfeld
Taiwanese To Hold Ballot on China Arms
Running for Re-Election, Taiwan Leader Takes on China
Austrian rejects EU mutual assistance defence commitment
Trail of Anti-U.S. Fighters Said to Cross Europe to Iraq
Iraqis call for return of secret police
Rumsfeld Makes Unannounced Visit to Iraq
Baker Is Named to Restructure Iraq's Huge Debt
Bomb Kills U.S. Soldier, at Least 3 Iraqis
Powell Hears Shadow Plan for Peace in Middle East
An Ally of Sharon Foresees a Palestinian State
Palestinians Divided Over Cease - Fire Offer
Nepal lays 10,000 landmines to counter insurgents
Suicide Bombing on Russian Train Near Chechnya Kills 42
Spy Satellites Used to Look for Damage on Space Station
Hundreds of U.S. Troops Infected by Parasite
Army Will Face Dip in Readiness 4 Divisions Need to Regroup After Iraq
Army Force Stretched After War in Iraq
General Gets 20 Years for Sarajevo Atrocities
AP: Iraq Set to Form War Crimes Tribunal
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Socks Prompt Warning About Al Qaeda and Planes
Deals Reported Afoot for Detainees
Terrorism Warning for Airlines Focuses on Shoes and Clothing
OTHER
Effort to Ban Human Cloning Will Resume
With Flu Cases Spreading, Demand for Vaccine Grows
ACTIVISTS
Mom Vainly Tries to See U.S. Iraq Soldier Daughter
Burma Says 16 Prisoners Released
'America's Hangar': Air and Space Museum's new wing
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- arms control
Arms Control Racing Time and Technology
December 6, 2003
New York Times
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/06/arts/06ARMS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
The intricate web of treaties and international agreements to limit the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons is under siege, influential arms control experts say, and may be unable to deter hostile states or terrorists from acquiring the most lethal weapons.
"We are facing a daunting array of new threats, some of which our existing treaties and agreements probably can't solve," said Michael L. Moodie, president of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, a nonpartisan research center that sponsored a conference in Washington last month.
Complaints about the three so-called pillars of nonproliferation - the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention - are not new. But the cascade of challenges has vastly increased concern.
Experts who attended the meeting in Washington and one in Monterey, Calif., last month warned of the growing sophistication of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and their persistent efforts to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons for what Bruce Hoffman, the head of the Washington office of the RAND Corporation, called "mass casualty" or "megaterrorism."
W. Seth Carus, deputy director of the Center for Counterproliferation Research at the Pentagon's National Defense University, warned that "terrorists cannot be deterred by existing treaties or emerging tools."
Of equal concern is the weakening of the arms control treaties themselves. For the first time, a member of the nuclear treaty group, North Korea, has withdrawn from the accord, openly renouncing its pledge not to develop nuclear weapons. India, Pakistan and Israel, none of which signed the treaty, have also suffered few consequences as a result of their decision to acquire nuclear weapons. That could encourage other nations to pursue atomic bombs, experts said.
The Bush administration's policies have also come under attack. Critics like Joseph Cirincione, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, argued that the administration was undermining nonproliferation norms and alliances by its policies: its determination to develop an antiballistic missile shield and a new class of nuclear weapons; its abandonment of an international, six-year effort to strengthen the bioweapons treaty; and its attack on Iraq as part of its doctrine of preventive war. Administration officials adamantly dispute such claims, arguing that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the anthrax letters that followed underline the limitations of current agreements and the need to propose creative supplements and alternatives.
Don A. Mahley, the State Department's special negotiator for chemical and biological arms control, called other nations' unwillingness to take action against treaty violators like Iraq the "greatest threat to the arms control regime and the rule of law."
"We need an international community that won't play Pontius Pilate whenever there are obstacles to taking action," he said at the Washington meeting.
Others say developments in technology - biotechnology, in particular - threaten to render current treaties unenforceable. "Advances in technology are moving too fast for international treaties, or even domestic legislation, to catch up," said Jean P. du Preez, a former South African diplomat who directs a nonproliferation program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute, which sponsored the California meeting last month. "And the germ weapons treaty has no enforcement mechanism at all."
Could thousands of new, small, mobile germ production facilities throughout the world ever be monitored to ensure that terrorists don't use them? And if nations do not need to stockpile vast quantities of microorganisms and chemicals for weapons, relying instead on fast new production techniques, could treaties stop them? Probably not, many experts agreed, including some of the staunchest defenders of the current arms control system.
Indeed, many criticized loopholes in the treaties, noting that Iran and North Korea used the antinuclear treaty - which was supposed to deter states from acquiring nuclear weapons - to secure that very atomic technology and expertise. Analysts say arms control is also being undermined by "secondary proliferation," the sale or trading of goods and expertise by states like Pakistan to would-be possessors of unconventional arms.
While Washington suspects nearly a dozen countries of violating the treaties banning chemical and biological weapons, officials concede that they usually lack "smoking gun" evidence of such cheating.
Still, most experts agree that the existing arms control regime, for all its faults, is vital to stop the most dangerous states and groups from getting the most dangerous weapons. But there is less agreement on how to respond to the new challenges.
Ashton B. Carter, a former assistant secretary of defense under President Clinton who is now co-director of the Harvard-Stanford Preventive Defense Project, argues for a major renovation of arms control arrangements. "Our entire tool box of counterproliferation measures needs overhaul," he said.
Some scholars have focused on how to fix flaws in the treaties, especially the germ weapons treaty. Jonathan B. Tucker, a senior researcher at the Monterey center, said the biological weapons treaty arrived with a "serious birth defect": the lack of a system for verifying that states are abiding by their treaty commitments and for punishing cheaters.
The administration has maintained that talks to repair this defect are not working. Instead, it has proposed a list of nine voluntary measures. These include approaches like stricter national control of germ stockpiles, scientific codes of conduct, extradition agreements and the criminalization of germ theft.
While Mr. Tucker applauds such steps, he says they do not go far enough. Both he and other germ weapons experts want Washington to concentrate more on increasing disease control in the United States and abroad, and to do more to secure stockpiles of dangerous pathogens.
Weak security at biological, chemical and nuclear sites in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere worries William C. Potter, director of the Monterey Institute. In a recent paper, he warned that terrorists could use such unsecured stockpiles of highly enriched uranium to make an "improvised nuclear device."
In the early 1990's, Congress approved groundbreaking legislation to secure such sites and stockpiles in the former Soviet Union. Yet despite the success of their Cooperative Threat Reduction program, too little money and effort have been spent on this task, said Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, one of the law's original sponsors. Moreover, despite 9/11, Congress only last month approved $50 million to help secure stockpiles of such dangerous materials beyond the former Soviet Union. "The mindset hasn't sunk in," Senator Lugar said.
Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based group that inspects nuclear programs, has been pressing nations to submit to tougher spot inspections when international suspicions are aroused. He has also revived an older proposal to internationalize uranium enrichment facilities so that countries like Iran cannot justify producing their own fuel for atomic reactors, an idea that intrigues both Russia and the United States.
Some analysts call for more sweeping revisions in the nuclear treaty and other major pacts. At the Monterey meeting, Rebecca Johnson, director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, a London-based center, argued for reexamining one of the grand bargains at the heart of the nonproliferation treaty: an offer of technical assistance to nonnuclear countries that seek to establish peaceful nuclear energy programs while renouncing nuclear weapons.
She noted that Iran and North Korea used the treaty's technical assistance to acquire a nuclear option. "Such a deal on nuclear technological assistance may have made sense in 1968," Ms. Johnson said. "But does it today?"
Mr. Potter and others are pessimistic about changing the nuclear treaty ground rules this late in the game. He argued that nonnuclear states can correctly point to another lapse in the treaty: the failure of the United States and Russia to move more rapidly toward disarmament.
One of the Bush administration's responses to the growing proliferation threat that has won praise from many defenders of current arms control measures is the Proliferation Security Initiative, which recruits nations to interdict the international transport of illicit nuclear supplies.
No matter what their political affiliation, defense experts say these sorts of creative supplements are needed.
As George Perkovich, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, "Diplomats from Kofi Annan to Henry Kissinger agree that we need new guidelines for the pre-emptive and preventive use of military force to stop proliferation."
----
U.S. threatening nuke treaty?
December 6, 2003
WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35980
During the Cold War, we were understandably concerned that the Soviets might nuke 50 or 60 million of us in our jammies. Post-Cold War, there remains the concern that a terrorist group might somehow nuke a few thousand of us.
So, when President Bush needed a rationale for imposing regime-change on Iraq, he told Congress that Saddam Hussein posed "a continuing threat to the national security of the United States" by "actively seeking a nuclear-weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations."
Never mind that on March 7, 2003, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei had reported to the Security Council that "after three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear-weapons program in Iraq."
The IAEA is an agency of the United Nations whose original mission was to facilitate the international transfer of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
Since 1972, the IAEA has also been responsible to the Security Council for verifying that those peaceful applications - once transferred - are not misused.
Article IV, Section (1) of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty says "Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination."
So, the IAEA requires every NPT signatory to "declare" certain facilities and activities and subject them to the IAEA-NPT Safeguards regime.
In the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War, the IAEA discovered that Iraq had "failed" to declare uranium-enrichment facilities and activities. Such "failures" are not necessarily violations of the NPT. But the IAEA eventually discovered that Iraq did have an illicit nuke-development program and that was an NPT "violation."
Iraq had gotten most items that it failed to declare from individuals and private-sector firms located in nation-states that didn't even have nukes. Only five of the 40-member Nuclear Suppliers Group are have-nuke states. All NSG members are supposed to closely scrutinize their exports. However, prior to post-war discoveries in Iraq, if NSG exporters said the importer's intentions were peaceful, NSG members usually took the exporters at their word.
No longer. Since the Gulf War, NSG members have criminally prosecuted and imprisoned deceitful exporters. Furthermore, they now require the importing nation-state to subject most items to a full-scope IAEA Safeguards Agreement, whether they are NPT signatories or not.
The additional "full-scope" authority is provided the IAEA by an Additional Protocol to the NPT, which more than a hundred NPT signatories - including Iran and the United States - do not yet have in force.
In agreeing to sign the Additional Protocol, Iran recently admitted to the IAEA that it has also "failed" to "declare" numerous facilities and activities. The IAEA has confirmed the failures, but after months of searching, has yet to find any "evidence" of an illicit nuke program.
Nevertheless, Under Secretary of State John Bolton has characterized Iran's "failures" to be NPT "violations" - which they are not - and has demanded that Iran be hauled before the U.N. Security Council for disciplinary action.
"The United States believes that the long-standing, massive and covert Iranian effort to acquire sensitive nuclear capabilities makes sense only as part of a nuclear-weapons program."
So, what does the United States intend to do if the Security Council does nothing?
"Properly planned and executed, the interception of critical technologies can prevent hostile states and terrorists from acquiring these dangerous capabilities," Bolton said. "At a minimum, interdiction can lengthen the time that proliferators will need to acquire new weapons capabilities."
Well, there's a problem with Bolton's approach. It - like the invasion of Iraq on the pretense of enforcing the NPT - is a violation of international law. Not only does the NPT grant Iran the "inalienable right' to acquire the peaceful "nuclear capabilities" that so frightens Bolton, but it also imposes on us and the French, Brits and Russians the responsibility of helping Iran acquire them.
Perhaps Bolton never read Secretary Powell's statement to the PrepCom session held this spring for the 2005 NPT Review Conference.
"The NPT can only be as strong as our will to enforce it, in spirit and in deed. We share a collective responsibility to be ever vigilant and to take concerted action when the Treaty - our treaty - is threatened."
The French, Brits and Russians believe they are strengthening the NPT by cooperating with Iran, keeping Iran subject to full-scope IAEA Safeguards. So who's threatening the NPT?
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
-------- china
Taiwan to Vote on China Missile Threat
By WILLIAM FOREMAN
Associated Press Writer
Dec 6, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TAIWAN_CHINA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Taiwan's leader has decided to hold a referendum on March 20 asking voters to demand that China stop threatening the island and remove hundreds of missiles aimed at the island, Taiwanese, a presidential spokesman said Saturday.
But the territory is willing to cancel the vote if China redeploys the missiles and renounces using force against the island, officials said.
For the past week, President Chen Shui-bian has kept voters guessing about what question would be on the ballot in Taiwan's first islandwide referendum. Chen had dropped several hints that the vote could deal with China's missile threat.
Presidential spokesman James Huang confirmed for The Associated Press on Saturday that "the missile issue will be on the referendum. That's for sure."
Chen surprised the public last week by announcing that he planned to use a new law that gives him the power to hold a "defensive referendum" when the island's sovereignty faces imminent threat. The opposition interpreted the vaguely worded law as allowing the president to call such a referendum only when facing an attack from China. Chen's opponents in the presidential election - also to be held March 20 - have accused the president of using the referendum as a dangerous campaign ploy that could needlessly provoke China.
"The missiles deployed by the Chinese Communists pose a serious threat, but they don't put Taiwan's sovereignty and the status quo in immediate danger," said opposition candidate Lien Chan of the Nationalist Party.
China's state-run media have issued a stream of bellicose rhetoric accusing Chen of flirting with disaster. But on Saturday, Beijing did not immediately react to Chen's choice of referendum issue.
Beijing is highly sensitive to the issue because it insists that self-ruled Taiwan - 100 miles off the mainland's coast - is an inseparable part of China. Since taking power in 1949, the Communists have never governed Taiwan, but one of their sacred goals is to get the Taiwanese to join the motherland. Taiwanese independence won't be tolerated, they have said.
Chen, a former attorney, has argued that he has the right to hold a defensive referendum because China is pointing more than 400 missiles at Taiwan. The vote would be symbolic, but Chen has said the missiles constitute a threat to the island's sovereignty and a referendum is needed to raise the voters' awareness of the danger.
On Saturday, the presidential spokesman said Chen was adding a new twist to the missile referendum. Huang said the president would "consider calling off the March 20 referendum" if China redeployed the missiles and renounced the use of force against Taiwan.
China is considered unlikely to agree to the demand. Many analysts believe that China fears that if it drops the war threats, the Taiwanese will be encouraged to seek a permanent split with China.
Several polls have reported that a large number of Taiwanese don't want to unify with China, but they oppose seeking formal independence because they fear it could start a war.
Chen's referendum call also has made some nervous in America, which would likely be called to defend Taiwan if war breaks out. State Department officials have been warning Taiwan not to hold a referendum that would unilaterally change the status quo.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao heads on Sunday to Washington, where he is expected to discuss the Taiwan independence issue.
On Friday in Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters not to be alarmed about signs of increased Taiwan-China tension.
Powell said he was confident that both sides will realize "where their interests lie and will be careful about what they say."
Tai Wan-chin, an American studies professor Tamkang University outside of Taipei, said the Taiwanese president knows that it would be extremely unwise to push for an independence vote because it would cost him crucial U.S. support.
"Chen Shui-bian definitely knows what the ceiling is on the defensive referendum," Tai said.
-------- europe
Schröder suffers political fallout from plutonium plant deal
Luke Harding in Berlin
Saturday December 6, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1101092,00.html
The German chancellor was involved in a bitter dispute last night with several members of his government after agreeing to sell a plutonium factory to the Chinese.
Several leading members of the Green party, the junior partner in Gerhard Schröder's coalition government, lambasted him after he gave his blessing to the deal during a visit this week to Beijing.
Mr Schröder has insisted that he only approved the sale of the second-hand plutonium factory in Hanau, near Frankfurt, western Germany, after receiving cast-iron reassurances from Beijing that the plant would not be used to make nuclear weapons.
But in a humiliating rebuff to the chancellor, the Green environment minister Jürgen Trittin, said there was little doubt that the plant was "weapons-capable".
"Mr Trittin is wrong," an irritated Mr Schröder said yesterday on his way back to Germany via Kazakhstan.
Other Greens said they would do all they could to block the sale.
"Nobody understands what the chancellor is up to," said Winfried Hermann, a leading environmentalist. The decision was the subject of universal criticism within the Green party, he added.
Before the Greens agreed to go into government with Mr Schröder's Social Democrats in 1998, they insisted that Germany abandon nuclear energy. Last month Mr Trittin celebrated with a large cake after the government decommissioned the first of 18 nuclear power stations. Green MPs yesterday said it was hypocritical for the government to renounce its nuclear energy programme and then export its facilities elsewhere.
The row has proved most excruciating for Joschka Fischer, the Green foreign minister and Germany's most popular politician. The long-time opponent of nuclear energy yesterday gave his half-hearted endorsement to the sale of the factory, which is owned by Siemens and is apparently being sold for the bargain price of €50m.
"There are sometimes situations where you have to make bitter decisions," he admitted.
The Chinese insist that the plant will not be used to make nuclear weapons. "This is completely a question of civil purposes and has no military goal," a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, said on Thursday. "This has nothing to do with non-proliferation issues."
The row is an extra headache for Mr Schröder, who faces a growing popular revolt over his plans to reform the welfare state, and who has seen his opinion poll ratings plummet.
He is also under pressure from the opposition Christian Democrats, meeting this week in Leipzig, who have vowed to block his plans for tax cuts next year.
Several members of Mr Schröder's own party have also criticised his decision to sell the plutonium factory. Michael Müller, the deputy leader of the SPD's parliamentary party, said there was little that could be done to block the deal - adding that he was fed up that MPs had not been told about the proposed deal earlier. "MPs are always being surprised by things like this," he grumbled.
After the factory's completion in 1991, it was touted as Europe's biggest plant producing fuel for atomic power stations, but it never went into operation. It was finally abandoned in 1995, largely because of pressure from the Greens. They also scuppered a proposal two years ago to export the factory's technical equipment to Russia.
Last night a spokesman for the chancellor admitted that the factory could be used for both peaceful and military purposes.
"It does have the dual-use problem," the spokesman, Thomas Steg, admitted.
------- korea
U.S., South Korea, Japan agree on nuke proposal for N. Korea
12/6/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-12-06-koreas-nuclear_x.htm
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The United States, Japan and South Korea have worked out a joint proposal on how to ease tensions over North Korea's nuclear weapons program and will ask China to relay it to the communist North, a senior South Korean official said Saturday.
If Pyongyang accepts the proposal, a second round of six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis will convene in Beijing, Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck told South Korean reporters upon returning home from a trip to Washington.
Ahead of the Washington talks, South Korean officials said the proposal would deal with the main sticking point: when the United States should give written security assurances to North Korea. The North wants Washington to issue the assurances simultaneously with a Northern renounciation of its nuclear weapons program, while the United States wants the North to move first.
"The three countries have reached an understanding on the wording of a joint statement and agreed to give it to China," Lee said. "China will send it to Pyongyang and then there will be a response."
"The next few days are crucial. I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic," he added.
He did not give details on the proposal, drawn up in talks with his Japanese counterpart, Mitoji Yabunaka, and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly. The three are their countries' top negotiators at the nuclear talks, which also include China and Russia.
The six-nation talks had been expected to convene in Beijing on Dec. 17. But officials in Washington and Seoul had indictated that they might be delayed, particularly because of differences over the security assurances.
Since the first round of the six-party talks was held in August in Beijing, North Korea has made demands for concessions - including the security guarantees - to be extended simultaneously with a drawdown of its nuclear program instead of after the program has been shut down.
North Korea rejects a U.S. demand that it first renounce its nuclear weapons program, saying it would "rather die" than submit to conditions that amounted to slavery.
China, North Korea's major ally, has taken the lead in informal discussions with North Korea.
In its offer, North Korea said it would declare its willingness to give up nuclear development, allow nuclear inspections, give up missiles exports and finally dismantle its nuclear weapons facilities. In return, it demanded economic and humanitarian aid, security assurances, diplomatic ties and new power plants.
A second round of talks would aim at adopting a declaration outlining a sequence of steps.
The nuclear crisis began in October 2002, when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted having a nuclear weapons program in violation of international agreements.
The United States and its allies suspended oil shipments to the North. North Korea in turn expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors, withdrew from the global nuclear arms-control treaty and said it was building nuclear arms to defend itself from U.S. invasion.
-------- missile defense
Australia Assures China on Missile Defense Program
Patrick Goodenough
Pacific Rim Bureau Chief
(CNSNews.com)
December 6, 2003
http://www.crosswalk.com/news/1234427.html
Pacific Rim Bureau - Australia has discussed its intention to join the U.S. ballistic missile defense program with China -- the plan's strongest critic -- and has assured Beijing that it has nothing to worry about.
Australia has become the first country to announce it will join the ambitious project, which aims to protect the U.S. and its allies from future missile attack by "rogue" states or terrorist groups.
The multi-billion plan, still under development, is controversial.
Critics argue that rather than making the world safer, it could unleash a new nuclear arms race, if existing nuclear powers like China or Russia respond by increasing the size of their arsenals to ensure they remain effective deterrents.
The U.S. has made it clear that the umbrella is not being designed with Russia or China in mind, and should not be seen as affecting their nuclear deterrents.
Beijing, in particular, is not convinced, largely because a theater missile shield defending Taiwan could render Chinese missiles less effective in the event of a future conflict.
"The incorporation of Taiwan into any foreign missile defense system is unacceptable and will seriously undermine regional stability," Beijing and Moscow said in a joint communique back in 2000.
Amid increased tensions across the Taiwan Strait, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao is planning to raise U.S. support for Taiwan during his forthcoming visit to Washington.
The Australian government says it has informed the Chinese and other countries in the region of its decision to back the defense shield.
In a television interview Friday, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer suggested that the Chinese were less hostile to the idea than had been previously the case.
"They've been very moderate in their response," he said.
"I don't think you could say that they've been supportive of this particular proposal, but I think they increasingly understand this isn't directed at China. or isn't designed to intervene in the China-Taiwan issue - which is of course their great area of sensitivity."
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Canberra said Friday there was no official response yet to the decision.
North Korean concerns
The missile defense system aims to detect incoming enemy missiles and then launch missiles from land- or sea-based platforms to intercept and destroy them in mid-air.
The "rogue" state most obviously of concern in the region is North Korea, which in 1998 test-fired a ballistic missile that flew over Japan before landing in the Pacific Ocean.
Pyongyang, which has admitted it has nuclear weapons, is developing longer-range rockets that American officials have warned could target the U.S. West Coast within a couple of years. That would also put Australia within range.
Canberra has not elaborated on the extent of its planned participation, but indicated that it could involve the use of Australian warships, and incorporate a U.S. satellite tracking station in central Australia called Pine Gap.
Defense Minister Robert Hill said he did not believe Australia would host interceptor missiles on its soil.
Likely areas of co-operation could include cooperation to ensure early warning of the launch of an enemy missile; acquisition of ship- and land-based sensors; and science and technology research, development, testing and evaluation.
Hill said in a statement the aim of the system was not to threaten other countries but to discourage them from investing in ballistic missile systems.
"The government is concerned that Australia might one day be threatened by long-range missiles with mass destruction effect and believes that investment in defensive measures is important," he said.
Space ambitions
The missile defense shield under development has been dubbed, mostly by opponents, the "son of Star Wars," in reference to President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or "Star Wars" proposals announced 20 years ago.
Although the current plans trace their roots from SDI, they are considerably more modest and Earth-based than the original ones, which envisaged a massive, space-based shield against a potential Soviet nuclear attack.
Critics continue to accuse the Bush administration of wanting to dominate space, however.
"The U.S. is not building a defensive system. It is planning to militarize and control space," said Dr. Hannah Middleton of the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition Friday. The coalition is opposed to U.S. bases and related facilities on Australian territory.
An organization called the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space said the missile defense plan "could ultimately carry warfare into the heavens."
Responded to the Australian decision, network coordinator Bruce Gagnon said the U.S. was finding the costs of developing the program so high it was "working overtime to convince allies to help with investments in the research and development phase of the project."
Left-wing politicians in Australia have also slammed the government's decision.
See related story: Australian Missile Defense Decision Puts Opposition on Defensive (Dec. 05, 2003)
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Building mini nuclear bombs
From: "vera gottlieb" <veragott@mail.ocis.net>
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2003
This is a very lose translation of this Spanish news item found in the Cuban "Granma International" - as reported by Prensa Latina (Latin Press). I tried to do a search and perhaps find this article somewhere else but did not find it. I did not search in US news services. I don't recall having heard anything on our own CBC. Do you have any further information on this? Rather chilling...can't we spend our money on better things? Doesn't this world have enough weapons of all kinds of mass destruction? Do we really need more?
Headline: "The USA approves production of mini nuclear bombs. Specially made to destroy subterranean military installations in more than 70 countries."
The White House approved production of mini nuclear bombs which could be used to destroy over 10,000 underground military installations which exist in over 70 countries around the world. The approval includes work on two types of atomic bombs; this could contribute to a new arms race and the proliferation of more nuclear arms on the international scene. According to the report by the Argentine newspaper "Clarin", it relates to mini nuclear bombs.
Scientist will look into a type of anti-bunker bomb that could destroy underground command centres and arms' storage. Experts will also look into the possibilities of precision mini nuclear bombs to destroy silos and the missiles they contain.
This article goes on to indicate the types of aircrafts that would be used to drop these mini nuclear bombs.
La Habana. 4 de diciembre de 2003
Aprueba EE.UU. producción de minibombas atómicas
• Especiales para destruir instalaciones militares subterráneas en más de 70 países
LA Casa Blanca aprobó la construcción de pequeñas bombas atómicas con las que podría destruir los más de 10 mil emplazamientos militares subterráneos que existen en 70 países del mundo, afirman fuentes congresionales, informa desde Washington Prensa Latina.
El presidente George W. Bush acaba de firmar una ley que otorga fondos al Departamento de Energía y del Agua que pasó casi inadvertida, comentaron en esos medios.
Ese paquete incluye partidas para la investigación y desarrollo de dos tipos de bombas nucleares que podrían contribuir tanto al desencadenamiento de una nueva carrera armamentista atómica como al aumento de la proliferación nuclear en la escena internacional.
Según la versión digital del periódico argentino Clarín, que se refiere también al hecho, se trata de dos variedades de minibombas nucleares.
Clarín subraya que los científicos investigarán el desarrollo de una variante antibúnker cuyo objetivo sería destruir centros de comando y control subterráneos, así como depósitos de armas que siempre son construidos en fortalezas bajo tierra.
Los expertos analizarán además la posibilidad de elaborar pequeñas bombas atómicas de alta precisión que podrían ser utilizadas para destruir silos y los misiles almacenados en su interior.
La ley prevé además fondos para la construcción de un lugar de ensayos nucleares en el estado de Nevada, pese a que Bush dijo que mantendría la moratoria de las pruebas nucleares.
El anuncio se produce tras haberse suspendido en mayo una ley promulgada hace una década que prohibía taxativamente la investigación de este tipo de armas.
Según especialistas en temas militares, los científicos tienen previsto estudiar la posibilidad de transformar dos ojivas nucleares, la B61 y la B83, en bombas antibúnker.
La B61 es una bomba termonuclear táctica que cae por gravedad y que puede lanzarse desde bombarderos B-52 y B-2 o aviones cazas F-16.
La B83 es un arma diseñada como una bomba de precisión que es apta para ser lanzada a baja altitud desde bombarderos invisibles Stealth B-2.
Los fondos asignados por el Congreso para las investigaciones de los artefactos ascienden a siete millones 500 mil dólares de los 14 solicitados por el Pentágono
-------- us politics
Pentagon Adviser Faulted Over Boeing Role
Saturday, December 06, 2003 8:15 a.m. ET
By Jim Wolf
(Reuters)
http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=804418&tw=wn_wire_story
WASHINGTON - Pentagon adviser Richard Perle came under fire on Friday for failing to disclose financial ties to Boeing Co. <BA.N>, even while championing its bid for a controversial $20 billion-plus defense contract.
Perle co-wrote a guest column in The Wall Street Journal newspaper this summer praising the plan to lease then buy 100 modified refueling planes, a year after Boeing committed to invest up to $20 million in Trireme Partners, a New York venture capital fund in which Perle is a principal.
"If ever there were an argument that traditional business practices are ill-suited for defense 'transformation', the saga of the tanker-leasing proposal would count as People's Exhibit A," Perle and a colleague wrote in the Journal on Aug. 14.
"It stinks to high heaven," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based federal budget watchdog group, of Perle's failure to disclose his ties to Boeing in the Wall Street Journal piece.
"Mr. Perle's entitled to his own views on the tanker deal," said Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government and corporate accountability watchdog. "We just think that the public's entitled to know that he has a relationship with Boeing when he's expressing his views."
Perle's role adds to the ethical questions dogging the tanker deal, placed on hold by the Pentagon this week for an audit of suspected contracting improprieties that contributed to the resignation on Monday of Boeing's chief executive.
Last month, lawmakers voted to allow the lease of no more than 20 tankers and the purchase of up to 80, rather than an approach that would have cost $5 billion or more over time.
As a high-profile assistant defense secretary under former president Ronald Reagan, Perle carries a lot of weight in Washington. He is widely credited with helping to lay the political groundwork for the March invasion of Iraq.
CHARGES OF INFLUENCE-PEDDLING
Perle was overseas Friday and did not respond to requests for comment e-mailed via colleagues.
Perle's business interests have raised repeated questions about what critics call improper influence-peddling. On March 27, he quit as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, which advises the secretary of defense, amid allegations of conflict of interest for his representation of companies with business before the Defense Department. He remains a board member.
Chicago-based Boeing pledged in the middle of last year to invest up to $20 million over eight to 10 years in Trireme Partners, which invests in defense- and homeland security-related technologies. It is one of 29 such investments in cutting-edge technology funds worldwide totaling $250 million, said Anne Eisele, a Boeing spokeswoman. To date, Boeing has invested $2 million in Trireme, she said.
Boeing acknowledged in a recently released internal e-mail that it ghost-wrote several opinion pieces by prominent figures in favor of leasing tankers rather than buying them outright, as has been standard weapons-procurement policy.
But a company spokesman, Doug Kennett, said of the Perle piece: "We did not write nor did we place it," only fact-checked it, "which is a fairly standard thing."
The Wall Street Journal editorial-page editor who handled the column was not available for comment but "normally, we do like to disclose this kind of information," said Brigitte Trafford, a spokeswoman for Dow Jones & Co Inc. <DJ.N>, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, referring to an author's financial interests in the deal.
Boeing said it had briefed Perle on the tanker deal in his capacity as a resident fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, a private research group. President Bush, at the institute's annual dinner in February, said it was home to "some of the finest minds in our nation ... at work on some of the greatest challenges to our nation."
--------
Conservatives Criticize Bush on Spending
Medicare Bill Angers Some Allies
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 6, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40090-2003Dec5.html
Last month's passage of a Medicare prescription drug benefit that could cost $2 trillion over 20 years, after three years of sharp increases in federal spending, has provoked an unusual barrage of criticism of President Bush from conservative leaders.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page accuses Bush of a "Medicare fiasco" and a "Medicare giveaway." Paul Weyrich, a coordinator of the conservative movement, sees "disappointment in a lot of quarters." Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist with the National Center for Policy Analysis, pronounces himself "apoplectic." An article in the American Spectator calls Bush's stewardship on spending "nonexistent," while Steve Moore of the Club for Growth labels Bush a "champion big-spending president."
"The president isn't showing leadership," laments Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation, who calculates that federal spending per household is at a 60-year high. "Conservatives are angry."
Such criticism is rare for Bush, who has assiduously courted the GOP's ideological base and has, in turn, built up enough goodwill that he can afford to stray from conservative orthodoxy, as he did on Medicare. This anger does not represent a political danger for Bush in the short term, conservatives leaders say, because it comes largely from conservative intellectuals, while grass-roots conservatives remain intensely loyal to Bush for his tax cuts, war leadership and antiabortion efforts.
But in the long term, the conservative leaders say, their discontent could spread to a popular backlash if spending continues to swell, pushing up deficits and interest rates. And the free spending is already limiting Bush's policy options. For example, economist Bartlett said, "the budgetary situation is getting so off track that you simply can't propose any more tax cuts without looking like a complete idiot."
The issue came to a boil this week, when White House economic aides summoned conservative economists to allow them to vent their rage. But according to participants, the session did little to dampen their anger. Joel D. Kaplan, the deputy director of the White House budget office, displayed a chart showing that, outside homeland security and defense, spending was falling. But under tough questioning, one participant recounted, Kaplan conceded that his figures did not include the series of "emergency" supplemental measures requested by Bush each year.
The next flare-up is likely to come Monday, when the House is scheduled to vote on a massive spending measure for 2004 that Congress negotiated with the Bush administration. The bill, which contains billions of dollars for lawmakers' pet projects, has aggravated fiscal conservatives, some of whom have threatened to join Democrats in opposition.
The spark has been the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which is expected to cost $400 billion over 10 years and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, could go as high as $2 trillion over another 10 years. Before its passage, former House majority leader Richard K Armey (R-Tex.) wrote to the Wall Street Journal to say that "the conservative, free-market base in America is rightly in revolt over this bill" and that "conservatives would be smart, and right, to reject it." Some conservatives, including Sens. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Don Nickles (R-Okla.), did just that.
But the Medicare legislation comes on top of a federal spending increase of 23.7 percent since Bush took office. "In the last three years we've had the biggest farm bill, the biggest education bill, the biggest foreign aid bill and now the biggest health care bill in 30 years," said Moore of the free-market Club for Growth. "There's now not any pretense that Bush is committed to smaller government."
The White House prefers a different set of statistics. Excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush aides say, he cut spending 6 percent in 2002 and 5 percent in 2003, and 2 to 3 percent for 2004 -- this after a comparable increase of nearly 15 percent in these areas in the last year of the Clinton administration.
"The president has provided strong leadership to make sure we are doing what it takes to win the war on terror, our nation's highest priority, while holding the line on spending elsewhere in the budget," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said this week.
But when a White House official presented this analysis to a meeting he attended recently, "I nearly laughed out loud," said Heritage's Riedl. He calculates that 55 percent of all new spending in the past two years, or $164 billion of $296 billion, is from areas unrelated to defense and homeland security. Unemployment benefits are up 85 percent, education spending up 65 percent. "It's really an across-the-board thing," he said. This has led federal spending to top $20,000 per household in today's dollars for the first time since World War II -- a jump of $4,000 in the past four years.
Discretionary spending, which grew 2 percent annually during Clinton's presidency, has grown at 6.5 percent under Bush. And federal spending as a percent of gross domestic product, which decreased under Clinton, has edged back up to 20 percent under Bush.
Congress holds the purse strings. But the president gets a share of the blame, David Hogberg writes in the American Spectator: "He has vetoed no appropriations bill, and has actually encouraged profligacy by his eagerness to sign budget busters like the Medicare Bill, Farm Bill, and Education Bill."
Grover Norquist, an administration ally who leads Americans for Tax Reform, said it is true that "government spending is growing too rapidly." But he said Bush should not get all the blame. "I am disappointed that the movement, starting with me, has not yet figured out how to assign accountability and responsibility for spending," he said. Norquist said Bush "needs to make the case next year that this is what he is working on."
A Republican pollster working on the 2004 campaign said the spending issue is growing but has not yet reached a point of concern for Bush. "I'm seeing it percolating in primary polls in Republican segments, but they're not blaming Bush as much as the whole system," he said. "In the short term, voters are going to say spend what you need to spend on the war."
Nobody can be certain how long the conservative voters' tolerance of the spending growth will last. Weyrich, who heads the Free Congress Foundation, said it could be well into Bush's second term before conservative voters rebel against the growth of government. "I've helped to start revolts against many administrations over the years, and the level of outrage just isn't there where you could oppose the administration," he said. "People are upset about it, but they weigh it against what they consider to be Bush's leadership in Iraq and elsewhere. . . . They say, 'Well, we don't like this, but it's not enough to cause us to bolt.' "
Staff writers Dan Morgan and Jonathan Weisman contributed to this report.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Bomb Explodes in Center of Kandahar
December 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Explosion.html
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- A bomb exploded in a bazaar in this southern Afghan city Saturday, wounding about 20 people, at least three seriously, in an attack that a Taliban spokesman said targeted -- but missed -- American soldiers who shop there.
The bomb, apparently placed on a motorcycle, detonated at about 12:30 p.m. outside a hotel in the Herat bazaar in Kandahar's commercial center.
Two shops were completely demolished. Broken glass from the shattered hotel front and victims' blood lay around the scene, which was quickly sealed off by U.S. troops and Afghan police. All the injured appeared to be Afghans, the U.S.-led military coalition said in an e-mail from its headquarters at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul.
``Taliban and al-Qaida carried out this terrorist attack. We are trying to catch those responsible,'' Kandahar city police chief Mohammad Hashim said.
Later, Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdul Hakim Latifi said the bombings was carried out by fighters from the hard-line Islamic movement, ousted from power by U.S. forces two years ago. Speaking with The Associated Press in Kandahar by satellite telephone, he said the Taliban bomb was meant for U.S. soldiers shopping at the bazaar, but went off later than planned.
Latifi, a former Taliban official, last week accurately announced that Taliban had freed a Turkish engineer after holding him hostage for a month.
Qasim Khan, a doctor at Kandahar hospital, said three people seriously injured by the blast and flying glass had been taken to the U.S. military base at the airport for treatment.
Kandahar is the former stronghold of Taliban, whose supporters this year have mounted a wave of deadly attacks on soldiers from the U.S.-led coalition, Afghan officials and aid workers.
On Saturday, a U.S. military spokesman said special forces had raided the compound of a renegade Afghan commander suspected in the attacks on coalition soldiers, blowing up weapons and detaining suspects.
It was unclear if there were any casualties.
U.S. troops found hidden storage compartments containing hundreds of 107mm rockets, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank and anti-personnel mines and several howitzers.
The compound was near Gardez, the capital of Paktia province in the southeast on Friday, Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said during a news conference at Bagram. Hilferty said several people were detained for questioning but did not elaborate.
The compound was used by Mullah Jalani, an associate of renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister who has joined the resurgent Taliban in vowing to battle foreign troops and topple U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai, Hilferty said.
On Wednesday, two U.S. soldiers were wounded in Kandahar when a suspected Taliban militant threw a grenade at their military vehicle in a busy square.
Residents say American soldiers have been patrolling the city since a car bomb exploded outside U.N. offices here on Nov. 11, injuring two people, including a U.N. security guard. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack.
The U.S. military said coalition troops on Thursday found hundreds of rockets, mortars and mines neatly stacked in Kandahar prison, where 41 Taliban prisoners mounted a spectacular escape in October.
The American military also is concerned that Taliban could target the loya jirga, or grand council, which is to meet in the capital Kabul next week to debate and ratify a new constitution for Afghanistan.
The violence has seriously hampered development work across the south and east of the country, undermining efforts to rebuild and democratize it after more than two decades of war.
--------
9 Children Dead After U.S. Attack in Afghanistan
December 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Attack.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Nine children were found dead Saturday after an American air raid in eastern Afghanistan, and the military was investigating whether U.S. forces were responsible, a spokesman said.
An American A-10 aircraft struck a site south of Ghazni, 100 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul, where a ``known terrorist'' was believed to be hiding at about 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Army Maj. Christopher E. West told The Associated Press.
``At the time we initiated the attack, we did not know there were children nearby,'' he said.
The target was a suspected militant believed responsible for the killing of two foreign contractors who were working on an Afghan road, West said. He did not identify the contractors and had no information about their deaths, but two Indian engineers were reported kidnapped while working on the road Saturday.
West said U.S. troops collected ``extensive intelligence over an extended period of time'' and located the suspect targeted Saturday at an ``isolated, rural site.''
``Following the attack, ground coalition forces searching the area found the bodies of both the intended target and those of nine children nearby,'' he said Sunday.
The military was sending a team of investigators to the site to determine if U.S. forces were at fault, West said.
West said other houses were near the area attacked Saturday, but the aircraft did not strike them.
Coalition forces ``will make every effort to assist the families of these innocent casualties and determine the cause of the civilian deaths,'' he said from the U.S. headquarters in Bagram.
``We regret the loss of any innocent life and we follow stringent rules of engagement to specifically avoid this type of incident while continuing to target terrorists who threaten the future of Afghanistan,'' West said.
Ahmad Zia Masood, a spokesman for the governor of Ghazni province, claimed the U.S. military targeted Mullah Wazir, a Taliban militant he said fired at U.S. helicopters on Friday.
``The Americans recognized where the fire came from and used jets to bombard it'' on Saturday, he told the AP.
Masood said it was unclear if the 10 victims were Wazir and his family or their neighbors.
He said the attack took place at Atla village, just north of where the two Indian road engineers were kidnapped by suspected Taliban.
The kidnapped engineers, who were not identified, were working for an Indian contractor helping resurface part of the Kabul-Kandahar road, a reconstruction project mainly funded by the United States. The road was to be officially opened later this month.
Taliban attacks have plagued the flagship project. Four construction workers were killed at the end of August, and de-mining operations along the road were suspended last month after a carjacking. A Turk was abducted along the road last month.
Two contractors working for the CIA also were killed in an Oct. 25 ambush as they were tracking terrorists operating in the region of Shkin, about 100 miles south of Kabul.
Also Saturday, a bomb in Kandahar, the main southern stronghold of the Taliban, ripped through a bustling bazaar, wounding 20 Afghans. Taliban fighters claimed responsibility, saying the blast was aimed at American soldiers but went off late.
The bomb, apparently attached to a parked motorcycle or bicycle, exploded in front of a hotel at about 12:30 p.m. in the city's main commercial district. The wounded included three children, Afghan state TV reported.
U.S. officials have been trying to track down remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida sympathizers in eastern and southern Afghanistan since ousting the hard-line Islamic regime two years ago. The militants have stepped up attacks in recent months, targeting foreign aid workers and perceived allies of the U.S.-led coalition.
The Indian engineers disappeared in Zabul province while traveling along the country's main highway between Kabul and Kandahar, an aide to Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali told the AP.
An Indian Embassy official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the engineers were traveling with an Afghan driver and another Afghan employee when they were stopped.
The kidnappers ``roughed up the driver, and he was able to return to the company. They let the other Afghan go as well.
A spokesman for The Louis Berger Group Inc., an American engineering company overseeing the road project, declined to comment on the reported kidnapping, as did a U.S. Embassy official.
International aid agencies have scaled down operations in Afghanistan's south and east due to escalating violence, including the Nov. 16 shooting death of a French aid worker for the United Nations.
Associated Press writer Chris Hawley in New York contributed to this report.
--------
Afghan Elections Threatened by Violence
December 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Threatened-Elections.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Surging violence by pro-Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents against Westerners and Afghans who work with them could delay plans for a landmark presidential election this summer.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a visitor here this week, insist the vote will go ahead -- a crucial step in ending more than 20 years of war.
Yet Afghan ministers and the United Nations make plain that security must improve -- with the aid of more foreign troops -- to make sure the vote is fair and includes all the country's bitterly divided groups.
``I don't think incomplete elections will be acceptable to anyone,'' Karzai's interior minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, said.
``The government is determined to hold to the timetable. But if something happens we will have to make a decision'' on whether to wait, he said.
June 22, 2004, was set as election day under U.N. peace accords signed in Germany in early 2002 after a U.S.-led offensive drove the Taliban from power for harboring Osama bin Laden.
But the so-called Bonn process has been imperiled by delays in other vital steps, such as disarming unruly warlords and passing a new constitution, as well as the Taliban's increasingly merciless targeting of civilians.
At least 11 aid workers have been killed and the same number injured since March, including a French U.N. refugee worker assassinated in Ghazni city, south of Kabul, last month.
In the latest incident, suspected Taliban gunmen sprayed vehicles carrying Afghans working on a U.N.-sponsored census with gunfire, killing one and injuring 11 in southern Helmand province.
An explosion near the U.S. Embassy on Thursday evening, about two hours after Rumsfeld left the country, underlined that even the capital remains unsafe.
On Saturday, a bomb exploded in the center of Kandahar on Saturday, causing injuries, an official said, blaming the attack on al-Qaida or Taliban militants. Kandahar is the former stronghold of the Taliban.
U.N. officials say the violence will prevent them from sending workers -- whether Afghan or foreign staffers -- to carry out the crucial task of registering voters in remote villages.
Registration in major towns began only this month -- instead of October as planned -- and the United Nations says it will tackle the most risky areas later.
``We continue with June as our reference date, but the registration started very late and as of today we cannot go to all places in the country to register everyone,'' said Manoel de Almeida e Silva, the chief U.N. spokesman in Kabul.
Hostility to the peace process is centered in southern and eastern regions dominated by Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group and the country's traditional rulers.
Many Pashtuns supported the Taliban, and resent the prominence of other ethnic groups in Karzai's government, especially the Defense Ministry.
To reduce the power of militias such as the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, the United States in training a new Afghan National Army. But the force has been plagued by desertion and only about 6,500 men have been armed so far.
Disarming the warlords who still control much of the country -- and whose abuse of civilians made the Taliban welcome in many areas -- also has been slow.
At a briefing with Rumsfeld on Thursday, Karzai insisted that ``the Taliban or terrorists, whoever they are, will not be able to disrupt the process.''
Rumsfeld also was upbeat.
``While there always may be incidents from time to time ... Afghan forces as well as coalition forces ought to be able to manage anything like that quite well,'' he said.
Yet neither man ruled out a delay.
Jalali acknowledged that government plans to have 20,000 newly trained police in place to guard the registration and voting were no guarantee that spectacular attacks by Taliban or their allies wouldn't derail the process.
Officials pin their hopes also on expanding the 5,700-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force now confined to Kabul. NATO has agreed in principle, and Turkey and Belgium are expected to provide badly needed helicopters. But member nations are dragging their feet on committing extra troops.
``The situation confirms the need'' for the peacekeepers to fan out across the country, Almeida e Silva said. ``Timeliness is now particularly important.''
Observers warn that delaying the election by more than a few months could undermine the already shaky Bonn process -- Karzai's detractors could paint him as the latest in a long line of unelected Afghan rulers who clung to office.
Christopher Langton, a defense analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said that while progress in stabilizing Afghanistan was slow, ``there are positives. The negative is what the Taliban do in spring.''
``A delay of more than two months and there would be loss of legitimacy,'' said Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity. ``But security is the real wild card.''
-------- arms
Iran woos New Zealand DIY missile builder
AUCKLAND (AFP)
Dec 06, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031205232147.r3jvgak5.html
A New Zealand engineer who made world headlines with his homebuilt cruise missile said Saturday he had received "very serious" offers from an Iranian company to invest in the project.
Bruce Simpson said the firm was linked to the aerospace and missile industries, and was one of a number of enquiries from several countries including Pakistan, China and Lebanon.
But after "worrying about the bigger picture" and turning down the offers, the cash-strapped engineer found himself backrupted by the Inland Revenue Department for non-payment of taxes.
The Iranians made "very serious inquiries about investing in the development of the X-jet technology", Simpson said on his website aardvark.co.nz.
"I have since had emails from Pakistan, Lebanon, China and other countries, all of which sought to obtain details of the X-jet project and some of which have involved seemingly genuine offers of not insignificant payment for such information."
Simpson said he contacted the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service who advised it was "certainly not sensible" to export such technology.
Instead he signed a heads of agreement with a United States firm that would have set up a research and development plant in Waikato, south of here.
But the deal was scuttled last Monday when he was bankrupted.
A bitter Simpson said Inland Revenue was stupid to quash a deal that would have reaped cash "hundreds of times the value of the outstanding debt".
The 49-year-old engineer, website developer and software technician worked within a budget of 5,000 US dollars to build and perfect his do-it-yourself cruise missile.
The "X-Jet" is similar to the pulse-jets that powered Germany's V-1 missiles in World War II, and the GPS guided missile has a range of 160 kilometres (100 miles) with a 10 kilogram (22 pound) warhead.
Simpson said he acquired most of the parts from the online auction house eBay, including a GPS system purchased for 120 US dollars that "was delivered by international airmail in less than a week and passed through customs without any problems."
The missile was no longer in his possession, and its whereabouts would be kept secret "until an appropriate time", he said.
----
Air Force urged Boeing deal despite ethical concerns
NEW YORK (AFP)
Dec 06, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031206131618.xmchpx58.html
An Air Force acquisitions officer urged Pentagon officials to close a 20-billion-dollar contract with Boeing after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld expressed concerns about the ethics of the deal, the New York Times reported Saturday.
The officer, Marvin Sambur, also shared internal Pentagon messages about price, terms and conditions strategy with Boeing while negotiating was underway, the Times said, citing internal Pentagon e-mail messages.
The Air Force is trying to acquire 100 Boeing-767 tanker planes for refueling in a deal critics say is unnecessary and too costly.
On Tuesday, The Pentagon said it had asked for a "pause" in the multibillion dollar deal in the wake of revelations about the company's recruitment of an Air Force official.
In a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited Boeing's decision to sack chief financial officer Mike Sears for improperly recruiting a US Air Force official, Darleen Druyun, who played a key role in the program before leaving the military and joining Boeing.
"In light of the recent allegations and actions taken within the Boeing Company to remove Michael Sears and Darleen Druyun, I am ordering a pause in the execution of the contracts to lease and purchase tanker aircraft," Wolfowitz wrote in the December 1 letter.
Wolfowitz also asked the Pentagon's investigative arm to report to him if those ethical violations had any impact on the Air Force contract with Boeing.
Rumsfeld first expressed concern about the matter on November 25, the day the two were fired, saying it was important to investigate potential improprieties "to see that things are done properly."
Sambur sent internal email messages urging the deal on November 25 and 26, the Times said.
Sambur defended his actions to the Times Friday, describing the messages as "privileged inside-the-house e-mails" in which he stated his opinion.
"No one is trying to circumvent anything," he said.
----
Ministers flout arms sales code
Exports trigger human rights row
Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday December 6, 2003
The Guardian
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,1101277,00.html
The government is selling arms and security equipment to countries whose human rights record it has strongly criticised, according to lists of weapons cleared for export that have been seen by the Guardian.
The countries include Indonesia, where the Foreign Office has reported allegations of extrajudicial killings, Nepal, where it has reported summary executions, and Saudi Arabia, where torture is just one abuse of basic human rights attacked by the FO.
Licences have been approved this year for the export to Saudi Arabia of "security and paramilitary goods", hitherto unpublished figures show.
The list of items under this category is: "Acoustic devices... suitable for riot control purposes, anti-riot shields... leg irons, gangchains, electric shock belts, shackles... individual cuffs... portable anti-riot devices... water cannon... riot control vehicles... portable devices for riot control or self-protection by the administration of an electric shock".
The government's arms export guidelines state that licences will be refused if there is a "clear risk [they] might be used for internal repression".
The exports to Saudi Arabia, which also include a wide range of military hardware and weapons systems, were cleared despite sharp criticism of the country in the FO's latest annual human rights report published in the summer.
"We continue to have deep concerns about Saudi Arabia's failure to implement basic human rights norms," it says, referring explicitly to capital and corporal punishment and restrictions on freedom of movement, expression, assembly and worship.
It adds: "We believe that between January and December 2002, the Saudi authorities executed about 46 people, one of the highest figures for any country in the world."
The government also approved export licences for categories of arms including machine guns, rockets and missiles, to Indonesia.
Indonesian forces are engaged in fierce fighting against pro-independence rebels in Aceh where British equipment is being used despite assurances from the government they would not be used for offensive or counter-insurgency measures.
After foreign observers were refused acces to Aceh, the government told MPs last month that it "remained concerned about the situation in Aceh".
British-built Saracen armoured vehicles were being used by Indonesian forces in Aceh, Tapol, the Indonesia human rights campaign and the Campaign Against Arms Trade said this week.
Next week human rights activists in Indonesia are planning to challenge the legality of British arms exports to the country, Tapol said yesterday.
There have already been reports of Hawk jets and Scorpion tanks deployed in Aceh.
The FO says in its human rights report that while the professionalism of the Indonesian security forces had improved, "serious problems remain, with allegations of extrajudicial killings, disappearances, arbitrary detention, rape, torture and mistreatment of prisoners".
The government has also approved big increases in the sale of arms to Nepal where security forces are fighting Maoist guerrillas. Last year Britain provided Nepal with two military helicopters with funds from its "conflict prevention" fund.
Yet the FO accuses the Nepalese army and Maoists of "gross and widespread human rights abuses". Its annual report adds: "The security forces were responsible for extensive and systematic illegal detentions, torture and summary executions".
The government's arms export criteria state it "will not issue licences for exports which would provoke or prolong armed conflicts or aggravate existing tensions".
The list of export licences was provided by Nigel Griffiths, the trade minister, in response to questions from Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman.
Mr Campbell said yesterday: "There is clearly a substantial disconnection between the government's avowed policy on human rights and its implementation of its own guidelines on arms exports".
"If we are serious about human rights we should not be exporting equipment under these categories to governments with such doubtful records."
The government says it keeps export licensing policy under review and that its controls are among the the toughest in the world.
-------- asia
N. Korea to Respond to Japan Spy Satellite
December 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-Japan-Spy-Satellite.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea warned on Saturday that it will take unspecified countermeasures in response to Japan's attempt at launching two spy satellites to monitor the communist country, a news report said.
Japan tried last month to launch the satellites into orbit but failed because of technical problems.
``This is a very dangerous military activity,'' North Korea's state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.
``We won't stand and watch while Japan continues to intensify its hostile activities against our country,'' said the newspaper, carried by the North's official KCNA news agency. ``We will continue to take measures to respond.''
The North Korean report, monitored by South Korea's national Yonhap news agency, did not elaborate.
The report comes amid diplomatic efforts to resume six-nation talks, possibly later this month, aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons development. The United States, Japan, the two Koreas, China and Russia held the first such conference in Beijing in August but made little progress.
The nuclear standoff flared in October 2002, when U.S. officials said the North acknowledged running a secret nuclear program.
Japan put its first two spy satellites into space in March to watch North Korea's missile and nuclear programs. North Korea protested the launch, and warned Japan against triggering a regional arms race.
Japanese officials said the spy satellite program was prompted by North Korea's surprise test launch of a long-range missile over Japan in 1998. They said the satellites are not meant as a provocation and will also be used to monitor natural disasters and weather patterns.
--------
South Korea Awaits First Dead From Iraq
December 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-SKorea-Iraq-Emotions.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Kim Young-jin begged her father not to go to Iraq, where he was to lay electric lines.
So she was beside herself when roadside gunmen riddled him and a fellow engineer, Kwak Kyong-hae, with bullets north of Baghdad last weekend. What hurts almost as much, she says, is that government policy made them targets.
Her father, 46-year-old Kim Man-soo, and Kwak Kyong-hae, 61, were shot dead and two other South Koreans were wounded when their vehicle came under fire on a road near Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein.
The four civilians worked for Omu Electric Co., which had been contracted by a U.S. firm to help restore Iraq's electric grid.
``Because our country said it was going to send troops to Iraq, the Iraqis killed my father and Mr. Kwak,'' the high school senior wrote in a scathing open letter to President Roh Moo-hyun days after the attack. ``My father was made a scapegoat for the country.''
As the bodies of South Korea's first fatalities in Iraq waited to be airlifted out of Baghdad, Kim's was a reluctant voice of criticism against Roh's plans to send up to 3,000 troops to the country in support of the United States. Her sorrow also foreshadows what grief might lie ahead if Roh follows through and Korean casualties mount.
``Couldn't somebody have called?'' Kim wrote, complaining that no one in the government had bothered to extend condolences to the family immediately after the attack.
She said Roh belatedly sent her an e-mail saying he ``could hardly suppress my sorrow'' and that the deaths were ``not just the tragedy of Young-jin's family but of the whole nation.'' But his government has been equally as quick to push ahead with its plans to back South Korea's most important ally.
On Thursday, the National Assembly extended the current mission of medics and military engineers already operating in Iraq until December 2004. And on Friday, Prime Minister Goh Kun told reporters that the government hoped to make fast progress next week on sending a bigger dispatch of up to 3,000 troops.
Roh proposed sending the 3,000 last month, but the mission is unpopular with the public and last Sunday's attacks were seen as putting extra pressure on the government to alter its plans.
The casualties, South Korea's first since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March, came over a deadly weekend in which agents and diplomats from coalition partners Spain and Japan were also killed in separate attacks.
-------- business
Air Force urged Boeing deal despite ethical concerns
NEW YORK (AFP)
Dec 06, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031206131618.xmchpx58.html
An Air Force acquisitions officer urged Pentagon officials to close a 20-billion-dollar contract with Boeing after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld expressed concerns about the ethics of the deal, the New York Times reported Saturday.
The officer, Marvin Sambur, also shared internal Pentagon messages about price, terms and conditions strategy with Boeing while negotiating was underway, the Times said, citing internal Pentagon e-mail messages.
The Air Force is trying to acquire 100 Boeing-767 tanker planes for refueling in a deal critics say is unnecessary and too costly.
On Tuesday, The Pentagon said it had asked for a "pause" in the multibillion dollar deal in the wake of revelations about the company's recruitment of an Air Force official.
In a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited Boeing's decision to sack chief financial officer Mike Sears for improperly recruiting a US Air Force official, Darleen Druyun, who played a key role in the program before leaving the military and joining Boeing.
"In light of the recent allegations and actions taken within the Boeing Company to remove Michael Sears and Darleen Druyun, I am ordering a pause in the execution of the contracts to lease and purchase tanker aircraft," Wolfowitz wrote in the December 1 letter.
Wolfowitz also asked the Pentagon's investigative arm to report to him if those ethical violations had any impact on the Air Force contract with Boeing.
Rumsfeld first expressed concern about the matter on November 25, the day the two were fired, saying it was important to investigate potential improprieties "to see that things are done properly."
Sambur sent internal email messages urging the deal on November 25 and 26, the Times said.
Sambur defended his actions to the Times Friday, describing the messages as "privileged inside-the-house e-mails" in which he stated his opinion.
"No one is trying to circumvent anything," he said.
--------
Air Force Pursued Boeing Deal Despite Concerns of Rumsfeld
December 6, 2003
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/06/business/06BOEI.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - Even after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld expressed concern late last month about improprieties in a proposed $20 billion contract with the Boeing Company, the Air Force's top acquisitions official, Marvin R. Sambur, distributed messages urging Pentagon officials to sign the deal "A.S.A.P.," according to internal Pentagon e-mail messages.
Earlier in the year, Dr. Sambur also forwarded to top Boeing executives, including James Albaugh, president of a Boeing division, copies of internal Pentagon communications outlining the Defense Department's negotiating strategy for price, terms and conditions of the contract, the e-mail messages show. The messages were sent to Boeing in April and May, at a time when the company and the Pentagon had yet to reach an agreement.
The messages, which were provided by government officials and confirmed as authentic by Dr. Sambur in a phone interview on Friday, provide fresh evidence of how the Air Force and Boeing worked as partners to promote the controversial deal, and how some Air Force officials continued to press for the contracts even against opposition from government auditors, some lawmakers and some top Defense Department officials.
The critics have portrayed the deal as too costly, unnecessary and unseemly. But the e-mail messages indicate the eagerness of some Air Force officials to complete a deal that would allow them to obtain 100 767's from Boeing for use as refueling tankers as a first step toward rebuilding an aging tanker fleet. Both Boeing and the Air Force have given high priority to the project, with Boeing eager for new government aircraft orders to supplement dwindling commercial business, and the Air Force concerned about a tanker fleet that dates from the Vietnam War.
On Nov. 24, Boeing acknowledged "compelling evidence" of misconduct by Michael M. Sears, the chief financial officer, and Darleen A. Druyun, a vice president who joined the company last January after serving as the chief Air Force negotiator on the project. Both were fired after an internal inquiry found that Mr. Sears discussed a job for Ms. Druyun at Boeing at the same time that she was representing the Pentagon. They also tried to cover up their discussions, the company said.
The Air Force began an investigation earlier this year into whether Ms. Druyun improperly disclosed information on a competing bid from Airbus for the tankers while she was working for the Pentagon.
The controversy led to the resignation on Monday of Philip M. Condit, Boeing's chief executive.
On Nov. 25, the day after the two executives were fired, Mr. Rumsfeld, said at a news conference that Boeing's decision to fire Mr. Sears and Ms. Druyun had persuaded him that it was important to look further into the accusations of improprieties "to see that things are done properly."
But despite Mr. Rumsfeld's action, Dr. Sambur sent internal e-mail messages on Nov. 25 and 26 to senior Pentagon and Air Force officials making clear that he favored the immediate signing of the contract despite the ethical and political concerns raised by the firings.
"We are ready to sign today," Dr. Sambur wrote in a message whose subject line included the words "HOT HOT!" Dr. Sambur added that "delaying until January will cause harm to the Air Force and Boeing."
The e-mail messages were addressed to a long list of senior officials, including Michael W. Wynne, the Pentagon's top acquisition official; Nancy L. Spruill, another top acquisition official; Gen. John Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, and others involved in the debate about how the Pentagon should respond to Boeing's decision to dismiss the officials involved in the tanker deal.
The second e-mail message, on Nov. 26, called for signing the deal "A.S.A.P." but said that as a fallback the Pentagon should consider only a delay until Dec. 10 or 11, when Congress is scheduled to return from a recess.
Despite Dr. Sambur's efforts, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, put the project on hold late Monday pending a review by the Pentagon's inspector general.
Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who has been the project's leading opponent, said in a phone interview on Friday: "This had already been revealed to be a corrupt if not terribly flawed process, and here they were trying to press ahead. Boeing is making an effort to clean up their act, but the Air Force and the Pentagon remain steadfast in their pursuit of a massive ripoff of taxpayer dollars."
The e-mail messages were read to a reporter on Friday by a government official. In a telephone interview, Dr. Sambur described them as "privileged inside-the-house e-mails" in which he simply stated his opinion. "Nobody's trying to circumvent anything," he said.
In the interview, Dr. Sambur also defended his decision last April and May to forward to Mr. Albaugh of Boeing internal correspondence sent to him about the tanker deal by James G. Roche, the secretary of the Air Force, and Mr. Wynne, the principal deputy under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.
Among the messages was one in which Dr. Sambur urged Mr. Albaugh to treat the correspondence as sensitive. But Dr. Sambur said he had shared the information as part of a deliberate negotiating strategy. "The only way to show Boeing that we were serious was to show them that within this building, we were ready to pull the plug," he said.
As assistant secretary for acquisition, research and development, Dr. Sambur was Ms. Druyun's immediate supervisor at the Air Force until she retired last November before joining Boeing.
In September, Mr. McCain, who heads the Senate Commerce Committee, released documents based on more than 8,000 e-mail messages provided by Boeing. The messages offered a first glimpse of the high-level lobbying campaign that the company and the Air Force mounted to fend off critics and potential competitors in the project. On Friday, Senator McCain's office provided copies of additional e-mail messages from last spring, including those sent by Dr. Sambur to the Boeing executives.
In a letter to Mr. Wolfowitz on Tuesday, Senator McCain expressed concern that Dr. Sambur was preparing to sign the contract as early as Nov. 26. Aides to Senator McCain said on Friday that the senator had received information that was subsequently authenticated by Dr. Sambur.
An initial plan supported by both Boeing and the Air Force called for the government to lease all 100 planes from the company, a plan that both saw as advantageous for budgeting reasons but that the General Accounting Office and other critics said would add billions of dollars to the cost. Under a compromise authorized by Congress and signed into law by President Bush on Nov. 24, the Air Force is to lease 20 of the plans and buy up to 80 more, but critics including Senator McCain still say a better, cheaper option would be to rebuild existing tanker aircraft.
Mr. Wolfowitz has asked the Pentagon auditors to determine whether the apparent improprieties provide any reason that the $20 billion contract should not go forward. But at Boeing, a senior executive said this week that he feared the deal would now almost certainly be scuttled or opened to renegotiation. Boeing officials said this week that they were still committed to the tanker deal.
The story of the tanker deal, in which months of aggressive lobbying by Boeing and the Air Force overrode opposition and won approval from the Pentagon and Congress, has cast new light on a revolving-door world in which lines between government and contractors appear to have been blurred.
And some of the newly released documents provided by Senator McCain's office on Friday raised new questions about whether the Air Force overreached in providing assistance to Boeing.
"Please treat this as sensitive," Dr. Sambur said in an April 24 e-mail message to Mr. Albaugh in which he had forwarded internal correspondence sent to him about the tanker deal by Mr. Wynne, in which Mr. Wynne laid out what he portrayed as "our current strategy" to win "a simple price reduction" from Boeing.
The role played by Ms. Druyun has been the main focus of investigators looking into accusations of impropriety in the deal. But in Boeing's campaign to win support for the deal, which it saw as vital to its future, the company also appears to have enlisted other former Pentagon and Congressional officials, including some who had high-level contacts within the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill.
Among those who promoted the tanker deal were Richard N. Perle, a top Pentagon adviser who is a member of the Defense Policy Board. Mr. Perle also runs an investment firm in which Boeing invested $20 million last year, and he co-wrote an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal in August arguing in favor of a deal in which the Air Force would have leased all 100 tanker aircraft from Boeing.
In the article, Mr. Perle and Thomas Donnelly, who both serve on the board of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research and advocacy group, wrote that a "special government green-eyeshade mentality" was holding up deal crucial to the Air Force.
A Boeing spokesman, Douglas Kennett, confirmed on Friday that Mr. Perle had been among journalists and policy advocates who were briefed by Boeing executives about the tanker deal as part of the company's effort to promote the contract. Mr. Kennett said that Mr. Perle and Mr. Donnelly had later shared a draft of their op-ed article with Boeing officials and asked them to double-check its facts.
Still, Mr. Kennett said of the op-ed article: "We didn't write it. We didn't place it. It was their words, not ours."
Boeing's investment in Mr. Perle's company, Trireme, one of the largest early stakes in the new company, was first reported by The Financial Times. Mr. Perle, whose office said he was out of the country on Friday, has denied any connection between Boeing's investment and his article.
Boeing's executives, board members and registered lobbyists include both Republicans and Democrats with close ties to the Pentagon, the White House and Congress. Its Washington office is headed by Rudy DeLeon, a former deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton administration who stayed on at the Pentagon in the early months of the Bush administration. Other senior executives include two retired senior Air Force generals, Timothy P. Malishenko and George K. Muellner, who both served as deputy assistant secretaries of the Air Force with responsibilities for contracts and acquisitions.
Boeing is a $50 billion company that has been expanding into the military business to offset declines in commercial aviation. By next year, military contracts are expected to provide more than half the company's business. But critics of the company have denounced what they have called an overly close relationship between Boeing and the Air Force during the negotiating of the aerial tanker deal.
"Boeing from the get-go was wired into all divisions of government on this project," said Keith Ashdown, vice president of policy at Taxpayers for Common Sense, one of several advocacy groups that was critical of the tanker project. "They had people who know the Air Force really well on their payroll, they had ties directly to senior leadership in the white house, and ties to the leadership in the House."
-------- china
Taiwanese To Hold Ballot on China Arms
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 6, 2003; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40611-2003Dec6.html
BEIJING, Dec. 6 -- Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian intends to call a referendum in March asking residents to vote on whether to demand that China withdraw missiles aimed at Taiwan and renounce the use of force against the island, a spokesman said Saturday.
The decision comes despite escalating threats from the Chinese government, which has warned that a referendum in Taiwan on any subject would be a step toward a vote on independence and could lead to a war.
The United States, Taiwan's main diplomatic and military supporter, has also expressed concern about Chen's referendum plans, but has stopped short of publicly urging him to abandon them.
James Huang, Chen's spokesman, said by telephone that the Taiwanese president has emphasized he will not hold a referendum on independence, the most sensitive subject for Beijing, which claims the self-governing island of 23 million is part of China.
But Huang said Chen will push ahead with a referendum on the Chinese military threat timed to coincide with the March presidential election. Chen is behind in the polls, and critics have accused him of trying to fuel anti-China sentiment to boost his support.
"The military issue will be on the ballot. That's for sure," Huang said. "That includes asking our people, 'Do you want to ask the People's Republic of China to withdraw their missiles directed at Taiwan and ask that the P.R.C. renounce the use of force against Taiwan?' "
He also said Chen will offer to cancel the referendum if China redeploys the estimated 500 missiles it has aimed Taiwan and renounces its threat of force.
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Running for Re-Election, Taiwan Leader Takes on China
December 6, 2003
By KEITH BRADSHER and JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/06/international/asia/06TAIW.html?pagewanted=all&position=
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Dec. 5 - President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan said in an interview here on Friday 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.
Mr. 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 Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao at the White House next week.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spoke with Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing of China by telephone on Friday, and told reporters afterward that he hoped both sides "will realize where their interests lie and will be careful about what they say."
China has urged Washington to oppose more firmly what it sees as Mr. Chen's desperate election season gambit to excite antimainland sentiment. The Bush administration has made clear that it does not want a fresh crisis when it is deeply engaged in other hotspots, and depends on China's help to shut down North Korea's nuclear program.
In the interview, Mr. Chen said the 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.
Senior Chinese military officers publicly warned on Wednesday that Taiwan was facing an "abyss of war" and said that China would accept boycotts of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, reduced foreign investment and military casualties to prevent Taiwan from using a referendum to advance independence.
Mr. 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 sides has reached its 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.
Mr. Chen said he planned to hold the referendum on Election Day, on March 20. He is seeking re-election, and is in a race with Lien Chan of the Nationalist Party, who favors a less confrontational approach with China.
Mr. Chen said he had informed the United States of his plans for the referendum, and 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 Friday morning in the reception hall of presidential offices used since Chiang Kai-shek's day, Mr. Chen explained his plans for the referendum. He said 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 money from a booming economy, China has rapidly increased its arsenal of ballistic missiles and put 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.
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 then-governing 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. His 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," 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 Mr. Chen's plans for the referendum. "He needs to forswear independence."
Mr. Xu added, "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 on Friday night.
Mr. Lien, the Nationalist Party's chairman and presidential candidate, criticized Mr. Chen in a separate interview on Friday, saying, "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."
For years, Independence advocates have called for referendums as a way to bypass constitutional barriers to legal independence. After months of discussion this autumn, the Legislature passed a bill written mostly by the Nationalist Party that limited the ability of the president to call a referendum except when the country is "facing an external threat which may jeopardize national sovereignty."
Mr. Chen said the missiles posed just such a threat. Mr. Lien said the Nationalist Party disagreed and had been surprised that Mr. Chen was moving so swiftly to use the clause, which the Nationalists had supported only as a last resort in a genuine crisis.
"We have a sense of betrayal," he said.
-------- europe
Austrian rejects EU mutual assistance defence commitment
VIENNA (AFP)
Dec 06, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031206132527.x2ty9tt0.html
Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner said Saturday she was against the idea of European Union members being committed to come to the assistance of each other in the event of attack.
She was commenting on a suggestion by Italy last month that the future EU constitution now under discussion should include a mutual defence clause under which EU members would be required to provide military assistance if any of their number were attacked.
Speaking on radio here, Ferrero-Waldner said Austria -- neutral since its sovereignty was restored in 1955 -- had joined with three other EU neutral members, Ireland, Finland and Sweden, to prevent the proposed clause being made obligatory.
A letter from the four addressed to Italy as current EU president and made public Friday said decisions on defence guarantees with formal obligations "would not be in accordance with our security policy nor with the demands of our constitutions."
The four instead proposed a more flexible clause under which a member-state under attack would simply have the possibility of seeking the support of its fellow EU-members.
The letter represents a change of position for Austria.
Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, the head of government,last Tuesday welcomed the Italian proposal and later told parliament here it was compatible with Austrian neutrality.
And Ferrero-Waldner herself said on television a week ago the proposed clause would not compromise Austria's neutrality.
--------
RECRUITERS
Trail of Anti-U.S. Fighters Said to Cross Europe to Iraq
December 6, 2003
By DESMOND BUTLER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/06/international/europe/06QAED.html?pagewanted=all&position=
MILAN, Dec. 5 - A string of recent arrests of terror suspects has shown that Al Qaeda and groups linked to it have established a network across Europe that is moving recruits into Iraq to join the insurgency against American and allied forces, European intelligence and law enforcement officials said this week.
Over the past year, the officials estimate, the network of recruiters working in at least six European countries - Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Britain and Norway - has assisted hundreds of young men trying to get to Iraq. The network provided high quality fake documents, training, money, and infiltration routes into the country, the officials said.
They said the evidence indicated that the campaign to recruit young militant Muslims for Iraq had become better organized and coordinated in recent months.
According to an investigating judge in Italy, the new network is building on an underground that helped smuggle fighters out of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the fall of 2001, when Taliban and Qaeda forces were routed by American-led allied troops. But since the end of last year the flow of recruits, including young men from Europe and North Africa, has turned toward the new front in Iraq, the judge said. "In August and September people were approaching the borders of Iraq, in Turkey and Syria," he said. "These people got very close and it's very easy for them to slip in."
An Italian investigation of a terrorist group with links to Al Qaeda led to the arrest of three men in Italy and Germany last week. Two of the men who were arrested in Milan were accused of providing false passports and money to the network for Iraq. Six men arrested in northern Italy in April were also accused of aiding the recruiting operation.
Officials in Italy said the conclusions emerging from their case were supported by investigations in other European countries.
"We have seen an intensification of movement by people who are under investigation," said Armando Spataro, coordinator of terrorism investigations at Milan's Justice Department. "They were going to Iraq or to training camps. We have seen that movement across Europe."
The evidence gathered by Italian investigators indicates that fighters entering Iraq from Italy have been active in recent attacks on coalition forces there, Italian judicial and military officials said. One official said there was evidence that a recruit from Italy, Morchidi Kamal, was involved in the October rocket attack on the Rashid hotel in Baghdad, where the American assistant defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, was staying at the time.
Fake Italian documents recovered in Iraq, including passport photos and identity cards, suggest that three recruits from Italy died there, the officials said. However, Mr. Spataro said he had not seen conclusive evidence that recruits from Italy had died in suicide bombings in Iraq.
It is not clear how significant a role foreign terror recruits may have in the surge of violence in Iraq. President Bush and L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Iraq, have said that "jihadists" and foreign terrorists have entered the country. But American military leaders there say they have not seen signs of a large influx of foreign fighters. They say that about 300 people of 5,000 prisoners in Iraq are holding non-Iraqi passports.
"It is not correct to say that there are floods of foreign fighters coming in, or thousands," said Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of allied troops in the region. General Abizaid and other allied military leaders said the insurgency was led by Iraqis still loyal to Saddam Hussein's toppled government.
According to several European intelligence officials, the Italian investigation is one of several inquiries in Europe into recruitment of fighters for Iraq. German officials said Thursday that they had opened an investigation into recruiting activities after the arrest in a Munich train station on Tuesday of an Iraqi man, identified as Mohamed L., 29, suspected of aiding 12 people who traveled to Iraq. The arrest is not related to the Milan cell, Italian officials said today.
"Almost all Western European countries have been touched by recruiting," Mr. Spataro said. "It also means that the investigators must travel around more, back and forth."
Investigators in several European countries, including Italy, Germany and Britain, have focused on the participation in Iraq recruitment of a terrorist organization named Al Tawhid. The group is led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who collaborated with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and has been implicated by American and European intelligence agencies in recent terror attacks in Jordan.
American officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, have also linked Mr. Zarqawi and his organization with Ansar al-Islam, a militant Islamic group based in Kurdish northern Iraq that is affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Italian investigators say documents and address books captured from a leader of Ansar showed that the group was in communication with Mr. Zarqawi and also with several of the suspects who are in jail in Milan. The investigators also believe that a satellite telephone used to call recruits in Milan from northern Iraq had been used by Mr. Zarqawi.
Last Friday, on the same day the two suspects were arrested in Milan, the German police in Hamburg, acting on an Italian warrant, arrested a third man, Abderazek Mahdjoub, 30. Italian officials have charged that Mr. Mahdjoub is a top figure in the Tawhid network, in charge of coordinating the movement of fighters from Europe to Iraq.
Also named in the most recent warrant is an Iraqi Kurd identified as Muhammad Majid, also known as Mullah Fuad, who is 32. A former resident of Italy who Italian authorities believe is a high-ranking militant in Ansar, he remains at large and is believed to be in Syria.
Transcripts of wiretaps printed in the warrant include calls Mr. Majid made to Italy in March asking that Tawhid members there send volunteers for suicide missions.
In a conversation with one of the men arrested in April, Mr. Majid asked him to recruit terminally ill men who would be willing to carry out suicide attacks.
The man replied, "I have one of them. He is sick. He is already sick and tired. There are also other people who are ready."
According to German and Italian officials, Mr. Mahdjoub, the Tawhid leader, traveled to Syria in March for a meeting with Mr. Majid. The purpose of Mr. Mahdjoub's trip was to check up on progress on moving recruits from Syria into Iraq, the officials said.
"Mahdjoub not only sent people, he went himself like a boss who goes to check up and make sure everything is working correctly before coming back," said the Italian judicial investigator.
Desmond Butler reported from Milan for this article and Don Van Natta from London. Jason Horowitz contributed reporting from Milan.
-------- iraq
Iraqis call for return of secret police
`We will use their own dogs to hound them'
Many of Saddam's ex-spies blamed for atrocities
MITCH POTTER MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
Dec. 5, 2003.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1070579408943&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724
BAGHDAD-A security organization whose very mention turns many Iraqis catatonic with fear is quietly creeping back into the consciousness as the way to bring Saddam Hussein to his knees and put the country back on its feet.
At least four Iraqi political factions are now advocating the reformation of the Mukhabarat, the dreaded spymasters responsible for some of the most grotesque acts of human cruelty this side of Nazi Germany.
Such is the despair and frustration with the intelligence gap in postwar Iraq, where U.S.-led coalition efforts are widely seen as haplessly failing to foreclose on the futures of resistance leaders loyal to Saddam and foreign extremists in their midst.
"We will use their own dogs to hound them," Nabil Musawi, deputy director of the Iraqi National Congress, one of the backers of the drastic initiative, said yesterday in an interview with the Star.
"And why not? The Allies used Nazis to hunt down other Nazis after World War II ... I'm willing to deal with the devil in the short term if it can help my people."
The Iraqi National Accord, Kurdish Democratic Party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq are also believed to be supporting the plan, which calls for the weeding out of the worst offenders among former Mukhabarat officers.
"It's very sensitive," Musawi said. "For many Iraqis, the thought of restoring the Mukhabarat will create fears of another brutal regime. And they have every right to those fears.
"But we would reconstitute it in such a way that we legislate, monitor, observe and impose legal barriers to prevent such a recurrence."
The Iraqi National Congress estimates as many as 27,000 officers worked at the Mukhabarat prior to the war. The vast majority, Musawi and others said, had no hand in atrocities.
"We're not talking about an amnesty," Musawi said. "At least 4,000 of them are killers, whether they were the decision makers or the ones who actually pulled the trigger. They will face justice. They won't be back.
"But 23,000 others were highly trained analysts. They know our country. They know the hiding places. This is something they can do as a step toward being forgiven."
Ali Abdel Amir, editor-in-chief of the Iraqi National Accord-published Baghdad Daily newspaper, said his party is advancing the issue as the co-ordinator of the Special Security Committee in the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.
"The main concept is to differentiate between the ones who were and were not involved in crimes against the Iraqi people," he said.
A spokesperson for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority said last night he was unaware of the plan.
But both Musawi and Amir said coalition security officials are involved in the discussions.
"It depends on which Americans we talk to. Some are keen, some are not," Musawi said.
"At the moment, the security file is very gray. Nobody knows who is doing what - even the Americans I talk to don't know what's going on."
Musawi said the intelligence gap in tracking the postwar insurgents has been severely hampered by U.S. insistence on filtering all actionable information through Washington.
"Today's priceless information is useless tomorrow. By the time it goes from Baghdad to Washington and back, the opportunity gets lost."
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), by contrast, is lukewarm to the idea. Speaking yesterday from one of the party offices in Baghdad - ironically, a Saddam-era guest house once controlled by Mukhabarat officials - party spokesperson Ahmed Barbari argued for burying the dreaded organization forever.
"The Mukhabarat, their job was to kill. You won't have an easy time finding good ones among them," he said.
While neither the PUK, nor the rival Kurdish KDP movement can claim stellar human rights records among their own security apparatuses, Barbari favoured the creation of a new broad-based security service drawn from the gamut of Iraqi factions.
But in a separate interview yesterday, PUK Deputy General Secretary Nosirwan Mustafa said some former Mukhabarat officials are likely candidates to join a new Iraqi security service.
The scars to the Iraqi psyche remain so fresh that even the mention of the word Mukhabarat makes many shudder. Yesterday a man involved in a Baghdad field office training young Iraqis in the theory of unbiased journalism - a novel concept in these parts - agreed to discuss the matter only on condition of anonymity.
"I am not a free man. I am still afraid of retribution from the Mukhabarat," he said.
"We all hate them, yet we want stability and we know they could deliver it. Despite the fame of the CIA and the FBI, they don't have the background of Iraqis. Only locals can understand each other.
"If they can find a way to reform it, taking out the criminals, it might work. But how do you do it? I consider every (former) agent a dishonest man."
The National Congress' Musawi acknowledged the fear. It is an emotion he shares.
Five members of his own family were murdered by Saddam's regime. "To think I am actually promoting this idea surprises even me," Musawi said. "I lost my father and two sisters in mass graves. We haven't found them yet.
"The word Mukhabarat raises all kinds of feelings in me. But we have to be realistic. We are here, we are now, and we have to do something."
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Rumsfeld Makes Unannounced Visit to Iraq
December 6, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Rumsfeld-Iraq.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Taking a fresh look at postwar Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld met Saturday with senior American commanders and was assured that a recent switch to more aggressive anti-insurgency tactics has begun to pay off.
Meanwhile, a funeral north of Baghdad for two Iraqis killed in a firefight with U.S. troops turned violent, with mourners killing a security officer and chanting pro-Saddam Hussein slogans over his body.
The funeral in Samarra started after American forces returned the bodies of the Iraqis killed here last week to their families. The town is in the so-called Sunni Triangle, the central region north and west of Baghdad where opposition to the U.S. occupation has been fiercest.
After a somber procession through the town, mourners began firing weapons in the air -- as is customary -- and members of the U.S.-led Iraqi Civil Defense Corps ordered them to stop, witnesses said. The mourners fired at the paramilitary forces, shooting a civil guard in the head, and set their truck on fire.
As the rest of the civil defense corps fled, dozens of people jumped up and down on the burning pickup and near the body, chanting, ``Long live Saddam! Death to the traitors!''
Security was tight for Rumsfeld's visit, which was not announced in advance. He arrived and left aboard an Air Force C-17 cargo plane and was whisked from Baghdad International Airport to the 82nd Airborne's post in a Black Hawk helicopter with gunners aboard.
He also went for the first time to Kirkuk, the center of Iraq's northern oil fields, and met with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq.
It was Rumsfeld's second trip to Iraq in four months, reflecting the Bush administration's push for faster progress toward improving security and speeding the political transition to Iraqi control, as well as an effort by the Pentagon to improve the morale of American troops.
Ordierno and other commanders spoke of the more offensive-minded approach to countering the shadowy resistance forces that made November the deadliest month for U.S. forces since the war began in March.
``It improves -- every month it gets better,'' Maj. Gen. Raymond Ordierno, commander of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, told Rumsfeld, who nonetheless expressed doubt that the drop in attacks on American troops marked a turning point.
``It's too early to say it's a trend,'' the defense secretary told reporters after having lunch with soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division at a muddy outpost on the outskirts of Baghdad.
The aggressive tactics, which have included the first use of aerial bombing since the fall of Baghdad in April, have made Iraqis who oppose the resistance less fearful of coming forward with tips on the whereabouts of weapons and fighters, Ordierno said. ``When we have a successful operation, other Iraqis come out of the woodwork and offer information,'' he said in a briefing for Rumsfeld on recent operations in his area of responsibility. That includes Kirkuk, east to the Iranian border, and a large portion of the area north and west of Baghdad where anti-American sentiment runs highest.
Odierno told Rumsfeld that only about 5 percent of the homemade bombs set by insurgents detonate because U.S. soldiers are getting better at finding them.
The top commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, said in an interview with reporters traveling with Rumsfeld that U.S. intelligence has not established conclusively that fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is directing he insurgency. Sanchez nevertheless said it is believed that Saddam remains in the country.
Looking to the future, Rumsfeld said he was encouraged that the U.S. military is putting more emphasis on fielding an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, designed as a sort of paramilitary force to perform low-level counterinsurgency operations and provide intelligence.
As an adjunct to that force, U.S. commanders are creating an Iraqi counterterror unit.
Rumsfeld said he was impressed with the work of the 82nd Airborne Division in training Iraqi civil defense troops.
``They are volunteering in large numbers,'' he said. ``The work that they are engaged in is dangerous.''
As he strolled through the training area, with Sanchez and others in tow, several dozen young Iraqi recruits in street clothes practiced marching in formation. ``Left, ... left, left, right left,'' they sang out at the command of a U.S. drill master.
Rumsfeld said he would like the training effort accelerated so Iraqis can relieve the U.S. military quicker of responsibility for their nation's security.
Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division, which is responsible for security in the Baghdad area, told reporters that in late November his troops attacked four of 10 known cells of insurgents. One, he said, was responsible for the rocket attack on the Al-Rashid Hotel in October that killed a U.S. Army colonel.
The attacks were successful in some respects, he said, but have not ended the problem. They disrupted the cells' ability to attack but did not destroy them, he said.
``Until you grab the leadership and the financers, they do have the ability to replenish themselves'' and strike again, Dempsey said.
``Now you might say, `Why didn't you attack all 10, General?' Well, we haven't gotten enough intelligence (information) to penetrate all of them,'' he said in an interview with reporters.
Sanchez said information collected from Iraqis is becoming more reliable, and he dismissed suggestions that the more aggressive tactics of his troops have created a backlash from ordinary Iraqis who resent the aggression.
``The opposite has been the case,'' he said. ``The people of the country are indeed cooperating with the coalition.''
Iraq was Rumsfeld's final stop on a weeklong trip that began in Belgium for NATO talks and took him to the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia.
An attempted visit to the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan, where 1,000 U.S. troops are based, was scratched when poor visibility at the Tashkent airport forced his plane to turn back Friday.
Associated Press writer Sameer N. Yacoub in Samarra contributed to this report.
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Baker Is Named to Restructure Iraq's Huge Debt
December 6, 2003
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/06/international/middleeast/06BAKE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - President Bush turned Friday for assistance on Iraq to the man who helped him win the contested election in 2000, naming former Secretary of State James A. Baker III as his personal envoy to restructure more than $100 billion in Iraq's foreign debt.
The appointment of Mr. Baker, a longtime Bush family confidant and troubleshooter, was, in effect, a public admission by the White House that the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq is a more urgent problem than officials acknowledge. Over Mr. Baker's decades of friendship with the Bush family, both father and son have turned to him when things have gone wrong, and Mr. Baker has for the most part delivered.
"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," Mr. Bush said in a statement.
But administration officials said that the portfolio of Mr. Baker, 73, would be much broader than seeking an international agreement to restructure the debt, and that he would serve as an unofficial ambassador to explain the administration's plans for Iraq to skeptical nations in Europe and the Middle East. Officials noted that Mr. Baker, who was a very powerful White House chief of staff and treasury secretary in the Reagan administration, and an equally powerful secretary of state for the first President Bush during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, was not a man accustomed to remaining in the background.
Some administration officials said the president had persuaded the man who directed the legal strategy that led to the Supreme Court ruling in Mr. Bush's favor in the 2000 Florida election recount to take on Iraq. Mr. Baker was said to have accepted the job only after being convinced that he would have direct access to Mr. Bush as his envoy, just as he had with Mr. Bush's father. The White House said the appointment had been made at the request of the Iraqi Governing Council.
Although Mr. Bush has never been as close to Mr. Baker as he was the first President Bush - and was said to distrust him after his father's losing 1992 campaign, which Mr. Baker ran - any such feelings have long been set aside in the pursuit of results, in this case the solvency of Iraq.
"James Baker's vast economic, political and diplomatic experience as a former secretary of state and secretary of the treasury will help forge an international consensus for an equitable and effective resolution of this issue," Mr. Bush said in his statement.
An associate of Mr. Baker said he was on a long-planned hunting trip in Texas and could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Baker's appointment raises questions about the role of the Treasury secretary, John W. Snow, who has been leading the administration's efforts on Iraqi debt. At the same time, the appointment gives Mr. Baker diplomatic responsibility and visibility that would ordinarily be accorded to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Administration officials said Mr. Baker would regularly travel to foreign capitals to meet with heads of state about American plans for Iraq.
At the State Department, Mr. Baker's appointment, with its emphasis on debt, was cast as more of a supplanting of the Treasury Department's role. "If this was going to take