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NUCLEAR
Genome map shows how bacterium gobbles radiation
Manga tells story of Iraqi bleeding hearts
Greens protest goes unheard
Sending the best away
Pakistan Holds Scientists for Questioning
Pakistan Allows Nuke Engineer to Go Home
With Eye on India, Pakistan Launches Home - Made Sub
Agency Thinks Israel Has Nuclear Weapons
Dream Energy Source: Hot future
Iraq troops dispatch violates constitution, says Japanese
Satellite detects fumes at N Korea's main nuclear center
N.Korea Nuclear Talks Seen Delayed Despite Efforts
Seoul suspects nuke activity
Missile benchmark
U.S. Dismantles Last Nuclear Artillery Shell
New nuke
NASA HIRES PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRM TO HELP BLUNT OPPOSITION
Plutonium Storage at SRS Questioned by DNFSB, Dec. 12
The untold story of the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy
Bush Defends Barring Nations From Iraq Deals
MILITARY
U.S. Soldiers Kill 4 Men in a Raid to Arrest an Afghan Commander
Deadly U.S. Raid Leaves Some Afghans Bewildered
Rights Group Faults U.S. Over Cluster Bombs
US, Spain caught in Libya missile mixup
Bioterror Preparedness Still Lacking, Health Group Concludes
Bush Thinks U.S. Overcharged in Halliburton Contract
Pentagon launches Halliburton inquiry
U.S. Sees Evidence of Overcharging in Iraq Contract
Bush Says Halliburton Will Have to Repay Any Overcharges
Halliburton Unit Probed for Possible Overbilling of U.S.
Taiwan's President Giving Bush Headaches
China Lauds Bush for Comments On Taiwan
Colombian Terrorism Bill Expands Military Powers
Germans fed up with war legacy
Bremer Expects Rise in Violence as Iraq Builds Democracy
Marines Plan to Use Velvet Glove More Than Iron Fist in Iraq
U.S. Draws on Israeli Methods for Iraq
A Bush Aide Criticizes Israel for Not Doing More for Peace
6 Palestinians Reported Killed in Gaza Clash
Israelis Kill 6 Palestinians in Gaza
US will attack from space?
ABC responds
A Baghdad Thanksgiving's Lingering Aftertaste
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
When DNA Meets Death Row, It's the System That's Tested
Probe Fails to Find Source of Leaks About Secret Service
Efforts to Fight Terror Financing Reported to Lag
Judge Frees 9/11 Suspect In Germany
ACTIVISTS
Greenpeace Case Worries Civil Rights Activists
Iraqi Protesters Oust Appointed Governor
-------- NUCLEAR
Genome map shows how bacterium gobbles radiation
Friday, December 12, 2003
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-12-12/s_11257.asp
WASHINGTON - A bacterium that can remove uranium contamination from groundwater may also be able to generate electricity, U.S. researchers said Thursday.
Scientists who deciphered the gene map of Geobacter sulfurreducens say it has more than 100 genes that should enable it to make chemical changes in metals that would generate electricity.
Writing in the journal Science, they said the bacterium might be useful in generating electricity deep underwater, for instance, and might be far more useful than previously thought in cleaning up the environment.
"The genome of this tiny microorganism may help us to address some of our most difficult cleanup problems and to generate power through biologically based energy sources," U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said in a statement.
"This genome sequence and the additional research that it makes possible may lead to new strategies and biotechnologies for cleaning up groundwater at DOE (the Department of Energy) and at industry sites."
The team at The Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland and at the University of Massachusetts found G. sulfurreducens had 100 or more genes that appear to encode for various forms of c-type cytochromes. These are proteins that help move electrons back and forth.
It also has genes that help it find metallic compounds. Plus the bacterium, previously thought to be able to exist only in the absence of oxygen, may have genes that would allow it to function when oxygen is present.
"We've provided a comprehensive picture that has led to fundamental changes in how scientists evaluate this microbe," said Barbara Methe, the TIGR researcher who led the study.
The first Geobacter species to be discovered, G. metallireducens, was found in sediments from the Potomac River, which separates Maryland from Virginia in the Washington D.C. area.
G. sulfurreducens was found in a soil sample in Oklahoma that was contaminated by hydrocarbons -- breakdown products of fossil fuel combustion.
University of Massachusetts researcher Derek Lovley and colleagues have previously found that G. sulfurreducens can convert uranium that is dissolved in water to a solid compound called uraninite, which can then be removed.
The bacteria removed about 70 percent of the uranium from a contaminated underground aquifer.
-------- depleted uranium
Manga tells story of Iraqi bleeding hearts
December 13, 2003
Mainichi News
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20031212p2a00m0dm006000c.html
A manga about the effects of the United States using depleted uranium in its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will be published in book form following massive public acclaim, according to publisher Kodansha Ltd.
Hundreds responded to the story when it ran in the weekly Shonen Magazine, prompting Kodansha to bring out the book some time next month.
Manga has helped formulate many people's views on the wars and taught others about depleted uranium bullets for the first time. "Newspapers and TV haven't really devoted a great deal of time to coverage of the depleted uranium issue, so the manga seems to have slipped into that gap," a Kodansha spokesman said.
Shonen Magazine started in May to run a column by Tetsu Nakamura, head of an NGO offering medical support in Iraq.
When it was completed, Kodansha editors decided to run a follow-up featuring the war in Iraq. Cartoonist Yoshiharu Mitsue, who also illustrated Nakamura's column, decided to tell the story of Takashi Morizumi, a photojournalist focusing on the use of depleted uranium bullets. The acclaimed story tells of Morizumi's encounters with victims of the Iraq war and the effects radiation from the controversial bullets has had on their bodies.
Response to the story was astounding, primarily coming from male students, housewives and high schoolgirls.
About 80 percent of messages the publisher has received have been antiwar or anti-American in nature. Dissenting voices have also been heard.
"Don't make out the United States as the only bad guy," one letter read, while another pointed out: "(Deposed Iraqi President Saddam) Hussein was also bad. It would have been a better story if you had written what caused the wars." (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, Dec. 12, 2003)
-------- europe
Greens protest goes unheard
Schröder's China policy furthers plans for strong EU military and arms industry
By Elise Kissling
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Dec. 12, 2003
http://www.faz.com/IN/INtemplates/eFAZ/docmain.asp?rub=%7BB1311FCC-FBFB-11D2-B228-00105A9CAF88%7D&doc=%7B0BD97A5D-CD36-4DF6-9362-3615E43B38D1%7D
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has said he will not rethink his decision to allow Siemens to ship a mothballed nuclear reprocessing plant to China. His government's junior coalition partner, the Greens, must deal with the dissent within the party on their own, he said.
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a member of the Greens, called the decision "bitter" but said the government had no legal basis to withhold export approval. "This isn't a question of credibility or a lack of credibility but an obligation to uphold the law. On the other hand, if you ask me about the political implications of the whole thing, I can only stress that we are all convinced that we should not only get out of atomic energy but that we should also implement that decision."
The Environment Minister, Jürgen Trittin, who pushed through legislation to phase out nuclear energy in Germany, has not made a statement on the facility's sale. "The minister of the environment went into hiding, but it's not right that he hasn't said anything about this issue," said Albert Schmidt, a member of parliament.
Lacking support from their own top-ranked politicians, the Greens said they hoped Washington would move to stop the sale. Greens party leader Angelika Beer speculated that the United States would intervene because of China's nuclear armament. "I don't think that the Americans are excited by this," she said on Tuesday.
The U.S. state department said the government does not oppose the sale, according to Handelsblatt newspaper. Schröder preempted potential controversy with Washington by promising to involve the International Atomic Energy Commission in the sale of the plutonium enrichment facility.
The chancellor had announced his intention to support the sale of the reprocessing plant during his visit to China last week, where he also called for an end to the 14-year EU weapons embargo against that country. Imposed after troops gunned down a revolt on Peking's Tiananmen square in 1989, this embargo has come to be seen by EU businesses as a political boomerang for trade. If the EU arms embargo falls, a much bigger beneficiary could be Germany's struggling armaments industry, which is currently being bought up by U.S. investors because the volume of EU military contracting is too small to sustain it.
Schröder, who is on record for opposing this sellout of weapons technology to non-European interests, has taken concrete steps to protect the domestic weapons industry from foreigners. On Wednesday, his cabinet signed off on legislation that would put the final decision about the sale of stakes in German military contractors in the hands of the government.
Germany's plans to promote the EU's weapons industry received another boost earlier this week when the EU heads of government and state agreed to adopt the joint proposal of Germany, France and Belgium made last May to set up a general staff for central military planning and execution, a plan that is fiercely opposed by the U.S. government.
This autumn, the U.S. diplomat at Nato, Nicholas Burns, had called the EU's plan to set up its own general staff for planning and carrying out military action "the most significant threat to Nato's future."
Individual member countries are free to join the new military alliance. The EU military staff in Brussels will be expanded. At the same time, the EU's military planning group, which currently has its office at Nato, will be established on a permanent basis.
----
Sending the best away
By Stefan Dietrich
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Dec. 12, 2003
http://www.faz.com/IN/INtemplates/eFAZ/docmain.asp?rub=%7BB1311FCE-FBFB-11D2-B228-00105A9CAF88%7D&doc=%7BBF8B85B7-0E93-42B3-9BA7-AA1AAE5F9BB7%7D
The expected uproar over the likely export of a plutonium plant to China has now been raised - not by the three Green party ministers in Germany's coalition government, but among second and third-level politicians. And the arguments of parliamentarians, who years ago found strong words to condemn the "nuclear mafia," sound strangely feeble.
"This has to be examined," they say, adding that "everything needs to be done" to prevent the export. Those are the words of people who know they have already lost the fight. The cabinet has already made its decision, and what follows now is nothing but a futile rearguard action.
The callousness with which Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is now supporting the sale of the plutonium plant, sitting unused near Frankfurt, mocks the propaganda with which the constructors of the facility were once forced to capitulate in Germany. In fact, Germany is one of the few countries in which the hazardous business of dealing with plutonium can be carried out safely; the necessary precondition is an open society with reliable watchdogs and high technical standards, but China, as a single-party state, does not entirely fulfill these preconditions. Therefore, selling the technology to the Chinese is less responsible than operating it in Germany.
Indeed, the use of nuclear energy in Germany is being wound down not because the risks cannot be controlled, but because of political resistance to the technology. To this day, Social Democrats and Greens are proud to have spoilt this business for industry through "exit-oriented legislation" that is nothing more than bureaucratic bullying.
The world noticed, with both bafflement and amusement, that Germany voluntarily relinquished its leading position in this technology and instead concentrated on the production of wind mills. Meanwhile, the high-temperature reactor, which is immune to the much-feared core meltdown and was also invented in Germany, is being readied for serial production in South Africa and China.
It might return to Germany from there one day.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan Holds Scientists for Questioning
December 12, 2003
NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/international/asia/12STAN.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 11 - Government officials confirmed Thursday that they were questioning two Pakistani nuclear scientists who were reported missing on Sunday. But they denied newspaper reports that the scientists were under investigation for sharing nuclear weapons technology with Iran.
Masood Khan, a foreign ministry spokesman, said there were no links between the scientists and Iran's nuclear weapons program. He said the scientists were only being "debriefed" and had not been taken into custody.
"People associated with sensitive programs in Pakistan are governed by stringent personnel dependability," he told reporters here. "The debrief program will end soon."
Two major Pakistani newspapers carried reports this week identifying the scientists as Dr. Yasin Chohan and Dr. Muhammad Farooq and saying that they were being questioned for possible links to the Iranian nuclear program.
The men held senior positions in Kahuta at the Khan Research Laboratories, named for Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program.
--------
Pakistan Allows Nuke Engineer to Go Home
December 12, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Nuclear-Scientist.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- One of two Pakistani nuclear engineers detained for unspecified reasons has been released, officials said Friday.
Yasin Chuhan, a senior engineer at Pakistan's main nuclear weapons laboratory, was released Thursday after four days in custody.
His colleague, Mohammad Farooq, a former director general at the laboratories, was still being questioned but might be freed soon, officials said. He is a former aide to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program.
The government insists the two men were not arrested but has refused to say why they were being questioned.
On Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said Chuhan has ``resumed his normal duties'' after the completion of ``debriefing sessions.''
Chuban works for the main nuclear weapons program at Khan Research Laboratories, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, has been accused of sharing its technological know-how with other countries -- including Iran and North Korea. It denies the charge.
Last year, Pakistan detained a former nuclear scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood, on suspicion of having links with Osama bin Laden.
Mehmood, who worked for Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission until his retirement in 1999, was later freed.
--------
With Eye on India, Pakistan Launches Home - Made Sub
December 12, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-pakistan-submarine.html
KARACHI (Reuters) - With one eye on nuclear rival India, Pakistan launched its first home-made submarine on Friday in what the navy called a ``quantum leap'' toward military self-reliance.
At a ceremony at Karachi's naval dockyard, President Pervez Musharraf inaugurated the Agosta 90B submarine five years after construction began with the help of French state-controlled naval shipbuilder Direction des Constructions Navales (DCN).
``It has given a considerable boost to our defense capabilities,'' the military leader said. ``Pakistan has joined the elite group of countries which can construct submarines. It is a step toward self-reliance.''
The launch of the vessel was delayed by the U.S.-led war in neighboring Afghanistan and the killing in May 2002 of 11 French naval technicians working on the project by a suicide bomber. The attack has been linked to Islamic militant groups in Pakistan.
``I express my heartfelt condolences to the families of the French engineers who lost their lives in this gruesome attack,'' Musharraf said.
The diesel-electric submarine is the second of three to be constructed under a deal with France, and the navy said in a statement it would go on building conventional submarines once they were finished. The first of the three was built in France and has been in service with the Pakistan navy since 1999.
The Agostas have been fitted with modern command and control systems and are capable of launching anti-ship missiles and torpedoes. It is designed as an anti-submarine, anti-surface and intelligence gathering resource.
MAIN THREAT INTERNAL
Musharraf said the main threat to Pakistan was not ``external,'' but came from religious extremism and sectarianism.
``This menace of extremism is eating us like termites. All Muslims are facing a threat because of it,'' he said.
But the navy made a pointed reference to India:
``The induction of this new submarine...will help maintain peace and stability in this volatile region by deterring our main adversary from any kind of adventurism,'' the statement said.
Pakistan has become increasingly alarmed at aggressive defense acquisitions by India in recent years, saying that they could further upset the military balance in South Asia in conventional and nuclear forces.
Musharraf recently banned six radical Islamic groups, some of which had already been outlawed but reappeared under new names.
The groups have been blamed for a wave of violence aimed at Western and Christian targets as well as Pakistanis from rival Muslim sects.
Some outfits have been linked to the al Qaeda network and others are involved in a separatist insurgency in the disputed Kashmir region, the trigger for two of three wars between India and Pakistan since independence from Britain.
The neighbors are taking tentative steps toward peace after coming to the brink of war last year, although there is little prospect of a swift resolution to the core Kashmir issue.
Musharraf criticized India for building a fence along the heavily militarized de facto border dividing the two countries in the Himalayan region.
``There should be no change on the Line of Control, especially when there are talks of rapprochement.''
Both countries are holding to a cease-fire along the frontier ahead of a regional summit in Islamabad in January which may provide a platform for further peace initiatives.
-------- israel
Agency Thinks Israel Has Nuclear Weapons
December 12, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Nuclear-Weapons.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in an interview published Friday that he believes Israel has nuclear weapons and suggested Israel rid itself of the stockpile to promote Mideast peace.
Mohamed ElBaradei also revealed that he has toured some of Israel's nuclear plants, although not the reactor in the southern town of Dimona where it is believed Israel produces arms.
ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, spoke to the Israeli daily Haaretz at his office in Vienna. The newspaper didn't say when the interview was conducted.
ElBaradei said he has made several visits to Israel, most recently in the late 1990s when he met with Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then prime minister. The visits were not made public at the time.
The newspaper said ElBaradei came as a guest of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. ElBaradei has been a senior member of the International Atomic Energy Agency since 1984.
ElBaradei said his most recent contact with Israeli leaders was a meeting in Vienna with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. The newspaper did not say when the meeting occurred.
ElBaradei said he cannot confirm independently that Israel has nuclear arms, but that ``we work on the assumption that Israel has nuclear capability.''
``I haven't seen that Israel ever denied it,'' he added.
Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, because it objects to international inspections.
Although widely assumed to have a stockpile of nuclear weapons, the government's public policy is purposely vague, stating only that Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.
In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at the Dimona plant, gave pictures of his workplace to The Times of London. Based on the photographs, scientists at the time said Israel had the sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. Vanunu is serving an 18-year term for treason and espionage.
In his talks with Israeli officials, ElBaradei said he ``raised the regional situation and issues of nuclear weapons with them. The status quo is not one with which I feel comfortable.''
He told Haaretz that opening discussions on the nuclear issue does not prejudge their outcome but dialogue is essential to reduce tension.
``My fear is that without such a dialogue, there will be continued incentive for the region's countries to develop weapons of mass destruction to match the Israeli arsenal,'' he said.
``As I go around the Middle East there is a sensation of frustration and impotence. People say there is an asymmetrical situation and a situation that is not sustainable and that we cannot go on like this, and I agree.''
-------- japan
Dream Energy Source: Hot future
The Asahi Shimbun IHT/Asahi:
December 12,2003
http://www.asahi.com/english/nation/TKY200312120173.html
A northern village is in the running for a multinational fusion project.
`If researchers come to Aomori, the impression of outsiders will change.' MITSUO HAYASHI President of the Aomori chamber of commerce
A village in Japan's northern snow country could become the home of a roiling cauldron of power to rival the sun. How hot would it get? Somewhere above 100 million degrees.
Rokkasho, in Aomori Prefecture, is one of two candidates for an international fusion project. It is also the site of a facility now under construction to reprocess spent nuclear fuel so plutonium can be extracted and used in the nation's nuclear-fuel recycling program.
The other candidate to host the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is Cadarache in France, which was chosen by the European Union in November.
Nuclear fusion is considered a dream energy source because it would use fuel and materials that are fairly abundant. A nuclear fusion reactor could not operate on a commercial basis until the end of the century, experts say.
Theoretically, one gram of fusion fuel will produce the same energy as eight tons of petroleum. The goal of the ITER project is more modest: to produce more than 10 times the energy used and to maintain nuclear fusion continuously-for more than five minutes.
-Still the operation will have to cope with extraordinary levels of energy. About 500,000 kilowatts of electricity will be needed. Part of the problem, then, will be to harness all that power-enough to rip apart atoms and vaporize their cores.
The solution will be a tokamak-style vacuum container shaped like a doughnut. Its outer diameter will be about 20 meters.
Superconducting magnetic coils will confine and heat the fuel, deuterium and tritium, to temperatures above 100 million degrees. At that temperature, the fuel becomes a plasma, in which atomic nuclei and electrons are separated.
The site to host the ITER is expected to be selected at a ministerial meeting set for Dec. 20 in Washington, D.C. Victory, however, will come at a price, with the finalist contributing the lion's share of about 300 billion yen for construction and equipment.
The total cost for all participants is expected to reach 1.3 trillion yen over the 20-year life of the project. The budget was decided in Dec. 4-5 negotiations in Vienna. ITER members are Japan, the EU, Russia, Canada, the United States, China and South Korea.
Japan's delegation was headed by Akio Yuki, deputy technology minister.
International negotiations to pick the construction site, as well as participants in operating the ITER facility, got under way in November 2001. Japan offered Rokkasho as a candidate in May 2002.
The selection of the construction site will be made through a vote of the seven members.
Science and technology ministry officials have been lobbying their counterparts in China and South Korea to back Japan. However, an official with the Cabinet Office said China appears to be leaning toward France, but Russia may back Japan.
Other government officials said they hoped lingering ill will between the United States and France over the war in Iraq will work in Tokyo's favor.
Aomori business circles are keen for Rokkasho to win.
``If advanced technology and researchers come to Aomori, which has a negative image as being at the end of the northern part of Honshu, the impression of outsiders toward us will change,'' said Mitsuo Hayashi, president of the Federation of Aomori Prefecture Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
Construction of the experimental reactor will cost about 570 billion yen and take about a decade to complete. In addition, about 600 billion yen will be needed to operate and maintain the facility during its life span.
Canada said it cannot pay its share, which leaves financing to the other six members. The United States, China, Russia and South Korea will pay 10 percent each.
The winner of the construction site contest, either Japan or France, will pay about 48 percent and the loser the rest.
In addition to construction, the winner will pay all costs for equipment: price tag about 90 billion yen.
Expenses will also be incurred for improving roads to the facility and housing and schools for foreign researchers and their families.
The Cabinet approved the Rokkasho candidate on condition no special fiscal measures would be implemented. That means the budget for other science and technology projects will have to be cut.
Among the projects that could be affected are the high-intensity proton accelerator under construction jointly by the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization and the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI).
----
Iraq troops dispatch violates constitution, says Japanese
Pakistan Daily Times,
December 12, 2003
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_10-12-2003_pg4_4
TOKYO: Japanese protesters on Tuesday urged Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to change his mind about sending troops to Iraq, saying the plan was a violation of the country's pacifist constitution.
"Don't kill!" said a banner held by about 20 members of the anti-war group Peaceboat, as they gathered across a street from the prime minister's official residence.
"Dispatching the Self Defence Forces to Iraq violates our constitution, which forbids the use of military forces," Peaceboat director Tatsuya Yoshioka said through a loud-hailer. "If Japan cannot follow its own laws, how can it be a protector of democracy in Iraq?" he added.
Protesters held placards denouncing Koizumi and his allies as "war criminals". Japan's post-war pacifist constitution bans the use of Japanese force as a means of settling international disputes.
The dispatch has prompted deep unease among the Japanese public, with the latest survey by the national broadcaster NHK showing only 17 percent of voters supported sending the troops as soon as possible, while 28 percent opposed the plan outright.
Malaysian PM warns: Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has warned Japan its troops face unknown dangers in Iraq in an interview with Japanese media ahead of his visit here for a regional summit. "You are going into a situation where you don't know what is going to happen," Abdullah was quoted as saying by Kyodo News agency on Tuesday.
"The situation in Iraq at the moment is not very predictable. The situation is so volatile. Opposition to the US presence in Iraq is very strong...it's a pity that the war has been won but not the peace," Abdullah said according to Kyodo. -AFP
-------- korea
Satellite detects fumes at N Korea's main nuclear center
REUTERS, SEOUL
Friday, Dec 12, 2003
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2003/12/12/2003079221
South Korea is investigating but has yet to confirm reports of fresh activity this month at North Korea's main nuclear center at Yongbyon, Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said yesterday.
South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper quoted US and South Korean officials as saying an American intelligence satellite detected fumes rising from a coal-fired boiler at the nuclear lab at Yongbyon. The fumes were traced on four days this month.
Yongbyon, about 90km north of the capital Pyongyang, contains a nuclear reactor and a plutonium reprocessing plant at the center of the year-long crisis over the secretive communist state's attempts to build nuclear weapons.
"We are trying to confirm the activities, but at this stage I have no definitive information to disclose," Jeong told reporters at his weekly news conference in Seoul.
State Department spokesman Steve Pike said he had not heard of new activity in the Yongbyon facility.
"It's the first I've heard," Pike said.
JoongAng Ilbo quoted Seoul officials as saying the fumes were detected on Dec. 2, 3, 4 and 7, and that a truck was spotted travelling in and out of the premises of Yongbyon's five-megawatt nuclear reactor on Dec. 3.
The latest report comes as the US, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia are trying to convene a second round of six-way talks on the nuclear dispute with North Korea to follow an inconclusive first round held in Beijing in August.
Jeong said that a nuclear crisis resolution proposal worked out last week by South Korea, the US and Japan had been conveyed to North Korea by China.
But he said North Korea had not given a reply -- a critical step in getting the talks started before the end of the year, which remains a goal of South Korea.
Echoing remarks on Wednesday by South Korea's Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan, Jeong said he didn't think a statement by North Korea on Tuesday calling the three-country proposal "greatly disappointing" represented Pyongyang's formal reply.
North Korea's Foreign Ministry proposed a deal on Tuesday under which it would freeze its nuclear activities in exchange for energy aid and other diplomatic concessions from Washington and regional powers.
----
N.Korea Nuclear Talks Seen Delayed Despite Efforts
December 12, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north.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.
A senior South Korean official said a December meeting could not be ruled out, but it looked more likely the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia would hold a second round of nuclear talks with North Korea next month, it said.
But Japan's Fuji TV network reported that preparations were still underway to try to hold the talks in Beijing from Dec. 17, which remains the goal of South Korea and its allies.
A senior U.S. official in Washington played down the chances of talks this month, saying: ``I guess at this point I would say it's not impossible, rather than it's possible.''
The official said if there were to be talks next week, the last full week before the Christmas and New Year's holidays, a U.S. team would probably have to leave on Sunday or Monday.
A European Union delegation, which arrived in South Korea on Friday after visiting North Korea, said officials in Pyongyang indicated the North would quickly join the six-way negotiations if their conditions were met.
``They would answer that they're willing to go right away, but of course the question would be on which terms,'' Percy Westerlund, a senior European Commission official, said after the three-day mission to North Korea.
He said the North Koreans, including Foreign Minister Paik Nam-sun, repeated demands for security assurances and stressed a proposal they made earlier this week to freeze their arms programs in exchange for aid.
The EU officials stressed that Brussels was not a party to the six-way talks.
UNDERMINING SECURITY
The Yonhap report pointed to signs that prospects for opening talks before the end of the year had dimmed: Both the South Korean and Russian chief delegates to the talks had postponed plans to fly to Beijing.
``The trend is moving toward opening talks in mid-January,'' Yonhap quoted an unnamed official as saying.
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.
Earlier this week, South Korea, the United States and Japan conveyed to China their proposed wording for a resolution to end the 14-month-old crisis. Beijing then passed it on to North Korea.
Pyongyang, apparently responding to media reports of elements of that U.S.-led plan, pronounced it ``greatly disappointing'' and published a counter-proposal that repeated demands for energy aid and diplomatic concessions 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 EU officials said they told Pyongyang development aid and deeper economic ties required a resolution of the crisis.
``They see the nuclear weapons option as an indispensable part of their national security,'' said Westerlund.
``We tried to persuade them that the development of nuclear weapons did not enhance their security. In fact, we suggested to them that it undermines their security -- that the nuclear weapons issue is the core of their problem,'' he said.
The North was unmoved by such reasoning, he added.
The CIA believes the North has produced one or two nuclear weapons. The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted having a covert nuclear program.
----
Seoul suspects nuke activity
December 12, 2003
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20031211-094858-1110r.htm
SEOUL - South Korea is investigating but has yet to confirm reports of fresh activity this month at North Korea's main nuclear center at Yongbyon, Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun told reporters yesterday.
South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper quoted U.S. and South Korean officials as saying an American intelligence satellite detected fumes rising from a coal-fired boiler at the nuclear lab at Yongbyon. The fumes were observed on four days this month.
Yongbyon, about 60 miles north of the capital, Pyongyang, has a nuclear reactor and a plutonium reprocessing plant that are at the center of the year-long crisis over the secretive communist state's attempts to build nuclear weapons.
"We are trying to confirm the activities, but at this stage I have no definitive information to disclose," Mr. Jeong told reporters at his weekly news conference in Seoul.
State Department spokesman Steve Pike said he had not heard of new activity at the Yongbyon facility.
"It's the first I've heard," Mr. Pike said.
The latest report comes as the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia are trying to convene a second round of six-way talks on the nuclear dispute with North Korea to follow an inconclusive first round held in Beijing in August.
Mr. Jeong said that a nuclear crisis resolution proposal worked out last week by South Korea, the United States and Japan had been conveyed to North Korea by China.
But he said North Korea had not given a reply.
In a separate development, the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) warned yesterday that up to 3.8 million North Koreans - 17 percent of the country's population - could be deprived of critical international food aid by the end of winter.
As the first snows fall, 2.2 million are already missing WFP deliveries because of global cutbacks in donations, the agency said in a statement. The group expects to have delivered 300,000 tons of food aid, only 62 percent of what it originally requested, in 2003.
The WFP also criticized North Korea for banning the group's activities in 43 out the country's 206 counties. The WFP has a policy of not sending aid to areas its staff can't enter.
"The restrictions imposed by the government continued to seriously impact operations and made some donors reluctant to provide food aid," the WFP said.
Access is a key issue for the United States, which in February said it would give North Korea 40,000 tons in food aid and could offer 60,000 more depending in part on whether Pyongyang let donors track its distribution and provided access to all vulnerable groups in the country.
-------- missile defense
Missile benchmark
December 12, 2003
Washington Times
Inside the Ring
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031211-105754-6020r.htm
Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of President Bush's announcement that the United States would pull out of the stale Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The move paved the way for deployment next year of a ground-based interceptor. When done, the missile shield is supposed to be composed of "layered" defenses to knock out rockets and warheads at various launch and descent phases.
The Senate Republican Policy Committee is using the anniversary to issue an eight-page call to continue funding the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.
"A single architecture likely will not deter rogue states from ballistic missile development or proliferation," the report says. "Multiple layers of missile defense - reinforced by additional allied capability - will serve as an anti-proliferation measure. As U.S. vulnerability to ballistic missiles is reduced, so will the incentive for rogue states to produce them."
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
U.S. Dismantles Last Nuclear Artillery Shell
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
December 12, 2003
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2003/2003-12-12-09.asp#anchor5
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) held a ceremony today to mark the dismantling of the last nuclear artillery shell in the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
The agency has now completed the elimination from the U.S. arsenal a type of battlefield nuclear weapon that comprised a key element of America's Cold War arsenal.
"Eliminating the last nuclear artillery warhead marks the end of an era in U.S. defense policy that included ground launched battlefield nuclear weapons," said NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks.
The United States introduced artillery fired atomic weapons in its defense arsenal in 1957. Six types were deployed over the years - the final shell dismantled this year was a W-79, a shell designed to be fired from an eight inch artillery piece.
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush announced his decision to retire artillery fired atomic weapons in the U.S. stockpile - the decision was made unilaterally, apart from any arms control agreement with the former Soviet Union.
U.S. Secretary Spencer Abraham praised the dismantling of the weapons and said the administration of President George W. Bush is "committed to reducing the threat of nuclear weapons worldwide."
But critics say the Bush administration's policies are increasing the threat. The White House requested, and received from Congress, funding to research new types of nuclear weapons and the lifting of a decade old ban on researching new low yield nuclear weapons.
Congress has also approved a Bush administration request to shorten the time required to prepare for a full scale nuclear test from 24 months to 18 months.
The administration received $7.5 million for research into nuclear "bunker buster" weapons and $6 million for low yield nuclear weapons less than five kilotons.
The Bush administration says research into these new nuclear weapons will make the nation's nuclear arsenal into a more effective deterrent, because these kinds of weapons could reduce the potential for causing civilian casualties and could improve the effectiveness of nuclear weapons in destroying deeply buried and hardened targets.
But critics are concerned that the Bush administration's plan blurs the line between the use of nuclear and conventional weapons and could undermine the international effort to contain the world's development of nuclear weapons.
The United States has more than 10,000 nuclear weapons.
----
New nuke
December 12, 2003
Washington Times
Inside the Ring
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031211-105754-6020r.htm
Pentagon officials were quietly overjoyed last week when President Bush signed into law the 2004 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act. Tucked away in the spending law is $7.5 million for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. It was half the $15 million request.
The money will be spent studying the ultimate precision guided weapon: a high-yield nuclear bomb designed to drill through rock and destroy deep underground bunkers and facilities. If the weapon is built, rogue states like North Korea and Iran can forget about hiding weapons of mass destruction in rock-hardened, blast-proof shelters.
And the penetrating nuke also would put Russia, China and other nuclear states on notice that they will be unable to protect hardened silos or cave missile complexes. Russian underwater submarine caves also could be taken out with the bomb. Pentagon officials would love to chalk a note on the penetrator before firing one into the cave used by Osama bin Laden and company in Afghanistan, when he is eventually located.
Little has been said in public about the new weapon. Linton Brooks, director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, told a Senate hearing earlier this year one idea is to use a B-61 or B-83 nuclear warhead on a new guided aerial bomb with a special nose cone that can burrow through solid rock. "It's not just that you have to be able to penetrate," he said. "We know how to make things that will penetrate. You have to be able to penetrate and still have nuclear weapons, which are actually quite intricate machines, to work right."
Both warheads have 350 kilotons or more of explosive power - the equivalent of 350,000 tons of TNT. The Pentagon wants a bomb that can go through 30 feet to 60 feet of solid rock before detonating. The bomb could also be used for what the Pentagon calls "agent defeat" - frying deadly biological or germ weapons.
----
NASA HIRES PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRM TO HELP BLUNT OPPOSITION TO NUCLEAR ROCKET
December 12, 2003
From: "Global Network" <globalnet@mindspring.com>
Fearing another public relations defeat like they got during the 1997 Cassini campaign, NASA has hired a public relations outfit to gather information from potential critics of their latest space nuclear project. Project Prometheus, the nuclear rocket, is now being developed under the Bush Nuclear Systems Initiative that will spend $3 billion during the next five years to expand the launching of nuclear power into space.
I actually began organizing the Cancel Cassini Campaign in 1994 by writing articles, speaking to groups around the world, and expanding the numbers of interested contacts. By the time the 1997 launch came around and the media began paying attention to the issue, there was a tremendous grassroots movement in place to oppose the plutonium launch. Even the TV program 60 Minutes covered the issue with a story just a week before the lift-off.
This time NASA wants to be prepared. While Project Prometheus is just now in the development stage, NASA has retained The Keystone Center, based in Colorado, to gather information about potential critics so they can effectively combat any expected opposition.
The Keystone Center called the Global Network office this fall and wanted to send one of their representatives to our office in Maine to "interview" me about our concerns. It was clear from the conversation that the real intention of the visit was to find out what strategies we intended to employ to block the launch of the nuclear rocket. I didn't want to have any part in helping NASA -- they have lots of money and easy access to the corporate dominated media. Neither was I about to help The Keystone Center, which is being paid quite well with taxpayer dollars, I'm sure. I told them I was not interested in being "interviewed" and left it at that.
Just today in the mail, I received a letter from The Keystone Center once again asking me to submit to an interview. In the letter they say that they'd like to "converse with you about NASA's Project Prometheus Nuclear Systems Program......We are undertaking a round of meetings and structured interviews with some 25 people, many of whom are long-standing skeptics or critics of NASA. Our sole focus is to understand what public involvement strategies, above and beyond the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), might be appropriate for NASA as they begin to develop Project Prometheus."
So basically The Keystone Center is being paid big bucks by NASA to find out what "critics" are saying and/or planning around Project Prometheus so they can then advise NASA on the best way to sell the project to the public and blunt the critics. And they have the audacity to ask me to help them!
I know we should take this as a supreme compliment. NASA is worried about the work of the Global Network. They fear the public response to Bush's plan to dramatically expand the launching of nuclear power into space. And so they should! But to ask us to help them create a plan to circumvent our very opposition is the height of arrogance.
What made it fun though was that a reporter from the New York Times also called today. The Times is doing a story on Project Prometheus and wanted to know if we were going to organize to oppose it. I told him that we were already organizing and he wanted to know why he had not seen anything in the media. I told him the reason was because the corporate media usually isn't very interested in what we have to say. He then said that he doubted that NASA was very worried about our opposition and I said, "Hey let me read you this letter I just got from The Keystone Center." After hearing the content the reporter asked me to fax him the letter, which I gladly did.
The New York Times called because Bush is expected very soon to make a big announcement about going back to the moon and Mars. The nuclear rocket will be a key component of this plan. At a time when we are facing massive budget deficits Bush is going to promote his "big idea" to spend $50 - $150 billion on this moon base mission.
It just goes to show that our work is being watched by the government and the corporate media. They know what we are doing, and as much as they like to make us think they ignore us, they don't. They watch all of us like a hawk because they are worried to death that the public might catch onto what we have to say. If anything should tell us to keeping doing what we are doing, this is it.
So put this one into your mental file cabinet -- NASA's Project Prometheus, the nuclear rocket. Keep it close to your heart because it is going to be another hot issue down the road. How do I know that? Well, The Keystone Center told me so.
Bruce K. Gagnon Coordinator Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 652 Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 729-0517 (352) 871-7554 (Cell phone) http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@m...
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- south carolina
Plutonium Storage at SRS Questioned by DNFSB, Dec. 12
Greenpeace International Update
Tom Clements - tom.clements@wdc.greenpeace.org
December 12, 2003
DOE Safety Board Report Questions Plutonium Management Scheme at Savannah River Site, Poses Obstacles for Plutonium Fuel (MOX) Program
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has presented a report to Congress which raises serious questions about the safe long- term storage of weapons plutonium at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS), located in South Carolina.
The report will likely have impacts on both the DOE's troubled plutonium disposition (MOX) program as well as further plutonium shipments to SRS, the site chosen for consolidation of DOE surplus plutonium. (See URL for report below.)
The DNFSB, an independent panel which oversees the environmental impact of DOE's nuclear weapons programs, was required under the Defense Authorization Act of FY 2003 to produce a report on the storage of plutonium in aging facilities at SRS. Given DOE's consolidation of plutonium storage at SRS, Congress determined it necessary to evaluate the implemented plutonium storage plan, one which had been drastically altered from earlier plans.
The DNFSB pointed out that DOE lacked "careful, consistent planning" in regards to plutonium storage at SRS and that DOE had foreclosed "cost-effective and safety-conscious" options by choosing to store plutonium in a closed 50-year old nuclear reactor at SRS. DOE has stood by plans to store plutonium in the old K-Reactor building (K-Area Material Storage facility, KAMS) for the long-term (up to 50 years) but the DNFSB stated in the report that storage KAMS could be done safely only for a period of "roughly 4 to 5 years" and beyond this amount of time only if safety improvements were undertaken.
Greenpeace International has long-maintained that KAMS, not built to store nuclear materials, was improper for long-term plutonium storage and was chosen simply to cut costs, thus placing cost concerns far above safety considerations. DOE refused to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the use of KAMS for storage of plutonium in spite of known concerns.
DOE has shipped all remaining weapons plutonium to SRS from the Rocky Flats site in Colorado and is now secretly developing plans to ship several tons of contaminated weapons plutonium from the Hanford site in Washington State to SRS. Given the DNFSB concerns, stated in the report, that "DOE has no apparent plan for the disposition of approximately 5 metric tons of excess plutonium" the issue of shipping yet more plutonium to SRS will spark controversy given that "disposition" of this material is unknown.
It is believed that DOE is once again looking at building an immobilization facility to mix plutonium in existing high-level waste, a program which was terminated in 2002. Greenpeace continues to support immobilization of all surplus plutonium on cost, environmental and non-proliferation grounds and thus believes that DOE should manage surplus plutonium as waste. The DNFSB report should bolster arguments to slow down the costly MOX program and reevaluate rapid implementation of the cheaper and quicker immobilization option.
Due to probelms with the MOX program in the US and Russia, it is rumored that the MOX program has fallen another year behind schedule though DOE has not publicly admitted this yet.
DNFSB recommendations/observations about plutonium storage at SRS include:
o "DOE has no apparent plan" to dispose of 5 tons of dirty plutonium which can't be processed into plutonium fuel (MOX) o proposes installation of fire protection systems at KAMS for storage longer than 4-5 years o DOE should proceed with plutonium removal from the 235-F Building and upgrade as necessary for long- term storage
o "DOE recognizes the importance of establishing a disposition path, and to that end formed a team in 2002 to determine a disposition path for material not planned for MOX fuel. Unfortunately, progress made on this task has been slow. So far, no technically feasible path forward has been approved. DOE needs to expedite this task to preclude unnecessary extended storage of plutonium at SRS."
Given the environmental and health impact to residents of South Carolina and Georgia in case of an accident in a plutonium storage or handling facility at SRS, Greenpeace believes that DOE must take immediate steps to upgrade plutonium storage conditions and halt further consideration of more plutonium shipments to the old facilities at SRS.
"Plutonium Storage at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site," Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, Report to Congress, December 2003 http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/dnfsb/rc_20031201.pdf
-------- us politics
The untold story of the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy
How the public's business gets done out of the public eye
Breaking News
12/12/03,
U.S. News & World Report
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/usinfo/press/secrecy.htm
INVESTIGATIVE REPORT:
Friday, Dec. 12, the PBS television program NOW with Bill Moyers will air a report on Bush administration secrecy produced in collaboration with U.S. News. Please visit pbs.org for stations and airtimes in your area. The U.S. News article, "Keeping Secrets," will be publshed in Monday's edition. Full text will be available on USNews.com Saturday, Dec. 13, at 6 p.m.
The Bush administration has removed from the public domain millions of pages of information on health, safety, and environmental matters, lowering a shroud of secrecy over many critical operations of the federal government.
The administration's efforts to shield the actions of, and the information held by, the executive branch are far more extensive than has been previously documented. And they reach well beyond security issues.
A five-month investigation by U.S. News details a series of initiatives by administration officials to effectively place large amounts of information out of the reach of ordinary citizens, including data on such issues as drinking-water quality and automotive tire safety. The magazine's inquiry is based on a detailed review of government reports and regulations, of federal agency Web sites, and of legislation pressed by the White House.
U.S. News also analyzed information from public interest groups and others that monitor the administration's activities, and interviewed more than 100 people, including many familiar with the new secrecy initiatives. That information was supplemented by a review of materials provided in response to more than 200 Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the magazine seeking details of federal agencies' practices in providing public access to government information.
Among the findings of the investigation:
~Important business and consumer information is increasingly being withheld from the public. The Bush administration is denying access to auto and tire safety information, for instance, that manufacturers are required to provide under a new "early-warning system" created following the Ford-Firestone tire scandal four years ago. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, meanwhile, is more frequently withholding information that would allow the public to scrutinize its product safety findings and product recall actions.
~New administrative initiatives have effectively placed off limits critical health and safety information potentially affecting millions of Americans. The information includes data on quality and vulnerability of drinking-water supplies, potential chemical hazards in communities, and safety of airline travel and others forms of transportation.
~Beyond the well-publicized cases involving terrorism suspects, the administration is aggressively pursuing secrecy claims in the federal courts in ways little understood--even by some in the legal system. The administration is increasingly invoking a "state secrets" privilege that allows government lawyers to request that civil and criminal cases be effectively closed by asserting that national security would be compromised if they proceed.
~New administration policies have thwarted the ability of Congress to exercise its constitutional authority to monitor the executive branch and, in some cases, even to obtain basic information about its actions.
There are no precise statistics on how much government information is rendered secret. One measure, though, can be seen in a tally of how many times officials classify records. In the first two years of Bush's term, his administration classified records some 44.5 million times, or about the same number as in President Clinton's last four years, according to the Information Security Oversight Office, an arm of the National Archives and Records Administration.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Rchard Folkers, Director of Media Relations(rfolkers@usnews.com or 202-955-2219)
----
Bush Defends Barring Nations From Iraq Deals
December 12, 2003
New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/international/middleeast/12BAKE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - President Bush on Thursday defended his policy of barring France, Germany, Russia and other nations from $18.6 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects. But despite the anger the policy has aroused in foreign capitals, he said his personal envoy, James A. Baker III, would still meet with the leaders of several of those nations to ask that they forgive debts they are owed by Iraq.
The president's argument was that only those nations that contributed militarily to the American effort in Iraq should reap the benefits of the $18.6 billion that Congress approved last month for reconstruction.
"The taxpayers understand why it makes sense for countries that risk lives to participate in the contracts in Iraq," Mr. Bush told reporters after a cabinet meeting at the White House. "It's very simple. Our people risk their lives. Coalition, friendly coalition folks risk their lives, and, therefore, the contracting is going to reflect that."
Administration officials acknowledged that Mr. Bush's position had enraged the very nations the administration was now seeking help from, and that Mr. Baker, who was appointed as the president's envoy last Friday, faced a more chaotic situation than he had expected. But the officials sought to portray Mr. Baker as undeterred.
"Was it helpful?" said a senior administration official who asked not to be identified for fear of being seen as criticizing the president. "Well, clearly not. But he'll find a way to work with the world as it is."
Mr. Baker is to leave on Monday from his home in Houston for a five-day, five-nation trip. He is to see the administration's chief foreign opponents in the debate over the war with Iraq: President Jacques Chirac of France, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Baker will also meet with two allies who supported Mr. Bush on the war: Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy.
Mr. Baker will return to Houston on Friday and brief the president by phone. Administration officials said he had no plans to return to Washington before the end of the year.
A former secretary of state and former secretary of the treasury, Mr. Baker will travel to the foreign capitals by government plane from Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. He will take with him staff members from the State Department and the Treasury Department as well as Gary Edson, a deputy national security adviser at the White House who handles international economics.
Mr. Baker will not have a press secretary, reporters will not travel with him, and he is not expected to hold news conferences overseas. Administration officials said Mr. Baker, who in previous administrations was extraordinarily accessible to reporters, was adamant that he not be seen as grandstanding or as undercutting Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who is the administration's chief representative overseas.
But administration officials said Mr. Baker would be seen in foreign capitals as having more leverage with Mr. Bush than Mr. Powell, who is viewed as a combatant in the Bush administration's policy wars.
"Baker is Bush," said a senior administration official who asked not to be identified because he was criticizing Mr. Powell. "Other countries know that Powell doesn't win all the battles. If you deal with Baker, you know you're going to get what you need."
Mr. Baker met with Mr. Bush in the Oval Office on Wednesday, when the president gave him general instructions, a senior administration official said, to "go and get the international community to do something about Iraq's crushing debt." The official said that Mr. Bush was not more specific because "Baker knows how to do this."
Mr. Baker's approach with the foreign leaders, the official said, would be to make the president's case on keeping the $18.6 billion in the hands of alliance members while holding out the promise that there will be more construction contracts for other nations down the road.
"This is our money, but there's lots of other money for which contracting is completely open," the official said. "Even with the U.S.-led reconstruction, as circumstances change on the ground, we want to look at that."
Mr. Bush left similar room on Thursday for Canada, which opposed the war and as a result was barred under the policy from the $18.6 billion in Iraqi projects. Canadian officials were so outraged that Mr. Bush telephoned Prime Minister Jean Chrétien on Thursday morning to reassure him.
Exactly what was said is not clear. Soon after Mr. Chrétien told reporters at a news conference that Canada would now be eligible to compete for projects in Iraq. But White House officials said later in the day that Canada was still excluded - though they kept their public comments vague and implied they were open to negotiating an agreement.
"We'll be glad to talk with Canadian officials about this decision," Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, told reporters. "We do very much appreciate the contributions that they have made, both in Afghanistan and to Iraq, and we'll be glad to discuss those issues with them."
Mr. Baker, who was secretary of state for Mr. Bush's father during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, is volunteering his time as the president's personal envoy. In the decade since leaving the White House, he has created the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston. He has also worked as an lawyer for Baker Botts, the Houston law firm his grandfather founded, and as a senior counselor at the Carlyle Group, an international investment bank.
Administration officials said Mr. Baker would retain his positions at Baker Botts and the Carlyle Group while serving as the president's personal envoy, and added that he had been vetted by the White House counsel's office for potential conflicts of interest.
The Carlyle Group, which has $17.5 billion in gross assets under management, invests money for 550 investors in 55 countries, and has investors in the Middle East. It has no investors or investments in Iraq.
Chris Ullman, a Carlyle spokesman, said Mr. Baker had not personally raised money from overseas investors, and therefore would not be in the position of negotiating with his business clients on behalf of the White House. But Mr. Ullman said Mr. Baker did speak at Carlyle events intended to attract investors.
"He never asks for money, and does not follow up or do any of that," Mr. Ullman said. "He effectively is a draw at fund-raising-type events."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. Soldiers Kill 4 Men in a Raid to Arrest an Afghan Commander
December 12, 2003
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/international/asia/12AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 11 - American soldiers killed four men in the eastern town of Jalalabad on Thursday when they raided a house and arrested a powerful commander allied to the government, local officials said. At least two others were wounded.
The raid appeared to be part of the continuing military effort against Taliban suspects and other militants who might try to disrupt a grand council that will convene Saturday to debate a new constitution.
The fighting erupted when soldiers tried to arrest General Esmatullah, a commander allied to the Northern Alliance faction led by Defense Minister Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, the Nangarhar provincial governor, Din Muhammad, said.
General Esmatullah had traveled from his base in the neighboring province of Laghman to Jalalabad for a meeting with regional military commanders. It was not clear why American soldiers had tried to arrest him because he is opposed to the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who are seen as the greatest threat to security. But aid workers familiar with the region said there had been complaints recently from the population about General Esmatullah and his soldiers.
The arrest is in keeping with the aggressive actions of American forces in the last nine days. United States officials say they have specific intelligence that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are planning actions to disrupt the loya jirga, and prevent delegates reaching the capital, and so troops have sought to take the offensive to prevent any attacks.
--------
Deadly U.S. Raid Leaves Some Afghans Bewildered
Villagers Say Target Was Not a Terrorist
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 12, 2003; Page A39
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57784-2003Dec11?language=printer
NARAI KALAI, Afghanistan, Dec. 11 -- The village, surrounded by bleak winter fields, was deserted Thursday. A dozen U.S. soldiers were busy inside a mud compound; next to it was another farmhouse with one mud wall smashed to rubble. On a frozen slope nearby, eight new graves, marked with jagged rocks, were already partly covered by snow.
Sometime between midnight and dawn on Dec. 5, U.S. warplanes and ground forces attacked this mud-walled hamlet in eastern Paktia province, searching for a arsenal of weapons, U.S. military officials said Wednesday. In the rain of rockets and gunfire, an earthen wall collapsed on a sleeping family, killing both parents and their six young children.
According to U.S. officials, the raid -- one of two military attacks that have killed a total of 16 Afghan civilians in the last week -- was aimed at an Islamic extremist identified as Mullah Jalani, who owned the compound. The officials said U.S. troops later found thousands of weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition inside, along with the bodies of the victims.
Residents described Akhtar Mahmad Jalani as a controversial local tribal and militia leader who had crossed swords with provincial officials and changed sides several times in the region's seesawing political struggles. Provincial sources said he had supported the Taliban at one time and was known as a bully who used threats of force in tribal disputes.
But most people interviewed insisted that Jalani was neither a terrorist nor a threat to the government, and some professed outrage and shock at the U.S. attack. They noted that, until recently, Jalani had served as district commissioner and was also a leader of the local tribal council.
Several residents said Jalani had supported the U.S. military campaign and met often with U.S. and Afghan troops based in Gardez, the provincial capital 20 miles west of here.
"This was always the safest place for Americans, and there has never been a single incident in our district," said Hairan, 29, a truck driver. "Everyone knew Jalani, and the day before this happened the new district chief came to have tea with him. We are amazed that they would bomb his house."
Naser Gul, 25, a brother of the man who was killed with his family in the attack, said the victims were sleeping when the sound of planes overhead woke them about 3 a.m. Gul said he ran outside, but the rest of the family was buried and died. He said the family, originally from Logar province, was visiting as guests of the Tutakhel tribe, which controls the district.
Gul identified the dead as Ikhtar Gul, 35, a farmer; Khela, his wife; four daughters, Ahmad Khela, Daulat Zai, Anara and Kadran; and two sons, Asif and Nematullah. He said the children's ages ranged from 1 to 12.
Their deaths came to light just days after a U.S. air assault on a village in neighboring province of Ghazni killed nine children and one adult. That raid was also aimed at an alleged Islamic extremist, Mullah Wazir, who apparently had already left the area.
Both cases have drawn strong statements of concern and criticism from U.N. officials, who are overseeing Afghanistan's difficult transition to democracy. They warned that such incidents could alienate Afghan civilians from the international community.
U.S. military officials have apologized for the deaths in Ghazni, calling the episode a "tragic mistake" and saying they had no indication that civilians were in the immediate area. They have promised to investigate the incident in an effort to make sure similar mistakes do not occur in the future.
In the Paktia incident, however, U.S. officials have continued to strongly defend their actions. Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, the U.S. military spokesman at Bagram air base, said Wednesday that the raid netted a significant arsenal. He also said that if civilians "surround themselves" with weaponry in a compound used by a terrorist, "we are not completely responsible for the consequences."
At a briefing Thursday, Hilferty again defended the high-powered military raid and added more detail to support it, saying that when U.S. troops attacked, they were met with heavy gunfire from inside the farmhouse.
"Certainly, we followed the law of proportionality in this compound," Hilferty said. "From the compound, they were shooting at us with machine guns. Jalani has more ammunition at his house than the coalition keeps at Bagram." Hilferty said the compound contained hundreds of 107mm rockets, mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades, antitank and antipersonnel mines and howitzers.
Hilferty further identified Jalani as a suspected associate of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the former Afghan prime minister who is believed to have formed an alliance with revived Taliban forces against the current U.S.-backed government.
Some residents and tribal leaders scoffed at such descriptions, saying Jalani had always strongly opposed the Taliban and had frequent dealings with U.S. military forces here.
No one in the area Thursday was able to say where Jalani is now.
Several residents said they thought he might have been killed in the raid but that they had not been allowed to enter the compound except to retrieve and bury the dead.
Between nine and 14 village men were detained by U.S. forces, but officials said Jalani was not among them. Sources in the province said it had been variously reported that Jalani escaped from his compound disguised in a woman's veil or had been in Pakistan at the time of the attack.
"We don't know if Hajji Jalani is alive or dead, and we don't understand the reason for this disaster," said Mahmad Yusuf, a retired army colonel and tribal leader from the district. "If he committed a crime, he should be brought to justice, but the Americans killed innocent people for nothing, and this is a very bad work."
U.S. Special Forces troops in the village Thursday refused to speak to a reporter and said she should leave the area. But several sources in Paktia gave accounts of the attack that cast the U.S. actions in a favorable light.
"The Americans surrounded the compound Friday night and gave everyone a chance to come out. The women and children eventually left, and the bombing did not start until several hours later," said a knowledgeable source in Gardez.
In the past several months, Taliban fighters and other armed guerrillas have staged numerous violent attacks in Afghanistan's southeastern provinces bordering Pakistan. A French U.N. worker was shot to death in Ghazni province, three foreign highway workers -- a Turk and two Indians -- were kidnapped, and a bomb wounded 20 people in downtown Kandahar.
The attacks have already led to cutbacks in many foreign aid projects and have threatened to disrupt a national constitutional assembly due to begin Saturday in Kabul.
Reuters reported from Bagram air base:
Nearly a week into what was described as the biggest ground operation in Afghanistan since the Taliban was overthrown in late 2001, thousands of U.S. soldiers have so far failed to engage any Taliban or allied militants, the army said Thursday.
Hilferty said soldiers of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment who helicoptered into Paktia on Monday as part of Operation Avalanche had yet to make contact with the enemy. But he said they had conducted patrols and cave searches over a 40-square-mile area as part of the offensive.
"The fact that we did not hit the jackpot here is not indicative that the air assault was not successful," he said.
-------- arms
Rights Group Faults U.S. Over Cluster Bombs
December 12, 2003
New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/international/middleeast/12CASU.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - The American and British armies could have prevented hundreds of civilian injuries or deaths during the war in Iraq by eliminating the use of cluster munitions in populated areas, according to a study by a leading human rights group.
The organization, Human Rights Watch, also says in a new report that while the Air Force was able to minimize civilian casualties in its strikes against fixed targets chosen in advance, it was not as successful in missions to kill leadership figures whose whereabouts became known only fleetingly, prompting quick attacks.
The report, "Off Target - The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq," states that 50 attacks aimed at senior Iraqi leaders failed to kill any of their intended targets, but resulted in dozens of civilian deaths.
Human Rights Watch says those strikes relied on the interception of satellite telephone calls for locating targets. But the map coordinates snatched from those satellite telephones were not precise enough to avoid civilian casualties when the attacks were conducted in urban areas.
The report makes no estimate of the total number of civilians killed or injured in the war.
But it says "the widespread use of cluster munitions, especially by U.S. and U.K. ground forces, caused at least hundreds of civilian casualties." Cluster bombs are weapons that spread a large number of smaller bomblets over a broad area to halt troops or vehicles massing for attack.
The study says American and British ground forces fired almost 13,000 cluster munitions, which spread nearly two million smaller bombs. The report says the Air Force limited its use of cluster bombs, and that the greatest numbers of these munitions used in the war were fired by the United States Army.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a telephone interview that the use of cluster bombs in Iraq also left many unexploded munitions, "littering the landscape, waiting for people to trip over them."
A spokesman for the military's Central Command, Lt. Cmdr. Nick Balice, said that "while civilian casualties of war are a tragedy, coalition forces have taken extreme care in Operation Iraqi Freedom to limit needless loss of human life and collateral damage."
Cluster munitions were used "against very specific and valid military targets and only when deemed a military necessity," he said.
The Human Rights Watch report also criticizes Iraqi forces, saying they violated international law and likely contributed to civilian casualties.
These violations, the report said, included the "use of human shields, abuse of the red cross and red crescent emblems, use of antipersonnel landmines" and the "location of military objectives in protected places," like mosques and hospitals.
"Clearly, when you're putting your artillery pieces in school yards or whatever, that increases civilian casualties," Mr. Roth said of the Iraqi tactic.
----
US, Spain caught in Libya missile mixup
By Tito Drago
Dec 12, 2003
Asia Times (Inter Press Service)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/EL12Dg01.html
MADRID - The US government needs to explain why the missile shipment on a vessel intercepted a year ago on the high seas by the Spanish navy ended up in Libya, a spokesman from Spain's Defense Ministry said this week.
The official was referring to declarations made by sources from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the Madrid daily El Mundo that claim 15 complete Scud missiles, a set of conventional warheads and 85 containers of chemical products - some 20 holding nitric acid - were ultimately delivered to Libya under a Washington decision.
The episode began on December 5, 2002, when US intelligence services informed Madrid about the route of a freighter named So San, which they suspected of trafficking weapons and which was, at the time, crossing a zone under Spain's authority in the Indian Ocean. Four days later, a Spanish frigate and warship intercepted the So San after ordering the captain to halt and firing warning shots. The vessel was found to be sailing under the Cambodian flag.
The weapons and chemicals came from North Korea and did not appear on the ship's manifest, which showed only that the merchant vessel was carrying bags of cement. After intercepting the freighter, Spain then handed the ship over to the US Navy. Immediate official explanations out of Washington and Madrid said the missiles might have been headed for the al-Qaeda network, which the US government holds responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. However, just hours later, the US administration took Spain by surprise by turning the So San over to Yemen, explaining that the cargo was actually a legal shipment of weapons purchased from North Korea by the Yemini government.
The handover was preceded by a telephone conversation between US Vice President Dick Cheney and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. When that conversation was made public, the White House justified the move by calling Yemen a friendly nation. So what initially came off as a brilliant Spanish military operation to prevent illegal trade in weapons of mass destruction was reduced to a suspected manipulation directed from Washington, with Madrid in the role of receiving and carrying out orders that were not very clear in their purpose.
The NATO sources cited in El Mundo said that at the time the shipment was intercepted, the United States was secretly negotiating the possibility that Libya would accept Saddam Hussein, then still president of Iraq, in exile. And Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who played the role of go-between during the Gulf War in 1991 by assisting in Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait, had hopes of gaining access to the weapons.
"Gaddafi wanted the missiles and Yemen acted as intermediary. In the context of gestures with Libya, it was decided to look the other way, given that there was no international regulation that impeded it," said the newspaper, citing sources from the Pentagon.
Today, as it was a year ago, Madrid's reaction of disappointment regarding the United States' handling of the shipment was immediate, but not very explicit, because Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar continues to be a staunch, unconditional supporter of the policies of his US counterpart, President George W Bush.
As a result, the opposition United Left (IU) has announced that it will petition Defense Minister Federico Trillo to inform parliament about the country's participation, "past and present", in relation to the case of the weapons shipment. Madrid's handling of the issue "is one more demonstration of [Aznar's] erratic foreign policy and his troubling submission and total dependence on the policy marked by the US," IU general coordinator Gaspar Llamazares said. "The IU is highly concerned that Spain is extending political and commercial ties to a country that does not provide any democratic guarantees," such as Libya, he added.
Neither the Spanish government nor the opposition and civil-society organizations categorize the Gaddafi regime as terrorist and they agree on the need to facilitate his integration into the international community. In fact, Spain has not drawn up a list of countries it considers terrorist, noted a Foreign Ministry spokesperson, but the United States has, and Libya, which figures on that list, is subject to a commercial and military embargo. No US company is authorized to sell weapons to Libya directly or indirectly, nor to facilitate the delivery of arms.
When the United Nations Security Council lifted sanctions against Libya, then-US ambassador James Cunningham abstained from the vote, stating that Washington did not want to give the idea that it believed Libya had done an about-face, because, said the ambassador, the country continued to try to obtain weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. But things appear to have changed radically, given that the weapons shipment intercepted by Spain, and which ended up in Libya, includes such arms.
-------- biological weapons
Bioterror Preparedness Still Lacking, Health Group Concludes
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 12, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57767-2003Dec11?language=printer
One year after President Bush sought to energize the nation's bioterrorism preparations with an unprecedented smallpox vaccination campaign, the program has all but ground to a halt. A report released yesterday, meanwhile, finds that only two states -- Florida and Illinois -- are prepared to distribute and administer vaccines or medicines that would be needed in the event of a major outbreak or attack.
Fewer than a dozen states have written plans for dealing with other public health threats such as pandemic flu, the report added, and most remain ill-prepared for any large-scale emergency.
After two years of work and $2 billion in federal aid, "states are only modestly better prepared to respond to public health emergencies than they were prior to Sept. 11, 2001," the Trust for America's Health, a nonpartisan, nonprofit health advocacy group, concluded.
Despite Bush's high-profile call on Dec. 13, 2002, for the immunization of millions of health care workers and emergency responders, the number vaccinated has been stuck at 38,700 for months.
"We are still underprepared to respond to even two cases of smallpox anywhere in the world," Michael T. Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said in a telephone interview. Just as health care workers and the public "panicked" in the spring over a few cases of monkeypox, Osterholm predicted that a report of smallpox would send thousands rushing to hospitals in search of vaccine and find few people there ready to deliver it.
"You need a core group of vaccinated workers able to go out to the front lines, and we don't have that," he said.
Other experts voiced fears that not enough attention has been given to lethal chemical agents, hospital surge capacity and sophisticated staff training.
"Are we ready or not? The answer is not," said Trust executive director Shelley A. Hearne. "Now is the time to get serious about developing an all-hazards approach to public health to ensure we are ready for the range of possible threats we face." White House spokesman Trent Duffy said Bush is pleased with the progress made on smallpox defenses but "would like more front-line workers to be vaccinated."
Joseph Henderson, associate director for terrorism preparedness and emergency response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the report "tells us things we've already known. We know we have a lot of work to do."
But, he added, the swift response to naturally occurring outbreaks such as severe acute respiratory syndrome last year and influenza now "demonstrate we are definitely more prepared." CDC expects to have more precise measures for evaluating the nation's preparedness next fall, but there will always be a reluctance to publicize that information, he said.
If, for instance, the president asked for a state-by-state assessment, Henderson said he is prepared to give it. "We don't tell the public because we're afraid it might reveal too many vulnerabilities."
State budget cuts, personnel shortages and red tape were the chief reasons identified by the Trust for the spotty progress. Although the report found significant improvement in communications capability and general terrorism response planning, researchers at the Trust and other experts identified several areas that are lagging.
Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said public health departments are able to respond more quickly, are better trained and are better equipped. He remains concerned, however, about staffing shortages, labs that are unable to identify chemical agents and the shortage of state influenza plans.
"I'm not sure this flu will be a pandemic flu, but we're going through a widespread flu epidemic now, and it worries me that states were not up to speed with those plans," he said.
In addition to tracking flu plans, the report scored states in nine other areas, such as lab capacity, availability of information on the SARS virus and appropriate distribution of federal dollars. States received one point for each category in which they met basic thresholds, with a 10 the highest possible score. More than 70 percent of the states received scores of 5 or lower.
Locally, the picture is mixed. Maryland was one of four states to receive a 7, the highest score given. Virginia received a 5, and the District, a 3.
"While states have achieved piecemeal progress, the full-scale effort to comprehensively fix the nation's public health system is falling short," the report noted.
Randall Larsen, a retired military officer and chief executive of the consulting firm Homeland Security Associates, endorsed the overall conclusions but counseled patience. "People need to understand that although this is frustrating, we're not much better prepared. An enormous change is required to prepare us for homeland security in the 21st century," he said.
Jerome M. Hauer, the former Bush administration bioterrorism preparedness chief who now runs a terrorism response center at George Washington University, said he is concerned that hospitals have not done enough to prepare to handle mass casualties and that states are having trouble hiring specialists such as epidemiologists and laboratory technicians.
He and Larsen criticized CDC Director Julie L. Gerberding for recently denying that the administration had pursued a nationwide smallpox immunization program, calling her comments "a very clever political move to distance herself from a failing program."
When Bush announced the program -- he was among the first people to be inoculated -- the administration said it intended to immunize nearly 500,000 public health and hospital workers by the end of February this year. The plan called for vaccinating millions of police officers and firefighters by spring, and by summer, Bush promised, any American who insisted would be able to receive the vaccine. That has not happened.
Gerberding's spokesman, Tom Skinner , said, "She fully supports the plan the president outlined last December. We're much better prepared even with only 40,000 vaccinated, but obviously we still have more work to do."
-------- business
Bush Thinks U.S. Overcharged in Halliburton Contract
Fri December 12, 2003
By Steve Holland
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=FWRJFRZAHCLP0CRBAEOCFEY?type=topNews&storyID=3986281
WASHINGTON - President Bush, seeking to deflect criticism from the controversy surrounding Halliburton contracts in Iraq, said on Friday he believed a subsidiary overcharged the U.S. government for fuel deliveries to Iraq by $61 million, and expected it to be repaid.
Bush told reporters the Pentagon was investigating the overcharge after an audit found Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown & Root unit overcharged the U.S. Army by $1.09 per gallon for nearly 57 million gallons of gasoline for Iraqi citizens.
"Their investigation will lay the facts out for everybody to see. And if there's an overcharge, like we think there is, we expect that money to be repaid," Bush said.
Critics of the Bush administration say Halliburton, the Houston-based oil company where Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive, has unduly benefited from its government connections. The fuel deliveries fall under a contract awarded, without competition, to Halliburton in March.
Democrats are using Halliburton as a symbol of what they view as big business profiting from the Bush administration while regular citizens are short-changed.
Howard Dean, running for the Democratic presidential nomination, told reporters in Council Bluffs, Iowa, that there should be an independent investigation of Halliburton's alleged overcharging and ties to the Bush administration.
So far the company has generated about $2 billion in business from a March contract and more than $2 billion from a logistics contract for which it supplies services ranging from delivering mail to doing laundry for U.S. troops.
"I would like to see such an investigation," Dean said. He said there was "an appearance of impropriety."
Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, also a Democratic presidential candidate, called on the Defense Department over a month ago to seek reimbursement from Halliburton for amounts it has overcharged the U.S. government.
"At a time of soaring federal deficits, we can ill afford to line the pockets of well-connected corporations at the expense of the American taxpayer," he said on Friday.
Halliburton defended its work and said it welcomed a full review. Chairman and Chief Executive Dave Lesar denied the company had overcharged the government, citing Army Corps of Engineers audits.
Bush said: "I appreciate the Pentagon looking out after the taxpayers' money. They felt like there was an overcharge issue. They put the issue right out there on the table for everyone to see and they're doing good work. We're going to make sure that as we spend the money in Iraq that it's spent well, spent wisely."
"PRESIDENT FOR BIG OIL"
Democrats charged the case showed Bush was coddling Halliburton at the same time Bush was excluding Iraq war opponents from U.S.-funded reconstruction contracts in Iraq.
The Bush administration has decided to bar Iraq war opponents like France, Germany and Russia from competing for $18.6 billion in U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in Iraq.
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark's campaign attacked what it called "the Bush administration's ties to Halliburton."
"George W. Bush is a president for Big Oil, of Big Oil, and 'buy' Big Oil. He is more concerned about the success of Halliburton than having a success strategy in Iraq," said Chris Lehane, a communications strategist for Clark.
New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg wrote this week to Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the Republican chair of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, to repeat his request for hearings on Halliburton's Iraqi reconstruction contracts, especially the size of the no-bid contract.
Collins has previously declined the request. Her aides said she was unavailable on Friday.
"This is the sweetheart deal of the century that is grossly wasting taxpayer dollars. It's time for the vice president and the rest of the Administration to come clean on the Halliburton backroom deals," Lautenberg said through a spokesman.
----
Pentagon launches Halliburton inquiry
Mark Tran
Friday December 12, 2003
UK Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1105729,00.html
The Pentagon has begun an extensive inquiry into Halliburton's activities in Iraq after evidence emerged that the oil services company, which was formerly run by the US vice president, Dick Cheney, overcharged the US government by as much as $120m (£69m).
Halliburton has not been accused of wrongdoing, but this is the first time Pentagon officials have believed that major contracts for the war in Iraq have been mishandled.
The possible overcharging occurred under two separate contracts awarded to Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root division.
In one case, Pentagon auditors found evidence that KBR may have overcharged the Army Corp of Engineers for petrol by $61m.
Auditors say that KBR did not profit, but had overpaid for supplies from Kuwaiti companies, pushing up the final price. The Pentagon says KBR failed to adequately evaluate the costs and operations of its Kuwait subcontractor.
The other case of overcharging involved the supply of mess halls, and the Pentagon said it had found evidence that KBR may have overestimated the cost of catering by $67m.
Investigators at the Defence Contract Audit Agency are now examining all aspects of financial controls and subcontracting arrangements by KBR in Iraq, with around 20 auditors having been assigned to the job.
In a statement, David Lesar, the chief executive of Halliburton, said: "We welcome a thorough review of any and all of our government contracts."
Mr Lesar defended the company's performance, and said that the questions were "a normal part of the audit process and not a condemnation of KBR processes".
However, Democrats - who have criticised the lack of competition for contracts in Iraq - were quick to lay into the Bush administration.
"We've recently learned what many Americans have suspected for a long time - special interest contributor Halliburton is overcharging the American taxpayers," Howard Dean, the Democratic presidential contender, told the Washington Post.
"Now this president is preventing entire nations from bidding on contracts in Iraq so that his campaign contributors can continue to overcharge the American taxpayers."
Mr Dean was referring to a White House decision earlier this week to block firms from countries opposed to the conflict in Iraq from bidding for contracts, worth $18.6bn, to rebuild the country.
The move caused predictable outrage in the countries affected, which include France, Germany and Russia. However, companies from Britain and Italy - which were coalition partners - are eligible for contracts.
Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, has urged the administration to reverse the decision, which he called "unfortunate", and the EU has raised the possibility that the US move violates World Trade Organisation rules.
The discovery that Halliburton could have overcharged the US government is certain to add to the arguments raging over Iraq's reconstruction. Halliburton has been under intense scrutiny ever since it was awarded a no-bid contract to provide billions of dollars in services in Iraq.
Critics of the Bush administration say that Halliburton has benefited from White House patronage, because the company is a big donor to Republican party coffers.
It gave $708,770 in political contributions between 1999 and 2002, with 95% of that going to Republicans. Administration officials counter that few companies have the resources and expertise to carry out the work needed.
Mr Cheney, a former defence secretary under the first Bush administration, stepped down as chief executive officer of Halliburton when he became Mr Bush's running mate in 2000.
He has said that he played no role in contracts for his former company, of which he became head in 1995.
KBR was first criticised in the summer by Congress for charging high rates to bring petrol into Iraq from Kuwait, but there have been accusations of overcharging before.
Last year, the firm paid $2m in fines to settle charges of inflating prices for repairs and maintenance at Fort Ord, California.
In 1997 and 2000, the General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog, found that KBR had billed the army for questionable expenses on its support contracts for operations in the Balkans.
Those reviews cited instances such as charging $85.90 per sheet of plywood actually costing $14.06, and billing the army for cleaning some offices up to four times per day.
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U.S. Sees Evidence of Overcharging in Iraq Contract
December 12, 2003
New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/international/middleeast/12PENT.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - A Pentagon investigation has found evidence that a subsidiary of the politically connected Halliburton Company overcharged the government by as much as $61 million for fuel delivered to Iraq under huge no-bid reconstruction contracts, senior military officials said Thursday.
The subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, also submitted a proposal for cafeteria services that seemed to be inflated by $67 million, the officials said. The Pentagon rejected that proposal, they said.
The problems involving Halliburton, where Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive, were described in a preliminary report by auditors, the officials said. The Pentagon contracts were awarded without competitive bidding and have a potential value of $15.6 billion; recent estimates by the Army have put the current value of the Halliburton contracts at about $5 billion.
Halliburton denied overcharging and called the inquiry a "routine audit." Dave Lesar, the company's chairman, president and chief executive, said in an e-mail statement, "We welcome a thorough review of any and all of our government contracts."
Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon's budget chief, said, "Contractor improprieties and/or contract mischarging on department contracts will neither be condoned nor allowed to continue."
Halliburton, which had more than $12.5 billion in revenues in 2002, has emerged as a symbol for many people who opposed the war in Iraq and who claimed that the interests of such companies with close political ties were given too much consideration by the administration.
Criticism intensified when Halliburton received the no-bid contract to provide billions of dollars in services in Iraq. Administration officials counter that few companies have the resources and expertise to carry out the work needed.
Military officials said the Pentagon was negotiating with K.B.R. over how to resolve the fuel charges. But Michael Thibault, deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, said in a telephone interview that a draft report by the agency had recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers seek reimbursement.
The officials said Halliburton did not appear to have profited from overcharging for fuel, but had instead paid a subcontractor too much for the gasoline in the first place.
Halliburton has also said that one reason it needed to charge a high price for fuel was that it must be delivered in a combat zone. Several K.B.R. workers have been killed or wounded in attacks by Iraqis.
Other questions, in a second contract with the Army, involved unacceptable delays by the subsidiary in providing cost estimates for dozens of projects already under way in Iraq, Mr. Thibault said. These violations, for work that includes the construction of food, housing and other facilities for the military, could involve inflated costs as well, he added.
A spokeswoman for Halliburton, Wendy Hall, said in an e-mail message that the inquiry was part of a "routine audit" and that it was "not the fact that K.B.R. has overcharged."
Mr. Lesar, the chief executive, said in his e-mail: "We will work with all government agencies to establish that our contracts are not only good for the United States, but also the company is the best and most qualified contractor to perform these difficult and dangerous tasks."
Mr. Thibault said that it would be "premature" to describe the auditor's conclusions as final, that the investigation was continuing and that the Halliburton subsidiary "deserves a chance to respond to our findings." He said auditors expected to issue a final report this month, but added that the preliminary findings involved overcharging that was "potentially very substantial."
The two Halliburton contracts are by far the largest awarded by the Pentagon in Iraq. Some Democrats have criticized the awarding of contracts to the Halliburton subsidiary, saying they might appear to be a political payoff to a company well connected with Republicans.
But administration and Halliburton officials have denied that politics played any role in the awards to K.B.R., whose work in Iraq involves a contract with the Army Corps of Engineers for repairing and restoring Iraq's oil industry. The initial value of the work was set at $7 billion. A second contract with the Army for logistical support has a maximum value of $8.6 billion, military officials said.
Mr. Thibault would not be specific about the basis on which the auditors have found evidence that the Halliburton subsidiary has overcharged for the fuel it is providing in Iraq under the oil contract.
But government documents show that the United States government is paying Halliburton an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying.
Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who has been a leading Congressional critic of the contract, said the preliminary audit "confirms what we've known for months: Halliburton has been gouging taxpayers and the White House has been letting them get away with it."
"It is deplorable and we need to put an immediate end to it," Mr. Waxman said in a written statement. "There needs to be a top-to-bottom review of all the Iraqi contracts."
Defense Department and other government officials said a draft report of the audit agency's finding was sent to K.B.R. on Dec. 5 and included "harsh assessments" of the company's handling of its contract to import fuel from Kuwait.
Mr. Thibault said that Halliburton had promised a response by Dec. 17, and that the agency would issue a final report within a week after that. Once that report is complete, it will be turned over to the clients, including the Army Corps of Engineers, which contracted with K.B.R. in March for tens of millions of gallons of gasoline, benzene and other fuel.
The audit agency has also discussed with K.B.R. the delays in the pricing of elements of the logistics contract, military officials said. Among projects under way, the company has provided the government with cost estimates for just 12 orders, with 69 outstanding and overdue, the officials said. They said the delays raised the possibility that the company would eventually claim an unacceptably high cost for a project whose work was already largely completed.
The company's work for the military in Iraq has evolved from putting out oil field fires to overseeing rebuilding of Iraq's oil infrastructure and providing fuel. K.B.R. also provides support to American troops, including serving meals.
Mr. Cheney, the former chief executive, left Halliburton in 2000, after President Bush asked him to become his running mate.
The Army awarded the logistics contract to Halliburton in 2001, on a competitive basis, but its size has swelled since the Iraq war, with additional work awarded to Halliburton without competition. The second contract, for oil reconstruction projects, was formally awarded in March on a "sole source" basis, but the decision to give the project to Halliburton was made in late 2002 by senior administration officials who were part of a secret task force planning for postwar Iraq.
Don van Natta Jr. contributed reporting from London for this article.
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Bush Says Halliburton Will Have to Repay Any Overcharges
December 12, 2003
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/international/middleeast/12CND-PENT.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - President Bush said today that the Halliburton Company would have to pay back any money it might have have overcharged the government for work it is doing in Iraq.
``If there's an overcharge, like we think there is, we expect that money to be repaid,'' Mr. Bush said this afternoon as he and his chief spokesman sought to distance the White House from a continuing controversy over Iraq-related work being done by Halliburton, which was once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Alluding to a Pentagon audit that has found that Halliburton may indeed have overcharged the government by some $61 million for fuel deliveries, the president said: ``I appreciate the Pentagon looking after the taxpayers' money. They felt like there was an overcharge issue.''
It was not entirely clear today just how much in supposed overcharges may already have been paid by the government to Halliburton, a huge oil-field services company. But it was clear that questions about the politically well-connected company may continue to nettle the White House.
Asked whether Halliburton might be ``an albatross around this administration's neck, '' the president replied: ``I expect anybody doing business with the United States government to be transparent, and to give the taxpayers a good return on their money. That's what I expect. And if anybody is overcharging the government, we expect them to repay that money.''
The preliminary Pentagon audit has found that a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, may have overcharged the government for fuel deliveries under lucrative no-bid construction contracts. But Pentagon officials have said the company did not appear to have profited from overcharges but rather may have initially paid a subcontractor too much. Halliburton has vigorously denied any overcharges, declaring in a statement that it welcomes ``a thorough review of any and all of our government contracts,'' and asserting that the Pentagon inquiry is routine in any event. The company has said, too, that fuel deliveries in a combat zone are inherently costly.
Earlier today, the president's chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, tried to characterize Halliburton and its contracts as the bailiwick of the Pentagon, not the White House.
``We expect the Pentagon to look at this and get to the bottom of it,'' Mr. McClellan said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also encountered the Halliburton issue, in a generally friendly question-answer session at a meeting today of the National Conference of State Legislatures in the capital.
A Minnesota lawmaker said she was concerned about apparent overcharging by Halliburton and urged Mr. Rumsfeld to look into it personally. Mr. Rumsfeld replied that he was not ``intimately knowledgeable'' about the affair.
``We've got auditors that crawl all over these things,'' Mr. Rumsfeld said. He emphasized that while there had been disagreements over charges, there had not yet been any actual overpayments.
Mr. McClellan, when asked whether the White House was planning any changes to guard against similar problems, indicated that no new measures were contemplated.
``This was a matter, a contracting matter, that was decided at the Pentagon,'' Mr. McClellan said at a news briefing. ``There are some oversight measures that are in place to make sure that tax dollars are protected, to make sure that tax dollars are being spent appropriately.
``And from our standpoint, we expect those measures and procedures that are in place for oversight purposes to be followed,'' Mr. McClellan went on. ``And we expect the Pentagon to look at this and get to the bottom of it.''
Further questions on the Houston-based Halliburton, where Vice President Cheney was chief executive until he joined the 2000 Bush ticket, should be directed to the Pentagon, Mr. McClellan said.
Democrats have had a field day with the Halliburton affair, asserting that the company is ``gouging taxpayers,'' as Representative Henry A. Waxman of California put it.
Mr. McClellan was asked today whether, in retrospect, it would have been better if Halliburton had never gotten any contracts. ``It's a Pentagon decision,'' he replied. ``It's a Pentagon matter.''
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Halliburton Unit Probed for Possible Overbilling of U.S.
By Jackie Spinner and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 12, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57520-2003Dec11.html
Defense Department auditors have discovered that a Halliburton Inc. subsidiary may have overcharged the government $61 million on a contract to supply fuel for Iraq, a Pentagon official said at a hurriedly called news conference last night.
In another contract to operate U.S. military mess halls, Halliburton, which was headed by Dick Cheney before he became vice president, would have been overpaid $67 million if auditors hadn't questioned the arrangement, officials said, citing findings of a draft audit.
While Halliburton isn't being accused of wrongdoing, and the government isn't yet seeking reimbursement, this is the first instance the Pentagon has said it believes that major contracts for the war in Iraq and its reconstruction have been mishandled.
"We have found some issues of concern that are worthy of immediate attention and we're making sure that that kind of aggressive action is taken so that we resolve these issues as expediently as possible," said William H. Reed, director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency.
On the gas contract, Halliburton subsidiary KBR has been charging the U.S. government $2.27 a gallon to deliver gasoline from Kuwait, while a similar contract for gas from Turkey sets the price at only $1.18, the official said.
Halliburton didn't profit from that differential, officials said. "This isn't money that went to the company," said Larry DiRita, the Pentagon's top spokesman. Rather, he said, the money the Pentagon believes was overcharged went to a private Kuwaiti company that is a subcontractor on the contract. He declined to identify that company. He also noted that during last spring's war, the Kuwaiti government provided fuel to the United States and its allies at no charge.
Halliburton's problem with the contract, a Pentagon official said, was that it failed to adequately evaluate the costs and operations of its Kuwaiti subcontractor. On the contract to operate mess halls, the official said that Halliburton told the Pentagon its subcontractor price would be $220 million. But auditors examining Halliburton's operations found that at that time, the company already had awarded a subcontract under which the cost was actually $67 million lower than that.
"You'd have to be pretty stupid" to do this on purpose, the official said, implying that it was an easy discrepancy to catch. He said he believes this was "a clear, obvious, miscommunication error" that resulted from a "disconnect" between the company's operations in the Mideast and its contracting office at its Houston headquarters.
Halliburton chief executive David J. Lesar said in a statement, "We welcome a thorough review of any and all of our government contracts." He defended the company's performance and said the questions were "a normal part of the audit process and not a condemnation of KBR processes."
On the fuel pricing, he said only one supplier from Kuwait met the government's specifications and said the company has repeatedly tried to transfer the delivery work to another contractor. On the food contract, he said that the auditors were talking about "a proposal, not an invoice."
Democrats have criticized the lack of competition and the prices being charged in the Halliburton contracts and were quick to jump on the Pentagon announcement about Cheney's former company.
"We've recently learned what many Americans have suspected for a long time -- special-interest contributor Halliburton is overcharging the American taxpayers," said former Vermont governor Howard Dean, a leading Democratic presidential contender. "Now this president is preventing entire nations from bidding on contracts in Iraq so that his campaign contributors can continue to overcharge the American taxpayers."
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who has taken the lead in questioning the Halliburton contracts, said in a statement that the draft report "confirms what we've known for months. Halliburton has been gouging taxpayers and the White House has been letting them get away with it."
Cheney was defense secretary from 1989 until 1993, and then was chief executive at Halliburton from 1995 until 2000, when he resigned to join George W. Bush on the 2000 Republican ticket.
Bob Faletti, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which administers the fuel contract, said, "We have a copy of the draft audit. We are going to let the process work. KBR has an opportunity to provide additional information and refute the charges. We will not be taking any action prior to the process being completed."
The two contracts in question are among the biggest the U.S. government has let for operations in postwar Iraq. They are open-ended arrangements under which about $5 billion has been spent so far, one of the Pentagon officials said.
-------- china
Taiwan's President Giving Bush Headaches
December 12, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Taiwan-Whos-Chen.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- The latest guy giving President Bush headaches isn't an AK-47 toting leader of a shadowy terrorist group. And he's not a Stalinist recluse with nuclear ambitions.
He's Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian -- a 52-year-old workaholic attorney who wears plain blue suits and big wire-framed glasses, and who runs one of Asia's most vibrant democracies and richest economies.
Chen landed in Bush's inbox of problems by calling for Taiwan's first island-wide referendum. He says the March 20 vote will be on whether China should withdraw hundreds of missiles pointing at this tiny island.
The Taiwanese leader is under tremendous pressure to cancel the referendum, which Washington fears could lead to an independence vote that could spark a war with China. The two split amid civil war in 1949, and Beijing is demanding that the island agree to unify.
Once an enthusiastic supporter of Chen, Bush leaned on the Taiwanese leader this week, warning that America opposes unilateral moves to change the status quo. It was Chen's biggest slap from Washington since he took office four years go.
Some members of Chen's Democratic Progressive Party said it's too early to say if Chen would scuttle the referendum to preserve friendly relations with America, Taiwan's most likely defender if China ever attacks. Much depends on whether Washington keeps the heat on Chen.
Luo Wen-jia, a lawmaker close to Chen, doubted the president would back down on the referendum.
``He has already compromised by proposing this anti-missile vote'' and not calling an election that directly involves the touchy sovereignty issue, he said. ``The president may twist and turn, but he won't easily give up.''
Chen is also locked in what could be the biggest election battle of his life. He's being challenged by two parties that have combined forces to defeat him in the March election. Dropping the referendum would be extremely embarrassing, his supporters say.
Chen has a long history as a scrappy fighter. He grew up in poverty in southern Taiwan; his father was a factory worker and his mother was a day laborer. He has said the family milk supply came from U.S. aid packages.
Chen excelled at school and majored in law at Taiwan's top school, passing the bar exam before graduating and settling into a career as a maritime lawyer.
He showed no strong interest in politics until the late 1970s, when he began defending dissidents arrested during the martial law era. He later became a Taipei city councilman and a member of parliament, where he often stormed around the legislature tossing papers as his party pushed for greater democracy.
Chen's political career brought pain to his family. His wife, Wu Shu-chen, was paralyzed from the waist down when a truck ran over her three times in 1985. The couple believes it was a politically motivated murder attempt.
Chen's upset election victory four years ago snapped the Nationalist Party's five-decade grip on the presidency. The win was an amazing success story for the Democratic Progressive Party, which the Nationalists had banned during martial law.
The party was founded by human rights, democracy and independence activists. But Chen remains flexible on independence, said Shen Fu-hsiung, a Progressive Party lawmaker.
``Most of us think he's just trying to use this issue to his benefit,'' Shen said. ``Those in the heart of the independence movement have doubts about him.''
Shen acknowledged that from the broader perspective used by China and sometimes America, Chen's views and his referendum plans seem pro-independence.
Beijing is also suspicious of Chen because he won't call himself ``Chinese.'' He has yet to embrace China's goal of eventual unification, and continues to insist that Taiwanese voters should have a choice.
Chen's program to remake Taiwan also includes holding other referendums and rewriting the constitution. Many analysts agree things need to be done, but some question whether Chen is the person to do them.
Denny Roy of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii noted that President Richard Nixon was a good man to restart U.S.-China relations because of his anti-communist background.
But Roy said he doubts Chen is the right person for the delicate tasks he wants to undertake. And Roy says the timing may not be the best.
``There must be a proper time and a proper place,'' he said.
--------
China Lauds Bush for Comments On Taiwan
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 12, 2003; Page A44
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57808-2003Dec11.html
BEIJING, Dec. 11 -- China issued a rare thank you to the United States on Thursday when it applauded President Bush's strongest statement yet opposing any moves by Taiwan toward independence.
The statement from the Foreign Ministry, calling Taiwan "the most important and sensitive" issue in U.S.-Chinese relations, underscored a continuing improvement in dealings between China and the United States and followed this week's visit by Premier Wen Jiabao to the United States. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, pronounced the visit a "complete success" and said, "We appreciate President Bush's statement."
Standing next to Wen on Tuesday, Bush said the United States opposed "any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo." Bush added: "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, which we oppose."
Bush was responding to recent moves by Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, to call a "defensive" referendum asking voters whether they want China to withdraw the hundreds of missiles it has deployed within striking distance of Taiwan.
Western analysts have said Chen's move was based on a desire to heighten tensions between Taiwan and China in the run-up to Taiwan's presidential election on March 20. In 2000, Chen benefited from increased tensions with China and became the first opposition candidate to win Taiwan's presidency.
China has accused Chen of using the referendum as a ploy to push Taiwan one step closer to declaring formal independence. China has threatened to attack the island, which it considers to be part of its territory, if such a proclamation is made.
In Taiwan, citizens shrugged off the Chinese warning as bluster, and Chen's supporters dismissed any suggestion the referendum could provoke an attack. Chen argued that the United States would eventually support the referendum, a view shared by many on the island.
"I believe America is a democratic country. It will absolutely support and encourage the public opinion of Taiwan's 23 million people and their pursuit of deeper democracy and peace," he said in an interview with CNN, according to a presidential office statement.
Earlier in the day, Chen said the referendum was in line with U.S. democratic values, which should allow voters to express opinions about a threat.
Trong R. Chai, a pro-independence legislator and influential party official who has urged Chen to take a stronger stand against China, said the United States could do little to punish Taiwan if the island ignored Bush's warning and held the referendum.
"The U.S. won't tell China, 'You can take over Taiwan,' " he said. And the Bush administration is unlikely to cancel arms sales to the island or impose economic sanctions, he said.
Pressing forward with his reelection campaign, Chen announced that Vice President Annette Lu would again be his running mate. Lu is fiery orator who openly advocates Taiwan's independence, and Chinese state media have labeled her a traitor and "scum of the nation."
Correspondent Philip P. Pan in Taipei contributed to this report.
-------- colombia
Colombian Terrorism Bill Expands Military Powers
WORLD IN BRIEF
Friday, December 12, 2003
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58152-2003Dec11.html
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Senators approved a divisive anti-terrorism bill that gives the military sweeping powers to search homes, detain suspects without warrants and tap phones. The legislation, criticized by human rights groups, is part of President Alvaro Uribe's strategy to defeat a 39-year insurgency and restore authority in the country's lawless provinces.
"The country's citizens can feel more serene," Interior and Justice Minister Sabas Pretelt told Congress. "They should know that the terrorists harming them will now face all the force of the state."
The decision came after Colombian troops launched a massive operation against outlawed right-wing paramilitary fighters, killing 24 and capturing 39. It was one of the largest campaigns against the militias since they opened disarmament talks with the government in July, the army said.
Colombia's main paramilitary umbrella group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, has declared a unilateral cease-fire, but some members of the group have allegedly continued attacking villages and killing civilians.
-------- europe
Germans fed up with war legacy
Reuters in Berlin
Friday December 12, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1105247,00.html
Almost 70% of Germans say they are annoyed at being held responsible for the Holocaust and many believe Jews use Germany's Nazi past to their advantage, a survey showed yesterday.
The survey by Bielefeld University showed 69.9% were irritated at still being held responsible today for crimes against Jews.
A quarter of 3,000 people surveyed also agreed with the statement: "Many Jews try to use Germany's Third Reich past to their advantage and want to make Germans pay for it." A further 30% said there was "some truth" to the statement.
Almost two-thirds said they believed too many foreigners live in Germany, while 30% said foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce.
Endorsing the survey, the German parliamentary president, Wolfgang Thierse, said he understood why so many people wanted to shed guilt for what happened before they were born. He said the survey did not prove there was widespread anti-Jewish sentiment.
The authors of the survey said they found that Germans who were worried about security threats and losing their jobs had become more hostile to Jews, Muslims, and immigrants.
-------- iraq
Bremer Expects Rise in Violence as Iraq Builds Democracy
December 12, 2003
By SUSAN SACHS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/international/middleeast/12BREM.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 11 - The American administrator of Iraq said Thursday that the country's transition to independence could be marred by increased violence, but he expressed confidence that Iraqis could build a democracy that values religious and political freedom.
L. Paul Bremer III, the former diplomat and counterterrorism official who has governed Iraq since May, expressed high hopes for Iraq's political future after 35 years of dictatorship and one-party rule, saying he believes Iraqis want and understand democracy.
"It is ambitious and it is possible," he said in an interview in one of Saddam Hussein's vast palace compounds, where the Coalition Provisional Authority has its headquarters in a building dating from the Iraqi monarchy in the first half of the last century.
"We're not going to have a Jeffersonian democracy here," he added. "The process will be bumpy. We'll have bad days and good days."
Mr. Bremer, appearing relaxed and in good humor, spoke in broad terms about the next phase of the American occupation, a period that he predicted could bring a spike in violent attacks as well as an American-nurtured public debate over the shape of the new Iraq.
Under an agreement with the Bush administration last month, Iraq's political leaders are supposed to create a new legislative assembly by next spring and elect a provisional government by July 1. An elected body to write a constitution would then follow, with national elections possibly by 2006.
Before that, however, Iraq's transitional leadership must also tackle one of the more complicated questions about its future relationship with the United States, the country that many Iraqis applaud for ending Mr. Hussein's rule but also criticize for its handling of the seven-month-old occupation.
By March 15, the two sides are supposed to draw up a status of forces agreement on the future relationship between an independent Iraq and the American military.
Several members of the Iraqi Governing Council, appointed by Mr. Bremer in July to nominate ministers and take a limited role in law-making, have said they would like to see the American troops stay in their base or bases unless called upon for help.
While it is too early to say how long American forces might stay and under what conditions, Mr. Bremer said he believed Iraqis would ask for an agreement based on security conditions in the country.
"It's a question that really ought to be asked in six months, when we get through this very important crucial period and let's we see where we are," he said. "My own guess is we're going to have an increase in violence over the next six months."
Although the number of daily attacks on American troops surged as high as 50 in November before the military started cracking down harder, most parts of Iraq remained relatively calm, as was Baghdad until a series of unexplained explosions on Thursday night. Mr. Bremer and American military commanders, however, said they feared that terrorists, loyalists of the old government and Islamic militants could increase attacks on Americans and Iraqi officials in the period leading up to independence.
"The violence will be precisely because of the fact that we're building momentum toward success," Mr. Bremer said.
In the last 45 days, American commanders have already noticed what they call a regional command and control capability on the part of attackers who have executed nearly simultaneous bombings in the capital and other cities.
An attack on an American military convoy in Samarra last week added yet another element, with military officials reporting large numbers of men mounting a daytime assault. "This was really an unusual attack," Mr. Bremer said. "It's really the first time anybody larger than a squad even has stood and fought."
An rise in attacks in the coming months would necessarily bring a sharper military response, he added, and should be accompanied by a comparable increase in American investment in improving the daily lives of Iraqi civilians. Mr. Bremer said he planned to pour millions of dollars into local reconstruction projects over the next six months.
"As we respond to attacks - and we do have to respond to attacks to show that we mean to carry out our security obligations here - we have to be careful that we don't overdo that," he said. "We balance that by putting an enormous amount of money into reconstruction efforts."
Since the fall of Mr. Hussein's government in April, military commanders have said they spent more than $100 million on projects in the provinces under their control. The source of the money was the seized assets of the old government.
Mr. Bremer said he wanted to spend more than double that.
Already this month, American forces have adopted aggressive new tactics to flush out their attackers, dropping 500-ton bombs on urban sites believed to harbor guerrillas, setting up barbed wire cordons around villages and arresting relatives of wanted men.
Commanders have acknowledged that their tactics could further alienate Iraqis.
Mr. Bremer said the coalition had become better organized to gather and analyze intelligence about its attackers, in part because because of greater Iraqi involvement. It is still too soon "to say we've broken the code," he added.
The interplay between the military and civilian sides of the occupation has been a source of muted tension since the beginning, with Mr. Bremer inclined to make life in Iraq as normal as possible and Army commanders inclined to close roads, patrol city neighborhoods and set up checkpoints to ensure security.
Mr. Bremer said he had worked to reduce tensions by assembling the military and civilian commands under the same roof.
The relationship, however, will be tested in the coming months.
The new timetable for turning political control and sovereignty back to Iraqis will require some process to select a new Iraqi provisional legislature, possibly by people now serving as municipal and provincial council members.
In most provinces, American Army officers picked the local legislators months ago, but many have since fallen into public disfavor. Mindful of their importance in the upcoming political battle for control of the new provisional government, the Iraqi Governing Council has already started to replace some local officials, most recently the provincial governor of Babylon.
Mr. Bremer, who had appointed the governor, said he, too, wanted to recast the local governments and reduce their dependence on the American military.
"What we will try to do is beef up the civilian capability in the provinces by refreshing the provincial councils, making sure the provincial councils are more representative," he said. "It's one of the issues we're working on right now with the Governing Council, so that there is a local Iraq political institution that is more or less representative" to aid the transition from occupation to independence.
Over the coming months, Mr. Bremer and his staff of 3,000 also have plans to engage Iraqis in a national debate over the shape of their nation.
"We want televised debates, town hall meetings, focus group meetings, meetings all across the country for people to sit down and talk about what kind of Iraq they want, what democracy means, what does separation of powers mean," Mr. Bremer said.
"It's never happened here and it needs to happen rather quickly."
--------
DISPATCHES: THE MILITARY
Marines Plan to Use Velvet Glove More Than Iron Fist in Iraq
December 12, 2003
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/international/middleeast/12MARI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Dec. 10 - No force has a tougher reputation than the United States Marines. But the marines who are headed to Iraq this spring say they intend to avoid the get-tough tactics that have been used in recent weeks by Army units.
Marine commanders say they do not plan to surround villages with barbed wire, demolish buildings used by insurgents or detain relatives of suspected guerrillas. The Marines do not plan to fire artillery at suspected guerrilla mortar positions, an Army tactic that risks harming civilians. Nor do the Marines want to risk civilian casualties by calling in bombing strikes on the insurgents, as has happened most recently in Afghanistan.
"I do not envision using that tactic," said Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, the commanding general of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, who led the Marine force that fought its way to Baghdad and will command the more than 20,000 marines who will return to Iraq in March. "It would have to be a rare incident that transcends anything that we have seen in the country to make that happen."
The increase in guerrilla attacks on American troops in Iraq has prompted Army units in the so-called Sunni triangle in central Iraq to adopt a hard-nosed approach - and spawned a behind-the-scenes debate within the American military about the best way to quash the insurgents.
While some Army commanders insist the hard-nosed tactics have been successful in reducing enemy attacks, other military officers believe they are alienating Iraqis and thus depriving American commanders of the public support and human intelligence needed to ferret out threats.
In an interview at his headquarters at Camp Pendleton, General Conway was careful not to criticize the Army. Still, he indicated that he plans to pursue a very different strategy.
"I don't want to condemn what people are doing," General Conway said. "I think they are doing what they think they have to do. I'll simply say that I think until we can win the population over and they can give us those indigenous intelligence reports that we're prolonging the process."
The Marines, General Conway says, will try to design their raids to be "laser precise," focused on the enemy with a maximum effort made to avoid endangering or humiliating Iraqi civilians.
After American forces invaded Iraq last spring, United States marines fought some of the fiercest battles of the war at Nasiriya and at a mosque in eastern Baghdad. After Saddam Hussein was ousted, the Marines assumed the responsibility for stabilizing south-central Iraq, where most of the inhabitants are Shiite Muslims who were persecuted under Mr. Hussein and were glad to see him gone. In contrast to the Army's experience, no marine was killed in action after mid-April.
The Marines insist their success also reflected their energetic efforts to work with the local population, an effort guided by their "Small Wars" manual, which derives from their 20th-century interventions in Central America.
There were several parallels between the Marine experience in southern Iraq and how the Army's 101st Airborne Division has approached northern Iraq - and many differences from the aggressive tactics of the Army's Fourth Infantry Division and other Army units in the Sunni triangle.
On their return to Iraq now, the Marines will be dealing with a much more challenging area which includes restive towns like Falluja, west of Baghdad.
In that region, American military units have come and gone so often that they have had little time to understand their surroundings. Falluja was initially occupied by the 82nd Airborne Division, which was soon replaced by the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, which was in turn replaced by the Second Brigade of the Army's Third Infantry Division. In early summer, the Third Infantry Division had some success in helping to establish the local police. But it returned to the United States, handing the town back to the Third Armored Cavalry, which was soon replaced by the 82nd Airborne.
In Iraqi society, which emphasizes personal relationships, the constant rotations have made a difficult job that much harder. So have some tactics: in April, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne based themselves in Falluja and were fired on during an anti-American demonstration. The troops fired back. Iraqis say 17 people were killed and more than 70 wounded, many of them civilians who never fired on the American troops. The 82nd Airborne has disputed that account.
Starting next March, nine battalions of marines will be deployed. In addition to infantry, the Marine force will include light armored reconnaissance units, engineers and attack helicopters. The Marines will also take command of a brigade from the Army's First Infantry Division, which is also going to Iraq in the spring.
Success, Marine commanders say, will ultimately depend winning the trust of a wary Iraqi population. The measure of progress, General Conway says, will not be the number of American raids or enemy dead. It will be tips about potential threats that are provided to the Marines by ordinary Iraqis.
"The program we used in the south was a maturing Iraqi police, supported by an Army M.P. company in each of the cities, supported by a Marine quick reaction force," he said, defining this as a Marine infantry battalion. "That worked very well for us. That is the model we intend to use."
Toward this end, the Marines are planning to work with the Iraqi police and also train and equip an Iraqi military force to take on the insurgents. "We intend to create an Iraqi Marine battalion, maybe a brigade," General Conway said.
Marine commanders have stressed the need to be sensitive to local traditions. Marines here have been told to remove their sunglasses and look Iraqis in the eye when they speak with them. A select group of marines also been selected for intensive Arabic language training. The marines will use Iraqi, not American names, to delineate the zones assigned to specific Marine units and will try to align them with Iraqi administrative districts. To limit the disruption to the local populations, the Marines also plan to set up their bases outside of Iraqi cities.
But the marines at Camp Pendleton are also prepared to fight.
"We carry an embedded offensive capability in every convoy," said Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, the commander of the First Marine Division. "To us you don't drive on through, you stop, you hunt them down and you nail them."
"We will try to go and restore a degree of civility," said General Mattis. "If they choose to fight, they are going to regret it, but we also believe that part of the physicians' oath that says first do no harm. If to kill a terrorist we have got to kill eight innocent people, you don't kill them."
General Conway added: "We will be as vicious with the resistance as we have to be. It is not that we intend to go in and coddle everyone. Our marines just have to be able to be aggressive and hostile one moment and the next moment be able to play soccer with the kids."
General Conway said, for instance, that if marines fire artillery shells, they will be special illumination rounds to light up terrain, not destroy targets.
"Right now, in some of the sectors they are firing artillery missions against radar hits," General Conway said. "That will not be our method of operation."
--------
U.S. Draws on Israeli Methods for Iraq
December 12, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Iraq.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- In fighting insurgents in Iraq, the United States is drawing on some of Israel's methods and experiences in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including running checkpoints and tracking militants with drone aircraft, Israeli officials say.
Israeli and U.S. security experts have met repeatedly in recent months to discuss urban warfare and Israel's lessons from its grueling three-year fight against Palestinian militants.
In public comments, Israeli and U.S. officials acknowledge ``strategic cooperation'' and confirm high-level meetings, the most recent one last week in Tel Aviv. However, they play down the contacts as routine, apparently for fear the Arab world will be outraged.
Recent U.S. methods in Iraq increasingly mimic those Israel uses in the West Bank and Gaza -- setting up impromptu checkpoints, keeping militants on the defensive with frequent arrest raids and, in at least one case, encircling a village and distributing travel permits.
An Israeli security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel has briefed the U.S. military on its frequent use of drones, or unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, which allow officers at Israeli military headquarters to watch operations in real time.
Israel uses drones to monitor targeted killings, often helicopter missile attacks on fugitives' cars. Israel has killed at least 117 terror suspects and 88 bystanders in targeted attacks.
The Israeli security official said Israel has taught the U.S. military how to make use of intelligence information within minutes to attack a moving target. The U.S. military has not formally adopted targeted killings, though some wanted Iraqis have been killed in arrest raids.
A U.S. Army officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. troops try to stay clear of methods that look like collective punishment. Israel routinely demolishes the family homes of Palestinian attackers in hopes of deterring future attacks.
The British newspaper The Guardian recently reported Israeli advisers are training U.S. soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C.
Lt. Col. Hans Bush, of the U.S. Army's Special Operations Command, said there are no Israeli forces ``currently teaching Army Special Operations Command forces at Fort Bragg.''
Last week, a large delegation from the Army Training and Doctrine Command in Fort Monroe, Va., visited Israel. Harvey Perritt, the command's civilian spokesman, said the meeting was routine, but would not elaborate.
The Israeli army said in a statement it does not comment on ``ongoing strategic cooperation between the U.S. and the Israeli military.''
But military officials close to the sides, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the meetings focused on lessons learned from Israel's fighting in the West Bank and Gaza and how to adapt them to Iraq.
Israel also gave the United States a training video for troops to illustrate an 11-point code on treating civilians, the rights of international relief groups and other issues ``very tied into...the daily dilemmas'' of urban warfare, said Lt. Col. Amos Guiora, commander of the Israeli army's school of military law. The Israeli military recently began showing the video to its troops, amid persistent Palestinian complaints of mistreatment by soldiers.
Israel has an entire doctrine on operating checkpoints: how many soldiers are needed for different types of blockades and how to differentiate between civilians and militants, said Eitan Ben-Eliahu, a former Israeli air force commander.
``These are details that only people who were involved in it for many years can know, and other armies, like the U.S. military, haven't had ... enough experience,'' he said.
Urban warfare is different from conventional fighting in every way, Ben-Eliahu said. Soldiers are often confronted with face-to-face battles against an enemy willing to commit suicide. And soldiers have to avoid killing civilians who mingle, knowingly or not, among militants, he said.
An Israeli security source said American officers have visited a mock-up of an Arab town used for Israeli training. Earlier this year, Israeli and American troops held joint exercises in Israel's Negev Desert, focusing on air defenses.
Brig. Gen. Michael Vane, deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command, acknowledged in a letter to Army Magazine in July that ``we recently traveled to Israel to glean lessons learned from their counter-terrorist operations in urban areas.''
Martin Van Creveld, an Israeli military expert, warned that just as Israel has been unsuccessful in eliminating militant groups and suicide bombers, the United States cannot expect to be victorious in Iraq.
Van Creveld traveled to Camp Lejeune, N.C., last year to lecture U.S. military officials on the door-to-door fighting that took place in April 2002 in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers and 52 Palestinians were killed in the battle.
``They are already doing things that we have been doing for years to no avail, like demolishing buildings ... like closing off villages in barbed wire,'' Van Creveld said. ``The Americans are coming here to try to mimic all kinds of techniques, but it's not going to do them any good.''
In Iraq, the Americans have a more difficult task than Israel's in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Van Creveld said. Iraq is larger, the borders are open and there is almost unlimited access to arms.
``I don't see how on earth they (the U.S.) can win. I think this is going to end the same way Vietnam did,'' Van Creveld said. ``They are going to flee the country hanging on the strings of helicopters,'' he added, referring to the 1973 U.S. departure from Saigon.
-------- israel / palestine
A Bush Aide Criticizes Israel for Not Doing More for Peace
December 12, 2003
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/international/middleeast/12DIPL.html
WASHINGTON - In an unusually blunt criticism of a close ally, a Bush administration envoy on the Middle East said Thursday that Israel had "done too little for far too long" to foster peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
Speaking at a conference in Rome held to raise money for the Palestinians, David F. Satterfield, a deputy assistant secretary of state, criticized the Palestinian side as well as the Israelis. But his comments about Israel were among the toughest any American official has publicly made in some time.
His statement was the third sign of American displeasure with Israel in the last month.
In late November, the administration reduced loan guarantees for Israel to punish the expansion of settlements and the construction of a barrier in the West Bank.
Last week the administration rebuffed Israel as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with self-appointed negotiators from Israel and the Palestinian side who proposed a peace plan to create a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel had asked the United States not to meet with the authors of that plan.
Mr. Powell met Thursday with two other freelance peace "negotiators," Ami Ayalon, a former chief of Israel's security service, Shin Bet, and Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian professor, who have also advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
Mr. Satterfield's criticism of Israel occurred amid other signs that European, Arab and American diplomats were trying to restart the peace effort after months of inactivity.
Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian security chief, met in Washington with Mr. Powell and other top American officials about the Arab efforts to get the Palestinian side to agree to a cease-fire.
In Rome international donors to the Palestinians said that, because of the installation of a new Palestinian prime minister, a "window of opportunity" had reopened, permitting the resumption of negotiations with Israel.
The donors also said they would consider establishing a special trust fund to help the Palestinian Authority deal with a $650 million shortfall in its budget. The donors provided $1.2 billion to the Palestinian Authority last year.
The conference in Rome included the first meeting with the Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, and the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, since the new Palestinian government was formed last month.
Secretary Powell is to meet with Mr. Shalom on Friday, and administration officials said they were awaiting details of certain unilateral actions to be taken by Israel that have been circulating in the Israeli news media. They include closing some settlements and establishing an interim Palestinian state, according to the media reports.
Some American officials said the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, might unveil these steps next week, the first anniversary of his endorsement of the administration-backed peace plan known as the "road map."
The view in the administration is that the peace negotiating process is stalled right now but could be rekindled if the Israeli steps could be coupled with a cease-fire by the Palestinians and a promise to crack down on Palestinian militants. But few officials were willing to express certainty that something was in the offing.
--------
6 Palestinians Reported Killed in Gaza Clash
December 12, 2003
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/international/middleeast/12MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Friday, Dec. 12 - Israeli troops on a predawn raid on Thursday shot dead six Palestinians, including militants and civilians during heavy exchanges of gunfire in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinians said. If the death toll given by the Palestinians is correct, it would be one of the highest in a single day in recent weeks.
Israeli armored vehicles, supported by attack helicopters, entered Rafah around 4 a.m. in search of Khaled Qadi, a leading member of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group that has carried out many suicide bombings and attacks against Israel.
The military said Israeli troops were fired upon and shot back.
The army said its soldiers had shot three Palestinian gunmen and believed that all were killed. But Palestinian witnesses and doctors at Rafah Hospital said six Palestinians were killed, two of them militants and four civilians. More than a dozen Palestinians were wounded, the hospital added.
The dead included a man hit about a half-mile from the scene of the fighting by a stray bullet, a hospital official said. He added that a medic was shot while trying to help the wounded, and later died of his wounds. Israel said the medic belonged to the militant group Hamas.
Palestinian gunmen wounded seven Jews who defied Israeli military orders early on Friday to try to reach a holy site in the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli security officials told Reuters. The officials said one of the Jews was critically wounded when gunmen fired at the group near Joseph's Tomb.
Palestinians in Nablus said the Israeli Army had moved in to seal off the area of the shooting.
On Thursday, the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, said it would be "a terrible mistake" if his Israeli counterpart, Ariel Sharon, tried to impose a unilateral political settlement on the Palestinians. Mr. Sharon has suggested he could take such action if peace efforts remain stalled.
"You cannot build a fence on our land, to cage us like chickens and hope all will be well," Mr. Qurei told the Israeli newspaper Maariv, referring to the barrier Israel is building in the West Bank. "The conflict will continue, the fire will burn, terror will increase, nobody will benefit."
--------
Israelis Kill 6 Palestinians in Gaza
Attempted Mob Hit In Tel Aviv Kills 3, Injures at Least 19
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 12, 2003; Page A43
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56746-2003Dec11.html
JERUSALEM, Dec. 11 -- Six Palestinians were killed and about 20 were injured Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip when Israeli soldiers arrested a senior Palestinian militant and fierce gun battles erupted in the neighborhood surrounding his home, Israeli and Palestinian security officials said.
Later in the day, Tel Aviv was rocked by a sidewalk explosion that bore the hallmarks of a Palestinian suicide bombing but turned out to be an attempted gangland hit that killed three bystanders, Israeli police officials said.
An Israeli military spokesman said troops entered a refugee camp in Rafah, along the Egyptian border, at 4 a.m. to arrest Khaled Kadi, whom the spokesman described as a senior member of Islamic Jihad. He said that Kadi was involved in smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip from Egypt and had previously planned attacks inside Israel and against Israeli soldiers and settlers in Gaza.
Palestinian witnesses and security officials said that about 20 Israeli armored vehicles entered the Salam neighborhood in eastern Rafah and came under attack as they approached Kadi's house. The Israeli spokesman said that when Palestinians from two groups -- Islamic Jihad and Hamas -- opened fire with light weapons and antitank rockets, Israeli troops returned fire and killed three Hamas gunmen.
Palestinian security sources and witnesses said that six people were killed, including two Hamas members -- Omar Abu Muhsin, 28, and Nasir Abu Naja, 28 -- and an emergency medical technician, Mohammed Vino, 23, who they said was shot in the head while aiding the wounded. Israeli military sources said that Vino was known to them as a Hamas operative.
The other victims were identified as Sabri Abu Loli, 25; Ayyad Mahmom, 55; and Kamal Akhras, 17. Palestinian security and hospital officials said at least 20 people were wounded, including a 10-year-old girl.
Israeli troops said they captured Kadi during the operation and destroyed three structures, including his family's house.
[Early Friday, Palestinian gunmen ambushed an Israeli car heading toward a disputed holy site in the West Bank city of Nablus, wounding seven, one critically, the Associated Press reported, citing military officials and rescue workers. The Israelis, members of an extremist Jewish sect, were sneaking into the city to pray at a site where some Jews believe the biblical patriarch Joseph is buried. Israel abandoned the site in 2000 and banned Jews from going there.]
In Tel Aviv, Israeli police said the bombing Thursday targeted Zeev Rosenstein, who is considered one of the top organized crime bosses in Israel. He reportedly owns several casinos in Europe and has been the target of at least six previous assassination attempts.
Rosenstein and a bodyguard were slightly injured in the blast, police officials said. Three men killed in the blast had not been identified Thursday night but apparently were pedestrians, police said. At least 19 people were injured, they said.
The explosion occurred near a cafe and money changing store at a crowded intersection in central Tel Aviv. Police said the bomb was planted on an awning over the entrance of a shop.
A police spokesman, Gil Kleiman, said Rosenstein had been released from police custody a few days ago after being held for investigation in a purported murder-for-hire scheme.
-------- space
US will attack from space?
China and Russia call for space arms prohibition
(Beijing Time)
Friday, December 12, 2003
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200312/12/eng20031212_130250.shtml
Since the launch of the first man-made satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957, space exploration, on which man has been devoting efforts, has not only brought huge economic benefits to mankind, but has also dramatically changed man's way of living and thinking.
Since the launch of the first man-made satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957, space exploration, on which man has been devoting efforts, has not only brought huge economic benefits to mankind, but has also dramatically changed man's way of living and thinking. Statistics show that space-related industries grow at an annual rate of 20 percent, and the profit of international space industry exceeded US$80 billion in 2000, which is expected to increase by over 200 percent in the next 10 years. The human society has become inseparable from the outer space, and it has become a common concern of world countries to make peaceful use of the outer space and ensure space security.
Who is challenging space security?
The end of the Cold War not only dramatically changed the global security circumstance, but put an end to the situation in which arms race in the space was more or less restrained. Superficially, the fast development of space technology and its wide application in military fields are the main factors threatening space security. As a matter of fact, the disintegration of the bipolar structure has made America the only superpower and its boundless expanding strength and ambition are also the actual factors challenging space security.
The dual-purpose space technology and its wide military application have provided potential driving force to space weaponization. Along with hi-tech development, the demarcation between technologies for military and civilian uses has become increasingly blurred. This is manifested as follows: firstly, many key technologies in military fields are at the same time pillar technologies for the development of the national economy; secondly, the convergence of military and civilian technologies is the orientation for technical renovation. The integration of these two kinds of technologies has made it difficult for people to tell one from the other. A case in point is space technology. Navigation, detecting and communication satellites can be applied to both military purposes and economic construction. During the Iraq War, America mobilized more than 100 satellites of various kinds, ranging from highly confidential electronic reconnaissance satellites to meteorological satellites accessible to anyone.
Besides, the wide application of space technology to the military field has, on the one hand, enormously enhanced the US army's capability of global reach and real-time striking, enabling US troops to have a farther sight, faster action, more direct attacking and smoother communication than their enemies. On the other hand, due to the fact that the efficient use of space resources has become an important factor deciding the outcome of war, satellites and other space resources will therefore possibly become targets of attack and intervention during wars and conflicts. Civilian satellites, in particular, due to their role as supplements and substitutes for military satellites in wars, are much likely subject to attack in war. For this reason, the dual purpose and wide military application of space technology have, to a certain extent, intensified the danger of weaponization of the space.
The US space policy of one-sided search for absolute advantages may trigger off a series of chain reactions and new vulnerability in space. America's attempt, plan and action to control the outer space not only have long been in existence, but also have undergone new development thanks to the effort of the Bush administration. To take the military highland of space all to itself, the US army not only aims to rely heavily on the space, but also wants to dominate it exclusively. As clearly pointed out in the nation's space development guide, the "space control" defined by the US army is the capability to "secure its own freedom of action in space", and at the same time "prevent its rivals from having such capability". The Pentagon is organizing its space combat troops and Rumsfeld has ordered the air force to get ready for "carrying out fast and continuous space operations".
What worth mentioning is that the Bush Administration is developing its missile defense system, aiming at missile interception in space by 2008. An official with the US Missile Defense Agency this year stressed efforts made on developing a space-based test platform, which includes at least three satellites at its initial stage, while a Space-Based Laser (SBL) in the missile defense program will be put into test by 2012. The application of SBL will go far beyond the needs of a missile defense system, experts pointed out. According to the SBL project director, the extra functions of SBL include "defending/attacking anti-space-based fights (i.e., anti-satellite missions); "preventing enemy use of space (such as destroying enemy launching); preventing information input/output of satellites (likely to use low-energy beams to jam satellites rather than directly destroying them); "defending/attacking anti-space fights" and "striking high-altitude planes, cruise missiles and unmanned aircraft". Although the efficiency of SBL is uncertain, the adverse current of space weaponization has appeared.
Due to the development of space technology, existing international treaty framework for planning space activities fails to meet the new growing space security challenge. By now, international treaties relating to the prevention of outer-space arms race mainly include the "Five United Nations Treaties on Outer Space", "Partial Test Ban Treaty", "Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques", "Agreement Concerning Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies", as well as the "Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty" between the Soviet Union and the United States.
These treaties once played a positive role in preventing outer-space arms race, but limited by political, military and technological conditions, they are seriously flawed and unable to prevent arms race in the outer space. For example, the "Five UN Treaties on Outer Space" is weakened in its function of preventing outer-space arms race and laid perils for future weapons in space since it doesn't prohibit the deployment of non-WMD arms nor the development, production and use of outer-space weapons. Some treaties do have strict regulations, but they have ceased to be effective, such as the "Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty" of 1972. Some others fail to be universal because signatories are too few, such as the "Moon Agreement" of 1979. In a word, the current international mechanism for preventing space arms race is too weak to tackle the rapid development of space technology and weapons. The existing treaties must be added or revised, even new treaties need to be concluded through negotiations.
Tit-for-tat lines in space security
The new threat to space security has raised higher requirements on outer-space arms control. In recent years, although the international community has made much effort in this regard, the Geneva Conference on Disarmament, due to obstructions from the United States, remained stagnant in the aspects of preventing outer-space arms race and strengthening the outer-space legal system. Currently there are two lines of thought for preventing out-space arms race and securing space security. One is represented by America, which, in quest of absolute security, is against negotiations on space disarmament regardless of the interests of other countries. Now the Bush Administration is bent on expanding its space military capability, believing that actions must be taken to guarantee its security as long as they are technologically practicable. Washington's excuse is that America relies heavier on space than other countries do, so it is obliged to develop a unique space capability to ensure security. America declared its space weapons as defensive, then whom is it to guard against? Are they Russia and China, who have been taken by America as rivals?
The other line is represented by China and Russia. The two countries oppose outer-space armament and arms race, and advocate addressing related countries' space security concerns through international cooperation, this helps enhance international security and stability and is in the common interests of all countries. To this end, China has been making strenuous efforts to spur the international community to sign related international legal documents through negotiations and proposed to the Conference related documents together with other countries involved. China holds that a special committee for preventing outer-space arms race should be rebuilt as soon as possible to reach, through negotiation, agreements or treaties with legal effect for preventing outer space arms race.
To ensure the effectiveness of the treaties China suggested that they must contain the following articles: prohibition of test, deployment and use of any weapon, weapon system and their components in outer space; prohibition of test, deployment and use of any weapon, weapon system and their components used for outer-space war on land, sea and in the atmosphere; prohibition of the use, or threat of use, of weapons on outer-space objects; prohibition of helping and encouraging other countries, groups and international organizations to participate in activities forbidden by the treaty.
The existence of the two completely different lines shows that the international community must take immediate actions to bring the outer-space weapon control into track. Once a legal binding agreement on space disarmament is reached, it will help remove an important unstable factor in future international security and ensure the continuous peaceful use of space.
(Article on "Liaowang (Outlook) weekly review; translated by PD Online staff member Li Heng.)
-------- propaganda wars
ABC responds
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003
From: Yu-Lan Tu <yu-lan@kucinich.us>,
Kucinich for President
While ABC might have a few points about being the only other network other than MSNBC to have a full-time reporter with the campaign, what they are missing, and hoping you will miss as well, is how they DON'T use the footage that Melinda Arons has collected over her period with the campaign. Melinda is a great person who is very dedicated to her work (I've met her several times and has had the opportunity to talk to her quite extensively), yet everytime I ask her why Dennis Kucinich is not mentioned more, she always refers the cause to upper-management: producers decide what to show and what not to show. So don't let ABC scare you away with their rhetoric about how they have been responsible and should be the last in line to be criticized. They should be criticized for not giving equal air time to all the presidential candidates, and they should be held responsible for the decisions they make. After all, does anyone really think Lieberman or Edwards is going to get the nomination? I didn't think so...
Go Dennis! Yu-Lan
----
A Baghdad Thanksgiving's Lingering Aftertaste
By Dana Milbank
Friday, December 12, 2003; Page A35
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57870-2003Dec11.html
Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon-authorized newspaper of the U.S. military, is bucking for a court-martial.
When last we checked in on Stripes, it was reporting on a survey it did of troops in Iraq, finding that half of those questioned described their units' moral as low and their training as insufficient and said they did not plan to reenlist.
With the Pentagon just recovering from that, Stars and Stripes is blowing the whistle on President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, saying the cheering soldiers who met him were pre-screened and others showing up for a turkey dinner were turned away.
The newspaper, quoting two officials with the Army's 1st Armored Division in an article last week, reported that "for security reasons, only those preselected got into the facility during Bush's visit. . . . The soldiers who dined while the president visited were selected by their chain of command, and were notified a short time before the visit."
The paper also published a letter to the editor from Sgt. Loren Russell, who wrote of the heroism of his soldiers and then added: "[I]magine their dismay when they walked 15 minutes to the Bob Hope Dining Facility, only to find that they were turned away from their evening meal because they were in the wrong unit. . . . They understand that President Bush ate there and that upgraded security was required. But why were only certain units turned away?"
Russell added that his soldiers "chose to complain amongst themselves and eat MREs, even after the chow hall was reopened for 'usual business' at 9 p.m. As a leader myself, I'd guess that other measures could have been taken to allow for proper security and still let the soldiers have their meal."
The 1st Armored Division officials told Stars and Stripes that all soldiers had the opportunity to get a proper Thanksgiving meal -- possibly more than the newspaper's editors will get in Guantanamo next year.
It's been two weeks since Bush made that secret trip to Iraq, but the flight itself continues to cause turbulence.
The controversy began when the White House said Air Force One was spotted by a British Airways plane but the president's pilots told the dubious British Airways pilots by radio that they were flying a Gulfstream V. The White House later said there was no British Airways plane involved and the conversation took place between British air traffic control and another plane while Air Force One was "off the western coast of England."
As it happens, Air Force One was flying across the North Sea, off the eastern coast of England, when it was spotted by the mystery plane, a German charter jet. But that's being picky.
Of more concern, air traffic controllers in Britain are seething over the flight, in which the president's 747, falsely identified as a Gulfstream, traveled through British airspace. Prospect, the controllers union in the United Kingdom, says the flight broke international regulations, posed a potential safety threat and exposed a weakness in the air defense system that could be exploited by terrorists.
"The overriding concern is if the president's men who did this can dupe air traffic control, what's to stop a highly organized terrorist group from duping air traffic control?" asked David Luxton, Prospect's national secretary. Luxton said the flight was in "breach" of regulations against filing false flight plans set by the International Civil Aviation Organization, which he said should apply to a military aircraft using civilian airspace.
Luxton said that by identifying itself as a Gulfstream V instead of the much larger 747, Air Force One could have put itself and other airplanes in danger. The Gulfstream can climb faster and maneuver more nimbly than a 747, which means controllers could have assumed the president's plane was capable of a collision-avoiding maneuver that it couldn't actually do. And the "wake vortex" of a 747, much larger than a Gulfstream's, could jeopardize smaller planes that were told by unsuspecting controllers to follow in the mislabeled plane's wake.
As it happens, Air Force One passed without incident. But Luxton said that's beside the point. "It's important air traffic control have an accurate picture of what's up there in the sky they're controlling," he said.
The White House has declined to elaborate further on the flight plan and other security measures for the trip.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- death penalty
When DNA Meets Death Row, It's the System That's Tested
By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 12, 2003; Page A01
Inside a walk-in freezer in a Richmond, Calif., laboratory sits a tiny vial that holds one-fifth of one drop of a 20-year-old sperm sample. It is forensic DNA evidence extracted from the body of a brutally murdered young bride, evidence that no one is permitted by law to touch, evidence that -- if tested -- could determine whether an innocent man was executed in Virginia 11 years ago.
The case of Virginia coal miner Roger Keith Coleman -- put to death for the 1982 murder of his wife's sister, Wanda McCoy -- is one of a handful of death-penalty cases in which DNA evidence still exists in police labs and evidence facilities across the country that could cast doubt on the guilt of men already executed.
Since DNA "fingerprinting" began to revolutionize criminal forensics in the late 1980s with precise identifications, it has freed more than 130 convicts, 12 of whom have walked off death row. But in other cases, prosecutors have successfully blocked the testing of DNA before an execution and then fought posthumous tests just as vigorously.
Now two of those cases are moving toward denouement. In the Coleman case, advocates met recently with a senior aide to Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner (D), who could order the DNA tested. Warner is seriously considering the request, said Robert Blue, the governor's chief counsel. And last Friday, in the Texas case of Richard Wayne Jones, a judge granted a prosecutor's motion to conclude legal efforts to obtain evidence for testing -- the last barrier stopping the state from destroying the evidence.
"The most critical reason to test these cases is that you can find the person who really committed the crime," said Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, which provides pro bono help to inmates seeking post-conviction DNA testing. "It seems to me the community would have a compelling interest in knowing the truth, and we can learn from the truth."
Scheck points to the Florida case of Frank Lee Smith as the most unsettling example of the relevance of DNA testing. Smith -- black, poor and mentally ill -- was convicted of the 1985 rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl. He died of cancer on death row in 2000, waiting for the DNA testing that exonerated him 11 months later. The results identified a convicted rapist and murderer as the perpetrator.
Prosecutors say that they usually support post-conviction testing if the results could definitively resolve an inmate's guilt or innocence. But a number acknowledge that they remain opposed to what they see as baseless testing, in large part out of concern for the victims' relatives, who have waited years -- sometimes decades -- for closure.
Legal experts say that the costs of testing, which run into thousands of dollars, contribute to the resistance. They also cite a prosecutorial fear that foes of the death penalty are simply trying to undermine the capital-punishment system. John Eastman, a Chapman University law professor, said that post-conviction DNA testing is not always "about a particular guy being innocent, but an effort to open the door to build a case against the death penalty."
In the case of Joseph Roger O'Dell III, executed in Virginia in 1997 for a rape and murder, a prosecuting attorney bluntly argued in court in 1998 that if posthumous DNA results exonerated O'Dell, "it would be shouted from the rooftops that . . . Virginia executed an innocent man." The state prevailed, and the evidence was destroyed.
"There are circumstances where enough is enough after going through 15 years of appeals," said Josh Marquis, an Oregon prosecutor who is co-chairman of the capital litigation committee of the National District Attorneys Association. "At some point there has to be finality. They have no disincentive for stopping. . . . In most of these cases, it's the last-ditch effort, the Hail Mary pass."
Prosecutors and defense lawyers agree that the spate of well-publicized wrongful convictions uncovered by DNA testing has taken its toll on the system. As Attorney General John D. Ashcroft encourages prosecutors to aggressively pursue the death penalty, jurors are showing increasing reluctance to mete it out. A 2001 Bureau of Justice Statistics study shows death sentences are down by half since 1994. Proof that an innocent man has been executed could be a tipping point in this national debate, according to both sides.
"There is no question" that the vindication of an executed man "could have a significant impact on the system," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death-penalty education organization in Washington. "By putting a human face on a huge mistake, hesitation of the death penalty could turn into opposition -- not because people morally perceive it as wrong but because they would see the system is flawed."
Others, however, believe the impact would be minimal, and a recent survey supports that. A May 2003 Gallup Poll showed that 73 percent of Americans believe that an innocent man has been executed in the past five years -- but the same poll showed that 60 percent of those surveyed believe the punishment is applied fairly.
In four cases of executed men examined by The Washington Post, anti-death-penalty advocacy groups, relatives of the executed, lawyers or the media have tried to have samples tested. In two of the cases, the states thwarted DNA testing before the men were executed. Most recently, the Texas attorney general denied a request from The Post to test evidence in the case of Jones, executed in 2000 for the stabbing murder of a woman he was accused of kidnapping. Also in Texas, defense attorneys continue to try to obtain DNA evidence in the case of Windell Broussard, put to death for killing his estranged wife and stepson. The nonprofit Innocence Project has agreed to handle the testing if they are successful. In the Oklahoma case of Malcolm Rent Johnson, executed for the rape and murder of an elderly woman, the state had tentatively agreed to posthumous testing -- but then federal authorities seized the evidence for another investigation.
More than 30 states have in recent years enacted laws that permit some form of post-conviction DNA testing in the event that evidence -- or technology -- should develop years later that could spare a life. But when Coleman, Broussard, Jones and Johnson were convicted, they were afforded no such guaranteed protections.
'Let Sleeping Dogs Lie'
In the decade that Roger Coleman sat on death row for the 1981 murder of his sister-in-law, he had more public support for his innocence claim than any other condemned man in recent history. Articulate and white, the coal miner from Grundy, Va., had going for him an ingratiating personality as well as a team of high-powered lawyers, an inmate aid organization, a supportive University of Virginia girlfriend and a press corps raising questions about his guilt. Days before his execution, Time magazine asked on its cover, "Must This Man Die?"
But in the end, no amount of public pressure could persuade the courts and the governor of Virginia at the time, L. Douglas Wilder (D), to spare Coleman's life. Coleman was electrocuted on May 20, 1992, after proclaiming, "An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight."
Last year, the Virginia Supreme Court rebuffed a pleading to obtain the sample for posthumous testing from Centurion Ministries, the inmate aid charity, and a group of media organizations, including The Post, ruling that the parties had "no right" to gain access to the sample for testing.
But the matter is not over.
Edward Blake, a forensic scientist hired by the defense in 1990 to do an earlier form of DNA testing, could not at that time eliminate Coleman as the rapist and killer. But with more-advanced technology now at his disposal, Blake holds the small sample in his Forensics Science Associates laboratory freezer in California, refusing to return it to the state for fear it will be destroyed -- but also barred from testing it without a court order.
Although Blake suspects Coleman is guilty based on his earlier work, he is also steadfast in his belief that the public has the right to know the truth. "I'm not anti-death penalty; I'm pro-democracy," he said in an interview. "How can the state take the position that this is not worth inquiring into? Why not find out once and for all?"
Blake also said that because he has not examined the sample in years, he cannot be sure there is enough left to test.
Coleman supporters have long challenged his conviction based on what they say was an implausible timeline and inexperienced trial lawyers. They argue that if he had been everywhere witnesses said he was, Coleman would not have had time to park his truck on the main road, wade through a creek, rape his sister-in-law, cut her throat and get home. He became suspect because of an earlier conviction for sexual assault -- a crime he also denied.
After years of legal maneuvering, Coleman's defense team persuaded a judge in 1990 to allow the semen swab to be tested, over strong objections from the Virginia attorney general. Blake concluded that the semen was consistent with Coleman's, but DNA technology was still in its nascent stages. Blake raised the possibility that two different semen samples may have been present.
When he lost the court battle to have the DNA tested, Jim McCloskey, head of Centurion Ministries, asked Warner to have the sample retested, a decision the governor can make unilaterally.
Tom Scott, a Grundy lawyer who prosecuted Coleman, believes Warner should "let sleeping dogs lie."
"That is not implying that I have any worry that Coleman was wrongly convicted," he said. "What do we do about it in 10 years -- when more sophisticated technology comes up? Do we test it again? When does this Pandora's box stop opening?"
Sharon Paul, Coleman's former girlfriend, lives in Seattle today and has tried to move on with her life. She said she is ambivalent about testing the sample -- but would like to see Coleman's name cleared. She said she has no apprehension about the results.
"I am very secure in my belief that Roger Coleman was innocent," she said. "Any results that offer a different answer will just lead me to conclude mistakes were made."
'Simply Unconscionable'
When Richard Wayne Jones was arrested in 1986 for the kidnapping and stabbing murder of Tammy Livingston in Fort Worth, he and his girlfriend had in their possession the victim's checkbook, bank card and credit cards. His fingerprint was found on the victim's car, and a couple of drops of blood consistent with hers were on his pants.
From the initial investigation, Jones never denied being at the crime scene. But after confessing to the murder, he later recanted. In a goodbye letter to his mother in 1993, after his first execution date had been set, he for the first time accused his sister, Brenda, and a friend of hers, Walt Sellers, of the murder, and claimed to have only helped dispose of the body to help Brenda. He admitted to driving the victim's car and to burning her body to cover up the crime.
Evidence in the case still sits in a Fort Worth police lab, but none of it -- including swabs from Livingston's body and cigarette butts found in her car -- was ever tested for DNA. Jones's defense team asserts that testing would have spared his life by raising a reasonable doubt that he was the murderer. Jones's sister and Sellers were never charged.
"I have no doubt about his version of events. I have no doubt this man did not kill Tammy Livingston," said Tina Francis, an investigator who worked on the case for years. She said she came across numerous people who supported Jones's version of events.
"It's unforgivable that he burned the body -- but he shouldn't have been executed for it. It's still very raw for me."
According to defense lawyers and Francis, Jones grew up in an unstable, poor family in rural Texas and had been in trouble with the law before this arrest. He had an IQ of 67, said Francis, which made him borderline retarded. The defense team was never able to persuade the courts to reopen the case. In a last-ditch effort shortly before his execution -- and immediately afterward -- Jones's attorneys and his two sons unsuccessfully tried to have the DNA tested. The effort was vigorously opposed by the state as a waste of time and resources.
"He always admitted to being present at the crime scene, so the DNA would never exclude him and therefore never exonerate him," said Ann Diamond, a prosecutor in the case, who is seeking the dismissal of the case.
"They found her blood on him. His fingerprint was on the car. He admitted to burning the body. There is no articulated basis, in any way, shape or form, that he could be cleared of this crime. If there were any possibility . . . we would have [tested]. But when we have so many cases, there was no justification to expend public resources." William Harris, Jones's appellate lawyer, said: "It was simply unconscionable that they would not test the evidence before killing a man."
Jones was executed Aug. 22, 2000. After he died, a member of the defense team secured a DNA sample from Jones's body, which is tucked away in a lockbox in the event the state ever agrees to test the evidence.
In September, the Texas attorney general's office denied a request from The Post for the physical evidence in the case, stating that "tangible physical evidence . . . is not public information." Then, last week, a judge agreed to dismiss all pending claims on the evidence. Jones's attorneys, Greg Westfall and Gerald Staton, did not oppose the prosecutor's motion.
'Wasn't a Choirboy'
In April 1992, a little girl named Toccara Harris lay critically wounded in a Port Arthur, Tex., emergency room, just hours after a brutal stabbing attack that took the lives of her mother and 10-year-old brother.
"Who hurt you?" a police officer asked her.
She was unequivocal in her response: "My stepdaddy," she said. "Windell Broussard."
At that moment, at 8 years old, Toccara became the most compelling witness against the estranged husband of her 28-year-old mother, a witness who the defense argued was far too young to make a definitive identification. The room was dark when the assailant stabbed the family, the lawyers argued. She could see only a man's profile, and furthermore, she was awakened in the middle of the night. How, the lawyers asked, could the child be so sure?
Broussard denied involvement, but prosecutors built a strong case based on his criminal record, his volatile relationship with his wife, Dianna, testimony from an elderly aunt who quoted him as saying he killed someone -- and Toccara's eyewitness account.
Broussard was convicted and sentenced to death. In April 2001, Texas passed emergency legislation to permit post-conviction DNA testing. Within weeks, Broussard's appellate lawyers filed suit in state district court in Beaumont to compel the testing.
"Windell wasn't a choirboy -- you'd never accuse him of singing too loud in church," said Michael Charlton, who filed the lawsuit. "But I believed him. . . . I just liked the guy."
During a hearing on the matter, Judge Charles Carver in Beaumont denied the request to test the scrapings but agreed to order the blood samples from the scene to be tested. A few weeks later, Charlton recalled, the judge changed his mind with no explanation. The lawyer appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals but was not able to get a stay of execution.
"I don't know what the purpose of DNA testing would be -- for publicity or to find the truth," Jefferson County Assistant District Attorney Ed Shettle said yesterday. "The little girl was an incredible witness."
"Windell maintained his innocence on the gurney," Charlton said.
This month the Innocence Project agreed to test any available DNA, and Charlton continues to press for whatever evidence may remain.
'I'm Going to Heaven'
Oklahoma City public defender Robert Ravitz is not sure to this day whether his client Malcolm Rent Johnson was innocent of the 1981 rape and murder of 76-year-old Ura Alma Thompson. But the defense lawyer is nonetheless certain that Johnson did not get a fair shake from the legal system before he was executed for the crime almost four years ago.
The state's case relied on Johnson's possession of Thompson's personal property, as well as fiber, hair and semen analysis that was later challenged. "Maybe [the state] could have made a case for being in possession of stolen property," Ravitz said. "But I just can't believe in my wildest dreams that a jury, even back then, would give someone the death penalty based on that kind of flimsy evidence."
Johnson maintained his innocence for 18 years. "I'm going to heaven on a midnight train," he told the witnesses to his execution.
Johnson was a young man with a low IQ and a troubled history when he was charged with Thompson's murder. A product of an abusive home life, he had served time for rape, robbery and assault by the time he was 23.
On the day Thompson's body was discovered by her nephew in her Oklahoma City apartment, Johnson was arrested on an unrelated weapons charge. The arresting detective noticed in Johnson's apartment a doll matching a description of one taken from another rape victim. A wider search uncovered a number of items belonging to Thompson -- a ring, a watch, a key to her apartment. Johnson said that he did not know how the items got there, that perhaps his brother brought them.
The forensic evidence presented at Johnson's trial had been handled and tested by now-disgraced police scientist Joyce Gilchrist, whose alleged mishandling of evidence threw the state law enforcement community into turmoil two years ago.
Gilchrist testified that semen samples allowed her to identify the blood type as being the same as Johnson's. She also testified that blue fibers at the apartment matched a shirt of Johnson's, and that the blue dye from the shirt was found on hairs at the scene -- a highly unusual conclusion. It was the first time Gilchrist had testified about fiber. The court denied Johnson's request for funds to hire an expert to refute her testimony.
When questions were raised about Gilchrist's competence after Johnson's execution, a lawyer who never knew Johnson took up his cause. Douglas Parr sued the police for documents and to have tested the semen-stained evidence -- a bedspread, pillowcases and pantyhose.
Two years ago, an internal police memorandum was made public that contradicted Gilchrist's testimony at trial. A new exam of the slides that Gilchrist had said contained sperm showed they contained none -- which a defense expert would likely have caught. "I was very upset," Ravitz said.
A month later, the city attorney agreed to let Parr have the evidence. But before it could be tested, the federal government subpoenaed all the Johnson evidence as part of an investigation into Gilchrist's practices.
Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson said in an interview this week that he supports testing the evidence but added that he has no doubt that the state executed the right man.
"If we tried this case again today without DNA, you'd still get a conviction." he said. "He was in the vicinity, his blood type was corroborative, her keys were in his apartment, and she's dead."
Edmondson said he has tried unsuccessfully to ascertain whether the federal government has tested the evidence. Prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in Oklahoma City declined to say. The truth, one said, will be revealed in time.
Researchers Lucy Shackelford and Alice Crites contributed to this report.
-------- justice
Probe Fails to Find Source of Leaks About Secret Service
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 12, 2003; Page A35
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57865-2003Dec11.html
A government leak investigation into a 2002 magazine series that found widespread problems within the ranks of U.S. Secret Service has failed to identify anyone who improperly revealed information.
The Treasury Department's Office of Inspector General, in a report released yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act, said that it was unable to find current or former Secret Service employees who were involved with the "unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information" to U.S. News & World Report.
In a series of investigative reports, the magazine detailed a host of serious failings within an agency that considers itself the most elite and professional in law enforcement. The Secret Service employs thousands of uniformed officers and plainclothes agents to protect the president and other senior government officials and their families.
The magazine found gaps at times in the protective detail around some government officials and their families, though not the president. It described inadequate weapons training and accidents caused by Secret Service motorcades.
The articles also reported numerous instances of improper activity by Secret Service personnel, including allegations of criminal behavior, alcohol abuse and misuse of government property and reports that senior Secret Service officials had extramarital affairs with White House employees. The magazine detailed how a team of agents assigned to Vice President Cheney when he traveled to San Diego got into a drunken brawl when their shift ended.
After the articles' publication, a senior official of the Secret Service's inspection division asked the inspector general of the Treasury Department, which includes the Secret Service, to find out whether Secret Service employees had broken the law by disclosing sensitive information or by making false statements about their contact with U.S. News reporters.
The inspection division questioned whether the release of such information could have harmed the service's mission and violated any law, rule or policy, according to the IG report.
A Secret Service spokeswoman had no comment yesterday on whether the agency had asked for an investigation or taken any other steps to respond to the problems reported by U.S. News.
"We don't know whether the inspector general did any substantive investigation," said U.S. News Editor Brian Duffy. "We know that the president asked [White House chief of staff] Andy Card to take it up with the then-head of the Secret Service, and we heard Card did raise it."
Duffy added that the Secret Service refused to respond to the magazine's questions throughout the course of its inquiry.
The inspector general's report, which was completed April 28 but released only yesterday in redacted form, said that the inspection division identified employees it suspected of talking to U.S. News employees.
One of those Secret Service employees declined to provide a sworn statement to investigators and resigned from the agency.
The inspector general found that another employee "probably did" discuss Secret Service issues, but, in a sworn affidavit, denied speaking to reporters.
In the course of the probe, IG investigators examined Secret Service telephone and computer records.
The Justice Department "declined to prosecute on the merits of the investigation," the IG report said.
-------- terrorism
Efforts to Fight Terror Financing Reported to Lag
December 12, 2003
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/12/national/12TERR.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - The federal authorities do not have a clear understanding of how terrorists move their financial assets and are still struggling to prevent the flow of money to terror groups, according to a new Congressional report.
The report, by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, also finds that the Internal Revenue Service has not developed a formal plan for sharing financial information with state authorities about charities under investigation. And the report says the Treasury and Justice Departments have fallen nearly a year behind in developing a plan for attacking money laundering and issues like terrorists' use of black-market gems and gold. It says some agencies have failed to make terrorism financing a high priority or have set unrealistic goals for overhauling their tactics. The report is to be made public on Sunday.
The findings come at a time when some government officials and lawmakers say they have grown increasingly concerned about weaknesses in the government's ability to track how terrorists finance their operations.
Law enforcement officials point to several recent successes in investigating people in the United States and overseas suspected as major financiers of terrorism. But they acknowledge that gaining a clear understanding of how terrorists move their money has proven far more difficult than many anticipated and that recent attacks in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and elsewhere point to terror groups with continued access to significant resources.
Justice Department officials acknowledged to investigators that the Federal Bureau of Investigation "does not systematically collect and analyze" information on financing used by terrorists. Such schemes have involved filtering money through charities or laundering it by selling diamonds and gold, or even cigarettes and household appliances on the black market.
The investigation "is a real eye opener," said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who requested the study along with Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa.
"This is an indication that we were naïve to believe that all of our attention had this problem under control," Senator Durbin said. "I don't think we're close, and this report says that terrorists are going to continue to have resources at their disposal."
Several current and former government officials said in interviews that they believed that federal agencies have made strong progress in the last two years in attacking terrorist financing, with the F.B.I, the Treasury Department, the Department of Homeland Security and others committing more agents and greater coordination to the problem.
"There have been real and material advances in the war on terrorist financing since 9/11," said David Aufhauser, the Treasury Department's former general counsel, who left the government in October after working extensively on the terrorist financing issue. "It's now part of the international agenda and has to be part of the international agenda in order to be effective."
Mark Corallo, spokesman for the Justice Department, said he had not received a copy of the report. But he said, "Since Sept. 11, the government has tirelessly pursued terrorist financing to great success."
Mr. Corallo said that "tracking down terrorist financing is no easy matter, but we pursue all the leads in order to dry up the financing that makes terrorist activity possible."
Other government officials say the course has been slow-going.
"Right now there is a lack of understanding of what the problem really is," a Justice Department official who works extensively on terror financing issues said in an interview. "Tracing money in the best of circumstances is very, very difficult, and when you're talking about terrorist operations that can be carried out for $50,000 or $75,000, it's almost impossible."
The campaign to cut off terrorist financing has seen some high-profile successes and arrests in recent months, and investigators are continuing to delve into a complex network of Islamic charities and organizations in Northern Virginia that they say may have funneled money to terrorist groups. In the New York City and New Jersey area alone, investigators with the Department of Homeland Security have identified $100 million that they say was sent through illegal money-transmittal businesses, like hawalas, to countries with possible terrorist ties.
But the efforts to trace terrorist financing have been marred at times by turf wars between agencies and occasional conflicts in mission.
Some agencies say they remain frustrated by a lack of resources to combat terrorist financing. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, part of the Treasury Department, said that it has felt stymied as investigators have either been let go or reassigned to other agencies.
The Treasury Department's efforts to freeze terrorist-related assets have slowed after an initial rush following the Sept. 11 attacks. More than $136 million has been frozen worldwide, most of it in the months immediately after the attacks.
Law enforcement officials say terrorists have proven adept at finding new ways to raise money, using commodities like stolen baby formula to launder money.
The report from the accounting office said investigators looked into suspected terrorists who were raising money by selling counterfeit household appliances; they simply created their own brand.
In Pakistan, a charitable group implicated in terrorist financing avoided a Pakistani intelligence investigation by moving its money to Afghanistan, the report said.
And in Lebanon, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration ran into a dead end in investigating possible ties between drug smugglers and terrorists because of the group's "indecipherable records" on its financial transactions, the report said.
"We recognize that such analyses are difficult, but without an attempt do so, information about terrorists' usage and potential usage remains unknown, leaving vulnerabilities for terrorists to exploit," the report said in recommending a comprehensive, more analytical approach to identifying terrorist money.
Senator Grassley said the report pointed up a need for a more integrated approach to investigating terrorist financing.
"What you're seeing in all of this is the left hand of the government doesn't know what the right hand is doing," he said in an interview. "Why do we have a problem? Three words: lack of cooperation."
Congressional investigators also faulted the F.B.I. for not distinguishing terrorist financing cases from broader international terror cases. "The lack of such data hinders the F.B.I. from conducting systematic analysis of trends and patterns" in financing and establishing clear priorities on areas it needs to attack, the report said.
But the F.B.I. said in a statement that it had aggressively analyzed the full range of unconventional financing schemes, including drug smuggling, charities and bulk-cash smuggling, in its effort to dismantle terrorist networks. "We believe we have had significant success in this aspect of the war on terrorism," the bureau said.
Eric Lichtblau reported from Washington for this article, and Timothy L. O'Brien in telephone interviews from Moscow. David Johnston contributed reporting from Washington.
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Judge Frees 9/11 Suspect In Germany
Ruling Could Undo Only Conviction
By Souad Mekhennet and Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 12, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55699-2003Dec11?language=printer
HAMBURG, Dec. 11 -- The trial of a Moroccan man accused of helping the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers appeared close to collapse Thursday after the court announced that the German federal police had provided information, apparently taken from the interrogation of a top al Qaeda planner in U.S. custody, that the defendant had no advance knowledge of the plot.
The trial will continue, but presiding Judge Klaus Ruehle released Abdelghani Mzoudi, 31, who has been imprisoned since his arrest in October 2002 on charges of membership of a terrorist organization and more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder. The judge said Mzoudi, alleged to be a member of the Hamburg cell that spearheaded the attacks in the United States, will have to continue to attend the trial but is otherwise free until a verdict is reached.
"There is the serious possibility that Mzoudi was purposefully left out of the attack plans despite his links to the Hamburg group and despite his stay in Afghanistan, and that his supportive actions were not consciously made," Ruehle said.
The surprise turn could also undo the guilty verdict a German court returned in February against another Moroccan, Mounir Motassadeq, on the same charges. With that ruling, he became the first person anywhere to be convicted of helping in the Sept. 11 attacks.
In Washington, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft told reporters that he was "disappointed that the case in Germany has taken the turn it has taken." He added that "fortunately, in the United States, we enjoy a legal structure which anticipates the need for protecting both national security and adjudicating the innocence or guilt of individuals who are charged."
Ruehle, citing police information faxed to the court, reported that an unnamed witness had said that of the cell members who were based in Hamburg, only suicide pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Samir Jarrah, along with and Ramzi Binalshibh, knew of the plan for the hijackings.
Ruehle said in court that he believed the unnamed witness was Binalshibh, a citizen of Yemen who was arrested in Pakistan on the first anniversary of the attacks, and is believed by investigators to have been one of the plot's central planners. Binalshibh is being held at a secret location by U.S. authorities.
The decision by the panel of five judges in Hamburg will increase pressure on the United States to release Binalshibh's interrogation transcripts so that his credibility can be assessed. If his statement were found to lack credibility, the court might ignore it and move to convict Mzoudi. Without such disclosure, the court could dismiss the cases against Mzoudi and Motassadeq solely on the strength of the police statement, lawyers said.
The judge said that because the court had no opportunity to question Binalshibh or review transcripts of his interrogations, it had no way to know how believable he is.
Under German law, authorities who become aware of potentially exculpatory evidence are required to report it to the court.
Prosecutors argued successfully in the Motassadeq case that the defendant knew what Atta and other members of the Hamburg cell were planning and willingly assisted them by transferring money to the United States and providing other services. Both Mzoudi and Motassadeq maintain that whatever help they gave was unwitting.
The three pilots and Binalshibh "did not speak with others at any time about 'actual operations or creating a terrorist cell' for furthering the jihad," read the faxed statement from the Bundeskriminalamt, the German equivalent of the FBI.
Motassadeq's attorney said in an interview that he would immediately petition the court to release his client because the information also appeared to exonerate Motassadeq, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
"I think the Germans will have to offer him a major apology and that he will be able to stay here," said the attorney, Josef Graessle-Muenscher, referring to statements by the government that Motassadeq would be deported to Morocco when he completed his sentence. "The Americans should consider what they have caused. Statements they kept secret led to a guilty verdict."
A short man with a thick beard and a receding hairline, Mzoudi was present in court Thursday when the decision was announced. He first appeared dumbfounded, as if he did not understand what had been said. He asked his attorneys and interpreter, "Am I a free man now?" according to one defense attorney. "Mr. Mzoudi, you can go home now," Michael Rosenthal told his now-smiling client.
After leaving the courtroom, Mzoudi immediately fell to his knees and prayed, Rosenthal said. "He is still shocked, and we had to explain to him it's not finished," Rosenthal added.
The court's decision infuriated prosecutors. Lead prosecutor Walter Hemberger also said that the unidentified witness could only be Binalshibh and that any evidence from him was probably an attempt to protect others. The federal police's fax did note that the witness had provided contradictory information in the past and that those who went to al Qaeda training camps were taught how to behave if arrested and interrogated.
U.S. officials have turned over selected summaries of Binalshibh's interrogation to the Germans with the understanding that they would not be used in court, German officials said. Because the summaries themselves have not been provided to the court, just a brief communication about them, the German government has kept its side of the bargain.
Both sides in the trial have been pressing for access to the full material, however. Two weeks ago, German prosecutors asked the court for a delay before ending the evidentiary part of the trial to see if they could produce some of the transcripts. But U.S. officials said in recent interviews that they would continue to refuse such access for the court, citing national security concerns. And in letters to the court Thursday, the office of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the Interior Ministry said the transcripts would remain secret.
An attorney for American co-plaintiffs in the case, relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, said he believed the prosecution's case was now doomed. "We assume that the trial against Mzoudi will . . . end in an acquittal," said Andreas Schulz, a Berlin lawyer hired by a number of relatives to represent their interests in the trial. "Motassadeq will probably be freed." Schulz said he would appeal any such decisions.
A Frenchman facing terrorism charges in U.S. District Court in Alexandria is also demanding access to statements made by key al Qaeda detainees, including Binalshibh, arguing like Mzoudi and Motassadeq that the statements could exonerate him. The issue of access to the witnesses has stalled the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was charged in December 2001 with conspiring with al Qaeda in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Finn reported from Berlin. Staff writer Dan Eggen in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Greenpeace Case Worries Civil Rights Activists
By J.R. Pegg,
December 11, 2003
(ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2003/2003-12-11-10.asp
WASHINGTON, DC - In 1872, the U.S. government enacted a law to prevent "sailor mongering" - the practice of luring sailors from their ships with liquor and prostitutes. Some 131 years later, the U.S. Justice Department is using the law to prosecute the environmental organization Greenpeace for boarding a ship and unfurling a banner to protest the Bush administration.
The indictment centers on an April 2002 protest in which two Greenpeace activists climbed aboard a commercial ship several miles off the coast of Florida.
The activists believed the ship carried a shipment of mahogany illegally exported from Brazil's Amazon rainforest and once aboard they unfurled a banner that said "President Bush, Stop Illegal Logging."
This kind of protest has been a signature of Greenpeace for more than three decades and the activists expected to be arrested and charged.
The individuals involved in the protest settled charges against them last year, but the Justice Department filed criminal charges against the entire organization in July 2003 under the 1872 law.
Bush administration lawyers say the charges are not severe enough to warrant a jury trial and a federal judge in Miami is set to hear the case. Possible penalties under the law are unclear - the law has only been used twice and the last time was in 1890.
But Greenpeace fears it could lose its tax exempt status, a potentially crippling blow to the organization's U.S. activities, and says the use of the "sailor mongering" law reflects a political vendetta by the Bush administration.
The administration is trying to "muzzle a group that frequently, publicly and effectively protests the Bush administration's policies," said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA.
The indictment is the first time a non governmental organization has been charged for free speech activities of its members and environmentalists are not the only ones worried about the possible implications.
Julian Bond, a longtime civil rights activist and chairman of the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called the case a "government assault on time honored civil disobedience as practiced by Martin Luther King and thousand of other Americans."
"If John Ashcroft had done this in the 1960s, black Americans would not be voting today, eating at formerly all white lunch counters or sitting on bus fronts," Bond told reporters at a press briefing today.
Not since the Nixon administration "has contempt for political activists so clearly guided the heavy hand of the state," said Robert Musil, executive director and CEO of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
The indictment is a clear attack on the U.S. Constitution, according to Ralph Neas, president of People For the American Way Foundation, a 600,000 member civil liberties organization.
"This is a threat to all Americans, not just Greenpeace," said Neas. "Permitting the selective prosecution of a group like Greenpeace merely because the government disagrees with its point of view would set a devastating precedent."
The right to disagree with the government is a cornerstone of American democracy, Neas said, and "it is profoundly patriotic to engage in peaceful dissent when you think the government is wrong."
The Justice Department has a policy not to comment on pending cases, but its position on the specifics of the case could become clearer in the next few days.
A federal judge will hear arguments Friday regarding several motions filed by Greenpeace, including one to dismiss the case and another to find the Justice Department is engaged in improper selective prosecution, which is prohibited by federal law.
Other organizations have not faced similar prosecution, according to Greenpeace. It notes that a Cuban American pro democracy group held a protest in federal waters near Miami - the activists were charged, but the organization was not.
The environmental group has also filed motions to hold a jury trial if the case is not dismissed and to compel the government to turn over evidence that may support Greenpeace's claim the ship was carrying mahogany.
Passacantando notes that the Justice Department revised its original indictment last month to remove language that asserted Greenpeace was mistaken in its belief that the ship carried Brazilian mahogany.
"Instead of indicting Greenpeace for blowing the whistle on illegal smuggling, our government should be intercepting the contraband and prosecuting the smugglers," Passacantando said. "The law under which we are being charged is so archaic that we can only conclude that the Justice Department dredged it up to shut us down."
It is illegal to import mahogany into the United States that has been illegally exported under U.S. law and the international treaty known as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna.
Brazil has had a moratorium on exporting mahogany since October 2001, but the demand in the U.S. market has prompted a flood of illegal exports.
In 2000, the United States received more than 70 percent of Brazil's mahogany exports and the administration has not had much success stemming the tide.
Greenpeace says this is because the Bush administration has little desire to enforce the law - the organization has evidence the ship its activists boarded in April 2002 offloaded 70 tons of mahogany in South Carolina.
There is little doubt that Greenpeace has been a thorn in the side of the Bush administration - activists with the organization unfurled a banner at Bush's Texas ranch several months before he took office that read "Bush the Toxic Texan, Don't Mess With Earth."
This past summer a Greenpeace vessel traveled up and down the Alaska coastline protesting the Bush forest policies and last month activists were arrested in Washington DC for protests against the administration's plans to relax a rule protecting roadless areas of national forests and allow logging in the Tongass National Forest.
--------
Iraqi Protesters Oust Appointed Governor
Demonstrators Defy U.S. Occupation With Demand for an Election
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 12, 2003; Page A39
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57791-2003Dec11?language=printer
HILLA, Iraq, Dec. 11 -- The demonstrators converged on the provincial governor's office on Sunday with banners, sleeping mats, cooking pots and a simple demand: Iskander Jawad Witwit should quit.
After three days and nights of continuous protests, Witwit did just that. But the demonstrators have refused to budge.
As soon as Witwit resigned, the local representative of the U.S. occupation authority appointed a former Iraqi air force officer as acting governor. To the protesters, that was unacceptable. The new governor, they insisted, should be chosen not by an American but by Iraqis -- through an election.
"Yes, yes for elections!" shouted the protesters, a collection of students, clerics and middle-aged professionals whose ranks swelled to more than 1,000 on Thursday. "No, no to appointment!"
The protesters have pledged to continue their sit-in outside the governor's office -- they have erected tents and dug latrines -- until their demand is met. Leaders of Hilla's largest labor unions have vowed to hold a general strike starting Saturday in support of elections.
Local leaders described the passionate but peaceful demonstration in this predominantly Shiite Muslim city as a preview of what U.S. occupiers will face if they follow through with a plan to select a provisional Iraqi government through regional caucuses instead of general elections. Although elections have become an increasingly popular rallying cry in Shiite-dominated central and southern Iraq, the protest here is the first indication that mainstream Shiites are willing to take to the streets to press the issue, adding a volatile new element to the country's impending political transition.
"It's been peaceful in Hilla until now, but if the coalition forces keep refusing what the people want, it will become a big problem that they will not be able to control," said Mohammed Kiflawi Abboud, chairman of the council that governs Hilla province. "Everyone will oppose the Americans."
Protest leaders said they have been energized by recent statements from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite leader, calling for the provisional government to be elected. Sistani has rejected the Bush administration's plan to select a national assembly through caucuses in each of the country's 18 provinces, saying it does not give Iraqis enough of a role in the transition.
While Sistani does not appear to have weighed in on the subject of Witwit's replacement, his pronouncements on the overall political transition have been interpreted in Hilla as a license to engage in civil disobedience.
"Ayatollah Sistani has called for elections," said Hussein Abdelrazzak Mehdi, a high school teacher and seminary student who was one of the protest organizers. "We want to ensure his words are followed."
Since Sistani voiced his opposition to the American transition plan, members of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council have been considering ways to amend the caucus system.
Over the past two weeks, other Shiite leaders and even several influential Sunni Muslims -- a rival minority that had long ruled Iraq -- have urged the Governing Council to call for elections. But the council has been reluctant to do so, largely because of pressure from the Bush administration and because members believe caucuses are the best way to protect their own political interests. Some members even want the council, which U.S. officials are seeking to dissolve on June 30, to remain as a second legislative body in the provisional government.
Hoping to find a middle ground that will protect the interests of the council and the Bush administration while still appeasing Shiites, several members are advocating another round of caucuses to reconstitute some local and provincial councils. "We recognize there are problems with some of the local councils, and we think some limited elections can address this issue," one council member said.
But if Hilla, a city of about 500,000 people about 60 miles south of Baghdad, is any indication, that approach will not fly. People here, from professors to roadside vendors, say elections are the only legitimate way to choose their governor and a provisional government.
"President George Bush promised us democracy" said Kadhim Abbas, the owner of a carpet factory, who brought three dozen employees -- women in head-to-toe black veils -- to the protest. "How can you have democracy without elections?"
Although they would have significant influence over the process, many members of Hilla's provincial council also said they objected to the caucuses, raising doubts about whether the Americans will be able to find willing local partners to back their transition plan.
"We don't want to participate," said Bassim Jalal Ibrahim, the council's deputy chairman. "We regard the caucuses as illegitimate."
Ibrahim said the council favors holding elections to select a new governor and to pick representatives for the transitional assembly. "I can't understand why the Americans don't want elections," he said. "We deserve to have them."
The Bush administration has resisted elections, contending that the absence of voter rolls and an electoral law would make a nationwide ballot time-consuming. Officials also argue that a hasty election would be vulnerable to violence and manipulation by religious militants and loyalists of former president Saddam Hussein.
Ibrahim and other members of the Hilla council insist a national database that is used to distribute monthly food rations could serve as a voter roll, enabling occupation authorities to hold a quick ballot. "It would be very easy to hold elections," said Hamid Ibrahim Awadi, a lawyer and council member. "We could do it right away."
The 22-member provincial council, comprising representatives from professional associations and community organizations, is only an advisory body. Power over the police and other government institutions rests with the governor, who rules at the behest of the occupation authority.
A day before Witwit resigned, a commission purging Baath Party members from government ordered his dismissal. Council members said they discovered documents linking him to Hussein's intelligence service. He also had been criticized for appointing two of his brothers and several other relatives to top posts in the provincial government.
His replacement, Emad Lefteh, insisted there would be no way to hold elections right away. Sitting behind the governor's desk with aides at his side, he said the occupation authority "should not bend to a few people protesting outside."
"If we have elections now, our enemies, the terrorists and the extremists, will take advantage of the situation," he said.
An official with the occupation authority in Hilla said Lefteh had proven himself to be an effective administrator in his previous job as mayor of Hilla. "That's what this province needs," the official said.
The official ruled out holding elections. "I'm not going to compromise on security, and we do not respond to mobs," the official said.
As the afternoon wore on, the protesters prayed, ate lunch out of large metal vats and brought in an interpreter. Using a megaphone, he addressed a dozen American and Polish soldiers standing guard on the roof of the governor's office.
"Coalition forces, don't be worried," he said in English. "We are here in peace. All we want is democracy."
"That's what they promised us," Jabbar Zaid, a university student, said after the interpreter finished. "All we want is what they promised."
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