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NUCLEAR
Detectors to protect port from bombs
Dounreay widow in 40-year fight for justice
A Time For Truth On DU
Nuclear Program in Iran Tied To Pakistan
Decision Delayed on Site of Nuclear Fusion Plant
Japan Vows to Pursue Nuclear Fusion Bid
Secret Diplomacy Won Libyan Pledge on Arms
Libya Made Progress in Nuclear Goal
Libya to Allow Snap UN Arms Inspections - Diplomat
U.S.: Libya Eager to Dismantle Weapons
Libyan arms renunciation to change global geopolitical map: analysts
Libya spies' secret deal to reveal terrorists
Democrats shift target to WMDs
MILITARY
General Plans Changes in Afghan Strategy
New Strategy Calls for Wooing Some in Taliban
Chinese Leader, Bush Talk About Taiwan
In Colombia, Coca Declines But the War Does Not
How to stay alive by dodging the bullets and bombs
Iraqi Shiites Enter New Era of Inclusion, Not Exclusion
U.S. Forces Round Up Iraqi Rebel Suspects
Israeli Leader Warns of Confrontation
Vieques Aftermath
Joint Intelligence Center Is Urged
3 Counts Against Translator Are Dropped
3 Charges Dropped Against Guantanamo Translator
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Terror Threat Changes
Administration Raises Level of Terrorism Alert to Orange
State Officials Respond As Threat Rises
Lost? Hiding? Your Cellphone Is Keeping Tabs
ENERGY AND OTHER
`Rewiring' the world's energy
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Detectors to protect port from bombs
The new portals detect radiation in cargo ships
By Paul T. Rosynsky,
STAFF WRITER
http://www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413,125~1486~1845201,00.html
OAKLAND -- The risk of a "dirty bomb" flowing through the Port of Oakland will diminish next year as the federal government begins installing radiation detection devices at every maritime terminal on the city's waterfront.
The U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection will place the devices -- radiation detection portals -- in Oakland next year as part of a program that eventually will screen every container flowing through the nation's ports.
In doing so, the bureau will make Oakland one of the first ports on the West Coast to have the devices, which resemble giant upside down "U's."
The idea to install portals at ports began soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It picked up speed earlier this year as custom officials were criticized for not moving fast enough to secure the nation's ports.
Among the top concerns is Customs' practice of hand-inspecting only 2 percent of all containers moving into the nation each year. Despite the low figure, Customs officials insist every container is screened through a process that points out containers that may have unusual cargo.
In addition, many security experts raised concerns that terrorists could load a dirty bomb onto a container and have it explode either at a port or while in transit through an urban area.
Dirty bombs are a concern because they can easily be created using radioactive material and conventional explosives such as dynamite. A terrorist could wrap a load of used plutonium with dynamite and have it explode, causing damage with the initial explosion and with the spread of the radioactive material.
Customs officials say the new detection portals will prevent any such attack by picking out containers with traces of radiation.
Once installed, trucks and trains would pass through the portals without stopping. The system is intended to allow customs to screen containers for radiation without impeding the flow of commerce.
Customs officials refused to confirm when or how many portals Oakland will receive, saying it was a "sensitive issue." How- ever, spokesperson Pat Jones said "the ultimate goal is to have them at all border crossings."
In addition, several port officials and shipping executives said the bureau has begun to install the devices on the West Coast. And on Wednesday, the port's maritime committee discussed the portals during a closed session meeting.
"There is a lot of movement right now," said Johnathan Tal, president of Homeland Security Research Corporation, a think-tank devoted to security issues. "Customs is under the gun to start inspecting containers."
The worries prompted Customs to create the radiation detection program.
So far, the bureau has installed 60 portals throughout the nation and received almost $40 million to install more next year.
But the speed at which the detectors are constructed at ports and how many ports will receive them remain in question as some published reports state it will cost more than $500 million to install monitors at every port.
Each monitor cost about $280,000 to construct and install, Jones said.
According to Oakland officials, the customs bureau decided to outfit 22 ports with the monitors in its first round and chose Oakland as one of the first six.
"The discussion is that the radiation detection portals should be installed by around this time next year," said Scott Dailey, spokesman for APL, an Oakland-based steamship and terminal operating company.
Despite the safety, which comes along with having the monitors, some shipping and port executives are concerned the devices could cause delays.
For example, a container filled with bananas could set off the monitor because of potassium given off by the fruit.
But Dailey said customs is in discussions with shipping companies to devise a three-pronged approach to alleviate delays due to false positive ratings.
Such a system would call for a truck carrying a container with a positive rating to drive through another screening device. If the positive rating continued the container would be inspected by a customs official.
"Customs has been a very, very good listener when it comes to understanding our business," he said.
Oakland port officials said they plan to discuss the radiation detection portals next month as they finalize terms on a contract with the federal government for installation.
-------- britain
Dounreay widow in 40-year fight for justice
Pensioner takes case to European court over claims of nuclear 'cover-up'
By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor
Sunday Herald
21 December 2003
http://www.sundayherald.com/print38841
When Jeannie Gillen's husband Alexander died, little blood vessels all over his body were leaking. It was, her doctor told her, a classic sign of radiation poisoning.
Forty years later, she is taking her campaign for justice to the European Court of Human Rights. Gillen accuses the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) of a "cover-up" after her husband contracted leukaemia while working at Dounreay nuclear power station in Caithness.
Over the last 20 years, over £5 million has been paid out in compensation to the families of nearly 100 nuclear workers from around the UK who suffered cancers that could have been caused by radiation. But Jeannie Gillen, and more than 500 others like her, have missed out.
Their claims have been rejected because they failed to meet complex probability criteria for radiation-related diseases agreed by employers and trade unions. The compensation scheme, which covers virtually everybody who worked for the UK civil or military nuclear industry, also exempts employers from any admission of liability.
But what Gillen, now 82, wants more than anything is for the UKAEA to accept what she says happened to her husband, and to apologise to her in writing. For decades, however, the UKAEA has refused to do so, insisting that there is no evidence to support her claim.
Alexander Gillen left the RAF to start work at Dounreay in 1958, when the first reactor was built there. Within a few months, Jeannie said he was involved in an incident in which he was exposed to high levels of radiation.
On a late shift, he was operating a crane removing radioactive fuel rods from the reactor. But one or two of the lids meant to shield workers from the intense radiation were inadvertently left open, she claimed.
"He got the beam," she said. A few years later in 1962 he died of leukaemia, a blood cancer known to be triggered by radiation. On his death certificate his doctor, Robert McRae, recorded "radiation sickness" as the cause of death.
Gillen still cries when she is reminded of her loss, and sometimes gets disheartened by the UKAEA's refusal to believe her. "It's terrible, really terrible. Nobody knows what it's like," she told the Sunday Herald from her home in Wick.
Nevertheless, she is determined to pursue her campaign while she still has breath left in her body. "I will move heaven and earth to get satisfaction," she said. "I'm going to fight to the bitter end."
As well as persistently lobbying the UKAEA and politicians, she has asked her lawyers to take her case to the European Court of Human Rights. "I've got the health to do it, God willing, and I swear God is looking after me for this."
She is being actively backed by her MP, John Thurso, the LibDem representative for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. "I cannot prove it, but all my instincts tell me that she is right," he said. "There is a very clear possibility that the sequence of events she relates could be accurate."
Thurso has already raised her case with the UKAEA chairman, Denis Tunnicliffe, and is hoping to take it up with the authority's new chief executive, Dipesh Shah, at a meeting in the new year. He thought her situation was "incredibly sad".
He is urging the UKAEA to offer an ex-gratia payment and to agree a form of words that would satisfy Gillen. "It would be a generous gesture that would make her last few years more bearable," he argued.
Last week, however, UKAEA, was still refusing to budge. "We have conducted a thorough investigation and we have been unable to uncover any evidence to substantiate Mrs Gillen's belief about what happened to her husband," said an authority spokesman.
"If there was new evidence available, we would gladly look at it. If we could have resolved this, we would have resolved it." Awarding an ex-gratia payment would open the UKAEA to criticisms that it wasn't being a good custodian of taxpayers' money, he argued.
Since the 1950s, about £4 billion of taxpayers' money has been invested in a failed attempt to develop a commercial fast breeder reactor at Dounreay. Over the next 60 years, another £4bn is going to be spent cleaning up the mess that was made.
The UKAEA said that since 1989, six workers and their families at Dounreay had been given compensation payments for cancers under the scheme agreed by employers and unions. But the authority has refused to disclose details of the payments or to accept any legal liability.
According to a letter earlier this month from the energy minister, Stephen Timms, the families of 96 UK nuclear workers have been awarded £5.08m in compensation for cancers since 1982. In addition to those at Dounreay, they included workers at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria, at the Rosyth nuclear submarine yard in Fife and at nuclear power stations across the country.
The scheme has not yet been extended to employees at the nuclear submarine base on the Clyde, though it soon will be. Timms said that the company that runs the base, Babcock Naval Services, had agreed with unions to join the scheme and was currently setting up the procedures that would enable them to do so.
A review of the compensation scheme by scientists from British Nuclear Fuels, the state-owned company that runs Sellafield, disclosed that by 1998 more than 500 applicants had been rejected. This was because the likelihood that their cancers were induced by radiation was estimated to be less than 20%.
The scheme was criticised by environmental groups as a "cosy" way of letting the nuclear industry off the hook. It made compensation an ordinary cost of doing business, and amounted to a hidden subsidy, they claimed.
Duncan McLaren, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "Such subsidies should be removed, and these businesses made legally accountable for the damage they do to people's health and the environment. Environmental justice must be done, and be seen to be done."
The existence of the compensation scheme also cast doubt on the nuclear industry's claim to be safe, according to David Lowry, an environmental policy consultant in London. "We've been told year after year by the nuclear industry that they comply with international radiation protection standards," he said. "If that is the case, why have they forked out millions of pounds in out-of-court settlements to cancer victims and their families?"
-------- depleted uranium
A Time For Truth On DU
Steven Rosenfeld, senior editor
TomPaine.com
Dec 21 2003
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9652
The health impacts of depleted uranium (DU) munitions on soldiers who served in the Iraq and the Persian Gulf Wars will be studied by Congress' General Accounting Office, according to two congressmen who have requested a new investigation into whether the Pentagon has ignored the medical consequences of the armaments.
"We are requesting further investigation by the GAO of the study of veterans exposed to DU during the 1991 Gulf War, and an assessment of current DoD [Department of Defense] and DVA [Department of Veterans Affairs] policies to identify and provide medical care for veterans exposed to DU during Operation Iraqi Freedom," wrote Reps. Bob Filner, D-Calif., and Ciro Rodriguez, D-Texas, in a Dec. 3 letter requesting the congressional inquiry.
"There are many uncertainties about depleted uranium, but one thing is clear: the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs have refused to conduct an adequate study of veterans exposed to DU on the battlefield," said Dan Fahey, a former board member of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans organization, who helped the congressmen frame the GAO inquiry.
"Congressmen Filner and Rodriguez have once again demonstrated their concern for the health of veterans by asking the GAO to investigate what appear to be serious flaws in the VA's study of veterans exposed to DU," Fahey said. "The Pentagon has admitted that thousands of veterans may have been "unnecessarily" exposed to DU during and after the 1991 war-including approximately 900 veterans with significant exposures-but this year the VA assessed the health status of just 32 veterans."
The GAO study of DU's health impacts on soldiers is significant because the very dense and slightly radioactive metal is used extensively in bullets and shells fired by U.S. tanks and jets. It is a byproduct of making nuclear fuel and is more effective than lead bullets, making DU bullets and warheads a key component of the military's arsenal.
DU projectiles puncture almost all metal targets. Due to its m ass and velocity, it breaks up and vaporizes into micron-sized particles upon impact. The Pentagon says DU is safe, but veteran advocates are skeptical, saying the military should scientifically study the most-exposed soldiers to see if they develop illnesses tied to low-level radiation exposure. Such exposure would come from either inhaling or ingesting airborne DU particles from destroyed Iraqi targets or from friendly fire accidents, and the related emergency responses and subsequent clean up.
The health impacts of DU have been a controversial issue. Some anti-nuclear activists say there are traces of deadly nuclear isotopes in the metal, because it is made from spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants. But leading medical journals in the United States and England say more study is needed before definitive conclusions can be reached.
In Iraq, where the Christian Science Monitor last spring reported an estimated 75 tons of the metal was used by the U.S. Air Force last winter and remains scattered on the ground, the military has posted signs in some places warning people to stay away from destroyed targets. Subsequent statements by the British and American militaries lead independent analysts to estimate that 100-to-150 metric tons of DU was used in the Iraq War.
The congressmen, drawing on research prepared by Fahey, have asked the GAO to study whether DU can be linked to cancers and other diseases among Iraq and Persian Gulf War veterans. Before the Iraq War, Fahey unsuccessfully tried to persuade the VA to independently study these same issues.
"DoD's own laboratory studies confirm DU may cause cancer, tumors, neurological damage, and reproductive effects, but the possible connection between DU and disease development in the vast majority of exposed veterans remains unexamined, and therefore, unknown," the congressmen's letter said. "This is of particular concern because it is now almost 13 years since the war, and the latency period for the development of many cancers possibly related to DU is 10 to 30 years."
They cited Fahey's belief that the Pentagon officials have made "false statements" about "the existence of a rare Hodgkin's lymphoma and a bone tumor among veterans in the DU Program, signaling a breakdown in the integrity of the study."
"On at least two occasions in 2001, DoD spokesmen falsely claimed that no veterans in the DU Program had developed cancer, in an apparent attempt to dampen controversy in Europe about the use of DU munitions in the Balkans," they wrote. "In addition, in April 2003, an Army doctor was quoted in press stories falsely claiming that no veterans in the DU Program had developed any tumors. These prevarications beg the question of whether other health effects have been observed among these veterans, but not reported."
That "army doctor" was Dr. Michael Kilpatrick of the Office of the Special Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, who is among the top-raking Pentagon officials who create military health policy. Those remarks were made at a NATO briefing.
The congressman also noted that the Pentagon "previously misled" GAO investigators and the Department of Veterans Affairs about "the extent of veterans' exposures to DU during the 1991 war" and said there was "cause for concern that DoD is not providing complete and accurate information about DU exposures in Iraq."
Fahey said this pattern of repressing information continues to this day.
"The VA is failing in its duty to assist veterans exposed to a known carcinogen on the battlefield, but sadly, it appears that the Pentagon is calling the shots when it comes to DU policy," Fahey said. "Even now, as our troops continue to fight and die in Iraq, the Pentagon refuses to disclose information about its use of DU, or release information to the United Nations Environment Programme about the quantities and locations of DU expenditure."
He said a serious inquiry by the GAO could clear up these and other unknowns. "There is a serious lack of transparency and accountability when it comes to Pentagon and VA policy on DU, but this GAO investigation is a huge first step in understanding what-if any-health effects DU has caused among U.S. troops."
Congressmen Filner and Rodriguez said the results of the GAO study could lead to legislation reorganizing the military's DU health programs.
"Depending on the findings of this GAO investigation, we may wish to introduce legislation requiring a restructuring of the DU Program and extending service-connected benefits to veterans who develop health conditions, such as certain types of cancer that can plausibly be caused by a significant DU exposure," they wrote.
The GAO investigation would most likely be completed by next summer.
-------- iran
Nuclear Program in Iran Tied To Pakistan
Complex Network Acquired Technology and Blueprints
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 21, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18170-2003Dec20?language=printer
VIENNA -- Evidence discovered in a probe of Iran's secret nuclear program points overwhelmingly to Pakistan as the source of crucial technology that put Iran on a fast track toward becoming a nuclear weapons power, according to U.S. and European officials familiar with the investigation.
The serious nature of the discoveries prompted a decision by Pakistan two weeks ago to detain three of its top nuclear scientists for several days of questioning, with U.S. intelligence experts allowed to assist, the officials said. The scientists have not been charged with any crime, and Pakistan continues to insist that it never wittingly provided nuclear assistance to Iran or anyone else.
Documents provided by Iran to U.N. nuclear inspectors since early November have exposed the outlines of a vast, secret procurement network that successfully acquired thousands of sensitive parts and tools from numerous countries over a 17-year period. While Iran has not directly identified Pakistan as a supplier, Pakistani individuals and companies are strongly implicated as sources of key blueprints, technical guidance and equipment for a pilot uranium-enrichment plant that was first exposed by Iranian dissidents 18 months ago, government officials and independent weapons experts said.
While American presidents since Ronald Reagan worried that Iran might seek nuclear weapons, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies were unable to halt Iran's most significant nuclear acquisitions, or even to spot a major nuclear facility under construction until it was essentially completed.
Although the alleged transfers occurred years ago, suggestions of Pakistani aid to Iran's nuclear program have further complicated the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, a key ally in the war against terrorism.
In documents and interviews with investigators of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iranian officials have offered detailed accounts of how they obtained sensitive equipment from European, Asian and North American companies. Much of the equipment was routed through a transshipment hub in the Persian Gulf port city of Dubai to conceal the actual destination, according to officials familiar with Iran's disclosures.
The disclosures offer a striking illustration of the difficulties faced by U.S. officials in trying to detect and interdict shipments of contraband useful in making weapons of mass destruction. Iran appears to have obtained the equipment by exploiting a gray zone of porous borders, middlemen, front companies and weak law enforcement where the components of such weapons are bought and sold.
Iran's pilot facility, which is now functional, and a much larger uranium-enrichment plant under construction next door are designed to produce enough fissile material to make at least two dozen nuclear bombs each year.
China and Russia also made significant contributions to the Iranian program in the past, IAEA documents show. Both countries were the focus of a long-running U.S. campaign to cut off nuclear assistance to Iran.
In a new finding, sophisticated laboratory tests by the IAEA detected traces of Soviet-made highly enriched uranium at Iran's Kalaye nuclear facility, a former testing center for uranium-enrichment equipment, knowledgeable officials said. Several distinct types of enriched uranium have been found at the site, the officials added. Although there are other possible explanations, the finding could indicate that Iran obtained some fissile material from a former Soviet state to use in testing its equipment, the officials said.
By far the most valuable assistance to Iran came from still-unnamed individuals who provided top-secret designs and key components for uranium-processing machines known as gas centrifuges, the officials said.
Centrifuges are technologically complex machines that spin at supersonic speeds to extract the small amounts of fissile material present in natural uranium. Uranium that has been enriched at lower levels is typically used as fuel in nuclear power plants, while a more concentrated product known as highly enriched uranium is used in nuclear submarines, research reactors and nuclear weapons.
The blueprints, which the IAEA has reviewed, depict a type of centrifuge that is nearly identical to a machine used by Pakistan in the early years of its nuclear program, according to U.S. officials and weapons experts familiar with the designs. The plans and components, which were acquired over several installments from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, allowed Iran to leapfrog over several major technological hurdles to make its own enriched uranium, a necessary ingredient in commercial nuclear fuel and nuclear weapons.
"Acquiring the drawings and a few components was a tremendous boost to Iran's centrifuge efforts," said David Albright, a former IAEA inspector in Iraq and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington research group that tracked Iran's nuclear procurements for more than a decade. "The possession of detailed designs could allow Iran to skip many difficult research steps."
Surprising Disclosures
It is unclear exactly why the United States and its allies failed to detect and halt Iran's most significant nuclear acquisitions.
One possible reason, according to some former government officials and outside experts, is that U.S. agencies were looking in the wrong place. American administrations since the late 1980s viewed the Soviet Union and then Russia as the most likely source of nuclear aid to Iran, launching intensive efforts to persuade Moscow to sever or scale back technological links to the Islamic republic.
"For too long we were running our Iran policy through Moscow," said Jon Wolfsthal, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "We saw Russia as Iran's main source of technology, and if shut off, the flow to Iran's program would freeze in its tracks. That was shortsighted."
Former top U.S. proliferation officials contend that the attention paid to Russia was hardly misplaced. The United States foiled several efforts by Iran to obtain sensitive technology from Russia in the 1990s. But some officials acknowledged that they were stunned to learn of the progress Iran had made with the help of partners closer to home.
"While the U.S. was heavily focused on Russian assistance, the Iranians were getting help elsewhere on the centrifuge program and making major headway -- and the U.S. was essentially in the dark on that," said Robert Einhorn, the State Department's former assistant secretary for nonproliferation. "It took information from an Iranian dissident group to expose how far Iran had gotten."
Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons, insisting that it is only exercising its right to develop a civilian nuclear power industry, including its own indigenous supply of nuclear fuel. Russia is helping Iran build a nuclear power plant in the port city of Bushehr that both countries insist is a civilian nuclear project.
Last month, in the face of mounting international pressure, Iran's leaders agreed to open the country's nuclear facilities to surprise inspections and to turn over hundreds of pages of documents to the IAEA. The agency has not commented publicly on the contents of the documents, but several U.S. officials and diplomatic sources familiar with Iran's disclosures agreed to discuss them on the condition they not be identified by name. Some of the revelations about Iran's nuclear procurement program also are described in a draft of a new report by Albright's research group. A copy of the draft study was made available to The Washington Post.
The disclosures do not provide a definitive answer to the question of whether Iran was actively seeking to build nuclear weapons. But they do show that Iran was intent on keeping its nuclear acquisitions secret, and that it sought a range of technologies far beyond those typically found in countries with commercial nuclear power programs.
An IAEA report made public in November revealed that Iran had secretly manufactured small amounts of uranium and plutonium, a violation of Iran's agreements under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That report also documented Iran's efforts to enrich uranium using a variety of methods, including gas centrifuges and lasers. Iran's biggest success, the construction of a pilot gas centrifuge plant for enriching uranium, was a well-guarded secret until it was exposed last August by the National Council for Resistance in Iran, an umbrella group representing opponents of Iran's Islamic government.
When IAEA inspectors discovered 160 working centrifuges during their first visit to the Natanz plant in February, Iran initially claimed to have designed and built them alone. But Iran's story began to unravel when the inspectors found traces of highly enriched uranium at Natanz and at a second, now-defunct pilot plant in Kalaye.
Iran, which insists it has never made highly enriched uranium, admitted receiving substantial foreign help, including numerous secondhand centrifuge components that were imported from an unnamed country.
Officially, Iran's leaders maintain that they bought the components on the black market, and they still don't know where the parts came from. But to the inspectors and independent experts on centrifuge design, the machines offer abundant clues.
The draft report by Albright's group, based on experts familiar with the Iranian machine, describes it as a modified version of a centrifuge built decades ago by Urenco, a consortium of the British, Dutch and German governments. The machine is about six feet high and is made of aluminum and a special type of high-strength steel. The design is one of several known to have been stolen in the 1970s by a Pakistani nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who later became known as the father of the Pakistani bomb.
Pakistan modified the Urenco design and manufactured a number of the machines before abandoning the centrifuge for a sturdier model, said Albright, co-author of the study. The blueprints obtained by Iran show "distinctive" modifications similar to the ones made by Pakistan, Albright said.
Traces of highly enriched uranium on centrifuge components in Iran indicated they had been used before. Most of the contaminants are of a type of highly enriched uranium believed to be "consistent with material produced in Pakistan," Albright said.
The evidence collectively supports a view widely held among nuclear experts and nonproliferation officials that Iran obtained castoff parts and designs from a centrifuge that was no longer needed by Pakistan, said Gary Samore, a former adviser on nonproliferation on the Clinton administration's National Security Council.
"The particular machine that Iran is using is not the mainstay of the Pakistani program," said Samore, now the director of studies at the Institute for International Strategic Studies in London. "Pakistan had these used aluminum-rotor machines that it no longer needed. The most plausible explanation for what happened is that Pakistan sold its surplus centrifuges, which have now turned up in Iran."
Much of Iran's basic nuclear infrastructure -- from research reactors to lasers used to manipulate uranium atoms -- was supplied by U.S. companies before Islamic revolutionaries deposed the shah in 1979. U.S. officials later discovered that the shah, a staunch U.S. ally, was conducting his own secret nuclear weapons research before he was overthrown.
Iran's revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, canceled the shah's contracts with a German company to build nuclear power reactors in Bushehr. But by 1985, during a war with Iraq, Iran reversed course, reopened its nuclear labs and began exploring its options for making enriched uranium and plutonium. It also began looking for new business partners to complete the Bushehr reactor, which had remained frozen since 1979.
Iran's explanation -- that it was only interested in developing nuclear power for electricity -- was greeted with skepticism then and now because Iran sits atop vast reserves of oil and natural gas.
A Big Break
U.S. intelligence officials began detecting attempts by Iran to acquire nuclear-related technology beginning in the mid-1980s. Much of the activity, as U.S. officials understood it at the time, involved Iranian efforts to acquire sensitive technology through legitimate deals with Russian, Chinese and East European companies. The United States sought to use a variety of diplomatic and commercial incentives and punishments to persuade Iran's potential trade partners to abandon projects, ranging from a proposed centrifuge plant to a Russian agreement to complete Iran's nuclear reactors in Bushehr.
"We were very concerned about Russian support of Iran's nuclear activity," said Robert Gallucci, a special envoy on nonproliferation during the Clinton administration and now dean of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. "At the same time, we were hearing about other activities involving the entire nuclear fuel cycle."
Iran's first big break came in 1987, when it obtained the complete set of designs and parts for gas centrifuges. Around the same time, Iran began receiving technical guidance from foreign experts who steered the country toward some of the same suppliers that had assisted Pakistan's nuclear program years earlier, said Albright, citing information obtained in the IAEA investigation.
"Armed with component specifications and drawings, Iran would be able to design and implement a strategy to develop a reliable centrifuge and create a manufacturing infrastructure to make thousands of centrifuges," Albright wrote in the report. "It would be able to find companies to make centrifuge components, often unwittingly."
Beginning around 1993, Iran launched a broader effort to acquire parts for hundreds of centrifuges, as well as machines and tools to create its own manufacturing center. According to officials familiar with Iran's disclosures to the IAEA, the effort relied on a small group of middlemen from European and Middle Eastern countries who put together orders, made purchases and arranged the shipping.
Iran provided names of a handful of agents to the IAEA, which has since sought to locate and interview them. According to Iran, the middlemen secured a long list of sensitive items, ranging from electronic beam welders and vacuum pumps to shipments of high-strength aluminum and steel that became the raw products for centrifuges.
Some of the shipments were intercepted by U.S. and European intelligence agencies and customs officials. But by the late 1990s, Iran had acquired all the parts it needed for a pilot centrifuge and was preparing to cross another important threshold.
"Iran appears to have secretly achieved self-sufficiency in centrifuge manufacturing," Albright said.
Questions Linger
In early December, there were reports in Pakistan about the disappearance of nuclear scientist Farooq Mohammed, a colleague of Kahn's in the creation of Pakistan's atomic bomb.
First thought to be missing, government officials later confirmed he had been detained by Pakistani security officials for extended questioning. Two subordinates were also picked up, according to a Western official knowledgeable about the incident.
A CIA spokesman denied that any Americans were involved in rounding up the scientists, but other officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the U.S. government was aware of the incident and had been allowed to participate in the questioning. The episode followed what one official described as high-level requests by both the IAEA and the U.S. government for Islamabad to respond to new evidence suggesting that Pakistan's nuclear secrets had been passed to Iran.
Some experts see the detention of the scientists as a hopeful sign, suggesting that Pakistan is preparing to increase its cooperation with IAEA investigators.
"The Pakistanis know the Iranians have fingered them," said Samore, the former adviser on nonproliferation for the Clinton administration. "They know the IAEA is asking questions. This could be the beginning of what Richard Nixon used to call a 'limited hangout' operation."
But other experts see only more obstacles in an already difficult quest for the truth. Doubts are already being voiced regarding whether the IAEA, or anyone, will be able provide definitive answers about Iran's nuclear history and future intentions, said Henry D. Sokolski, a former Defense Department adviser on nonproliferation.
"What is most worrying is not what the Iranians did in the past, but, rather, what they're going to do," said Sokolski, who now directs the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a Washington research organization. "What does our past experience with Iran tell us about the prospects of catching them in a lie in the future?"
-------- japan
Decision Delayed on Site of Nuclear Fusion Plant
December 21, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-energy-nuclear-reactor.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of countries working together to produce energy in the same way as the sun have postponed a decision on whether to site a nuclear fusion reactor in Japan or France.
Officials involved in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) met in private near Washington on Friday and Saturday to choose a host for the project, which is worth $12 billion (10 billion euros).
It was unclear when the members of the joint venture -- the United States, China, Russia, South Korea, the European Union and Japan -- would meet again.
But a French official said they would have to choose between the fishing village of Rokkasho in Japan and a site at Cadarache in southern France by February.
``At the end of the meeting... it was agreed by all parties present that no definitive choice could be made at this stage,'' France's Research Ministry said in a statement issued in Paris on Saturday.
Nuclear fission, in which energy is released by splitting the atom, powers traditional nuclear plants and is used to make weapons. In nuclear fusion, energy is released when atoms are forced together.
The goal of the ITER project is to create a sustained nuclear fusion reaction that potentially will provide a safe and efficient source of pollution-free energy.
Apart from prestige, the economic stakes are high. Construction of the reactor alone is expected to take a decade and to provide employment for about 2,000 workers.
NEW VOTING RULES?
The choice of site also has a political dimension, given transatlantic tension over French opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
The U.S. Energy Department, which hosted the ITER meeting, had said on Friday it expected a decision to be announced at the conclusion of the gathering.
French official Stephane Salord said a decision would now have to be taken by February and that voting rules could be changed to prevent another stalemate. It was not immediately clear why a decision had to be taken by February.
The European Union supports Cadarache, near the Mediterranean port Marseille.
Japanese officials say Rokkasho, home to about 12,000 people, offers the advantage of access to a port and ample supplies of sea and fresh water.
Both sides plan to keep pushing for their favored sites.
``It is disappointing for our country that were unable to win the opportunity to host the facility, after an effort that involved the prime minister, the government, industry and academia,'' Science Minister Takeo Kawamura said in a statement.
``We will, however, continue to make all possible efforts to bring this about.''
Fabio Fabbi, spokesman for European Union Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin, said the bloc would continue to campaign for Cadarache.
``We regret the fact that the international partners were unable to reach agreement in a first shot, because although the Japanese site is of high quality, we think Cadarache is better,'' Fabbi said.
European sources close to the talks said the United States and South Korea favored locating the plant in Japan. Russia and China were said to back the French site.
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Japan Vows to Pursue Nuclear Fusion Bid
December 21, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Fusion-Energy.html
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan vowed Sunday to pursue its bid to host an experimental project that would generate energy by reproducing the sun's power source after negotiations by international sponsors ended in a deadlock.
Japan and France have been bidding for the world's first large-scale nuclear fusion plant -- an estimated $12 billion effort to find a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels such as coal and oil.
A final decision on a site had been expected Saturday, but the project's sponsors -- the European Union, the United States, Russia, South Korea, China, Japan and Canada -- failed to reach a consensus during talks in Washington Saturday.
``The meeting ended in a deadlock and it is a shame that we were unable to get a favorable response, but we plan to do our utmost in the days ahead to bring (the project) to Japan,'' Science and Technology Minister Takeo Kawamura said in a statement Sunday.
The consortium plans to meet again in February after further evaluating the sites in northern Japan and southeastern France.
Fusion, which powers the sun and stars, involves colliding atoms at extremely high temperatures and pressure inside a reactor. When the atoms fuse into a plasma they release energy that can be harnessed to generate electricity.
The process produces low levels of radioactive waste but no greenhouse gases, and there is little risk of a radioactive meltdown.
Also, while fossil fuels are expected to run short in about 50 years, the reactor would run on an isotope of hydrogen, a virtually boundless source of fuel that can be extracted from water.
Tokyo has proposed Rokkasho village on the northern tip of the main Honshu island because of its proximity to a major port, meaning sea water can be pumped for fuel and that heavy-duty reactor parts can be transported by ship in one piece. The town also already hosts an industrial complex, and a nuclear fuel disposal and reprocessing plant is scheduled to be finished in 2006.
France, with EU backing, is proposing the southeastern town of Cadarache, which boasts a more temperate climate and does not face the same threat of earthquakes as Rokkasho does in tremor-prone Japan.
-------- libya
Secret Diplomacy Won Libyan Pledge on Arms
December 21, 2003
By PATRICK E. TYLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/international/middleeast/21LIBY.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
LONDON, Dec. 20 - Libya's surprise declaration giving up its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons was the culmination of a week of intense negotiations that followed months of secret diplomacy, including a series of late-night meetings in Tripoli between the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and experts from the C.I.A., and clandestine visits to at least 10 sites in Libya by British and American weapons experts, officials in London and Washington said Saturday.
The meetings with Colonel Qaddafi occurred secretly this fall, and he personally drove his own subordinates to cooperate with the C.I.A.'s review of Libya's illicit weapons programs, United States intelligence officials said Saturday.
"During meetings with Colonel Qaddafi, he was consistent throughout with his desire to proceed with the admissions and elimination of his weapons program," one intelligence official said. "He knew what he wanted to do, and he had a message to pass back to both Washington and London. Our meetings were usually late at night, but in each case he had done his homework, and was quite generous with his time."
But the negotiations hit high speed in the last week. Prime Minister Tony Blair had his first ever telephone conversation with Colonel Qaddafi on Thursday, an aide said. Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Mr. Blair's national security adviser, and Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, spoke with Libyan officials throughout the week, British and American officials said. And Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was on the phone with the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, from his hospital bed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he was recovering from prostate surgery, a State Department official said.
The effort's roots lay in the final phase of the five years of talks over the United Nations sanctions against Libya imposed after the bombing in 1988 of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, British and American officials said. The United Nations agreed to lift its sanctions after Libya acknowledged responsibility for the bombing and offered about $10 million in compensation for each of the 270 victims. But Libya said full payment would come only after all international sanctions were lifted.
Congress and the Bush administration, however, said sanctions would be maintained until Libya gave up its illicit weapons programs and links to terrorist organizations. That position, American and British officials said, forced Libya, economically crippled and desperate for the return of foreign oil companies, to consider the new concessions.
"The Libyans had obviously taken the issue of their weapons on board and started thinking about it simultaneously with the Lockerbie settlement," a State Department official said. "As Lockerbie was winding up, one issue led directly to the other."
That official said Libya felt an urgency to act because of the United States' stances on Iran and North Korea and its war in Iraq. An intelligence official added that the Libyan leader was also concerned about extremist elements in the country.
British and American officials said Friday that the initial approach was made by Libya in March, just before the war. A spokesman for Mr. Blair said Saturday that Libya's chief of intelligence, Musa Kussa, contacted the British government.
Mr. Kussa is well known in Europe and, British and Arab diplomats said, has spent the last several years seeking diplomatic pathways to break the United States economic embargo. Mr. Kussa and other Libyan officials carried on secret discussions with British and American intelligence that at times have involved the former South African president Nelson Mandela, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, and other Arab diplomats.
The negotiations hinged on how strong a commitment to breaking with Libya's past Colonel Qaddafi was willing to make in a public statement, given the criticism it would probably arouse in parts of the Arab world, officials in London said.
A strong declaration was crucial, a British official who briefed reporters here said Saturday, after discoveries by teams of experts who spent three weeks inspecting Libyan laboratories and military factories in October and early December. They found that Libyan scientists were "developing a nuclear fuel cycle intended to support nuclear weapons development," the official said.
"Our team was given access to projects under way at more than 10 sites, including uranium enrichment," the official said. "Libya had not acquired a nuclear weapons capability, though it was close to developing one." The discoveries raised the question of what nations had supplied components like centrifuges for enrichment of uranium. The British team also saw "significant quantities of chemical agent" and "bombs designed to be filled with chemical agent."
The significance of Libya's declaration is that it appears unconditional, but the praise that both Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair heaped on the Libyan leader suggested that the Bush administration might soon ask Congress to lift sanctions and restore economic and trade ties. Britain did so in 1999 when it re-established diplomatic relations with Tripoli.
Mr. Bush implied in his remarks at the White House on Friday that there would be reciprocity.
"As the Libyan government takes these essential steps and demonstrates its seriousness, its good faith will be returned," Mr. Bush said.
But Colonel Qaddafi has a history of tantalizing Washington with pledges to give up his stockpile of illicit weapons. In late 2001, he sent senior diplomats to Europe to convey that he was ready to sign the international Chemical Weapons Convention and open Libya to inspections. But he never followed through.
Colonel Qaddafi's son, Said al-Islam, said in an interview with CNN that Libya's decision to abandon illicit weapons programs "will pave the way for the normalization of political relations with the States."
"It's a critical deal for Libya, because first of all we will get access to defensive weapons and no sanctions on Libyan arms imports anymore," he told the network.
His remarks suggested that Colonel Qaddafi faces a significant task of selling his policy shift at home.
Libyan Meets Nuclear Regulator
VIENNA, Dec. 20 (Reuters) - The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, met a senior Libyan official on Saturday in Vienna to discuss the elimination of Tripoli's unconventional weapons program.
"Dr. ElBaradei met with Libya's secretary of the National Board of Scientific Research to discuss the Libyan government's desire to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction program," an agency spokesman, Mark Gwozdecky, said. He said the official was returning to Tripoli.
Patrick E. Tyler reported from London for this article and James Risen from Washington.
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Libya Made Progress in Nuclear Goal
By Peter Slevin and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 21, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18171-2003Dec20?language=printer
U.S. and British specialists invited into Libya's weapons laboratories and warehouses this fall found an unexpectedly advanced nuclear program and an intensive effort to build more powerful missiles, said senior U.S. officials who had been logging evidence that Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi was trying to upgrade his arsenal.
The nuclear discoveries proved most surprising to intelligence officials, who said Libya had made substantial progress in acquiring the sophisticated equipment needed to produce weapons-grade uranium. Officials noted the existence of centrifuges and thousands of essential parts, calling the program nascent but active.
Although Libya's ambition to acquire weapons of mass destruction had never been questioned, officials said its abilities do not approach the sophistication and scope of weapons programs in North Korea and Iran. Its efforts have been limited by lack of home-grown expertise and by international trade sanctions.
Libya also possesses an aging but potent stockpile of mustard gas and had conducted experiments on the nerve agents sarin and soman, U.S. officials said yesterday.
On Friday, Gaddafi announced he will abandon unconventional weapons, freeze his nuclear program and allow international inspectors to test his word.
The extraordinary change of course by Gaddafi, who intervened personally to speed secret negotiations with the United States and Britain, has given the Bush administration hope for what one official yesterday called a "huge intelligence opportunity" -- the chance to learn which countries and companies helped Libya's illicit weapons effort.
Gaddafi dispatched a top government official yesterday to Vienna to meet with Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. After years of denying the existence of weapons programs, Gaddafi's government has promised to provide full details and permit surprise inspections in an attempt to end two decades of crippling U.S. economic sanctions.
A monitoring structure has not been established, but the Bush administration will look to several international organizations. The IAEA, which the White House has openly criticized, is expected to handle nuclear questions, while chemical-weapons programs will be evaluated by the relatively untested Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Intelligence officials said they have been struck by Libya's apparent openness, described by one senior analyst as the most remarkable disclosure he had seen in 30 years of work in the field.
The U.S. officials praised the assistance given by Gaddafi himself during late-night meetings in Tripoli between Libyan scientists and American and British proliferation specialists. One official said the Libyan leader, whose government still appears on the State Department's list of terrorism sponsors, was a "driver and motivator." Still, officials said it would take time to know whether Gaddafi will prove trustworthy in this new relationship.
U.S. authorities believe Gaddafi hopes not only to open Libya and its oil industry to badly needed American investment, but to burnish his own legacy and smooth the succession path for his sons. One son, Saif Islam Gaddafi, told CNN yesterday that the government sees "no need anymore for acquiring nuclear weapons."
On the nuclear front, he said Libya had aimed to develop a nuclear capability for civilian purposes, "but also we know that it is easy to be transferred into a military project."
U.S. and British specialists invited to Libya said they found few surprises in Libya's chemical weapons program and found no concrete evidence of an existing biological weapons effort. They questioned the Libyans about equipment and research that could be applied to the production of germ warfare, but the Libyans denied that such a program had ever existed.
Libya controls dozens of tons of mustard gas, a World War I-era chemical weapon produced more than a decade ago by Libyan scientists, according to U.S. officials. The Libyans had also acquired valuable components capable of producing chemical weapons and more peaceable substances alike, despite years of international sanctions.
Interviews with Libyan scientists provided a "living example of how dual-use items could be used," said a U.S. intelligence official who traveled to Libya as part of the U.S.-British team.
The nuclear field was one place where the Libyans were "substantially further along than had been publicly disclosed," an intelligence analyst said yesterday. Officials who toured 10 sites said they had seen centrifuges for enriching uranium and countless valuable parts.
The Libyans, he said, "denied any actual enrichment had taken place." The visiting team did not see a "cascade" -- the array of centrifuges needed to begin the enrichment process. An intelligence official described it as an active but "nascent nuclear program" that was being carried out at 10 sites. One administration source estimated that Libya was still likely years from being able to build a reliable atomic weapon.
Although the existence of the mustard gas and 250-pound bombs for delivering it was widely known, weapons specialists have long questioned Libya's ability to produce effective unconventional weapons. Compared with states such as Iran and North Korea, Libya's weapons program never got much respect.
One senior Bush administration official, in a recent interview, said Libya's bumbling attempts at mastering the science of advanced weapons earned it a reputation as the "clown prince of weapons of mass destruction."
Years of isolation, and rampant corruption and nepotism, left Libya's weapons laboratories weak, inefficient and demoralized. But Libya and its mercurial leader, whose agents exploded a bomb at Berlin's La Belle disco in 1986 and blew apart Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, could not be counted out. One reason was international backing.
"It is believed that all of Libya's programs have been heavily dependent on foreign supply," said Gary Samore, a weapons specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
Indeed, intelligence officials had become increasingly worried about Libyan efforts to obtain weapons-usable parts and equipment from other countries after international embargoes against the country were eased in the late 1990s.
North Korea helped Libya to develop a missile that could travel 500 miles, a U.S. official said.
Libya also is believed to have been the intended recipient of a large shipment of missile-related technology aboard the North Korean-flagged freighter Kuwolsan, boarded by Indian customs officers in June 1999 in the port city of Kandla. The ship carried hundreds of missile components, machine tools, and detailed blueprints for variants of the Scud-B and Scud-C missiles.
One former U.S. official called it a "full production kit for missiles."
In January 2000, 32 crates of missile parts disguised as automotive spare parts were discovered at London's Gatwick Airport on a British Airways flight bound for Tripoli via Malta. Paperwork seized with the equipment indicated other consignments had already reached Libya through Britain.
The Bush administration has embarked on an ambitious strategy to curtail the spread of weapons of mass destruction, as well as the technology and equipment needed to produce them.
A key element of that strategy is identifying producers and traders, and interrupting their trade.
U.S. officials who have briefed reporters since Friday's announcement noted North Korea's connection to Libya's missile program, but have declined to name companies or other countries that helped Gaddafi. They indicated that they know more than they are telling: On the issue of the centrifuges, believed to be well beyond Libyan manufacturing capability, a senior official said, "I don't want to get into that."
Staff writer Joby Warrick contributed to this report.
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Libya to Allow Snap UN Arms Inspections - Diplomat
December 21, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-libya.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Libya has agreed to allow snap U.N. nuclear arms inspections, just a day after declaring it was giving up plans to build an atomic bomb, a Western diplomat said Sunday.
Libya, widely praised for announcing Friday that it was ditching efforts to build the bomb and other banned weapons, told the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog Saturday it was ready to sign up to inspections, the diplomat told Reuters.
The surprise moves, which could lead to the end of U.S. sanctions and the return of U.S. oil companies, mark an about-face for Muammar Gaddafi, Libyan leader for 34 years.
``We are turning our swords into ploughshares and this step should be appreciated and followed by all other countries,'' Libyan Prime Minister Shokri Ghanem said of Friday's statement, adding that economic progress was more important than arms.
But Britain, which played a key role in talks that persuaded Tripoli to abandon its arms ambitions, said the fate that befell Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who was ousted in April by U.S.-led forces, may have prompted the move.
``We showed after Saddam Hussein failed to cooperate with the United Nations that we meant business and Libya, and I hope other countries, will draw that lesson,'' Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told Sky television.
In Tripoli, the official Jana news agency said British Prime Minister Tony Blair had ``expressed his hope and desire'' to meet Gaddafi ``and discuss international affairs with him.''
The agency said Blair made the offer in a telephone conversation with the Libyan leader. It did not say when this took place and gave no further details..
BLAIR'S OFFICE SAYS NO MEETING PLAN
Earlier in London, Blair's office said there were no plans for the prime minister to meet Gaddafi, as British Sunday newspapers also reported.
An official said Blair spoke to Gaddafi through a translator Thursday. In a half-hour conversation, they agreed the final wording of Libya's statement on its weapons.
U.S. intelligence officials said Gaddafi seemed the driving force behind Libya's decision and his motivation may have ranged from concerns about the Iraq war and a desire to end isolation to concerns about domestic threats to his own rule.
Tripoli acted swiftly to show it was serious.
A top official met the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna Saturday to discuss its proposals to accept stricter IAEA nuclear safeguards.
The Vienna-based Western diplomat said Libya told Mohammed ElBaradei it would open its atomic facilities to unannounced inspections, a deal going beyond the basic demands of the main nuclear arms control treaty.
Libya is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, allowing limited IAEA inspections, but said it was now willing to sign the treaty's Additional Protocol, which allows far more intrusive checks. Iran signed it Thursday after pressure from Washington over an alleged arms program.
``The Libyans confirmed they want to sign the Additional Protocol in their meeting with ElBaradei,'' said the diplomat.
Libyan Foreign Minister Mohamed Abderrhmane Chalgam said in Algiers: ``Our delegation is still in negotiations in Vienna.''
The separate Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said Libya would have to adopt the Chemical Weapons Convention before inspections for such arms could be made.
THAW WITH WEST
Libya was freed of broader U.N. sanctions this year after accepting responsibility for the December 21, 1988, downing of a U.S. airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
Washington left its sanctions in place, accusing Tripoli of seeking biological and chemical arms.
Some U.S. officials said at the weekend it was too early to say when, or if, the United States would lift its embargo.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin called on the international community to help pressure Libya to conclude talks on compensating families of victims of a French airliner bombing in 1989, saying the Libyan arms deal ``creates a new context.''
``The discussions under way have allowed significant progress, including in these last few days. We therefore hope a definitive settlement can be reached in the next few weeks (on the UTA bombing case),'' he told the French daily newspaper Le Figaro in an interview due to be published Monday.
Tripoli's announcement Friday was the culmination of secret negotiations with Britain and the United States launched at about the time of the Iraq invasion in March.
President Bush said he hoped others would follow Gaddafi's example.
The head of the Arab League said Israel, widely believed to have a nuclear weapons capability, should do the same as Libya.
Gaddafi was vilified by the United States over the last two decades. In the 1980s, U.S. planes bombed Tripoli, killing Gaddafi's infant daughter, in retaliation for the bombing of a West Berlin nightclub frequented by U.S. soldiers.
-------- mideast
U.S.: Libya Eager to Dismantle Weapons
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
Associated Press Writer
Dec 21, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LIBYA_WEAPONS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, meeting in the dead of night in his capital with officers from the Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence, appeared eager to do away with his weapons programs, U.S. officials said Saturday.
Those secret meetings over recent months led to Friday's surprise announcement that Libya would cease work on its programs to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, including an effort to refine uranium for use in nuclear devices, the officials said.
The United States and Britain portrayed the announcement as a significant breakthrough in their efforts to curtail the spread of such weapons and keep them from a terrorist organization or hostile country.
It is clear, however, that Gadhafi has tried in recent years to ease tensions with the West, and this step was expected to further improve Libya's international standing.
Gadhafi initiated the talks and the subsequent onsite inspections in March after he agreed to settle the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, with cash payments and an admission of complicity. His overture for talks came days before the United States and Britain invaded Iraq.
President Bush said the ouster and capture of Saddam Hussein and U.S. efforts to check weapons pursuits by North Korea and Iran played a role in Gadhafi's decision. Gadhafi's son said Saturday his father went ahead after receiving assurances that the United States was not plotting against him. Libya also claimed it had acted on its own to serve as an inspiration for the rest of the world.
Senior intelligence officials, including one on the inspection team that went to Libya, briefed reporters Saturday on the chain of events that led to the announcement. They spoke on condition they not be identified.
Most significant among the discoveries was that Libya had built a working centrifuge for uranium enrichment. To make weapons-grade uranium, a raw form of the substance can be passed through a series of centrifuges that slowly create a product capable of nuclear fission.
Such programs need hundreds of centrifuges, called a cascade, to make significant quantities of uranium over a reasonable time. The inspection teams saw only one or a few centrifuges, and the Libyans denied that any enriched uranium had been produced.
The intelligence officials refused to say how Libya obtained centrifuge technology. Both Iran and North Korea are thought to have the technology, as are a number of companies and U.S. allies.
Before their meetings with Gadhafi, the American and British intelligence officers were whisked around Tripoli, the capital, by Libyan security officials, sometimes changing cars before arriving at the sites of meetings with Gadhafi.
Gadhafi was described as agreeable, laying out proposals for disarming and allowing inspections. He provided information about Libyan weapons programs that Western intelligence agencies had been unaware of.
The Libyans had chemical weapons and medium-range missiles from North Korea and, at a minimum, a program to make uranium for nuclear weapons. U.S. intelligence agencies lack information that Libya had enriched the uranium to make a nuclear weapon or possessed biological weapons. For all the Libyan cooperation, officials acknowledged there still could be undisclosed weapons and programs.
So far, the United States has learned that Libya had:
-Tens of tons of mustard agent, a World War I-era chemical weapon, produced about 10 years ago.
-Aircraft bombs capable of dispersing the mustard agent in combat.
-A supply of Scud-C ballistic missiles made in North Korea. The weapons can hit targets 500 miles away.
Much of this information reinforced the CIA's assumptions, intelligence officials said, although some expressed surprise at how far the Libyans' nuclear program had advanced.
Early in the year, before contacts began, Libyan officials approached the British government to open discussions. Washington was later included in negotiations that took place at an undisclosed location in Europe.
After some initial visits to Tripoli, a team of CIA and British intelligence personnel went to Libya in October to inspect weapons sites. The team included technical experts on weapons programs.
At some point, the CIA presented the Libyans with its intelligence about the programs. The Libyans were surprised at how much the agency knew, the officials said, then provided much more information.
The second inspection visit, in December, was more fruitful, the officials said.
During the visits, the team went to 10 sites related to Libya's nuclear effort, chemical stockpile and missile program.
The U.S. intelligence officials also acknowledged that authorities had stopped a shipment intended to supply Libya's weapons program. They would provide no details.
It is unclear if the intelligence team will return, the officials said. Libya has agreed to allow U.N. inspectors access to its programs.
Gadhafi also agreed to get rid of missiles with ranges longer than 186 miles, which would include the North Korean Scud-Cs but not Scud-Bs, which have the 186-mile range.
The officials said Libya was developing the weapons for its defense, but they refused to discuss whether Libya had provided weapons or expertise to other countries.
Bush said that if Libya shows it is serious in honoring its commitment, there was the possibility of U.S. help in making Libya "a more free and prosperous country."
The United States has a 17-year embargo in place against Libya and continues to list Libya among nations that sponsor terrorism. Britain's foreign secretary indicated that Washington may lift the embargo.
On the Net:
Federation of American Scientists page on Libyan weapons of mass destruction: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/libya/index.html
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Libyan arms renunciation to change global geopolitical map: analysts
Agence France Presse
Dec 21, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031221181137.gkgblth8.html
TRIPOLI (AFP) - - Libya's renunciation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons heralds possible global geopolitical changes, with Syria's arsenal foremost in US sights and Arabs insisting Israel must relinquish nuclear arms, analysts said.
"We welcome the Libyan decision," said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "Israel must also eliminate its weapons of mass destruction."
Fighting for international acceptance and an end to crippling trade sanctions, Libyan officials in Vienna met earlier with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed El Baradei, to discuss inspections of its nuclear capabilities.
The Libyan decision shook up President George W. Bush's list of so-called rogue states, which listed Libya along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Syria, Cuba, Iran and North Korea.
"The map is certainly different now,"said Judith Kipper, an analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations.
Libya's policy change left Syria more than ever in Washington's sights because of its alleged illicit weapons program.
On December 12, Bush approved economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria for its alleged support for terrorism, tacit support of anti-US insurgents in Iraq and efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction. The bill gave Bush the freedom to decide when and how to impose sanctions.
The United States has accused Damascus of having chemical weapons and trying to obtain biological weapons.
"The Syrian regime doesn't yet understand that since the war in Iraq they are in a completely different strategic position, one that requires them to adapt," Kipper said. "They seem to forget the US are on their border."
However, in Arab diplomatic circles, the general feeling was that Damascus will seek to resolve its differences with Washington by diplomatic means, although as one source said, it would avoid to be seen as "kowtowing to Washington."
Meanwhile, with Saddam Hussein captured, Syria on a tight leash and Libya turning to cooperation, Israel may be able to regard the Middle East with a greater sense of ease.
In Jerusalem, analysts said Israel was still concerned about a possible threat from Iran, but even here, Tehran's decision to allow surprise checks of its nuclear facilities removed some of the perceived threat to the Israelis.
Although Israel has never confirmed nor denied that it has atomic arms, experts estimate it has 200 nuclear warheads.
The Libyan state press said the international community should now put pressure on Israel to give up its nuclear arms because it no longer had an alibi for keeping them.
The secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Mussa, said the world should put pressure on Israel to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
He said Libya's action was part of "serious Arab efforts" to make the Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.
"It is not logical to make an exception for Israel while other countries are called on to eliminate WMDs," he added.
Iran said through its foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, that the world must put more pressure on Israel.
"The Zionist regime is the principal threat to the safety of the region and the international community must put pressure so that this regime eliminates its weapons of mass destruction", Asefi said.
The Gulf states of Qatar and Bahrain also called for the international community to turn its attention to Israel.
Both in Washington and London, Libya's decision was seen as a consequence of the American-led invasion of Iraq.
"I don't think you can separate out the relevance of military action in Iraq from the decision the Libyans have taken," said British defense secretary Geoff Hoon.
Hoon said on Sky TV that the Libyan announcement "shows that the policy of engagement can work -- but it also shows that that policy has to be backed with the threat, or if necessary the use, of force to be successful."
Editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post both said the invasion of Iraq influenced the Libyan leader, Moamer Kadhafi.
The Post said that those who developed the US policy of preemptive, unprovoked action against emerging threats "predicted that an impressive US victory in Iraq would intimidate allies and foes alike, making them yield to US interests in other areas."
That was also the view in Jerusalem. According to Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, Kadhafi's surprise decision was yet another victory notched up by the US and British allies who had crushed Saddam.
"After bringing about the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the Anglo-American coalition has achieved a new victory in prompting Kadhafi to renounce his weapons of mass destruction," Mofaz told public radio.
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Libya spies' secret deal to reveal terrorists
Peter Beaumont, Martin Bright and Kamal Ahmed
Sunday December 21, 2003
The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1111197,00.html
Libya provided detailed intelligence on hundreds of al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists as part of a deal to end its isolation as a pariah nation, The Observer can reveal.
The disclosure came as Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George Bush yesterday celebrated a diplomatic triumph following Friday night's dramatic announcement that Libya had renounced its weapons of mass destruction programme.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw praised the Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gadaffi for his 'huge statesmanship' in striking the deal over WMD.
But the real prize for London and Washington for two years of intense negotiation was access to material from one of the world's most formidable and feared intelligence organisations, The Observer can reveal.
Libya has a sophisticated network of intelligence missions throughout Africa and the Middle East, many of them a legacy of the nationalist struggles of the post-colonial period and Cold War.
In a series of extraordinary meetings, orchestrated by MI6 and involving the CIA and Libyan intelligence, which were held in Britain over the past two years, Libya agreed to hand over intelligence as well as pledging to abandon its WMD programme in return for the lifting of crippling US sanctions.
In a further twist, it has emerged that the key Libyan negotiator was once an avowed enemy of Britain, accused of exporting international terror and masterminding Libya's support for the IRA.
Musa Kousa, the head of Libya's external security organisation, was an enemy of Britain and America until the events of 11 September 2001 made Libya a useful ally in the war on terror.
The one-time Libyan envoy to London, he was expelled from Britain in 1980 for publicly threatening to murder dissidents. He was also named by the French as a suspect in the bombing of a civilian airliner over Niger in 1989 with the loss of 170 lives.
In 1995, a secret MI5 assessment accused Kousa of running agents in the UK and of presiding over an organisation 'responsible for supporting terrorist organisations and for perpetrating state sponsored acts of terrorism'.
Last Tuesday, however, Kousa was negotiating the final details of the plan to bring Libya in from the cold in the Travellers' Club in Pall Mall with senior figures from the Foreign Office and MI6.
It is a remarkable turnaround for a man who was declared persona non grata in 1980 by then Deputy Foreign Secretary Ian Gilmour amid cheers in the Commons.
Kousa was Libya's de facto ambassador to Britain in June 1980 when he told the Times: 'The revolutionary committees have decided last night to kill two more people in the United Kingdom. I approve of this.' He went on to profess admiration for the IRA and threatened to throw Libya's support behind the terrorist organisation if Britain refused to hand over Gadaffi opponents. This threat was later followed through with material support to the IRA.
The deal announced on Friday follows two years of intense negotiations centred on London in the immediate aftermath of al-Qaeda's devastating attack on the World Trade Centre. The first part of the negotiation secured compensation for the Lockerbie bombing.
London-based dissidents last night feared for their future and expressed their horror that Musa Kousa was allowed to enter the country.
Ashur Shamis, founder of the opposition National Front for the Liberation of Libya, said: 'It is an absolutely appalling state of affairs. The British and Americans were prepared to go to war to dismantle a regime like Saddam's. But they are quite happy to accommodate Gadaffi, who is no less tyrannical and repressive.'
Shamis, who has a $1m bounty on his head from Libya, said Kousa had organised the systematic persecution of Libyan dissidents in Europe for two decades.
Huda Abuzeid, whose dissident father was murdered by Libyan assassins in west London, said: 'I am astonished that they have done this deal before dealing with the unsolved murders of my father and PC Yvonne Fletcher [shot and killed outside the Libyan People's Bureau in 1984]. This is deeply depressing.'
Families of those who died in the Lockerbie bombing also reacted with dismay. Susan Cohen of New Jersey, whose daughter was killed on the flight, described the move as a 'total betrayal'.
-------- us politics
Democrats shift target to WMDs
December 21, 2003
By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031221-120728-4484r.htm
The capture of Saddam Hussein has muted Democratic criticism that President Bush "lied us into war," but his argument that actual weapons of mass destruction are no different from programs to develop them opens him to a new angle of attack.
Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's presidential bid in 2000, says that despite the national euphoria at Saddam's capture, the Bush administration "cannot sweep the issue of WMDs under the rug."
"This was the primary reason given at the time to the American people as the justification for going there," Ms. Brazile says. "If the administration gets away with lying on this issue, how can we trust them again when America may face a 'real threat.' "
In an interview on ABC's "Primetime Live" Tuesday, correspondent Diane Sawyer observed that before the invasion of Iraq, the president and high-level members of the administration stated that there was no doubt that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he was hiding them from inspectors.
"It was stated as a hard fact that there were weapons of mass destruction, as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons," Miss Sawyer said.
"What's the difference?" Mr. Bush replied. "If [Saddam] were to acquire weapons, he would be a danger ... so we got rid of him, and there's no doubt the world is a safer, freer place as a result of Saddam being gone."
In the eight months since the liberation of Iraq, U.S. troops have failed to uncover those weapons, but David Kay, head of the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, reports evidence of Saddam's WMD "programs."
Mr. Bush said in the "Primetime Live" interview that such programs and actual WMDs are one and the same.
The White House maintains that deposing Saddam was an integral part of the war on terrorism, which intensified Friday with a report that a suicide attack by al Qaeda is planned for New York City.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan says the administration is "concerned about the volume of reporting of threats" in the last few weeks.
"That is why the Department of Homeland Security has sent out several [warning] bulletins over the past few weeks ... urging all to continue to be on a heightened state of alert, especially as we enter the busy holiday season."
Most Democrats, however, still don't see a connection between Saddam and the war on terrorism, and hint that they will soon begin to focus again on that theme.
A supporter of presidential candidate Howard Dean posted a message on the former Vermont governor's campaign Web site mocking Mr. Bush's "What's the difference" line, and predicted his candidate would echo that theme on the campaign trail.
After the capture of Saddam, Mr. Dean said the deposed Iraqi dictator was never a threat to the United States and that going to war to eliminated him was a mistake.
Bill Buck, spokesman for Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark, says that questions about Iraq and the president's "Primetime Live" interview will continue to haunt Mr. Bush as the election approaches.
"I think it's clearly a problem for the White House, and I think they recognize that it's a problem for them," Mr. Buck says. Where the WMDs are "is obviously a question that the Bush administration owes the American people an answer to."
Mr. Clark believes that the Iraq war "is something that has distracted us from the war on terror, not enhanced it," Mr. Buck says.
A new opinion poll suggests that the general public doesn't share that view, and is less concerned about the distinction between actual weapons and programs to build them than Democrats are.
A poll conducted by the organization Public Affairs for the Associated Press shows that by a margin of 2-to-1, respondents think Mr. Bush made the right decision by going to war in Iraq and 63 percent say they approved of the president's handling of foreign policy and terrorism, up from 54 percent who thought that two weeks before Saddam was captured.
In his weekly radio address, the president yesterday urged Americans to seek out ways to help the needy during the holiday season, and took credit for a rise in volunteerism nationwide. "This holiday season, I ask every American to look for a challenge in your own community, and step forward to lend a hand."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
General Plans Changes in Afghan Strategy
December 21, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-US-Commander.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- In a significant switch in strategy, U.S. troops plan to set up bases to provide reconstruction aid in provinces plagued by Taliban attacks, the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Saturday in his first interview since taking charge.
Lt. Gen. David Barno told The Associated Press that the move will make the troubled south and east safer for aid workers and open the way for landmark Afghan elections in mid-2004. He also predicted a sharp reaction from insurgents.
They're ``going to realize that's the death knell to terrorist organizations in that part of the country,'' said Barno. ``We'll be prepared for that.''
A wave of violence this year has belied U.S. claims to have brought security to Afghanistan, two years after an American-led assault drove the Taliban from power for harboring al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.
Attacks have forced the United Nations and other aid groups to withdraw from some regions, undermining aid delivery and confidence in the reconstruction efforts of the U.S.-backed government ahead of elections slated for June.
The United Nations has even accused the U.S. military of playing into the hands of Taliban agitators in its hunt for terror suspects, with two botched raids that killed 15 Afghan children earlier this month.
In a bid to deliver more aid to impoverished civilians, the United States and allies including Britain and New Zealand have set up nine joint civilian-military units charged with creating islands of stability across the country.
So far, most of the so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams are in relatively secure regions. Now, the U.S. military is deploying teams across a broad swath of the country dominated by Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group from which the hardline Islamic Taliban draw their main support.
Barno, who took command of the 11,000-strong U.S. force here on Nov. 27, said there will be at least 12 such reconstruction teams by March and more later, including dangerous missions in the capitals of Zabul and Uruzgan provinces that were shunned by aid groups because Taliban militants reportedly roam freely.
``We are looking at a significant alteration of our strategy in the south and east,'' Barno said at his office in the fortified U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul.
The military teams will help distribute reconstruction aid bolstered by an extra $1.2 billion recently released by the U.S. Congress.
That aid, combined with the opening of the south and east by a string of new military operations, will cause ``a dramatic change in the amount of involvement of the people in that area in support of the central government and the future of Afghanistan,'' Barno said.
Aid groups worry that their attempts to remain independent in the eyes of Afghans, including Taliban sympathizers, has been compromised by U.S. involvement in delivering assistance.
But Barno suggested it was time for relief groups to accept that they could not be neutral after a stream of deliberate attacks on de-miners and well-diggers. He said he hoped aid workers would return to Pashtun areas.
``They probably have to, and they are, realizing that they are now operating in a different world,'' he said.
--------
New Strategy Calls for Wooing Some in Taliban
U.S. Forces in Afghanistan To Vary Tactics by Region
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 21, 2003; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17872-2003Dec20.html
KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S. military officials, after two years of narrowly focusing on anti-terrorist combat operations, say they are shifting to a broader strategy that includes trying to woo noncriminal members of the Islamic Taliban movement back into mainstream society and establishing long-term civilian assistance programs in conflict zones.
At the same time, the U.S. military does not appear to be having serious second thoughts about combat tactics after two controversial incidents this month in which a total of 15 children were inadvertently killed during U.S. air assaults on two villages in Paktia and Ghazni provinces.
Lt. Gen. David Barno, the new senior U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, said in a wide-ranging interview last week that U.S. military officials saw three distinct adversaries in different parts of the country, each requiring a different approach.
In southern provinces bordering Pakistan, such as Khost and Paktika, where Arab Islamic extremists and al Qaeda fighters have repeatedly attacked U.S. bases, Barno said U.S. combat troops would continue to aggressively track down, capture and kill as many as they could.
In northern border provinces such as Kunar and Nuristan, which armed followers of fugitive Afghan militia leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar have used as a base for urban sabotage and links with other Islamic groups, Barno said U.S.-led combat sweeps would also continue in an effort to isolate and destroy these forces.
But in southeastern provinces such as Ghazni, Zabol and Kandahar, where revived Taliban forces have staged numerous attacks against civilians while also trying to win political influence, Barno said U.S. officials were shifting to an "integrated" approach that woos back former Islamic fighters into civilian life.
"Those who are criminals must be held accountable, but for the rank and file, the noncriminals, there will be opportunities for reconciliation and reintegration," Barno said. His remarks suggested that U.S. officials now agree with Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the revived Taliban movement needs to be courted politically.
In numerous speeches and interviews, Karzai has made a distinction between what he describes as good and bad members of the Taliban. He said recently that as few as 150 Taliban officials might be guilty of terrorism and abuse and that the rest needed to be brought back into civilian life, as is the case with thousands of other former Afghan militia forces, who previously fought the Taliban but are being formally disarmed and offered job training.
Until recently, U.S. military officials, headquartered at Bagram air base north of Kabul since the defeat of Taliban rule in late 2001, routinely mentioned Taliban and al Qaeda forces together, and always described the principal mission of some 11,000 U.S. forces stationed here as killing and capturing as many of both enemy groups as possible.
But Afghan and U.N. officials have conducted intensive consultations over the past two months, coinciding with Barno's arrival and with the shift of the U.S. military command from Bagram to Kabul, the Afghan capital. U.S. military officials said they had concluded that while al Qaeda forces represent a die-hard, armed threat, the Taliban revival was more complex and rooted in Afghan society, and thus required a more comprehensive solution.
There have been unconfirmed reports that U.S. military or civilian officials were meeting privately with some commanders of both the Taliban and Hekmatyar's forces. A senior former Taliban official, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, was recently released from U.S. custody and has been rumored to be acting as a mediator between Afghan and Taliban officials.
"Our move of the senior headquarters to Kabul, instead of a semi-isolated area, recognizes the change of an era in Afghanistan," Barno said. From being "absolutely focused" on combat, he said, U.S. military policy will now stress integrating a variety of efforts to stabilize and secure the country. "Our role will be to help set conditions for successful elections next summer," he said.
Afghanistan is moving gradually toward a democratic political system under U.S. auspices, with a national constitutional assembly being held here this month and presidential elections scheduled for June. Parliamentary elections would be held later.
Asked about the deaths of the 15 Afghan children in two U.S. military raids in early December, and the potential adverse effect of such mistakes on civilian attitudes toward the U.S. military role, Barno said officials would continue to "refine" their efforts to pinpoint targets and minimize civilian casualties, but would not become so cautious as to run the "risk of paralysis."
"The system is imperfect, and we learn from each incident," he said, adding that U.S. military forces here might need to adjust the current balance of human vs. technical intelligence gathering. But if civilians are "co-located" with terrorists or weapons caches, that is a "callous decision by the enemy" rather than a flaw in American planning, Barno said.
International human rights groups have been highly critical of the two attacks. The New York-based group Human Rights Watch said the U.S. military should "increase precautions and explain intelligence failures" as a result. It said a "pattern of mistakes" had led to "too many civilian deaths and no clear changes" in U.S. military operations planning.
In the new U.S. military effort to win Afghan hearts and minds, a key component is to be the rapid expansion of regional military aid centers known as "provincial reconstruction teams" -- some American, some staffed by other NATO members -- into the heartland of the Taliban revival.
Four such centers are already in operation, and eight more are expected to open by spring, including four in the troubled southeast. Last week, a new center opened in Kandahar, a major southeastern city that was once the Taliban religious headquarters. Barno said U.S. military teams there would work with Afghan and U.N. officials, hoping to create a role model for other provinces.
"It's a pretty big change," he said. "We will be out in patrols on the roads, we will be training 20,000 new Afghan police. We want to use the military to enable an integrated effort. . . . We will be planting the U.S. flag and telling the Taliban we are here to stay."
Like the idea of "reintegrating" some Taliban members into mainstream Afghan society, the U.S. decision to expand the military aid teams coincides with long-standing proposals from the Karzai government on the need to greatly improve government services and visibility in areas where the Taliban are active.
In recent interviews, both the interior minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, and the governor of Kandahar, Yusuf Pashtoon, said such efforts were urgently needed but that the Karzai government had few resources to bring them about.
-------- china
Chinese Leader, Bush Talk About Taiwan
December 21, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-US.html
BEIJING (AP) -- Underscoring China's increasingly aggressive stance toward Taiwan, President Hu Jintao told President Bush that the island's independence ``cannot be tolerated.''
Hu made the remark to Bush during a telephone conversation late Saturday night, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The two leaders also discussed Premier Wen Jiabao's recent visit to America, the North Korean nuclear crisis and the situation in Iraq, it said.
For China, the highlight of Wen's trip earlier this month was a meeting with Bush, who used the most definitive language yet about the relationship between the United States and Taiwan.
The United States opposes ``any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo,'' Bush said then, adding: ``And the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose.''
China and Taiwan split in 1949 amid civil war and the island has operated as a self-ruling nation despite the mainland's insistence that it unify eventually or face war. While Washington cut formal ties with Taiwan when it recognized the communist Beijing government in 1979, it has been the island's unofficial ally and biggest arms supplier.
Bush was referring to Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian's recent advocacy of a referendum about whether China should stop pointing hundreds of missiles at Taiwan. China fears such a referendum might eventually lead to a vote on formal independence.
Hu told Bush he appreciated the American president's recent remarks and said that ``the Chinese government is willing to achieve the reunification peacefully.''
``But Taiwan independence cannot be tolerated definitely,'' Xinhua quoted Hu as saying.
Bush also praised China for its efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue and reiterated that America wanted a peaceful solution to the crisis, Xinhua said.
Beijing -- the North's last major ally -- hosted the first round of six-nation talks in August and has led attempts to coordinate a second summit.
-------- colombia
In Colombia, Coca Declines But the War Does Not
Fighting Spikes in Province Despite Anti-Drug Program
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 21, 2003; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17533-2003Dec20?language=printer
EL TIGRE, Colombia -- Jose Efrain Mora lived in a house on the steep bluffs above the River Guamuez for 30 years until the night last month when a stranger's hands shook him awake.
Members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, the country's largest guerrilla insurgency, ordered him to get up, and he quickly woke his wife and three children. Outside, more than a dozen men, working quietly in the darkness, laced dynamite to the 350-foot bridge spanning the wide river below their house.
The resulting explosion toppled the bridge from the bluffs, severing the economic lifeline that joined hundreds of farmers in southern Putumayo province with markets, food and families. The roof of Mora's home caved in. Heavy seasonal rains have since left the detritus of a humble life -- two children's backpacks, a lady's worn white pumps, a shabby purse -- swimming in pools of water in the ruined bedroom.
"They didn't want us dead, and in that sense I view them well," said Mora, a 48-year-old farmer. "But just look at my house. I had nothing else."
After more than a year of relative calm, Putumayo province is enduring a severe spike in violence, defying national trends.
The war is rising here despite a sharp decline in Putumayo's drug crops, reduced 93 percent after three years of intensive U.S.-financed aerial herbicide spraying.
Colombian and U.S. authorities have long said that coca production provides the motivation and financial fuel for the country's nearly four-decade civil war. But the continuing violence in a province that has been the chief venue of U.S. anti-drug assistance challenges that notion. It also shows the difference in the benchmarks for success, which the Bush administration measures as a swift reduction in drug crops and the Colombian government envisions as a lasting peace.
The FARC is an 18,000-member guerrilla group that promotes a Marxist solution to Colombia's economic imbalances. It has in the past six weeks attacked oil wells, roads and bridges, military posts and police stations across Putumayo. Fighting for Puerto Asis, the province's commercial capital 25 miles east of this river town, left at least 30 people dead in November. One was a 14-month-old boy killed by a bullet after it passed through his father's head. The death toll accounted for more than half the murders reported in first 10 months of the year.
The United States has delivered $2.4 billion in mostly military assistance to Colombia since 2000 in the hopes of crippling the drug trade. Colombian trafficking accounts for as much as 90 percent of the cocaine reaching U.S. shores and funds two irregular armed groups -- the FARC and a rival paramilitary force that works alongside the army against the FARC.
Coca, the key ingredient in cocaine, covered 163,000 acres of Putumayo in 2000, when the U.S. Congress approved the first phase of the aid package known as Plan Colombia. By the end of July 2003, fewer than 12,000 acres remained. Nationwide coca cultivation has dropped from 403,000 acres to 169,000 acres over that time, according to Colombian National Police figures.
But less coca has not translated into less violence, the long-term Colombian objective, in Putumayo. Neither a new economy nor a stronger local government has taken hold, as envisioned by the anti-drug plan, and the military is still struggling to keep down a potent guerrilla force.
Coca farmers who once expected sustained U.S. help to begin legal farms have instead moved into remote corners of the lightly governed region to replant illegal ones.
"It is very easy to see this rising violence as a fight over the illegal crops," said Simonetta Grassi, acting director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime in Bogota, the capital, about 350 miles northeast of here. "We can't discard this. But at the same time, Putumayo is no longer the center of the drug trade, and there is likely more going on here."
Coca cultivation has increased in the Amazon River basin east of here, south along the Ecuadoran frontier, and west in bordering Nariño province, which has replaced Putumayo as Colombia's biggest coca producer, according to national police figures.
Much of the expansion has been directed by the FARC, now trying to shore up support in southern Colombia, where it has long derived much of its money and recruits, as it loses ground in other regions. Meanwhile, it is stepping up its defense of what little coca remains: Guerrilla groundfire has struck 94 spray planes this year, more than twice as many as in 2002, and brought down four of them.
"It's a last stand," said Col. Carlos Malaver, director of planning and strategy of Colombia's National Police anti-narcotics division. "Once we get rid of all the coca, which we will, they must find new places to go. They'll have to move farther away from their markets and their territory, so there is resistance."
After the family coca plot south of here was sprayed earlier this year, Buenaventura Calvache, 22, moved east down the Putumayo River to begin again behind a protective guerrilla perimeter. Colombian police have detected 1,400 acres of new coca in La Paya, a national park in eastern Putumayo province not far from Puerto Ospina, where Calvache and his brother-in-law carved out 22 acres from the jungle to start fresh.
The guerrillas provide protection and in return are the only ones allowed to buy the coca after it has undergone its first stage of processing, Calvache said. They are paying $820 for every 2.2 pounds of unprocessed cocaine, known as base, the going rate in areas the FARC controls nationwide.
"Coca still pays," said Calvache, a rare high school graduate among coca farmers. "Even if it didn't, people are not used to working in anything else. Almost all of the crops are in the east now, and every day there are new ones."
The intensity of the spraying effort has made farming coca more expensive, U.S. officials say, offering new hope for U.S. development programs that have invested $45 million in Putumayo since the start of Plan Colombia. Most dramatically, they say, coca now ranks ninth on the list of crops that offer the best return per acre, trailing the tropical flower heliconia, vanilla and black pepper.
"We're still investing a considerable amount of funds, and we think that alternative development is more viable than maybe we even gave it credit for a year or so ago," said Mike Deal, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development in Colombia. He added, however, that "security is still a major impediment and a major cost of doing business."
"Given the overall financing of Plan Colombia, I don't think we can sustain that heavy an investment in Putumayo," Deal said. "I think we can improve our overall success by focusing on more secure areas with better market access."
Last week, an anti-narcotics battalion comprising 400 police officers and army troops arrived a few miles west of here to begin yanking out the remaining coca crops by hand and arresting, for the first time, the small-time landlords and leaf pickers who represent the lowest rung of the drug trade.
As soldiers searched a plank-board shack by the roadside, seizing such dual-use items as gasoline and vats used to process coca, a group of troops hacked away at the shoulder-high plants behind the house, stacking them and setting them ablaze.
"Spraying doesn't kill all of this," said the police lieutenant in charge. "So we'll do the rest by machete."
The FARC is waging its own offensive, sending in a mobile column and an additional front of several hundred troops. In the past two months, guerrillas have burned oil wells near the Ecuadoran border, shelled the military base on the outskirts of Puerto Asis, and blown up homes used by the army and paramilitary troops.
The United Nations shuttered its relief agencies earlier this month because of the violence.
Puerto Asis, a billiards-and-beer town where the guerrillas were pushed out five years ago by paramilitary forces, has been hardest hit. The November murders -- all of the victims were young men except for the toddler -- made the homicide rate for the month 23 times that of the annual rate in Washington.
The spike runs counter to an overall improving human rights picture under President Alvaro Uribe that shows, in figures disputed by human rights groups, a decline in murders, kidnappings, guerrilla attacks and civilians forced from homes by war. Police officials say the paramilitary group in Puerto Asis might have been using a 17-year-old FARC deserter to point out alleged guerrillas and their collaborators, many newly arrived. Most of the dead have been found in a river with three bullet wounds along the head and neck.
"The FARC aspires to take back all of this," said Maj. Miguel Fernando Roa Ramirez, the Puerto Asis police chief, who is so short of resources that he has not had enough gasoline to run patrols since late November.
Though he lost his house, Mora has a new job, part of a cottage industry that has sprung up around the broken bridge. He dispatches taxis to points west for passengers who can no longer cross the bridge. Other jobless young men receive $5 a day carrying propane gas tanks, jugs of gasoline and lengths of lumber from one truck over the river to another.
"I want them to yank it all out," said Maria del Carmen Gutierrez, discussing the coca crop as she watched the foot traffic around the bridge. Gutierrez directs a nonprofit organization that has received about $200,000 from Plan Colombia so that 75 former coca farmers can begin planting cacao, from which chocolate is made. "Everyone has to be more responsible if they want progress or else there will be more of this violence."
-------- iraq
WELCOME TO BASRA
How to stay alive by dodging the bullets and bombs is first lesson you get on arrival in Iraq
Dec 22 2003
UK Daily Record
Bob Shields
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/content_objectid=13748002_method=full_siteid=89488_headline=-WELCOME-TO-BASRA-name_page.html
As well as sending the Jocks a Box we also sent them Bob Shields. Here is the first of his three special reports from Basra
THEY put on a welcome reception for all the new arrivals here. But there's no free sangria children's club T-shirts or discounted tickets for Tuesday night's hillbilly hoedown.
Instead, they tell you in a Power Point presentation how to avoid being shot, stabbed, kidnapped, blown up, infected, infested, bitten, stung or poisoned.
Beforeyouevenleavethebaggage hall they ask you for your blood type in advance of suffering any combination of the above.
And finally, you fill out a form with the solemn headline next of kin.
In a state of shock I shuffled outside for my first cigarette after nine airborne hours. There was a pop like a car backfiring. Then another then a stream of pops echoing in the darkness.
It didn't take me long to realise that 30 cars don't backfire simultaneously, this was gunfire. ''Hell, there are people out there shooting each other, '' I said to no one, dropped my cigarette and fled back through the glass sliding doors that seemed to take an eternity to open.
An army sergeant was waiting with his hand extended ''Mr Shields... welcome to Basra.'' He led me back outside to where four armed soldiers were waiting in the ''snatch'' an armoured carrier that got its nickname from years of active service in Northern Ireland.
Even surrounded by two tonnes of steel plate, I was still invited to put on my body armour and helmet standard practice for every serviceman when outside the security of his own barracks. ''If any shooting starts you sit there and let us take care of it, '' said the driver.
''Funnily enough I was just about to suggest that myself, '' I told him. Everyone laughed and there were quite a few of those over the next five days.
Then another blast of gunfire ricocheted into the night. There were quite a few of those as well. I could still hear shooting as I finally collapsed in a sleeping bag at 3 am in a former prisoncell, at Chindit Camp, temporary home of A company, the Royal Scots. We were in Az Zebayr, a satellite town south of Basra.
''Breakfast starts at 7 am, '' said colour sergeant Gordon Surgeon.
And what time does it finish?'' ''At 7.45, '' he told me.
Dawn in Iraq is conveniently at around 6.45 am. Stirring upfrommy sleeping bag I saw the first rays of daylight shine throughatinywindowand glint onahook in the centre of the ceiling.
Less than a year ago, some poor Iraqi soul was probably hanging from it.
I later discovered that every single ''room'' had a hook. Butno toilet or heating. But after a month in Iraq the Royal Scots have turned it into as safe and welcoming a headquarters as they could.
All the lads here had bunks with mattresses, a luxury compared to their tent dwelling colleagues at Camp Cherokee who I met later.
But the C company at Cherokee, north of Basra, had state of the art flushing toilets. The Chindit boys had non-flushing toilets that opened to display everything previously dumped into them.
The lads told me they tried to keep their business until night time when theycouldn't see anything and the stink from the heat of the day was a little reduced. The sanitation at Chindit was the only flaw in a tightly-enforced hygiene regime to combat what the army here call ''D&V', diarrhoea and vomiting.
''It was originally called V and D until someone's wife got it confused with something sounding very similar, '' one soldier joked.
Before every meal, the soldiers pass a washing station where alcohol gel, water and towels are used diligently.
PART of the airport's Power Point welcome included other aspects of personal hygiene. Bodily parts that are strangers to soap for too long give off anodour that attracts anything from mosquitoes to mice.
Incoming soldiers and journalists were also reminded to check their boots and bedding for spiders and scorpions. A warning was issued against ''military tourism', picking up booby trapped shell cases or clambering around the rusting tanks and people carriers that litter the Basra roads from the first Gulf War.
They were destroyed by depleted uranium warheads that still carry potentially fatal parts in the desert dust that coats them.
And hundreds, if not thousands of square miles have never been cleared of Iraqi landmines or unexploded Coalition bombs.
Also on the danger list were women andsome tabloid newspaperswhichtend to show more female flesh than the religious Iraqis think permissible.
As for women, the servicemen are warnednottoengageinanyconversation with local females which is seen as highlydisrespectful, especially to their husbands, father or brothers. Men, however, can make long speeches of greeting and are very tactile. Blokes holding hands or kissing in the street is normal.
And thirdly, giving treats or water bottles to children at the roadside was also on the prohibited list. There have been several tragic cases of little ones rushing out in front of speeding cars.
The good news was that the shots I had heard that night were mostly from rival gangs sorting out feuds or male guests firing skywards to celebrate a wedding.
But then there was a little more bad news. Although alcohol is not illegal in Iraq, you won't find it in any of the three Royal Scots encampments.
This has fuelled a little resentment, especially with some of the younger soldiers who feel they are missing out on the festivities their mates are enjoying back home.
''The commanding officer Major Derek Dobson told us Christmas was cancelled, '' one lad said.
But with many soldiers on 30 minutes notice of action and C company in a two hour state of readiness it's tough to see how even the old ''two cans per day'' policy could apply.
But there's plenty of nosh and cheap cigarettes. Some of the boys even go to a nearby Pizza Hut, which was brought over to keep the Americans happy.
But as the morning sun melted the evening chill, even the alcohol ban was the last thing on my mind. The night I arrived I heard the sound of guns.
Tomorrow I was going to join an active patrol to walk among some of the people who were firing them.
----
Iraqi Shiites Enter New Era of Inclusion, Not Exclusion
December 21, 2003
New York Times
By SUSAN SACHS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/international/21SHII.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 20 - In an otherwise grim and uncertain time, the banners hanging in Shiite Muslim neighborhoods this week struck a joyous note: "Congratulations to the families of the martyrs on the capture of Saddam Hussein!"
The reviled Mr. Hussein, accused by Shiites of killing their most eminent clerics and persecuting their sect for more than 30 years, was in American custody, his decrepit underground hiding place given away by one of his own Sunni Muslim clansmen.
But there were ample reasons for celebration even before his capture.
Iraq's Shiites, long the underclass in a nation where they are the majority, stand on the verge of their first real chance at political power in Iraq.
After the Shiites were sidelined for centuries by successive Sunni and foreign rulers, their political and religious leaders have become the dominant players in the American-led process of shaping a new, more representative government for Iraq.
"Our tragedy will not occur again," vowed Muhammad Hussein al-Hakim, a spokesman for his father, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Said al-Hakim, one of the four most senior Shiite clerics in Iraq. "There is no turning back the tide."
His confidence in that future was only buoyed, he said, after seeing the bedraggled Mr. Hussein in American hands.
"We saw him in his true character - as a humiliated, cowering man who could no longer hide behind his big words," Mr. Hakim said.
The former Iraqi leader must be put on public trial, he added. But the clerical establishment, he said, would counsel Shiites to be patient, to make sure everyone in the world with a claim against Mr. Hussein had a chance to present their case.
"The Shia are patient people, so they will be patient," Mr. Hakim said. "It doesn't matter when it happens because he's in custody now."
The country's Shiite leaders have taken pains to avoid openly antagonizing the American occupiers, the Sunnis or the Iraqi Kurds. The Shiites have said they do not seek a theocratic form of government like that in neighboring Iran, the next-largest Shiite nation. They have said they do not seek to oppress other groups.
But the Shiite leadership has also made it clear that its modesty should not be mistaken for meekness. The Shiites are believed to make up as much as 70 percent of Iraq's population of 25 million, and Mr. Hakim, whose family has produced a long line of senior clerics, said they would not accept less than the presidency of an independent Iraq.
"We don't want a dictatorship of the majority to dominate," said Mr. Hakim. "But we do want to preserve the rights of the majority, which is the Shia, and the simplest right is to have the head of state come from the majority. Isn't that correct?"
Iraqis are not expected to choose a head of state before next June, after a new provisional legislative assembly is chosen and it votes on a provisional government. National elections might not be held for years, under a plan approved by the American-led occupation authority.
But most Shiite religious leaders are thinking ahead.
Ayatollah Muhammad Yacoubi, another prominent cleric from the holy city of Najaf, is one of a small but vocal group of Shiite scholars who have started publicly advocating a political role for the clergy. He suggested that the network of Shiite religious schools and teachers based in Najaf - grouped together under the name Hawza - might sponsor a new political party to take part in Iraqi elections.
"We are calling for clerics to participate directly in politics, and for the Hawza to support politics and be part of a multiparty system," Ayatollah Yacoubi said. "After all, the Hawza is a guiding force."
Shiite religious leaders, without even leaving their homes in Najaf, have already emerged as a pivotal factor in the deliberations at the Iraqi Governing Council in Baghdad.
The word of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential of the Iraqi Shiite clerics, ultimately forced both the council and the Bush administration to change course on Iraqi independence last month.
The United States had pushed for Iraq to adopt a constitution and then hold national elections before it would be granted independence. But Ayatollah Sistani, in a religious edict, decreed that the drafters of a new Iraqi constitution had to be elected. The only way to satisfy his ruling, it was decided, was to postpone writing a constitution until after independence.
The United States has promised Iraq sovereignty by July 1. But the ayatollah is still pulling strings on the political process, as Iraqi political leaders and American officials try to come up with a plan for choosing a provisional legislature that would get his blessing.
Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a member of the Governing Council, said he regularly gave Ayatollah Sistani the minutes of every week's council meetings and any draft resolutions it discussed.
"He goes through the documents carefully," Mr. Rubaie said. "This is one of the major ways to keep him informed about the Governing Council but also to guarantee his continuing support of the council."
As they have built up their influence, Iraqi Shiites have also suffered losses.
Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, an influential political and religious figure who founded the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was killed in a bomb blast in Najaf in August along with at least 95 other people. Just this week, on Wednesday, another member of the same group and a distant relative was killed in Baghdad.
But there have also been triumphs.
At noon prayers on Friday, for example, Shiite clerics delighted worshipers by recounting the respectful reception given this week to Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the brother and successor of the slain Ayatollah Hakim, by the king of Spain, the president of France and the prime minister of Britain.
--------
U.S. Forces Round Up Iraqi Rebel Suspects
December 21, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Acting on intelligence gleaned from the capture of Saddam Hussein, U.S. troops rounded up dozens of suspected rebels during two days of raids in towns where loyalty to the deposed president remains strong, officials said Sunday. Two Iraqis were killed.
Smashing down doors, troops went house to house in Fallujah, a center of resistance west of Baghdad, early Sunday. Troops of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment blockaded Rawah, near the western border with Syria, for a sweep dubbed Operation Santa Claws, the U.S. Army told Associated Press Television News.
Rawah was put under a nighttime curfew, while the towns of Samarra, 75 miles north of Baghdad, and Jalulah, northwest of Baghdad, were also targeted. Support for Saddam has been strong in all of those areas.
Soldiers arrested 60 Iraqis for questioning, and are seeking more than 100 senior members of Saddam's Baath Party and insurgents the military calls ``terrorists,'' said Lt. Brian Joyce of the 3rd Armored Cavalry.
In one of the Rawah raids, a 60-year-old woman was killed when soldiers blasted open the reinforced steel door of her home, said regiment commander Lt. Col. Henry Kievenaar.
Troops patrolling in tanks, Humvees and Bradley armored vehicles seized dozens of AK-47 assault rifles and several rocket-propelled grenade launchers, Kievenaar said. They were searching for more arms and ``people who finance, supply and organize resistance to the coalition,'' he said.
Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said several hundred Saddam loyalists had been rounded up in recent raids. They include ``some of the leadership of this insurgency, absolutely, some of the cell leaders,'' he told Fox News Sunday.
Myers tied arrests to Saddam's capture. ``Some of the information we gleaned when we picked up Saddam Hussein led to a better understanding of the structure of the resistance from the former regime elements,'' he said.
Saddam was arrested Dec. 13 near his hometown of Tikrit, and the U.S. military has said soldiers also seized a briefcase containing documents that shed light on the anti-U.S. insurgency. The CIA is interrogating him in Iraq; Iraqi officials say the former dictator is in the Baghdad area.
``The only word I have is that he's not being cooperative. But other than that, I don't know,'' Myers said.
In other news on Sunday:
-- Guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a U.S. military convoy at a police recruitment center in Mosul, 250 miles north of Baghdad. The grenade hit a civilian vehicle, seriously wounding the Iraqi driver, said an AP Television News cameraman at the scene.
Some of the U.S. soldiers in the three-truck convoy were outside their vehicles when the attack happened but were unhurt, APTN reported.
-- The head of the Iraqi Governing Council met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim said Syria is trying to stop fighters from crossing the border into Iraq to join the resistance.
Al-Hakim said his administration planned to sign agreements with Syria, a staunch opponent of the U.S.-led invasion, to improve security along their long, desert border.
``Syria does not want Iraq to be unstable and ... it doesn't want operations in Iraq against the Iraqi people's interests,'' al-Hakim said.
-- The higher education minister reported the U.S. military detained three scientists from the University of Technology in Baghdad for questioning about their role in ``military industrialization programs,'' a reference to weapons of mass destruction.
Minister Zayad Abdul-Razzaq Aswad said he complained about last week's detentions to L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq. But the scientists, who lecture at the university, were still in custody, the minister said.
Officials at the U.S.-led coalition could not immediately be reached for comment.
-- And the military reported that U.S. troops killed one person, wounded one and arrested 36 people during an airborne raid in Jalulah.
Soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division traded gunfire with about 20 guerrillas in the raid Saturday on the house of a sheik suspected of directing resistance in Jalulah, division spokeswoman Maj. Josslyn Aberle said.
Saturday night, the U.S. military said it detained 111 people in 48 hours in Samarra, including 15 suspected of directing attacks on Americans. In past raids, many detainees were released after questioning.
On Saturday, rebels firing rocket-propelled grenades hit storage tanks in southern Baghdad, creating fires that burned about 2.6 million gallons of gasoline, said Issam Jihad, a spokesman for the Oil Ministry.
The attack came as a pipeline exploded in the al-Mashahda area, 15 miles north of Baghdad, in what Jihad called ``an act of sabotage.''
Insurgents have targeted the oil infrastructure in an apparent attempt to undermine the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. The country is suffering from severe fuel shortages, partly because of sabotage, distribution problems and dilapidated equipment.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Leader Warns of Confrontation
December 21, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- A government plan to dismantle Israeli settlements and impose a new boundary with the Palestinians will touch off bitter confrontation with Jewish settlers but must go ahead for the sake of the country's security, the prime minister's top deputy said Sunday.
Vice Premier Ehud Olmert's comments pointed to fears of a bitter internal conflict over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's recent announcement that Israel will have to evacuate settlements even without a peace agreement. The Palestinians vehemently oppose the plan, and now even members of Sharon's Likud Party say they would rather break a government coalition than back it.
``I have no doubt there be a very painful, difficult, heartbreaking process, and a confrontation of (previously) unknown proportion in the life of this country,'' Olmert told the local Foreign Press Association. ``It's a serious crisis ... There's no doubt about it. I expect it to be very emotional and very confrontational.''
Olmert said Israel had to leave most of the West Bank and Gaza -- an about-face for his Likud Party -- because otherwise Arabs will soon outnumber Israel's 5.5 million Jews in the territory it controls. ``Do we want (the Palestinians) to be equal citizens in the state of Israel and ultimately dictate the nature of the state?'' Olmert said.
Also Sunday, Israeli troops conducted a series of raids in the West Bank city of Nablus, arresting a Hamas leader and killing a 5-year-old Palestinian boy, Palestinian witnesses said.
Israeli and Palestinian officials were still trying to arrange a meeting between Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart, Ahmed Qureia. A meeting between Sharon and Qureia is seen as an important step toward reviving talks on the U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan.
The road map seeks an immediate end to violence and envisions the creation of an independent Palestinian state by 2005. Its implementation has been delayed for months by continued violence, a Palestinian political crisis and violations by both sides.
In his speech last Thursday, Sharon reiterated his commitment to the road map. But he said that if the Palestinians do not make serious peace moves in the next few months, Israel would impose its own boundaries on them to improve Israel's security.
The Palestinians have made clear that they do not intend to dismantle militant groups, a move required by the road map and Sharon's main demand. Qureia has instead tried in vain to coax a pledge of nonviolence from the militants -- an approach Sharon has dismissed as insufficient.
Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, was expected in Israel on Monday in an effort to get the peace plan back on track.
Sharon said that if he decides on unilateral steps, the Palestinians would receive much less land than under a negotiated agreement. But he also warned Israelis that his unilateral steps would involve a withdrawal from and dismantling of some Jewish communities in Gaza and the West Bank.
Olmert, a close Sharon ally, conceded that evacuating parts of the West Bank and Gaza -- where more than 220,000 Israelis live among some 3.5 Palestinians -- would be painful for Israel. But he maintained that the government is serious, saying probably ``tens of thousands'' of people would be affected.
``There will be a very serious protest and I don't take it lightly,'' Olmert said.
Reflecting those fissures, nine members of Sharon's Likud Party said they would rather bring down the government than vote for his disengagement plan.
``We will tell the prime minister clearly that, if we implement a unilateral plan and we dismantle legal settlements, we will definitely reach a situation in which we will vote against'' the government, said one of the lawmakers, Ehud Yatom.
Cabinet Minister Zevulun Orlev, of the hawkish National Religious Party, said Sharon's speech threatened the future of the governing coalition.
``The subject of dismantling and the moving of settlements certainly raises question marks about the existence of the coalition,'' he said.
Meanwhile, the army continued a crackdown in the West Bank city of Nablus, saying it had arrested Hamas leader Adnan Asfour. Asfour's brother, Said Asfour, said troops had also taken away a computer and a number of maps.
Most of the current Hamas leadership is in the Gaza Strip, and Israel has killed or arrested most of the Hamas leaders in the West Bank during the more than three years of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Later Sunday, an Israeli soldier killed a 5-year-old Palestinian boy in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, witnesses and hospital officials said. Hospital officials said the boy, Mohammed Al Araj, was shot in the chest.
The army said soldiers had opened fire in Balata after being attacked by a crowd that threw rocks, bottles and an explosive device. It had no information on a boy being shot, but said it was still investigating.
-------- puerto rico
Vieques Aftermath
by Kate M. Levin
December 22, 2003
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040105&s=levin
A recent issue of National Geographic Traveler featured a list of its Top Five Caribbean hot spots for the year. Number one is Cuba, the perfect destination if you love those "faded Commie icons," as the magazine put it. Their second favorite is the Puerto Rican island-municipality of Vieques, which was, until recently, a bomb-testing zone for the US Navy.
Last month, two tourists, perhaps acting on a tip from the glossy mag's feature, visited a Vieques beach. They found, in addition to the stunning natural beauty they'd been promised, something unexpected: a small cylindrical detonator with two wires dangling from it. Navy specialists confiscated the object, inspected it, declared that it was an explosive of nonmilitary origin and destroyed it.
Their response was hardly a surprise to Vieques residents, according to Roberto Rabin of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques. Viequenses have come to expect denials and deflections from the Navy on the issue of environmental contamination. They have, Rabin says, "a long history of dealing with the Navy's mistruths."
The Navy's departure from the island last May was a bittersweet victory for those who had fought for decades to make it a reality. There was jubilation at having defeated the Goliath which, in 1941, expropriated three-fourths of Vieques's land and displaced half the population. And there was deep satisfaction in expelling the killers of David Sanes, the civilian guard killed by an errant Navy bomb in 1999.
But the celebration was tainted by fear for Vieques's future. For sixty-two years, the Navy pummeled the island with millions of pounds of bombs, missiles, depleted-uranium bullets, napalm and Agent Orange. But the toxic threat to Viequenses didn't end when the Navy stopped bombing. Some Navy bombs never exploded when fired, dropping instead into the shallow ocean water and remaining there, lying on the coral reef or resting on the ocean floor. These live bombs leak contaminants and pose an explosive threat to fishers and divers. How, then, does the Navy--which promised, in a Memorandum of Agreement issued upon leaving the island, to assume responsibility for environmental cleanup--plan to deal with the unexploded bombs lying in Vieques's waters?
It doesn't, according James Barton, a former senior technician with the Navy's Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit. The Navy, Barton explains, has procedures for the safe removal of unexploded bombs on land--but not underwater. So it has traditionally taken two approaches to unexploded underwater bombs: blowing them up in place or, as Barton puts it, "leaving them there and learning to live with them." The former option is not viable for Vieques; detonating bombs would mean the destruction of the area's ecosystem, including its delicate coral reef. The leave-them-be choice, however, is hardly preferable: "If left there," says Barton, "the casing of the bombs will deteriorate, gradually contaminating the surrounding environment."
A 2001 New York Times article titled "For the Future of Vieques, Look to Hawaii" noted the parallel between the cases of Vieques and Kahoolawe, the Hawaiian island also used for decades as a Navy bombing target. The bombs stopped falling there in 1990, and three years later, a $460 million, decade-long Navy cleanup effort began. But when Kahoolawe was officially transferred back to Hawaii this past November 12, only 71 percent of the land ordnance had been cleared. When asked what became of the unexploded underwater bombs resting off Kahoolawe's shore, Barton, who was involved in the cleanup while he was still with the Navy, states flatly, "They just left them there."
Culebra, another tiny Puerto Rican island, offers an additional parallel. It, too, has precious coral reef, exquisite tropical beaches and waters sprinkled with explosives and artillery. Culebra, a Navy bombing range until 1975, has been waiting nearly three decades for decontamination. "We still have many bombs here in Culebra and are trying to get the Navy to clean them," Culebra's deputy mayor said last May.
One of the greatest frustrations for Viequenses has been the Navy's evasion of a fundamental question--just how toxic is the material lying in the munitions junkyards off the coast of the island? The question is hardly a trivial one. The cancer rate for Viequenses is 27 percent higher than it is for mainland Puerto Ricans; elevated rates of heart disease, asthma and diabetes plague the island's population (who number around 9,300) as well. Though links are difficult to prove, many health researchers in Puerto Rico and the United States argue that a correlation exists between contamination from the bombing and the high incidence of disease among Viequenses.
A few years ago, motivated largely by growing health concerns in Vieques, the Puerto Rican government asked the Navy to investigate one particularly littered area of ocean. The site, just off of Vieques's eastern shore, contained hundreds of barrels of an unknown, leaking material, along with a dilapidated target ship.
The Navy's conclusions, presented to a Puerto Rican Senate committee in December of 2002, were dismissed by the incensed committee chairman as "defective." The reason? The study didn't test the contents of any of the barrels, but nonetheless declared them innocuous. Nor did the Navy mention that the decaying ship, the USS Killen, had been used in atomic tests prior to being used as a bombing target.
The government of Puerto Rico then commissioned a new study of the site, which was performed last summer by Barton and Dr. James Porter, a coral reef expert from the University of Georgia. Their findings, including the results of toxicological tests, will soon be released by the Puerto Rican government.
Vieques need not be another Kahoolawe, as new technology promises an alternative to the Navy's traditional approach to unexploded ordnance. After retiring from the Navy bomb squad, Barton founded a company, Underwater Ordnance Recovery, Inc., that has developed techniques to remove bombs from sensitive waters nondestructively. His method removes the bombs with an unmanned platform, then employs one of several safe disposal techniques: defusing them, detonating them somewhere sufficiently far from inhabited areas or burying them in deep sea. The Puerto Rican government, Barton says, supports nondestructive removal as a viable option for cleanup--but it is the Navy that needs convincing. He hopes to do so this coming March, at the first official exhibition of his technology, to which the Navy has been invited.
Whether the Navy will break with its long history of environmental negligence remains to be seen. So far, it has yet to abandon its pretense of responsible eco-friendliness. "We pride ourselves on environmental stewardship," Navy spokesperson Lieutenant Commander Cappy Surette said in a phone interview, "and the Navy is taking a cautious and meticulous approach to the cleanup effort in Vieques." For the sake of the people of Vieques, one hopes that this is true--but it would be a radical departure from the Navy's behavior thus far.
-------- spies / spy agencies
Joint Intelligence Center Is Urged
Rep. Wolf Says Information Should Be Shared Globally to Fight Terror
By Douglas Farah and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 21, 2003; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17873-2003Dec20.html
Lack of cooperation between the United States and its European allies has greatly hindered the war on terror, and some congressional leaders are asking the United States to take the lead in establishing a joint intelligence center modeled on NATO to share information on terrorist money and movements.
In a letter last week to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) said that "it is critical for national law enforcement agencies to begin sharing law enforcement assets on a global basis, which does not currently exist. International cooperation and information sharing among law enforcement agencies is the next step in addressing terrorism."
Wolf, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the FBI budget, said the formal coalition "would allow for the FBI and its counterparts around the world to work hand in hand and more easily share information about potential terrorists and terrorist threats."
Among the examples cited by Wolf and others are the failure to share international terrorist watch lists, separate files that are not shared on suspected terrorists and the lack of a common database on suspected terrorist financial entities and transactions.
The proposal advocated by Wolf, known as an FBI ally in Congress, comes at a time when the FBI continues to fend off suggestions from some politicians and policymakers that it should be stripped of its counterterrorism and counterintelligence duties, which would be transferred to a separate domestic intelligence agency akin to Britain's MI5.
An independent panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has signaled that it may suggest a similar reform. In an interview, Wolf said that despite his support of the FBI, he believes there should be a separate counterterrorism agency and expects it to be created eventually.
Wolf's proposal to establish a joint intelligence center, for which he has scheduled hearings in February, has gained some support among Democrats and Republicans. Congressional aides familiar with the concerns about U.S.-European intelligence sharing said that although many legislators are aware of the problem and want to take action, no consensus has emerged on a remedy.
Pasquale J. "Pat" D'Amuro, head of the FBI's New York Field Office and former chief of counterterrorism and counterintelligence at headquarters here, said relationships between U.S. and European intelligence agencies have improved dramatically since the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We've always had pretty good relationships with sharing in Europe," D'Amuro said. "If you're talking about the Brits, it's always been good with the Brits, and things have gotten much better with other countries over the last couple years."
Although the FBI has legal attachés in most European capitals to act as liaison officials, Wolf and congressional staff aides interested in the matter said the new alliance would take cooperation to an institutional, permanent level.
"If we don't take cooperation to the next level, we will remain vulnerable," said one congressional aide involved in promoting the proposal. "We don't want it to be in Interpol, because too many countries sit there and too much information can leak. We want something where the information we have can be permanently put together with what our European allies have. It works in the military and NATO; we should be able to make it work with law enforcement and the war on terror."
The assessment of U.S. officials that cooperation is free and constant was disputed by several European intelligence officials, who said that although the FBI and CIA request information from European allies, they seldom receive anything from the U.S. counterparts.
"If you call sharing a one-way street, then we share information," one official said. "They want what we have immediately, and demand it. But if we ask for something, it can take months before we even get an initial reply."
Another European source said that when pursuing an investigation into the possible al Qaeda use of diamonds to buy weapons, European police officials waited at least two months for clearance to visit the United States. The clearance was given only after the intervention of a senior U.S. official, who expedited the matter.
"It is a matter, in part, of culture," one European source said. "They believe strongly in the need-to-know operational function, and they usually believe we don't need to know."
But U.S. and European intelligence officials said they were not sure a new organization, with its inevitable bureaucracy, would improve the situation significantly.
One U.S. intelligence official said creation of the Department of Homeland Security and various task forces since the Sept. 11 attacks has produced too much confusion.
"We don't need any more . . . organizations being created," the official said. "It's already a nightmare what's been created now. What we need is to just continue to apply the pressure and keep focused on improving relationships."
But Wolf's letter said that approach was not enough.
"Terrorism is an international problem," it said. "The international community cannot successfully stem the tide of terrorism without cooperating in the area of law enforcement."
--------
3 Counts Against Translator Are Dropped
December 21, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/national/21GUAN.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - The Air Force has dropped three counts in an espionage case against a Syrian-born airman who worked as a translator at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The lawyer for Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi, Donald G. Rehkopf Jr., said on Saturday that once those charges were removed, "simply the gut of the case was gone."
A single count in the charge that accused the airman of "aiding the enemy," a capital offense, was dropped. Also dropped were counts that dealt with e-mailing information about detainees and committing espionage by transmitting information to unauthorized recipients. Airman al-Halabi still faces 17 charges. He was arrested in July.
Lt. Gen. William Welser III, commander of the 18th Air Force at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, convening authority for Airman al-Halabi's general court-martial, gave no rationale for his decision to drop the charges.
--------
3 Charges Dropped Against Guantanamo Translator
Associated Press
Sunday, December 21, 2003; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18074-2003Dec20.html
The Air Force has dropped three counts in an espionage case against a Syrian-born airman who worked as a translator at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp for terrorism suspects.
Dropped was the single count in the charge that accused Senior Airman Ahmad I. Halabi of aiding the enemy, a capital offense. Also dropped were counts that dealt with e-mailing information about Guantanamo detainees and committing espionage by transmitting information to unauthorized recipients.
Halabi still faces 17 of the 30 charges filed against him following his arrest in July after nine months as an Arabic translator at the prison. They include other espionage counts, disobeying an order, making false official statements, mishandling classified documents and lying on a credit application.
He is being held at Travis Air Force Base in California, his home base, where his court-martial will be held.
Air Force Lt. Gen. William Welser III, commander of the 18th Air Force at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., convening authority for Halabi's general court-martial, gave no rationale for his decision to drop the charges Friday.
"A convening authority has the discretion to withdraw charges after a case is referred for trial," Master Sgt. Scott King, a spokesman at Travis, said Saturday in an e-mailed statement.
He said such decisions can follow a commander's decision that, "based on additional evidence or a change in circumstances, pursuing certain charges may no longer serve to promote justice, assist in the good order and discipline of the armed forces or be consistent with national security."
Donald G. Rehkopf Jr., Halabi's civilian lawyer, said the impact of Welser's decision was significant because it went at "the very gut charge of how he was alleged to have done whatever it is they claim or think that he did."
"The common denominator in those three all involved his allegedly having sent e-mails with classified materials in them. From day one we denied it ever occurred," Rehkopf said from his home in Rochester, N.Y.
Halabi, a naturalized American, was arrested July 23 at Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida at the start of a leave from Guantanamo, the first of four service personnel to be arrested by investigators looking into possible security breaches. He was heading to Syria to be married.
Rehkopf said the Halabi case recalls that of a Muslim chaplain, Army Capt. James Yee, who was arrested with documents that were said to have been classified. Serious charges against Yee recently were lowered to mishandling classified information, disobeying orders, committing adultery and storing pornography on his military computer. He has pleaded not guilty.
The lawyer said both Yee and Halabi had documents with them that were not stamped with security classifications but were considered classified by investigating officers.
After Halabi's arrest, "They went literally berserk with the classification stamp," Rehkopf said. "They classified anything and everything" that Halabi had.
One document classified SECRET NOFORN, which means "secret, not to be viewed by non-Americans," was a photograph of Halabi's fiancee, who lives in Syria.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
Terror Threat Changes
December 21, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-Threat-Changes.html
Government changes in the color-coded national threat level since the system was announced on March 12, 2002; yellow represents an ``elevated'' threat level, orange a ``high'' threat level:
--Sept. 10, 2002: yellow to orange, based on intelligence from a high al-Qaida network operative of the possible attacks on U.S. interests abroad ahead of the first anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Returned to yellow Sept. 24; no known incidents.
--Feb. 7, 2003: yellow to orange, based on the possibility of attacks during Muslim holy days associated with the hajj pilgrimage to the religion's holiest city, Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Returned to yellow Feb. 27; no known incidents.
--March 17, 2003: yellow to orange, based on the reports that ``sleeper cells'' of terrorists in the United States might have been considering attacks on nuclear power plants as the United States went into a war footing for the invasion of Iraq. Returned to yellow April 16; no known incidents.
May 20, 2003: yellow to orange, based on the possibility of terror attacks associated with al-Qaida bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco that killed 75 people including eight Americans. Returned to yellow May 30, 2003; no known incidents.
Dec. 21, 2003: yellow to orange, based on a high level of communications intercepts that might foreshadow terror attacks.
--------
Administration Raises Level of Terrorism Alert to Orange
December 21, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-Threat.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government on Sunday raised the national threat level to orange, indicating a high risk of terrorist attack, and said threat indicators are ``perhaps greater now than at any point'' since Sept. 11, 2001, with strikes possible during the holidays.
Americans were promised ``extensive and considerable protections'' around the country and told to stick to their travel plans despite intelligence indicating the al-Qaida terrorist network is seeking again to use planes as weapons and exploit suspected weakness in U.S. aviation security.
Some of the intelligence information gathered in the past few days suggests that ``extremists abroad'' are anticipating attacks that will rival or exceed the scope of those of Sept. 11, Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge said.
He also said officials did not see a connection between last weekend's capture of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the heightened security alert.
The threat information comes from multiple, credible sources but officials are unaware of a specific target or means of attack, added a senior law enforcement official.
Some of the intercepted communications and other intelligence mentions New York, Washington and unspecified cities on the West Coast, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Authorities also are concerned about dams, bridges, nuclear plants, chemical facilities and other public works.
Thousands of state and local law enforcement agencies have received an FBI advisory urging special notice of sites that could be a conceivable target and potential security upgrades, the official said.
In addition, Ridge has contacted his counterparts in Canada and Mexico about increasing border security.
The State Department issued a worldwide caution to U.S. citizens overseas. ``Al-Qaida and its associated organizations have struck in the Middle East in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and in Europe in Istanbul, Turkey,'' the department's Web site said. ``We therefore assess that other geographic locations could be venues for the next round of attacks.
``We expect al-Qaida will strive for new attacks designed to be more devastating than the Sept. 11 attack, possibly involving nonconventional weapons such as chemical or biological agents,'' the State Department advised.
At a hastily arranged news conference at Homeland Security headquarters, Ridge said credible intelligence sources ``suggest the possibility of attacks against the homeland around the holiday season and beyond.''
``The strategic indicators, including al-Qaida's continued desire to carry out attacks against our homeland, are perhaps greater now than at any point since Sept. 11,'' he said.
The alert level had stood at yellow, an elevated risk and in the middle of the five-color scale, since May.
The White House declined comment, referring all questions to Ridge's department.
Ridge said the government acted after U.S. intelligence agencies ``received a substantial increase in the volume of threat-related intelligence reports.''
``Recent reporting reiterates that al-Qaida continues to consider using aircraft as a weapon. They are evaluating procedures both here and abroad to find gaps in our security posture that can be exploited,'' Ridge said.
But he added that U.S. aviation ``is far more secure'' than ever.
As a result of the change in threat level, all federal departments and agencies were putting action plans in place and stepping up security at airports, border crossing and ports, Ridge said.
``Extensive and considerable protections have been or soon will be in place all across the country,'' Ridge said.
``Your government will stand at the ready 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to stop terrorism during the holiday season and beyond.''
The secretary sought to reassure Americans about the warning, urging them not to disrupt holiday plans and to use common sense and report suspicious items and to prepare or review personal emergency plans.
``We have not raised the threat level in this country for six months, but we have raised it before. And as before, Americans can be assured that we know what we must do and we are doing it,'' Ridge said.
Federal aviation security officials were in contact Sunday with general aviation officials, including the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, which represents 400,000, or two-thirds of all pilots in the United States.
U.S. officials by the end of last week were telling holiday travelers to be vigilant about the threat of attacks. The warning was prompted in part by a raised level of ominous intercepted communications that has not quieted for months.
On Friday, the Arabic television network Al-Jazeera aired a new statement from Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden's chief deputy. The CIA said Saturday it believes the tape is authentic.
``We are still chasing the Americans and their allies everywhere, even in their homeland,'' according to the voice on the tape.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said earlier Sunday that officials were trying to determine whether the increased material detected was an aberration or something more serious.
``There is no doubt, from all the intelligence we pick up from al-Qaida, that they want to do away with our way of life,'' he told ``Fox News Sunday'' after his return from a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Four times before had the threat level risen to orange. Each change sets off a flurry of increased security measures by cities, states and businesses. The lowest two levels, green and blue, and the highest, red, have not been used since the system was put in place in early 2002.
Associated Press writers Curt Anderson and John J. Lumpkin contributed to this report.
--------
State Officials Respond As Threat Rises
December 21, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-Threat-States.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Major cities and transportation hubs around the nation increased security patrols Sunday in response to the raising of the national terror alert to its highest level in months.
The heightened alert prompted heavier security at buildings ranging from nuclear plants to shopping malls, and was expected to cause delays at many of the nation's airports and border crossings.
Governors across the country offered the same basic message: Although residents should be vigilant, there was no specific threat against their communities and they should stick to their holiday plans.
``We encourage people to go about their lives. I hope this is yet another false alarm, but we have to be prepared,'' said Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. He returned to Boston from a family vacation in Utah to deal with the heightened alert, but planned to fly back Monday.
Many shrugged off the warning.
``They're like earthquakes. You learn to deal with it,'' said 42-year-old Jeff Shaw of Reno, Nev., during a family trip to the San Francisco Shopping Mall.
Even those who said they were nervous didn't think the alert would change their plans.
``What are we supposed to do differently? Either they're going to bomb us or they're not,'' said Curtiss Jacobs of Lafayette, Calif., who was meeting friends for lunch in downtown San Francisco. ``You just have to live your life.''
Federal Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced in a hastily arranged news conference Sunday that he was raising the national threat level to orange, the second-highest level, saying attacks were possible during the holidays and that threat indicators are ``perhaps greater now than at any point'' since Sept. 11, 2001.
Orange means a high risk of terrorist attack. Since May, the level had been at yellow, or an elevated risk, and in the middle of the five-color scale.
Ridge cited reports that al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, is trying to find holes in U.S. aviation security, and that ``extremists abroad'' are anticipating attacks that will rival or exceed the scope of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Ridge also spoke about the increased terror risk to governors and other state officials in a conference call Sunday.
Officials are unaware of a specific target or means of attack, but some of their intelligence mentions New York, Washington and unspecified West Coast cities, said a senior law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said his department was putting more officers on the streets, establishing checkpoints at bridges and tunnels and patrolling the waterways.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that although there were no specific threats, ``we have to always act as if there are because it's the best way to deter a terrorist attack.''
``Our great strengths are what make us the obvious target,'' Bloomberg said.
The Golden Gate Bridge and other San Francisco Bay-area spans now have beefed-up patrols, undercover officers and mandatory checkpoints for trucks, said Sgt. Wayne Ziese, division spokesman for the California Highway Patrol. Areas around oil refineries and nuclear facilities also are getting extra attention, he added.
The FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force in Philadelphia set up a command post to receive and check out tips, said FBI spokeswoman Linda Vizi. Residents who hear or see something suspicious should call 911 if they think a threat is imminent or the FBI if it's something that can wait, she said.
``People shouldn't determine in their own mind whether they think it's significant, they should let us take a look at it,'' Vizi said.
Patrols were increased immediately at Florida's Port Everglades at Fort Lauderdale, where some 50,000 passengers were on 15 cruise ships, port spokeswoman Ellen Kennedy said.
At Boston's Logan Airport, where the two hijacked planes that hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 originated, officials added more state police at curbs, terminals and along perimeter roads Sunday, Logan spokesman Phil Orlandella said.
Many airports resumed or were planning to resume random vehicle searches, including those for Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Philadelphia and San Francisco. In some cases, all cars will be searched, said Doug Wills, spokesman for the Air Transport Association, the airline industry's main trade group.
Travelers were advised to arrive at airports an hour earlier than usual to get through the additional security.
Border officials said the heightened alert combined with the holiday season probably will mean longer waits for people entering the United States.
``We will search more vehicles and more trunks of vehicles,'' said Mike Milne, a U.S. Customs Service spokesman in Washington state. That doesn't mean U.S. travelers should not buy Christmas gifts in Canada or vice versa, he said -- ``just don't wrap them.''
Emergency officials in California and other states said they may increase security measures even further, but were waiting for more detailed information.
``We have gone through these many times, and we don't want to ramp up the full operation and find ourselves sitting there waiting and wasting a tremendous amount of money,'' said Dale Chessey, a spokesman for the California Office of Emergency Services.
Many Americans reacted to Ridge's announcement with a mix of resignation and defiance against terrorists.
``Would it stop me (from holiday travel)? Absolutely not. I have no fear,'' said Michael Patrick McCormack, a retired fire lieutenant in Brooklyn. ``You just can't prepare for everything. To crawl in a hole -- no pun intended for the butcher of Baghdad -- but that's what he had to do, not us.''
The alert came at a bad time for the nation's retailers, who are hoping for a strong end to what has been an uneven holiday shopping season. Major mall operators such as Taubman Centers Inc., which owns and manages 31 shopping centers in 13 states, immediately stepped up security.
John Courtney, a Bostonian standing by the tree in New York's Rockefeller Center on Sunday, said the alert made him ``maybe just a little more cautious.''
``You can't stop your life because of this. That gives them exactly what they would want,'' Courtney said.
Associated Press Writer Stephanie Nazzaro in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
-------- spying
Lost? Hiding? Your Cellphone Is Keeping Tabs
December 21, 2003
By AMY HARMON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/technology/21WATC.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
On the train returning to Armonk, N.Y., from a recent shopping trip in Manhattan with her friends, Britney Lutz, 15, had the odd sensation that her father was watching her.
He very well could have been. Ms. Lutz's father, Kerry, recently equipped his daughters with cellular phones that let him see where they are on a computer map at any given moment. Earlier that day, he had tracked Britney as she arrived in Grand Central Terminal. Later, calling up the map on his own cellphone screen, he noticed she was in SoHo.
Mr. Lutz did not happen to be checking when Britney developed pangs of guilt for taking a train home later than she was supposed to, but the system worked just as he had hoped: she volunteered the information that evening.
"Before, they might not have told me the truth, but now I know they're going to," said Mr. Lutz, 46, a lawyer who has been particularly protective of Britney and her sister, Chelsea, 17, since his wife died several years ago. "They know I care. And they know I'm watching."
Driven by worries about safety, the need for accountability, and perhaps a certain "I Spy" impulse, families and employers are adopting surveillance technology once used mostly to track soldiers and prisoners. New electronic services with names like uLocate and Wherify Wireless make a very personal piece of information for cellphone users - physical location - harder to mask.
But privacy advocates say the lack of legal clarity about who can gain access to location information poses a serious risk. And some users say the technology threatens an everyday autonomy that is largely taken for granted. The devices, they say, promote the scrutiny of small decisions - where to have lunch, when to take a break, how fast to drive - rather than general accountability.
"It's like a weird thought I get sometimes, like `he definitely knows where I am right now, and he's looking to see if I'm somewhere he might not approve of,' " said Britney Lutz. "I wonder what it will be like when I start to drive."
Still, personal location devices are beginning to catch on, largely because cellular phones are increasingly coming with a built-in tether. A federal mandate that wireless carriers be able to locate callers who dial 911 automatically by late 2005 means that millions of phones already keep track of their owners' whereabouts. Analysts predict that as many as 42 million Americans will be using some form of "location-aware" technology in 2005.
Wireless companies and start-up firms are weaving the satellite system known as G.P.S., or Global Positioning System, which was begun by the United States military in the 1970's, into the cellular phone network and the Internet to sell products and services that provide location information.
After fixing an individual's location relative to a network of G.P.S. satellites orbiting 12,000 miles above the earth - or, more crudely, by the time it takes signals to bounce off nearby cell towers - personal locator services transmit the constantly updated information to a central database, where customers can retrieve it through the Internet, telephone or pager.
Until recently, one of the main civilian uses of G.P.S. was in devices issued by the criminal justice system to track offenders as a condition of their parole or probation. The new generation of tracking devices has moved well beyond that population and now takes many forms, from plastic bracelets that can be locked onto children to small boxes with tiny antennae that can be placed unobtrusively in cars.
"We are moving into a world where your location is going to be known at all times by some electronic device," said Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. "It's inevitable. So we should be talking about its consequences before it's too late."
Some of those consequences have not been spelled out. Will federal investigators be allowed to retrieve information on your recent whereabouts from a private service like uLocate, or your cellular carrier? Can the local Starbucks store send advertisements to your phone when it knows you are nearby, without your explicit permission?
Because the new electronic surveillance services are still in their infancy, there are few answers, but the debate over the boundaries of privacy in a more transparent world is already taking shape. Teenagers in particular tend to be skeptical of the new technology's value.
"Cellphones would lose their appeal if they became tracking devices," said Nate Bingham, 16, of Seattle. "I think if your parents really care that much they should just put a leash on you."
Mr. Bingham's parents use an AT&T service called Find Friend that lets them see his general location when his cellphone is on, based on the company's nearest cellular tower. He said his mother had at times asked him where he was and then used the service to see if he was telling the truth. He admits to turning the phone off occasionally when he doesn't want to be found.
That won't work in the Pratt household, in Garden City, N.Y., where Jason, 13, and Ashley, 11, were given new Nextel cellphones on the condition that they be kept on at all times. With uLocate, Tom Pratt set up his account on the company's Web site to establish a "geofence" around his home and his children's school. Every time the kids leave a 400-foot radius of either place, he gets an automatic e-mail alert: "Ashley has exited Home at 08:18 AM," read a typical message last week.
Jason Pratt said there were advantages to being watched. He no longer has to call his mother to let her know where he is. Instead, she can press a "locate" button on her phone and see for herself. So long as Jason's phone is running the uLocate software, it transmits his location information every two minutes. Jason's 17-year-old brother, Matthew, however, kept his older cellphone - even though it had poor reception - rather than submit to the new deal.
Howard Boyle, president of a fire sprinkler installation company in Woodside, N.Y., presented his employees with no such choice. The five workers who have been given company phones with the G.P.S. feature have not been told that Mr. Boyle can find out if they have arrived at a work site, and whether they are walking around in it or sitting still.
"They don't need to know," said Mr. Boyle, who hopes the service will help him determine the truth when clients claim they are being overbilled for the time his employees spent at their location. "I can call them and say, `Where are you now?' while I'm looking at the screen and knowing exactly where they are, just to make sure they're not telling me they're somewhere else."
But it is not just the unnerving effect of uncovering small lies that has some users of the technology worried. Like caller I.D., location devices lift the curtain on a zone of privacy that many Americans value, even if they rarely have anything serious to hide.
"Think back to when you were a teenager and your mom or dad said, `I don't want you to do this,' and you said, `yeah, yeah, yeah,' because you knew you could do it and they wouldn't know," said Graham Clarke, president of National Scientific, which makes several G.P.S. tracking devices. "Those days are gone now, because they actually can know."
Mr. Clarke recently installed a tracking device called Followit in the Jeep Wrangler of his 17-year-old son, Gordon. It alerts him if Gordon has exceeded 60 m.p.h. or traveled beyond preset boundaries.
Advocates of location-aware technology insist that its safety benefits - like locating a 911 caller or a stolen car - outweigh the privacy issues.
And for Donna Phillips, 66, whose husband, Hubie, has Alzheimer's disease, the ability to lock a G.P.S.-enabled bracelet from Wherify Wireless around Mr. Phillips's fanny pack when he goes out has meant an end to panicked searches when he fails to come home. Now her granddaughter can help her find her husband on the Wherify Wireless Web site, which displays the location information transmitted from the bracelet when an authorized user logs on.
About two weeks ago, Mr. Phillips, 90, boarded a bus near his home in Rancho Park, Calif., and traveled several miles before switching to another bus. Because he was moving too fast for his wife to catch up, she called the police, who were able to pinpoint his location through the Wherify Wireless service to pick him up.
Critics of the new technology do not dispute its usefulness, but worry that it will become ubiquitous before legal guidelines are established.
Last year, the Federal Communications Commission turned down a request from the cellular phone industry's association and privacy groups for guidance on such matters. For the moment, the questions of trust and tracking are being raised largely in the sphere of family and personal relationships, rather than in the public arenas of government and business.
Jerold Surdahl, 40, an administrator in a building management office in Centerville, Ohio, said he started using the uLocate service to communicate with colleagues. Now, he is intrigued by the possibility of stashing a location-tracking phone in the trunk of his wife's car.
"I'm not expecting or hoping or wanting to find something, but I would just like to explore the possibilities," Mr. Surdahl said. "I'd tell her about it later."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
`Rewiring' the world's energy
By Ross Gelbspan,
12/21/2003
Boston Globe, New York Times
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/12/21/rewiring_the_worlds_energy?mode=PF
CLIMATE CHANGE isn't just another issue in this complicated world of proliferating issues. It's the issue that -- unchecked -- will swamp all others. Unfortunately, the urgency of the climate crisis is overwhelmed by competition from other major problems. We are under attack from terrorists. We are apprehensive about the aftermath of the Iraq war. Our trick-or-treat economy is as unnerving to investors as it is cruel to workers. These diverse challenges may be susceptible to a common solution -- a rapid worldwide transition to clean energy.
A clean energy revolution would reduce our dependence on oil and our exposure to the political volatility in the Middle East. Conversely, since it generates a quarter of the world's carbon emissions, America's continuing indifference will likely guarantee more attacks from people whose crops are destroyed by weather extremes, whose homelands are going under from rising seas and whose borders are overrun by environmental refugees, according to the head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri.
Any meaningful deterrent to anti-US terrorism requires a major change in our posture toward developing countries. Energy investments in poor countries generate far more wealth and jobs than equivalent investments in other sectors. Transferring clean energy to poor countries would begin to address the economic desperation that fuels most anti-US sentiment. A public works program to rewire the globe with clean energy would accelerate economic development around the world.
Our coal and oil burning attack the systems that have made this planet hospitable for 10,000 years. We are heating the deep oceans, melting ice caps, triggering a wave of chaotic weather, and changing the timing of the seasons. We are living on an increasingly narrow margin of stability. Nature's non-negotiable demand requires humanity cut its use of carbon fuels by 70 percent in a very short time, according to more than 2,000 scientists reporting to the UN panel.
One approach involves three interactive policies which, while cutting emissions, would simultaneously create millions of jobs around the world:
Redirect energy subsidies in industrial nations. The United States spends $20 billion a year to subsidize coal and oil; industrial countries overall spend about $200 billion. If those subsidies were phased out and equivalent subsidies created for renewable energy sources, oil companies would use them to retool and retrain their workers to become aggressive developers of fuel cells, wind farms, and solar systems.
Create a fund of $300 billion a year to transfer clean energy to poor countries. Virtually all developing countries would love to go solar; virtually none can afford it. The fund could come from a small tax on international currency transactions, which total $1.5 trillion every day. A tax of a quarter-penny-per-dollar on those transactions would yield about $300 billion a year for windfarms in India, solar assemblies in El Salvador, fuel cell factories in South Africa, and vast solar-powered hydrogen farms in the Middle East.
Alternatively, financing could involve a carbon tax in industrial countries or a tax on airline travel.
Establish a binding fossil fuel efficiency standard that rises 5 percent per year. Starting at its current baseline, each country would raise its carbon efficiency 5 percent -- producing the same amount next year with 5 percent less carbon fuel or 5 percent more with the same amount of carbon fuel -- until the 70 percent reduction was attained.
Because no economy grows at 5 percent for long, emissions reductions would outpace economic growth. Domestic emissions trading could help countries meet the progressively more stringent goal. Nations would initially meet the goal through low-cost efficiency measures. When those cheap efficiencies become exhausted, countries would meet the rising efficiency goal by drawing progressively more energy from non-carbon sources. That, in turn, would create mass markets for renewables that would lower their costs and make them economically competitive with fossil fuels.
A plan of this type would propel the metamorphosis of oil companies into energy companies. The progressive efficiency standard would make renewable energy a central engine of global economic growth. Competition for the new $300 billion a year market in clean energy would power the process.
A real solution to climate change has the potential to begin to mend a fractured world.
Ross Gelbspan is author of "The Heat is On" and the forthcoming "Fevered Planet."
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