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NUCLEAR
Training emphasized for border inspectors
Sellafield leaks worse than feared
Radiation-protection measures for troops undecided: Ishiba
Annan and the Vocabulary of Deception
Iran to Sign Deal for Nuclear Inspections
Iran to Sign Up to Snap Nuclear Inspections in Days
American Data Aided Iraq Arms Program
U.S. Hopes for N. Korea Talks in January
Baker's Return = Cheney's Heartburn
MILITARY
Afghan Leader Asserts Taliban Insurgency Will Fail
Afghan Assembly Is Postponed for A Second Time
Recruits in Pakistan reinforce Taliban's ranks
Bush Sees Need for Repayment if Fee Was High
Company Overcharged U.S. in Iraq, Bush Says
Federal Prosecutors Probing 2 Ex-Employees of Boeing
India Finds Bullets Laced with Chemicals in Kashmir
Europeans Approve New Security Strategy
Disputes Hinder EU Draft Constitution
Iraqi Agent Denies He Met 9/11 Hijacker in Prague
General Says Cash and Arms Are Cut Off in Iraqi Hotbed
Recruits Abandon Iraqi Army
Likud Debates a Palestinian State to Save Israel
U.S. Urges Israel to Ease Burdens
Yemen Closes Investigation Into Militants
UK envoy urges Nato to play big role in Iraq
Survey at Naval Academy Finds More Dissatisfaction
Army Fines Officer for Firing Pistol Near Iraqi Detainee
General Clark to Testify for the Prosecution at Milosevic Trial
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
3 Inmates' Lives Spared in Texas by Court Inaction
FBI Applies New Rules to Surveillance
Try Detainees or Free Them, 3 Senators Urge
Military Urged To Try or Free 660 Detainees
ACTIVISTS
Florida Greenpeace Case Hinges on 1872 Law
Guantanamo demonstration at No 10
Verdict at Northampton Magistrates' Court 12 December 2003
Hiroshima survivors slam US before atomic bomber Enola Gay goes on display
Enola Gay display provokes debate
Hiroshima bomb survivors protest US museum display
Enola Gay display angers victims
Rebuilding of Enola Gay draws praise, opposition
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Training emphasized for border inspectors
Shannon Dininny
Associated Press
Dec. 13, 2003
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1213borderpatrol13.html
RICHLAND, Wash. - A radiation pager beeps wildly as a customs agent searches a suspicious stack of fertilizer bags, uncovering concealed sticks of dynamite. Up the sagebrush-lined road, border inspectors reveal a hidden compartment in a sealed oil drum using an ultrasound device.
This remote stop in south-central Washington is no random customs check: It's the latest in high-tech training to detect and identify weapons of mass destruction.
Offered by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the class is designed to supplement training for Coast Guard, Border Patrol, and customs and agriculture inspectors.
The three-day course includes classroom instruction and field training about everything from recognizing missile systems to learning how biological agents can be spread.
More than 400 inspectors have completed the monthly class. It was so successful in its first year, funding was increased to offer it twice a month beginning this fall. "It's excellent training. It complements what we do with our national training in Georgia and our training in the field," said Todd Hoffman, director of interdiction security for technology for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, which is under the Department of Homeland Security.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a Department of Energy science research facility with an annual budget of $600 million, is located near the Hanford nuclear reservation, site of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb during World War II.
The proximity offers a unique opportunity to learn firsthand how to differentiate weapons-grade plutonium from medical isotopes.
"There's nowhere else in the field where we can use natural sources," Hoffman said.
The lab first began offering the program internationally in 1997. During the next several years, 300 border agents from central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union were taught to thwart weapons smuggling.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the class was extended to customs and border agents in the United States to supplement regular training.
"It is new to them. The anti-terrorism focus was just laid on them after 9/11," said Bill Cliff, the lab's program manager. "The question is, how do you train them to be able to recognize these things while still going about their jobs?"
The answer, it seems, is to test them in their own environment: A mock "port of entry" where instructors plant dangers the students must uncover in a real-life simulation of a border check.
At one station, an ultrasound device resembling a hairdryer identifies the liquid contents of tanks and drums and locates hidden compartments.
Radiation pagers and gamma spectrometers detect concealed radioactive materials aboard a tractor-trailer. A ruse often steers them away from their true target: a sarin-filled wine bottle atop a concealed bomb.
A hooded polyethylene suit for handling biological agents left the students puzzled when they uncovered it, but that should have been the clue the sarin was on board, said Richard Arthur, a 20-year lab scientist.
"Only one person in two years has discovered the sarin, which has a different viscosity than wine," Arthur said. "We'll explain to them their instincts are right.
"We can give them all the tools in the world," he added, "but we can't teach them instincts."
The bureau picks the 25 students from seaports, airports and border stops nationwide for each class. The lab also hires retired customs agents to assist with the training, and the students don't hesitate to pepper them with "what if" questions.
John Barnes, a 16-year customs inspector stationed in Fort Lauderdale, called the class the best training he has received in his career.
"These folks, many of them are nuclear experts," Barnes, 39, said. "Interacting with these scientists gives us a chance to learn from their expertise and knowledge on high-tech articles.
-------- britain
Sellafield leaks worse than feared
Fears for drinking supply as radioactive pollution at nuclear plant contaminates groundwater
By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor
Sunday Herald
14 December 2003
http://www.sundayherald.com/print38691
Radioactive contamination of the groundwater under the Sellafield nuclear complex is worse than thought and British Nuclear Fuels isn't doing enough about it, says the government's English watchdog, the Environment Agency.
The agency has told the local community in Cumbria it is "not satisfied" with the progress being made by the state-owned company in understanding the spread of pollution. New evidence indicates the contamination is "potentially significant".
"BNFL has messed up again," alleged Pete Roche from the environmental group, Greenpeace. "Contamination of groundwater is a serious matter, and BNFL has displayed a lackadaisical attitude in its efforts to discover the source."
BNFL admitted two years ago that the radioactive wastes, technetium-99 and tritium, had been found in boreholes on the site. Last year, the government's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate reported that the contamination was also detectable outside the site.
Now the Environment Agency is suggesting it has spread further. "The agency is concerned that the current contaminated land study is indicating that there is potentially significant contamination of groundwater," it reported to the Sellafield local liaison committee a few days ago.
"The lateral spread of technetium-99 and tritium on the Sellafield site appears to be greater than last reported. The agency considers the develop ment of deeper boreholes should lead to a greater understanding of the vertical spread of contamination into the aquifer beneath the site. The agency is not satisfied with BNFL's progress in such work."
The agency's inspectors are worried BNFL is not using the best practice when it samples groundwater. "We are very keen to protect the aquifer," one of them told the Sunday Herald. "We are pushing BNFL very hard on this."
Environmentalists fear contamination of the sandstone aquifer under the site could affect drinking water.
"It's disgraceful that this liquid radioactive plume is being allowed to spread out-side Sellafield unchecked and out of hand," Martin Forwood, a member of Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (Core).
"That it now appears to involve not just technetium-99 but a number of other radioactive materials, and to have penetrated the sandstone aquifer below Sellafield, is a major concern and a threat to drinking water supplies. BNFL and the Environment Agency must come clean now with the public about what is happening."
There are several possible sources for the leak. One is six, huge, old tanks containing 3000 tonnes of radioactive sludge, another is some old waste disposal trenches and a third is a complex of ponds and silos containing high-level waste.
"The most likely source is previously reported leaks from historic facilities on the site. We are continuing our investigations to confirm the precise source or sources," said a BNFL spokesman.
"The levels found pose no threat to health, and are so low that sophisticated techniques are required to measure them. The company has already made improvements to its sampling regimes, and is developing an integrated monitoring programme as suggested."
-------- depleted uranium
Radiation-protection measures for troops undecided: Ishiba
By NAO SHIMOYACHI
Japan Times
Dec. 13, 2003
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20031213a4.htm
The government has not decided whether to take steps to protect Iraq-bound Self-Defense Forces troops against radiation contamination suspected to have been caused by U.S. and British forces, Defense Agency chief Shigeru Ishiba said Friday.
"We are not at the stage of telling you" whether the government will take protective measures against radiation, Ishiba said, although he vowed that the agency will take all possible measures to protect the SDF.
Under the special law allowing the SDF dispatch to Iraq, Ishiba is responsible for ensuring the safety of all Japanese military personnel in the country.
His comments come on the heels of growing suspicion among journalists and researchers that the U.S. and British forces might have used depleted uranium rounds in Iraq and thus caused radiation contamination.
They have visited cities in southern Iraq, including Basra, and claimed they found indications that depleted uranium weapons were used, judging from shot-out Iraqi armored vehicles they saw. The government is expected to send Ground Self-Defense Force troops to southern Iraq to engage in reconstruction work.
Ishiba's remark apparently reflects Japan's consideration for its biggest ally, the United States, which has not said whether it used such rounds in the Iraq war.
Washington has meanwhile officially denied that depleted uranium is harmful to human health, and Tokyo has agreed with this position and has said no research has found existence of such a link.
Depleted uranium weapons have been blamed by activists for sickening a number of Iraqis as well as U.S. and European soldiers who participated in the Gulf War and peacekeeping activities in Kosovo.
In July, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told the Diet that the government had asked the U.S. whether it used depleted uranium weapons in the war on Iraq. Japan still hasn't received a reply, according to Defense Agency officials.
The U.S. Department of Defense said it used some 300 tons of depleted uranium during the Gulf War in 1991.
----
Annan and the Vocabulary of Deception
The Splendid Failure of Occupation, Part 4 of 22
by B.J. Sabri
Dissident Voice
December 13, 2003
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Sabri_Iraq-Occupation4.htm
"I would like to see some helicopters flying over these sites and some bullets fired at looters. I think you have got to kill some people to stop this."
-- Elizabeth Stone, an American archeologist
We ended part three by alleging that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is guilty of simplistic treatment of serious matters such as terrorism, genocide, and WMD. If this is true, how can we then corroborate such an audacious allegation against him?
Let me begin by saying that Annan's problem does not relate to absence of priorities, but rather from unwillingness to confront the structural cracks of his U.N., as he tends to stress problems that resulted from specific policies of individual states, or in relation to them, but never addresses the cause at the base. Example, in his speech to the General Assembly (9/23/2003), Annan shyly criticized the "pre-emption doctrine" (invented by the Bush Administration as an ideological premise to invade Iraq), but was fast to identify, among other things, the spread of WMD, genocide, and terrorism as the principle problems facing the world. He completely ignored the collapse of the United Nations system because of the U.S. monopoly over its functions. Given that Annan specifically designated these problems as the most urgent facing the world, we feel that discussing them in a factual context, and not on the abstract level that hyper-imperialists usually prefer, is the best way to understand them.
The first point that Annan mentioned in his speech was genocide. Annan talked about genocide in generic terms; was he alluding to Rwanda, Congo, or Cambodia? Otherwise, where else does he mention the criminal and relentless acts of genocide the U.S. committed in Iraq in two wars and 13 years of sanctions? Is the Iraqi genocide equivalent to exterminating a colony of mice? What is the reason for which he carefully avoided talking about the cumulative genocide of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis? He mentioned WMD in reference to Saddam's alleged use of chemical weapons in Iran and Halabja (Iraq), but he was extra careful not to mention the American-British use of depleted uranium in Yugoslavia, Kosovo, and especially in Iraq? Who knows, maybe Annan's view of DU is contrary to what scientists, the U.N. itself, and the U.S. know about it!
If Annan and hyper-imperialists find it easy to gloss over important and charged terms, we on the other hand do not. Even if the term "genocide" stands to mean the elimination of a specific group of people for any invented reason, we strongly believe that the term is also applicable or extendable to individuals as well. Because "geno" or "gen" takes its usage from Greek meaning "birth", "kind", or "race", and because "cide" or "cida" is Latin for "kill", then it can be roughly translated to "birth killing". Since birth is an individual unique event, then the killing of an individual is necessarily genocide.
When one kills someone else, he inflicted an individual genocide on that unique individual. When Saddam killed his opponents he terminated them by "individual genocides", when Israel kills Palestinians, it terminates them by "individual genocides", and when the U.S. kills Iraqis, it commits "individual genocides". A question: should we include Americans killed by Iraqis in these examples of individual genocides? Of course, we should. However, to be impartial to a strict definition of aggression and its consequences, we have to do that with technical distinction in assigning responsibility. This is how it should work: the U.S. of Richard Perle invented one million reasons to invade Iraq knowing that its bombs will kill. An aggressor is the party responsible for inflicting "individual genocides" on both his soldiers and the people whom they are attacking. In other words, the aggressor has permitted the killing of its own soldiers at the hands of their created adversaries. In this case, responsibility for individual or collective genocides lies exclusively with the U.S. Government and not with the Iraqis.
As for the issue of WMD, Annan treats it as a trivial chat over a barbecue, and not a serious matter that requires its own perspective, frame, and a viewpoint from which you can look at all its philosophical, practical, and moral dimensions. Ultimately, the issue of terrible weapons boils down to one point only: those who own them do not want anyone else to have them. Analyzing the issue of WMD, however goes beyond the scope of this writing.
Third, he used the word "terrorism" in accordance with how the U.S. defines it, and never cared to explain what "terrorism" is, when you can call it so, why it happens, when it happened, in response to what, who is the target, why and for what purpose. Because the word "terrorism" is composed of a common noun and an ideologized suffix, its use is, necessarily, ideological and political depending on the specific focus of those who use it; its meaning, however, is not encompassing as other words such as "bread" for example where agreement on attributes is universal. In other words, it is unsettling, politically, that Annan uses a ideological word, either to please the U.S. or to pre-empt its wrath.
So, what is terrorism? Is it the intentional provocation of fear as in "terrorization"? Can terrorism be a psychological or physical terrorization? If so, is chasing a cat with a broom an act of terrorism or just terrorization? By inference, is the person doing the chasing a "terrorist"? Within this concept, is the relentless campaign to scare the American people with the specter of Islamic "terrorism" a form of terrorization or terrorism? On the other hand, could terrorism be a sudden infliction of injury or violent death on innocent people for reasons that are: 1) calculated to subdue an enemy by bombarding its civilian population, or 2) psychological, as when a disgruntled employee shoots and kills his co-workers because he lost his job? No matter how we wish to define it, current political trends define terrorism as always being political in nature; and in the vocabulary of many international political systems it has one meaning only: any violent action that targets the military and civilian structures of those systems. There is more: those systems, invariably, methodically, and emphatically always describe the attack against their structures as unprovoked, hence it is a manifestation of an irrational and blind criminality.
Is that so?
The answer is no. There are mainly two conditions where aggressions could be committed without provocation. You can see the first condition in ordinary life, when criminal conduct, derangement, jealousy, or any other motive can lead to committing aggression against people not associated with the reasons behind the aggression. You can see the second condition in an international setting throughout history when lust for territorial expansion, empires, or looting can lead to committing aggression on a larger level as in the Mongol invasion of Asia minor, Iraq, and Syria, or the colonialist expansions of European settlers in the Americas and Africa.
In all other conditions where an aggressive action happens, it is always provoked, it has origins, and it comes in response to an inflicted aggression or as correction to arbitrary decisions by others. In this case, aggression is not an intentional act aimed at inflicting just pain or death, but rather a thoughtful process, where the options for a response to an imposed hostile action affecting individuals, groups, or societies underwent evaluation and successive selection. In modern societies where secure boundaries defined the existence of most states or where disputes have been resolved, reciprocal aggressions have ceased. Example, after the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam, the killing between Americans and Vietnamese stopped. Likewise, when the British negotiated with the IRA, truce followed and violence ebbed. On the extreme side, when the USSR dissolved itself, all former states that had no affinity with Russia obtained independence, except Chechnya (a czarist colonialist conquest) which although it is federated within Russia proper, it has no ethnical or religious affinity with it. Since Russia would not agree to independence, violence followed.
In places where states deny national and minority rights, where imperialist encroachments and interventions are routine, where imperialistic provocations because of ideology and material gains are habits, aggressions and counter-aggressions are the rule. Even in this case, violence is selectively directed against one entity in particular and no one else. Examples, I have never heard that Kashmiri Muslims ever attacked Chinese or Americans; they only attacked rival Hindu nationalists. I have never heard that Hindu nationalists ever attacked Saudis, Burmese, or Russians; they only attacked rival Kashmiri Muslims or Indian Muslims. Nor have I ever heard that "terrorists" attacked Iceland, or that Iceland has ever attacked anyone else. A self-explanatory question: why did the IRA conduct military operations against Britain but not against Canada, Belgium, or Holland? Another question: why do Palestinians only attack Israelis and not Japanese, Brazilians, or Koreans?
To conclude, when we think of terrorism as a manifestation of or an act of military violence, we have always to ask the question, "why". In the world of physics, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, etc., there is always a reason for even the tiniest phenomena, so why should it be different for terrorism.
Constantly and through out history, if you hit the military and civilian structures of any country or impose military occupation or restrictions on its people, then, at some point in time, you have to expect retaliation; and this happens regardless of who the attacker and the attacked are. In the current lawless international system, the notion of violent resistance has become the prevailing philosophy and praxis in societies that have exhausted all their means for peaceful solutions. If the U.N. is incapable of effecting any positive change in world relations, if the International Court of Justice is incapacitated, and if the aggressor is unaccountable, then how do we expect legality and justice to work, and who is going to care for justice except those who are the subject of injustice? One last scenario: if the US would declare that it is going to withdraw all of its forces from Iraq within 21 days (that is how long it took the US to capture Iraq), would Iraqis continue to attack its forces?
Therefore, before we address the issue of terrorism at large, we have to define it first. Terrorism, in the pure sense of the word, is a criminal and abhorrent political-military instrument meant to achieve a purpose. However, it is only so when it is applied in a peaceful setting where groups are not engaged in an existential struggle, and it is not so when it happens in an adversarial situation where it is the natural response to aggressions by an enemy. I must note that in military strife among nations and groups, no one defines its military operations as terrorism except the United States, which actually finds it glamorous to call it so by using alternative sophisticated terminology - "shock and awe". Does shock mean fright or traumatize?
Technically, terrorism is an extremist violent response to an extremist violent imposition, but happens only as reaction to an action; to say the same in a tautological physical sequence, reaction can never precede action! Therefore, it is a condition of consequentiality. You can see this condition at work by observing that when A slaps B, B may react by slapping A. Conclusively, violent response to violence always and invariably, follows a violent action and never precedes it. To enforce this notion, you can compare it to the following mandatory sequence: without opening your eyes, you cannot see. To see, you have to open your eyes. Example, the Iraqi violent resistance against American soldiers did not happen before invasion, it is consequent to it. Can you call this terrorism? The answer is no. This violence is the only response to intentional violence and as such, it is ingrained, beyond redemption, in the animal fabric of humanity, and Annan, Rice, Perle, or hyper-imperialists cannot change that unless they first change the human genome.
Conversely, violence resulting from ideological aberration is a different subject. For example, the Okalahoma bombing was not a response to physical violence within the internal structure of the United States, i.e., the U.S. before it executed Timothy McVeigh as a retribution for his crime, did not inflict any direct physical violence on him. (Ironically, the U.S. taught and used McVeigh to inflict violence on Iraqis [Gulf War, 1991]. Indeed, McVeigh acknowledged killing at least 15 Iraqis by using them as target practice!). To conclude, McVeigh unleashed his violence because of ideological enmity toward the system. Similar to this, is the case of Theodore John Kaczynski, the "unibomber", as well as the terrorism of the Italian Red Brigades whose ideology predicts the collapse of the system consequent to assassinations of political figures.
Accordingly, to bundle all acts of violence as terrorism is ridiculous and ideologically motivated. Violence, especially physical, intended to inflict pain including death for any irrational, criminal, or any other reason, not only is not equivalent to terrorism, but also it is a different subject with its own origins, methodology, and connotations that finds its own logic in the psychological domains of one or more individuals sharing one specific asocial purpose. In contrast, terrorism as it relates exclusively to the ideology of violent military retribution for received collective injustice, is a tool whose users designed it with the specific idea to employ violence as a means to achieve specific national or emancipation ends, and as such, its use is visceral and natural as much as universal throughout history. Historical examples include Algeria against France, France against Germany, Vietnam against France, and now Iraq against the U.S.
Yet, Bush and Zionists declared war on "terrorism" in the guise of the "war on drugs", as if the struggle between antagonistic groups and wars of liberations are social malaise or generalized aberrations and not a problem with roots in history and collective memory. Moreover, Bush also tells us that violence and terrorism are the same, and are an exclusive national trait of specific people who are living in specific geographical locations and that is because of peculiar cultural, political, and religious systems. For that reason and with one stroke, hyper-imperialists are now considering all other acts of violence occurring beyond those geographical delimitations as acts of random and "gentle violence", while violence construed as terrorism means only one thing: Arab and Islamic violence, as if Arab and Muslim mothers feed their babies milk fortified with genetically violent hormones.
Let us look at this example as a sequence. George Bush invaded Iraq with the pretext to disarm the Iraqi dictator from his alleged WMD. George Bush cannot find any WMD and the dictator is overthrown and gone. George Bush stays in Iraq. George Bush is facing resistance to his conquest. George Bush fights those who are resisting his conquest. To resolve the riddle of conflict, George Bush finally declares, "It is better to fight the terrorists in Iraq than here in the United States!" But what terrorist is he referring to? What pertinent specificity is he providing for his arguments? That, as usual, is a mystery connected to the doctored domestic audience! Because Iraqis are only engaging in fighting invaders, it is clear therefore that his ideological designation of them as terrorists does not work! We know what Bush's labeling is rubbish; even he knows that (!), regardless, his pre-fabricated logic is the official logic of the United States which uses it to establish ideological parameters and related actions. To mingle varied complex concepts in one word out of propagandistic convenience and readily absorbable inference that those who attacked the United States are everywhere in the Middle East is not only a monochromatic deception but also a strident form of fascism.
To explain the above, Bush and Zionists attribute acts of reactive violence by Arabs against foreign occupation, domination, and expropriation as metaphysical characteristics intrinsic to the Arabs, and are an integral part of their natural making, i.e. an Arab is born violent. You can see that when George Bush, master of violence, characterizes Iraq as a "violent land". We have known many fascists in history who theorized on such matters. Among them, there are two fascists whose record of sinister theorizations against specific groups of people can't be beat. The first is the inventor of Nazism Adolph Hitler, whose theories against Jews, Gypsies, handicapped, and communists are notorious. The second is Menachem Begin of Israel, whose understandable loathing of Nazism pushed him to emulate and surpass it, as when he considered the Arabs below insects and worse than excrement.
Nonetheless, defining "terrorism" cannot proceed without a methodological historical investigation. Let us go back to 1258 when Mongol hordes invaded Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Empire. By George Bush's standards, if Baghdadis of that time had engaged the Mongols in small-scale war of attrition, how would his highness, the American caliph of Baghdad, define the Baghdadi attacks against Mongols? Just to make sure that the president does not scratch his head looking for an answer, we have to remind him that al-Qaida did not exist then, and that the chromosomes which would create Bin Laden's lineage in the future had no programs guiding them in that direction! We just hope that the president of the United States would not say that the nasty spirit of Bin Laden had traveled back to the past to inhabit the souls of those fanatic Baghdadis attacking the good Mongols, just because Mongolian soldiers are now participating in the occupation of Iraq! Knowing the president do you think he might just do that?
Let us address another aspect of terrorism that goes beyond the specious definitions of Bush, Sharon, Blair, Berlusconi, Aznar, and Annan. Consider the following ideological situation where Anthony Cordesman (an intelligent military analyst on the side of hyper-imperialism, now associated with the rightwing think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies) offers us a valuable insight on how a political imperialist principle invented to justify an action may be used against those who invented it - a sort of a double edge sword. (Incidentally, Saddam allowed Cordesman to come to Iraq as a military analyst for the Iran-Iraq war, on which he wrote a book.)
In 1991, Cordesman articulated a principle that many Zionists and imperialists embraced immediately. To justify the Gulf War and sanctions against Iraq (1991), Cordesman published an article in the New York Times (late 1991 or early 1992) postulating a principle where he considers the people of any nation responsible for the conduct of their government. That is, if this government misbehaves, the people it rules must be responsible for the actions of their government; consequently, they have to co-share in the punishment exacted on that government. Here is the preponderant implication of Cordesman's thought: if he meant to articulate a principle, then this cannot be unilateral and must apply to small or big states equally, and it must be universal. It is possible then that forces opposing U.S. military presence and entrenchment on Arab soil are knowledgeable of the published views of Cordesman. This could explain the attack against continental U.S.A.
At this point, having discussed the issues of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and genocide under conditions different from those that Annan treated them, it is now mandatory that we discus them again but only in relation to the U.S. use of radioactive depleted uranium in Iraq, and the implications that derived from that deliberate use. We shall discuss all that and other issues next in part five.
Next, Part 5: The U.S. and the Use of Radioactive Depleted Uranium: Infatuation or Deliberation?
B. J. Sabri is an Iraqi-American anti-war activist. He can be reached at: bjsabri@yahoo.com.
- Read Part One http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Sabri_Iraq-Occupation1.htm
- Read Part Two http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Sabri_Iraq-Occupation2.htm
- Read Part Three http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Sabri_Iraq-Occupation3.htm
-------- iran
Iran to Sign Deal for Nuclear Inspections
December 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html?hp
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran will sign an agreement in the next few days allowing unfettered inspection of its nuclear facilities, Iran's foreign minister said Saturday.
The United States and the three main European powers have been pushing for the additional protocol of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty since it became evident that Iran had an advanced nuclear program.
Iran committed itself to signing the protocol on Oct. 21 -- during a visit by the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany -- but it has yet to do so. The delay has triggered reports that the government was backtracking.
Conservatives in the Iranian hierarchy are known to oppose the protocol as a surrender of sovereignty.
Asked when Iran will sign the protocol, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters: ``In the next few days.''
Last week the government said the Cabinet had authorized the Foreign Ministry to sign the protocol, which will provide inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency with unfettered access to any Iranian nuclear site.
The United States strongly suspects Iran is conducting a secret program to build nuclear bombs. Iran insists its atomic program is peaceful and geared only toward energy production.
Last month the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear agency, censured Iran for not declaring certain aspects of its nuclear activities and warned the country to abide by the rules to assure the world it is not making nuclear weapons.
----
Iran to Sign Up to Snap Nuclear Inspections in Days
December 13, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear.html
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=421623§ion=news
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will sign a binding international protocol in the next few days that authorizes snap inspections of its nuclear sites by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said on Saturday.
Asked when Iran would put pen to paper, Kharrazi told reporters: ``In the next few days.''
The government gave the formal go-ahead earlier this week for the country to sign the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
This followed the decision in October to suspend the Islamic Republic's disputed uranium enrichment program to dispel U.S.-led concern that it might be trying to produce nuclear weapons.
Kharrazi spoke to reporters after meeting Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha, who said his country might be prepared to work with Iran on civilian nuclear technology.
Iran, OPEC's second biggest oil producer, insists its nuclear program is peaceful and is needed to meet booming domestic electricity demand and free up its finite hydrocarbon resources for export.
Kharrazi said the protocol, the subject of heated debate in Iran earlier this year, had received the ratification needed for the country's representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to sign it in Vienna.
``It had to be approved by the Supreme National Security Council, then the government and now it is under way,'' he said.
Government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh said on Wednesday that once Iran had signed the document, the government would send it to parliament as a bill.
If lawmakers, most of them allies of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, approved the bill, it would still need to be approved by the Guardian Council, a 12-member body dominated by conservative clerics who decide whether proposed legislation is in line with the constitution and Islamic Sharia law.
HARDLINE OPPOSITION Several of the body's members spoke out earlier this year against signing the protocol, and many hard-liners view snap nuclear inspections as tantamount to allowing spies into the country. But hard-liners have been virtually silent on the issue in recent weeks.
Khatami said on Thursday that Iran would be violating the Islamic faith if it developed nuclear weapons.
``I have argued that as Muslims, our religious faith should not allow us to seek nuclear weapons,'' he told the World Council of Churches, an ecumenical body, in Geneva. ``The Islam I know does not have a use for them.''
Iran's decision to sign the NPT's snap inspection protocol followed strong pressure from international bodies, the United States and a troika formed by Britain, France and Germany.
Iran acknowledged to the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, in October, that it had hidden a secret centrifuge uranium enrichment program from U.N. inspectors for nearly two decades.
Washington said this was proof that Tehran was secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.
The IAEA said the laboratory-scale Iranian experiments were on too small a scale to be easily detected, and that it was ``highly unlikely'' that a move to industrial-scale work to develop weapons would have gone undetected.
Indian Foreign Minister Sinha, whose country has nuclear weapons, said on Saturday there was common ground for India to work with the Islamic Republic on peaceful nuclear energy.
``As far as civilian uses are concerned, there most certainly could be collaboration between Iran and India,'' he told reporters.
-------- iraq / inspections
American Data Aided Iraq Arms Program
December 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraqs-Eureka-Moment.html
After hunting for days, the Iraqi physicist finally checked a long-locked attic room. There he spotted a box, coated with decades of dust, and opened it. Sure enough, it was full of reams of data -- American data -- on how to make a nuclear bomb.
``In it were the Manhattan Project books and reports,'' Imad Khadduri recalls, referring to the U.S. program that produced America's first atomic weapons during World War II.
With that and other U.S. material, Khadduri and his colleagues in 1987 painstakingly began collecting patent designs for critical equipment. ``Within four months,'' he says, ``the scientists and engineers had their hands full of immediately applicable scientific information. ... They quickly set to work.''
With that, too, Iraq joined the list of countries whose bomb programs stemmed in part from the U.S. ``Atoms for Peace'' initiative, inaugurated by President Eisenhower 50 years ago this month with a historic speech at the United Nations.
Atoms for Peace was designed to sell U.S. nuclear technology for electricity generation and other peaceful purposes, but it had ``an unintended outcome,'' says Peter R. Lavoy, an American expert on weapons proliferation. ``Some recipient nations did divert U.S. nuclear assistance to military uses.''
In Iraq's case, the 1991 Gulf War halted the weapons program, and U.N. inspectors later dismantled what was left of it. The Bush administration claimed before the U.S. invasion last March that intelligence indicated Iraq had restarted a bomb program, but months of searching turned up no evidence of that.
In the cases of Israel, India and Pakistan, U.S. assistance in the early years contributed to the nuclear arsenals those nations now possess. At the same time, the Soviet Union was supplying nuclear technology to China, which eventually also built nuclear weapons.
Khadduri, a senior scientist in the Iraqi bomb effort who left his homeland in 1998, describes the quest for technology in a new, self-published book, ``Iraq's Nuclear Mirage,'' available via online booksellers.
When Iraq mounted a crash program in 1987 to build a bomb, he was named to coordinate scientific documentation. At the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission library at Tuwaitha, south of Baghdad, he determined the government had received U.S. reference material as an Atoms for Peace gift in 1956, when Iraq was a British-allied monarchy.
Card indexes indicated the material included some 30 Manhattan Project books and reports, but didn't say where they were.
``It took me several days of searching for the keys of forgotten attics and storage rooms in the library building,'' he recounts. ``In one of them I found a box that was probably not opened since the 1960s.''
It held the Manhattan Project material. Khadduri then found more U.S. documents in other locations.
The Iraqi physicists focused on the calutron, a device for separating out fissionable uranium for reactor fuel -- or bombs -- by using electromagnetic isotope separation, an American technique of the 1940s that later bombmakers disdained.
``We were the only people who made use of the calutron, as far as I know. It was a huge exercise, using huge amounts of electricity,'' Khadduri said in a telephone interview from Toronto, where he lives.
Key to the exercise were 164 patents relating to the calutron, noted in references in the literature. Khadduri didn't have the designs themselves, but he knew where to find them.
Enlisting an Iraqi diplomat's help, he tapped the resources of the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, repository of all world patents.
``He used Iraqi students in Geneva,'' Khadduri said of his partner. ``I would send him a list of 20 or 30 items, with a couple of calutron patents thrown in, and the students would go by WIPO and collect them.''
They soon accumulated all the patents, including equipment designs down to minute details, and Iraqi teams built their own calutrons, dubbed ``Baghdadtrons,'' at Tarmiya, north of Baghdad. The work was difficult, but they were slowly producing bomb material until Tarmiya was bombed in the 1991 war.
In his Atoms for Peace speech on Dec. 8, 1953, Eisenhower said he hoped to ``hasten the day when fear of the atom will begin to disappear.''
The underlying U.S. goal was to head off a commercial and propaganda challenge from the Soviet Union's nuclear establishment. By 1954, the United States was training foreigners in nuclear science and had declassified hundreds of nuclear studies. In 1955 in Geneva, a U.S.-sponsored conference on peaceful nuclear energy drew 25,000 participants and distributed truckloads of declassified material.
Lavoy, a specialist at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, said the optimism finally died in 1974, when India, which had trained more than 1,000 nuclear scientists in the United States, conducted a nuclear test explosion.
In an article in the journal Arms Control Today, Lavoy also noted what he said was the positive side of Atoms for Peace, including its role in the establishment of the U.N.-affiliated International Atomic Energy Agency, which works to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
In his memoir, Khadduri recalls that Iraq's Atoms for Peace gift package was to have included a small U.S. nuclear research reactor. But the Iraqi socialist revolution of 1958 intervened, and the reactor was diverted to Iran, then a U.S. friend -- and now a focus of U.S. concern about possible nuclear weapons-making.
That reactor is believed still operating, after helping train generations of Iranian physicists.
-------- korea
U.S. Hopes for N. Korea Talks in January
December 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-North-Korea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- New talks aimed at resolving the future of North Korea's nuclear ambitions could come in January but not earlier because of the communist state's continued insistence on preconditions, senior Bush administration officials said Saturday.
The United States and its allies in the region want to persuade North Korea to end its nuclear programs through six-nation talks. The first round, held in Beijing in August, ended without much progress.
Discussions over a U.S.-backed plan for easing tensions with North Korea are continuing among the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, U.S. officials said.
The countries have not hit major snags over what eventually could become a joint statement to be released at the end of a new round of talks, and the debate over the past week has focused mainly on fine-tuning the document, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The administration does not see a need for the language to be worked out completely before talks can go ahead, the officials said. Standing in the way, they said, are North Korea's demands for concessions before officials from the North will come to the table.
Washington has offered North Korea a written security guarantee, but the North has said it wants a formal nonaggression treaty that promises the United States will not attack.
North Korea indicated last week it would join the talks and freeze its nuclear weapons activities only if the United States agreed to remove the North from its list of terrorism-sponsoring countries and provide fuel and economic aid.
China has acted as a go-between with North Korea, and American officials say all indications are that the North is not backing down from its demands.
``We're willing to enter talks at an early date and with no preconditions,'' one official said.
The administration once said it would like to hold more talks before the end of the year, but as the year draws to a close, officials have backed off that goal.
A second official said that the White House is hoping another round can be set for January.
The United States, Japan and South Korea presented a blueprint for ending the standoff to China last week. The plan broadly seeks the complete, verifiable and irrevocable dismantling -- not freezing -- of the North's atomic weapons program along with security assurances for Pyongyang.
In the fall of 2002, U.S. officials said North Korea admitted running a new nuclear weapons program using enriched uranium in violation of international agreements.
Since then, North Korea has said it restarted its frozen reactor at Yongbyon, kicked out U.N. nuclear inspectors and quit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Experts have said it would take a year of operation before the reactor can produce enough to make a new weapon.
-------- us politics
Baker's Return = Cheney's Heartburn
by Jim Lobe
December 13, 2003
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lobe121303.html
It may be that, by four or five months from now:
- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz will have heard the siren song of academia and returned to teach in ivy-covered halls somewhere, and that
- His deputy, Undersecretary for Policy, Douglas Feith, will have decided he can't really afford to put his young kids through school on a government salary, and that it's time to return to a lucrative law practice, and that
- Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton will have been advised that the sustained excitement of defending U.S. national sovereignty against all comers - from Al Qaeda, to the French, to Amnesty International - was simply too much for his nervous system, and that it was time to take a long vacation with lots of rest; and even that
- Vice President Dick Cheney will have been sternly warned by his doctors that his chronic heart problems make his participation in a rigorous reelection battle simply out of the question and that he will have to take himself off the ticket for the sake of his own survival, if not for that of his deeply concerned family members.
Fantasy? Mindless speculation? Wishful thinking? Desperation?
Perhaps, but that doesn't change the fact that such scenarios suddenly appeared far more real when former Secretary of State James Baker returned in the flesh this week to take up his new office in the White House - close to the Oval Office - as President George W. Bush's personal envoy for persuading other countries to forgive tens of billions of dollars in Iraqi debt.
In returning, Baker, the longtime consiglieri to the Bush family whose last mission on its behalf was to secure all of Florida's electoral votes for George W. in 2000 regardless of the state's actual voting laws or how people actually voted, made what was already a bad week for administration hawks much, much worse.
As one unnamed "senior administration official" quoted by the New York Times Friday said in noting that Baker has a vastly greater influence on the Bushes than Secretary of State Colin Powell, his fellow-realist, could ever hope to be: "Baker is Bush." Other countries know that Powell doesn't win all the (intra-administration) battles.
"If you deal with Baker, you know you're going to get what you need," said the source in a phrase that must have sent chills down the backs of the neo-conservatives and their right-wing fellow-travelers, most notably Cheney himself.
Of course, it is not yet known how much Baker, the master diplomatic puppeteer of the first Gulf War who also served as White House chief of staff and Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan, intends to weigh in on policy decisions that go beyond his specific brief.
But the fact that he is now in the White House and dealing directly with all of Washington's major allies in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East on the future of Iraq, if not the entire region, places him in the thick of the administration's foreign policy, to put it mildly. From now on, very little is likely to be decided on anything that affects Iraq or US alliances without his "input."
And one can only imagine what kind of input he has given Bush on Wolfowitz's incredibly timed decision to make Baker's task far more difficult and expensive by announcing that the allies holding most of Iraq's debt will not be permitted to bid on some 18.6 billion dollars in reconstruction contracts.
If Baker chooses to interpret Wolfowitz's move as a deliberate effort to sabotage his mission ab initio (as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman did Friday), the consequences for the former dean of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, whose hopes of becoming secretary of state in a second Bush term were already on the wane, could be severe.
But the threats posed by Baker's presence to the hawks, especially the neo-conservatives both in and out of the administration, goes far beyond personal score-settling in which Baker has historically shown little interest; they are strategic. By all accounts, Baker believes their dominance of US foreign policy since Sept. 11, 2001, and especially the Iraq invasion, has been disastrous for the country and, perhaps more important, for Bush Jr.'s reelection.
On Iraq, Baker made no secret of his opposition to waging unilateral war before the US invasion, although he was more discreet about it than Bush I's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, with whom he remains close.
Baker, like other realists, has also been deeply skeptical, not to say incredulous, about neo-conservative ambitions to "remake the face of the Middle East" by exporting democracy. Long associated with Big Oil, Baker would find the radical change in the region of the kind promoted by the neo-cons unacceptably risky and destabilizing.
Moreover, he has always disdained the Likud Party in Israel; it was he who threatened to cut off housing guarantees if then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir did not take part in the 1991 Madrid peace talks (that led eventually to the Oslo peace process), much to the public dismay and anger of neo-conservatives like Feith, the powerful former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, and Elliott Abrams, the current Middle East director on the National Security Council.
And he has also sided consistently with those, like Powell and Bush's father, who have favored constructive relations with Beijing, a position which Bush Jr. has clearly come to share, as he showed this week during the visit of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.
Finally, as secretary of state, Baker gave top priority to close ties to traditional European allies, including Germany and France, or what the neo-cons and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld has referred to disdainfully as "Old Europe." In that respect, Wolfowitz, in issuing his directive banning German and French contractors from bidding on reconstruction contracts now, not only made Baker's job more difficult (and more costly for the US taxpayer), has confirmed that the hawks have their priorities upside down.
But Baker, Scowcroft, Powell and their fellow-realists had already reached that conclusion 12 years ago when some of the neo-cons, like Wolfowitz and Perle, were furious that the Gulf War ended without the US army in Baghdad.
Similarly, it was Wolfowitz and his boss, then-Secretary of Defense Cheney, who kept up a stream of strident warnings that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev remained a committed Communist whose designs for global conquest were no different from his predecessors right up until...well, right up until the Soviet Union collapsed. Even then, they thought it might be a trick.
And it was, of course, Wolfowitz and his top deputy, I. Lewis Libby - who is now Cheney's powerful chief of staff - who prepared the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) draft in which they called for the US to pursue a strategy of global domination and preemption, nuclear if necessary, against rogues states and possibly emerging rivals.
Baker, Scowcroft, and then-Armed Forces Chief of Staff Powell, not to mention Bush Sr., were so alarmed - as were senior lawmakers and US allies in Europe after parts of it were leaked to the New York Times - that it was only Cheney's promises to overhaul the text that saved the jobs of the two main authors, whose radical proposals would guide US policy after the 9/11 attacks a decade later.
In many ways, therefore, the hawks themselves already see Baker as their nemesis, but they have been steadily losing power over the last several months in any case.
Bush's harsh words for Taiwan's leader this week, and the readiness with which neo-cons, like Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, accuse him of appeasement testify to the very serious strains between the White House and the neo-con network which until now has assiduously avoided attacking the president himself for any disagreements it has had with the administration.
In addition, intra-administration fights over Iran, Syria, and North Korea in which the hawks appeared to have the upper hand after the Iraq war have been tilting back towards the realists. This week's decision by the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), for example, to disarm and deport the Iranian Mojahadin e Khalq marked a signal defeat for Cheney and the neo-conservatives, who have wanted to use them against the Islamic Republic. Similarly, the acceleration of "Iraqification" in neighboring Iraq without a thoroughgoing "de-Ba'athification" marks a triumph of the realists.
Indeed, Baker's arrival in some ways may crown the successful development of an effective "counter-network" within the administration that has gradually eroded the hawks' authority since September. Aside from Powell and senior officers in the uniformed military and the intelligence community who were always dubious of the hawks, key members of this group include the National Security Council's (NSC) Coordinator for Strategic Planning, Amb. Robert Blackwill, who came on board in September, and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) chief, Amb. L. Paul Bremer, in Baghdad.
Both are former foreign service officers who are conservative but not ideologues. Bremer and Blackwill have known each other since they both worked for arch-realist Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s. Blackwill is particularly interesting, both because he was Rice's boss as NSC director for European and Soviet Affairs under Scowcroft in the first Bush administration who, in that capacity, clashed with Wolfowitz and Cheney over Gorbachev. He reportedly met Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a political officer in the US embassy in Tel Aviv and has remained on good terms, although he disdains neo-conservatives.
When hired by Rice, Blackwill's job was to assert firm White House control over Iraq policy, which had been seen increasingly between August and October as having been botched by the Pentagon, especially Feith's office. By most accounts, he has made so much progress in that regard that he also has begun weighing in on overall Middle East policy, possibly at Abrams' and the neo-conservatives' expense.
Of course, the situation in Iraq is the most important single factor in the changing the balance of power within the administration. But Blackwill was also brought in to ensure that the NSC enforces discipline - something which Rice on her own was unwilling or unable to do - over all the policy agencies, particularly the Pentagon which, under Cheney's protection, has often appeared to act on its own. The fact that Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, who warned several months ago that there should be "no more wars" before the November election, also supported these changes has also had its impact.
But the larger, foreign-policy impact of the resurgence of the realists capped by Baker's return may already be tangible.
While Sharon clearly is under growing domestic pressure to take steps to reinvigorate peace negotiations with the Palestinians, his recent moves - as well as Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's unexpectedly far-reaching proposals for territorial compromise - may suggest that the Israelis themselves perceive a shift in the administration's internal balance of power that needs to be accommodated.
If Baker's European interlocutors next week suggest that real pressure by Washington on Israel - perhaps of the kind Baker wielded back in 1991 - could make them more amenable to reducing Iraq's official debt, the larger implications of Baker's appointment become more tangible. In any event, Wolfowitz's timing has clearly given Mssrs. Chirac, Schroeder, Putin, and other European leaders more leverage to raise issues of this kind.
And for the hawks, even the recognition that the Europeans enjoy significant leverage over US foreign policy is very bad news, indeed.
It's just the kind of news that makes Dick Cheney's heart go ''Thumpa-Thumpa-Thumpa."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan Leader Asserts Taliban Insurgency Will Fail
December 13, 2003
New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL and DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/international/asia/13AFGH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 12 - The growing Taliban insurgency in southern and eastern Afghanistan is alienating the population and will eventually fail, President Hamid Karzai said Friday in an interview at the presidential palace.
Confident and at times combative, Mr. Karzai denied that parts of the country had become too dangerous for Afghan and foreign aid workers to enter. Popular support for the Taliban, he added, is fading.
"It's not working," he said, referring to the rising number of Taliban attacks that have killed 300 Afghans, including 100 policemen and 13 aid workers, this year. "It's working against them."
Sounding almost like the presidential candidate he will be if elections are held in Afghanistan as planned next year, Mr. Karzai said the country's situation had improved in the two years since he assumed the helm of a transitional administration. Despite threats, thousands of people participated in selecting the 500 delegates from around the country who gathered in Kabul this week for a historic constitutional convention, or loya jirga, he said.
"How come terrorism could not affect the participation of people in the elections of the loya jirga?" he asked. "How come they did not persuade them not to attend?"
Mr. Karzai, who has been criticized for moving too slowly to exert his authority beyond Kabul, the capital, is at a defining moment in his two-year presidency. The debate over the next two weeks by the constitutional assembly will be one of the biggest tests of his approach and of his ability to persuade Afghans to adopt his vision for the country.
When Mr. Karzai took charge two years ago after the fall of the Taliban, the country was riven by ethnic and factional divisions, and heavily militarized after 20 years of war. He has held the government together and kept the peace by co-opting the powerful warlords and including members of all factions in the decision-making process.
Yet parts of the country have become so insecure because of the Taliban insurgency that the United Nations special representative in Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, said on Friday that the organization might have to withdraw staff members. Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, criticized the loya jirga, citing reported cases of intimidation and buying of delegates so that the assembly will be dominated by the armed factional leaders and their proxies.
Mr. Karzai, who brushed aside the criticism, is pushing a draft constitution that would provide for a strong presidency and a parliament whose powers would be limited mainly to approving the budget. Judges would be appointed by the president.
Mr. Karzai said he wanted to avoid the instability of a parliamentary system and what he described as "coalition governments built by armed gangs." If adopted, the constitution would pave the way for elections in June, and Mr. Karzai has already said he will run.
In an unusual example of political brinkmanship, Mr. Karzai said he would not run for president if the convention adopted a parliamentary system with a prime minister as well as a president, as some delegates have said they want.
"How can I be president for a system that I have said I don't believe in?" he said Friday.
Mr. Karzai and his senior aides appeared confident that the draft constitution he is expected to present to the loya jirga this weekend will be passed without extensive alterations. Mr. Karzai described it as combination of democracy and Islam that was "suitable for the conditions in Afghanistan today."
It remained unclear how the debate would go. Some groups have criticized Mr. Karzai's plan as laying the groundwork for a possible dictatorship. Islamists may attack the proposed constitution for being too Westernized. And there is always the threat of disputes between the country's two largest ethnic groups, Pashtuns and Tajiks, over cultural issues like the language used in the Afghan national anthem.
Western diplomats have suggested that the measure will pass largely intact as presented by Mr. Karzai. That may be because discussions with the major factional leaders have been going on behind the scenes. Mr. Karzai denied reports of pre-assembly deals. "I've not done any deal with anybody," he said.
Sitting in his ornately decorated office, where he received a steady stream of delegations of tribesmen from around the country, Mr. Karzai remained optimistic about the future. He admitted, however, that his views contradicted most news reports and even the United Nations assessment of the situation.
He talked about the major achievements of the last year, including the reconstruction of the main Kabul-Kandahar highway, repair of a crucial tunnel and the opening of a university in Khost.
"You have zero percent inflation," he continued, listing economic accomplishments. "You have 30,000 Pakistanis working in Kabul. You have higher per capita income. You have surplus wheat. You have 30 percent growth. You have hundreds of homes coming up in Kandahar."
Pressed on his government's reputed weak response to the Taliban insurgency, which many observers believe is gaining strength, especially in the south and southeast, Mr. Karzai insisted his government retained political control throughout the country.
"We are a weak administration because of a lack of resources and human resources," he said. "But politically the country is strongly united to see this country do better. That is not understood by the media, nor the United Nations."
He agreed that security in parts of the country was too fragile for general elections to be held. "We have to work on that," he said.
Another group of visitors representing a separate source of tension in the country visited the president on Friday: the families of nine children killed in a botched American air attack last weekend.
In the interview, Mr. Karzai called on the United States military to review its use of air attacks to try to kill individual Taliban leaders. In the attack, American A-10 attack planes killed nine children and one adult when they struck the house of a former Taliban member in Ghazni Province in southern Afghanistan.
"This has to be reconsidered, has to be re-evaluated thoroughly," he said.
--------
Afghan Assembly Is Postponed for A Second Time
Logistics Blamed for Delay on Constitution
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60872-2003Dec12.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 12 -- The opening of a national constitutional assembly has been postponed again as threats of violence from armed Islamic groups increase and concerns spread that the meeting could produce a paralyzing split between conservatives and reformers that would damage chances for successful presidential elections next year.
Officials said Friday night that the assembly, which was to begin on Saturday, has been delayed until Sunday only because some of the 500 delegates have had difficulty reaching Kabul from remote provinces. But security has been extremely tight as participants gather for the meeting, known as a loya jirga. Hundreds of Afghan and foreign troops are guarding the site at Kabul's Polytechnic Institute.
The loya jirga is being convened to debate and ratify a new constitution -- the first since 1964, when Afghanistan was ruled by a monarch and had not yet experienced Soviet occupation, civil war and repressive Islamic rule. The assembly is a critical step in the country's U.N.-mandated transition to democratic rule and will almost certainly feature fiery discussions among delegates from diverse backgrounds, including urban women's activists, conservative tribal elders and former Islamic militia commanders.
One concern among outside observers is that the assembly may be hijacked by Islamic fundamentalists. More than two-thirds of the 344 elected male delegates are reportedly associated with factions that want the new constitution to emphasize strict Islamic law and provide for a prime minister who can act as a counterweight to a powerful president.
Moreover, it is not yet clear who will chair the assembly or how that person -- who can set and control much of its agenda -- will be chosen. President Hamid Karzai reportedly wants to name a moderate former Afghan president, but religious conservatives are pushing for a direct election by the delegates, which could put someone from their ranks -- probably Islamic factional leader Abdul Rasool Sayyaf -- in the powerful post.
"We are hoping to see a strong chair who can prevent the loya jirga from being dominated from any specific group, but we still don't know what the rules will be," said Nader Naderi, spokesman for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. "That issue alone will make a major difference in what happens."
Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special representative to Afghanistan, predicted this week that the assembly would be marked by "difficult debate." Brahimi said in a report to Afghan officials this week that unless the government becomes more representative and balanced, the political steps taken at the loya jirga will be "unlikely to produce a stable, legitimate political order" and could instead institutionalize a "fractured, unstable political order" dominated by factional and ethnic interests.
The loya jirga will bring together 500 delegates -- 344 men elected from all of Afghanistan's 32 provinces, 64 women elected by other women, 50 people chosen by Karzai and 42 chosen to represent various minority groups. The great majority are from conservative rural areas.
The draft constitution before the assembly, as proposed by Karzai's administration, calls for a strong president and weaker parliament, with no prime minister. Karzai, 46, an ethnic Pashtun who is the country's interim leader, has said he will run for president unless the loya jirga restores the position of prime minister. Many analysts say he could win but would face extreme difficulties governing if challenged by a powerful parliamentary leader.
"In countries where there are no strong institutions, in countries where there are remnants of a conflict still there, we need a system that will run with one centrality, not many centers of power," Karzai said this week.
His opponents, largely members of conservative Islamic factions that dominate many rural regions, are expected not only to lead efforts to add the prime minister's position but also to call for changes that specifically enshrine strict Islamic law precepts, known as sharia, in the charter. The current draft, which was the subject of much negotiation among Islamic moderates and conservatives, merely says that no Afghan law shall contradict the principles of Islam.
During elections this month to select delegates to the assembly, the most common demand in many regions was for a political system that is guided by and subordinate to Islamic law. This notion is anathema to reformers in Karzai's administration, as well as to Western governments and human rights groups who see imposition of sharia as a hindrance to Afghanistan's political and economic modernization.
If Islamic groups are hoping to sabotage Karzai and his version of democracy, they are using subtle tactics. On the issue of who should chair the assembly, for example, they have argued for an open and democratic election among delegates. And while the government and its foreign advisers have proposed dividing the assembly into working groups on various issues, presumably headed by the more educated members, opponents have branded this plan undemocratic and called for open discussion on every issue.
Meanwhile, officials are hoping that the intensive security precautions will prevent any harm coming to the delegates, who will be fed and housed at a cost to the United Nations and international aid groups of $50,000 per day.
In recent days, spokesmen for the revived Taliban movement, which has carried out numerous attacks in southeastern Afghanistan, have also threatened members of the loya jirga, while calling the meeting a "charade" promoted by Western interests.
----
Recruits in Pakistan reinforce Taliban's ranks
Resurgence raises aid workers' fears within Afghanistan
Juliette Terzieff,
San Francisco Chronicle Foreign Service
Saturday, December 13, 2003
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/12/13/MNGD13MEG31.DTL
Quetta, Pakistan -- Dressed in baggy pants and a long tunic, the recruiter looks like any one of thousands of men and boys passing through the busy market of Satellite Town, a Quetta neighborhood populated largely by Afghan refugees.
But while the others have come to buy and sell staples like potatoes, carrots and rice, the recruiter is on the lookout for volunteers willing to cross the nearby border with Afghanistan and join the Taliban militia in its fight against U.S.-led forces.
"During the Taliban times there was peace and security, but now there is chaos. It is not too difficult to find those willing to fight to get that back, " said the 34-year-old man, who sports a salt-and-pepper beard that makes him look much older.
The recruiter, who refused to give his name, is one of tens of thousands of Afghans who settled in and around Quetta over the tumultuous last 25 years, which have seen their homeland blasted back into the Middle Ages.
He paints a frightening picture of recruiters scouring Afghan refugee communities and religious seminaries across the province of Baluchistan, signing up hundreds of young men willing to risk death at the hands of Pakistani, Afghan or U.S.-led coalition forces. Just over a month ago, he ferried his most recent batch of 16 recruits across the border, gave each 1, 000 rupees (about $17) for incidentals, dropped them off to Taliban contacts on the other side and returned for more.
"Security forces might control the streets, but we command the hearts and minds of the people," he insisted.
The resurgence of the Taliban has alarmed the United States and the Afghan government. On Friday, it also prompted the United Nations' top official in Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, to warn that unless security improves, the world body may soon have to abandon its two-year effort to stabilize the country.
Noting that 11 aid workers have been killed since March, Brahimi told the Associated Press: "Countries that are committed to supporting Afghanistan cannot kid themselves and cannot go on expecting us to work in unacceptable security conditions."
If NATO and the United States cannot make the situation safer, he added, "we will go away."
In recent months, Washington and Kabul repeatedly have urged Pakistan to do much more to prevent a resurgent Taliban from using its soil as a staging base.
Nowhere has the temperature gotten higher than in Quetta -- which has been depicted by both the international and local media as the new home away from home for the Taliban. Pakistani officials denounce the reports.
"I have one word for you: bull -- ," snapped one Quetta-based army general. "The Taliban does not control Quetta or any part of Pakistan. If any of them are here, they are on the run, hiding."
But the Baluchistan provincial government is in the hands of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a party that has long supported the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and openly opposes President Pervez Musharraf's cooperation with the United States in the war on terror.
Maulana Hafiz Hussein Sharodi, Baluchistan minister of information, talks like a Taliban -- and looks like one in his black turban.
"If forces have come from outside, then of course the Taliban have the right to defend themselves against the American soldiers, and people here support that," he said from behind a pair of thick-lensed glasses. "The decision to ally Pakistan with the U.S. was not a decision of the people of this country ... it was a decision of military generals."
"The Taliban will come to power again," Sharodi predicted. "Look at (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai. He can't even leave his palace for fear of his own security. That just shows how bad things have gotten since the Taliban were forced out."
While Pakistan has arrested more Taliban and al Qaeda suspects than any other American ally in the war on terror, U.S. and Afghan officials are worried by persistent reports that major Taliban figures -- including the notorious one-legged commander Mullah Dadullah, who is believed to have given the order to destroy the famed statues of the Buddha at Bamyan -- have repeatedly visited Baluchistan to rally support.
"We hear one thing from Islamabad, and then see a different thing on the ground," Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Omar Samad said recently.
Since August, Taliban and allied fighters have killed more than 400 people in a spate of attacks across southern and eastern Afghanistan. This has led aid groups to scale back -- or temporarily cease -- their operations and has disrupted reconstruction projects, including the $250 million resurfacing of the Kabul-Kandahar highway.
"We know the Pakistani government has made some progress, but they must put a complete stop to the infiltration of men and arms across the border," said Samad.
Hamid Khan, the leader in Baluchistan of the opposition Pashtunkhwa National People's Party, scoffed at that notion.
Echoing persistent reports that elements of the Pakistani army and the Inter-Services Intelligence bureau are supporting the Taliban's efforts -- or, at the very least, turning a blind eye -- he said: "Almost every mullah in every mosque in the small villages of this province is screaming 'jihad, jihad, jihad' five times a day, every day. If the government had really turned its back on the Taliban, this would not be allowed.
"If the Taliban is a threat, then so are those who made them, and for that you can look to the Pakistani and Saudi governments who funded them, encouraged them and were the only ones in the world to recognize them."
The bazaar recruiter was more equivocal: "There are those in power that are with us, and those that are against us. But even if the establishment shuts us out, the people never will."
-------- business
RECONSTRUCTION
Bush Sees Need for Repayment if Fee Was High
December 13, 2003
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/international/middleeast/13PREX.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - President Bush said Friday that he expected the Halliburton Company to repay $61 million if a subsidiary was found to have overcharged the Pentagon on a contract to deliver fuel to Iraq.
The Pentagon said Thursday that it had evidence that Halliburton, while not profiteering, had failed to get a reasonable price for the fuel from a subcontractor in Kuwait and had passed the inflated price along to the government.
On Friday, Mr. Bush said he was satisfied with the Defense Department's investigation of the matter. The contract has taken on political overtones because Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 until he was chosen by Mr. Bush to be his running mate in 2000.
"We're going to watch, we're going to make sure that as we spend the money in Iraq, that it's spent well and spent wisely," Mr. Bush said in a short question-and-answer session with reporters at the White House. "And 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."
Mr. Bush also defended his choice of James A. Baker III, a former secretary of state and treasury secretary, as his envoy for talks with other nations on forgiving Iraq's debts.
Mr. Baker's law firm, Baker Botts, and an investment firm where he is a counsellor, the Carlyle Group, have business interests in the Middle East.
When asked if Mr. Baker's role at these concerns posed a conflict of interest in renegotiating Iraq's debt, the president described Mr. Baker as a "man of high integrity" and of "enormous experience."
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Baker "is fully complying with all laws and rules on the books, and has taken significant steps to avoid even the potential for a conflict of interest."
Mr. McClellan said Mr. Baker would renounce his partnership share of any fees his law firm received from clients who might pose a conflict of interest. Baker Botts's clients include Halliburton.
Mr. Baker is taking similar steps at the Carlyle Group, Mr. McClellan said. Carlyle is an international investment company that has had dealings with the Saudi royal family.
Last year Mr. Bush appointed Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of state, to lead an inquiry into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But Mr. Kissinger, who heads an international consulting firm, withdrew after encountering demands that he cut his ties to the firm to assure the public that he would conduct the investigation without regard to how it might affect his clients.
Mr. Bush said that the United States was "fortunate to have Jim Baker agree to serve," and that Mr. Baker would proceed with a planned five-day, five-nation trip next week.
That trip has been complicated by the administration's decision, made public by the Pentagon this week, to bar companies from nations that did not back the war in Iraq from receiving prime contracts for $18.6 billion in American-financed reconstruction work in Iraq. Companies from those countries can take part as subcontractors.
Among the nations disqualified were France, Germany and Russia, three of the countries Mr. Baker will ask to help put Iraq, which has more than $100 billion in foreign debt, on a sounder financial footing.
At the center of the disputes over the reconstruction of Iraq stands Halliburton, which was awarded a lucrative contract by the United States, without competitive bidding, to play a major role in the rebuilding.
Pentagon officials said their reviews of the Halliburton contracts had turned up two problems, both related to a subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root.
In one case, they said, the company submitted a proposal for cafeteria services that appeared to be $67 million higher than what Halliburton had agreed to pay a subcontractor to carry out the services. The Pentagon rejected Halliburton's proposal, but attributed it to miscommunication rather than to an effort to defraud the government.
In the case of the fuel, Halliburton charged the government $2.27 a gallon for 56.6 million gallons of gasoline from Kuwait, Pentagon officials said. That was $1.09 a gallon higher than the government was charged by another contractor, they added. The difference amounted to more than $61 million.
The Pentagon officials said Halliburton appeared to be charging the government the same amount it was paying to its subcontractor in Kuwait, plus normal overhead costs. The implication, they said, is that Halliburton was not price gouging but that it had selected a subcontractor that was charging a far higher price than was available elsewhere.
But they said that it was Halliburton's responsibility to ensure that it paid a reasonable amount for the fuel, and that if the price was determined by the Pentagon to be excessive, Halliburton, not the subcontractor, would be asked to absorb the difference.
Asked for a response to Mr. Bush's remarks, Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Halliburton, said in an e-mailed statement that the company "has not been accused of fraud or any other kind of intentional wrongdoing."
She also sent a statement, issued Thursday night by the company's chairman and chief executive, Dave Lesar, saying the company welcomed a review of its contracts.
Whatever the merits of the business and legal issues, Halliburton, in part because of its ties to Mr. Cheney, has become a political lightning rod, with Democrats saying its role in Iraq reflects the administration's willingness to do favors for friendly corporate interests.
Mr. Bush was also asked by reporters whether Israel was playing its part in his plan to bring peace to the Middle East. He repeated his call for an end to terrorism and for the Palestinians to find new leaders. But he added that Israelis "must be mindful that they don't make decisions that make it hard to create a Palestinian state."
Mr. Bush's comments on Israel came a day after an American envoy to the Middle East said Israel "had done too little for far too long" to foster peace with the Palestinians. And they came on the same day that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met here with Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom.
-------
Company Overcharged U.S. in Iraq, Bush Says
President Wants Halliburton Unit to Pay
By Dana Milbank and Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60978-2003Dec12.html
President Bush said yesterday that he believes Halliburton Inc. overcharged the Pentagon in Iraq and that the company once led by Vice President Cheney should repay any such overcharge.
Democrats said the preliminary findings by a Pentagon audit -- that Halliburton may have overcharged the Army by $61 million for gasoline -- proved that the Bush administration was giving favorable treatment to its friends and supporters. But Bush said the findings, released Thursday, demonstrated the government was closely monitoring its contracts.
"I appreciate the Pentagon looking out after the taxpayers' money," Bush said after promoting Alphonso R. Jackson to be his new Housing and Urban Development secretary. "And if there's an overcharge, like we think there is, we expect that money to be repaid."
The audit found Halliburton, of which Cheney was chief executive before becoming Bush's running mate, may have overcharged the Army by $1.09 per gallon on nearly 57 million gallons of gasoline delivered to citizens in Iraq by buying from Kuwait instead of Turkey. The charges were part of a no-bid contract Halliburton received for rebuilding the Iraqi oil industry.
A Halliburton executive who declined to be identified said in an interview yesterday that the company's subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, picked the lowest eligible bidder. The executive said KBR was required by the Army Corps of Engineers to purchase some of the higher-priced Kuwaiti fuel and was only permitted to do business in Kuwait with companies approved by the government-owned Kuwait National Petroleum Co.
Halliburton has until Wednesday to respond to the Pentagon's draft audit report. The audit agency then will release a final report to the Army Corps, which would decide whether to seek reimbursement. "Until the contracting officer makes a decision, there is no dispute with the government," the executive said.
Democratic presidential candidates yesterday accused Bush of cronyism. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) said the deal was lining "the pockets of well-connected corporations," while Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) charged that Halliburton was "war profiteering."
And former Vermont governor Howard Dean sought to link the Halliburton issue with a decision by the administration to block France, Germany and others who opposed the Iraq invasion from winning U.S.-funded contracts there. "George W. Bush is preventing entire nations from bidding on contracts in Iraq so his campaign contributors can continue to overcharge the American taxpayers," he said.
Democrats also continued to raise questions about the administration's move to block war opponents from getting prime contracts in Iraq. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said national security adviser Condoleezza Rice called him in April to express Bush's opposition to a slightly more stringent Senate proposal, saying "it limits his flexibility."
"The bottom line is they were opposed to it for every reason; they knew it was stupid," Biden said.
But the administration's new policy got an endorsement from Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. "Those countries that have refused to pay any money to help with the support of reconstruction are demanding access to the contracts," Downer said in a radio interview. He said the new policy "should benefit Australia."
And after Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) on Thursday raised concerns about the policy, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) yesterday defended the policy by issuing a statement titled "DeLay to Euro-Grumblers: 'Non' 'Nein,' and 'Nyet.' "
On the Halliburton matter, the preliminary findings the Defense Department made public Thursday were part of a routine audit of two contracts that KBR has with the government, including an Iraq oil reconstruction contract awarded in March worth as much as $7 billion. The results do not suggest that KBR necessarily did anything wrong, a defense official noted in laying out the findings.
The Halliburton executive said the company reviewed bids from four potential subcontractors. The winning company, Altanmia Commercial Marketing Co., was the low bidder that met all of the Army Corps' requirements, the executive said. The Halliburton executive said the Corps required the company to buy oil from Kuwait. "The Corps knew it," the executive said. "They told us to do it."
Some Democratic members of Congress have questioned why KBR bought more expensive fuel from Kuwait when it paid less for fuel from Turkey. According to government documents, KBR paid $1.17 per gallon to buy fuel from Kuwait and 89 cents to purchase it from Turkey.
But a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers said the agency told KBR that it could not just import fuel from a single source because "there was a great risk that any supply course was likely to be disrupted at some point." He added that Turkey did not have the capacity to supply all of the fuel and that an Army Corps audit of the oil contract found nothing inappropriate.
Speaking at a news conference yesterday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the government had not yet paid the money in question to the Halliburton unit. "We've got auditors that crawl all over these things," he said.
--------
Federal Prosecutors Probing 2 Ex-Employees of Boeing
By Jerry Markon and Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61236-2003Dec12.html
Federal prosecutors have launched an investigation into potential corruption and conflicts of interest involving two former Boeing Co. executives, according to law enforcement sources.
The probe, led by the U.S. attorney in Alexandria, is the latest faced by the aerospace and defense giant in recent months. The investigation, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, extends an inquiry into conduct by Michael M. Sears, Boeing's former chief financial officer, and Darleen A. Druyun, a former senior vice president who had been an Air Force procurement officer, whom Chicago-based Boeing fired last month for unethical behavior.
Charges are not imminent, but "we might be turning the corner very quickly on this,'' said a law enforcement source. "You're talking potentially corruption and conflict of interest."
The Justice Department declined to comment, and a spokesman for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service did not return a call for comment.
The probe, which was launched within the past four months, also includes possible obstruction charges, according to government sources.
"We have been cooperating with the Department of Justice and DOD [inspector general] and have been providing them some information for some time," said Boeing spokesman Larry McCracken. "We're not trying to stonewall with them."
A Boeing internal inquiry found that Sears violated company rules by talking to Druyun about a position at the company while she was overseeing Boeing contracts at the Air Force, including a program to lease and buy Boeing 767s. They initially made contact in October 2002 through Druyun's daughter, who works in Boeing's St. Louis office, then met the next month in person. That meeting took place at least two weeks before Druyun recused herself from making decisions involving the company, Boeing's inquiry found.
Sears has denied wrongdoing, and Druyun has declined to comment. If Druyun did engage in employment discussions while overseeing the Boeing contracts, she could face criminal charges for violating federal procurement rules, according to industry and government officials.
The Pentagon inspector general is already looking into whether Druyun and Sears tainted the $17 billion deal to buy 80 and lease 20 tankers, which refuel fighter jets in midair. At the time of the alleged inappropriate contact, Druyun was negotiating the controversial deal on the Air Force's behalf, and some in Congress have said it appears that she acted as an advocate for Boeing instead of taxpayers.
The deal has been put on hold pending the completion of the inspector general's inquiry. It is also expected to face more congressional hearings. Secretary of the Air Force James G. Roche has asked the inspector general's office to look into all Boeing-related contracts that Druyun supervised in the past few years.
If the tanker contract is not approved, Boeing could be forced to close down the production line for the 767 -- the tanker aircraft -- as early as 2005 and take a charge of about $200 million. The company began building a wing of the first plane yesterday in Washington state.
Boeing is under investigation by at least four entities, including the U.S. attorney's office in Northern Virginia and the Pentagon's inspector general, which recently issued a subpoena in its inquiry. A grand jury in Los Angeles indicted two former Boeing employees on charges of stealing trade secrets from Lockheed Martin Corp. during a rocket-launch competition. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, chaired by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), has also been conducting an inquiry into the tanker deal.
-------- chemical weapons
India Finds Bullets Laced with Chemicals in Kashmir
December 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-kashmir.html
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Police battling Islamic separatists in disputed Kashmir have found bullets coated with lethal chemicals at a rebel hideout, they said on Saturday.
The seizure comes four months after the Indian army said it had information that Islamic militants in Kashmir knew how to build crude chemical weapons but had no proof.
About a dozen separatist groups operate in Kashmir, which is at the core of decades of animosity between India and Pakistan.
``We recovered a pen-pistol and 25 cartridges. When one of our men tried to remove the cartridge inside, it emitted fumes and he felt dizzy and became unconscious,'' K. Rajendra, inspector general of police in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, told Reuters.
``We have sent the pistol and bullets for forensic examination. Initial tests reveal the bullets are laced with a neurotoxic substance,'' he said, describing the weapon as lethal at short range.
Rajendra said the discovery was made this week in a house in the village of Nagri in the border district of Kupwara, northwest of Srinagar, summer capital of the state.
Police were investigating to determine which rebel group had hidden the arms and the homeowner was being held for questioning, he added.
In the past, guerrillas fighting against New Delhi's rule in the state have been accused of stockpiling sophisticated weapons, including a surface-to-air missile and a warhead that troops recovered last December from a hideout in the same district.
But the seizure was the first time a weapon of this kind has been found since the revolt against Indian rule began 14 years ago.
And in stepped up violence Indian soldiers on Saturday shot dead 10 rebels in gun battles across Kashmir and militants shot dead two civilians in the region, police said.
Pakistan denies Indian accusations it sponsors the 14-year-old revolt in the Muslim-majority state, which has claimed at least 40,000 lives so far. Separatists put the toll at more than 80,000.
-------- europe
Europeans Approve New Security Strategy
December 13, 2003
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/international/europe/13EURO.html
BRUSSELS, Dec. 12 - The leaders of the 15-nation European Union approved a common security strategy on Friday that they said would enable Europe to "share in the responsibility for global security, and in building a better world."
The leaders, opening a two-day summit meeting to discuss a draft constitution for the union as it brings in 10 new members, most of them from Eastern Europe, also approved a plan for a joint military planning staff separate from NATO. The plan has aroused misgivings in Washington for fear that it would duplicate NATO institutions and damage trans-Atlantic cooperation on defense matters.
The military side of the plan was something less than some European nations, notably France and Germany, had envisioned. In the original plan, commissioned at the height of the trans-Atlantic bickering over the Iraq war, the force was to have had its own headquarters in Brussels, apart from NATO.
The French and Germans, under pressure from Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, revised the plan to accommodate American objections. The plan adopted today calls for a planning staff of perhaps 100 military and civilian officials, and for NATO and the European Union to station teams of officers at each other's headquarters.
Still, the measure, approved unanimously, represents the first time that Europe has formally framed its strategy for common defense and taken steps to back it up militarily.
The 14-page strategy paper, based on a draft by the chief European foreign affairs official, Javier Solana, emphasized that Europe did not seek to rupture the alliance with North America, affirming that "the trans-Atlantic relationship is irreplaceable."
In a departure from the security thinking of the Bush administration, the document stated that none of the current threats to peace - including terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, the collapse of government institutions and organized crime - was purely military, "nor can they be tackled by purely military means."
The document represented the culmination of many years effort by European nations to formulate a defense policy separate from NATO, which is dominated by the United States. The movement gained force after the Treaty of Maastricht, which took effect in 1993, mandating gradual progress from mere economic integration to common policies in defense and foreign affairs.
The adoption of a common security strategy was preceded by weeks of intense diplomatic effort to lessen American resistance, particularly at meetings this month in Brussels with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Both men had opposed the plan as an unnecessary duplication of NATO, which already pools European military resources under a single command.
President Jacques Chirac of France, a staunch proponent of an independent European defense policy, praised the moves as a "confirmation of European defense, an affirmation of its interests." But he was at pains to stress the integrity of NATO, saying the plan was in "perfect conformity with the demands of NATO."
The United States was angered earlier this year when four European Union nations - France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg - promoted the idea of a separate European military headquarters independent of NATO.
Several leaders said the group had discussed the United States decision to exclude countries opposed to the Iraq war, including France, Germany and Russia, from contracts in Iraq, though it reached no consensus. Mr. Blair later defended the United States decision. "It is very important to emphasize that this is American money," he said, adding that it was "for the Americans to decide how they spend their money."
Mr. Chirac, emphasizing the need for "adhesion in the international community" in facing the challenges of Iraqi reconstruction, said the United States should ask whether such exclusions "go in the direction of indispensable unity, or of disunity." Yet he said he was prepared to meet James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, who is visiting Europe next week to discuss debt relief for Iraq.
The leaders of the existing Europe Union nations also announced that Bulgaria and Romania would be allowed to join the organization by 2007, provided they meet the criteria for membership.
--------
Disputes Hinder EU Draft Constitution
Power Balance Divides Large And Small Nations
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60874-2003Dec12.html
BRUSSELS, Dec. 12 -- European Union leaders negotiated late into the night Friday in an effort to overcome deep divisions over a draft constitution that would create a powerful president of Europe and could give the union more influence in world affairs.
"It is going to be very, very difficult because the positions are a long way off," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said. "It is important to try to get an agreement," he said, but added, "it may well not be possible."
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the summit chairman, said it would take "a miracle" for this session to succeed. On Friday night, Berlusconi was engaged in intense one-on-one meetings with other leaders "to see what are the margins for maneuver," one EU official said.
The main point of contention is how to balance power between the member states of the EU, which now includes 15 nations but is set to grow next spring to 25.
Germany, the union's most populous country, and France insist that future EU decisions be passed by a majority of countries that also represent at least 60 percent of the EU population. But Spain and Poland are resisting any change in the current, weighted voting system that gives them clout that far exceeds their population size.
The issue is much the same that faced the United States' Founding Fathers meeting in Philadelphia in 1787, when small states feared being dominated by the larger ones -- and the result was a bicameral legislature with every state having equal power in the Senate, but power being apportioned according to population in the House.
The Spanish and Polish prime ministers have stuck to their positions so fiercely that analysts said they risked a political backlash at home if they were perceived as caving to pressure now. That is particularly true for Poland, one of the incoming countries, where segments of the population, notably farmers, still view membership warily.
Failure to agree, say many diplomats and analysts, will likely formalize a split in the EU, with a core group led by Germany and France continuing on a fast track toward deeper integration and shared policies. But others, such as Spain and many incoming members, would be left lagging.
In many ways, the splits mirror those exposed this year by the debate over the Iraq war; then, France and Germany formed the core of the anti-war alliance, with Britain, Spain, Poland and most of the future Eastern European members in the pro-war camp.
In recent months, Germany and France have raised the ire of smaller countries by openly violating rules that require countries using the common currency, the euro, to keep their budget deficits within prescribed limits -- and then prevailing on the EU not to collect penalties from them.
Britain has allied itself with Spain and Poland on the voting system question. But Blair has tried to stake out a role as a mediator between the two camps. He was instrumental in forging the one success of this summit so far, a deal for a new, scaled-down European military command center that will be located inside NATO headquarters in Brussels. France and Germany had wanted a separate, larger headquarters, an idea the Bush administration had opposed as rivaling NATO.
Other contentious issues here are the powers of the future EU president; how much say the EU can have over sensitive tax and social security issues; and whether the new constitution should include a reference to God and the continent's Christian roots. Predominantly Catholic Spain and Poland, with backing from Pope John Paul II, are calling for such a religious statement.
Some analysts suggested the countries could drop their backing for language on religion if they were assured of more voting weight. Said Daniel Keohane of the Center for European Reform, a London-based organization: "It will be interesting to see if Spain and Poland give up God for votes."
-------- iraq
INQUIRY
Iraqi Agent Denies He Met 9/11 Hijacker in Prague Before Attacks on the U.S.
December 13, 2003
By JAMES RISEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/international/europe/13INQU.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told American interrogators the meeting never happened, according to United States officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter.
Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the United States in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations.
American officials caution that Mr. Ani may have been lying to American interrogators, but the only other person reported to have attended the meeting was Mr. Atta, who died in the crash of his hijacked plane into the World Trade Center.
Reports that an Iraqi spy had met with Mr. Atta in Prague first circulated soon after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, but they have been in dispute ever since.
Czech government officials initially confirmed the reports, even as the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said they could not corroborate them. Conservatives both inside and out of the Bush administration, arguing for war with Iraq, pointed to the reports as evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization that planned the Sept. 11 attacks.
During the period between the Sept. 11 attacks and the war, the reports of the Prague meeting came under intense scrutiny from the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Pentagon and the White House.
Possible contacts between Mr. Atta and Mr. Ani seemed to offer the clearest potential connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda at a time when the Bush administration was arguing that invading Iraq was part of its campaign against terrorism.
But the C.I.A. and F.B.I. eventually concluded that the meeting probably did not take place, and that there was no hard evidence that Mr. Hussein's government was involved in the Sept. 11 plot.
That put the intelligence agencies at odds with hard-liners at the Pentagon and the White House, who came to believe that C.I.A. analysts had ignored evidence that proved links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Eventually, the Prague meeting became a central element in a battle between the C.I.A. and the administration's hawks over prewar intelligence.
Since American forces toppled the Hussein government and the United States gained access to captured Iraqi officials and Iraqi files, the C.I.A. has not yet uncovered evidence that has altered its prewar assessment concerning the connections between Mr. Hussein and Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, officials said.
American intelligence officials say they believe there were contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda in the 1990's, but there is no proof that they ever conducted joint operations.
Senior operatives of Al Qaeda who have been captured by the United States since Sept. 11 have also denied any alliance between the organization and Mr. Hussein.
Abu Zubaydah, one of the highest-ranking Qaeda leaders in American custody, told the C.I.A. that Mr. bin Laden rejected the idea of working with Mr. Hussein, a secular leader whom Mr. bin Laden considered corrupt and irredeemable, according to a September 2002 classified intelligence report obtained by The New York Times.
Mr. Zubaydah said that some Qaeda operatives wanted the organization to try to take advantage of Mr. Hussein's hatred for the United States in order to obtain military material or other support from Iraq. But Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were strongly opposed to working with Iraq, according to the report of Mr. Zubaydah's debriefing, which was obtained from Bush administration officials.
Al Qaeda's leadership "viewed the Iraqis, particularly the military and security services, as corrupt, irreligious and hypocritical in that they succumb to Western vices while concurrently remaining at war with the United States," the report says, summarizing Mr. Zubaydah's statements. "The Iraqis were not viewed as true jihadists, and there was doubt amongst the senior Al Qaeda leadership on the depth of Saddam's commitment to destroy Israel and further the cause of cleansing the Holy Land of infidel influences or presence."
The debriefing report contains significant caveats, warning that Mr. Zubaydah, who was captured in March 2002, might be seeking to mislead the United States.
Separately, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda's chief of operations until his capture on March 1, 2003, in Pakistan, has also told interrogators that Al Qaeda never agreed to work with Mr. Hussein, officials said.
But even as the C.I.A. has played down the connection, the report of a Prague meeting has continued to resonate among administration conservatives. As recently as September, two months after Mr. Ani was captured, Vice President Dick Cheney referred to the Prague meeting during an appearance on the NBC News program "Meet the Press."
Asked about links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, Mr. Cheney replied: "With respect to 9/11, of course, we've had the story that's been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know."
The story first emerged in October 2001, when the Czech interior minister said publicly that there was evidence that Mr. Atta had met with Mr. Ani in April 2001. At the time, Mr. Ani was serving as an Iraqi intelligence officer under diplomatic cover at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague.
Later, many Czech government officials became much more skeptical that the meeting ever took place, particularly after it became clear that the initial intelligence report from the Czech domestic intelligence agency concerning the meeting had come from a single informant in the local Arab community.
The information was treated skeptically by Czech intelligence experts because it had been provided only after the Sept. 11 attacks, after Mr. Atta's picture had been broadcast on television and published in newspapers around the world, and after the Czech press reported that records showed that Mr. Atta had once traveled to Prague.
Czech officials have said that border police records showed that Mr. Atta, who was then living in Hamburg, Germany, did come to Prague in June 2000, after obtaining a visa in late May. Shortly after arriving in Prague on that occasion, Mr. Atta flew to Newark.
American records now indicate that Mr. Atta was in Virginia Beach, Va., in early April 2001, when he was supposedly in Prague to meet Mr. Ani.
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THE MILITARY
General Says Cash and Arms Are Cut Off in Iraqi Hotbed
December 13, 2003
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/international/middleeast/13GENE.html
TIKRIT, Iraq, Dec. 11 - The United States general commanding operations in Saddam Hussein's ancestral homeland says that American forces have dealt a damaging blow to the insurgency in this pivotal region of Iraq in the past 30 days by choking off much of the guerrillas' financing and arms supplies. But he also acknowledges that the occupation still faces huge challenges, from suicide bombings to training and equipping new Iraqi police officers and militia members.
The commander, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who heads the Army's Fourth Infantry Division, said in an interview Thursday night that American operations had captured several important insurgent financiers in recent days, seized money stashed across the region to pay for weapons and attacks ($500 to conduct a strike and up to $3,000 to kill an American soldier) and stopped couriers smuggling in cash from outside Iraq.
Nearly $2 million in American currency was seized in Samarra this week. As a result, he said, attacks against American soldiers have dropped to an average of 6 a day from 22 a day a month ago.
"For the first time in the last 30 days, I truly feel we've gotten into their cycle of financing," General Odierno said at his headquarters here in one of Mr. Hussein's sprawling palace complexes. "We have indications they're having trouble financing attacks. There are indications that for the first time, they're having trouble getting their hands on weapons."
General Odierno said he could not say how long American troops would stay in Iraq. But he set out four specific conditions for their departure: creating a credible police force to maintain civil order, establishing an army to defend against external threats, forming an effective new government and eliminating the threat of insurgency by former Iraqi security forces.
"There's still a long way to go," said General Odierno, who refused to predict the length of the American military presence here.
Indeed, this city of 30,000 is struggling with a 50 percent unemployment rate, and General Odierno said the occupation authority must speed the process of Iraqi self-rule, hasten the pace of rebuilding the infrastructure and rid Iraqis of the intimidation imposed for more than three decades by Mr. Hussein's Baath Party.
General Odierno oversees military operations in a swath of Iraq the size of West Virginia just north of Baghdad, ranging from this Sunni bastion to the northern oil fields of Kirkuk to the Iranian border in the east. Success in this Sunni-dominated region could set an important model for the rest of the country, but the general said he was realistic about what American troops can and cannot accomplish here.
"We are not going to win hearts and minds in seven months," said General Odierno, a West Point graduate from Rockway, N.J. "They have been taught to hate Westerners for 35 years. They've been indoctrinated. But what we can do is try to show them that we can at least start them on the way to a better life. I think the majority of the people do want that."
General Odierno cautioned that the recent successes had driven loyalists to Mr. Hussein to change their tactics and begin carrying out high-profile suicide bombings against military and civilian targets. There were three such attacks on American bases this week. "It shows their desperation," he said.
Capturing or killing Mr. Hussein would be a huge step toward that goal. "It's psychological," General Odierno said. "I don't think he's really directing any of the operations, but I think he has a psychological effect. They fear him. They absolutely fear him. And there's a fear he might come back and suppress them."
An elite team of Special Operations Forces and Central Intelligence Agency operatives, called Task Force 121, is leading the hunt for Mr. Hussein and other top former Iraqi officials.
General Odierno said American forces believe that they had at least two close calls with the former Iraqi dictator in recent months. In a raid on a safe house in the Tikrit area this past summer, American forces said they learned from Iraqis they detained that Mr. Hussein had been there just eight hours earlier.
"Do I think he's operating in this area? Probably," General Odierno said. "Do I know if he's in this area? I don't. What I do know are his tribal connections here and his family connections here. The tribal and family connections are binding, and it's very tough to get inside them. But one day we will."
General Odierno continued: "I think he's moving around. Look at the quality of his tapes. Any one of my soldiers could make a better tape than he does right now."
General Odierno said that most of the attacks were now being coordinated by former colonels and lieutenant colonels in the Iraqi intelligence services, Special Republican Guard or other Iraqi security services.
"There's no one mastermind," he said. "It's to work at the will of the American people back in the U.S. by killing as many coalition soldiers as they can so we will pull out. They still believe we're not willing to take casualties."
--------
Recruits Abandon Iraqi Army
Troubled Training Hurts Key Component of Bush Security Plan
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60899-2003Dec12?language=printer
KIRKUSH, Iraq, Dec. 12 -- More than half the men in the first unit to be trained for the new Iraqi army have abandoned their jobs because of low pay, inadequate training, faulty equipment, ethnic tensions and other concerns, leaving the nascent 1st Battalion dramatically understaffed just days before it is scheduled to leave training camp for its first assignment, Iraqi, U.S. and other coalition officials say.
About 480 of the 900 recruits who began training in August have left the U.S.-backed force, according to Australian Maj. Doug Cumming, chief instructor at the training academy in Kirkush, about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad. They will not be punished for leaving, nor are they even being pursued, officials say. Among those who remain, some still have not mastered such basics as how to march in formation and how to properly respond to radio calls.
On Monday, the 1st Battalion is scheduled to begin assisting the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division in running traffic checkpoints and securing defense perimeters around bases in the eastern part of the country. Plans also call for the battalion to move to the northern city of Mosul in mid-February to serve as an independent unit under the command of the 101st Airborne Division.
Creation of the new Iraqi army is a key component of the Bush administration's plan to restore security and to return sovereignty to Iraqis. Establishing a capable military force would also yield domestic benefits for the administration by making it possible to send U.S. and other foreign soldiers home. Congress has allocated $2 billion in the next year to support the new Iraqi army.
Administrators, instructors and recruits interviewed here at the training camp all agreed that the 1st Battalion's training had been troubled.
"It was a new experience for everyone," said U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Johnny Matlock, who is part of the multinational team overseeing the new army's training. "We had to learn by mistakes."
The first mistake, according to those in charge of the training program, was that the Iraqi soldiers' salaries were too low. Privates earn $70 a month -- about half the amount paid to the people who fill sandbags around the Baghdad headquarters of the U.S.-led occupation authority, Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton said. For several months, Eaton has been asking for extra money for the soldiers.
The Coalition Provisional Authority says it is reviewing the pay scale for the Iraqi army as well as for other Iraqi security forces. But one official said the authority feels the soldiers' "remuneration package is at least very fair."
Civilians Training Soldiers
Another problem, Eaton said, was that a civilian company was hired to conduct the training rather the military. The $48 million contract was awarded to Vinnell Corp. in the spring, when U.S. forces in Iraq were stretched thin and cutting loose several hundred soldiers to oversee the training would have been difficult.
Training was conducted by employees of Vinnell or one of its subcontractors: Military Professional Resources Inc., Science Applications International Corp., Eagle Group International Inc., Omega Training Group and Worldwide Language Resources Inc. Founded in the 1930s, Vinnell was well known in defense circles for its training of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, but it only recently was thrust into the public spotlight when its complex in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, was bombed by terrorists this year.
Eaton said that while he believes Vinnell brought world-class technical expertise to the task, instructors weren't able to impose the regimented discipline of military instructors. The new Iraqi army needed drill sergeants, he said, but Vinnell personnel were more akin to college professors.
"Soldiers need to train soldiers. You can't ask a civilian to do a soldier's job," Eaton said.
Representatives from Vinnell declined to comment and referred all questions to the military.
Initial plans for creation of the Iraqi army called for civilian contractors to train all 27 battalions. Now, after Vinnell completes its obligation to train nine battalions, military personnel will take over. The U.S. government has decided to award a second contract, for training officers, to the Jordanian military. Remaining battalions will be trained by the Iraqi military, and the total number of troops to be trained before occupation authorities surrender sovereignty has been cut in half, to 20,000, Eaton said.
Shortly after the war ended this spring, Iraq's U.S. civilian administrator, L. Paul Bremer, disbanded the Iraqi army, leaving an estimated 400,000 soldiers without jobs and provoking violent protests in the streets of every major city in the country.
Bremer then ordered creation of a new army, one without ties to ousted president Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party. Recruiting offices opened around the country, and ex-soldiers, farmers, cigarette vendors, construction workers and others signed up.
One recruit was Haitham Ahmed Salman, 33, from Baqubah, north of Baghdad. When he showed up for training 41/2 months ago, he said, he was prepared for the brutality of boot camp. Instead, he was surprised to find that the civilian instructors were polite, respectful and even friendly.
The majority of the instructors, who walk around the training base with slate-gray uniforms that look like a cross between hospital scrubs and prison garb, have some military experience, but many had been retired for years. They approached the recruits with an egalitarian philosophy, several trainees said, making do without the formalities of "sir" and "ma'am" and saluting. They encouraged trainees to take time off and relax and watch Sylvester Stallone and Jackie Chan movies.
Salman, who is now a major in command of the 1st Battalion's 4th Company, said this relaxed attitude confused recruits, who often were not punished for arriving late for classes, neglecting assignments or getting into fistfights.
"They taught that military orders work on your mood. You can refuse -- this is freedom and democracy," he said. "But in military life, freedom and democracy should not apply."
When the 1st Battalion graduated on Oct. 4, the unit's Iraqi commander, Lt. Col. Ali Naim Jabbar, and his top deputies concluded that they would need to redo much of the training. For the past few weeks, they have been running the recruits through exercises they remembered from their days in the old Iraqi army.
Meanwhile, Vinnell's trainers have been concentrating on overhauling their program for the 2nd and 3rd battalions. Significant curriculum changes include a reduction in the theory and other classroom studies by 30 to 40 percent and adding hands-on field exercises focused on such skills as how to conduct a night watch and how to scan an area for danger -- things that had been taught only by textbook examples.
Military personnel are now a more visible part of the training. Iraqi soldiers from the 1st Battalion impose discipline on and serve as mentors to recruits in the 2nd and 3rd battalions, and occupation soldiers make an effort to engage in back-and-forth discussions.
Disunity in Diversity
Another source of tension among 1st Battalion recruits was the forced integration of ethnic Arabs and Kurds, traditional enemies. American planners imagined the new army as a showcase for the country's diversity, and the 1st Battalion was set up to be 60 percent Arab Shiite Muslim, 20 percent Arab Sunni, 10 percent Kurdish Sunni and 10 percent other. About 100 Kurds quit in the first few weeks of training after their tribal leaders objected to the battalion's ethnic mixture.
In addition, because predominantly Kurdish northern Iraq was autonomous from the rest of the country for the past dozen years, many young Kurds don't speak Arabic. During military training, instruction had to be translated from English to Arabic and then to Kurdish.
"I'm not that comfortable in the new army," said Nawar Mahmood, 23, who said he was a member of the Kurdish pesh merga militia and had been reassigned to the new Iraqi army. "I spent 13 years in the pesh merga fighting the Baathists, and now there are many Baathists in the new army."
Among other complaints voiced by the recruits: The soles of the first set of boots they received fell off. Their uniforms -- an odd mix of pink, brown and green that is supposed to resemble camouflage -- are falling apart. Their weapons jam when they try to fire them -- although U.S. troops who have tested them say they work fine.
"Soldiers want to be elegant when they go out, but you see our funny clothes," Salman said. "The men ask me, 'Are we really going out in these clothes?' Every time you wash them they get smaller, so I have gone a month without washing them."
Eaton said he, too, is frustrated about the quality of the equipment. One reason, he said, is that the coalition authority is buying the gear with seized Iraqi assets, which can only be spent through contracts with Iraqi companies.
Cumming, the chief instructor, said he worries that some of his recruits can't pay their rent with their salaries and that, because they agonize over the welfare of their families, they want life insurance. Eaton said his team is working on a plan to introduce health coverage and other benefits for troops and to create housing for their families on bases, but he acknowledges it is unlikely this will happen soon.
Cumming said fair compensation for Iraqi soldiers would be equal to what Iraqi police receive -- $120 a month -- plus something extra, because soldiers are asked to live away from home.
"Get a bureaucrat and take him away from home and stick him in this camp and make him run around a bit, and then ask him what's fair," Cumming said.
For about a week, members of the Army's 4th Infantry Division have been running the 1st Battalion's remaining troops through some simulated missions. Capt. William Hansen of Fairfax and Staff Sgt. Donald Coleman from Arlington are advising Salman's 4th Company.
On Friday, the 4th Company's goal was to set up a mock ambush point, stop a convoy and capture or kill the enemy. The trainees hoisted their guns, swarmed the road, and within a few minutes they had successfully neutralized their target. Or so they thought.
Hansen called the privates over to assess their performance. He was less than thrilled. The men should have camouflaged their helmets with leaves and branches, he said, before they advanced to the side of the road. They should have been moving discreetly in twos, not in long lines. And they should have gotten around the vehicle faster, to take advantage of the element of surprise during the critical first 15 seconds.
Not everyone was listening. Some soldiers fidgeted and began talking among themselves.
"Hey!" Hansen yelled, pointing at his chest. "Everyone with less rank than me pays attention to me, okay?"
Salman closed his eyes and sighed.
Staff writers Thomas E. Ricks and Peter Slevin in Washington, special correspondent Omar Fekeiki in Kirkush and correspondent Alan Sipress in Baghdad contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Likud Debates a Palestinian State to Save Israel
December 13, 2003
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/international/middleeast/13MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, Dec. 12 - In this place that often seems burdened by the past, it is the future that is suddenly bearing down.
Within the Likud, the dominant right-wing party, leaders who once advocated holding every inch of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and who for three years argued that Israel could make no concessions because it lacked a Palestinian peace partner, are now debating how quickly to concede how much of that territory.
The Likud is publicly grappling with a prospect long raised by Israel's left: that within a few years Arabs are likely to be the majority in Israel and its occupied territories, and that they may switch from demanding their own state to demanding the right to vote in Israel, threatening its Jewish identity.
The result is a breathtaking inversion: Though the Likud's platform opposes a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River as a threat to Israel, some members of the party say they have concluded that only the creation of such a state can save Israel as a Jewish democracy.
The debate within Likud is the most surprising development in a fall that has brought a two-month lull in the violence here and, with it, a series of official and unofficial initiatives for peace.
Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations special envoy here, told the Security Council on Friday that peacemakers had a "narrow window of opportunity," though he called the situation "very fragile."
In Washington on Friday, the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, sat down with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Shalom told reporters he hoped for a meeting "in the near future" between the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers. Mr. Powell met Thursday with Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian who worked on an unofficial peace initiative.
As the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, struggles to cement a cease-fire among Palestinian factions, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel is acting like a man in a hurry. The days when Mr. Sharon stressed reasons not to act - like his demand for seven days of absolute quiet - are past.
Now he is eager to meet with his Palestinian counterpart. He is sitting privately with members of the opposition Labor Party he had all but ignored. He is even talking about unilaterally removing some of the settlers he worked so hard, for so many years, to place in the West Bank and Gaza.
Mr. Sharon has said he will clarify his intentions soon, perhaps in a speech planned for the middle of next week.
On the right and left, many politicians believe that Mr. Sharon's hints may be political and diplomatic posturing, to satisfy the Bush administration, to restore his sagging popularity, or perhaps to distract attention from a widening corruption investigation.
Shimon Peres, the Labor Party leader, who met with Mr. Sharon this week, said he was skeptical. "You know, hints are not a policy," Mr. Peres said in a telephone interview on Friday. "It's like all the time in Israel they say we have hints of oil. The difference between hints of oil, and oil, is quite a major one."
Mr. Peres said that there had been a change within the Likud, an acceptance of the need for a Palestinian state, but that it had yet to formulate a policy to express that. "The Likud doesn't anymore have an ideology," he said, "but it doesn't have an alternative."
Mr. Sharon's advisers say he is committed to the road map, the peace initiative promoted by the Bush administration. They say he is formulating possible unilateral steps to take if, in six months or so, that initiative fails.
At the same time, a senior Israeli official said, Mr. Sharon is seeking to adjust the Likud to a political realignment in Israel. "One of the things Sharon is doing is to inculcate a new approach," he said. "The dream of Greater Israel is no longer there. We have to adjust our sights."
Palestinians argue that any unilateral withdrawal would be a cynical attempt to unload as many Palestinians as possible into as little territory as possible.
"All they're arguing is, how big a reservation do they want to give to the Palestinians," said Michael Tarazi, a lawyer for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Mr. Qurei has criticized any possible unilateral Israeli action, while also saying he welcomes that "Israelis are beginning to think of a solution."
Mr. Qurei says he believes that he can reach a deal with Mr. Sharon. More than two years ago, he and Mr. Peres worked out an informal understanding that would include an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank to create an interim Palestinian state. Mr. Sharon, who has known Mr. Qurei for years, has said privately that he backed the idea.
But while Mr. Peres and Mr. Qurei envisioned rapid progress toward a final settlement, Mr. Sharon envisioned freezing the handoff of territory at that interim point for as many as 12 years. Some diplomats here say they believe that his talk of unilateral action is his means of pressing Mr. Qurei to accept his terms. The Bush administration also opposes unilateral action, and it is pressing Israel and the Palestinians to fulfill their commitments to the plan Mr. Bush advocates.
Israel was supposed to freeze growth of settlements and remove the dozens of clusters of trailers that settlers have erected on West Bank hills since 2001. But though Mr. Sharon speaks now of possibly evacuating some settlements, those outposts are continuing to multiply and settlements continue to grow.
Both sides say a new outbreak of violence could upend any talks. In the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday, Palestinian gunmen shot and wounded seven Jews who evaded Israeli restrictions to visit a site they revere as the tomb of the Biblical Joseph.
Fanned by Mr. Sharon, the debate over a unilateral withdrawal broke into the open a week ago with a newspaper interview by his deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
Mr. Olmert, one of the so-called Likud princes bred to the dream of a Greater Israel, suggested that Israel might have to part with even some neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
Mr. Olmert has been attacked by Likud absolutists. But he has a reputation as a canny pragmatist, and many Israeli politicians interpreted his move as recognition of where the debate is headed.
At the beginning of the year, Amram Mitzna, Labor's candidate for prime minister, was derided on the right for proposing a complete, immediate withdrawal from Gaza.
Yet in a telephone interview on Friday, Yuval Steinitz, a rising Likud leader who is chairman of Parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee, said he would be willing to consider a complete unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, if that is what Mr. Sharon proposes.
"From a strategic perspective, we are between a rock and a hard place," Mr. Steinitz said. He said the demographic argument demanded an Israeli withdrawal, while Israel's security needs demanded it retain at least some of the West Bank.
"Our aim should be to find the golden path, to pull out from the most populated areas, under minimal conditions that will enable us to defend ourselves," he said.
Unlike some members of Likud, Mr. Steinitz never argued for keeping the West Bank and Gaza out of a conviction that God had deeded them to the Jews. Mr. Sharon has also advanced reasons of security, rather than belief, for holding on to the territories.
The Iraq war has not changed their views. Mr. Sharon's advisers say it is far too soon to conclude that Iraq will not eventually menace Israel again.
What is prompting the change appears to be concern about demographics and politics, including Likud's own growth from opposition to governing party.
"When reality and vision meet, inevitably there is a mellowing down of the vision," said Dan Meridor, another of the Likud princes, who before the last elections served as an adviser to Mr. Sharon on the peace effort. "It is always less than the dream."
Mr. Meridor had been a lonely voice in the Likud warning of the demographic shift.
The figures are striking. About 5.2 million Jews and 1.3 million Arabs are Israeli citizens, while roughly 3.5 million more Arabs live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Arab birth rate exceeds the Jewish rate.
"If we don't have a border within a short period of time, one day we will get up and hear Arafat or his successor say, `I don't want a Palestinian state. I want just one thing: Annex me,' " Mr. Meridor said.
Put another way, he said: "The problem now is not that we lose. The problem is that we might win."
--------
U.S. Urges Israel to Ease Burdens
Powell Says Concrete Results Could Hearten Palestinians
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61029-2003Dec12.html
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell urged the Israeli government to do more to alleviate Palestinian hardship yesterday, the day after a State Department official criticized the Israelis in direct terms.
In a State Department meeting with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, Powell talked of the need for reciprocal steps while emphasizing what Israel could do on its own to "make life better for ordinary Palestinians," department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
Powell spoke of increasing the number of work permits for Palestinians and creating jobs and trade opportunities, Boucher said. The Bush administration also wants Israel to remove unnecessary security barriers and roadblocks and begin removing remote settlements.
The discussion, coming ahead of a speech next week by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was part of an effort to persuade Israelis to provide tangible encouragement to the Palestinians. Concrete results, many analysts believe, are essential to counter the arguments of Palestinian extremists.
At the same time, U.S. officials are working with Arab governments in an attempt to halt Palestinian violence. Powell met earlier in the week with Egyptian security director Omar Suleiman, and Shalom will return to Washington on Monday for talks at the White House.
"All parties must fight off terror," President Bush told reporters yesterday. The Palestinians have to find new leadership, he said, and Israel must avoid decisions that hinder the chances of creating a Palestinian state.
"It's in Israel's interest there be a Palestinian state," Bush said. "It's in the poor, suffering Palestinian people's interest there be a Palestinian state."
Bush said the peace process is "stalled" because former Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas was "shoved aside." He called for a Palestinian leadership that "believes in peace and believes in the aspirations of the Palestinian people."
On Thursday, State Department Middle East specialist David Satterfield told an audience in Rome that the Palestinian reform process is "at a near standstill." Responsibility for that, he said, starts with the Palestinians and includes the Israelis.
Satterfield said "external factors" have a significant impact on the Palestinian Authority's reform agenda. "In particular, the Israeli government has done too little for far too long to translate its repeatedly stated commitment to facilitate Palestinian reform into a reality," he said.
-------- mideast
Yemen Closes Investigation Into Militants
December 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Yemen-Terror.html
SAN'A, Yemen (AP)-- A leading al-Qaida militant arrested last month in Yemen was trying to infiltrate the state's security forces, officials close to the investigations said Saturday.
Mohammed Hamdi al-Ahdal, was arrested in late November by security forces that surrounded his hide-out west of the capital, San'a, and authorities have been interrogating him since.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that al-Ahdal confessed to forming small, independent cells aimed at infiltrating Yemeni security and gathering intelligence to block the capture of wanted militants.
Al-Ahdal's sources, including some within his homeland of Saudi Arabia, transferred funds in small amounts into Yemen to avoid detection, the officials said. They said a Saudi intelligence team has arrived in Yemen and would be briefed about al-Ahdal.
Al-Ahdal, also known as Abu Assem al-Makky, has reportedly admitted planning, financing and coordinating the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Aden harbor, which killed 17 U.S. sailors. He also planned the 2002 bombing of the French oil tanker Limburg off the Yemeni coast.
In each of those attacks, an explosive-laden boat was piloted up to the larger ship and detonated. The Limburg attack killed a Bulgarian crew member and spilled 90,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Aden.
At the time of his arrest, Al-Ahdal, 32, was reported to have replaced Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, Osama bin Laden's top deputy in Yemen who was killed by a missile fired from a U.S. drone aircraft last year.
A U.S. counterterrorism official in Washington said then that al-Ahdal had been among the top 20 al-Qaida figures at large.
He has been described by Yemeni officials as supervising the al-Qaida terror group's finances, weapons smuggling and operational planning in Yemen and was well-connected to extremists in other Gulf countries.
The Yemeni officials said Al-Ahdal admitted in interrogations to being in close contact with other extremists groups in Yemen such as the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army and the Yemeni Islamic Jihad.
Bin Laden's family comes from Yemen, which has long been regarded as a hotbed for militant groups, and the country, which supports the U.S. war on terror, has acknowledged that elements of al-Qaida are at large there.
-------- nato
UK envoy urges Nato to play big role in Iraq
Multinational force is more acceptable, says Greenstock
Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Saturday December 13, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1106175,00.html
The British envoy to Baghdad, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, yesterday proposed that Nato take responsibility for security in Iraq from the second half of next year.
Support for Nato involvement in Iraq, apparently unthinkable in parts of Europe even a few weeks ago, appears to be gathering pace. Nato confirmed yesterday that it was a serious option.
Given the hostility in Iraq towards the US forces, Sir Jeremy said a multilateral force like Nato would be more acceptable to Iraqis.
Speaking in London on his return from Iraq, he said: "I will probably be killed by the MoD [Ministry of Defence] for saying this. I think it is quite a good idea, because I think it would be a sign of the kind of multilateral performance that the Iraqis want to see.
"Although the Americans will always be top dog in Iraq of the international forces, and must be, doing it in the Nato format would be politically rather a good idea."
It would mark a remarkable international turnaround given the opposition of some Nato members to the war.
The issue was raised last week at a Nato meeting in Brussels by the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, and France and Germany neither approved nor dissented.
Jamie Shea, a Nato spokesman, said yesterday: "Greenstock is on the mark. The option is on the table."
He added that 18 of the 26 members of Nato were in Iraq already, and that the organisation could take on a greater role after Afghanistan was under control, which he could envisage happening in the first half of next year. Nato involvement in Iraq could follow the pattern of Afghanistan. Nato's initial limited role gradually expanded to become a full-scale operation.
At present, Nato is only providing logistical and communications support to the Polish contingent operating south of Baghdad.
A decision on full-scale involvement may be delayed until heads of government meet at the Nato summit in Istanbul on June 28-29.
The deadline for the US-led coalition in Iraq to hand over sovereignty to a transitional Iraqi government is two days later, July 1.
Sir Jeremy warned the British public to expect little comfort in the security situation in the coming year. He predicted more "spectaculars" - headline-grabbing bombings and other attacks by the insurgents.
He is to go to New York on Monday to discuss with Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, a bigger role for the UN, particularly in overseeing the transition to a democratic Iraqi government, scheduled for 2005 or 2006.
In a speech to an invited audience at Chatham House, one of Britain's forums for discussion of international relations, he produced a graph showing levels of trust among Iraqis for various institutions, of which religious leaders were at the top and the US-led coalition authority at the bottom.
Sir Jeremy used the Research International survey to claim there was growing support for the Iraqi Media Network, run by a Pentagon contractor and widely derided in the western media for its unimaginative relaying of the US-led coalition's viewpoint.
He also said it was important to be aware that many Iraqi religious leaders did not support the idea of an Islamist state.
Asked about the low support for the UN also found in the survey, Sir Jeremy offered various explanations - not least that the UN label had been attached to 12 years of international sanctions against Iraq.
In relation to the poor showing by the US and British occupation forces, he noted that the key word was "occupation", but argued that many Iraqis nevertheless wanted the security offered by competent forces.
· The coalition headquarters in Baghdad came under fire yesterday when missiles hit a building in the so-called green zone for the first time since US forces mounted a counteroffensive last month. Two soldiers were slightly injured.
Meanwhile, two Polish troops, were more seriously wounded by a landmine explosion in southern Iraq.
-------- us
Survey at Naval Academy Finds More Dissatisfaction
Midshipmen Less Happy With Their Training
By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60853-2003Dec12.html
A survey of nearly 3,000 U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen taken in November revealed the lowest levels of satisfaction in the student body since scandal buffeted the school in the mid-1990s, academy officials announced yesterday.
Asked to rate their overall satisfaction with the academy, 83 percent of the midshipmen said they were satisfied, down from 91 percent last year and the lowest score since 1998. Satisfaction with the professional training provided by the school, whose graduates go on to become commissioned officers in the Navy and Marine Corps, dropped from 90 percent last year to 82 percent this year, its lowest level since the academy began the survey in 1996.
Academy officials said little about the results except that they would look into them. Some members of the Board of Visitors, though, expressed concern about morale. "If I looked at these charts, I would say, 'There's something going on here,' " said Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), who sits on the board.
Glenn Gottschalk, the school's institutional research director, told the board members the results could be due partly to the survey's timing. The anonymous, online survey was taken during an exam week in November, rather than at the start of the academic year in August, as usual.
Yet the school also has weathered a tumultuous year featuring accusations of sexual assault and plagiarism, the abrupt resignation of its superintendent, Vice Adm. Richard J. Naughton, and a hurricane that caused $100 million in damage to the school and dumped students and faculty into temporary classrooms.
In many areas, the survey results were similar to those found in the mid-1990s, when midshipmen were accused of cheating, organizing a car theft ring and sexual assault.
The new superintendent, Vice Adm. Rodney P. Rempt, and the commandant, Capt. Charles J. Leidig Jr., watched without expression as Gottschalk quickly flipped through overhead slides showing the declining results.
Gottschalk said officials are "trying to find out what we need to address to solve the problem," but he also said, "We don't want to overreact to what may be the timing of the survey as opposed to a real problem."
The results were fairly consistent, showing small to moderate declines in many indices of student life at the academy, including professional training, gender relations and overall satisfaction.
Asked whether they would recommend the academy to a friend who had the interest and ability to go there, 88 percent of the midshipmen responded positively this year, vs. 95 percent last year. The percentage of female midshipmen who felt accepted by their fellow students dropped from 94 percent last year to 88 percent this year. The rate of students who reported that the academy had a positive impact on their military careers also dropped, from 87 percent last year to 80 percent this year.
"We're at war, and the professional development is going to be key," said retired Gen. Charles C. Krulak, the former commandant of the Marine Corps, who is a member of the board. "I think Admiral Rempt understands that fully."
Rempt said he thought that some of the declines in confidence for military training represented "anxiety over the ongoing terror war" and that the gender tension was a result of greater sensitivity at the academy to discrimination.
Gottschalk also noted that the downturn in most of the survey results came from second-year midshipmen answering questions for the first time. First-year midshipmen, or plebes, did not take the survey.
A fourth-year midshipman flatly dismissed that argument. "They can try and point fingers all they want, but I know that I am [angry] about a lot of things, and so are other people," said the student, who spoke under condition of anonymity. "The superintendent and the hurricane really had nothing to do with it."
The midshipman complained about recent "off-the-wall" policies imposed from above, including the denial of leave to some of his classmates during parents weekend. He also attributed declining satisfaction with military training to the recent toning-down of Plebe Summer -- every midshipman's grueling introduction to the rigors of military life.
--------
Army Fines Officer for Firing Pistol Near Iraqi Detainee
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61162-2003Dec12.html
A battalion commander in Iraq who fired his pistol near the head of an Iraqi detainee after his soldiers had punched the prisoner was fined $5,000 yesterday as part of a nonjudicial disciplinary proceeding that effectively ends his Army career.
Lt. Col. Allen B. West had been criminally charged with aggravated assault and communicating a threat, and faced a possible court-martial for his role in interrogating the Iraqi, a policeman who was said by an informant to know about a planned ambush of West's troops.
West testified at a preliminary hearing in November that he had used poor judgment in firing his pistol in an attempt to frighten the detainee into divulging information during an August interrogation. But he insisted that he was only trying to protect his men and never meant to endanger the Iraqi's life.
His case quickly became a celebrated cause in the retired officer community and on Capitol Hill, where leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees publicly expressed concern that West was facing a possible court-martial for acting to save the lives of his men.
Although Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno yesterday decided against court-martialing West, the commander of the 4th Infantry Division in northern Iraq ruled at the end of an administrative hearing in Tikrit that West would have to forfeit $2,500 a month in pay for two months.
Odierno ordered that the punishment be made part of West's permanent file, effectively ending his military career, but allowed West, 42, to retire next spring after 20 years of military service without any loss of pension benefits.
Neal A. Puckett, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel and West's attorney, said his client is hoping to return to Fort Hood, Tex., as soon as possible, where he will be assigned to the 4th Infantry's rear detachment while he awaits processing of his retirement papers.
"The courageous decision in this case would have resulted in this matter never coming to public attention," Puckett said. "Lieutenant Colonel West would still be in command, would have been privately congratulated for a job well done, but told to stay out of the interrogation business in the future."
One Army official, who spoke on condition that he not be named, said West could have been court-martialed for firing his pistol and allowing his soldiers to beat the Iraqi detainee. But the official said Odierno's decision to forgo a court-martial and impose nonjudicial punishment was appropriate, given the "very difficult conditions" presented by Iraqi insurgents using terrorist tactics against West's men.
"Lieutenant Colonel West's actions compromised his ability to command and maintain good order and discipline within his unit," the Army official said. "Every soldier under his command now believes it is okay to abuse detainees for information."
Gary Solis, a former Marine judge advocate who teaches the law of war as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said he believes West should have faced more serious charges for allowing his soldiers to beat the Iraqi detainee. "It seems to me that one simply cannot allow a commander to walk away from that kind of conduct," Solis said.
But retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, a leader in the community of retired Army officers, said he was pleased by Odierno's decision. "It signals to the Army that we don't want prisoners maltreated," he said, but recognizes that West was "a good officer, acting for his soldiers' defense."
-------- propaganda wars
General Clark to Testify for the Prosecution at Milosevic Trial
By MARLISE SIMONS
December 14, 2003
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/14/international/europe/14BOSN.html?ei=1&en=9f41f6c141197bd9&ex=1072363232&pagewanted=print&position=
PARIS, Dec. 13 - Washington has agreed that Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the former NATO commander and a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, can testify in the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic. But the Bush administration has demanded the right to edit videotapes and transcripts of the sessions before they are made public.
The two former opponents, the American general and the former president of Yugoslavia, will face each other in court on Monday and Tuesday.
Closed sessions are routinely held at the United Nations tribunal that deals with Balkan war crimes, but usually to protect witnesses's safety. The conditions of General Clark's appearance are new.
The court agreed to give the United States government 48 hours to review the testimony and to ask judges to suppress any it regards as sensitive. Two government lawyers will accompany the general.
"The review is to ensure there was no inadvertent disclosure of sensitive, classified information," said Pierre-Richard Prosper, the United States ambassador at large for war crimes issues, in a telephone interview from Washington. During the Balkan wars, he said, General Clark "obviously had seen a substantial amount of intelligence." But, he added, "we feel fairly confident that the bulk of the testimony and videotapes can be released."
The current plan is to release videotapes of the sessions on Friday, after the review, said Jim Landale, a tribunal spokesman.
The two men confronting each other in court next week have met many times before. General Clark spent many hours with Mr. Milosevic in 1994 and 1995, when he was special adviser to Richard C. Holbrooke, who was trying to end the Bosnia war. They were both at the 21-day peace negotiations Mr. Holbrooke led in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995, and they spent lengthy sessions negotiating before NATO began bombing Serbia and its province of Kosovo in March 1999.
Mr. Milosevic, whose trial began in February 2002, is facing 66 charges, including genocide, stemming from his role in those wars, which left more than 200,000 people dead, destroyed villages and towns, and drove more than a million people from their homes. General Clark will be a witness for the prosecution.
Prosecutors want to know how much Mr. Milosevic knew - or could have known - about crimes committed by members of the Bosnian Serb military who were on Belgrade's payroll and by Serbian police officers and other forces directly under his command.
General Clark faces direct cross-examination by Mr. Milosevic, who conducts his own defense and usually demands as much time to question a witness as the prosecution. Frequently, he is given more time.
Among the 280 witnesses who have already testified at the trial, there have been many high-profile witnesses and many senior military officers from other nations. Only France is known to have insisted that its top military officers testify behind closed doors.
In court, Mr. Milosevic has often railed against NATO's bombing campaign and said NATO was the one that had committed war crimes. Of the 23,000 bombs and missiles used during the 78-day campaign, some struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, several bridges, a train full of civilian passengers and a television station.
How much finger-pointing Mr. Milosevic will be allowed with General Clark on the stand will depend on Richard May, the British judge who presides over the trial.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- death penalty
3 Inmates' Lives Spared in Texas by Court Inaction
December 13, 2003
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/national/13EXEC.html
HOUSTON, Dec. 12 - The clock ran out on Billy Joe Vickers in the Huntsville death house on Tuesday night, but when midnight struck he was still alive in his cell, smoking cigarette after cigarette and digesting a heavy meal that was to have been his last.
Hours earlier, for the first time anyone could remember, a federal appeals court had essentially thrown up its hands, declining to decide on deadline whether to let Mr. Vickers die by lethal injection or stay his execution. That threw his fate to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which had been legally commanded to kill him that night. But would it do so with his appeal unresolved?
A lawyer for Mr. Vickers, Keith S. Hampton, circled the prison, frantic to get in. There was "a gentlemen's agreement" not to kill his client, he kept insisting. "I just want to make sure the executioner understands the agreement."
The excruciating drama as defense lawyers and the Texas attorney general's office exchanged frenzied telephone calls and futilely awaited a ruling from the entire Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans capped an eventful week in the struggle over the death penalty in Texas.
Three prisoners were to have been executed this week in Texas, which leads the nation in executions since the Supreme Court allowed reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976. But none of them were, leaving the state's tally for the year at 24 and pushing the cases into the new year with thorny legal issues unresolved. But Texas justice officials said that the executions of the 445 men and 8 women on death row would proceed as scheduled.
Two developments in particular intrigued lawyers for several of the defendants: the hesitation of the Fifth Circuit to rule at a crucial moment and a decision by Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court to grant a stay to another of the three Texas death row inmates the following day.
"I think they dropped the ball," said Jordan Steiker, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a specialist in capital punishment cases, speaking of the circuit court and calling its failure to rule "very unseemly from the Supreme Court's point of view."
Justice Scalia, the court's circuit justice for the region, may have acted to preserve the judiciary's authority in such cases, Mr. Steiker said.
The intense week began with a lawsuit filed on Monday in federal court here by Jim Marcus of the Texas Defender Service and David Dow of the Texas Innocence Network, for three prisoners who were scheduled to die this week: Mr. Vickers, 58; Kevin Lee Zimmerman, 42; and Bobby Lee Hines, 31.
Mr. Vickers was convicted of shooting a grocer coming home with a bag of money in 1993. Mr. Zimmerman was convicted of stabbing another man to death in a motel in 1987. Mr. Hines was convicted of robbing and strangling a young woman in her apartment in 1991. The lawsuit claimed the men would suffer cruel and unusual punishment from pancuronium bromide and other drugs in the lethal injections because they mask pain and suffering and have been outlawed for euthanizing pets.
The court summarily dismissed the suit as a habeas corpus challenge that had been already rejected. On Tuesday, with Mr. Vickers set to die between 6 p.m. and midnight, the appeal went to a panel of the Fifth Circuit. The judges called the evidence on the drugs seemingly stronger than that previously offered but said they were bound by the court's precedents to also reject the appeal as repetitious.
Only the full 17-member court could overturn a precedent, so about 4 p.m. Mr. Marcus and Mr. Dow filed for a hearing by the entire court. They also e-mailed, but did not legally file, their appeal papers to the United States Supreme Court.
Hours before, Mr. Hines, who was scheduled to die on Thursday, won a reprieve by a ruling from the state Court of Criminal Appeals, which granted him a stay on grounds of possible mental retardation.
At Huntsville, Mr. Vickers ate a last meal and waited in a holding cell near the execution chamber. The warden, Neill Hodges, was not only authorized but required to carry out the death warrant by midnight.
"He smoked a cigarette every other second and watched the clock," Mr. Hampton said of Mr. Vickers after talking to his client later. "The guards told him what was going on."
When the judges had not reported by 9 p.m., the latest they had ever ruled, no one knew what to do, the lawyers said. The Texas Criminal Justice Department called its lawyer - the state attorney general's office - where a lawyer on duty and the defense lawyers exchanged phone calls searching for a resolution.
"She advised her client not to execute our client until the Fifth Circuit ruled," Mr. Marcus said. "But she could not guarantee the prison would comply."
Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for Attorney General Greg Abbott, said only that his agency had been in contact with the criminal justice department and provided legal advice.
Finally, a court representative called to say the judges would take no action either way that night. "That's the first time we know of in 21 years," said Mike Viesca, a state criminal justice spokesman.
The warrant was allowed to expire, which effectively granted Mr. Vickers a reprieve for at least 30 days - the soonest it could be reissued.
Mr. Zimmerman was set to die the next night, Wednesday. Mr. Dow and Mr. Marcus formally filed the appeal papers they had sent by e-mail to the Supreme Court. Minutes before 6 p.m. Justice Scalia ordered Mr. Zimmerman's execution stayed pending further review.
-------- police
FBI Applies New Rules to Surveillance
Many Searches Not Subject To Regular Courts' Oversight
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60964-2003Dec12?language=printer
The FBI has implemented new ground rules that fundamentally alter the way investigators handle counterterrorism cases, allowing criminal and intelligence agents to work side by side and giving both broad access to the tools of intelligence gathering for the first time in decades.
The result is that the FBI, unhindered by the restrictions of the past, will conduct many more searches and wiretaps that are subject to oversight by a secret intelligence court rather than regular criminal courts, officials said. Civil liberties groups and defense lawyers predict that more innocent people will be the targets of clandestine surveillance.
The new strategy -- launched in early summer and finalized in a classified directive issued to FBI field offices in October -- goes further than has been publicly discussed by FBI officials in the past and marks the final step in tearing down the legal wall that had separated criminal and intelligence investigations since the spying scandals of the 1970s, authorities said.
Senior FBI officials said the changes have already helped the bureau disrupt plans for at least four terrorist attacks overseas and uncover a terrorist sleeper cell in the United States, though they declined to provide details on those cases. The approach also has resulted in a notable surge in the number of counterterrorism investigations, a statistic that is classified but currently stands at more than 1,000 cases, officials said.
"With 9/11 as the catalyst for this, what we've done is fundamentally change the approach we take to every counterterrorism case," FBI terrorism chief John S. Pistole said in an interview. "This is a sea change for the FBI."
To civil libertarians and many defense lawyers, the changes pose a threat to the privacy and due-process rights of civilians because they essentially eliminate, rather than merely blur, the traditional boundaries separating criminal and intelligence investigations. As a result, these critics say, FBI agents and federal prosecutors will conduct many more searches and seizures in secret, as allowed under intelligence laws, rather than being constrained by the rules of traditional criminal warrants.
"By eliminating any distinction between criminal and intelligence classifications, it reduces the respect for the ordinary constitutional protections that people have," said Joshua L. Dratel, a New York lawyer who has filed legal briefs opposing government anti-terrorism policies. "It will result in a funneling of all cases into an intelligence mode. It's an end run around the Fourth Amendment," which protects citizens from unreasonable searches, he said.
The overhaul of the FBI's counterterrorism policies began earlier this year with a classified document called the Model Counterterrorism Investigations Strategy (MCIS), officials said. The strategy stems from a November 2002 decision by an intelligence appeals court, which ruled that the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act permits intelligence investigators and criminal prosecutors to more easily share information about terrorism cases.
The MCIS and other rules effectively put that finding into practice by reworking the way terrorism cases are handled by the FBI, and by requiring that both criminal and intelligence investigators physically work as part of the same squads on terrorism investigations, officials said. FBI officials declined to release copies of the MCIS or a related Oct. 1 directive, citing national security restrictions, but agreed to describe the outlines of the process.
Under previous FBI protocols, terrorism probes could be opened along two separate tracks, one for the purposes of developing a criminal case and one for intelligence gathering. Each was labeled with separate classification numbers, which govern the way cases are tracked and budgeted within the FBI. Sharing between the two categories was sharply limited, overseen by legal mediators from the FBI and Justice Department, and subject to scrutiny by criminal courts and the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Under the new guidelines, all counterterrorism cases are opened under the same classification number, 315, and are handled from the outset like an intelligence or espionage investigation, officials said. The structure allows investigators to more easily use secret warrants and other methods that are overseen by the surveillance court and not available in traditional criminal probes, sources said.
All terrorism cases will also be formally run by the counterterrorism division at FBI headquarters in Washington, rather than by individual field offices, officials said.
Pistole said that focusing on intelligence gathering will improve the ability of the FBI to prevent, rather than just investigate, terrorist attacks. He and other FBI officials also said the new system will result in less emphasis on bringing criminal charges against suspects in favor of longer surveillance operations. When charges are eventually brought, however, prosecutors will be able to use information gathered through intelligence methods.
"We're still interested in the criminal violations that people may be involved in," Pistole said. "But in many cases we are going to put that in the back seat and go down the road until we have all that we need."
Robert M. Blitzer, a former FBI counterterrorism official, said that by merging the criminal and intelligence sides of counterterrorism cases, investigators will be able to work more efficiently on cases and avoid problems that were common before Sept. 11, 2001.
"In the past, it was an absolute cardinal rule that there be a wall between the two cases," Blitzer said. "Now, you will have much broader access to see what is going on. You can see the whole scope of things. . . . We were always afraid that something could slip between the cracks on both sides under the old system, and that did happen."
In one stark example, FBI lawyers refused to allow criminal agents to join an August 2001 search for Khalid Almidhar, who had entered the United States and would later help commandeer the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon. The lawyers said that information about Almidhar's ties to al Qaeda obtained through intelligence channels could not be used to launch a criminal investigation. An angry New York FBI agent warned in an internal e-mail that was later revealed during congressional hearings that "someday someone will die" because of the decision.
In another case, the FBI failed to seek an intelligence warrant to search the belongings of alleged al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussoaui, who had been detained in Minnesota three weeks before the attacks. The legal counsel in the FBI's Minneapolis field office said headquarters officials limited the actions of regular FBI agents in the case because of concerns about breaching the wall between intelligence and criminal cases.
The FBI's new strategy is the culmination of a series of new rules and regulations issued since the Sept. 11 attacks to govern terrorism investigations. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft last month issued new national security guidelines, for example, that allow the FBI to conduct an initial "threat assessment" of potential terrorists without firm evidence of a threat or crime, which is required to open a full investigation.
Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and other officials argue that such changes are necessary to transform the FBI from a reactive law enforcement agency into one capable of detecting and thwarting terrorist attacks before they occur. According to a study released this week by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Justice and the FBI have sharply increased the number of terrorism cases they are pursuing since the 2001 attacks, although most of the 6,400 people referred to prosecutors were never charged with a crime related to terrorism.
Several civil liberties advocates and defense lawyers said the new FBI rules appear to encourage agents to ignore constitutional concerns and to push the boundaries of what is allowed by recent court rulings. Ann Beeson, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the system will encourage prosecutors to rely too heavily on evidence gathered by secret intelligence methods.
"They're going to use all their foreign intelligence tools, and then they're going to prosecute people using those tools," Beeson said. "They're putting this whole class of criminal cases outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment."
Michael A. Vatis, a former Justice Department and FBI official, said the changes are necessary but acknowledged the risk that investigators could overreach. "The principal danger is what the old rules were designed to avoid: to make sure that the FBI wasn't using intelligence authorities when they were really just looking to bust bad guys," he said. "There does need to be good oversight to make sure these new rules are not abused."
-------- prisons / prisoners
Try Detainees or Free Them, 3 Senators Urge
December 13, 2003
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/politics/13GITM.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - After visiting the military's detention center for some 660 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, three senators, including the onetime prisoner of war John McCain, sent a pointed letter on Friday telling Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that it was time to release the detainees or bring them to trial.
Mr. McCain, who as a naval aviator spent more than five years held prisoner by North Vietnam, said in an interview that he believed the continued detention of the prisoners violated basic human rights precepts.
"They may not have any rights under the Geneva Conventions as far as I'm concerned," said the senator, an Arizona Republican, "but they have rights under various human rights declarations. And one of them is the right not to be detained indefinitely."
On the tour of Guantánamo, and in the letter to Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. McCain was joined by Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another Republican, and Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington.
The letter emphasized that the senators believed the prisoners were being treated humanely by the military and not being abused in any way.
"The treatment of the detainees is not an issue," they wrote. "However, a serious concern arises over the disposition of the detainees - a considerable number of whom have been held for two years."
"It is now time to make a decision on how the United States will move forward regarding the detainees," the letter said, "and to take that important next step. A serious process must be established in the very near term either to formally treat and process the detainees as war criminals or to return them to their countries for appropriate judicial action."
Mr. McCain said he believed that an excess of bureaucracy at the Defense Department was producing gridlock that had left the detainees in unfair limbo.
Mr. Rumsfeld has yet to reply to the letter, and a spokesman at the Pentagon said this evening that it had no comment now. But the secretary has said in the past that the detainees will be sorted out as soon as possible. More than 80 have already been released to their home countries.
Some military officials have said that an active collection of intelligence continues at Guantánamo. But Mr. McCain said he believed that most useful operational intelligence information goes stale after about four months, meaning that the detainees can provide little information of value.
The senators' complaints mirror those of many human rights organizations, notably the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Like the senators, the Red Cross has found no cases of abuse in the treatment of the prisoners. But earlier this year it declared that the United States' holding them indefinitely was not acceptable. In October, Christophe Girod, the director of the international committee's Washington office, said that "the open-endedness of the situation and its impact on the mental health of the population has become a major problem."
President Bush has identified six detainees as likely candidates for the first round of military tribunals. But only one of the six, David Hicks, an Australian, has been assigned a lawyer, and there is no indication when any proceedings will begin.
--------
Military Urged To Try or Free 660 Detainees
Senators Visit Cuba Center
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60970-2003Dec12.html
Three senators who just returned from visiting the U.S. military's detention center in Cuba urged the Bush administration yesterday to accelerate the trial or release of more than 660 detainees there, including at least 200 men who have been held for more than two years.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who visited the Guantanamo Bay prison Wednesday with Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), said that after such lengthy detentions, the suspects -- all of whom have been held without charge -- had an inherent right to be told of their legal status.
McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said a senior administration official told him before the trip that the military has been unable to develop cases against more than a third of the detainees and that they will have to be released.
"They are human beings. There is such a thing as human rights," McCain said.
The lawmakers wrote Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the detainees appear to have been treated in humane fashion. Only two have been subjected to sleep deprivation, they said in interviews, a tactic that is allowed only with Rumsfeld's approval.
McCain said the detention conditions "are adequate and in some cases more than adequate."
But their letter said that "we firmly believe it is now time to make a decision" about the detainees' fates.
They said expeditious trials would help convince other nations that the detainees are being treated fairly and would serve as a deterrent to terrorist activities by others. "We need action, more action," Graham said. "To drag on into next year would be unacceptable."
McCain noted that the military has a shortage of Arabic speakers in Guantanamo Bay to interrogate prisoners, but he said this was the case everywhere in the military and blamed bureaucratic gridlock for the pace of administration decision making.
It takes the consent of many officials -- in the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Army secretary's office, Rumsfeld's office and elsewhere -- to approve the discharge of a detainee, and any one of the officials can veto it, McCain said. "No one wants to be responsible for the release of someone who turns out to be a terrorist," he explained. "All bureaucracies find the safest harbor [in doing] . . . nothing."
The senators visited Guantanamo Bay at a time the White House is reviewing the Pentagon's strategy for dealing with the detainees, according to several officials. Washington has been under growing pressure from Europe and the Middle East to guarantee that citizens held in Guantanamo Bay will be given due process.
McCain and Graham, a former Air Force judge, said all the detainees held there were arrested in Afghanistan, but they come from 44 countries. Only one, an Australian, has been allowed access to an attorney; the visit was this week. All are men, but a woman recently arrested in Afghanistan as a suspected member of al Qaeda is to join them.
Three of the detainees are ages 13 to 15 who were "kidnapped into" a terrorist organization and treated brutally, Graham said. He said they are slated for discharge early next year into the custody of U.N. officials who have organized a special program for child combatants.
A total of 88 men have been discharged since the detention center was established in January 2001; four of the 88 were jailed in Saudi Arabia. The most recent release of 20 men was July 18. A spokeswoman for the Defense Department, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, declined to comment on reports that additional detainees were slated for release soon, citing security concerns.
But she said that each detainee is under "continuous assessment" to determine whether he meets three criteria for release: He must be judged to pose no threat to the United States, to be incapable of providing further intelligence information and to have been uninvolved in criminal activity.
"At this time, there is no release pending," Burfeind said.
Although the Pentagon has declined to address the nationalities of any detainees, the lawmakers said they were told the most dangerous among them were Saudi, Yemeni and Pakistani. Of these, Graham said, "the Saudis are definitely the toughest." Several of those held were said by the military to be connected to the terrorist plot of Sept. 11, 2001, the lawmakers said.
Army Maj. John Smith, a spokesman for the military tribunals being formed to try detainees, said no decision has been made about when the trials will begin. Several men have been designated as eligible for the military commissions, as the Pentagon calls them. "Everybody is working expeditiously," he said.
But a congressional staff member said a senior military official confided before the trip that the commissions were "woefully short" of prosecutors and other needed staff.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Florida Greenpeace Case Hinges on 1872 Law
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60787-2003Dec12.html
MIAMI, Dec. 12 -- The saucy boardinghouse owners of the 1800s were such aggressive marketers that Congress passed a law to stop them from jumping on board harbor-bound ships and luring away sailors with booze and prostitutes. The 1872 law, which bans unauthorized boarding of ships about to arrive in port, never got much of a workout. It was used twice -- the last time in 1890 -- then disappeared from courtrooms for more than a century.
But now, after a 113-year respite, the law is back in action in an unusual case that pits the Bush administration against one of its peskiest foes: the environmental group Greenpeace. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami filed criminal charges against Greenpeace and a federal grand jury returned an indictment in July, more than a year after two of the group's supporters scrambled onto a ship bound for the Port of Miami-Dade that they suspected of illegally importing 70 tons of Brazilian mahogany.
Greenpeace, which argued Friday for a dismissal of the charges in a Miami federal courtroom, accuses prosecutors of attempting to suppress the age-old American practice of civil protest. Although it is common to levy criminal charges against individual protesters, Greenpeace says a criminal indictment of an advocacy group is unprecedented and politically motivated.
"Greenpeace has criticized the Bush administration," Tom Wetterer, general counsel for Greenpeace, said after the court hearing. "They want to silence one of their main critics."
The group, which could be fined $10,000 and placed on five years' probation if convicted, says a successful prosecution could have a chilling effect on its operations because it might have to reveal its tactics and membership rolls to a probation officer.
Matthew Dates, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Marcos Jimenez, defended the indictment Friday, saying, "politics plays no part in our decisions. We base our prosecutorial decisions on the facts and the law in this case and every other one."
Greenpeace used two inflatable Zodiac rafts in April 2002 to intercept a cargo ship called the APL Jade about three miles off Miami Beach. Two of the group's renowned "climbers," skilled in the perilous art of boarding ships at sea, scaled the Jade using ladders. They were stopped by authorities before they could unfurl a banner that read: "President Bush: Stop Illegal Logging."
Eventually, six Greenpeace supporters pleaded no contest to federal charges and were sentenced to time served after spending three days in jail. The case against Greenpeace, which is scheduled for trial in May if the group's attempts to get the charges dismissed fail, surfaced 15 months after the arrests when Greenpeace was indicted.
Greenpeace attorney Jane Moscowitz argued Friday that the group was singled out for selective prosecution, saying that for decades federal prosecutors have not charged an array of activist groups -- from the NAACP to militant antiabortion organizations -- with criminal wrongdoing because of the actions of their members.
"In this country, there has never been a prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan," she said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Elliott countered by citing examples of criminal campaign finance law violations against labor unions and prosecution of terrorist groups. Elliott also started to discuss a federal prosecution of the Communist Party of the United States for refusing to turn over membership lists, but U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan cut him off.
"That might not be the best example given that the prosecution itself was unconstitutional," Jordan said.
Indeed, Jordan seemed almost as curious as the Greenpeace attorneys about the use of a law that had not been employed for more than a century. The judge, who was appointed in 1999 by President Bill Clinton, questioned whether the long dormancy of the law could be the "best evidence of all" to support the selective prosecution claim.
"People have behaved for the last hundred or so years?" he asked.
For all the high-minded rhetoric about the rights of activist groups presented Friday, the case could come down to a technical interpretation of the 1872 law. Greenpeace's attorneys argued that the law, which specifies illegal boarding of ships "about to arrive" in port, should not apply in the case because the Jade was boarded by activists three miles from the Port of Miami-Dade.
Jordan pressed Elliott to define exactly how far away from port the law should apply. When Elliott could not come up with a definitive answer, the judge wondered aloud how the law was interpreted in 1890.
"I wish I could speak to the judge in that case," Jordan said. "Maybe you could arrange that."
"That's beyond my capability," Elliott responded.
There was a split second of silence, then some in the sparse courtroom audience began to giggle.
----
Guantanamo demonstration at No 10
The father of detainee Moazzam Begg joined the protest
Saturday, 13 December, 2003
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3316017.stm
Supporters of the nine Britons held by the US at Guantanamo Bay have protested at Downing Street to demand the release of all the detainees.
The demonstrators, among them the father of Birmingham detainee Moazzam Begg, handed in a petition to No 10.
The nine Britons, suspected of al-Qaeda or Taleban links, have been held at the US base for nearly two years, without trial or lawyers.
Azmat Begg said the UK Government was not doing enough to help its citizens.
Britain and the US have been negotiating over the fate of the prisoners for some time.
At-a-glance: Britons held UK DETAINEES IN CAMP DELTA Shafiq Rasul, 24, of Tipton, West Midlands Asif Iqbal, 20, of Tipton Ruhal Ahmed, 20, of Tipton Martin Mubanga, 29, from north London Jamal Udeen, 35, from Manchester Richard Belmar, 23, from London Tarek Dergoul, 24, from east London Moazzam Begg, 35, from Birmingham Feroz Abbasi, 23, from south London
The Britons' case was raised by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair during last month's state visit to Britain by US President George W Bush.
At the time, Mr Blair said the dispute would be resolved "sometime soon".
A series of recent reports have suggested that the Britons could be sent back to the UK by the New Year.
One report said those who had pleaded guilty to charges in America would serve their sentences in British prisons.
Some could be held under terrorism laws, and others could be freed with no charges.
But the men's families say they have heard nothing of any deal, and remain angry at the government.
The relatives want the men to be sent back immediately to Britain, to be either charged or released.
Rumsfeld call
But BBC correspondent Shaun Ley, at Downing Street, said although UK ministers were angry and embarrassed over the affair, they faced some difficulties in demanding the immediate return of the men.
"There are those privately worried in government... that if these men were repatriated to Britain and there are still suspicions about some of them, would the law in this country be strong enough to allow them to be detained here?
"The American authorities are not satisfied the judicial process is strong enough, despite the series of anti-terrorist legislation that has been passed over the last couple of years... and that's been one of the reasons they've been reluctant to repatriate them here."
On Friday, three US senators who visited the Camp Delta base urged US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to come to a decision about all the 600 or so prisoners.
In an open letter, they urged him "either to formally treat and process the detainees as war criminals, or to return them to their countries for appropriate judicial action."
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Verdict at Northampton Magistrates' Court 12 December 2003
From: Lindis Percy
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003 2:31 PM
Day 3
Thursday 11 December 2003
Northampton Magistrates' Court R v Lindis Percy
Again apologies for the lengthy report....this report gives only a summary of the progress of this case.
The Crown Prosecution continued with their case, the court having heard from one of their witnesses late on Tuesday afternoon (refer to CAAB report of first two days).
Airman Van West (US security personnel at USAF Croughton) had been flown over from Guam to give evidence. Ms Van West said that Lindis Percy had immediately identified herself and had said 'something about the Iraq war and that we shouldn't be there'. She did not recall Lindis saying that she was leaving.
Ms Van West said Lindis was well known to the US authorites on base and that her photograph was up round the base. She said that Lindis was 'uncooperative' and refused to accompany the US security personnel to their waiting car. She said that Lindis kept talking about the fact that there were Instructions, rules and regulations to deal with British citizens found on base. These included specific rules which said that the local police or Ministry of Defence Police Agency had to be called and that they would then deal with the situation.
Under cross examination by Raza Hussein (Defence Barrister) Ms Van West was asked why she carried out such an intrusive search of Lindis. She said that she was 'hostile' and 'uncooperative'. She said that the mere act of coming on the base was 'hostile'.
When pressed Ms Van West said that she did agree that they were frequently briefed about known protesters and that Lindis was known to the US authorities as a 'peaceful, non-violent Quaker'.
She was asked to read out the paragraph in the Instructions (which we had eventually been allowed to see - however sections had been 'blacked out' and a third of a page cut off). She agreed that the US security police could only use handcuffs, leg shackles and a search if the 'intruder' was hostile or violent. She said that Lindis had 'kicked out' and she had been shackled for the 'safety of the officers present'.
Ms Van West was asked about the Mission Statement of the US Security personnel, which is written on the wall of the Law and Enforcement Center at USAF Croughton. She recited it to the court, 'word for word' and in an alarming and conditioned monotoned way. She was however unable to recall many of the conversations she had had with Lindis during this incident.
Sergeant Nusspickle (US Security Superintendent on duty at the time of the incident) said that he had known Lindis from when he was at USAF Greenham Common. He had ordered the search and shackles to be used because she was 'kicking and squirming'. This was done for the safety of his officers. (His evidence in the first trial was different). When cross examined by Razza Hussein his attention was drawn to the Instructions when an intruder is on base. On the second day Airman Ferreira had agreed that these Instructions had been violated.
Sergeant Nusspickle said that he was deeply upset at the use of the US flag and that a US flag upside down indicated that the base was under attack.
The court heard evidence from Airman Forrest who was on duty on the Main gate. She said that the base had been immediately 'shut down' and that this was normal proceedure when an 'intruder' is suspected of being on base. She had made a list of the registration numbers of the cars that had been prevented from entering and leaving the base. The CPS however declined to reveal this list for 'security reasons'.
The court was told that a witness (Sergeant Stillwell) had since left the US Army on 'medical grounds' and was somewhere in the US. Peter Blair (CPS Barrister) said that despite extensive searches and enquiries, he could not be found. Peter Blair was therefore making an application (Lindis unclear as to which Act he was using) to dispense with the calling of this witness. Raza Hussein asked for evidence of these searches and enquiries made. The court adjourned over lunch so that this could be produced. After lunch Peter Blair dropped his application.
Two Northampton police (NP) officers gave evidence in the afternoon. The arresting officer (PC Cook) said that he had been instructed by Sergeant Terry (NP) to arrest Lindis for 'aggravated trespass' after speaking to Major Villereal and Sergeant Nusspickle.
This evidence took the Defence by complete surprise as Sergeant Terry had put in a very short statement only to say that she had been at Weston Faville police station and had been the officer who had charged Lindis. There was nothing in her statement about actually being present at USAF Croughton on the night.
The Defence would not agree to this statement being read and insisted that Sergeant Terry was called to give evidence. However suddenly she could not be found and despite the CPS saying they were making 'every effort' to contact her, there had been no response.
District Judge Holland was clearly troubled and agreed with Raza Hussein that Lindis would not be able to have a fair trial if this witness did not appear in court. The hearing was adjourned in the afternoon and Ms Terry was to be traced and ordered to appear in court the next morning.
Richard Holland (DJ) again made no comments or observations about the fact that apparently a US witness could be flown over from Guam but that one of the local police officers who lived in Northampton was not available in court despite having been warned to appear. Neither did he comment about Ms Terry's statement that had completely omitted to include key details concerning this officer's crucial involvement in the incident.
Major Villereal (Staff Judge Advocate at USAF Croughton) was not called to give evidence, despite being a key witness.
DAY 4 Thursday 11 December 2003 continuing trial at Northampton Magistrates' Court
Sergeant Terry was present in court to give her evidence. Again there was no apology, comment and reasons given as to why this witness did not appear (to either the court or the Defence). Peter Blair confined his questions to her to address her very short statement.
Raza Hussein cross examined her as to her presence at USAF Croughton on the night of the incident in March 2003. She was asked why she did not include this detail in her statement. She said that it was not necessary as any detail of conversations she had had would be 'hearsay' evidence. The DJ again asked no questions and made no comments.
Lindis was then called to give evidence. She told the court what had happened to move her to go to USAF Croughton. She had been invited to attend a two day conference organised by the Oxford Research Group at Charney Manor and had been deeply impressed by a passionate plea by Di Macdonald at the end of the conference. Di had been asked by a woman in Iraq to plead for people to do something to show their opposition to the illegal US invasion of Iraq.
Lindis had gone to the base on her way home to Hull and had climbed over the perimeter fence. She had been on the base for about an hour and a half before walking over the fields to an operations compound (there are 5 radomes there and also the US Embassy Annex). She had walked quietly round the double rows of fencing with CCTV cameras all round the area and had hung a US flag upside down with the words: WAR ON IRAQ: IMMORAL, ILLEGAL, MADNESS written on the flag. She was in the process of leaving the area the way she came in when apprehended by US security personnel.
Lindis said that she was well aware that there were specific Instructions that the US authorities had to abide by when dealing with a British citizen. These rules had been seriously violated when she was prevented from leaving (there was evidence in court to show that on many previous occasions Lindis had been escorted off the base - as per Instructions).
Lindis said that she would never be violent and did not show any expression of violence or verbal abuse. She followed the Quaker Peace Testimony and practiced a deeply held belief of non violence, peaceful protest. Lindis went on to demonstrate that it was a physical impossibility to 'kick out' when handcuffed, face down on the ground. The account given by the US witnesses had not been the truth of what actually happened at USAF Croughton.
Lindis was upset when talking about the search of her whole body and which went over and into intimate areas. She said that it was deeply humilitiating, her body had been appropriated, violated and degraded. This was not done in the UK and the US security personnel had not adhered to their Instructions; so violating their Instructions. She was in the witness box for over two hours after being cross examined by Peter Blair.
The DJ adjouned for lunch while Raza Hussein was summing up the Defence case. It was continued after lunch with factual and legal submissions. Peter Blair responded to the legal submissions. The DJ then adjourned to prepare his ruling.
After two hours Richard Holland gave his ruling which was that Lindis was guilty of the alleged offence of s.68 'aggravated trespass' (Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994) - details of ruling later.
Lindis quietly said 'excuse me' and left the court. She had to be persuaded to return to hear the sentence and only returned to court after hearing from her legal team that if she did not return this any future appeal might be jeopardised. She returned to the court and quietly addressed the DJ but later left the court before the end of the hearing.
Lindis will be sentenced on Tuesday 16 December 2003 at Northampton Magistrates' Court.
Once again thank you so much to all Northampton Ffriends and others who came from Essex and Bedford to support Raza and Lindis each day in court. A special thanks to Eleanor Barden (Northampton Meeting) who worked so hard to organise this support. It felt so good to have the quiet presence of Ffriends in the court.
Anni Rainbow and Lindis Percy Joint Co-ordinators CAMPAIGN FOR THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF AMERICAN BASES (CAAB) 8 Park Row, Otley, West Yorkshire, LS21 1HQ, England, U.K. Tel/fax no: +44 (0)1943 466405 0R +44 (0)1482 702033 email: anniandlindis@caab.org.uk or caab@btclick.com Website: http://www.caab.org.uk
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Hiroshima survivors slam US before atomic bomber Enola Gay goes on display
13 December 2003 0647 hrs -
AFP
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/61801/1/.html
WASHINGTON : Fifty-eight years after being devastated by a US atomic bomb, Hiroshima survivors pleaded with the United States to honor their pain before the plane that dropped the bomb goes on public display.
Three aging Hiroshima victims traveled from Japan to lodge written protests with President George W. Bush and the National Air and Space Museum, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, before the bomber named Enola Gay goes on public display Monday.
They accuse the museum of dishonoring the memory of the scores of thousands of civilians killed in the blast, and a second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later, by not displaying casualty figures next to the plane.
"If the Enola Gay is going to be displayed, they should also say what happened beneath the plane on a day the bomb was dropped," said Sunao Tsuboi, who was about a mile (kilometer) from the epicenter of the blast on August 6, 1945.
"I was under this cloud," Tsuboi, who still bears scars from the blast, told a press conference, as he pointed to an enlarged photo of a mushroom cloud towering over Hiroshima minutes after the attack.
The Enola Gay, a gleaming silver B-29 Superfortress bomber, goes on public display at a new annex of the National Air and Space Museum, near Dulles International Airport outside Washington on Monday.
It will bear a label describing it as the "most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II."
The text mentions the technological prowess of the aircraft and how it "found its niche on the other side of the globe."
"On August 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan."
Survivors claim the exhibit ignores the agony of around 230,000 people killed in the blast and from subsequent radiation poisoning and disease as well as the decades of pain endured by those who survived.
The museum's director, retired general John Dailey, has resisted groups who want the death toll included.
"We don't do it for other airplanes," he told AFP. "From a consistency standpoint, we focus on the technical aspects."
The museum says its stance is consistent with the mission entrusted to it by US Congress, which is to display and preserve historic and technologically significant air and space craft.
In a petition signed by 25,000 people sent to Bush and Dailey, survivors say they cannot "repress our deep astonishment and anger."
"To exalt this Enola Gay -- which caused an unprecedented atrocity that violated all norms of morality and international law -- as testimony to "technological achievement" is completely unacceptable to the atomic bomb victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
Debate has raged for years over the US use of the atomic bomb. Opponents of the twin raids have described them as a war crime. Other historians argue the action hastened the defeat of imperial Japan and by so doing saved thousands of lives.
This is not the first time the Enola Gay has flown into a diplomatic storm.
In 1995, portions of its fuselage, undercarriage and engines went on display in the National Air and Space museum's building on Washington's central mall.
The exhibit closed in 1998 having never shed the controversy.
The Enola Gay, which pilot Paul Tibbets named after his mother, has undergone the most extensive restoration in the museum's history.
It will be on display, in one piece for the first time in 43 years, surrounded by other aircraft from World War II, including a British Hawker Hurricane, a German Focke-Wulf FW 190A-8 and a Japanese Aichi Seiran.
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Enola Gay display provokes debate
By FRANK DAVIES
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Sat, Dec. 13, 2003
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/7484979.htm
WASHINGTON - The Enola Gay, the simple plaque tells us, was the most sophisticated bomber of World War II. The two paragraphs of text compress its momentous impact on the world to one spare sentence:
"On Aug. 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan."
The unmistakable icon of the nuclear age, the fully restored Enola Gay goes on public display for the first time Monday in the Smithsonian's new, cavernous Air and Space Museum in suburban Virginia.
But there is no mention of the 140,000 people killed by that bombing. Nor is there mention of the claims that the bombing was necessary to force Japan's surrender or of the wider controversy about using weapons that could destroy humanity.
The unveiling of the Enola Gay and its presentation are touching off a debate about how a museum deals with the pride and pain surrounding one of history's great turning points: President Truman's decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan.
John Dailey, the director of the museum, recently described the B-29 Superfortress as a "magnificent technological achievement," one of the crown jewels in a vast space that contains some of aviation's most notable craft.
Terumi Tanaka, who was 13 when the atomic bomb fell on his city, killing five of his family members, sees the plane differently: "To the survivors, it is a symbol of evil in the world. I am surprised, angry and sad that it is on display."
Tanaka and four other Hiroshima survivors, called hibakusha in Japan, came to Washington this weekend with petitions and plans for a protest Monday when the museum opens. They seek recognition of the human cost of the atomic bomb attack.
About 400 historians, scientists and activists signed a petition urging the Smithsonian to "rethink its exhibit to include a balanced discussion of the atomic bombings and of current U.S. nuclear policy."
"This plane began the era of ultimate destruction," said Peter Kuznick, who heads the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University. "It's just unconscionable for this country to display the Enola Gay in the national museum while whitewashing its role in history."
Smithsonian officials rejected the petition, saying the simple plaque identifying the plane "does not glorify or vilify" its role in history. The labeling is "precisely the same kind used" for the other 81 military and civilian craft in the museum.
Dailey, a retired Marine general, said the bombing helped prevent later use of nuclear weapons during the Cold War because "it showed what can happen."
"But we don't tell people what to think about it," he added.
That did not satisfy the mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba, who wrote recently to Dailey that the plane is not "simply another exciting step in the technology of flight. ... I urge you to convey the horrifying tragedy of nuclear weapons." The atomic bomb controversy is not new to the Smithsonian. In 1995, to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, the museum planned a wide-ranging exhibit - including death tolls, photos and the debate about necessity of the bomb - with part of the plane's fuselage as the centerpiece.
After a firestorm of criticism from veterans and other groups, the museum dropped most of the exhibit and gave a bare-bones description of the plane, with video footage of the crew talking about their mission.
One U.S. Army veteran from Virginia, Jack Pulwers, said that approach in the permanent display is fine with him: "It's just the facts. They're not saying it's a wonderful thing. There's no chest-pounding."
Paul Boyer, an historian at the University of Wisconsin, has researched the cultural aspects of the atomic age and said he's not surprised there is such disagreement over how to portray nuclear history.
"These life and death issues are difficult to deal with," Boyer said. "I'm not outraged by the caption, but given the emotional, political and cultural impact of this act - whatever your position - the museum's brief treatment of this seems inappropriate."
Summarizing the controversy over dropping the bomb isn't easy, many historians concede. Some of Truman's advisers, research shows, wanted to use the bomb quickly to intimidate the Soviets, who had just entered the war against Japan.
Military leaders were divided over whether the atomic bomb was necessary. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and Gen. Douglas MacArthur doubted it was needed, believing Japan was on the verge of collapse.
But the specter of high U.S. casualties in an invasion of Japan haunted many leaders and soldiers. More than 12,000 Americans died on Okinawa, as Japanese soldiers fought to the last man.
"It's very important to understand the context of wartime attitudes in 1945," Boyer said.
Some of the Hiroshima survivors agreed that the debate over dropping the atomic bomb should not obscure Japan's aggression and atrocities over many years, from Asia to Pearl Harbor.
"It's only fair that all sides of the story be told, and especially important for the younger generations," said Tanaka, 71. Some survivors have lobbied to make sure Japanese textbooks include information about Japanese atrocities.
Many American veterans see the atomic bomb as a godsend that may have saved their lives. Pulwers, whose new book "Press of Battle" recounts the work of GI reporters during the war, said that was the sentiment in his unit.
Truman expressed that certitude many times. Pulwers, who worked for WABC News in New York, once interviewed Truman and told him how his infantry battalion was about to ship out for the Pacific when they heard about the atomic bomb.
Pulwers said: "I'll always remember what Truman told me: 'I saved your ass, son.' "
FOR MORE INFORMATION
For more information about the new museum, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, and the Enola Gay, check this Smithsonian Web site: www.nasm.si.edu
COMPLETE TEXT
Here is the complete text of the plaque in the exhibit of the Enola Gay:
Boeing's B-29 Superfortress was the most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II, and the first bomber to house its crew in pressurized compartments. Although designed to fight in the European theater, the B-29 found its niche on the other side of the globe. In the Pacific, B-29s delivered a variety of aerial weapons: conventional bombs, incendiary bombs, mines and two nuclear weapons.
On Aug. 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, Bockscar (on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio) dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. Enola Gay flew as the advance weather reconnaissance aircraft that day. A third B-29, The Great Artiste, flew as an observation aircraft on both missions.
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Hiroshima bomb survivors protest US museum display
December 13, 2003
BBC
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1009493.htm
A controversy has arisen over the way in which the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan will be exhibited when it goes on display near Washington on Monday.
Survivors of the 1945 attack say the display of the B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, should reflect the human suffering caused by the bombing.
Tens of thousands of people were killed in the strike on the Japanese port of Hiroshima, and on the city of Nagasaki a few days later.
Now three elderly survivors of the Hiroshima bombing have written to President Bush to complain that the aircraft is being put on show without any mention of the casualties it caused.
The sign next to the propeller driven bomber says simply that it dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima.
The museum's director, John Daley, says no other exhibit carries any mention of a death toll.
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Enola Gay display angers victims
Tuesday, 16 December, 2003
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3315729.stm
Protesters said the exhibit should have included casualty figures Protests have interrupted the opening of a new US museum display which includes the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.
Two men were arrested after red paint symbolising blood was thrown at the Enola Gay, a World War II B-29 bomber.
Survivors of the bombing are angry that the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum is not displaying casualty figures from the US-led attack.
About 140,000 Japanese died in the bombing itself, and many others later.
Around six survivors and 50 peace activists visited the new annex to the museum, some holding pictures of burned victims of the blast.
Thomas K Siemer, 73, of Columbus, Ohio, was charged with felony destruction of property and loitering, while Gregory Wright of Hagerstown, Maryland, faced a misdemeanour loitering charge.
A panel of the Enola Gay was dented in the fracas.
However the museum's director, retired general John Dailey, has resisted calls for the death toll to be included.
"We don't do it for other airplanes," he told French agency AFP.
"From a consistency standpoint, we focus on the technical aspects."
The text accompanying the plane talks about its technological prowess and how it "found its niche on the other side of the globe".
"This is the second time I have seen the Enola Gay," said Hiroshima survivor Minoru Nishino, 71, who was two kilometres (miles) from the epicentre of the blast, and still bears scars.
"The first time was on August 6, 1945, when I saw it flying high in the sky.
"When I saw the Enola Gay today, I was overcome by anger," he said.
Debate
The museum has spent months restoring the B-29 bomber for display in a giant hangar at its Steven Udvar-Hazy Center, near Dulles International Airport in Washington DC.
The Enola Gay has proved contentious for the museum before, when in 1995 portions of its fuselage, undercarriage and engines went on display as part of an exhibition about the atomic bomb, leading to protests.
Three days after the 1945 Hiroshima bombing, the US dropped another atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.
Within days the Japanese officially surrendered and World War II ended, although debate has raged ever since over whether the act hastened the war's end and saved thousands of lives or was one of the world's worst war crimes.
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Rebuilding of Enola Gay draws praise, opposition
By Ken Kaye Staff Writer
South Florida Sun-Sentinel P
December 13 2003
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-senola13dec13,0,1251254.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
As the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, the Enola Gay has been revered and loathed for ending World War II and launching the nuclear age.
For most of the past 58 years, it has been stored in pieces out of public view.
Now, as of Monday, the big four-engine B-29 Superfortress will be displayed for the first time fully intact and meticulously restored in a new Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum exhibit near Washington Dulles International Airport.
"It will be absolutely breathtaking," said Dik Daso, the Smithsonian's curator of modern military aircraft. "It's a remarkable piece of technology and a remarkable artifact that needed to be preserved."
Teams of volunteer engineers and technicians worked 300,000 hours to completely rebuild the plane inside and out, making it the Smithsonian's most ambitious restoration project.
Resting on an eight-foot platform, it will become one of 80 historic aircraft initially to be housed in the gigantic Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, including the likes of an Air France Concorde and the first Boeing 707.
But the Enola Gay is sure to be the dominant attraction because of its historical significance.
While they won't be able to touch the Enola Gay, visitors will be able to view it from below, for a good look at the bomb bay, or from two levels of catwalks above.
"From the catwalk, you'll be able to look directly down into the cockpit, into the bombardier station," Daso said. "All the engines have their original tubes and wiring."
Aside from a $12 parking fee, visitors will be able to view the plane for free, with no reservations or tickets required. Museum officials are confident the hangar-like exhibit hall, which stands more than 10 stories tall and more than three football fields long, will handle the crowds.
And, unlike the early 1990s, when the bomber's fuselage was displayed, they don't expect any uproar.
That exhibit was controversial because museum curators, trying to be politically correct, had planned to include a detailed description of the destruction the atomic bombs left in Japan.
U.S. war veterans protested, saying that would have made the Japanese look like innocent victims, when they had attacked Pearl Harbor, drew the United States into war and left tens of thousands of American soldiers dead.
Even partially displayed, the bomber drew 4 million visitors over three years.
Ongoing question
Not everyone is happy the bomber is going on display, notably the survivors of Hiroshima, who say the exhibit is an "insult," glorifying the suffering they have endured since the bombing on Aug. 6, 1945.
In reappearing so prominently, some say the Enola Gay has resurrected an ongoing question: Did the bomb really need to be dropped on a big city?
John Tateishi, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, based in Los Angeles, says it was immoral to kill so many civilians when Japan was on the verge of surrender. That surrender came five days after a second atomic bomb was dropped on Aug. 9, 1945, on Nagasaki, killing another 70,000.
"Who has the moral authority to destroy populations of civilians? It's totally inconceivable to me that anyone could make a decision to do that," he said.
If the atomic bomb instead had been detonated in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan, far from any people, it still would have had the same impact, Tateishi said. "If people had seen the magnitude of that bomb, it would have been very convincing for the Japanese that they had better surrender."
Course of action
But military historians and U.S. war veterans say the bomb was imperative to break the spirit of Japanese military leaders, who were willing to commit national suicide rather than surrender.
They say in dropping the bomb, tens of thousands of American lives were saved because in November 1945, U.S. armed forces were planning a massive invasion of Japan with more than 1 million troops. At the time, the Pentagon predicted 20,000 U.S. soldiers would die in the first month alone.
They say the bomb ultimately saved thousands of Japanese lives as well because U.S. air forces already had firebombed several Japanese cities, including Tokyo, and would have continued until achieving total surrender.
"In an odd sense, it may have been a very humane choice," said Napoleon Byars, director of policy and communications for the Air Force Association, in Arlington, Va. "There's no assurance a bomb dropped in the middle of the Pacific Ocean would have brought an end to the war.''
"It wasn't until the atomic bombs were dropped that things really turned around," said Rollin Maycumber, 58, of Hollywood, a military history buff who served in the Navy.
Maycumber said it was necessary to drop bombs on civilians to stem plans for one "last great battle" that Japan was plotting as a means to greet an American invasion on its soil.
Further, he said, the attack on Pearl Harbor and atrocities such as the Bataan Death March had to be answered.
The Enola Gay has revived another disquieting concern: Atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, not Germany, because the United States placed less value on Asian lives than on European whites.
It is particularly bothersome, Tateishi said, because the atomic bomb was initially intended for Germany.
"I end up wondering why, with the United States in a race with Germany to build an atomic bomb, we dropped the bomb on Japan," he said. "The only thing I can think of: The Japanese population wasn't white."
But Byars said it was a matter of timing. Germany and Italy had surrendered on May 8, 1945, well before the atomic bomb was finally tested and ready for use.
"Go back and look at dates," he said.
Modern implication
To understand the lingering fervor against the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Tateishi draws a comparison with how Americans felt after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
"The magnitude of outrage at what happened on Sept. 11 is so profound because it was an attack on civilian lives," he said.
For that reason, Tateishi said, the bombing should always be remembered as a warning to avoid nuclear war in the future.
"The Enola Gay display is important. Young kids, American and foreign, need to understand that it changed forever the way we all live," he said. "We need reminders of our past as guideposts to our future."
Ken Kaye can be reached at kkaye@sun-sentinel.com or 954-385-7911.
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