By Lynn Eden
January/February 2004 pp. 32-37, 40-43 (vol. 60, no. 1) © 2004 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=jf04eden

For more than 50 years, the U.S. government has seriously underestimated damage from nuclear attacks. The earliest schemes to predict damage from atomic bombs, devised in 1947 and 1948, focused only on blast damage and ignored damage from fire, which can be far more devastating than blast effects.

The failure to include damage from fire in nuclear war plans continues today. Because fire damage has been ignored for the past half-century, high-level U.S. decision makers have been poorly informed, if informed at all, about the extent of damage that nuclear weapons would actually cause. As a result, any U.S. decision to use nuclear weapons almost certainly would be predicated on insufficient and misleading information. If nuclear weapons were used, the physical, social, and political effects could be far more destructive than anticipated.

How can this systematic failure to assess fire damage have persisted for more than half a century? The most common response is that fire damage from nuclear weapons is inherently less predictable than blast damage. This is untrue. Nuclear fire damage is just as predictable as blast damage.

One bomb, one city

To visualize the destructiveness of a nuclear bomb, imagine a powerful strategic nuclear weapon detonated above the Pentagon, a short distance from the center of Washington, D.C. [1] Imagine it is a "near-surface" burst--about 1,500 feet above the ground--which is how a military planner might choose to wreak blast damage on a massive structure like the Pentagon. Let us say that it is an ordinary, clear day with visibility at 10 miles, and that the weapon's explosive power is 300 kilotons--the approximate yield of most modern strategic nuclear weapons. This would be far more destructive than the 15-kiloton bomb detonated at Hiroshima or the 21-kiloton bomb detonated at Nagasaki. [2]

Washington, D.C., has long been a favorite hypothetical target. [3] But a single bomb detonated over a capital city is probably not a realistic planning assumption.

When a former commander in chief of the U.S. Strategic Command read my scenario, he wanted to know why I put only one bomb on Washington. "We must have targeted Moscow with 400 weapons," he said. He explained the military logic of planning a nuclear attack on Washington: "You'd put one on the White House, one on the Capitol, several on the Pentagon, several on National Airport, one on the CIA, I can think of 50 to a hundred targets right off. . . . I would be comfortable saying that there would be several dozens of weapons aimed at D.C." Moreover, he said that even today, with fewer weapons, what makes sense would be a decapitating strike against those who command military forces. Today, he said, Washington is in no less danger than during the Cold War.

The discussion that follows greatly understates the damage that would occur in a concerted nuclear attack, and not only because I describe the effects of a single weapon. I describe what would happen to humans in the area, but I do not concentrate on injury, the tragedy of lives lost, or the unspeakable loss to the nation of its capital city. These are important. But I am concerned with how organizations estimate and underestimate nuclear weapons damage; thus, I focus largely, as do they, on the physical environment and on physical damage to structures.

With this in mind, let us look at some of the consequences of a nuclear weapon detonation, from the first fraction of a second to the utter destruction from blast and fire that would happen within several hours. This will allow us to understand the magnitude of the damage from both effects, but particularly from fire, which is neither widely understood nor accounted for in damage prediction in U.S. nuclear war plans.

Unimaginable lethality

The detonation of a 300-kiloton nuclear bomb would release an extraordinary amount of energy in an instant--about 300 trillion calories within about a millionth of a second. More than 95 percent of the energy initially released would be in the form of intense light. This light would be absorbed by the air around the weapon, superheating the air to very high temperatures and creating a ball of intense heat--a fireball.

Because this fireball would be so hot, it would expand rapidly. Almost all of the air that originally occupied the volume within and around the fireball would be compressed into a thin shell of superheated, glowing, high-pressure gas. This shell of gas would compress the surrounding air, forming a steeply fronted, luminous shockwave of enormous extent and power--the blast wave.

By the time the fireball approached its maximum size, it would be more than a mile in diameter. It would very briefly produce temperatures at its center of more than 200 million degrees Fahrenheit (about 100 million degrees Celsius)--about four to five times the temperature at the center of the sun.

This enormous release of light and heat would create an environment of almost unimaginable lethality. Vast amounts of thermal energy would ignite extensive fires over urban and suburban areas. In addition, the blast wave and high-speed winds would crush many structures and tear them apart. The blast wave would also boost the incidence and rate of fire-spread by exposing ignitable surfaces, releasing flammable materials, and dispersing burning materials.

Within minutes of a detonation, fire would be everywhere. Numerous fires and firebrands--burning materials that set more fires--would coalesce into a mass fire. (Scientists prefer this term to "firestorm," but I will use them interchangeably here.) This fire would engulf tens of square miles and begin to heat enormous volumes of air that would rise, while cool air from the fire's periphery would be pulled in. Within tens of minutes after the detonation, the pumping action from rising hot air would generate superheated ground winds of hurricane force, further intensifying the fire. [4]

Virtually no one in an area of about 40-65 square miles would survive.

A little farther away

At Pentagon City, a shopping and office complex about seven-tenths of a mile from ground zero, light from the fireball would melt asphalt in the streets, burn paint off walls, and melt metal surfaces within a half second of the detonation. The interiors of vehicles and buildings in line of sight of the fireball would explode into flames.

Roughly one second later, the blast wave and 750-mile-per-hour winds would arrive, tossing burning cars into the air like leaves in a windstorm. At this distance, the blast wave and thermal radiation would be more powerful and destructive than at ground zero in Hiroshima.

The compressed air and winds associated with the shockwave could cause structures to cave in and might even topple large office buildings. The massive concrete and steel office buildings at Pentagon City might not be knocked down, but all nonsupporting interior walls and doors would be shattered, their fragments blown away at high speed. Window frames, glass, heavy desks, tables, filing cabinets, chairs, and other furnishings would become missiles and shrapnel. Within minutes, the insides of buildings still standing would be burning pyres of splintered walls, doors, and other combustibles.

Seconds after the blast wave passed, suction effects created in part by the rising fireball would reverse the winds, drawing them toward ground zero. Trees and other objects could be sucked toward the point of detonation.

Within a slightly longer distance from the Pentagon--about 1.3 miles--are most of Arlington National Cemetery, most of the Virginia Highlands and Addison Heights neighborhoods, and parts of Washington, D.C., including the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.

At this distance, for a split second the fireball would shine more than 5,000 times brighter than a desert sun at noon. Thermal energy from the fireball--more than 15 times more intense than that at the edge of the mass fire that destroyed Hiroshima--would radiate onto exposed surfaces in just seconds.

All combustible materials illuminated by the fireball would spew fire and black smoke. Grass, vegetation, and leaves on trees would explode into flames; the surface of the ground would explode into superheated dust. Any flammable material inside buildings (paper, curtains, upholstery) that was directly exposed would burst into flame. The marble on the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials would crack, pop, and possibly evaporate. If the light from the fireball illuminated part of the bronze statue of Jefferson, its surface would melt.

Trees and telephone poles would recoil from the flaming gases. Birds in flight would drop from the sky in flames. The air would be filled with dust, fire, and smoke. Visitors at Arlington National Cemetery or the Lincoln or Jefferson memorials who were directly exposed to the fireball's light would be killed instantly. Others would not survive long.

It would take about four seconds after the detonation for the shockwave to arrive at the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. They would collapse instantly. As the shockwave passed over, it would engulf all structures in high pressure and crush all but the strongest. The blast wave would generate ferocious winds of 300-400 miles per hour that would persist for about a second and a half.

The winds and the crushing overpressure would tear apart many strong structures. Wood-frame and residential brick buildings would be completely destroyed. Other structures at this range, such as the Arlington Memorial Bridge and the George Mason Memorial Bridge, might not collapse, but anyone caught in the open or even sheltered behind these structures would be killed within seconds or minutes.

The high winds would tear structural elements from buildings and cause them to disintegrate explosively into smaller pieces. Some of these pieces would then become destructive projectiles, causing further damage. The superheated, dust-laden winds would be strong enough to overturn trucks and railroad cars.

Just beyond this range, about 1.6 miles from the Pentagon, aircraft at Reagan National Airport would be exposed to a light flash from the fireball more than 3,000 times brighter than a desert sun at noon. The thermal radiation would melt and warp aluminum surfaces on aircraft. Interior sections of the aircraft illuminated by the fireball would burst into flames. The tires of the aircraft would catch fire, as would the tires and fuel hoses of service vehicles near the aircraft.

Three miles from ground zero

The Capitol, the House and Senate office buildings, and the Library of Congress are all about three miles from the Pentagon, and just beyond is Union Station. The Mall and the White House are closer. The monumental structures on Capitol Hill are among the strongest civilian buildings in the world: They are reinforced concrete, two-to 10-story buildings of earthquake-resistant design. The surrounding neighborhood mostly comprises private two-to four-story dwellings with brick, load-bearing walls, surrounded by many trees.

At the Capitol, the fireball would be as bright as a thousand suns and would deliver nearly three times the thermal energy deposited at the perimeter of the mass fire at Hiroshima. The Capitol is well constructed to resist fire and stands in an open space at a distance from other buildings, but it would probably suffer heavy fire damage. Light from the fireball shining through its windows would ignite papers, curtains, light fabrics, and some upholstery. The House and Senate office buildings would suffer greater damage--their interiors would probably burn, as would the area's adjacent residential buildings and trees.

Fire would be virtually everywhere within three miles of ground zero. Clothes worn by people in the direct line of sight of the fireball would burst into flames or melt, and uncovered skin would be scorched, charring flesh and causing third-degree burns.

It would take the blast wave 12-14 seconds after the fireball's light flash to travel three miles. At this distance, the blast wave would persist for well over two seconds and be accompanied by near-hurricane winds of 100 miles per hour. Buildings of heavy construction on Capitol Hill would suffer little or no structural damage, but all exterior windows would be shattered, and nonsupporting interior walls and doors would be severely damaged or blown down.

At a distance of 3.5 miles from the detonation, the light flash from the fireball would still be severe, delivering twice the thermal energy at the edge of the mass fire at Hiroshima. The light and heat to surfaces would approximate 600 desert suns at noon. Black smoke would effuse from wood houses as paint burned off wood surfaces and furnishings ignited.

At Union Station, not quite 3.5 miles from the Pentagon, the majestic front facade of glass would be smashed into razor-sharp projectiles. Curtains, table cloths, and other combustibles would ignite on the upper decks. Blast damage would not be nearly as severe as it would be closer to the point of detonation, but streets would be blocked with fallen debris. The scouring effects of the high winds accompanying the shockwave would loft dust into the air. Fires would be everywhere. Dust and smoke would create a dense, low-visibility, foglike environment, impeding the ability of individuals and emergency response teams to move about.

Even at this and greater distances from the detonation, fires would result from the tremendous release of thermal energy. Fires would also be started by the breakup of buildings from the blast wave and its accompanying winds.

Structural breakup would start fires by releasing flammable materials (gas, chemicals, and other hazards), by exposing and shorting electrical lines and equipment, and by exposing additional ignitable surfaces. These are "blast-disruption" fires. More ignitions would be caused by fire spread from radiant heat and from the winds accompanying the blast wave, which would carry firebrands. [5] In all probability, fires would be ignited to a distance of about 4.6 miles from the detonation--over an area of approximately 65 square miles.

A hurricane of fire

Within tens of minutes after the cataclysmic events associated with the detonation, a mass of buoyantly rising, fire-heated air would signal the start of a second and distinctly different event--a mass fire of gigantic scale and ferocity. The firestorm would quickly increase in intensity, generating ground winds of hurricane force with average air temperatures well above the boiling point of water. This would produce a lethal environment over a vast area.

The Pentagon is located near the relatively wide Potomac River, but fires would start simultaneously in large areas on both sides. The direction of fire winds in regions near the river would be modified by the water, but the overall wind pattern from these two huge and nearly contiguous fire zones would be similar to that of a single mass fire and will be treated as one.

The first indicator of a mass fire would be strangely shifting ground winds of growing intensity near ground zero. (Such winds are entirely different from and unrelated to the earlier blast-wave winds that exert "drag pressure" on structures.) These fire-winds are a physical consequence of the rise of heated air over large areas of ground surface, much like a gigantic bonfire.

The inrushing winds would drive the flames from combusting buildings horizontally toward the ground, filling city streets with hot flames and firebrands, breaking in doors and windows, and causing the fire to jump hundreds of feet to swallow anything that was not yet violently combusting. These extraordinary winds would transform the targeted area into a huge hurricane of fire.

Within tens of minutes, everything within approximately 3.5 to 4.6 miles of the Pentagon would be engulfed in a mass fire. The fire would extinguish all life and destroy almost everything else.

Firestorm physics

This description of the physics of mass fire is based on the work of a few scientists who have examined in detail the damaging effects of nuclear weapons, including nuclear engineer Theodore A. Postol and physicist Harold Brode. Postol is one of the country's leading non-government-funded technical experts on nuclear weapons, missiles, and arms control. Brode's five-decade career has been devoted to the study of nuclear weapons effects.

That mass fires have occurred, and that something like the firestorm described here could occur, is not in dispute. What is not widely accepted is that nuclear weapons detonated in urban or suburban areas would be virtually certain to set mass fires, and that the resulting damage is as predictable as blast damage. The much more widely held view is that the probability and range of mass fire depends on many unpredictable environmental variables, including rain, snow, humidity, temperature, time of year, visibility, and wind conditions.

But the work of Postol, Brode, and Brode's collaborators shows that mass fire creates its own environment. Except in extreme cases, environmental factors do not affect the likelihood of mass fire. Weather can affect the fire's range, but this can be reasonably well predicted. For nuclear weapons of approximately 100 kilotons or more, the range of destruction from mass fire will generally be substantially greater than from blast. The extraordinarily high air temperatures and wind speeds characteristic of a mass fire are the inevitable physical consequence of many simultaneous ignitions occurring over a vast area. The vacuum created by buoyantly rising air follows from the basic physics of combustion and fluid flow (hydro-or fluid dynamics). As the area of the fire increases, so does the volume of rising air over the fire zone, causing even more air to be sucked in from the periphery of the fire at increasingly higher speeds.

Only a few mass fires have occurred in human history: those created by British and U.S. conventional incendiary weapons and by U.S. atomic bombs in World War II. These include fires that destroyed Hamburg, Dresden, Kassel, Darmstadt, and Stuttgart in Germany, and Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki in Japan. History's first mass fire began on the night of July 27, 1943, in Hamburg--created by allied incendiary raids. Within 20 minutes, two-thirds of the buildings within an area of 4.5 square miles were on fire. It took fewer than six hours for the fire to completely burn an area of more than five square miles. Damage analysts called it the "Dead City." Wind speeds were of hurricane force; air temperatures were 400-500 degrees Fahrenheit. Between 60,000 and 100,000 people were killed in the attack. [6]

A mass fire from a modern nuclear bomb could be expected to destroy a considerably larger urban or suburban area, in a similarly short time.

The unique features of the mass fire fundamentally distinguish it from the more slowly propagating line fire. Famous line fires include the great urban fires that destroyed London (1666), Chicago (1871), and San Francisco (1906); the forest fire that swept Peshtigo, Wisconsin (1871); the suburban fire that burned the Oakland, California, hills (1991); and the combined forest and suburban fires that recently devastated southern California (2003). [7] These fires were terrifying and destructive, but they were not mass fires. They burned and spread for days and were not ignited simultaneously over very large areas. They generated high temperatures and winds, but not on the scale or with the intensity of mass fires.

The dynamics of mass fire are grounded in Newtonian laws of conservation of mass, momentum, and energy; classical hydrodynamic equations can be applied to mass fire. A nuclear detonation ignites material that releases energy into a fluid--the atmosphere. The region of atmosphere being heated can be approximated as a thin disc-shaped volume near the earth's surface. By solving the hydrodynamic equations, it is possible to calculate the flow of rising air from the heated fire zone and the lateral inflow of cool air near the ground from just outside the periphery of the fire zone. These equations model the behavior of mass fire.

Fire environments created by mass fires are fundamentally more violent and destructive than smaller-scale fires, and they are far less affected by external weather conditions. They are not substantially altered by seasonal and daily weather conditions.

There are, of course, uncertainties in the damage ranges associated with the initiation and spread of mass fires, and variations in environmental conditions could contribute to these uncertainties. For example, the location of the perimeter of mass fire following a nuclear attack cannot be predicted precisely. How the topography or the weather might affect the range of mass fire is also uncertain. But uncertainty over the extent of damage associated with mass fire can be estimated and modeled, and this uncertainty is not greater than that associated with blast damage.

Moreover, for higher-yield weapons (more than 100 kilotons), under almost all conditions fire damage will be far more destructive than blast damage. In addition, "fire may cause more complete and permanent damage. A structure only moderately damaged by blast may be gutted and rendered useless by fire. Similarly, building contents may survive the blast but be destroyed by the fires." [8]

What effect could the weather have on the probability and range of mass fire? Reductions in visibility because of rain, fog, haze, or smoke could absorb or scatter thermal radiation from the detonation and reduce or attenuate the amount that would reach exposed structures, equipment, and people. But even with a reduction in visibility from 10 miles to five (from the visibility of a relatively clear day to a misty rainy day), enough thermal energy would be delivered to set a mass fire out to three miles from ground zero. Even with visibility reduced to two miles, the flash would set a mass fire out to 2.2 miles from ground zero. (Visibility in the Washington, D.C., area is 10 miles or greater about 64 percent of the time. Visibility is five miles or greater 90 percent of the time, and visibility is two miles or greater 98.5 percent of the time.) [9]

The flash from the fireball from a 300-kiloton detonation would set a mass fire under virtually all weather conditions.

If the ground were snow-covered, vegetation covered by snow would not be ignited at first, but light and heat from the fireball would be reflected by the snow, roughly doubling the amount of light entering building windows. Further, during periods of cold weather when snow cover would be a factor, the warm interiors of buildings have very low relative humidities, greatly increasing the likelihood of ignitions. The mass fire set at Dresden in February 1945 by non-nuclear incendiary weapons occurred in "winter with snow on the ground. It was cold and wet and cloudy outside, but there was fuel inside where it was warm and dry." Similarly, in the first incendiary attack on Tokyo, in February 1945, the city "was covered by snow . . . but about one square mile was burned out." [10]

If a nuclear weapon were detonated below cloud cover, reflections off the clouds would increase the light shining into buildings by a factor of about two. When there is both snow and cloud cover, light reflected could intensify the fire-initiating fireball flash roughly by a factor of four.

Only if detonations occurred at altitudes above cloud cover or in periods of very intense rain or heavy ground fog would the size of the fire zone be as small as the zone of severe blast damage.

Severe weather conditions in Washington, D.C., are rare and can be taken into account by military war planners. More generally, the likelihood of severe weather is known for many locations and time of year. In addition, real-time or near real-time weather data have been available on a global basis for decades. The U.S. military maintains its own weather satellites to forecast cloud cover, predict low-altitude weather systems, and collect wind data.

Because of the many ways fires can start and spread, it is reasonable to assume that a mass fire with a radius of at least 3.5 miles would occur in all but the most extreme weather conditions. The fire would generate its own extremely intense winds; air temperatures would be so high that wet surfaces would quickly dry, and the relative humidity within the fire zone would be very low. Such a fire would be only weakly influenced by external weather conditions.

Blast and fire damage

In the late 1970s, Brode and a team of scientists at Pacific-Sierra Research began to investigate the possibility of incorporating the effects of fire into damage prediction for nuclear targeting under contract for the Defense Nuclear Agency. By the late 1980s, Brode and his colleagues thought they had developed an analytical basis for predicting fire and blast damage from nuclear weapons. But in early 1992, federal funding for the nuclear fire and blast damage studies begun by Brode was canceled. (The issue was later revisited and, as far as I know, remains under consideration.) If the U.S. government were to take both fire and blast into account, its predictions regarding nuclear weapons damage would have to change.

We can see how great the changes would be by comparing the differences in damage predicted by the above hypothetical scenario, which takes into account both blast and fire damage, with the results of the method used by the U.S. government, which predicts only blast damage. For many targets, although not all, the differences are great.

The government's way of predicting damage to structures, installations, and equipment uses the Physical Vulnerability Handbook--Nuclear Weapons, published by the Defense Intelligence Agency. It exists in a number of editions, from 1954 to 1992. [11] The Handbook characterizes structures in terms of their physical vulnerability to blast effects using "vulnerability numbers" (VNs) at specified damage levels. [12] Physical vulnerability sounds like the opposite of the widely used term "target hardness," but for all practical purposes it is the same: A target is strong, or hard, up to the point at which it is vulnerable, or fails. Physical vulnerability is stated in terms of level of damage that the structure would be expected to sustain at a given overpressure--severe, moderate, or light damage. Severe structural damage is defined as "that degree of structural damage to a building which precludes further use of the building for the purpose intended without essentially complete reconstruction or replacement. A building sustaining severe structural damage requires extensive repair before it can be used for any purpose." Moderate damage is "that degree of structural damage to principal load-bearing members . . . of a building which precludes effective use of the building for the purpose intended until major repairs are made." [13] The Handbook does not describe light structural damage for buildings, presumably because such damage would not be severe enough to bother with in targeting calculations.

Despite the sophisticated understanding of blast waves and structural response embedded in the government's vulnerability number system, for many types of targets the total damage that would occur in a nuclear attack is vastly understated because only blast damage is taken into account.

Take, for example, a target of interest to military planners--an aircraft carrier. The Handbook gives aircraft carriers a VN of 11P0 for moderate damage. (In this code, 11 is a rating of target hardness that translates to blast pressure; P indicates a type of target that responds mainly to overpressure, not drag pressure; 0 means the target is not sensitive to the duration of blast pressure.) At this rating, according to the government's method of calculating damage the aircraft carrier would sustain "about half loss in ability to deliver weapons effectively, because of damage to equipment or topside structure, or because of personnel casualties." The carrier's target-acquisition and communication equipment, however, are predicted to be operative. [14]

This code corresponds to blast-wave pressure that in a 300-kiloton nuclear weapon attack on the Pentagon would occur about 1.6 miles from ground zero. For purposes of illustration, such a target could be located in the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport. On an aircraft carrier at this range, the thermal flash would be more than 4,000 times brighter than a desert sun at noon, and the winds would be over 250 miles per hour. The light flash would ignite clothing, rubber, and exposed petroleum products; seven seconds later, the blast wave and winds would overturn and break up the carrier's fuel-laden planes. Under these conditions, the carrier could become a floating inferno. It is highly unlikely that sailors on it would be able to deliver half of its weapons effectively.

Damage to aircraft on the carrier and a little farther away at Reagan National Airport is also underestimated. According to the Handbook, light fighter and bomber aircraft located about 1.8 miles from a detonation and oriented "nose-on" toward it would sustain only "light damage," which it describes as "structural failure of small control surfaces, bomb bay doors, wheel doors, fuselage skin damage, and damage due to flying debris. Requires one to four hours repair but may permit limited flight." At this distance, the blast wave would cause the complete collapse and disintegration of typical two-story wood-frame and brick buildings. The winds accompanying the blast would be a little less than 220 miles per hour. Given that aircraft routinely fly into winds of several hundred miles per hour, we can see how the Handbook might arrive at such a prediction of damage.

But when the thermal effects are considered, "light damage" is understated. At a range of 1.8 miles, the light flash from the bomb would be thousands of times brighter than a noonday sun. The surfaces of the aircraft would warp and melt and tires and other components would burst into flames, rendering the aircraft inoperable.

These targets would be deep within the perimeter of mass fire. Farther away from the detonation, the built-up areas of Capitol Hill would be engulfed in a mass fire that would extinguish all life and destroy nearly all buildings and residences, large or small. Only the Capitol and some similarly monumental buildings on the Mall might be spared from complete destruction.

According to the calculations used in the Handbook, for a 300-kiloton detonation,

Lynn Eden is the associate director for research at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. This article is adapted from the first chapter of her book, Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation, Ithaca: Cornell University Press (December 2003).

January/February 2004 pp. 32-37, 40-43 (vol. 60, no. 1) © 2004 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

-------- us politics

Heath infuriated by Nixon's secret nuclear stand-off

ANGUS HOWARTH,
Thu 1 Jan 2004
Scotsman
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1032004

THE full fury of the Tory prime minister Edward Heath when the United States staged a nuclear face-off with the Soviet Union without informing Britain or other NATO allies is disclosed in the secret files made public today.

The decision by Richard Nixon, the then US president, to put his forces on worldwide nuclear alert after the Soviets threatened to intervene in the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973 marked one of the gravest moments of the Cold War.

It took the superpowers closer to nuclear conflict than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis, the only other occasion during the Cold War when US forces were put on a stage three alert.

Nixon, already mired in the Watergate scandal, and Henry Kissinger, the US secretary of state, had wanted to send a clear signal to the Soviets not to intervene on the side of the Arabs.

The files suggest that Mr Kissinger apparently misled the British ambassador in Washington, Lord Cromer, over the US alert, even though it covered American troops stationed in Britain.

Mr Heath only learned what had happened from news reports several hours later, while sitting in the Commons alongside the foreign secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who was preparing to make a statement on the crisis. The prime minister's embarrassment was compounded by the fact GCHQ, the secret "listening" agency, had discovered what had happened but had not passed the information on to Downing Street or the Foreign Office because it was assumed they already knew.

In a blistering memorandum to his private secretary, Lord Bridges, Mr Heath demanded to know what had happened. He said: "I wish the highest priority to be given to this with no attempt whatever to hide any defects there may have been in our system at home or the ambiguities in President Nixon's conduct."

He added: "We have to face the fact that the American action has done immense harm, I believe, both in this country and worldwide."

At the same time, British spy chiefs secretly warned that the US would be prepared to invade Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to seize their oilfields following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

The intelligence agencies believed the US was ready to take action to prevent further disruption to their oil supplies. It followed the decision in October 1973 by the Arab nations to slash oil production, sending prices rocketing, while imposing a complete embargo on the US over its support for Israel.

In Britain, the government, which adopted a more pro-Arab line, was still forced to draw up plans for petrol rationing after panic buying led to filling- station shortages in southern England.

Although the war in the Middle East was over after three weeks, an assessment drawn up for ministers by the joint intelligence committee, including the heads of MI5 and MI6, concluded the US would rather risk military action than be held to ransom again by the Arabs.

Meanwhile, it emerged that the Foreign Office secretly blocked an application for asylum from the former Chilean ambassador Alvaro Bunster because they did not want to offend the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

Asylum requests by Mr Bunster and seven of his staff were quietly downgraded to requests for permission to reside and work in the UK in order to avoid "embarrassment" with the new regime.

Mr Bunster had been forced out of the embassy by the military attaché, Admiral Buzeta, after Gen Pinochet seized power in a notoriously bloody coup d'état on 11 September, 1973.

----

Bush: Not Involved 'In Any Way' in CIA Leak Probe

Jan 1, 2004
(Reuters)
http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/357662|top|01-01-2004::22:03|reuters.html

FALFURRIAS, Texas - President Bush on Thursday sought to distance himself from an investigation into whether someone in his administration illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer.

"I'm not involved with the investigation in any way, shape or form," Bush told reporters here after wrapping up a hunting trip with his father and a family friend.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday stepped aside from the investigation into who disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame, a secret intelligence officer. Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, has publicly challenged Bush's reasons for going to war and has said he believes the administration leaked his wife's name as a means of retaliation.

Wilson, a retired diplomat, went to Niger early in 2002 at the CIA's request to assess a report that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger. He found the allegation doubtful and the International Atomic Energy Agency later dismissed it as based on forged documents.

But the charge found its way into Bush's State of the Union speech in January as part of the U.S. case against Saddam Hussein. Only after Wilson went public did the White house admit Bush should not have included it, blaming the CIA.

The Justice Department has named a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to lead the investigation into the leak of Plame's identity to newspaper columnist Robert Novak.

Asked whether Ashcroft had made the right decision in recusing himself from the case, Bush replied: "You're going to have to ask him. I mean, I don't know the details which caused him to recuse himself.

"I've told the members of the White House to totally cooperate," Bush said. "And the sooner they find out the truth, the better, as far as I'm concerned."

----

Bush Faces a Challenging Year: The Turn From War to Peace

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 1, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46213-2003Dec31?language=printer

George W. Bush faces the most daunting diplomatic challenges of his presidency in 2004, a year when his administration will be out to prove that his daring and controversial foreign policy was able to achieve its goals. After three years of waging war, much of this year will be spent in a frantic search for peace.

The difficulty of Bush's election-year agenda is reflected in its breadth: Re-creating an entire nation in Iraq, transforming beleaguered Afghanistan, defusing the nuclear crisis with North Korea, pursuing the elusive Middle East peace and ending the world's longest civil war in Sudan while helping to rebuild war-torn Liberia.

Looming above them all is the global fight against terrorism.

"It's not going away," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in an interview this week. "We have a better idea of whom we're fighting, but they're still out there and they're still coming after us. We have to protect the homeland and we have to go out and get them where they are."

The success or failure of Bush's diplomacy in 2004 will shape the world well beyond America's borders and will heavily influence global events for the next decade, U.S. foreign policy experts say.

"Not since the height of the Cold War has an American president faced so many foreign policy challenges -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Pakistan, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iran. Simply managing these problems is going to test the capability of the Bush administration," said Walter Russell Mead, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow.

"Then there's the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the collapse of America's image and the worldwide tide of anti-globalization. These are the kinds of challenges that don't lend themselves to quick and easy solutions," he said.

How the United States fares abroad may also be the biggest single factor in determining whether Bush wins a second term, according to some analysts.

"This is the first presidential election perhaps since Vietnam that is going to turn on the way the public views the success or failure of foreign policy. This is going to be the first election that turns on something this administration never wanted to do -- get involved in nation building with more than 100,000 troops engaged in the process," said Mark Snyder, senior vice president of International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based organization that monitors global hot spots.

To achieve its goals, America may have to mediate a new peace with key allies, Powell acknowledged.

"I'm going to work very hard in making clear to our friends in Europe and elsewhere in the world that America is a partner: spend more time with them, spend more time listening to them and finding ways that we can cooperate together," Powell said in a telephone interview as he continued to recuperate from surgery for prostate cancer.

Iraq

The administration faces two tight deadlines in 2004 to convert war-torn societies into democracies. To help end the U.S. occupation of Iraq by June 30, Washington is going to reach out to the international community for help with the political transition, military occupation and economic reconstruction, Powell said.

"I've got to generate more international support, get the U.N. back in there in force, both humanitarian and to play a political role. I think NATO is more and more willing to play a role in Iraq," Powell said. The United States is also hoping within the next two months to win agreement from dozens of countries to relieve most of Iraq's $120 billion in foreign debt.

Even more difficult will be the complex formation of a provisional government to assume sovereignty and write new laws.

"Getting an agreement is going to be tough and divisive. If we fail, then there could be internal strife and possibly civil war. We'll have no chance to build a strong, stable and unified Iraq unless we get the political process to work first," said Jessica Matthews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Afghanistan

The other deadline is for June elections to select Afghanistan's first democratic government, a goal that may only be partially met, Powell said. The United States has not yet achieved the goals of its 2001 war, notably wrapping up the former Taliban government and capturing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Several factors -- including widespread instability, ongoing attacks by Taliban remnants, delayed reconstruction and the inability to develop a new political culture -- may force Afghanistan to defer elections for parliament and hold only a presidential poll.

"That's certainly a possibility," Powell said. "It's still an open question. The presidential election is the one that is key and that has to come first whether it's together or separated [from parliamentary elections]."

Some foreign policy analysts worry more about U.S. failure in Afghanistan than in Iraq, as former warlords gain more control of the rugged country.

"Iraq gets more attention and resources because of the huge stakes for Bush and the visibility of what is happening in Iraq. Afghanistan is not getting the resources it needs and is now going to hell in a handbasket," warned Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott, an undersecretary of state in the Clinton administration.

North Korea

Washington hopes to schedule a second round of six-nation talks to resolve the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, after December talks fell through.

"We're prepared to seek a diplomatic solution and not be cowed or blackmailed or pushed into some deal with North Korea where we're paying them for their misbehavior," Powell said.

But the administration also remains split over policy, with some conservatives hoping talks will fail -- with blame placed on Pyongyang -- so Washington can isolate and destabilize the government. In the meantime, Powell said he hopes Libya's pledge to surrender its weapons sends a strong signal to Pyongyang.

Pakistan

The Islamic world's nuclear power is the big wild card for 2004, especially after two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf last month. Washington believes he "enjoys broad support," Powell said, while conceding deep concern about Pakistan's extremist groups.

"We still have confidence in President Musharraf and we're standing behind him," Powell said. But experts warn that Pakistan, pivotal to the war on terrorism, is vulnerable to a sudden change in political status.

"Pakistan is probably the most dangerous place in the world, with the dangerous combination of nukes, religious extremism and territorial disputes. Conflicts on its borders represent the highest danger of unleashing waves of global instability," said Moises Naim., editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

Other pressing U.S. goals include the perennial but deadlocked Arab-Israeli conflict and curtailing weapons of mass destruction, Powell said.

But U.S. experts warn that the administration may pay a price for paying too little attention to other brewing flash points, including Russia's democratic reversals, growing anti-globalization fervor, and the collapsing economies and political systems in Latin America.

Staff writer Glenn Kessler contributed to this report.


-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

AU gets military intervention power

Thursday January 01, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jan2004-daily/01-01-2004/world/w8.htm

ADDIS ABABA: The African Union (AU) has gained the power to intervene militarily in national conflicts on the war-torn continent after a security pact won the backing of a majority of the body's members.

The pact establishes a Peace and Security Council, seen as a crucial step towards boosting the relevance of the AU, the successor of the Organisation of African Unity, in tackling wars hampering economic growth across Africa.

"The AU Security Council is a key organ to enhance capacity for conflict management and peace building," the chairman of the commission of the African Union Alpha Oumar Konare said in a statement received by Reuters on Wednesday. Under the pact, the AU can set up an African Standby Force drawn from member countries and use it to prevent conflicts, restore peace or intervene to stop war crimes. But the body will also need to lean heavily on its members to fund the force's activities.

African officials agreed early this year on a framework to establish a standby force to intervene in wars from Liberia to Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo, but without ratification of the pact such a force would lack a clear mandate.

----

Military stalks terrorists in Africa

January 01, 2004
By Chris Tomlinson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031231-083517-2847r.htm

CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti - Three high-definition television screens, a bank of green military radios and detailed maps line the walls. Laptop computers cover three rows of tables. And military officers, among them Lt. Cmdr. Victor Cooper, keep 24-hour vigil, tracking terrorists from afar.

The Joint Operations Center, tucked inside a former French Foreign Legion post, is the heart of the Bush administration's quiet battle against Islamic militants operating in six nations in East Africa and Yemen.

From here, the U.S. military monitors Marine beach landings, Navy warships, Army infantry maneuvers and Air Force flights, keeping in close communication with Central Command headquarters in Qatar and troops in the field. And there are secret operations no one will talk about.

The goal: to detect, disrupt and defeat the bad guys.

On a recent day, U.S. soldiers trained with local troops in rural Ethiopia, civil-affairs officers helped with rehab projects in Kenyan towns and Marines landed on a deserted beach in Djibouti.

Offshore, NATO ships coordinated their operations with the task force, searching ships in international waters for weapons and terrorists.

"We are the gathering point and dissemination point for all information," said Cmdr. Cooper, of Jackson, Miss., his calm, friendly demeanor a reflection of how U.S. forces fight terrorism here.

Sometimes his job gets boring, he said, but then that's the idea. A day without terrorist activity is a successful day, troops say.

The task force uses military training, humanitarian aid and intelligence operations to keep northeastern Africa and Yemen from becoming the next Afghanistan by strengthening local security forces and keeping terrorist groups from operating in the predominantly Muslim region, said Brig. Gen. Mastin Robeson, commander of the task force.

The 1,800 personnel at Camp Lemonier coordinate U.S. military operations in Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Yemen and Djibouti, a region largely ignored before the war on terrorism. The region is now one of the war's main theaters.

"Here you have six countries that very positively desire to be partners in every way possible in the global war on terrorism," Gen. Robeson said, leaving out Somalia, which doesn't have a government.

"We are empowering host nations to retake neighborhoods that people are trying to take from them, so you have, in our opinion, sovereign governments here, who are being invaded, who have been invaded ... with sleeper cells that are just now coming to life," he added in an interview at his air-conditioned office.

Djibouti, an arid nation the size of Massachusetts, has long been a strategic link between Africa and the Middle East, with trade ships sailing along the coast for centuries. The French carved the colony out of the Horn of Africa to control the point where the Red Sea opens into the Gulf of Aden, one of the busiest waterways in the world.

The French Foreign Legion still keeps a brigade in Djibouti, and French forces train in the desert year-round as French Mirage fighter jets scream overhead. U.S. forces arrived in June 2002 at Camp Lemonier - a vacant, former Legion post - and the task force began operations from the tented camp in December 2002.

The Americans have built a permanent mess hall, gym and convenience store, but troops still live in dusty, crowded tents. The post employs hundreds of Djiboutian construction workers to rehabilitate the dilapidated French buildings in preparation for what military officials say will be a long stay.

The region has already suffered four terrorist attacks, all of them either claimed by, or attributed to, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network. In August 1998, car bombs destroyed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; in October 2000, suicide bombers attacked the USS Cole while it was refueling in Yemen; and in November 2002, attackers tried to shoot down an Israeli airliner minutes before a car bomb destroyed a hotel on Kenya's coast.

Gen. Robeson said his forces have disrupted several terrorist plots and that more than two dozen suspected terrorists have been detained in the region. He declined to provide details, citing diplomatic sensitivities and security reasons.

The task force works with local military commanders to develop strategies to help countries fight terrorists, concentrating on better border security, coastal security, intelligence collection, customs departments and counterterrorism forces.

In addition to support, medical and administrative staff from the Marines, Navy, Army and Air Force, Gen. Robeson has under his command a Marine helicopter detachment with four CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters, a U.S. Army infantry company, a U.S. Army Reserve civil-affairs company, Navy cargo planes, military engineers and a special-operations unit.

Responsibility for stopping ships possibly carrying al Qaeda members and weapons falls to a fleet of six to seven NATO ships, known as Combined Task Force-150. A French admiral is currently in command of the force, which boards several ships a week, said Lt. Cmdr. Dean Matusek, a Navy liaison officer at Camp Lemonier.

This month, the French navy plans joint operations with the Kenyan navy to work on coastal-patrol techniques. U.S. Marines also plan to land in Kenya this month for joint training with the Kenyan army.

When the task force identifies a suspected terrorist or detects a plot, local authorities are encouraged to take action first. But Gen. Robeson said his special-operations troops are ready to act independently if necessary.

"If I know there is a terrorist out there, and we have the means to go get him and someone else isn't, will we go get him? You bet we will," Gen. Robeson said. He refused to say whether his forces have snatched any terror suspects.

The task force also works with what military personnel call OGAs, or "other government agencies," such as the CIA and FBI.

"We share information with each other. We share intelligence with each other. We find that there are places that we can do things that benefit them and there are places they can do things that benefit us," Gen. Robeson said.

"There are places where U.S. law permits us to spend our money and do things, and places U.S. law permits them."

Gen. Robeson said the ultimate goal is for each of the seven countries in the region to have its own modern methods of protecting its borders and coordinating its customs and intelligence activities so that terrorists have no chance of staging attacks or taking shelter in the region.

"In truth, this is more of the model of how the global war on terrorism should be fought, not Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.


-------- arms

Digital warfare system hunts Iraq rebels
But soldiers say dust, heat can thwart computers

By Jason Keyser
The Associated Press
Jan. 01, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3855079&p1=0

TIKRIT, Iraq - On mud-spattered computer screens in their Humvees, American soldiers scan digital street maps, monitor enemy positions, zoom in on individual buildings through satellite imagery and download instructions from commanders.

Back on base, senior officers watch raids unfold on large screens showing real-time footage from aerial drones and displaying maps with moving icons for ground and air forces. Their locations are tracked by global positioning satellites.

The two dozen components making up this high-tech digital warfare system are known as Army Battle Command Systems. The technologies, originally designed for battlefield combat involving tanks and helicopters, now are being adapted for hunting rebel leaders and trailing street fighters.

The technology has allowed commanders to plan complicated raids and organize battle gear and hundreds of soldiers within two hours. That speed, they say, played an important part in capturing Saddam Hussein and other fugitives.

Only 4th Infantry has it

The Army's 4th Infantry Division, headquartered in one of Saddam's palace complexes in his hometown beside the muddy Tigris River, is the only unit outfitted with the system, and it is being used in combat for the first time.

"No longer do you have guys on a map putting little stickers where things are at," said Capt. Lou Morales, a division training officer. "It's digitally done. ... It allows commanders to move more rapidly, more decisively, more violently."

In Iraq, where the battle is an intelligence-driven hunt for underground street fighters and their leadership, the system has proven effective in helping planners visualize forces' movements, Morales said.

Each military vehicle is tracked by satellite and appears as a moving blue icon on computer screens inside Humvees, tanks and other craft, and on monitors back at command headquarters.

Red icons represent known enemy positions - insurgents laying an ambush, fugitives' hideouts or the locations of known roadside bombs.

Each soldier using the touch-screen monitor can place an icon on the map and have it appear on screens throughout the system.

Reducing friendly fire deaths

With that battlefield view, a commander can watch his forces surround the home of a suspect and know when they are all in place. The system also is credited with reducing the number of friendly fire incidents.

However, some ground forces complain that the vehicle consoles are too complicated to use and frequently break down under desert wear and tear. Links between pieces of the network sometimes crash and, because the system is unique, replacement parts are slow to arrive.

Some soldiers are not using the system because of the problems, he said.

"These guys are busy. They don't have time to troubleshoot a hard drive," Saul said.

Although the traditional method of gathering intelligence - using tips from Iraqi informants, seized documents and interrogations of detainees - still plays a central role, commanders say the computer system has been a crucial tool for orchestrating raids that often change course in mid-operation.

For example, if a reconnaissance team spots a suspect leaving for another location, commanders in a matter of seconds can redirect pursuing forces with an e-mail via the system's "tactical Internet."

"That's pretty much in the realm of incredible," said Lt. Col. Ted Martin, the division's chief of operations. "This is a bunch of infantry men. Their main job is to kick a door down and throw a hand grenade in a room.

"But they're sitting there on a computer screen at night, moving through a town, getting a new order, making a turn and looking at satellite imagery."

Unmannned aircraft also help

The system also includes eight "Shadow" unmanned aerial vehicles - pilotless drones that observe the homes of suspects or the locations of rebel mortar crews. The drones, the only ones being used in Iraq, carry thermal cameras that produce real-time video, even in darkness or rain.

Beside one of Saddam's ransacked palaces at the 4th Infantry Division's headquarters, leaders oversee military operations from a small fold-out mobile command center on the back of a flatbed truck.

Recently, three large screens illuminated the room with color images from a drone flying above local towns and farms. The aircraft banked west, showing a sunset over the Tigris River. Martin said the system has given military planners so much confidence they even skip time-consuming rehearsals and contingency plans.

"It gives me the confidence I need to speed up the tempo and outmaneuver these guys," he said.

-------- israel / lebanon / palestine

Israel continues assassination policy
345 Palestinians have so far been killed in ''assassination operations''

By Laila El-Haddad in Gaza
Thursday 01 January 2004
Aljazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/75B25D3C-1FF3-4F75-9B1E-9E7A160F0DBF

In what appears to be a continuation of the Israeli policy of extra-judicial killings, Israeli helicopter gunships fired two missiles at a car carrying Hamas activist Jamal al-Jarah in Gaza city. Ten Palestinian bystanders were injured.

The attack on Tuesday marked the first such attempt to assassinate a senior figure from Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, in over two months.

Israeli security officials had recently indicated they would refrain from targeting Hamas activists after the Israeli army Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon said the group appeared to have halted attacks inside Israel.

Ya'lon stated Israel would target militants of Palestinian movements such as the PFLP and the Islamic Jihad, but had excluded Hamas from his threats.

No agreement

Analysts say a tacit understanding appears to have been reached between the two sides, following the failed Egyptian truce talks last month.

But an Israeli Army spokesperson told Aljazeera.net that was not the case.

"There is no such agreement. As long as there is a threat to the lives on Israeli citizens inside Israel, the IDF will operate in order to dismantle such threats," said the spokesperson.

"If any agreement takes place, it will be between the Palestinians and the Israeli government, not between Hamas and the Israeli government," he added.

Hamas, likewise, denied the claim, stating, "There was no agreement, only discussions."

"If any agreement takes place, it will be between the Palestinians and the Israeli government, not between Hamas and the Israeli government"

An Israeli army spokesperson

According to Ghazi Hamad, editor of the Hamas weekly newspaper al-Risala, American officials recently told Egyptian mediators they were ready to pressure Israel to halt its policy of assassinating Hamas leaders, in return for a Hamas ceasefire against Israelis.

"Hamas refused the offer because this issue is about all of Palestinian society, and not just about Hamas," Hamad told Aljazeera.net.

"Besides, there was no clear indication that (Israel) would agree to stop the assassinations."

The Israeli army said they would only consider halting their assassination policy under one open-ended condition: "If there is no threat and no need to operate."

Conflicting claims

The Israeli army confirmed that the intended target of Tuesday's attack was a senior Hamas leader who was "involved in planning terrorist attacks and launching rockets on Israeli civilian targets".

But Hamad said such accusations were unfounded and merely the standard Israeli justification for an otherwise extra-judicial killing. "I think this is the regular excuse that Israel always has ready," he said.

"Its important to point out that no one from Gaza has ever been sent to conduct an operation inside the Green Line during the course of the Intifada."

When pressed on the nature of the attacks carried out by al-Jarah, the army spokesperson declined to comment.

Hamas holds that settlements in the Gaza Strip are legitimate targets since they are considered illegal under international law.

They, however, claim to have stuck to an informal ceasefire of sorts in the past month, regardless of Israeli actions.

"Not a single operation was carried out by Hamas against any Israeli target last month. Yet, Israel continues its attacks on Rafah, Khan Yunis, Tul Karem, Jenin, and Nablus."

Israeli political science professor Ira Sharkansky says Hamas's claims to have eased its military activities are dubious.

"Not a single operation was carried out by Hamas against any Israeli target last month. Yet, Israel continues its attacks on Rafah, Khan Yunis, Tul Karem, Jenin, and Nablus"

"I do not accept Hamas's claim to have refrained from violence in the recent period. I do not know how many attempts had Hamas fingerprints on them. I give very little credence to Hamas statements," said Sharkansky.

"And a substantial proportion of us (Jews) consider civilians in the territories and soldiers to be unfair targets of violence. So when Hamas and others speak of a ceasefire with regard to civilians inside the green line, the response is likely to be 'nonsense'."

Escalating tensions

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights strongly condemned the attempted assassination, claiming that the attack was further proof of an institutionalised Israeli policy aimed at escalating tensions in the region.

"PCHR stresses that extra-judicial and wilful killings further demonstrate the Israeli government's disregard for the principles of international law and humanitarian law. PCHR also reconfirms that the policy of extra-judicial assassinations officially adopted by the Israeli government serves to increase tension in the region and threatens the lives of Palestinian civilians."

Targeted or political assassinations are deliberate killings, carried out by order of, or with the acquiescence of a government, outside any judicial framework. Extrajudicial executions are unlawful even in an armed conflict.

In a 1998 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions noted, "extrajudicial executions can never be justified under any circumstances, not even in times of war".

So far, 345 Palestinians have been killed in ''assassination operations'' conducted by the Israel occupation army, including 122 bystanders, 39 of them children.

----

Israeli warplanes violate Lebanese airspace over New Year

BEIRUT (AFP)
Jan 01, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040101132602.f9wv331y.html

Israeli warplanes violated Lebanese airspace twice over the New Year's holiday, the Lebanese army said Thursday.

A reconaissance aircraft made a 20-minute intrusion over the Syrian-controlled Bekaa valley in the east of the country on New Year's Day morning, the army said.

On New Year's Eve another plane made a two-hour overflight from the coastal Saadiyat region, 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of the capital, across to Bekaa and then south across the UN-patrolled border.

In early December, the United Nations had hailed a decline in Israeli violations. The previous month it issued a strong condemnation of the Jewish state for its peristent intrusions into Lebanese airspace since its pullout from the south of the country in May 2000.

----

Israel to deport Swedish MP

Thursday 01 January 2004
Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/32F23DAE-1A2B-4DC0-A4C4-A69450621A6A.htm

Israel has decided to deport a member of the Swedish parliament and three other internationals following a demonstration against the apartheid wall in the West Bank.

Forty Palestinians and an Israeli were wounded as occupation troops fired teargas and rubber bullets to break up a protest close to the controversial barrier.

Israeli police said four Israelis were also arrested at the protest near the Palestinian village of Budrus, near Jenin in the northern West Bank.

Israeli soldiers arrested Gustav Fridolin, a Swedish member of parliament who was among a group of protesters detained near the village.

It was the second protest in five days against the separation wall which Israel claims is needed to keep prevent resistance fighters from carrying out bomb attacks inside Israel.

The wall has been criticised internationally because parts of the barrier made of concrete, razor wire, and trenches snakes through Palestinian land.

Palestinian demonstrators shout at Israeli border police in Budrus

Gil Kleiman, a spokesman for Israeli national police, said "a decision was made to deport all four of the foreigners detained today," including the Swedish lawmaker named by Sweden's embassy in Tel Aviv as Gustav Fridolin of the Greens Party.

All four were expected to appeal the decision to a board on Thursday and would remain in custody pending a decision.

Freedom songs

Anna Weekes, a protester from South Africa, said Fridolin had been detained by soldiers as he sang pro-Palestine songs with a group of local schoolchildren.

"We were sitting on a terrace singing 'Free, Free Palestine'. Then they grabbed various internationals," she said.

"They have taken him and the others away to a detention centre." Protesters added that an Israeli, Nimrod Kerreet, had been beaten by soldiers who were trying to arrest him.

An Israeli military source said seven people had been arrested for trying to block work for the barrier.

Around forty Palestinians were injured at the large demonstration

"A few protesters came to the place at Budrus where there was engineering work. They came and protested in a controlled manner.

"Then at some stage they started to prevent the work, by standing in front of the vehicles, blocking the road," the military spokesperson added.

Israel has deported dozens of peace protesters accused of involvement in "illegal activities" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This includes internationals and Israeli nationals who enter Palestinian areas whilst occupation troops are invading towns or cities, and activists who assist Palestinian farmers in harvesting olives.

It's much less common for Israel to deport foreign politicians or diplomats.

Expelled to Gaza

Israel expelled a Palestinian from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip after accusing him of belonging to armed resistance group, Islamic Jihad.

Palestinian officials said Mustafa Abed, a 40-year-old father of seven from the West Bank city of Nablus, was taken to the Gaza Strip by Israeli occupation troops late on Wednesday.

Palestinian officials and international human rights groups have condemned Israel for using the measure against Palestinians, saying such expulsions are a violation of international law.

An Israeli military spokesperson confirmed that Abed had been expelled to Gaza for a period of two years as "preventive measure".

Abed told the Reuters news agency that he had been arrested by Israeli occupation troops more than a year ago and held in custody without charge.

-------- pakistan / india

Pakistani Leader's New Tactic: Persuasion

January 1, 2004
By AMY WALDMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/01/international/asia/01STAN.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 31 - Gen. Pervez Musharraf took power in a coup. Now President Pervez Musharraf is on the stump.

On Thursday, Pakistan's president and army chief will face a vote of confidence by Pakistan's electoral college - members of Parliament and the four provincial assemblies - that would allow him to remain president until 2007. It is President Musharraf's latest attempt to provide some democratic legitimacy to his rule, which began when he ousted an elected prime minister in 1999.

There is little doubt that he will win, but many members of the opposition parties have indicated they will boycott or abstain from voting. A low yes vote would be an embarrassment for a man who won 98 percent of the vote in a referendum last year, albeit one heavily criticized as being rigged in his favor.

So over the past three days, in a series of striking speeches, General Musharraf has been addressing those who will vote on Thursday, defending not only his presidency, but his vision of Islam as a tolerant religion. He has gathered members of the electoral college at his heavily secured camp in Rawalpindi, the city where two recent assassination attempts against him - including one last Thursday - took place. Plans to travel to the four provincial capitals were canceled because of security concerns.

On Tuesday, the president spoke to the members of the provincial assembly of the North-West Frontier Province, where a coalition of six religious parties - the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, or United Action Front - holds power. Last week General Musharraf reached an agreement with the coalition's members of Parliament that he would step down as army chief in a year; in return, they promised to support some of the constitutional changes that he decreed last year.

Members of the coalition, who are expected largely to abstain from voting, have been among the most vocal critics of General Musharraf's support for the American campaign against terror, among other policies, so his comments to their provincial assembly members on Tuesday were particularly notable.

Wearing the gear of the commando he once was, but adopting a less aggressive stance than he has in the past, General Musharraf began by listing the world's perceptions of Pakistan, according to the accounts of two politicians who were present.

Pakistan, he said, was seen as helping to spread nuclear weapons, and as a recruiting ground for violent Islamic militants. It lacks democracy. Its struggle to liberate Kashmir is seen as cross-border terrorism, and its tribal areas as a haven for Al Qaeda.

These perceptions "might not be right, might not be based on fact, but perceptions count, and we have to change," he said, according to Sikander Sherpao, a provincial assembly member who plans to support the president on Thursday.

President Musharraf described the perceptions as a "minefield" Pakistan would have to navigate, according to Mr. Sherpao.

But General Musharraf also seemed to make clear that he thought there was some truth to the perceptions. There was a problem in the tribal areas, Mr. Sherpao quoted him as saying, in which "certain people were harboring certain people," and this needed to be stopped.

He said some people were taking advantage of Pakistan's open border with Afghanistan to "carry out certain actions" - a reference to attacks carried out by Taliban militants in Afghanistan. He said those actions were isolated, not organized, but said that now that Pakistan was aware of them, it would crack down.

He referred obliquely to the attack on him last week, in which two suicide bombers rammed his motorcade, by saying the emergence of suicide attackers in Pakistan was a dangerous development. But he said the militants or fundamentalists who thought he had sold out to the West were wrong, that he alone would decide what was in Pakistan's interest, not outside, presumably Western, interests.

General Musharraf said that while many madrassas, or religious schools, did good work for the poor, some were hurting Pakistan's image by teaching intolerance. They needed to change, President Musharraf said. It was a provocative statement, given that some of those in the room run the madrassas of which he spoke.

He said religious conflict should end, and that it is not "for us" to decide who is a good or bad Muslim, according to Mr. Sherpao. Mr. Sherpao quoted the president as saying that the idea that "jihad will take us straight to heaven" should change.

General Musharraf talked about Kashmir as well, where Pakistan has long provided support to militants seeking to end Indian rule of part of that divided border region. Pakistan and India have been observing a cease-fire there for more than a month now, and the president seemed to suggest in a recent interview that Pakistan would set aside a demand for a plebiscite in Kashmir were India to show flexibility in return.

It was wrong to say he had sold out on Kashmir, President Musharraf said. But he also said that Pakistan wanted a "peaceful resolution" to the dispute.

The president spoke briefly about the recent questioning of some of the country's nuclear scientists to determine whether they had provided sensitive nuclear technology to other countries, notably Iran, Libya or North Korea. It is a difficult issue for Pakistan, which has taken great national pride in its nuclear program.

Inayatullah, a member of the religious coalition in the North-West Frontier Province, quoted President Musharraf as saying that the scientists would not be dishonored or disrespected, but that it was important that the international community not blame Pakistan for the spread of nuclear technology.

"He was defending the questioning," said Mr. Inayatullah, who uses one name.

-------- russia / chechnya

Russians now able to sign up for alternative military service

MOSCOW (AFP)
Jan 01, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040101074826.knzxgx4w.html

Conscientious objectors in Russia from Thursday gained the right to carry out alternative, non-military service, but only a few thousand a year were expected to sign up for the scheme, officials said.

A new law on civil service, criticized for forcing young men who want to keep out of the army to serve for up to three and a half years compared to two years for regular conscripts, came into force on January 1, ITAR-TASS said.

"Already from February to March, they can send a request to the draft boards for the right to alternative service," General Viktor Kozhushko, a senior official from the general staff's mobilisation department, told the news agency.

Those who qualify as conscientious objectors will be able to do social work, such as in hospitals and orphanages, but they will be required to serve outside their home region and for three and a half years.

They can serve six months less -- three years -- if they agree to do civilian duties on a military base.

As little as 3,000 people a year are expected to take up the option, which involves filing an application six months ahead of call-up, according to the general staff.

Alternative service has been hailed as a symbolic step in reforming Russia's unpopular and often brutal conscription system, although liberals say that the form of service set out in the bill is little better than serving in the ranks.

Those with higher education need only serve half the time -- 21 months in social work or 18 months in non-military army duties.

The service is likely to involve doing menial jobs for the military or working as hospital orderlies or carers in orphanages, though this has not been made explicit by the law.

Some 400,000 youngsters are drafted each year, but according to an analysis by the Carnegie Moscow Center, as many as 100,000 dodge the draft, most of them scared off by the military's reputation for poor living conditions and "dedovshchina," or hazing -- a brutal form of initiation.

A 2.8 billion dollar four-year reform plan that aims to have half the armed forces made up of volunteers by 2008 is to be introduced this year.

The length of military service is also to be halved from two years to one from 2008.

Russia has been trying to reform its chronically underfunded and violence-ridden armed services since the mid-1990s, but reforms aiming to scale back the 1.1 million-strong military are resisted by top brass.


-------- propaganda wars

The Weapons That Weren't
Saddam's thought crimes finally come to light

New York Press,
January 1, 2004
http://www.nypress.com/16/52/news&columns/signorile.cfm

"So what's the difference?" a slightly flustered George W. Bush asked Diane Sawyer last week when she challenged him on whether Saddam Hussein actually had weapons of mass destruction, or just wanted to get his hands on some.

"The possibility that he could acquire weapons," Bush continued, now defending the invasion and occupation of Iraq based on Saddam's thoughts, desires and wildest dreams rather than his actions, "if he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger. That's what I'm trying to explain to you."

With that logic, I should pay taxes on a brand-new BMW just for wanting one. Hell, I should be locked up-and, in Texas, given the death penalty-just for some of the ugly thoughts that have gone through my own mind in recent months.

Gone are those heady days of Colin Powell's maps and grainy photos of deadly trailers filled with diabolical scientists making poisons designed to knock off entire populations. "My colleagues," Powell told the U.N earlier this year, "every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence... We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels...[that] can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people."

Not one of the mysterious trailers of mass destruction ever materialized, of course, nor did anything else that the Bushies promised us Saddam had. So now they're embarking on what we might call the clairvoyant defense: We just know he was thinking about getting these weapons. Next we'll be told that Condoleezza Rice had a prophetic vision, a la Angels in America. Or maybe Nancy Reagan's old astrologer was called in to the current White House-just in time for her own glamorous portrayal in the CBS-banned The Reagans-to chart the stars and see if Saddam would be acquiring toxic agents. ("The moon is in the seventh house: He must be getting sarin gas from Syria!")

It would all be laughable if it weren't so outrageous. From the moment the news of Saddam's capture surfaced two Sundays ago, the media went into 24/7 overdrive, ignoring other important facts and telegraphing the ridiculous notion that the capture justified the war. For a full week the pundits have been pounding out the message that finding Saddam was terrible news for the Democrats and, particularly, for Howard Dean.

When Dean responded to the capture by saying it was a triumph for the Bush administration, but that America was no safer with Saddam caught, you'd have thought, by listening to the media windbags, that he'd said we should throw small children into boiling cauldrons. I mean, can any of us actually say we feel safer now that a feeble, unkempt maniac has been pulled up from a hole outside a dirt hut thousands of miles away? While the men and women in the U.S. military might be safer (if it is true that Saddam was orchestrating the insurgency, which seems unlikely), it's increasingly clear that he was not an "imminent threat" to the U.S. even while in power. I feel less safe since the invasion, as the occupation and Saddam's removal from power have allowed al Qaeda and assorted other types to make Iraq a new plotting ground. And obviously Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge doesn't think we're safer, as he put the country on orange alert for the holidays.

But back to Saddam's hole. I saw so many renderings of it in the media last week that it bordered on obscene, including MSNBC's lifesize recreation, in which they stuffed one of their anchors down inside of it. Meanwhile, a bit of scandalous news went uncovered amid the Saddam-fest: Florida Sen. Bill Nelson's revelation that someone in the Bush administration last year told him and 75 other senators that Iraq not only had WMDs but had the means to deliver them to cities on the East Coast, presumably including New York and Washington. The classified briefing, Nelson said, came just before he and the majority of senators voted last October to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

"Nelson said the senators were told Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones," reported the website Florida Today, one of only a few places that reported this news. Nelson, who declined to say who exactly briefed the senators, apparently made the comments in a conference call to reporters.

"They have not found anything that resembles an [unmanned aerial vehicle] that has that capability," Nelson said about the current search for weapons in Iraq.

With no deadly trailers, unmanned aircraft, nukes or vials of chemicals found, the Bushies are sounding more and more like "dead-enders"-to borrow a term from Rummy-when it comes to WMDs. And turning to the clairvoyant defense is not only despicable and desperate; it's in direct contradiction to their defense regarding intelligence prior to 9/11.

"I don't think anybody could have predicted... that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Condoleezza Rice claimed in May of 2002. This, even though there had been clear and consistent intelligence that laid out exactly that type of attack.

"How is it possible we have a national security advisor coming out and saying we had no idea they could use planes as weapons when we had FBI records from 1991 stating that this was a possibility?" Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband died in the World Trade Center attacks, asked CBS News last week. In her new book Seeds of Terror, CNN's Jakarta bureau chief Maria Ressa-whose reports about al Qaeda's organizing in Southeast Asia run on CNN International but, she says, often aren't aired on American CNN-notes that documents seized from an al Qaeda cell in the Philippines in 1995 outlined, specifically, a plot to crash planes into buildings.

It's curious how Condi and the gang became fortunetellers when it came to Saddam-and justified a war based on their soothsaying-but claim they couldn't predict the 9/11 attacks, even with clear-cut intelligence staring them in the face. Former New Jersey Republican Gov. Thomas Kean, the chairman of the 9/11 commission that the White House has fought tooth and nail, confirmed last week that you most certainly didn't have to be psychic to predict 9/11.

"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said of the findings to be released in coming months. "This was not something that had to happen."

Michelangelo Signorile hosts a daily radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio, stream 149.

He can be reached at www.signorile.com.

--------

Sudan security: Expel Aljazeera call
Jazeera's bureau chief, Islam Salih is still under interrogation

Thursday 01 January 2004
Aljazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C0F8DB76-339C-404E-A8FB-B96294DA193A.htm

The Sudanese National Security Apparatus has asked for the termination of the authorisation given for the Aljazeera office in Khartoum.

The Director of Intelligence at the security apparatus on Thursday confirmed requesting Sudan's National Press Council to cancel Aljazeera's office work permit permanently.

In his written request, the intelligence director, accused the Aljazeera channel of "lying" and "reporting false information on Sudan."

The Sudanese authorities closed the Aljazeera's office and arrested its bureau chief, Islam Salih, on 18 December. One day before the bureau chief's detention, the office was raided by the security forces and Salih was taken in for questioning. During the raid, broadcasting equipment was confiscated.

Aljazeera's office in Khartoum is still closed as requested by the Sudanese National Security Apparatus. Salih who was released on 24 December 2003 is still under interrogation.

Condemnation

The channel, whose motto is "The opinion and the other opinion", had given government and opposition figures a platform when reporting on Sudan.

Aljazeera had earlier condemned the arrest of its Sudan correspondent. "It is an outrageous state of affairs when a journalist in this day and age is afforded treatment that ought to be reserved to criminals," said Al Jazeera spokesperson Jihad Ballout last week.

Human rights organisations have often condemned Sudan for cracking down on freedom of expression. In its 2003 report on Sudan, Amnesty International said security forces continued to limit media freedoms.

Amnesty added that authorities unlawfully arrested journalists and editors and fined or suspended newspapers. Sanctions were also imposed for publishing articles critical of the government.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE

-------- justice

Head of Leak Probe Is Called Relentless
Expectations High as U.S. Attorney Takes Over

By David Von Drehle and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 1, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46146-2003Dec31?language=printer

If Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the man chosen to investigate the leak of a CIA operative's identity to a prominent Washington journalist, is everything people say he is, there should be a nervous leaker out there today.

Colleagues, classmates and more neutral observers say the Chicago-based U.S. attorney is fiercely independent, relentless, tireless, fearless. He has sent al Qaeda terrorists, mob hit men and drug dealers to jail; last month he indicted the former governor of Illinois. American Lawyer magazine has written of his "almost frightening brilliance." Author Daniel Benjamin, having studied Fitzgerald's work in prosecuting terrorists in New York, calls him "an awesome public servant."

"Anybody who has done something wrong in connection with [the leak] should not be heartened by Patrick Fitzgerald's appointment," says former deputy attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. "That's an incredible understatement."

On the other hand, Fitzgerald's personal friendship with No. 2 Department of Justice official James B. Comey Jr. -- he is the godfather of one of Comey's children -- leaves some critics complaining that top administration officials still have too much control over an investigation that is centered on the White House.

For example, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) paused from his presidential campaign long enough yesterday to call on Comey to "relinquish his authority to limit or interfere with the investigation." Lieberman said Fitzgerald's appointment means "there is still no real independence and autonomy."

Fitzgerald's assignment is to find out who told columnist Robert D. Novak last summer that the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. Wilson was in the news because he had disputed President Bush's assertion, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium from Niger.

Compared with the work that made Fitzgerald's career -- a series of cases in the late 1990s that laid bare the tangled and devious al Qaeda terrorist network -- the leak case is simple. "Fitzie," as his friends call him, is a mathematician by training, a person obsessive about his work and the owner of a memory so large and supple that he could piece together threads and shreds of seemingly disjointed information -- snatches of Arabic, credit card receipts, unfamiliar names -- that were just scraps to nearly everyone else.

And he was able to explain it all in compelling terms to juries faced with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, and an elaborate plot based in the Philippines to hijack and destroy a number of passenger jets on a single day. As co-head of the terrorism unit in the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office, he secured the first U.S. indictment of Osama bin Laden.

Here, he is just looking for a few people, maybe just one, in or around the peaceful confines of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But that address can certainly complicate an otherwise straightforward inquiry.

This is not the first time Fitzgerald, 43, has been presented to the public as an utterly independent prosecutor. In 2001, when northern Illinois needed a new U.S. attorney, Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (no relation) was, by custom, given the prerogative to choose. The maverick Republican bucked the long-standing tradition of naming an Illinoisan to the powerful post because, he said, he was worried that a locally connected lawyer would be reluctant to push corruption probes to the highest levels.

The senator, instead, looked nationwide. He sought suggestions from then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White and many others. Patrick Fitzgerald's name kept coming up.

In two years on the job, Fitzgerald has pushed the investigation of corruption around former governor George H. Ryan (R) closer to the man himself, rolling up former aides, close advisers and keepers of Ryan's campaign funds. His indictment of Ryan showed he has no plans to stop.

Former Illinois governor James R. Thompson (R), whose firm represents Ryan, says Fitzgerald has indicted an innocent man. But that has not changed his high opinion of the prosecutor. "He came to Chicago from his New York terrorist prosecutions with an excellent reputation," Thompson said, "and I think that reputation has held up in Chicago. He's smart, tough, determined, focused. His staff clearly works well with him and probably idolizes him."

Patrick Fitzgerald is the son of Irish immigrants -- "fresh off the boat," in the words of John Goggins, a prominent corporate lawyer in New York who has known Fitzgerald since high school. He grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and won a scholarship to Regis High School in Manhattan, a highly competitive Jesuit academy.

He worked his way through Amherst College, cleaning the school's restrooms and painting walls. In summers, the math and economics major earned more tuition money as a school janitor and part-time doorman in some of the same Upper East Side luxury buildings where his father had worked as a doorman for years.

Fitzgerald got his fill of rich and powerful people that way, Goggins said.

"He had numerous funny anecdotes about being treated shabbily by residents who didn't realize this was a Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst, and later a Harvard Law School student, holding the door." According to his friends, Fitzgerald never resented the slights, but he also made it clear that he was never going to seek the approval of such people.

Goggins and others remember Fitzgerald as "very apolitical." Throughout his school years, during many heated political debates, Goggins never heard him take a predictable partisan stance. "He would be very neutral and down the middle, always taking what he thought was the logical position -- he didn't really subscribe to a political philosophy."

After a brief stint in a small law firm, he was hired into the highly competitive U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, where his work habits quickly became legendary.

Once, a police officer was in the building where Fitzgerald had a small studio apartment. There had been a burglary. He noticed newspapers piled high on Fitzgerald's gas stove and warned him about the fire hazard. "Don't worry," Fitzgerald told the officer. "I've never turned the gas on." He had never had time to eat a meal at home.

It was in the Manhattan office, pursuing mobsters and terrorists, that Fitzgerald and Comey became best friends, two of the "bomb boys," as the terrorism prosecutors were known around the office. They entertained colleagues with their endless comic banter -- "like 'The Brothers McMullen,' " said one movie-loving co-worker -- with Fitzie playing the straight man, except for the occasional acerbic aside.

David N. Kelley, the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, is another former "bomb boy"; he has known Fitzgerald for 15 years and has taken vacations with him. Kelley and others who are close to Fitzgerald stress that, while he is tough and aggressive, he is not unreasonable or overzealous.

"There are a lot of people that you can say are dogged or aggressive and all of that," Kelley said yesterday. "But there's also an incredibly humane side of Pat. He's almost honest to a fault, if that's possible." Kelley adds: "You can't have a political conversation with him, because it's just not something he's interested in."


-------- ENERGY AND OTHER


-------- environment

Bush Plans On Global Warming Alter Little
Voluntary Programs Attract Few Firms

By Guy Gugliotta and Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 1, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46212-2003Dec31?language=printer

Two years after President Bush declared he could combat global warming without mandatory controls, the administration has launched a broad array of initiatives and research, yet it has had little success in recruiting companies to voluntarily curb their greenhouse gas emissions, according to official documents, reports and interviews.

At the heart of the president's strategy is "Climate Leaders," a program that recruits the nation's industrial polluters to voluntarily devise ways to curb their emissions by 10 percent or more in the coming decade. Scientists believe these greenhouse gas emissions, which include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, are contributing to a troubling rise in the earth's temperature that could disrupt weather patterns and cause flooding.

Only a tiny fraction of the thousands of U.S. companies with pollution problems -- 50 in all -- have joined Climate Leaders, and of the companies that have signed up, only 14 have set goals. Many of the companies that are volunteering say they did so either because reducing emissions makes good economic sense or because they were being nudged by state and federal regulators.

Industry groups, meanwhile, have crafted their own programs under a Bush administration initiative called "Climate VISION," but none of the programs requires individual companies to either enlist in the program or set goals for emission reductions.

Many of the companies with the worst pollution records have shunned the voluntary programs because even a voluntary commitment would necessitate costly cleanups or possibly could set the stage for future government regulation, according to industry insiders.

Most of what the administration hopes to accomplish in terms of reduced emissions will not become apparent for many decades to come, experts agree. The president's more immediate goal, announced on Valentine's Day 2002, is to reduce greenhouse gas intensity -- the amount of gas put into the atmosphere per unit of economy -- by 18 percent over the next 10 years. Congress's research arm, the General Accounting Office, concluded in October that Bush's plan would reduce overall emissions only 2 percentage points below what the nation would achieve with no federal program whatsoever.

These findings have further fueled a debate in Congress and along the campaign trail over whether voluntary efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are useful.

Bush promoted his voluntary initiatives after he abandoned a campaign pledge to impose mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions and then formally disavowed the 1997 accord negotiated by the United States and 158 other countries in Kyoto, Japan, which would impose mandatory caps on greenhouse emissions in developed countries. The Bush administration argued that mandatory controls would hinder economic growth. The U.S. rejection means that the treaty will die unless Russia, which also has expressed concerns about the economic impact, decides to ratify. Moscow has not yet said what it will do.

The administration followed the 2002 announcement of the voluntary program with a flurry of press events, scientific conferences and research initiatives.

"There are a lot of activities, a lot of initiatives, but I don't think it amounts to very much in the short to medium term -- over, say, the next 10 years," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, which does advocacy and research on the issue. "We don't think that the goal of the president's program is ambitious. We think it's pretty much business as usual."

She and other skeptics say most of the other initiatives are spruced-up holdovers from previous administrations or long-term research undertakings with little immediate impact.

But James L. Connaughton, the White House environmental policy chief, said recently that the Bush program is working, and that private-sector companies and groups that strongly opposed the Kyoto treaty "are now coming forward in what we would say is a more economically rational and more sensible policy environment."

"They are stepping up to the plate in a way they never have -- never did in the 1990s. That's a huge step," Connaughton said.

Much of what the administration hopes to accomplish through the plan could pay dividends in coming decades. Initiatives announced by the president include promoting a better world network for climate observation, combating illegal overseas logging that destroys carbon-absorbing forests, and encouraging research in fuel cells and nuclear fusion technology.

These "public-private partnerships and the U.S.-international partnerships in scale and scope far outstrip what we've seen in the past," Connaughton said, and are designed to produce results for the near , mid- and long term. The Problem With Pollution

Although controversy surrounds research on global warming, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences concluded in June 2001 that it is a real problem caused at least in part by man-made pollution building up in the atmosphere and trapping heat like a blanket. At present rates, the trend could well have a "serious adverse" impact on the climate by the end of the century, the panel said.

The United States is responsible for about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, U.S. emissions are nearly 12 percent above the 1990 level and will continue to climb, although in 2001 they dipped by 1.2 percent, largely as the result of an economic slowdown and an unseasonably warm winter that sharply reduced demand for fossil fuels.

Bush has repeatedly opposed mandatory controls, including a bill sponsored by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) to impose caps on greenhouse gas emissions from utilities and other industries. That bill was rejected in the Senate late last year, by a vote of 55 to 43.

Instead, the president called for more research and voluntary measures. "My approach recognizes that economic growth is the solution, not the problem," Bush said in his Valentine's Day speech.

Besides the Climate Leaders program for individual companies and Climate VISION for industry and trade groups, the new initiatives included:

• New guidelines for companies to disclose voluntarily their efforts to reduce emissions.

• Financial incentives for farmers who plant trees or cultivate crops in such a way that soil retains carbon dioxide.

Although Climate Leaders represents the cutting edge of Bush's strategy, it has a budget of $1 million a year and a full-time staff of three, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which runs the program. And although some "Leaders" are big names in manufacturing -- among them General Motors Corp., Caterpillar Inc., U.S. Steel Corp. and Raytheon Co. -- most are perennial "good citizens" who were participating in "green" programs years before Bush called for volunteers.

Fetzer Vineyards, for example, switched to organic farming in the 1980s and has powered its headquarters with a solar array since 1999.

Another firm that signed up for Climate Leaders is Milwaukee-based We Energies, the biggest utility in Wisconsin, but it is taking no new emissions-reducing actions as a result. Anticipating pressure from state and federal regulators, the company had planned to curb other polluting emissions from nine coal- and natural-gas-burning plants. As a result, the plants would also spew less carbon dioxide -- a major greenhouse gas.

Company executives reasoned: Why not get credit for that as well -- at no added expense? Joining Climate Leaders was an easy call.

We Energies and Ohio-based Cinergy Corp. -- two of the six utility companies participating in Climate Leaders -- had established track records of emissions reduction and were relatively easy to recruit.

"It just made sense to put [our efforts] into a program," said Kris McKinney, manager of environmental policy for We Energies. "Given the range of activities we're involved in and our level of interest in the issue, we had been looking for something we could participate in."

But the administration has made no headway signing up big utility companies with the worst emissions records. Many of those companies vigorously opposed mandatory controls. Now they are refusing to take part in voluntary measures that set targets, largely for fear that those programs eventually will lead to government regulation.

"Some just see it as a slippery slope," said a lobbyist for several major utilities. No Specific Goals

Most of the 190 major U.S. utility companies represented by the Edison Electric Institute prefer to participate in an industry-created program called "Power Partners," which does not require companies to commit to specific goals.

"Under Power Partners, there's obviously greater flexibility, and it encourages companies to do what they can, recognizing that some can do more than others," said Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the utility industry group. "But it tries not to leave any company behind just because they can't make a specific numerical commitment at this point."

"Energy conservation is good business because it helps us avoid costs," said Jack Azar, vice president for environment, health and safety at Xerox Corp., a member of Climate Leaders and a volunteer in federal energy programs for nearly a decade. "And we're not averse to the publicity, if we can get a couple of nice statements about what we've done."

Climate VISION, run by the Energy Department, holds out hope for a broader assault on global warming. It seeks to enlist participants from 12 industrial sectors and trade groups, which represent the vast majority of the nation's industrial greenhouse gas emitters.

The commitments vary widely. The Semiconductor Industry Association had an agreement already in place to reduce emissions of perfluorocarbons, a greenhouse gas, and the American Iron and Steel Institute pledged to reduce greenhouse gas intensity by 10 percent by 2012.

But the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives of 150 of the country's biggest corporations, sought only to get its members to endorse the program. The Nuclear Energy Institute simply wants people to use more emission-free nuclear power, a controversial goal because of the unresolved problem of disposing of radioactive waste.

In no case have the trade associations compelled participation, let alone compliance with industry-wide goals, although some groups have reported a strong response from their members. To date, no Climate VISION activity has led to a surge in corporate interest in Climate Leaders, but Xerox's Azar acknowledged that Business Roundtable seminars helped pique his company's interest. A Tougher Registry

Meanwhile, the Energy Department has drawn up more stringent guidelines for the voluntary reporting of steps taken by private companies and other "entities" to reduce emissions. The registry, begun in 1994, gives companies a federal database in which they can "bank" their emissions-control accomplishments, should a national or international regulatory regimen take effect.

The registry had 228 participants in 2001 and 2002, a modest number that could fall when the tougher guidelines kick in.

"We envision a rigorous registry, accurate and reliable for the participants," Energy Undersecretary Robert G. Card said. "There could be an initial decline [in participation] before there's a gain. Our view is that industry is not necessarily going to be happy with the registry, [but] those who take it seriously will be."

Finally, the 2002 farm bill added $17.1 billion to federal conservation programs over 10 years, and the Agriculture Department, for the first time, is including greenhouse gas mitigation as a criterion for granting incentive payments for such activities as planting hardwood trees and harvesting methane from livestock manure.

"The approach we take in any individual program is going to be slightly different," said William Hohenstein, director of the Agriculture Department's global change program. "Considering greenhouse gases in how we set conservation priorities is a big step for us."

Some administration critics give the USDA high marks for paying attention to global warming, but they note that the new money came not from the administration but from legislation passed by Congress. The critics contend that much of the funding was meant for clean-water programs that the White House simply endorsed and repackaged as greenhouse gas initiatives.

"I don't want to begrudge the administration," said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group. "But what they're doing is misleading, because they're double-counting those dollars for different environmental purposes."


-------- ACTIVISTS

Thousands of Protesters March in Hong Kong
Latest Demonstration Aimed at Communist Leaders to Allow Democracy

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 1, 2004; 1:46 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47517-2004Jan1?language=printer

HONG KONG, Jan. 1 -- Tens of thousands of shouting, sign-waving protesters marched from Hong Kong's Victoria Park to the city's main government building on New Year's Day, the latest in a series of mass demonstrations aimed at persuading China's Communist leaders to allow full democracy in this former British colony.

The march, which organizers said drew 100,000 people, five times more than they expected, was the largest protest in Hong Kong since July 1, when a half-million people filled the streets, embarrassed the city's Beijing-backed government and forced it to abandon a stringent anti-subversion bill favored by the Chinese leadership.

Police said about 37,000 people gathered in the park at the height of the rally Thursday and said many others participated in the orderly, two-mile procession through downtown Hong Kong, which was crowded with holiday shoppers.

Leaders of the pro-democracy movement said they were pleased by the turnout but acknowledged that it may prove increasingly difficult to maintain the momentum of their campaign. Public anger at Hong Kong's chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, though still intense, has subsided somewhat since he backed down on the security bill and the city's economy has begun to recover from a deep recession.

"Of course, the people now are not as angry as a half-year ago," said Richard Tsoi, who helped organize both Thursday's march and the demonstration in July. He said residents in July felt a sense of urgency because of the impending passage of the security bill, while the push for democratic reforms in Hong Kong will be a long, drawn-out battle.

Hong Kong's constitution, signed by China and Britain when the territory was handed back to Beijing in 1997, permits direct elections of the city's chief executive in 2007 and of the legislature in 2008. But the Chinese government would have to approve the change, as would the chief executive and two-thirds of the Legislative Council.

The city's pro-democracy opposition argues that Tung should begin drafting new election legislation now to ensure there is enough time to persuade everyone to sign on to it. But both Tung and his superiors in Beijing have shown no interest in moving quickly on the issue, while many of the city's wealthy tycoons have argued that Hong Kong people are not ready for democracy.

"Many citizens took part in the procession today. We will listen carefully to their aspirations," Tung said in a written statement. But he added, "Hong Kong is a pluralistic society, and there are differing views on the pace of constitutional development."

March organizers said they hoped Tung would respond to their demands when he delivers his annual policy speech next Wednesday. If he does not, the organizers said they would begin planning further protests, including a major one on the anniversary of the July 1 demonstrations.

"The year 2004 is very critical," Tsoi said. "Today's march is just the start of this year's campaign . . . We very much hope Beijing's new leaders can continue to listen to the concerns and views of the Hong Kong people and respect our wish for democracy."

As in previous marches, the protesters appeared to represent a broad cross-section of Hong Kong society and were remarkably orderly, following directions from police and leaving the park where they had gathered almost entirely free of litter. But there was nothing subdued about their message. The most popular chant of the day was, "Tung Che-hwa, step down!"

"We want a government that listens to the people," said Apple Chen, 28, an environmental activist who made the point by wearing large paper cut-out ears on her head. "This government doesn't listen."

As the crowd sang a Cantonese version of "We Shall Overcome," Chen lifted up a red banner criticizing Tung for appointing 102 pro-government candidates, mostly businessmen not active in civic affairs, to the city's local district councils on Saturday.

Pro-democracy candidates largely defeated their pro-Beijing counterparts in the local elections on Nov. 23, but Tung defied public opinion and exercised his power to appoint extra people to the councils. Tung himself was appointed by Beijing in 1997 and was re-elected without opposition last year by an 800-member committee named by China. In addition, business and professional groups select 36 of the 60 members of the Legislative Council, while direct elections have been allowed only for the other 24.

In September, though, half of the legislature will be directly elected. The pro-democracy opposition has already begun a voter registration drive and announced plans to use the election to put greater pressure on Tung and the Chinese government.

China responded to the July 1 demonstrations by taking a more active role in the city's affairs, sending new personnel and granting more economic benefits to the territory. For the first time, a member of the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee was named to coordinate Hong Kong policy: Zeng Qinghong, a top ally of the former president, Jiang Zemin, who appointed Tung.

Some pro-Beijing politicians have argued that the confrontational tactics of the democracy activists -- and their success at winning elections -- has eroded the high degree of autonomy China granted the territory in 1997 and made Beijing more nervous about approving political reform here.

But Audrey Eu, a pro-democracy legislator who was handing out brochures during the march, disagreed. "I think the opposite is true," she said. "If we sit here and do nothing, Beijing is not going to do anything on democratic reform."

----

U.S. Restricts Demonstrations In Iraq
If Americans are afraid of demonstrators, what would they do with spiraling resistance? Asked one Iraqi analyst

By Aws Al-Sharqy,
IOL Correspondent, (IslamOnline.net)
January 1, 2004
http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2004-01/01/article04.shtml

BAGHDAD - U.S. occupation authorities in Iraq have imposed strict restrictions on the right of the Iraqi people to demonstrate, particularly in the capital Baghdad, in what Iraqi political analysts described as the real face of sugar-coated democracy clichés.

A statement issued by the U.S.-led authority and broadcast by the Iraqi media network Wednesday, December31 , said no individual or group is allowed to organize marches or demonstrations or even gather in streets, public places or buildings at any time without a prior from the occupation command.

It demanded those who want to demonstrate or organize a meeting to submit a written request to the occupation authorities no less than a day before.

The request, according to the statement, must include the purpose and duration of the demonstration, an estimate of the maximum number of demonstrators and names and addresses of the organizers.

Detention Threat

If a permit is granted, the American statement said, demonstrators would not be allowed to wear the traditional galabiya (a loose shirt-like garment), helmets, hoods or even cover their faces.

Would-be Iraqi demonstrators must also not carry guns, even the licensed, stones or sticks, added the statement.

Last but not least, any demonstration must not last more than four hours and should not be organized less than 500 meters away from the headquarters of the occupation forces and the affiliated institutions.

According to the statement issued by the U.S.-led occupation forces any "breach" of these restrictions will result in the detention and trial of the "violator".

Ridicule

Iraqi political analysts lashed out at the watertight restrictions, stressing they unmask the ugly face of the occupation, justified by sugar-coated clichés of bringing democracy to the oil-rich Arab country.

"It is unbelievable that a country boasting a democracy record would clamp such rigid restrictions on the simplest forms of freedom of expression, which is the right to demonstrate," said Dr. Abdel-Sattar Gawwad, a political expert, told IslamOnline.net.

"If the Americans are afraid of popular demonstrations, what would they do with spiraling resistance against their presence?

"Isn't it strange enough that the U.S. troops impose restrictions on demonstrators? Why assuming protestors will attack armed-to-the-teeth soldiers with stones?" Gawwad wondered.

"Does this tell you something about claims by the U.S. forces they were hardheartedly welcomed by Iraqis?" added the political analysts.

He also underlined "the repressive practices of the occupation troops in Iraq such as the raiding of houses, killing of innocents and random detention of Iraqi citizens."

Such practices, Gawwad added, fanned armed resistance against the U.S.-led occupation of the country. False Promises

Mohiel-Din Ismail, an Iraqi writer, agreed that such restrictions unveil the logic of occupation.

They give the people hollow promises, restrict their freedoms and now deprive them of the simplest right to demonstrate, he added.

"Where, then, is the (U.S.-sanctioned) Governing Council? Isn't it - as claimed - the highest authority in Iraq? Should it wait instructions from (U.S. administrator of Iraq) Paul Bremer and the White House?" Ismail wondered.

U.S.-led occupation forces have repeatedly opened fire at Iraqi demonstrators, killing and wounding many of them.

Amnesty International said Friday, November21 , U.S. forces appeared to be destroying houses in Iraq as a form of collective punishment for attacks on U.S. troops and warned that the practice would violate the Geneva Conventions.

Iraqi civilians are often exposed to random shooting by American forces whenever occupation troops are attacked.

The New York-based Human Right Watch accused the American occupation forces of "excessive or indiscriminate use of force" against civilians in Baghdad as well as failing to conduct proper investigations in cases of civilian deaths in the Iraqi capital.

In a56 -page report released Monday, October20 , the group documented20 cases of Iraq civilians deaths between May1 , when U.S. President George Bush declared an end to the major combat operations in Iraq, and September30 .


-------

------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)

------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!