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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."
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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.
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