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NUCLEAR
Kazakhstan hailed for giving up nukes
Areva, Siemens sign deal to build nuclear reactor in Finland
Finnish nuclear plant to boost growth, break trend
Iran to Open Nuclear Facilities to U.N.
Iran Signs Protocol on Snap UN Nuclear Inspections
Iran Signs Pact Allowing Inspection of Its Nuclear Sites
Remember 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? For Bush, They Are a Nonissue
Chief of Arms Hunt in Iraq May Be Leaving His Post
Head of U.S. Team Searching for Iraq Arms May Leave
CIA mulls plans on news top US arms inspector may quit Iraq
Iraqi Scientists Going on U.S. Payroll
Kay Plans to Leave Search for Iraqi Arms
Japan reviewing arms export ban to join US missile defense system
North Korea Resolute on Nuclear Program
British Man Faces 'Dirty Bomb' Charge in U.S.
The additional protocol to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty
No new nukes to U.S. arsenal, Nunn urges
2 Times Reporters to Testify in Scientist's Case Against U.S.
Nev. Lawyers Outline Nuke Dump Strategy
Hanford's first plutonium facility being dismantled
MILITARY
Serbs May Help Patrol Afghanistan, but Qualms Abound
A Young Afghan Dares to Mention the Unmentionable
European Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Market Growing Rapidly
Halliburton Unit Denies Gouging KBR
Pentagon Boosts High-Tech Tagging
Europeans Seek More U.S. Defense Work
Saddam shown videos of mass graves
U.S. Soldier Killed in Ambush in Iraq
Sharon Says Israel Might Use Wall to Create Palestinian Border
Israel Awaits Latest Word From Sharon on Next Step
Israel prepares for mass move if road map fails
Iraq Deployment Shows the East German Syndrome
Iraq Crowds AIDS, Hunger Out of Spotlight - Annan
Wounded Troops Denied Benefits?
White House Web Scrubbing Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
U.S. Federal Court Rebukes Bush on Detainees
Courts Slam Anti - Terror Legal Strategy
Courts Deal Blow to Bush on Treatment of Terror Suspects
U.S. to Seek Stay of Court Ruling on Padilla
Hussein Enters Post-9/11 Web of U.S. Prisons
Appeals Court Orders Release of American Held as Combatant
Australian at Guantanamo in 'Legal and Moral Black Hole,' Lawyer Says
10 Years For Man Who Aided Jihad Probe
U.S. Intensifies Its Alert on Saudi Arabia
New Warning About Threat of Terrorism Is Issued in Saudi Arabia
OTHER
Appeals court OKs medicinal pot
AIDS Is Cutting African Life Span to 30-Year Low, Report Says
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- asia
Kazakhstan hailed for giving up nukes
December 18, 2003
By Delphine Soulas
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031217-091953-2561r.htm
U.S. officials praised Kazakhstan this week for the example it set eight years ago by giving up the world's fourth-largest nuclear arsenal and called for other countries to follow its example.
Sen. Richard G. Lugar and former Sen. Sam Nunn, the champions of U.S. legislation that helped Kazakhstan and other former Soviet republics to give up nuclear materials, were among those at the ceremony marking the Central Asian nation's 12th anniversary of independence on Tuesday.
"Our experience of nonproliferation and disarmament must be ... applied to other countries," said the Kazakh minister of energy and mineral resources, Vladimir Shkolnik, at a symposium co-sponsored by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a privately financed group aiming to reduce the threat from weapons of mass destruction.
"Iran and other nations could learn from Kazakhstan that a nation can grow, modernize, make progress and gain stature not in spite of renouncing nuclear weapons, but because of it," said Mr. Nunn.
Kazakh Ambassador Kanat Saudabayev pointed out that Kazakhstan was the first country ever to shut down a nuclear-test site and renounce a nuclear arsenal - the world's fourth-largest at the time.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Kazakhstan inherited 104 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 1,040 nuclear warheads, 40 strategic bombers and the Semipalatinsk nuclear-test site, where the Soviet Union conducted more than 400 nuclear tests between 1949 and 1989.
Through the $100 million committed to Kazakhstan by the U.S. government's Cooperative Threat Reduction program, all nuclear weapons were removed from Kazakhstan by May 1995. Kazakhstan also destroyed the nuclear-testing infrastructure of Semipalatinsk by July 2000.
Mr. Nunn, Georgia Democrat, and Mr. Lugar, Indiana Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, were the primary forces behind the enactment of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program in 1994.
"With help from the Nunn-Lugar program, Kazakhstan has systematically banished the legacy of weapons of mass destruction inherited from the Soviet Union," President Bush said in a statement read at the symposium.
-------- europe
Areva, Siemens sign deal to build nuclear reactor in Finland
PARIS (AFP)
Dec 18, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031218115227.p0c54pkb.html
Finnish electricity provider TVO has signed a contract with a consortium grouping French nuclear energy group Areva and German engineering giant Siemens to build a reactor in Finland, Areva announced Thursday.
Ae European Pressurized Water Reactor is to be built at the Olkiluoto site in Finland, said French state-owned Areva, the world's largest nuclear group.
TVO put the value of the deal at three billion euros (3.7 billion dollars).
----
Finnish nuclear plant to boost growth, break trend
By Ott Ummelas
18 Dec 2003
(Reuters)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L17486713.htm
HELSINKI, Dec 18 (Reuters) - By the end of 2003, Finland will finalise details for an investment that will break ground in more ways than one.
Private power generation firm Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) plans by that time to pick the main contractor to build the country's fifth nuclear reactor. TVO says a bid from France's Framatome and Germany's Siemens currently has the inside track.
TVO expects the 3.2-billion-euro ($3.95 billion) project at existing nuclear facilities in the west coast town of Olkiluoto to provide more than 3,000 construction jobs during four years and help create at least as many in the services sector.
"The gross domestic product (GDP) of Finland should be some 1.5 percent higher in 2010 than without the nuclear plant, mainly from the investment impact," said Hannu Kaseva, an economist with Finnish think-tank ETLA.
The investment, to be largely funded through debt, will be the largest of its kind in Finland. It comes at a time when the country's centre-left government is trying to maintain the welfare state while also cutting taxes to keep big firms, like top global phone maker Nokia, from moving abroad.
The 1,600-megawatt pressurised water reactor, due to come online in 2009, will also help offset volatile energy prices in a region dependent on climate-sensitive hydropower, TVO says.
And it will help Finland cap greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuels as stipulated under the Kyoto deal.
"When we filed the application last time to the state in 1993, we did not have the Kyoto protocol," said TVO official Anneli Nikula. "If we want to keep the Kyoto target...nuclear power is the best option."
But the decision stands in stark contrast to a Western Europe moving away from nuclear power, with no new plants built in the last decade and the memories of Ukraine's 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster never lurking too far below the surface.
AGAINST THE GRAIN
Germany, Belgium and neighbouring Sweden have announced a withdrawal from atomic energy, with Britain and France lukewarm on the idea but keeping their options open on how to replace their ageing reactors.
Environmentalists say Finland should focus on renewable energy resources, with the decision downplaying safety issues and sending the wrong message abroad. The project also doesn't take account of the recent surge in global terror, they add.
"It can be a strong and dangerous signal to other countries that this is a good way of solving climate issues while it in fact is solving one environmental problem with another," said campaigner Kaisa Kosonen from Greenpeace.
Eight Greenpeace activists were arrested this month after they slipped into TVO's head office and handcuffed themselves to furniture. Others climbed the building to hang banners from the roof calling to "stop the nuclear madness".
"Finns are like the guinea pigs," Kosonen said, referring to Framatome's European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR) which is slated to be used. EPR was once planned as a replacement for ageing reactors in France and Germany but has not been built anywhere.
But Finnish nuclear safety authority STUK, which has the right to reject the application in its review next year, says all the competing reactor designs could fulfil its requirements with some adjustments.
And the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States are being taken into account.
"The possibility of a large plane hitting (the reactor) is one of the main issues," said Petteri Tiippana, head of STUK's project unit.
"The plant has to be able to cope with a large airliner crash without immediate radioactive releases into the environment."
NUCLEAR COMEBACK?
Even when the reactor is up and running, industry estimates that Finland will still need more than twice the new plant's power capacity by 2015 to meet the growing energy demand as old plants using fossil fuel are gradually decommissioned.
The harsh winter of 2002-2003 already tested all the available plants and even forced the authorities to advise Finns to turn down the heat in their sacred retreat -- the sauna.
Experts say this means the debate on whether to build more nuclear power is set to grow, but any decision on building a sixth reactor is unlikely to be taken during this decade.
"There is an obvious need for more capacity at some stage, but there are factors like how much we can expect from renewable energy sources," says Ulla Sirkeinen, head of the energy policy unit at Finland's industry and employers' lobby TT.
"The other is what will emissions (quota) trading bring with it? These things need to be followed up before there is any need to make the decisions."
-------- iran
Iran to Open Nuclear Facilities to U.N.
December 18, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iran signed an accord Thursday that gives U.N. experts full access to its nuclear facilities, yielding to international pressure to end two decades of secrecy and prove it has not tried to build atomic weapons.
But while Iran called the agreement ``historic,'' the United States played down its importance of the signing, saying it was ``a useful step in the right direction,'' but would require monitoring to ensure Tehran does not break promises.
Washington, which has accused Tehran of trying to develop nuclear weapons in secret, said it would take several years before the world gains confidence that Iran is being truthful about its atomic program. Iran insists its program is peaceful and geared only toward producing electricity.
``My country has taken a great and important step towards revealing its attitude of transparency and its full commitment to international confidence-building,'' said Ali Akbar Salehi, the Iranian representative to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.
``I ardently hope that the new stage is set and that my country shall no more be subject to unfair and politically motivated accusations and allegations,'' he said, after he and the IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei signed the accord.
The agreement, tacked on to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, requires Iran to submit to intrusive, surprise U.N. inspections of its nuclear complexes and research facilities. The treaty, which Iran has endorsed, forbids it from developing atomic weapons.
ElBaradei called the signing ``an important building block toward establishing confidence that Iran's program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.''
While he called on Tehran to ratify the agreement quickly, he also praised the government for beginning in October to open up suspect sites that were previously off-limits and let agency inspectors conduct unannounced checks -- effectively acting as if the accord is already in force.
ElBaradei said inspections so far have not proved or disproved Iran's claims that it has not tried to develop nuclear weapons.
But if subsequent inspections dispel suspicions about Iran's activities, the U.N. nuclear agency will have broken ``a vicious cycle which has been going on for over 20 years,'' he said.
Kenneth Brill, the U.S. envoy to the IAEA, called Thursday's signing ``a useful step in the right direction,'' but said only aggressive inspections would erase doubts sown by Iran's ``nearly two decades of deception.''
Iran is still seeking new weapons, a senior Bush administration official said Thursday in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official told The Associated Press that the United States would be watching closely to see if Tehran complies with the inspection accord.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush labeled Iran part of an ``axis of evil'' along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea, which Washington also suspects of developing weapons of mass destruction.
The European Union welcomed the new agreement, saying ``it will help in establishing the international community's confidence in Iran's assurance about the peaceful nature of its nuclear program.''
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said his country also was pleased with the agreement but added that ``much remains to be done,'' urging Iran to ratify it ``as soon as possible.''
Although Iran repeatedly had said it would sign the accord, its failure for weeks to follow through had led to speculation that it might be stalling.
The IAEA's 35-nation board of governors censured Iran in November for its past secrecy in a resolution that warned Tehran to stay in line with international efforts to make sure the country has no nuclear weapons ambitions.
Although the resolution did not threaten to send the matter to the U.N. Security Council -- a tougher approach that Washington had sought -- it warned Tehran that the IAEA would consider further action if ``serious Iranian failures'' arise.
Under international pressure, Iran also has agreed to suspend its enrichment of uranium, which it says had been confined to non-weapons levels anyway.
On the Net:
IAEA, http://www.iaea.org
----
Iran Signs Protocol on Snap UN Nuclear Inspections
December 18, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iran-nuclear.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran signed an agreement on Thursday allowing the U.N. nuclear watchdog to conduct snap inspections across its territory, in a bid to persuade the world it is not secretly developing atomic weapons.
The signature to the Additional Protocol to the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) comes nearly 18 months after an exiled Iranian opposition group sparked a crisis by saying Tehran was hiding several large nuclear facilities. The allegations proved to be true.
Iran's outgoing ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ali Akbar Salehi, said Tehran wanted to ensure every aspect of its nuclear program was open to scrutiny.
``We will not leave any stone unturned,'' he told reporters.
Salehi and IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei signed the document at the agency's headquarters in Vienna.
``The protocol is a tool to build confidence and to provide assurances,'' ElBaradei said, adding that he hoped Iran's parliament would ratify it as soon as possible.
The United States has labeled Iran part of an ``axis of evil'' and says it is using its atomic energy program as a smokescreen to develop nuclear arms. Tehran denies this.
The U.S. ambassador to the IAEA called the signature a ``step in the right direction'' but said it would take years before the world could be sure Iran was meeting its obligations. Another Western diplomat called the move ``long overdue.''
The protocol sparked heated debate in Iran earlier this year, with hard-liners saying the short-notice inspections it permits were tantamount to allowing spies into the country.
But, under mounting international pressure, Iran said in October it would sign up for the tougher inspection regime, suspend uranium enrichment and provide full details of nuclear activities dating back to the 1980s.
Unlike the IAEA's U.N. Security Council mandate to conduct weapons inspections in pre-war Iraq, the protocol does not allow unannounced ``anywhere and any time'' inspections in Iran.
But it does empower the agency to demand much more information about sensitive nuclear activities and to inspect all declared and undeclared nuclear sites with as little as two hours' notice.
18-YEAR COVER-UP
The IAEA criticized Tehran last month for an 18-year cover-up of potentially arms-related nuclear research, warning the Iranians any further breaches could see them taken to the Security Council for possible sanctions.
``Iran's signature today of the Additional Protocol is a useful step in the right direction,'' U.S. ambassador Kenneth Brill said, adding that it was ``only a first step'' and now had to be ratified and enter into force.
``Given Iran's nearly two decades of deception, rigorous verification of the Protocol's implementation by IAEA inspectors over a period of several years will be critical if the international community is to begin to gain confidence in the consistency of Iran's actions with its international obligations,'' Brill said.
The protocol will give the IAEA much broader inspection powers than it has under Iran's NPT Safeguards Agreement. But one analyst said it would not stop Iran developing the capacity to manufacture nuclear arms if it wanted to.
``Even with the Additional Protocol, the IAEA is going to need member states to provide intelligence,'' Gary Samore of the International Institute for Strategic Studies told Reuters. ``If governments have information that Iran has not really come clean, then now is the time to give it to the IAEA.''
----
Iran Signs Pact Allowing Inspection of Its Nuclear Sites
December 18, 2003
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/middleeast/18CND-IRAN.html
Iran signed a protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty today that allows the International Atomic Energy Agency broader rights of access to sites in the country, a move intended to help establish confidence that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful.
Iran's former representative at the agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, and Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the agency, signed the protocol in Vienna. The agency is a United Nations organization that promotes atomic energy and monitors its use in military applications.
"The protocol for us is an important tool for our work towards trying to establish confidence that the nuclear program is really peaceful," the agency's chief spokesman, Mark Gwozdecky said. "The next step is that Iran would ratify the agreement."
Mr. Gwozdecky said by telephone from Rome that the signing of the agreement today demonstrated "an act of good faith or good will on the part of the Iranian government" and was an "indication of their legal commitment" that must be followed by ratification of the agreement, which will make it a full legal obligation.
"It, formally speaking, doesn't enter into force until ratification has taken place," he said. "However, Iran has told us that they will act as if the protocol was ratified, and therefore they have allowed our inspectors to go and inspect places as they want to.
"Right now we are getting the benefits of the protocol without it being legally enforced," Mr. Gwozdecky said. "They have indicated to us that they would continue to do so until ratification legally brings that into force."
Asked when the ratification might take place, he said that there was no deadline and that the process varied for each country, because legislation must be enacted to put the protocol into effect.
For example, new laws may be required to compel companies to cooperate or to criminalize activities in order to comply with the agreement, he said.
"Iran has stated that it is acting in accordance with the protocol's provisions, pending the protocol's formal entry into force," according to a statement posted on the International Atomic Energy Agency's Web site after the signing. "The additional protocol requires states to provide an expanded declaration of their nuclear activities and grants the agency broader rights of access to sites in the country."
Iran's vice president, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, told reporters on Wednesday that Iran would sign the agreement to demonstrate Iran's commitment to peaceful uses of nuclear power.
"Iran has decided to sign the protocol to prove that the Iranian nuclear program is for civilian purposes," said Mr. Aghazadeh, who is also the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, in remarks carried by the Islamic Republic News Agency on Wednesday. "Signing the protocol will also end the propaganda campaign against the nuclear program."
On Oct. 21, Iran agreed under international pressure to sign the additional protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
During a visit by the foreign ministers of Britain, Germany and France, Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment program and allow unfettered inspections but demanded technical cooperation for its peaceful nuclear program.
On Wednesday, Mr. Aghazadeh called on the three European nations to help Iran gain the release of nuclear equipment previously bought by Iran.
The news agency today carried a report quoting the nuclear agency's chairman, Antonio Núñez García-Saúco, as saying that the board expected Iran to immediately set the protocol into motion. He said that the board was still studying a report Iran handed over to the agency last month on its nuclear activities, but acknowledged that the country had suspended its uranium-enrichment program.
In response to Iran's demand on Wednesday that the agency facilitate the transfer of nuclear technology after the signing of the protocol, Mr. Garcia-Sauco said today that the transfer was a very long process.
"It has different phases with the additional protocol making up the first stage," Mr. Garcia-Sauco said, according to the news agency.
The International Atomic Energy Agency condemned Iran's 18-year nuclear program last month and said it had produced small amounts of plutonium, which is needed for making nuclear weapons. The agency, seeking to encourage recent Iranian openness, stopped short of urging action by the United Nations Security Council.
Russia, Iran's major nuclear partner, this week refused to deliver nuclear fuel to Iran unless it signed the protocol. Russia helped Iran build a nuclear reactor in the southern city of Bushehr.
Christine Hauser reported from New York for this article, and Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran.
Christine Hauser reported from New York for this article, and Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran.
-------- iraq / inspections
WHITE HOUSE MEMO
Remember 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? For Bush, They Are a Nonissue
December 18, 2003
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/politics/18PREX.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 - In the debate over the necessity for the war in Iraq, few issues have been more contentious than whether Saddam Hussein possessed arsenals of banned weapons, as the Bush administration repeatedly said, or instead was pursuing weapons programs that might one day constitute a threat.
On Tuesday, with Mr. Hussein in American custody and polls showing support for the White House's Iraq policy rebounding, Mr. Bush suggested that he no longer saw much distinction between the possibilities.
"So what's the difference?" he responded at one point as he was pressed on the topic during an interview by Diane Sawyer of ABC News.
To critics of the war, there is a big difference. They say that the administration's statements that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons that it could use on the battlefield or turn over to terrorists added an urgency to the case for immediate military action that would have been lacking if Mr. Hussein were portrayed as just developing the banned weapons.
"This was a pre-emptive war, and the rationale was that there was an imminent threat," said Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a Democrat who has said that by elevating Iraq to the most dangerous menace facing the United States, the administration unwisely diverted resources from fighting Al Qaeda and other terrorists.
The overwhelming vote in Congress last year to authorize the use of force against Iraq would have been closer "but for the fact that the president had so explicitly said that there were weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to citizens of the United States," Mr. Graham said in an interview on Wednesday.
As early as last spring, Mr. Bush suggested that the Iraqis might have dispersed their biological and chemical weapons so widely that they would be extremely difficult to find. And some weapons experts have suggested that Mr. Hussein may have destroyed banned weapons that he had in the early 1990's but left in place the capacity to produce more.
This week, at a news conference on Monday and in the ABC interview on Tuesday, Mr. Bush's answers to questions on the subject continued a gradual shift in the way he has addressed the topic, from the immediacy of the threat to an assertion that no matter what, the world is better off without Mr. Hussein in power.
Where once Mr. Bush and his top officials asserted unambiguously that Mr. Hussein had the weapons at the ready, their statements now are often far more couched, reflecting the fact that no weapons have been found - "yet," as Mr. Bush was quick to interject during the interview.
In the interview, Mr. Bush said removing Mr. Hussein from power was justified even without the recovery of any banned weapons. As he has since his own weapons inspector, David Kay, issued an interim report in October saying he had uncovered extensive evidence of weapons programs in Iraq but no actual weapons, Mr. Bush said the existence of such programs, by violating United Nations Security Council resolutions, provided ample grounds for the war.
"If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger," Mr. Bush continued, referring to Mr. Hussein. "That's what I'm trying to explain to you. A gathering threat, after 9/11, is a threat that needed to be dealt with, and it was done after 12 long years of the world saying the man's a danger."
Pressed to explain the president's remarks, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Bush was not backing away from his assertions about Mr. Hussein's possession of banned weapons.
"We continue to believe that he had weapons of mass destruction programs and weapons of mass destruction," Mr. McClellan said on Wednesday.
Mr. Bush has always been careful to have multiple reasons ready for his major policy proposals, and his administration has deployed them deftly to adapt to changing circumstances.
In trying to build public and international support for toppling Mr. Hussein, the administration cited, with different emphasis at different times, the banned weapons, links between the Iraqi leader and terrorist organizations, a desire to liberate the Iraqi people and a policy of bringing democracy to the Middle East.
When it came to describing the weapons program, Mr. Bush never hedged before the war. "If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today - and we do - does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?" Mr. Bush asked during a speech in Cincinnati in October 2002.
In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad in April, the White House was equally explicit. "One of the reasons we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction," Ari Fleischer, then the White House spokesman, told reporters on May 7. "And nothing has changed on that front at all."
On Wednesday Mr. McClellan, when pressed, only restated the president's belief that weapons would eventually be found. Mr. Bush, despite being asked repeatedly about the issue in different ways by Ms. Sawyer, never did say it, except to note Mr. Hussein's past use of chemical weapons. He emphasized Mr. Hussein's capture instead.
"And if he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction?" Ms. Sawyer asked the president, according to a transcript provided by ABC.
"Diane, you can keep asking the question," Mr. Bush replied. "I'm telling you - I made the right decision for America because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait. But the fact that he is not there is, means America's a more secure country."
--------
Chief of Arms Hunt in Iraq May Be Leaving His Post
December 18, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Iraq-Weapons-Hunt.html
CAMP SLAYER, Iraq (AP) -- Weapons hunters are spending more time on base, intelligence experts have been reassigned to work on the counterinsurgency and the man leading a so-far unsuccessful search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons is thinking of stepping down.
A nine-month search for the weapons of mass destruction President Bush said he went to war to destroy has been conducted by a succession of U.S. teams that have all failed to find any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
The lack of evidence has led critics to suggest the Bush administration either mishandled or exaggerated its knowledge of Iraq's alleged arsenal. Since the war, White House officials have at times claimed weapons were found, or that evidence of programs, rather than actual weapons, would be enough for them.
Still, nothing substantive has materialized and after an exhaustive search, the weapons hunt appears to have slowed.
``For a while this place was really active, but that's changed in the last month,'' said Charles McKay, a member of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency who has been involved in the search since May.
``Now we're lucky if there's a mission once a week around here,'' he said at Camp Slayer, the nickname weapons hunters have given to their base on the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein's former Baghdad palaces.
David Kay, a former U.N. weapons inspector, was named by the CIA in June to lead the search for weapons of mass destruction. His appointment, and the creation of his operation, the Iraq Survey Group, was supposed to be the key to finding the weapons Iraq long denied having.
Kay returned to the United States last week and on Thursday, a U.S. intelligence official in Washington said he was considering quitting his post. Kay did not return an e-mail message seeking comment and recently turned down a request for an interview.
During a visit Wednesday to Kay's headquarters at Camp Slayer, a senior military officer with the weapons hunt tried to offer assurances their work was continuing. ``We're still here,'' Roland Mulligan said.
U.S. intelligence officials in Washington said the search would continue. New leads could come from the interrogation of Saddam, who was captured Saturday.
The weapons hunt is staffed by more than 1,000 intelligence analysts, interrogators and translators who pore over documents, investigate suspect sites and conduct interviews with Iraqis.
The work hasn't been easy and there was recently a large staff turnover, those involved with the search said on condition of anonymity.
Some people went home and others were reassigned to work on the counterinsurgency the U.S. military is waging in Iraq, U.S. officers said.
Kay's teams have complained about everything from logistical and transportation problems to an inability to find and keep track of Iraqi scientists. One top Iraqi missile maker who was believed to have gone to Iran in May was actually working the entire time with British military officers in Iraq. Only recently was he questioned by team members, he said.
So far, Kay's teams have talked to hundreds of Iraqis. Some have been detained, but the overwhelming majority have been cleared. In many cases, they were rehired for their old jobs; others will be eligible for U.S. government-funded projects.
Currently, fewer than 10 former weapons scientists, with expertise in biological weapons or missiles, are in custody for suspected work or knowledge of proscribed programs. None have led inspectors to any weapons.
``It's probably time to call it quits,'' said Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, whose teams were given one-third of the time the United States has already spent looking for weapons.
``The U.S. and the U.K. are so wedded to the idea that the Iraqis were hiding things that they are not willing to explore the possibility that they're wrong,'' Blix said.
In October, Congress approved $600 million for the weapons hunt to continue. Kay predicted then that definitive conclusions would be reached within six to nine months -- by spring 2004.
``I just can't understand the figures, given how little they're finding,'' said David Albright, a former weapons inspector, noting the U.N. operation cost far less.
While money is clearly being used for testing equipment, data entry, facilities and transportation, it is also going to big-name U.S. contractors working at Camp Slayer.
Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's former company Halliburton, has a large operation at Camp Slayer, running a fueling station, a new dining hall and portable lavatories.
The base, which was bombed out and looted after the war, was littered with broken glass, unexploded ordnance, and the remnants of Saddam's regime. There was little electricity or running water in June.
Today, it has a volleyball court, a barber shop, a country store, laundry and alterations services; it is stocked with sports utility vehicles and pickup trucks the weapons hunters use to get around.
Fluor Daniel, a subsidiary of the California-based Fortune 500 company Fluor, is putting in new windows at Camp Slayer, turning palace suites into office space and helping repair damage around the grounds. Other subcontractors include Egyptian and Jordanian engineers and construction workers.
Associated Press Writer John J. Lumpkin contributed to this report from Washington.
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Head of U.S. Team Searching for Iraq Arms May Leave
December 19, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-usa-wmd.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a potential setback to the so far fruitless hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the head of the U.S. search team, David Kay, told administration officials he is considering leaving the job as early as next month, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
Though Kay cited family obligations, officials described the former U.N. nuclear weapons inspector as frustrated -- no banned weapons have been found despite months of searching and some of Kay's staff have been diverted to helping combat Iraqi insurgents.
Kay and his team were sent to Iraq to locate the weapons that were cited by President Bush and his top advisers as the main justification for invading.
An announcement could come as early as next week, one official said.
Officials said Kay, who is directing the weapons search as an adviser to the CIA, could step down before his Iraq Survey Group issues its next interim report slated for February.
Kay met with CIA officials earlier this week and will hold a follow-up meeting, most likely next week, ``to discuss next steps,'' including his tenure, an official said. He may not return to Baghdad after the Christmas and New Year's holiday. ``That's yet to be determined,'' one official said.
Critics blamed the Bush administration for undercutting the search for weapons and warned that Kay's departure could further undermine the effort.
Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright, now head of the Institute for Science and International Security, said some of the investigators on Kay's team might say to themselves, ``Kay's not sticking around. Why should I?''
But White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the weapons hunt was an ``important priority'' for the administration whether Kay stays or goes. ``Regardless, the work of the Iraq Survey Group continues and they will complete that work,'' he said.
In an interview earlier this week with ABC News, Bush brushed aside questions about whether Iraq had possessed banned weapons -- as his administration asserted before the war to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who was captured on Saturday -- or was merely pursuing weapons programs.
``So what's the difference?'' Bush responded.
HIGH HOPES
When he took the job in June, officials said, Kay had fully expected to quickly find evidence to back up the administration's prewar claims about Iraqi weapons.
But in a preliminary report in October, his team found no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons.
``When he (Kay) signed up, I don't think that he envisioned that it would take quite as much time and effort and that the security situation would be quite what it is,'' a U.S. official said.
``And there is some pressure back here on the home front,'' the U.S. official added, referring to Kay's family obligations.
Officials said Kay was also unhappy that some members of his team were shifted to the counter-insurgency front. ``So he doesn't have all of the assets he would like to have. Nobody does,'' the U.S. official said.
The Survey Group plans to issue its next interim report in February and its final report next fall.
----
CIA mulls plans on news top US arms inspector may quit Iraq
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Dec 18, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031218225856.9wl14km5.html
The CIA discussed "what comes next" after press reports that US team leader David Kay plans to leave the group searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a US official said Thursday.
The CIA had no comment on Thursday's Washington Post report that Kay planned to leave the Iraq Survey Group as early as February, before the group's work is finished.
"He's back here for the holidays and for discussions on what comes next," said a US official, who declined to elaborate.
The 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group that Kay leads has failed so far to find any of the banned weapons that President George W. Bush cited as justification for war against Iraq.
Some survey group members have been redirected to intelligence work on the insurgency in Iraq.
The White House, meanwhile was silent Thursday on whether Kay would quit.
"I wouldn't presume to speak for him," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
"I would point out that the search is an important priority and the work of the Iraq Survey Group continues."
The Post said Kay, who reports to CIA director George Tenet, is planning to leave early for personal and family reasons and that the only remaining question was when.
It quoted a senior administration official as saying he planned to leave before the Iraq Survey Group submits its final report in late 2004 and possibly even before its next interim report, due in February.
Kay's preliminary report in October said the group found that Iraq had been working to acquire chemical and biological weapons before the war, had missile programs under development, but only a rudimentary nuclear program.
The US insistence that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear program in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions served as the prime justification for the US-led invasion of the country in March.
In a televised interview Tuesday, Bush dismissed the question of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or only had plans to acquire them.
"So what's the difference?" he said in the interview with ABC television.
"If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger," the president said. "A gathering threat, after nine-11, is a threat that needed to be dealt with and it was done after 12 long years of the world saying the man's a danger."
Meanwhile, investigations by the House and Senate are looking into the intelligence community's pre-war assessments that Iraq possessed banned weapons.
Democrats have accused the administration of making selective use of the intelligence to make its case for war.
An internal review led by former CIA deputy director Richard Kerr last month expanded its inquiry to include the raw intelligence used to back up the intelligence community's assessments.
----
Iraqi Scientists Going on U.S. Payroll
December 18, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq-Scientists.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hundreds of Iraqi scientists and technicians who the Bush administration says worked on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs for Saddam Hussein will be paid by the United States for their role in postwar projects, partly to keep the Iraqis from selling their expertise elsewhere.
The two-year program will begin with a $2 million U.S. contribution, and the United States may provide as much as $20 million more later, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday.
That would prevent the scientists from helping ``countries of concern or groups of concern,'' he said.
The Associated Press was the first to report in November that the Bush administration was working on a plan to keep Iraqi scientists occupied with peaceful research at home, including details of the proposal.
The program has some similarities to the United States' hiring German scientists who had worked in atomic and missile projects during World War II and paying Russian scientists to discourage them from offering their skills to potential American adversaries.
``We are giving people an opportunity to contribute to the future of Iraq,'' Boucher said.
While the United States is interested in prosecuting Iraqis who may have used weapons of mass destruction, it is not interested in pursuing people who may simply have been associated with the programs, the spokesman said.
``We are looking at scientists and technicians here, not politicians, not political people,'' Boucher said. ``If there are issues that arise with regard to individuals, those issues will be looked at.''
Before Saddam was deposed this year in a U.S.-led war, he had hundreds of scientists and technicians working on a wide range of weapons programs.
The new program was approved by postwar Iraqi officials, Boucher said. The first step is to establish a new office in Baghdad by February and start work on projects within about six months, he said.
--------
Kay Plans to Leave Search for Iraqi Arms
Members of Survey Group He Heads Being Diverted to Fight Against Insurgents
By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A42
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9823-2003Dec17?language=printer
David Kay, the head of the U.S. effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has told administration officials he plans to leave before the Iraq Survey Group's work is completed and could depart before February, U.S. military and intelligence officials said.
The move comes as more of Kay's staff has been diverted from the weapons hunt to help search for Iraqi insurgents, and at a time when expectations remain low that any weaponry will be discovered.
Kay requested the change for personal and family reasons, officials said. When he accepted the job in June, they said, he expected to quickly find the expansive evidence that the administration had claimed as its primary reason for going to war. Rather, Kay's preliminary report in October said the group had so far discovered only that Iraq was working to acquire chemical and biological weapons, had missile programs under various stages of development and possessed only a rudimentary nuclear program.
Two officials confirmed that Kay is planning on leaving early, and said the question remaining is how soon. Kay, who is on holiday leave in the Washington area, could not be reached for comment.
"Kay is thinking of leaving before a final report and perhaps before the next interim report," which is due in February, a senior administration official said yesterday. The survey group is slated to submit its final report next fall. The official said there will be a meeting next week at CIA headquarters where "the next steps will be discussed."
U.S. government officials said Kay's departure will have little practical impact on the day-to-day work of 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group. More worrisome for the administration is that his departure may foster an impression -- incorrect in their view -- that the search is effectively over. His departure leaves the administration looking for a replacement at a time when it is dogged by questions about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.
In an interview Tuesday night with President Bush, ABC correspondent Diane Sawyer asked why the administration stated as a "hard fact" that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had such weapons when it appears now he only had the intent to acquire them.
"So what's the difference?" Bush responded. "The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger."
In recent weeks the U.S. search for weapons has been hampered by the insurgency in Iraq. The threat of attack has impeded the ISG's ability to move around easily. "You can't go where you want to go when you want to go," one senior administration official said.
The insurgency has forced the Pentagon to divert personnel from Kay's team to help commanders identify and question insurgents.
"They took away a lot of his folks, some critical people, the linguists and analysts," Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in an interview yesterday from Israel.
In mid-October, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld agreed to a request by Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, to make more ISG resources available to the hunt for insurgents, according to a defense official who has seen the order Rumsfeld signed.
The insurgency "now has the same priority as WMD," said another U.S. government official, who added that members of the ISG had interrogated the men who helped identify Hussein's location, for example.
Three intelligence officials said Kay may not return to Iraq from holiday leave, but said he firmly believes the search for weapons should continue.
"Our hope and belief and desire is that he will be going back," said CIA deputy director John McLaughlin said in a recent interview. "If he isn't, it will have to be his call, and we will work with him to choose" a successor.
Charles A. Duelfer, former deputy director of the U.N. weapons inspectors in the early 1990s, said Kay "signed up for six months and I don't think he was keen on staying the [length of] time he was there."
Kay publicized his expectations on Iraq in January, in a Washington Post article, before he was appointed: "When it comes to the U.N. weapons inspection in Iraq, looking for a smoking gun is a fool's mission. That was true 11 years ago when I led the inspections there. It is no less true today. . . . That's because the answer is already clear: Iraq is in breach of U.N. demands that it dismantle its weapons of mass destruction."
David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and who worked on Iraq inspections in the 1990s, said Kay went to Iraq "with preconceived notions that were so strong" that the weapons programs existed but were hidden. Albright, who recently was in Iraq talking with scientists, said it was important, however, that the ISG work be completed to make sure Iraqi weapons data or expertise is not overlooked "so that a terrorist group could in fact get help."
Harman said that Kay's departure would be "a big loss" because he has been "apolitical and thorough." But, she added, "I don't think it will set back the effort a lot; I'm not personally convinced there's anything there."
The ISG's staff continues to take soil samples, collect suspect equipment, interview Iraqi scientists and analyze hundreds of thousands of documents in a warehouse in Qatar. On Tuesday, for example, they interviewed a dozen Iraqi scientists in detention -- yet again. The interviews have not yielded information that has allowed U.S. authorities to pinpoint the location of weapons caches and related equipment.
The fact that no weapons have been found has become a sore point at the CIA, which is under scrutiny for its assessment by the House and Senate intelligence committees.
In a Nov. 20 memo to employees, CIA Director George J. Tenet defended the agency's analysis. "I continue to believe, as I have said all along, that the work of the intelligence community in assembling the Iraq WMD" National Intelligence Estimate "was solid and professionally done and that this will be borne out."
Responding to a USA Today article asserting that Tenet had ordered investigators to probe whether the agency missed telltale signs on WMD issues, Tenet said he had asked a former top CIA official, Richard J. Kerr, to review intelligence on Iraq and judge it next to what Kay ultimately finds.
The ordering of Kerr's review demonstrates open-mindedness and "confidence rather than implies any excessive concern about performance as the news story suggests," the Nov. 20 memo says.
-------- japan
Japan reviewing arms export ban to join US missile defense system
TOKYO (AFP)
Dec 18, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031218102043.qfbyjgqm.html
Japan said Thursday it was reviewing its self-imposed ban on arms exports to develop sophisticated missile defense systems with the United States.
The government is expected to lift the ban for parts that could be used by the United States to produce missile defense-related equipment, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported Thursday.
Japan has been jointly researching with the United States development of missile defense systems since 1999 after North Korea fired a suspected ballistic missile over Japan and into the Pacific in 1998.
"There is a debate on whether it is acceptable that we cannot exchange the results of our (joint) research," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a news conference.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also told reporters: "Such a debate has been going on for a while and we will continue to study it."
Trade ministry officials said it was too early to contact domestic contractors, such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which is charged with making Japan's satellite-launching H-2A rockets after April 2006.
"If they (domestic firms) are to produce parts, of course there needs to be some debate, but the discussion has not proceeded at all," ministry official Hiroshi Katagiri told AFP.
The export ban, in place since 1967, prevents Tokyo from exporting weapons to communist nations, those subject to UN-imposed arms embargoes and those involved in armed disputes.
The policy was widened to ban all military exports in 1978.
By the end of 2004, the government also plans to review the nation's basic defense framework adopted in 1976 and reviewed in 1995, as well as the current five-year defense program, the Yomiuri said.
Under the review, the government will change the focus of defense programmes from threats of Cold War-style foreign invasion to "new threats" such as terrorist attacks and ballistic missiles from other nations, it said.
These plans will be completed at a meeting of the Security Council of Japan and at a cabinet meeting Friday, the paper said.
Defense Agency officials said in August that they would seek 4.96 trillion yen (46 billion dollars) in defense spending for the year to March 2005, including 142.3 billion yen as part of a four-year plan to build up the ballistic missile defense system.
The system will comprise US-developed SM-3 missiles launched from Japan's high-tech Aegis guided missile destroyers and land-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) anti-missile systems.
-------- korea
North Korea Resolute on Nuclear Program
By SANG-HUN CHOE
Associated Press Writer
December 18, 2003
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031218/API/312180677
North Korea said Thursday it will never give up its nuclear weapons program unless Washington provides economic aid and security assurances.
Pyongyang's official newspaper Rodong Sinmun reiterated its demand that Washington agree to a "simultaneous package solution" to the nuclear dispute.
North Korea wants to trade its nuclear weapons for economic aid and security assurances. Washington wants North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons first, calling Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions violations of international agreements.
"The DPRK's stand to beef up its nuclear deterrent force will remain unchanged no matter what others may say, as long as the United States keeps pursuing a policy to threaten and stifle the DPRK ... while turning down its proposal for simultaneous package solution to the nuclear issue," Rodong said in a commentary.
DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name, Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia are trying to convene a new round of six-nation talks with North Korea, possibly early next year, to ease tensions over the nuclear crisis.
In the past week, North Korea's state-run media have trumpeted the country's hard-line demands.
Rodong's commentary, carried by the North's official news agency KCNA, said the country has watched U.S. strategies in Iraq and determined that it must "keep and steadily increase its nuclear deterrent force" against a pre-emptive U.S. nuclear attack.
"The U.S. used a huge amount of depleted uranium shells, a type of nuclear weapon, when attacking Iraq, a country with no strategic forces and with very weak military capacity in terms of latest weaponry," Rodong said. "It is self-evident that it will use nuclear weapons of higher performance when it invades the DPRK, a country with strong military power."
The Pentagon and many experts contend that depleted uranium, because of its low radioactivity, poses no risk to the health of soldiers handling munitions made from it, or to civilians living in areas where those shells were used.
On Wednesday, South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan said there has been "meaningful progress" in trying to arrange another round of talks on resolving the crisis, but gave no possible timeline.
The first round of six-nation talks, held in Beijing in August, ended without much progress. Participants had hoped to meet again by the year's end, but backed off that goal, saying differences between North Korea and the United States still had to be worked out.
-------- terrorism
British Man Faces 'Dirty Bomb' Charge in U.S.
December 18, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-crime-missiles.html
NEWARK, N.J. (Reuters) - A Briton held in the United States on charges of trying to sell missiles to shoot down airliners will face additional charges of plotting to procure a ``dirty bomb,'' prosecutors said on Thursday.
Hemant Lakhani, an Indian-born 68-year-old London arms dealer arrested in August in a FBI sting operation, was indicted with new allegations that he offered to procure anti-aircraft guns, tanks, armored personnel carriers, radar systems and a dirty bomb, U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie of Newark, New Jersey, said in a statement.
Dirty bomb is the term used by law enforcement officials to refer to an unconventional device designed to spread radioactive or chemical agents. Christie declined to give details about the bomb.
Lakhani's lawyer could not be reached for comment.
Lakhani was charged with one count of attempting to provide material support to terrorists, which carries a maximum 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The indictment contains other charges carrying possible prison terms of between two and 20 years.
Lakhani, who has been in jail since his Aug. 12 arrest at a hotel near Newark International Airport, was charged with trying to sell a shoulder-fired missile imported from Russia to an FBI informant. He will appear in court in the coming days, the prosecutor said.
``I feel more strongly today than I did in August that the arrest of Mr. Lakhani has made the country a safer place,'' Christie said at a news conference on Thursday.
``He was not just a businessman looking to make a buck. This was someone who believed that American citizens should be attacked and killed.''
New York jeweler Yehuda Abraham and Moinudden Ahmed Hameed were also charged in the case in August. Prosecutors described them as being financial middlemen who did not know transactions involved illegal weapons.
Christie said Lakhani has also been accused of having told his intended purchaser, with whom he was arranging the sale of 50 more missiles, that the weapons could be used most effectively if 10 to 15 commercial aircraft were shot down simultaneously across the United States.
In another unrelated dirty bomb case, U.S. citizen Jose Padilla has been held for 18 months by the government, which said he plotted with the militant Islamic group al Qaeda to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb in the United States.
The two cases were not linked, but the prosecutor announced the new charges on the same day an appeals court ruled that Padilla could no longer be held incommunicado by the government as an enemy combatant.
-------- treaties
The additional protocol to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty
VIENNA (AFP)
Dec 18, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031218114923.ghpco7d2.html
The additional protocol to the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty that Iran might sign on Thursday was established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1997 and is the world's main tool for curbing the spread of nuclear weapons.
Seventy-four states have already signed an additional protocol with the IAEA although only 35 of them have ratified the legally-binding agreement.
Its main aim is to allow the United Nations' nuclear watchdog to verify a country's declared nuclear activities and ensure the latter is not hiding material it could use to build a nuclear bomb.
The protocol obliges countries to provide the IAEA with much more precise information about their nuclear activities than is required under the NPT. And it authorises the IAEA to carry out more intrusive inspections of nuclear facilities.
Under the agreement, states commit to giving IAEA inspectors information about, and short-notice access to, all parts of their nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mines, fuel production and enrichment plants, and nuclear waste sites. They must also offer access to any other location where nuclear material is or may be present.
The IAEA may give as little as two hours' notice before it visits a site to check for evidence of undeclared nuclear material or resolve inconsistencies in the information the government has provided about its nuclear activities.
Once at a site the IAEA is authorised to inspect it, examine records, take samples, use radiation detection equipment and impose seals or other tamper-indicating devices. The agency may also make use of established satellite surveillance systems.
States which sign the protocol have one month, from the time of the request, to issue nuclear inspectors with multiple entry visas valid for at least one year.
The additional protocol cannot work miracles but it does improve the IAEA's chances of discovering the true extent of a country's nuclear activities.
"There's never a 100-percent guarantee when it comes to verification but the additional protocol raises the level of security," an IAEA official told AFP recently.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
No new nukes to U.S. arsenal, Nunn urges
Ex-senator says move may hurt nation's security
By GEORGE EDMONSON
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
12/17/03
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/1203/17turnernti.html
WASHINGTON -- Former Democratic U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn criticized the Bush administration Tuesday for exploring the possibility of developing new nuclear weapons.
Nunn, senator from Georgia from 1972 to 1997, said the recent move dims prospects for reducing the international threat of nuclear attacks.
"I think it's very damaging to America's security position because I think it sets back our effort and our moral persuasion effectiveness in trying to move the world away from nuclear weapons," he said. "So I think it's counterproductive to our own security interests."
Congress recently approved funding for research into smaller nuclear weapons and what are called "bunker-buster" bombs to attack deep underground facilities. Funding also was approved to improve the testing site in Nevada.
Nunn said averting catastrophe from weapons of mass destruction will require unprecedented cooperation: "We have to have that cooperation, not because cooperation will give us a warm, fuzzy feeling of community, but because every other method will fail," he said.
Any unilateral action "that is not absolutely necessary" works against further cooperation, he said, adding that even the massive military power of the United States is not sufficient to deal with the problems.
"And when we take actions in other arenas of the world that look like we don't need or want any help, I think it's counterproductive to what I consider to be our most important security problem," Nunn said. He added that he hoped the issue would be addressed by all candidates in the upcoming presidential campaign.
Nunn is co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization he founded with Ted Turner in 2001. He and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) helped establish a threat reduction program to help Russia and the former Soviet republics deal with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Nunn spoke at a symposium on Capitol Hill the NTI sponsored with Kazakhstan, which has been praised for dealing with nuclear weapons after it declared independence 12 years ago.
At that time, the country had 1,410 nuclear warheads and was the site of a nuclear test site as well as an anthrax production facility. All of the warheads have been removed from Kazakhstan. The nuclear test site has been shut down and the anthrax facility's capability has been eliminated.
"Iran and other nations could learn from Kazakhstan that a nation can grow, modernize, make progress and gain stature not in spite of renouncing nuclear weapons but because of it," Nunn said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
2 Times Reporters to Testify in Scientist's Case Against U.S.
December 18, 2003
By JACQUES STEINBERG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/national/18PAPE.html
Two reporters for The New York Times are scheduled to give depositions today in a lawsuit filed against the federal government by Wen Ho Lee, the scientist at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory who was suspected of espionage in 1999.
In the suit, Dr. Lee asserts that his privacy rights were violated by leaks of personal information from his employment records to The Times and to other news organizations.
A federal judge in the District of Columbia has ordered the reporters to provide information about their sources - an order that they indicated in previous court filings that they might not obey, despite the potential prospect of jail time. That order, issued in October, represents more than the latest development in the case of Dr. Lee. It is also an example of what some First Amendment lawyers view as the recent undermining of longstanding protections of how reporters gather information.
In August, for example, Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago writing in another case, expressed skepticism about any special privilege for reporters. Courts that had extended the privilege to nonconfidential sources "may be skating on thin ice," Judge Posner said.
"We do not see why there needs to be special criteria merely because the possessor of the documents or other evidence sought is a journalist," Judge Posner wrote, in a decision that compelled a group of reporters to produce recordings of their interviews with a witness in an Irish terrorist case.
Last week, Judge Lynwood Smith of Federal District Court in Alabama ordered that a reporter for Sports Illustrated provide the court with the name of a confidential source for an article published in May about Mike Price, who was then the head football coach at the University of Alabama. The article included accusations of sexual indiscretions by Mr. Price in a Florida hotel. Mr. Price was later fired.
He is now suing both Time Inc., which owns Sports Illustrated, and the reporter, Don Yaeger, for libel.
In ordering the depositions of The Times journalists and others in the case of Dr. Lee, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson of Federal District Court in the District of Columbia wrote that "the court has some doubt that a truly worthy First Amendment interest resides in protecting the identity of government personnel who disclose to the press information that the Privacy Act says they may not reveal."
The Times reporters ordered to provide depositions are Jeff Gerth and James Risen. In addition, Judge Jackson has ordered that three other reporters - Robert Drogin of The Los Angeles Times, Josef Hebert of The Associated Press and Pierre Thomas, formerly of CNN - cooperate with similar depositions in the coming weeks. Those who do not answer certain questions - specifically regarding "the identify of any officer" who "provided information to them directly about Wen Ho Lee" - could be found in contempt and sent to jail to compel disclosures.
Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an advocacy organization partly financed by The Times Company's charitable foundation and other media companies, said that Judge Jackson's order represented a particular threat to journalists in states that had not enacted so-called shield laws to protect journalists' sources and often their notes. Such laws have been adopted in recent years in more than 30 states.
Those laws, as well as similar protections extended by courts across the country, generally trace their roots to a 1972 Supreme Court case, Branzburg v. Hayes. That case, the last one in which the court ruled on the issue, has been interpreted as setting forth a series of tests for compelling a reporter's testimony, including whether the reporter's information goes "to the heart" of a particular case and cannot be obtained through other means.
"This particular case has the potential to be the first major `reporter's privilege' showdown in 30 years," Ms. Dalglish said.
George Freeman, assistant general counsel for The Times Company, said that what was at stake in the questioning of the reporters was a fundamental element of the journalistic process: the protection of people who supply information to reporters on the condition of anonymity.
Dr. Lee is seeking the reporters' testimony because in order to sue the government under the Privacy Act, he must identify which government agency provided the journalists with information from his records. Writing in 1999, Mr. Gerth and Mr. Risen described Dr. Lee as a suspect in the supposed transfer of information about American nuclear technology to China. In the articles, they wrote about aspects of his employment history and personal finances.
Dr. Lee was later indicted on 59 felony counts, but after nearly nine months in solitary confinement, no evidence of espionage emerged. He was released after pleading guilty to one felony count of mishandling nuclear weapons data.
A lawyer for Dr. Lee, Brian A. Sun, declined to comment.
-------- nevada
Nev. Lawyers Outline Nuke Dump Strategy
December 18, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nevada's legal team will tell a federal appeals court that the government is trying to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain even though it does not meet the original legal requirements for a dump, lawyers said Thursday.
The hearing Jan. 14 before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will cover six lawsuits that the state filed against the federal government between 2000 and 2002, and that have been consolidated.
For Nevada, which has failed in the political arena for over two decades to stop the dump, the courts might represent the state's best chance of keeping out 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive waste, lawyers said at a media briefing. The waste would be buried for 10,000 years at a desert site 90 miles from Las Vegas.
``I think that this is the first time that any court in this country is really going to look at the fundamental legal merits of this project,'' said Joe Egan, Nevada's lead lawyer in the Yucca case.
Egan and other lawyers outlined a series of arguments that accuse the government of learning, after it began studying Yucca Mountain, that the site could not satisfy Congress's original mandate of ``geological isolation.'' Instead studies demonstrated that the site would be at risk of dangerous seepage, they said.
Rather than abandon the site, the Energy Department changed the rules and declared it suitable, the lawyers said.
They accused the department of improperly evaluating the environmental effects of the project and said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham unlawfully recommended its approval to President Bush. They contend the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed to comply with the law in developing licensing rules and standards for the project.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the department has followed the law and that a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain would be safe. He said Nevada's lawsuits ``are simply misguided.''
``In the end, if the science doesn't meet the standards, it's not going to be built. In the end, we believe the science will meet the standards,'' Davis said.
Congress and Bush approved sending nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain last year, but the department does not expect to open the site until at least 2010.
The department still must apply for a license from the NRC, which it plans to do a year from now.
-------- washington
Hanford's first plutonium facility being dismantled
By Shannon Dininny
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 18, 2003
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001795339_hanford19m.html
YAKIMA - For four decades, the Hanford nuclear reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear-weapons arsenal, including the atomic bomb that devastated Nagasaki in World War II.
Now, more than half a century later, workers at the south-central Washington site are tearing down a plutonium facility for the first time as they clean up a legacy of radioactive and hazardous waste.
"There are only a couple of places in the country, in the world, that deal with producing, let alone processing, plutonium," Keith Klein, manager of the federal Energy Department's Richland office, said yesterday in a telephone interview.
"These facilities are unique, and they pose some unique challenges in terms of taking them down."
Hanford has about 1,400 buildings that need to be deactivated and demolished as part of the effort to clean up the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Most of the buildings are industrial, about 400 are considered radioactive and another 200 are labeled as nuclear.
Nuclear sites are the most heavily contaminated and difficult to clean up. The Plutonium Concentration Facility falls into that category and is the first plutonium facility that Hanford workers are dismantling, Klein said.
The three-story, 3,500-square-foot building played a critical role in the production of plutonium at Hanford during the first decades of the Cold War.
Spent fuel rods from Hanford's nine nuclear reactors were dissolved into solution, which was then sent to this building for processing so the plutonium could be concentrated back to a solid metal form.
The building is highly contaminated, both due to the nature of the work and several incidents during its operation from 1956 to 1964, including a 1963 fire that spread significant amounts of radioactivity.
For that reason, a lot of planning and engineering goes into figuring out how to dismantle or demolish these structures, Klein said.
Cleanup at the site is estimated to cost between $50(billion and $60(billion and will be completed by 2035.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Serbs May Help Patrol Afghanistan, but Qualms Abound
December 18, 2003
By NICHOLAS WOOD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/europe/18SERB.html?pagewanted=all&position=
PRESEVO VALLEY, Serbia and Montenegro - A convoy of jeeps sped though an Albanian village in southern Serbia one recent day. Inside, troops with their faces hidden by camouflage masks sat with their guns at the ready.
The men were part of Serbia's gendarmerie, an elite paramilitary police force that routinely patrols this region in search what they call Albanian terrorists.
In 1999 similar Serbian forces were bombed by NATO warplanes as they rooted out ethnic Albanian rebels - and killed ethnic Albanian civilians - in the neighboring province of Kosovo. American officials now see these special forces as potential allies.
The governments of Serbia and Montenegro, the two republics that until early this year made up what was left of Yugoslavia, have offered a contingent of 700 troops and policemen to work alongside NATO soldiers in Afghanistan.
The offer, first made in July and explored in September at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., is in abeyance pending the outcome of parliamentary elections in Serbia on Dec. 28.
But Serbia's very readiness to send troops - and Washington's apparent willingness to consider accepting them - show how much the world has changed since the ethnic conflicts of the 1990's and the atrocities attributed to Serbs and their leader at the time, Slobodan Milosevic, dominated world headlines.
Now Serbia, which was isolated and impoverished by a decade of war and violence, wants to join NATO. The United States wants to foster democracy, although the old nationalisms still make the task difficult.
For instance, the United States Congress insists that Serbia hand over war crimes suspects to the United Nations tribunal in The Hague if it expects to receive further aid.
But Milos Vasic, a defense analyst and writer with the Serbian weekly Vreme, said that United States had put the issue of human rights to one side in its desire to see a broad coalition of troops serving in Afghanistan or Iraq.
"The Americans want a token Serbian force," he said in an interview. "This is regarded as a completely separate issue from cooperation with The Hague."
Serbian nationalists and human rights groups alike have united in criticism, believing for different reasons that it is too soon for Serbian forces to serve with NATO soldiers.
Vojislav Kostunica, the former Yugoslav president whose Serbian Democratic Party is predicted to fare well in the coming elections, warned in a Montenegrin newspaper, Vijesti, "Our soldiers will come back in metal coffins, like the Americans."
Natasa Kandic, a lawyer and veteran human rights campaigner in Belgrade, is one of many liberals who say the security forces - blamed for thousands of civilian deaths during the Kosovo conflict - should not take part in any foreign mission until they have been properly reformed, and until senior commanders accused of war crimes have been tried.
"The Serbian police are not a formation who should go anywhere," Ms. Kandic said, adding that any checks were not sufficient. "How they are going to bring peace and human rights to another country, it is impossible to know," she said.
Serbia's current deputy interior minister and head of public security, Sreten Lukic, has been indicted by The Hague tribunal for his alleged role in the Kosovo conflict. He was the commander of the uniformed police in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999. The current prime minister, Zoran Zivkovic, has refused to hand him over to the tribunal.
Whatever the politicians decide, the commander of the gendarmerie, Gen. Goran Radosavljevic, is preparing to supply at least 250 of the 700-member contingent, all of whom would be volunteers.
In an interview, he said senior officers were learning English and receiving human rights training. He maintained that his troops were well suited to work in Afghanistan.
"Our people have a lot of experience in war situations," said the general, who was a deputy commander of police operations during the war in Kosovo.
His 2,800-member brigade was formed in September 2001 and is recruited from units that have been accused of direct involvement in war crimes. It specializes in antiterrorism operations and is also trained in coping with natural disasters, using explosives and finding and disarming mines.
Some of its most recent recruits include 80 former members of the Red Berets, a paramilitary police unit that was disbanded earlier this year after some of them were implicated in the killing of the Serbian prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, in March.
A NATO official said the possibility of Serbian forces working in Afghanistan was a "viable idea" if those taking part were checked. Implication in war crimes would exclude service, he said.
Ms. Kandic, for instance, says General Radosavljevic is guilty of complicity in genocide in Kosovo. She said operations by the Serbian police to remove hundreds of bodies from mass graves and transport them to Serbia at the end of the war could not have taken place without his help.
General Radosavljevic denied that there was "any evidence" that he or any of his senior officers were responsible for war crimes. But he openly opposes cooperation with The Hague tribunal. In October he attended a protest organized by the police in support of Mr. Lukic.
The brigade's commander asserts that his force is now multiethnic, including Muslims, ethnic Hungarians, and even seven or eight ethnic Albanians. But new recruits who trained near the town of Kula, some 70 miles northwest of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, marched to the tune of Serbian nationalist songs alongside murals depicting battle scenes from Serbian history.
The gendarmerie already has contact with American troops serving with the NATO contingent that helps keep the peace in Kosovo, which is still formally a Serbian province, though one with an overwhelmingly Albanian population and a United Nations administration.
The Serbian units and foreign peacekeepers meet each month to discuss monitoring of the province's boundary - in 2000 and 2001, Kosovar Albanian insurgents fought Yugoslav troops here in the Presevo Valley in an attempt to unite three Albanian-populated towns in southern Serbia with Kosovo.
The rebellion was quashed in May 2001, and NATO officials praised the Serbian military for its comparative restraint in dealing with the uprising. The gendarmerie is now responsible for patrolling the region.
"I'm very happy with the results our unit has had in southern Serbia," said General Radosavljevic.
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A Young Afghan Dares to Mention the Unmentionable
December 18, 2003
By AMY WALDMAN and CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/asia/18AFGH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 17 - Malalai Joya pushed her black head scarf forward to cover her hair fully, then opened her mouth.
Out poured a torrent of words, in a voice rising with emotion. Why, she asked the delegates assembled here on Wednesday to ratify a new constitution for Afghanistan, were her countrymen and women tolerating the presence of the "criminals" who had destroyed the country?
"They should be brought to national and international justice," she said. "If our people forgive them, history will not."
It took a moment for the 502 delegates to absorb the import of her words. When they did, the result was bedlam: shouts of "Death to Communism!" and a rush by some toward the stage, and toward the diminutive Ms. Joya as well.
All of 25, Ms. Joya, a social worker from Farah Province, in the southwest, had crossed several lines at once. She had spoken her mind as few Afghan women dare to do. More important, as many interpreted her words, she had spoken against the mujahedeen, or holy warriors, who fought and humbled the Soviet Union. They are a sacrosanct constituency in this country, and a powerful political force in this assembly, a traditional meeting called a loya jirga.
Many Afghans, however, now call those commanders warlords, blaming them for the destruction of Kabul in a vicious civil war that began in 1992 after the fall of the Communist government and ended only when the Taliban conquered the country in 1996 and imposed their harsh brand of Islamic law.
But few dare say "warlord" aloud.
Ms. Joya's experience helps explain why. The assembly chairman, Sebaghatullah Mojeddidi, himself a former mujahedeen leader, called for security officers and tried to throw her out. He was persuaded not to, but he then asked her to apologize to the gathering. She refused. He finally accepted the apologies of others on her behalf.
"My sister, you did an astounding thing," Mr. Mojeddidi said. "You have upset everybody here."
At a news conference, he said: "In fact we wanted to take her out for the good of herself. Who can stand against mujahedeen to defend her? They've stood against big powers. "You know mujahedeen when they get angry at these things. They don't care about anyone."
Two hours after she spoke, an ashen-faced Ms. Joya was in the United Nations tent at the assembly, escorted by two women, members of the security force. She later returned to the assembly but was closely watched to ensure her safety. Amnesty International issued a press release saying that some people present when she spoke had been heard vowing to kill her.
After a similar assembly last year, a man who had complained about jihadis, the most religiously conservative mujahedeen, was so seriously threatened that he and his family won political asylum in the West.
By accident or intent, Ms. Joya had stepped directly on the fault line of a power struggle that has already emerged in the first few days of this gathering.
On one side are the country's American-backed interim president, Hamid Karzai, and his allies, who support a draft constitution that ensures a strong presidency, in part to check the power of the warlords.
On the other side are the jihadis. Many favor a parliamentary system that would limit the power of Mr. Karzai and give greater weight to Islam than the current draft does. They are suspicious of Western involvement in the country's political affairs.
While Mr. Karzai's faction, backed by the international community, may ultimately have the edge, his opponents have repeatedly showed their strength.
When, for example, the chairman could not restore order after Ms. Joya's speech, one of the men she was probably referring to - Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an imposing mujahedeen commander and Islamist scholar whom many accuse of human rights atrocities - had little trouble doing so.
He took the stage to quiet the crowd, then delivered a 15-minute lecture (most delegates, Ms. Joya included, get two or three minutes) implicitly accusing her of being a Communist. "When you are calling those heroes who fought for the freedom of the country criminals," he said, "it means you are a criminal yourself."
The previous day, Mr. Sayyaf and his allies had managed to gain control of most of the assembly committees, where the real discussions on the draft constitution will take place.
Under a plan devised by the constitutional commission and the United Nations, the 502 delegates will divide into 10 committees of 50 people each to allow for more manageable discussion. The real aim, however, is to prevent religious conservatives and those opposed to a strong presidency from steamrolling the debate by intimidation or sheer force of numbers, officials have admitted.
The jihadis had opposed the idea of committees on just those grounds, then suddenly agreed to the idea on Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Sayyaf called for the committees to be carefully structured so that each included religious scholars, jihadis, lawyers and elders.
Later he won his way, a major concession by the constitutional commission, which had intended to use a computer-run random selection, one foreign official said.
At least six of the 10 committees have chosen jihadis as chairmen, including the former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, and Mr. Sayyaf. No women were chosen to lead any committees, though there are about 100 women serving as delegates.
The 10 committee chairmen will wield considerable influence because they will be part of the final reconciliation group that will prepare amendments to put to the vote of the full assembly.
The jihadis' control of the committees had upset moderate delegates, and may have provoked Ms. Joya's tirade on Wednesday. She referred to the chairmen in her speech.
In a brief interview on Monday, before she became a very public figure, Ms. Joya said she worked for a nongovernmental organization in Farah, helping at the main hospital and running literacy programs for women, and a nursery and an orphanage.
Her one goal, she said, was to "improve the women of Afghanistan." She complained that security in Farah Province, where factional commanders hold sway, often fighting amongst themselves, was so bad that it was impossible to provide health care outside the capital. And she had pointed out that she was the namesake of a legendary Pashtun woman, Malalai, who had fought the British in 1880.
Ms. Joya's comments fiercely divided the women at the assembly. Some called her brave. Others called her unprintable names for soiling the memory of the warriors who had spilled blood for her country.
Fatima Gailani, a member of the constitutional commission, called her rash. "I think she's very young," Ms. Gailani said.
She said she had met with Ms. Joya and explained to her that for the country to move forward with unity, women had to proceed carefully.
"Till when should we keep quiet?" Ms. Joya had responded.
The answer was easy, Ms. Gailani said: "Till we are strong, till the country is strong, till our democracy is strong, till women's situation in this country is strong. Then we can open our mouths."
But Safia Sidiqi, a deputy chairwoman of the assembly, defended Ms. Joya's right to speak freely. "If you are working for democracy here in this country, this is one way, this is one step," she said. "People should have freedom of expression."
-------- arms
European Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Market Growing Rapidly
London - Dec 18, 2003
SpaceDaily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/uav-03zzl.html
The latest study from Frost & Sullivan reveals that due to recent military developments and the United States' use of UAVs the global market for unmanned aerial vehicles is expanding and accelerating the development of such specialized weapons in Europe.
Over the last two decades, the propensity for small-scale, low-intensity conflicts (LIC) has increased dramatically worldwide. As various armies participate in more expeditionary roles in overlapping geographic areas and use interoperable systems, seamless information sharing has become vital.
"UAVs play a key role in the run for battlespace information dominance and will be increasingly present in future conflicts," notes Shai Shammai, research analyst at Frost & Sullivan. He goes on to say, "Their strongest selling point is probably their endurance capability of quietly loitering over targets for over 24 hours."
Another strong appeal to the military sector is the ability of the technology to enable remote fighting, reducing the number of troops in the front line. With better viewing and launching angles than helicopters, modern UAVs are more accurate and cause less collateral damage.
In Europe, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy will invest most heavily in UAVs. France, Germany and Israel already host some of the leading UAV manufacturers such as Elbit, IAI, Sagem SA, EADS and Dassault Aviation, and is gearing up for the next generation of UAVs.
The European aggregated military UAV budget is expected to reach around EUR 5.5 billion between 2003 and 2012.
"This is a clear indication of a market willing to rely on UAV solutions. Application-wise, the market is moving into tactical UAVs (TUAVs) and lethal UAVs (LUAVs), and possibly high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) UAVs and unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs)," reports Shammai.
European manufacturers lag far behind their U.S. competitors and the largest gap lies within the HALE UAVs and UCAV segments. While the United States already has an operational HALE system, the Global Hawk, Europe is yet to develop any corresponding application. With respect to UCVAs, the United States invests heavily in these applications and is expected to have an operational application by the end of the decade. Europe is engaged in a couple of projects not yet in the same level of intensity.
With the realization that unmanned aircraft form the aerial weapons of the future, the United Kingdom might abandon its plans to acquire more Eurofighters and instead increase focus on developing UAV based capabilities.
There are high expectations from the commercial and civil markets for UAVs in Europe. In civil and commercial applications, UAVs are deemed capable of replacing manned aircraft as well as some ground and satellite applications.
In the commercial market, increasing potential client awareness of these novel applications and developing business models that eliminate initial high investments can drive up market revenues. The introduction of a pay per usage (PPU) model, for example, allows customers to pay only for flying hours instead of requiring a purchase of the system.
The commercial market is also application-led, where customers are more interested in cost-effective value additions than the technology itself. Hence, UAV manufacturers need to focus on comprehensive solutions with short investments cycles. Initially, the demand market is likely to be dominated by big companies such as oil majors that operate in remote non-urban environments and have potentially fast payback times.
In the civil markets, most UAV deployments are expected to be intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) applications. The challenge for manufacturers would be to introduce downgraded, cheaper military applications. The growing focus on homeland security solutions is the main revenue driver as the European Union expands and new ISR needs emerge.
The demand for HALE UAVs for maritime surveillance is also expected to grow with Europe's need to monitor its coastline for security and environmental protection. Potential applications for UAVs include wildfire monitoring, illegal fishery monitoring and swifter oil spill discovery.
-------- business
Halliburton Unit Denies Gouging KBR
Says It Saved U.S. Money in Iraq Fuel Deal
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9734-2003Dec17?language=printer
The Halliburton Co. subsidiary fighting allegations that it charged too much to import fuel into Iraq said yesterday that it actually saved the U.S. government $164 million by not relying on a sole supply source.
In outlining the company's written rebuttal to Pentagon auditors, which it submitted yesterday, KBR chief executive Randy Harl said the Army Corps of Engineers pushed the company to buy the fuel from Kuwait, where it paid a single subcontractor $2.27 a gallon to import it into Iraq.
Harl said KBR balked at having only one fuel source and asked the Corps to allow the company to bring in fuel from Turkey as well. According to Army Corps documents, KBR paid $1.18 a gallon to import fuel from Turkey.
Defense auditors have accused KBR of overcharging $61 million by purchasing fuel from Kuwait instead of from Turkey.
"The real story here is that the original mission detailed by the Army Corps of Engineers only included buying fuel from Kuwait," Harl said during a conference call. "KBR initiated the idea to source fuel from Turkey and presented it to the Corps. Because of KBR's initiative, we actually saved the U.S. taxpayer approximately $164 million by having two sources of fuel for the Iraqi people."
Bob Faletti, spokesman for the Army Corps, said that the Corps "might have" directed KBR initially to buy only from Kuwait but that KBR needed to go to both places.
"Kuwait could not provide the quantity needed. Turkey could not provide the quantity needed. Kuwait was much closer to the download point when we started this. The main thing was the importance to get fuel to the Iraqi citizens who were very close to civil unrest, thus a potential danger to our troops and citizens in the city of Baghdad."
The Army Corps has said that its own audits found nothing improper.
Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim said yesterday that KBR did not profit from the potential overcharge, adding that the problem may have stemmed from an antiquated accounting and cost-estimating system.
"From what I've seen so far . . . I have no basis whatsoever to see anything nefarious," Zakheim told reporters at a breakfast meeting, according to Bloomberg News.
The allegations of overcharging appear in the preliminary findings of a draft report by the Defense Contract Audit Agency. KBR had until yesterday to respond. The audit agency will prepare a formal report and send it to the Army Corps contracting office in Texas. It will be up to the Corps to take any action based on the report.
The draft audit also found that KBR may have tried to overcharge the government $67 million to operate U.S. military mess halls. KBR estimated that the project would cost $220 million but found a subcontractor that could do the work for $153 million.
KBR's Harl said yesterday that that potential overcharge is a "misunderstanding" because KBR never did the work or billed for it.
"Even if our proposal had been accepted, it would not have resulted in an overcharge because invoices are always supported by actual costs, not estimates," he said.
Harl said the company can explain the discrepancy in fuel-importing costs between Turkey and Kuwait. For example, although the trip to import fuel from Kuwait is shorter, he said, security risks are greater in the southern part of Iraq, which increases costs.
He said Kuwait also has a more limited pool of bidders for the subcontracts. "Financial and industrial resources are controlled by a relatively small number of people, many of whom have intermingled business relationships," he said. "This is not a criticism. It is just a fact."
But Walid Khadduri, editor of the Cyprus-based Middle East Economic Survey, said the fuel from Kuwait still should not cost that much more. "You don't expect to see a real big difference," he said. "It shouldn't cost that much."
Researcher Richard S. Drezen contributed to this report.
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Pentagon Boosts High-Tech Tagging
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9964-2003Dec17?language=printer
The Pentagon, just like Wal-Mart, is counting on a couple of start-ups to help it change the way it does business.
Both the Department of Defense and the world's largest retailer have said in recent months that they want their suppliers by 2005 to use a tracking technology called radio frequency identification, or RFID for short.
It's a higher-tech version of bar codes, using tags that have wireless antennas that can be placed on individual items or large cases of merchandise. The technology is supposed to improve a company's (or government's) bottom line by smoothing the "supply chain." If the technology works, say advocates, products arrive on time, get where they're supposed to and are easily trackable along the way.
At the moment, the two main companies developing RFID technology are Alien Technology of Morgan Hill, Calif., and Matrics of Columbia, according to Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Alan Estevez, who is promoting the technology in the Defense Department.
Concerns about privacy and the technology's high cost have so far prevented widespread commercial adoption of RFID. (If someone buys a tagged t-shirt, will he be followed by a Wal-Mart employee or, worse yet, a government worker wherever he goes?)
Nevertheless, Estevez said the Pentagon is embracing RFID because it can improve operations. "This works," said Estevez. "We've got to quit fooling around and make this our standard." The Pentagon has been using RFID intermittently for years, including during conflicts in Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo, he said.
Matrics, which has just 50 employees, was founded by former National Security Agency technology experts. "We have a vision of creating a network where items talk to humans and talk to computers," says Piyush Sodha, Matrics chief executive. For instance, Sodha envisions a clothing tag that tells a washing machine it needs a delicate cycle, and a refrigerator that notifies people when they're out of milk.
Such uses for RFID, says Sodha, are 10 years away. But eventually, "items and appliances will be talking to each other," he said.
Several investor groups in the Washington area have bet on Matrics. Local venture capital and angel funds that have invested in the company include Novak Biddle Venture Partners, the Carlyle Group, Allied Capital, Venturehouse Group, Riggs Capital Partners, the Washington Dinner Club, WomenAngels.net and Capital Investors.
Matrics now has a total of $16 million in private equity investments. Because some high-net-worth individuals in Washington have invested in several of these funds, they stand to lose or win a big chunk. Mark Ein, who runs Venturehouse Group, says he knows people who are in the Matrics deal five different ways.
Meanwhile the area's largest venture fund, New Enterprise Associates, has put its money on Alien Technology.
Matrics now has seven paying customers, says Sodha, including a Las Vegas airport, a paper mill and a car manufacturer. The airport, McCarran International, has agreed to pay Matrics $25 million over five years to tag its bags. About 20 companies or organizations are trying out the technology, Sodha says.
On Dec. 2, the Pentagon held a summit to discuss the possibilities of having its 43,000 suppliers use RFID. A pilot program will start around February and will most likely be with a large aerospace company, said Estevez.
The Pentagon also plans to start using tags itself, and currently has two trials underway -- one tracking food sent to servicemen and women, and the other following shipments of biohazard suits. Estevez wouldn't say which company or companies are running those tests. In July, the Defense Department will start collecting bids for creating the tags for the Pentagon, he said. Estevez said he does not know how much this effort will cost the government.
One reason the technology has not been widely used in the private sector is its high cost.
Estevez admits he's getting letters from people worried that the government will soon be watching their every move. "I'm not tracking them," he says. "I'm tracking my inventory."
But even supporters of the technology acknowledge that the Big Brother fears remain a major obstacle for those promoting RFID in the government or private sector.
Estevez says he's talked to representatives at the General Services Administration, the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security who are all watching to see how the Defense Department fares.
There is a staggered rollout schedule and it is still in flux. The Pentagon now expects its top 100 suppliers to be on board by January 2005, then the top 500 by July of that year and the remaining companies by 2006. Many questions remain about exact standards and radio frequency regulation; a second summit has been planned for all the players to gather in Washington in February or March of the new year.
Shannon Henry writes about Washington's technology culture every other Thursday. Her e-mail address is henrys@washpost.com.
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Europeans Seek More U.S. Defense Work
EADS Intensifies Rivalry With Boeing
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9920-2003Dec17.html
Europe's largest aerospace and defense company is spending heavily to crack the U.S. defense market but is making slow progress in the face of the Pentagon's reluctance to award sensitive programs to foreign contractors and persistent tensions between the United States and its European allies over support for the war in Iraq.
Even the business and ethical troubles at Boeing Co. have provided no major opening for European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., known as EADS, which is 15 percent-owned by the French government and has headquarters in Paris and Munich.
"My view is that Boeing is a fierce and able competitor in all markets," said Ralph Crosby, chief executive of EADS North America. "I don't see it abating."
EADS has proved its competitiveness in recent years as its Airbus subsidiary has steadily chipped away at Boeing's lead in commercial aircraft. For the first time, Airbus will surpass Boeing this year in worldwide sales of airliners for the commercial market.
But in the U.S. defense market the European giant pales next to Boeing. EADS had worldwide revenue last year of about $36 billion, of which only an estimated $500,000 was in U.S. defense contracts. Chicago-based Boeing, in contrast, had sales to the Pentagon last year of about $25 billion.
EADS's only major contract before its latest push was a 1980s deal to provide 98 helicopters to the U.S. Coast Guard. Its most recent sales have largely come in partnership with Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp., the Pentagon's largest contractor. With Lockheed Martin, EADS is expected to sign a contract this month to deliver two patrol planes to the Coast Guard in 2006 and has signed a contract to provide radar for a Coast Guard cutter.
EADS set up a U.S. holding company in May and tapped Crosby, a well known industry figure who spent 20 years at Northrop Grumman Corp., to lead it. The company opened a helicopter plant this year in Mississippi, a state with two Republican senators, Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on homeland security.
The company is spending $80 million to upgrade its refueling tankers to make them more attractive to the Air Force. It is also considering a listing on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq to raise its American profile.
"As a newly focused competitor in the market, we [must] build confidence among our customers," said Crosby. "I am pleased with the progress that we're making. . . . Not everything can be done 100 percent here, but we're mindful of the need for a substantial amount of work to be done in the U.S."
One key area that EADS has targeted for potential growth is the tanker market, now dominated by Boeing. It is also a market that is causing Boeing enormous headaches. The company has come under investigation by the Pentagon's inspector general for possible unethical behavior during recent negotiations to sell and lease 100 tankers to the Air Force.
-------- iraq
Saddam shown videos of mass graves
GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN,
Thu 18 Dec 2003
Scotsman
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1386352003
INTERROGATORS trying to get Saddam Hussein to confess to his crimes have shown him video recordings of mass graves, torture and executions in the hope that they can break his spirit.
The former Iraqi leader, who is being held in the Baghdad area, has also been shown footage of anti-Saddam protests, although US officials said his initial response had been disappointing.
Two officials with access to interrogation reports told the USA Today newspaper that the video technique was being used in a bid to provoke Saddam into making unguarded statements. One official said interrogators were analysing his every "sweat gland, word and twitch".
The Iraqi Governing Council yesterday denied reports that US forces had moved Saddam to the Gulf state of Qatar for the interrogation. A council member, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, said: "There is no proof or confirmed information on this. Saddam is still in Iraq ... God willing ... he will be tried in Iraq in public by an Iraqi court."
Another council member, Adnan Pachachi, said the US administrator, Paul Bremer, had categorically denied Saddam had been taken out of the country. US officials have said in public only that Saddam, captured by US forces near Tikrit on Saturday, was at an "undisclosed location".
The arrest has failed to bring a respite from violence. Yesterday a petrol tanker exploded in al-Bayaa, a poor south-western district of Baghdad, killing at least ten Iraqis.
Iraqi police said the tanker had been packed with explosives and might have been driven by a suicide bomber planning to attack a nearby police station.
However, eyewitnesses said the tanker's petrol exploded when police opened fire on the vehicle. US forces said the explosion was caused by a traffic accident. About 20 people were injured in the incident.
Ahmed Kadhim Ibrahim, the deputy interior minister, said the dead were Iraqis, and that the lorry's driver had planned to strike the police station.
A charred, crumpled bus lay in the intersection after the blast.
"I was leaving home when I heard an explosion and saw vehicles burning at al-Bayaa intersection," said Ahmed Ayyoub, 23, a bus driver.
"I ran to the place to see if there were people injured. There were lots of human remains on the sidewalks and we started collecting them."
The rescue effort was more difficult because it was still dark at the time, he added.
Despite the coalition's major victory over the weekend with Saddam's capture, violence has continued in predominantly Sunni areas west and north of Baghdad, once Saddam's power base.
Violent protests in Ramadi and Fallujah followed a period of relative quiet, although attacks on US troops there are occurring less often than in early November.
In the northern city of Mosul, assailants shot and killed a policeman who was on his way to work, and Iraqi security forces there opened fire on pro-Saddam protesters, injuring nine, witnesses said.
With attacks on coalition troops showing no signs of abating, US forces north of Baghdad staged a raid in the town of Samarra, detaining at least a dozen guerrilla suspects after catching almost 80 others, including an alleged rebel financier.
The 4th Infantry Division, which was responsible for the capture of Saddam, launched the raids, codenamed Operation Ivy Blizzard, with the assistance of Iraqi forces.
Backed by armoured vehicles and Apache helicopters, US troops conducted door-to-door searches designed to stamp out guerrilla resistance. At least a dozen people were detained.
"Samarra has been a little bit of a thorn in our side," said US army Colonel Nate Sassanan.
"It hasn't come along as quickly as other cities in the rebuilding of Iraq. This operation is designed to bring them up to speed."
As US officials are questioning Saddam, further charges are being added to the list of crimes he could face at trial.
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said yesterday fresh evidence suggested that most, if not all, Kuwaitis who disappeared after Iraq invaded its oil-rich neighbour in August 1990 were killed.
"After many years of manoeuvring and denial by the previous government of Iraq, a grim truth is unveiling itself," he said. "The discovery of mass graves in Iraq containing the remains of Kuwaitis is a gruesome and devastating development."
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U.S. Soldier Killed in Ambush in Iraq
December 18, 2003
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/middleeast/18CND-IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 18 - An American soldier was killed in an ambush in Baghdad on Wednesday, the United States military said today, in the first American combat-related casualty since the former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, was captured.
A United States Central Command statement said that the soldier from the First Armored Division was ambushed while on patrol in the Iraqi capital. Another soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were wounded, it said.
"The one this morning was the first since his capture," a military spokesman said by telephone, referring to Mr. Hussein and the death reported today.
The insurgency against the American occupation in Iraq has shown few signs of abating since Mr. Hussein was uncovered hiding in an underground hole dug into the courtyard of a farm in the northern city of Tikrit, Mr. Hussein's hometown.
A powerful explosion early on Wednesday morning killed at least 13 people and injured 22, when a truck collided with a bus at an intersection in western Baghdad.
The Iraqi police initially reported that the explosion was caused by a bomb in the truck, but the United States military said later that tests showed no traces of explosives, and that the truck appeared to be a fuel tanker that had crashed.
The explosion set nerves on edge in Baghdad, where violence has risen since the capture of Saddam Hussein on Saturday night.
The force of the blast was huge, even by the standards of a nation now accustomed to stupendous explosions, and among the victims were two young girls and a boy.
"It was horrible," said Ahmed Suheil, an Iraqi policeman at the scene, who said the truck was packed with large amounts of explosives. "I have never seen a bomb this big."
The military kept up its pressure in Samarra, north of Baghdad, a city considered a major center of the insurgency. It reported the arrests of two dozen people in raids there on Wednesday, after a sweep the day before in which 73 suspected resistors were detained, along with a substantial amount of bomb-making material.
"Samarra has been a little bit of a thorn in our side," Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman, of the Fourth Infantry Division, told reporters. "It hasn't come along as quickly as other cities in the rebuilding of Iraq. This operation is designed to bring them up to speed."
On Wednesday night the raids continued, as Apache helicopters hovered over Samarra and tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles rumbled through the streets.
Since Mr. Hussein was captured, there have been violent demonstrations, several of which have ended in firefights with American troops in areas north and west of Baghdad, where support for Mr. Hussein remains strong.
On Wednesday in Bayji, a northern oil-producing city, soldiers fired warning shots over the heads of protesters who were spitting at soldiers and yelling as they paraded with portraits of Mr. Hussein. Several threw rocks at tanker trucks ferrying gasoline from Turkey.
"We are demonstrating because those Americans are Jews and we are Muslims," said one protester, Arkan Abdullah, who was carrying a picture of Mr. Hussein. "We can never accept their presence in Iraq, with Saddam or without Saddam."
On Wednesday delegates on the Iraqi Governing Council, the 25-member body appointed by the Americans to help run Iraq, denied reports that Mr. Hussein had been taken out of Iraq, possibly to Qatar, on the Persian Gulf.
"Saddam Hussein is still in greater Baghdad and will remain there to be tried in Iraq," Mowaffak al- Rubaie, a council member, said at a news conference here.
Before the explosion on Wednesday, there had been two fatal suicide bombings in Iraq since Mr. Hussein was arrested.
On Sunday, only hours after Mr. Hussein was caught but before the news became public, at least 17 Iraqi police officers were killed in a suicide bombing in Khaldiya, west of Baghdad. The next day at least six police officers were killed in one of two suicide bombings at police stations in Baghdad.
In Baghdad on Wednesday, the Iraqi police said the yellow tanker truck was seen moving at high speed through an intersection just before 6 a.m. Mr. Suheil said the truck was not hauling a tanker or a trailer, and that investigators believed it was heading toward a police station about half a mile up the road. He said the truck hit a bus and then exploded.
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Sharon Says Israel Might Use Wall to Create Palestinian Border
December 18, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?pagewanted=all&position=
HERZLIYA, Israel (AP) -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday that Israel was willing to move some Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but delivered an ultimatum that Palestinians had only a few months to make peace or Israel would impose its own solution.
Palestinians, Israeli doves and Jewish settlers promptly criticized Sharon's long-awaited policy speech. The White House credited Sharon with taking significant steps toward peace but criticized any go-it-alone moves by Israel that would undercut negotiations on a U.S. ``road map'' peace plan to create a Palestinian state by 2005.
Under Sharon's ``disengagement plan,'' Israel would pull back from some of the area it conquered in the 1967 Mideast War and relocate some settlements to create a more easily defended security boundary and reduce the number of Israelis in Palestinian areas. Israel would also speed up construction of a contentious barrier of fences, walls and trenches, whose planned path dips deep into the West Bank.
``This reduction of friction will require the extremely difficult step of changing the deployment of some of the settlements,'' Sharon said, without naming the settlements that would be taken down.
Sharon's plan, which he unveiled in a speech to a security conference in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya, came in the face of intense domestic pressure to take action to end the violent conflict that has unnerved Israelis and badly damaged the economy over the past three years.
The prime minister's popularity has plummeted in recent months as the road map stalled amid continuing bloodshed and intransigence on both sides.
The idea of a forced partition also reflects Israeli concerns about demographic projections that Arabs will, within a few years, outnumber Jews in the area currently controlled by Israel.
Sharon said Israel remained committed to the road map, but demanded Palestinians begin dismantling militant groups, as called for by the peace plan, or face an Israeli-imposed security border.
``We are interested in conducting direct negotiations, but do not intend to hold Israeli society hostage in the hands of the Palestinians. ... We will not wait for them indefinitely,'' Sharon said. ``If there is no progress toward peace in a matter of months, ``then Israel will initiate the unilateral security step of disengagement from the Palestinians,'' he said.
Sharon said the boundary would not be a permanent, political border: ``The disengagement plan is a security measure and not a political one.''
Under this approach, Sharon said, the Palestinians receive ``much less'' territory than they would have from direct negotiations.
He also said all his moves would be coordinated with the United States.
Israel also would reduce travel restrictions that have crippled the Palestinian economy over the past three years, promising to end closures, curfews and roadblocks, and to transfer some areas to Palestinian control, Sharon said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said he was confident the two sides could reach rapid agreement for a Palestinian state, but he bristled at Sharon's threats.
``These are ultimately dangerous words, and this type of talk is simply not acceptable,'' Qureia told The Associated Press.
U.S. officials have joined Palestinians in condemning any Israeli-imposed measures -- certain to leave Palestinians with less land than they want -- saying that only a deal acceptable to both sides can lead to peace.
``We would oppose any unilateral steps that block the road toward negotiations under the road map,'' White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday. ``The United States believes that a settlement must be negotiated and we would oppose any effort -- any Israeli effort -- to impose a settlement.''
However, the White House found much to like in Sharon's speech as well, with McClellan singling out for praise Sharon's ``strong reiteration of his support for the road map as the way forward'' and his statement that unauthorized outposts will be dismantled.
``We are also pleased that for the first time he said flatly that there will be no new settlements, no confiscation of land for construction, no special economic incentives for settlers and no construction beyond present construction zones,'' McClellan said.
Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said he believes Sharon will give the Palestinians three months to begin complying with the road map before imposing his new plan.
Lapid, of the centrist Shinui Party, said Sharon's talk of moving some settlements was ``a major breakthrough.''
Sharon was a chief architect of Israel's settlement policy over his three-decade political career, and any steps to dismantle or move settlements would be a revolutionary step for him that could fracture his hard-right governing coalition.
``We will not be part of a government that uproots Jewish communities and will defame the entire Zionist enterprise,'' said Housing Minister Effie Eitam, leader of the National Religious Party.
On the other side of the Israeli political spectrum, Labor Party leader Shimon Peres said he too was disappointed with the speech.
``I am very frustrated,'' he told Israeli Television. ``In the speech we heard, there is nothing new.''
Sharon's speech comes after weeks of buildup. He began speaking of undefined ``unilateral steps'' last month, indicating he might consider moving West Bank Jewish settlements while seizing control of swaths of the West Bank.
Palestinian and U.S. officials have called on Israel to stick to the road map. Before a Palestinian state would be established in 2005, the plan requires Israel to freeze settlement activity and calls on the Palestinians to dismantle militant groups -- steps neither side has taken.
Israel has some 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, with about 220,000 Jewish settlers. Roughly 3.5 million Palestinians live in the occupied areas.
West Bank settlers called Sharon's speech a ``plan of illusions that will escalate terror.''
``The dismantling of settlements and expulsion of Jews from their homes will only increase the appetite of the murderers and will bring about the destruction of Zionism,'' said settler spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yosef.
Islamic militants said the speech amounted to a victory for their attacks that have killed roughly 900 Israelis in the past three years.
``This is a new language by the Israelis, and this is evidence that the uprising has created a new fact on the ground,'' said Sheik Nafez Azzam, an Islamic Jihad leader.
Violence continued Thursday, as Israeli troops killed at least four Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus.
The army moved into the city's ancient bazaar quarter before dawn in a search for wanted Palestinian militants, a military spokeswoman said. Palestinian security sources said one of the dead was unarmed.
The military said one man ran toward troops with an explosive device and was shot as he approached, while in a separate incident, three masked men shot at soldiers from a rooftop and were killed by return fire. The army also reported 10 arrests, including two people it said were planning suicide attacks.
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Israel Awaits Latest Word From Sharon on Next Step
December 18, 2003
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/middleeast/18MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Dec. 17 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel is scheduled to speak at a conference in the seaside town of Herzliya on Thursday, and it seems that all of Israel, certainly all of the Israeli press, is speculating as to what he will say.
Mr. Sharon may say little more than he has said before, particularly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, merely reiterating his known position: that Israel is waiting for some concrete steps from the Palestinian side in fighting terrorism before returning to the negotiating table to try to carry out the road map, the American and European-supported plan for peace.
But Mr. Sharon will be speaking at a time of especially lively debate among Israelis, in which some new initiative or proposal seems almost a daily occurrence. Mr. Sharon surely knows that the public will be disappointed if he does not announce at least some modest new measures, most likely, according to local press reports, plans for a limited withdrawal of Jewish settlements from the occupied territories even in the absence of an agreement with the Palestinians.
Mr. Sharon's speech is scheduled at a dinner meeting on Thursday in Herzliya, where a sort of Israeli and international who's who list has been gathered for much of this week at the fourth annual conference of the Israeli Institute for Policy and Strategy.
"Even a limited evacuation of settlements, or other significant immediate measures, would prove to both the Israeli public and the international community that Sharon is capable of initiating rather than merely responding," a foreign policy commentator, Aluf Benn, wrote in Haaretz on Wednesday.
Many people here are expecting Mr. Sharon to outline one or another of two broad options. One would be to announce a concrete withdrawal of all the Jewish settlements in the Ga