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NUCLEAR
How Not to Curb Nuclear Proliferation
Black smoke halts Flats cleanup work
High radioactivity and low security
US nuke facilities fail security tests
We're not a link in nuclear chain, says Malaysia
Scandal of Gulf War guinea pigs
Pakistan, India to enlarge N-stocks: report
AP: Accused Nuke Smuggler Lived Lavishly
Europe's nuclear deal with Iran faces collapse
Iran Ready to Sell Nuclear Fuel Abroad - Kharrazi
The nuclear road from Pakistan to Pyongyang
Bush's desperate steps
Beijing hopes to see tangible results in NKorea nuclear talks
North Korea signals hardline policy toward Japan after talks
U.S. Says N.Korea Atomic Program More Advanced
High radioactivity and low security
'Plutonium Parkway' opponents strategize
Clark sings Kerry's praises
U.S. Trade Deficit Reaches a Record $489.4 Billion
Trade Deficit Hits $489 Billion
MILITARY
Russian general: 'Invasion of Afghanistan was a big mistake'
Afghan Women, Still in Chains
U.S. Soldier Killed in Mine Blast in Afghanistan
Killing of a U.N. Observer in Congo Heightens a Mission's Fears
South Korea Sending 3,000 Troops to Iraq
Ex-Halliburton staff claim company ripped off military
Halliburton Likely to Be a Campaign Issue This Fall
Ex-Halliburton Employee Testifies on Audit
Private U.S. Operatives on Risky Missions in Colombia
Cyprus Greeks and Turks Agree on Plan to End 40-Year Conflict
U.N. Plan For Cyprus Reunification Advances
Belarus isn't dreaming
Iraqi Sanctions and American Intentions: Blameless Carnage?
At Least 21 Killed in Attack in Iraq
Iraqi Party Goes From Exiled to Electable
PA: Israel's absence has no impact on ICJ's authority on fence
Israelis Kill Palestinian in West Bank Raid
Air Force launches rocket carrying missile-detection satellite
Lockheed Martin-Built Titan 4 Launches Defense Support Program Payload
Who oversees our spies? In most cases, nobody
Dispute Prompts Scrutiny of Bush's Daily Reading
The reality of intelligence failures
U.N. Warns Against a Hasty Vote, but Iraqis Address the Issue
U.N. Envoy Seeks 'Credible' Iraqi Vote
Army Suicides Reach 21
Many Gaps In Bush's Guard Records Released
Majority of Iraqi exiles slanted stories
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Senate to Close Intelligence Session
Bush, Clinton Agree to Testify Privately to Panel Probing 9/11
Study Revises Texas's Standing as a Death Penalty Leader
Homeland Security Rethinks Personnel System
NYPD Preparing Strategies for Attacks
Panel Set Up To Hear Pleas Of Detainees
Sting Suspect Stressed Military Prowess
ACTIVISTS
President Aristide's supporters attack demonstrators
British whistle-blower faces prison for exposing U.N. spy efforts
Letter to President Bush on Valentine's Day 2004
-------- NUCLEAR
How Not to Curb Nuclear Proliferation
by Praful Bidwai
February 14, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://antiwar.com/bidwai/?articleid=1969
President George Bush's proposed curbs on the spread of nuclear weapons, outlined at his National Defense University address on Wednesday, and the continuing disclosures about clandestine nuclear transfers from Pakistan to North Korea, Libya and Iran, occasion a good hard look at the murky goings-on in the nuclear world. At the heart of Bush's proposals lies monumental hypocrisy. He wants to limit the number of nations which are allowed to produce and keep fissile materials, and to tighten the inspections regime. This is meant to stop "horizontal proliferation." But he is prepared to do nothing about "vertical proliferation" (multiplication or refinement of existing weapons) or to fulfill the United States' own obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Nor is he willing to roll back his dangerous plans for Ballistic Missile Defence and nuclear "bunker-buster" bombs.
Implicit in Bush's scheme is a distinction between "responsible" and "irresponsible" nuclear weapons-states (NWSs). Thus, the US - and presumably the other four NWSs recognized under the NPT - are "responsible" states, whereas North Korea, Iraq and other "Axis of Evil" states are "irresponsible." Even his distinction is applied inconsistently. Thus, Pakistan, whose chief nuclear expert has confessed to having transferred nuclear components and designs for making nuclear weapons, is not "irresponsible" - simply because of its temporary importance for the US as an ally against Al-Qaeda. However, Saddam's Iraq, which was merely suspected to have mss-destruction weapons (which did not exist), attracts that appellation. But let this pass.
It is in the first place utterly illogical to divide the NWSs into supposedly "responsible" and "irresponsible" states. Possessing weapons of mass destruction and drawing up plans to use them is itself a grave act of irresponsibility. Every single NWS has the criminal intention to kill millions of non-combatant civilians with these weapons. Besides, some NWSs have taken new initiatives in making the world a more dangerous place. For instance, the US will militarize outer space through Ballistic Missile Defence. It is also planning to develop battlefield nuclear weapons, which will further raise the global nuclear danger.
The NWSs have been as deeply involved as the non-nuclear states in nuclear proliferation in direct or indirect ways - as recipients or providers of materials and technology or in condoning transfers. They are all irresponsible in different ways and to different degrees.
In the early years of the Cold War, the USSR and China collaborated on nuclear weapons technology, as did the United States and the United Kingdom. In the 1960s and 1970s, France is believed to have helped Israel acquire a nuclear capability. Israel and apartheid South Africa too collaborated on the Bomb.
Nuclear collaboration between China and Pakistan was reportedly close. India too borrowed, or procured by dubious means, vital ingredients of its nuclear weapons program from the US and Canada, while using materials from sources as diverse as the UK, US, USSR/Russia, Norway, France, China and Canada. Similarly, the US has been indulgent towards the nuclear pursuits of its allies Israel and Pakistan. And India is now keen to collaborate with the US and Israel on nuclear weapons in general and Ballistic Missile Defence in particular.
Pakistan's is only the latest case in this long sordid story of nuclear proliferation. What Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan and his team did is of course condemnable. But so is the charade staged by Pakistan and the United States to pretend that the Pakistan-based nuclear smuggling ring was the work of "individual scientists" driven by "personal greed." Consider the following.
The information that has come to light shows that Khan and his KRL (Khan Research Laboratories) colleagues ran a huge global network - the world's most complex, elaborate and purposive effort ever at beating national and international non-proliferation controls. The ramifications of the network cut across continents, with a factory making centrifuge components in Malaysia, with middlemen from Germany, Sri Lanka, and Holland, with meetings in Turkey and Morocco, and hardware shipments routed through Dubai. Lubricating this network was monumental corruption.
The evidence is so damaging that the clemency granted to Khan doesn't make sense. Khan was complicit in serious offenses, including creating the potential for crimes against humanity. And yet, he has been allowed to keep his ill-gotten wealth.
Ever since last year's leaks suggesting Pakistan had swapped uranium enrichment centrifuges for ballistic missiles from N. Korea, the US has bought Gen Musharaf's line that the illicit commerce was the work of "individual scientists." But after Iran's and Libya's recent disclosures to the International Atomic Energy Agency, it's hard to believe that the secret transfers suddenly stopped when Musharraf took power - despite his reported "four hundred percent assurance."
It's impossible for clandestine nuclear transfers to have occurred out of Pakistan's Kahuta enrichment plant without the consent of the government, in particular, the army-controlled security apparatus. As Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist and nuclear affairs expert from Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University, says: "Since its inception, Pakistan's nuclear program has been squarely under army supervision. A multi-tiered security system was headed by a lieutenant general (now, two) with all nuclear installations and personnel kept under the tightest possible surveillance."
Some years ago, the French ambassador to Pakistan was roughed up when he strayed into an area "several miles from the enrichment facility" - diplomatic immunity notwithstanding. Even Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif couldn't get permission to visit Kahuta.
Pakistan has always consciously traded in nuclear components and technology. Ever since it decided to counter India's nuclear weapons status, announced through the 1974 Pokharan-I explosion, it tried to make up for its technological backwardness by procuring nuclear designs by whatever means. The critical break came in the late 1970s when Khan managed to steal designs for high-speed uranium centrifuges from a Dutch plant. The metallurgist had huge government resources and total freedom from public scrutiny. He bought restricted materials from Western Europe and the US and built the Kahuta enrichment plant. By the late 1980s, Kahuta had produced significant quantities of highly enriched uranium. As Pakistan's nuclear capability grew, so did Khan's personal wealth!
Three different considerations seem to have inspired the sale of Pakistan's nuclear secrets. The rationale for transferring centrifuge designs to Iran reportedly between 1987 and 1991 was probably money. It's hard to believe that helping Shiite Iran was ideologically compatible with the Pakistani Establishment's Sunni ideology. The N. Korean deals were downright commercial. By the late 1980s, Pakistan had a nuclear capability, but no missiles. It bought the "Nodong" from N. Korea, and renamed it "Ghauri." The probable rationale in the Libyan case was personal corruption.
The Pakistani nuclear transfers are "the tip" of a global iceberg, says IAEA director-general Mohamed ElBaradel: "It's obvious that the international export controls have completely failed in recent years. A nuclear blackmarket has emerged, driven by fantastic cleverness. Designs are drawn in one country, centrifuges are produced in another, they are then shipped via a third country and there is no clarity about the end user ... Libya and Iran made extensive use of this network." This operation represents a serious danger of nuclear proliferation.
The danger is not confined to the global blackmarket. Huge quantities of weapons-grade fissile material routinely pass through civilian nuclear facilities the world over. Plutonium, only 5 to 8 kilos of which is enough to make a Nagasaki-type bomb, is annually traded in amounts such as tonnes between Japan and Europe. There are large quantities of MUF (material unaccounted for) in the world's reprocessing facilities. One leaked IAEA report for the 1980s notes MUF enough for more than 20 bombs in one year alone! Then there are the states of the former Soviet Union, which have hundreds of unemployed nuclear technologists and unscrupulous businessmen willing to trade in forbidden material.
Clearly, IAEA inspections cannot take care of all of these sources of leaks. And yet they constitute the sole system of physical controls available on movements of nuclear materials. IAEA safeguards don't even apply to all countries. Therefore, the proliferation danger will remain so long as nuclear weapons and power programs exist. There is no leakproof method of eliminating it - short of global nuclear disarmament and shift to non-hazardous technologies of power generation.
Pakistan's nuclear pursuit cannot be separated from India's. Pakistan's nuclear program has been largely reactive to India's. India too has bought, borrowed and procured by dubious means nuclear materials and technologies from sources as diverse as the UK, US, USSR/ Russia, Norway, France, China and Canada.
The source of the plutonium used in India's 1974 test was spent fuel from CIRUS, a "research" reactor of Canadian design, to which the US donated heavy water. India reneged on its promise to use CIRUS solely for "peaceful" purposes. To escape legal censure, it hypocritically called the 1974 test a "peaceful nuclear explosion." This was a form of cheating too.
Yet, the US today coddles India, just as it coddled Pakistan in the 1980s when it was a "frontline" state against the USSR. According to a BBC documentary, Bush took the CIA off surveillance on KRL. The same myopia is at work again - with one difference. Bush is compounding the original blunder through "vertical proliferation" on the US's part.
-------- accidents and safety
Black smoke halts Flats cleanup work
Workers to undergo mandatory safety reviews on Monday
By Ann Imse,
Rocky Mountain News
February 14, 2004
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_2654319,00.html
The Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant has halted demolition and cleanup work by 3,500 employees for a safety review, after black smoke billowed from a building barely a week after the contractor was fined $500,000 for safety violations.
Department of Energy spokeswoman Karen Lutz said contractor Kaiser-Hill called the "safety pause" on its own. Workers were off Friday, anyway, under the normal every-other-Friday-off work schedule, but they will go into mandatory safety reviews on Monday rather than continue demolition, she said. She did not know how long the delay would continue.
The accident occurred Thursday, when workers filling an underground tunnel with foam smelled smoke.
That location was not contaminated with radioactivity, Lutz said. But it was part of Building 991, which was once used for final assembly of plutonium bomb cores for nuclear weapons, she said.
No flames appeared but black smoke billowed, Lutz said. Rocky Flats firefighters sprayed it with water and "contained it in that area," Lutz said.
"We're not classifying it as a fire," she said, because there were no flames.
Building 991 was due to be demolished next week. Workers were filling up human-sized tunnels underneath with hardening foam to stabilize them because they will remain after the weapons plant has been demolished, Lutz said.
Just a week ago, the Department of Energy fined Kaiser-Hill $522,500 for safety violations that led to the contamination of 10 employees and risked "significant adverse consequences" involving plutonium.
The most dangerous violations involved "significant lack of attention or carelessness" in the storage of weapons-grade plutonium and combustible materials in 2002, the Department of Energy said.
Other violations were connected to three accidents in 2003.
Kaiser-Hill is being paid $7 billion to demolish and clean up the sprawling bomb factory 17 miles northwest of downtown.
It is due to complete the job in 2006.
Asked if DOE is concerned with Kaiser-Hill's repeated safety problems, Lutz said, "DOE is going to continue to challenge Kaiser-Hill."
----
High radioactivity and low security
Scattered across remains of U.S.S.R. are materials to make 'dirty bombs'
By Douglas Birch
Sun Foreign Staff
February 14, 2004
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.radioactive14feb14,0,2432108.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines
SOKHUMI, Abkhazia - It's the stuff from which nightmares are made.
Ignoring the ominous graffiti scrawled on the rusting steel doors - "Radiation! Danger!! Stop! Cancer!" - three men broke into a masonry bungalow at a medical research institute here in May 2002. They fished seven lead-lined capsules out of a containment pool.
The thieves took the containers, shaped like coffee cans, back to a garage, stripped the lead out of at least one, and planned to melt down the metal to make shotgun pellets.
But these were not ordinary canisters. Lerry Meskhi, head of nuclear and radiation safety for the former Soviet republic of Georgia, said they contained a small but potent amount of cesium 137, emitting about 33,000 curies of radioactivity - enough to cause radiation sickness or death.
The three thieves quickly fell ill. Abkhazia's de-facto government - rebels who led a successful revolt against Georgia in 1993 - had the cesium moved to the ruins of a nearby physics institute for safer storage.
But the danger posed by this deadly cache, and thousands of others like it scattered through the former Soviet empire, has by no means disappeared.
When the Soviet Union and its satellite regimes collapsed, Cold War fears of mutual annihilation were replaced by fears that Soviet-era stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium could, through bribery or theft, fall into the hands of rogue states or terrorists.
But those fears now extend to relatively common radioactive materials, including those used in medical research, agriculture and navigation devices.
Cesium 137 and these other common materials can't detonate. But an ounce or so - the weight matters less than the level of radioactivity, measured in curies - could be used to make a "dirty bomb," a conventional high-explosive salted with radioactive matter.
Frightening, costly
Such a device would have no more explosive power than a conventional bomb. But it would spread a cloud of radioactive particles that could cause additional injuries or deaths. It would certainly trigger panic.
A recent study by the U.S. National Defense University in Washington, D.C., estimated that the cleanup after detonation of one large device in Lower Manhattan would cost $40 billion.
No one has ever used a dirty bomb. But after the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan, U.S. troops scouring caves used by al-Qaida discovered the blueprints for one. Justice Department officials said in June 2002 that they had foiled a plot to use such a device in a major American city.
The radioactive ingredients for a dirty bomb can be found in just about every country in the world. But nowhere, it seems, are more of them kept under poor security than in the former Soviet Union.
And probably nowhere in the wreckage of the U.S.S.R. is the material less secure than in Abkhazia and other rebel-controlled bits of post-Soviet states where corruption is endemic, the rule of law weak and smuggling a mainstay of the economy.
If the three Abkhazian thieves had known what they had, they might have tried to smuggle the cesium to Turkey with a shipload of lumber. Or tried to carry it in a car through Georgia and south toward Iran.
In recent years, hunters and farmers in Georgia have stumbled on radioactive devices scattered through the countryside. They have used the hot cores to make hot water or keep them warm while camping in the mountains. This month, the Georgian government said it had found tiny amounts of cesium 137 at 30 gasoline stations across the country, used to measure the level of gas in tanks.
Abkhazia is a breakaway part of Georgia where separatists routed government troops in the fall of 1993, after a civil war that killed 10,000 people.
Today Abkhazia is one of four ethnic enclaves - the others are Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh and Trans-Dniester - to claim independence. Most have become havens for smugglers and criminal groups.
With its palm-fringed beaches, orange groves and sunny Mediterranean climate, Abkhazia seems like a dreamy refuge from the world of war and terrorist threats. That appearance masks a different reality.
The country is carved up among four criminal gangs who smuggle everything from timber and hazelnuts to hashish and stolen cars, according to a draft report by American University's Transnational Crime and Corruption Center. Kidnapping and assassination are common. Police are ineffective.
"The distinction among official security and police forces, criminals [and] various armed formations is totally blurred," the report says.
During the war, the medical research institute in Sokhumi was ransacked. But its radioactive cesium, used in leukemia research, was untouched.
Theft and recovery
The institute's director, Sergei K. Ardzinba, resisted foreign pressure to move the material to a more secure storage site. He hoped, he said in a recent interview, to resume radiological experiments one day.
After the theft and recovery of the cesium in May 2002, Ardzinba relinquished the material. The rebel government moved it to a vault at a former nuclear weapons lab called the Sokhumi Institute of Physics and Technology. There, it was stored with about 240 other samples of radioactive material.
Unfortunately, the Sokhumi physics institute has a poor record of protecting nuclear materials. According to Western experts, in spring 1993 it held between 1.4 and 4.4 pounds of highly enriched uranium, suitable for a nuclear bomb. Sometime after that, nonproliferation experts say, the uranium vanished.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, there have been at least 18 reports of stolen plutonium or highly enriched uranium. But the theft in Sokhumi is unique.
"It represents, to the best of my knowledge, the only confirmed instance of missing or diverted highly enriched uranium or plutonium that was not recovered," said William Potter, a nonproliferation scholar with the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.
For several years after the war with Georgia, Abkhaz officials barred international inspectors from visiting the physics institute. Experts with Russia's atomic energy agency, Minatom, finally gained access in December 1997. They found most buildings vacant. Any highly enriched uranium was gone.
Abkhazian officials insist they haven't lost any nuclear bomb materials. Anatolia I. Markolia, director of Sokhumi's physics institute, says he has no evidence the facility ever had highly enriched uranium. "Nothing went missing during the war," he said.
But most foreign experts believe otherwise. Valter G. Kashia, a former researcher at the institute, said in an interview he personally used 655 grams - 1.4 pounds - of highly enriched uranium at the institute to test designs of nuclear-powered electric generators for spacecraft. Kashia fled Abkhazia in 1992 and now lives in exile in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.
Abkhazia's security chief turned down requests to visit the Sokhumi physics institute and see the vault where the radioactive materials are held.
Lack of security
Nonproliferation experts say they think cesium 137 from the medical research center is still safely stored there. But some still worry about what might happen to the material.
"Even if [radioactive material] is under lock and key and guarded, how reliable is that under the Abkhaz regime?" asked Scott Parish, a proliferation researcher at the Monterey Institute, who has been to Abkhazia.
Vilmos Friedrich, an official with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, helps run that agency's program to clean up radioactive materials in the former Soviet Union. Among the most troublesome regions for regulators, he said, are those where central governments have little or no control.
"Of course, where the political structure is not well established, where smuggling and illicit trafficking of any kind of materials is going on, there is much higher probability that this illicit activity also includes radioactivity," he said.
Georgian authorities have caught several people attempting to smuggle materials that might be used in a dirty bomb. Last May, a taxi driver was caught headed for Tbilisi's main railroad station carrying a trunk loaded with containers of highly radioactive cesium 137 and strontium 90.
A month later, an Armenian man was arrested in a border town, on his way south to the Armenian capital, Yerevan. American-supplied radioactivity detectors set up at the roadside sounded an alarm, and border guards discovered a 4.4-pound disc of uranium hidden a shopping bag filled with tea.
Lt. Gen. Valeri Chkheidze, chief of the Georgian border guards, said Abkhazia's long coastline on the Black Sea makes it difficult to control what goes in and what comes out.
"Contraband is widespread," he said. "Drugs are being trafficked. Where there is no control, it is easy to smuggle radioactive materials as well."
----
US nuke facilities fail security tests
14 February 2004
New Zealand Stuff
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2814612a12,00.html
NEW YORK: Security at two US nuclear weapons facilities has been breached at least three times in mock terrorist drills despite heightened concerns after the September 11 attacks, says CBS news show "60 Minutes".
Security measures failed at the Y-12 nuclear complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee - America's primary source of weapons-grade plutonium - and at Los Alamos National Laboratory near Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to the report to be aired on Monday (NZT).
The scheduled tests showed long-standing security problems had not been adequately addressed despite the new terrorism risk, according to the man who conducted other mock drills for the Department of Energy leading up to the September 11, 2001, assault.
"People should know that the Department of Energy facilities cannot withstand a full terrorist attack. . . a realistic attack, serious, state-sponsored," said Richard Levernier, a former senior DOE nuclear security specialist.
A spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration said the news release for the segment was "misleading at best and irresponsible at worst."
"Our nuclear materials are secure and it's irresponsible to suggest otherwise," said spokesman Anson Franklin, adding: "These tests are designed to find vulnerabilities before someone else does. . . it's wrong to suggest that terrorists could easily penetrate security at these sites."
Levernier said there was a 50 per cent failure rate in the tests of factories and laboratories he conducted.
Chris Steele, the DOE's senior safety official at Los Alamos, said he was in the process of giving the laboratory an "F" grade because of "systematic nuclear safety violations."
The "60 Minutes" report cited other examples of lax security including the disappearance of hundreds of electronic key cards and master keys at nuclear facilities.
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory near San Francisco failed to immediately report its missing keys, while at Sandia National Laboratories near Albuquerque, locks to missing keys had just been replaced after three years, the report said.
"I find it inexplicable and unacceptable that people don't take (security concerns) seriously," NNSA chief Linton Brooks told "60 Minutes."
"And that's why we have been working to fix that problem."
Security at the facilities, however, was "perfectly acceptable," said Brooks. "Safe and no problem are not the same thing."
-------- asia
We're not a link in nuclear chain, says Malaysia
By Mark Baker
Asia Editor Singapore
February 14, 2004
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/13/1076548223284.html
Malaysia has rejected United States attempts to portray the country as a key link in the clandestine nuclear trafficking network allegedly built by disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has challenged a speech by US President George Bush reiterating claims that a Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering, knowingly built components for nuclear centrifuges destined for Libya.
"There is no such thing as Malaysia's involvement. I don't know where he got the evidence... We are not in any way involved, not at all," said Mr Abdullah, who took over as Malaysian leader from Dr Mahathir Mohamad in October.
He also said Malaysian police had found no evidence against Sri Lankan businessman B. S. A.Tahir, described by Mr Bush as "chief financial officer and money launderer" for the Khan network.
US officials claim the interception last year of a shipment of 14 alleged precision nuclear components manufactured by Scomi played an important role in unmasking Libya's secret weapons program and the involvement of Dr Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb.
They allege that B.S.A.Tahir, who is married to the daughter of a former Malaysian diplomat, arranged the manufacture of the components on behalf of a man in Dubai working for Libya.
But Scomi officials insist they had no idea that the components were destined for Libya to assemble centrifuges for uranium enrichment. They say the parts could have had a variety of industrial applications, and they believed they were for use in the oil and gas industry.
While officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency have backed US claims that the components were clearly designed for nuclear use, Malaysian police chief Bakri Omar announced earlier this week that an investigation had cleared the company of wrongdoing.
The issue has been complicated by the fact that Scomi's largest shareholder is Kamaluddin Abdullah, the Prime Minister's son, although he is reported to have no involvement in the management of the company.
Malaysian officials point out that CIA director George Tenet wrongly claimed in a speech two weeks ago that authori-ties had shut down a plant making components for nuclear weapons manufacture - the first public accusation against Scomi.
CIA officials later described the remark as an "editing error" in a speech intended to demonstrate the quality of the agency's work after claims that it bungled intelligence about Iraqi weapons programs used to justify the US invasion.
-------- depleted uranium
Scandal of Gulf War guinea pigs
EXCLUSIVE, UK Sunday Post
By Jackie Bytheway,
February 14, 2004
http://www.sundaypost.com/news1.htm
THE Ministry of Defence breached the Nuremberg Code by carrying out medical tests on soldiers during the first Gulf War.
Injections with a cocktail of drugs were given to thousands of soldiers prior to being sent to the Gulf.
But one medical unit - 205 General Hospital, now 205 Field Hospital, based in Govan, Glasgow - was used for vaccine experiments without being told. Immunisation The Nuremberg Code states that voluntary consent is "absolutely essential" before such experiments are carried out.
Britain is bound by the code yet two of the soldiers in 205GH were unaware they were used as guinea pigs until told by The Sunday Post.
A Government report into the immunisation of soldiers during the first Gulf War states, "HQ British Forces Middle East decided a trial should be conducted at 205 General Hospital to assess how many personnel would suffer severe reactions as a result of plague immunisation before other units in theatre began the administration of plague vaccine.
"The results of the trial would give an indication of the number of personnel who would be affected by severe vaccine reactions."
Tony Flint, who was attached to the unit, added, "We were guinea pigs and we are all pretty angry about it. We had no choice and they had no right to do that to us. It is against the Nuremberg Code. We all assumed this vaccine had been safe and tested out at Porton Down - not on the battlefield."
Symptoms
Tony, from London, has not been able to work for 10 years and is only 56. He attributes all his symptoms to the vaccines he received for anthrax, whooping cough and the plague.
Tony now suffers from a long list of ailments including flu-like symptoms every six to eight weeks and chronic fatigue.
One Glasgow soldier, who served with 205 General Hospital and does not want to be named, said, "There was a lot of peer pressure applied by comrades and senior officers. I wasn't aware of mass testing and if we had been told a lot of people would have refused.
"There were a lot of professional people in 205 such as doctors, nurses and lab technicians and there would have been a full-scale riot if they knew they were being tested."
Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, Malcolm Hooper, said, "It's extremely disturbing that a number of situations in the first Gulf War were clearly experimental without the proper research being carried out." Prof Hooper, who retired from Sunderland University, is now chief scientific advisor to the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association. He said there is clear evidence of damage to the nervous system that he believes has been caused by the injections.
Cold heart
He added, "The veterans are fighting for their lives, sanity and families. They have not received justice, they've been met with a tin ear, cold heart and a closed mind. They are just asking that their health is taken care of properly." Now the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association plan to take legal action against the MoD.
The MoD initially maintained personnel had given informed consent for the injections. But after we disputed their facts, they admitted the immunisations were meant to be voluntary.
However, they accept that when the instruction was passed down the chain of command it may have led to the belief the immunisations were mandatory. An MoD spokesman said, "It appears the voluntary nature of the anti-biological weapons immunisation programme was clearly understood in some cases but not in others."
He added that a combination of leadership by example, peer pressure and lack of clear instructions left some personnel with the belief they could not refuse the immunisations.
"We are holding our hands up. In some cases the Nuremberg Code may have been breached," he added.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan, India to enlarge N-stocks: report
By Rana Mubashir
Saturday February 14, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2004-daily/14-02-2004/main/main11.htm
ISLAMABAD: India and Pakistan should demonstrate responsible stewardship of their nuclear capabilities and New Delhi, in particular, should adopt and implement strengthened export controls.
In the absence of some "new" nuclear understandings, Pakistan and India are likely to enlarge their stocks of fissile material and expand their nuclear arsenals and delivery capabilities which will increase the already dangerous proliferation risks in South Asia as well as the chances for leakage from the region, of sensitive nuclear technology and material.
These were the findings and recommendations made to the US policy makers in the chairmen's report of an Independent Task Force co-sponsored by the US Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society.
The report further said that it is unrealistic to believe that either India or Pakistan will give up this capability or that any conceivable external pressure will be sufficient to convince them to alter their positions. However, the US government needs to think much more searchingly about possible ways to fit India and Pakistan into the global non-proliferation system.
To-date, the Bush administration has not tackled the thorny problem of trying to find a place for India and Pakistan in the international nuclear system. The basic bargain of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - NPT, was that states willing to forego the development of nuclear weapons would be eligible to receive peaceful nuclear cooperation, commerce, and technology and the nations refusing to give up the weapons option would be ineligible for nuclear assistance and trade.
The NPT does not allow for recognition of "new" nuclear weapon states, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act 1978 (NNPA) precludes US nuclear cooperation or commerce with countries, like India, that have not accepted International Atomic Agency safeguards on all their nuclear facilities (so-called full scope safeguards).
The NPT system has become virtually universal, only India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea- since it withdrew from the treaty earlier in 2003, are non-parties to the treaty. Because India and Pakistan both exploded nuclear devices after the January 1, 1968, cut-off date, they are in any case no longer eligible to join the treaty (even in the unlikely event that they chose to do so) unless they destroy their weapons as South Africa did.
In acquiring nuclear weapons, Pakistan's goal was to match the capability that India had demonstrated in 1974 and to provide a deterrent against its neighbour's conventional military superiority. Possession of nuclear weapons has taken the edge off India's conventional arms advantage by raising the stakes any time New Delhi considers military action against Islamabad.
--------
AP: Accused Nuke Smuggler Lived Lavishly
February 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Emirates-Nuclear-Suspect.html?pagewanted=all&position=
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- The Sri Lankan businessman President Bush accused of brokering black-market deals for nuclear technology had a taste for Versace suits and liked to mingle with diplomats and politicians.
At his business, Bukhary Syed Abu Tahir, kept a low profile, leaving daily operations to his brother but making major decisions himself and often meeting privately with clients.
Now he is gone to Malaysia, leaving behind employees stunned by accusations that his Dubai-based SMB Computers was a front for money laundering and illegal nuclear shipments. The company is part of a small-business empire with interests in Pakistan, Iran and Libya, key countries linked to the clandestine weapons network.
Several employees and one former employee of SMB spoke to The Associated Press about Tahir's life and company. None said he had witnessed any wrongdoing, though some who interacted with him daily said he tended to meet alone only with certain business contacts.
All who spoke to AP insisted on anonymity, with those still employed saying they feared being fired for speaking to a journalist.
Their boss could not be reached for comment. Tahir was said to have left town in October with his family. The last time he was seen in public was shortly before that, at gala dinner at a computer exhibition in Dubai, an industry executive said.
Tahir, now in his mid-40s, launched his information technology enterprise from a small, rundown office in Dubai's Deira district in 1988, according to a former employee, who said he was with the company for several years.
Within five years, SMB -- named for Tahir's grandfather Syed Muhammed Bukhary -- was an industry leader, distributing brands including Epson, Palm, Acer and Samsung. Today, the company's headquarters is in the upscale, marbled Al Musalla Tower in the heart of Dubai's commercial district.
Tahir shared his seventh-floor office with his younger brother Syed Ibrahim Bukhary, who ran day-to-day affairs at the company. Tahir stayed in the background yet made all the major decisions.
Employees described Tahir as intelligent and religious, praying late into the night during Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, a practice of devout Muslims.
He also was a bit flamboyant, always well-groomed and favoring designer suits and fast cars. He drove a Mercedes S320 for a while, then a white BMW X5.
Tahir and his Malaysian wife lived with their pre-school-age son in a four-bedroom condo in the chic Majestic Palace, a tinted-windowed building where the ground floor houses expensive boutiques selling gold jewelry, designer clothes and Fendi accessories.
A security guard at the Majestic Palace said Tahir left with his family in October. A close employee said Tahir had gone to Malaysia but returned in November and December for brief visits to the Dubai office.
In Washington on Tuesday, Bush named Tahir a key link in a clandestine network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced father of Pakistan's atomic program who confessed leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Bush described Tahir as the network's chief financial officer, money launderer and shipping agent, ``using his computer firm as cover for the movement of centrifuge parts to various clients.''
Khan and his associates allegedly used a company in Malaysia to make parts for centrifuges -- used to enrich uranium for weapons -- and Bush said front companies deceived legitimate firms into selling the tightly controlled materials.
Revelations about SMB's alleged illegal activities stunned company workers, an employee said. The atmosphere today is tense among the staff of 150 at the company's headquarters, and a week ago, Tahir's name was removed from a company Web site.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Thursday questioned U.S. intelligence on Tahir's alleged role in the network. He acknowledged that Tahir was in Malaysia but said he would not be arrested -- for now. ``He is on his feet and free to move around,'' Badawi said.
Badawi's only son, Kamaluddin Abdullah, also has been implicated in the nuclear proliferation scandal. He is a major shareholder in the Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering, whose factory made parts found in a shipment for Liyba that could be used to enrich uranium.
The factory admits it made 14 semifinished machine components ordered by Tahir, but says it thought the parts were for the oil and gas industry.
Tahir allegedly started ordering the centrifuge components in 2001 for another Dubai-based company, Gulf Technical Industries LLC. The multimillion-dollar contract made GTI Scomi's biggest customer in fiscal 2002, according to Scomi's public financial reports.
GTI's British owner, Paul Griffin, who has a commercial license to trade in pumps, engines, valves and spare parts, was reached Friday in Dubai and denied any wrongdoing.
Griffin said he knew Tahir and Khan as acquaintances, but that his company had never ordered the illicit shipments. Griffin said he had not been contacted by Emirates authorities, or by British or U.S. officials, and that he was corresponding with Scomi to clear his company's name.
At the SMB electronics showroom that allegedly was a front for nuclear black marketeering, the motto is: ``Customers are Kings and Kings Don't Bargain.'' It was business as usual the day after Bush's comments. Newspapers in the Emirates did not report the president's accusations against SMB until four days later.
According to SMB's Web site, it has subsidiaries in Egypt and Kazakhstan and owns Dubai-based Peripherals Gulf Limited, a distributor for American giants Hewlett Packard and Tripplite in the former Soviet states. The possible theft of highly enriched uranium in Kazakhstan and other former Soviet republics has been an ongoing U.S. concern.
A current employee familiar with the company's accounts said he never noticed anything out of the ordinary in SMB's cash flow, such as large, unexplained shipments or money transfers.
The former employee said a female Sri Lankan politician and a retired Pakistani military officer who introduced himself only as Iftikhar, as well as a U.S.-educated Indian engineer who was a go-between for Tahir on his business dealings in Iran, were visitors he always received in private.
The Emirates' government had no comment on the allegations, a spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity, and it was unclear if it would take any action against SMB.
Dubai has been in the crosshairs of U.S. and Western investigators for banking, trade and visa regulations that can be easily abused for money laundering and illicit trade. The recent revelations -- and Bush's fingering of SMB and Dubai -- highlight the rich, freewheeling emirate's role as a center for traders and middlemen running the black market.
Dubai also has been at the center of shady dealings, including illicit money transfers. About half the $250,000 spent on the Sept. 11 attacks was wired to al-Qaida terrorists in the United States from Dubai banks, say officials of the U.S. Treasury and U.A.E. Central Bank. Al-Qaida money in Dubai banks also has been linked to the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
-------- iran
Europe's nuclear deal with Iran faces collapse
Ian Traynor
Saturday February 14, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1148081,00.html
A European agreement with Tehran aimed at settling the Iranian nuclear crisis and hailed as a breakthrough last year is now deadlocked and in danger of collapse.
Senior officials from Britain, Germany and France went to Vienna last week to negotiate with the Iranians and with Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The attempt to break the deadlock failed.
"There was no breakdown, but there was no breakthrough," said a well-informed diplomat. Since the talks aimed at securing a comprehensive freeze of Iran's uranium enrichment activities, further evidence has emerged that Iran is continuing to cover up elements of its nuclear programme despite its claims to have revealed all to the IAEA.
UN inspectors discovered designs for a centrifuge that can produce bomb fuel twice as fast as the machine the Iranians are currently assembling. The centrifuge designs were not reported by the Iranians, and constitute an apparent breach of their commitment to reveal all, although the significance of the finding is being played down by IAEA officials.
The new design is believed to have come from the Pakistani network masterminded by the disgraced scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. Given that the Pakistanis also supplied Libya with a nuclear bomb blueprint, the assumption by IAEA investigators and western intelligence is that the same blueprint was made available to the Iranians.
The Americans, the Europeans, and officials at the Vienna agency are convinced that the Iranians have reneged on the deal.
"We're on a steep downward trajectory on Iran," warned Jon Wolfsthal, the US nuclear analyst and former Clinton administration department of energy official.
While the uranium enrich ment issue is one of the biggest bones of contention, a range of other questions are emerging about Iran despite its delivery in October of what purported to be a full and comprehensive accounting of its 20-year-old nuclear projects.
Questions also remain unanswered about the origins of traces of high-enriched uranium found by inspectors in the Iranian centrifuge equipment. In a study to be published next month, David Albright, the leading US nuclear analyst, says that Iran has still not answered key questions about its nuclear activities.
"Between 1993 and 1995, Iran received through middlemen enough components to build 500 centrifuges," he writes. "As of late January 2004, the manufacturer of these components has not been publicly identified. Iran appears so far to be protecting the supplier of these components."
Once in full swing, Mr Albright predicts, the Iranian centrifuges could be producing 500kg of weapons-grade uranium, or enough for up to 30 nuclear weapons a year.
Last October, Jack Straw and his German and French counterparts, Joschka Fischer and Dominique de Villepin, went to Iran to secure the Tehran declaration, hailed as a breakthrough for Europe and a signal to the Americans that mediation and diplomacy can deliver while bullying and threats can be counter-productive.
The negotiations were "very tense and difficult" and at one stage Mr Fischer threatened to walk out. The bargain struck in Tehran was that Iran would freeze its ambitious and extensive uranium enrichment activities in return for technology transfer for a civilian nuclear programme from Europe's three biggest generators of nuclear power - Britain, France and Germany.
But Dr ElBaradei said the Iranians were continuing enrichment activity and refusing to suspend the building of gas centrifuges, the machines that convert uranium gas into high-enriched bomb fuel or low-enriched fuel for nuclear power stations.
"They maintain the right to assemble centrifuges," he said.
Experts and diplomats fear that Iran is continuing to acquire and perfect a bomb-making capability while technically observing a narrow interpretation of suspending uranium enrichment.
Dr ElBaradei is to report on his inspections in Iran next week ahead of a meeting of the 35-strong IAEA board in Vienna in three weeks' time.
Critics claim that the EU agreement contained a fatal flaw. Agreement was reached on a broad definition of freezing uranium enrichment, but only verbally.
----
Iran Ready to Sell Nuclear Fuel Abroad - Kharrazi
February 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran-fuel.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, his country accused by Washington of secretly developing nuclear arms, said on Saturday the Islamic Republic was ready to sell nuclear fuel to international buyers.
Iran rejects U.S. charges it seeks nuclear weapons and insists it will enrich uranium only to the level needed to fuel power stations and not to higher, weapons-grade purity.
``The Islamic Republic of Iran, as a country that has the potential to produce nuclear fuel, is ready to offerfuel to international markets,'' he told the official IRNA news agency at a Tehran airport after a trip to Italy and the Vatican.
Britain, France and Germany last year persuaded Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and accept snap inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a U.N. watchdog.
Iran insists its suspension of uranium enrichment is a temporary goodwill gesture. Diplomats report Iranian failure to suspend all enrichment-related activities has annoyed France and Britain.
Washington this week upped pressure on Tehran after the IAEA discovered undeclared drawings of centrifuges that can be used to make bomb-grade material.
The United States made clear on Friday it would give Iran more time to disclose its nuclear programs before deciding whether to refer the issue to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
IRAN PLEDGES CO-OPERATION
Western diplomats in Vienna said the drawings showed Tehran had not complied with a demand from the IAEA governing board that it provide a full and truthful account of its entire nuclear program.
But Kharrazi pledged Iranian cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
``The United States is following its own agenda as it did before and intends to put the agency and its governing council under new pressure,'' he said.
The IAEA board meets again on March 8.
-------- korea
The nuclear road from Pakistan to Pyongyang
FEB 14, 2004
SUN Straits Times
By MICHAEL RICHARDSON FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/story/0,4386,235209,00.html
In a televised confession last week, Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan said he had sold nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. More disclosures about the Pakistan-North Korean connection are likely as global efforts intensify to unravel and shut down the nuclear black market. One of these disclosures was made this week when senior North Korean defector Hwang Jang Yop said a top military official in the regime had told him: 'We've solved a big problem. We don't need plutonium this time. Due to an agreement with Pakistan, we will use uranium
WHILE calling for tougher international action to prevent weapons of mass destruction from spreading, United States President George W. Bush spent the first half of his speech on Wednesday focused on one topic: Outlining how US and British intelligence officers had worked over several years to piece together and then expose a nuclear weapons supply chain headed by Pakistani scientist and enrichment specialist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
According to investigators, this nuclear black market involved companies or individuals in at least seven countries, including Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, South Africa, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. The Khan network set up front companies to deceive legitimate firms into selling tightly-controlled materials or items that could be used either for civilian or military purposes, without telling them who the end users would be, said Mr Bush.
But what he did not explain was how the Khan network, which began nuclear weapons trading at least 15 years ago, was able to operate for so long without being detected and shut down by Pakistan and foreign governments.
Still, continuing revelations about the international trafficking in technology and equipment to build nuclear weapons will put added pressure on North Korea to come clean about the full extent of its programme in negotiations that are due to resume in Beijing later this month.
In his televised confession last week, Dr Khan, the scientist who is widely regarded in Pakistan as a national hero because of his work in giving the country a nuclear deterrent, said he had sold nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
According to Pakistani government and intelligence sources, all three countries received equipment over the last 15 years that was either exported illegally from Pakistan or procured abroad by Dr Khan and his associates. It included centrifuges for enriching uranium so that it can be used in nuclear warheads.
In the case of Libya, US officials say that the Pakistan-based supply network provided not just centrifuge systems for making highly-enriched uranium but also warhead designs, although of a relatively crude type.
It is not yet clear whether North Korea also received Dr Khan's blueprint for making a uranium bomb. This is one of the things Washington wants to find out. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Monday that the Pakistan government had done quite a bit to roll up the nuclear weapons supply network. But Mr Powell added that he had told Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf, that 'we wanted to learn as much as we could' about what Dr Khan and the network were up to, 'and it has to be pulled up by its roots and examined to make sure that we have left nothing behind'.
The US has amassed evidence that Pakistan was a key source of uranium enrichment technology and hardware for North Korea, evidently in exchange for North Korean ballistic missiles needed by Pakistan's military to provide a reliable delivery system for its nuclear warheads. With a range of more than 1,000km, the North Korean No-Dong missile enabled Pakistan to target New Delhi and Mumbai - the two main cities of its nuclear rival and long-time adversary, India.
The Federation of American Scientists and other experts have said Pakistan's Ghauri missile series is a copy of North Korea's No-Dong missile. Pakistan has denied this. It also denied this week that it had delivered nuclear technology to North Korea in exchange for missiles. Pyongyang, too, insisted that reports of its nuclear dealings with Islamabad were fabricated.
But more disclosures about the Pakistan-North Korean connection are likely as international efforts intensify to unravel and shut down the nuclear black market. This must worry Pyongyang, which has acknowledged it has a programme to make nuclear weapons from plutonium but refutes reports that it is developing a uranium-based one.
China, too, has refused to accept the US contention that North Korea has a two-track programme. However Beijing's position, which Washington has described as unhelpful, may shift as more evidence comes to light. China's role is crucial because it is by far the largest foreign supplier of fuel and food to North Korea and is hosting the six-party talks that resume on Feb 25.
The other participants are the US, Russia, Japan and South Korea. American insistence, based on intelligence, that North Korea was pursuing uranium enrichment for bomb making triggered the current nuclear crisis in October 2002.
The US case was buttressed this week when a senior North Korean defector told a Japanese newspaper that the North had launched its uranium-based programme in 1996 with the help of Pakistan. Mr Hwang Jang Yop, a former mentor to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, said in an interview with the Tokyo Shimbun that, not long before he escaped to South Korea, a top military official told him about the deal with Pakistan.
'Jon Pyong Ho came to me, as the person responsible for international affairs, asking: 'Can we buy some more plutonium from Russia or somewhere? I want to make a few more nuclear bombs,' ' the newspaper quoted Mr Hwang as saying. 'But then, before the fall of 1996, he said, 'We've solved a big problem. We don't need plutonium this time. Due to an agreement with Pakistan, we will use uranium.' '
Mr Jon is a member of North Korea's National Defence Committee and a secretary of the country's ruling Workers' Party. Mr Hwang, who defected in 1997, was a former chief of North Korea's legislature.
# The writer, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies in Singapore. This is a personal comment.
----
Bush's desperate steps
2004.02.14
Korea Herald
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2004/02/14/200402140018.asp
President George W. Bush's proposed new steps to halt illicit nuclear trafficking through multilateral efforts must be a move to boost his national security credentials, now a key issue in his reelection campaign. But the initiative will also further pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions.
The recent revelation of black-market dealings by the architect of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program offered Bush the opportunity to renew his nonproliferation appeal to the world.
Bush also gave his backing to U.S. intelligence agencies, under fire for misjudgments in Iraq, praising their role in exposing the secret Pakistani nuclear deals with Iran, Libya and North Korea. But he conveniently overlooked the fact that this "major success" of the U.S. intelligence apparatuses came only after the three countries had completed their transactions with the network operated by Abdul Qadeer Kahn.
President Bush publicly accused Kahn's private network of supplying North Korea with the centrifuge technology needed to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Probably in view of Pyongyang's persistent denial of an HEU program, Bush stressed the need for a complete ban on both uranium enrichment and the reprocessing of spent fuel rods to obtain plutonium.
By now, it has become apparent that nuclear non-proliferation is to be a key area in the campaign debates in the United States this year, and that North Korea will be a focus of the discussion. The U.S. delegation to the Beijing six-party talks later this month will undoubtedly take a hard-line stance against North Korea to convince the U.S. electorate of the administration's unwavering determination toward nonproliferation.
Yet, Pyongyang will be seeing from the Pakistan's experience a most tempting model of establishing a nuclear deterrent on its own. With President Pervez Musharraf, Washington did everything to curry his favor, even overlooking the question of what the Pakistani military leadership, including Gen. Musharraf, was doing while Dr. Kahn was running his nuclear peddling business for years.
We cannot predict what will happen in the Beijing multilateral talks opening on Feb. 25. During the past six-month interval since the previous Beijing session, significant revelations have been made concerning Iran and Libya's nuclear programs and on the "non-existence" of WMD in Iraq.
Only North Korea's programs remain "sealed" in the nonproliferation process. The forthcoming session will be a last chance for North Korea to make a choice between the different courses taken by the three Islamic nations.
----
Beijing hopes to see tangible results in NKorea nuclear talks
SEOUL (AFP)
Feb 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040214081657.ex0kutug.html
A senior Chinese official expressed hope on Saturday that upcoming multilateral talks would produce "tangible" progress toward defusing the 16-month stand-off over North Korea's nuclear programme.
Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who is to chair the six-way talks in Beijing beginning on February 25 to resolve the nuclear crisis, also called for patience in pursuing a peaceful resolution of the issue through dialogue.
"Following six months of preparation, the conditions are ripe for holding the six-nation talks," Wang said after talks with Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-Hyuck here on Saturday.
"China hopes that the participants hold substantial talks to produce tangible results," he said.
The United States is seeking verifiable pledges from North Korea to eliminate not only its plutonium reprocessing programme but also a highly enriched uranium programme that Washington claims Pyongyang is developing.
North Korea denies the existence of any uranium enrichment programme.
It has offered to freeze its plutonium reprocessing -- which had been mothballed under a 1994 deal before the crisis was rekindled in October 2002 -- in return for economic gains.
It said it was willing to move on to further talks on removing its nuclear programmes entirely. The first round of six-nation talks in August last year in Beijing produced little results.
Wang called for joint efforts by South Korea and the host, China, to ensure that the next meeting was a success.
"China has a firm position that all the countries concerned must be persistent in pursuing a peaceful resolution of the issue, no matter what difficulties lie ahead," he said.
After arriving here Friday, Wang told journalists that North Korea wants "detailed and practical discussion" at the Beijing talks and seeks to make the meeting a fruitful one.
He also said North Korea was ready to do likewise if other participants showed flexibility at the talks.
He said the talks must also properly address "the reasonable interest of North Korea," a close ally of China.
But analysts in Seoul predicted rough sailing at the talks.
Political science professor Lee Chul-Ki of Dongguk University said North Korea felt it was necessary for the momentum of dialogue to be maintained until the end of the US presidential election in November.
"North Korea will play for time until then and seek new negotiations from scratch. Both North Korea and the United States will maintain the status quo while seeking to avoid worsening the situation," he said.
Chun Hyun-Jun of the Korea Institute for National Unification agreed.
"It is hard to expect any substantial outcome from the talks. North Korea is trying to make out where the US presidential poll is going while Washington has no mind to hurry," Chun said.
Wang, who is China's point man on North Korea, arrived here Friday from Tokyo for a three-day visit for talks with South Korean officials ahead of the nuclear crisis talks.
----
North Korea signals hardline policy toward Japan after talks
TOKYO (AFP)
Feb 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040214110353.cf29iqrp.html
North Korea has condemned Tokyo's de facto sanctions against it and rejected a request for the return of Japanese citizens it had kidnapped, an official said Saturday after talks between the two sides.
During last week's talks, Pyongyang criticised Japan's approval of a bill making it easier to block cash remittances to North Korea, a foreign ministry spokesman said in a report after the Japanese delegation had left the country.
It said Tokyo was "resorting to its moves to stifle" North Korea, the official said in the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) report.
Japan's parliament passed the legislation on Monday last week in a bid to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions and resolve a row over its abductions of Japanese citizens to train its spies.
It is believed hundreds of millions of dollars are transferred from Japan to North Korea, mainly by pro-Pyongyang ethnic Koreans or sympathisers, providing a financial lifeline for a country that suffers chronic food shortages but maintains a heavily armed military.
The Japanese delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka, returned to Tokyo late Saturday from Pyongyang, where they raised the abductions and the nuclear issue ahead of six-nation crisis talks on the stand-off.
Tokyo wants Pyongyang to allow visits to Japan by relatives in North Korea of five Japanese who were abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.
The five were allowed to visit Japan in 2002 but refused to return to North Korea.
Tokyo also wants more information on 10 other abducted Japanese nationals whom Pyongyang said were dead or missing.
However, the North Korean official dismissed the requests, adding that if Japan raised the abduction issue at the next round of the six-way talks on its nuclear program, North Korea will "resolutely shut out Japan's participation in the talks."
Pyongyang has agreed to hold a second round of six-nation talks on February 25 in Beijing to defuse tensions over its nuclear weapons drive.
The first round of multilateral talks, which brought together the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China, took place in Beijing in August last year.
The spokesman said that during the talks with the Japanese officials, the North reiterated its proposal that financial and diplomatic support be provided to Pyongyang in return for the freeze of its nuclear arms programs.
The proposal will "be beneficial to the Japanese side, too," the spokesman added.
The spokesman also said the North "strongly urged Japan to fully apologize and compensate for its crimes such as forcibly drafting more than 8.4 million Koreans during its colonial rule and military occupation over it in the past."
Korea was under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945. Japan has never had diplomatic ties with North Korea, created when the Korean peninsula was divided into the capitalist South and communist North in 1945.
--------
U.S. Says N.Korea Atomic Program More Advanced
February 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-usa-north.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A key covert North Korean nuclear program may be more advanced than the United States had believed, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said on Friday, citing a recent confession by a Pakistani scientist that he sold nuclear technology to Pyongyang.
``... the recent confession of Pakistan's A.Q. Khan suggests that if anything, the North Korean HEU (highly enriched uranium) program is of longer duration and more advanced than we had assessed,'' Kelly said.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arms program, said this month he had sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Libya and Iran.
North Korea dismissed the confession as a lie cooked up by Washington to justify an invasion of the communist state.
``We are confident that our intelligence in this matter is well-founded,'' Kelly said in a speech two weeks before the start of a new round of six-party talks to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis.
He did not elaborate on this charge in his prepared remarks at a conference hosted by the Korea Economic Institute and other groups and later refused to answer questions.
But he said Washington now believes Pyongyang is more wedded than ever to its nuclear ambitions.
``As we now see it, maintaining a nuclear arsenal apparently has become a core, not peripheral, element of North Korea's national defense strategy,'' he said.
This is likely to trigger reaction from administration critics who have complained that President Bush delayed too long in launching serious negotiations, allowing Pyongyang to continue work on its various nuclear programs.
SECRET PROGRAM
The current crisis was triggered in October 2002 when the United States confronted the North about a secret program for enriching uranium, which can produce fuel for nuclear bombs.
This was in addition to a separate program for producing plutonium, the other type of nuclear fuel, that was frozen under a 1994 U.S.-North Korea accord but has since been resumed.
North Korea acknowledged the highly enriched uranium program during that October 2002 meeting, according to U.S. officials, but now denies its existence.
Kelly said the change of heart resulted when the North realized the admission was ``a major tactical error that was resulting in massive international criticism.''
After months of maneuvering, talks on the crisis hosted by China and involving the United States, South Korea, Russia, Japan and the North, start in Beijing on Feb. 25.
Kelly reiterated Washington's insistence that Pyongyang end its nuclear programs.
``North Korea needs to make a strategic choice -- and make it clear to the world as Libya has done -- that it will abandon its nuclear weapons and programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner,'' Kelly said.
Libya in recent weeks agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Kelly's speech was not without comments designed to encourage Pyongyang.
He said Libya's case proves the North can dismantle its nuclear programs ``as a sovereign country'' and gave assurances that this will not be a hard task once the North has made the fundamental decision to do so.
Kelly reiterated a U.S. commitment to a diplomatic solution and said the negotiating team he leads at the Beijing talks will ``listen carefully and respond to all positions.''
``We and other the other parties realize that moving away from isolation and estrangement toward openness and engagement will be a major undertaking and we are willing to help ... There is a chance for redemption,'' he said.
-------- russia
High radioactivity and low security
Scattered across remains of U.S.S.R. are materials to make 'dirty bombs'
By Douglas Birch
Baltimore Sun Foreign Staff
February 14, 2004
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.radioactive14feb14,0,2432108.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines
SOKHUMI, Abkhazia - It's the stuff from which nightmares are made.
Ignoring the ominous graffiti scrawled on the rusting steel doors - "Radiation! Danger!! Stop! Cancer!" - three men broke into a masonry bungalow at a medical research institute here in May 2002. They fished seven lead-lined capsules out of a containment pool.
The thieves took the containers, shaped like coffee cans, back to a garage, stripped the lead out of at least one, and planned to melt down the metal to make shotgun pellets.
But these were not ordinary canisters. Lerry Meskhi, head of nuclear and radiation safety for the former Soviet republic of Georgia, said they contained a small but potent amount of cesium 137, emitting about 33,000 curies of radioactivity - enough to cause radiation sickness or death.
The three thieves quickly fell ill. Abkhazia's de-facto government - rebels who led a successful revolt against Georgia in 1993 - had the cesium moved to the ruins of a nearby physics institute for safer storage.
But the danger posed by this deadly cache, and thousands of others like it scattered through the former Soviet empire, has by no means disappeared.
When the Soviet Union and its satellite regimes collapsed, Cold War fears of mutual annihilation were replaced by fears that Soviet-era stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium could, through bribery or theft, fall into the hands of rogue states or terrorists.
But those fears now extend to relatively common radioactive materials, including those used in medical research, agriculture and navigation devices.
Cesium 137 and these other common materials can't detonate. But an ounce or so - the weight matters less than the level of radioactivity, measured in curies - could be used to make a "dirty bomb," a conventional high-explosive salted with radioactive matter.
Frightening, costly
Such a device would have no more explosive power than a conventional bomb. But it would spread a cloud of radioactive particles that could cause additional injuries or deaths. It would certainly trigger panic.
A recent study by the U.S. National Defense University in Washington, D.C., estimated that the cleanup after detonation of one large device in Lower Manhattan would cost $40 billion.
No one has ever used a dirty bomb. But after the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan, U.S. troops scouring caves used by al-Qaida discovered the blueprints for one. Justice Department officials said in June 2002 that they had foiled a plot to use such a device in a major American city.
The radioactive ingredients for a dirty bomb can be found in just about every country in the world. But nowhere, it seems, are more of them kept under poor security than in the former Soviet Union.
And probably nowhere in the wreckage of the U.S.S.R. is the material less secure than in Abkhazia and other rebel-controlled bits of post-Soviet states where corruption is endemic, the rule of law weak and smuggling a mainstay of the economy.
If the three Abkhazian thieves had known what they had, they might have tried to smuggle the cesium to Turkey with a shipload of lumber. Or tried to carry it in a car through Georgia and south toward Iran.
In recent years, hunters and farmers in Georgia have stumbled on radioactive devices scattered through the countryside. They have used the hot cores to make hot water or keep them warm while camping in the mountains. This month, the Georgian government said it had found tiny amounts of cesium 137 at 30 gasoline stations across the country, used to measure the level of gas in tanks.
Abkhazia is a breakaway part of Georgia where separatists routed government troops in the fall of 1993, after a civil war that killed 10,000 people.
Today Abkhazia is one of four ethnic enclaves - the others are Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh and Trans-Dniester - to claim independence. Most have become havens for smugglers and criminal groups.
With its palm-fringed beaches, orange groves and sunny Mediterranean climate, Abkhazia seems like a dreamy refuge from the world of war and terrorist threats. That appearance masks a different reality.
The country is carved up among four criminal gangs who smuggle everything from timber and hazelnuts to hashish and stolen cars, according to a draft report by American University's Transnational Crime and Corruption Center. Kidnapping and assassination are common. Police are ineffective.
"The distinction among official security and police forces, criminals [and] various armed formations is totally blurred," the report says.
During the war, the medical research institute in Sokhumi was ransacked. But its radioactive cesium, used in leukemia research, was untouched.
Theft and recovery
The institute's director, Sergei K. Ardzinba, resisted foreign pressure to move the material to a more secure storage site. He hoped, he said in a recent interview, to resume radiological experiments one day.
After the theft and recovery of the cesium in May 2002, Ardzinba relinquished the material. The rebel government moved it to a vault at a former nuclear weapons lab called the Sokhumi Institute of Physics and Technology. There, it was stored with about 240 other samples of radioactive material.
Unfortunately, the Sokhumi physics institute has a poor record of protecting nuclear materials. According to Western experts, in spring 1993 it held between 1.4 and 4.4 pounds of highly enriched uranium, suitable for a nuclear bomb. Sometime after that, nonproliferation experts say, the uranium vanished.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, there have been at least 18 reports of stolen plutonium or highly enriched uranium. But the theft in Sokhumi is unique.
"It represents, to the best of my knowledge, the only confirmed instance of missing or diverted highly enriched uranium or plutonium that was not recovered," said William Potter, a nonproliferation scholar with the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.
For several years after the war with Georgia, Abkhaz officials barred international inspectors from visiting the physics institute. Experts with Russia's atomic energy agency, Minatom, finally gained access in December 1997. They found most buildings vacant. Any highly enriched uranium was gone.
Abkhazian officials insist they haven't lost any nuclear bomb materials. Anatolia I. Markolia, director of Sokhumi's physics institute, says he has no evidence the facility ever had highly enriched uranium. "Nothing went missing during the war," he said.
But most foreign experts believe otherwise. Valter G. Kashia, a former researcher at the institute, said in an interview he personally used 655 grams - 1.4 pounds - of highly enriched uranium at the institute to test designs of nuclear-powered electric generators for spacecraft. Kashia fled Abkhazia in 1992 and now lives in exile in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.
Abkhazia's security chief turned down requests to visit the Sokhumi physics institute and see the vault where the radioactive materials are held.
Lack of security
Nonproliferation experts say they think cesium 137 from the medical research center is still safely stored there. But some still worry about what might happen to the material.
"Even if [radioactive material] is under lock and key and guarded, how reliable is that under the Abkhaz regime?" asked Scott Parish, a proliferation researcher at the Monterey Institute, who has been to Abkhazia.
Vilmos Friedrich, an official with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, helps run that agency's program to clean up radioactive materials in the former Soviet Union. Among the most troublesome regions for regulators, he said, are those where central governments have little or no control.
"Of course, where the political structure is not well established, where smuggling and illicit trafficking of any kind of materials is going on, there is much higher probability that this illicit activity also includes radioactivity," he said.
Georgian authorities have caught several people attempting to smuggle materials that might be used in a dirty bomb. Last May, a taxi driver was caught headed for Tbilisi's main railroad station carrying a trunk loaded with containers of highly radioactive cesium 137 and strontium 90.
A month later, an Armenian man was arrested in a border town, on his way south to the Armenian capital, Yerevan. American-supplied radioactivity detectors set up at the roadside sounded an alarm, and border guards discovered a 4.4-pound disc of uranium hidden a shopping bag filled with tea.
Lt. Gen. Valeri Chkheidze, chief of the Georgian border guards, said Abkhazia's long coastline on the Black Sea makes it difficult to control what goes in and what comes out.
"Contraband is widespread," he said. "Drugs are being trafficked. Where there is no control, it is easy to smuggle radioactive materials as well."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
'Plutonium Parkway' opponents strategize
by Jonathan Ellis
Saturday, February 14, 2004
Canyon Courier
http://www.canyoncourier.com/articles/2004/02/12/news/news10.txt
GOLDEN - Opponents of a proposed toll-way that would slice the city of Golden in half say they are preparing to fight round four.
This fight may turn out to be a brutal cage match in which only one combatant walks out alive.
Last year, Gov. Bill Owens announced that the state would build the "missing link" to a metro-wide beltway. The proposal would connect C-470 at Interstate 70 in Golden with Interstate 25 in Broomfield.
Plans for a beltway circling metro Denver date back to the 1960s.
But a group of citizens from Golden and the mountains have plans of their own. And those plans don't include a beltway.
"This issue is a big one, especially for Golden, but also for a large area in the Denver-metro area," said Sierra Club member Alan Streater.
Streater spoke to a group of about 25 beltway opponents Monday night at the American Mountaineering Center.
The proposed highway would most likely be a toll road running through northern Jeffco near Rocky Flats, where the federal government produced plutonium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Government officials call it the Northwest Corridor, but opponents have dubbed it the "Plutonium Parkway."
The beltway would make it easier for people in Broomfield, northern Arvada and other cities to flood the mountains.
This isn't the first time that officials have tried to build the beltway's northwest section. In 1989 voters in Jefferson, Boulder and Adams counties defeated a similar proposal in a special election. That was round one.
Since then, opponents have fought against the beltway during a transportation study in the mid-1990s and again in the 2001 Northwest Quadrant Feasibility Study - a $600,000 review suggesting that traffic congestion could be alleviated by improving existing roads rather than building a highway.
Edie Bryan, a former Lakewood City councilwoman and an organizer against the 1989 measure, said beltway opponents can win this round by using some of the same tactics they employed in 1989.
"There are some things that happened that might be useful to today's situation," Bryan said.
She recommended that opponents organize, solicit money and attend every public meeting in which the project is discussed.
An Environmental Impact Statement is currently being conducted. The process will study where the toll-way should go and determine its impact on the environment and existing communities.
Tom Atkins, a member of Citizens Involved in the Northwest Quadrant, criticized the environmental study, saying its scope is too narrow. He also believes citizens don't have enough input.
Atkins vowed that opponents would remain energized during the environmental study, which won't be completed until the end of the year.
"It's another round of the same thing. And it's for the same reasons," he said.
-------- us politics
Clark sings Kerry's praises
February 14, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040213-091632-1732r.htm
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 -- Retired general Wesley Clark Friday went to Wisconsin to endorse Sen. John Kerry, the man who kept beating him in the Democratic presidential race.
The former NATO Supreme Commander dropped out of the primary campaign this week and lost no time in throwing his weight behind the Massachusetts senator who won two more primary contests in Tennessee and Virginia this week.
"I ask you to join me in standing up for an American who has given outstanding service to his country in peace and war -- John Kerry," Clark said in Madison, Wisconsin. "The Army's come on board," he added.
"I will do everything I can to help make sure George W. Bush doesn't get away with playing politics with national security," Clark said.
Clark's rapid and extremely warm endorsement of Kerry raised the possibility that he might be willing to run with Kerry as the vice presidential candidate. It would be the first time in U.S. history that two U.S. Vietnam veterans had ever shared the presidential ticket of a major party.
--------
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
U.S. Trade Deficit Reaches a Record $489.4 Billion
February 14, 2004
By ELIZABETH BECKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/business/worldbusiness/14trade.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 - The United States trade deficit soared to a record of $489.4 billion last year, according to a federal report released on Friday, raising concerns about the problems such a large gap could create.
The deficit, which is the difference between the value of foreign goods and services purchased in this country and the amount of American goods and services sold overseas, is now the largest in history.
As a percent of gross domestic product, the goods and services deficit increased to 4.5 percent from 4 percent in 2002.
Despite a variety of reactions to some of the underlying patterns in the trade report, concern about the size of the deficit was almost uniform.
"This is not only a record, it is a record by a great deal," said Richard J. DeKaser, an economist at National City Corporation.
"We are developing a great reliance on foreign capital to pay for our debt," Mr. DeKaser said, "and it is clear that foreigners are losing confidence, that there is a greater reluctance to finance our trade deficit."
To finance its trade deficits, the United States has been borrowing record amounts from foreign investors and banks. The risk is that foreign investors could balk at continuing to lend the money needed just to finance that deficit. That has not been a problem so far amid very low interest rates.
The International Monetary Fund warned in a report last month that, given the ballooning trade deficit, the United States risked a loss in foreign confidence and that a quick, uncontrolled drop in the dollar could upset world markets.
The danger, according to the I.M.F. report, is that America's voracious appetite for borrowing could push up global interest rates and thus slow global investment and economic growth.
Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, added his voice to these concerns, telling the House Committee on Financial Services earlier this month that "given the already substantial accumulation of dollar-denominated debt, foreign investors, both private and official, may become less willing to absorb ever-growing claims on U.S. residents."
The persistent rise in the trade deficit has confounded experts.
It shot up during the recent recession and even accompanied the decline in the dollar, which fell 14 percent against a trade-weighted basket of 40 currencies.
Traditional economic theory holds that such events should trim a trade deficit.
"The easy answers of slower growth or letting the dollar decline aren't working, so the crisis is much deeper," said Robert L. Borosage, director of the Campaign for America's Future, a liberal public policy group. "You can't sustain a deficit of 5 percent of your G.D.P. indefinitely."
The 2003 trade gap included the poorest performance ever in goods. The deficit for goods was $549.4 billion, the highest on record. Services, which is the brightest side of the trade balance, showed a surplus of $60 billion, but the smallest surplus since 1992.
Robert E. Scott, director for trade studies at the Economic Policy Institute, said the human consequences of the rising trade deficit could be seen in the reconfiguration of the job market.
"As a consequence of the trade deficit," Mr. Scott said, "people are being pushed out of well-paying jobs with benefits in manufacturing and into the poor-paying service jobs, often with no benefits."
The United States deficit with China rose to a record $124 billion and to $94.3 billion with the European Union. It shrank by $4 billion with Japan, to $66 billion.
The deficit with China received the most attention. Imports from China are 5.7 times the value of American exports to China, a gap that many experts say is caused by China's refusal to float its currency and to allow the price of its exports to rise.
For the month of December, the trade gap widened by 11 percent. Imports rose by 3 percent and were led by purchasers of capital goods and industrial materials.
Several economists found reason for optimism in the December report saying that the weaker dollar was boosting exports as expected.
Manufactured exports increased 3 percent last year after two years of decline.
"With the value of the dollar now at its 30-year average and economic growth picking up abroad, I expect growing export opportunities," said David Heuther, chief economist of the National Association of Manufacturers.
For the full year, United States imports rose by $98.3 billion from 2002, with industrial supplies, petroleum products, consumer goods and capital goods leading the list.
Exports grew by $30.9 billion, with industrial supplies, consumer goods, foods, feeds and beverages accounting for the increase.
--------
Trade Deficit Hits $489 Billion
Widening Gap Triggers Further Debate on Job Losses Overseas
By Jonathan Weisman and Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, February 14, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40854-2004Feb13?language=printer
The U.S. trade deficit reached a record $489 billion in 2003, the Commerce Department announced yesterday, adding fresh fuel to a political fight that has flared all week over the loss of jobs to international competition.
The gap was widened by Americans' endlessly expanding appetite for foreign cars, consumer electronics, clothing and furniture. Although exports grew 4.5 percent last year, to $1.018 trillion, imports rose 8.3 percent, to $1.507 trillion. In December alone, the deficit rose by 11 percent from November.
"At the end of the day, the trade deficit reflects the fact that Americans are better shoppers in the world economy than other people," said Neal Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse First Boston. "We buy more from ourselves and from other countries, while people in other countries don't buy as much from themselves or from us."
But while the trade report showed the robust growth in U.S. consumption, it also provided a stark reminder of problems on the economy's productive side -- in particular, the lack of employment growth, which is attributable in part to the loss of jobs to foreign competition. Controversy over that issue was stoked Monday, when President Bush's top economist said that the migration of service jobs overseas "is just a new way of doing international trade." On Wednesday, N. Gregory Mankiw issued a statement saying he had been "misinterpreted." He added: "It is regrettable whenever anyone loses a job."
The emergence of "outsourcing" as a potent political issue has been swift. Democrats on Thursday introduced what they called the Jobs for America Act, which would require companies moving jobs overseas to give employees three months notice and to disclose how many jobs would be affected, where they are going and why. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y) took to the Senate floor to demand that her colleagues repudiate the comments of Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. Then yesterday, the White House Office of Management and Budget announced an initiative to roll back regulations that the administration says have raised the cost of manufacturing in the United States.
The political reaction has stemmed from growing voter sentiment that U.S. workers are losing ground to their low-cost competitors, especially in China and India. The University of Michigan yesterday reported an unexpectedly large drop in consumer sentiment, at least in part because of concerns over slow job growth and positions migrating abroad. The trade deficit figures only triggered a new round of recrimination. Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, said the deficit was a sign of national economic decline.
"This is not the way of a great nation," he said. "This is not our America."
The issue is especially potent more than two years into an economic recovery that has yet to generate substantial job growth.
"Economies and labor markets are dynamic things, with lots of growing and shrinking going on, and people really feel that at a time when we've lost over 2 million jobs," said Jeffrey Frankel, a Harvard economist and former member of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. "In the 1990s, we had a lot of this outsourcing going on, and that did hurt some sectors of the economy, but other sectors were rapidly expanding. And what we're missing now is other sectors that are rapidly expanding, at least in terms of employment."
The trade deficit worries economists because it is such a large percentage of the overall economy -- about 4.5 percent of gross domestic product -- and the United States collectively has to borrow roughly that amount from foreigners to pay for the surfeit of goods purchased from abroad.
The growing reluctance of foreigners to continue pouring money into the United States on such a vast scale is evident in the fall of the U.S. dollar against other currencies, which began in early 2002 and has picked up speed in recent months. If foreigners holding U.S. Treasury bonds and other assets suddenly decided to unload them en masse, the damage to the U.S. economy could be enormous. And even if the dollar's decline is gradual, that will adversely affect U.S. living standards, because it will increase the cost of the imported products.
Yesterday's report contained some good news on that front, however -- evidence that the falling dollar, which makes U.S. goods cheaper on world markets, is starting to boost exports.
In the fourth quarter, exports rose 19 percent in volume terms, noted Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm. "The falling dollar has already made our exports much more competitive worldwide," Behravesh said. "And we expect the dollar to continue falling, so that will continue to provide a boost to employment."
Still, the trade debate has risen to the top of the economic agenda in the presidential campaign, and driven Democrats toward a more protectionist stance than the party held when Clinton was president.
Clinton's policies emphasized job training and education to help the victims of free trade find new work. But a shift is in order, said Gene B. Sperling, the former chairman of Clinton's National Economic Council, since many of the jobs moving to India, such as software writing and computer technical support, are precisely the ones Clinton aides thought unemployed factory workers would get.
At least, Sperling said, the government should subsidize the kind of infrastructure expansions that are heavily underwritten by the governments of India and China.
"One may not be able to control whether wages are lower in Bangalore than Buffalo, but you could make sure broadband access isn't better there," he said.
The swift change in the political climate may be taking a very real toll on legislation. Congress faces a March 1 deadline to repeal export subsidies ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization or face retaliatory sanctions from the European Union. In the heated political atmosphere, lawmakers are not about to pass legislation that would raise taxes on manufacturers without measures to more than offset that pain. But Senate Republicans -- and many of their House colleagues -- are at loggerheads with House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) over just what those sweeteners would be.
Legislation approved by the House committee in the fall would provide up to $60 billion in tax breaks to business, some to domestic manufacturers but others to multinational corporations, many of which have taken advantage of cheaper business conditions overseas, critics say. Last year, 40 House Republicans said they would oppose the measure as a job killer, and those ranks have likely swelled to 100, said a Republican tax lobbyist with close ties to the GOP leadership.
"Thomas's bill is nowhere," he said.
Thomas aides said they are actually winning support for their approach in the House, but they conceded that the scrap over Mankiw's comments hurt the cause.
"You'd be a fool not to realize they were not helpful," one committee aide said.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Russian general: 'Invasion of Afghanistan was a big mistake'
Saturday February 14, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2004-daily/14-02-2004/main/main14.htm
MOSCOW: Fifteen years ago, the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan, ending a disastrous 10-year invasion that claimed the lives of at least 15,000 soldiers and fuelled the rise of Islamic extremists.
The Afghan invasion still provokes heated debate in Russia, which is bogged down in a bleeding guerrilla conflict for the past decade in its republic of Chechnya, where 10,000 Russian troops have been killed.
General Boris Gromov, who led the withdrawal of the Soviet troops, and was the last Soviet soldier to leave Afghanistan on February 15, 1989, slammed the Afghan war, saying, "It was a big mistake and opened the hornet's nest that is terrorism, not only in Afghanistan but in the region as a whole. It bred violent Islamic radicalism, he said in an interview with the Russian army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda published on Friday.
Moscow had invaded with a nighttime raid by elite forces on the presidential palace in Kabul on December 25, 1979 to back up the Marxist regime that had taken power in the country the year before. The Soviet army withdrew in a humiliating defeat in 1989, driven back by guerrillas whom the United States armed and financed, using Pakistan's secret services as an intermediary.
The Jihad against the Soviets attracted volunteers from the Muslim world, including the young Osama bin Laden, making them proficient in guerrilla warfare. Former deputy head of the KGB Vadim Kirpichenko blames the United States for today's radicals. In his book he insists, "The US miscalculated in a major way. They set up a network of Mujahideen in Pakistan to fight against the Soviet army. Washington armed them and sent them to fight. The Americans opened the path for terrorists, who have spread fear and horror in many countries today."
Kirpichenko's superior at that time, General Vladimir Kryuchkov, in a defiant interview entitled, "We won this war" says, "We can be proud of our military. They carried out their task and managed to stabilise the situation. Our army comrades in Afghanistan were victorious." He criticised Mikhail Gorbachev, who ordered to end the occupation, saying, "After August 1991 we stopped delivering military equipment. Communist regime of Najibullah could have survived with Soviet military aid, rather than being overthrown in March 1992."
Krasnaya Zvezda devoted its entire Friday issue to the 15th anniversary of the Soviet pullout, to be commemorated on Sunday by an Afghan veterans' parade through central Moscow. They will lay wreaths at the memorial to the unknown soldier at the Kremlin walls before a reception hosted by President Vladimir Putin.
"Russian leaders, who sent troops into Chechnya have learnt nothing," say the military men who served in Afghanistan. "Afghan and Chechen wars are identical from a military and a moral point of view the wars," said General Ruslan Aushev, an Afghan veteran and decorated Hero of the Soviet Union.
--------
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Afghan Women, Still in Chains
February 14, 2004
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/opinion/14KRIS.html
One of the bleakest, saddest and best movies I've seen lately is "Osama," the tale of a girl in Taliban-run Afghanistan who risks her life by pretending to be a boy so she can leave her house and earn money for her widowed mother. "I wish God hadn't created women," the girl's mother moans - and then the girl is arrested, and the movie really gets depressing.
Americans should be proud that we took on that world and ousted the Taliban. As President Bush declared in his 2002 State of the Union address, "The mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes. . . . Today women are free."
But they aren't. More than two years later, many Afghan women are still captives in their homes. Life is better in Kabul than under the Taliban, but in many areas our triumphalism is proving hollow. Consider these snapshots of the new Afghanistan:
• A 16-year-old girl fled her 85-year-old husband, who married her when she was 9. She was caught and recently sentenced to two and a half years' imprisonment.
• The Afghan Supreme Court has recently banned female singers from appearing on Afghan television, barred married women from attending high school classes and ordered restrictions on the hours when women can travel without a male relative.
• When a man was accused of murder recently, his relatives were obliged to settle the blood debt by handing over two girls, ages 8 and 15, to marry men in the victim's family.
• A woman in Afghanistan now dies in childbirth every 20 minutes, usually without access to even a nurse. A U.N. survey in 2002 found that maternal mortality in the Badakshan region was the highest ever recorded anywhere on earth: a woman there has a 50 percent chance of dying during one of her eight pregnancies.
• In Herat, a major city, women who are found with an unrelated man are detained and subjected to a forced gynecological exam. At last count, according to Human Rights Watch, 10 of these "virginity tests" were being conducted daily.
I strongly backed the war in Afghanistan. President Bush oversaw a smart and decisive war, and when I strolled through Kabul in those heady days of liberation, I was never more proud to be an American.
Yet now I feel betrayed, as do the Afghans themselves. There was such good will toward us, and such respect for American military power, that with just a hint of follow-through we could have made Afghanistan a shining success and a lever for progress in Pakistan and Central Asia. Instead, we lost interest in Afghanistan and moved on to Iraq.
Mr. Bush has refused to provide security outside Kabul. So banditry and chaos are rampant, longtime warlords control much of the country, the Taliban is having a resurgence in the southeast, and the U.N. warns that "there is a palpable risk that Afghanistan will again turn into a failed state, this time in the hands of drug cartels and narco-terrorists."
The rise of banditry and rape, often by the Afghan security authorities, has had a particularly devastating effect on women. Because the roads are not safe even in daylight, girls do not dare go to schools or their mothers to health centers. And when women are raped, they risk being murdered by their own families for besmirching the family honor.
"Many women and girls are essentially prisoners in their own homes," Human Rights Watch declared. And Amnesty International quoted an aid worker as saying: "During the Taliban era, if a woman went to market and showed an inch of flesh, she would have been flogged. Now she's raped."
Change in Afghanistan was never going to come overnight. Honor killings of girls and forced early marriages are deeply ingrained. An Afghan proverb says, "A girl should have her first period in her husband's house and not her father's house."
But we should have started the process of change - above all, by providing security. We missed that opportunity (but it's still not too late). So as we celebrate Valentine's Day and enjoy our bonbons, let's remember Afghanistan's girls, like the one in "Osama."
Even now, in the new Afghanistan we oversee, they are being kidnapped, raped, married against their will to old men, denied education, subjected to virginity tests and imprisoned in their homes. We failed them.
--------
U.S. Soldier Killed in Mine Blast in Afghanistan
February 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Soldier-Killed.html?pagewanted=all
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A U.S. soldier died and nine others were wounded when an anti-tank mine exploded underneath their Humvee in eastern Afghanistan, the military said Saturday.
Investigators were trying to determine whether the mine, which exploded Friday, was targeted at the U.S. patrol or was one of the many unexploded munitions that litter Afghanistan after more than two decades of war.
``It's hard to tell if it was a deliberate attack or just a leftover mine,'' U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said.
Four of the wounded Americans were treated at the scene while a helicopter evacuated the others to a hospital in Bagram, at the main U.S. base in the country. Two were later flown to an American military hospital in Germany for treatment, Hilferty said.
The soldiers were from the 10th Mountain Division, based in Fort Drum, N.Y. Their names were no released.
The blast occurred near Ghazni, about 80 miles south of Kabul. A Jan. 30 explosion at an arms dump in the area killed eight U.S. soldiers in what the military said appeared to have been an accident.
Since the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom following the Sept. 11 attacks, 109 U.S. troops have died. About two-thirds of those deaths occurred in Afghanistan, many in accidents, with the rest in other countries.
More than 100 people have died in violence in Afghanistan since the start of this year, as a Taliban-led insurgency roils the south and east of the country, casting doubt on plans for national elections this summer.
In the latest deadly attack, a remote-controlled mine exploded Friday in eastern Khost province, killing a police officer and a civilian. Five civilians and another policeman were also injured.
That attack came hours after some 20 rockets were fired at the airport in Khost city that houses the third-largest U.S. base in Afghanistan, causing no casualties and drawing retaliatory airstrikes from American forces.
-------- africa
Killing of a U.N. Observer in Congo Heightens a Mission's Fears
February 14, 2004
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/international/africa/14CONG.html?pagewanted=all
BUNIA, Congo, Feb. 13 - The death of an unarmed United Nations military observer in an ambush on his convoy on Thursday was an eerie replay of the troubles that beset the United Nations peacekeeping mission here just under a year ago.
The convoy, made up of military observers and a civilian United Nations representative, had gone to investigate reports of fighting between rival militia groups in the town of Katoto, about 14 miles north of here. The convoy of four United Nations off-road vehicles, sandwiched between armored personnel carriers, had just left Katoto and was on its way back to the mission headquarters here, when gunmen began firing from the forested banks of the dirt road.
The gunmen waited until the first armored personnel carrier had crossed their path, choosing instead to fire at the unarmed observers. The driver of the second car in the convoy, Maj. Peter Wachaye, took a fatal bullet in the head.
Beatriz Baygin, a human rights investigator who was driving the next car, saw Major Wachaye's vehicle swerve to the left and crash into a tree. She kept driving. The armored personnel carriers at the back of the convoy returned fire, but it was apparently too late.
Major Wachaye's body was flown back to his country, Kenya, on a United Nations plane Friday morning. None of the gunmen were captured.
"It was an organized ambush - that's my feeling," Ms. Baygin said. "They were waiting for us."
The killing of the military observer has sent a chill through the United Nations mission here and raised new questions about the adequacy of the roughly 5,000 peacekeepers stationed here in Ituri Province, the sprawling eastern swath of Congo thick with gold - and rival gunmen all too willing to fight for it.
Last May, the United Nations mission headquarters came under fire from the latest ethnic militia to seize control of this town.
Around the same time, the bodies of two unarmed military observers, stationed in a gold mining area called Mongbwalu, north of here, were found. They had been murdered. A third was killed by a land mine.
The incidents highlighted the peacekeeping mission's inability to stop the bloodshed. Across Ituri, massacres followed massacres. The streets of Bunia were littered with mutilated bodies.
The United Nations Security Council authorized additional troops, raising the total number of peacekeepers to 10,000 in a country larger than Western Europe.
In June, a French-led intervention force took control of Bunia for three months, effectively sweeping gunmen off the streets and bringing at least a semblance of security to the town.
But this year, provocations against United Nations peacekeepers resumed. A team investigating reports of a massacre near Lake Albert were fired on earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Major Wachaye, who had been stationed in Nizi, north of here, told his superiors that he feared for his safety and requested protection.
His request was denied, according to one United Nations official, and he returned to headquarters in Bunia, venturing out only on reconnaissance missions like the one on Thursday.
Also fearing for their safety, the peacekeepers who were killed in Mongbwalu last May had asked to be pulled out. Their requests went unheeded.
-------- asia
South Korea Sending 3,000 Troops to Iraq
February 14, 2004
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/international/asia/14KORE.html?pagewanted=all
SEOUL, South Korea, Feb. 13 - South Korea on Friday approved a plan to send 3,000 troops to Iraq, ending months of debate over the country's role there.
Public opinion in South Korea has been divided, prompting the government to limit the number of troops it will send. South Korea has already sent more than 400 medical and engineering troops to support American military operations in Iraq.
The 271-seat National Assembly approved the troop plan, with 155 in favor and 50 opposed. Another 59 lawmakers did not take part in the vote, while 7 abstained.
The first troops are expected to leave by the end of March, and the deployment would be completed by the end of April. The troops will be based in Kirkuk in northern Iraq.
It will be the largest overseas deployment of South Korean troops since the Vietnam War.
-------- business
Ex-Halliburton staff claim company ripped off military
February 14, 2004
Reuters
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/13/1076548195775.html
Two ex-Halliburton employees told US Democratic congressmen that vice-president Dick Cheney's old energy company "routinely overcharged" for work it did for the US military, the congressmen said today.
The Texas oil services giant, which is being examined by the military for possibly overcharging for services, has consistently denied allegations of overbilling.
Halliburton did not immediately respond to the allegations or questions over why the two employees had left the company.
The two ex-employees, who contacted Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who has been critical of Halliburton, worked for the Texas firm's procurement office in Kuwait.
Waxman's office said the two quit for personal reasons.
Waxman and another Democrat, John Dingell of Michigan, wrote about the "whistleblowers" in a letter to the defence Contract Audit Agency, which is already looking into whether one of the company's subsidiaries overcharged for fuel it took into Iraq and for meals served to US troops in the region.
Examples of wasteful spending given by the ex-employees ranged from leasing ordinary vehicles for $US7,500 ($A9,500) a month to seeking embroidered towels at a cost of $US7.50 ($A9.50) each when ordinary ones would have cost about a third of the price.
"What is most disturbing about these allegations from the whistleblowers is the regular and routine nature of the overcharging," the politicians wrote in the letter to DCAA Director William Reed.
The DCAA confirmed it had received the letter. "The letter is under review. It would be premature to comment at this time," a spokeswoman said.
Halliburton unit Kellogg Brown and Root has a logistics contract with the US military that has so far received more than $US3.7 billion ($A4.7 billion) in business, mostly in Iraq. It also has contracts worth nearly $US4 billion ($A5.08 billion) to rebuild Iraq's oil industry.
One of the employees, a field buyer identified as Henry Bunting, was to address a Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing tomorrow about alleged Iraq contracting abuses.
The other whistle-blower, a procurement supervisor, was not identified by name.
Halliburton is the US military's biggest contractor in Iraq and the Pentagon's seventh biggest contractor overall.
It was boosted from 37th place last year by its Iraq business.
The letter said senior Halliburton officials frequently told the employees high prices charged by vendors were not a problem.
"One whistleblower said that a Halliburton motto was: 'Don't worry about price. It's cost plus'," said the letter, referring to the practice of charging for a service and then adding a percentage fee as profit.
Halliburton has come under scrutiny by a number of US government departments during the 2004 election year, leading the company to accuse Democrats of political mudslinging because of the company's former ties to Cheney.
Aside from military auditors' questions, the US Treasury, the Justice Department and the US Securities and Exchange Commission are all looking into a range of issues, from allegedly paying kickbacks in Nigeria to whether the company broke US laws by dealing with Iran via a foreign subsidiary.
The company says all its dealings have been in line with US laws and denies wrongdoing, except in the case of one or two former employees who it said may have paid $US6.3 million ($A8 million) in kickbacks to a Kuwaiti subcontractor.
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Halliburton Likely to Be a Campaign Issue This Fall
February 14, 2004
New York Times Company
By JOEL BRINKLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/politics/14CONT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 - As the accusations and investigations of the Halliburton Company's federal contracts in Iraq expand in size and number, Democrats say they will use the company's ties to the Bush administration as a campaign issue, and Halliburton is responding with television advertisements implying that it is being unfairly singled out.
"We are serving our troops because of what we know, not who we know," declares the 30-second spot, which is running in Washington, Houston and several other cities.
A company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late last month declared that Halliburton's Iraq contracts "will likely be subject to intense scrutiny" in the months ahead, in large part because "the vice president of the United States" is "a former chief executive officer."
"We expect that this focus and these allegations will continue and possibly intensify as the 2004 elections draw near," it adds with understandable prescience.
In recent days, several prominent Democrats have made a point of attacking the White House over Halliburton's contracting troubles, issues that in normal times would hardly rise to the level of prominent national debate.
"At a time when Halliburton is defrauding the federal government and facing serious allegations of bribery, we look forward to taking this debate to George Bush," Senator John Kerry's campaign said in a statement late last week.
And Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Friday demanding that he "immediately begin suspension or disbarment proceedings against the Halliburton Company" because of its contracting problems. The Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle, has made a similar request.
Bill Carrick, who was the media strategist for the presidential campaign of Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, said he believed that Halliburton's problems had the power to remain a durable campaign issue because "in a lot of people's minds, it's a surrogate for the larger feeling that the Bush administration is too close to the oil business, and Cheney has in some ways become an elusive figure."
While Bill Dal Col, a Republican consultant, called Halliburton "a good rallying cry" for Democrats that "will help with fund-raising," he added that "it doesn't really have any traction with anyone who is not already opposed to the administration."
Cathy Gist, a Halliburton spokeswoman, acknowledged that "there has been a lot said about the company's contracts in Iraq" but she then pointed out that the Pentagon comptroller, Dov S. Zakheim said in Congressional testimony last week that Halliburton was "doing their best to do the right thing."
In the advertisements, Dave Lesar, Halliburton's chief executive, said: "You've heard a lot about Halliburton lately. Criticism is O.K. We can take it. Criticism is not failure."
Still, Halliburton's troubles continue to multiply. On Thursday, two Democratic members of Congress informed the Pentagon that two former Halliburton employees had come forward with a variety of accusations about wasteful spending of government money, saying Halliburton "routinely overcharged" for its work in Iraq.
"High-level Halliburton officials frequently told employees that the high prices charged by vendors were not a problem because the U.S. government would reimburse Halliburton's costs and then pay Halliburton an additional fee," the two Congressman - Henry Waxman of California and John D. Dingell of Michigan - wrote in a letter to Pentagon auditors.
One of the former employees, according to the letter, said "a Halliburton motto was: `Don't worry about price. It's cost-plus.' "
In the letter, the congressmen said the two men approached Mr. Waxman after leaving jobs with Halliburton for personal reasons last month. The letter said the employees told them Halliburton worked hard to avoid putting purchases out for competitive bidding and therefore overspent for many purchases as well as common items.
One of them, Henry Bunting, had been a buyer for the company in Kuwait for several months. The other, who was not named, also worked for the company for only a few months, said Karen Lightfoot, an aide to Mr. Waxman. Mr. Bunting repeated his accusations on Friday in testimony to Senate Democrats, saying, "There was not concern about price."
Ms. Gist, the Halliburton spokeswoman, said the company took seriously any accusations of improper conduct. Nonetheless, she noted that Halliburton had no record that Mr. Bunting ever called the company hot line for employee concerns about business practices.
The former employees' accusations are the latest in a long string of troubles. On Monday Kuwait's energy minister asked his country's chief prosecutor to investigate accusations of overcharging in relation to Halliburton's contract to import fuel to Iraq from Kuwait. On Wednesday, Kuwaiti legislators demanded a separate inquiry.
Last Friday, Nigeria ordered an investigation into accusations that a Halliburton subsidiary paid $180 million in bribes in an effort to win a natural gas contract there, accusations already being investigated in the United States and France.
Also last week, Halliburton said it would withhold billing for as much as $27.4 million until a debate with the Pentagon was resolved over the cost of supplying meals to troops in Iraq. In addition, the company disclosed last month that two employees had taken kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor who was providing services to American troops. The company reimbursed the government $6.3 million.
The largest controversy remains the debate over whether Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary, overcharged the government by $61 million while importing fuel to Iraq. Halliburton says the government-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation pressured Halliburton's subsidiary to buy the fuel from an obscure family-owned company, the Altanmia Commercial Marketing Company, despite its high price.
Scott Saunders, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which handled bidding on the fuel contract, said Halliburton had solicited bids from three companies, "but the other two could not meet the requirements of the contract," specifically the capability to export large quantities of fuel to Iraq. "So," Mr. Saunders said, "we told K.B.R. to go with" Altanmia.
----
Ex-Halliburton Employee Testifies on Audit
Former Buyer Describes 'Problematic' Practices
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 14, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41110-2004Feb13.html
A former Halliburton Co. employee said yesterday that his supervisors in Kuwait encouraged him not to talk to Pentagon auditors reviewing the company's contracting work and that he "sanitized" files before turning them over to the auditors.
Henry Bunting, who worked as a field buyer for the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root Inc. for a few months before he quit in August, told a Democratic Party panel that the directive from his supervisors was part of a larger corporate culture in which he witnessed "problematic business practices," including failing to seek competitive bids for goods.
Bunting, who said he made 80 to 150 purchases a day and was paid at the rate of about $112,000 a year, said he never talked to auditors but removed hand-written notes and other documents from files to "clean" them up. "This didn't misrepresent what took place," he said, adding that essential information was not deleted or changed.
Bunting spoke at a forum of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee on Iraq reconstruction contracts, in which lawmakers claimed Halliburton has been war-profiteering under a broad contract KBR has to provide logistical support to the military. "The fact is large contracts have been awarded by the Pentagon without the benefit of a competitive, transparent process, and the result for me has been a steady stream of reports of waste and abuse," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), the chairman of the committee, an arm of the Democratic leadership.
Dorgan said he invited Pentagon officials to testify at the forum but they declined. He also said the panel planned to ask Halliburton representatives to appear in the future.
Halliburton and its KBR unit have been fighting allegations for months that it overcharged the government for work in Iraq. In an initial review in December, Pentagon auditors said KBR may have overcharged the government by at least $61 million to import fuel from Kuwait into Iraq under a contract with the Army Corps of Engineers.
The company also has been accused of charging the government for meals it never served at dining facilities in Iraq and Kuwait. It has agreed to reimburse the government $27.4 million for potential overcharges related to the meals and $6.2 million to cover other potential overcharges.
A spokeswoman said the company "takes any charges of improper conduct seriously."
"We have actively been pursuing concerns in Kuwait regarding procurement activities," spokeswoman Cathy Gist said in an e-mail. She also noted that the company has a hotline operated by an independent organization that allows employees to report concerns. Bunting said yesterday he had not brought his concerns to the company's attention.
Bunting, who now works for another Houston firm in a similar buying capacity, said KBR managers routinely directed him to use a preferred supplier list that did not always offer the best price.
When he negotiated with vendors off the list, Bunting said, he would often find considerable savings. By finding a different furniture supplier than one KBR had used, Bunting said he saved $30 per desk and $10 per chair, an annual savings he estimated at $5,000 to $6,000.
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Private U.S. Operatives on Risky Missions in Colombia
February 14, 2004
By JUAN FORERO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/international/americas/14COLO.html?pagewanted=all
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Feb. 12 - After their tiny plane crashed deep in the jungles of southern Colombia, three American civilians on a mission to search for cocaine labs, drug planes and, occasionally, guerrilla units were taken hostage by Marxist rebels.
A year later, the men's families say the captives have been all but forgotten. Some say that is the way American officials and the men's employers want it to be.
The three Americans - Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes - worked cloaked in secrecy for two subsidiaries of Northrop Grumman, the huge military contractor, in an arrangement used increasingly by the United States government in conflict zones from Colombia to Afghanistan.
The men's families and critics of American policy here say the case sheds light on a shadowy world of secret operations that employ private contractors in deals that make it easy to skirt public scrutiny and for all to wash their hands if something goes wrong.
"My complaint about use of private contractors is their ability to fly under the radar and avoid any accountability," Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, said. "Now we're finding out that because of their low profile, and so little scrutiny, they are able to avoid liability or responsibility for these individuals."
American officials and executives at Northrop Grumman bristle at the suggestion that they have not done all they can to secure freedom for the men. Diplomats say there is probably little that they can do.
The American ambassador here, William B. Wood, said that "nothing at this mission has a higher priority than the well-being and safe release" of the crew members, according to a letter sent to the families of the missing men before Christmas.
Jack Martin, a Northrop Grumman spokesman, said in an e-mail message that the company was closely cooperating with the government to ensure the release of the three Americans and "remained in regular and frequent contact with the hostages' families."
But in interviews, family members were aggrieved at what has become a painful and protracted episode that could have implications beyond Colombia. "They're not acknowledging these men, and nobody cares," Jo Rosano, the mother of Mr. Gonsalves, said last month in an interview in her home in Bristol, Conn. "They say, `We're doing all we can.' But what are you doing?"
The number of Americans working in Colombia for private contractors has nearly doubled in two years to 400, the congressional limit. Hundreds more are citizens of Colombia and other countries. American law also allows up to 400 military officials in Colombia.
There are now two dozen American companies here, with the contracts for antidrug programs worth $178 million last year. They spray coca fields, operate eavesdropping devices, organize alternative development programs, repair airplanes, assess intelligence and advise the Colombian Defense Ministry.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 70 American companies and private individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts in the last two years, according to the Center for Public Integrity in Washington. Much of their work is shielded from the public, critics say, noting that their deaths are not even added to the American body count.
American officials, here and elsewhere, say using contractors saves money, provides essential services and specialists and frees military forces that are already stretched thin. They also say the three men taken captive were working within the legal limits set by the Congress.
But critics say that for American policy makers, the political risks surrounding Washington's deepening involvement in Colombia's conflict made using contractors preferable to placing American forces or intelligence officers in similar jeopardy.
The mission of the three men whose plane went down last Feb. 13 was to fly their single-engine Cessna, its underbelly loaded with sophisticated photographic equipment, over vast jungle tracts to search for illegal drug activities and, sometimes, guerrilla movements.
The intelligence was then shared with the Colombian armed forces in Washington's two-pronged fight against drug trafficking and a 40-year Marxist insurgency.
After the crash, in Caquetá Province, the rebels killed two other survivors: an American pilot, Tom Janis, and a Colombian intelligence officer. Weeks later, on March 25, a plane on a mission to track the captives hit a tree. Three more Americans were killed: Tommy Schmidt, Ralph Ponticelli and James Oliver.
The men were part of a team of a dozen or so pilots and technicians overseen by the American military mission in Latin America, the Southern Command, based in Miami. Their operation was dubbed the Southcom Reconnaissance System, and Northrop Grumman held the $8.6 million contract for the work.
As the program became increasingly successful, several former pilots and others familiar with the program said civilian managers pushed flight crews farther over the jungles, often at night and sometimes 300 miles from their base.
Their mission expanded, too, from locating targets in the illegal drug trade chosen by the American Embassy to keeping a look out for leftist guerrillas, including those of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
"The mission is certainly not to look for the FARC," but rather drug traffickers, said one former pilot. "But it's hard, as you know, to separate the two."
By 2002, pilots began to worry about what they perceived to be the lack of power and speed of their planes - the single-engine Cessna Caravan - for a country as big and mountainous as Colombia.
"Pretty soon you're exceeding your limitations," said another flyer, who added that the $150,000 annual salary motivated pilots to accept increasingly dangerous missions.
Two pilots, Paul C. Hooper and Douglas C. Cockes, wrote letters in November and December of 2002 to Northrop Grumman warning that flying single-engine planes was a recipe for disaster. The letters, first revealed by The Los Angeles Times, suggested that the Cessnas be replaced with twin-engine Beech King Air 300's.
Northrop Grumman and American government officials declined to comment when asked about the warnings.
"We had 60 some years of flight experience between the two of us," Mr. Cockes said in an interview, "and the handwriting was on the wall."
The planes were not replaced, and the two pilots resigned. After the two crashes, which temporarily halted the program, Northrop Grumman resumed the operation under a different name, the Colombia Surveillance System, using twin-engine planes.
Today, family members say they still have not received a full explanation of what happened. In January the families of the crewmen killed in the second crash receive a half-page, double-spaced summary from the Southern Command saying the plane hit a ridge and suggesting pilot error.
But conflicting information exists, with an embassy official saying recently that engine failure may have caused the plane to dip just before reaching the 4,400-foot rise.
"It's been sheer hell," said Ralph Ponticelli, the father of one of the pilots killed. "We are just not satisfied."
Family members also remain confused about the contractual obligations of the men's employers. All of the pilots and crew members had begun working for California Microwave Systems, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman. After the first crash, the program was transferred to a newly created company, CIAO Inc., former pilots and family members said.
Family members, former pilots and a high-ranking official who worked with contractors for years in Colombia contend that the contract switch was aimed at shielding Northrop Grumman from liability.
"There are veils," said John McLaughlin, the former head of the State Department's airborne program in Colombia, in charge of the spraying of coca crops. "If you have to go through this company and that company to try to recover, it puts some people off."
Efforts to reach CIAO - which has an office in Maryland, according to documents - were unsuccessful. Phones were either disconnected or went unanswered.
Northrop Grumman, in a statement, declined to answer a list of questions regarding details of the program and requesting a response to the relatives' claims.
The company did say it had been working with California Microwave "to support the families of the three crew members who lost their lives and to ensure they receive all the benefits to which they are entitled."
But the relatives are far from satisfied.
"We hear that Butch went to work for CIAO three days after he was assigned to Colombia," said Betty Oliver, the mother of Mr. Oliver, who is known as Butch. "And consequently CIAO does not recognize who is working for them. Grumman does not recognize he worked for them. So who did he work for?"
Mr. Schmidt's wife, Sharon, and Mr. Ponticelli's parents said they had since been trying, with no luck, to obtain $350,000 death benefits. Both families received notices from an insurance adjuster saying they could not be paid benefits because the men had not worked for Northrop Grumman when they were killed.
"They say they terminated him and so therefore they have no legal responsibility," Ms. Schmidt said. "The reason they had done this is because they had been made aware, in writing, that serious concerns had been raised about the use of single-engine planes."
As for those taken captive, the FARC is using them as bargaining chips for a prisoner exchange and has hidden them well. Though American forces tracked the Americans after their capture, the trail has since been lost.
"The intelligence picture has, candidly, dried up," General James Hill, commander of American forces in Latin America, told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Oct. 29. "We get very little intelligence on them. We do not know exactly where they are."
What little is known of their fate comes from "Held Hostage in Colombia," a documentary by two American producers, Victoria Bruce and Karin Hayes, featuring interviews with the hostages conducted by a Colombian journalist, Jorge Enrique Botero.
"I don't want more deaths," Mr. Stansell, sitting with his fellow crew members as armed guerrillas stood by, said in the documentary, excerpts of which were shown on "60 Minutes II." "I don't want to die. I don't want anybody dying trying to get me out of here."
The families are demanding negotiations to secure the release of the captives, but American policy forbids talks with the FARC, which the State Department has labeled a terrorist group.
"The Americans are truly making no effort to get them out," said a Western diplomat. "The Americans could be there 10 years."
-------- europe
Cyprus Greeks and Turks Agree on Plan to End 40-Year Conflict
February 14, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/international/europe/14NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 13 - Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders on Friday accepted Secretary General Kofi Annan's plan for ending the decades-long division of Cyprus and pledged to negotiate reunification in time for the island's May 1 entry into the European Union.
The deal between the Greek Cypriot president, Tassos Papadopoulos, and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart, Rauf Denktash, was reached after three days of talks at the United Nations, and brought forth expressions of hope that a solution to one of the world's most intractable conflicts was at hand.
"I really believe that after 40 years, a political settlement is at last in reach," Mr. Annan said in announcing the pact.
Thomas G. Weston, the United States special coordinator for Cyprus since 1999, said, "It is almost certain now that there will be a settlement on the island of Cyprus."
Interviewed after meeting with Mr. Annan, he said: "There have been numerous attempts in the past, and they all led to failure until today. Now we have the procedure and methodology which has given us exceptionally strong prospects to reach agreement before Cyprus enters the European Union."
If successful, the plan will put an end to a stalemate that on a number of occasions brought Greece and Turkey, both NATO members, to the verge of war and, in 1974, to a conflict that ended with the division of the island.
With Cyprus scheduled to join the European Union on May 1, pressures to end the standoff grew increasingly intense. Unless reunification was achieved, only the Greek Cypriot government would be entitled to enter.
That reality focused negotiators, with Turkey in particular lending strong backing to the last-ditch effort, well aware that failure in Cyprus would jeopardize its own active candidacy to become the first Muslim nation to join the union.
Mr. Annan had invested substantial personal capital in breaking the impasse on the Mediterranean island, and the arrangement makes him the final binding arbiter of any last-minute disagreements on what is known as "the Annan plan."
According to the plan, the two sides will reconvene on Thursday in Cyprus under a tight timetable calling for them to agree by March 22 on reunification language that can be put to simultaneous island-wide referendums in April.
Technical committees on laws and treaties will work out details, also starting next week, and the United Nations will preside over a separate committee on the financial and economic aspects of reunification.
If the two parties are unable to reach agreement themselves, the pact calls for Turkey and Greece to enter the talks. If differences still persist by March 29, Mr. Annan will have the power "to fill in the blanks," according to United Nations diplomats. The proposed date of the referendums is April 21.
"Very much as a last resort, the secretary general, with reluctance, will have the last word," said Álvaro de Soto, the Peruvian diplomat who is Mr. Annan's special adviser on Cyprus and who will lead next week's talks. He said he believed that the parties had the will and resources to complete the settlement themselves, and he "devoutly" hoped that Mr. Annan's intervention would not be necessary.
Hostilities between Cyprus's Greek and Turkish populations have required United Nations peacekeepers on the island since 1964 and led to formal division in 1974, when Turkey seized the island's northern third in response to a pro-Greek coup seeking to unify Cyprus with Greece. In 1983, the breakaway state became the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized internationally only by Turkey, which keeps 30,000 troops there.
An intensive round of reunification talks under Mr. Annan last year produced a United Nations blueprint for a single state with Greek and Turkish Cypriot federated regions, but it collapsed in April when Mr. Denktash refused to put it to a vote of his people and balked at the appointment of Mr. Annan as a final arbiter.
Last week, the secretary general invited the two sides to New York to make a last try before the pending European Union entry, and he received strong outside backing from the United States, a supporter of Turkey's European aspirations, and the three so-called guarantor nations: Greece, Turkey and Britain.
"The agreement is the result of cooperative efforts among the parties, particularly Greece and Turkey, who have not always exercised such cooperative efforts in the past," Mr. Weston said. He confirmed reports that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had been in direct contact with the principal parties in recent days as the talks appeared to falter.
Mr. Denktash, accused of obstructionism in the past, surprised the negotiators by dropping his objection to Mr. Annan's role as final judge and by saying his main demand was more active involvement in the later stages by Turkey and Greece. "We were impressed this time that there was a different mind-set," Mr. de Soto said.
But Mr. Papadopoulos came back with a demand that the European Union itself become an active participant in the talks, a request that was dismissed as meddlesome by the Turkish side.
Athens, Ankara, London and Washington engaged in busy overnight diplomacy, and a European Union official in Brussels said Friday that they had no interest in becoming directly involved, thus taking the air out of the Greek Cypriot proposal.
The statement read by Mr. Annan on Friday promised only "assurances of the European Union to accommodate a settlement and the offer of technical assistance by the European Commission."
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U.N. Plan For Cyprus Reunification Advances
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40925-2004Feb13?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 13 -- Greek and Turkish leaders in Cyprus agreed Friday to abide by a United Nations plan for reunifying the country by the end of March, in what diplomats called one of the most important political breakthroughs on the divided island nation in four decades.
Both sides agreed to begin an intensive last-ditch round of negotiations in Cyprus next Thursday in an attempt to reach a deal on the terms of the country's reunification. But if they cannot agree, the leaders pledged to let U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan step in and put his own reunification plan before the Cypriot people for a vote.
The process is designed to move quickly so that a unified Cyprus could gain entry into the European Union on May 1.
"It is a very good evening for Cyprus," Annan said Friday at a news conference after three days of intensive negotiations with the two Cypriot leaders. "We have not yet solved the problem, but I really believe that, after 40 years, a political settlement is at last in reach, provided both sides can summon the necessary political will."
Friday's accord was an important diplomatic achievement for the United Nations, which has more than 1,000 peacekeeping troops in Cyprus and has made little progress toward a political settlement.
The Mediterranean island nation has been effectively split since 1974, after Greek Cypriot military officers staged a coup and Turkey invaded to protect the Turkish minority. Decades of negotiations over the fate of the former British colony, independent since 1960, have faltered, including a round of U.N.-sponsored talks that stalled in April.
Friday's agreement followed a behind-the scenes effort this week by senior U.S., Turkish, Greek and European officials to pressure the two sides.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell maintained regular telephone contact this week with Annan, Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou and Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, enlisting their help in encouraging Cypriot leaders to make the deal. Bush's special envoy for Cyprus, Tom Weston, participated on the sidelines.
"We have been actively involved in the secretary general's efforts," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday. "We're pleased that the parties are seizing this historic opportunity to achieve a just and durable settlement to the long-standing division of Cyprus. This will allow all Cypriots to enjoy the benefits of joining the European Union on May 1st."
Annan outlined an elaborate negotiating timetable, agreed to by both sides Friday morning after a long session of talks, that he hopes will lead to Cyprus's entry into the European Union. "If all concerned showed the same courage and goodwill during the next three months that they have shown in the last three days, I believe there is now a real chance that, before the first of May, Cyprus will be reunited," he said.
Annan said that U.N.-sponsored talks between the Greek Cypriot leader, Tassos Papadopoulos, and the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, will resume Thursday in Cyprus. If they fail to reach an agreement by March 22, Annan said he will personally convene another meeting, involving senior representatives from Turkey and Greece, in an attempt to break the impasse.
If that fails, Annan will put his own plan for reunifying the island to a vote on both the Turkish and Greek sides of Cyprus.
"As a final resort, in the event of a continuing and persistent deadlock, the parties have invited me to use my discretion to finalize the text to be submitted to referenda on the basis of my plan," Annan said.
Annan's plan calls for a federal government with highly autonomous Greek and Turkish states. A relatively weak central government would oversee the island's defense, foreign affairs and national economic policy.
The two Cypriot leaders spoke cautiously Friday. "There have been so many false hopes in the past," Papadopoulos said. "I hope this will be solved."
Denktash called this "the beginning of the process" and said, "The most important thing for us is to continue this process in such a way that we will be able to protect the rights of our people."
Turkey's deputy foreign minister, Ugur Ziyal, presented a more upbeat view.
"The work we have started will end in a win-win situation," he told reporters. He said Turkey wants to resolve the dispute so the two sides can "live in peace with a common state."
Annan invited the two Cypriot leaders on Feb. 4 to restart talks in New York, after he received assurances of U.S. support for the U.N. plan from President Bush and Powell, officials said.
The drive to end the division of Cyprus gained renewed momentum in part because the European Union is preparing to accept the Greek Cypriots as one of 10 new members on May 1.
U.N. officials blamed the Turkish Cypriots for scuttling the last round of talks. But this time around, the Turks face the possibility of losing out on the benefits of joining the European Union. Turkey is also pursuing membership.
"The Turks went along because they didn't have a choice," a U.S. official said. "If they ever wanted to become a member of the European Union, they had to sign on to this agreement. The Greeks felt that they got a good deal and they got a lot of pressure from United States."
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Belarus isn't dreaming
Letters to the Editor
February 14, 2004
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20040213-082039-5007r.htm
Tod Lindberg's Op-Ed column "Democratic dreams" (Tuesday) proves that the author's democratic dreams have been borrowed from the revolutionary past of the 20th century. Also, "good" Sen. John McCain decided to go to Riga, Latvia, to enlighten the world on "bad" Belarus and the advantages of Atlantic democracies. The reader is again intimidated by Belarus' actions supposedly threatening NATO and the European Union.
A truly independent and objective journalist would never call Belarus an authoritarian state. Mr. Lindberg's intolerance toward Belarus can be explained by scant knowledge of our country and superficial understanding of events. According to Mr. Lindberg, life in Belarus has been reduced to confrontation between authorities and opposition.
The reality on the ground is different: There are authorities, and there is no opposition. That's not because authorities do not want opposition, but because the opposition has long been on the margin of all processes, having proudly rejected participation in the parliamentary elections in 2000. Civil-society structures also have been developing without the opposition's participation. Opposition figures focus their attention on negative attitudes toward the country and authorities, while the people of Belarus understand that black is not the only color in the palette.
Belarus has indisputable achievements in its economy, technology, science, culture and sports, and the international community is aware of these. Belarusian authorities have not tolerated the liberal economic terror spreading crime and stagnation in neighboring states. Belarus is advancing steadily from a planned to a market economy. This period of transition requires strong power and calculated actions.
Mr. Lindberg, unfortunately, fails to explain why formerly communist Eastern and Central European states must build liberal democracy from the ground up while Western European nations enjoy its other manifestations.
We are willing to present alternative views. Belarusian authorities requested participation in the Riga conference and were surprised by the organizers' rejection.
Belarus is developing its national identity and is building a nation whose ideology will never be hostile toward the outside world. The young Belarusian democracy will be grateful to Mr. McCain, not for discussing the advantages of Atlantic democracies, but for his support to the fundamental principles of nations' international behavior, including equality, mutual respect and cooperation.
MIKHAIL KHVOSTOV
Ambassador Embassy of the Republic of Belarus
Washington
-------- iraq
Iraqi Sanctions and American Intentions: Blameless Carnage?
by James Bovard
Future of Freedom Foundation
February 14, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig2/bovard021404.html
President Bush's advisors assured Americans that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators - with flowers and hugs - when the United States invaded Iraq. That promise turned out to be one of the biggest frauds of the Iraqi debacle.
One major reason for the animosity to U.S. troops is the lingering impact and bitter memories of the UN sanctions imposed on the Iraqis for 13 years, largely at the behest of the U.S. government. It is impossible to understand the current situation in Iraq without examining the sanctions and their toll.
President Bush, in the months before attacking Iraq, portrayed the sufferings and deprivation of the Iraqi people as resulting from the evil of Saddam Hussein. Bush's comments were intended as an antidote to the charge by Osama bin Laden a month after 9/11 that "a million innocent children are dying at this time as we speak, killed in Iraq without any guilt." Bin Laden listed the economic sanctions against Iraq as one of the three main reasons for his holy war against the United States.
Most Western experts believe that bin Laden sharply overstated the death toll. A United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report in 1999 concluded that half a million Iraqi children had died in the previous eight years because of the sanctions. Columbia University professor Richard Garfield, an epidemiologist and an expert on the effects of sanctions, estimated in 2003 that the sanctions had resulted in infant and young-child fatalities numbering between 343,900 and 529,000.
Regardless of the precise number of fatalities (which will never be known), the sanctions were a key factor in inflaming Arab anger against the United States. The sanctions were initially imposed to punish Iraq for invading Kuwait and then were kept in place after the Gulf War supposedly in order to pressure Saddam to disarm.
Sanctions wreaked havoc on the Iraqi people, in part because the Pentagon intentionally destroyed Iraq's water-treatment systems during the first U.S.-Iraq war:
• A January 22, 1991, Defense Intelligence Agency report titled "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities" noted,
Iraq depends on importing specialized equipment and some chemicals to purify its water supply, most of which is heavily mineralized and frequently brackish to saline.... Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease.... Unless the water is purified with chlorine, epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid could occur.
• The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated in early 1991 that "it probably will take at least six months (to June 1991) before the [Iraqi water treatment] system is fully degraded" from the bombing during the Gulf War and the UN sanctions.
• A May 1991 Pentagon analysis entitled "Status of Disease at Refugee Camps," noted,
Cholera and measles have emerged at refugee camps. Further infectious diseases will spread due to inadequate water treatment and poor sanitation.
• A June 1991 Pentagon analysis noted that infectious disease rates had increased since the Gulf War and warned, "The Iraqi regime will continue to exploit disease incidence data for its own political purposes."
George Washington University professor Thomas Nagy, who marshaled the preceding reports in an analysis in the September 2001 issue of The Progressive, concluded, The United States knew it had the capacity to devastate the water treatment system of Iraq. It knew what the consequences would be: increased outbreaks of disease and high rates of child mortality. And it was more concerned about the public relations nightmare for Washington than the actual nightmare that the sanctions created for innocent Iraqis.
Pentagon intent
A Washington Post analysis published on June 23, 1991, noted that Pentagon officials admitted that, rather than concentrating solely on military targets, the U.S. bombing campaign "sought to achieve some of their military objectives in the Persian Gulf War by disabling Iraqi society at large" and "deliberately did great harm to Iraq's ability to support itself as an industrial society."
The bombing campaign targeted Iraq's electrical power system, thereby destroying the country's ability to operate its water-treatment plants. One Pentagon official who helped plan the bombing campaign observed,
People say, "You didn't recognize that it was going to have an effect on water or sewage." Well, what were we trying to do with sanctions - help out the Iraqi people? No. What we were doing with the attacks on infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of the sanctions.
Col. John Warden III, deputy director of strategy for the Air Force, observed,
Saddam Hussein cannot restore his own electricity. He needs help. If there are political objectives that the UN coalition has, it can say, "Saddam, when you agree to do these things, we will allow people to come in and fix your electricity." It gives us long-term leverage.
Another Air Force planner observed,
We wanted to let people know, "Get rid of this guy and we'll be more than happy to assist in rebuilding. We're not going to tolerate Saddam Hussein or his regime. Fix that, and we'll fix your electricity."
The Post explained the Pentagon's rationale for punishing the Iraqi people:
Among the justifications offered now, particularly by the Air Force in recent briefings, is that Iraqi civilians were not blameless for Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. "The definition of innocents gets to be a little bit unclear," said a senior Air Force officer, noting that many Iraqis supported the invasion of Kuwait. "They do live there, and ultimately the people have some control over what goes on in their country."
A Harvard School of Public Health team visited Iraq in the months after the war and found epidemic levels of typhoid and cholera as well as pervasive acute malnutrition. The Post noted,
In an estimate not substantively disputed by the Pentagon, the [Harvard] team projected that "at least 170,000 children under five years of age will die in the coming year from the delayed effects" of the bombing.
The U.S. military understood the havoc the 1991 bombing unleashed. A 1995 article entitled "The Enemy as a System" by John Warden, published in the Air Force's Airpower Journal, discussed the benefits of bombing "dual-use targets" and noted,
A key example of such dual-use targeting was the destruction of Iraqi electrical power facilities in Desert Storm.... [Destruction] of these facilities shut down water purification and sewage treatment plants. As a result, epidemics of gastroenteritis, cholera, and typhoid broke out, leading to perhaps as many as 100,000 civilian deaths and a doubling of the infant mortality rate.
The article concluded that the U.S. Air Force has a "vested interest in attacking dual-use targets" that undermine "civilian morale."
Infant mortality rates
In 1995, a team of doctors (including a representative of the Harvard School of Public Health) visited Iraq under the auspices of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization to examine the nutritional status and mortality rates of young children in Baghdad. They concluded that the sanctions had resulted in the deaths of 567,000 children in the previous five years. (Most subsequent studies implicitly concluded that this study sharply overestimated the mortality toll in the first years of the sanctions.)
CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl relied on this estimate in 1996 when she asked U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright,
We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Albright answered,
I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.
Albright's words echoed like thunder through the Arab world in the following years.
At the behest of the United States and Britain, the United Nations maintained a de facto embargo on Iraq through 1996, when an "oil for food" program was approved. Saddam and the UN had wrangled for five years over the conditions under which Iraq would be permitted to resume oil exports. The "oil for food" program gave the UN Security Council veto power over how every cent of Iraqi oil revenues would be spent. The de facto blockade on the Iraqi people made many common illnesses far more lethal.
The Detroit News noted, "Many diseases - including cancer - cannot be treated in Iraq." The Washington Post noted in December 2002, shortly after the Bush administration proposed new restrictions on antibiotic imports by Iraq,
As a practical matter, the most modern and effective medicines already are hard to come by here, even some of those used to treat routine illness.
One Baghdad pharmacist groused that he "cannot get atropine or inhalers for asthmatics or insulin for diabetics."
The infant/young-child mortality rate in Iraq rose from 50 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 133 per 1,000 in 2001 (meaning that more than 13 percent of Iraqi children die before the age of five). Iraq had by far the sharpest rise in infant/young-child mortality of any nation in the world during that period, according to UNICEF. Professor Garfield declared,
It is the only instance of a sustained increase in mortality in a stable population of more than 2 million in the last 200 years.
Sanctions advocates claimed that the punitive policy would spur discontent and eventually undermine Saddam's rule. However, a Harvard International Review analysis noted,
Sanctions seem to have bolstered Saddam's domestic popularity. He uses the sanctions to demonize the West and to rally support for his leadership; they have been a convenient scapegoat for internal problems. The rations system he has established in response to the sanctions has tightened his control of Iraqi citizens' everyday lives, making them totally dependent on the government for mere survival and less likely to challenge his authority for fear of starvation.
While Pentagon officials bluntly admitted in 1991 that sanctions aimed to punish the Iraqi people, candor evaporated as the death toll rose. The State Department's website announced in June 1999,
Sanctions are not intended to harm the people of Iraq. That is why the sanctions regime has always specifically exempted food and medicine.
This was false. Banning exports of oil effectively also banned imports of food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods. Some of the worst impacts of the sanctions dissipated after the oil-for-food program was launched, but by that time, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis may have already perished.
Denis Halliday, the UN administrator of the oil-for-food program, resigned in 1998 to protest the ravages the sanctions were continuing to inflict on Iraqis. Halliday complained, "We are in the process of destroying an entire country" and denounced the sanctions as "nothing less than genocide." Hans von Sponeck, his replacement, served two years before resigning in protest in early 2000, denouncing the sanctions as a "criminal policy."
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned in a report in December 1999 that the oil-for-food program "has not halted the collapse of the health system and the deterioration of water supplies, which together pose one of the gravest threats to the health and well-being of the civilian population." Seventy members of Congress sent a letter to President Clinton in early 2000 denouncing the sanctions as "infanticide masquerading as policy."
While sanctions were maintained after the Gulf War allegedly to compel Iraq to disarm, the U.S. government long pursued a different goal. Secretary of State James Baker declared in May 1991, "We are not interested in seeking a relaxation of sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power." President Clinton decreed in November 1997 that "sanctions will be there until the end of time, or as long as he [Saddam Hussein] lasts." At the end of the Clinton era, Defense Secretary William Cohen bragged,
We have been successful, through the sanctions regime, to really shut off most of the revenue that will be going to rebuild [Saddam Hussein's] military.
Joy Gordon, professor of philosophy at Fairfield University, spent three years researching the effects of the UN sanctions programs on Iraq. Gordon obtained many confidential UN documents that showed that
the United States has fought aggressively throughout the last decade to purposefully minimize the humanitarian goods that enter the country,
as she reported in a November 2002 Harper's article.
After the first Gulf War, the UN Security Council set up a committee to administer sanctions on Iraq. The U.S. government vigorously exploited its veto power on the committee by placing holds on contracts. The Economist declared in early 2000 that Americans and British on the sanctions committee were "abusing their power to block suspicious imports." The United States blocked the importing of ambulances, tires, and soap. Imports of children's pencils were restricted "because lead could have a military use." The United States vetoed allowing car batteries and forklifts to be included on a list of humanitarian goods that could automatically be sent into Iraq. The Associated Press summarized controversies around U.S. vetoes of imports:
Most of the disputed contracts are for equipment to improve Iraq's dilapidated oil industry, power grid and water sanitation infrastructure.
The U.S. government routinely and perennially vetoed delivery of goods that UN weapons inspectors had certified as posing no military benefit to Saddam. As of September 2001, the United States was blocking "nearly one-third of water and sanitation and one quarter of electricity and educational - supply contracts were on hold." Gordon noted, "As of September 2001, nearly a billion dollars' worth of medical-equipment contracts - for which all the information sought had been provided - was still on hold."
In early 2002, the United States blocked contracts for the delivery of "dialysis, dental, and fire-fighting equipment, water tankers, milk and yogurt production equipment, printing equipment for schools." Gordon reported,
Since August 1991 the United States has blocked most purchases of materials necessary for Iraq to generate electricity.... Often restrictions have hinged on the withholding of a single essential element, rendering many approved items useless. For example, Iraq was allowed to purchase a sewage-treatment plant but was blocked from buying the generator necessary to run it; this in a country that has been pouring 300,000 tons of raw sewage daily into its rivers.
Sanctions and political games
Gordon observed that the U.S. government "has sometimes given a reason for its refusal to approve humanitarian goods, sometimes given no reason at all, and sometimes changed its reason three or four times, in each instance causing a delay of months." She noted,
The United States found many ways to slow approval of contracts. Although it insisted on reviewing every contract carefully, for years it didn't assign enough staff to do this without causing enormous delays."
Large shipments of humanitarian aid were delayed "simply because of U.S. disinterest in spending the money necessary to review them."
The U.S. government played politics with its holds, turning Iraq into a pork barrel for wheeling and dealing on the UN Security Council. In 2001, the United States proposed a reform called "smart sanctions" that would have automatically slowed down many more imports into Iraq - while removing the United States from culpability for blocking the relief. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the U.S. government was confident that the revised sanctions system would be able to keep the box as tightly closed as we have the last 10 years, without receiving on our shoulders all the baggage that goes with it.
When Russia refused to support "smart sanctions," the United States responded by slapping holds on almost all the contracts that Russian companies had to deliver goods to Iraq. After Russia agreed to support a revised sanctions reform in April 2002, U.S. government holds on three-quarters of a billion dollars in Russian contracts for Iraq suddenly vanished in what one diplomat told the Financial Times was "the boldest move yet by the U.S. to use the holds to buy political agreement."
Gordon concluded that "U.S. policy consistently opposed any form of economic development within Iraq." As of mid 2002, the importation of almost $5 billion in humanitarian goods was blocked - almost entirely because of holds imposed by the U.S. and British governments.
Blaming Saddam
President Bush sought to blame all the suffering of the Iraqi people on Saddam's lust for weapons. In an October 7, 2002, speech Bush declared,
The world has also tried economic sanctions and watched Iraq use billions of dollars in illegal oil revenues to fund more weapons purchases, rather than providing for the needs of the Iraqi people.
While Saddam did use some of the revenue from "illegal" (i.e., not authorized by the UN) oil sales to Syria and elsewhere to purchase weapons, the United States never presented any evidence that such purchases amounted to "billions of dollars." The U.S. position appeared to be that as long as Saddam spent a single cent on weapons, the United States was blameless for the devastation from its "siege warfare" tactics.
After human-rights advocates had harshly condemned sanctions on Iraq for almost a decade, the sanctions suddenly morphed into a causus belli. At a March 27, 2003, joint press conference for Bush and Britian's prime minister, Tony Blair, Blair declared,
Over the past five years, 400,000 Iraqi children under the age of five died of malnutrition and disease, preventively, but died because of the nature of the regime under which they are living. Now, that is why we're acting. Progressive editor Matthew Rothschild observed that Bush and Blair "refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for those deaths and instead seize upon them simply to justify their war of aggression."
After the war started, the suffering caused by sanctions became further proof of Saddam's depravity. In a March 25, 2003, press conference announcing plans for humanitarian aid after the Iraq War, Andrew Natsios, administrator for the Agency for International Development, declared,
There has been a water issue, and I am not sure everybody entirely understands this. It predates the war. Water and sanitation are the principal reasons children have died at higher rates than they should have for a middle-income country.... It is a function of a deliberate decision by the regime not to repair the water system or replace old equipment with new equipment, so in many cases people are basically drinking untreated sewer water in their homes and have been for some years.
In reality, the United States government perennially blocked the importation of the necessary equipment and supplies to repair the water system - as if it were a "dual use" because of the possibility that Iraqi soldiers would get glasses of water from the repaired systems.
From 1991 through the end of 2002, 8,924 people were killed in attacks by international terrorists, according to the U.S. State Department. The sanctions on Iraq may have killed more than 50 times as many civilians as did terrorists during a time when terrorism was supposedly one of the gravest threats to humanity.
During the 2000 election campaign, Bush criticized the Clinton administration for failing to keep sanctions as tight as possible. In the lead-up to the war, he frequently relished recounting the details of Saddam's brutality, especially the alleged gas attacks against Kurdish villages that, according to Bush, "killed or injured at least 20,000 people, more than six times the number of people who died in the attacks of September the 11th." (It is unclear whether it was the Iraqis or the Iranians who actually carried out the gas attacks.)
But far more Iraqi children were killed by sanctions after Bush's inauguration on Janu ary 20, 2001, than Saddam killed in his alleged gas attacks on the Kurds. If the estimate of 500,000 dead as a result of sanctions is correct, that would be the equivalent of snuffing out the lives of all the babies and young children in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota.
The fact that bin Laden greatly exaggerated the sanctions death toll does not absolve the U.S. government. Within a year or two after the end of the Gulf War, it should have been obvious that sanctions would neither turn Saddam into a Boy Scout nor bring him to his knees. The U.S. government knew the sanctions were scourging the Iraqi people. Three U.S. presidents escaped any liability for the Iraqi deaths caused by U.S. policy. The people who worked in the World Trade Center may not have been so lucky.
Rather than continue to pirouette on the world stage as a great benefactor, the Bush administration should open the files and let everyone learn what the U.S. government knew - and when it knew it - about the devastation sanctions wreaked upon Iraq. This information could provide a healthy antidote against future salvation manias by American presidents.
comments on this article? send them to backtalk! [visit backtalk!]
James Bovard is author of Lost Rights (1994) and the forthcoming Terrorism and Tyranny: How Bush's Crusade is Sabotaging Peace, Justice, and Freedom (St. Martin's Press, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email. mailto:jbovard@his.com
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At Least 21 Killed in Attack in Iraq
February 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) -- Guerrillas shouting ``God is great'' launched a bold daylight assault on an Iraqi police station and security compound west of Baghdad on Saturday, freeing prisoners and sparking a gunbattle that killed 21 people and wounded 33, police and hospital officials said.
The same security compound was attacked two days earlier by gunmen just as the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, was visiting the site in Fallujah. Abizaid escaped that attack unharmed.
One shop owner across the street from the security compound said he and his neighbors had been told by guerrillas not to open that morning because an attack was imminent.
Around 25 attackers, some of them masked, faced little resistance as they surrounded the police station and stormed in, going from room to room throwing hand grenades and firing heavy machine guns, survivors said. Few police, most with only small weapons, were present at the time.
``I only had a pistol with me,'' said Kamel Allawi, a police lieutenant. ``Right away I fell on the ground and blood was gushing out of my left leg.''
The attackers freed 75 prisoners held at the station, killing the guards and shooting open the cell doors, police Lt. Col. Jalal Sabri said. The prisoners were criminals -- most arrested for murder or theft -- and none of them were suspected of involvement in the anti-U.S. insurgency, Sabri said.
The gunmen, shouting Islamic slogans ``God is great'' and ``There is no god but Allah,'' also attacked the nearby, heavily barricaded compound of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps that Abizaid visited Thursday. Iraqi security forces battled with the attackers for a half hour in the streets, taking cover behind concrete blocks amid a hail of gunfire.
The brazen, bloody battle -- on the heels of the Abizaid attack -- raised questions about the preparedness of some Iraqi police and defense units to take on security duties as the U.S. administration wants. After the Thursday attack, Abizaid said of the Iraqi civil defense unit in Fallujah: ``Obviously they are not fully trained. They're not ready.''
The U.S.-led coalition intends to hand sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30 and rely more on Iraqis to fight the persistent insurgency, blamed on backers of Saddam Hussein and foreign Islamic militants.
But American plans for the transfer of power have been shaken by criticism from the powerful Shiite Muslim clergy and growing opposition on the U.S.-picked Governing Council. A U.N. special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, who was brought in to try to resolve the dispute, called on Friday for major changes in the U.S. formula for picking a new government.
In Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad, no American forces could be seen in Saturday's battle. The U.S. command has said American troops could be quickly dispatched to trouble spots to help Iraqi forces as America hands over security to the Iraqis.
Lt. Col. Sabri said 17 people were killed -- almost all police -- along with four attackers, two of whom he said carried a Lebanese passports. He said he believed all the attackers were non-Iraqis.
``I suspect they were Arabs or Syrians or belonged to al-Qaida. They want to create instability and chaos,'' he said.
Two of the dead taken to Fallujah General Hospital appeared to be attackers. They were dressed in black T-shirts and baggy pants with hand grenades in the pockets, said Mohammed Ibrahim, a hospital administrator. One had belt of machine gun ammunition.
Of the 33 wounded, 25 were policemen, said Adel Ali, the hospital's deputy director.
Qais Jameel, a wounded policeman, said some of the attackers spoke in a foreign language. ``It sounded like gibberish to me. It wasn't Arabic,'' he said from his hospital bed, the sheets soaked in his blood.
``If the situation continues this way, I might leave the police force. We joined the police to provide security, but no one wants security, they (insurgents and criminals) want to chaos to continue,'' said his colleague, Ahmad Saad, who was unhurt in the attack and crouched by the bed comforting Jameel.
``Our problem is that we don't have any kind of heavy weapons, no effective weapons,'' just automatic rifles, said Sabri, speaking at the police station in a room with bloodstained carpets.
In early February, pamphlets signed by insurgent groups were posted in Fallujah warning Iraqis not to cooperate with U.S. forces and threatening ``harsh consequences.'' Among the groups that signed the leaflets was Muhammad's Army, which U.S. officials say appears to be an umbrella group for former Iraqi intelligence agents, army and security officials and Baath Party members.
Also Saturday, demonstrations broke out in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah and the Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, where hundreds of angry Iraqis demonstrated against U.S. military raids and searches of their homes.
Carrying placards that read ``Today Demonstrations, Tomorrow Explosions,'' protesters gathered near a giant American-run prison -- built by Saddam Hussein -- and demanded the release of thousands of Iraqi prisoners.
``This demonstration is a reaction against the behavior of the coalition forces against our citizens and against the attacks against our houses and the capture of our men and our children,'' one man shouted during an interview with Associated Press Television News. ``They are attacking in the middle of the night against innocent people.''
In Kurdish-majority Sulaimaniyah, thousands of protesters clamored for an independent Kurdish state that includes the three autonomous Kurdish provinces as well as disputed parts of northern Iraq containing a large Arab population.
In Suwayrah, 30 miles southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi police shot and wounded three armed men in a pickup truck, and after searching the truck, discovered it was wired with a bomb on Friday, said the provincial police chief Brig. Gen. Hassan Khatan.
U.S. plans to hand over power to the Iraqis on June 30 have been shaken, with Iraq's most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, demanding elections before the handover date.
U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi left Iraq on Friday after a week-long mission to determine if elections were possible. His spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, said he doubted a national ballot was feasible by the target date.
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Iraqi Party Goes From Exiled to Electable
Shiite Group Emerges as an Effective, Innovative Political Force in Basra
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40790-2004Feb13?language=printer
BASRA, Iraq -- Um Mustafa, a veil revealing a crescent of her face, gingerly entered the office of Basra's most effective Islamic party. Her time was short and -- like many in a city where the government is hapless and the occupiers aloof -- her list of requests was long.
Salah Battat, the party's representative, fielded them in rapid-fire fashion from behind his desk.
Um Mustafa needed help planning a Shiite Muslim ritual. Battat nodded.
Her husband was fired 14 years ago from a steel plant. No problem, said Battat, whose men provided security for the factory and could call in some favors.
Clothes? Pick them up from Um Tubarak, he answered.
What about her phone line, cut three months ago? "What's the number?" asked Battat, repeating a phrase he has uttered dozens of times to a stream of visitors seeking his intervention. He glanced at his smartly dressed assistant, who opened a brown leather book.
"550-869," Um Mustafa answered.
"We'll take care of it," he assured her.
So went another morning of Basra's equivalent of local politics -- mundane gestures with dramatic stakes -- at the two-story villa that serves as the headquarters of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Over the past few months, the once-exiled party has emerged as the best organized, most influential organization among 25 or so contenders in Iraq's second-largest city. While a debate rages over the best way to choose Iraq's next government and a U.N. mission in the country seeks a way forward, the party has begun a decisive move to position itself for elections that many in Basra believe are inevitable.
Even its detractors, most numerous among secular parties, acknowledge that the Supreme Council's ascent is innovative and spectacular. Like Islamic groups in Lebanon and elsewhere, it stands as the most effective mediator between a frustrated public and a government still struggling to constitute itself -- with a keen understanding that politics in Iraq are still driven more by patronage than by sweeping electoral promises.
As in Sudan, where Islamic activists infiltrated the bureaucracy, leaders of the Badr Brigades, the Supreme Council's technically banned militia, have taken key positions in the police force, most notably in the intelligence branch. And in an Iraqi twist, the party has cultivated tribes across the south, a recognition of their prominence in the wake of the government's fall last April.
At the center of the strategy is Battat, 49, a resistance fighter turned neighborhood politician, who travels in Basra like a man on the campaign trail.
"Elections are the best way toward the future," he said in an interview this week in his office, a green Koran on his desk along with a picture of Mohammed Bakir Hakim, the Supreme Council leader who was assassinated last August in a car bombing in the sacred Shiite city of Najaf. "Any government that takes power without elections will not win the confidence of the people." No Force or Fear
Battat, who forgoes a tie but buttons his shirt to the collar, speaks in the style of a man accustomed to being listened to. In recent days, traveling in a white sport-utility vehicle accompanied by a pickup truck of armed guards, he has visited a petroleum products company, a steel manufacturer and a fertilizer factory. He convened a meeting of workers and managers at a paper mill. A conference followed at the city's technical institute, "where we didn't avoid any question."
Last week, he took up the demands of 100 workers at the Oil Transport Co., whose $200 monthly salaries were cut in half. Leading a delegation, he spoke with the company's manager "in brotherly fashion."
"We told him, 'If you take care of the people, the people will take care of you,' " the soft-spoken Battat recalled saying during the half-hour meeting at the company's headquarters. "We don't deal with people through force or fear."
The salaries were soon restored.
Despite his public profile, Battat can still seem somewhat ill at ease, still the underground fighter. He left Iraq in 1979 and spent the next two decades, he said, as a guerrilla with the Badr Brigades in the once-vast marshes of southern Iraq and as an exile activist in Tehran with the Supreme Council. In April, he returned to Iraq with the council, but the secrecy of a subversive still shadows his conversations. The size of his office staff in Basra, for instance, was confidential, he said.
On this day, Battat had an appointment at the Customs Police, where the commander had decided to open a small, one-room mosque on the grounds of the headquarters. Battat arrived a half-hour late and, thumbing his brown worry beads, was then made to wait another half-hour. When the police chief arrived, with effusive apologies, Battat was escorted like a visiting dignitary.
"This building is better than constructing a factory," Battat told the two dozen police officers and guests gathered for the inauguration, two sticks of incense burning along the wall of the small worship hall. "The best factory is the mosque."
Col. Thafer Sabah Abdel-Nabi, the Customs Police chief, told the audience that he was inspired to build the mosque by the example of the city's traffic police and border police. The police, he said, needed a place to worship at work.
"We'd like to build the police force on the basis of religious doctrine, then on martial skills," he said.
Abdel-Nabi's name comes up in almost every conversation with secular parties about the influence in Basra of the Supreme Council and the Badr Brigades -- a militia long stationed in Iran whose numbers range anywhere from 10,000 to many times that and whose name was changed to the Badr Organization to signal its ostensible transformation into a welfare group.
A 38-year-old former military officer, Abdel-Nabi left Iraq during the 1991 Shiite uprising that followed the Persian Gulf War. He joined the Badr Brigades and remained in southern Iran for 13 years. After the fall, he returned to Iraq, and since last year, has served as the head of the Customs Police, a key institution in Basra, which is near the porous border with Iran.
The other name mentioned is Lt. Col. Khalaf Badran, still known to many by his Badr nom de guerre of Abu Mahmoud. Like Abdel-Nabi, Badran deserted during the uprising, spending the next decade as a fighter in the marshes.
Since October, Badran, 39, has run Police Intelligence, a former Interior Ministry outfit that, with the dissolution of the former government, has transformed itself into an intelligence arm of the police.
The influence of Badr remains: Khalaf doesn't hide his affiliation, a colleague freely identified himself as a Badr commander, and a poster at the entrance to his office commemorates fallen Badr militiamen.
"The police are scared to touch a lot of people," he said. "We work without fear."
Capt. Shay Marks, a British military spokesman, described Khalaf's 45 agents as "hard men," but effective and capable. While lawlessness pervades Basra to a lesser degree than in Baghdad, Marks still has to contend with tribal rackets and groups posing as Islamic parties -- with names like God's Revenge and the Islamic Vanguard -- that mete out vigilante justice. The Badr men and the Supreme Council have so far proved responsible, he said. That view is echoed by the British civilian administration.
"If you're not killing people and you're not posing a particular threat, we can take a longer view of it," Marks said. "You've got to be relatively pragmatic. There's a bit of reality to take into account here."
A darker view comes from Basra's secular parties, which are far less influential and cater mostly to intellectuals. They fear the Badr Brigades are infiltrating the police, locking in their influence before a new government takes power. Given Basra's proximity to Iran, some of them also complain that Iranian intelligence agents work through them and other Shiite parties.
"It's a time bomb inside society," said Ali Mehdi, the representative of the Iraqi Communist Party in Basra.
A Vague Program
As in much of southern Iraq, Basra's politics are dominated by Islamic parties, and the city's liquor stores -- once numbering more than 100 -- have all closed. The Supreme Council still competes with the Dawa party and followers of Moqtada Sadr, a young, militantly anti-American cleric. But divisions have weakened Dawa, and residents say Sadr suffers from a lack of money.
Since Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq, rejected a U.S. plan for Iraq's political transition and demanded direct elections, the Supreme Council has taken up the call for a vote, endorsing the message as its own.
Beyond that, its political program remains vague, often overshadowed by appeals for dialogue, upright living and the importance of religion in private and public life. Struggling not to appear anti-Islamic, cash-strapped, non-religious parties have found it difficult to compete -- most even avoid the use of the term "secular" -- and many fear the Supreme Council's success in organizing puts it at an overwhelming advantage if a vote did take place.
"What's the danger? The danger is direct, free elections," said Hikmat Othman Saad, the representative in Basra of the Coalition of Iraqi National Unity. "At that point, a university professor and an illiterate person in the street will be equal."
Saad, blunt in his criticism of Islamic parties, nevertheless speaks with a measure of admiration. He recalled last summer when persistent blackouts in Basra's stultifying heat drove the price of blocks of ice from 6 cents to nearly $7. Battat's Supreme Council, he said, arranged for convoys of trucks loaded with ice that was sold for about 65 cents.
Battat said they were only arranging for donations from the faithful, but he and other spokesmen acknowledge their wide-ranging social activism through seven branches across the province -- facilitating documentation for travelers to Iran, writing letters of recommendation for the unemployed and providing certification that residents were free of Baathist connections.
The work takes up much of Battat's day; his staff estimates that it fields hundreds of requests a week.
After the visit by Um Mustafa, seeking help for her telephone, a teacher in a red kaffiyeh had a meeting that lasted barely a minute. It was enough time to plead for help in getting back a job he lost before the war.
"We'll give him a letter to support his case," Battat said afterward.
Outside Battat's office was Hazem Saadoun, who waited patiently for help in getting a phone line. There was no rush, Saadoun admitted. He, his sister and their parents had been waiting for a phone since 2002. Friends suggested he come to the party for assistance in getting phone lines, as well as other utilities, cooking gas or a post office box, or even to change departments at the university.
"We have no alternative," Saadoun said. "Otherwise we just keep waiting."
Next came a representative of a Shiite community center, asking Battat to speak at a meeting. "If there's time," he answered. They had already held a women's meeting and were planning a conference in two weeks that would bring together the most important tribal leaders from the Basra region. That day, he still had a youth conference, to which he hurried off in the afternoon.
The meeting, held in a mosque along a canal drenched in sewage, drew 500 youths. Along with a pastry and fruit drink, each attendee received a card asking for name, birth date, address, phone number and impression of the meeting. On the walls were portraits of Shiite clerical leaders. Taped to the white pillars inside the worship hall were appeals for the young to organize.
"The Iraqi people want only one thing," Battat called out to the crowd. "Elections!"
-------- israel / palestine
PA: Israel's absence has no impact on ICJ's authority on fence
By Aluf Benn,
Haaretz Correspondent, and Agencies
14/02/2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/393773.html
Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Sha'ath on Friday said that Israel's decision not to appear at the International Court of Justice hearing on the West Bank separation fence should have no effect on the court's authority to rule on the matter. Sha'ath, who is visiting in Tokyo, reiterated the Palestinian position that if Israel wants a security fence, it should be built in Israeli territory.
Earlier Friday, an official in the State Prosecutor's office said that the court, located in The Hague, is expected to take a position against Israel regardless of whether Israel participates in the proceedings.
Top cabinet ministers decided Thursday that Israel will not participate in the proceedings set to begin February 23 in The Hague. The decision was made hours after legal advisers recommended that Israel stay away from the proceedings, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said in a statement.
"The ministerial team, headed by... Sharon, decided to make do with the affidavit Israel filed on January 1, stating that the court does not have the authority to hold hearings on the fence," the statement said.
Irit Kahan, head of the international affairs department in the State Prosecutor's office, said Israel's planned absence from the hearing was irrelevant.
"I don't think that because we won't be there, the judges will formulate a position against us," she told Israel Radio on Friday. "The expectation is that a position against us will be formulated in any event."
Kahan said Israel was trying to prevent the hearing from being a political event. "We have certainly shown sufficient respect to the court by trying to prevent it from being dragged into a political move by the Arab countries," she said.
The negative world opinion of the fence would have changed had Israel moved its route closer to the 1967 border at an earlier stage, said Kahan, adding that she thought doing so at this point won't alter the debate at The Hague.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority interpreted Israel's decision not to appear at the hearing as an admission of guilt.
"This is a recognition that the Israelis cannot face the international community and international law and justice," Nabil Abu Rdeineh, an adviser to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, said Thursday.
Israel's legal team urged that Israel not take part in oral arguments before the court because that would lend legitimacy to a case they say is politically motivated and outside the tribunal's jurisdiction.
Alan Baker, the Foreign Ministry legal adviser, said that "after having examined all the written statements that were submitted by other countries, Israel does not feel it has anything to add."
However, Israel won't remain entirely on the sidelines in the closely watched case. The Foreign Ministry is dispatching spokespeople, hundreds of Israeli demonstrators plan to fly to the Netherlands, and the Israeli rescue service ZAKA is sending the skeleton of a Jerusalem bus mangled in a Palestinian suicide bombing.
The International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, agreed to hold hearings in response to a request by the United Nations General Assembly for a non-binding opinion on whether Israel is legally obliged to tear down the barrier.
Israel says it is a security fence to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers.
Palestinians object to the planned route of the barrier, slated to cut deep into the West Bank with a network of metal fences, razor wire and concrete wall. They hope for a ruling to exert international pressure on Israel to stop the project.
Israel has signalled it might shift the fence's route in response to U.S. pressure.
The Israeli rescue service ZAKA said it is flying the charred frame of a Jerusalem bus blown up by a Palestinian suicide bomber to The Hague. Eleven people were killed and dozens wounded in the bombing last month.
ZAKA members collect body parts of victims in the aftermath of suicide bombings. The rescue service said ZAKA volunteers would deploy outside the court, alongside the bus, and talk to passers-by about their work.
An Israeli grass roots group, meanwhile, is arranging for discount flights to The Hague for Israeli demonstrators. Shahar Ervin, the director of the group, the Citizens Coalition, said more than 600 have approached him over the last two days.
--------
Israelis Kill Palestinian in West Bank Raid
February 14, 2004
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/international/middleeast/14MIDE.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Feb. 13 - Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man during a raid before dawn on Friday in the northern West Bank, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.
An Israeli security official said soldiers were searching for a suspected car bomb in Qabatia, near Jenin, when they heard gunshots. The official said that the soldiers spotted a car driving from the area where shots were fired, and that they opened fire on it after the driver ignored warning shouts and shots.
The official said soldiers found no weapons in the car. Palestinians said the dead man was a farmer.
The official said soldiers had entered Qabatia after intelligence reports that militants there had prepared a car bomb.
Israeli security forces were on high alert on Friday. Palestinian militants threatened retaliation after Israeli soldiers killed 15 Palestinians, most of them gunmen, during a raid in Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli police blocked Palestinian men under the age of 45 from attending Friday Prayer at the site revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews as the Temple Mount.
-------- space
Air Force launches rocket carrying missile-detection satellite
The Associated Press
February 14. 2004
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040214/APN/402140742
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A Titan 4B rocket took off from its seaside pad Saturday carrying an Air Force satellite that will give the U.S. military an early warning of incoming missile attacks. The Air Force said the cost of the rocket was about $500 million and pegged the value of the satellite at $250 million. The Defense Support Program satellite has a life expectancy of at least 10 years.
The launch just before 2 p.m. took place despite approaching stormy weather that caused a delay earlier in the countdown. The rocket will place the satellite into a geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the earth about seven hours after liftoff.
Defense Support Program satellites use infrared sensors to detect heat from missile and booster plumes against the earth's background.
The program began in the early 1970s and improvements since then have made the system more sensitive. Since the mid-1990s, upgrades have allowed the satellites already on orbit to detect smaller missiles, giving ground commanders more time to react to short-range missile attacks.
Military officials said that missile threats exist in the former Soviet Union and in other nations.
"They're all over the world and we see nations and other elements that are willing to use them, so we think we still need the capability," said Col. Robert S. Reese, deputy program manager for Space Based Infrared Systems.
The Titan 4B that carried the satellite into orbit was designed based on the Titan 1, which was created in 1955.
----
Lockheed Martin-Built Titan 4 Launches Defense Support Program Payload
Feb 14, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/launchers-04d.html
Cape Canaveral - A Lockheed Martin-built Titan IV B rocket thundered off its Complex 40 seaside launch pad today at 1:50 p.m. Eastern Standard Time carrying a Defense Support Program (DSP) satellite into orbit for the U.S. Air Force. The DSP satellite constellation provides early warning of missile launches worldwide. An Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) transferred the satellite to its final orbit approximately 22,000 miles above Earth.
Today's launch was the first of two Titan IV launches planned for this year from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), Fla. The second launch will be the final launch of a Titan IV from Cape Canaveral. Next year the last Titan IV will fly from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. This was the 37th Titan IV launch overall. Twenty-six Titan Ivs have been launched from CCAFS and 11 from Vandenberg.
"The Lockheed Martin Titan team is treating these final missions of the Titan IV like they are first-time launches, not final launches," said G. Thomas Marsh, executive vice president, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. "The pride of our entire team is riding on these missions, because we know how important they are for our nation's security. Today's launch is a result of the great partnership between industry and the Air Force."
Titan IV, the nation's largest and most powerful expendable launch vehicle, is built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company in Denver, Colo. The Titan IV B is capable of boosting payloads weighing 38,800 pounds into low-Earth polar orbit, 47,800 pounds into low-Earth equatorial orbit, or more than 12,700 pounds into geosynchronous orbit.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. Is under contract to the U.S. government to complete the launch of 39 vehicles. As prime contractor and systems integrator, the company builds the first and second stages and provides overall program management and launch services. The IUS was built by The Boeing Company at facilities in Kent, Wash., under separate contract with the U.S. Air Force. The satellite was built by Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, Calif.
Other members of the Titan IV contractor team and their responsibilities include: GenCorp Aerojet Propulsion Division, Sacramento, Calif., liquid rocket engines; Alliant Techsystems, Magna, Utah, solid rocket motor upgrade; The Boeing Company, Huntington Beach, Calif., payload fairing; and Honeywell Space Systems, Clearwater, Fla., advanced guidance.
-------- spies
Who oversees our spies? In most cases, nobody
Auditor's report offers sobering news
THOMAS WALKOM,
Feb. 14, 2004
Toronto Star.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1076713810377&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467
Amid the fuss over the Liberal sponsorship scandal, one element of Auditor-General Sheila Fraser's damning report has received little public attention.
That's the eight-page section dealing with oversight of Canada's spies.
Fraser's conclusion is that there isn't enough - particularly now that Parliament has given security agencies more authority to snoop and more money to do it.
Or, as she puts it: "We would have expected that intrusive powers would be subjected to a level of review proportionate to the level of intrusion."
Some might be surprised to discover how many spy agencies there are working for the federal government. According to Fraser, the tally is 10 - eight operating in Canada plus two more working exclusively abroad.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP are the best known. But the defence department also operates three spy agencies while the Canada Border Services Agency has more than 200 intelligence operatives, plus a counterterrorism section.
The foreign affairs and immigration departments collect unspecified intelligence on Canadians and others abroad.
And in the wake of 9/11, a relatively new agency called the Financial Transaction and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada was given broad powers to look at people's bank accounts and other money transactions.
Canada also boasts a high-tech eavesdropping agency called the Communications Security Establishment. Set up during the Cold War to listen in on the Russians, it was originally banned from snooping on Canadians at home.
But since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it has been granted new powers that allow it, under the authority of the defence minister, to eavesdrop on the electronic communications of anyone inside Canada.
Fraser notes that the Communications Security Establishment became increasingly close to the RCMP during the last few years and now provides the Mounties with many of the fruits of its high-tech snoopery.
So who watches all of these watchers? Who makes sure they don't overstep their bounds?
Fraser's report is particularly sobering here, for her answer is - in most cases - nobody.
Given the circumstances of its founding, CSIS has the most elaborate review mechanism. Set up in 1984, when spies were treated with great suspicion, it answers to an external inspector-general and something called the Security Intelligence Review Committee.
Critics argue that an after-the-fact review isn't sufficient to prevent abuses. But the review committee's public reports - while heavily edited for security reasons - do give an inkling as to what the agency is up to.
Actions of the Communications Security Establishment are also subject to review after the fact by a commissioner (now former Supreme Court chief justice Antonio Lamer).
But in her report, Fraser says the commission's reports to date haven't supplied much useful information.
The RCMP is a curious case. After CSIS was set up, it was supposed to get out of the spy business. But it never did and, over time, gradually re-expanded its national security role.
The Mounties got a real boost after 9/11 when the government, under pressure from Washington, passed anti-terrorist legislation. This gave them more powers, more authority to investigate suspected terrorism - and an extra $576 million over six years.
While the RCMP now vies with CSIS for the title of Number 1 spy agency, it has no formal review mechanism - only a complaints commission with limited powers.
Indeed, complaints commissioner Shirley Heafey is so frustrated by what she calls RCMP stonewalling, she's taken the force to court in an attempt to get it to give her information.
The Mounties say that as police officers involved in criminal cases, their actions are adequately monitored by the courts.
But Fraser doesn't buy that argument, noting that in its expanded counterterrorist role the RCMP often collects information or takes actions that are never intended to result in criminal prosecution.
As for the remaining eight spy services, she says, they aren't answerable to any independent review bodies.
Auditors' reports always carry responses from the government. The Privy Council Office reply to Fraser on this file, given to her a few months ago, is the usual gobbledegook - saying little and signifying less.
The RCMP response is clearer. The Mounties politely told Fraser to take a hike, saying that they thought the current system works just fine.
But between the time Fraser completed her report last fall and the time she released it this week, much has happened.
Prime Minister Paul Martin has been embarrassed into calling a judicial inquiry into the role Canadian spy agencies played in the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian deported to Syria from the U.S. to be tortured as an alleged Al Qaeda supporter.
The government has also asked the judge heading the inquiry, Ontario Appeal Court Justice Dennis O'Connor, to recommend a real review system for the Mounties.
With luck, O'Connor will take a broad look at all of Canada's spy agencies. It would be nice if someone knew what they were up to.
--------
INTELLIGENCE
Dispute Prompts Scrutiny of Bush's Daily Reading
February 14, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 - The highly classified digest that provides President Bush with his daily intelligence updates is being scrutinized within the government and Congress after criticism that the information Mr. Bush has been given on Iraq and other matters has not reflected a broad range of views, senior administration and Congressional officials say.
Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Senate Intelligence Committee, which voted on Thursday night to expand its inquiry on Iraq intelligence, have signaled their intent to examine the shaping and presentation of the daily briefing, the officials said Friday.
The inquiries were prompted in part by questions about whether prewar White House statements regarding Iraq and its illicit weapons were based on the best available intelligence on that subject, the officials said.
As much as any information the president receives from top aides, the daily briefing informs his view of the world, ranging across issues of terrorism, arms control, military events and more.
But under Mr. Bush, the number of intelligence agencies receiving the data was reduced, prompting complaints from senior officials in those agencies.
They say that because they do not know what is presented in the digest, prepared by the C.I.A.'s intelligence directorate, they have no way of challenging information with which they disagree, administration officials said.
Under previous administrations, the heads of agencies like the State Department's intelligence branch and the Defense Intelligence Agency were among those who received daily copies of the briefing document.
In the prewar debate on Iraq, other agencies, particularly the State Department's intelligence branch, were more skeptical of the idea that Iraq possessed illicit weapons than the C.I.A. was, the officials said.
The C.I.A. review was announced in an unpublicized address at the agency this week by Jami Miscik, the deputy director for intelligence, who said it would focus on the "quality and approach taken" in the preparation of the digest, formally known as the President's Daily Brief, or P.D.B.
The separate review by the Senate committee will consider whether the digests presented the White House with an accurate picture of prewar intelligence on Iraq, and whether they adequately reflected the views of intelligence agencies outside the C.I.A., senior congressional officials said.
In a telephone interview on Friday, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate panel, declined to say whether the panel was seeking to read the highly classified documents. But a senior Congressional official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said "the P.D.B's have become a focus of greater interest on our part."
A senior intelligence official said that the briefings often spelled out the views of agencies other than the C.I.A. "if we know of competing views" and that the reasons for the disagreements were explained.
A senior intelligence official also said representatives of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and others also took part in a daily planning meeting at C.I.A. headquarters in which the contents of the presidential daily briefing document were mapped out in general terms.
In her speech, Ms. Miscik said the C.I.A. review would compare the approach adopted under President Bush with the one in place until 2000 under President Bill Clinton. An overhaul three years ago "significantly improved the quality of the product we put in front of the president each morning," Ms. Miscik said, but the review would "see if some of the strong points of our earlier approach have been lost."
Ms. Miscik did not publicly describe the nature of the earlier changes. But a senior intelligence official said that under Mr. Bush, the intelligence digest included more operational, real-time information than before, including detail about the sources of intelligence that could not have been shared with a larger audience.
Intelligence officials said the C.I.A. review would not address the question of how widely the briefing should be distributed, a decision they said was up to the White House. But Congressional officials said that the Senate intelligence panel would be likely to address that issue.
A White House spokesman, Sean McCormack, said: "The P.D.B. is a product prepared for the president, and each president decides the distribution of the P.D.B. President Bush decided at the start of his term that only his closest and most senior advisers should receive copies."
On Thursday night, that Senate panel voted unanimously to expand the scope of its inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, to address not only whether the intelligence was well founded but whether public statements and testimony on Iraq by government officials "were substantiated by intelligence information."
The contents of the president's daily brief are so closely held that most Congressional and administration officials who have raised questions about the briefings given to Mr. Bush acknowledge that they have never been permitted to see the document. They say they do not know if the briefings on Iraq and other subjects reflected the general consensus of the intelligence community.
The White House asserts that the documents are covered by executive privilege. Even members of the Congressional commission that is investigating the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States have been permitted only limited access to the documents, under highly restricted circumstances.
The staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee still has not yet been able to strike an agreement with the White House that would allow it to review copies of the briefings on Iraq in the months before the war, as part of its broadened effort to compare the administration's public statements with prewar intelligence.
A joint statement issued by Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Mr. Rockefeller said that other new areas the panel would review would include the role played by the Iraqi National Congress in providing information to intelligence agencies.
Some of the defectors introduced to American intelligence officers by the exile organization, which is headed by Ahmad Chalabi, were determined to have fabricated some of the information they shared about Iraq and its illicit weapons, according to intelligence officials.
Republicans had sought for months to block any widening of the Senate inquiry. In his own statement, Senator Rockefeller said that "a few outstanding issues" continued to divide Republicans and Democrats on the panel, but he said the two sides had "made a lot of progress."
"We will address the question of whether intelligence was exaggerated or misused by reviewing statements by senior policy makers to determine if those statements were substantiated by the intelligence," Senator Rockefeller said.
--------
The reality of intelligence failures
Letters to the Editor
February 14, 2004
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20040213-082039-5007r.htm
The grotesque silliness of investigating our intelligence services for failures in Iraq is clearly illustrated by a brief look at history ("Probe to go beyond Iraq war," Page 1, Feb. 2). All wars are declared on faulty intelligence, period. Every war in which America has been involved has been based at least in part on faulty intelligence, because intelligence, by its very nature, is always faulty. The Spanish-American War, which ended the 500-year-old tyranny of the Spanish Empire, was entered into because of faulty intelligence, and good thing it was.
Intelligence is faulty, in the first place, because it attempts to predict what people and nations will do, and no one can know that. Faulty intelligence is what nations use as public relations to justify doing what they want to do anyway. You can't hold national policy hostage to any kind of intelligence. That is the tail wagging the dog.
Let Congress and the president go back to what they are supposed to be doing, promoting the national interest, and let our intelligence services continue to be as faulty as the nature of the job makes them. If the president had not had this "faulty Iraqi intelligence" and used it skillfully in the court of public opinion, there is no way Congress or the United Nations ever would have authorized this needed and just Iraq war, and the world and America would have been the worse for it.
All our great presidents have used faulty intelligence to make the public case for doing what needed to be done in the national interest, and thank God they did.
ROBERT SHARP
Executive director
Leadership Forum Coalition Vienna
-------- un
ELECTIONS
U.N. Warns Against a Hasty Vote, but Iraqis Address the Issue
February 14, 2004
By NEELA BANERJEE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/international/middleeast/14IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 13 - The United Nations special envoy to Iraq departed Friday, warning that the country faced a significant chance of civil strife, and leaving unresolved the contentious question of holding elections before the June 30 transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis.
The rift over elections has broadened fissures between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Muslims, a trend that the envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, described as part of a trend of rising communal tensions that pose "very, very serious dangers." Sunni Arabs, a minority that has long ruled Iraq, worry that swift elections could bring the Shiite majority to power and unleash a backlash against them.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered cleric among the Shiites, injected himself into the debate by criticizing an American plan for a caucus system and calling for direct elections.
But after two recent meetings with him, Shiite and Sunni Iraqis representing some of the intellectual and tribal elite came away convinced that the cleric is flexible on the system and timetable of elections.
Moreover, they said, the meetings signal a willingness on the part of Ayatollah Sistani and Sunni leaders to try to thwart sectarian strife, as other politicians and clerics appeal to religion and ethnicity in advancing their demands.
"I am a Sunni," said Sheik Nazar Habib al-Hayzaran, head of the Azza tribe, who attended one meeting. "But I don't think that Sistani represents just the Shia, but that he represents all of Iraq."
At a news conference, Mr. Brahimi said he was heartened that Iraqis themselves were aware of the threat of communal strife. Still, he warned, "Civil wars happen because people are reckless, because people are selfish, because groups think more of themselves than they do of their country."
Rising concerns about civil strife prompted a group of Sunni Arab and Kurdish tribal leaders to meet with Ayatollah Sistani last Saturday to bring his message home to their anxious tribesmen. One of those who attended the meeting, Sheik Ibrahim al-Shawi, the leader of the mostly Sunni Shawi tribe, said some men in his tribe had told him "they would rather be ruled by a foreigner than a Shia."
During a 90-minute meeting at the cleric's home in Najaf, the leaders sat on a carpet and pillows in a large, unadorned room and candidly expressed their worries. When they said their tribesmen feared the possibility of Shiite political hegemony, Ayatollah Sistani said, "God forbid," several people at the meeting recounted.
Ayatollah Sistani "said the Shia are not a single bloc," Mr. Shawi said, "and they couldn't move as a single bloc." Shiites here, Mr. Shawi and others said, run the gamut from Communists to fundamentalists, a fact often ignored in discussions of their potential political might.
The cleric also indicated that he does not favor an Islamic state similar to Iran, a point he reiterated at the meetings, participants said.
"He doesn't want politics," said Ghassan R. al-Atiyyah, the organizer of the meetings and the executive director of the Iraq Foundation for Democracy and Development, a research organization. "He doesn't want any position to be occupied by a turban."
Mr. Atiyyah also led a meeting of academics and intellectuals with Ayatollah Sistani earlier this month, during which the cleric said he was open to a spectrum of electoral compromises that he thought would be better than the American-backed caucus system for choosing a government.
"He is flexible on the dates for general elections, though they should be before the American elections" in November, Mr. Attiyah said. "And any position on elections should be endorsed by the U.N. Security Council."
Whether Ayatollah Sistani communicated such flexibility to Mr. Brahimi remains unknown. The reclusive ayatollah did not comment on the discussions. At the Baghdad news conference, Mr. Brahimi recounted that the cleric "said that he agrees with me that elections cannot be established unless the appropriate circumstances are provided."
An aide to Mr. Brahimi hinted strongly that the June 30 date might be impossibly soon. "The time between now and June is very short, and that makes it unlikely that you can put mechanisms in place," Mr. Brahimi's spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, told The Associated Press.
Those Sunnis who met with Ayatollah Sistani conceded that they had little time to stanch the fear among their tribesmen over elections.
Others who have met with Ayatollah Sistani have said that he assured them he would consider options other than direct elections. For example, elections could be held on the level of neighborhoods for broader city councils. Those councils, in turn, would select their representatives to the new national assembly.
--------
U.N. Envoy Seeks 'Credible' Iraqi Vote
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40752-2004Feb13.html
BAGHDAD, Feb. 13 -- A U.N. envoy trying to settle differences among Iraqi leaders over the formation of an interim government said on Friday that conducting elections before a planned handover of sovereignty this summer could exacerbate tensions among rival religious and ethnic groups.
Although Iraq's senior Shiite Muslim cleric has called for an interim government to be selected through elections before sovereignty is transferred, the U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, suggested at a news conference that Iraqis would need more than a few months to conduct "reasonably credible elections."
"The demand of the Iraqi street for elections is a legitimate request, but the Iraqi street must know that elections are a very complicated process," said Brahimi, 70, a former Algerian foreign minister who is serving as an adviser here to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
"The benefits the street is hoping for cannot be achieved unless there are good preparations for those elections and they are conducted at a time when everybody can accept the result," Brahimi said. "Conducting elections without adequate preparations could lead to even more disagreements."
The Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has not issued any pronouncements on the feasibility of elections since meeting with Brahimi on Thursday. People close to Sistani have said he would be willing to drop his demand if the United Nations deems early elections too difficult.
Brahimi hinted that Sistani might be willing to back down. "I think Ayatollah Sistani agrees with me that . . . preparing correct elections is important," Brahimi said.
Sistani's insistence on elections has stalled the Bush administration's plan to hold regional caucuses to choose an interim government that would assume sovereignty by June 30. Under the administration's plan, Iraqis would hold elections by March 2005 to select people to write a constitution, but elections for a new government would not occur until December 2005.
In his meetings with Iraqi leaders over the past week, Brahimi indicated that he believes direct nationwide elections could be held by late this year, according to people who met with him. Although Shiite leaders would prefer elections to be held sooner and rival Sunni Muslim leaders want them to be held later, both sides appear willing to settle for the end of the year, several Sunni and Shiite leaders said.
A U.S. official involved in the political transition said the administration is willing to consider holding elections before March 2005 to select a group of Iraqis who would serve as both an interim government and the drafters of a constitution.
But there remains a fundamental disagreement among Shiites, Sunnis and the administration over how Iraq should be governed between the transfer of sovereignty and the election.
At a meeting with Brahimi, several members of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council called for the council to assume sovereignty until elections can be held. Some Shiite members suggested the 25-member council be expanded to make it more representative, people at the meeting said.
"The caucuses are out . . . the window," said Mowaffak Rubaie, a Shiite member of the council.
But U.S. officials in Baghdad still favor some form of the caucus system to choose an interim administration. The officials contend such a process would create a far more representative body than the Governing Council.
Brahimi said his meetings left him feeling optimistic that a solution could be reached because Iraqi political leaders indicated a willingness to compromise. "Everybody seems to be conscious that the country is in trouble," he said.
He warned that the country faced "very serious dangers" if it was unable to find a way to bridge differences between religious and ethnic groups.
"Civil wars are started because people are reckless, people are selfish, because people think more of themselves than they do of their country," said Brahimi, whose native Algeria was wracked by civil war from 1954 to 1962. "I've appealed to everyone I've seen to be very careful."
-------- us
Army Suicides Reach 21
United Press International
February 14, 2004
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_suicide_021404,00.html
WASHINGTON - A week before it expects to release a report on mental health issues affecting troops in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Army has determined that at least 21 soldiers have committed suicide in Iraq or Kuwait.
Army spokeswoman Martha Rudd said the suicides do not include an undisclosed number of soldiers who killed themselves after leaving Iraq or Kuwait. And several "non-hostile" deaths there are still being investigated.
The new figure suggests the suicide rate has risen substantially since mid-January, when 18 Army suicides had been confirmed. At that point, a Pentagon official put the Army suicide rate at 13.5 per 100,000 -- calling that "a very small increase" over a past average of 10 to 11 suicides per 100,000 soldiers.
Asked how the three additional confirmed suicides affect the rate, Rudd said the Army wouldn't comment before the mental health report is released. But assuming a comparable pool of soldiers, United Press International calculated the new rate as 15.8 suicides per 100,000 soldiers serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Some veterans groups said they are worried.
"I fear that the military is in denial and that they are rationalizing this. As far as we're concerned, we can't even trust the numbers," said Wayne Smith, an adviser to the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.
"Why is the Army equivocating and why is it delaying? It echoes some of the problems we saw in Vietnam and hopefully learned lessons from."
Rudd said there was no deliberate delay in presenting the report, citing scheduling conflicts among the 12 members of the team that wrote it, and the need to prepare documents for release.
She also said there was no effort to manipulate suicide statistics.
But Smith pointed to the Army's statement that it isn't including suicides that occurred outside of Iraq or Kuwait as a reason for concern. UPI reported last month that at least two soldiers who served in Iraq had subsequently killed themselves at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
Smith called the suicides "the tip of an iceberg," noting reports of hundreds of medical evacuations from Iraq for mental problems.
The Army first voice concern about soldier suicides in Operation Iraqi Freedom last July, when it saw a spike in suicides that month. The Army surgeon general's office dispatched a team to Iraq in September and completed the report that is expected to be discussed next week.
On Jan. 14, William Winkenwerder Jr., undersecretary of defense for health affairs, told reporters that the number of confirmed Army suicides for Operation Iraqi Freedom was 18 -- a number he called "a very slight increase" above expected suicides, "on the high end of what they've seen in the past." Two Marines and one Navy member also committed suicide, a number he said was consistent with past rates for those services.
He said the numbers could rise as investigations are completed but did not say how many deaths remain unresolved. He added, "I don't see a trend there in looking at these cases that tells us there is something more there."
Announcement of some deaths has lagged by several months. Last Friday, the Pentagon announced the names of seven additional service members who died from non-hostile causes "while in support of Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Iraqi Freedom."
UPI reporters determined that at least two of those deaths, which occurred last March, were suicides. Last week's announcement lists both of those casualties as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, though one was a Marine deployed near the Iraq border who shot himself March 13, seven days before the war began. A Marine spokeswoman said that classification reflects the fact that Operation Iraqi Freedom had not begun.
In other cases, months have passed between the announcement of a non-hostile death and determination of a cause. As of early December, one soldier who died from a "non-hostile" cause in June was listed as "determination pending," though his family said the Army told them he had killed himself.
The Pentagon did not say how it is determining suicides, but in general, there must be evidence the death was intentional, based on both the physical circumstances and a "psychological autopsy" that includes interviews with fellow soldiers.
How thoroughly the military is reviewing deployment issues that might trigger mental problems or suicide is unclear. Rudd told UPI that the team did not look at whether any soldiers who committed suicide had taken the anti-malaria drug Lariam, which has been associated with depression, suicidal thinking and rare reports of suicide. She said the military believes that drug cannot cause suicide and therefore cannot be a factor.
The drug, which is being prescribed to some soldiers in Iraq, was invented by the Army, which licensed it to a Swiss drug company.
One Pentagon official recently has suggested military suicide rates are not alarming. "Are soldiers killing themselves in increased numbers due to deployment? No," said Army Col. Thomas J. Burke, Pentagon program director for mental health policy, in a January speech reported by the Armed Services Press Service. Burke said media reports about a high rate of suicides were "false."
"This is where I so totally disagree with the military," said Smith of Vietnam Veterans. "It is absolutely a problem. These suicides are the tip of an iceberg and I am not willing to wait till the Army decides the numbers are alarming to intervene. Something is going wrong."
Separately, Stars and Stripes reported Feb. 9 that at least 16 Pacific Fleet suicides have been confirmed for 2003, double the number for 2002. Stars and Stripes said it obtained a memo by Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Walter F. Doran that called the statistics "significant" and said they warranted "immediate attention and action."
Sound Off...Do you think the military is putting enough attention towards the suicide problem? Join the discussion.
--------
Many Gaps In Bush's Guard Records Released
Papers Do Not Document Ala. Service
By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, February 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40964-2004Feb13?language=printer
Files released by the White House last night from President Bush's Vietnam War-era service in the National Guard show that the future president was an exemplary pilot whose military record contains numerous gaps in the last two years of his six-year commitment.
The White House, seeking to quell a revived controversy over Bush's Guard service, released hundreds of pages of records that were previously withheld. The documents include what the White House describes as all the non-medical elements of Bush's military personnel file, including performance evaluations, documentation of his honorable discharge, and a thick bureaucratic paper trail of applications, promotions and transfers.
The records show Bush was an eager fighter pilot who said he wanted to spend a lifetime in aviation. But they provide no evidence that he did any military service in Alabama, to which he had requested a transfer in May 1972 to work on a Senate campaign that ended in November 1972.
And the records show officials from Bush's home base in Texas declining to provide details of his activities between May 1972 to April 1973, even though such documentation was requested by National Guard headquarters.
The records, while offering nothing further to prove Bush's participation with the Guard in Alabama, provide a number of extraneous personal details about Bush. His tonsils were taken out at age 5 and he had appendicitis at 10. A fatty cyst was removed from his chest in 1960, and he had a hemorrhoid while in the Guard.
Bush had a $212-a-month stint as a sporting-goods salesman at Sears in 1966, and was a messenger for the white-shoe law firm of Baker Botts. He listed the "Houston Club" as a credit and character reference on one form. The "personal history" he filled out in 1968, when he was 21, listed his only foreign travel as Scotland, in August and September 1959, for "pleasure -- vacation."
Bush, in applying for pilot training in 1968, signed a statement saying he has "applied for pilot training with the goal of making flying a lifetime pursuit." He participated in a Guard exercise in Canada, and his superiors uniformly praised his performance.
A 1971 evaluation described Bush as "an exceptionally fine young officer" with "sound judgment" who "is mature beyond his age and experience level." Bush "is a natural leader but he is also a good follower of military discipline," it said. A 1970 letter recommending him for a promotion from second to first lieutenant called him "a dynamic outstanding young officer" who "clearly stands out as a top notch fighter interceptor pilot." Bush, it said, "is a tenacious competitor and an aggressive pilot."
But the tone of Bush's military file changed abruptly, and with no documented explanation, in May 1972, when Bush sought to transfer to Alabama. That began a period of months in which, the documents suggest, Bush did not actively pursue Guard service and the Guard did not actively pursue him.
For Bush's fifth year in the Guard, May 1972 to May 1973, Bush earned a total of 41 "points" for his service and was granted another 15 "gratuitous" points by his superiors, bringing him above the 50-point minimum requirement for the year. There are no records showing he participated in any Guard activities from May 1972 through the end of October 1972.
On May 24, 1972, Bush sought to transfer from his Houston Guard unit to the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron for an unpaid assignment. Two days later, the unit's commander accepted him but added: "The continuation of this type unit is uncertain at this time and we may last 3 months, 6 months, a year or who knows! With this in mind, if you are willing to accept assignment under these circumstances, welcome! We're glad to have you."
There is no evidence Bush reported to the reserve unit. Retired Lt. Col. Reese Bricken, the commander who wrote Bush's acceptance, told the Birmingham News that Bush never showed up. "He was looking for a place to hang his hat, but he never came by," Bricken said.
On July 31, 1972, the Air Force Reserve Personnel Center overruled Bricken and returned Bush's application, calling him "ineligible for assignment to an Air Reserve Squadron."
The next move from Bush apparently came in a letter on Sept. 5, in which he requested permission to perform "equivalent duty" with the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery, Ala.
The request was immediately approved, and on Sept. 15 the Alabama Guard approved Bush and directed him to report to Lt. Col. William Turnipseed. Turnipseed has said he has never met Bush, and the only documentation that Bush was at a Guard facility in Alabama was a one-page dental exam from January 1973 that was previously released by the White House.
Back in Houston, the Guard, in a Sept. 5, 1972, memo, announced Bush's "suspension from flying status" as of Aug. 1 because of a "failure to accomplish annual medical examination."
On May 2, 1973, Bush's evaluation form stated: "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report. A civilian occupation made it necessary for him to move to Montgomery, Alabama. He cleared this base on 15 May 1972 and has been performing equivalent training in a non flying status with the 187 Tac Recon Gp, Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama."
But the evaluation was returned from National Guard headquarters to the Texas Guard in June 1973, with a "suspense date" of Aug. 6. "An AF Fm 77a should be requested from the training unit so that this officer can be rated in the position he held," it said. "The officer should have been reassigned in May 1972 since he no longer is training in his AFSC or with his unit of assignment."
The form requested, the 77a, was sent by the Texas Air National Guard personnel office on Nov. 12, 1973, and said simply: "Not rated for the period 1 May 72 through 30 Apr 73. Report for this period not available for administrative reasons."
Records show sporadic Guard activity at unspecified locations between late October and May 1973, when Bush appeared to resume active participation back in Houston. On Sept. 5, Bush filed an "Application for Discharge" effective Oct. 1, seven months before his six years were up. "I am moving to Boston, Massachusetts to attend Harvard Business School as a full time student," he wrote. "I have enjoyed my association with the 111th Ftr Intcp Sq and the 147th Ftr Intcp Gp." The discharge was granted.
One of the latest documents was another request from Bush, while at Harvard. "I would like to discharge from standby reserve," he wrote in an undated letter.
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the files were released to try to dispel "this wrong impression that there was something to hide."
Bartlett pledged that he had put out "absolutely everything" he had of Bush's non-medical military records.
The White House did not release 44 pages of medical records that Bush's aides received this week, but it allowed a small pool of reporters to peruse them for 20 minutes. Bartlett said that was to maintain a zone of privacy.
A "Medical Recommendation for Flight Duty" that was his last physical as a pilot put his flying category as "unconditional," or unrestricted. The form was dated May 15, 1971, and said he had recorded 625 hours in the cockpit. The qualification expired July 6, 1972, and was never renewed.
One of the most prominent mysteries about Bush's military record has been why he did not take another flight physical, resulting in the suspension from flying status. Bartlett said, as he has in the past, Bush made that choice "because he was no longer flying," since he was reporting to the Alabama Air National Guard, which did not have the plane he was trained to fly, an F-102 fighter.
"It was a practical thing," Bartlett said. "There was no reason to take a flight exam when he wasn't flying and wasn't going to fly."
Bartlett said the pay and duty records show Bush fulfilled his obligation. "Anyone who says otherwise is more interested in partisan conspiracy theories than getting to the truth," he said. Bartlett said he does not expect Democrats to be satisfied because "their interest was never to find the facts."
Staff writers Thomas E. Ricks, Lois Romano and Josh White; researcher Lucy Shackelford; and research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.
-------- propaganda wars
Majority of Iraqi exiles slanted stories
U.S. officials have concluded that almost all Iraqi defectors provided questionable information in the run-up to war with Iraq.
BY WARREN P. STROBEL AND JONATHAN S. LANDAY wstrobel@krwashington.com
Sat, Feb. 14, 2004
Miami Herald
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7952660.htm
WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that almost all of the Iraqi defectors whose information helped make the Bush administration's case against Saddam Hussein exaggerated what they knew, fabricated tales or were ''coached'' by others on what to say.
As investigations expand into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, questions are growing about the defectors' role in building the momentum toward last spring's invasion.
Most of the former Iraqi officials were made available to U.S. intelligence agencies by the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of exile groups with close ties to the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office. The INC had lobbied for years for a U.S. military operation to oust Hussein.
The defectors claimed, among other things, that Hussein had built mobile biological weapons facilities, was rapidly rebuilding his nuclear weapons program and had trained Islamic warriors at a camp south of Baghdad.
None of those allegations has been borne out so far.
At least one defector provided by the INC -- an Iraqi engineer named Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri -- provided valuable information on Hussein's underground military facilities, U.S. officials said.
But most of the information provided by the INC's defectors ''was shaky'' at best, said a senior Bush administration official. He and others spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified information involved.
The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, which handled the INC-supplied defectors, has since concluded that they provided little worthwhile information on Hussein's weapons programs or alleged ties to Islamic terrorism, a defense official said.
'COACHING' SIGNS
The officials said some of the defectors showed signs of ''coaching'' because they used similar language. That raised suspicions that the INC had prepped them before their debriefings.
Much of the defectors' testimonies were discounted in the run-up to the war by analysts at the CIA and State Department, which soured on the INC and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, during the 1990s.
Nonetheless, some of the information found its way into the most critical prewar intelligence assessment on Iraq's illicit weapons program, known as a National Intelligence Estimate; media reports; statements by top U.S. officials and, in one instance, Secretary of State Colin Powell's watershed presentation to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003.
'PERSISTENT' EXILES
Senior U.S. officials said that despite doubts about the defectors' reports, they continued to be sought by top civilians in the Defense Department and other officials eager to make the case for war.
''These guys were persistent,'' the senior administration official said of the Iraqi exiles.
Defectors were one of several sources of information on Hussein's Iraq. Their reports were combined with those from human spies, satellite photographs and electronic snooping.
Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, two principal advocates for a U.S.-led invasion, underscored the importance placed on defectors and other human sources.
In a January 2003 speech, Wolfowitz said, ``For a great body of what we need to know, we are very dependent on traditional methods of intelligence -- that is to say, human beings who either deliberately or inadvertently are communicating to us.''
Cheney, opening the administration's drive for public support for Hussein's ouster, said in an Aug. 26, 2002, speech that ''firsthand testimony'' from defectors had disclosed that Hussein had resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
Those defectors, Cheney said, included Gen. Hussein Kamal, Hussein's son-in-law, who fled to Jordan in 1995 and was murdered when he returned to Baghdad in 1996.
Cheney's assertion, however, conflicts with Kamal's comments in an interview conducted by Rolf Ekeus, the then-head of a U.N. weapons inspection program.
''All weapons -- biological, chemical, missile, nuclear -- were destroyed,'' Kamal said, according to an official U.N. transcript of the Aug. 22, 1995, session.
Cheney's office did not explain the apparent discrepancy.
Instead, Cheney's spokesman Kevin Kellems referred Knight Ridder on Friday to an interview earlier this month with St. Louis radio station KMOX, in which Cheney stood by his comments about Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
`NEVER PERFECT'
''The fact is that if you look at the statements I made, they track almost perfectly with the National Intelligence Estimate'' on Iraq's weapons programs, Cheney told the interviewer. Intelligence is never perfect, Cheney said, adding, ``This is a business where you don't have absolute proof on these subjects.''
In addition, a report issued by the White House on Sept. 12, 2002, said former Iraqi military officers described how Iraq had been training Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs in ''hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage and assassinations'' at a secret terrorist facility in Iraq, Salman Pak.
No information has surfaced since the war to support those claims, defense and intelligence officials said.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Senate to Close Intelligence Session
Move Allows Review of Secret Data to Assess Performance
By Helen Dewar and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, February 14, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40853-2004Feb13.html
The Senate will hold its first closed-door session in five years to discuss the nation's intelligence-gathering operations, the chamber's top Democrat said yesterday.
Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said he and Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) have agreed to the session, which would bar the public and news media, but have not settled on a date.
A Frist aide said the two leaders are "headed in that direction," although critical details, such as the date and scope of the session, have yet to be worked out. The aide did not dispute that the two leaders intend to order a closed session in the near future. Other Senate officials said Daschle and Frist have discussed a possible session the week of March 1.
The last time the Senate held a closed session was in February 1999, during President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial. Its most recent private session involving national security matters was in 1997, focused on the chemical weapons treaty.
Some Republicans have resisted the idea of a closed session on grounds that Democrats might portray it as a criticism of the Bush administration's prewar assessments of Iraq's unconventional weapons, according to a GOP aide.
For several weeks, Democrats have been pressing for such a session -- which would allow discussions of classified material -- to debate the administration's use of intelligence as well as the quality of the intelligence itself. Democrats want to call national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George J. Tenet to address the Senate. They want Rice to explain how the administration came to make statements that appear to have been exaggerations of the available intelligence, one top congressional aide said. Democrats want Tenet to explain how the CIA apparently got the intelligence wrong.
On Thursday, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted to expand its investigation into the prewar intelligence on Iraq by probing whether President Bush and other top administration officials exaggerated intelligence information to make a case for war.
The new mandate will allow the panel to review public statements and testimony of administration officials but not to gain access to their internal decision-making or the intelligence they used. It permits the committee to evaluate the work of two Pentagon offices -- the Office of Special Plans and a two-man Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group -- as well as an Iraqi exile groups' "Information Collection Program."
The collection program is run by the Pentagon's Defense Human Intelligence Service, a unit of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The U.S-funded program collected and analyzed information about Iraq from defectors, according to a June 2002 letter from the group to Congress.
The Senate committee is investigating the influence of the exile groups' information on the overall intelligence findings. Many claims made by defectors, including some that were eventually included in the intelligence community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, have turned out to be false.
Critics say the exiles had undue influence with senior policymakers, a charge the administration disputes.
Under Senate rules, any two senators can force a closed session on any issue. On national security matters, the two party leaders generally act together, according to Senate aides. There have been 14 closed sessions since 1980.
--------
Bush, Clinton Agree to Testify Privately to Panel Probing 9/11
White House Rules Out Public Questioning of President
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 14, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40942-2004Feb13.html
President Bush agreed to meet privately with the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but has ruled out offering any testimony in a public setting, according to a White House statement released last night.
In addition, the commission's executive director said that Vice President Cheney, former president Bill Clinton and former vice president Al Gore have tentatively agreed to provide similar private testimony to the panel. None has committed to testify publicly.
Commission officials and historians said Bush's decision appears to be unprecedented, allowing an outside, nonprosecutorial panel to question a sitting president about some of the most sensitive national security issues of his administration. During the investigation into the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, for example, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson submitted a three-page statement to the Warren Commission but was not subjected to questioning.
"Outside of a legal investigation, I cannot recall any sitting president meeting with an investigative body of this kind," said Philip D. Zelikow, the commission's executive director, who is a history professor at the University of Virginia. "It is highly unusual."
Among the issues likely to be pursued during interviews with Bush and the others are whether either the Bush or Clinton administration had specific clues that could have provided a warning of the Sept. 11 plot and whether the government was sufficiently focused on the threat posed by al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, commission sources said. The questioning is also certain to include discussions of intelligence reports known as the President's Daily Brief, including one from Aug. 6, 2001, that discussed the possibility of hijackings by al Qaeda, sources said.
It is not clear how much of the information gleaned from such private interviews will be included in the commission's public report, which currently has a deadline of May 27. The commission has taken testimony from more than 900 witnesses, including Bush national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other senior administration officials.
The White House announcement came in response to formal request letters sent yesterday to Bush, Cheney, Clinton and Gore by the commission's chairman, former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean (R), and vice chairman, former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.).
In a statement, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said "the president has agreed to the request" from Kean and Hamilton for "a private meeting."
"While the chair and vice chair have suggested the possibility of a public session at a later time," the statement continued, "we believe the president can provide all the requested information in the private meeting, and there is no need for any additional testimony."
Bush's decision appears to resolve the latest standoff between the 10-member commission and the White House, which initially opposed the panel's creation and has sparred with it for months over access to documents and other issues. The panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, has issued two subpoenas to federal agencies and twice threatened to obtain court orders for documents from the White House.
Kristen Breitweiser, a member of the Family Steering Committee whose husband, Ronald, was killed at the World Trade Center, said last night that private testimony "is a step in the right direction," but that Bush and other senior U.S. officials should testify publicly as well.
"I don't understand why high-ranking officials would not welcome the opportunity to testify openly in a public forum," Breitweiser said. "If you've got nothing to hide, why wouldn't you welcome a chance to talk to the American people openly and tell them that?"
The 9/11 commission and the White House reached an agreement earlier this week that provided the commission with a 17-page summary of President's Daily Briefs from the Bush and Clinton administrations related to al Qaeda.
But the deal angered some Democrats on the panel because it did not allow the full commission to have access to the original reports.
That compromise followed the announcement Feb. 4 that the White House, which had opposed an extension of the commission's May deadline, would support a two-month extension. Any postponement would require the approval of Congress, however, and key Republicans on Capitol Hill remain opposed.
Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said last night that "the commission looks forward to the meeting" with Bush and that "the time, place and venue will all be negotiated." Felzenberg said the letters from Kean and Hamilton were formal requests for private meetings with the current and former presidents and vice president that also raised the "possibility" of public testimony.
Earlier yesterday, spokeswoman Kiki McLean issued a statement from Gore announcing that "the commission has invited me to meet with them privately, and I look forward to being of assistance. My office is responsible for setting up the time."
-------- death penalty
Study Revises Texas's Standing as a Death Penalty Leader
February 14, 2004
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/14/national/14EXEC.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Texas, generally considered the leading death penalty state, actually sentences a smaller percentage of people convicted of murder to death than the national average, according to a new study. It found that the conventional view failed to take into account the large number of murders in Texas.
As a percentage of murders, Nevada and Oklahoma impose the most death sentences, at 6 and 5.1 percent. In Texas, the percentage is 2 percent. The rate in Virginia, another state noted for its commitment to capital punishment, is 1.3 percent. The national average is 2.5 percent; the median is 2 percent.
"Texas's reputation as a death-prone state should rest on its many murders and on its willingness to execute death-sentenced inmates," wrote the authors of the study, published in a new publication, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. "It should not rest on the false belief that Texas has a high rate of sentencing convicted murderers to death."
Using the same analysis, the study concluded that blacks are actually underrepresented on the nation's death row. Blacks commit 51.5 percent of all murders nationally but constitute about 42 percent of death row inmates, the study found.
Texas had about 38,000 murders from 1976 to 1998 in which people older than 16 were arrested, according to the study, which relied on F.B.I. data. Only California had more, about 50,000. The number of murders in Texas, more than anything else, explains the 776 death sentences that were issued during roughly the same period, the study concluded.
The study used arrest records as a proxy for convictions. It did not exclude people who were arrested but not prosecuted or not convicted.
This did not affect the study's conclusions, its authors write, "because erroneous murder arrests are of concern only if they vary unevenly across states."
The study does not consider execution rates. Prisoners on death row in Texas are more likely to be executed than in many other states. As of this week, Texas has executed 319 people since 1976. California, by contrast, sentenced 795 people to death from 1976 through 2002 and has executed only 10.
Comparing execution statistics from the Justice Department with the number of murders the study cited, though, a different picture emerges. The chances that a convicted murderer was executed in the United States in the years in question was a little more than 0.2 percent. In Texas, the corresponding number was, at 0.5 percent, substantially higher. But even by this measure, Texas trails Delaware, at 1.6 percent; Virginia, at 0.8 percent; and Missouri, at 0.6 percent.
The difference between the sentencing rate in Texas, which trails the national average, and the execution rate, which exceeds it, suggests that what takes place after convictions accounts for Texas's reputation. Texas juries are no more likely to impose death sentences than their counterparts elsewhere, but appeals courts and prosecutors in the state are more likely to ensure that sentences are carried out.
"It tells you there are absolutely massive post-sentencing differences," said Theodore Eisenberg, a law professor at Cornell and an author of the study, sponsored by the Cornell Law School Death Penalty Project, which provides legal services to death-row inmates. The other authors are John Blume, the director of the project, and Martin T. Wells, a professor of statistics at Cornell.
But Professor Eisenberg emphasized that the sentencing rate is independently significant. "Putting someone on death row is a major decision of the state," he said.
Focusing on Texas, he added, obscures the level of activity elsewhere. "The reality is that the most death-prone states are under the radar," he said, citing Nevada and Oklahoma.
Capital defense lawyers in Texas and elsewhere said the study's conclusions were accurate but incomplete. "It's misleading to look at Texas as a whole," said David Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston who often represents capital defendants. "In Texas, the death penalty is not spread out equally."
For instance, Professor Dow said, 158 of the 450 inmates on death row in Texas are from Harris County, which includes Houston. Professor Eisenberg countered that the large number of murders in Harris County explains that disparity, too.
"Harris County is in the middle of Texas in terms of death sentences," he said. "Harris County is to Texas as Texas is to the nation."
Executions are, again, a separate question. Of the 317 executions in Texas in the last three decades, 70 were of people convicted in Harris County - more than any other county in the nation.
The study considered several explanations for the range in sentencing rates, which is less than 1 percent in Colorado, Maryland, New Mexico and Washington State and more than 4 percent in Arizona, Idaho, Delaware, Oklahoma and Nevada.
State laws make a significant difference, the study found. Laws that limit the availability of the death penalty to specific kinds of murder, like that of a police officer or witness, have lower death sentencing rates than those that use more subjective standards, like whether a murder was particularly heinous or atrocious. The states with more objective standards, including Texas, have an average sentencing rate of 1.9 percent; the states with more subjective standards have an average sentencing rate of 2.7 percent.
In states where juries or a panel of judges made the final sentencing decision, the average rate was 2.1 percent. In cases in which a single judge - typically an elected judge - made the decision, the rate was 4.1 percent.
The availability of life without parole as an alternative to a death penalty did not correlate with a lower death sentencing rate, a conclusion that the authors wrote was "opposite to the expected effect." Nor did Southern states have higher death sentencing rates than the rest of the country.
The significance of race in death sentences is complicated, the study found. At the most general level, though, what little effect the defendant's race appeared to have on the sentencing rate operated in favor of black defendants.
That conclusion is not new, but death penalty supporters contend that it has been underreported.
"We have somehow managed," Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School writes in a forthcoming essay, "in the death penalty context to overcome centuries of embedded racism and administer a system of ultimate punishment where defendants will be judged more nearly by the circumstances of their crimes and the contents of their character than by the color of their skin."
Authors of the Cornell study said, though, that race still did have an impact. The available data are not comprehensive, but they suggest that the race of the victim has a large effect on sentences. In Virginia, for instance, blacks who murdered blacks were sentenced to death 0.4 percent of the time, while blacks who murdered whites were sentenced to death 6.4 percent of the time. The rate for white killers of whites was 1.8 percent; for white killers of blacks, 2.3 percent.
That black defendants fare differently depending on the race of their victim is well known. But that the race of the defendant has a separate impact when the victim is white is news, the study says.
"The existence of a broad race-of-defendant effect, found here in different death sentence rates for black defendant-white victim cases and white defendant-white victim cases, has been virtually undetectable in more than 50 previous empirical studies," the authors write.
According to the Justice Department, black murder victims were killed by blacks 94 percent of the time and white murder victims were killed by whites 86 percent of the time.
"This tendency," the study concluded, "swamps the increased black presence on death row attributable to the harsh treatment of black defendant-white victim cases."
-------- homeland security
Homeland Security Rethinks Personnel System
Plan Would Replace Annual Pay Raises With Ones More Tied to Jobs and Performance
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 14, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40929-2004Feb13.html
Citing the demands of the war on terrorism, homeland security officials yesterday launched the most ambitious and complex attempt in decades to overhaul the way federal employees such as Border Patrol agents, customs inspectors and intelligence analysts are paid, promoted and deployed.
The Department of Homeland Security's proposed personnel system, to be published in the Federal Register next week, would replace a half-century-old compensation system that provides automatic annual pay raises with one that more directly ties pay to occupation and performance. It also would substantially alter how the 180,000-employee department disciplines workers and negotiates with labor unions.
Union officials expressed skepticism about the new plan yesterday but did not reject it out of hand. They said that more work needs to be done to shape the system, explain it to employees and ensure that it can be administered fairly.
"I was very surprised and disappointed in a lot of the language that is in these proposed regs," said Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 13,000 workers in the department. "There were some pretty startling things in there."
In the biggest departure from current practice, the department wants to toss out the General Schedule, a 15-grade pay system created in 1949. It would replace it with broader salary ranges, known as "pay bands," in which compensation would be determined by occupation, experience, geographic location and annual evaluations. Unlike the current system, in which pay is linked to longevity in a job, anyone with an unsatisfactory performance rating would be ineligible for a raise, officials said.
"Under the current system everybody goes up, whether they are successful or not," said Ronald P. Sanders, a top official at the Office of Personnel Management who helped draft the new system. "No more one-size-fits-all."
The plan also calls for shortening to as little as 15 days an employee discipline and appeals process that now can take months to complete. And while employees would still be able to protest what they regard as unfair treatment before the independent Merit Systems Protection Board, the board would have limited authority to overturn managers' decisions.
The new plan would curtail the power of labor unions by no longer requiring officials to negotiate over such matters as where employees will be deployed, the type of work they will do and the equipment they will use. It also would cut the independent Federal Labor Relations Authority out of the business of settling labor-management disputes and hand the job to an internal labor relations board controlled by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
A 30-day public comment period begins with the publication of the plan next week. Congress gets to review the plan for 30 days after that, although no formal legislative approval is required.
Officials said major departures from the traditional civil service system are needed to move workers swiftly and effectively in an agency whose chief mission is deterring attacks such as the terrorist strikes on New York and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
"Our department and our country changed September 11," said Janet Hale, the department's undersecretary for management. "Our mission has changed. We have a tremendous responsibility for the country and think that it is important to modernize our human resources system to recognize the current situation."
No employees would lose their jobs or see a reduction in pay in the transition to the new system, officials said. About 8,000 employees, most of whom work at the department's headquarters or are non-military members of the Coast Guard, will switch over to the new system in fiscal 2005, officials said. It will take years to fully implement the system, which will affect about 110,000 employees and by law cannot include members of the military or the Transportation Security Administration.
A similar personnel system overhaul is underway at the Defense Department. Together the changes at the two departments are expected to affect about 860,000 workers, or nearly half of the government's 1.8 million civilian employees.
Big changes do not come cheap. The Homeland Security Department has asked Congress for $100 million in fiscal 2005 to develop the personnel system and train employees to operate within it. Officials also want an additional $12.5 million for performance pay for the first 8,000 employees who will be moved into the new system next year.
During nearly 10 months of planning, labor leaders were permitted to help gather data and suggest features for the new system, but were excluded from all decision-making. John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said Ridge told union leaders that he would be willing to discuss the plan with them over the coming weeks.
"I think we can shape this thing a little bit differently so we can end up with a system that's good for the mission of the department, good for employees and good for the country," Gage said.
Whether the unions have any real influence is largely up to Ridge. The legislation that created the department in 2002 requires the secretary to consult with labor groups but leaves the final decisions about the new personnel plan up to him and OPM Director Kay Coles James.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said she would review the regulations with an eye to ensuring that unions are consulted. "The details of the implementation matter greatly," Collins said in a statement
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NYPD Preparing Strategies for Attacks
February 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Preparation.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- The city's police department has been working for the last year with local and federal officials to prepare for a possible chemical, biological or nuclear weapons attack.
The agencies have been meeting in secret and conducting complicated drills to put together what has been called a unique strategy for dealing with such emergencies, The New York Times reported on its Web site Saturday.
For example, police said special units have been conducting training exercises to board cruise ships from helicopters and piers and reviewing Midtown theater floor plans.
Officials also have plans to work along with the Health Department and other agencies to begin a pilot program that would quickly test the city's air for biological agents.
``We're thinking about the unthinkable,'' Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the Times, noting that the drills and training is not a response to any direct threat. ``It's something we're trying to take head-on, but the scope and magnitude of the problems are daunting.''
Police officials are also preparing to do their part in a plan to vaccinate every New Yorker in the case of a large biological weapons attack or outbreak of infectious disease.
According to The Times, the city is scheduled to begin anti-chemical and bioweapons training on Wednesday in order to have 10,000 police officers trained in time for the Republican National Convention this summer.
Coordination plans also are being made that would provide guidelines for joint investigations between the Health Department and the FBI in case of a biological attack.
Another plan under preparation would determine how to house and feed thousands of police officers who would continue working in the aftermath of an attack.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Panel Set Up To Hear Pleas Of Detainees
Rumsfeld: Cuba Prisoners Will Get Annual Reviews
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40941-2004Feb13.html
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday announced the creation of an administrative panel that will annually review the cases of detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to ensure that none is held "any longer than is absolutely necessary."
But Rumsfeld, in a speech to the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, defended the government's practice of holding detainees indefinitely without charges, saying they "are enemy combatants and terrorists who are being detained for acts of war against our country. And that is why different rules have to apply."
Rumsfeld said the new panel is designed to ensure that foreign detainees who no longer pose a threat to national security are released, by affording them an opportunity to appear and present information on their own behalf. Their governments also will have the opportunity to file information with the panel.
But many other details of the review panel, including its composition, have yet to be decided, senior defense officials said later in a briefing at the Pentagon.
Rumsfeld's announcement comes amid continued international criticism of the administration's policy, under which 680 people have been held at Guantanamo Bay without any way of challenging their detentions. Some foreign governments and human rights groups have demanded that they either be charged with crimes and tried or released.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether the Guantanamo Bay detainees should be able to use the U.S. court system to contest their detentions. The government contends that Guantanamo Bay is outside the jurisdiction of the federal courts.
The United States has repatriated more than 85 detainees and sent five more back to the custody of Saudi Arabia and Spain. Negotiations continue with some nations over the fate of perhaps scores of other detainees; six more have been designated to stand trial before special military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay. Some of them have been assigned military lawyers.
In establishing the review panel, "the administration is trying to look very reasonable," said Jamie Fellner, a program director at Human Rights Watch in New York. "The message is, 'We don't need the courts to be concerned. We will act properly, trust us.' "
But, she said, "just because the United States is battling terrorism, doesn't mean that it can do whatever it wants with whomever it detains."
At the Pentagon, Paul Butler, a principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations, said the panel also would consider intelligence gathered on detainees before making "an independent recommendation about whether the detainee should be held" indefinitely or released.
Butler, in response to questions, said that the makeup of the panel, its powers and when it will convene are all details that have yet to be fully decided. Nor has there been a decision on whether a detainee would be provided a lawyer to represent him before the panel, he said.
Creation of the panel was disclosed in yesterday's editions of the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.
While the U.S. government has filed criminal charges against some individuals alleged to be foreign terrorists associated with al Qaeda, Butler, reiterating government policy, said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks brought about a new legal reality.
Because the "global war on terrorism" could continue for many years, he said, President Bush and other administration officials realized that the old "criminal justice model" was insufficient.
Butler did not provide identities of those at Guantanamo Bay but said they include a former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, operatives linked to the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, a shoe-bomb manufacturer and an alleged associate of the Sept. 11 plotters who was denied entry into the United States less than a month before the attack.
Detainees at Guantanamo Bay, he said, are being held under "the law of armed conflict," which gives the administration the right to hold enemy combatants without charge for the duration of a conflict so that they cannot return to the battlefield.
At the same time, however, he said Geneva Conventions protection of prisoners of war do not apply because detainees failed to fight in uniform and often used terrorist tactics to target unarmed civilians.
Elaborating, Rumsfeld said detention of enemy combatants for the duration of a conflict has been practiced "in every war we have fought. It is a security necessity, and I might add it is also just plain common sense."
Fellner said Rumsfeld's legal position represents "a very selective invocation of the law of war -- ignoring those aspects of the law of war intended to protect people" captured in battle.
Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington lawyer who is an expert in military law, called establishment of a review panel "a step on the road of providing some process" to protect the rights of detainees.
"But the question is, what is this process going to be, and how transparent the development of the rules will be," he said. "I think this is almost certainly an effort to calm what might otherwise be a very grumpy Supreme Court."
--------
Sting Suspect Stressed Military Prowess
Internet Message Trail Shows Sender Dwelling on Weapons, Conversion to Islam
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 14, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40850-2004Feb13?language=printer
SEATTLE, Feb. 13 -- Ryan G. Anderson, a National Guardsman caught in a federal sting operation for allegedly trying to pass weapons information to al Qaeda, has been bragging for years on the Internet about his mastery of guns and his passion for all things military.
The tank crew member, 26, arrested Thursday at nearby Fort Lewis, where his unit is training for deployment to Iraq, has posted scores of self-revelatory messages on Internet user groups. His writings portray a young man infatuated with guns, prone to exaggeration and eager to make sudden commitments to new religious beliefs.
"I am a die-hard Christian," he wrote to a militia newsgroup in February 1996, while a freshman at Washington State University in Pullman. Eight months later, in an Islam newsgroup, Anderson wrote that after taking a course in Arab history, "Islam has literally called to me."
"Help!" he wrote. "I'm looking to convert, but I don't know where to start."
Anderson, who did convert to Islam, was arrested in what government officials said was a sting operation involving federal agents posing as al Qaeda members. An Army official said Anderson offered to provide the agents with "information about the capabilities and vulnerability of some U.S. weapons systems."
On Thursday, FBI agents searched Anderson's apartment in Lynnwood, a Seattle suburb. Neighbors told television reporters that they seized a rifle that looked like an AK-47.
A neighbor, Jack Roberts, told the Seattle Times that Anderson's wife said her husband had been accused of passing information and drawings of tanks and Humvees.
The Army, which has released few details, has taken over the prosecution. Anderson's National Guard unit, the 81st Armor Brigade, leaves in March for a one-year mission in Iraq. It has been training at Fort Lewis for nearly four months.
After graduating from Washington State in 2002 with a history degree, Anderson introduced himself to Muslims in the Seattle area by writing in an Internet chat room and offering to take fellow believers up into the Cascade Mountains to teach them how to fire weapons. His screen name was "aka gunfighter."
The offer annoyed several in the discussion group, and Anderson was firmly told to go elsewhere.
"This guy had nothing to do with the community," said Aziz Junejo, host of a local television program about Islam and a frequent participant in the chat room. "We thought it was some kind of setup."
Junejo said that Anderson then showed up at the Omar Farouq Mosque in Mountlake Terrace, north of Seattle, but never became a regular participant in services.
Anderson's behavior made Muslims nervous, Junejo said, because he appeared in the area at a time when the FBI was investigating radical Muslim groups in Seattle and Portland. There was suspicion that he might have been a government informer.
"A person like him stands out," Junejo said. "Maybe he was just innocently infatuated with Islam and maybe he is a confused, irresponsible young person."
Anderson graduated in 1995 from Cascade High School in Everett, north of Seattle. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he was vice president of the school's chapter of Junior Statesmen of America, a group for high-achieving students.
At Washington State, Anderson claimed (in his many Internet postings) a keen interest in Middle East studies. But one of his history professors, Marina Tolmacheva, said she never saw him show much interest in the courses -- Middle East history and a survey of Islamic civilization -- he took from her.
"He was slender, and he was quiet," she said. "He really was not among the best students."
On campus, Anderson occasionally wore military-style clothing but did not talk effusively about politics or about his conversion to Islam, said Steve Lincoln, a student friend.
"Ryan did not strike me as the sort of person who would take up with al Qaeda or its goals," said Lincoln, in an e-mail message.
Referring to news reports that Anderson first attracted the attention of FBI investigators by reaching out to al Qaeda on extremist Internet sites, Lincoln said, "Ryan never struck me as someone dumb enough to use the Internet to try and get in touch with terrorists."
The long and sometimes-comic trail of Internet postings that Anderson left at Washington State contains hints, though, that he believed -- and even hoped -- that the government was monitoring his behavior. These Internet postings were sent from what was apparently Anderson's university-provided e-mail address. Many were signed "Ryan" or "Ryan Anderson," although he often used other screen names.
His student messages contain wildly exaggerated claims about his military expertise: He said in one message that he had been an "Army intelligence officer." In another, he talks about being an ROTC cadet and participating in tough military exercises. His university said he never joined the ROTC.
Anderson boasts, too, about how his militia involvement might be attracting attention from federal law enforcement.
"I have a feeling the FBI is watching us," he wrote in the militia newsgroup in 1996. In that message, in which he asserted that FBI agents had already spoken with him, Anderson wrote, "I just love feeling like a suspect, don't you."
In a personal ad that he placed on the Internet in 1997, about a year after he said he wanted to convert to Islam, Anderson describes both himself and "his dream girl."
She would be "a girl who could handle a blade or a rifle," he wrote. "I myself am a fencer, aspireing [sic] sword fighter and gun-slinger with an innate ability to work with old weapons."
-------- ACTIVISTS
President Aristide's supporters attack demonstrators
February 14, 2004
The Age (Australia)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/13/1076548222241.html
Port-Au-Prince - Militant supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide blocked roads and threw rocks at anti-Government demonstrators on Thursday, derailing a planned protest march. Opposition leaders warned that suppression of the event could give fresh momentum to a rebel insurrection in central and northern Haiti.
The violence poses the biggest threat yet to Mr Aristide's three-year-old Government. In an interview on Thursday, the President condemned the movement to oust him as a terrorist opposition.
His supporters used rusting refrigerators, burning tyres, stones and tree stumps to block key roads leading from wealthy hillside neighbourhoods into the city centre, defying Mr Aristide's call on Wednesday to reject violence. March leaders blamed the police force, which they say has become a political tool of the President, for failing to protect their peaceful demonstration.
----
British whistle-blower faces prison for exposing U.N. spy efforts
By Molly Ivins
Sat, Feb. 14, 2004
CREATORS SYNDICATE
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/7949359.htm
Friends of liberty, raise hell! To the barricades, or at least to the post office and the e-mails. A British citizen named Katharine Gun faces two years in prison for revealing that the U.S. National Security Agency tried - and succeeded - in getting the Brits to help us with illegal spying operations at the United Nations. The targets were the delegations of the six countries on the U.N. Security Council that were undecided on how to vote on the critical Iraqi war resolution.
Now, there are two schools of reaction to this tawdry, slimy little spy episode: It was illegal, immoral and wrong, and Katharine Gun should get a medal for exposing it. Or, some are shocked, shocked to hear of spying at the U.N., where it is apparently only slightly less common than dirt.
Well, if it wasn't much of a secret to begin with, why is this woman going to prison for telling the truth? Give her a medal anyway.
Not in Britain, where the Official Secrets Act is used to scare the bejeezus out of people - fear of the act may have played a role in the suicide of Dr. David Kelly, the scientist who claimed the British government overstated Iraq's weapons capability. If Britain had a constitution guaranteeing freedom of the press, or even a halfway decent whistle-blower law, this truly Orwellian Secrets Act would be tossed out by the courts in no time flat.
Meanwhile, Gun may be sentenced to prison for doing precisely what we all hope every government employee will try to do: prevent the government from committing an illegal and immoral act. Some dare call it patriotism.
Gun, 29, worked for Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) as a translator. I spoke to her father while in London recently - Gun herself is not allowed to speak to anyone about this, and he could not say much. Gun was raised partly in the Far East and speaks fluent Chinese. During the lead-up to the Iraqi invasion, she came across an e-mail from Frank Koza of NSA proposing an intelligence "surge" to gather "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policy-makers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises." Under the Vienna conventions on diplomatic relations, espionage at the United Nations is strictly forbidden.
Nevertheless, the United States wanted information at the time of Secretary of State Colin Powell's appearance at the U.N. seeking a second U.N. resolution on Iraq. It will be interesting for future historians to find out how much of the Bush administration's failure to persuade the U.N. to its point of view was the result of using illegal and bullying tactics.
The British paper The Observer reported last week that Britain did indeed help the United States to conduct secret and "potentially illegal" spying operations at the U.N. "It is also known that the operation caused significant disquiet in the intelligence community on both sides of the Atlantic."
Ooops, even the spooks were nervous about it. The Observer also notes it was likely China was a target of the operations: "Security experts have said it is highly unlikely that someone as junior as Gun would have seen the memo had she not been expected to use her language expertise in the operation."
You've never seen anything as pathetically deformed as the British press's efforts to report what its own government is up to when it looks as though the Official Secrets Act might come into play. The Hutton report was an investigation into Dr. Kelly's suicide that politely exempted Tony Blair's administration from all blame (this was achieved by failing to ask a number or pertinent questions). The day before Lord Hutton was to present his report, its contents were leaked to a pro-Blair newspaper, setting off a great chorus of cries for an inquiry to investigate the leak of the report of the inquiry to investigate the leak of the ... etc. The thing would have leaked as a matter of course in Washington. It's not as though any damage was done like, say, just for example, exposing a CIA agent who worked abroad without diplomatic cover.
As a rule, it is not a good idea to set things up so that people get punished for telling the truth - or even re-elected for telling lies. I realize Americans are in no position to lecture other countries on freedom these days, given the Patriot Act and attendant damage to the Fourth Amendment, but given Gun's dicey situation, it's worth dropping a line to the British Embassy at 3100 Massachusetts Ave., Washington, D.C. 20008 or via a group in the United States supporting Gun, the Institute for Public Accuracy at solidarityaccuracy.org.
Gun probably is guilty under the misbegotten Official Secrets Act (the e-mail she leaked was marked "Top Secret"), but one wonderful thing about the system of justice we inherited largely from the Brits is that a jury doesn't have to follow the law - a jury can do what it thinks is right.
I can think of at least 536 really good reasons why I wish American government employees had blown their whistles before we went to war over weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist.
----
Letter to President Bush on Valentine's Day 2004
September Eleventh Families For Peaceful Tomorrows
Sat, Feb. 14, 2004
http://www.peacefultomorrows.org/letters/valentine2004.htm
Dear President Bush,
Two years ago today, family members of 9/11 victims lost at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and on Flight 93 launched a group called September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. We chose Valentine's Day as a symbolic reminder that the American ideals of peace, justice and reconciliation remain vibrant, and did not die with our loved ones.
On that day, we held up a large heart containing a valentine letter to you. In the letter we asked to meet with you to discuss the creation of a fund to assist innocent victims of war in Afghanistan. We felt that it was not only a decent and moral response to those accidental deaths, but also a practical opportunity to demonstrate the same compassion that 9/11 family members received from all over the globe.
You chose not to meet with us, but since that day two years ago, the members of Peaceful Tomorrows have worked to display the best of America's ideals to the rest of the world. We secured congressional funding to assist Afghan civilians affected by the war. We connected with others around the world who have been similarly affected by terrorism and war. We stood with millions across the globe against the war in Iraq and for the cause of peace. And our group has grown as more 9/11 family members have found healing by turning their grief into action for peace. In contrast, you declared it was an "us versus them" world, and pursued unilateral and unpopular policies that turned that world against the United States and made us less secure. And worst of all, you often used the deaths of our family members as an excuse to pursue that agenda.
Two years later, we ask you to stop exploiting the tragedy of September 11 for political gain and to join us in responding to that tragic day in a manner that brings about genuine healing and peace for Americans and the rest of the world.
We respectfully request a written response to the following questions:
1. You and members of your administration consistently invoked 9/11 as a justification for war in Iraq, without presenting any evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the attacks of that day. The confusing and misleading statements made by your administration that allude to an unproven link have caused a majority of the US public, (up to 70% according to a Washington Post poll taken in September 2003) to believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for September 11.You have exploited the American public's genuine fear of another September 11 to pursue an unrelated war, which has already cost the lives of more than 500 US service people and an estimated 10,000 Iraqi civilians. We call upon you today to publicly acknowledge that your administration's statements have misled the American people, and to clarify that there is no evidence of a connection between the events of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Please, Mr. President, will you correct this dangerous misperception?
2. In light of your announcement that the United States plans to step up the campaign to find Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, we ask that you cease the tactic of bombing villages in an attempt to kill Bin Laden or other suspected Al Qaeda or Taliban leaders. In the past two years these village bombings have killed and injured countless innocent civilians, including children, while failing to achieve their stated aim. Since the beginning of 2003, media reports confirm that more than 64 civilians have been killed in at least six separate incidents of village bombings. Meanwhile, most top Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders have been captured through international cooperation, intelligence sharing, and police work, not the bombing of villagers. No one desires Bin Laden to be arrested and stand trial more than we do. Yet through continued bombing of innocent civilians, you have increased anti-American sentiment and created legions of potential future terrorists. We beg you, Mr. President, will you direct the military to cease the tactic of bombing villages in Afghanistan, and choose more effective methods to capture the criminals responsible for our loved ones deaths?
3. We ask you to stop playing politics with the 9/11 attacks. September 11 was many things, but it was a victory for no one but the terrorists. When your administration treats it like a success story and your political party uses the World Trade Center site as the backdrop for the Republican convention this fall, we are offended. We have witnessed the photograph of you on the telephone on September 11 sold by your campaign as a fundraising vehicle. We have read Republican party officials' acknowledgement that the national convention was planned in New York City at the latest possible date in order to "flow seamlessly into the commemoration of 9/11." And we have witnessed your administration's lack of cooperation with the Independent Commission investigating 9/11. On November 27, 2002, you stated, "the investigation should carefully examine all the evidence and follow all the facts, wherever they lead. We must uncover every detail and learn every lesson of September the 11th...It's our most solemn duty." We ask you today live up to that promise. As president of the United States, you well know that our nation's future is more important than any one person's political career. We ask you, Mr. President, will you renounce the exploitation of September 11th for partisan political gain?
You claim that September 11th made you a war president. But this is not true. By responding to the terrorism of 9/11 with an unending "war on terror," and a doctrine of pre-emptive war, you and your administration chose this path. After September 11, the entire world reached out to the United States with compassion. Rather than building on that good will and ushering the world into a new era of mutual cooperation, an effort that would have required true statesmanship and a willingness to deal honestly with the root causes of terrorism, you appealed to our fears and to the worst in human kind. Your domestic and foreign policies have reduced our nation's leadership, leaving us less secure, less free, less respected and less able to deal effectively with the genuine threat of 21st century terrorism.
This Valentine's Day, two years after the creation of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, we call on you to open your heart, take accountability for your actions, and act now to set our nation on the path of real peace. This is the way to truly honor those who died on September 11 and who continue to live in our hearts. We look forward to your timely answers to our inquiries.
Sincerely,
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
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