Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Are Gulf war veterans getting better?
Intention Deficit Disorder
Sweden to Fund New Blix - Led Weapons Body
Pakistan Nuke Scientists Being Questioned
Pakistan Quizzes Nuclear Scientists, No Iran Link
Iran's leader rules out nuclear weapons
'Fresh activity' at N Korea nuclear plant
North Korea's nukes
Talks on N. Korea's Nuke Program Planned
N.Korea Nuclear Talks Seen Delayed to Mid - January
Nuclear breakout in the Middle East?
Aegis cruiser will attempt to shoot down missile in test off Hawaii
Aegis Missile Test Successful
GAO Calls for Review of Missile Defense Satellite Program
U.S. Hits Target in Sea - Based Missile Test
Missile Defense Hits Target During Test
DOE affirms nuclear labs can be run by different contractors
Facility could start processing waste in early '04
Hanford completes work on F Reactor
McCain-Feingold Ruling Angers Activists on Both Left and Right
MILITARY
U.S. Says Other Afghan Children Died in Earlier Raid
8 Afghan Civilians Killed in U.S. Raid
Militias Transfer Heavy Arms, Bolstering Kabul's Authority
Britain Restructuring Its Armed Forces
U.S. Decision on Iraq Contracts Irritates Excluded War Critics
Army Corps to Have Big Role in Awarding Iraq Contracts
US, China find a new middle way
Taiwan's President Unfazed by U.S. Warning
Long Basque Rebellion Losing Strength
U.S. Officers Predict Rise in Assassinations
Bush Seeks Help of Allies Barred From Iraq Deals
2 Troops Killed in Attacks In Mosul
Israel freezes barrier extension project
Bomb Kills 2 in Tel Aviv, but Police Call It 'Criminal Attack'
NATO set to accept European defence plans, announcement expected
Two Pakistani nuclear scientists detained: reports
Appeals Court Says Bush Can't Hold U.S. Citizen
Iraq Spy Service Planned by U.S. To Stem Attacks
Rumsfeld Seeks Better Intelligence On Iraqi Insurgents
Srebrenica Sentencing
Serb Policeman Describes Massacre in Kosovo
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Judge Questions Sentence in Al Qaeda Case
Judge in Terror Trial Orders Hearing on Prosecutors
Did the Pennsylvania Legislature Cross the Line?
High Court Halts Texas Execution in Appeal of Drug Lawsuit
Nanotechnology's Homeland Security Potential To Be Explored
Secret Service Takes Blame for Waiter's Exit
Ridge Favors a Status Short of Citizenship for Illegal Immigrants
Ridge Revives Debate on Immigrant Status
German Judge Frees 9/11 Suspect, Citing New Evidence
OTHER
White House Attacked for Letting States Lead on Climate
Times change when mercury is in question
'Sea Giant' sent to Pakistan for dismantling
ACTIVISTS
In Speech, Nobel Winner Rebukes the U.S.
Nobel Honoree Sounds Alarm
Thousands of Iraqis call for end to violence
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Are Gulf war veterans getting better?
Gulf war illness - better, worse, or just the same?
EurekAlert!
11-Dec-2003
BMJ Volume 327, pp 1370-2.
Incidence of cancer among UK Gulf war veterans
BMJ Volume 327, pp 1373-5.
Editorial: The health consequences of the first Gulf war BMJ Volume 327, pp 1357-8
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-12/bmj-agw121103.php http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/502389/
Gulf war veterans still have considerably poorer health than other military personnel, but the health gap has narrowed slightly, finds a study in this week's BMJ. A second study shows no increased risk of cancer among Gulf war veterans.
The first study compared the health of members of the UK armed forces who served in the 1991 Gulf war with non-deployed military personnel over a four-year period. Gulf war veterans experienced a modest reduction in fatigue and psychological distress, but a slight worsening of physical functioning.
Gulf war veterans continue to experience symptoms that are considerably worse than other military personnel, say the authors. However, Gulf war veterans are not deteriorating and do not have a higher incidence of new illness, they conclude.
The second study compared cancer rates in 51,721 UK Gulf war veterans and 50,775 non-deployed service personnel in the 11 years since the end of the war.
Incidence of and deaths from cancer in Gulf war veterans was almost identical to that seen in veterans who were not deployed, even after smoking and alcohol consumption, which are known to influence cancer risk, were taken into account.
Furthermore, the risk of cancer was no higher in Gulf war veterans who reported multiple vaccinations or exposure to pesticides or depleted uranium during deployment.
Although this study should provide some reassurance of a lack of association between deployment to the Gulf and increased risk of cancer, the long latent period for cancer means that these groups should continue to be monitored, conclude the authors.
paper 1:
http://press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/december/ppr1370.pdf
After the embargo date, please use the following link:
http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/327/7428/1370
paper 2:
http://press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/december/ppr1373.pdf
After the embargo date, please use the following link:
http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/327/7428/1373
Click here to view editorial:
http://press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/december/edit1357.pdf
After the embargo date, please use the following link:
http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/327/7428/1357
----
Intention Deficit Disorder
Why the Bush Administration's good ideas in the Middle East get such sorry results
WEB EXCLUSIVE
Newsweek
Dec. 11 - T.B. (Mac) McClelland had what sounded like a great idea last spring. The former U.S. Marine officer, now head of a consulting business in the free-wheeling Persian Gulf port of Dubai, knew the war in Iraq was going to leave thousands of Saddam Hussein's main battle tanks dead in the desert. He also happened to know Charlie Wilson of Houston, Texas, who's made millions out of the salvage business. Together, they figured they could retrieve the derelict weaponry, sell it off as scrap, and contribute the profits to educational programs in the New Iraq. They called the project "Tanks for Schools."
advertisement "We see it as a full circle sort of thing," says Wilson (and no, he is not the former U.S. congressman who made the Afghan mujahedin his pet project in the 1980s). "We recycle weapons of war, put the money into education, and hopefully help to avert future wars." The public relations would be great for the United States, of course, and for Wilson and McClelland, too. "What we'd like," says McClelland, only half joking, "is a [White House] Rose Garden ceremony were we hand President Bush the speedometer from a Russian-made T-72 tank mounted on a plaque..." Like so many other good ideas for what "could be," or "should be" or "must be" done in Iraq and the Middle East, however, this one was ignored by Washington when it was still relatively easy to implement. Now, as the Mesopotamian battlegrounds erupt again with fighting, the work of retrieving dead tanks for salvage gets more dangerous by the day. And as casualties mount, charity is going by the boards. "It's very difficult to get something like this on the radar screen," says Wilson. By the time somebody in the United States government finally focuses on the necessary permissions, the answer may well be "sorry Charlie, too late."
How many times have we seen good ideas-and good will--in the Middle East squandered by folks who were far too quick to make war, and far too slow figuring out how to make peace? I've lost count. But it keeps happening every day.
This week, for instance, President Bush had the good sense to appoint former Secretary of State James Baker as a special envoy to renegotiate Iraq's international debt, which may be more than $100 billion. Then the Pentagon announced that three of the key creditors with whom Baker has to negotiate--Russia, France and Germany--are barred from participating in contracts to rebuild Iraq. The measure is more symbolic than substantive, since it doesn't affect subcontractors. But the public slap has brought a furious response. Russia's defense minister said flatly there's now no intention to re-negotiate the $8 billion that's owed to Moscow. Sorry, Jim.
There was a time, last summer, when a credible way for the United States to extricate itself from Iraq might have been to invite greater international participation, including the United Nations and NATO. But the administration moved only grudgingly on that front. The UN went in out of duty, but with next to no authority. Its headquarters in Baghdad got blown up. It pulled out. NATO never went in as such, remains badly divided, and the civilian geniuses at the Pentagon never miss a chance to dis what could be some of the best nation-building troops--the French, the Germans and even the Canadians. So that kind of multilateral solution is now a panacea whose sell-by date has expired, a hope of the past, even though many Democratic presidential candidates still talk about it in the present. Sorry, Howard, Wes, et al.
The same pattern applies in Middle East peacemaking. As both the Israelis and the Palestinians know, an initiative that's stalled is an initiative that's died. That's why the so-called "road map" included a calendar with set dates and a verification process that called on the United States, the European Union, the Russians and the United Nations to judge whether both sides were complying at each step along the way.
The document was finished a year ago, approved by the Palestinians in January, and published in April. The first phase was supposed to be completed by May, but Israel didn't even accept it until then, and only with reservations. The second, transitional phase to statehood, was supposed to be completed by now. Forget that. The final phase, the establishment of a permanent status agreement and an end to the Palestinians-Israeli conflict, is due on the roadmap's calendar by the end of 2005. In your dreams.
The verification process of this "performance-based and goal-driven roadmap," which was supposed to be key to its success, isn't even mentioned anymore by American officials. To the peace-loving majorities in Israel and Palestine, what can you say? Sorry.
The good news, bad as things may be, is that good ideas do keep coming. The Bush administration is right to be looking for ways to speed up the handover of titular sovereignty to an Iraqi government. It's right to be re-enlisting, and vetting, the old Iraqi military. (Somebody's got to help the United States restore order, and it's the Iraqis' country, after all.) It's also right to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. But all these initiatives should be moving ahead much more quickly to close the gap between good ideas and effective implementation.
President Bush must know that it's not only the obvious enemies--the "bitter-enders" mounting a guerrilla war in Iraq, or the suicidal fanatics of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Holy Land (or, for that matter, the French or the Germans) - who stand in the way of his good intentions. It's bureaucracy and greed, corruption, ideology and hidden agendas on our own side that have to be watched. Are there some people we call friends and allies who don't really want a peaceful, democratic, united Iraq? Are there some who don't want an equitable peace between a viable Palestinian state and a secure Israel?
I don't doubt President Bush's good intentions, but the results he's gotten have been so sorry, you'd think he'd be asking himself if all the members on his team really do share his goals. There's no shortage of interests in the Middle East that see chaos as a cash cow for military industries; or who believe so strongly in their ideological missions that they work to undermine every effort at intelligent compromise and international cooperation. And then there's the endemic problems of lame ignorance and plain bad judgment. Eventually, folks out here get pretty cynical about good intentions.
That's why it's so good to hear about an imaginative project like "Tanks for Schools." It may never get off the drawing board. It may never overcome the bureaucratic, technical and security problems it is up against. (About half the estimated 8,000 destroyed tanks sitting around Iraq and Kuwait are so peppered with depleted uranium ammunition it's hard to know what to do with them.) But at the very least this project reminds us that some people in this world still really are looking for ways to "beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks-or turn T-72s into No. 2 pencils-so that "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
-------- europe
Sweden to Fund New Blix - Led Weapons Body
December 11, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-sweden-blix.html
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The Swedish government said on Thursday it had decided to finance an independent international commission on weapons of mass destruction to be led by former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix.
Sweden's contribution of 13 million crownswill fund the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission until it reports its findings in 2005.
The body aims to bring a new impetus to international efforts to promote disarmament and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles that carry them.
``I am convinced that the commission, under the capable leadership of Hans Blix, can help inject new energy into the global efforts aimed against weapons of mass destruction,'' Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds said in a statement.
``The existence of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons represent a serious threat to international peace and security and new initiatives are needed in the efforts for disarmament and non-proliferation,'' she added.
No further details on the commission's terms of reference were released. Blix was not available for comment. The Swedish government said he would name the commission's 14 members and present its work plans at a news conference on December 16.
Blix walked a diplomatic tight-rope earlier this year when his searches for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were the key evidence in a U.N. debate on the case for going to war.
Sweden, which had been neutral during the Cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States, criticized the U.S.-led war on Iraq because it did not have United Nations' approval.
Blix, 75, who retired from his U.N. post earlier this year, is now in the process of writing a book, entitled ``Weapons of Mass Destruction,'' but he has continued to be maintain his close contacts with the field.
On Sunday he had dinner in Stockholm with Freivalds and the visiting head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, who has proposed toughening up the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Last month Blix told Reuters that the new commission would comment on major events of the day concerning weapons of mass destruction, including worries about Iraq's neighbor Iran.
He also said he had doubts that Iran engaged in a civilian energy program aimed at making a nuclear bomb. The United States has long accused Iran of using a civilian nuclear energy program as a front to build a bomb.
The IAEA said in a report it found no evidence of a secret arms bid, but that Tehran had dabbled in activity often associated with bomb-making, such as plutonium production.
Looking at Iraq, Blix repeated his conviction that no evidence of weapons of mass destruction would ever be found.
Blix told Reuters that his new commission would tap the resources of major international research institutes and be headed by leaders in the field, including a prominent American.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan Nuke Scientists Being Questioned
December 11, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Nuclear-Scientists.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Two scientists at Pakistan's top nuclear laboratory have been taken into custody for questioning, Pakistani sources said Thursday.
The nuclear scientists at the Khan Research Laboratories were being interrogated after complaints were made against them, a government official and two Pakistanis affiliated with the country's nuclear programs said. All three spoke on condition of anonymity.
Confirming reports in three Pakistani newspapers Thursday, the sources identified the two detained men as Yasin Chohan and Mohammad Farooq, the former director general at the laboratories. Farooq also is a former aid to the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who had the research laboratories named after him.
The sources declined to describe the complaints that were made against Chohan and Farooq, or where they originated. They also denied a story in the Lahore-based Nation newspaper Thursday saying that the two men were being interrogated about their alleged links with Iran's nuclear program.
Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, has been accused of sharing its technological know-how with other nations, a charge it fiercely denies. The KRL is the country's main nuclear weapons laboratory where uranium is enriched, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
Working with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Iranian government recently agreed to sign an additional protocol of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, another step toward fulfilling its commitment to allowing unrestricted inspection of its nuclear facilities.
The United States suspects Iran of conducting a secret program to build nuclear bombs, and the IAEA has identified Russia, China and Pakistan as probable sources for equipment used by Iran for possible nuclear weapons development, according to diplomats.
Masood Khan, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the two scientists were being ``debriefed,'' not questioned as suspects. But he refused to discuss their cases.
On Thursday, three officials reached in separate telephone calls at the Khan Research Laboratories in Kahuta, a town 20 miles southeast of Islamabad, declined to discuss the reported detention of the two nuclear scientists.
In its report, The Dawn newspaper in Karachi said that Farooq and Chohan have been missing from the Khan Research Laboratories for a week.
The Nation said the security forces who took Farooq into custody at his home included foreigners. The Dawn said they may have been FBI agents.
--------
Pakistan Quizzes Nuclear Scientists, No Iran Link
December 11, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakistan-scientists.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani officials said two scientists at the country's top nuclear laboratory were being questioned by the intelligence service Thursday, but denied any link to Iran's nuclear program.
Some newspapers suggested the pair were being questioned over allegations that Pakistan transferred nuclear technology to Iran. Opposition politicians, saying the men had been detained because of U.S., called a ``national insult.''
It was a charge robustly denied by the foreign office, which said it was merely a ``routine debriefing,'' denying any Pakistani links with Iran's nuclear program.
An intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the scientists, Mohammad Farooq and Yasin Chohan, were picked up earlier this month from the city of Rawalpindi, and were being questioned by intelligence agencies.
Both men worked for Khan Research Laboratories, headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb.
Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan said the men were undergoing ``debriefing sessions.''
``It is part of routine personal dependability and debriefing sessions carried out in such sensitive departments,'' he told Reuters. ``It has nothing to do with Iran's nuclear program.''
Diplomats in Vienna told Reuters last month the International Atomic Energy Agency was investigating a possible link between Pakistan and Iran after Tehran acknowledged using centrifuge designs that appear identical to ones used in Islamabad's quest for an atomic bomb.
``That is a matter between Iran and IAEA,'' Masood Khan said. ``It is Pakistan's consistent policy that it does not export sensitive technology or information to any country in the world.''
Mohammad Ali, son of scientist Farooq, said reports his father had been arrested or detained were incorrect.
``He is working with a defense-related department and such interrogations do take place with them,'' he said. ``We are not worried for his safety. He phoned us the day before yesterday and we have spoken to him before as well.''
But the development drew strong criticism from opposition groups who accused the government of President Pervez Musharraf of bowing to American pressure.
``General Musharraf is doing it just to appease the United States,'' said Ahsan Iqbal, a senior leader of the Pakistan Muslim League of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
``This is a national insult. We are going to launch a campaign for their release because they are our national heroes.''
-------- iran
Iran's leader rules out nuclear weapons, embraces western democracy
GENEVA (AFP)
Dec 11, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031211183600.2sapwdwu.html
Iran's President Mohammad Khatami insisted Thursday that his country would not make nuclear weapons, as he told Muslims they should embrace western democracy.
Launching an urgent appeal for dialogue between Islam and Christianity, Khatami told an audience at the World Council of Churches (WCC) that Iran's dominant Islamic faith ruled out the use of nuclear weapons.
"We cannot seek nuclear weapons because of our religious faith, I told our religious leaders," he said, speaking through an interpreter.
"The Islam that I know does not allow the use of nuclear weapons, then we cannot go ahead and manufacture them," the Iranian president added in response to questions.
Khatami's comments came a day after Iran said it had given the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the formal go-ahead to carry out more intrusive inspections of its suspect nuclear programme.
The United States has voiced concern that the Islamic republic is using a civil atomic energy programme as a cover for secret nuclear weapons development.
During his address to a seminar on religious tolerance organised by the WCC, which groups the world's Christian and Orthodox faiths with the exception of the Roman Catholic Church, Khatami also gave an unusually frank endorsement of western democracy.
"I think democracy is the only alternative, we can take it as Muslims," he said.
"We must accept this has been materialised in the West, we must accept this as Muslims," Khatami, an Islamic scholar added, warning that the alternative was authoritarian and despotic rule.
Iran had problems, the president admitted, "we have violations of human rights, we know these are going on", although he claimed the country had the most democratic system in the region.
Khatami's principal speech focused on a plea for religious tolerance, warning that the shared values of faith and religion had been eroded worldwide by bigotry as well as by anti-religious sentiment.
"The dialogue between civilisations, but also the dialogue between religions, in particular between Islam and Christianity are a vital, imperative and unavoidable necessity."
"I have to add in this respect that unfortunately those with power in this world, instead of reducing and removing the misunderstandings, are contributing to their revival," he added.
Iran's president also responded to a question about the impact of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, pointing out that the 20th century had been marked by unprecedented wars and violence, including the "ugly face of terrorism".
"It showed its ugliest face in the cities of New York and Washington in September 2001," he added.
The Iranian leader, seen as a reformist figure in the Islamic state, was in Geneva primarily to attend a UN conference on the impact and development of information technology.
The digital boom had increased the ability to communicate, but was not able to overcome a gulf in understanding, he cautioned.
"We must note that in our global village, we are unable to understand each other," Khatami observed.
-------- korea
'Fresh activity' at N Korea nuclear plant
Thursday, 11 December, 2003,
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3309305.stm
N Korea claimed to have restarted work at Yongbyon in February South Korea is investigating reports of fresh activity at the Yongbyon nuclear facility in North Korea.
South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper quoted US and South Korean officials as saying that a US satellite detected fumes rising from a boiler at the lab.
Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said Seoul was trying to confirm this.
Pyongyang said in July that it had reprocessed 8,000 spent fuel rods to extract plutonium, and has since vowed to boost its nuclear deterrent.
JoongAng Ilbo said a US intelligence satellite had detected "signs of vapour and fumes" from a coal-fired boiler linked to a nuclear laboratory at the plant on four days this month.
It said a truck was also spotted in the area where the nuclear reactor is located.
"We are trying to confirm the activities, but at this stage I have no definitive information to disclose," Mr Jeong told reporters in Seoul.
Officials will want to establish whether the vapour and fumes relate to gasses that are released when nuclear material is reprocessed or extracted from a nuclear facility.
North Korea claims that it restarted Yongbyon, which was mothballed under a 1994 agreement with the US, in February, and has since produced plutonium for nuclear weapons.
The CIA believes North Korea already has one or two in its nuclear arsenal.
But monitoring North Korea's nuclear activities is notoriously difficult, especially since Pyongyang kicked out UN monitors last year.
The latest report of activity at Yongbyon comes as the US and its allies try to get North Korea to resume talks on the nuclear crisis.
The US and its allies last week offered a plan of "co-ordinated steps" to resolving the stand-off, whereby Washington and Pyongyang would stagger their concessions.
But North Korea, fearful of a possible attack by the US, has insisted on simultaneous moves.
Earlier this week, its foreign ministry spokesman said it would not even sit down at the table with Washington and its allies unless it was promised energy aid and the removal of North Korea from the US' list of state sponsors of terrorism - in return for which it would "freeze" its nuclear programme.
US President George W Bush dismissed this proposal, insisting that North Korea end its programme entirely.
NORTH KOREA NUCLEAR PROGRAMME
Yongbyon: 5-MWt experimental nuclear power reactor and partially completed plutonium extraction facility. Activities at site frozen under 1994 deal. North Korea says restarted in Feb
Taechon: 200-MWt nuclear power reactor - construction halted under 1994 deal
Pyongyang: Laboratory-scale "hot cells" that may have been used to extract small quantities of plutonium
Kumho: Two 1,000-MWt light water reactors being built under 1994 deal - work has been suspended
----
North Korea's nukes
By Joel Mowbray,
December 11, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20031210-083127-6352r.htm
Contrary to various media reports, the joint statement that almost resulted from the six-country talks concerning North Korea's nukes is actually a victory of sorts for the "hawks" in the administration who favor taking a hard line against Pyongyang.
Notes one administration official familiar with the contents of the joint statement, "We got 80 percent of what we wanted." The other 20 percent, the official explains, mostly consists of one point that institutionalizes the engagement, by calling for talks every other month.
What has attracted the most attention is the willingness of the United States to offer North Korea a written security guarantee in exchange for a scuttling of its nuclear program. Though this was seen - and intentionally spun by many senior administration officials - as a departure from past policy, it wasn't.
The United States. has long been willing to offer a security guarantee for a complete destruction of North Korea's nuclear program - which is why Pyongyang immediately called the "offer" what it was: a restatement of current U.S. policy.
The language in the statement of principles - only opposed by China - is vague on the specifics of a security guarantee, in part, a reflection of infighting within the administration on that very issue.
The careerists at the State Department's East Asian and Pacific Affairs (EAP) bureau, who participated in the first round of talks in August, initially wanted to offer a security guarantee as soon as Pyongyang would "commit" to scrapping its nuclear program. Given North Korea's history - violating the 1994 pledge to halt all production of nukes - EAP's proposal was rejected out-of-hand in the interagency process.
The new soft-line position from the EAP and its allies within the National Security Council is that the security guarantee should be offered once North Korea "credibly commits." That language, in fact, has made it into the list of three recommendations now under consideration by the White House.
The hard-line option included in the list of possible recommendations is that the security guarantee only follows "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantling" of the nuclear program. But as long as North Korea has even one civilian nuclear reactor - or refuses to grant complete, unfettered access to inspectors - such an exacting standard could probably not be achieved.
The "compromise" position is offering the security guarantee after inspectors "achieve verifiable benchmarks." As one might expect with such vague wording, "verifiable benchmarks" could conceivably run the gamut from being little more than the first option - or little less than "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantling."
If anything, the White House's public posturing would indicate that the final offer made to North Korea will not be to Pyongyang's liking. President Bush publicly has called for a "complete, irreversible verifiable" elimination of North Korea's nuclear program - echoing the words chosen by the hawks.
According to one official familiar with the deliberations on the security guarantee, "Ultimately, the middle option will be chosen."
Regardless of the timing of the security guarantee, the United States will continue to put the screws to Pyongyang. The Proliferation Security Initiative, which is designed to identify and seize materials related to non-conventional weapons, is targeted directly at North Korea's exports and is in full force, according to several administration officials.
Because North Korea gets 20 percent to 40 percent of its hard currency from weapons sales, the United States has also waged a campaign to dissuade possible purchasers of North Korean exports.
One example cited repeatedly by U.S. officials to foreign governments is that the much-publicized SCUD missiles sent to Yemen from North Korea last December actually don't work. So even though Yemen saved money buying from North Korea, it got nothing for its millions.
The pitch appears to be working. Several Middle Eastern countries have already agreed not to buy weapons from North Korea.
The outside measures seem to be all that's likely to happen on the North Korean front in the near future. Within hours of receiving the joint statement - which had already been agreed to by Japan and South Korea - China rejected the document. China wanted economic benefits and more specificity in guarantees made to North Korea, concerns which Pyongyang echoed almost immediately in denouncing the statement.
The real victory is that South Korea agreed to the tough language found throughout the document. South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun has been pushing for appeasement of the North, but with rock-bottom poll numbers at home, Mr. Roh did not have the political will to battle the United States. With Russia unlikely to be a roadblock for any eventual agreement, the lone holdout the United States needs to work on is China.
Given the quickness with which China rejected the statement, though, it might be a while before a second round of talks gets underway. But in the minds of many administration hawks, no deal with North Korea is better than an appeasing one.
Joel Mowbray occasionally writes for The Washington Times.
--------
Talks on N. Korea's Nuke Program Planned
December 11, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Six-nation talks on easing tensions over North Korea's nuclear weapons program will likely be held in mid-January, South Korean media reported Friday.
For weeks, the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas have tried to convene a new round of talks before the year's end. But differences between the United States and the communist North make that unlikely.
``We have not completely ruled out a possibility of holding the talks this month but it gets increasingly likely that it would be sometime in mid-January,'' the national Yonhap news agency quoted a government source as saying. YTN, an all-news cable channel, carried a similar report.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong-kil could not confirm the reports but said Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck was delaying a visit to China.
Meanwhile, a group of European diplomats traveled Friday across the heavily fortified no man's land that separates the two Koreas, stepping into South Korea after a three-day visit to the North.
The delegation was expected to bring word about the isolated communist country's thoughts on a possible new round of six-nation talks to dismantle its atomic weapons program.
Lee, South Korea's chief delegate during the first round of six-nation talks in August, had planned to fly to Beijing on Friday in a last-minute effort to bring about a new round later this month.
At the border truce village of Panmunjom in the middle of the Demilitarized Zone separating the North and South, the EU team stepped over a concrete curb signifying the border and was greeted by officials from the U.S.-led United Nations Command and the European Union.
Guido Martini of Italy, who led the nine-member EU delegation, didn't provide details of the talks in North Korea, simply saying that trip ``was very good for all of us.''
Asked whether there was any word from the North on whether it would join six-nation nuclear talks, he said, ``this is our wish.''
The North Korean nuclear crisis flared in October last year, when U.S. officials said the communist state admitted running a new nuclear weapons program using enriched uranium in violation of international agreements.
North Korea says its has restarted its nuclear facilities after it kicked out U.N. nuclear inspectors and quit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in January. It also says it has completed reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods in a process that could yield enough plutonium for several bombs.
North Korea rarely allows Western diplomats to cross the border. The last Western government official to cross the border was Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, who visited both Koreas in May.
--------
N.Korea Nuclear Talks Seen Delayed to Mid - January
December 11, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-talks.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - Six-country talks to try to halt communist North Korea's nuclear weapons program -- which had been expected this month -- are likely to be put off until mid-January, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Friday.
Yonhap quoted a senior Seoul official as saying that a December meeting could still not be ruled out, but it looked more likely that the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia would convene a second round of nuclear talks with North Korea next month.
``The trend is moving toward opening talks in mid-January,'' the unnamed official was quoted as saying. The remarks could not immediately be confirmed.
U.S., Asian and Russian officials have conducted intensive shuttle diplomacy in the months since Beijing hosted an inconclusive first round of six way talks in August to try and convince North Korea to attend a second round.
Yonhap said one sign that prospects for opening talks before the end of the year had dimmed was that South Korea's point-man in the negotiations, Assistant Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck, had postponed plans to fly to Beijing on Friday.
Lee's Russian counterpart in the six-way talks, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, had likewise put off plans to visit the Chinese capital this month, Yonhap said.
Earlier this week, South Korea, the United States and Japan conveyed their proposed wording for a resolution to the 14-month-old crisis to China. Beijing then passed it on to North Korea.
Reclusive North Korea, responding apparently to media reports of elements of the U.S. plan, pronounced it ``greatly disappointing'' and published a counterproposal which repeated demands for energy aid and diplomatic concession in exchange for freezing its nuclear program.
President Bush rejected the idea of a freeze, saying Washington wanted North Korea's nuclear arms program dismantled ``in a verifiable and irreversible way.''
The CIA believes the North has produced one or two nuclear weapons. The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when Washington said Pyongyang had said it had a covert nuclear program.
--------- mideast
Nuclear breakout in the Middle East?
by Gary Milhollin
Thursday 11 December 2003
Media Monitors Network
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/2902/
"It is time for the whole world--not just the United States--to start imagining what a nuclearized Middle East will look like. Could western diplomacy keep such a region from going over the edge?"
Since the 1960s, when Israel produced its first A-bomb's worth of plutonium, it has enjoyed a surprisingly long-lived monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Now, with the nuclear resurgence of Iran, that monopoly could end, with consequences to the region that are difficult to foresee.
Israel is thought to possess as many as 200 nuclear warheads, fueled primarily by its French- and Norwegian-supplied reactor in the Negev desert. Those warheads could be delivered by Israel's squadrons of American-made F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers, or by its powerful Jericho-II missile, also made with components from the United States. Neither Israel's bombs nor the means to deliver them are homegrown. The question facing the Middle East now is whether Israel's rivals will be equally successful in importing what they need.
Iran is making great progress. By year's end, it plans to be operating a thousand gas centrifuges--machines able to boost natural uranium up to nuclear weapon grade. Depending on how efficiently the centrifuges operate, they could produce a bomb's worth of weapons-grade uranium within a year or so after coming on line. Iran hasn't said where its centrifuge designs and components came from, but whoever supplied them is producing a large strategic impact. For the moment, the finger of suspicion points to Pakistan.
Help to Iran has also come from Chinese companies, which have supplied the blueprints for a plant to produce the gaseous form of uranium needed to feed the centrifuges, and from Russia, which has provided sensitive technology for heavy water reactors. The latter produce plutonium, a second type of nuclear weapon fuel. None of the imports has any reasonable use in Iran's civilian nuclear power program, itself suspect in light of Iran's copious oil reserves.
There is every reason to think that Iran will achieve nuclear weapons status if it stays its present course. The centrifuges appear to be functional, and Iran has managed to buy equipment needed to assemble or make centrifuges on its own. Should Iran enter the nuclear club, the Middle East will face a nuclear-armed state with longstanding ties to terrorism and a growing missile fleet. Iran's missiles are capable of carrying a nuclear-sized payload not only to Israel, but to Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and possibly Egypt.
It is naive to think that none of these states will react. Uzi Rubin, former director of defense policy at Israel's National Security Council, predicted in an October 2003 speech to an international conference on missile defense that an Iranian bomb would spur nuclear weapon moves by both Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Egypt does not possess such weapons now, but in the past has considered building them. It has already begun to produce Scud-type missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to Israel. Saudi Arabia does not possess the bomb either, but it bought a fleet of Chinese missiles in the 1980s that could deliver nuclear warheads to many points in the Middle East, and it is rumored to have discussed nuclear cooperation recently with Pakistan. Given the fact that Pakistan has sold uranium centrifuge technology to North Korea, and is rumored to have supplied the same to Iran, any nuclear talks between it and the Saudis should cause real alarm. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Egypt would like to see Iran dominate the region.
In addition to all this, Libya has shown signs of renewed nuclear activity. Colonel Qaddafi has been talking to the Russians about refurbishing his Tajura nuclear site, and about building a power reactor. Libya has for years imported Scud-type missiles from North Korea.
Thus the nuclear question in the Middle East is not just between Israelis and Muslims. A nuclear breakout by Iran would affect inter-Islamic rivalries as well. That is why the nuclear future in Iran is so important.
Iran's progress is not likely to be stopped by its pledges under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Unfortunately, a country is perfectly free to use its adherence to the treaty as a reason why other countries should provide it with nuclear technology. Then, after importing what it needs, it can drop out of the treaty on three month's notice and turn its nuclear wherewithal to bomb-making. Nor do the inspections carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency provide much comfort. As long as the inspectors are allowed to observe what Iran is doing, Iran can come right up to the edge of nuclear weapon capability without breaking the rules.
It is time for the whole world--not just the United States--to start imagining what a nuclearized Middle East will look like. Could western diplomacy keep such a region from going over the edge? Would some species of local deterrence work? And what about US President George W. Bush's plan to extend democracy in the region? Unless the world is ready to answer such questions, it had better curb Iran's nuclear program before it is too late.
-------- missile defense
Aegis cruiser will attempt to shoot down missile in test off Hawaii
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Dec 11, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031211005920.y8g198or.html
A US Aegis cruiser will attempt to shoot down a medium range ballistic missile Thursday in a test over the Pacific near Hawaii, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
The test is designed to evaluate the sea-based Aegis weapons system's capacity for long range surveillance and tracking of a medium range missile.
The cruiser USS Lake Eerie will use a Standard-3 missile to try to shoot down the target missile at Barkings Sands Missile Range near Hawaii.
The test is the third in a series of six to develop a sea-based missile defense system effective against medium range missiles.
----
Aegis Missile Test Successful
United States Department of Defense
December 11, 2003
http://www.dod.mil/releases/2003/nr20031211-0757.html
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the U.S. Navy announced today the completion of a successful flight test in the continuing development of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Program, the sea-based element of the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). Flight Mission-6 (FM-6) involved the detection and tracking of an Aries short-range target missile launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF), Kauai, Hawaii at 8:10 a.m. HST (1:10 p.m. EST). Approximately two minutes after target launch, a developmental Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) was launched from the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense cruiser the USS Lake Erie. Approximately two minutes later the SM-3 successfully intercepted the target missile with "hit to kill" technology, using only the force of the direct collision to destroy the target. This was the fourth successful intercept for Aegis BMD and SM-3.
After the target was launched, the Aegis destroyer the USS Russell, located near the island of Kauai, detected the target and reported the target track to the USS Lake Erie, located further out to sea. Outfitted with Aegis BMD equipment and computer program configuration, the USS Lake Erie acquired and tracked the target with its AN/SPY-1 radar and developed a fire control solution. The crew of the USS Lake Erie then launched the SM-3 missile. The Aegis Weapon System guided the first, second, and third stages of the SM-3 to a position to perform an intercept of the target. After ejection from the SM-3 third stage, the kinetic warhead acquired, tracked, and diverted directly into the target at an altitude of 137 kilometers, and at a closing speed of approximately 3.7 kilometers per second.
This test was another step forward in the development and test program leading to the integration of Aegis BMD into the "layered" missile defense system designed to intercept and destroy all types of ballistic missiles during any phase of flight-boost, midcourse and terminal. A primary objective for this test was to evaluate the performance of long-range surveillance and track support from an Aegis cruiser and destroyer team that has the potential for use with a number of different missile defense elements, including the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) designed to protect the United States against long-range ballistic missiles. Extensive post-test analysis will be conducted to evaluate the performance of the entire system as tested. It will provide the data necessary to prepare for future flight tests and to aid in the continuing development program to ensure the United States will be able to defend our homeland, deployed forces, and our friends and allies, against ballistic missiles of all ranges.
Conducted by Navy personnel, FM-6 is the fourth of a six-flight test series within the 2004-2005 time period (called Block 2004) to develop a sea-based ballistic missile defense against short-to-medium range ballistic missiles. FM-6 is the third developmental flight test against more complex, stressing, and operationally realistic ballistic missile engagement scenarios. Future tests will continue to increase operational realism.
MDA, in cooperation with the Navy, manages the Aegis BMD Program. Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems and Sensors, Moorestown, N.J., is the prime contractor for the Aegis Weapon System and Vertical Launch System installed in Aegis cruisers and destroyers. Raytheon Missile Systems, Tucson, Ariz., is the prime contractor for the SM-3 missile.
News media points of contact are Chris Taylor, Missile Defense Agency, at (703) 697-8001 or, in Hawaii, Maj. Cathy Reardon at (703) 963-3179.
Photos will be available at Navy Region Hawaii, OSD (PA) and MDA Websites. Video is available from 4-5pm EST, on Digital Uplink: AM-3 TR-9 Slot G, Downlink Frequency 11895 H Down Data Rate 5.5 / 3/4 FEC/ Symbol Tate 3.9787, Analog Uplink AM-3 TR-9C, Downlink Frequency 11880.00 H Down, CNN Newsbeam Atlanta (404) 827-1094, Trouble Line (678) 313-6001.
----
GAO Calls for Review of Missile Defense Satellite Program
Wade Boese,
11 December 2003
Arms Control Today
The General Accounting Office (GAO) recently recommended that the Pentagon review a missile defense satellite system because of lingering problems that could result in major program cost and schedule overruns. The Air Force just restructured the program last year following a critical review of the system.
Initiated in 1996, the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS)-high program has been "burdened by immature technologies, unclear requirements, unstable funding, underestimated software complexity, and other problems," GAO stated in an Oct. 31 report on the program.
SBIRS-high is intended to replace the Pentagon's current constellation of Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites. The DSP satellites have been operating for more than 30 years and provide information on worldwide missile launches, among other tasks. The new system is also intended to gather intelligence and provide timely battlefield information to U.S. troops.
Yet, SBIRS-high is far from proving it can handle these missions. GAO noted that testing earlier this year revealed that the first infrared sensor to be deployed as part of the system demonstrated "several deficiencies" in the sensor's ability to "maintain earth coverage" and to track missiles.
As such problems have emerged, the SBIRS-high price tag has more than doubled. Originally projected to cost $1.8 billion to research and develop, the system is currently budgeted at $4.4 billion.
The system's development troubles have led to significant delays. The Pentagon initially planned to begin fielding SBIRS-high components between 1999 and 2004, but the first delivery of sensors for two of the system's satellites has slipped from February 2002 to at least December 2003, while the launch of the first of four other satellites making up the system has been pushed back from 2004 to 2006.
Frustrated by the system's lack of progress, the Pentagon ordered a review that led to the Air Force restructuring the program in August 2002. Although there have been improvements in oversight of the program, GAO concluded that there are continuing schedule and cost risks that merit the program being reviewed again-an assessment the Pentagon shares.
In May, GAO reported that a complementary satellite system to SBIRS-high, the Space Tracking and Surveillance System (formerly SBIRS-low), was also beset with problems. (See ACT, June 2003.) As originally conceived, SBIRS-high was to provide the early warning of a hostile missile launch, while SBIRS-low was to provide more detailed tracking information on the target cluster to help a missile interceptor distinguish between an enemy warhead and any potential decoys that might be accompanying it. The overhauled and renamed SBIRS-low program is still supposed to help track a missile during its entire flight, but the requirement that it must discriminate between warheads and decoys has been postponed for now, according to the May GAO report.
--------
U.S. Hits Target in Sea - Based Missile Test
December 11, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-missile-test.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A missile from a U.S. Navy Aegis cruiser shattered a dummy warhead over the Pacific on Thursday, the fourth intercept in five tests of the sea-based leg of a planned multi-layered missile shield, the Pentagon said.
The Standard Missile-3 fired from the Lake Erie off Kauai in the Hawaiian islands ``successfully engaged the target'' about four minutes after the target was launched, said Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.
The Pentagon described the test as part of increasingly ``complex, stressing and operationally realistic ballistic missile engagement scenarios.''
But it did not specify in what way the scenario had been made more realistic.
``Future tests will continue to increase operational realism,'' said a statement. Among other things, decoys could be added to the mix. The intercept relied on ``hit-to-kill'' technology, using only the force of the collision to destroy the target, the Pentagon said.
The last such test, on June 18, failed when the interceptor missile missed its target.
President Bush has ordered a Pacific missile defense ``testbed'' be fielded by Sept. 30, 2004, partly to thwart a perceived threat from North Korea. The initial deployment will include six ground-based interceptor missiles at Fort Greely, Alaska and four at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Up to 20 sea-based interceptors, spread among three Aegis cruisers, are to be folded into the system starting in 2005.
Lockheed Martin Corp., based in Bethesda, Maryland, is the prime contractor for the Aegis weapon system and vertical launch system. It is described as capable of simultaneous operation defending against advanced air, surface, subsurface and ballistic missile threats.
Raytheon Co., based in Waltham, Massachusetts, builds the Standard Missile-3.
Lockheed said the intercept took place outside the Earth's atmosphere during the target missile's descent. The Pentagon is seeking to build defenses that would also go after warheads in their boost and mid-course flight paths.
The Aegis system is deployed on 67 U.S. Navy cruisers and destroyers, and at least 22 more ships are planned, Lockheed said in a statement.
Aegis is the primary weapon system on Japanese Kongo-class destroyers, which could also join in a missile shield to protect joint forces, seaports, inland airfields, political and military assets and population centers.
The test on Thursday was designed to evaluate the system's long-range surveillance and track functions, the Missile Defense Agency said. The system could be used with other missile defense components, including a ground-based mid-course defense designed to guard the United States against long-range ballistic missile attacks.
The Pentagon plans to spend $50 billion over the next five years to develop the planned shield, including components based on land, at sea, in the air -- in laser-firing Boeing Co. 747 aircraft -- and in space.
-------
Missile Defense Hits Target During Test
December 11, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense-Test.html
HONOLULU (AP) -- An interceptor missile fired from a Navy ship knocked a target rocket out of the sky over the Pacific on Thursday in the first successful test of a U.S. missile defense system in more than a year, military officials said.
In June, an interceptor missile missed the target rocket in a similar test.
An Aegis cruiser launched a Standard Missile-3 interceptor -- designed to destroy its target by colliding with it rather than using a large explosion -- from an undisclosed location in the Pacific. The defense has been compared to hitting a bullet with a bullet.
The target missile launched from Kauai was intercepted at 8:14 a.m. Hawaii time at an altitude of about 85 miles, said Chris Taylor, Washington-based spokesman for the federal Missile Defense Agency. The interceptor was traveling more than 8,000 mph, Taylor said.
Last December, President Bush ordered the Pentagon to have ready for use within two years a bare-bones system for defending American territory, troops and allies against attack by ballistic missiles.
Under Bush's plan, 20 Standard Missile-3 interceptors would be placed aboard three Navy ships with improved versions of the Aegis system.
This sea-based system was outlawed under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, but the United States withdrew from the treaty last year. The plan also calls for the development of ground-based interceptors.
On the Net:
Missile Defense Agency:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/bmdolink/html/bmdolink.html
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
DOE affirms nuclear labs can be run by different contractors
BY ALAINA SUE POTRIKUS AND ANDREA WIDENER
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Thu, Dec. 11, 2003
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/nation/7471263.htm
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - A controversial commission has recommended the Department of Energy look separately for new operators at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos labs and affirmed the nuclear labs could be effectively run by different contractors.
At a meeting here Wednesday, members of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board said they see no compelling reasons that the two labs currently run by the University of California must be overseen by one contractor when bid next year for the first time in half a century.
``The collaboration necessary can be achieved by different contractors,'' said board member Hank Habicht, CEO of the Global Environment & Technology Foundation.
The controversial finding was contradicted by speakers and letter writers who support the joint management of the two nuclear labs.
Kimberly Budil, a Lawrence Livermore physicist, said she supported the commission's emphasis on performance and science. But she disagreed with separating the labs, which have been run by UC since their inception. They support each other in achieving common goals, and their mutual work would be stifled by ``fundamentally competing objectives'' inherent in different management.
``Our long history of success is predicated by cooperative competition,'' she said.
The findings of the board's Blue Ribbon Commission are not binding but they will go to the Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham for review and will likely be influential on future lab competitions.
The report was spurred by a DOE decision this spring to make UC compete to continue running Los Alamos after 60 years as its sole manager - a move spurred by business and management problems at the New Mexico lab. A recent Congressional decision forced competition for all contracts older than 50 years, including UC's other labs, Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley.
At the meeting, some members speculated that opening the labs to competition would enhance performance, reduce overhead and make more resources available. Others argued in favor of long- term, stable relationships between the DOE labs and universities.
``Competition for the sake of competition will result in a loss to the research atmosphere,'' said Frederick Bernthal, president of a consortium of research universities.
The board acknowledged there are few possible bidders for management of the nation's leading research labs and that the competition process could be costly in many ways.
``We also realize that competition can be expensive and disruptive to the research environment,'' Habicht said. ``The decision to compete has a significant adverse impact on the morale and productivity of a laboratory.''
Yet, board members said they felt the need to examine other options to achieve and maintain ``higher quality, state-of-the-art science and technology and efficient and effective operations.''
``If the performance of a laboratory is fine, then we don't go forward with it,'' said board member Bill Brinkman. ``But, you have to see what kind of response you get - if there's a better opportunity out there.''
Board member Burton Richter said employing different contractors would diffuse potentially ``incestuous situations'' that arise from the coordination of the classified programs.
``People say that if Stanford ran one and MIT ran the other - or Boeing ran one and Martin Marietta ran the other - that there would be fighting all the time,'' said Richter, director emeritus of Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center. ``I haven't seen that.''
``I think they'd be a lot better off with different contractors. Then, there'd be argument over whose programs deserved funding.''
In a letter to the Energy Secretary, 10 former directors of Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore said separating the contracts is at odds with ``our experience and our judgment about the conduct of nuclear weapons activities.''
They said more cooperation will be needed in coming years, as the end of nuclear testing and a shrinking stockpile will require more intense peer review among the two labs. ``All of these are difficult under a single contractor and would be greatly exacerbated with separate contractors.''
Joe Martz, manager of Los Alamos' weapons materials program, said he exchanges staff and plutonium with Livermore in experiments examining the aging of plutonium. He said the process would be much more difficult if there were two managers. It would also limit career advancement for weapons scientists with few options besides moving between the two labs.
``I worry about the practical things, like my accelerated aging experiment,'' he said. ``My concern is that we produce the best quality science for the country. People are relying on our judgment.''
UC managers also said the commission is making a mistake separating the lab contracts.
``They have a common mission down,'' S. Robert Foley, UC's vice president for lab management, said in an interview. ``They work together to ensure that mission is properly carried out.''
-------- tennessee
Facility could start processing waste in early '04
Transuranic waste is produced during nuclear fuel assembly and during nuclear weapons-related work.
By: Paul Parson
Oak Ridger Staff paul.parson@oakridger.com
December 11, 2003
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/121103/new_20031211022.shtml
Officials are ready to get the ball rolling on the treatment of some of the nastiest waste stored in Oak Ridge.
That should be just around the corner, especially since a so-called "operational readiness review" of the Transuranic Waste Processing Facility is scheduled to be done in January.
"It's the pathway for getting all the transuranic waste out of town," Steve McCracken, the Department of Energy's environmental chief, said of the facility. McCracken was one of several local officials who spoke during a public meeting Wednesday night on Oak Ridge cleanup efforts.
Transuranic waste is produced during nuclear fuel assembly and during nuclear weapons-related work. This waste generally consists of protective clothing, tools, glassware, equipment, soils and sludge that have been heavily contaminated with high concentrations of manmade radioactive elements, including plutonium, neptunium, americium, curium, and californium.
If all goes according to plan, the transuranic facility will begin processing some of the waste in early 2004, according to Bob Sleeman, who is overseeing the cleanup of Melton Valley for DOE. He also spoke at Wednesday night's meeting, which was sponsored jointly by DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office and the Oak Ridge Site-Specific Advisory Board.
In 1998, DOE contracted Foster Wheeler Environmental Corp. to construct and operate the waste processing facility. Much of the waste to be treated is currently stored in Melton Valley.
The treated transuranic waste will be disposed of at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, N.M., while the low-level waste will be disposed of at the Nevada Test Site, located 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nev.
-------- washington
Hanford completes work on F Reactor
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thursday, December 11, 2003
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=WA%20Hanford%20Reactor
RICHLAND, Wash. -- The company charged with "cocooning" defunct nuclear reactors at the Hanford nuclear reservation has completed work on the F Reactor almost 10 months ahead of schedule, leaving five reactors still to be completed.
Cocooning is a term for cleaning out and demolishing all the outlying buildings at the reactor sites, and sealing the reactors themselves inside the main chamber. What remains is a nearly 100-tall concrete box with a slanted roof to keep rainwater out.
The sealed reactor chamber is then entered every five years to check for problems.
Hanford, the home of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, has nine defunct Cold War reactors. Eight are scheduled to be cocooned.
Bechtel Hanford completed work on the C Reactor in 1998 and the DR Reactor in 2002.
F Reactor was the third Hanford reactor to produce plutonium, starting up in February 1945 and shutting down in June 1965. The initial engineering work on cocooning F Reactor began in 1997.
It cost about $21 million to seal F Reactor, slightly more than for work on other reactors because it also had a fuel storage basin with buried pieces of spent nuclear fuel, said Mike Mihalic, the company's project leader.
The next reactor to be cocooned is D Reactor, which is scheduled to be completed in September 2004.
-------- us politics
McCain-Feingold Ruling Angers Activists on Both Left and Right
By David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54524-2003Dec10?language=printer
It's not every day the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union are outraged by the same Supreme Court decision.
The two organizations are often used to represent opposite poles of American politics, the gun-toting right and the liberal left. But both groups hated yesterday's unexpectedly broad ruling by the court to uphold the major provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.
Reformers have been trying to squeeze the influence of money out of politics for at least 100 years, but yesterday's ruling was either one of the boldest steps yet or a terrible overreach, depending on which side was analyzing the case. Surprise at the scope of the ruling was just about universal, however. Even many proponents of the campaign finance law had expected the court to use the First Amendment to strike down new limits on political advertising on television.
But the prevailing justices -- with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in the decisive role, as she is so often -- cast a deeply disgusted eye on the entire political process, finding "corruption, and in particular the appearance of corruption" almost everywhere they looked. Even efforts by political parties to register voters, identify supporters and urge them to the polls -- activities once extolled in civics classes -- were seen as opportunities for corruption if large donors were allowed to pay for such projects as a way of currying favor with elected officials.
The problem with critics of the law, the majority declared, is that they "conceive of political corruption too narrowly."
This attitude took the 5 to 4 majority well beyond earlier limitations on political advertising, in the judgment of several First Amendment experts. And so a broad range of advocacy organizations denounced the decision as a historic attack on the right to free speech. Under the ruling, groups wishing to use television ads to criticize -- or even mention -- federal candidates in the decisive months of an election year must comply with an array of regulations before they can say their piece.
"The notion that the government can tell an organization like the ACLU when and how it should address important civil liberties issues is a form of censorship masquerading as campaign finance reform," ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said in a statement reacting to the ruling.
Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA, called the ruling "the most significant change in the First Amendment since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which tried to make it a crime to criticize a member of Congress."
"This whole thing from the start has been an inside deal among politicians to stop criticism, whether it comes from us or from the Sierra Club," LaPierre said.
"Well, we're going to be heard," he added, "and they're going to be surprised how loud we're going to be heard."
The court explained itself by saying that Congress is the best institution for sorting out election rules and for balancing the importance of free speech against the need for reform. But that theory was also hotly debated yesterday.
To critics of the ruling, including dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia, giving congressional incumbents a virtually free hand to set the rules of elections is like letting the reigning Scrabble champion rewrite the dictionary.
The legislation "prohibits the criticism of Members of Congress by those entities most capable of giving such criticism loud voice," Scalia wrote, namely, "national political parties and corporations, both of the commercial and the not-for-profit sort." In his typically tart way, Scalia noted that the Supreme Court has recently protected the free speech rights of tobacco advertisers and Internet pornographers -- but has now limited the rights of corporations and labor unions to criticize elected officials in television ads.
"I could not be more shocked," said James Bopp, general counsel at the James Madison Center for Free Speech, who denounced the campaign finance law as "an orgy of incumbent protection." Like many critics of the ruling, he noted the irony that a law designed to limit the influence of money in politics leaves one class of citizens almost entirely unregulated -- the super-rich. People willing and able to spend their own fortunes on political ads can say what they want when they want.
Critics also noted that the major television outlets are owned not by disinterested charities but by major corporations: Disney owns ABC, General Electric owns NBC, Viacom owns CBS, Time Warner owns CNN. And so on.
"These conglomerates spend millions in political contributions to influence legislation, but whatever they decide is news will be all over the airwaves until Election Day," LaPierre said. "Somehow they are pure, while AARP or the NRA is not."
This analysis seemed overheated to those who saw yesterday's ruling as a big step forward for honest and open politics -- and a lot of people felt that way.
"The law does nothing to prohibit any ads," said Colby College professor Anthony Corrado, an authority on campaign finance laws. "What the law says is you can air ads solely devoted to discussion of an issue -- without mentioning a federal candidate. But if you are broadcasting an ad within 60 days of the election" -- the window is 30 days in the case of primaries -- "and the ad features or names a federal candidate, then it has to be paid for with money subject to federal election laws. You can't use corporate or labor union money."
In trying to clean up the problem of "sham issue ads," the court fell back on a solution that might intrigue people who have spent a few decades watching the endless effort to clean up campaign finance. Political action committees -- PACs, those darlings of reformers in the 1970s turned demons of the 1980s -- are once again in good odor, according to the court.
Corporations and advocacy groups -- from big drug companies to environmentalists -- must, under the ruling, use PACs to raise money to air their regulated advertisements. A defiant LaPierre said yesterday that the NRA will immediately ask its 4 million members and 28 million affiliated members to donate $20 each, a potentially enormous ante to push back onto the table.
ACLU leaders, on the other hand, resisted the idea that they should have to form a political committee to promote issues that they see as nonpartisan.
The whole thing was "incomprehensible" to storied First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who felt the nearly 300-page ruling missed the fundamental importance of political speech. "It almost reads like a tax case rather than a First Amendment case," he said. "In style, tone and nature, it reads like an opinion about regulation by government of some sort of improper activity."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. Says Other Afghan Children Died in Earlier Raid
December 11, 2003
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/international/asia/11AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 10 - For the second time in a week, the American military has acknowledged that children were victims of airstrikes aimed at Taliban fighters.
A military spokesman said Wednesday that six children and two adults were found under a collapsed wall after an attack on Friday night by American Special Forces on the compound of a known militant. The airstrike was called in after the soldiers came under heavy machine-gun fire.
The United States previously acknowledged having killed nine children in an airstrike on Saturday against a suspected Taliban fighter in southern Afghanistan.
The killings are an embarrassment to the military, which is seeking to provide a secure environment for an Afghan constitutional council that is to convene here next weekend. Although military officials were aware on Saturday of the Friday incident that led to the deaths of the six children, they did not acknowledge it until Wednesday, and then only in response to a question at a news conference in Kabul.
The United Nations and the office of President Hamid Karzai expressed renewed concerns about the political damage inflicted by such incidents. The United States ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have both expressed regrets for the deaths of the nine children killed on Saturday and promised relief assistance for the village.
The attack on Friday was aimed at the well-defended compound of a known militant, Mullah Jilani, just outside the town of Gardez, 60 miles south of Kabul. Mullah Jilani is suspected of connections with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, as well as with a renegade mujahedeen commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is also on the United States list of wanted terrorists.
According to the military, Special Forces troops mounting the assault called in airstrikes after gunfire erupted from the compound.
"We were conducting a night assault on the compound," Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said at a news conference in Kabul. "We observed a heavy machine gun firing from a compound that we had no indication there were noncombatants in. We fired on the compound from the air and the machine gun stopped."
It was only the next morning that troops searched the compound and found the bodies of six children and two adults under a collapsed wall.
"We don't know what caused the collapse of the wall because although we fired on the compound there were secondary and tertiary explosions inside the compound," Colonel Hilferty said. He did not identify the two adults who died but said Mullah Jilani was not found.
Asadullah Wafa, the governor of Paktia Province, where the raid happened, confirmed the deaths in a telephone interview from Gardez. He said the victims, who lived in the compound, belonged to the family of an associate of Mullah Jilani.
Nine suspected militants were captured in the raid, during which troops also found dozens of weapons, including artillery pieces, machine guns and rockets.
Colonel Hilferty said the rules of engagement were stringent, noting that the soldiers had not fired on 10 people seen leaving the compound because they could not be identified as combatants.
"We try very hard not to kill anyone," he said. "We would prefer to capture the terrorists rather than kill them. But in this incident, if noncombatants surround themselves with thousands of weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition and howitzers and mortars in a compound known to be used by a terrorist, we are not completely responsible for the consequences."
A presidential spokesman, Hamid Elmi, said he did not yet have independent confirmation of the incident, but expressed deep concern at the news. "It is a very serious issue for the government," he said. Mr. Karzai had ordered a government delegation headed by two ministers to investigate the scene of the airstrike Saturday, a sign of his profound concern about the consequences of such civilian casualties, he said.
Hundreds of delegates have been arriving this week in Kabul for the constitutional grand council to approve a new constitution for the country. American and Afghan officials say they have received specific intelligence that the Taliban and Mr. Hekmatyar intend to disrupt the proceedings.
In an effort to pre-empt any serious attacks, United States forces began an operation that put about 2,000 troops into action across the south, southeast and east of the country to put the Taliban and other groups on the defensive. The airstrikes that resulted in the children's death were part of that operation.
A spokesman for the United Nations, Manoel de Almeida e Silva, expressed "regret and concern" over the latest incident.
"In addition to contributing to a sense of fear and insecurity these kinds of incidents make it easier for those who wish to spoil the peace process to rally support," he said.
--------
8 Afghan Civilians Killed in U.S. Raid
Deaths of Six More Children Deepen Doubts About Strategy
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54489-2003Dec10.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 10 -- An air and ground assault by U.S. forces on a farm compound in eastern Afghanistan late last week killed six children and two adults, U.S. military officials said Wednesday. It was the second report in less than a week of a U.S. military operation claiming the lives of young Afghans.
Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, the U.S. military spokesman at Bagram air base, said the victims were crushed when a wall fell on them during the raid in Paktia province, which he said was aimed at destroying a large weapons cache.
Hilferty said U.S. military officials acted on reliable information that an Islamic guerrilla identified as Mullah Jalani had stored weapons in a village about 12 miles east of Gardez, the provincial capital. On Friday night, the compound was assaulted by aircraft and ground troops, and nine people were arrested. The next day, a large arsenal of weapons and ammunition was found, along with the bodies of the civilians.
"We had no indication there were noncombatants in the compound," Hilferty said.
The incident came to light four days after a U.S. airstrike, also targeting Islamic guerrillas, killed nine children in neighboring Ghazni province. On Saturday, U.S. A-10 attack planes fired on a village compound in southern Ghazni, where U.S. officials believed a local Taliban commander, Mullah Wazir, was hiding. But villagers later said Wazir had left the area days or weeks earlier.
News of a second incident resulting in civilian deaths appeared certain to deepen concerns already expressed by Afghan and foreign authorities about the accuracy, purpose and value of high-intensity military assaults in populated areas, where civilian goodwill and support are crucial for U.S.-led efforts to stop attacks by resurgent Taliban fighters and other armed anti-government groups.
"The first news this week was bad enough; the second is obviously tragic," Foreign Ministry spokesman Omar Samad told the Reuters news agency. "It shows the need for better coordination and that we need to look at our intelligence-gathering process."
The U.N. special envoy here sharply criticized the Ghazni attack, warning it would add to Afghans' fear and insecurity and called for an investigation. U.S. military and civilian officials here have apologized for the incident and said they were carrying out an urgent probe at the site.
Hilferty told reporters that "we try very hard not to kill anyone. We would prefer to capture the terrorists rather than kill them." But he added that "if noncombatants surround themselves with thousands of weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition and howitzers and mortars in a compound known to be used by a terrorist, we are not completely responsible for the consequences."
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said that it is "always a tragedy when children die" and that "we do everything we can to avoid civilian deaths." But, he said, both Afghan and foreign forces "face a severe threat" from guerrillas who are trying to "derail" Afghanistan's progress.
Khalilzad, speaking Wednesday on National Public Radio, said he was convinced that despite such incidents, "the Afghan people are overwhelmingly in favor of what we are doing here" and that he had "not seen an indication of a change in public attitude" toward the U.S. presence.
In the past several weeks, U.S.-led coalition forces have launched a number of raids in eastern Afghanistan. On Dec. 2, U.S. military officials announced they had begun their largest combat operation in 18 months, sending about 2,000 troops into areas near Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan.
The Taliban, a radical Islamic movement that ruled most of Afghanistan for five years, has been regrouping along the Pakistani border since U.S. and Afghan forces drove it from power in late 2001.
Taliban leaders have repeatedly denounced the continuing U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and have regained some popular support in the impoverished southeast, where conditions have improved little under the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.
Since October, militants suspected of being allied with the Taliban and other radical Islamic forces have carried out violent attacks in several southeastern provinces, including the fatal shooting of a French U.N. worker in Ghazni province, a bombing that wounded 20 people in Kandahar and the kidnapping of foreigners working on a major highway project. A kidnapped Turkish engineer was released after a month in captivity, but two Indian workers are still being held.
Spokesmen for the Taliban have also threatened to violently disrupt a national assembly to adopt a new constitution, which is scheduled to begin Saturday at a heavily guarded university campus here.
--------
Militias Transfer Heavy Arms, Bolstering Kabul's Authority
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A46
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54404-2003Dec10.html
PANJSHIR GATE, Afghanistan, Dec. 10 -- The huge green military truck rumbled and belched as its driver waited for the signal. The snub nose of a Soviet Scud missile poked above the cab. A soldier slowly lifted the striped pole blocking the road, and a small arsenal began a historic journey from the militia lairs of the Panjshir Valley to the safekeeping of the Afghan government.
The convoy of loaded missile launchers, tanks and artillery pieces left Panjshir Wednesday morning en route to an Afghan army compound in Kabul, 70 miles to the south. There, they would be turned over to central authorities, 15 years after ethnic Tajik insurgents seized them from the Afghan government during the insurgents' long fight against Soviet occupation.
Although some weapons remained behind in the valley and some militia commanders reportedly resisted the move, officials said the political significance of the transfer was enormous, given the deep rivalries and mistrust between the Tajiks of the Panjshir and the two-year-old government headed by President Hamid Karzai, who is from the Pashtun ethnic group, Afghanistan's largest.
"We kept these weapons as the pride of our holy war, but we have peace and security now. Today they are the property of the Afghan people, not of any one faction," Gen. Bismullah Khan, the army chief of staff and a former Panjshiri commander, told reporters gathered beside a river that rushed through the rocky Panjshir gorge. "This shows our sincere and honest support for the government."
Yet Khan and other officials suggested that only direct personal intervention by another Panjshiri -- Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim -- had persuaded the valley's commanders to give up a hard-won arsenal that has provided them powerful leverage during the uncertain political transition since the collapse of Taliban rule in late 2001.
The weapons surrender occurred only after months of negotiation and was reportedly unpopular with many prominent Panjshiris, but Defense Ministry officials said it would set a crucial example for other areas of the country. In Kabul, for example, officials hope hundreds of heavy weapons held by Tajik militias can soon be collected and turned over to the new national army.
"There is no doubt that Panjshiris raised a number of questions and concerns. There were rumors among the people," Khan said. But he said Fahim visited the area, spoke with the commanders and elders, and won their support for the transfer. Fahim, who initially resisted efforts to reform the Afghan military and demobilize private militias, has emerged as a strong public advocate of such policies.
Some militiamen watching the convoy expressed regret and suspicion over giving up so many heavy weapons, including two Scuds and 13 other Soviet-built missiles, 11 tanks and 38 artillery pieces. They noted that attacks by the Taliban and other anti-government forces are escalating just as the government is trying to disarm and demobilize the militias that fought against Soviet occupation and Taliban rule.
Since October, about 4,000 soldiers and officers have been disarmed in Kunduz, Paktia and Kabul provinces, most of them handing over Kalashnikov rifles or other personal weapons in exchange for $200 in cash and a promise of job training. Wednesday's heavy-weapons transfer was not part of that U.N.-supervised program, and there was no immediate reward offered.
"This is a sad day for me. The Taliban and al Qaeda are alive with their guns, but the government is coming to the Panjshir for our weapons," said Ismael, 22, a militiaman who said he had once fought Taliban forces that surrounded his village. "If they collected all the weapons from the Taliban, that would be different."
Several soldiers said they supported the transfer and were proud to turn the weapons over to central authorities after keeping them safely for so long. But they also expressed worry about their own futures in a competitive civilian society after spending years as fighting men.
"I am an expert on Scuds. We captured them in 1987 and I studied them for 10 years. Is there anyone in the new army who knows anything about Russian weapons?" demanded Lt. Mahmad Ehsan, 30. "We all want these weapons to go to Kabul, to support our country, but what about us? What will happen to us now?"
As the convoy crawled down the rugged Panjshir gorge, it passed hundreds of rusting Soviet tanks, the detritus of years of combat that consumed this impoverished but hardy corner of Afghanistan. It also passed hundreds of posters showing Ahmed Shah Massoud, the senior Panjshiri commander who dominated this valley for two decades and was assassinated by suicide bombers in September 2001.
In interviews along the way, militiamen referred to Massoud as "emir sahib" -- respected Islamic leader. In their speeches, Afghan military officials invoked Massoud's name in hopes of planting his posthumous imprimatur on their controversial move to disarm the country's most politically powerful militia.
"The credit for safeguarding these weapons goes to the martyr Massoud and the freedom fighters of the Panjshir," Deputy Defense Minister Rahim Wardak said as he sat on a stone ledge beside the rushing river. "The gratitude of the nation will be written in history."
-------- britain
Britain Restructuring Its Armed Forces
December 11, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Defense.html
LONDON (AP) -- Britain announced a major restructuring of its armed forces Thursday, with plans to make them lighter, quicker and more technologically advanced.
The announcement coincided with a separate government report that criticized the preparedness of British troops for the war in Iraq, saying many soldiers did not even have the correct boots when they embarked on desert warfare.
Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said Britain must modernize its forces so they can continue to fight side by side with the United States in the war on terror.
Presenting the government's plans, Hoon said that over time the military would cut its number of heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery, downgrade one of its three armored brigades and keep under review the number of combat aircraft it deploys.
But he said the armed forces would become more hi-tech and capable of deploying quickly around the world for combat, peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.
The government gave no indication whether the restructuring would affect overall troop numbers.
The changes are similar to those proposed by Washington. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith said a week ago that the Pentagon wants to have smaller, more agile military units on bases where they are available to travel to crisis areas on short notice.
Hoon told the House of Commons on Thursday that Britain's armed forces needed to be ``rebalanced'' for the post-Cold War era.
``This is a changing world and we must adapt if our armed forces are to stay ahead of potential adversaries,'' he said. ``The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the threat posed by international terrorism, coupled with the consequences of failed or failing states, present us with very real and immediate challenges.''
He said Britain expected to conduct military operations alongside or integrated with U.S., NATO, U.N. and European forces.
The idea is Britain should be able to mount limited operations on its own, or take the lead in small to medium-scale operations at the head of an international coalition. Large-scale operations, such as the war in Iraq, could only plausibly be mounted if the United States were involved.
Hoon said a major area of investment would be technology to ensure tanks, ships and aircraft in the battle zone are linked by computer. So-called ``network-enabled capabilities'' would allow information gatherers, commanders and troops to work together with ``unparalleled speed and accuracy.''
The main opposition Conservative Party accepted the need to counter the threat of terrorism, but feared the plans were a veiled attempt to cut Britain's defense capability.
``Given that there are so few hard facts ... we are concerned that a whole raft of decisions on cuts will start to leach out later,'' Conservative defense spokesman Nicholas Soames said.
The government insists, however, that defense spending will increase 1.2 percent per year in real terms between 2002-2003 and 2005-2006.
In a separate report, the National Audit Office, which scrutinizes public spending on behalf of Parliament, reported on lessons that could be learned from the war in Iraq.
It said that body armor, nuclear, biological and chemical suits and desert uniforms all failed to reach some troops on the front line. The speedy deployment was cited as a key problem. It said the forces had to be ready much more quickly than the Defense Ministry's planning assumptions had envisaged.
Some Challenger 2 tanks were only ready for desert warfare 48 hours before they went into action, while tanks and other armored vehicles never received filters to protect against nuclear, chemical and biological contamination.
Commanders struggled to locate equipment, the report said, and in one instance, 200,000 body armor sets issued since the 1999 Kosovo campaign seemed simply to have ``disappeared.''
The report noted, however, that the Iraq war was a ``significant military success.''
``We must learn from the difficulties as well as the successes,'' Hoon said.
In a third report published Thursday, the Ministry of Defense acknowledged it had experienced problems in distributing essential equipment, including body armor, to its troops in Iraq.
In that report, titled ``Lessons for the Future,'' the ministry said it would assess the level of stocks held in readiness for such large-scale operations.
-------- business
U.S. Decision on Iraq Contracts Irritates Excluded War Critics
By Peter Finn and Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A42
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54443-2003Dec10.html
BERLIN, Dec. 10 -- Germany, Canada and Russia expressed irritation and disbelief Wednesday after a Pentagon announcement barring firms from those countries from bidding on $18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts in Iraq. Analysts said the move would set back U.S. efforts to repair relations with friendly countries that opposed the war.
France, which led the antiwar coalition but has recently tried to mend relations with the United States, was more circumspect. President Jacques Chirac, leaving a cabinet meeting, would not comment, but a Foreign Ministry spokesman later said, "We are studying these decisions' compatibility with international competition law."
The response in Berlin was much blunter. A spokesman for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the decision was "unacceptable" and that it ran counter to what the Germans had perceived as a new "spirit" in relations, one of "looking toward the future and not the past."
Last month, in a clear nod to Washington, Schroeder said he favored restructuring Iraq's massive foreign debt to help the country recover and was open to forgiving some of the $100 billion or so that Iraq owes its creditors.
News services reported that President Bush called Chirac, Schroeder and President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Wednesday to ask them to reduce Iraq's debt. A National Security Council spokesman, Sean McCormack, said Bush discussed "the need to restructure and reduce Iraq's crushing debt burden" and asked the three leaders to meet with former secretary of state James A. Baker III, whom he appointed last week to handle the debt issue.
The Canadian government was also upset by the Pentagon decision. "If these comments are accurate . . . it would be difficult for us to give further money for the reconstruction of Iraq," said John Manley, the deputy prime minister. "To exclude Canadians just because they are Canadians would be unacceptable if they accept funds from Canadian taxpayers for the reconstruction of Iraq." A government spokesman noted that Canada had already donated about $190 million toward reconstruction.
Paul Martin, who is set to become Canada's next prime minister on Friday, told reporters he found it difficult "to fathom" the decision. "I understand the importance of these kinds of contracts, but this shouldn't be just about who gets contracts, who gets business," Martin said. "It ought to be about what is the best thing for the people of Iraq."
A spokeswoman for the European Commission said it would investigate whether the U.S. action violates World Trade Organization rules, the Associated Press reported.
In response to questions from European governments, U.S. officials cited an exception to WTO contracting rules in cases of "essential security." The office of the U.S. Trade Representative, however, issued a statement saying that the Coalition Provisional Authority is not subject to international procurement obligations, which means there is no need to cite that exception.
The Bush administration said it was well within its rights to direct U.S. taxpayer money to companies of its choosing. Another $13 billion pledged to Iraq in October by other countries and international institutions will be overseen by the World Bank and the United Nations.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said primary contractors would be limited to partners in the military alliance now contributing to Iraqi reconstruction. "If additional countries want to participate with our efforts . . . then circumstances can change," he said.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher pointed out that all such partners would be eligible and said, "As a general proposition, I would tell you it was not done to exclude, it was done to include." The administration was criticized last spring for reserving all contracts for U.S. contractors.
Once the primary contracts are awarded, Boucher said, the winning bidders will be entitled to hire subcontractors from any country they choose, including France, Germany, Russia and Canada.
"This is a negative decision for German industry and commerce," said Ludolf von Wartenberg, director general of the Federation of German Industries, whose group held a previously scheduled meeting today on opportunities in Iraq. "We regret this decision."
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who was meeting in Berlin Wednesday with his Russian counterpart, said, "We noted with astonishment today the reports, and we will be speaking about it with the American side."
Russia's defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, said he would contact Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on the issue and suggested it should not be up to the United States to decide who rebuilds Iraq. "As for future contracts in Iraq, I believe that is a matter for the sovereign government of Iraq," he said at a news conference in Moscow.
The Pentagon decision particularly irritated Moscow because Putin has tried to be accommodating to Washington on postwar issues. While pushing for the occupation to be put under the auspices of the United Nations, Putin has supported the United States remaining in command of military forces in Iraq.
Russia had a strong business relationship with Iraq before the war and wants to get its oil companies back into the country. Lukoil, Russia's second-largest oil producer, has been particularly eager to salvage a multibillion-dollar contract to develop the West Qurnah oil fields.
Russia also holds substantial Iraqi debts, assessed at between $8 billion and $11 billion, and seems prepared to use that as leverage with the United States. Ivanov said: "We are not planning to write off any debts. Iraq is not a poor country."
"It's the kindergarten approach to transatlantic relations," Eberhard Sandschneider of the German Council on Foreign Relations said of the Pentagon action. "If you destroy my sand castle, I will destroy yours. If improvement in transatlantic relations was any part of America's focus, it's a mistake. Emotions are coming back into the equation after months of trying to get them out."
Baker reported from Moscow. Correspondent DeNeen L. Brown in Toronto and staff writer Peter Slevin in Washington contributed to this report.
--------
Army Corps to Have Big Role in Awarding Iraq Contracts
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54567-2003Dec10.html
The Army Corps of Engineers will take the lead in awarding the $18.6 billion in new Iraq reconstruction contracts, government officials said yesterday.
The decision, which will give the Pentagon tighter control over the second round of Iraq spending, was attributed to the Army Corps' expertise in construction matters. It will award at least half of the 26 prime contracts, covering electrical infrastructure, transportation, communications and justice facilities. The U.S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps will be responsible for awarding five public works and water contracts.
"We have determined the agencies in our government that are the subject-matter experts," said Maj. Joseph M. Yoswa, a Pentagon spokesman.
The U.S. Agency for International Development was the leader in awarding more than $2 billion in initial reconstruction contracts. Half of the funding went to projects such as refurbishing school programs and assessing health needs . USAID is currently reviewing bids for a $1.7 billion infrastructure contract. "That's not an insignificant amount of work that we will continue to do in Iraq," said Portia Palmer, a USAID spokeswoman.
The Army Corps has been under pressure from some Democrats in Congress to explain the prices it is paying a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton Co. to import fuel to Iraq under the existing fuel contract. Richard B. Cheney headed Halliburton before he became vice president.
In a letter yesterday, Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) said Halliburton is paying $2.64 per gallon to import gasoline from Kuwait. They said that price is more than double what others, including American military force in Iraq, are paying.
The Army Corps has said government audits have turned up nothing inappropriate and note that the Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, has to negotiate short-term fuel contracts, which are more costly. The Army Corps is in the process of bidding out two oil contracts to replace the one with KBR.
In the meantime, the Army Corps has been negotiating with the Defense Energy Support Center, which supplies fuel to the military, to take over the work. An Army Corps official said that is unlikely because the energy center would have to bid out the work again, rather than use the same contract that is supplying military forces in Iraq.
The new contracts will be structured differently than the contracts that USAID and the Army Corps awarded with limited or no competition. They will be competitively bid but also open-ended, meaning that the government can add work to them without going through the bid process again.
"These are huge contracts with very open-ended, vague statements of work," said Jessica C. Abrahams, a government contract lawyer at Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy LLP in Washington. "They've manifested themselves into a way of avoiding competition."
The winning bidders will be given tasks to carry out as projects are identified. U.S. officials said that gives them greater flexibility for getting the contracts awarded under an unusually fast schedule: 10 weeks instead of the six months it typically takes.
"This is a very, very fast train we are on," Michael Mele, the Army Corps Iraq program manager, said yesterday at a conference in Washington.
-------- china
US, China find a new middle way
Chinese premier's visit reflects a relationship characterized less by rivalry than moderation.
By Peter Grier and Amelia Newcomb
December 11, 2003
Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1211/p01s02-woap.html
WASHINGTON - The welcome accorded Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in Washington this week highlights how much US-Chinese relations have improved since the first months of the Bush administration.
This doesn't mean these two giants of the world economy have become strategic partners, as Clinton officials had hoped. From trade to Taiwan, there are too many differences between them for that. But neither have they become strategic competitors, as the Bush team once predicted they might.
For the most part, China and the US instead appear to have compromised on a middle ground that entails working together when they can while playing down conflicts, if possible.
"It's a selective partnership. On issues where they have similar interests, they'll cooperate," says Minxin Pei, an Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
It's easy to forget now, but before Sept. 11 and the war on terrorism intervened it seemed that China might be one of the Bush administration's biggest foreign policy problems.
One of the first real overseas crises the Bush White House dealt with was the forced landing of a US Navy eavesdropping aircraft on Chinese soil. (The crew was peacefully returned after delicate negotiations.) Charges of Chinese espionage further roiled the relationship. Bush himself adamantly defended Taiwan, going so far as to say in April 2001 that he would do whatever it took to defend an island the Chinese government considers a wayward province.
But the Bush White House appeared to learn what every US administration since Nixon has: China is too big and too important to handle without care. It sits on the UN Security Council. The China-Taiwan relationship is potentially one of the most dangerous flash points anywhere. China's voracious economy is becoming the engine of Asia, if not yet the world.
"It has always been a relationship where if it goes very wrong the costs are very high for everyone," says Ken Lieberthal, a China expert at the University of Michigan.
Over the past two years, US rhetoric about China has been noticeably more restrained. Washington and Beijing have worked closely together to try to defuse the North Korean nuclear issue.
Gone is the tension of Bush's early months. "It has been one of the biggest foreign policy shifts of this administration," says Elizabeth Economy, an Asia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The visit of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao reflected this shift. From the 19-gun salute on the South Lawn of the White House to President Bush's discussion of Abraham Lincoln with his visitor, Mr. Wen was feted in a way seldom associated with a nation's No. 2 official. Most striking was Bush's stern warning to Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province, not to proceed with an election gambit seen as a referendum on possible independence.
Taiwanese President Chen Shui-Bian has proposed that his nation vote on China's missile build-up in the area, and asked for US support for this vote. Instead, Bush said that Mr. Chen's actions indicate that he may "be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose."
The US has long indicated that it would come to Taiwan's aid if China tried to use force to bring the island to heel, says Mr. Pei of the Carnegie Endowment. With his statement, Bush has simply explicated what the US position is with regards to possible provocations on the other side of the Taiwan Straits. "The policy to this point was really tilted to Taiwan. This brings it back into balance," says Pei.
Other experts disagree as to whether the statement is on its face a shift in policy. But some saw the atmospherics as striking, noting that President Bush used the phrase "leader" to refer to Taiwan's head of state, as do the Chinese, instead of the more loaded word "president."
Purposely or not, the White House has sent a message that may well reverberate throughout East Asia.
"The signal it sends ... is that the US has backed off, and the growing influence of China has forced the US to back off," says Warren Cohen, a history professor and Asia expert at the University of Maryland.
White House officials insisted that Bush's statement did not conflict with his recent speeches calling for a renewed push to spread democracy in the Middle East, and indeed the world.
Taiwan is already largely democratic, they noted, and enjoys the fruits of a capitalist economy. But this democracy could be threatened if Taiwan's leaders go too far and provoke a Chinese overreaction.
In the end, the Bush administration may simply have recognized the reality that China is on the rise as a regional power and that if the US wants to maintain influence in the area it will have to accommodate itself to this change in some manner. The Chinese themselves have become smoother and less hostile in their diplomacy with the US and many neighbors, note some US experts.
----
Taiwan's President Unfazed by U.S. Warning
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A47
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53717-2003Dec10.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Dec. 10 -- President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan brushed off the strongest U.S. rebuke in years and announced a bid for reelection Wednesday, as his government minimized Washington's concerns about a planned referendum that angers China. Even Chen's opponents declined to make the U.S. warning a campaign issue.
One day after President Bush stood next to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and bluntly warned Chen against moving Taiwan toward independence, the island of 23 million appeared to be less in shock than in denial. There was little sense of crisis and no sign the warning had hurt Chen's popularity or altered his plans to hold a referendum in March demanding that China remove hundreds of missiles aimed at Taiwan.
Asked on Tuesday if he wanted Chen to cancel the March 20 referendum, Bush declined to answer directly. He said the United States opposed "any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo, and the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo."
Chen responded Wednesday by assuring the United States that he had no plans to provoke China by seeking independence. But he refused to withdraw his referendum proposal, insisting that it did nothing to change relations with China.
He also criticized China for trying to block Taiwan's efforts to strengthen its democracy, and he urged the world not to let Beijing determine how Taiwan should handle its affairs. "What's threatening? What's provocative? It is absolutely not something that Chinese leaders can unilaterally define," he said.
Chen's supporters in the ruling Democratic Progressive Party said Bush issued his warning only to please the visiting Chinese premier, and that U.S. policy had not changed. Bush may oppose a referendum that changes the status quo, such as a vote on independence, but he is not against a referendum on China's missile deployment, they said.
U.S. officials who briefed reporters in Washington on condition of anonymity said the United States opposed the proposed vote, which China has described as a provocation that could lead to war. But Chen's political allies and the Taiwanese news media largely ignored those remarks focusing instead on Bush's less specific statement.
"Bush's remarks after his meeting with Wen signal no fundamental changes to the basic U.S. policy," Foreign Minister Eugene Chien said. "President Chen himself has on many occasions declared that the referendum plan has nothing to do with the subject of independence."
Taiwanese political analysts said that if Bush wanted Taiwan to cancel its referendum, he would have to be more forceful and direct. They cite his administration's previous record of strong support for Taiwan, including unprecedented levels of arms sales and military cooperation, and the warm treatment Chen received when he traveled to the United States this fall.
"That's why popular sentiment is that President Bush would never really let Taiwan down," said Emile Sheng, a political scientist at Soochow University. "The Taiwanese people have heard so many warnings and seen so much, including Chinese missile tests, that Bush will have to be 100 percent clear if he wants to shock Taiwan into realizing there is a problem."
Chen also may be receiving mixed signals from the United States or counting on allies in the U.S. Congress to ensure the Bush administration doesn't abandon the island. Chen met Wednesday with Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), a longtime friend of Taiwan.
"There's no question in my mind that the people of Taiwan have a right to request those Chinese missiles be moved," Burton said in a telephone interview. He emphasized that Chen "stated clearly that while he is going ahead with the referendum, he is not going to move toward independence. I take him at his word. He just wants to focus attention on those missiles."
Tim Ting, a pollster, said it was unclear whether Bush's rebuke would hurt Chen's chances of reelection, but so far he has not slipped significantly in polls, which show the race is close. Ting said he expected Chen to continue pressing for the referendum. "If he retreats, he will look weak and lose," he said.
Ting and other analysts said they expected Chen to portray himself as a hero who is standing up to China and even the United States, and to cast his rival for the presidency, Nationalist leader Lien Chan, as a lackey of the Communists and the Americans.
Chen's opponents have warned that he is jeopardizing Taiwan's security by angering China and straining relations with the United States, the island's most important military ally. But they have been restrained so far. Lien declined to comment about Bush's rebuke of Chen, telling reporters he wanted to "observe" the situation.
Correspondent John Pomfret in Beijing and special correspondent Tim Culpan in Taipei contributed to this report.
-------- europe
Long Basque Rebellion Losing Strength
International Effort Squeezes Underground Separatist Group
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54614-2003Dec10?language=printer
SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain -- After more than three decades of sporadic bombings and assassinations by the separatist group known as ETA, many people here in Spain's prosperous Basque region are daring to speak of a possibility that long seemed remote: an end to one of Europe's oldest conflicts.
ETA victims, academics, local leaders, journalists, Spanish government officials and others say that the underground group, which demands a separate country for Spain's 800,000 Basque people, has been severely weakened in recent months by the arrests of scores of members and many top leaders in Spain and in France. The Basques have lived in the swath of border territory on both sides of the Pyrenees mountains for thousands of years.
Another major arrest was reported Tuesday: Police in southwestern France seized Gorka Palacio Alday, who Spanish authorities say is the group's military commander.
In addition, ETA's financial assets abroad have been squeezed by increased international cooperation. And whatever public sympathy ETA enjoyed has declined in a wave of revulsion against its killings of popular politicians and journalists.
"There's a big change developing in the Basque Country in Spain," said the Rev. Txema Auzmendi, a Basque Jesuit priest who runs a local radio station, Herri Irratia, or Radio Popular. "It looks like ETA will call it quits."
The most concrete evidence is a fall in the number of attacks and killings by ETA, the Basque-language initials for Basque Homeland and Liberty. In 2000, when ETA announced the "reactivation of armed struggle" following a 14-month cease-fire, its operatives launched 44 bombings and assassinations, in which 23 people were killed, government figures show. In 2001, it carried out 43 attacks, killing 15. But in 2002, the number of attacks dropped to 20, with five deaths, and so far this year there have been 17 strikes attributed to ETA, in which three people were killed.
ETA's rebellion, which has claimed more than 800 lives, began in the early 1960s during the repressive 40-year Spanish dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco. It has continued to bedevil the democratic governments that followed Franco's death in 1976. Spain has granted the country's Basques broad autonomy but has drawn the line at independence.
Some of the decline in attacks has been attributed to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's hard-line policy toward ETA: no negotiations, no concessions and unrelenting police pressure. Aznar, who escaped unhurt from an ETA bombing of his car in 1995, has been faulted by many in the Basque region for failing to have political dialogue with moderate Basque nationalists who run the regional government and reject violence.
Yet many critics concede that his tough approach has succeeded in keeping the group on the defensive. "Little by little, it's the end of ETA," said Gorka Landaburu, an editor at the magazine Cambio 16 and a frequent radio commentator. "ETA is arriving at the end of the road."
Landaburu is something of an expert, having become a victim of the ETA. In May 2001, he opened a letter bomb that exploded. He lost his left eye, his right thumb and some of his fingertips. He was likely saved only because he opened the package while standing up at his desk; a high-backed office chair between him and the bomb absorbed much of the blast.
While no fan of the separatists, Landaburu is also critical of Aznar's approach. "Mr. Aznar is not doing anything to try to find a way for dialogue," Landaburu said. "He thinks he can end ETA with the force of justice, the police and the French crackdown. It's the end of ETA, thanks to the pressure, thanks to the international cooperation. But there is still a need for negotiations."
The weakening of ETA has also been traced to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, which triggered the U.S.-led global war on terrorism. The State Department agreed with Aznar's request to label ETA a terrorist organization. The European Union followed suit, which led to a freezing of the group's assets and closer coordination between governments in tracking a list of ETA suspects. A series of key arrests followed in Spain and, notably, in France, which ETA has long used as its base for operations.
Spanish officials had long contended that French police had been slow to act, because almost no attacks occurred on French soil. But the French anti-terrorism police have put severe pressure on ETA members in France in the past year and a half -- prompted, many said, by the EU's labeling of ETA as a terrorist group and the shift in France, in May 2002, to a center-right government that campaigned against rising insecurity. In November 2002, Nicolas Sarkozy, the newly appointed French interior minister, visited Madrid and met in the Spanish Senate with the families of ETA victims. Sarkozy was stunned to find hundreds of people -- including children who had lost parents, and wives of slain Spanish policemen -- crammed into the chamber, an aide said. Since his return, the French crackdown has intensified.
Last August, a Spanish judge ordered a ban on the radical Basque party Batasuna, accused by the Spanish government of being the legal, political arm of ETA. Batasuna's party offices and "people's taverns," which Spanish officials consider to be recruiting grounds for ETA, were closed. At the time, many feared that banning Batasuna would cause a political backlash in the region, but it never materialized.
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, such steps would likely have drawn widespread international criticism. But in the context of the war on terrorism, Spain's actions evoked barely a note of international concern.
"No one is saying anything," said Martxelo Otamendi, chief editor of Egunkaria, a Basque-language newspaper that was closed by the government in February. Meanwhile, he said, Aznar "is closing newspapers and torturing suspects." Otamendi was detained for five days by Spain's elite Civil Guard after being accused of being an ETA member; he said he was not, but has interviewed ETA leaders. He said that during his detention, he was tortured and was forced to stand and squat naked with his hands raised for long periods. Otamendi was freed after paying a $30,000 bond, but his bank accounts were frozen and his passport was seized. He has filed a complaint in court alleging he was tortured by the anti-terrorism police.
Analysts said that ETA has been further knocked off balance as the Irish Republican Army, long considered the Basque group's soul mate, has observed a cease-fire that has enabled a peace process to proceed in Northern Ireland. Last year, the IRA apologized for killing civilians; it has also disposed of part of its arsenal.
"The IRA has been their big brother in terms of ideology," said Auzmendi, the Jesuit priest. Now ETA members "are really isolated."
Public fatigue with the conflict has also helped weaken the group, many analysts here said. "You can't kill people just because they disagree with you," said Andolin Eguzkitza, a professor of Basque culture in the Basque city of Bilbao. "People of goodwill are getting fed up." He added, "Today, many people who have been defending the work of ETA would say they have to stop."
Spanish government and security officials in Madrid and Paris agreed that ETA has been severely weakened, although they did not predict the group's imminent demise.
"ETA is in a weak situation," said Ignacio Astarloa, Spain's deputy interior minister for security. "ETA is dismantled, its ability to act is significantly reduced and the level of information the French and Spanish police forces has received is as never before."
But "as long as ETA exists, it can kill at any time," Astarloa said. "The end of ETA will come about from police action, without a doubt. I'm very clear now that ETA has an end."
Astarloa said the Sept. 11 attacks "inarguably changed things, because it lays before a lot of people the horror that terrorism really is."
In Paris, a senior French security official confirmed that French actions have been stepped up in the past two years, saying, "We've caught a lot of big fish." He added: "The Spanish believe this could be the end of ETA. We hope this is not wishful thinking."
With ETA seemingly weakened, many here say they believe now is the time for a new political deal between the Spanish government and the autonomous Basque region.
The president of the regional government, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, whose Basque Nationalist Party controls the regional legislature, is proposing a new power-sharing deal that would further increase this region's autonomy in such areas as education and health and give the Basques a seat at European Union meetings on matters that concern the Basque region.
Aznar and his supporters in Madrid condemn the plan as an unconstitutional and surreptitious attempt to achieve independence. "It's a back door to sovereignty," said Gustavo de Aristegui, a member of the Spanish parliament and the majority leader on foreign policy. "They can't get it by voting, so they try to snatch it."
But in the sleepy Basque capital of Vitoria -- a town of broad avenues and high-rise buildings -- Ibarretxe defended his plan as a way out of the impasse and the violence. "My plan is not an independence plan," Ibarretxe said in an interview. "My plan is not a plan to break up Spain, but a plan to coexist with Spain."
Ibarretxe said he condemns "totally and absolutely" the violence. "I know there are people who try to connect Basque nationalism to ETA violence, but that's very unfair," he said. "We have never defended our ideas with guns and we will never defend our ideas with guns."
Despite his protests, many people in Spain accuse Ibarretxe of implicitly siding with ETA gunmen to advance an independence agenda -- for example, by allowing members of the banned Batasuna party to continue to operate openly in the Basque Country, in defiance of Spain's Supreme Court.
Ibarretxe's autonomy plan calls for the Basque government to take full control of natural resources, infrastructure and administration of the state pension and welfare programs in the Basque territory. "We think if we manage it from here, we will do a better job than if it is managed from Madrid," he said.
What Spanish officials most oppose is an element of Ibarretxe's plan in which the Basques would send their own representatives to international bodies to protect Basque interests on such issues as fishing rights or the environment. Spanish representatives say that would amount to allowing the Basques to have a separate foreign policy, a step toward independence. Aznar's government has gone to court to have the plan declared illegal, and is threatening to have Ibarretxe jailed -- and the Basque government dissolved -- if he holds a local referendum on the proposals.
"The Spanish government has the obligation to maintain the constitution firmly," said Juan Pablo Fusi, a history professor at Madrid University. "Where I would criticize the government is that in the last two or three years, it has maintained complete political confrontation and absolutely no dialogue with the Basque government, even if the weight of the break lies with the Basque government."
Special correspondents Pamela Rolfe in Madrid and Robert Scarcia in Spain's Basque region contributed to this report.
-------- iraq
TERRORISM
U.S. Officers Predict Rise in Assassinations
December 11, 2003
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/international/middleeast/11MILI.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 - American military commanders in Iraq are warning that they anticipate a sharp increase in assassination attempts against local political leaders and security officials who are cooperating with the American efforts to stabilize the country.
Military intelligence officials said that in recent days they had gathered evidence in Iraq indicating that anti-American forces might turn increasingly to assassination, in part because allied forces have become practiced at detecting and detonating improvised explosive devices, thus far the weapon most often used in guerrilla attacks.
The officials say they expect more assassination attempts because the strengthened American response to the attacks has disrupted, at least temporarily, the planning for more complicated operations against military and government sites.
The new concern about assassinations was included in briefings by American military officials prepared for last weekend's visit to Iraq by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Pentagon and military officials said.
In addition, a Pentagon official with access to daily reports from Iraq said "hit lists" identifying Iraqi political and security officials for assassination have been found in several recent raids.
One list, this official said, had been posted on a wall inside a mosque, where it was seized by Iraqi security forces during a sweep. Another Pentagon official said the lists tend to focus on municipal- and regional-level politicians and security officers. They may be more vulnerable to attack than members of the emerging Iraqi central government, many of whom hired guards, if they did not already have them, after the assassination in September of Akila al-Hashimi, one of the three women on the Governing Council.
There were at least eight assassination attempts against Iraqi political or security figures between Oct. 31 and Nov. 20, resulting in four deaths, according to the most recent statistics compiled by the Pentagon.
Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the First Armored Division, which is responsible for security in Baghdad, has warned of "political assassinations, which attack the will - not our will - but the will of those working with us."
The assessments for Mr. Rumsfeld's visit say the attacks, including assassinations, are meant to "intimidate local government actions" and "neutralize new Iraqi security organizations."
The assessments warn that attacks against allied forces and Iraqis cooperating with the American-led mission will remain focused in central Iraq, the heartland of support for Saddam Hussein.
In other regions of Iraq, Mr. Hussein's adherents will try to "create ethnic strife," pitting Sunni Muslim against Shiite Muslim in the south and Kurds against Arabs against Turks in the north, according to the assessments.
They also noted that "actions in Baghdad have greater resonance," so even a shift toward assassination attempts should not be read as a decision by the guerrillas to abandon the high-profile rocket, mortar and truck-bomb attacks there that have seized world attention. Military officials say those attacks are designed to create a sense of chaos and instability in the Iraqi capital.
"The terrorists are adjusting their tactics," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing this week. "They undoubtedly will continue to go to school on what we do, and we'll go to school on what they do."
The assessments also highlight successes.
They say anti-American forces are having a more difficult time carrying out attacks with "improvised explosive devices," or homemade bombs. Only 5 percent of those cause casualties, while the other 95 percent are discovered, detonated safely or explode on their own without harming allied forces. But the assessments gave no total numbers for the numbers of such devices reported.
In the large area of north-central Iraq controlled by the Fourth Infantry Division, soldiers have discovered in recent days about a half-dozen improvised explosive devices constructed from fuel in drums, rather than the usual explosives. A military commander there suggested that might be an indication that fewer standard explosives are available.
In addition, the assessments say, the guerrillas' financing for attacks is being squeezed - partly because fighters are demanding high prices to participate - and the insurgency's leadership is under pressure and on the move, making it harder to plan attacks.
--------
DIPLOMACY
Bush Seeks Help of Allies Barred From Iraq Deals
December 11, 2003
By DAVID E. SANGER and DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/international/middleeast/11PREX.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 - President Bush found himself in the awkward position on Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's debts, just a day after the Pentagon said it was excluding those countries and others from $18 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects.
White House officials were fuming about the timing and the tone of the Pentagon's directive, even while conceding that they had approved the Pentagon policy of limiting contracts to 63 countries that have given the United States political or military aid in Iraq.
Many countries excluded from the list, including close allies like Canada, reacted angrily on Wednesday to the Pentagon action. They were incensed, in part, by the Pentagon's explanation in a memorandum that the restrictions were required "for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States."
The Russian defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, when asked about the Pentagon decision, responded by ruling out any debt write-off for Iraq.
The Canadian deputy prime minister, John Manley, suggested crisply that "it would be difficult" to add to the $190 million already given for reconstruction in Iraq.
White House officials said Mr. Bush and his aides had been surprised by both the timing and the blunt wording of the Pentagon's declaration. But they said the White House had signed off on the policy, after a committee of deputies from a number of departments and the National Security Council agreed that the most lucrative contracts must be reserved for political or military supporters.
Those officials apparently did not realize that the memorandum, signed by Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, would appear on a Defense Department Web site hours before Mr. Bush was scheduled to ask world leaders to receive James A. Baker III, the former treasury secretary and secretary of state, who is heading up the effort to wipe out Iraq's debt. Mr. Baker met with the president on Wednesday.
Several of Mr. Bush's aides said they feared that the memorandum would undercut White House efforts to repair relations with allies who had opposed the invasion of Iraq.
White House officials declined to say how Mr. Bush explained the Pentagon policy to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany. France and Russia were two of the largest creditors of Saddam Hussein's government. But officials hinted, by the end of the day, that Mr. Baker might be able to show flexibility to countries that write down Iraqi debt.
"I can't imagine that if you are asking to do stuff for Iraq that this is going to help," a senior State Department official said late Wednesday.
A senior administration official described Mr. Bush as "distinctly unhappy" about dealing with foreign leaders who had just learned of their exclusion from the contracts.
Under the Pentagon rules, only companies whose countries are on the American list of "coalition nations" are eligible to compete for the prime contracts, though they could act as subcontractors. The result is that the Solomon Islands, Uganda and Samoa may compete for the contracts, but China, whose premier just left the White House with promises of an expanded trade relationship, is excluded, along with Israel.
Several of Mr. Bush's aides wondered why the administration had not simply adopted a policy of giving preference to prime contracts to members of the coalition, without barring any countries outright.
"What we did was toss away our leverage," one senior American diplomat said. "We could have put together a policy that said, `The more you help, the more contracts you may be able to gain.' " Instead, the official said, "we found a new way to alienate them."
A senior official at the State Department was asked during an internal meeting on Wednesday how he expected the move to affect the responses of Russia, France and Germany to the American request. He responded, "Go ask Jim Baker," according another senior official, who said of Mr. Baker, "He's the one who's going to be carrying the water, and he's going to be the one who finds out."
In public, however, the White House defended the approach. Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said "the United States and coalition countries, as well as others that are contributing forces to the efforts there, and the Iraqi people themselves are the ones that have been helping and sacrificing to build a free and prosperous nation for the Iraqi people."
He said contracts stemming from aid to Iraq pledged by donor nations in Madrid last month would be open to broad international competition.
Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said Wednesday that while the bidding restriction applied to prime contracts, "there are very few restrictions on subcontractors."
He also said the World Bank and International Monetary Fund "may have different, or their own, rules for how they contract."
When the committee was drafting the policy, officials said, there was some discussion about whether it would be wise to declare that excluding noncoalition members was in the security interests of the United States. As a matter of trade law, countries are often allowed to limit trade with other nations on national security grounds.
"The intent was to give us the legal cover to make the decision," one official said.
But the phrase angered officials of other nations because it seemed to suggest they were a security risk.
Moreover, the United States Trade Representative's office said on Wednesday that contracts with the occupation authority "are not covered by international trade procurement obligations because the C.P.A. is not an entity subject to these obligations."
"Accordingly, there is no need to invoke the `essential security' exception to our trade obligations," the office added.
That raised the question of why Mr. Wolfowitz included the phrase.
The Pentagon was already recasting the policy on Wednesday.
"Nobody had the intent of being punitive when this was being developed," said Larry Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"This is not a fixed, closed list," he said. "This is meant to be forward looking and potentially expansive."
--------
2 Troops Killed in Attacks In Mosul
U.S. Also Probes 2 Forced Landings
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A41
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54497-2003Dec10.html
BAGHDAD, Dec. 10 -- Attacks on U.S. forces Wednesday in the northern city of Mosul left two American soldiers dead and four wounded, and military officials said they were investigating the circumstances surrounding forced landings by an Army transport plane and a helicopter gunship.
A soldier with the 101st Airborne Division was killed and another was wounded at about 11 a.m. Wednesday when a gunman shot at them as they were guarding a gas station in the eastern part of Mosul, military officials said. Three hours later, another soldier was killed and three were wounded when their vehicle hit an explosive device while traveling through the city.
The deaths brought the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action to 195 since May 1, when President Bush declared the end of major combat.
Mosul, which had been relatively peaceful in the early months of the U.S. occupation, has recently been the scene of frequent insurgent attacks. Tensions there have been exacerbated by a fuel crisis that has resulted in miles-long lines at gas stations and huge profits for black marketeers selling gas on the street, sometimes at 100 times the official government price.
An American soldier was killed and four were wounded Sunday when their Humvee hit a roadside bomb in Mosul; another soldier was killed Monday in a drive-by shooting at a Mosul gas station; and 61 people -- mostly U.S. troops -- were wounded Tuesday when a bomber blew himself up in front of a U.S. Army camp at nearby Tel Afar.
In response to the attacks, the 101st Airborne has launched aggressive operations to find insurgents, raiding homes and questioning suspects. In two operations this week, soldiers detained 52 people, including members of the Saddam's Fedayeen militia and Baath Party loyalists, and confiscated weapons and ammunition, according to a statement by the 101st.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, military officials said they were investigating whether groundfire was the cause of a forced landing by an Army C-17 transport plane at the city's airport and a similar landing by an AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship near Mosul.
Capt. Carrie Clear, a spokeswoman at Baghdad International Airport, said in an e-mail that the C-17 declared an in-flight emergency shortly after takeoff at around 4 a.m. Tuesday following an explosion in one of its engines. One person suffered a minor injury, was treated and was able to resume duty. Clear said the cause had not yet been determined.
No one aboard the Apache, whose engine caught fire, was injured, the military said.
In a 2 a.m. raid Wednesday in the town of Latifiyah, south of Baghdad, U.S. forces arrested 41 people, some of whom appeared to be responsible for the Nov. 29 attack that killed seven Spanish intelligence officers, the military said.
Among those captured was Abu Abdullah, who was described as a "cell leader." Military officials also said they detained other possible attackers and an intelligence officer, a financier and doctors linked to insurgents. The doctors allegedly treated guerrillas to help them avoid local hospitals.
Meanwhile, Iraq's Governing Council formally announced it had established a war crimes tribunal that would investigate abuses committed during the rule of former president Saddam Hussein and previous Baath Party governments. Abdul Aziz Hakim, the council's current president, said the court would prosecute war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity committed between July 14, 1968, and May 1, 2003. He cautioned Iraqis against trying to use the tribunal as a means of settling personal vendettas.
"The law includes guarantees for all the accused people, and their rights will be protected according to the international law," Hakim said.
Pentagon officials in Washington said that about 250 of the 700 Iraqi soldiers trained by the U.S.-led occupation authority have quit. Army Lt. Col. James Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said, "We are aware that a third . . . has apparently resigned, and we are looking into that."
But a Pentagon official insisted that the attrition rate in the unit, the first to be trained for the new Iraqi army, was not alarming. There already are 160,000 Iraqis providing security as police officers or civil defense members or in other organizations, he said, adding that the loss of fewer than 250 people hardly undercut the U.S. approach.
Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran and special correspondent Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad and staff writer Thomas E. Ricks in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel freezes barrier extension project
AFP
December 11, 2003
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/10/1070732281332.html
A builder works beside a recently erected part of the security fence on the West Bank. Photo: AFP
Israel has frozen plans to extend its controversial West Bank separation barrier to the Jordan Valley following a United Nations vote.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had announced on October 24 that such an extension project was being considered and was to be submitted to the Government soon.
On Monday, the United Nations General Assembly voted in favour of taking the issue of the barrier to the International Court of Justice for a legal opinion.
Israeli army officials said on Tuesday, during a meeting of the parliamentary defence and foreign affairs committee, that no construction work would be undertaken at this time for "legal reasons".
"The officers said that, according to justice ministry experts, the barrier in this sector did not qualify as 'a security fence' aimed at protecting Israeli villages, since it cuts through Palestinian villages," member of Parliament Avshalom Willan said.
Deputy Defence Minister Ze'ev Boim confirmed that there were no plans to start building a barrier in the Jordan Valley.
Erecting an extension of the separation barrier on Israel's eastern border would eventually fence in the West Bank completely and effectively annex it to the Jewish state.
Palestinians regard the barrier as a land grab of some of the region's best real estate, cutting deep into the West Bank and reducing the area to be allotted to their future state.
----
Bomb Kills 2 in Tel Aviv, but Police Call It 'Criminal Attack'
By GREG MYRE and CHRISTINE HAUSER
December 11, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/international/middleeast/11CND-MIDE.html
TEL AVIV, Dec. 11 - A bomb placed above the entrance to a currency exchange shop in Tel Aviv exploded today, killing at least two people and wounding 19 in what the Israeli police are investigating as an attack apparently aimed at an underworld figure.
"We are treating this as a criminal attack," said a police spokesman, Gil Kleiman.
And in the Gaza Strip, five Palestinians were killed today when Israeli forces raided the southern refugee camp of Rafah, using attack helicopters and opening fire on houses with heavy machine guns, according to a statement by a Palestinian spokesman carried on the official Palestinian news agency.
The statement did not say whether the casualties were all civilians.
An Israeli army spokesman said Israel's forces operated on the outskirts of Rafah to arrest a senior Islamic Jihad figure they said was responsible for weapons smuggling and attacks. The spokesman said Palestinian gunmen opened fire with anti-tank missiles and Israeli forces retaliated, killing three gunmen identified as members of Hamas.
The latest raid came after the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, met with Palestinian militants in Cairo during the past week to try to reach consensus on calling a truce with Israel. Their talks ended without agreement.
For more than three years, militants have launched scores of bomb attacks in Tel Aviv and other cities during the Palestinian uprising for statehood.
But Mr. Kleiman said the explosion here today appeared to be the sixth attempt on the life of a man police described as an "underworld figure." Previous attempts included a bomb placed in front of his office, a car bomb exploding near him, and shootings.
"We suspect he was the intended target," Mr. Kleiman said.
The man and his bodyguard were wounded in the blast, which brought down awnings in neighboring first floor shops along the street and shattered glass windows. The police taped off the area as hundreds of onlookers crowded around. The police estimated the bomb weighed about two pounds and said it was placed on top of the door or on the awning of the shop.
Greg Myre reported from Tel Aviv for this article, and Christine Hauser reported from New York.
-------- nato
NATO set to accept European defence plans, announcement expected
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Dec 11, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031211150226.frn9ioxq.html
NATO chief George Robertson said Thursday he is willing to accept a joint plan agreed by EU heavyweights France, Germany and Britain to set up a European military planning centre.
He indicated that details of the plans -- which are being watched closed by NATO and the United States -- could emerge later in the day from the EU's Italian presidency.
London, Paris and Berlin agreed a draft of the plans at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Naples at the end of October. But NATO and US leaders have warned against anything which duplicates NATO assets.
"If it is clear this is not a permanent establishement but simply the reinforcement of national sectors then I think not only could we live with that but it could be advantagoeus," he told a small group of journalists.
Asked if he believed the United States will have a problem with the plans, he said: "I speak for the alliance so I better be pretty confident that what I say usually conforms with what the consensus will be."
He added that he expects an announcement in the near future.
"There's been a fairly heavy discussion behind the scenes in order to get to this point and I'm told that .. probably in the (EU) presidency they will put it foward at some point, maybe today," he said.
-------- pakistan / india
Two Pakistani nuclear scientists detained: reports
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Dec 11, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031211164238.zxkvq6p8.html
Two Pakistani nuclear scientists have been detained amid reports they had been involved in transferring technology to Iran, opposition politicians and local media said Thursday.
Farooq Muhammad, director of Pakistan's key uranium enrichment facility Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL), and a KRL laboratory director, Yasin Chohan, were arrested this month, the reports said.
"They have been arrested and are under detention," opposition senator Ishaq Dar, of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, told AFP.
"I say this with full responsibility on the basis of credible information."
Local Urdu-language newspaper Jinnah reported that caucasian men wearing bullet-proof jackets had arrested Farooq at his home in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad. It said Chohan was also taken from his home.
A government spokesman refused to confirm whether the two men were in detention. A foreign ministry statement said nuclear scientists routinely underwent "personnel dependability and debriefing programs".
"The matter referred to falls within the scope of such programs," the statement added, referring to the reported detentions.
Farooq's daughter refused to discuss her father's whereabouts when contacted by AFP.
"No comment," she replied, declining to give her name.
"The family is fine and there is nothing for us to worry about."
The government rejected local media reports that the two men were connected to alleged transfers of nuclear technology to Iran.
"There are reports about many sources from where Iran could have obtained nuclear technology, including several Western companies and individuals. The focus should be on checking out with those sources," the foreign ministry said.
The PML-N party said it believed the two men were being held by US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents.
"According to our information, the FBI is holding Director General Dr Farooq and Laboratory Director Yasin Chohan with the assistance of Pakistani agencies," said a party statement, condemning the arrests.
At a press conference late Thursday the PML-N accused President Pervez Musharraf of allowing foreigners to arrest Pakistan's most prized government employees, as nuclear scientists are perceived here.
"The detention of the two nuclear scientists shows Musharraf wants to perpetuate his rule by pleasing foreign powers. He has crossed all limits to disgrace, humiliate and surrender on national interests," PML-N chief coordinator Ahsan Iqbal said.
"This kind of action will only support the cause of those elements who think the American war against terrorism is in fact a war against Muslims."
The PML-N aslo raised concerns that the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, may also come under future arrest.
Khan, who founded KRL, has been named in international media reports, quoting foreign intelligence officials, which claim that Pakistan aided both Iran's and North Korea's nuclear program.
KRL, based on the outskirts of Pakistan's capital Islamabad, was sanctioned by the United States in March for allegedly helping an unnamed foreign country or entity to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Islamabad, which went public as a nuclear power in May 1998 when it conducted underground nuclear tests, consistently denies reports of exporting nuclear know-how.
-------- prisoners of war
Appeals Court Says Bush Can't Hold U.S. Citizen
By Gail Appleson
(Reuters)
Thu, Dec 18, 2003
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20031218/ts_nm/security_padilla_dc
NEW YORK - The president of the United States does not have the power to detain an American citizen seized on U.S. soil as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, in a serious setback to the bush administration's war on terror.
The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, said only the U.S. Congress can authorize such detentions and it ordered the government to release Jose Padilla from military custody within 30 days.
The court said that the government can transfer Padilla, a U.S. citizen who has been held incommunicado in a Navy prison, to a civilian authority that can bring criminal charges against him.
"Presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the President is obligated in the circumstances presented here to share them with Congress," the court said.
"Where, as here, the President's power as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and the domestic rule of law intersect, we conclude that clear congressional authorization is required for detentions of Americans on American soil...."
A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. Attorneys office did not have an immediate comment.
In Washington, Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said, "We are reviewing the opinion." He declined further comment.
Padilla is a suspect in an al Qaeda plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States. He was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport 18 months ago as he arrived from Pakistan. He was transported to Manhattan federal court system where he was held as a material witness in a federal grand jury terrorism investigation. The Bush administration later classified him as an enemy combatant and he was transferred to a Navy prison in South Carolina.
His New York lawyers sought his release as well as access to their client.
Federal prosecutors have argued Padilla should not have access to attorneys because they said he posed a threat to national security and defense lawyers would interfere with his interrogation. They also believe defense lawyers could unwittingly be used to pass messages to al Qaeda operatives.
-------- spies
Iraq Spy Service Planned by U.S. To Stem Attacks
CIA Said to Be Enlisting Hussein Agents
By Dana Priest and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A41
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54518-2003Dec10.html
The Bush administration has authorized creation of an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new government, according to U.S. government officials.
The new service will be trained, financed and equipped largely by the CIA with help from Jordan. Initially the agency will be headed by Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Badran, a secular Shiite and activist in the Jordan-based Iraqi National Accord, a former exile group that includes former Baath Party military and intelligence officials.
Badran and Ayad Alawi, leader of the INA, are spending much of this week at CIA headquarters in Langley to work out the details of the new program. Both men have worked closely with the CIA over the past decade in unsuccessful efforts to incite coups against Saddam Hussein. The agency and the two men believe they can effectively screen former government officials to find agents for the service and weed out those who are unreliable or unsavory, officials said.
By contrast, some Pentagon officials and Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, vehemently oppose allowing former intelligence and military officials into the new organization for fear they cannot be trusted. Intelligence experts said Chalabi and his sponsors also fear some former government officials would use the new apparatus to undermine the influence of Chalabi, who wants to play a central role in a new Iraq.
Although no deadline has been set, officials hope to have the service running by mid-February. Congress had approved money for the effort in the classified annex of this year's budget. The service will focus largely on domestic intelligence and is seen by some administration officials as a critical step in the administration's effort to hand over the running of the country to Iraqis.
The CIA declined to comment on the program.
Establishing the service is just one of several new steps the CIA is taking to deal with an increasingly worrisome Iraqi resistance, U.S. intelligence officials said. In recent weeks, the deputy director for intelligence, Jami Miscik, has pulled together an analytical working group at CIA headquarters similar to the task force the agency used during the war. Miscik has more than doubled the number of analysts working to identify insurgents and their sources of support.
Likewise, the CIA station in Baghdad has grown significantly since major combat operations ceased, as have the number of substations around the country. "The intelligence community doesn't understand what's going on in Iraq and has decided to put a whole bunch of analytical manpower on it," one intelligence official said. "They definitely didn't think this would happen as it has," the official said, referring to the resilience of the insurgency.
Another U.S. intelligence official used the phrase "midcourse correction" to describe new efforts by the larger intelligence community, which includes military intelligence.
Two weeks ago, the U.S. occupation authority decided to form a paramilitary unit to track down insurgents. The unit, composed of Iraqi militiamen from the country's five largest political parties, will work with U.S. Special Forces soldiers, and their operations will be overseen by U.S. military commanders. Since the summer, the CIA has recruited and trained some former Iraqi intelligence agents to help identify the insurgents.
Setting up a new intelligence service is an obvious next step as U.S. forces work to thwart daily attacks that have killed and maimed Iraqis and Americans. But the challenges are daunting, especially in a country where the four secret Iraqi intelligence services acted for decades as Hussein's main apparatus of control.
Because political rivalries are acute in Iraq, some U.S. government officials with knowledge of the program said they are worried that various Sunni or Shiite factions could eventually use the service to secretly undermine their political competitors.
According to some U.S. officials, L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. governor in Iraq, has come to regret his decision to disband the Iraqi army and, similarly, has become more open to using former Iraqi intelligence officials in the new service. In the summer Bremer dissolved Iraq's four intelligence services, along with the ministries of information and defense.
To vet Iraq's former intelligence officials, the CIA has flown polygraph machines to Iraq. To help determine who is worth hiring, the CIA is relying on help from intelligence officials from Jordan and other Middle Eastern nations, from Iraqis on the Governing Council and from political leaders in the provinces.
Hussein's government kept meticulous records of its intelligence personnel and operations. Literally tons of these documents are now in U.S. hands and are being used to question new intelligence service recruits.
Still, the outstanding issue is, "to what degree you bring back former intelligence service," one U.S. intelligence expert said.
Candidates for positions in the new service will have to pledge loyalty to the goals of a free Iraq, an official said, and then provide a full accounting of what they were involved with in the past -- an honest airing of what they did for the previous government and what they did for Hussein.
"We'll try to build in enough protection," another official said.
In the past, U.S. efforts to set up or bolster foreign intelligence services have had mixed results.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, high-level CIA officials traveled to each newly independent state offering help. In Prague, for example, the CIA station tripled in size. The agency built a secure, bug-proof room in the prime minister's castle, gave the president an armor-plated fleet of cars and helped the government find secret communist sleeper cells. In Iran, the CIA helped equip and train the Iranian secret police, Savak, whose human rights abuses against its own citizens under the shah fueled the revolution that brought Shiite fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini to power.
"Intelligence services are the heart and soul of a new country," said one former CIA operative who helped several post-communist countries establish new services.
--------
Rumsfeld Seeks Better Intelligence On Iraqi Insurgents
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A43
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54451-2003Dec10.html
Despite his optimistic public comments about the success of U.S. forces in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has privately expressed the need for better intelligence on whether Iraqi insurgents are replenishing their ranks faster than they are being killed and captured.
In a closed-door session with defense analysts and retired officers three days before Thanksgiving, Rumsfeld said he was not quite as confident as Gen. John Abizaid, his top military commander in Iraq, about U.S. gains in counterinsurgency operations because he cannot gauge the extent to which foreign terrorists and new Iraqi recruits are joining the fight led by former Baath Party members, a person who attended the session said.
Another who attended the Pentagon session said Rumsfeld commented: "We know we're killing a lot, capturing a lot, collecting arms. We just don't know yet whether that's the same as winning."
"That was a very legitimate point," the attendee said. "We don't really have a sense. He did mention that 90 percent of the country is quiet."
Rumsfeld's comments mirrored those in a private memo he sent to his closest advisers in October in which he said defense officials and military commanders lack a good set of measures to determine how well they are doing in the global war on terrorism.
In the memo, Rumsfeld predicted that victory in Iraq and Afghanistan would only come with "a long, hard slog" and said, "Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror."
During the closed-door session on Iraq, according to four of those in attendance, Rumsfeld made a similar point about the lack of accurate "metrics."
"The best you can say at this moment is that we are holding our own," said one attendee, explaining that Rumsfeld and other top defense officials do not seem to have a good sense of precisely who they are fighting, what their level of organization is or how fast they can replenish their ranks.
Retired Army Col. Andrew J. Bacevich, who teaches strategy and security issues at Boston University, said Rumsfeld is "right to be concerned. There has never been a time in U.S. military history when, six months into a war, we have known so little about the enemy."
"Apart from the issue of numbers," Bacevich said, "we don't know who is in charge, we appear to have very little knowledge about organization, and we don't seem to have a clear understanding of the enemy's purpose."
William S. Lind, a defense analyst at the Free Congress Foundation, a Washington think tank, believes that Rumsfeld's search for "metrics" of success misses the fundamental nature of the war in Iraq, which pits U.S. forces against a "non-state" enemy. While the U.S. military insists upon defining success "in comparative attrition rates," Lind wrote in a recent column, "what 'wins' at the tactical and physical levels may lose at the operational, strategic, mental and moral levels," where this conflict will be decided.
U.S. military commanders in Iraq cite numerous metrics to bolster their contention that they are slowly grinding down the Iraqi insurgents and winning over the Iraqi people. On the combat side of the ledger, they talk about the number of Iraqis killed and captured; the amount of weapons and money seized; the frequency and sophistication of enemy attacks; the number of Iraqis volunteering to serve in the Iraqi police, civil defense corps, facilities protection service and border patrol, and the amount and quality of intelligence received from Iraqis.
Another Army officer involved in Iraq issues noted that commanders have begun figuring out the insurgents' cell structure to gauge the effectiveness of their raids and sweeps. "For example, if we kill or capture midlevel cells that are serving as conduits for money from above, the chain is disrupted, but only until it can be reconstituted," the officer said. "We recognize this."
The real problem, he added, is that success against the insurgency "demands coordinated military, political, informational and economic efforts to remove the fundamental sources of strength -- it is here where we are encountering our greatest difficulties."
Indeed, commanders and other officers in Iraq said that while such metrics are important, there is a danger in defining success against a guerrilla force using metrics more appropriate for conventional warfare.
"The issue of quantifying success in counterinsurgency operations is a fool's errand," said one officer based in Baghdad. "It is great for business management, but not for the conduct of war. It is something that is questionable in conventional warfare and downright dangerous in unconventional warfare, simply because it will force you into taking actions based on that which is to be measured and not on what needs to be done."
An officer in Mosul said quantifying success against the Iraqi insurgents "is not a science. Some of it is literally just a commander's feel -- your sense of whether there's more bad guys out there than less."
Another officer based in Khaldiyah, one of the difficult sectors of the Sunni Triangle, said a recent decrease in attacks after U.S. forces stepped up raids suggests that the insurgents cannot replenish their ranks at the rate they are being dismantled.
"The primary indication to me that we are succeeding is the number of human intelligence sources we have coming to our gate, leading us to weapons caches, telling us about the enemy in their neighborhoods," the officer said.
After a recent mortar attack on his headquarters, he added, an Iraqi showed up and turned in the cell responsible for the strike. The relevant metric: "That neighborhood," the officer said, "has given us no problems since."
Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.
-------- war crimes
Srebrenica Sentencing
December 11, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/international/europe/11HAGU.html
THE HAGUE, Dec. 10 (Reuters) - A former Bosnian Serb army commander was sentenced to 17 years in prison by the United Nations war crimes tribunal on Wednesday after confessing his role in the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995.
The former commander, Dragan Obrenovic, pleaded guilty to one count of crimes against humanity. A plea deal resulted in the dismissal of five other counts, including extermination and murder.
Mr. Obrenovic, the chief of staff of the Zvornik Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, was aware of the murders in Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in July 1995 after the enclave was captured. He failed to prevent subordinates from taking part or to punish those responsible, said the presiding judge, Liu Daqun.
--------
Serb Policeman Describes Massacre in Kosovo
December 11, 2003
By NICHOLAS WOOD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/international/europe/11SERB.html
BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 10 - For the first time since the end of the 1990's wars that broke up Yugoslavia, a former Serbian policeman went before a local court on Wednesday and described how his police reserve unit had taken part in the massacre of at least 14 people, including 7 children.
The policeman, Goran Stoparic, said his unit, known as the Scorpions, was sent to the town of Podujevo in eastern Kosovo on March 28, 1999 - five days into the war with NATO over Kosovo - and rounded up a group of women and children and shot them. The unit was withdrawn from Kosovo into Serbia proper the same day, he said.
The trial of one member of the unit, Sasa Cvjetan, who is accused of killing 19 people, is the eighth in Serbia to tackle crimes committed in the three main Yugoslav wars of the 1990's. While witnesses at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague have detailed the involvement of police officers and soldiers in war crimes, Serbian courts so far have excluded accusations pointing to government involvement.
Even senior members of the Serbian government that succeeded the wartime administration of Slobodan Milosevic deny that the government had any role in massacres or brutal expulsions of non-Serbs in the conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Mr. Stoparic described how his unit had been deployed to Kosovo after the start of NATO's bombing campaign. He said the unit had been issued weapons close to the border of Kosovo, Serbia's southern province, which is inhabited mostly by Albanians. He said the men had been driven in two buses to Podujevo and told that they were to seize territory captured by the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army.
Once they entered the town, he said, the unit's commander instructed them to find accommodation in local houses. In one house, Mr. Stoparic said, Mr. Cvjetan led a group of women and children into the backyard, where they were joined by several other unit members.
A minute later, Mr. Stoparic testified, he heard four to five bursts of automatic gunfire. He said that he had not seen any bodies, but that Mr. Cvjetan and three other unit members left shortly afterward, reloading their guns as they went.
A member of a special antiterrorist unit, identified only as Vuk, then entered the backyard and reappeared with a wounded girl, Mr. Stoparic told the court.
The man called Vuk stopped a colleague trying to enter the yard, saying: "They've killed them. There is nothing to see." The colleague then asked Vuk if everyone was dead, and Vuk said yes, Mr. Stoparic added.
Five children survived the shootings, though, including one girl who had 16 bullet wounds in her arms, legs and back. All five, who now live in Britain, gave testimony in July when the trial started and identified Mr. Cvjetan as having been among the killers.
Enver Duriqi, a Kosovo Albanian man, lost his mother, father, wife and four children from 21 months to 9 years old in the massacre. The seven other known victims were all members of the Bogujevci family, also from Podujevo.
Mr. Stoparic was to have given his testimony on Monday but pleaded illness at the last minute. Questioned by a lawyer for the victims' families if he had been threatened before the hearing, he said the unit's commander had approached him outside the courtroom. "He did not say he would kill me," Mr. Stoparic said. "He said the consequences would be drastic."
Throughout his three and a half hours of testimony, Mr. Stoparic was guarded by bodyguards, and the court ordered protection maintained for him.
Asked why he had decided to testify now, he said he felt obliged to do so because children had been killed.
"Now I am a Serbian traitor," he said. "Even if I am killed, it would be worth it because of the children who were killed. I participated in wars for 10 years and never saw anyone kill children."
Last Friday several other former members of the unit, including its commander, Slobodan Medic, testified that none of them had been present at the shootings. Only two unit members are on trial, Mr. Cvjetan and Dejan Demirovic, who is in Canada and is being tried in absentia. Mr. Cvjetan could face up to 15 years in prision if convicted.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Judge Questions Sentence in Al Qaeda Case
December 11, 2003
By DAVID STABA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/national/11LACK.html
BUFFALO, Dec. 10 - A man described as the leader of a group of Yemenite-Americans from Lackawanna, N.Y., who attended a training camp run by Al Qaeda was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a federal judge who questioned the term's adequacy.
"Perhaps in your case, it is not long enough," the judge, William M. Skretny of Federal District Court, told Yahya Goba, 26, who pleaded guilty to supporting Al Qaeda earlier this year.
Five other men from Lackawanna, a city just south of here, pleaded guilty to similar charges, with three receiving their sentences in the past week.
In Mr. Goba's case, Judge Skretny imposed the maximum sentence allowed by a 1996 law. He said that under federal sentencing guidelines Mr. Goba would have faced a term of 15 1/2 to 19 1/2 years if not for limits set by the 1996 law.
"In my view, a term in that range might have been more appropriate," said the judge, who also mentioned Mr. Goba's role in collecting money to pay the group's travel expenses.
According to Mr. Goba's plea agreement, he allowed a Qaeda recruiter, whom prosecutors have refused to identify, to stay at his home before the men traveled to the Farooq camp in the spring of 2001. The recruiter, identified by lawyers familiar with the case as Kamal Derwish, persuaded the men to attend the camp during meetings at Mr. Goba's home, the agreement said.
Once there, Mr. Goba and the others received training in the use of firearms and explosives, as well as performing guard duty.
After returning to the United States in August, 2001, Mr. Goba allowed another man, identified by government officials as Juma Al Dosari, who had been involved in recruiting the Lackawanna group to stay in his home. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Goba and others gave Mr. Al Dosari money to leave the country, Mr. Goba's lawyer said.
"Mr. Goba and some others in the Lackawanna community contributed money to get this person out of the community because they felt he was a bad person and they wanted him out of town," said William Clauss, the defense lawyer.
Prosecutors agreed with Mr. Clauss's contention that Mr. Goba and the others who financed Mr. Al Dosari's trip thought he was going to Bahrain. On the eve of his departure, Mr. Al Dosari said he was going to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban against American forces.
Mr. Goba, whose infant daughter was born after his arrest on Sept. 13, 2002, apologized before receiving his sentence, which also includes three years of supervised release and a $1,500 fine.
"I love my country," Mr. Goba said. "I'm lucky to be an American and I'm proud to be an American."
The prosecutor, William Hochul Jr., said Mr. Goba had cooperated with government investigators as required by the plea agreement, providing particularly useful information about the recruiting strategies of Al Qaeda.
--------
Judge in Terror Trial Orders Hearing on Prosecutors
By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54448-2003Dec10.html
The judge in the first terror trial after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has ordered an emergency hearing Friday to determine why prosecutors did not turn over evidence that defense attorneys contend would have helped exonerate their clients.
U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen said that anyone who has "knowledge of this matter, including, but not limited to, information as to why this evidence was not provided to defense counsel" should show up Friday.
Attorneys for Karim Koubriti, Ahmed Hannan and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, all originally charged with terrorism-related offenses, had complained that prosecutors were stonewalling and failing to provide timely information. This week, attorneys said that prosecutors engaged in a "pattern of misconduct" and that the convictions should be voided.
Elmardoudi and Koubriti were convicted of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and to fraudulently obtain documents such as government visas. Hannan was cleared of terrorism but convicted of engaging in document fraud. They face up to 20 years in prison. A fourth person, Farouk Ali-Haimoud, was acquitted.
The attorneys' request came after federal prosecutors acknowledged last month that they had not turned over an FBI interview with a convicted drug dealer who undercut the testimony of a key government witness. In a December 2000 letter, Milton "Butch" Jones wrote that prosecution witness Youssef Hmimssa told him while they were in jail "how he lied to the FBI, how he fool'd the Secret Service agent on his case."
Prosecutors also belatedly turned over an interview with a former roommate of two defendants in which he said the men were lazy and drank and smoke.
Defense attorneys argued that their clients were not the devout Muslims that prosecutors said they were.
In September, prosecutors Richard G. Convertino and Keith Corbett were removed without explanation. The new prosecutor, Eric Strauss, turned over the information in mid-November.
--------
Did the Pennsylvania Legislature Cross the Line?
Supreme Court Hears Democrats' Complaint About GOP Gerrymandering House Districts
By Lara Jakes Jordan
Associated Press
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54396-2003Dec10.html
The Supreme Court used Pennsylvania's congressional map yesterday to consider whether the redrawing of election districts by states has become too political.
At issue is a 19-district map that was prepared last year by the Republican-controlled state Legislature, and forced three Democratic lawmakers out of office. The high court debated whether drawing districts to favor one party can be constitutional or a political matter best left for states.
"How unfair is unfair?" Justice Antonin Scalia asked.
"If a party is getting two-thirds of the seats with less than half of the vote, I submit that's unfair," answered Paul M. Smith, who argued on behalf of a group of Democrats.
Republicans hold 12 of Pennsylvania's 19 congressional seats, but Democrats have a 445,000-voter edge over the GOP in the state. Previously, the Republicans had 11 seats to the Democrats' 10. Because of the state's slower-than-average population growth, Pennsylvania lost two of its 21 U.S. House seats after the 2000 Census.
The Supreme Court has made it almost impossible to win a claim that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, although justices left the door open to such claims in a splintered 1986 ruling.
The case argued yesterday, Vieth v. Jubelirer, is important because of the stakes involved in boundary-drawing for political parties. States must redraw boundaries after every census to reflect population shifts. Legislatures and political parties have begun using sophisticated computer analyses to ferret out the best places to pick up more seats.
If the court makes it easier to challenge maps, some states could be forced to redraw their districts, which could threaten Republican control of the House.
The case "puts the Supreme Court in a terrible bind," said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University. "The court has historically avoided political questions, and respected the public to render its own judgment on the propriety of political maneuvers or tactics."
Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General J. Bart DeLone, defending the Republican map, shrugged off whether politics played a part in drawing the lines.
"There's nothing wrong with it," DeLone told the court. "I think you can assume there was a political motivation. And frankly, we don't have a problem with that. The question is whether or not [Democrats] have been shut out of the process."
Justice John Paul Stevens criticized Republicans for failing to justify the political gerrymandering that the Democrats charge violates the "one person, one vote" requirement protected in the Constitution.
"When you have a very strangely shaped district, the burden is on you to point out one neutral justification for it," Stevens said. "But you can't point to anything."
-------- death penalty
High Court Halts Texas Execution in Appeal of Drug Lawsuit
Associated Press
Thursday, December 11, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54952-2003Dec11.html
HUNTSVILLE, Tex., Dec. 10 -- The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution Wednesday of a condemned inmate who was part of a lawsuit that challenged one of the drugs used to carry out the death sentence.
Kevin Lee Zimmerman won his reprieve about 20 minutes before he could have been put to death for a robbery and fatal stabbing at a Beaumont motel in 1987.
In a brief order, Justice Antonin Scalia stopped the punishment pending an additional order from him or the court.
"I'm disappointed," Zimmerman told a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman, Michelle Lyons.
"I was ready to go. The stay only means 18 more months of this."
The lawsuit had allowed another inmate, Billy Frank Vickers, to avoid the death chamber Tuesday. Rejection of the lawsuit Wednesday by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for Zimmerman's execution until the Supreme Court order was issued.
Citing the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment, the lawsuit sought to stop use of pancuronium bromide -- a drug that paralyzes muscles.
Texas, the first state to execute condemned inmates by injection, uses three drugs: pancuronium bromide, the barbiturate sodium thiopental and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest.
Vickers's execution was postponed when the 5th Circuit failed to rule by midnight, and the death warrant expired. After the appeals court rejected the case Wednesday, it was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
-------- homeland security
Nanotechnology's Homeland Security Potential To Be Explored
Dec 11, 2003
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanotech-03zzr.html
Moffett Field - Nanotechnology's potential to help with homeland security is the subject of a forum that hundreds of experts from industry, academia and government will attend Monday, Dec. 15, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. PST in Bldg. 3 at NASA Research Park at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.
Nanotechnology is the creation of materials, devices and systems through the control of matter on the nanometer scale. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, roughly 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Scientists say nanotechnology could lead to changes in almost everything from computers and medicine to automobiles and spacecraft.
"NASA is using nanotechnology to reduce the weight and increase the capability of spacecraft. One of the strongest of the nation's lines of defense could include microscopic sensors and machines derived from our NASA work," said G. Scott Hubbard, director of NASA Ames. "This revolutionary, new technology could provide a vital component of the nation's ongoing efforts to defend against terrorist threats," Hubbard stated.
NASA is co-hosting the Nanotechnology and Homeland Security Forum with U.S. Reps. Anna G. Eshoo, Zoe Lofgren and Mike Honda. Honda is co-sponsor of the Boehlert-Honda Nanotechnology Bill, H.R. 766. After emerging from a bipartisan committee, the bill resulted in S 189 that President Bush Dec. 3 signed into law. It authorizes $3.7 billion for research over the next four years for the National Nanotechnology Initiative.
"This will be a big shot in the arm for Silicon Valley and for the country's economy," Honda said. "Nanotechnology has the potential to create entirely new industries and radically transform the basis of competition in other fields," Honda added. The National Science Foundation has projected a $1 trillion global nanotechnology market within the next decade.
The forum will include four panel discussions: Homeland Security Technology Needs, Homeland Security Nanotechnology R&D, Venture Capital and Government Funding, and Business Role and Market.
"I'm proud to welcome the Nanotechnology and Homeland Security Forum to the heart of Silicon Valley," said Eshoo. "Our region has for decades led the world in developing innovative solutions to our most pressing technological challenges. As we address the critical question of how to strengthen homeland security, I have no doubt that many of the answers will be found right here," Eshoo added.
The meeting will include key participants from NASA Ames, other Bay Area federal laboratories (including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.), universities, and such companies as Hewlett-Packard, Genencor, The Boeing Company and representatives from the venture capital community and the federal government.
"It is essential that we bring leading thinkers and innovators together to understand the tremendous potential of nanotechnology and what needs to be done to further encourage its development," said Lofgren. "I always look forward to learning more about the exciting work that is being done at NASA Ames in the area of nanotechnology," Lofgren continued.
"This forum will provide participants with an excellent opportunity to see and hear first hand much of the work and research that is being done in the areas of homeland security and nanotechnology, learn of funding opportunities and share ideas on the future of the Bay Area economy," said Michael Marlaire, NASA Ames' assistant director for development.
There also will be breakout sessions for: roundtable discussions on the Northern California Nanotechnology and Convergence Roadmap, presentations of early stage companies and technologies and various funding opportunities in this field.
"Nanotechnology provides an enormous opportunity to increase the sensitivity of sensors for detecting chemical, biological and nuclear threats," said Meyya Meyyappan, director of the Center for Nanotechnology at NASA Ames. "The bonus is that the product can come in ultra-small size, requiring only low power levels," Meyyappan added.
The forum is co-sponsored by: Technet, Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium (BASIC), Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network, Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, Bay Area Economic Forum, Northern California Nanotechnology Initiative, NOVA (North Valley Workforce Board) and the cities of Palo Alto, Mountain View and Sunnyvale, Calif.
Related Links
Nanotechnology at NASA http://www.ipt.arc.nasa.gov
SpaceDaily http://www.spacedaily.com/
Search SpaceDaily http://www.spacedaily.com/cgi-bin/search/search.cgi
Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express http://www.spacedaily.com/subscribe.html
----
Secret Service Takes Blame for Waiter's Exit
Agency Says Muslim Was Not on Work List for Bush Banquet; He Says He Was
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54565-2003Dec10.html
The Secret Service took responsibility yesterday for sending an Arab American waiter home from his job at a Baltimore hotel before a presidential fundraiser last week. But it said the decision resulted from confusion over his work schedule, rather than from ethnic or religious discrimination.
While expressing regret over the incident, the Secret Service also stopped short of offering the apology that the waiter, Mohamad I. Pharoan, 58, has sought.
Pharoan, a Syrian-born Muslim who immigrated to the United States in 1992 and became a citizen in 1996, was told to go home shortly after he arrived Friday morning at the Hyatt Regency at the Inner Harbor, where he has worked for seven years.
He had expected to help serve lunch to 550 people at a banquet at which President Bush raised $1 million for his reelection campaign. Instead, he says, he was given a few minutes to change clothes and was escorted off the premises after a manager asked him one question: "Is your name Mohamad?"
Last week, the Secret Service denied that it had requested the hotel's management to dismiss Pharoan for the day. But a spokesman said yesterday that after further review, the Secret Service found it was responsible.
"Mr. Pharoan was dismissed when the Secret Service learned he was not among the employees that we were aware were scheduled to work that event," said the spokesman, John Gill.
"We seek to assure Mr. Pharoan and the Arab American community that the problems he experienced on that day were in no way related to his ethnic or religious background. These problems simply stemmed from confusion over a work schedule," Gill said. "The Secret Service regrets any difficulties and inconvenience this confusion may have caused the employee involved."
Pharoan said in a telephone interview from his home in Dundalk, Md., that he does not accept the Secret Service's explanation. He said the hotel's work schedule was printed and distributed a week in advance. He still has a copy on his refrigerator, he said, and it clearly shows him working last Friday.
Moreover, Pharoan said, the Hyatt Regency's security staff told him that his name was on the list given to the Secret Service for background checks. "I was one of the employees allowed to come to work that day, and my name was checked off when I arrived," he said. "It's not true at all, what they say about 'not scheduled' or confusion."
The Hyatt Regency's general manager, Robert L. Steele III, did not return calls seeking comment. Pharoan said Steele apologized, promised to pay him for Friday and assured 100 employees at a staff meeting Monday that the hotel had merely followed the Secret Service's orders.
-------- immigration / refugees
Ridge Favors a Status Short of Citizenship for Illegal Immigrants
December 11, 2003
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/politics/11IMMI.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 - Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has called for millions of illegal immigrants in the United States to be given some sort of legal status short of citizenship, a proposal suggesting that the Bush administration might revive an ambitious legalization plan that was sidetracked after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In comments on Tuesday at a town hall meeting in Miami, Mr. Ridge said, "The bottom line is, as a country, we have to come to grips with the presence of 8 to 12 million illegals, afford them some kind of legal status some way."
Mr. Ridge, who became the government's chief spokesman on immigration issues after his new department took control over immigration policy this year, said the government might consider legalizing the status of illegal immigrants already in the country on a one-time basis.
Do "Then, as a country, you make a decision that from this day forward, this is the process of entry, and if you violate that process of entry, we have resources to cope with it," he said in response to a question from the audience at Miami-Dade Community College about his support for changes in immigration policy.
Aides to Mr. Ridge said that his comments were not scripted and not formally approved by the White House but that they reflected a growing view in the Bush administration that the federal government needed to find a way to register illegal immigrants, if only for reasons of national security.
Brian J. Roehrkasse, Mr. Ridge's spokesman, said, "The secretary acknowledges that we have several million people here illegally, and he understands that for homeland security reasons, at some point in time, there needs to be a better way to identify those who may be a threat to our country."
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration had appeared eager to reach agreement with the government of President Vicente Fox in Mexico on a plan to provide legal status to millions of Mexicans illegally in the United States, a proposal advocated largely on economic and humanitarian grounds.
The administration's enthusiasm for the proposal evaporated after Sept. 11, when the attention of law enforcement and intelligence agencies turned to blocking illegal immigrants from entering the United States and finding - and often deporting - those who were here.
In his comments in Florida, Mr. Ridge said that the issue of legalization needed to be revived and that the government would need to find a way to provide some sort of legal protection to people who entered the United States illegally. He insisted, however, that the protections would not included citizenship.
"I'm not saying make them citizens, because they violated the law to get here," he said. "So you don't reward that type of conduct by turning over a citizenship certificate."
He offered no details on what sort of legal status might be offered to the immigrants, although administration officials have previously suggested that illegal immigrants might be granted work permits and provided with drivers' licenses.
Mr. Ridge's comments were welcomed by immigrant-rights groups. Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said his remarks were "a good step forward," adding "It's a signal that we can come back to the table and talk about what is realistic."
--------
Ridge Revives Debate on Immigrant Status
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54338-2003Dec10.html
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told a Miami audience this week that the U.S. government should consider offering some form of legal status to as many as 12 million illegal immigrants, raising the issue of immigration reform, which was halted by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"The bottom line is, as a country we have to come to grips with the presence of 8 [million] to 12 million illegals, afford them some kind of legal status some way, but also as a country decide what our immigration policy is and then enforce it," Ridge said Tuesday at a town hall meeting in response to a question from the audience, according to press reports.
"I'm not saying make them citizens, because they violated the law to get here," he added. "But . . . you determine how you can legalize their presence."
Ridge's comments appear to be the strongest endorsement of immigration reform from a Bush administration official since the terror strikes more than two years ago, which prompted the government to tighten border controls and abandon talks with Mexico that were aimed at easing immigration restrictions.
Homeland Security officials said yesterday that Ridge's remarks were not intended as a proposal or a change in government policy but were meant only to point out an obvious challenge facing the government. Ridge has made similar remarks in at least two other recent appearances, officials said.
"The secretary was merely acknowledging a very practical problem that exists," said Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse. "There are several million people here illegally, and at some point in time it would be good to have an accounting of these people so we can identify those that might be a threat to us."
In the weeks leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush had begun talks with Mexican President Vicente Fox to create a method of legalizing the presence of more than 3 million undocumented Mexicans living in the United States. The negotiations were part of a broad White House strategy to woo Hispanic voters and help business leaders.
"There are many in our country who are undocumented and we want to make sure that their labor is legal," Bush said at the time.
But the Sept. 11 attacks, carried out by 19 foreign nationals who entered the United States legally on visas, abruptly brought an end to those negotiations and prompted a series of measures aimed at tightening border controls.
White House officials have said since that they are open to a temporary-worker program that would allow some workers to obtain legal status, but they have not actively championed any legislative proposals. Several legalization and guest-worker measures also have been proposed on Capitol Hill.
Judy Golub, a spokeswoman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that providing a mechanism to legalize some undocumented immigrants would allow the government to focus its attention on those who pose a real threat to national security.
"If this is a sign that the administration is turning back to immigration reform, it is very welcome," Golub said. "I'd much rather the government go after people who are out to harm us and not people just here to fill our labor needs."
-------- prisons / prisoners
German Judge Frees 9/11 Suspect, Citing New Evidence
December 11, 2003
By DESMOND BUTLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/international/europe/11CND-TERR.html?hp
BERLIN, Dec. 11 - A judge surprised a Hamburg courtroom today by ordering the release of a Moroccan man accused of aiding the Sept. 11 hijackers, after the German police said they had seen evidence that a witness had testified to American interrogators that only four people from the Hamburg cell knew of the attack.
The man who was freed, Abdelghani Mzoudi, had been on trial on charges of being an accessory in the deaths of more than 3,000 people in the attacks in the United States.
But Judge Klaus Ruehle expressed doubt today that the defendant had knowledge of the attacks. "There is the serious possibility that Mzoudi, despite his involvement and his visit to Afghanistan, was deliberately excluded from planning for the attacks and did not consciously provide a supportive role," the judge said, according to Reuters.
By implication, the judge's decision also raised questions about the conviction of another man in the case, Mounir el-Motassadeq, who was sentenced this year to 15 years after being convicted of similar charges.
After Judge Ruehle's action to free Mr. Mzoudi, Mr. Motassadeq's lawyers immediately filed papers seeking his release and renewed their appeal of his conviction.
"This is a bombshell," said Hans Leistritz, who represented Mr. Motassadeq at his trial.
The new evidence concerned testimony of an unidentified witness who was said to have asserted that only four members of the Qaeda cell that planned and carried out the attacks had advance knowledge of them. This witness identified those four as three of the four suicide-hijacking pilots and an associate of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who has been described by the American authorities as a central figure in the logistics of the Sept. 11 plotting.
A prosecutor told the courtroom that by a process of elimination, the unidentified witness must be Mr. bin al-Shibh, who was arrested in Pakistan a year after the attacks and remains in American custody.
Judge Ruehle said the new evidence raised sufficient doubt that Mr. Mzoudi was aware that his actions as described by prosecutors were in support of a terrorist attack.
German prosecutors indicted Mr. Mzoudi in May on charges of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder in connection with the 9/11 attacks. He denied the charges.
Mr. Motassadeq, a former roommate of Mr. Mzoudi's, began serving his 15-year sentence on similar charges in February after the Hamburg court convicted him of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder, and of playing a crucial logistical role for the members of Al Qaeda who ultimately succeeded in ramming passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashing an airliner in rural Pennsylvania.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
White House Attacked for Letting States Lead on Climate
December 11, 2003
New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN and JENNIFER 8. LEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/science/11CLIM.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Several times at the talks now going on in Milan over a global warming treaty, Bush administration officials have portrayed states' actions to curb heat-trapping gases as evidence of American resolve.
But in this country, officials in many of those same states are strongly criticizing the administration's statements, saying their efforts are no substitute for federal action.
The focus of the criticism is a speech in Milan last Thursday by Dr. Harlan L. Watson, the administration's chief climate negotiator. Listing a variety of initiatives begun by states and communities, he said they were like ``laboratories where new and creative ideas and methods can be applied and shared with others and inform federal policy - a truly bottom-up approach to addressing global climate change.''
But in Washington State, Gov. Gary Locke, a Democrat, said the administration was using state initiatives as cover for its own inaction.
``The states are taking action for one simple reason - because the federal government is not,'' Mr. Locke said. ``For the White House to say it is looking for leadership from the states is just an excuse to delay and procrastinate. We are limited in what the states can do. We need a national policy to address global warming.''
Administration officials and some industry groups say that Mr. Watson had it just right - that having the states take the lead is in the best federalist tradition.
Still, even some groups often critical of environmental regulations said the speech would cause trouble for the administration at home.
``It's not surprising that the administration, when it goes in front of an international body like this, is going to brag about all the initiatives undertaken on global warming at the state level,'' said Jerry Taylor, director of natural resources studies for the libertarian Cato Institute. ``What's the alternative? To go and say we're taking no significant steps and don't intend to in the near future?''
The text of the speech is online at www.state.gov/g/oes/rls/rm/2003/26894.htm.
Some Republican governors are distancing themselves from the administration's Milan position without directly criticizing it.
``They have not yet taken climate change on as a real issue and developed policies,'' a senior aide to one such governor, George E. Pataki of New York, said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. ``We are going to keep pushing them.''
Mr. Pataki has led an effort to institute a 2005 regional cap for heat-trapping emissions for states from Maryland to Maine, and is pursuing New York legislation similar to California's new law requiring curbs in such emissions from cars. Mr. Pataki also supports a federal limit on emissions of carbon dioxide, the dominant heat-trapping gas, from power plants as part of a broader cleanup of the plants.
The Bush administration opposes mandatory limits on the gases and state efforts to curtail such emissions from cars. None of Mr. Pataki's proposals involving mandatory curbs were among the projects described by Dr. Watson, who focused on voluntary plans like inventories of the gases.
Erin M. Crotty, Mr. Pataki's environment commissioner, declined yesterday to discuss the Bush administration's position. ``I'll just say from our perspective New York will continue to be a leader,'' she said.
The Milan meeting, which ends Friday, is intended to gauge countries' progress under the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, and to hash out details of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an amendment to the original pact requiring cuts in gas emissions by industrialized countries.
The 1992 treaty calls for voluntary action to avoid ``dangerous'' human interference with the climate. President Bush has said he intends to adhere to that treaty, but has rejected the Kyoto pact because it does not apply to China and other developing countries and because he says it could hurt the nation's economy. Last week, Russia also indicated that it would reject the treaty.
The American delegation in Milan has faced withering criticism throughout the meeting. for its position on the Kyoto treaty, and American officials said that Dr. Watson's comments were intended to illustrate that the country was doing things now to deal with warming.
``We're continually getting criticized that we're not doing anything practically at any level except pie-in-the-sky far-out research stuff which won't have any near-term impact,'' an American representative at the meeting said.
In a telephone interview, Dr. Watson said his statement was meant to reflect that ``there is a broad effort going on in the United States on many levels to address global climate change.''
Dr. Watson, a physicist, heads a National Security Council committee on climate policy and has participated in international climate talks for more than a decade.
Among domestic climate initiatives described by Mr. Watson in Milan were programs in 13 states requiring utilities to produce increasing amounts of power using nonpolluting sources like the wind and sun. President Bush signed one such program into law as governor of Texas.
But yesterday, environmental groups pointed out that the administration had successfully sought to exclude similar federal standards from its energy bill, which fell short of passage last month.
Many officials and private groups working on climate policy argue that scattered state and local actions are not an effective way to deal with gases, like carbon dioxide, that flow every time a fossil fuel is burned, stay aloft for up to a century, and drift throughout the atmosphere. A dozen states and three cities recently filed suit against the administration in an effort to compel it to regulate greenhouse gases.
``Nobody wants a situation where there are 50 different states dealing with climate on their own,'' said Joel Levin, the vice president for business development of the California Climate Action Registry. This nonprofit group, created under state legislation, enlists companies to tally and register their emissions of greenhouse gases, a prelude to cutting emissions and getting credit for the change
----
Times change when mercury is in question
12/11/2003
Z Wire EDITORIAL
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1091&dept_id=426906&newsid=10648384&PAG=461&rfi=9
News last week that the federal Environmental Protection Agency is proposing changes in rules for the air-borne release of mercury sent a chill through Hillsborough colder than the arctic air already nipping at our noses.
The news concerns a proposed change in rules for air quality standards, primarily in the application of EPA rules to coal-fired power plants in the Midwest. New Jerseyans know these plants well - the plants contribute the bulk of air pollution in New Jersey, according to studies by the EPA.
And Hillsborough residents know mercury - we've been trying to get rid of the stuff for years. With more than 2,500 tons of mercury stored in the Defense Logistics Agency depot next to Docherty Park on Route 206, we could probably claim the title of "Mercury Capitol of America," if there was any benefit to doing so.
Each new statement from the DLA attracts lots of attention from residents, as we await the final determination of what the federal government will do with the mercury.
For the feds, the problem is tough: as a highly toxic material, it's not easy to get rid of, move or store. Unlike some toxic materials, no one wants mercury - even plutonium has a market with terrorists and nuclear-power-wanna-bes.
The commercial market for mercury has disappeared, so what the government has in storage is a problem - especially when pesky citizens get upset about it and want it moved to someplace more than a couple hundred yards from children's soccer fields.
Ironically, when discussing the standards for protecting the local citizenry from the dangers of mercury, DLA spokesman John Reinders noted the greatest danger from mercury comes not when it sits inside sealed flasks in a warehouse, but when the stuff is burned and released into the air.
That's why, he pointed out, the DLA was taking extra precautions to insure the safety of Hillsborough residents by installing extra fire sprinklers in the warehouse, as well as sealing the sealed mercury flasks inside plastic drums.
While we appreciate the DLA's efforts to protect us, we haven't found anyone who wants the mercury to stay in Hillsborough. The DLA has promised to have a final determination on the fate of the mercury by spring.
In the meantime, the fed's "other hand" is seeking to allow more mercury to be burned as a by-product of coal burning.
If that comes to pass, all area residents will be at a greater risk than if the mercury stored here, stays here.
In the old days, the "bad guys" at the Defense Department put citizens at risk with toxic materials, and the "white hats" at the Environmental Protection Agency were standing up to protect the air and water supplies.
Apparently, things have changed.
----
'Sea Giant' sent to Pakistan for dismantling
Thursday, December 11, 2003
By Paul Haven,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-12-11/s_11218.asp
GADDANI, Pakistan - Dying piece by piece, the beached supertanker looms over the shore, a skeletal Colossus almost too big to be imagined, and a cash cow heralding a rebirth for the country's controversial ship-breaking industry.
The French-made Sea Giant, at 74,400 metric tons the second biggest ship ever built, is being taken apart at the sprawling Gaddani complex, a 10-mile (16-kilometer) stretch of sand-turned-junkyard west of the port city of Karachi.
Labor organizations have denounced working conditions at Gaddani, and international environmental groups like Greenpeace fear the rebound in ship-breaking will be a disaster for the ecosystem along the Arabian Sea coast.
But laborers by the hundreds have begun turning up from all over Pakistan, hopeful that more floating behemoths will find their final resting place here.
Hundreds of men - bathed in sweat and clothed in ragged, oil-stained shalwar khameez - scurry around the half-dismantled hulk of the Sea Giant like ants swarming over an abandoned picnic basket.
They work for 130 to 200 rupees (US$2 to US$3) a day, in line with Pakistan's average wage, with no safety gear and no health plan - and they are thankful to have the job in a country where unemployment is rampant.
"All you have to do is tell one person in the village that a ship has arrived and the next day the entire place will empty of men, all rushing here to see if they can find a job," said Mohammed Uzair, a laborer.
The ship, which once carried Saudi oil by the hundreds of millions of gallons to the United States, is mammoth: It soars 110 feet (33 meters) out of the water and is 1,360 feet (408 meters) long, about 100 feet (30 meters) longer than the Empire State Building is tall. Built in 1979, it had reached the end of its serviceable life and would have been hard to insure if it had stayed in service.
The Sea Giant arrived at Gaddani in September, the biggest catch so far among the old tankers that have come in since the government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf cut taxes on Pakistan's ship-breaking companies by about a third.
Still, the eight ships lying on the long beach are a far cry from the dozens that clogged the shore during Gaddani's heyday in the 1970s, when 35,000 laborers were on the job. Several thousand work at the ship-breaking yards today, competing with yards in Bangladesh, China and India.
But industry leaders predict better times ahead.
"The tax break has brought the ship-breaking industry out of the inertia its been in for the last few years," said Ikhlaq Memon, chairman of the Pakistan Ship-breaking Industry and the businessman who paid US$17 million to buy the right to break up the Sea Giant for scrap to sell to steel mills. "I am foreseeing a better future for the industry here."
That prospect worries environmentalists, who are already grappling with the damage from a July oil spill that dumped more than 4 million gallons of crude in Karachi, blackening beaches and killing untold fish and other sea life.
"If the ship-breaking industry is revived, it will be an environmental disaster," said Tahir Qureshi, in charge of coastal and marine ecosystems in Pakistan for the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature. "These ships will blacken the land and the air and dump dangerous chemicals into the sea."
Greenpeace calls the ship-breaking business "one of the most deadly in the world," noting the old ships hold large amounts of toxic chemicals, asbestos, and heavy metals. Disposal is subject to strict regulations in Europe and the United States, but no such rules are enforced in Pakistan or the other major ship-breaking countries.
Shaheed Patel, the foreman in charge of scrapping the Sea Giant, said Pakistani ship-breakers have cleaned up their operations, although he acknowledged environmental standards are not high in Pakistan.
"There was a time when we used to dump the sludge into the sea without any care," he said. "But now we take the chemicals and dump them properly. We take every possible precaution."
Patel said heavy metals and asbestos are all dealt with properly, too, though his assurances were belied by the dead fish washing up on the beach.
The hazards are not just to the environment.
Laborers rush about at their tasks, weaving around giant piles of scrap. Dozens of other workers cut away at two-ton slabs of metal with acetylene torches while enormous steel plates capable of squashing a man swing near their heads. No one wears a hardhat.
By far the hardest and most dangerous job is done by the welders who work inside the hull, dangling in total darkness amid overpowering fumes from oil and the gas from their torches.
"I can only go for two hours at a time and then I need a break," said Taj Mohammed, a compact 35-year-old who had just emerged from a recess of the Sea Giant's hull. "When I start to suffocate I come out."
Mohammed said he had seen men overcome by fumes and fall to their deaths and others injured by exploding gas tanks, though none while working on the Sea Giant.
Patel, the foreman, said the company pays 200,000 rupees (US$3,300) to the families of those killed and for the cost of getting the body home.
There is no medical facility at Gaddani and just one ambulance to take injured men on the hour's drive to a hospital in Karachi.
A laborer named Mobeen said he was working on another tanker in October when a cable snapped and severed the leg of a man standing next to him.
Mobeen's foot was broken, but two months later, he was back at the Gaddani yards, where he has worked for 22 years.
"Yes, it is dangerous work," he said, wiping his face on a blackened sleeve. "But there is no other work we know how to do. We are helpless."
-------- ACTIVISTS
In Speech, Nobel Winner Rebukes the U.S.
December 11, 2003
By CRAIG S. SMITH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/11/international/europe/11NOBE.html
OSLO, Dec. 10 - Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer, received the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize here Wednesday, declaring that the prize would inspire women across the Muslim world to fight for equality in oppressive, patriarchal societies.
But Ms. Ebadi, who has represented political prisoners and the victims of political violence in Iran, avoided sharp criticism of the Islamic government there and delivered her most pointed rebuke instead to the United States for what she called human rights abuses carried out in the name of fighting terrorism.
Many Iranian exiles have complained that by awarding the prize to a woman working within the legal system in Iran, the Nobel Foundation is supporting political Islam over a secular alternative in the country. Indeed, the Iranian government has taken Ms. Ebadi's prize as an opportunity to showcase recent reforms and put the best possible light on the position held by women there.
After Wednesday's award ceremony, Iran's vice president for the environment, Massoumeh Ebtekar, appeared on CNN to congratulate Ms. Ebadi and extol the advances of women in Iran. Ms. Ebtekar is better known to many people in the West as the official interpreter and spokeswoman for the militants who took American hostages in 1979 at the American Embassy in Tehran.
In her acceptance speech, Ms. Ebadi offered only oblique criticism of Iran's conservative Islamic government, saying that "some Muslims, under the pretext that democracy and human rights are not compatible with Islamic teachings and the traditional structure of Islamic societies, have justified despotic governments."
Ms. Ebadi, 56, is the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to win the prize, which has been awarded annually for the past 102 years. The prize comes with $1.4 million. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which picks the winners, made it clear that this year's award was meant to send the message that Islam is not necessarily incompatible with democracy and human rights.
"We felt it important to relate to human rights in the Muslim world, but wanted to avoid demonizing Islam," the committee's executive director, Geir Lundestad, said in an interview.
But Ms. Ebadi has come under attack by many Iranian opposition figures abroad who see her as an apologist for political Islam despite her difficulties working within the Iranian system. The chant of protesters has followed her around the few Oslo blocks where the Nobel Peace Prize festivities take place.
"If you live under an Islamic regime in a region where political Islam is terrorizing women and you defend Islam, then you are defending political Islam," said Azar Majedi, founder and chairperson of the London-based Organization of Women's Liberation in Iran, which helped organize the protests in Oslo. "You cannot stop this kind of regime with these kind of niceties."
Ms. Ebadi lost her job as a judge after the 1979 Islamic revolution and has faced death threats and jail time while fighting for the rights of her clients. The country's hard-line clerics have called her a "Western mercenary," and just a week ago, an angry group of conservative Islamic women stopped her from giving a speech at a women's university in Tehran.
Ms. Ebadi has recently called for Iran's ruling clerics to allow women to run for president and has said she does not agree with capital punishment, which is practiced in Iran.
But she insists that her differences with Iran's senior clerics on such matters are a question of interpreting Islamic law. Though she goes without a veil while in Western countries - a punishable offense in Iran -- she has avoided calling for a secular state in her own country.
In her acceptance speech, Ms. Ebadi reserved her strongest reproach for the United States, declaring that "some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of Sept. 11 and the war on international terrorism as a pretext."
"Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms, special bodies and extraordinary courts, which make fair adjudication difficult and at times impossible, have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of terrorism," she said, making a specific reference to the American military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
She warned the United States and other Western countries that have "prescribed war and military intervention for this region" that it would be wrong to meddle in Iran's affairs.
--------
Nobel Honoree Sounds Alarm
Iranian Peace Laureate Cites Loss of Freedoms Since 9/11
By Doug Mellgren
Associated Press
Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A43
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54477-2003Dec10.html
OSLO, Dec. 10 -- An Iranian human rights activist, Shirin Ebadi, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Wednesday with a warning that civil liberties and human rights must not be allowed to fall prey to the war on terrorism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
Without naming the United States, Ebadi cited the prisoners from the war on terrorism held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the site of a U.S. naval base, "without the benefits of rights."
Ebadi, the first Muslim woman and the first Iranian to win the award, said that even Western democracies have allowed their strong traditions of freedom and basic rights to be eroded.
"Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms . . . have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism," she said, speaking Persian.
"The concerns of human rights advocates increase when they observe that international human rights laws are breached not only by their recognized opponents," but by "Western democracies . . . which count themselves among the initial codifiers of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," she said.
Ebadi said she accepted the prize, which includes a $1.4 million award, on behalf of all women, Iranians, Muslims and others who strive for human rights worldwide.
"Undoubtedly, my selection will be an inspiration to the masses of women striving to realize their rights, not only in Iran but throughout the region," said Ebadi, who was cited for her work as an advocate of democracy and the rights of women and children.
In Stockholm, meanwhile, 10 Nobel laureates, including six Americans, received Nobel prizes in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics from King Carl XVI Gustaf, the Swedish monarch. After the ceremony at a concert hall, the laureates attended a banquet with the royal family and a host of dignitaries, including former vice president Al Gore.
In Iran, state television reported that Ebadi had received the award but carried no pictures of the ceremony, apparently because she did not wear a head scarf. Hard-line vigilantes had issued statements vowing to punish her if she did not wear a scarf, according to newspaper reports.
Asked in parliament about the award, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi said, "It's a source of pride for Iran that an Iranian is given the Nobel Peace Prize."
Iranian reformers have looked to Ebadi to rally resistance to hard-liners who oppose changes to the conservative Islamic government and who have denounced her as a "Western mercenary." She recently was given police bodyguards after receiving death threats.
In Stockholm, J.M. Coetzee became the second South African to receive the literature prize, after Nadine Gordimer, who won in 1991. Coetzee, an intensely private man, attended the prize ceremony but was not at the traditional news conference.
American Paul C. Lauterbur and Briton Sir Peter Mansfield received the award in medicine. Alexei A. Abrikosov of the United States and Russia, Anthony J. Leggett of the United States and Britain, and Vitaly L. Ginzburg of Russia received the physics prize. Americans Peter Agre and Roderick MacKinnon won the chemistry prize, and American Robert F. Engle and Briton Clive W.J. Granger shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics.
----
Thousands of Iraqis call for end to violence
By Maureen Fan
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Thursday, December 11, 2003
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001812403_demo11.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Five thousand to 10,000 Iraqis tried to send terrorists a cease-and-desist message yesterday from downtown Baghdad in the biggest demonstration against violence to date.
The protesters snarled traffic by filling Fateh Square near the National Theater and Fardos Square in front of the Palestine Hotel. Chanting "No, no terrorism" and "Yes, yes Islam," they carried photographs of religious leaders and unfurled banners that read "The Iraqis Should Not Forget Palestine."
Coalition officials have said that despite pockets of resistance, most Iraqis support the presence of American troops and oppose the resistance. By strengthening Iraqi security forces and announcing a plan to turn over sovereignty to Iraqis by next summer, the United States hopes to stem some of the anger and frustration many Iraqis have voiced.
Protest organizers, including Brig. Gen. Tawfik al Yassiri, a member of the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council, which the Pentagon established in February, had invited political parties, religious groups, schools and unions to participate.
"We didn't expect this big a crowd to respond," said al Yassiri, who's also secretary-general of the Iraqi National Coalition, an exile group. "It was hard to organize all these groups who filled the streets and the sidewalks."
Marchers cited a number of reasons for demonstrating.
"There are so many jobless people. If foreign companies were to come here, there would be more jobs, but they will not come if they are afraid of terrorism, so we should protect these companies. We want to live," said Kareem Abed Kareen, 52, who's unemployed.
"All these shortages - electricity, propane for cooking, benzene (gasoline), oil for heating - and the high prices for all of these things, are connected to terrorism," said Amar Anwar, a 50-year-old hospital security guard who complained about sabotage. "Also, if you have no way to make a living, you will protest in another way, by causing trouble and making explosions."
But not everyone was feeling peaceful. "What did Saddam do for us? He slaughtered us all. What did the Americans do for us? They slaughtered us all," said an angry woman in a head-to-toe black abaya.
Abbass Hamid, 24, an off-duty taxi driver, said "I hope, if God is willing, the government will listen to us. I'm depending on them to make life better for us."
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.