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NUCLEAR
U.S. Ready to Talk to Iran on Issues
Changing Times Forcing Israel to Review WMD Policy
EU slams US support for Japan to host nuclear fusion project
U.S. Delegation Visits N.Korean Nuclear Complex
Rice: No Evidence Iraq Moved WMD to Syria
Debate missile shield
Russian non-proliferation efforts still lacking: senior US official
Code Orange: Glowing Lawyer
Employee error puts nuclear plant reopening on hold
State urged to make Entergy wait
EVERYTHING YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT NEOCONS
Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda
Deficit Hits $126 Billion In Fiscal First Quarter
MILITARY
Afghan Officials Blame Taliban in the Killing of 12 Civilians
Dissident claims Saddam's weapons were smuggled into Syria
CHINA - Japan told to explain troop dispatch to Iraq
France backs Libya-EU relations
US moves in as Russia retreats from Caucasus
At Least 4 Killed in Bomb Blast at a Shiite Mosque in Iraq
9 Soldiers Dead in Crash in Iraq
The Shape of a Future Iraq: U.S. Entangled in Disputes
Kurds' Wariness Frustrates U.S. Efforts
Iraq Copter Crash Kills 9
Palestinians Must Do More, Powell Says
Latin American Allies of U.S.: Docile and Reliable No Longer
Russia refuses Georgia's request to withdraw from bases in 3 years
Bush to Offer Initiative to Explore Space
Bush Plans To Call for Settlement On Moon
Soviet 'spies' to sue CIA
White House Wants U.N. to Return to Iraq
U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Approach 500
U.S. Marines stationed on Okinawa to be dispatched to Iraq
Inside the Ring
U.S. in Huge Troop Movement With New Unit to Find Bombs
Huge Movement of Troops Is Underway
Betrayal behind Israeli attack on U.S. ship
Powell Dismisses Think - Tank's Iraq Report
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Supreme Court to Rule on Terror Detainee
Homeland security official defends tough checks
Government Weighs Lowering Nation's Terrorist Alert Status
Threat Level May Fall to Yellow
Terror Alert Level Is Reduced
Easing Threat?
U.S. Immigrant Labor Plan Leaves Mexicans With Doubts
Thai Officials Probe Tie To Al Qaeda in Attacks
ENERGY
UNEP: Solar Power Gift Brings Ray of Sunshine to India's Rural Poor
OTHER
Flu Has Killed 93 Children, but Comparisons Are Difficult
Worst of Flu Epidemic May Be Over, CDC Says
ACTIVISTS
Protests as radioactive shipment heads through Albuquerque, N.M.
Through film, group seeks to put 'human face on war'
Pondering War and Peace
Irish paramilitary weapons to be melted down into US peace fountain
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- iran
U.S. Ready to Talk to Iran on Issues
January 9, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iran.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration declared its willingness Friday to talk with Iran on that nation's nuclear program, human rights record and support for violent opponents of peace between Israel and the Arabs.
Iran's acceptance of U.S. assistance after an earthquake ``has opened some opportunities for dialogue with Iran,'' Secretary of State Colin Powell said.
In fact, there already have been contacts in which these issues have been discussed, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
There is no plan to widen the contacts, but U.S. policy is ``to engage Iran on specific issues of concern in an appropriate manner if and when the president determines he wants to do so,'' the spokesman said.
Despite denouncing Iran two years ago as being part of an ``axis of evil,'' President Bush authorized relaxing restrictions on delivery of equipment and money to Iran to help relief efforts after the disastrous Dec. 26 earthquake there. Iran turned down the offer, as well as a visit by a high-level American delegation, but on Thursday Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said, ``Iran is ready to negotiate with all countries, and America is no exception.''
Speaking on Iranian state television, Kharrazi also said that if the United States were to adopt ``a new approach to Iran and is ready to interact with us based on mutual respect and the principle of equality, the atmosphere will change remarkably.''
The United States and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since Iranian revolutionaries took over the U.S. Embassy in 1979, took U.S. diplomats hostage and held them for 444 days.
Iran has not shut the door to receiving the U.S. delegation later, and it welcomed a team of 83 U.S. aid workers.
Powell, in an interview with Abu Dhabi TV, said, ``There are still serious political differences between the United States and Iran.'' But, he said, Iran's acceptance of earthquake assistance ``showed that in a crisis like this we could cooperate, and maybe that will lead to other areas of cooperation.''
At a news conference Thursday, Powell said Iran's response was not a ``political breakthrough, but it was, nevertheless, a human breakthrough.''
And so, Powell said, ``We will see what happens in the future with respect to our relationship with Iran.''
One test of whether there may be a diplomatic thaw is whether the State Department allows Iran's U.N. ambassador to travel to Washington next week for meetings with members of Congress.
Within the administration there has been a protracted debate between two views of Iran. One is that reformers are gaining strength and would like to respond to the Iranian people's yearning for democracy. The other view is that fundamentalist religious leaders still have the last word and have no intention to ease up on their stern policies or to seek better relations with the United States.
Iran's support for anti-Israel militants remains a big obstacle to a U.S. dialogue. On Friday, Boucher would neither verify nor deny reports that Syrian planes returned home from missions to transport earthquake relief supplies to Iran with munitions for Hezbollah, an Iranian-supported Lebanese group that has been fighting a cross-border war with Israel.
``I don't think I am in a position to talk about information that foreign intelligence services may or may not have,'' Boucher said.
He said Iran's support for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, through Syria, remains a problem.
-------- israel
Changing Times Forcing Israel to Review WMD Policy
Carsten Hoffmann
Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Arab News,
9 January 2004
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004/Jan/9o/Changing%20Times%20Forcing%20Israel%20to%20Review%20WMD%20Policy,%20Carsten%20Hoffmann.htm
TEL AVIV - One of Israel's worst security "nightmares", as one national daily described it yesterday, is about to become reality. As international pressure for more openness about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in the Middle East is growing, Israeli arms technician Mordechai Vanunu is scheduled to complete his 18 -year prison term in April.
The Israeli security establishment is frantically examining ways to prevent the country's "most isolated prisoner", convicted of treason for betraying Israel's nuclear secrets to a British newspaper, from spreading more of his knowledge after his release. One option under consideration is not allowing Vanunu to travel abroad after his release, another to prohibit interviews with the Israeli media, the Israeli Yediot Ahronot daily reported.
The international and regional climate regarding WMDs in the Middle East is changing, forcing Israel to reassess its policy of calculated silence, known as "strategic ambiguity", about its nuclear capabilities. Israel has never confirmed nor denied reports that it possesses nuclear arms, but the Central Intelligence Agency estimates it has about 200 to 400 nuclear warheads. Although its official line since the1960 s has always been that it would "not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East", Israel has used its reported capabilities as a deterrence against enemy states.
However, since the war in Iraq, the situation in the region has changed fundamentally. The removal of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the failure of the United States to find hard evidence of WMDs in the Gulf state have removed Baghdad from the top of Israel's list of regimes posing a threat to the Jewish state. Iran has allowed international inspectors to examine its nuclear facilities, while the most recent change came last month, when Muammar Qaddafi's Libya declared it would abandon its WMD program. Syria for its part has presented a proposal to the United Nations for removing all WMD from the Middle East, although President Bashar Assad said in an interview this week that any deal to destroy Syria's chemical and biological capability would come about only if Israel agreed to abandon its undeclared nuclear arsenal.
Israel is now preparing for the day the international community begins directing its attention toward its weapons program, the Israeli Ha'aretz daily reported. The Israeli foreign and defense ministries have begun to "detect the change in climate", it said. They are now discussing the question whether to voluntarily accept inspections or wait for external pressure. The Israeli security Cabinet met for the first time in years last week to discuss the issue.
Only one in four Israelis believe their country should give up its undeclared nuclear arsenal as part of an overall move to rid the Middle East of WMDs, according to a poll published by Israel Radio last week. Among the supporters of a nuclear-free Middle East is the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammed el-Baradei. In his first interview with Israeli media, the Egyptian-born official told Ha'aretz recently that "the time is now" to discuss the issue. "I don't see why Israel is not ready to at least start the discussion" he said, adding "My fear is that without such a dialogue, there will continue to be incentives for the countries of the region to develop weapons of mass destruction to match the Israeli arsenal."
Professor Yair Evron, an expert in nuclear weapons at Tel Aviv university, said that given the changes in the region, it was possible Israel would finally ratify the Chemical Weapons Treaty, which it signed more than a decade ago. "I believe Israel should ratify it," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur. But he said it was unthinkable that Israel would give up its reported nuclear program as long as it felt that its existence was under threat.
As long as there is a threat that one of the countries in the Middle East will use nuclear weapons, Israel will keep its nuclear arsenal as the "ultimate weapon of self-defense", he said. He added, however that as part of a regional peace settlement, Israel was likely to be willing to make "far-reaching concessions" in the nuclear field, such as ending production of uranium and plutonium. That could mean that Israel would commit not to produce new nuclear weapons and also not renew those which it reportedly already has once they have become outdated.
-------- japan
EU slams US support for Japan to host nuclear fusion project
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Jan 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040109152726.r821fxbr.html
EU Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin on Friday slammed a declaration of US support for Japan's bid to host an experimental nuclear fusion reactor instead of France.
"It is inappropriate and inopportune to make such declarations at a time when there is a process of evaluation (for the competing bids) going on," the Belgian commissioner told AFP through his spokesman, Fabio Fabbi.
US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said during a visit to Tokyo Friday that Japan offers "the superior site" to host the multi-billion-dollar International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project.
ITER will be located either in the French southeastern town of Cadarache, which defeated a Spanish site to be chosen as the European Union's bid, or the northern Japanese village of Rokkasho-mura.
It aims to be a test bed for what is billed as the clean, safe, inexhaustible energy source of the future, emulating the sun's nuclear fusion. The project, however, is not expected to generate electricity before 2050.
Among the project's backers, the EU has won support from China and Russia to site ITER at Cadarache. Japan has the backing of South Korea and now the United States.
The six partners tried to choose the winning bid at a meeting in Washington on December 20, but failed to decide. A fresh meeting has been called for next month to review the results of the current evaluation study.
-------- korea
U.S. Delegation Visits N.Korean Nuclear Complex
By REUTERS
January 9, 2004
BEIJING (Reuters) - A U.S. delegation has visited North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex, the first time outsiders have been allowed into the plant since U.N. inspectors were expelled a year ago.
The United States suspects North Korea may have resumed reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods from Yongbyon into plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. Advertisement
``We did go to Yongbyon,'' Stanford University professor emeritus John Lewis, the head of the delegation, told reporters in Beijing upon arrival from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
Lewis and others on the unofficial delegation declined to comment on what they saw at the secretive complex. North Korea's foreign ministry had allowed the U.S. visitors to visit all the places they asked to see, he said.
The five-day visit by a group that included two U.S. Senate aides, a nuclear specialist and a former State Department envoy for North Korea, came as the United States and its allies tried to reconvene talks with North Korea to end its suspected nuclear arms program. China hosted an inconclusive round of six-party talks on the nuclear issue in August with the United States, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia.
The United States said in October 2002 North Korea had admitted to a clandestine uranium enrichment program to build nuclear weapons, which U.S. officials say violated a 1994 agreement by the North to freeze its nuclear program.
North Korea subsequently said it would restart its reactor at Yongbyon to generate electricity, disabled surveillance cameras at the complex and expelled U.N. inspectors, leading to U.S. fears that it had resumed a nuclear arms effort.
Lewis said the group met military, foreign ministry, economic and science officials. He did not elaborate.
``What we saw in the DPRK were related to the whole of the issues, not just the nuclear issue,'' he said, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Another member of the team, Sig Hecker, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1985 to 1997, said he would be briefing U.S. government officials on what he and his colleagues saw.
``I feel a very deep obligation to first inform the U.S. government officials about our trip, what we saw and what we learned,'' Hecker said.
-------- mideast
Rice: No Evidence Iraq Moved WMD to Syria
Friday January 9, 2004
(AP)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3606884,00.html
WASHINGTON - The United States has no credible evidence that Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria early last year before the U.S.-led war that drove Saddam Hussein from power, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Friday.
Rice said, ``Any indication that something like that happened would be a very serious matter.
``But I want to be very clear: we don't, at this point, have any indications that I would consider credible and firm that that has taken place, but we will tie down every lead,'' she said at a White House briefing about Bush's trip Monday to a hemispheric summit in Mexico.
In nine months, arms control experts in Iraq have failed to find a single item from a long list of weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration cited an alleged weapons stockpile in Iraq as a primary reason for launching the war against Saddam's government. ``We're going to follow every lead on what may have happened here,'' Rice said. ``I don't think we are at the point that we can make a judgment on this issue. There hasn't been any hard evidence that such a thing happened.
``But obviously we're going to follow up every lead,'' she said, ``and it would be a serious problem if that, in fact, did happen.''
Rice said the United States talks with Syria about a number of issues, ``including the borders with Iraq and what may have happened in the past there and what may be continuing to happen there.'' Mainly, she said, the United States opposes Syria's support for terrorism, particularly its support for anti-Palestinian groups Hezbollah and Hamas.
-------- missile defense
Debate missile shield
Jan. 9, 2004.
Toronto Star. Editorial
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1073603408187&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795
Canadians aren't missile defence enthusiasts. Nor should we be.
U.S. President George Bush is rushing to install 10 wobbly interceptor rockets in California and Alaska this year, to "shoot down" any missiles North Korea might be crazy enough to launch. But this "Star Wars lite" scheme is more fantasy than fact, as eminent Canadians like Nobel laureate John Polanyi have pointed out.
The cost is real: $20 billion.
Yet the missiles don't work. They most probably will one day, but not now. The U.S. General Accounting Office warns that of 10 technologies the system needs, just two function.
Moreover, the threat has been blown out of proportion. Few countries threaten us. None appears suicidal enough to attack.
Still, the Americans are adamant. Congress has passed a law requiring a shield. And rightly or not, the trauma of 9/11 has added urgency.
Even Bill Clinton, no fan of missile shields, was under the gun to comply. Bush is downright eager.
To all this, Prime Minister Paul Martin might be tempted to say, No thanks. It's not for us. But the downside of opting out is becoming greater than that of opting in. It would alienate Washington, just as Ottawa is trying to improve relations.
Worse, it would invite the breakup of Canada's key strategic alliance.
Bush might give up on the North American Aerospace Defence Command, a joint Canada/U.S. military operation since 1958 that tracks threats to this continent. If Canadians refuse to help track and shoot down missiles, Bush could place both functions solely in U.S. hands.
That would end Canada's privileged access to U.S. strategic thinking, intelligence data and high-tech weaponry. And by shifting the front end of our defence into U.S. hands, it would compromise our sovereignty.
It would also put us out of step with every ally we have.
The entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization has agreed to "examine options for protecting alliance territory, forces and population centres against the full range of missile threats." Even the Russians, who once fiercely objected to missile defence, are climbing aboard.
So if Americans are fantasizing when they dream of a functioning missile shield any time soon, the shield's critics also fantasize when they claim that we can walk away at no cost, or that we invite an arms race by signing on.
Canadians would prefer not to be forced to choose. But given Bush's insistence, we now have to ask ourselves whether the Canada/U.S. alliance is worth risking to oppose a shield that our allies are embracing. Opponents of the shield haven't made a convincing case.
So it's no surprise to learn Martin plans to tell Bush that Ottawa is ready to open talks on joining the scheme, when they meet next week.
Still, before Martin makes a final decision, Parliament must be consulted, and have a healthy debate.
Canadians will want to know whether NORAD will run the system, what it may cost us, and whether radars or interceptor rockets might be based here.
Martin should signal, as well, that Canada will continue pressing the U.S. and other nuclear powers to cut down their arsenals, with a view to eliminating them, and to refrain from placing arms in space.
That much of our arms control policy Martin can and should preserve.
-------- russia
Russian non-proliferation efforts still lacking: senior US official
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jan 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040109181338.ygijilx8.html
Russia has been helpful in pressing Iran and North Korea to address concerns about their nuclear programs, but the United States believes it could and should do more to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, a senior US official said Friday.
"Could they do more? The answer is yes," the official said, noting that Moscow has thus far refused to take part in a US-led scheme to seize such weapons in transit.
The official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity at the State Department, said Russia was "playing a little hard to get" in response to US calls for it to join the so-called "Proliferation Security Initiative" (PSI).
"They are so far not ready to join the process," the official said.
"They are interested but are raising lots of questions about what are the legal authorities that would permit this broader strategy of interdiction to go forward," the official said.
"We're trying to get them from this interrogatory mode into more active participation," the official said.
PSI was proposed by US President George W. Bush in late May with the aim of stopping countries -- particularly North Korea and Iran -- from buying or selling biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, their components or delivery systems.
Under the scheme, nations cooperate to intercept those items on the high seas, in international airspace or during overland transit.
The first PSI seizure -- of uranium enrichment components destined for Libya -- occured in October and may have helped to convince Tripoli to renounce weapons of mass destruction two months later, according to US officials.
Since its launch, the initial 11 members -- Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United States -- have been joined by Canada, Denmark, Norway, Singapore and Turkey.
But Russia, along with China, has questioned the legality of the initiative, despite arguments from the United States and others that it is consistent with existing international law.
In addition, Russia has expressed displeasure with the fact that it was not invited to take part in the initial drafting of the initiative's outlines, according to the senior official.
"They are a little miffed that they weren't in on the ground floor, ... so they are playing a little hard to get," the official said.
Washington regards Moscow's participation in PSI as particularly important, given the size of its navy and its role in the Soviet era as a co-founder of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"Russia is a country with a big navy and could be an important player," the official said.
"Plus, Russia, as one of the founding members of the non-proliferation regime, would add political weight to the initiative and send a message to potential proliferators -- both sellers and buyers -- that they should stop messing around," the official added.
-------- terrorism
Code Orange: Glowing Lawyer
In The Loop
Washington Post
By Al Kamen
Friday, January 9, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1775-2004Jan8.html
The news of late has been about a "dirty bomb" alert over the holidays, which sent radiation experts to the District, Los Angeles, New York and Las Vegas. But while the search was ramped up over the holidays, it turns out the government's efforts against an attack have been proceeding apace for some time.
Take, for example, an incident involving a Washington lawyer of a certain age who went to his doctor a few months ago for a routine heart checkup. (No, no, despite his profession, a heart was indeed located.)
The exam included a stress test with injection of a radioactive isotope -- most likely technetium or thallium -- which helps illuminate the heart muscle during exercise. The doctor told him he passed.
The elated lawyer says he left work several hours later and was driving along I Street NW between 16th and 17th when a police car with lights flashing zipped up behind him. An officer on a bicycle pulled alongside.
What could this be? Couldn't be speeding, a red light or a stop sign.
"Sir," the officer explained, "you were not pulled over because of a traffic violation. You were pulled over because you are radioactive."
After about 15 harrowing minutes of some discussion, checking of license and IDs, and a call by police to his physician, the lawyer was allowed to go on.
Better toss that glow-in-the-dark watch if you're thinking of driving in this town.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- ohio
Employee error puts nuclear plant reopening on hold
Friday, January 09, 2004
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-01-09/s_11893.asp
OAK HARBOR, Ohio - A utility asked federal regulators to delay a final inspection of a shutdown nuclear reactor, saying a minor incident suggested some workers aren't fully prepared to restart it.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed to put off inspection of the Davis-Besse plant - which had been set to begin Monday - for about a week.
The NRC said the move quashes FirstEnergy Corp.'s plans to seek a Jan. 21 meeting with NRC officials to discuss restarting the reactor. No new meeting date was set.
The reactor at the plant along Lake Erie near Toledo has been shut down since February 2002. An inspection after the shutdown revealed a pineapple-sized hole in the reactor's lid.
In the incident Tuesday, technicians testing a pressure gauge in an emergency safety system failed to tell the control room that the safety system would be off-line, First Energy spokesman Todd Schneider said.
That mistake meant the emergency system was off-line for two hours without operators shifting to a backup.
Schneider said the incident was minor but that managers believed the plant needed to do a better job of following the rules.
On Dec 19, the NRC's restart readiness inspectors and a second team looking at the plant's safety environment said they could not recommend allowing the plant to restart. Managers spent the next 10 days retraining workers.
-------- vermont
State urged to make Entergy wait
January 9, 2004
By SUSAN SMALLHEER,
Rutland Herald Staff
http://rutlandherald.nybor.com/News/Story/77068.html
VERNON - Time, not money, is the way to make Entergy Nuclear pay attention to state regulators, residents said during a Public Service Board hearing Thursday.
Residents charged that Entergy has repeatedly violated the state's trust - and regulations. The only way to get its corporate attention, they said, is to make it wait for a decision on whether it can increase power production at the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor or construct related buildings.
More than 200 people turned out on a frigid Thursday night to complain that Entergy Nuclear was a lousy corporate citizen and could not be believed, let alone trusted.
Residents said that anti-nuclear New England Coalition should be given more time - upward of six more months - to review more than 9,000 documents about the proposed power increase.
Several said the burden of evaluating the proposal had fallen on the anti-nuclear group, since the state had endorsed the controversial project.
And one of the coalition's key expert witnesses, nuclear industry engineer Paul Blanch of Hartford, Conn., told the hearing officers that the proposed power increase was fatally flawed and would violate federal safety regulations, putting residents at risk.
Blanch, who called himself "very pro-nuclear," is expected to testify next week before the PSB against Entergy's proposal."This is a significant issue ignored by Entergy," Blanch said, a former executive with Northeast Utilities who has also worked as a consultant for Entergy's Indian Point plant outside New York City.
The PSB ruled last month that it would impose sanctions against Entergy for starting construction without permission on facilities that will retrofit key plant components for the power increase. It is the second such recommendation for state sanctions in two months.
Entergy was fined $50,000 in October for failing to turn over documents to the New England Coalition, which is fighting the power uprate.
At the time, the board called Entergy's behavior "bullying and corrosive" toward the state's regulatory process.
Company officials said they were unaware of the construction at the Vernon reactor, and called it an "honest mistake."
Debbie Katz, executive director of the anti-nuclear group Citizens Awareness Network, said at the hearing that money means nothing to Entergy, which is part of a $700 billion energy conglomerate based in Louisiana.
"How does a $700 billion corporate forget to get a permit?" Katz asked the PSB hearing officers.
She charged that Entergy has only demonstrated that it holds the state and its citizens in contempt.
Entergy Nuclear started construction on the foundations for two "temporary" buildings, one of which is about half the size of a football field, where workers would rebuild the rotor to the plant's main generator.
The company had originally said it would ship the rotor by rail to General Electric facilities in Schenectady, N.Y., but it said on-site work was cheaper.
The early construction is part of a pattern of "deceit and manipulation" by Entergy, according to Jane Southworth of the New England Coalition.
"Entergy will push, bend or break the rules," she said.
The hearing Thursday night was actually the second PSB hearing on the construction project. The hearing had to be held a second time because of a snafu in the publication of the notice of the hearing.
During the 90-minute hearing, only two people, both Vernon Select Board members, spoke in favor of Entergy's plans to erect the temporary buildings.
A "silent majority" of residents support the plan, said Selectwoman Peggy Farabaugh. Nonetheless, she had basic questions for Entergy about the project, including whether radioactive components would be worked on in the buildings.
Selectman Leonard Peduzzi said it was a "simple building" and walked out, saying that "no one is concerned."
More than 200 people were in the Vernon Elementary School gym at the time.
Several high school students spoke out against Entergy.
"Vermont Yankee keeps on deceiving us, it makes no sense to sanction them," said Ian Bigelow.
The emergency evacuation plan is not completed for the region, Bigelow said. If the company gets to produce 20 percent more power, "Will the sirens be 20 percent louder?" he asked.
Several residents said the issue wasn't about the buildings, but whether Entergy could be trusted.
"We're all in The Zone," said Ellen Kaye of Brattleboro, referring to the 10-mile emergency evacuation zone surrounding Vermont Yankee. "They consider themselves above the law, and this cannot go unchecked and unnoticed."
"This is not just about a temporary storage building," one man said.
Judy Davidson said the company should be denied permission to work on the giant rotor locally, and should be forced to ship it to Schenectady.
"No matter how many Christmas lights they buy for Brattleboro ... this is outright deception," she said.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
-------- us politics
EVERYTHING YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT NEOCONS
But were afraid to ask....
by Justin Raimondo
January 9, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j010904.html
They're coming out of the closet, so to speak, faster than David Brooks can deny their very existence: I'm talking about neocons, of course, that dreaded sub-species of right-wing ideologues whose fabulous history has become the stuff of legend. Brooks says that to even breathe the n-word is to flirt with Hitlerian tendencies, and Joel Mowbray agrees. So, too, does Jonah Goldberg, and that seems to finalize the verdict of the jury. Except that it doesn't.
Max Boot dissents, for one, acknowledging, in a Wall Street Journal piece entitled "What the Heck is a Neocon?", that they do, indeed, exist, but that us neocon-watchers - a very small group, at least up until now - have it all wrong. They aren't going to let neocon-phobes define who and what they are, no sirree! Neocon Pride is here, and it's mighty queer - but we're just gonna have to get used to it! That is the scintillating theme of Boot's latest screed, in the January-February issue of Foreign Policy magazine (not online yet), which complains that "critics have twisted the neocons' identities and thinking on U.S. foreign policy into an unrecognizable caricature."
Oh, the poor little babies! Misunderstood, laughed at, persecuted, hated - yes, they're victims, alright. Victims of their own success, which Boot goes to great lengths to deny. The idea that "the Bush administration is pursuing a neoconservative foreign policy" is the first myth he seeks to debunk: "If only it were true!" While acknowledging that neocons - he names Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby - occupy key second-tier positions in this administration, where, he asks, are their representatives in the top tier? Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, "not a neocon among them," Boot triumphantly avers.
But this completely obscures the real role of the neoconservative policy intellectuals, not as representatives of some kind of mass movement but as a faction of the policymaking elite. These avid students of Machiavelli see themselves as advisors to the Prince, and it is there, as the Italian master of intrigue and power politics knew, that the power very often lies.
It is hardly necessary for the neoconservative policy intellectual to hold the highest office in order to exert a controlling influence: to expect this is to misconceive their role, and miss the point of neoconservatism, which is an ideology of power, expressed as advice to the powerful. Their audience is not Joe Sixpack, but the ruling elite in government, and opinion-makers in academia and the media.
Between these two tiers of power there is a natural division of labor, with the second tier producing the grand theory and the first tier charged with selling it to the public.
There is also, as I have pointed out earlier, yet another aspect to this division of labor:
"The neoconservative intellectuals, like Wolfowitz, expend millions of words to prove and reprove the necessity of their policies, of the inevitability of perpetual war for perpetual peace, while second-and-third tier activists like William Kristol proclaim the virtues of a 'benevolent world hegemony.' But in the end it boils down to such vulgar matters as Halliburton's profit margins and the price of oil. In an era in which wars are fought in the name of vague and improbable ideals, such as 'human rights' and 'multiculturalism,' it is a safe bet to follow the money. It works almost every time."
But these lines of division in the War Party are by no means impassable: in the case of Richard Perle, that Renaissance man of the neocons, we have someone who combines the entrepreneurial instincts of a vulture with the intellectual ferocity of a shrike. Both war profiteer and neoconservative policy wonk, Perle combines the two characteristics most typical of the War Party - greed and bloodlust - in a single persona.
Bush was converted on the road to Damascus by the events of 9/11, and has since abjured his support for a more "humble" foreign policy - but why Iraq? Of course, there's always Laurie Mylroie's conspiracy theories, which point to Saddam as the source not only of the 9/11 attacks, but of virtually every disaster, both natural and unnatural, for the past decade or so, including the Oklahoma City bombings and the first attack on the WTC. But the American Enterprise Institute's very own version of Lyndon LaRouche is really not taken seriously, and for good reasons. Neither are the other alleged links between Al Qaeda and Saddam proffered by any of the Usual Suspects. Perhaps the best explanation of "Why Iraq?" was the brutally honest one, courtesy of Wolfowitz, who told Bob Woodward: "Because it was doable."
Boot's argument that Team Bush may have embraced the neocon line in Iraq, but not elsewhere - Iran, and North Korea - makes no mention of Syria, and/or Lebanon, the next logical steps in the neocons' rampage through the Middle East.
He also points to the "road map" as evidence of Bush's failure to toe the neocon party line: but the administration never did anything to punish the Israelis for defying its chief benefactor and going ahead with the Wall of Separation. Settlements continue to go up, and are expanded, even as the muted protests of the U.S. - which is footing the bill for all this - are ignored.
Contra Boot, the U.S. still refuses to negotiate, one on one, with the North Koreans, who have the power to incinerate Japan as well as South Korea - and the 30,000 American troops stationed there. As for "cooling the axis of evil talk," as Boot puts it, there is a rhythm to this kind of rhetoric, and now (right before an election) is the logical time for a natural pause, an ingathering of breath, before a fresh outburst precedes the next war. Having swallowed Iraq whole, the world-encircling python of American power is presently engorged. It must have time to digest before hunger and bloodlust drive it to devour the next small animal that crosses its path.
I will concede, however, that Bush's policy of détente with China hardly coincides with the neocon position, which is always and everywhere an unrestrained belligerence. It is a case of the exception proving the rule. China is hardly in the neocons' sights right now: the center of their focus is Iraq and the Middle East, the first steps on the road to empire. They can forgive Bush this one deviation, at least for the moment, while the "transformation" of the Middle East proceeds apace.
Okay, then, let's move on to the really good stuff, the part where Boot tries to bury the leftist origins of neoconservative ideology behind a chador of multiple veils. The old line about neocons being "liberals who have been mugged by reality" is "no longer true," according to Boot. Only a few old fogies like Irving Kristol and Sidney Hook flirted with socialism and the more exotic varieties of Trotskyism, but today a whole new generation of Bright Young Things, including Kristol the Younger and Carnegie Endowment analyst Robert Kagan, "have never gone through a leftist phase."
That it is possible to be influenced by ideas that originated on the far left without being a card-carrying Trotskyist is too subtle a point for the neocons to absorb. Besides that, there are plenty of second-generation neocons who did go through a leftist "phase," and in many cases one is not entirely sure that this "phase" has entirely passed.
Joshua Muravchik is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, author of Exporting Democracy, and Heaven on Earth, a history of the failure of the socialist idea in America, and one of the chief members of the neocons' defense team. Muravchik got the ball rolling with this whole "neocon = Jew" meme with his recent fulminating piece in Commentary. He is a former national chairman of the Young Peoples Socialist League, then the youth section of the old Socialist Party/Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA). This group was the last ideological resting place of Max Shachtman, Leon Trotsky's former right-hand man in America.
In addition to Muravchik, Penn Kemble and Carl Gershman constitute a "second generation" of Trotskyists-cum-neocons: included in the first generation are such founding figures as Nathan Glazer, Sidney Hook, and Albert Wohlstetter, who, as John Judis points out, "were either members of or close to the Trotskyist left in the late 1930s and early 1940s."
Marshall Wittman, a former official of the Christian Coalition who became a top advisor to John McCain during his presidential bid, opened his address to a meeting sponsored by SDUSA with these words:
"When I see this distinguished panel and all the distinguished people in the crowd, I'm thinking that we haven't had so many clear-thinking people in one room since Max Schachtman dined alone. We are all Schachtmanites now, in one way or another.
"It's funny - I have a completely different memory of the YPSL and the social democrats than Josh[ua Muravchik] does. He was my national chairman, I was a young YPSL at NYU in 1971. The reason I joined the social democratic movement and the YPSL was to support George Meany and the Israeli Labor Party and Israel on my campus. All these notions expressed in the Internationale and so forth were thought to be a little bit nonsensical. We really didn't take it seriously.
"I think that's important, because when we talked about socialism, I don't think we were suffering from too many utopian illusions. Essentially, we wanted to fight those on the left who were disparaging America and Israel and seeking their destruction. It seems that some things haven't changed over the years, after all."
No, some things never change. The neocons have been around since the damn 1930s, fer chrissake, in one form or another, first as schismatic Trotskyists, then as schismatic Democrats, and now as occasionally schismatic Republicans. Their ideological colors changed over the years, but the core principle at the heart of their faction remained the same. Always they pushed for war: class war, world war, perpetual war. Will we never be rid of them?
You want more names? I have in my hands a list - a long one! - of ex-Commies of one sort or another who have since enlisted with the new Jacobinism of the Right: Christopher Hitchens (a former editor of the Socialist Worker, newspaper of the International Socialist Organization), Stephen Schwartz, David Horowitz, Ronald Radosh, Arnold Beichman, Arch Puddington, and Greg Yardley, to name just a few of the most well-known as well as the obscure. (This is entirely apart from the "New York Intellectuals," who, over the years, veered from anti-Stalinist leftism to LBJ-"Great Society" liberalism). An article by Schwartz defending Trotsky's legacy was posted on National Review Online, and the National Post did a feature on how Trotsky's ghost seems to be stalking the Pentagon, with quotes from Schwartz assuring us that Wolfowitz and other insiders are all very aware of the Trotskyist origins of neoconservatism.
Liberals mugged by reality? More like Commies who merely switched sides.
"It seems that some things haven't changed over the years, after all."
How true! Even much of the leftist vocabulary has survived the neocons' migration to the right. When you conquer and subjugate a country, call it "liberation." David Horowitz continually refers to the antiwar movement as a "fifth column" - as if he were fighting the Spanish Civil War on the Commie "Loyalist" side. The loyalists invented the phrase as a rationale to slaughter priests and purge other "bourgeois" elements. Whether or not Horowitz has in mind a similar fate for antiwar activists, his tone certainly suggests they would deserve it. We are told that critics of the war are "anti-American" in the same tone of voice as the Kremlin once denounced "anti-Soviet elements."
Like Muravchik, Joel Mowbray, Jonah Goldberg, and a host of other minor neoocn pundits and publicits, Boot plays the "anti-Semite" card, formulating a popular misconception about neoconservatism as follows:
"Neocons are Jews who serve the interests of Israel" - this a headline, set in 30-point type, as if the size of the font gives weight to the words. But all the fancy formatting really does is underscore the brutal idiocy of a proposition that precisely no one of any consequence holds.
Boot mentions Lyndon LaRouche in the same breath as Le Monde, and the BBC. Yes, it's true, as Boot says, that all three mention the names of prominent policymakers who also happen to be Jewish - but not, I'm sure, with the same emphasis on ethnicity. Nor can the same emphasis be attributed to Pat Buchanan, whose magazine, The American Conservative, has attacked neocons of all ethnicities. According to this latest modification of the unwritten laws of political correctness, one is not allowed to utter a Jewish-sounding name in tandem with any discussion of neoconservatism - or in connection with the conduct of American foreign policy. That's one rule they're going to have an awfully hard time enforcing.
Boot's argument is self-refuting in many places, but certainly in this section, wherein he lists a whole platoon of non-Jewish neocons, and then goes on to claim that "the charge that neocons are concerned above all with the welfare of Israel is patently false." Yet each and every one of the aforementioned non-Jewish neocons - Bill Bennett, James Woolsey, John Newhaus, Michael Novak, and Jeane Kirkpatrick - are slavish supporters of whatever line the Israeli government happens to be putting out. You don't have to be Jewish to be a full-fledged member of Israel's amen corner in America, and nobody important ever said any different.
The defense of Israel has always been a foundation stone of the neoconservative approach to U.S. policy in the Middle East, but aside from that, the links of individual neocons now in government, such as Douglas Feith, to Israel's extremist Likud party, and to the "settler" movement, are no secret.
Boot mentions that the U.S. helped the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo, but this hardly contradicts the pro-Israel bias of U.S. policymakers. Certainly the "liberation" of the Balkans did much to pave the way for future interventions, such as in the Middle East. The Bosnian and Kosovo interventions also advanced the interests and extended the influence of Turkey, Israel's key ally in the region.
"If the neocons were agents of Likud," writes Boot, "they would have advocated an invasion not of Iraq or Afghanistan but of Iran, which Israel considers to be the biggest threat to its own security." Michael Ledeen, of Iran-Contra fame and a leading neocon, has certainly been advocating just that in the pages of National Review, and the recent publication of the neocons' latest manifesto, grandiosely entitled An End to Evil, includes Iran on a very long list of proposed targets slated for "regime change."
C'mon, you guys! What kind of cabal are you running, anyway? Get your line straight, willya please?
I won't bother with Boot's denial that "neocons are a well-funded, well-organized cabal." If nearly $70 million isn't well-funded, then nothing is: comparing this to the largely non-ideological charity engaged in by the Rockefeller and MacArthur foundations hardly diminishes the neocons' financial advantage over nearly every other intellectual tendency on the right as well as the left. Since there are only a few hundred neocons, at most - not counting fellow-travelers and other dupes - the money goes a long way in maintaining a veritable labyrinth of thinktanks, academic chairs, seminars, conferences, publishing projects, and other activities on behalf of spreading the neoconservative gospel.
Boot mentions the five-person "Project for a New American Century," a kind of interface between the world of neoconservative scholarship and Washington politics, more like the old "Committee on the Present Danger" than a full-fledged thinktank. For some reason, however, he neglects to note the existence of "Neocon Central," otherwise known as the American Enterprise Institute, with its $25 million yearly budget, far overshadowing the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, which is widely perceived as having abdicated its position as the leading conservative thinktank with the rise of AEI.
Boot claims that the leading neocon publications have lower circulations than other ideological magazines, but this merely underscores how wrong he is when he says that "neocons have been relatively influential because of the strength of their arguments, not their connections." Aside from their huge subsidies from the Olin, Scaife, Bradley, and Smith-Richardson foundations, they got where they are through their connections to the media barons who subsidize their money-losing pamphleteering. Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black together employ, publish, or otherwise subsidize a good two-thirds of the neoconservative journalists in existence.
Boot's next point is that neocons aren't exactly "Wilsonian idealists." Oh, we've got the Wilsonian part right, but there are "hard" Wilsonians, you see, and "soft" Wilsonians, and the neocons are the former. This is news? Boot confesses that the popular idea that the neocons' next targets are Iran and North Korea is true, which just confirms me in my belief that Syria and Lebanon are up next.
I'll pass over Boot's complaint about the charge of "unilateralism," since I am, myself, a unilateralist - that is, one who believes we ought to unilaterally and immediately end this business of empire-building and global do-good-ism. What's interesting, though, is Boot's answer to the charge that neocons are followers of Leo Strauss, the philosopher of the "noble lie," or that Trotskyism played a major role in the intellectual evolution of neoconservatism.
The influence of Leo Strauss on leading figures within this administration, and certainly on the neoconservative movement, is not a matter of opinion: it is a matter of public record, Boot's denials to the contrary notwithstanding. Boot claims that Strauss did not advocate lying to the public, but the import of his philosophy - his separation of "esoteric" and "exoteric" knowledge, with the former reserved for the intellectual elite - is clear.
Boot also disputes the influence of Leon Trotsky, and this, insofar as it goes, is technically correct. It wasn't Trotsky so much as his apostates, chief among them Max Shachtman, who had such an impact on the "New York Intellectuals." This group gradually moved right-ward, and eventually morphed into the neocons. Shachtman and his followers - who, today, are organized in the Social Democrats, USA - did not abandon socialism, but put it on the back-burner until global "democracy" could be achieved. Oblivious to this history, Boot writes:
"As neocon author Joshua Muravchik has pointed out, Trotsky would not have supported a democratic war of liberation in Iraq: his sympathies would have been with Saddam."
Yes, but the point is that Shachtman certainly would have supported the "liberation" of Iraq by the U.S. He would have cheered the sentiments expressed by President George W. Bush in his speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, hailing the conquest of Iraq as just the first phase of "the global democratic revolution."
Now we get to the last "myth" about the neocons that Boot wants to deflate, and this is really the whole point of his essay, which is to deny that "failure in Iraq has discredited the neocons." It is, he says, "too early to say." Whatever went wrong in Iraq is Rumsfeld's fault, not the neocons', who wanted to engage in the "nation-building" efforts disdained by the Defense Secretary. Oh, boo hoo hoo, the poor victimized little neocons. Life just isn't fair when policymakers have to answer for the consequences of their policies! "Fairly or not," wails Boot,
"Neocons will doubtless be held responsible for the outcome in both countries [Iraq and Afghanistan]; their numerous enemies, on both the left and the right, will see to that."
You bet we will.
--------
DIPLOMACY
Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda
January 9, 2004
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/politics/09POWE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded Thursday that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no "smoking gun" proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorists of Al Qaeda.
"I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection," Mr. Powell said, in response to a question at a news conference. "But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."
Mr. Powell's remarks on Thursday were a stark admission that there is no definitive evidence to back up administration statements and insinuations that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda, the acknowledged authors of the Sept. 11 attacks. Although President Bush finally acknowledged in September that there was no known connection between Mr. Hussein and the attacks, the impression of a link in the public mind has become widely accepted - and something administration officials have done little to discourage.
Mr. Powell offered a vigorous defense of his Feb. 5 presentation before the Security Council, in which he voiced the administration's most detailed case to date for war with Iraq. After studying intelligence data, he said that a "sinister nexus" existed "between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder."
Without any additional qualifiers, Mr. Powell continued, "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants."
He added, "Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with Al Qaeda. These denials are simply not credible."
On Thursday, Mr. Powell dismissed second-guessing and said that Mr. Bush had acted after giving Mr. Hussein 12 years to come into compliance with the international community.
"The president decided he had to act because he believed that whatever the size of the stockpile, whatever one might think about it, he believed that the region was in danger, America was in danger and he would act," he said. "And he did act."
In a rare, wide-ranging meeting with reporters, Mr. Powell voiced some optimism on several other issues that have bedeviled the administration, including North Korea and Sudan, while expressing dismay about the Middle East and Haiti.
But mostly, the secretary, appearing vigorous and in good spirits three weeks after undergoing surgery for prostate cancer, defended his justification for the war in Iraq. He said he had been fully aware that "the whole world would be watching," as he painstakingly made the case that the government of Saddam Hussein presented an imminent threat to the United States and its interests.
The immediacy of the danger was at the core of debates in the United Nations over how to proceed against Mr. Hussein. A report released Thursday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan Washington research center, concluded that Iraq's weapons programs constituted a long-term threat that should not have been ignored. But it also said the programs did not "pose an immediate threat to the United States, to the region or to global security."
Mr. Powell's United Nations presentation - complete with audiotapes and satellite photographs - asserted that "leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option." The secretary said he had spent time with experts at the Central Intelligence Agency studying reports. "Anything that we did not feel was solid and multisourced, we did not use in that speech," he said Thursday.
He said that Mr. Hussein had used prohibited weapons in the past - including nerve gas attacks against Iran and Iraqi Kurds - and said that even if there were no actual weapons at hand, there was every indication he would reconstitute them once the international community lost interest.
"In terms of intention, he always had it," Mr. Powell said. "What he was waiting to do is see if he could break the will of the international community, get rid of any potential future inspections, and get back to his intentions, which were to have weapons of mass destruction."
The administration has quietly withdrawn a 400-member team of American weapons inspectors who were charged with finding chemical or biological weapons stockpiles or laboratories, officials said this week. The team was part of the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, which has not turned up such weapons or active programs, the officials said.
The Carnegie report challenged the possibility that Mr. Hussein could have destroyed the weapons, hidden them or shipped them out of the country. Officials had alleged that Iraq held amounts so huge - hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons, dozens of Scud missiles - that such moves would have been detected by the United States, the report said.
The Washington Post this week reported that Iraq had apparently preserved its ability to produce missiles, biological agents and other illicit weapons through the decade-long period of international sanctions after the Persian Gulf war, but that their development had apparently been limited to the planning stage.
On North Korea, he said he had received "encouraging signals" from his Asian counterparts that the North might be close to agreeing to another round of six-party talks. But he said the administration would not yield on its insistence that the North first state its willingness to bring its nuclear program to a verifiable end.
Mr. Powell was equally hopeful about a peace agreement to end a grueling civil war in Sudan. "The key here is that after 20 years of most terrible war, Sudanese leaders have come together and are just one or two steps short of having a comprehensive peace agreement," he said.
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said the United States and the three other nations promoting peace talks had expected more movement ending hostilities and establishing a Palestinian state. "They are as disturbed as I am that we haven't seen the kind of progress that we had hoped for," he said.
Turning to Haiti, where a decade ago Mr. Powell took part in a delegation that sought to persuade plotters in a military coup to step down, he voiced frustration at the failure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to reach agreement with his political foes. Violence has flared in recent days as anti-Aristide protesters demanded an end to a political deadlock that has paralyzed the government. The country's Catholic Bishops Conference has tried to broker a new agreement.
--------
Deficit Hits $126 Billion In Fiscal First Quarter
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1665-2004Jan8.html
The federal budget deficit reached $126 billion in the first three months of the 2004 fiscal year, as improving tax receipts were outpaced by rising federal spending, congressional auditors said this week.
The first quarter total puts the deficit on pace to top $500 billion and adds weight to increasingly insistent calls for more attention to the government's deteriorating fiscal health. Economists with the International Monetary Fund warned Wednesday that the twin U.S. budget and trade deficits "pose significant risks for the rest of the world."
The IMF paper came three days after former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin, Brookings Institution economist Peter R. Orszag and Wall Street economist Allen Sinai presented a paper warning of "financial and fiscal disarray" from a federal budget "on an unsustainable path." Orszag and Rubin are Democrats, but Sinai, the chief global economist for Decision Economics Inc., was a prominent supporter of President Bush's tax cuts.
The newest analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, Capitol Hill's nonpartisan scorekeeper, portrays a modestly improving tax-receipts environment, compared with the first quarter of 2003. But those improvements are being swamped by rising spending. In the first quarter of fiscal 2004, tax revenue rose by 2.8 percent, after three consecutive years of decline.
But spending rose by 5.4 percent, propelled by a 15.6 percent increase in defense spending and significant jumps in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid expenditures.
Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said this week that the deficit remains manageable and will be brought under control by restraints in spending. And Treasury officials yesterday rejected the IMF warning as "breathless hyperbole."
"The paper seems to conclude that if everything goes wrong in the U.S. economy, and no one does anything about it, that would be bad," said Treasury spokesman Tony Fratto. "That's not exactly groundbreaking."
But the IMF is hardly alone in its warnings. Several Wall Street economists have called on Bush to present a detailed plan for getting the nation's fiscal house in order. In March, the Committee for Economic Development, a business and academic organization, broke with most of the business world and called for immediate action -- including a halt to new tax cuts -- to address the growing deficit.
"It's pretty interesting that there isn't any party left, except the Republican Party, that isn't saying there's a problem here," said William G. Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institution.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan Officials Blame Taliban in the Killing of 12 Civilians
January 9, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/international/asia/09AFGH.html?pagewanted=all
KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 8 - The Taliban have returned to the offensive in southern Afghanistan with a string of attacks, Afghan officials said Thursday.
After something of a lull during the constitutional convention, or loya jirga, Taliban militants have killed at least 27 people in three days.
Twelve civilian men were tied up and executed on a remote mountain road in Helmand Province, west of Kandahar, on Tuesday night. The attack had all the hallmarks of Taliban militants, police and human rights officials said. On Thursday, two Afghan soldiers were wounded in a bomb blast at a military base in Kandahar.
The latest attacks also came two days after a double bomb blast that killed at least 15 people and wounded 55. Among the dead and wounded were many children who happened to be emerging from a nearby school. Officials immediately blamed the Taliban, citing intelligence reports warning that the Taliban were preparing a campaign of urban violence.
The United States military said in a statement on Thursday that it had evacuated 28 wounded from the double bombing to their field hospital at an air base east of the city. Three of the wounded died, and the others were treated in military hospitals in Bagram and Kandahar. In addition, 30 people were treated at the civilian hospital in Kandahar, the statement said.
The attack on the 12 civilians was a calculated murder, Col. Muhammad Ayub, a police official in Helmand Province, said. The civilians were villagers among a group of 20 traveling from their home in Kijeran in Oruzgan Province south through Helmand to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, witnesses said. They had stopped for the night at a small hotel when at 10 p.m. gunmen surrounded the building and broke in, tying the hands of the travelers. They took the 12 men outside, up a small hill and executed them, the witnesses said.
The men who were killed were all Shiite Hazaras, said Musa Husseini, 30, who said he arrived at the village on Wednesday morning and saw the bodies. Six men were missing and two had managed to escape. One was injured in the shooting and was now in a hospital, he said.
"Obviously, it is those people who are against national unity and are making problems between the tribes," Colonel Ayub said. "We are investigating into it, but I am sure it is those terrorists - Taliban, Al Qaeda and followers of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar."
Amir Muhammad Ansari, the local representative of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said, "Unfortunately, the situation is bad in these provinces."
He said some of those behind the violence and instability in the region were allied to the government, in particular commanders who often fight one another. "The Taliban are taking advantage of this situation and making things worse," he said.
In Kabul, Nader Naderi, chief spokesman of the Human Rights Commission, said, "The nature of attacks of the Taliban in the last six to eight months is that they are not choosing targets on specific grounds. They are attacking any accessible target that creates an impact. To attack Afghan nationalities, such as the Hazaras, is easy. It is a soft target and makes a noise."
Allied forces recently established a provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar to try to enhance security and increase reconstruction efforts in the region.
-------- arms
Dissident claims Saddam's weapons were smuggled into Syria
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jan 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040109205024.ngq3vcuw.html
The White House said Friday that it lacked "hard evidence" to back a Syrian dissident's claim that Iraqi chemical and biological arms were smuggled into Syria before the US-led March invasion.
"I want to be very clear: We don't, at this point, have any indications that I would consider credible and firm that that has taken place. But we will tie down every lead," said national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
However, Rice refused to rule out the scenario raised by Paris-based Syrian dissident Nizar Nayyouf who told Britain's independent Channel Five News that a senior Syrian military intelligence source had told him about the weapons.
"There hasn't been any hard evidence that such a thing happened," Rice told reporters, but "I can't dismiss anything that we haven't had an opportunity to fully assess."
US-led forces in control of Iraq for months have yet to locate the vast arsenals of chemical and biological weapons that President George W. Bush accused Saddam Hussein of possessing in violation of UN resolutions.
The unnamed source revealed that such weapons were smuggled across the Iraqi border in ambulances before the war that led to Saddam's ouster, and hidden at three sites in Syria, Nayyouf said.
"I knew this man during the last two years, he sent me much information," Nayyouf, a Syrian opposition activist and journalist, said of his contact.
He added that Saddam moved the weapons last February and March because he knew he faced defeat at the hands of the US-led coalition.
"I don't think we are at the point that we can make a judgment on this issue. But obviously we're going to follow up every lead and it would be a serious problem if that, in fact, did happen," said Rice.
The Foreign Office in London gave a cautious response to Nayyouf's claims.
"If there is new information we would naturally follow it up," a spokesman said.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday rejected British and US calls to renounce weapons of mass destruction and indicated that he would not abandon his country's suspected chemical and biological programs unless Israel gave up its undeclared nuclear arsenal.
"We are a country which is (partially) occupied, and from time to time we are exposed to Israeli aggression," Assad told the London-based Daily Telegraph newspaper.
"It is natural for us to look for means to defend ourselves," he said.
-------- asia
CHINA - Japan told to explain troop dispatch to Iraq
January 09, 2004
Washington Times
Briefly
http://www.washtimes.com/world/briefly.htm
BEIJING - Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged Japanese Senior Vice Foreign Minister Ichiro Aisawa yesterday to give Asian countries a full explanation of the planned dispatch of troops from the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq to help rebuild the country, Japanese officials said. Mr. Aisawa, who is visiting Beijing, was asked to give a full explanation to neighboring countries because sending troops without a U.N. resolution is a departure from Japan's previous policy, they said. "Japan will respect the ideals of its constitution and deal with the matter with respect to the international reputation it has gained since the end of World War II," Mr. Aisawa reportedly said, adding that Japan will do its best to explain the matter to its neighbors.
-------- europe
France backs Libya-EU relations
January 09, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040109-025932-9605r.htm
PARIS, Jan. 9 -- France has called for a gradual normalization of relations between the European Union and Libya, the BBC reported Friday.
The call follows Libya's agreement to pay an additional $170 million to the victims' families of a 1989 bombing of a French plane as it flew over Niger.
French Foreign Minister Dominique De Villepin met his Libyan counterpart, Abdel Rahman Shalgham, in Paris hours after the families of the 170 people killed when a UTA plane was blown up accepted Libya's compensation offer.
Families of the victims, who included many Congolese and Chadians, welcomed the compensation and said it was a sign Libya is changing.
France, which lost 54 citizens on the plane, had campaigned for a more "equitable" settlement for the families after Libya agreed to a $2.7 billion payout for the 270 people killed in the destruction of Pan Am Flight 107 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
De Villepin acknowledged there still needed to be a settlement of Libya's alleged involvement in the bombing of a disco frequented by U.S. military personnel in Germany.
Tripoli has never accepted responsibility for the bombing or extradited six men convicted of the crime.
----
US moves in as Russia retreats from Caucasus
By Julius Strauss
09/01/2004
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$34QM04AIR3213QFIQMFSFF4AVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2004/01/09/wcauc09.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/09/ixworld.html
High in the snow-covered, ragged mountains of northern Armenia, just a few miles from the Turkish border, a detachment of Russian soldiers was on patrol this week.
Just as they have for the past 200 years, they marched out of the Bolshaya Krepost camp in woollen greatcoats and high leather boots with bayonets fitted to their rifles.
"We are here to protect this land from Turkish aggression," said Oleg, a 26-year-old lieutenant from Moscow, in language that might have been uttered a century ago.
To see the lines of determined faces it would be easy to imagine that little had changed in the region since the days of the Tsars. But today, for the first time in more than two centuries, the Russians are being pushed out of the southern Caucasus, one country at a time.
Their forced retreat was given added momentum this week when Mikhail Saakashvili, a stridently pro-western lawyer, was elected president of Georgia.
Mr Saakashvili has made it a priority to ensure that Moscow closes its remaining military bases in his country and stop supporting its three breakaway republics.
The Russians are hugely proud of their conquest of the southern Caucasus, which began in the 18th century as Tsarist forces pushed south towards the Black and Caspian Seas.
The expansion into the region spawned some of the country's greatest romantic literature.
Pushkin and Lermentov both wrote about the subjugation of the proud and cruel Caucasian tribes. Mayakovsky, the Russian poet, was born in Georgia.
In the centre of the camp where Oleg is based are the ruins of a majestic Orthodox church, destroyed by the Ottomans when they overran the area in the early years of the last century.
Russian rule came to the Caucasus piecemeal at the end of the 18th century when imperial troops offered to help fend off attacks from the Ottomans and the Persians.
They swiftly established the infrastructure of empire. Russian engineers built the Georgian Military Highway to supply troops and administrators in the area.
Following the 1917 revolution, the Red Army crushed nationalist revolts in the region and Stalin, then "people's commissar" for nationalities, divided the area into Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The republics were heavily garrisoned, partly to quell endemic ethnic unrest and, later on, to guard against an attack by Nato through Turkey.
But with the collapse of communist rule in Moscow, Russian domination of the region began to fray. Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan all declared independence in 1991.
Today the Georgian Military Highway is pot-holed and almost deserted as traffic to and from Russia has slowed to a trickle.
The Soviet-era railway was cut by a separatist war in the Black Sea region of Abkhazia a decade ago and intense negotiations to re-open it have failed.
The main road south to Yerevan from the north is often little more than a muddy track.
Where the Russians have been steadily pushed out, the Americans have moved in to fill the gap.
The US military is training the Georgian army and there are rumours of air bases being planned in Azerbaijan.
Last month, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, demanded that Russia speed up the withdrawal of their remaining forces in Georgia, eliciting a fierce protest from the Kremlin.
For Russian soldiers, such humiliation at the hands of their Cold War enemy is difficult to swallow.
Oleg said: "I think we are still every bit as strong as the Americans. We have modern arms and equipment and very high morale. They are just better at advertising themselves."
Col Ashot Karapetyan, who also serves at the Bolshaya Krepost base, said: "The Americans are pursuing an aggressive and expansionist policy. The Russians first came here in 1775 and our presence today is more important than ever.
"Without us the Muslims would overrun this area and in no time would be on the southern borders of Russia."
But in Georgia and Azerbaijan, few locals are convinced. They see their future as wedded to the US and Europe. The younger generation is learning English rather than Russian. Only in Armenia, sandwiched between historical enemies Azerbaijan and Turkey, is there still a desire to see Russian soldiers on the streets.
"With the Russians here we sleep easier at night," said Anjella, a 48-year-old housewife in Yerevan.
"We are Christians in a sea of Muslims and Russia protects us," said Narine, 37, a government employee. "Of course we'd prefer the Americans too, but they are so far away and Russia is just next door."
-------- iraq
At Least 4 Killed in Bomb Blast at a Shiite Mosque in Iraq
January 9, 2004
By TERENCE NEILAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/international/middleeast/09CND-IRAQ.html?hp
Four people were killed and dozens were wounded today when a bomb exploded on a busy street outside a Shiite mosque after Friday prayers in Baquba, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, an American military official said.
Some news agency reports put the death toll at five or six.
Baquba is in a largely Sunni Muslim area, and the attack is a further indication of the depth of religious and political animosity in Iraq. A car bomb outside the main mosque in the Shiite holy city of Najaf last August killed more than 80 people, including a senior Shiite cleric.
Increased violence between different religious and political groups could undermine the efforts of the United States to pull together a democratic government in Iraq, which for many years under Saddam Hussein was ruled by the minority Sunnis. The majority Shiites, in particular, were subject to oppression under Mr. Hussein.
In other parts of Iraq, soldiers of the Fourth Infantry Division captured 12 suspected members of the Tikrit Fedayeen cell in a wide-ranging raid on late Thursday evening in Tikrit, the hometown of Mr. Hussein.
Other reports said the 12 were among 30 suspects who had been detained, but a spokesman for the Fourth Infantry Division, Capt. Jefferson Wolfe, said by telephone from Tikrit that he could not confirm that information.
In central Baghdad early today, security guards told The Associated Press that several rockets struck a hotel used by Western contract workers, but that no one was injured.
The security chief for the compound of the Bourj al-Hayat and Sindibad Palace hotels said two rockets hit the fourth and fifth floors of the Bourj al-Hayat Hotel at about 6 a.m. today, The A.P. reported.
The Bourj al-Hayat was one of several hotels struck by rocket-propelled grenades on Christmas Day, injuring two Iraqis.
In Baquba, a police sergeant, Haki Ismail Mustafa, told Reuters: "A gas cylinder with explosives inside was put on a bicycle and left near the mosque.
"At the end of prayers it exploded."
The news agency said six people died in the blast.
But the American military official, Maj. Josslyn Aberle of the Fourth Infantry Division, said four died after a propane gas tank attached to the back of a bicycle exploded.
Major Aberle said by telephone from Tikrit that the attacker tried to gain admittance to the mosque but was turned away. The bomb exploded soon afterward, she said.
Footage from Associated Press Television News showed men pulling sheets over two bodies lying in the street as women in black robes wailed. Wounded people could be seen wandering in a daze, the news agency reported.
The agency said a local doctor put the death toll at five.
The A.P. and Reuters, as well as Agence France-Presse, said medical officials in the town put the number of wounded at 37. Major Aberle put the number of wounded at 36, adding that 4 were in serious condition.
All the wounded were taken to the Baquba hospital, she said.
The police and witnesses told Reuters that the bomb shattered windows and damaged cars outside the small mosque in a residential area. Officials at a nearby hospital said they knew of 39 people injured.
American military officials on the scene were said to be investigating.
--------
INSURGENTS
9 Soldiers Dead in Crash in Iraq
January 9, 2004
By NEELA BANERJEE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/international/middleeast/09IRAQ.html
NUAYMIYA, Iraq, Jan. 8 - An American Black Hawk helicopter crashed Thursday in this tiny village near the restive town of Falluja, killing all nine soldiers aboard. Less than a week ago, another American helicopter was shot down in the area.
The United States military said the cause of the crash was still under investigation, but witnesses near the mangled wreckage said the helicopter had been downed by a missile.
The crash was the most deadly incident in a 24-hour span that clearly illustrated the continuing risk to American soldiers and other foreigners in occupied Iraq. One soldier died Thursday of wounds sustained in a mortar attack on Wednesday evening that wounded 30 other soldiers and a civilian at Logistical Base Seitz, west of Baghdad.
A spokesman for the Air Mobility Command, which oversees military transport, said a C-5 transport plane with 63 people on board was struck Thursday by ground fire but returned safely to Baghdad airport.
Six months from now, the American-led occupation authority plans to hand political power to a transitional Iraqi government, but the shape of that administration remains unclear and its ability to guarantee the safety of more than 100,000 American and other troops highly uncertain.
Since the capture of Saddam Hussein on Dec. 13, attacks on Iraqis and occupation soldiers have continued with deadly efficacy. The American military and civilian leadership maintains, however, that the arrest of Mr. Hussein has prompted larger numbers of Iraqis to provide more accurate intelligence about the insurgency.
In what the American-led occupation is hoping will be seen by Iraqis as a gesture of goodwill and a sign of success against the insurgency, about 500 Iraqis detained in recent months for possible connections to the attacks are to be released.
On Thursday, near the gate to Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, where thousands of suspected insurgents are held, about 60 men were brought out in American Army trucks and let out into a crowd of jubilant friends and relatives, but it was not clear if they were part of the release program.
So far, little seems to have discouraged the stubborn insurgency, which is mainly concentrated in a swath of territory west and north of Baghdad called the Sunni Triangle, encompassing Falluja.
The Black Hawk helicopter that crashed was one of many that regularly fly over Nuaymiya, ferrying soldiers from nearby Habbaniya to Baghdad, said Ikab, a farmer who stood on the roof to his unfinished two-story brick house about six hundred yards from the wreckage. He and other witnesses said the helicopter was painted with the distinctive red cross of a medical aircraft, a detail the American military confirmed.
About six miles southeast of Falluja, Nuaymiya is a scattering of houses dotting softly green potato fields and wide stands of reeds. By evening, American soldiers had cordoned off the area with Humvees. But the burnt husk of the helicopter could be seen behind a sparse screen of grass deep in the fields, and around 6 p.m., another Black Hawk landed nearby as part of the clean-up and investigation.
Witnesses said they saw the rear of the aircraft catch fire, and three people said they saw the helicopter struck by a projectile before it crashed. "It was hit by a missile," said Mahir Abdul-Hamid, a 27-year-old student. "There were women working in the fields when it flew by and was hit."
No Iraqis were hurt in the incident.
Just six days ago, an OH-58 Kiowa helicopter was shot down in Falluja as it circled over soldiers who were conducting a search to clamp down on attacks at a nearby intersection called Death Square. One soldier was killed and another wounded in that incident.
Roadside bombs are the most frequent weapon used by the insurgents. But militants have exploited the vulnerability of American aircraft, beginning with a rash of attacks on helicopters in November. The most American soldiers killed in one day since the war began - 17 - came in mid-November when two Black Hawks crashed near Mosul as they tried to avoid hostile fire from the ground.
Militants have also used surface-to-air missiles to pursue the big planes that use Baghdad airport, a trend that has delayed opening Iraq to commercial flights. Fox News attributed Thursday's attack on the C-5 to a surface-to-air missile but the military did not confirm this.
In a sign of Iraqis' frustration with the persistent violence, Sayyed Muhammad Bahr al-Uloum, an influential Shiite cleric who is a member of the American-appointed Governing Council, said in Kuwait that Arab countries should press Syria to police its borders to prevent foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq, Al Iraqiya television reported. Iraqi and American authorities have said foreign militants intent on fighting the occupation have entered from neighboring states but it is not clear what role if any they have played.
American military officials say they now hold about 9,800 people suspected of attacks on occupation soldiers and Iraqis. Under the current system, those arrested are generally held for 72 hours, after which they are released, sent to the Iraqi police if they have committed run-of-the-mill crimes or held for further investigation if they are suspected of involvement in the insurgency.
The 500 or so to be released under the program announced Wednesday have been deemed to offer a low risk of getting involved in attacks. But they will still need guarantors, ideally a respected elder or cleric, to vouch for them. Such guarantors would not be punished if those they have sponsored take part in future attacks, American military officials said.
Anxious Iraqi families and the media waited at Abu Ghraib until late afternoon, when about 60 men were released. But some American officials cautioned that these detainees were among those let out after the 72-hour wait, not those who have been scrutinized under the new program. According to these officials, about 100 men now have guarantors, who are gradually coming forward.
--------
NEWS ANALYSIS: OCCUPATION
The Shape of a Future Iraq: U.S. Entangled in Disputes
January 9, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/politics/09DIPL.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - After insisting for months that Iraqis must determine their future under a kind of passive American supervision, the Bush administration is being forced to take sides in several Iraqi disputes and running into friction with groups long friendly to Washington.
How these new confrontations are resolved will probably determine the staying power and effectiveness of Iraq's future government and, ultimately, even its territorial integrity after the United States transfers sovereignty to Baghdad.
Among the difficulties are the American efforts, so far unsuccessful, to convince a leading Shiite cleric of the legitimacy of the administration's plan to transfer sovereignty to Iraq on June 30, and American wrangling with Islamic groups over the role of Islam in Iraq's laws and constitution.
In addition, the United States has had to dash the hopes of several Iraqi exile leaders who had worked with Washington to plan the Iraq war and now want to stay in power even if they are not selected as part of the government in a future Iraq.
But the biggest dispute, which has become public only in the last few days, is with the Kurds in the north, whose regional state has been democratically run, largely autonomous and protected by the American military since the end of the first Persian Gulf war in 1991.
For years, the United States has stated as a matter of policy that even though it encouraged the existence of an autonomous Kurdish regional government under Saddam Hussein, a post-Hussein Iraq should be divided into provinces based on geography rather than ethnic identity.
The American fear is that an ethnically divided Iraq would stir instability in the region, especially in Turkey, which has a large and restive Kurdish population. Saudi Arabia, a Sunni Muslim country, also fears that a Kurdish withdrawal from Iraq would give too much power to the nation's remaining Shiites, who the Saudis fear would be sympathetic to largely Shiite Iran.
It was not until last Friday, however, that the Kurds got word from L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Iraq, that the United States wanted them to give up their powers over security, oil resources and other matters and accede to the authority of the new Iraqi state that is about to be born.
"It was not a happy meeting from our point of view," said a Kurdish official. "It was totally contradictory to the spirit of the relationship we have had with the United States as allies in the war against Saddam."
Kurdish spokesmen say that Mr. Bremer was rebuffed and that he came back for another meeting with Kurdish leaders on Wednesday, expressing flexibility on the idea of autonomy.
Evidently aware that his maximalist approach had simply provoked an angry counterreaction, Mr. Bremer was more conciliatory the second time around, while still insisting that the Kurds back down on at least some of their demands for full powers.
"He didn't go through the laundry list of all the requirements he laid down earlier," said an administration official. "Essentially, he said to the Kurds, `What I need from you is flexibility.' He went to the bigger picture."
Some in the Bush administration speculate that the United States, in the end, will have no choice but to accept Kurdish autonomy. There is not enough time to change the status quo, they say, given the timetable for a new "transitional" Iraqi government to take full sovereignty after June 30.
Concern about angering the Kurds is also prevalent at the Pentagon, where officials remain grateful for the role Kurds played in the war.
In a recent memo to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, Mr. Bremer warned that American opposition to "ethnic federalism" espoused by the Kurds would "create political problems where none currently exists."
Forcing the Kurds to back down, he wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, "will likely require the expenditure of significant political capital on our part" and "also surely upset the political stability we have enjoyed thus far in northern Iraq."
Some Kurds, expecting the United States to back down, wonder if Mr. Bremer was not pressing a tough line with the Kurds only to be able to tell Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other nations that he tried as hard as he could before giving in to the creation of a Kurdish state.
Meanwhile, a senior Turkish official, watching the situation closely, said it seemed that the United States had already gone too far in letting the Kurds "hijack" the process of drafting a federal setup for Iraq.
"We find these events very disturbing," said the Turkish official. "The United States cannot let the Kurds abuse their current privileged status in Iraq." He explained that he was referring not only to their leverage within Iraq but also to their ties to the Pentagon.
Part of the American problem is that the Kurds have actually won support for retaining their autonomy from other members of the Iraqi Governing Council, the American-created body that now manages Iraqi affairs and is planning for the transition to self-rule.
Though the Kurds have only five votes on the 25-member council, they have a unique status because they actually can claim a mandate from the Kurdish population, under elections held in 1992.
The Kurds also can use their five votes to get support from non-Kurds by promising to support what other groups want.
Thus the United States may actually have to oppose the wishes of the council, a body that is essentially its own creation.
Given the difficulties of standing up to the Kurds and to other Iraqis who are America's allies, many experts say the United States may have no choice, in the end, but to accept Kurdish demands.
"This will get resolved one way or another," said a Western diplomat involved in the situation. "I won't be surprised to see it resolved in the Kurds' favor."
--------
Kurds' Wariness Frustrates U.S. Efforts
Reluctance to Yield Autonomy Brings Prospect of Two Governments in Iraq
By Robin Wright and Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1767-2004Jan8?language=printer
The United States faces the prospect of two governments inside Iraq -- one for Kurds and one for Arabs -- after so far failing to win a compromise from the Kurds on a formula to distribute political power when the U.S. occupation ends, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, twice met with the two main Kurdish leaders over the past week to urge them to back down from their demands to retain autonomy, according to U.S. officials.
But in a new setback for U.S. plans in Iraq, the Kurds have not budged. They insist on holding on to the basic political, economic and security rights they have achieved during a dozen years of being cut off from the rest of Iraq during Saddam Hussein's rule.
"They have a strong hand and they're playing it," a senior administration official said.
Creation of an autonomous Kurdish region, with its own militia, represents one of the biggest fears about the ethnically diverse nation -- a problem that Washington thought had been averted before U.S. intervention.
But the two Kurdish leaders, Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, are resisting U.S. pressure, in large part out of fear that the vulnerable Kurdish minority could once again be persecuted by a strong central government, as it was repeatedly by Arab regimes.
The new crisis over Kurdistan is the latest flap in the increasingly troubled process of working out a transition to Iraqi rule. The drama is playing out as the United States rushes to help create a Transitional Administration Law to govern the country after June 30.
To the surprise of many U.S. and Iraqi officials, the hottest flashpoint is proving to be the formula for federalism. Iraqis generally agree that Iraq's 18 provinces, possibly redrawn into a smaller number of states, should have a federal government, but the details have been divisive.
One possible compromise is deferring decisions on the final status of the Kurdish north, and its claim on regional oil fields, until the United States hands over power to a provisional Iraqi government. The Iraqis would then be left to sort it out. If this fallback option is adopted, U.S. officials say, they hope that a strong central government in Baghdad emerges, wins international backing and leads the Kurdish minority and Arab majority to come to a mutually accepted arrangement.
But Kurds are opposed to creating a set of basic laws for Iraq that doesn't address those issues. "If you leave everything out, no details, it's like a time bomb," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi Governing Council. "The sooner one tries to find a solution and some consensus, the better."
The danger in trying now to make major decisions on Kurdish autonomy, U.S. officials say, is that the Kurds may be reluctant to alter those terms later when Iraqis write a constitution after the U.S. political role ends.
"The more time that passes, the more attached the Kurds may become to keeping the reins of power," a U.S. official said.
Turkey would also oppose autonomy for the Kurdish region, both because of its own large restive Kurdish community and because of the large Turkmen minority in northern Iraq.
Other Arab governments are already warning of a dangerous spillover if ethnicity becomes a central factor in Iraqi government.
"Regimes founded on a confessional or ethnic basis do not help bring stability and territorial integrity to a country," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Faisal said Wednesday. "The danger of starting on the confessional and ethnic road will consequently partition Iraq, threatening our own security."
The often feisty debates underway in Iraq are reminiscent of arguments among America's founding fathers about federation, U.S. officials say. Like New York, Virginia and Massachusetts in the late 18th century, Kurdistan does not want to cede full authority to a strong central government.
The United States is trying to allow Iraqis to make the critical decisions. "It was the position of the United States from the very beginning of this crisis that [Iraq] had to remain one single integrated country. How it organizes itself, recognizing the major constituencies in the nation, remains to be determined," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told reporters this week.
The Bush administration is sympathetic to the Kurds' concerns, but unwilling to concede to their demands.
"Clearly the Kurds wish, in some way, to preserve their historic identity and to link it in some way to geography. But I think it's absolutely clear that that part of Iraq must remain part of Iraq," Powell added.
Bremer intends to hold further talks with the Kurds to warn of the potential dangers.
"The transitional law must not lead to secession or create conditions where secession might be likely or possible," a State Department official said. "The new central government must have central authority, which means demobilization of private militias and control over borders, national finance and foreign policy, including trade and financial policy and ownership of national resources."
Several key Arab leaders on the Governing Council are expected to meet soon with Barzani and Talabani to press for compromise. But Kurdish leaders say they are not convinced of the need to accommodate the United States or other Iraqis.
"Bremer is committed to a non-ethnic Iraq. But the way the United States is framing it is not workable or practical here," a senior Kurdish politician said. "Iraq is not the United States. To make it such requires time. You can't impose voluntary integration."
The question of the Kurds' role comes on top of an ongoing crisis with Iraq's leading Shiite leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He demands that the United States hold direct elections for a provisional government, rather than selecting a new national assembly through a complicated process based on provincial caucuses.
The one bit of good news for the United States is that Iraq appears to have averted a crisis over the role of Islam in its new government. The Iraqi council has come up with a formula declaring that Iraq is a state with a majority Muslim community committed to the protection of minorities. Islamic law, or the Sharia, will be a source of legislation, but not the only source, Iraqis and U.S. officials say.
In a move pivotal to defining the state, "the Islamic bloc on the Governing Council agreed to separate religion from the state," said Yonadam Kanna, the lone Christian on the 25-member council.
Sipress reported from Baghdad.
--------
Iraq Copter Crash Kills 9
U.S. Troops Transport Plane Makes Emergency Landing in Baghdad After Suspected Attack
By Daniel Williams and Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64423-2004Jan8.html
ZOBAA, Iraq, Jan. 8 -- A U.S. Army helicopter crashed Thursday near this village in west-central Iraq, killing all nine soldiers on board, and a military transport plane carrying 63 people made an emergency landing in Baghdad after being hit by groundfire, according to U.S. military officials.
Those officials declined to specify what caused the crash of the helicopter, a UH-60 Black Hawk used for medical evacuation, but witnesses said rocket fire brought it down.
"Two helicopters were flying together. We saw something shot at them, and then one was hit and there was black smoke from its body," said Majdi Mohammed Jumaili, a law student who resides in a house about 300 yards from the crash site. "It caught fire on the ground."
Mahmoud Saif Jumaili, a farmer who was watering his fields, said: "It looked like it was hit in the tail. It flew for a while, and then dropped down fast."
In Baghdad, a C-5 Galaxy transport plane made an emergency landing Thursday at the international airport shortly after takeoff because one of its engines exploded, a military spokesman said. No one aboard the plane was hurt.
The U.S. Air Mobility Command, from Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, said in a statement that "initial reports indicate the incident is the result of hostile action from the ground, but the type of weapon and other details are unknown."
Meanwhile, military officials said Thursday that an American soldier had died of wounds sustained Wednesday night in a mortar attack on a U.S. base west of Baghdad. The soldier was not identified.
In addition to the fatality, 33 soldiers and one civilian were reported wounded in the attack on Logistical Base Seitz, staffed by the Army's 3rd Corps Support Command. Military officials said insurgents fired six 60mm mortar rounds at the base shortly after sunset.
If Thursday's Black Hawk helicopter crash was the result of groundfire, it would be the second U.S. helicopter downed within a week near Fallujah, a town west of Baghdad that has been a flash point for anti-U.S. violence since June. Zobaa is about 10 miles south of Fallujah.
On Jan. 2, a rocket downed an OH-58 Kiowa observation helicopter near Fallujah, killing the pilot. On Nov. 2, 16 soldiers were killed when a shoulder-fired SA-7 surface-to-air missile struck an MH-47 Chinook transport helicopter near Fallujah.
Since the end of major combat in Iraq was declared May 1, 10 military helicopters have crashed or been shot down, killing a total of 56 soldiers. The deadliest such incident occurred in November, in the northern city of Mosul, when two Black Hawks collided, killing 17.
The site of Thursday's crash lies along a route frequently taken by U.S. helicopters between Habaniyeh air base west of Fallujah and Baghdad. Since Nov. 2, when guerrillas downed the Chinook near Fallujah, U.S. commanders said pilots would vary their routes and take other evasive action to reduce their vulnerability to groundfire.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a military spokesman, told reporters in Baghdad that the Army reviews tactics and procedures but never shuts down operations. "We have a responsibility to get from Point A to Point B. We have a responsibility to continue our combat operations, and those pilots do not stop working. They make conscious decisions about the risk they are taking and get back up in the air," Kimmitt said.
Residents of Zobaa said helicopters fly over their homes, which stand along the banks of the Euphrates River, almost daily.
The Fallujah region lies in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where the population formed the bedrock of support for deposed president Saddam Hussein. Insurgents have harassed U.S. military convoys on roads in and around Fallujah, and a mob burned down city hall there last fall.
Hussein's capture in December seemed to have done little to dim devotion to him in Zobaa. "We like Saddam and wish he had not been caught," said Jumaili, the law student, to the nodding assent of a half-dozen friends.
Jumaili expressed no dismay over the crash. "We don't care," he said. "The Americans should not be here."
Sipress reported from Baghdad.
-------- israel / palestine
Palestinians Must Do More, Powell Says
No Criticism of Israel Is Offered
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1485-2004Jan8.html
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell put the onus for the failure of a U.S.-backed Middle East peace plan on the Palestinian Authority yesterday, signaling growing frustration with the new Palestinian government and significant support for the Israeli position in this presidential election year.
"What we need is, I believe, more responsible action on the part of the Palestinian Authority in order to bring terrorism under control, make sure that violence is being brought to an end," Powell said in a rare, wide-ranging news conference. Only then, he said, can progress be made on the "road map" plan.
Powell addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict four times in the news conference, but he offered no criticism of Israel and did not lay out a plan for greater U.S. involvement. He brushed aside the concerns raised by Palestinians that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has threatened to take unilateral steps that would prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
Powell is generally viewed by European and Arab governments -- who take a much dimmer view of Israeli intentions -- as their ally in an administration stocked with fierce advocates for Israel. But his remarks, coming after European and Arab officials expressed deep concern over Sharon's statements, suggest that Powell may be less willing to wage battles internally. He pointedly told reporters that the governments of Egypt and other Arab countries need to put more pressure on the Palestinians.
At the news conference, Powell amplified the comments he made earlier in the week regarding possible talks with North Korea. On Monday, Powell hailed as "positive" a statement by North Korea that it would be willing to freeze its nuclear programs in exchange for energy aid and a lifting of sanctions. Yesterday, Powell made it clear that the administration will not offer such incentives at the next round of the six-nation talks, and noted that North Korea must agree to a verifiable dismantling of its nuclear programs before any progress in resolving the crisis can be made.
"What is absolutely essential for us to move forward [is] we need a clear statement from the North Koreans that they are prepared to bring these programs to a verifiable end," Powell said, adding that the dismantlement must also be permanent. If the North Koreans agree to those terms, then the administration is prepared to "describe the kind of security assurances we will give." Otherwise, Powell said, the administration will not consider discussions on "what the needs of the North Korean people are, and how those needs can be addressed."
Powell announced that he will attend the Jan. 25 inauguration of Georgia's new president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who won a landslide election victory last weekend. Powell vigorously defended his presentation before the United Nations last February of U.S. allegations that Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction. But weapons inspectors have not uncovered programs that posed an immediate threat, as asserted by the administration before the war.
"Anything that we did not feel was solid and multi-sourced, we did not use in that speech," Powell said. "I am confident of what I presented last year. The intelligence community is confident of the material they gave me; I was representing them."
Powell, looking fit after undergoing prostate surgery three weeks ago, resumed a full schedule this week.
Powell's remarks on the Middle East were noteworthy because, generally, the State Department's statements on the Arab-Israeli conflict are much more evenhanded, making sure an equal dose of concern is expressed about the actions of each side. In the past, for instance, the administration warned Israel not to take unilateral actions that might prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state. But such concerns were not expressed by Powell yesterday.
In a major speech last month, Sharon said he would unilaterally separate Israelis and Palestinians if negotiations falter and the Palestinian government does not take action against militant groups. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia warned yesterday that such actions would doom the two-state solution envisioned in the road map.
But Powell appeared to defend Sharon, saying "he is looking for a reliable partner he can work with." Powell noted that "Sharon's comments recently and some of the plans that he has talked about or have been speculated about are just that, right now, plans. . . . What we are trying to do is to get that reliable partner to stand up and start acting."
-------- latin america
NEWS ANALYSIS
Latin American Allies of U.S.: Docile and Reliable No Longer
January 9, 2004
New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/politics/09SUMM.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - The United States, which has often viewed most nations of Latin America as reliable and docile allies, is increasingly facing resentment over security and trade policies that some of them view as inimical to their interests.
When President Bush travels to Mexico next week to confer with leaders from throughout the hemisphere, he will meet a more assertive Latin America. It is a region that spurned Washington on the war in Iraq, is demanding better treatment for immigrant workers and continues to block a hemispheric trade agreement that some nations, led by Brazil, view as unfair.
Mr. Bush will try to patch up relations with his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, by presenting his new proposals to normalize immigration between the two countries and ease the plight of millions of illegal workers in this country. Mr. Fox's political standing at home has been undercut by his failure to win action from Mr. Bush on immigration.
But immigration is just one element in a series of pent-up issues, and largely irrelevant to the rest of the region, which is grappling with weak economies, corruption, crime and anemic trade. Many nations look to Mr. Bush to invigorate economic development and help them emerge from political crises in places like Venezuela, Haiti, Colombia and Bolivia.
Arturo Valenzuela, a senior White House aide on Latin America in the Clinton administration, called the new Bush immigration proposal "a very significant boost for the relationship with Mexico." But he added, "It's a wash or a negative for the other nations of the hemisphere."
Mr. Bush, who speaks Spanish and grew familiar with Latin American issues during his tenure as Texas governor, came into office promising to improve relations with the countries of the region. He began his presidency by emphasizing his friendship with Mr. Fox. Since Sept. 11, 2001, however, Mr. Bush's attention has been focused on other regions. One expert described the president's visit to Monterrey, Mexico, the site of the next week's meeting, as "a second coming out" in the neighborhood.
Latin American leaders say they are newly pragmatic in their relations with the United States. They are also unafraid to challenge Washington, even in the face of considerable pressure.
The most pointed example of such independence was the refusal of most Latin American nations to support the American-led war in Iraq. In the United Nations Security Council, Chile and Mexico opposed a resolution authorizing force in Iraq, and only 7 out of 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations supported military action.
In Latin America, there was broad, popular resistance to an American strategy that was seen as unilateral and pre-emptive. Ill will from that standoff lingers, both in Latin America and in the United States, which has long taken regional support for granted.
Gabriel Marcella, a Latin America expert at the United States Army War College, said that Latin Americans "were asked by the United States to support a preventive war."
"They did not," he said. "The ugly head of unilateralism seemed to reappear."
Peter Hakim, the president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a forum for hemisphere leaders, said: "I don't think you can overestimate the damage to the U.S.-Mexican relations. No relationship was more damaged, with the possible exception of France."
After months of giving President Fox the cold shoulder, Mr. Bush's action on immigration may foretell an end to the tensions, particularly since Mr. Bush is taking a political risk by angering anti-immigration Republicans.
Mexico's ambassador to Washington, Juan José Bremer Martino, said this week that his country had worked closely with the Bush administration to address most of its concerns on security, most of them regarding border issues. The disagreement over Iraq, he said, is part of the past.
"This issue has been left behind," he said. "Our cooperation in the field of security has been outstanding."
After Chile joined Mexico in opposition to the war, Washington delayed approval of a free trade agreement. The agreement was later signed.
Colombia ran into trouble with the administration on the issue of the International Criminal Court. When Bogotá balked at signing an exemption from prosecution for American personnel, the administration withheld some aid and threatened to cut off $160 million more. Colombia, which gets more American aid than any other country except Israel and Egypt, eventually acceded.
Argentina, which was the only Latin American nation to take part in the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and was later designated a major non-NATO ally, found itself in a spat with the administration this week over ties with Cuba. When Roger Noriega, the assistant secretary of state for Latin America, criticized Argentina's warming relationship with Cuba, the reaction from Buenos Aires was swift and indignant, with one cabinet official declaring that the days of "automatic alignments" with Washington were over.
The administration has clashed repeatedly with Brazil, South America's largest country. The disagreements have resulted in a stalemate over what is probably the most widely sought project in the hemisphere: the establishment of a free trade area from Alaska to Argentina by next year.
When Brazil led nations in insisting that American farm subsidies and steel protections be included in trade negotiations, Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, lashed out at what he termed "won't do" nations. But Brazil held its ground, and the two nations settled on a watered-down agreement that set aside the most sensitive issues.
"Brazil is severely penalized by restrictions in the United States," said Rubens Barbosa, Brazil's ambassador to Washington.
On the security front, Brazil has been equally adamant. When the administration began requiring photos and fingerprints of foreign visitors who are from countries that require visas to United States, a Brazilian judge took umbrage and ordered the same treatment for American visitors to Brazil.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Thursday argued that Brazil's action was discriminatory, while the administration's position was universal, with admitted exceptions. After speaking with his Brazilian counterpart, he said an end to the dispute was in sight, with Brazil moving to modify the judge's instructions.
In the absence of a grand bargain on trade, the Bush administration has pursued bilateral and multilateral pacts with regional blocs. Central American nations were among the first to sign a free trade agreement, called Cafta, last month.
But some experts said Cafta merely pointed up the asymmetrical relationship that the United States has with its neighbors. The deal largely protected trade benefits the Central Americans already have, said Nancy Birdsall, the president of the Center for Global Development.
"They have such a weak negotiating position with the United States," Ms. Birdsall said. "They're desperate to stay in the club."
Still, for some individuals, the cost of membership is too high.
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, who served as Mexico's ambassador to the United Nations throughout the debate on war in Iraq, gave a speech in November that asserted that the United States sought a subservient relationship with Mexico.
"It sees us as a backyard," he said.
Mr. Aguilar Zinser was promptly fired, Mexican officials said - under pressure from the United States.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia refuses Georgia's request to withdraw from bases in 3 years
AFP, Reuters
Friday, January 9, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/124302.html
MOSCOW Rebuffing Georgia's new leadership, Russia refused Thursday to withdraw from its last two military bases in the ex-Soviet state within three years, news agencies here said.
The new leadership of President-elect Mikhail Saakashvili has set an early withdrawal as a priority in ties.
But Russian news agencies said senior Russian military officials told Foreign Minister Tedo Japaridze of Georgia on Thursday that it was unrealistic for Georgia to expect the two bases to be closed in three years unless the ex- Soviet state could find foreign capital to pay for the move. In that case, Russia, said, it could be undertaken sooner.
The bases, one in Akhalkalaki in south Georgia and the other in the Black Sea port of Batumi, are remnants of a much larger Russian military presence in Georgia in cold war times.
"The Russian side again firmly stated that the call by the Georgian authorities for a three-year term for the withdrawal of bases from Georgia is unrealistic," the Itar-Tass news agency quoted an unnamed official as saying after talks in Moscow between Japaridze and the first deputy chief of the Russian general staff, Yuri Baluyevsky.
"It reaffirmed its position that the minimal period for a withdrawal is 10 years," the source told Tass.
Russia says it needs that length of time to be able to rehouse the returning forces, equipment and armaments.
The bases issue is one of several between Russia and the small Caucasus nation, where the Western-leaning Saakashvili was elected president on Jan. 4 after leading a people's revolution that ousted the veteran leader Eduard Shevardnadze. Saakashvili, with the encouragement of the United States, wants to forge better ties with Russia to the benefit of stability in the volatile region as a whole.
But Moscow believes that Georgia is only half-heartedly tackling the problem of Chechen rebels who it says are based in its border lands.
Georgia, which fears being torn apart by separatism, says some forces in Russia still have a vested interest in backing secessionists in breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia, though Moscow has peacekeeping contingents in these regions.
Georgia's semiautonomous region of Adzharia was tense on Thursday after its authoritarian leader reimposed a state of emergency on fears of "destabilization."
The measure followed Saakashvili's election. He is a political foe of Adzharia's leader, Aslan Abashidze.
-------- space
Bush to Offer Initiative to Explore Space
January 9, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD and DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/science/09SPAC.html
President Bush will make a speech next week outlining a major space initiative, the White House said last night.
Administration officials said they expected that Mr. Bush would propose a research and development program with the aim of establishing a base on the moon, as a prelude to a longer-term goal of sending humans to Mars.
Aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, the president's press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters, "The president directed his administration to do a comprehensive review of our space policy, including our priorities and the future of the program, and the president will have more to say on it next week."
But another administration official cautioned that the proposal could be broad and open-ended, more in the nature of "a mission statement" rather than a detailed road map and schedule.
Still, the announcement, combined with Mr. Bush's call this week to revamp laws regarding immigration, would signal the second major policy initiative put forward by the White House at the beginning of an election year. Both new policy directives would allow the president to be portrayed as an inspirational leader whose vision goes beyond terrorism and tax cuts.
They also would have the added political benefit of diverting attention from the Democratic presidential candidates trudging through the retail politics of the Iowa caucuses.
NASA officials have said publicly since late summer that a group of senior policy advisers, convened by the White House, was meeting to establish new goals for the agency. The report on the Feb. 1 breakup of the space shuttle Columbia, which killed seven astronauts, said one of NASA's problems was the lack of a long-term, inspiring goal and called for a public debate on the issue. But that debate has largely waited for the White House, which has been distracted by the war in Iraq.
The report was released in late August, and in the months since, several news reports have appeared asserting that the White House was preparing to announce a return to the moon as a steppingstone to Mars. Some of these suggested that the announcement would come when the president attended a commemoration of the centennial of powered flight, in Kitty Hawk, N.C., on Dec. 17, but the president made no policy statement there.
In exhorting the country to undertake an ambitious space program, Mr. Bush would follow the example of at least two presidents. In 1961, John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. And in 1989, Mr. Bush's father, George Bush, proposed establishing a base on the Moon, sending an expedition to Mars and beginning "the permanent settlement of space."
But while President Kennedy's challenge resulted in an eight-year sprint to the moon, the elder President Bush's proposal went nowhere. By the time the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated in February, NASA had made no significant progress on how it would return to the moon, much less laying the groundwork for the far more complex question of developing a space ship with sufficient propulsion and speed to take people to Mars.
The NASA administrator, Sean O'Keefe, has spoken publicly in some detail about the problems of a manned landing on Mars, saying the nation would have to develop new methods of propulsion and electricity generation in space and a way to protect the astronauts from large radiation doses.
The problems are related; the radiation dose is proportional to the length of the round trip, which depends in part on propulsion, and the propulsion could be driven by electricity.
The questions Mr. O'Keefe raised are integral to another nagging problem: what should replace the shuttle? There are three surviving shuttles, but the program has been operating for 20 years, and the design is even older. NASA has begun preliminary design work on a new system to carry astronauts to low earth orbit, to reach the International Space Station and presumably achieve other goals as well, but its purpose is not yet clear.
The issue is urgent because any replacement would probably be a decade away, by which time the shuttles, if they are still flying, would be about 30 years old, experts say.
The administration, however, is facing competing priorities, experts say. One question, as noted by the chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in August, is how much the nation can commit to spending, at a time of record budget deficits.
"This stuff is not cheap," said the chairman, Harold W. Gehman Jr., a retired admiral.
John Logsdon, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, who was a member of Admiral Gehman's investigative board, said yesterday evening that the report had "led the administration to say we need to articulate a vision for the program and give a sense of where we're going and why."
Aides on Capitol Hill said they were uncertain about precisely what mission the president would call for, although many analysts have argued that a simple return to the moon, which astronauts first visited almost 35 years ago, would not be enough.
One expert on NASA management, Harold E. McCurdy of American University, said that if, in fact, the plan was to go to the moon, the overall goal would be broader.
"The ultimate purpose of going back to the moon is not to go the moon," Mr. McCurdy said. "It's to go to Mars and explore the inner solar system. It's like climbing Mount Rainier in preparation for an ascent of Mount Everest."
But several space experts said yesterday evening that the announcement might be in the nature of a long-term goal and research program. This would avoid any huge expenditure in the near term, unlike, for example, the drive in the 1960's to reach the moon the first time.
If the announcement comes next week, it will probably occur as NASA's new Mars lander continues to send back stunning photos and other information.
Congressional aides also said they expected the announcement to detail a reorganization of the nation's space effort, to bring the military and civilian sides closer together to make better use of limited resources.
--------
Bush Plans To Call for Settlement On Moon
Manned Mars Mission Is Longer-Term Goal
By Mike Allen and Kathy Sawyer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2311-2004Jan9?language=printer
President Bush will announce plans next week to establish a permanent human settlement on the moon and to set a goal of eventually sending Americans to Mars, administration sources said last night.
The sources said Bush will announce a new "human exploration" agenda in Washington on Wednesday, six days ahead of the final State of the Union address of his term and just as his reelection campaign moves from the planning stage to its public phase.
The plans grew out of a White House group that was assigned to examine the mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on Feb. 1, throwing the future of the space program into doubt.
Officials were unwilling to provide cost figures or details and would say only that Bush will direct the government to immediately begin research and development to establish a human presence or base on the moon, with the goal of having that lead to a manned mission to Mars. That endeavor could be a decade or more away, the officials said.
The last humans on the moon, the crew of Apollo 17, landed in 1972.
Even advocates within the administration said the new project is sure to be a difficult sell on Capitol Hill because of the huge costs at a time when the administration is projecting mammoth deficits for years to come, and had promised to cut the shortfall in half over the next five years.
Another objection is likely to be that the existing human space flight program is still struggling to recover from the shuttle accident. The shuttle fleet is grounded until at least September and is unable to resupply the U.S.-led international space station, which is currently relying on Russian vehicles and operating with a caretaker crew of two instead of the usual three. However, some space analysts have suggested that the very extent of the program's troubles may have helped generate a consensus around the notion that only a dramatic remedy would save it.
NASA's budget this year is about $15 billion, and officials there have been told to expect an increase in the budget the president will send to Congress in February.
Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, proposed a sustained commitment to human exploration of the solar system -- with a return to the moon as a stepping stone to Mars -- in 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the first human landing on the moon. NASA came up with a budget-busting cost estimate of $400 billion, which sank the project.
The United States currently lacks the scientific and technical foundation required to send humans to Mars, and scientists still find it daunting just to land a robot there safely, as the events of the past week have shown.
Any new moon or Mars mission would take years to develop, scientists said.
Advocates of a return to the moon, already successfully conquered, have argued that a lunar initiative would be useful scientifically and envision the moon as a base for developing technologies and rehearsing the dispatch of humans to a much more distant and isolated landing zone on Mars.
With the Saturn 5 moon rockets, now spread across the land as museum pieces, astronauts could reach the moon in about three days, while a trip to Mars could take six months or more. Any worthwhile lunar initiative would require the development of a substantial rocket, some analysts have suggested.
Sources involved in the discussions said Bush and his advisers view the new plans for human space travel as a way to unify the country behind a gigantic common purpose at a time when relations between the parties are strained and polls show that Americans are closely divided on many issues.
"It's going back to being a uniter, not a divider," a presidential adviser said, echoing language from Bush's previous campaign, "and trying to rally people emotionally around a great national purpose."
Another official involved in the discussions used similar language, saying that some of Bush's aides want him to have a "Kennedy moment" -- a reference to President John F. Kennedy's call in 1961 for the nation to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade.
"It's a national unifying thing, it's a world unifying thing," this official said.
The sources said Bush aides also view the initiative as a huge jobs program, and one that will stimulate business in the many parts of the country where space and military contractors are located.
"This is a boon for business and a boon for Texas," one official said, referring to the state where Bush was governor and the location of the Johnson Space Center, which is the home of mission control and the nerve center for human space flight.
The decision was controversial within the White House, with some aides arguing that it would make more sense to focus immediately on Mars, since humans have already landed on the moon and a Mars mission would build cleanly on the success of Spirit, the U.S. rover that landed safely on Mars last weekend. Bush himself settled the divisions, according to the sources, working from options that had been narrowed down by his senior adviser, Karl Rove.
One presidential adviser, who asked not to be identified, said, after discussing the initiative with administration officials, that the idea is "crazy" and mocked it as the "mission to Pluto."
"It costs a lot of money and we don't have money," the official said. "This is destructive of any sort of budget restraint." The official added that the initiative makes any rhetoric by Bush about fiscal restraint "look like a feint."
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, who was a key participant in the White House policy review, said in an interview recently that one goal of any new policy would be to provide much needed clarity to a program that has been drifting.
-------- spies
Soviet 'spies' to sue CIA
FOREIGN STAFF
Fri 9 Jan 2004
Scotsman
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=26852004
A COUPLE from the former Soviet Union who say they once spied for the United States have been given permission to sue the Central Intelligence Agency for failing to honour a promise to look after them after they moved to the United States.
The couple - a one-time high-ranking diplomat and his wife - said they had reluctantly spied for the CIA after seeking to defect to the West.
They eventually emigrated to the Seattle area where, they said, the CIA promised to "always be there" for them.
In 1997, the man lost his job because of a corporate merger and turned to the CIA for help.
But the US's foreign intelligence agency apparently decided the couple had been given enough help already, prompting them to file a lawsuit. Last May, a panel of the Court of Appeals ruled the case could be heard, even though the CIA wanted it dismissed.
That ruling was upheld yesterday, paving the way for the couple to take action. But several judges who voted against the hearing going ahead said the case could compromise national security.
"If what the [couple] allege is true, a serious injustice has been done to them, and injustice to them is seriously harmful to the long-term security interests of the United States," a statement from the dissenting judges said.
"Nevertheless, the judicial branch cannot right such a wrong without disclosure of the engagement's existence which must remain forever secret." ----
The CIA's 'Anonymous' No. 2 Low-Profile Deputy Director Leads Agency's Analytical Side
By Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1407-2004Jan8.html
Since Sept. 11, 2001, CIA Director George J. Tenet has been unusually visible in supporting the administration's war plans, first the fight against al Qaeda and then the war in Iraq. By contrast, the CIA's second-in-command, John E. McLaughlin, has been "the most anonymous" senior official in Washington, as McLaughlin puts it.
With the looks and quiet manner of a college history professor, McLaughlin is the counterpoint to the gregarious Tenet. He is also the man from whom Tenet keeps no secrets, Tenet said.
In a town with no shortage of senior officials who thrive in the limelight, McLaughlin, 61, says he is comfortable with obscurity. He worked in Washington's shadows for 31 years -- until 2000, when he became acting deputy director of central intelligence, on the analytical side of the agency.
As an analyst, McLaughlin had plenty of opportunity to see the discrepancies between reality and the analysis that prevailed within the intelligence community at critical junctures. He was the analytical division's director of European analysis when then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev surprised the agency with reforms that shook up Eastern Europe. He was director of Slavic and Eurasian analysis, responsible for the Soviet Union, when the Soviet state unexpectedly fell apart.
When McLaughlin became acting deputy director in June 2000, Chinese counterintelligence and foreign missile proliferation were the consuming issues of the day. He was sworn in four months later.
By the time of the 2001 terrorist attacks, McLaughlin had become accustomed to his role in helping make operational decisions at the agency, as a chief liaison between the White House and the departments of Defense and State and as the presidential briefer when Tenet was out of town.
"We shifted to the offensive so dramatically" after the attacks, McLaughlin said in recent interview. "We are doing things that are arguably precedent-setting" in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the continuing effort to roll up terrorist groups around the world.
"We never take our packs off," he said. "We're always with our security detail, in communication with the operations center."
Now, the U.S. occupation in Iraq faces an insurgency more resilient than the CIA publicly predicted before the war, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found, despite CIA assessments suggesting they would be.
During an interview in his office, which adjoins Tenet's, McLaughlin offered assessments of the CIA and world events.
Asked whether critics who compare Iraq with Vietnam are right, McLaughlin, who served in the Army during Vietnam, said "not yet" and offered a sobering view. "When I went to Vietnam, the French had already been there" for years. "There was an order of battle," the term for a military or guerrilla structure, including command and control and equipment. "But in Iraq, we are developing an order of battle."
On the question of whether the U.S. occupation of Iraq has created a new generation of terrorists determined to kill Americans in Iraq, McLaughlin said: "People will argue about that for years, have we created more terrorists or have we not. That can be sorted out.We take Iraq as it is at this point. If the United States succeeds in Iraq, it will be anathema to terrorists in the world. The last thing they want to see created is a liberal democracy in the center of the Middle East."
"Over 90 percent" of the violent insurgents are Baath Party loyalists, he said. Foreign fighters, he added, "are coming in in small handfuls. They are not inconsequential," but they are "classic jihadists coming in for the long haul, who will try to get themselves organized." Even if they are able to get organized, "it doesn't mean they can get it off the ground."
He defended the CIA's assessment that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, but he lamented the expectation about those weapons that was created by U.S. officials before the war. "I think everyone made a mistake in allowing an image to be created of stacks" of such weapons and "mounds of artillery" shells filled with deadly poisons. "In fact, it wouldn't have to be like that," he said, citing the swimming-pool-size space necessary to hide the tons of chemical and biological weapons the CIA said Iraq possessed.
McLaughlin lauded the frankness of chief weapons sleuth David Kay, whose preliminary report in October stated bluntly that no weapons of mass destruction had been found, although Kay has found proof of weapons programs. "One thing that has escaped public notice is" the report's "utter honesty," he said. "That tells you something about us."
On efforts to defeat al Qaeda, McLaughlin said, "We've captured or killed 75 percent of the senior Al Qaeda leaders." But, he cautioned, "it is possible to be too sophisticated. So many of our targets are so small: a suitcase, a person, an apartment building, a room inside an apartment building, a packet of data moving" across the Internet.
In a speech in March 2001 about the CIA's analysis of the Soviet Union, McLaughlin told the audience at Princeton University about the canned peas and timber analysts the CIA used to employ to understand the secretive communist country's food-processing industry "in order to gauge the underlying strength of the Soviet society."
Today, he said, in the era of Osama bin Laden, there are "canned pea analysts" in the counterterrorism center, people who analyze terrorist cells in different countries, who know the names, affiliations and family ties of thousands of individuals connected to al Qaeda, who understand dozens of extremist movements and their factions. By this, they are able, he said, to assess al Qaeda's strengths and weaknesses.
At the end of the interview, McLaughlin, a master magician and always the analyst, ripped to shreds a recent Washington Post article about the CIA. See, he was saying, seldom are things what they appear to be -- even when you know you are being fooled.
Then he unfolded the same newspaper page -- unripped. "Now, you're probably thinking, how could I top that?" McLaughlin said quietly.
With that, the door behind his desk swung open, and out popped the CIA director. "He does everything," Tenet said, his arm around McLaughlin's shoulders. "He's a real partner."
-------- un
White House Wants U.N. to Return to Iraq
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1495-2004Jan8.html
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 8 -- The Bush administration is launching an effort to persuade the United Nations to return to Iraq in coming months and to support the U.S. plan for transferring governing power to Iraqis by June 30.
The emerging U.S. strategy will be outlined Friday by John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Britain's U.N. envoy Emyr Jones Perry, in a closed-door meeting with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.
The United Nations withdrew its personnel after a suicide attack killed 22 of its staffers. Annan remains reluctant to send them back into harm's way, particularly if the delegation will not have independent authority to help shape the country's political future. Annan has set a Jan. 19 meeting to discuss the United Nations' role in Iraq.
On Friday, the U.S. and British delegations will sound out Annan on new pledges by the United States to protect U.N. personnel and on possibilities for a more sharply defined role for the organization.
They will also seek to enlist the U.N. chief's help in heading off an effort by influential Shiite Muslim leaders, including the cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to renegotiate the plan for political transition in Iraq. The current plan calls for a series of regional caucuses to appoint a provisional government this summer. Sistani wants elections conducted to create that government.
Abdel Aziz Hakim, a Shiite political figure who served as rotating president of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council last month, asked Annan in a confidential Dec. 29 letter to send a U.N. team to Iraq to determine whether national elections could be organized before creation of a provisional government. He also appealed to Annan to help negotiate the terms for the country's political transition in the event that elections were deemed "unfeasible."
In an important concession to the United States, the U.N. chief sent Hakim a reply Thursday night, saying that elections cannot be organized in time for the establishment of the provisional government. He also declined to commit to a role in negotiating new terms for elections, but said that a more representative group of Iraqis should participate in the political process, sources familiar with the letter said.
Despite Annan's gesture, the United States on Thursday canceled plans to send a high-level delegation to Friday's talks. Officials had expected the delegation to include Kim Holmes, assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, and William Burns, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. Burns will travel to Baghdad next week to refine the plan in discussions with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq.
The United Nations withdrew most of its staff from Iraq in November after a string of terrorist attacks against the organization, including an Aug. 19 suicide attack that killed 22 U.N. officials and associates, including special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has been engaged in discussions with Annan on how the United States and its military allies might provide greater security for U.N. officials.
U.S. officials concede that they have no intention of assigning the United Nations sufficient independence in Iraq to negotiate new terms for the political transition.
But they insist that they do want to deepen U.N. participation. They said they want the organization to participate in drafting an interim constitution and help organize regional caucuses.
The Bush administration would also like the United Nations to urge groups outside the political process to support the U.S. plan for creating a government. Those groups include key Shiite Muslim leaders and representatives of the Sunni Consultative Council, a newly established association of Sunni religious and political figures. "We hope that the United Nations can play a useful role in bringing these groups along in support of the agreement," a U.S. official said.
Staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- us
U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Approach 500
By ROBERT H. REID
Associated Press Writer
Jan 9, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_RISING_TOLL?SITE=FLPET&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The number of American troops who have died in Iraq since the war began last March is nearing 500, more than U.S. losses in many regional conflicts of the past several decades: the Gulf War, Lebanon, Somalia, Panama, Grenada, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
So far the Iraq conflict has cost the lives of 494 American service members, including nine who were killed Thursday in the crash of a Black Hawk medevac helicopter believed shot down near Fallujah. Most of the deaths - both combat and non-combat - have occurred since President Bush declared an end to major fighting on May 1.
Already, the loss of American life in Iraq has surpassed the U.S. death toll of the first Gulf War of 1991, when about 315 Americans died in the operation to drive Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait. That figure includes combat and non-combat deaths suffered during the military buildup and the war itself.
Ninety-nine American forces have been killed in the ongoing operation in Afghanistan, less than a third of them by hostile fire.
The number of American battle deaths since the Iraq war began on March 20 - at least 333 - is approaching the figure of 385 Americans killed in action during the Spanish-American War of 1898-1899. U.S. officials dismiss most of the attacks by Iraqi insurgents as militarily insignificant, and the Bush administration strongly defends the U.S. role in Iraq. Bush said during a visit to London in November that the failure to build democracy in Iraq "would throw its people back into misery and turn that country over to terrorists who wish to destroy us."
Iraq casualty figures are small compared with the horrific bloodletting of some of America's past conflicts. About 19,000 American soldiers died in one month alone in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, a conflict in which more than 290,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were killed in action.
An estimated 620,000 Americans - both northerners and southerners - died in the Civil War, America's bloodiest conflict. More than 58,000 U.S. troops lost their lives in Vietnam, both in combat and from non-battle causes.
Nevertheless, the rising death toll after 10 months of military operations in Iraq is significant, especially in a country whose public traditionally has little appetite for their sons and daughters dying in battle in distant, unfamiliar lands.
The United States aborted its participation in an international peacekeeping operation in Somalia after 18 U.S. troops were killed in a battle in the capital, Mogadishu, with forces loyal to warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid.
Former President Ronald Reagan pulled U.S. peacekeepers out of Lebanon after a suicide truck bomber killed 241 Marines and other service members at Beirut's airport in 1983.
After U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War ended in 1973, U.S. presidents were loathe to commit American forces to protracted struggles in foreign lands without clear objectives and overwhelming chances for success.
However, U.S. antipathy to foreign military operations receded after a series of quick and relatively painless operations in places like Grenada in 1983 - with only 16 battle and non-combat deaths - and Panama in 1989, when 21 troops were killed.
The Gulf War introduced the public to precision, high-tech weaponry that could strike distant targets seemingly without significant risks to the pilots who fired them from thousands of yards away.
To a generation reared without memories of the close-quarter savagery of Vietnam, Korea and other distant battlefields of half-forgotten conflicts, war appeared to have been sanitized to a life-and-death computer game where the winner had the best gadgets.
In the Kosovo campaign of 1999, the United States and its NATO allies pounded Yugoslavia into submission with an aerial bombardment in which America lost not a single service member.
Afghanistan's Taliban rulers and their al-Qaida allies collapsed after about a month of fighting, with the Americans delivering precision bombs from the sky while their northern alliance Afghan allies did most of the ground fighting.
But the Iraq conflict has proven to be a different kind of war. Since the end of major combat, most American casualties have come from low-tech weaponry - roadside bombs, mortars and small arms fire.
----
U.S. Marines stationed on Okinawa to be dispatched to Iraq
2004/1/9
TOKYO, AP
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/detail.asp?onNews=1&GRP=A&id=22258
The U.S. military is sending about 3,000 Marines stationed on the southern Japan island of Okinawa to Iraq as replacements for personnel who are returning home, a spokesman said Friday.
The dispatch would come "as early as February" said Capt. Chris Perrine, a spokesman for the U.S. Marine Corps in Japan. In all, about 25,000 Marines, most of whom will come from California and other bases in the United States, are being sent to replace their fellow Marines in Iraq.
The move is part of a major troop rotation in the Middle East, which would "involve a slight reduction of troops," Perrine said.
The approximately 130,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq will be heading home over the coming four months, to be replaced by a more mobile, less heavily armed force of about 110,000 that will include about 20,000 Marines and an increased proportion of National Guard and reserve troops.
About 17,500 Marines are based on Okinawa, about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) southwest of Tokyo.
----
Inside the Ring
January 09, 2004
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
Supply woes
We've seen an internal Army memo that says the service is still having problems resupplying soldiers in Iraq nine months after Baghdad fell.
The memo talks of a secret plan to create a "Joint Logistics Command" that would try to solve the problem of delays in getting ammunition, food, spare parts and other materiel to the troops.
Several military delegations plan to travel to Iraq early this year to make an assessment before the new command is created. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, is due to be briefed on supply fixes in March.
Conference critique
Guests and paying customers are giving high marks to last month's Fletcher School conference, a yearly event that attracts some of the government's top national security figures, including members of the Joint Chiefs.
We obtained a copy of one defense industry representative's report. His assessment: The services fully accept Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's demand for reform and transformation.
"All military speakers from all services espoused the need for a new joint and expeditionary mindset," said the memo. "And every service endorsed the sea-basing concept and claimed a future sea-basing role for itself.
"In contrast to earlier presentations, service chiefs and combatant commanders stressed organizational, mindset and procedural changes over procurement, manpower growth, modernization or technology injections as key to increasing capabilities and combat power. Doing more with less was a consensus."
The memo adds, Gen. Peter Schoomaker "admits Army lost its way on path to relevance and readiness after the Cold War. If he asked for two more divisions, they would not be trained and ready in time to ease the current stress on the force."
Air Force Lt. Gen. Duncan McNabb, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, said that if two B-1Bs that tried to kill Saddam Hussein April 7 during the war could have dropped bombs 30 minutes after call, the mission may have turned out differently. As it were, the flight took 60 minutes. The remarks suggest Saddam left the meeting place, possibly a restaurant, in the Mansur neighborhood of Baghdad minutes before the bombs hit.
Mr. WMD
The officer who supervised the intelligence community's 2002 report that concluded Iraq owned chemical and biological weapons made a rare public appearance this week.
Stuart Cohen, vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, showed up Tuesday on ABC's "Nightline." His reason: to defend the CIA against charges analysts tilted a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to help President Bush make the case for invading Iraq.
Mr. Cohen, who directed the NIE on Iraq, called such charges "just nonsense."
"We have re-looked the evidence that we have used," he said. "We have parsed every word, every judgment. And I remain convinced that the work we did was well-grounded.
"We did not, in any area, hype our judgments. We made our calls based on the evidence that we had. And let me make very clear. We had 15 years' worth of evidence, compelling evidence, evidence from multiple sources. We did not hype the estimate."
Mr. Cohen said the assessment that Saddam Hussein had huge stocks of chemical and biological weapons came from human sources, satellite imagery and communication intercepts. "All of which pointed, made a compelling case," he said.
The Iraq Survey Group continues to look for those weapons, but has not found them to date.
Mr. Cohen denied that anyone in the Bush administration pressured the NIE analysts. "The reality is that there are checks and balances in the system that would not allow such things to happen," he told Ted Koppel. "These were judgments that we had rendered over a 15-year period. ... There was no sudden halt, no sudden change in our judgments."
China tensions
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been fairly silent on the subject of communist China.
During his first visit to Japan and South Korea in November, the secretary was asked about China and declined to talk about the emerging regional power. He is said to still be wary of China after the April 1, 2001, incident when the crew of a U.S. EP-3 surveillance aircraft was imprisoned after making an emergency landing on Hainan island.
Asked why Mr. Rumsfeld has not accepted invitations from Chinese leaders to visit China, one official remarked: "It took three years to get him to Japan," a reference to the secretary's single visit to Northeast Asia.
Mr. Rumsfeld was asked recently about China's launch of a manned spacecraft and whether it will lead to a military space race. The secretary said after a speech Dec. 10 that the launch was "notable" but that it is not likely to lead to the militarization of space.
"I think that the way to think about the People's Republic of China is it's not written how it's going to enter the world," Mr. Rumsfeld continued. "It is big to be sure. It is a significant regional power. It is a country that has some tension going on. Its successful economic reform is dependent upon its peaceful interaction with its neighbors and indeed with the rest of the world."
However, Mr. Rumsfeld then noted that economic success in the new century "requires that people be relatively free to know what's going on elsewhere in the world."
"It requires that a country be relatively open to involvement by other countries," he said. "And that tends to be somewhat in conflict, not just somewhat, but quite a bit in conflict with a communist system politically, a dictatorial system, a nondemocratic political system. So there's a tension there."
Mr. Rumsfeld predicted that China's communist rulers "will be grappling with that tension and they're going to have to make a choice every day, every year, every decade, as to the extent they're willing to, in exchange for gaining the economic benefits that will accrue to their people by engaging the world economically, the extent to which they're willing to give up their control over the political system."
The hope of the United States and others in the region is that China will join the international community "in a peaceful, rational way without any grinding of gears."
Schmidt's battles
Air National Guard Maj. Harry M. Schmidt, the only pilot in the war on terrorism to face "friendly fire" criminal charges, is due to trial in March.
But his attorney, Charles Gittins, yesterday asked the United States Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals to delay the court-martial. He accused Air Force prosecutors of deliberately hampering defense preparations by refusing to grant him a security clearance.
Mr. Gittins is a former active-duty Marine officer who had a top-secret clearance while at the Pentagon.
His brief states that under current procedures Maj. Schmidt must first clear classified information with the government before telling it to Mr. Gittins.
"To date, Maj. Schmidt simply has refused to disclose such information to his counsel in order to prevent its disclosure to prosecutors, thus impairing counsel's ability to provide him with effective assistance of counsel," Mr. Gittins wrote.
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are Pentagon reporters. Mr. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or bgertz@washingtontimes.com. Mr. Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or rscarborough@washingtontimes.com.
----
ROTATION
U.S. in Huge Troop Movement With New Unit to Find Bombs
January 9, 2004
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/politics/09MILI.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - The American military on Thursday announced the start of its largest troop movement in decades, and a senior Army officer said the forces flowing to Iraq would be more mobile and aided by the first unit to be assigned to detect homemade bombs.
"It has started," the officer said of the redeployment. "This is the biggest move that we've done, I think, since World War II. We are moving 240,000-plus soldiers and their equipment."
Equipment of the First Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Tex., and of the 25th Infantry Division, based in Hawaii, is at sea en route to Iraq. Troops of the 82nd Airborne Division, from Fort Bragg, N.C., left Wednesday and Thursday, the officer said.
No new deployment orders or call-ups were announced Thursday as the officer gave a status report on what he called "a major muscle movement" - bringing home about 123,000 personnel in Iraq and Kuwait, to be replaced by about 110,000. Most of the fresh troops are Army, with the Marine Corps sending 25,000, and smaller numbers from the Air Force and Navy.
The Navy announced that the Boxer, a helicopter carrier, will soon leave, with equipment for the First Marine Expeditionary Force.
In addition to the Iraq redeployments, the military is rotating about 11,000 troops to Afghanistan to replace those there now, officials said.
Officers acknowledge that the Iraq rotation, to be completed by May, presents a risk for troops traveling across unfamiliar territory before reaching more secure bases, and in numbers presenting a target for insurgents. But commanders are planning to capitalize on the overlap, which offers a natural, if temporary, increase in troop strength.
The new force flowing into Iraq will be more heavily weighted toward reserve forces; 38 percent of those heading home from Iraq are reservists, while 46 percent of the fresh force is drawn from the reserves. Units sent to Iraq are also designed to be more mobile than those that captured Baghdad.
To counter the threat of home-made bombs, known as "improvised explosive devices," or I.E.D.'s, the Army devised a new unit called Task Force I.E.D. to find and destroy the weapons, and to train conventional units in specialized techniques. The task force, already on the ground in Iraq, will grow to about 300 soldiers.
--------
Huge Movement of Troops Is Underway
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1773-2004Jan8.html
The Pentagon has begun a shift of troops into and out of Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan that promises to be the most challenging movement of U.S. forces in more than half a century, military officials announced yesterday.
In the past week, ships loaded with equipment from the 1st Cavalry Division in Texas and the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii have departed for the Persian Gulf. The first 200 members of the 101st Airborne Division returned from Iraq earlier this week to their home base at Fort Campbell, Ky. And Wednesday saw the departure from Fort Bragg, N.C., of paratroopers of the 504th Parachute Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division.
An advance team from the Army's III Corps -- whose commander, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, is due to take operational control of the new force -- has also gone to Baghdad.
The turnover of troops, intended to substitute fresh U.S. forces for the battle-tested ones that have spent up to a year at war, poses enormous logistical burdens. Scheduled to last between now and May, the operation is unusual not only for its large scope and compressed timetable but also for its need to transport sizable numbers of troops into and out of combat zones at the same time.
"It's the biggest one we've ever had in some respects," Lt. Gen. Franklin "Buster" Hagenbeck, chief of Army personnel, said in an interview. He predicted "hiccups along the way" but added: "It's going to work."
In addition to the sheer difficulty of coordinating transportation, housing and other needs for so many troops, the mass transition also heightens the security risks for U.S. service members in Iraq, who continue to face daily attacks from insurgents.
Plans call for ferrying many troops into and out of Iraq by plane to lessen the possibility of enemy assaults on long ground convoys. But the reported attack yesterday on a U.S. Air Force C-5 cargo jet, suspected of being hit by ground fire as it took off from Baghdad International Airport, underscored the danger of relying on air transport.
Top U.S. military authorities have confessed to being worried about the huge rotation. But they have also said the operation has received extensive high-level reviews and will be bolstered by extra security measures.
Disclosing one such measure in a briefing to a group of reporters yesterday, a senior Army officer said a military team has gone to Iraq to explore ways of coping better with the makeshift, roadway bombs that have become a prime cause of U.S. military casualties. Made up of explosives experts, the team plans to perform forensic studies of actual attacks and to help develop tactics and improved technical means of detecting and defeating the improvised devices.
"The enemy gets a vote," the officer said, referring to the prospect that attacks by insurgents could disrupt the rotation schedule. "We owe it to all these soldiers not to rush through this thing. We have to do this thing right because it's still a dangerous place."
But he also acknowledged, in response to a question, that the rotation could offer an opportunity for greater U.S. offensive action, as incoming forces overlap with those due to exit, swelling the total number of U.S. troops in the country.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the region, is "going to have a very, very large force in there, and a very capable force. And our plan is to keep the pressure on the enemy," the officer said.
Although the military has handled other sizable flows of troops, the movement has tended to be essentially in one direction. This time, the traffic will be going both ways, with more than 100,000 troops pouring into Iraq and about the same number -- and their dusty, worn equipment -- pulling out. An additional 20,000 troops in Kuwait are due to be replaced, along with about 10,000 soldiers in Afghanistan.
In all, the shift will involve "the better part of" 81/2 of the Army's 10 active-duty divisions, the senior officer said.
The operation also includes a division of Marines from Camp Pendleton, Calif. The Marines are slated to take over from the 82nd Airborne Division and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and to move into an area west of Baghdad that includes Ramadi, Fallujah and other centers of insurgent activity.
Two brigades of the 1st Infantry Division, along with a brigade of the 25th Infantry Division and the 30th Infantry Brigade of the North Carolina National Guard, will operate in the region north of Baghdad -- around Tikrit and Kirkuk -- which has also seen much enemy action, replacing the 4th Infantry Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade.
Originally, U.S. officials had hoped some of the military burden in this area would be assumed by another division of non-U.S. foreign troops -- in addition to the two already operating south of Baghdad. But when the foreign division failed to materialize, the 25th Infantry's brigade, due to go to Afghanistan, was redirected to Iraq.
In Baghdad, the 1st Cavalry Division and the 39th Infantry Brigade of the Arkansas National Guard will replace the 1st Armored Division.
And responsibility for northwestern Iraq, which has belonged to the 101st Airborne Division, will go to an Army Stryker Brigade that has been in the country for several months, but operating farther south.
Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.
-------- propaganda wars
Betrayal behind Israeli attack on U.S. ship
By ADM. THOMAS MOORER
Jan. 9, 2004,
Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/2345393
After State Department officials and historians assembled in Washington, D.C., last week to discuss the 1967 war in the Middle East, I am compelled to speak out about one of U.S. history's most shocking cover-ups.
On June 8, 1967, Israel attacked our proud naval ship -- the USS Liberty -- killing 34 American servicemen and wounding 172. Those men were then betrayed and left to die by our own government.
U.S. military rescue aircraft were recalled, not once, but twice, through direct intervention by the Johnson administration. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's cancellation of the Navy's attempt to rescue the Liberty, which I personally confirmed from the commanders of the aircraft carriers America and Saratoga, was the most disgraceful act I witnessed in my entire military career.
To add insult to injury, Congress, to this day, has failed to hold formal hearings on Israel's attack on this American ship. No official investigation of Israel's attack has ever permitted the testimony of the surviving crew members.
A 1967 investigation by the Navy, upon which all other reports are based, has now been fully discredited as a cover-up by its senior attorney. Capt. Ward Boston, in a sworn affidavit, recently revealed that the court was ordered by the White House to cover up the incident and find that Israel's attack was "a case of mistaken identity."
Some distinguished colleagues and I formed an independent commission to investigate the attack on the USS Liberty. After an exhaustive review of previous reports, naval and other military records, including eyewitness testimony from survivors, we recently presented our findings on Capitol Hill. They include:
ˇ Israeli reconnaissance aircraft closely studied the Liberty during an eight-hour period prior to the attack, one flying within 200 feet of the ship. Weather reports confirm the day was clear with unlimited visibility. The Liberty was a clearly marked American ship in international waters, flying an American flag and carrying large U.S. Navy hull letters and numbers on its bow.
Despite claims by Israeli intelligence that they confused the Liberty with a small Egyptian transport, the Liberty was conspicuously different from any vessel in the Egyptian navy. It was the most sophisticated intelligence ship in the world in 1967. With its massive radio antennae, including a large satellite dish, it looked like a large lobster and was one of the most easily identifiable ships afloat.
ˇ Israel attempted to prevent the Liberty's radio operators from sending a call for help by jamming American emergency radio channels.
ˇ Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned lifeboats at close range that had been lowered to rescue the most seriously wounded.
As a result, our commission concluded that:
ˇ There is compelling evidence that Israel's attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew.
ˇ In attacking the USS Liberty, Israel committed acts of murder against U.S. servicemen and an act of war against the United States
ˇ The White House knowingly covered up the facts of this attack from the American people.
ˇ The truth continues to be concealed to the present day in what can only be termed a national disgrace.
What was Israel's motive in launching this attack? Congress must address this question with full cooperation from the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the military intelligence services.
The men of the USS Liberty represented the United States. They were attacked for two hours, causing 70 percent of American casualties, and the eventual loss of our best intelligence ship.
These sailors and Marines were entitled to our best defense. We gave them no defense.
Did our government put Israel's interests ahead of our own? If so, why? Does our government continue to subordinate American interests to Israeli interests? These are important questions that should be investigated by an independent, fully empowered commission of the American government.
The American people deserve to know the truth about this attack. We must finally shed some light on one of the blackest pages in American naval history. It is a duty we owe not only to the brave men of the USS Liberty, but to every man and woman who is asked to wear the uniform of the United States.
Moorer was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff from 1970 to 1974. He is joined in the independent commission of inquiry by Gen. Ray Davis (recently deceased); Rear Adm. Merlin Staring; former Judge Advocate General of the Navy and Ambassador James Akins.
----
Powell Dismisses Think - Tank's Iraq Report
January 9, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged Thursday that he had seen no ``smoking gun, concrete evidence'' of ties between Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaida terror network, but insisted that Iraq had had dangerous weapons and needed to be disarmed by force.
At a State Department news conference, Powell disagreed with a private think tank report that maintained Iraq had not been an imminent threat to the United States. And the secretary defended the case he had made last February before the United Nations for a U.S.-led war to force Saddam from power.
``My presentation ... made it clear that we had seen some links and connections to terrorist organizations over time,'' Powell said. ``I have not seen smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.''
Three experts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in a report Thursday that the Bush administration systematically misrepresented a weapons threat from Iraq, and U.S. strategy should be revised to eliminate the policy of unilateral preventive war.
``It is unlikely that Iraq could have destroyed, hidden or sent out of the country the hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons, dozens of Scud missiles and facilities engaged in the ongoing production of chemical and biological weapons that officials claimed were present without the United States detecting some sign of this activity,'' said the report by Jessica T. Mathews, Joseph Cirincione and George Perkovich.
Powell noted that Saddam obviously had, and used, destructive weapons in the late 1980s, then refused for a decade to assure the world he'd gotten rid of them.
``In terms of intention, he always had it,'' Powell said. Of Carnegie's finding that Iraq posed no imminent threat, Powell said: ``They did not say it wasn't there.''
Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled and there was no convincing evidence it was being revived, the report said.
And the U.S.-led war on Iraq in 1991 combined with U.N. sanctions and inspections effectively destroyed Iraq's ability to produce chemical weapons on a large scale, it said.
The real threat was posed by what Iraq might have been able to do in the future, such as starting production of biological weapons quickly in the event of war, Carnegie said.
Also, Iraq apparently was expanding its capability to build missiles beyond the range permitted by the U.N. Security Council, the report said. ``The missile program appears to have been the one program in active development in 2002,'' it said.
Years of U.N. inspections to determine whether Saddam was harboring weapons of mass destruction were working well, and the United States should set up jointly with the United Nations a permanent system to guard against the spread of dangerous technology, the report said.
It recommended that consideration be given to making the job of CIA director a career post instead of a political appointment.
Mathews is president, Cirincione is director of the proliferation project, and Perkovich is vice president for studies at Carnegie, an independent research group.
Citing the CIA and other U.S. intelligence offices, the Bush administration contended that Iraq had caches of weapons of mass destruction and plans to produce more.
The Carnegie report said the U.S. intelligence process failed on Iraq and that Bush administration officials dropped qualifications and expressions of uncertainty presented by U.S. intelligence analysts.
In the weeks before the war, the administration also intensified its allegations of links between Saddam and the al-Qaida terror network headed by Osama bin Laden.
Since May, when Bush declared an end to major combat, 357 U.S. service personnel have died in attacks on them and in accidents.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Supreme Court to Rule on Terror Detainee
January 9, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Enemy-Combatant.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear the case of a U.S.-born man captured during fighting in Afghanistan and held without charges, the latest setback for the Bush administration and its assertion of broad new powers to prosecute the war on terrorism.
Over the administration's objections, the court said it will consider the treatment of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a suspected Taliban foot soldier held at a U.S. naval brig in South Carolina. The government calls Hamdi an ``enemy combatant'' and says he is ineligible for ordinary legal protections.
The administration says it is reluctant to allow enemy combatants access to lawyers because that could greatly inhibit efforts to obtain information from them about potential terrorist operations.
Unlike almost all the others picked up overseas since the Sept. 11 attacks, Hamdi is an American citizen. He was born to Saudi parents living in Louisiana but was raised in Saudi Arabia.
Other terrorism cases are still at or near the high court's doorstep, including the case of another U.S.-born terror suspect held indefinitely without access to lawyers. Jose Padilla, a former gang member and convert to Islam, was picked up in Chicago in 2002 and detained in connection with an alleged plot to detonate a radioactive ``dirty bomb.''
The Supreme Court could choose to consider the two cases together, simultaneously addressing the rights of U.S. citizens captured abroad as well as those picked up in the United States.
The cases raise basic legal and constitutional questions about the breadth of executive power and the rights of terror suspects to defend themselves in court.
``The court has really drawn a line in the sand,'' said Deborah Pearlstein, a lawyer and national security specialist at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, which has been a frequent Bush administration critic. ``It is recognizing that, yes, the executive has some wartime powers, but they are not unlimited.''
``The Justice Department will vigorously defend the president's authority to capture and detain enemy combatants,'' department spokeswoman Monica Goodling said Friday. ``This authority is crucial in times of war,'' whether applied to those caught overseas or at home, she said.
The court will probably consider Hamdi's case in April, with a ruling expected by July.
The court separately has agreed to consider the legal rights of other battlefield prisoners held as enemy combatants at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The court could say as soon as Monday whether it will hear an appeal over government secrecy in the detention of hundreds of foreigners picked up in the United States and held immediately after Sept. 11. Civil liberties organizations are seeking names and other details about the detainees, mostly Muslim and Arab men who have since been deported for civil immigration violations.
Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, and taken to Guantanamo. He was transferred to the naval brig in South Carolina after authorities verified his citizenship.
The Bush administration has maintained that it alone has the power to designate someone an enemy combatant -- and that the label means a detainee can be held in open-ended military custody without access to courts, lawyers and sometimes family or other outsiders.
Such detentions serve national security ends, and are not subject to the usual rules of the criminal court system, such as private meetings between suspects and lawyers and the right to a speedy trial, the administration has said.
``Hamdi is a classic battlefield detainee -- captured in Afghanistan, an area of active combat, with an enemy unit,'' Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the court in urging it to stay out of the case.
A lower federal court had sided with the government in Hamdi's case, and the administration wanted that ruling to stand. Another lower federal court ruled against the government in the Padilla case.
The government contends that Hamdi is not constitutionally entitled to a lawyer, but recently said it will allow lawyer Frank Dunham to visit him anyway. The meeting has not taken place and the issue remains a part of the Supreme Court case.
``The guy basically had his day in court and he wasn't there,'' Dunham said Friday. ``Now we're seeking review of that denial of a day in court. If I saw him now it wouldn't change anything.''
The case is Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 03-6696.
On the Net:
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the Hamdi case: http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/027338.P.pdf
-------- homeland security
Homeland security official defends tough checks
January 09, 2004
By Shaun Waterman
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040108-111923-2285r.htm
A senior homeland security official yesterday defended tough new security measures affecting planes and people coming to the United States, in the face of concern that the measures might be an overreaction that will hurt the country's image.
"Any time you have change there's a lot of questions that are asked," said Asa Hutchinson, the Homeland Security Department's undersecretary for border and transportation security. "We're working very hard to get the message out that these measures do not change the historic nature of America as a welcoming country."
With the country braced for a feared major strike by al Qaeda terrorists, a series of aviation alerts since Christmas Eve has resulted in more than a dozen flights from foreign countries being canceled, diverted or delayed.
In at least two cases, incoming airliners were escorted to their destination by fighter jets.
On Monday, U.S. authorities began fingerprinting and photographing foreign visa holders as they entered the country, prompting authorities in Brazil to retaliate by doing the same to incoming U.S. citizens.
But Mr. Hutchinson said the Brazilian action was "not even ... a bump in the road" and that the new measures - dubbed U.S.-VISIT (Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology) - had not "changed people's perceptions of America as a place to visit or a place to work."
Indeed, he said visitors were reassured, not put off, by the increased security.
He said the department was "working very hard," in tandem with the State Department, on an "education process ... [for] our foreign guests to make sure they know what the requirements are."
Mr. Hutchinson also addressed critics who have suggested that the United States is overreacting. Last week, it emerged that one of the canceled planes - an Air France flight from Paris - had been grounded even though passengers thought to be suspect turned out to have no connection to terrorism.
"There's been too much attention paid to the question of whether there were passengers that would pose a risk on that flight," he said. "If you have a threat to a flight, it could be from a number of sources, not just the passengers. ... It doesn't take a very imaginative mind to realize there could be other threats."
Mr. Hutchinson said he had no doubt that erring on the side of caution was the right thing to do.
"You always ask yourself: 'Would I want my family on that flight?' and if the answer is 'No' would it be the right call to say, 'Well, my family's not on there, but everyone else's can fly on there'? That would be the wrong decision. I have full confidence we made the right decision."
One of the more contentious measures introduced as part of the high alert is the United States' insistence that armed law-enforcement officers be placed on some flights.
Mr. Hutchinson said the Homeland Security Department would impose such a restriction "only when we have specific threat information that raises particular concerns to which armed marshals would be an appropriate response."
But several governments have balked at the idea, including four European nations - Portugal, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. They have said they will cancel flights rather than place gun-toting plainclothes police on board.
Ireland, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, has called a meeting of EU nations' aviation officials next week to consider the U.S. proposal.
Mr. Hutchinson played down suggestions that the issue could drive a wedge between the United States and Europe, much as the tricky negotiations about the handing over of computerized airline passenger records had threatened to do last year.
"We will work with foreign governments," he said, "sharing intelligence, and I think that if there is specific intelligence information, they will want to take the appropriate measures. We can work that through on a flight-by-flight basis."
--------
Government Weighs Lowering Nation's Terrorist Alert Status
January 9, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/national/09ALER.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - The Bush administration has seen a downturn in what it considers credible terrorist threats and is considering lowering the nation's threat status to an "elevated" level after nearly three weeks at high alert, officials said Thursday.
"The volume of credible threat reporting has gradually lessened since the holidays," said Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Roehrkasse said that officials were continuing to evaluate terrorism intelligence daily and that it was "impossible to speculate" when the administration might decide to change the status.
Other administration officials, however, said that because terrorist intelligence pointed to a somewhat reduced risk, the administration was considering lowering the status level to "elevated," or yellow. The current status is "high," or orange, the second highest level on the five-step alert system. The change could come within the next several days, although no recommendations have been made, officials said.
The threat status was raised from elevated to high on Dec. 21 after intelligence officials said they had picked up an alarming rise in threats, some indicating the prospect of attempted hijackings on specific overseas flight routes.
Officials have been particularly concerned about flights from London to Washington, Paris to Los Angeles and Mexico City to Los Angeles. The threat to the Paris and Mexico City routes appeared timed to the Christmas and New Year's holidays, and officials said they had become less worried about those routes this week. But concern about the London route - particularly on British Airways flights - "remains high," officials said.
Concerns about terrorism have prompted the cancellation or disruption of at least 15 overseas flights in the last two weeks, F-16 military jets have escorted some commercial flights into the United States, and Mexican officials agreed to turn around one Los Angeles-bound flight in midair because American officials were worried about security lapses.
The Bush administration also put foreign carriers on notice last week that it expects them to be ready to put armed air marshals on certain United States-bound flights that may be at risk. Although some foreign governments have complied, others have resisted the idea.
-------
Threat Level May Fall to Yellow
Concerns Could Keep Some Cities and Airports on High Alert
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1829-2004Jan8.html
With the holidays safely over, U.S. officials said they are considering soon lowering the nation's threat alert level to "elevated," or yellow, while keeping airlines, airports and some cities on high alert because of continued concern of a terrorist attack.
The nation's threat level will be lowered from orange, or "high risk," in the next several days, possibly as soon as today, U.S. and aviation sources said.
The Department of Homeland Security might officially lower the threat level across the board but quietly instruct cities such as Washington, New York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles and certain industries to keep security on heightened alert, one U.S. official said. U.S. aviation and government sources said intelligence reports indicate a specific concern about hijackings through early February.
"It makes sense if you have specific intelligence that says, for example, East Coast ports are at a high risk, why would police chiefs in middle America need to raise security measures?" one U.S. official said.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge elevated the nation's threat level Dec. 21 out of concern that terrorists were planning to attack commercial airliners or large public gatherings over the holidays. In the past three weeks, 16 international flights were canceled, and some inbound flights continue to be delayed as they undergo additional screening procedures. The U.S. military deployed F-16 jets to shadow certain commercial flights entering the United States, and officials ordered foreign carriers to place armed sky marshals aboard some flights .
Under the heightened alert, U.S. officials have said they are concerned that terrorists have targeted specific routes between London and Washington and from Paris and Mexico City to Los Angeles. Intelligence officials also were concerned about New Year's Eve "dirty bomb" explosions at public gatherings in New York, Washington, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and they remain concerned about that possibility.
Raising the alert status from yellow to orange costs the government $1 billion a week, according to David Heyman, director of science and security initiatives at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
The alert automatically prompts local and state police to increase patrols and work overtime. Major airports must impose additional security measures, such as random inspections of vehicles driving by terminals. Security costs at Los Angeles International Airport, where several flights were canceled, have totaled more than $3.8 million since Dec. 21, airport officials said.
Members of Congress have criticized the Homeland Security Department's alert system as too broad and vague. The House Select Committee on Homeland Security is considering legislation that would force the department to tailor the alert system to specific economic sectors and regions, and establish standards for raising or lowering the threat level.
"If we continue to have these general elevation alerts, the public is going to become immune to the increase in alerts and it's certainly going to be perceived by local officials and the private sector to be burdensome in terms of costs," said Rep. Jim Turner (Tex.), ranking Democrat on the committee.
A Homeland Security Department spokesman said the alert system already contains features that allow for refining its application. "The system was designed with flexibility to allow us to put different cities, regions or sectors of the economy on different levels of alert and have different protective measures in place," spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said.
The agency has twice considered raising the threat level for specific purposes, U.S. officials said. In May, New York, Boston and Washington were nearly placed on elevated alert after the government received intelligence that terrorists might be targeting those cities, according to U.S. officials. During the Fourth of July holiday last year, the agency considered placing Texas on alert after receiving intelligence that terrorists might target oil refineries. In both cases, officials found the intelligence wasn't credible and decided against the specific alert, agency officials said.
"You need to tailor the alert to the specific risk as much as you can," said Carter Morris, vice president for security policy at the American Association of Airport Executives.
Morris said the department has allowed airports more flexibility to respond to orange alerts and has recognized that rural airports may not need as many security procedures as large international hubs. "We need to make sure we're doing the smart things at the right airports, not just doing it for the sake of doing it," he said.
Staff writer Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.
--------
Terror Alert Level Is Reduced
January 9, 2004
By TERENCE NEILAN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/national/09CND-ALER.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 - The nation's threat status was lowered a notch to "elevated" from "high" this morning.
The announcement was made at a news conference by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
The current high, or orange, level was imposed on Dec. 21 after Mr. Ridge said that the danger of an attack in the "near term," possibly in the United States, was "perhaps greater now than at any point since Sept. 11, 2001."
The level was lowered to yellow, though Mr. Ridge warned that the United States would continue to vigorously monitor terror threats. "Though we have moved to yellow," he said, "we have not let down our guard,
Nevertheless, the change comes as a result of what the Bush administration considers a downturn in credible terrorist threats.
"The volume of credible threat reporting has gradually lessened since the holidays," Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said on Thursday.
Mr. Roehrkasse said that officials were continuing to evaluate terrorism intelligence daily.
The threat status was raised after intelligence officials said they had picked up an alarming rise in threats, some indicating the prospect of attempted hijackings on specific overseas flight routes.
Officials have been particularly concerned about flights from London to Washington, Paris to Los Angeles and Mexico City to Los Angeles. The threat to the Paris and Mexico City routes appeared timed to the Christmas and New Year's holidays, and officials said they had become less worried about those routes this week. But concern about the London route - particularly on British Airways flights - "remains high," officials said.
Concerns about terrorism have prompted the cancellation or disruption of at least 15 overseas flights in the last two weeks, F-16 military jets have escorted some commercial flights into the United States, and Mexican officials agreed to turn around one Los Angeles-bound flight in midair because American officials were worried about security lapses.
The Bush administration also put foreign carriers on notice last week that it expects them to be ready to put armed air marshals on certain United States-bound flights that may be at risk. Although some foreign governments have complied, others have resisted the idea.
--------
Easing Threat?
Homeland Security Lowers Terror Alert Level From Orange to Yellow
Associated Press
January 9, 2004
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/World/threat_level_040109.html
Jan. 9 - The Bush administration lowered the national terror warning level today as Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said that an urgent threat had passed. However, the airline industry remained at high alert.
"I know we are all thankful that nothing happened," said Ridge, announcing the lowering of the threat level for most of the country at a news conference.
Ridge acknowledged that certain locations and sectors of the economy, which he did not identify, will keep their security posture at the orange level.
But a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity had said earlier that airports and airlines will keep their high alert status.
During heightened alerts, airports are asked to restrict parking near terminals if necessary, increase law enforcement patrols of terminals and perimeters and conduct random checks of vehicles on airport roadways.
The alert level went from orange, signifying a high threat of terrorist attacks, to yellow, signifying an elevated threat. The conclusion of the holidays - and the large gatherings that go with them, played a role in the decision to lower the threat level, Ridge said.
"Although we've returned to yellow, we have not let our guard down," he said. "Yellow still means that we are an elevated risk of attack and we will maintain particular vigilance around some critical resources and locales."
Deterrent to Terrorists
Ridge said he did not know yet whether the orange alert had actually disrupted a planned attack on U.S. soil. Past increases in security measures have served as a deterrent, persuading terrorists to change their targets, said Ridge, citing interviews with prisoners.
In particular, a group of operatives in Turkey decided not to target an American diplomatic building there because security was too tight, Ridge said. In November, they hit a British consulate instead.
"When we raise the security level, when you have more police, when you have frankly more security professionals involved in protecting communities and critical pieces of infrastructure, it is a deterrent. It does disrupt activity," Ridge said.
Homeland Security ranks threats by colors, starting with green at the bottom and followed by blue, yellow, orange and red as perceived dangers intensify. The warning level can be changed for the entire country or for specific regions and economic sectors.
The level was raised to orange, or the second-highest level, on Dec. 21. That marked the fifth time the national alert level was raised to orange since the system was announced in March 2002. It has never dipped below yellow, representing an "elevated" risk.
Distinguishing Fact From Fiction
Ridge said the decision to go to orange was sound. Several streams of intelligence pointed to imminent, simultaneous attacks against U.S. interests, he said.
Some officials have worried that operatives of the al Qaeda terrorist network were deliberately trying to spoof U.S. and international intelligence networks aimed at uncovering terrorist threats, by planting misinformation on lines of communications they believed were monitored.
However, other U.S. officials said the amount and energy level of the threatening intelligence were too widespread for this to entirely be a disinformation campaign.
"Clearly one of the biggest challenges that the intelligence community has, that we have in this country, that we have internationally, is trying to distinguish between information that we should act upon and information that is intentionally designed to deceive us," Ridge said.
He said officials remain fearful about the aviation system, particularly the threat of overseas flights being hijacked and used in Sept. 11, 2001-style attacks on American targets.
Security was raised to extraordinary levels over the last several weeks. In particular, more than a dozen international flights were canceled and military helicopters patrolled during the large celebrations on New Year's Eve in Las Vegas and at Times Square in New York City.
In addition, the Homeland Security Department directed teams of experts to New York, Washington, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, to hunt for signatures of a radiological attack. None was detected.
Five Alert Levels
The five levels of terrorism alerts, as well as recommended government and private-sector responses include the following:
Green: Low risk of terrorist attacks.
Refine and exercise planned protective measures.
Ensure emergency personnel receive training.
Assess facilities for vulnerabilities and take measures to reduce them.
Blue: Guarded condition. General risk of terrorist attack.
Check communications with designated emergency response or command locations.
Review and update emergency response procedures.
Provide the public with necessary information.
Yellow: Elevated condition. Significant risk of terrorist attacks.
Increase surveillance of critical locations.
Coordinate emergency plans with nearby jurisdictions.
Assess further refinement of protective measures within the context of the current threat information.
Implement, as appropriate, contingency and emergency response plans.
Orange: High risk of terrorist attacks.
Coordinate necessary security efforts with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies or any National Guard or other appropriate armed forces.
Take additional precaution at public events and possibly consider alternative venues or cancellations.
Prepare to work at an alternate site or with a dispersed work force.
Restrict access to threatened facilities to essential personnel only.
Red: Severe risk of terrorist attacks.
Assign emergency response personnel and preposition specially trained teams.
Monitor, redirect or constrain transportation systems.
Close public and government facilities.
Increase or redirect personnel to address critical emergency needs.
ABCNEWS' Pierre Thomas contributed to this report.
-------- immigration / refugees
U.S. Immigrant Labor Plan Leaves Mexicans With Doubts
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1482-2004Jan8?language=printer
MEXICO CITY, Jan. 8 -- When Cecilia Gamez heard about the immigration reform plan President Bush announced Wednesday, she had a thought: A program like that might have saved her husband's life.
Roberto Rivera was one of 19 illegal immigrants who died last May in a sweltering trailer truck on a highway in Victoria, Tex., abandoned by the unscrupulous human smugglers Bush hopes to put out of business with a new temporary worker program.
Gamez, 30, said her husband would have taken advantage of a provision that would allow employers to sponsor immigrant workers, so that they would not have to face the dangers of crossing illegally. But she said she feared that Bush's announcement was nothing but election-year posturing.
"Bush says he will do it and I hope he will, but I doubt it -- they always say things and don't do them," Gamez said in a telephone interview from her home in the village of Pozos in Guanajuato state. "It would be good because it would avoid many more deaths. My husband never thought this would happen to him."
Gamez's reaction to Bush's proposal is typical of many in Mexico: enthusiasm tempered with deep reservations or outright skepticism.
Many Mexicans are pleased that Bush has chosen to take on their number-one issue in such a prominent way, using a White House speech to outline his plans for a temporary worker program that could legalize millions of undocumented workers.
Columnist Sergio Sarmiento, writing in the Reforma newspaper Thursday, called Bush's plan "reasonable" and "brave" and said it could benefit both countries. Armando Esparza Elias, head of a group in Zacatecas state that advocates for Mexicans abroad, said in an interview that the plan would "be for the good of workers who want to follow the American dream, who want a better life, and who want to do it legally."
But many of those interviewed said they were skeptical of promises from the United States, which is widely seen here as selfish and arrogant in its dealings with Mexico.
"I've seen Bush vacillate many times; he'll say one thing and then say something else," said Juan Manuel Ferrao, 59, an importer who travels regularly to the United States. "It will be a miracle if this actually happens."
Juan Lopez Garcia, 20, who is studying to be a teacher, also expressed doubt about U.S. intentions. "You shouldn't believe everything they tell you," he said. "On the other hand, you can't stop believing."
President Vicente Fox's initial reaction after talking to Bush on the telephone Wednesday morning was ebullient; at the opening of a school in Mexico City he said Bush's plan represented "a clear recognition of the value of these Mexicans who are working there in the United States."
By later in the day, after Bush's speech, Fox was more guarded and called the plan "an important first step" but "less than we had hoped." In a speech Thursday, he sounded more upbeat again, calling the plan "a great step forward."
"It is going to permit millions of Mexicans who are there without documents to do their work with full legal status, with full labor and human rights, with full recognition," Fox said, adding that the Bush plan was a response to the Mexican government's "efforts and work."
Headlines and cartoons in newspapers Thursday ranged from cautious to caustic.
A political cartoon in El Independiente newspaper showed Bush tossing a Frisbee, meant to represent his immigration plan, marked "Vote for Bush." Fox, depicted as a mustachioed hound dog with his tongue hanging out, is chasing it.
"The only people who are happy with Bush's plan are people who don't understand Washington, or those who are naive or highly romantic," said Raymundo Riva Palacio, editor of El Independiente. "But Fox grabs anything that Bush gives him."
Many people here said they feared that documenting temporary workers, without guaranteeing them a track to eventual permanent residence, would result in the systematic expulsion of millions of Mexican workers in the United States.
"In the end, this may be just a polite way of kicking people out," said Arturo Hernandez, 32, a Mexican American from New York who was visiting here Thursday.
"After they have exploited them, they will throw them out," said Gerardo Diaz Rojas, 61, a street vendor.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), visiting Mexico on Wednesday, said he was confident that Bush's plan would pass Congress "because it is a security issue."
"At a time when everybody in the United States and everybody in Mexico at least would understand that documentation is important for security, it's hard to say it should not pass," Frist said.
Frist's comments framing the plan in security terms led the Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, one of the three main political parties in Mexico, to issue a statement denouncing the Bush proposal as "a distraction to mask the hegemonic interests of the ultraconservative group installed in the White House." The statement said that for Fox, the plan was a "new cosmetic victory designed to make Mexicans forget his long list of unfulfilled promises."
Roberto Madrazo, leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, offered a tepid response: "We hope that this effort that has been proposed corresponds to reality and is not simply an electoral strategy."
Researchers Bart Beeson and Gabriela Martinez contributed to this story.
-------- terrorism
Thai Officials Probe Tie To Al Qaeda in Attacks
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A390-2004Jan8.html
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jan. 8 -- Thai officials are investigating whether a wave of bomb and arson attacks in southern Thailand, a predominantly Muslim region, is linked to al Qaeda, the country's new national security adviser said Thursday.
Retired Gen. Kitti Rattanachaya said security officials speculate that the attacks, which have killed four soldiers and two police officers and burned 20 schools, were the work of local separatists possibly linked to regional militant networks such as Jemaah Islamiah, an affiliate of al Qaeda. Jemaah Islamiah has been accused of bombing two nightclubs on the resort island of Bali in 2002 and the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last August. The Bali bombings killed more than 200 people, most of them foreign tourists.
However, in a telephone interview from Narathiwat, one of the provinces under assault, Rattanachaya said, "We don't have concrete evidence to support this assumption." But he said the professional quality of the attacks indicated outside help.
The violence began Sunday, when the 20 public schools were set ablaze in separate areas of three provinces, Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat. Small piles of tires in 10 districts were also set on fire. A group of armed men then entered a military camp in Narathiwat and shot and killed four soldiers who were guarding a weapons armory.
Armed with acetylene torches and bolt cutters, the men cut the armory's electricity supply and communications links and made off with at least 300 weapons, including 100 M-16 assault rifles and several rocket-propelled grenades, according to a report prepared by PSA Asia Ltd., a security consulting firm.
The assailants also cut trees to block roads, spread tire-spike strips along key access routes and positioned fake explosives and hand grenades at several bridges and highway overpasses, the report said.
On Monday, two bombs exploded in Pattani, slightly wounding a police officer. Later that day, a bomb attached to a motorcycle gas tank exploded as a squad was attempted to defuse it, killing two officers.
On Wednesday night, attackers fired automatic weapons at a police station in a remote village in Yala, near the Malaysian border. No one was injured.
Police have detained five people, including an Islamic teacher, and questioned about 25 others. No one has been charged.
Though separatists have carried out low-level attacks on police targets before, the coordination of these strikes is unprecedented, said Paul Quaglia, director of PSA Asia.
"This is a big spike in capability," he said. "This required funding [and] a fair amount of professional management to pull it off."
Thai officials had long insisted that Jemaah Islamiah was not present in Thailand. But officials were forced to acknowledge its presence there after a series of arrests last year, including the capture in August of Hambali, a top strategist for Jemaah Islamiah and a member of al Qaeda, in a town north of Bangkok. Hambali, an Indonesian, and other members of Jemaah Islamiah have used Thailand as a point of transit, and have met and rested there as they plotted new attacks.
Special correspondents Natasha Tampubolon and Noor Huda Ismail, and Somporn Panyastianpong in Bangkok contributed to this report.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
UNEP: Solar Power Gift Brings Ray of Sunshine to India's Rural Poor
From UN Environment Programme
Friday, January 09, 2004
http://www.enn.com/direct/display-release.asp?objid=D1D1366D000000F9FB052EAAA96B735E
MANGALORE (India)/BASEL (Switzerland), 9 January 2004 -- Poor families in India are being given a New Year renewable energy life-line as a result of a donation by one of the world's leading solar power companies.
BP Solar USA is donating over $1 million worth of solar modules to BASE (Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy), who in turn are dispatching them to rural and semi-rural areas of India where over 60 per cent of the population is without electricity.
The solar systems will be used for water pumping, lighting and for powering telecommunications services including cyber cafes.
Virginia Sonntag-O'Brien, Managing Director of BASE, which is a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Collaborating Centre, said: "Lack of access to reliable and affordable energy is one of the main obstacles to economic development in developing countries."
"These solar photovoltaic modules, amounting to 635 kilowatts and equivalent to 10 per cent of India's current solar market, will not only help overcome this hurdle, but will do so in a clean and non-polluting way. This is sustainable development in action", she said.
Photovoltaic solar cells are made of semi-conducting materials that directly convert sunlight into electricity. The simplest photovoltaic cells power small devices such as watches and calculators, while more complex systems can light houses and provide power to an electrical grid.
Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of UNEP, said: "I welcome this generous gift. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) specifically recognized the vital need of improving access to economically viable, socially acceptable and environmentally sound energy services as a way of tackling poverty."
"Two years ago, the G8 Renewable Energy Task Force report concluded that alternative forms of electricity generation could be delivered to over a billion people by 2010. This initiative in India, bringing together the private sector, financial bodies and organizations like BASE, is just the kind of action needed to bring this target and timetable to fruition", he said.
A proportion of the panels will be sold to paying customers by the Syndicate Bank of India, which has established schemes for promoting solar pumping and lighting in rural areas. The revenues generated along with other donations and grants will in turn be used to fund the installation of the remaining panels in poor communities where customers will pay an affordable fee for the service.
Ms Sonntag-O'Brien said a variety of partners were making the initiative possible. International courier company DHL and its heavy freight division, Danzas Air and Ocean, are shipping the panels at cost and are donating funds as are Swiss Re, one of the world's leading re-insurance companies, and Good Energies, Inc. Dasag Energy Engineering, Switzerland, coordinated the packaging of the project and Netpro Renewable Energy India, based in Bangalore, is helping to implement the programme.
For more information, please contact: Virginia Sonntag-O'Brien, Director, Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy (BASE), tel: +41-61-274-0480 or e-mail: virginia.sonntagob@energy-base.org or Eric Falt, Spokesperson/Director of UNEP's Division of Communications and Public Information, in Nairobi, on tel: +254-20-623292, mobile: +254-733-682656, e-mail: eric.falt@unep.org or Nick Nuttall, UNEP Head of Media, on tel: +254-20-623084, mobile: +254-733-632755, e-mail: nick.nuttall@unep.org
Additional information on BASE can be found at http://www.energy-base.org/; information on UNEP's energy programme can be found at http://www.uneptie.org/energy
For more information, contact:
Nick Nuttall Head of Media UN Environment Programme cpiinfo@unep.org
Web site: http://www.unep.org
-------- health
Flu Has Killed 93 Children, but Comparisons Are Difficult
January 9, 2004
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/national/09FLU.html
Influenza has killed 93 children since October, but there is no way to determine whether this season is more severe for children than earlier years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday.
The number of children's deaths has risen from the 42 reported late last month. Precise assessments of the severity of the flu epidemic for children are impossible because influenza is not nationally reported, said Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the centers, in Atlanta.
The children who died from influenza ranged from 4 weeks to 17 years, with a median age of 4 years. Children younger than 5 accounted for 55 deaths, or 59 percent, and infants 6 to 23 months accounted for 24 deaths, or 26 percent.
Thirty-three of the victims had not been vaccinated. The disease control agency recommends vaccinations for all healthy children 6 months and older.
The deaths occurred in a variety of settings. Of the 55 cases for which locations were reported, 15 children, or 27 percent, died at home; 12, or 22 percent, died in emergency rooms; and 3, or 5 percent, died being taken to hospitals. The remaining 25, or 45 percent, died in hospitals.
In the absence of specific case reports, the centers monitors influenza activity for all ages in several ways. Using those yardsticks, Dr. Gerberding said, the agency was "cautiously optimistic" that the peak of the flu epidemic had passed.
In a teleconference with reporters, Dr. Gerberding said the number of states reporting widespread activity declined last week, to 38, including New York City and the District of Columbia, which are separate reporting areas, from 42 for the week ended Dec. 27.
The percentage of outpatient visits for influenza dropped in all monitoring regions, the centers said in its weekly report.
The percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza rose slightly to exceed the epidemic threshold, a crucial determinant of the severity of an influenza season. The threshold is based on a statistical calculation that the centers derives from the number of deaths from pneumonia and influenza in 122 cities. The data usually reflects deaths three to four weeks earlier.
Recent studies and widespread publicity about children's deaths in Colorado and other states have underscored the need to learn more about how the flu virus affects young people, Dr. Gerberding said.
The agency has asked doctors to report all influenza-related deaths in children younger than 18 through local agencies. Doctors are also being asked to submit virus isolated from fatal cases and tissues from autopsies. The intent is to help determine whether unusual characteristics are killing children.
In another step, the agency is asking state officials to consider making children's deaths from influenza routinely reportable. The sole estimate of children's influenza deaths is in an academic study that indicates that the total is 92 in an average year.
Dr. Gerberding said her agency was campaigning to help parents and teachers educate children about preventing the transmission of colds, influenza and other illnesses. Information about steps like using a tissue and discarding it are at the agency's Web site, www.cdc.gov.
--------
Worst of Flu Epidemic May Be Over, CDC Says
Vigilance Urged, as Second Wave Is Possible
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64893-2004Jan8.html
The flu has killed at least 93 young Americans so far this winter -- about double the count as of last month -- but there are indications that the epidemic may have peaked, federal health officials said yesterday.
Although experts remain concerned that the toll of sickness and death could continue to mount, the number of states reporting widespread flu dropped to 38, down from 42 a week earlier.
"We are cautiously optimistic that, in at least some parts of the country, influenza may have peaked," said Julie L. Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But Gerberding cautioned that "there's still plenty of flu out there," that the number of people getting sick could remain high for some time, and that there is a chance of a second wave later in the season.
"In past years we have seen flu come back, and we have seen new strains emerge late in the season," she said during a briefing. "So it's important that we continue to be vigilant."
Widespread flu is still being reported in Virginia, Maryland and the District. Baltimore City's health commissioner announced yesterday that a 3-year-old boy who died in that city Dec. 16 was the first child in the state to die from the flu this season.
But flu cases were dropping off in some places, including Colorado, which reported numerous cases statewide early in the season but is now reporting only regional outbreaks.
This year's flu season began earlier than usual and appeared to hit hard, particularly in the western United States. That, along with the fact that the season has been dominated by a strain of the virus never seen before, prompted federal health officials to warn that this could be one of the worst flu seasons in years. The level of concern increased when Colorado health officials reported that a number of children had died.
As a result, the CDC began collecting information about pediatric deaths, and it had previously reported receiving data about 42 deaths. The agency then took the unprecedented step of asking all states to report flu deaths among people younger than 18.
Yesterday, the agency released preliminary data from 31 states. As of Tuesday, at least 93 flu deaths had occurred among Americans younger than 18, the CDC reported.
"That's a very, very sad and sobering figure," Gerberding said.
Gerberding stressed, however, that because flu deaths are not routinely tallied by the federal government, it remains unclear whether this year's flu season has been unusually deadly for children.
"We don't have the data from previous years to know whether this represents an increase," Gerberding said.
One study estimated that an average of 92 children ages 5 and younger succumb to the respiratory disease in a typical flu season. But the agency was conducting a number of new studies to try to assess the impact on younger people this year, she said.
The age of this year's young victims ranged from 4 weeks to 17 years; the median age of those who died was 4. Eight deaths occurred in children younger than 6 months, 24 in children ages 6 to 23 months, 23 in children 2 to 4 years, 19 in youths 5 to 11 and the remaining 19 in people ages 12 to 17.
Thirty-five of the children had other health problems, such as asthma, a weakened immune system, mental or developmental problems, epilepsy or a genetic disorder.
Officials were able to learn the vaccination status of only 45 of the children who died. Of that group, six had been fully vaccinated, but for five of them it was unclear whether enough time had passed for the vaccine to start protecting them. Six had gotten only one of the two shots recommended for children ages 6 months to 23 months, and the remaining 33 were not vaccinated. Adults typically need only one shot.
Staff writer John F. Kelly contributed to this story.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Protests as radioactive shipment heads through Albuquerque, N.M.
By MELANIE DABOVICH
Associated Press Writer
01/09/2004
http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=80025
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Protesters shouted "Stop!" and waved signs from an interstate overpass Thursday as a shipment of radioactive waste bound for a nuclear waste dump in southern New Mexico passed through the state's largest city.
The waste, in three huge containers aboard a tractor-trailer, headed east on Interstate 40 after being sent on its 1,130-mile journey from the Nevada Test Site on Wednesday. Its ultimate destination was the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad in southern New Mexico.
While WIPP routinely receives radioactive shipments, Thursday's was the first to come from the Nevada site and to travel through urban Albuquerque, home to roughly half a million people.
The demonstrators yelled, "Stop, stop!" as the truck passed under the I-40 bridge about 11:05 a.m., honking at the protesters as it went by under escort by two state police patrol cars. Trucks in nearby lanes then also started honking.
The protesters, from the Center for Peace and Justice, Stop the War Machine and Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping, held up signs reading, "Code Orange: WIPP" and "No WIPP trucks through Albuquerque."
They had a brief run-in with an Albuquerque police officer over the signs after they duct-taped some to the bridge. City ordinance prohibits anything from being fixed to an interstate bridge, and the protesters removed the signs to hold them instead.
Stop the War Machine's Bob Anderson had sent an e-mail to the organization's members urging them to gather on the bridge to protest "this appalling disregard for Albuquerque."
Most waste shipments to WIPP enter New Mexico from the north on Interstate 25 at Raton, then travel a sparsely populated route on U.S
. 285 to Carlsbad.
Some protesters gathered Wednesday night outside the Albuquerque office of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. One woman was arrested after allegedly refusing to leave without first speaking with the senator.
The waste traveled through California and Arizona before arriving at 6:46 a.m. Thursday at New Mexico's western port of entry near Gallup.
At the Gallup port of entry, inspectors carrying radiation detectors walked around the rig and its cargo, scanning for leaks. They also conducted a mechanical inspection.
Inspectors found no leaks but did report a couple of loose fender bolts above the trailer's rear axle, said Gary Trujillo, chief inspector at the port for the state Department of Public Safety.
They also found antifreeze leaking from a hose in the tractor, which the rig's driver fixed by tightening a clamp, he said.
"It was just an oversight on our part and it's a minor thing we have to watch," said Cordie Mossier who was driving the rig along with her husband.
Mossier, of Carlsbad, played down the significance of the trip.
"It's our job and we try to do it the best we can, no matter if it happens to be the 100th trip or the 5,000th trip. It would be all the same to us," Mossier said before driving the rig away from the port of entry at 8:30 a.m.
The waste is contaminated with americium-241 -- "mostly alpha emitters, mostly low-level stuff and no beta or gamma radiation," Trujillo said. Americium is produced when plutonium atoms absorb neutrons in nuclear reactors and in nuclear weapons detonations, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Alpha radiation is less penetrating than beta or gamma radiation.
California balked at allowing the shipments in July, but the U.S. Department of Energy and governors from the four states agreed Oct. 9 to allow 40 to 60 shipments this year on the route, Ralph Smith, a WIPP spokesman, has said.
Similar shipments are planned for Jan. 13, 15, 20 and 22, the DOE has said. Shipments are to continue at a similar rate for the rest of 2004.
WIPP is designed to hold defense-related radioactive waste in ancient salt beds 2,150 feet underground.
There have been 2,240 shipments to WIPP from various states during the past five years with no release of radioactivity, Smith said. One shipment was involved in a crash in August 2002, when an allegedly drunken driver hit the rear of a truck. No one was seriously hurt.
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Through film, group seeks to put 'human face on war'
Would-be documentarians seek funds to complete project about Iraqi exile's return home
May Farah
Lebanon Daily Star
January 09, 2004
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/features/09_01_04_c.asp
BEIRUT: They came together from a common desire to spread a message a very different one than was being reported by the US media to make films, and to use the medium of film to spread their message. Nine US-based activists, all students and professors, and the majority Arab-Americans, got together in June and formed a collective called InCounter Productions.
InCounter's first venture was Iraq, and the group's first film is called About Baghdad.
"Iraq was chosen because it was the right project to do, and not simply because of the war, but also because of the country's recent history since the Baathist coup 35 years ago," says Maya Mikdashi, an InCounter founding member who is in Beirut to present the film, and guide the question and answer period after the screening. "We were frustrated with the media coverage in the US. We found it dangerous and offensive," she explains. "There was no human face to the war, and, as a result, a growing insensitivity to the loss of human life, on both sides."
It was out of this aggravation that the group came together.
"We discovered that the democratization of the media means it can and needs to be used by all," says Mikdashi, who is working on her master's degree at Georgetown University, where half of the other group members are also studying and teaching. "Contrary to common perception, it's not that expensive to make film and it's logistically doable. So our frustration resulted in us going out and making a film."
What InCounter has now, in fact, is a 15-minute trailer, which they hope will be at the heart of a feature-length documentary. After five of the group members spent three-and-a-half weeks in Iraq this past July, each at his or her own expense, they returned with about 70 hours of footage.
Through the trailer, which is equal to a short documentary and which has been shown across the United States with plans now to screen it in several Arab countries including Iraq the group is hoping to raise interest, and the necessary funds to complete the film.
At the center of the documentary is fellow activist and Iraqi exile Sinan Antoon, who fled Baghdad in 1991, after the Gulf war. He had not been back to his native country since. Antoon, says Mikdashi, was the vehicle for the film.
"His experiences are the skeleton that everything gets flushed around."
The crew returned to Baghdad with Antoon and shot footage of what he saw, the people he spoke to and his reactions.
"We see the city's destruction and the parts left intact," says Mikdashi. "For example, we see the main library which was entirely looted and where thousands of books were burned."
Now back in the US, where he is a poet and author and a professor of Arabic language and literature at Dartmouth University, Antoon recalls that he had prepared himself for the worst, particularly after hearing many who had already returned before him speak of the "withering of Baghdad."
"But no mental and emotional preparation was sufficient," says Antoon, 36. "I'd been following Iraq's news for years on a daily basis and watching satellite channels throughout the war, but still, it was a shock.
"The Baghdad I saw this past July was a shadow of its old self," he adds. "Aside from the physical withering of the city, the people I'd known looked a century older. The wrinkles were not just on their faces, but in their tired voices and in the sighs that punctuated their complaints."
For Mikdashi and the others, there was a desire to present this often invisible side, particularly women's voices, "who we don't often hear and see anymore," to ask people their views on what's happening, and what has happened during the modern history of Iraq. In short, to go beyond the "myopic" version of events often broadcast in the US and Arab world that often serves simply to pit "us" against "them."
"We are always presented with this stagnant picture, but Iraq is dynamic," she says. "The only victim in all that's happened is the Iraqi people from the coup, through sanctions, war and now occupation. So, we are looking at what has driven these people: the events and the culmination of these events."
The answers they got from Iraqis from all walks of life in the streets, at universities, at cultural events were varied, say both Mikdashi and Antoon. Many people spoke of the effects of the sanctions.
"We are tired,' is the refrain I heard most," says Antoon, who after witnessing the effect of sanctions and war, can only concur. "Even the palm trees I so loved looked tired and thirsty."
"They just want their basic needs water, electricity, food to be met," says Mikdashi.
The team also heard from many that while they are happy to have a "Saddamless Iraq," there is not much else to look forward to.
"Every day is a battle for ordinary Iraqis," says Antoon, via email from the US. "Most basic services have yet to be restored and on top of that, there is no security or safety. There is anarchy everywhere and a real danger of descending into a Lebanese-style civil war."
Saddam may be gone, he adds, but his legacy of violence lives on.
"The violent practices he institutionalized and the socioeconomic disasters he inflicted on Iraqis, while he was supported by the US/UK will take decades to be ameliorated," he says. "Add to this the devastation brought by sanctions and the fact that generations of Iraqis will have to deal with the effects of this last war, with depleted uranium to name just one material reality."
The post-war Iraq they saw, say both Antoon and Mikdashi, was one of destruction and despair. And unfortunately, irony. Irony teetering on the edge of tragedy, that is.
"While America's justification for its war and occupation was to bring democracy to Iraq, it looks like it will not leave before ensuring that its own puppets are in power," says Antoon.
"It's interesting," Mikdashi agrees, "that the US-led occupation is being commanded from the Republican Palace, the same physical space from which Saddam Hussein ruled."
Nevertheless, Antoon says, knowing the resilience of Iraqis, there is hope; there has to be hope.
"They cannot afford total pessimism, because they have to live with what has become of Iraq," he says. "I am reminded of (Italian theorist Antonio) Gramsci's famous quote: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will."
"Iraqis need the support of people around the world," he continues.
"Our film is a modest attempt to make their voices heard."
For more information, visit "http://www.aboutbaghdad.com"
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Pondering War and Peace --
Students try to make sense of an increasingly violent world
Mami Tsukahara
Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer,
January 09, 2004
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20040110woc1.htm
How can humans create peace in the world? Why can't they stop fighting among themselves and killing one another? There are young boys and girls who are struggling to find answers to these eternal questions, which even adults have difficulty answering, seeking reason in the irrational qualities of wars.
"What do you think of Japan's scheduled dispatch of Self Defense Forces personnel to Iraq, now that two Japanese diplomats have been killed there?" Ryuta Ishimura, a third-year student at Hakuyo High School in Yokohama asked the other members of Ajisai, a student group created just in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001 and the U.S. attack against the Taliban.
Nine members of Ajisai, whose purpose is to discuss peace, were exchanging opinions on the situation in Iraq in a classroom after school in early December. It was surprising to see that these young students were thinking seriously and deeply about the Iraqi situation and that some of them were quite well informed about it.
Opinions filled the air.
"If Japan decides not to send SDF personnel because Japanese were killed, other victims (from the other countries) would turn in their graves."
"Japan will be criticized if it only supports (the United States) with money (rather than personnel) again."
"I think, if Japan aims to support Iraqi reconstruction, it can accomplish its purpose without sending the military (SDF)."
"It's ridiculous that the strongest nation says they should not give in to terrorists, who it decided on its own have disrupted the order it thinks it has restored, and that others just obey that country."
"I think people's dissatisfaction causes terrorism, so to solve the problem, what the world should do is listen to the Iraqi people and learn what they want, and not use force to suppress them."
It was after the U.S. attack against the Taliban in 2001 that Ishimura called on his classmates to help raise funds for UNICEF to help the suffering Afghan people. The students involved in that cause decided to continue their efforts to think about world peace by setting up Ajisai, Ishimura said. They have since met almost every Friday to discuss various issues.
Their discussion on dispatching SDF personnel lasted more than two hours, but they did not come to any conclusion or consensus. In fact, that is not what they seek.
"What is important is that each of us thinks about peace and discusses it," said Ishimura, who even visited Iraq in December 2002 to see how the Iraqi people were living under the fear of an imminent U.S. attack. "Talking to each other is the basis of creating peace, and if youth, on whom the world's future depends, seriously discusses the topic, that will make a lot of difference."
There are no statistics on how many or what kind of student groups exist in the nation to discuss peace, said Yoshiko Ishide of the Peace Forum, a nongovernmental organization established in 1999 mainly by labor unions to focus on peace, protection of human rights and the natural environment. However, Ishide said many young people, including middle and high school students, have recently joined peace activities all over the nation, especially after Sept. 11 and the subsequent U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq.
"At peace demonstrations, in which we participate once a month on average, we noticed that more young people who have no affiliation with any of the unions were joining the protests, which was rare before Sept. 11," Ishide said. "Some of them said they had volunteered in activities to help the Afghan people and so became interested in the peace movement."
Maho Shiroki, 18, former vice chair of a peace discussion club at a high school in Machida, Tokyo, is one such student.
"The United States says they are fighting against terrorism, but it seems the number of victims of terrorism has increased rather than decreased since Sept. 11," she said. "I'm afraid if the SDF goes to Iraq it will trigger further terrorism and Iraq will become a more dangerous place."
Shiroki often attends peace demonstrations and discussions held outside her school. Daiki Mizushima, who often joins her in these activities, expressed his opposition against the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
"(Former Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein has done many wrong things, but the United States has no right to kill that many Iraqis only to punish him," Mizushima said. "I'm really sorry for those who are suffering from leukemia caused by depleted uranium shells (used by the U.S. forces during the Gulf War), and I wish we could help them."
Their friend Taito Horie, 16, said: "It seems that Japan is just following the United States. The government should find its own way."
===
Nurturing peace-loving minds
Fuchi Middle School in Nagasaki, about two kilometers southeast of the spot where the atomic bomb was dropped by a U.S. warplane on Aug. 9, 1945, has been holding "peace meetings" on the ninth of every month since 1982 to provide the students an opportunity to think about war, atomic bombs, human rights abuses and other themes concerning world peace. Such issues have special resonance at this school where, according to principal Tsutomu Miyazaki, about a dozen teachers and other school staff were killed by the atomic bomb.
"I can't understand why those two Japanese diplomats, who were in Iraq to help the Iraqi people, were killed by the terrorists," Go Miyano, a 15-year-old Fuchi student, said at a peace meeting. "I wonder if (international activity in Iraq) is really helping the Iraqis, because I think, if it was, this kind of thing would have never happened."
In the meeting on Dec. 9, 130 third-year students gathered in front of the school's "peace zone," an area that encompasses a monument for those killed in the bombing, the school gate from the time of the bombing and other reminders of World War II. There, several students made presentations about the importance of peace.
"I was surprised that the students of this school, compared to those in other prefectures, can think more seriously, listen to people and have their own opinions about war," said Manabu Machida, a teacher at the school who organizes the meetings. Machida previously taught at another middle school in Yamaguchi Prefecture.
The Nagasaki municipal government has placed special importance on peace education for children. It has created a set of three principles of peace education, which stresses that students be taught to pursue peace, as well as the importance of life and international cooperation. For that purpose, the municipal government stipulates that teachers are obliged to attend lectures on peace, and students learn about the war and the atomic bombing by visiting war-related places in the city and listening to survivors.
"Nagasaki is one of only two cities in the world to be struck by atomic bombs," said Mitsuyoshi Furusato of the Nagasaki Municipal Board of Education. "We are determined to incorporate this uniqueness in our education, encouraging the children to think about the importance of peace."
Though the national government stipulates that every school in the nation should educate its students on peace, how much emphasis each school puts on peace education is determined by the school itself, according to Yuichi Sakashita of the Education, Science and Technology Ministry.
"As Nagasaki and Hiroshima are areas that have been hit by atomic bombs, it is natural that schools in those cities provide their students with a thorough peace education," Sakashita said.
The Fuchi school has various other programs to teach students about war and peace, including an annual peace ceremony on Aug. 9, the biggest war-related event of the year.
"At last year's peace ceremony, a retired teacher who was in the school building when the bomb dropped told us about her experience," Miyazaki said.
According to what Miyazaki heard from her, she survived because she had just turned a corner on a corridor at the second the blast hit the school. A colleague, walking just one meter behind her, was killed instantly.
"She is now over 80 years old, and many of the people who can tell us about such experiences have died," Miyazaki said. "We expect our students, in the future, to tell the world what they have heard from these survivors and what they have learned about the importance of peace."
Ken Kobayakawa, secretary general of the Japan Association of Peace Education, established in 1972 to promote peace education, stressed the importance of teaching children about peace as early as possible.
"Peace education is a form of education that aims to create human beings who oppose anything, especially war, that denies people the dignity of life--and who love peace and build peace," Kobayakawa said. "Teaching the importance of peace to children, on whose shoulders the future lies, will ultimately create peace in the world."
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Irish paramilitary weapons to be melted down into US peace fountain
DUBLIN (AFP)
Jan 09, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040109140504.m5f9npby.html
Metal from hundreds of paramilitary weapons seized by Irish police and destroyed Friday will be used to make a peace fountain in the United States, Irish police said.
About 800 guns and rocket launchers seized from criminals and Catholic paramilitary groups, including the Irish Republican Army, were destroyed at a Dublin industrial unit.
"The metal fragments will be melted down and shipped to Ohio in the US for a peace fountain there," said detective inspector Brendan McArdle.
The weapons destroyed included heavy sub-machine guns, machine pistols, Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, a number of rocket launchers, pistols, revolvers and sawed-off shotguns.
"At least some good can come out of them if they are to be used to make the peace fountain," McArdle said, adding that up to 20,000 weapons had been seized from various groups opposed to British rule during Northern Ireland's three decades of sectarian violence.
"It is a very considerable amount of weaponry. We have been destroying them every so often. We have always had the policy of destroying rather than re-cycling weapons," he said.
McArdle said the US peace fountain was part of a campaign in Ohio against gun violence. Cascading water was to symbolise the washing away of old conflicts, such as in Northern Ireland, and the promise of a new beginning.
A similar peace fountain has been made from paramilitary weapons seized by Northern Ireland police in County Derry, northwest of Belfast.
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