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NUCLEAR
Get rid of all nuclear arms
AP: Nuclear Financier Has Ties to Malaysia
China to boost nuclear power as demand soars
Tokyo Lets Loose Lapdogs of War
MOD accepts DU has the potential to cause ill health
ITALIAN SOLDIERS DON'T USE URANIUM PROTECTION MASKS
Salesman on Nuclear Circuit Casts Blurry Corporate Shadow
Pakistani Store Blushes Over Nuclear Scandal
Israeli minister says "nuclear spy", set to be freed
Dispute Imperils North Korea Nuke Talks
Report: N. Korea May Discuss Covert Atomic Program
South Korea to Purchase Additional Weapons
Russian air defense in deplorable state
Russian navy denies two failed missile launches, admits third
Russia's Mountain of WMD
Russia trains 600 Iranian nuclear experts
Russian missile explosion blights Putin's military show
Putin oversees one successful military launch
Russia Plans New Generation of Weapons
Russian Missile Launch Flops
Russian Missile Self - Destructs After Launch
Power Plant Cooling Water Intake Rule Called Illegal
Nuclear Expert Tells AP Yucca Mt. Unsafe
More Pu to SRS?
Plutonium work finished
Scientists Accuse White House of Distorting Facts
Bush Honors Soldiers, Prepares Them for More
U.S. National Debt Tops $7 Trillion for First Time
MILITARY
U.S. General Maps New Tactic to Pursue Taliban and Qaeda
EPA scientist queried over biowarfare warning
EADS Casa, Lockheed Martin sign contract on patrol aircraft
In Iraq, Contractors' Security Costs Rise
Iran Train Explosion Kills More Than 200
Nobel Laureate in Iran Joins Boycott of Elections
Lawmakers Reprove Iran Leader
Shiite Vote Plan Would Exclude 'Sunni Triangle'
An Iraqi Council With Clout
U.S. Marines Preparing for 'Small War' in Falluja
Suicide Bombers Kill 11 Iraqis South of Baghdad
Letter From Jayyous
Israelis Approve $22 Million for Settlements on West Bank
U.S. Seeks Safeguards for Israel's Gaza Pullout
Sending troops to Iraq "historic mistake": Japanese opposition leader
Croatia confident of its NATO future
NATO chief heads to Turkey
Pakistan Intensifying Hunt for Al Qaeda, U.S. General Says
Putin aide: Russia losing war on terror
'Heads should roll' over Iraq
Iraqi 'fabricator' told U.S. about bioweapons labs
WANTED... WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Administration Split Over Role Of U.N. in Iraq
Paintball poor training for combat, says witness
President's "Disgraceful" Treatment of Troops/Vets
Amid Iraq-Bound Guardsmen, Bush Acts to Blunt Foes' Barbs
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Book details last meals
Brazilian Indians fear millennial way of life is threatened
Terrorism Prosecutor Sues Justice Dept.
Prosecutor sues Justice, Ashcroft
OTHER
Conservationists Sue to Halt Alaska Petroleum Reserve Leasing
Alaskan Reserve Drilling Plan Draws Lawsuit
Landmark Toxics Treaty to Become Law
USDA Accused of Misleading Public on Mad Cow
ACTIVISTS
John Ashcroft's Subpoena Blitz:
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Get rid of all nuclear arms
By Adil Najam,
USA Today
2/18/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-02-18-oppose_x.htm
President Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) provides the right solution, but to the wrong problem. Nuclear proliferation is merely a symptom; the real issue is the nuclear weapons themselves. And, in this sense, the PSI is no more than a Band-Aid, and a quite small one at that.
The recent scandal in Pakistan, where a corrupt scientist sold nuclear secrets for profit, only demonstrates that such traffic is much too lucrative to be stopped by increased policing. For 60 years, ever since Hiroshima, the U.S. and the world have tried to control the spread of nuclear weapons. We've tried treaties, economic sanctions and moral persuasion. And we've failed.
We could not stop the Soviets from getting nukes. We chose not to resist, and actually ignored, Israel's nuclear program. We looked the other way when India went nuclear and, thus, could do little when Pakistan followed suit. And we merely fumed when North Korea flexed its nuclear muscles. In the meantime, we have built and maintained the world's largest nuclear stockpile.
Can we contain Pakistan's nuclear program? Yes, we can. But first we will need to contain India's. To do that, however, India will need to see China's program rolled back. How does that happen? For that, we will need to start looking at our own. As my grandmother used to say, "If you point one finger at someone, at least three will point back at you." No one said this was easy!
Are we really surprised that the rest of the world rolls its eyes when we pontificate about the dangers of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in general - as when Bush referred to them as "the greatest threat to humanity today"? What other countries doubt is our sincerity. It is hypocritical to tell the rest of the world that nuclear weapons are good enough for us, but not for them. We can't have a world part nuclear and part not.
Perhaps the fathers of our own atom bomb - Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues from the Manhattan Project - were correct in believing that the only real way of dealing with nuclear proliferation is to ban nuclear weapons altogether. Everywhere.
International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei understands this reality. He recently wrote: "We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them and indeed to continue to refine their capacities and postulate plans for their use."
We must insist on a nuclear-free world. We must make a sincere commitment to it at home and demand it abroad. Rather than better mousetraps for proliferating nations, we need an approach to eliminate nuclear weapons. Some may argue this is unrealistic. But no more so than the misguided, even naive, hope that a feel-good Band-Aid called PSI will make the world a safer place.
Adil Najam is an associate professor of international negotiation and diplomacy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
-------- asia
AP: Nuclear Financier Has Ties to Malaysia
February 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- A Sri Lankan accused of being the chief financial officer for an international nuclear black market sat on the board of a company owned by the Malaysian prime minister's only son, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The connection indicates that alleged senior members of the network established by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, were able to woo partners in the highest levels of society.
In the Malaysian case, the partners said they had no idea deals were being made to fashion parts that could be used to make nuclear weapons. The companies involved have cut ties with Tahir and his wife, Nazimah.
The documents, obtained by AP via searches of publicly accessible files, reveal a paper trail through privately held companies that outlines ties between the prime minister's son, Kamaluddin Abdullah, and the Sri Lankan, Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, as well as his Malaysian wife.
Malaysian authorities say the accusations against Tahir are being investigated and he remains free, though under surveillance.
``The question is, has he broken any law?'' Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak told reporters Wednesday. ``We have to investigate and get the facts first before we can act on anything.''
The men were top executives at Kaspadu Sdn. Bhd. when Tahir negotiated a deal for a company linked to Kaspadu, Scomi Precision Engineering, to build components that Western intelligence agencies allege were for use in Libya's nuclear program, according to the documents.
President Bush last week called Tahir the ``chief financial officer and money launderer'' of the black market network led by Khan, who has admitted selling nuclear technology and know-how to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
Kamaluddin's company, the Scomi Group, previously acknowledged that Scomi Precision Engineering, a subsidiary, fulfilled a contract for machine parts that was negotiated by Tahir.
Nonproliferation authorities say the parts were for centrifuges -- sophisticated machines that can be used to enrich uranium for weapons and other purposes -- but Scomi says it did not know what the parts were to be used for.
Rohaida Badaruddin, a Scomi spokeswoman, confirmed Tuesday that Tahir was a Kaspadu director until early last year, and said it was likely Kamaluddin encountered Tahir at business meetings.
Kamaluddin was ``shocked and surprised'' to learn late last year of Tahir's alleged role in the nuclear network and broke ties with the Sri Lankan -- including asking Tahir's wife, Nazimah Syed Majid, to sell her shares in Kaspadu, the spokeswoman said.
Kamaluddin has not spoken publicly about the matter and was not available for comment Tuesday. A security guard at the house listed on company documents as his residence told AP it was owned by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, but that nobody now lives there.
The AP traced Nazimah, 35, to an apartment in one of Kuala Lumpur's most exclusive suburbs. She declined comment, except to say, ``My husband is not here; he's away.'' She said she did not know where.
But a building security guard said a man he named as Tahir had come and gone several times from the apartment on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the telephone line to the apartment was disconnected and the guard said the couple had left with their two young children, sending a driver back later to pay outstanding bills.
Abdullah took office last October and was deputy prime minister at the time of the business dealings between his son and Tahir.
Tahir is believed to have started developing social and business ties in Malaysia in the mid-1990s, and by 1998 held a society wedding attended by Khan. Tahir's wife is the daughter of a former Malaysian diplomat.
The revelations of deeper links between Tahir and Kamaluddin come as Malaysian officials complain that this mostly Muslim Southeast Asian country has been unfairly singled out by Washington for its role in the nuclear black market.
Bush, in his speech last week, alleged Tahir used a Dubai computer company as a front for Khan's network, and directed the Malaysian company to produce centrifuge parts based on Pakistani designs. Bush said Khan's network used front companies to ``deceive legitimate firms into selling them tightly controlled materials.''
A senior U.S. official said during a visit to China on Monday that Bush doesn't hold Malaysia responsible.
``There was never any suggestion that the government of Malaysia was involved,'' said John Bolton, an undersecretary of state, adding the Malaysian firm might not have known its equipment was for nuclear use.
Kaspadu is a privately held investment vehicle for Kamaluddin and a business partner that has a controlling stake in Scomi.
Scomi fully owns Scomi Precision Engineering, which delivered ``14 semifinished components'' to Dubai-based Gulf Technical Industries between December 2002 and August 2003, under the $3.4 million Tahir contract.
The parts were seized in October in boxes marked with Scomi's name en route to Libya. Scomi says it understood the parts were for the oil and gas industry, and had no knowledge of the Libyan connection.
Scomi has previously identified Tahir as a businessman who approached its subsidiary about the contract, and said Kamaluddin had no knowledge of the deal because he has no official management role in Scomi.
But company documents show ties between Tahir, 44, and companies controlled by Kamaluddin, 36, were closer than previously acknowledged.
Kaspadu documents list Tahir as being appointed Dec. 16, 2000, as a company director. Kamaluddin is listed as one of Kaspadu's four other directors and its ``corporate executive.''
Malaysian police say Tahir negotiated the Libya-linked contract around 2001. It was Scomi Precision Engineering's first order, and it built a factory to fill it.
Kaspadu records show Tahir resigned as a director Feb. 24, 2003. No reasons were given and the Scomi spokeswoman said she didn't know why.
Scomi Precision Engineering paid Kaspadu $22,000 in management fees in 2002, when Tahir was a director.
Other records show that in October 2000, Nazimah, was one of only three shareholders in Kaspadu. The others are Kamaluddin and his business partner, Shah Hakim Shahzanim Zain.
Documents show that Nazimah's stake in the company was sold to Kamaluddin and Kahim in January.
``Late last year, when Kamaluddin and the other shareholder were informed about the investigation into Tahir, they were shocked and told Nazimah to cease her shareholding'' in Kaspadu, Scomi spokeswoman Badaruddin told AP. ``There was a mutual agreement to sell the shares.''
After an inquiry, Prime Minister Abdullah declared Scomi had been cleared of wrongdoing; last week he said ``there is no such thing as Malaysian involvement'' in the network outlined by Bush.
Associated Press writer Pauline Jasudason contributed to this report.
-------- china
China to boost nuclear power as demand soars
Reuters,
02.18.04,
By Chen Aizhu
http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/newswire/2004/02/18/rtr1265131.html
SINGAPORE, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Heady economic growth and a worsening power shortage is prodding China to hasten the building of nuclear power plants to fill an energy supply gap in the world's fastest-growing major economy, Beijing-based experts say.
Beijing has drafted a preliminary plan to quadruple nuclear power capacity to more than 32,000 megawatts (MW) between 2005 and 2020, or roughly two plants a year. China has built only eight reactors over the past two decades.
"There are strong signals from the government that encourage the nuke power sector. The sudden power shortage was the trigger," said Liu Changxin, deputy secretary general with the Chinese Nuclear Society (CNS).
The expansion would boost the share of nuclear energy in China's power mix to six percent in 2020 from 1.4 percent last year, sharply below wealthy nations' average of 30 percent.
In early 2003, nuclear power was officially listed for the first time in the national power sector development plan and placed under the direct charge of China's super ministry, the State Development and Reform Commission, experts said.
China runs 6,200 MW at eight nuclear generators all in the east coast and is building another three, which would bring total capacity to 8,800 MW by the end of 2005.
The country's electricity demand surged at a sizzling 15.4 percent last year to 1.89 trillion kilowatt hours, driven by 9.1 percent economic growth, stretching the supply system and plunging 22 out of 31 provinces into brown-outs.
Demand is set to expand about 11 percent this year. Analysts estimate China's power demand would grow at an annual average of 4.3 percent between 2001 and 2025, the fastest in the world.
SHORTAGES TO WORSEN
State media said shortages would worsen this year and supplies would not catch up with demand for another two years.
This prompted Beijing to rethink its strategies to grow its power market, the world's second largest, after the United States, and divert energy sources from coal, which fires three-quarters of the 384,500-MW installed capacity.
Beijing is evaluating proposals to build four 1,000 MW plants costing an estimated $6 billion in east China's Zhejiang and Guangdong province, but no time frame has been set. Each kilowatt of capacity could cost around $1,600, an industry source said.
China financed most of the existing plants via international bank loans based on guarantees from the governments of foreign suppliers. Future projects are likely to seek more diverse funding, including corporate bonds and foreign stake holdings, Liu from CNS said.
Hong Kong's largest power utility, CLP Holdings Ltd, is so far the only firm outside mainland China that owns a 25 percent stake in the 2,000-MW Daya Bay nuclear power plant.
The pace of future developments, however, could be slowed by a debate over where China should source its nuclear power technologies.
"The argument is over whether China should leap to the most advanced technology from the U.S., or the less advanced French know-how which dominates the existing reactors and of which China has had a firm grasp," Liu said.
He said Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric Co, owned by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd, was among the interested suppliers.
China would have to wait at least two to three years before the most advanced technology from the United States is transferred to it, he said.
China imported eight of its 11 existing and planned reactors. Suppliers include France's Framatome and Electricite de France, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd as well as from Russia.
Industry experts said China's inland provinces such as Hunan, Hubei and Sichun aimed to have new nuclear power plants and boost supplies to help attract investments and boost tax revenues. They shrugged off worries over nuclear safety, citing its tiny share in the country's power mix and stringent safety measures set in plant designs.
"We have excessive concerns over nuclear safety. People have beach vacations in Japan and France where many nuclear plants are located nearby," said an official with state-owned China National Nuclear Corp.
-------- depleted uranium
Tokyo Lets Loose Lapdogs of War
Dominated by the U.S., officially pacifist Japan charges into the Iraq quagmire
By Chalmers Johnson,
February 18, 2004
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-johnson18feb18,1,37117.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Japan may have regained its sovereignty in 1952, but the decision to dispatch Japanese troops to Iraq earlier this month has reminded many of its citizens just how little independence the country really has - and just how much control the United States retains.
If British Prime Minister Tony Blair is President Bush's poodle, then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is his cocker spaniel.
"We are still occupied by the American military," said an acquaintance of mine who is a former official of Japan's Ministry of Education and now a university president. "We are a satellite. Our foreign policy revolves entirely around the wishes of Washington."
Like many other Japanese, he believes that Koizumi ordered Japan's first military sortie into an active combat zone since World War II because he was too weak to stand up to President Bush.
According to a recent Japan Broadcasting Corp. poll, 51% of the country opposes getting involved in Washington's war against Iraq, while only 42% supports Koizumi's decision. What's more, 82% of those polled said they did not trust the prime minister's explanations for marching into the Iraqi quagmire. Most believe that Koizumi had to go along with Bush or risk damaging the alliance with the U.S.
There's no question that the U.S. takes Japan for granted. The Bush administration likes to boast about how successful the U.S. Army was in democratizing Japan after World War II, and it likes to suggest that it will accomplish the same feat in Iraq. But it fails to note that the U.S. military kept the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa as a Pentagon colony for more than 25 years - until 1972 - and that the U.S. still has 38 military bases on that small island.
Okinawa is home to 1.3 million Japanese citizens who since 1945 have repeatedly had to bear the burdens of violent crimes by American soldiers, continuous environmental and noise pollution, hit-and-run accidents, bar brawls and behavior that would never be tolerated in the U.S. or the mainland of Japan. The Washington official charged with keeping Japan in the U.S. orbit is Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. His name probably appears in the Japanese press more frequently than any other U.S. government figure. Armitage has been hammering Koizumi for more than a year "not to miss the boat" this time, referring to Japan's failure to support the United States militarily in the 1991 war against Iraq. (He has apparently forgotten that Tokyo bankrolled operations to the tune of $13 billion.)
After his reelection as prime minister in September, Koizumi railroaded a vote through the Japanese Parliament endorsing the dispatch of Self-Defense Forces troops to Iraq, even though he acknowledged that this was probably a violation of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution.
Article 9, a key part of Japan's post-World War II constitution, prohibits Japan from using force in the conduct of its foreign relations. Koizumi tried to get around this by endorsing future efforts to amend the constitution and by claiming that the Japanese army would undertake "only humanitarian and reconstruction work" in Iraq.
But this is hardly a risk-free operation - militarily or politically. Domestic critics charge that sending the troops before amending the constitution suggests that Japan does not believe in the rule of law. Two former secretaries-general of Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party, Koichi Kato and Makoto Koga, and the party's former policy chief, Shizuka Kamei, declined to vote for the troop deployment.
The first of about 1,000 Japanese troops arrived Feb. 8 in Samawah, 168 miles south of Baghdad. Four days later, they came under mortar attack. They've also been threatened by Al Qaeda for joining the U.S.-led coalition - and given that Al Qaeda delivered painful blows to the Turks in Istanbul after issuing similar warnings, Japan should be braced for military and civilian casualties.
Perhaps even more serious for the Japanese, Samawah was hit by U.S. depleted-uranium ammunition in both 1991 and 2003. A Japanese journalist, Mamoru Toyoda, equipped with a Geiger counter found radiation levels in the town 300 times greater than normal. The Dutch troops also based there have refused to remove or go near any of the radioactive debris in the area. Death and disability because of radiation sickness is a particular horror for all Japanese after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The British and Australian governments ignored their populations to join Bush's might-makes-right adventure, when they could have stood aside like France and Germany. It is too bad that Japan has now done the same thing, permanently destroying the idealism behind its antiwar constitution.
Chalmers Johnson is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and author of "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic" (Metropolitan Books, 2004).
----
MOD accepts DU has the potential to cause ill health
From: davey garland <thunderelf@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Wed Feb 18, 2004 11:12am
Dear all this warning card (see below) was sent out by a Gulf Veteran, please circulate cheers
MoD Accept DU has the potential to cause ill health
British Troops serving in Iraq are now being issued with an F Med 1018.
Why not before the Iraq war, Balkans or Gulf War?
Are service personnel from other nations aware that British Troops carry this warning card?
Are Iraqi Civilians aware of this warning card?
Are Civilians aware of this warning card who around the world live near test firing range's.
Copies of this card should be made for the Iraqi civilians to turn up at British & American Military establishments in Iraq and ask for testing as it was the US and the UK that used Uranium Munitions.
Please distribute the faxed, photo-copy of the card that was sent to me.
REMEMBER The MoD have always told Gulf War 1 Vet's DU IS SAFE another demonstration of an UNTRUTH
It was said that DU was experimental during Gulf War 1 - then is this another demonstration of the breaking of the Nuremberg Code by observing the health effects on the Veterans after the War?
MOD Card:
DU Information Card (introduced 03/03) F Med 1018
You have been deployed to a theatre where Depleted Uranium(DU) munitions have been used.
DU is a weakly radioactive heavy metal, which has the potential to cause ill health
You may have been exposed to dust containing DU during your deployment
Further Information
You are eligiable for a urine test to measure uranium. If you wish to know more about having this test, you should consult your unit medical officer on return to your home base. Your medical officer can provide information about the health effects of DU. Information is also available on the MOD web site: www.mod.uk/issues/depleted_uranium/index.htm
----
ITALIAN SOLDIERS DON'T USE URANIUM PROTECTION MASKS - ASSOC PRESIDENT
(AGI) - Rome, Italy,
Wednesday February 18, 2004
http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200402161848-1185-RT1-CRO-0-NF11&page=0&id=agionline-eng.oggitalia
Feb. 16 - Italian soldiers deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq do not wear protective masks that impede inhalation of depleted uranium dust, wrote Falco Accame, president of the Armed Forces Victims Association, in a letter to the Italian president. According to Accame, norms were issued by the United States in 1993 for the use of masks in order to "impede the inhalation of uranium oxide that deposits in the soil of areas bombarded by weapons containing depleted uranium, which can be carried by the wind." These norms are in effect for Italian forces since 1999. Accame also said that Italy has had "twenty deaths for suspected uranium contamination, and around 200 illnesses."
-------- india / pakistan
Salesman on Nuclear Circuit Casts Blurry Corporate Shadow
February 18, 2004
By RAYMOND BONNER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/international/asia/18NUKE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb. 17 - It has lately begun to seem as if B. S. A. Tahir, a prominent businessman here, had two faces.
Acquaintances describe Mr. Tahir, who is in his middle 40's, as a soft-spoken husband and father who lives in an upper-middle-class suburb of Kuala Lumpur and has a passion for fast cars and flashy clothes.
He has a financial interest in a fine-chocolates franchise in a shopping mall in fashionable Bangsur that was opened a couple of years ago by the wife of a top politician. Nearby is a gourmet date shop that he also partly owns.
In addition, Mr. Tahir has been director of an investment holding company called Kaspadu, until recently owned by his wife in partnership with the son of the country's current prime minister and another prominent businessman.
But investigators are trying to determine whether Mr. Tahir's legitimate businesses here have been a cover for nuclear black-market activities, a senior Malaysian official said.
President Bush, in a speech last week at the National Defense University, called him the "chief financial officer and money launderer" of an illicit operation headed by the Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. That operation has been accused of providing Iran, North Korea and Libya with technology for making atom bombs.
Investigators say Mr. Tahir put together a deal two years ago for a Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering, to make nuclear-centrifuge parts for Libya, apparently without telling the company where the parts were going, according to company officials and corporate documents. The deal was exposed last October when a ship destined for Libya, the BBC China, was seized in the Mediterranean.
Scomi Precision's parent, the Scomi Group, is principally owned by Kaspadu, the holding company linked to Mr. Tahir, according to corporate documents on file with a government regulatory agency here.
Investigators say Mr. Tahir, a Sri Lankan who came to Malaysia in the mid-90's by way of Dubai, may have been sent by Mr. Khan to secretly procure nuclear parts.
They also suspect this was not the first time or country in which Mr. Tahir carried out an operation to acquire nuclear matériel, one senior investigator said, adding that in Malaysia, Mr. Tahir had "replicated" earlier operations - though the details of those are still unknown.
Investigators have discovered that Mr. Tahir apparently traveled widely to carry out his nuclear-technology business. On one occasion, they say, he went to Casablanca, Morocco, to negotiate with Libyans for the purchase of the centrifuge parts, which are important in making fuel for bombs. On a trip to Switzerland, they say, he met with an engineer who came to Kuala Lumpur to supervise production of the parts.
Mr. Tahir also made trips to Germany and Turkey to meet with suppliers, the investigators said. A Malaysian official said Mr. Tahir's network included two father-and-son teams, one British and one Swiss.
In recent weeks, it appears Mr. Tahir has taken steps to cover up his past. His wife sold her shares in Kaspadu, some of them to the Malaysian prime minister's son, Kamaluddin Abdullah. In addition, a Dubai computer company that Western investigators say Mr. Tahir was using as a front has removed evidence of his involvement from its Web site.
He has not been arrested, but is under constant and close surveillance by Malaysian authorities, who say he declines to comment publicly. Nor did Mr. Kamaluddin respond to requests for interviews made at his home and his business.
Bukhary Seyed Abu Tahir was born in Tamil Nadu, India, on April 17, 1959, according to the Sri Lankan Embassy and corporate papers. When he was about 5, his family moved to Sri Lanka.
He later returned to New Delhi to study, and it was during this time that an uncle met Dr. Khan, according to investigators. The uncle had a business that supplied parts to Dr. Khan's operation.
In his early 20's, Mr. Tahir moved to Dubai and opened a shop, SMB Computers, using his father's initials. He was successful, and together with his brother, Seyed Ibrahim Bukhary, he helped the company grow into SMB Group, which has computer sales and services operations throughout the Middle East.
In a brief telephone conversation last week, Mr. Bukhary refused to answer any questions, saying only that his brother had no current financial interest in SMB Group and was not involved in the management.
Two weeks ago, the SMB Group's Web site (www.smb.co.ae) implied a different story. For instance, a press release from 2002, which announced that SMB Computers had signed a "megadeal" with the United Arab Emirates Air Force, listed Mr. Tahir as the managing director. That press release no longer appears on the site.
In the mid-90's, Mr. Tahir showed up in Kuala Lumpur, according to Malaysian officials. Most notable among his new friends was Mr. Kamaluddin, son of the country's foreign minister, Abdullah Badawi, who is now prime minister. There was also Shah Hakim Zain, who was on the verge of joining the "movers and shakers," to quote a recent article in a Malaysian business magazine.
Mr. Kamaluddin and Mr. Hakim had an investment company named Kaspadu, according to records at the Companies Commission of Malaysia, a regulatory agency.
In 1998, Mr. Tahir married a cousin of Mr. Hakim's, Nazimah Binti Syed Jajid. She was put on the Kaspadu board, but stepped down in December 2000 and was replaced by Mr. Tahir, who served until early 2003. He then stepped down and she rejoined the board, according to corporate documents.
Two weeks ago, after Mr. Tahir's reported involvement with the Libya-bound shipment became public, Ms. Nazimah sold her shares in Kaspadu to Mr. Kamaluddin and Mr. Hakim, according to documents and Malaysian officials.
Kaspadu is the principal shareholder of the Scomi Group.
In 2001, Mr. Tahir negotiated a contract with Scomi for the manufacture of high-precision components, Scomi officials have said. At the time, he was on the board of Kaspadu, according to corporate documents. Mr. Tahir said the parts were being made for Gulf Technical Industries, a Dubai company owned by a British engineer, Peter Griffin, a longtime supplier to Dr. Khan during the time he was building Pakistan's nuclear capacity.
Mr. Griffin, whose son Paul is one of three owners of Gulf Technical, acknowledges meeting Scomi officials with Mr. Tahir, but denies that they discussed nuclear equipment, or that he ever bought anything from Scomi or any Malaysian company.
To manufacture the parts, Scomi set up Scomi Precision Engineering.
Gulf Technical brought in a Swiss engineer, Urs Tinner, to oversee production of the parts, Scomi officials said this week. Mr. Tinner, who was based in Dubai, rented a house near the plant while he was here, Scomi officials said. He kept the blueprints with him at all times, they said.
Mr. Tinner's father is also an engineer, and has a factory in Europe that makes vacuum tubes, Scomi officials said. Investigators have not linked the elder Mr. Tinner directly to the sale to Libya.
Scomi officials declined to provide addresses of either Tinner, and efforts to find them failed.
Scomi shipped the parts in four consignments to two companies in Dubai that had been designated by Mr. Tahir, Scomi officials said this week. One of them, according to Dubai corporate records, was owned by Mr. Tahir's financial partners in SMB Computers.
Desert Electrical was owned by one of Mr. Tahir's financial partners in SMB Computers, according to Dubai corporate records. The phone number for Desert Electrical listed in the corporate records is no longer in service.
Scomi officials have repeatedly insisted that they were told the parts were for an oil and gas company. They had no reason to suspect Mr. Tahir, they said, until the BBC China was seized last year.
Why should they have? a Malaysian official asked on Monday, as he walked between the date shop and the chocolate shop. Mr. Tahir "appeared very legitimate," he said.
--------
Pakistani Store Blushes Over Nuclear Scandal
February 18, 2004
By DAVID ROHDE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/international/asia/18STAN.html?pagewanted=all
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 17 - A tinge of panic washed over the weathered face of Salahuddin Khan when he was asked two questions. He answered yes to both and immediately wondered aloud how the news would affect his business.
"I'm afraid American customers won't come here," he said.
Mr. Khan is the owner of Good Looks Fabrics and Tailors, an Islamabad institution. For the past 25 years, Pakistani government officials, titans of industry and other luminaries have streamed here to buy some of South Asia's finest hand-tailored suits. American diplomats and journalists have been customers too.
On Tuesday afternoon, rows of rich fabrics lined the store's brightly lighted walls. A salesman dressed in a sharply cut gray suit waited eagerly for customers.
Mr. Khan handed out business cards that declared the store's proud motto: "First in fashion." But he found himself trying to explain away an unwanted distinction.
Yes, he had answered, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who recently confessed to sharing nuclear technology with Iran, North Korea and Libya, was a regular customer.
And yes, he had heard that American investigators had recently found a plastic bag from his Islamabad store in a nuclear weapons facility in Libya. Inside the shopping bag were detailed plans for a nuclear bomb.
"We've done nothing wrong here," the tailor nervously insisted. "Dr. Khan did nothing wrong here."
Mr. Khan, who is no relation to Dr. Khan, said he had no idea how one of his shopping bags ended up in Libya. He said that several days ago a man he believes was a Pakistani government investigator stopped by his store and asked the same questions.
Mr. Khan said that Dr. Khan bought suits from his store "once or twice a year" throughout the 1990's. He was "nice to us," Mr. Khan said, but he had not been back for the past three years.
As if to prove the store's innocence, a clerk unveiled a large black plastic shopping bag, pointed to where the store's name and address was printed, and shrugged. Others questioned whether Dr. Khan was truly the culprit.
One employee suggested that a foreign client might have taken the bag to Libya.
"There are many Libyans and Syrians who come here and get their stitching also," said the clerk, who would not give his name.
A friend visiting Mr. Khan said Pakistan's powerful army was framing Dr. Khan to hide its own role in nuclear proliferation. "Why do you just hold Qadeer Khan responsible," he asked a reporter, and not the "top brass?"
-------- israel
Israeli minister says "nuclear spy", set to be freed, could be again held
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Feb 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040218194858.0ytk5wlo.html
Mordechai Vanunu, the whistleblower jailed for 18 years for exposing Israel's nuclear arsenal, could be placed in administrative detention following his April release, a cabinet minister said Wednesday.
Gideon Ezra, parliamentary relations minister, said the Jewish state's secret services could hold Vanunu "to keep him from divulging secrets."
Vanunu, 49, worked as a technician at the Dimona nuclear facility in southern Israel. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 1986 after giving details about Israel's secret weapons program to Britain's Sunday Times.
Israeli agents lured Vanunu from London to Italy, where he was kidnapped and brought to Israel. He was tried in secret and found guilty of "espionage".
He is due to be released from prison on April 21.
"I visited him myself in his prison cell, where he told me of his intention to continue to divulge secrets, without expressing the least regret for what he had done," Ezra told parliamentary deputies.
Israel has firmly adhered to a policy of "nuclear ambiguity", never confirming or denying it possesses nuclear weapons. But foreign experts believe the Jewish state holds at least 200 atomic warheads.
Under administrative detention regulations, Israeli authorities can detain a suspect for renewable periods of six months without charges or trial. It is a practice frequently used to detain suspected Palestinian militants.
-------- korea
Dispute Imperils North Korea Nuke Talks
February 18, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-Nuclear-Secrets.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The dispute between Pyongyang and Washington over North Korea's nuclear capabilities is threatening to derail chances of a peaceful resolution at six-nation talks next week.
Undersecretary of State John Bolton, meeting with Japanese officials in Tokyo, warned Wednesday that North Korea's denial it has a nuclear program based on uranium could hurt efforts to resolve the crisis.
``I think North Korea's unwillingness to discuss the uranium enrichment program could subvert President Bush's determination for a peaceful, diplomatic resolution of the North Korean issue,'' Bolton said in an interview with Japanese public broadcaster NHK.
The questions about North Korea's nuclear capabilities are expected to overshadow the six-party talks in Beijing that begin next Wednesday with China, Japan, Russia and South Korea also taking part.
At issue is whether North Korea has only a plutonium-based nuclear program, as it claims, or whether Pyongyang also has a uranium-based program, as the United States maintains.
There's also uncertainty about whether North Korea has made nuclear weapons and whether they can mount them on a missile and fire them.
The plutonium program is believed to be more of an immediate threat than the alleged uranium one, which does not require large-scale, easily detectable facilities and could require at least several years of operation before it can produce a bomb.
U.S. officials believe North Korea has at least one or two nuclear bombs from plutonium, though some experts believe Pyongyang does not have the technology and resources to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.
The recent confession of Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's proliferator of nuclear secrets, suggests North Korea's uranium program ``is of longer duration and more advanced than we had assessed,'' U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said last week in Washington.
North Korea denies receiving nuclear secrets from Pakistan.
``There is no agreed estimate of anything,'' said Leon Sigal, a North Korea expert. ``As with Iraq, there is significant disagreement in the intelligence community about pieces of this.''
North Korea will likely try to capitalize on the uncertainty, brandishing the threat of what it vaguely describes as its ``nuclear deterrent'' in an effort to extract concessions.
U.S. negotiators will likely hold firm, demanding that North Korea dismantle all nuclear projects in a verifiable, irreversible way.
A resolution is possible if the two adversaries move toward a step-by-step process under which North Korea -- perhaps the most secretive country in the world -- allows unprecedented access to its most guarded sites, and the United States and its allies provide sweeping security assurances and economic aid.
Pyongyang might pursue two tracks: offer to freeze activities at its plutonium-based site at Yongbyon in exchange for concessions, and persist in denying or downplaying claims it has a program based on uranium enrichment. It could also attack the credibility of U.S. intelligence following the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
North Korea might feel emboldened by reports that China, a traditional ally of Pyongyang that is wary of U.S. influence in Asia, has not accepted the U.S. contention that the North has a uranium-based weapons program. However, China wants the Korean Peninsula to be free of nuclear weapons and could pressure the North to curtail its belligerence.
Some security analysts believe the mystery will put pressure on the United States to be more explicit about what it knows.
``Unless the U.S. introduces a high-level defector with certain knowledge of the North Korean (uranium program) locations, or can send the IAEA or other inspectors to the right place, U.S. intelligence credibility will not be reinforced,'' said Larry Wortzel, a former U.S. military attache in Beijing and now an analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
North Korea expelled inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, from frozen nuclear facilities at Yongbyon after U.S. officials alleged that the North admitted it had a uranium-based program in late 2002. North Korea then restarted the Yongbyon site as Pyongyang and Washington traded accusations that each side had failed to honor a 1994 nuclear deal.
In a rare, recent show-and-tell by North Korean scientists at Yongbyon, an American was allowed to pick up -- with a gloved hand -- a glass jar that allegedly contained 200 grams of plutonium metal, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons. The jar was heavy and slightly warm, and tests showed the substance was radioactive.
But the American, Siegfried Hecker of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and other U.S. scientists couldn't confirm what was in the jar. They concluded 8,000 spent fuel rods containing plutonium had been removed from a fuel pond, but they could not substantiate North Korean claim the rods had been reprocessed to extract the metal.
``I saw nothing and talked to no one that allowed me to assess whether or not they have the ability to design a nuclear device,'' Hecker said last month.
----
Report: N. Korea May Discuss Covert Atomic Program
February 18, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea might discuss its suspected uranium-based nuclear weapons program with the United States at six-party talks next week in Beijing, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday.
``North Korea has recently expressed its willingness to discuss the highly enriched uranium program to a third country,'' Yonhap quoted an unnamed government official as saying.
The official said that North Korea had in recent meetings with ``third country'' officials backed away slightly from its adamant denial that it had a highly enriched uranium program, although Pyongyang did not acknowledge the HEU scheme.
U.S. and South Korean officials have said the six-party talks may hinge on Pyongyang's willingness to address the HEU issue.
U.S. officials said this week that if Pyongyang continued to deny the HEU program, which triggered the current nuclear controversy, the multilateral talks set to begin on February 25 in Beijing could collapse.
The talks involve the United States, the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia. The six met last August in Beijing, but did little more than state their respective positions in the dispute.
The current crisis was triggered in October 2002 when the United States confronted the North with allegations of a secret program for enriching uranium, which can produce fuel for nuclear bombs.
This was in addition to a separate North Korean program for producing plutonium, another type of nuclear fuel, that was frozen under a 1994 U.S.-North Korea accord but has since been resumed.
U.S. officials said the North had acknowledged the highly enriched uranium program at that October 2002 meeting. Pyongyang has since denied its existence.
The United States, South Korea and Japan are to hold consultations in Seoul on February 23 ahead of the Beijing talks.
----
South Korea to Purchase Additional Weapons with Relocation of U.S. Forces in Korea
FEBRUARY 18, 2004
Donga
Contact english@donga.com for more information
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?bicode=060000&biid=2004021924578
The South Korean military may have to buy more weapons in order to defend the front line due to the relocation of the United States forces stationed in Korea, Defense News reported in its February 17 issue.
Because the 2nd U.S. Infantry Division is planned to be relocated from north of Seoul to south of the Han River, the South Korean military is urged to purchase radars that can detect the North's artillery attacks, helicopters that can carry out search and rescue work for 24 hours per day and additional artillery in order to respond to artillery attacks by the North, a South Korean Defense official was quoted as saying in the weekly defense magazine.
In addition, the United States hopes South Korea will appropriate a bigger defense budget in order to purchase the Ballistic Missile Defense System that would help the South cope with North Korea's Scud missiles, and invest more into commanding and telecommunication systems, computers, intelligence, and reconnaissance.
Apart from the South Korean military's reinforcement, the U.S. Defense Ministry plans to inject 11 billion dollars in an effort to modernize its military forces stationed in South Korea. The purchase list includes Stryker armored vehicles, the Patriot PAC-3 Missile System, and AH-64D Apache attack helicopters equipped with the advanced Longbow fire control radar.
-------- russia
Russian air defense in deplorable state
February 18, 2004
A Sukhoi Su-30 fighter aircraft (AP)
MOSCOW - Russia's air defense is in a deplorable state, Anatoly Kornukov, the former commander of the Russian air force, said at a round table meeting on Wednesday.
"Russian air defense is in deplorable condition, but it is not hopeless," he said. According to Kornukov, the country's air defense weapons "remained the same as several decades ago" due to the lack of funds and the absence of modernization. As an example, he referred to the S-50 air defense system. The combat effectiveness of the system is halved, according to the former air force commander.
On the need to develop a space defense program in Russia, Kornukov said "Russia needs an inexpensive but reliable space defense system, capable of protecting it from air and space strikes". "Space defense should become a vital part of a system to deter possible aggression against Russia," he stressed. According to Kornukov, Russia already has a system capable of hitting orbital vehicles. "In combat service since 1972, this system still operates effectively," he noted.
Kornukov said a new S-400 system, Triumf, had been tested successfully. "I think regular launches of long-range missiles will be conducted before March 8," he added. The Triumf anti-aircraft missile system is ready for serial production, according to the ex-commander of air force.
The Triumf system has a range of 400km. It can be used both against high-flying strategic and ballistic missiles and against cruise missiles like the Tomahawk, which fly low and are effective against targets in woodland and rugged terrains.
The new system is capable of detecting and destroying early-warning aircraft and tactical and strategic aircraft. It can also intercept warheads flying at a speed of 4,800 km per hour.
--
Russian navy denies two failed missile launches, admits third
February 18, 2004
http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=42596
MOSCOW - Mystery still surrounds the failed launch of two ballistic missiles from the Novomoskovsk submarine yesterday, though the navy confrimed that another missile had self-destructed in mid-air on Wednesday.
After a prolonged silence yesterday the Northern Fleet command said that Tuesday's launches had not been scheduled and the military exercises had gone to plan. Other sources in the navy, however, still insist that the launch was disrupted.
On Wednesday another report of a ballistic missile self-destructing 98 seconds after being launched from the Karelia nuclear submarine was made by the press service of the Russian navy. The launch was also conducted within the framework of major naval exercises currently being held in the Barents Sea. Initially the launch was proceeding normally, but after 98 seconds of flight the missile self-destructed as its instruments started to show that it was loosing trajectory, the press service reported.
Yesterday the Novomoskovsk submarine, taking part in large-scale military exercises in the Russian North, failed to launch an RSM-54 intercontinental ballistic missile that was supposed to hit a target in Kamchatka. The incident occurred as Supreme Commmander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin was observing the war games from the Arkhangelsk nuclear submarine.
Russian news agencies reported the failure, but refuted those same reports hours later, with top military officials denying the glitch took place and claiming the exercises had proceeded as planned. By the end of the day it became clear that the Novomoskovsk submarine was not damaged and its crew were safe and had already returned to their base in Severomorsk.
''The causes and circumstances of the incident are being investigated. The Novomoskovsk has already returned to base,'' a source in the staff of the Northern Fleet told Interfax. According to the source, the incident had not entailed any serious consequences; none of the crew members was injured and the vessel was not damaged.
The military have still not officially confirmed those reports. The press services of the navy, the Northern Fleet, and the Defence Ministry remained unavailable for comment throughout the day. On Tuesday evening the navy's chief commander, Vladimir Kuroyedov, told NTV that no actual launches had been planned in the first place, only simulations, and hence, there had been no failures and the exercises went to plan.
However, earlier statements by top military officials refute the simulation theory. In the run-up to the large-scale military exercises currently being held in Russia Deputy Chief of General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky, addressing a news conference in Moscow, explained what exactly the military units and formations involved in the war games would be doing. Baluyevsky, in particular, confirmed that practice launches of ballistic missiles from sea and land would be performed.
Igor Dygalo, aide to the navy's chief commander, told ITAR-TASS news agency on Tuesday that two launches of ballistic missiles were to be performed during the exercises. One rocket was to hit the Kura bombing range in Kamchatka, another was to be used as a target for an anti-aircraft and missile complex on board the Pyotr Veliky cruiser.
Furthermore, by offering their own versions of the launch failure to news agencies throughout the day on Tuesday, numerous sources in the Northern Fleet command also cast doubt on the credibility of Kuroyedov's explanation. Those versions suggest that one of the RSM-54 missiles to be fired from the Novomoskovsk, which was supposed to hit a target at the Kura range, disintegrated right after it left the missile shaft.
Later Associated Press, citing its sources, reported that the launch failed after it was blocked by the submarine's automatic safety system. Sources in the Northern Fleet command then told Russian news agencies that two launches had been planned but the launches never took place because the launch command was blocked by a satellite.
According to other reports, the captain of the Novomoskovsk, Sergei Rachuk, cancelled the launch at his own initiative after detecting a failure in the sub's control system.
Interestingly, in his report on the progress of the maneuvers, presented to Vladimir Putin by Anatoly Kvashnin, the chief of general staff made no mention of the Novomoskovsk incident at all. Kvashnin reported on the successful anti-aircraft operation from Pyotr Veliky, adding vaguely that ''in general, the troops have coped with the set tasks''.
What Putin thinks of the reports from Kvashnin and Kuroyedov and the incident itself remains to be seen. Several hours later Putin returned to Severomorsk from the area where the exercises were held. On Wednesday Putin flew to Plesetsk where Russia's Space Forces launched a satellite in his presence.
----
Russia's Mountain of WMD
February 18, 2004
The Nation
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0218/p08s03-comv.html
"We have more work to do," President Bush told the world in a speech on WMD proliferation last week. That particular sentence referred to the "Nunn-Lugar" program to dismantle, destroy, and secure weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. Mr. Bush's one-liner puts the "under" in "understatement." The program championed by former Sen. Sam Nunn and Sen. Richard Lugar is grossly behind schedule. What was supposed to be accomplished in 10 years is now in its 13th year, and the work is not even half done.
Since 1991, all of the nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus have been removed; 6,252 nuclear warheads have been deactivated; and more than 20,000 scientists employed in WMD have found peaceful work. That's progress.
But it leaves more than 7,000 warheads to go, and hundreds of metric tons of highly enriched uranium and plutonium to properly secure. Most of the 40,000 tons of chemical weapons - much of it in suitcase-size shells - has yet to be destroyed.
Some critics, noting the administration's decreased budget request for 2005, argue that more funding would speed things up.
The real need here, however, is not money but political will. Serious bureaucratic delays are stalling efforts, preventing allocated money from being spent. The wrangling covers everything from physical access at Russian facilities to liability concerns.
Pouring money into a system where it gets stuck in bottlenecks can't do much good. These problems could be more speedily resolved if they received sustained attention at the highest levels in the White House and the Kremlin.
----
Russia trains 600 Iranian nuclear experts
MOSCOW (AFP)
Feb 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040218165038.2v3peztl.html
Russia has trained 600 Iranian experts to work on the Islamic republic's first nuclear power station, which Washington fears is being used to develop atomic weapons, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported Wednesday.
An Iranian nuclear official told the agency that the experts had undergone training at the Novovoronezh centre, 500 kilometres (300 miles) south of Moscow, which is to prepare some 700 specialists for work in the Bushehr plant.
Russia has faced intense pressure over its construction of the Bushehr reactor from the United States, which fears that Iran could use fuel from the reactor for a weapons program, though Washington has toned down its criticism in the past several months.
"We still have doubts about the wisdom of Russia's work to build an atomic power station at Bushehr," Alexander Vershbow, the US ambassador in Moscow, said last week.
Russia, which has refused to abandon the 800-million-dollar project, provisionally plans to deliver fuel to Bushehr by mid 2005 and plans for the reactor to start operating a year later.
----
Russian missile explosion blights Putin's military show
PLESETSK, Russia (AFP)
Feb 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040218161827.uu2xifpy.html
An unarmed Russian ballistic missile veered off course and self-destructed Wednesday amid massive military exercises that President Vladimir Putin hoped would show off Russia's military might only weeks before elections.
The embarrassing incident came moments before Putin delivered a major address on nuclear arms at this secret rocket launch site and just one day after another mishap prevented the Russian navy from test-firing two intercontinental ballistic missiles, known as ICBMs.
The mishaps blighted the largest war games staged by Russia in 20 years, which were meant to convince the United States that its missiles could penetrate any defense shield now being developed by Washington.
Russia's Northern Fleet said the missile blew itself apart 98 seconds after being launched from the Barents Sea by an underwater nuclear submarine.
It was supposed to hit a target on the Kamchatka peninsula in the far eastern corner of Russia but quickly strayed off course. The navy said it has launched an investigation but gave no immediate explanation for the accident.
The incident involved an RSM-53 missile, given the NATO specification SS-N-23, which was first developed by the Soviet Union in 1979.
A military source told Interfax the missile -- which is capable of delivering a nuclear strike on the United States -- probably went off course because its guidance system malfunctioned.
"It could have happened because the rocket was sitting in storage for too long," the military source said.
The war games came ahead of the March 14 presidential election in which Putin -- who has made army reforms one of his top priorities and relies heavily on support of Russian patriotic forces -- is expected to easily win re-election for a second term.
The explosion went off moments before Putin argued in a keynote address that Russia's nuclear arsenal would keep the country safe for generations to come.
He did not refer to the incident.
"I can inform to you with satisfaction that the tests conducted during these exercises were successful," Putin declared.
"Russia's strategic missile defense systems will in the near future be upgraded with the most modern equipment. Russia will guarantee its strategic security for the extended future."
But Putin did mention that there were "pluses and minuses during these exercises."
The explosion was not covered on the two state-controlled national television channels, the exact same procedure given to Tuesday's Barents Sea mishap.
The Kommersant business daily said Tuesday's launch went wrong when the first of two ICBMs failed to completely leave its launching pad. The second launch was then called off as a security precaution.
Navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov told Interfax in response to the Kommersant report that he refused "to comment on gossip."
Western governments have openly accused Russian media of bias and helping pro-Putin parties gain control of parliament in December elections.
Instead the government-run channels trumpeted the fact that another ICBM was successfully launched by the Russian military from the Baikonur launch pad it is renting from its neighbor Kazakhstan.
Putin praised that launch as a sign that Russia could break through any missile shield that is under construction by the United States.
ITAR-TASS quoted Putin as saying that the SS-19 missile launched at Baikonur "has no competition" when it comes to breaking through potential defense mechanisms.
"We are talking about a very dangerous weapon with serious potential," Putin said.
----
Putin oversees one successful military launch as another goes haywire
PLESETSK, Russia (AFP)
Feb 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040218120707.b0sillef.html
A smiling Russian President Vladimir Putin witnessed the successful launch of a spy satellite Wednesday at a secret base as part of his campaign to boost the military's morale and his own image ahead of next month's elections.
But while everything went according to plan at this closed facility, a serious accident befell Russia's mighty nuclear forces when an unarmed inter-continental ballistic missile veered off course hundred of miles (kilometers) away during a test launch and self-destructed.
The two contrasting incidents highlight both the emphasis Russia still places on its missile forces and the difficulties the Russian leader is facing in keeping them modernized following the Soviet Union's collapse.
Putin stood just a kilometer away at the Plesetsk launch pad in Russia's far north as a Molnia rocket blasted off at 10:06 am (0706 GMT) in the latest stage of ongoing Russian exercises aimed at checking Russia's military readiness and the strength of its strategic forces.
He sat smiling and clad in green military fatigue next to Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov in the control room as a booming military voice gave a second-by-second account of the event -- images that led off state-controlled television news.
Putin's presence in Plesetsk and his jaunt through the Barents Sea on board a nuclear submarine Tuesday appear to be aimed at boosting his tough-guy image and drumming up support from Russia's nationalists in the March 14 vote which he is widely expected to win.
But all did not go according to plan Tuesday as the Russian leader set out to sea to witness the launch of two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from a nuclear submarine -- only for the tests to be scrapped because of an apparent malfunction.
Putin spent 20 minutes standing on a deck of a nuclear submarine to witness the launch before turning back to port in disappointment.
The potentially embarrassing incident for the Russian president -- who made military reforms one of the top priorities of his first term -- was hushed up by the state-controlled television station and only reported in the independent media.
The Kommersant business daily said the launch went wrong when the first of two ICBMs failed to completely leave its launching pad. The second launch was then called off as a security precaution.
But Russia's navy -- which also spent days trying to cover up the August 2000 Kursk submarine disaster that claimed the lives of 118 seamen -- again appeared to try to cover up its tracks by saying that no actual launch was ever planned.
But things only got worse for the navy and the nuclear forces Wednesday when a different submarine tried to test fire another ICBM from the same site only for the experiment to go out of control.
The Northern Fleet said the missile self-destructed 98 seconds after its launch; it was supposed to hit a military target on the Kamchatka peninsula on Russia's Far East but went in a different direction, the navy giving no further details.
There was no immediate reaction from Putin or his Kremlin staff to Wednesday's mishap.
State television Tuesday evening showed Putin complementing top military commanders for a job well done and suggested that awards would be received by those who took part.
-------
Russia Plans New Generation of Weapons
February 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Military-Exercise.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- After two failed missile launches during highly publicized military maneuvers, President Vladimir Putin announced plans Wednesday to deploy a new generation of strategic weapons and said Moscow may build new missile defenses.
Some analysts said the new weapons may be warheads that zigzag on their way to a target, an idea that dates to the Soviet era. Putin did not say exactly what they were.
Putin spoke after watching Wednesday's launch of a military satellite from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia, which was part of a massive exercise of the nation's strategic forces described as the largest in more than 20 years.
``The experiments conducted during these maneuvers ... have proven that state-of-the art technical complexes will enter service with the Russian Strategic Missile Forces in the near future,'' Putin said in remarks broadcast by Russian television stations.
The new weapons will be ``capable of hitting targets continents away at hypersonic speed, with high precision and the ability of broad maneuver both in terms of altitude and direction of their flight,'' he said.
Putin spoke after two embarrassing missile launch failures Tuesday and Wednesday. A missile launch from the Novomoskovsk nuclear submarine set for Tuesday didn't take place, though the navy later claimed that it had never planned the test despite numerous statements to the contrary.
On Wednesday, the navy sent another Northern Fleet nuclear submarine to the Barents Sea to repeat the launch -- only to fail again. The missile launched from the Karelia submarine started drifting from its flight path 98 seconds after launch and self-destructed automatically, Russian navy spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo told The Associated Press.
Retired Adm. Vladimir Chernavin, the former Soviet navy chief, said that until the cause of the failed launch is found, ``it's hard to talk about full combat readiness of the navy's strategic nuclear forces,'' the Interfax-Military News Agency reported.
State television kept mum about the failures. Putin didn't directly mention them, though he did acknowledge some shortcomings in the exercises.
``We have not had such exercises for almost 20 years,'' Putin said. ``Naturally, in the course of such exercises there are minuses and pluses ... and those minuses will be detected and clearly we'll be drawing conclusions. It is only for the better.''
The military exercises were widely seen as part of campaign efforts to play up Putin's image as a leader determined to restore Russia's military power and global clout ahead of the March 14 presidential election. He is expected to win easily.
In his comments, Putin focused on the new weapons, which he said would be unrivaled in the world. He said they would ensure Russia's safety for years to come.
Putin said that Russia was continuing research in missile defense systems and may build a new missile shield. Russia now has a missile defense system protecting Moscow that was designed in the 1970s and modernized in the 1990s.
Some military analysts said his statement could indicate the revival of Soviet designs for nuclear warheads that zigzag on their final approach to a target, confusing missile defenses.
Such behavior would make a missile hard to intercept and destroy.
``On the other hand, its accuracy leaves much to be desired, making it unfit for dealing precision strikes,'' said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent Russian military analyst.
He said that the research on zigzagging warheads began in the 1980s in response to Ronald Reagan's ``Star Wars'' program.
Putin said the new weapon systems wouldn't be directed against the United States, which has backed out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and is developing a missile defense system of its own.
``Modern Russia has no imperial ambitions or hegemonist strivings,'' he said.
Alexander Pikayev, a Moscow-based expert in Russian nuclear forces, said that the military had experimented with a maneuvering warhead during a missile launch several years ago, but voiced doubt about Russia's ability to deploy such weapons any time soon.
Putin could also have been referring to a ballistic missile system being developed for submarines, said Ivan Safranchuk, the head of the Moscow office of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington-based think-tank. Little is known about the system, called Bulava.
In Plesetsk on Wednesday, Putin watched the successful launch of a Molniya-M booster rocket, which carried a Kosmos military satellite into orbit.
Later in the day, the military successfully test-fired a Topol ballistic missile from Plesetsk and an RS-18 ballistic missile from the Baikonur cosmodrome which Russia leases from Kazakhstan. The two are reliable weapons systems dating from the Soviet era.
--------
Russian Missile Launch Flops
Test Exemplifies Military Troubles
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49543-2004Feb17.html
MOSCOW, Feb. 17 -- It was a campaign manager's dream visual: A president weeks away from an election stands on the bridge of a nuclear submarine out at sea, watching the test launch of two intercontinental missiles capable of destroying an enemy city.
President Vladimir Putin took his position aboard the Arkhangelsk on Tuesday afternoon, television cameras dutifully recording the moment. And he waited. And waited and waited.
Finally after 25 minutes, naval officers announced what had become painfully obvious, that the launch had not taken place, and they shuffled the guests and journalists below deck , according to Russian reporters on the scene. Putin disappeared without a word. Russian news organizations promptly reported that a malfunction had scuttled the launch.
Then, a few hours later, the navy's top admiral denied that any launch had been planned. A "virtual launch" had been intended from the start, he explained, and it had been a success.
The incident represented an unusual glitch for Putin's tightly scripted political campaign, but not a particularly unusual one for his troubled military. The launch of the RSM-54 missiles from a submerged submarine, the Novomoskovsk, in the Barents Sea to a target on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Far East was to be the centerpiece of the country's biggest strategic nuclear exercise since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Instead, it became a metaphor for the problems of a military still aspiring to superpower glory with post-superpower resources and training. In recent years the Russian military has seen its submarines sink, its airplanes crash and its crack troops fail to subdue rebels in the region of Chechnya.
Some of the ballistic missiles involved in this week's nuclear exercises are 27 years old, far past their normal lifespan of 10 years, because Russia cannot afford to replace them, according to military analysts.
"Mr. Putin wants to show to all the Russians, who have an inferiority complex, that we're still equal to the United States, we can still be a great power," said Alexander Golts, a military specialist at the Russian newsmagazine Yezhenedelny Zhurnal. But instead, "it looks like something is out of order."
The cycle of problem and denial had a familiar ring as well. The navy commander in chief sent out to insist all was well was the same one in charge when the submarine Kursk sunk in 2000, and the government provided multiple contradictory and misleading statements.
"The work was carried out according to the plan," Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov said at a televised briefing Tuesday. "And to make things completely clear, I'll say that the ballistic exercises were designed as a virtual launch, which was done twice, first in one spot, then in another."
Many scoffed at the explanation. They "haven't learned anything -- or if they learned anything from the Kursk, they learned they could lie and get away with it," said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst.
In the end, Putin's campaign manager may not have much to worry about. Many Russian journalists who watched from a different ship, the cruiser Peter the Great, did not report the incident. Among the state-controlled television networks, only NTV suggested anything unusual had happened. On the other channels, Putin was shown in a navy uniform eating with sailors while admirals hailed the triumphant exercises.
------
Russian Missile Self - Destructs After Launch
February 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-missile.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian ballistic missile self-destructed after a failed test launch from a submarine on Wednesday during military exercises in the Arctic North attended by President Vladimir Putin, a navy spokesman said.
``The missile's trajectory was normal until the 98th second of flight,'' spokesman Igor Dygalo said. ``Then it started diverting from course and self-destruction system worked.''
Putin, standing for re-election in March, was attending the military exercises, described by the media as the largest in more than 20 years, but was not in the area where the missile failed.
Tuesday, Interfax and Itar-Tass news agencies reported two ballistic missiles failed to take off in a test on another nuclear submarine, the Novomoskovsk, but navy officials later denied the incident.
In 2000, the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank off the Arctic coast during military exercises, killing 118 sailors and officers on board.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Power Plant Cooling Water Intake Rule Called Illegal
By J.R. Pegg,
February 18, 2004
(ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2004/2004-02-18-11.asp
Some nuclear power plants use two billion gallons of water a day to cool turbines. (Photo courtesy Tennessee Emergency Management Agency)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/pics28/nuclearplant2.jpg
WASHINGTON, DC - To cool their turbines, power plants withdraw billions of gallons daily from reservoirs, rivers and lakes, often drawing fish and other aquatic animals in with the water. A final rule designed to protect aquatic life from dying in the water intakes was signed Monday by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Mike Leavitt, but environmentalists say the rule is too lenient and violates the Clean Water Act.
"EPA has completely abdicated its congressionally mandated duty to require best technology for minimizing fish kills," said Alex Matthiessen, Hudson Riverkeeper and executive director of Riverkeeper, Inc., an environmental advocacy group.
According to Riverkeeper, Leavitt rejected the recommendation by EPA staffers to require closed-cycle cooling water technology at the direction of the White House Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).
The closed-cycle systems are more expensive than systems that use cooling water once only, but they are fish friendly because they cut the smount of water put through the intake systems. Closed-cycle cooling systems use 95 percent less water than once through systems.
"This was Governor Leavitt's first big test," said Matthiessen, "and he has shown himself to be indifferent to federal law and unwilling to stand up to the White House." Leavitt, a Republican, was Governor of Utah when he agreed to take the EPA top position late last year.
The rule is the second of three cooling water intake regulations the EPA is required to develop under the Clean Water Act and to satisfy terms of a consent decree filed in 1995 as a result of a lawsuit brought by several environmental groups.
The Phase I rule, which was finalized in 2002, called on new facilities that draw 10 million gallons of water or more a day from natural water bodies to use cooling systems with recirculated water.
The Phase II rule announced Monday is for existing electric generating plants that withdraw more than 50 million gallons of water per day.
The rule requires these facilities meet performance standards to reduce the number of organisms pinned against parts of the cooling water intake structure by 80 to 95 percent. Some facilities will also have to meet performance standards to reduce the number of aquatic organisms drawn into the cooling system by 60 to 90 percent.
The rule offers facilities several compliance alternatives to meet the performance standards, including the use of restoration measures.
Restoration includes such measures as building artificial wetlands or operating a hatchery to replace the aquatic wildlife lost in the water intakes.
But the Phase I rule also contains that provision and a federal appeals court ruled earlier this month that the EPA does not have the authority to allow power plants to opt for restoration of aquatic resources in lieu of installing technology to prevent fish kills.
"The [new] rule simply invites more litigation," said Reed Super, Riverkeeper senior attorney and lead attorney in the lawsuit challenging the Phase I rule. "EPA has made a mockery of the Clean Water Act by maximizing fish kills with the worst technology available, when it was required to do just the opposite," Super charges.
Rejecting a simultaneous challenge from industry, the court also upheld the Phase I rule's basic requirement that new plants install closed-cycle cooling or equivalent technology to minimize fish kills.
The Phase II rule allows existing plants to withdraw billions of gallons per day through their "once through" cooling systems, rather than converting to closed-cycle cooling.
The cost benefit tests used by OIRA are flawed and biased, according to Riverkeeper, and violate the Clean Water Act's "best technology" mandate.
The EPA estimates that the Phase II rule will affect about 550 facilities and will cost approximately $400 million annually to implement and administer.
"This rule sets an important national standard to protect fish, shellfish, and other forms of aquatic life from death or injury," Leavitt said. "The environmental benefits of this rule include improvements to recreational and commercial fishing and are valued at about $80 million annually."
The Phase II rule signed Monday will be published in the Federal Register in a few weeks, and can be challenged in federal court two weeks after that.
Riverkeeper says it will challenge the rule and will likely seek a stay of the rule pending a court decision.
The Phase III rule, scheduled for proposal in November 2004, will cover existing electric generating plants using smaller amounts of cooling water and other facilities such as manufacturers.
-------- nevada
Nuclear Expert Tells AP Yucca Mt. Unsafe
February 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain-Critic.html
RENO, Nev. (AP) -- The nation's nuclear waste dump proposed for Nevada is poorly designed and could leak highly radioactive waste, a scientist who recently resigned from a federal panel of experts on Yucca Mountain told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Paul Craig, a physicist and engineering professor at the University of California-Davis, said he quit the panel last month so he could speak more freely about the waste dump's dangers.
Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is planned to begin receiving waste in 2010. Some 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at commercial and military sites in 39 states would be stored in metal canisters underground in tunnels.
``The science is very clear,'' Craig told AP in an interview before his first public speech about the Energy Department's design for the canisters.
``If we get high-temperature liquids, the metal would corrode and that would eventually lead to leakage of nuclear waste,'' Craig said.
``Therefore, it is a bad design. And that is very, very bad news for the Department of Energy because they are committed to that design,'' he said.
Craig, who was appointed to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board by President Clinton in 1997, planned to speak Wednesday night at a forum sponsored by the Sierra Club. He said he's convinced the Energy Department will have to postpone the project and change to metal less liable to corrode.
``It would require years of delay and my guess is that is what is going to happen. The bad science is so clear they will be unable to ignore it forever,'' Craig told the AP.
The 11-member technical review board outlined its concerns about the potential for corrosion in a report to the Energy Department in November about the metal for the canisters, called Alloy-22 -- ``an upscale version of stainless steel,'' Craig said.
It was the most important report the board has produced since Congress created the panel in 1987, he said, but largely has been ignored by Congress and the department.
``The report says in ordinary English that under the conditions proposed by the Department of Energy, the canisters will leak,'' Craig said. ``It was signed by every single member of the board so there would be no confusion.''
Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson defended the design plans for the repository and the metal in the storage casks.
``We stand by our work,'' he said Wednesday in Las Vegas. He said the department was preparing a formal response to the board's November report. He had no further comment.
In Washington, D.C., officials with the industry's Nuclear Energy Institute did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment.
The board's report in November said the government had failed to take into account ``deliquescence'' -- a phenomenon regarding the reaction of salt to moisture -- in its plans to operate the dump at temperatures well above boiling water, or about 200 degrees.
At those temperatures, the metal canisters would heat up, causing salts in the surrounding ground to liquefy, thus leading to corrosion, Craig said.
``It turns out the metals which look like they act pretty good at temperature levels below boiling water -- those same metals act badly with temperatures that could exist'' at Yucca Mountain, he said.
Craig, who also has served as a member of National Academy of Sciences National Research Council Board on Radioactive Waste Management, said he sent his resignation letter to the White House in January before his term was to expire in April so he could shine more light on the government's plans.
``When you serve as a member of one of those boards, you cannot talk about the political consequences of the science or the big picture. You are supposed to stick to the science and you should stick to the science,'' Craig said.
``You cannot have the kind of conversation we are having now if I was still on the board.''
-------- south carolina
More Pu to SRS?
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004
From: tom.clements@wdc.greenpeace.org
More plutonium due to be shipped by DOE to the Savannah River Site in spite of no identified "disposition" path?
As you can see from the article below, 4.4 tons of plutonium at DOE's Hanford site are now ready to be shipped to SRS. But, the question looms as to what will happen with this contaminated plutonium once it gets to SRS.
DOE has yet to explain how dirty plutonium Rocky Flats, now already at SRS, and dirty plutonium from other sites will be managed. A rumor has persisted that DOE has been looking at "immobilization" at SRS of this plutonium in high-level waste, a idea which DOE halted two years ago. Revival of the immobilization program would be the smartest thing to do, as this method may be needed for more plutonium when the MOX program fails. Until the immobilization program is revived, no more plutonium should be shipped to SRS.
Tom Clements Greenpeace International tel. 202-319-2411 tom.clements@wdc.greenpeace.org
-------- washington
Plutonium work finished
By Annette Cary Herald staff writer
Tri-City Herald Washington State
Feb. 18, 2004
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/4755610p-4702275c.html
One of Hanford's most urgent risks has been nearly eliminated, with 4.4 tons of plutonium from the nation's weapons program converted into a form that can be safely stored.
"It won't go critical. It won't leak. It won't give off gas," said Michele Gerber, spokeswoman for contractor Fluor Hanford.
The completion of the project, announced Tuesday by the Department of Energy, brings to a close 55 years of history at the heavily guarded Plutonium Finishing Plant in central Hanford.
Starting in 1949, the plant, called PFP, turned plutonium produced in nuclear reactors into metal buttons the size of hockey pucks for shipment to the nation's weapons production facilities. The Hanford nuclear reservation produced more of the plutonium buttons for use in nuclear weapons than any other place in the nation.
But at the end of the Cold War in 1989, work was abruptly stopped at the Hanford plant. About 19.8 tons of material containing plutonium was left in various stages of production and forms.
Because of the amount and variety of materials left at PFP, Keith Klein, DOE's Richland manager, has called the stabilization work among the most "risky, complex and technically challenging" projects in the country.
"It was very unstable before we started work on it," DOE Richland spokeswoman Colleen Clark said Tuesday.
If improperly handled, plutonium can be at risk for a criticality, the runaway nuclear reaction that occurs quickly when a nuclear weapon detonates.
A chemical separation process was used to turn the liquid plutonium into oxide solids. The solids were "cooked" for at least two hours in muffle furnaces at about 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit.
The muffle furnaces, which are about double or triple the size of a large microwave oven, were used on several forms of plutonium to drive off water and organic vapors.
In 2003, workers finished a second part of the project, packing residues into shielded drums. The residues included sand, slag and bits of a crucible that the finished buttons had been encased in during production. Some of the drums have already been shipped to New Mexico for permanent storage.
That left about 6,000 solids, including cubes similar to plastic used for criticality experiments, metals and oxides, some of which was brushed off of the leftover buttons. The oxides also were heated in the muffle furnaces.
That was the final piece of work that was completed this month.
Now, plutonium that won't go to New Mexico -- the solids and granular oxides -- have been packed into three-layered stainless steel containers that have been welded shut. Each canister weighs 30 to 50 pounds.
"It's ready now to be moved off site," Clark said. "As soon as we get the order, we're ready to ship."
DOE is still considering where the nation's plutonium will be stored long term, but Savannah River in South Carolina appears the most likely site, and eventually the stabilized plutonium may go to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. In the meantime, the plutonium is kept in a guarded vault at Hanford.
Now work shifts to tearing down the contaminated PFP complex.
"Sixty-one buildings will be down to slab in 2009," according to the work schedule, said Stacy Charboneau, PFP project manager for DOE.
To do the work, 150 employees will be added to the 700 employees of the present PFP work force.
Long term, the benefits for the nation will be not only the reduced risk at PFP, but also reduced costs. The government has spent $100 million a year on operations at PFP.
A ceremony to mark completion of plutonium stabilization is planned Friday at Hanford. Among the speakers will be U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings. Because of security issues, the public cannot attend.
With stabilization finished, Hanford still must eliminate two other urgent risks, according to DOE. Hanford workers must convert highly radioactive waste stored in underground tanks into safer forms and clean up and remove spent nuclear fuel from Hanford's production years.
-------- us politics
Scientists Accuse White House of Distorting Facts
February 18, 2004
New York Times
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/science/18CND-RESE.html
The Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad, a group of about 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, said in a statement issued today.
The sweeping charges were later discussed in a conference call with some of the scientists that was organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization that focuses on technical issues and has often taken stands at odds with administration policy. The organization also issued a 37-page report today that it said detailed the accusations.
Together, the two documents accuse the administration of repeatedly censoring and suppressing reports by its own scientists, stacking advisory committees with unqualified political appointees, disbanding government panels that provide unwanted advice, and refusing to seek any independent scientific expertise in some cases. "Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front," the statement from the scientists said, adding that they believed the administration had "misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies."
A White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said today he had not seen the text of the scientists' accusations. "But I can assure you that this is an administration that makes decisions based on the best available science," he said.
Dr. Kurt Gottfried, an emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University who signed the statement and spoke in the conference call, said the administration had "engaged in practices that are in conflict with the spirit of science and the scientific method." Dr. Gottfried asserted that what he called "the cavalier attitude toward science" could place at risk the basis for the nation's long-term prosperity, health and military prowess.
The scientists denied that they had political motives in releasing the documents as the 2004 presidential race began to take shape, with Howard Dean dropping out a day after Senator John Kerry narrowly defeated Senator John Edwards on the Wisconsin Democratic primary. The organization's report, Dr. Gottfried said, had taken a year to prepare - much longer than originally planned - and had been released as soon as it was ready.
"I don't see it as a partisan issue at all," said Russell Train, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, and who spoke in the conference call in support of the statement. "If it becomes that way I think it's because the White House chooses to make it a partisan issue," Mr. Train said.
----
Bush Honors Soldiers, Prepares Them for More
President Tells Members of National Guard He Won't Relent Until Threat Is Removed
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49017-2004Feb17.html
FORT POLK, La., Feb. 17 -- This time, there can be no dispute: President Bush fulfilled his duties to the National Guard on Tuesday.
Bush, embattled over gaps in his service to the Guard during the Vietnam War, flew to the Joint Readiness Training Center here in central Louisiana to address and to lunch with members of the National Guard who are about to be deployed to Iraq.
The purpose of the trip was to honor the sacrifice of Americans fighting, and dying, in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and to gird the military for more. "My resolve is the same today as it was on the morning of September the 12th, 2001," Bush told thousands of cheering soldiers, many of them from a Guard unit heading for Baghdad. "My resolve is the same as it was on the day when I walked in the rubble of the twin towers. I will not relent until this threat to America is removed. And neither will you."
But Bush, sharing a lunch of beef enchilada MREs with the National Guard soldiers bound for Iraq, delivered another important, if unspoken, message: Service in the National Guard, which Bush did from 1968 to 1973, is honorable.
As Democrats raise questions about whether Bush shirked his National Guard duties from May 1972 to May 1973, he has charged that his opponents are disparaging the National Guard itself. "It's fine to go after me, which I expect the other side will do," Bush said earlier this month. "I wouldn't denigrate service to the Guard, though, and the reason I wouldn't is because there are a lot of really fine people who served in the National Guard and who are serving in the National Guard today in Iraq."
Bush was referring to remarks such as those made by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), his likely presidential challenger, equating Guard service with avoiding the draft during the Vietnam era. But Kerry said, "I've never made any judgments about any choice somebody made about avoiding the draft, about going to Canada, going to jail, being a conscientious objector, going into the National Guard."
At issue in the dispute is whether the modern Guard, which is fighting in large numbers in Afghanistan and Iraq, is the same as the Vietnam-era Guard, which remained mostly at home. Bush, in remarks quoted in the Houston Chronicle in 1994, appeared to describe the Guard in terms similar to Kerry's. "I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment," he said. "Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."
The soldiers Bush met Tuesday, the 39th Enhanced Separate Brigade of the Arkansas National Guard, are emblematic of the modern Guard. Some of them served in the Sinai after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, thousands of them will go to Baghdad after completing training here, and all volunteered to serve without the threat of being drafted.
By contrast, the history of the same unit describes its mission during the Vietnam era as "training" and "readiness" -- not combat. As in Bush's home unit, with the Texas Air National Guard, there was little prospect of being sent to Vietnam.
Soldiers in today's 39th, wearing their desert camouflage fatigues to Bush's speech, sounded anxious but resigned when discussing their looming assignment in Iraq. "I see it as my obligation," said Thomas Herster, a computer networker who has volunteered with the 39th since 1988. Herster said Bush's relatively risk-free Guard service was as honorable as his own. "Anybody who served their country is doing his duty, whether it's Vietnam or the war on terrorism," he said.
Bush's press secretary, Scott McClellan, said the trip to Fort Polk was planned before the controversy over Bush's Guard service was revived this month by Democrats. But, he added, "both those in the armed forces and those in our reserve units and Guard are playing an important role in helping us confront the dangerous threats that we face."
The White House last week released records from Bush's Guard files that provided numerous details about his service but did not resolve the central controversy over whether he served with the Alabama Guard while working on a Senate campaign in the state in 1972.
Bush's appearance Tuesday in Fort Polk was recorded by banks of cameras and cheered by thousands of National Guard and other soldiers. Under clearing skies, Bush, in a Fort Polk insignia jacket, spoke of the sacrifice of those trained at the facility, which prepares light infantry and Special Forces for the Army. Fort Polk has sent about 10,000 soldiers to fight in recent conflicts, and a dozen of those trained here are among the more than 500 dead in Iraq.
"You have said farewell to some of your best," Bush said in his speech here, remembering Pvt. Rey D. Cuervo, a Mexican citizen killed in Baghdad while fighting for the United States. Bush said all such noncitizens have been granted posthumous citizenship. "Last month," Bush said, "Pfc. Cuervo was laid to rest under a marker with these words: 'All gave some, and some gave all.' " Bush met privately with relatives of some of the fallen soldiers after his speech.
It was Bush's first visit to a military base since former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said it is unlikely that stocks of prohibited weapons will be found in Iraq -- undermining the administration's main justification for war. The president grouped the conflicts since Sept. 11 as a single effort to "fight the terrorist enemy."
Bush reminded the soldiers that many others shared his belief that the weapons existed. "My administration looked at the intelligence information, and we saw a danger," he said. "Members of Congress looked at the same intelligence, and they saw a danger. The United Nations Security Council looked at the intelligence, and it saw a danger. We reached a reasonable conclusion that Saddam Hussein was a danger."
----
U.S. National Debt Tops $7 Trillion for First Time
February 18, 2004
By Jonathan Nicholson
(Reuters)
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/breaking/breakingnewsarticle.asp?feed=OBR&Date=20040218&ID=3408316
WASHINGTON - The U.S. government's national debt -- the accumulation of past budget shortfalls -- totaled more than $7 trillion for the first time as of Tuesday, according to a Treasury Department report.
In its daily financial statement released on Wednesday, the Treasury said the U.S. debt subject to a congressionally set limit totaled $7.015 trillion, up from $6.983 trillion on Friday. The government was closed on Monday for the Presidents Day holiday.
While passing the $7 trillion mark itself has little practical significance, not unlike a car's odometer rolling over, it may signal some tough political times for President Bush's administration on fiscal policy.
The government debt ceiling stands only a few hundred billion dollars ahead at $7.384 trillion, and Treasury would need Congress's blessing to borrow beyond that. Treasury officials say they expect the limit to be hit sometime between June and October.
And in this election year, Democrats may also use the $7 trillion figure to assail Bush's tax policy and the federal deficits on his watch. Budget shortfalls are met by borrowing. In 2003, the federal budget gap was a record $374.25 billion and a larger one is expected this fiscal year. Bush blames the deficits on a sluggish economy and needed spending on security and defense.
Rep. Baron Hill of Indiana, part of a centrist group of Democrats said, ``It is simply immoral to run a national debt exceeding $7 trillion, every penny of which our children and grandchildren will be responsible for paying back.''
A Treasury spokeswoman said there was ``no special significance'' to the number.
The last time that debt subject to the limit passed a trillion-dollar milestone was on June 28, 2002, according to Treasury records.
To give some idea of the size of the debt, U.S. gross domestic product -- the sum of goods and services produced inside the United States -- totaled about $11 trillion at the end of 2003, according to the Commerce Department.
The debt includes that held by investors and Treasury securities in trust funds for government programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. General Maps New Tactic to Pursue Taliban and Qaeda
February 18, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/international/asia/18MILI.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 - The commander of American-led forces in Afghanistan said Tuesday that the military had adopted new tactics to combat Taliban and Al Qaeda militants in the country.
The officer, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno of the Army, said that in the past three months, American units down to the level of 40-soldier platoons had been dispatched to live in villages where they can forge ties with tribal elders and glean better information about the location and activities of guerrillas.
In the past, he said, American forces typically gathered intelligence about hostile forces, carried out focused raids for several days against those targets, then returned to base to plan and prepare for their next mission.
"What we're doing is moving to a more classic counterinsurgency strategy here in Afghanistan," General Barno told reporters at the Pentagon in a videoconference from his headquarters in Kabul, the capital. "That's a fairly significant change in terms of our tactical approach out there on the ground."
The approach, he said, will give soldiers "great depth of knowledge, understanding, and much better intelligence access to the local people in those areas by owning, as it were, those chunks of territory."
General Barno and other American officials have boasted that Osama bin Laden, the elusive leader of Al Qaeda, will be captured this year. He refused to repeat this assertion, though he said, "We have a very, very high priority in bringing to justice here the leadership of each of the terrorist organizations that we face."
General Barno said the new strategy had already paid dividends: Afghan civilians have reported more insurgents' weapons caches in the past month than had been turned in during the past half year.
The shift in tactics comes in response to a growing number of attacks against foreign aid workers, Afghan civilians and others associated with the government of President Hamid Karzai, which General Barno said were aimed at disrupting the fitful reconstruction efforts.
The new strategy also seeks to complement a renewed effort by the United States, NATO and other allies to expand the number of teams of soldiers and civilians who will fan out beyond Kabul and assist local authorities with security and rebuilding.
General Barno said that by the end of this week, 12 of those "provincial reconstruction teams" would be operating. Britain, Italy, Turkey and Norway agreed earlier this month to lead four additional NATO teams by this summer.
The teams consist of 60 to 100 people, are tailored to a region's specific needs, and have become the linchpin of the coalition's efforts to rebuild Afghanistan while staving off guerrilla attacks.
General Barno said the allies, in concert with the Karzai government, are forming what he called regional development zones, essentially areas that encompass more than one of the provincial teams.
More than 13,000 American and other allied troops are operating in Afghanistan alongside a 5,500-member NATO peacekeeping force in and around Kabul. American forces are also trying to integrate 5,700 members of the new Afghan Army and several hundred newly trained Afghan police officers into the security arrangements.
General Barno, a West Point graduate who assumed command last October, said cooperation with Pakistani forces on the Afghan border had increased, especially in the past six to eight weeks. American officials say they believe that Mr. Bin Laden is hiding in the mountainous border region.
Using a harsh, century-old British method, Pakistani forces have handed local tribal leaders a list of villages suspected of sheltering members of Al Qaeda. If the tribe refuses to hand over the suspects, the Pakistani Army threatens to punish the group as a whole, withdrawing funds or demolishing houses.
"That they're confronting the tribal elders and they're holding them accountable for activities in their areas of influence is a major step forward," General Barno said.
He said he meets in Pakistan with his counterparts at least once a month (his next visit is planned for Wednesday), and every four to six weeks he invites Pakistani and Afghan officials to meet at his headquarters to discuss security issues.
The general said the group had set up a committee to deal with border issues and another to address military information and coordination.
General Barno said American and Pakistani forces were cooperating to create a "hammer and anvil" strategy, in which forces on one side of the border drive Al Qaeda members across the border to troops waiting on the other side, a tactic that will "crush the Al Qaeda elements between the Pakistani and the coalition forces."
------- biological weapons
EPA scientist queried over biowarfare warning
February 18, 2004
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040217-094306-3740r.htm
An Environmental Protection Agency scientist has been questioned by the FBI about an anonymous letter accusing a colleague of plotting biowarfare in the days before the 2001 anthrax attacks.
Agents from the FBI's anthrax task force, according to a document obtained by The Washington Times, sought information on the anonymous letter, which warned that Ayaad Assaad, an Egyptian native who works as a toxicologist at the EPA, was an anti-American "religious fanatic" with the means to unleash a bioweapons attack.
The anonymous letter, sent in early October 2001 to police in Quantico, Va., identified Mr. Assaad, who conducted ricin research at the Army's biodefense lab at Fort Detrick, Md., before moving to the EPA.
Meanwhile, the discovery of the deadly protein ricin on Capitol Hill early this month brought a chilling reminder of the anthrax attacks that left five persons dead in the months after the September 11 hijackings.
It also may have restored the FBI's interest in Mr. Assaad, who built a career during the 1990s developing a ricin vaccine for the Army and generally is regarded as one of the premier ricin researchers in the nation.
The document obtained by The Times indicates that one of Mr. Assaad's EPA colleagues was called last week into the FBI's Washington field office and asked whether he was the author of the letter, which referred to Mr. Assaad as a "religious fanatic."
Mr. Assaad, who holds graduate degrees from Iowa State University and has lived in the United States since the mid-1970s, has something of a contentious past as an Army researcher.
He has a discrimination lawsuit pending against the Army stemming from the time he worked as a researcher at Fort Detrick during the 1990s. The lawsuit claims others at the Army base had formed a group called the "Camel Club" to make fun of his ethnicity, published reports said.
Mr. Assaad yesterday said he has not been questioned by the FBI since the days before the anthrax attacks. He said the anonymous letter, which investigators showed him at the time, probably was written by someone who had worked at Fort Detrick.
"I hardly believe the letter came from an EPA scientist," he said. "It carries the fingerprint of Fort Detrick." However, FBI officials at the Washington field office, which is heading the anthrax task force, have refused to release the letter or give Mr. Assaad a copy.
It was not clear yesterday whether the latest development signals a new direction in the more than 2-year-old investigation into who sent deadly anthrax bacteria to senators on Capitol Hill and to news outlets in Florida and New York.
"At this point, I'm unable to discuss whether or not there is a nexus between the anthrax mailings of 2001 and this anonymous letter written to the FBI before the first anthrax mailing," a representative at the FBI's Washington field office said yesterday.
The document said one EPA scientist was told by an FBI agent last week that he had been identified by other EPA scientists as the author of the anonymous letter about Mr. Assaad. The document also indicates that the FBI agent warned the scientist not to speak of the interrogation and suggested he may be subjected to a lie-detector test.
While it may appear the FBI has a renewed interest in the anonymous letter, it also may be that investigators have been pursuing the letter secretly as a lead in their aging investigation.
The massive probe into who mailed the anthrax has resulted in no arrests and has produced few substantial leads. However, FBI officials say the probe remains intensely active.
-------- business
EADS Casa, Lockheed Martin sign contract on patrol aircraft
PARIS (AFP)
Feb 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040218154455.l8a29lel.html
EADS Casa, the Spanish subsidiary of the European Aeronautic, Defense and Space company, and Lockheed Martin of the United States signed a contract Wednesday for 87.4 million dollars (68 million euros) to supply the US Coast Guard with patrol aircraft, EADS said in a statement here.
The contract, signed in Madrid, makes official EADS Casa's participation in a 20-year 11.04 billion-dollar project that was awarded to Lockheed Martin and another US firm, Northrop Grumman in 2002.
The deal signed Wednesday calls for the delivery in 2006 of two CN-225 MRS MPA maritime surveillance planes to the Coast Guard.
The overall program, dubbed Deepwater, calls for the delivery to the Coast Guard of 91 boats, 111 planes, 34 helicopters and the modernization of 49 vessels and 96 helicopters.
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In Iraq, Contractors' Security Costs Rise
By Mary Pat Flaherty and Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49272-2004Feb17?language=printer
Attacks on the private contractors rebuilding Iraq are boosting security expenses, cutting into reconstruction funds and compelling U.S. officials in Baghdad to contend with growing legions of private, armed security teams spread throughout the country.
While attacks on military targets and Iraqi citizens have received widespread attention, the assaults on the companies, which have left at least 17 dead and others wounded, are lesser known. Those attacks could jeopardize the success of the coalition efforts in Iraq, according to a Coalition Provisional Authority document reviewed by The Washington Post.
A draft of security guidance for contractors prepared by the CPA's Infrastructure Security Planning Group in Baghdad says, "Spiraling costs, excessive work delays, lost materiel and workforce casualties in the current threat environment have the potential to put Coalition success at risk." The CPA's Program Management Office is seeking to hire a central coordinator for the private security teams in anticipation of the thousands of foreign workers and hundreds of new work sites that will flood Iraq starting next month, when nearly $10 billion in U.S.-funded rebuilding contracts are due to be awarded.
"The number of soft Coalition targets will grow dramatically," the draft states. U.S. and coalition military forces, which are being trimmed and face continuing attacks, cannot provide contractor protection, and neither can fledgling Iraqi forces, the draft states, leaving private teams as the main protection for contractors. But tighter licensing, registration and identification are needed "to prevent fratricide," the document says.
The draft says the threat to coalition forces and contractors is "assumed" to remain at current levels through next year, leaving rebuilding companies vulnerable to attacks both from anti-occupation elements and criminal rings. That combination could intensify bidding wars for experienced security personnel and cause more money to be pulled away from rebuilding under government contracts that allow companies to pass on security and other costs, providing little incentive to hold down those expenses.
Security costs are consuming about 10 percent of each construction contract, up from 7 percent in October, according to the Baghdad office that manages reconstruction projects for the Coalition Provisional Authority. Costs on high-profile targets, including pipelines, run higher. The added expenses may cause some projects to be delayed or canceled, said Darrell Crawford, chief of staff for the office.
The CPA would not publicly release information about attacks and killings of contractors. A review of news reports since last August found accounts of 17 deaths of foreign contractors and five injuries in incidents in five cities or towns.
U.S. officials courting companies to take part in the rebuilding insist that security is not an issue for contractors and said accounts have been overblown. "Western contractors are not targets," Tom Foley, the CPA's director of private-sector development, told hundreds of would-be investors at a Commerce Department conference in Washington on Feb. 11. He said the media have exaggerated the issue.
Some contractors have not had problems with security. Creative Associates International Inc. has "been all over the country" distributing student kits and desks to schools, "and they haven't touched us," Richard L. McCall Jr., a director of the D.C.-based firm, said in an interview.
However, during a conference Feb. 10 in Washington, contractor Mohamed K. Najjar, president of El Concorde Construction Ltd., which has an office in Vienna and is working in Iraq, sounded a sobering note amid an otherwise optimistic speech. Since December, the security situation for companies has become "very different," he said. "The terrorists are finding more ways to get to you."
Companies that win major U.S.-funded rebuilding contracts are required to provide their own security. Smaller subcontracting firms also are hiring armed teams, creating bidding wars for experienced employees and putting more people with guns on the ground.
The CPA issues permits for weapons in Iraq, but officials declined to say how many personal security details are registered, saying disclosure could pose a safety risk. They also said reliable estimates of civilian contractors are not available.
Major security contractors there estimated in interviews that at least 40 private security companies and several thousand armed guards already are working in the country. The CPA Program Management Office, in its draft, said reliable estimates are unavailable.
That office plans to issue new security directives by March, anticipating the influx of contractors. The intent is to let everyone in a region know who is traveling there and what their responsibilities are, "so each contractor is not rolling around uncontrolled," said Tony Hunter-Choat, director of security for the Program Management Office. "We can't order them to do a great deal, but we can persuade them it's in their best interest."
The need for central coordination has been recognized since the CPA took over governing Iraq last summer and has "nothing to do with any real or perceived change in the security situation," Capt. Bruce A. Cole, spokesman for the office, said in an e-mailed response to questions.
Thomas W. Charron, a principal with Boston-based Sallyport Global Holdings, a consulting firm that represents companies doing business in Iraq, said it was clear to him after recent discussions with U.S. officials that "they don't want a bunch of people running around Baghdad with guns saying they're security."
Scott Custer, whose Fairfax-based Custer Battles LLC has about 400 foreign employees providing armed security in Iraq, said, "There are a lot of cowboys."
Demand for security teams is so keen that firms have been poaching employees from competitors inside Iraq and offering highly lucrative pay. Because it is so hard to estimate the cost of variables like security, especially in a hostile setting, the major U.S.-funded rebuilding contracts have been "cost plus" based. That means prime contractors can pass along to the government or the CPA the added security costs they pay.
Mike Baker, chief executive of D.C.-based Diligence LLC, said that shortly after the fall of Baghdad, former American and British commandos were paid as much as $2,000 a day by some of his competitors.
Diligence is a four-year-old firm that built its business on intelligence and information analysis, but added security forces last July because of opportunities in Iraq.
Diligence employs mostly Iraqis as guards, Baker said, which is less expensive than using ex-commandos. Yet some other firms that hire locally and pay their Iraqi workers $200 a month charge their contractors' accounts 10 times that, he added.
The market started to correct itself by November, Baker said, when "the clients started to realize this doesn't make sense." But, "there still is a tendency for companies to push the envelope on profit."
Two security company executives, who asked not to have their names used because they compete for work, said they still charge $1,000 a day for skilled employees who work as bodyguards. Even then, they said, they've had workers hired away inside Iraq by companies offering even more.
"In a normal situation, you would have your client looking at the costs of security in terms of their profit and loss," said Noel Philp of ArmorGroup International Ltd., a London-based security company with more than 600 foreign workers in Iraq doing armed security. "But here, you have the U.S. government saying it wants security. 'OK, here's the bill for it.' The Army Corps wants it. 'Here's the bill.' A big contractor wants it. 'Here's the bill.' "
Said Custer, "I've never had a security line item reduced."
ArmorGroup's chief executive, Jerome E. Hoffman, said, "It's clear the market value has changed, but there is a finite amount of money to be spent getting the job done in Iraq," and "I happen to be more critical of some things I'm seeing. Proper controls and standards need to apply."
Bechtel National Inc., which has the main U.S. contract for Iraqi rebuilding, estimates security accounts for about 6 percent of its contract costs. "Security is an engineering issue if you know what the security problem is," forcing creativity to deal with attacks "here and there," said Clifford G. Mumm, Bechtel's project director.
Some contractors said they've never relied on military backup. Fluor Corp., a California-based engineering and construction firm, runs between 10 and 20 armed security details every day from a compound in Baghdad. "No one leaves without close protection," and no one leaves except for official business, said Tom Flores, Fluor's corporate security director. "We've never had the military involved in any of this."
The tension produced by pushing forward on reconstruction while violence continues surfaces regularly.
In Baghdad last month, Brig. Gen. Steven Hawkins, who is in charge of the Army Corps of Engineers' mission to fix Iraq's electrical infrastructure, said contractors get easily spooked. When told that two French subcontractors had been killed in a highway ambush earlier in the day, his frustrations spilled over.
"You know what this means?" he said. The contractor on the job "is going to come in here and ask for two weeks off to reassess their security. We can't stop for two weeks because they're scared."
A few weeks later, as would-be bidders gathered near Dulles to learn more about the upcoming work, CPA program management officer Bill Smith acknowledged that many companies had felt isolated in Iraq.
"I know it's been like each of you is out there like 'Little House on the Prairie' up to this point," he said.
Pentagon contract manager Nancy Gunderson said contractors need to identify security risks and say in their bid proposals how they plan to offset those risks on their own without extensive military support. Iraqis need help now, she said. "We need to be prepared to start the contracts in the face of potential continuing security problems."
Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks and staff researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
-------- iran
Iran Train Explosion Kills More Than 200
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer,
Feb 18, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_TRAIN_EXPLOSION?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
NEYSHABUR, Iran (AP) -- Runaway train cars carrying a lethal mix of fuel and chemicals derailed, caught fire and then exploded hours later Wednesday in northeast Iran, killing more than 200 people, injuring at least 400 and leaving dozens trapped beneath crumbled mud homes.
Many of those reported dead were firefighters and rescue workers who had extinguished most of the blaze outside Neyshabur, an ancient city of 170,000 people in a farming region 400 miles east of the capital, Tehran.
The dead also included top city officials - including Neyshabur's governor, mayor and fire chief as well as the head of the energy department and the director-general of the provincial railways - who had all gone to the site of the derailment, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
The explosion devastated five villages, where authorities rushed in blood supplies and appealed through loudspeakers for donors. Hardest hit was Hashemabad, where 41-year-old Zahra Rezaie, whose mud home was near the tracks, was cooking lunch for her family when she heard the explosion and felt the ground shake. Then the ceiling collapsed.
"It knocked down and broke some dishes. I was sure it was an earthquake, and my first thought was to rush to the school and save my children," Rezaie told The Associated Press. Her children were safe. An AP photographer who arrived in Dehnow, one of the severely damaged villages close to the train tracks some 500 yards from the blast, said the village's homes were flattened.
"The houses are all built of clay, and nearly every one has been destroyed, like they had collapsed in an earthquake," Hassan Sarbakhshian said. "Everyone appears to have been evacuated," he said, adding he could see thick, black smoke billowing about 500 yards ahead.
Rescue workers, aided by cranes and giant floodlights, worked into the night shrouded in toxic fumes, as they searched for dozens of people thought to be trapped in their clay homes devastated by the blast.
The blast was so powerful that windows were shattered as far as six miles away. In an apparent indication of the explosion's force, Iranian seismologists recorded a 3.6-magnitude tremor in the area, IRNA reported.
Many of the buildings that collapsed in a Dec. 26 earthquake in Bam, in southeast Iran, also were mud-brick structures. That tragedy killed more than 41,000 people.
Authorities were investigating what caused the 51 cars to roll out of the Abu Muslim train station, outside Neyshabur, at 4 a.m. Forty-eight of the cars derailed on reaching the next stop at Khayyam, about 12 miles away, and caught fire.
Iranian TV showed footage of black plumes of smoke and orange flames billowing into the sky from the cars, 17 of which were loaded with sulfur, six with gasoline, seven with fertilizer and 10 with cotton. Dozens of people, some wearing face masks to protect themselves from the smoke, were seen walking around or putting out flames on the scene.
Firefighters - apparently with little experience in handing industrial chemicals - had extinguished 90 percent of the fire when the cars exploded at 9:37 a.m., Mohammad Maqdouri, head of the local emergency operations headquarters, told Tehran television.
More than 400 people were injured, said Vahid Bakechi, a senior official in Khorasan Province's Emergency Headquarters.
Eighty percent of them were injured when their homes collapsed, and the rest were either burned or hurt from the force of the explosion, said Syed Majid Taqizadeh, head of the 22 Bahman hospital. The hospital is named after the date in the Iranian calendar that coincides with Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The bulk of the injured were from the village of Hashemabad, Taqizadeh said. Other victims were found in surrounding villages, particularly Dehnow and Abdolabad.
Dozens of people remained buried under the rubble of their homes, said Saeed Kaviani, editor of the Sobh-e-Neyshabur newspaper. Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guards closed the immediate area, fearing more explosions.
IRNA quoted Mehran Vakili, Neyshabur's medical examiner, as saying that by Wednesday evening 180 bodies had been recovered. The dead included 182 fire and rescue workers.
"The scale of the devastation is very great, and the damage appears more than initially thought," said Vahid Bakechi, of the Khorasan Province's Emergency Headquarters.
In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan conveyed his condolences to the Iranian government and the victims of the disaster, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said. He added that the world body was ready to assist those affected by the tragedy.
After finding her children safe at the Hashemabad school, which was unscathed by the explosion, Rezaie went to a hospital.
"That's when I saw them bringing in many injured people ... wearing uniforms that firefighters or rescue workers wear," she said. "They told me there had been an explosion," she said.
Neyshabur is at the center of a farming region for cotton, fruit and grain. Other industries include carpets, pottery, leather goods and turquoise.
It became one of Persia's foremost cities in A.D. 400, a center of culture with several important colleges. Omar Khayyam, the 11th century Persian poet, was born in Neyshabur, and is buried there.
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Nobel Laureate in Iran Joins Boycott of Elections
February 18, 2004
By NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/international/middleeast/18TEHR.html?pagewanted=all
TEHRAN, Feb. 17 - Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace laureate, joined protesters on Tuesday in announcing that she would not vote in parliamentary elections on Friday in which more than 2,000 candidates were disqualified by the government.
"I cannot tell people to vote or not to vote, but I will not vote because I do not know any of the candidates who have been allowed to run," said Ms. Ebadi, a human rights lawyer. "I would have voted if I knew and trusted the candidates."
Her statement, just 48 hours before the elections, intensified the standoff that has been building between reformist supporters of President Mohammad Khatami and their hardline opponents since January, when a watchdog council rejected liberal candidates. Nearly 130 deputies resigned in protest and the leading reform party is boycotting the elections. This week 679 candidates, whose qualifications had been approved, withdrew in protest as well.
On Tuesday, reformist members of Parliament broke a long-established taboo and wrote an open letter to the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that criticized his policies.
"You lead a system in which legitimate freedoms and the rights of the people are being trampled on in the name of Islam," said the letter, which was distributed in Parliament.
"The organs under your authority have for four years humiliated the Parliament and its deputies by blocking legislations and have openly blocked the most basic right of the people: to choose and be chosen," it said.
The reference was to the Guardian Council, which disqualified over 2,000 candidates. The letter also implied that Mr. Khamenei, despite his public statements, approved the disqualifications.
Mr. Khamenei has issued an order saying the vote could not be delayed, and hardliners are counting on a low turnout in hopes that they can win a majority in the 290-seat Parliament by mobilizing their supporters.
In a statement released on Monday, the reformist president, Mr. Khatami, appealed to people to go to the polls "despite the unfairness of the election," the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
He said that a low turnout could mean a minority gaining control of the country, which would not be in its interests.
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Lawmakers Reprove Iran Leader
Open Letter Boldly Accuses Khamenei of Sanctioning 'Sham' Elections
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49077-2004Feb17.html
TEHRAN, Feb. 17 -- Outgoing Iranian lawmakers made a bold, direct challenge to the country's supreme leader Tuesday, issuing a tartly worded open letter accusing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of leading "a system in which legitimate freedoms and the rights of the people are being trampled on in the name of Islam."
The six-page letter was released to foreign journalists in the parliament lobby, where scores of reformist incumbents held daily sit-ins for more than three weeks protesting mass disqualifications of candidates for the legislative elections set for Friday.
The letter makes clear that the banned lawmakers regard Khamenei, who holds the title of supreme leader of the revolution, as responsible for this Friday's "sham" elections, which were technically engineered by the Guardian Council, a supervisory body whose 12 members were appointed directly and indirectly by Khamenei. The council also has the power to veto legislation.
"Institutions under your supervision, after four years of humiliating the elected parliament and thwarting bills and restricting the legislature, have now, on the verge of the parliamentary elections, deprived the people of the most basic right: the right to choose and be chosen," the letter said.
"Do the members of the Guardian Council dare to resist your orders? Or is it that, as rumors say, despite your public statements, they were permitted by you to disqualify these people illegally and widely?"
The letter appeared to challenge the ban on criticizing the supreme leader, who under Iran's theocratic system is regarded as responsible only to God. The unique structure was established for Ruhollah Khomeini, the charismatic grand ayatollah who led the 1979 Islamic revolution. The lawmakers accused Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini in 1989 but holds a lesser clerical rank, of "petrified thinking."
The letter was not reported by state-run media, whose editors have been scolded for covering the election controversy. Editors at an independent newspaper preparing to publish excerpts grimly predicted their own arrest or closure of the paper. Judges have closed more then 40 newspapers in recent years under a press law passed the last time conservatives controlled parliament.
Reformers took over in a landslide four years ago, but the disqualification of about 2,000 reformist candidates makes a conservative win Friday a foregone conclusion. A fresh crackdown on news outlets and rights activists is widely expected to follow, although some analysts said it could be tempered if voter turnout is low enough to underscore doubts about the conservatives' legitimacy.
Khamenei has repeatedly urged a big turnout. A boycott urged by student activists and some reformers got a boost Tuesday when Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said she did not plan to vote.
-------- iraq
Shiite Vote Plan Would Exclude 'Sunni Triangle'
February 18, 2004
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/international/middleeast/18IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 17 - Shiite leaders are pushing a new plan for the transfer of power in Iraq that calls for partial elections, with balloting in the relatively secure Shiite and Kurdish areas but not in the more turbulent "Sunni triangle."
The proposal, which has grown out of an emerging alliance between Kurdish and Shiite political parties, is part of the intensifying scramble for power among politicians before the United Nations announcement, expected this week, on whether election are feasible in Iraq.
But partial elections, American officials said, would further alienate the Sunnis, who are already generating most of the violence against the Americans and their Iraqi allies.
"Allowing citizens from some regions to vote and disenfranchising others certainly does not inspire credibility and legitimacy," a senior American official in Baghdad said.
Leaders of Iraq's Shiites, the country's largest single group, said their plan is the only feasible way to have any kind of elections while still allowing American administrators to transfer authority to the Iraqi people by June 30, the date set in an American-Iraqi agreement last November.
"Partial elections is one of the possibilities on the table," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a Shiite political leader and a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. "There are places secure enough where we can hold elections right now. Those places happen to be in the north and in the south."
Kurdish leaders would not comment specifically on the plan, but they did emphasize a new "strategic relationship" with Shiite clerics in their discussions.
Barham Salih, prime minister of the Partiotic Union of Kurdistan, a leading Kurdish party, said it was important to work with the Shiite leadership because "these two major communities in Iraq should share an interest in fundamental change in the politics of Iraq."
He added, "Both have been excluded from power for almost 83 years of the Iraqi state."
On Sunday, Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union and a member of the Governing Council, traveled to the holy Shiite city of Najaf, where he met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiites. After a two-and-a-half-hour meeting, Mr. Talabani said, "We have big hope in our Shia brothers."
The partial election plan calls for representatives in the predominantly Sunni areas to be chosen in tightly guarded caucuses, an idea vehemently opposed by members of the country's Sunni minority, who say it is illegitimate and would further divide Iraq's people.
Sunnis represent about 20 percent of Iraq's population, but they were a ruling minority for much of its modern history until Saddam Hussein was unseated.
"Maybe this is their dream," said Adnan Pachachi, a Governing Council member and a Sunni. "But it doesn't make any sense, only the north and the south voting. If the center of Iraq is not involved, how could Iraq be considered a sovereign power?"
He also said the Governing Council had "discarded" American plans for a caucus-style selection process for a transitional government. Instead, Council members want to hold on to power though the transition period but double the number of seats on the Council from 25 to 50 to make it more representative.
Both those developments are complicating American intentions for the handover of power. American administrators in Iraq say direct elections are not feasible before the June 30 deadline but they support elections sometime in 2005. American officials were hoping to organize caucuses to select a transitional government that would have more legitimacy than the Governing Council, whose members were hand-picked by American officials.
In a news conference this week, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator here, insisted that the central elements of the November agreement could be carried out - that an Iraqi national assembly could be chosen in nationwide caucuses and that the Americans could hand over power by June 30.
But while all sides are sticking to the June 30 deadline, the clamor for direct elections is only growing louder. A United Nations team was in Iraq last week assessing when and how elections could be held. On Tuesday, Secretary General Kofi Annan said he hoped to make his recommendation on Iraq before departing for a trip to Japan on Friday.
The proposal being discussed by Iraq's Shiite and Kurdish leaders is a sign of the enormousness of the task they are facing in choosing a representative government while a guerrilla war is raging over large swaths of the country.
Ayatollah Muhammad al-Yaqobi, a cleric and part of the inner circle of Shiite leadership, called the partial election plan, "the lesser of two evils."
"There is no perfect solution," he said in an interview in Najaf. "But we have 10 stable provinces south of Baghdad where it's possible to have elections right now, and the Kurdistan areas have had their own government for 12 years. As for the Sunni areas, they can do what suits them best."
Another Shiite official, Ali Atishan, the deputy mayor of Najaf, said the Sunni areas could select leaders through a caucus system. "They can appoint some people now and have elections later," he said.
Mr. Rubaie said the partial election plan should not be considered anti-Sunni. "There may be some Sunni areas that are ready for elections," he said. "If Falluja wants to hold elections, it's up to them."
Falluja, a small city in the Sunni triangle, has been one of the most violent areas of Iraq since the insurgency began. However, any plan to divide the country into stable and unstable zones would be difficult because many areas, like Baghdad, are a mix.
Mr. Salih said he favored elections soon but "adequate preparations must be carried out to ensure genuine democratic elections."
He added, "We have discussed, however, elections in the Kurdistan region for our Kurdistan National Assembly."
While Shiite clerics have been pushing for early elections, Kurdish leaders have been pushing to keep the autonomy their region has enjoyed since 1991.
But until now, each of the three main groups in Iraq - Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds - had been pursuing its own agenda. The Shiites and Kurds make up 75 to 80 percent of the population, and even if the partial election plan never materializes, the prospect of an alliance between the two groups is terrifying to many Sunnis.
After the meeting on Sunday in Najaf, Abdul Aziz al-Hakima, a confidant of Ayatollah Sistani, celebrated the new relationship between the Kurds and Shiites.
"This strong relationship between us and Kurds is to serve all Iraq," he said.
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An Iraqi Council With Clout
With Elected Members, Baghdad City Panel Proves Influential
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49293-2004Feb17?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Feb. 17 -- President Bush made sure to set aside time to see them during his quickie Thanksgiving Day trip to Iraq. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell scheduled a meeting with them when he was last here. So did Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans.
In a country in search of new leadership, the 37 members of the Baghdad City Council are quickly becoming influential, if still behind-the-scenes, players. They may not have the name recognition of a grand ayatollah or a wealthy exile, but they have one very important thing going for them: They are the closest thing Iraq has to a democratically elected representative body with real clout.
Selected by their neighbors to serve as liaisons to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, they are doctors, lawyers, professors, engineers and other highly educated citizens. Few had been involved in politics before, but now they speak out as much about national issues as local ones.
With 41/2 months remaining before the scheduled transfer of Iraqi sovereignty from the U.S.-led occupation authority to an interim national government, the Baghdad council is a wild card. Occupation officials and Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council had agreed on an elaborate plan for creating a transitional assembly through provincial caucuses, saying direct elections were not possible before the June 30 handover date, but most council members have since withdrawn support for the plan. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most influential religious leader, has said that nothing short of full elections could produce a government that was representative of the country's population.
The United Nations appears ready to broker a compromise, with elections held sooner than occupation officials wanted but later than Sistani demanded. The Baghdad City Council still has not said where it stands on this question, but its members have been quietly surveying constituents and hope to issue a statement that they say will reflect the true views of the people.
In the seven months since the council was formed, it has become a symbol of hope for democracy in a country that for the most part has known only authoritarian rule and that has been ravaged by violence since the fall President Saddam Hussein. The council's greatest strength and greatest weakness, say those who have worked with it, is its inexperience. Many members have only vague notions about what a campaign or poll or caucus is, but that means the type of democracy they practice is very academic, very pure.
Taking Up Challenges
"They aren't afraid to challenge anyone or anything, and that is a good sign," said Lt. Col. Joe Rice, an Army reservist and former mayor of Glendale, Colo., population 5,000, who is advising the City Council here.
The council has pushed the occupation authority to reconsider its vision for a foreign investment law. It publicly challenged the Governing Council because it was appointed, not elected. And it drafted a list of reconstruction projects that served as the foundation for a report presented at a conference of donors last year in Madrid.
When the Japanese government recently invited a delegation from Iraq to meet with the prime minister, it went to the Baghdad City Council, not the Governing Council. "We decided when we initiated contact with the Iraqi people we wanted to meet with the City Council because they were somewhat democratically elected. That was important," said Matsu Bayashi, first secretary at the Japanese Embassy in Baghdad.
The most telling sign that the City Council had arrived came in November, when the occupation authority unveiled its plan for the formation of an interim Iraqi government that would take power this summer. Under the complicated system, councils in each of Iraq's 18 provinces, or governorates, would have a key part in the initial stage of the process of picking an interim national legislature. The legislature would choose a prime minister or president -- or two or three -- and appoint the rest of the government.
Although the plan is now in flux, members of the Baghdad City Council are poised to play a prominent role in the next government -- perhaps as part of an expanded Governing Council that might rule the country as it prepares for elections, and most definitely, they say, as candidates in eventual elections.
For most Iraqis, choosing a president or prime minister, even indirectly, is an alien concept. Most have lived under only two leaders -- Saddam Hussein and the American civil administrator, L. Paul Bremer, both of whom were forced upon them. So when U.S. troops took to the streets of Baghdad this spring and summer with bullhorns and fliers and invited the people to meetings where they could elect representatives, many came out of curiosity, if nothing else.
Like many members of the Baghdad council, Ali Haidary said he came to vote, not to run. But someone nominated him for a spot on his neighborhood council and he won, and he felt it was his responsibility to serve his people.
"When I came home that day, I told my family I became a member of the local city hall. My family was amazed. What happened? they asked," recalled Haidary, 47, now City Council chairman. More important, they wondered: What does that mean? Haidary is a serious, meticulous man who studied mechanical engineering in college and, like many other Iraqi men his age, spent time working for the government and time in the army. He now owns an air-conditioning repair company in the middle-class area of Al Adl.
In the weeks following his election to the Al Adl Neighborhood Council, Haidary was elected to represent Al Adl on the Mansoor District Council, which in turn voted him onto the Baghdad City Council. In July, he was elected vice chairman of the City Council. Since being chosen as chairman in January, he has been the top man in a political system that comprises 88 individual councils and more than 750 representatives.
His fellow members of the Baghdad City Council range in age from twenties to late sixties and include sheiks and religious leaders as well as citizens who say they consider themselves secular. Saeb Sideeq Gailani is director general of Medical City, the largest hospital complex in the country; Adnan Abdul Sahib Hassan, 53, is a former flight attendant for Iraqi Airways and was an officer in the old Iraqi army; Fatima Hassan Miqdadi, 41, is a teacher who spent almost all of her twenties in prison because she was suspected of helping the Dawa party, a prominent Islamic political group that opposed Hussein's Baathists.
The council got off to a rocky start when it first met on July 7. Members could barely agree on how to conduct the meetings, not to mention what issues they should address.
In the beginning, the council members focused on issues in their neighborhoods. Haidary, for instance, helped reopen a government shopping center that provided more than 200 jobs. He also got funding to repair 20 of the 22 schools in his area that had not been scheduled for reconstruction. The $480,000 for the schools came from U.S. military commanders, humanitarian groups and the Japanese Embassy.
"I believe the biggest crime Saddam committed was neglecting education," Haidary said. "The Iraqi student in the past was one of the most intellectual, the most clever. But because of Saddam, our students have now reached the lowest level."
A Growing Visibility
The council members' successes and their cooperation with the occupation authority, have made them targets for insurgents. Haidary's Al Adl council offices have been attacked several times, and one of his fellow council members was shot and killed. Two other members of the neighborhood councils in Baghdad have died in ambushes. In December, a bomb went off in front of one City Council member's house. Hebrew language professor Ali Hussein Amiri's 20-year-old son had walked out the door and found a pen on the steps. When he picked it up, it blew his hand off.
As the months have passed, the council has sought to expand its role. Members have challenged occupation officials on a number of issues, asking for control of the city budget and demanding authority to inspect the progress of reconstruction projects.
"We shouldn't have to go to CPA for everything we do," Nashat Husseini argued at one meeting, using the initials of the Coalition Provisional Authority. "We should be able to do it ourselves." He said too many Iraqis -- other than themselves -- are as afraid of being punished by the Americans for challenging authority as they were of Hussein.
In November and December, the United States, Japan and Turkey separately invited the Baghdad City Council to visit.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi Governing Council, which had all but ignored the Baghdad City Council some months ago, recently began sending representatives to its weekly meetings. Senior occupation officials, including those in charge of electricity and reconstruction contracting, have also come to seek the representatives' advice.
The biggest question for the City Council remains what members think about how a sovereign Iraq should be created. The committee assigned to look at the issue remains divided over a caucus system or direct elections.
Council member Miqdadi said that she supports Sistani's call for direct elections and that people should think of him not as a religious figure but as a scholar. "He studied international relations and he knows about politics. We believe very much that his thoughts are with the times," she said.
Basim Salih Yaaqubi, 39, a financier who serves on the council, disagrees. Direct elections, he says, are not practical at this time for many reasons, including the fact that the political system is still developing and that security is so poor that there is a danger polling places would be attacked.
But both quickly said that if the council's survey shows the public's opinion differs from theirs, they will support the people. "In democracy, that is how things should work," Yaaqubi said, as if quoting from a textbook. "You go with the majority."
--------
U.S. Marines Preparing for 'Small War' in Falluja
February 18, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-usa-marines.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A force of 25,000 U.S. Marines that will take over the dangerous Falluja area of Iraq from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in March is preparing to both win the cooperation of Iraqis and fight insurgents, the Marine Corps commandant said on Wednesday.
Gen. Michael Hagee said Marines were historically better prepared to fight ``small wars'' than the Army and will put troops everywhere around Falluja, west of Baghdad, to seek friendship with the population while watching for deadly explosive devices.
``They know that the most lethal, dangerous weapons system on any battlefield is the United States Marine armed -- and that is one of the things that we will bring,'' Hagee told reporters.
Explosive devices have killed dozens of the more than 500 U.S. troops who have died in Iraq since last year's invasion. Many have been remotely exploded in and near Falluja in the Sunni Triangle area, a hotbed of anti-American activity and the one-time power base of toppled President Saddam Hussein.
``We know how to fight, and we are prepared to do that. But this is a security and stability operation, and we have to establish relations with the people there. That's where the intelligence is going to come from,'' Hagee said.
The U.S. Army earlier came under sharp criticism from Iraqis for what some saw as a heavy-handed approach in the area when it destroyed homes of suspected insurgents and blocked off troops from the population with razor wire.
That has begun to change under the 82nd Airborne and will change even more, Hagee said.
``One of the things that we will bring is boots on the ground because of what we do. We are a light infantry, expeditionary force and our battalions are fairly robust,'' he said.
'SMALL WARS' CAPABILITY
``We do bring this 'small wars' capability with us,'' Hagee added.
He pointed as well to the effort to obtain information from Iraqis in the area, relying on techniques dating back to the Vietnam war.
``Establish that relationship -- 'hearts and minds' was the term used in Vietnam. I think that's still accurate ... where the people will come to you and say 'Hey, the bad guy is around the corner here and I want to show you where he is.' That is starting to happen now,'' he said.
The Marines are part of a fresh force of about 110,000 U.S. troops rotating into Iraq this spring for at least a year to help secure the country as the United States plans to turn over authority to the Iraqi government by the end of June.
Hagee said the 82nd Airborne Division already had improved conditions on the ground for U.S. forces in Falluja, but warned that the threats from explosive devices and missile attacks against U.S. warplanes and helicopters continued.
The Marines, members of the 1st and 2nd Marine Expeditionary Forces based in California and North Carolina, will take with them about 3,600 military jeeps and trucks and about 3,000 will be armored.
--------
Suicide Bombers Kill 11 Iraqis South of Baghdad
February 18, 2004
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/international/middleeast/18CND-IRAQ.html?hp
Suicide bombers in two vehicles killed 11 Iraqis and wounded more than 100 foreign troops and Iraqis today at a military base south of Baghdad, the American military said.
The blasts, in which the two bombers were also killed, were the latest in a series of attacks that have appeared to target the foreign occupation forces in Iraq or Iraqis who are working with them. Last week, two back-to-back suicide bombings killed more than 100 people, many of them Iraqis applying for jobs with the new Iraqi Army and police forces.
An American military spokeswoman, Specialist Nicci Trent, said today in a telephone interview from Baghdad that there were two vehicles involved in the attack early this morning near the entrance to a coalition logistics base near the town of Hilla, south of the Iraqi capital.
She said the drivers of the vehicles were killed and 58 coalition troops were wounded, but she did not give a breakdown of their nationalities.
A press officer from the Coalition Provisional Authority, who declined to give his name, said from Baghdad that 11 people were killed, none of them foreign troops.
Lt. Col. Robert Strzelecki told Reuters in Hilla that guards outside the base managed to stop one of the cars by shooting at it but that a second car exploded after smashing into a wall.
Last week's attacks came days after American officials released details of an intercepted document supposedly written by a suspected Jordanian terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in which Mr. Zarqawi boasts of directing about 25 suicide bombings in Iraq and requests help from Al Qaeda in igniting a sectarian war.
Military officials have said they expect spectacular attacks in the months leading up to the scheduled transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30.
-------- israel / palestine
Letter From Jayyous
by David Bloom
February 18, 2004
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040308&s=bloom
he wall took less than a year to be constructed in an arc around much of Jayyous, a village in the occupied West Bank near Qalqilya. Seventy percent of the villagers' farmland--and all their irrigated land--has ended up on the western side of Israel's "security fence." There are gates for Jayyous's farmers to access their land, but Israel has made the ability to do so steadily more difficult--in a process most villagers believe will eventually lead to the confiscation of their ancestral lands.
Jayyous, a town of about 3,000, already lost 20 percent of its lands after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. These lands were redistributed to Israeli farmers. Jayyous was never compensated for its loss. One villager tells how he used to lead his donkey at night to what was once his family's apricot orchards, across the Green Line, and helped himself to the fruit. He called himself and his donkey "the Apricot Liberation Front."
Depending on how the question is considered, there are between five to eight clans, or extended families, in Jayyous. One was Christian until about 100 years ago. Somewhere in the village there used to be churches. The columns on the village's main mosque were salvaged from Roman ruins. There are also Ottoman ruins. Caves, used since time immemorial, dot the northern hillside, some ending up underneath houses in the village. Many of the houses have older stone foundations underneath--up to 1,500 years old. Villagers hid in these caves for twelve days when the Israelis sent trucks in during the Six-Day War in 1967 to cart the people of Jayyous to the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, in a possible prelude to expulsion. After twenty days in the camp, the rest of the villagers walked the ten miles home on foot.
Some of the villagers have eight names, and a few have nine, indicating that their families extend back about 600 years, according to Abdel Latif Khaled, a local hydrologist. It is clear the land has been cultivated for centuries; some of the thousands of olive trees belonging to the village are hundreds of years old. An Israeli arborist reported that the oldest tree he knew of in Israel/Palestine was 1,700 years old but said there may be even older ones (Journal of Palestine Studies, Summer 2003 issue). Villagers refer to these extremely old trees as "Roman trees," indicating they have been there from the time when Jayyous was a Roman garrison town. Some Jayyous residents still possess tattered Ottoman deeds to their lands, which were eventually replaced by British and then Jordanian deeds; all of the land is registered in Jordan. They also have vouchers from the Palestinian Authority's Finance Department. Four hundred dunams (100 acres) are held in common by the Jayyous municipality; before that, they were held by the colonially appointed mukhtar (town elder).
Once, 300 Jayyous farmers went to their lands every day. Then the wall was built. At first the gates were open. Then the Israelis placed locks and chains on them. Then they started locking the gates, only opening them for about fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. On October 2 the Israeli West Bank military commander, Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, declared the area between the wall and the Green Line to be a closed military zone. The Israelis call this area the "seam zone." The rules of the seam zone require that no Palestinian can enter without a permit issued by Israel. However, Israeli citizens and those eligible to be citizens under the Law of Return are allowed to enter. A sign next to the gate reads in Hebrew, Arabic and English, "He who enters this area without permission endangers his life."
Shareef Omar, a member of the local Land Defense Committee, says he told PA minister Saeb Erekat that accepting the permits was a mistake, and would be another step in losing the rights to their lands. Erekat disagreed, and told Omar, "The farmers have already suffered too much."
On November 14 a stack of hundreds of permits was delivered to the municipality of Jayyous. Mostly the permits were for children, old men and women, and Jayyousians who currently live in places like Canada, Saudi Arabia or Jordan. Conspicuously absent were permits for any of the farmers who had participated in Jayyous's campaign of dozens of nonviolent protests against the wall in the preceding year. Or anyone who had a family member seized by Israel's security forces. Only 30 percent of the farmers who needed them could get permits, and they were issued for two months, until January 14. Of seven numbered items on the permit, the most salient is Number 6: "This permit does not prove your ownership of the land, or if you have a house there, this permit does not prove you are the owner of the house." Many farmers went to the occupation authorities in the Israeli settlement of Kedumim to try to obtain permits, and sometimes hired Israeli lawyers to help. The answers were always the same: "Come back in a couple of days," or "Come back next week." The end result was always the same: "Permit denied." No explanation ever given. In a bit of irony, one farmer, Mahmoud, 29, has a permit to work in Tel Aviv, but not in his own fields. Apparently he is a greater threat to Israel tending his sheep than working construction in Tel Aviv.
Khader Shamasny, 29, has 100 sheep but cannot graze them because he has no permit to get to his lands, and there is little to graze on inside the wall. This does not prevent shepherds from trying to graze their sheep wherever something green can be found inside the town. Some sheep have clearly visible ribs. Their offspring are not surviving as regularly, and they get sick more easily. Abdel Latif Khaled says the people in the village do not have enough protein in their diets as a result.
Shamasny cannot afford to buy feed for his sheep, the price having doubled over the past year. He is thinking of selling them before they starve to death. He talks about taking a job with the Palestinian police--which seems to amount to a sort of workfare in the occupied West Bank. Police wages will not allow Shamasny to feed his sheep, however.
It seems to be part of a deliberate policy not to allow shepherds to graze their flocks. At the south gate, farmers who had permits were not allowed to take their sheep through from November through early January and much of their land is not accessible through the other gate. On January 10, this reporter was asked to accompany farmers to their fields. Also accompanying us was an Israeli-born US national and activist with Jews Against the Occupation, who speaks Hebrew. I explained to the soldier at the gate, a Druze who would not let me through, that under the rules of the seam zone I do not require permission to enter as someone eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. He went to his jeep to call his commander, then came back and told me no dice. So I watched the work crew--many of them Jayyousians with permits hired by farmers without permits to tend to their land and harvest their crops. The soldiers checked them all semi-methodically, and let them through, about thirty people and seven vehicles.
However, the soldiers stopped the last two villagers who tried to enter, boys from Jayyous, aged approximately 12 or 13, with about twenty-five sheep. Without asking for or checking their permits, one soldier said to the boys in Hebrew, in a very aggressive tone, as if he recognized one of them: "No sheep. No sheep. You're not coming to the fence. Go home. You throw stones, you come near the fence. If I see you by the fence today--forget about it. Go home."
Then the soldiers closed the gate and left. The boys told us they did not throw stones, that they had permits and that they had been allowed through before.
At 8 AM we placed a call to Hamoked Lehafganat Haprat, an Israeli human rights group in Jerusalem, which acts a liaison to the occupation authorities. One of the boys, Muhammed, spoke to the organization. Hamoked said they would call the Israelis, and told us to wait.
At 8:15 another jeep arrived. Two soldiers got out, opened the gate and approached us. They were very aggressive and angry. "What time is it? You're late. You're not getting through. Get out of here. Go home." When the shepherds and I insisted they were there on time, the soldiers turned around and went back through the gate. "Are you going to open the gate for them?" I shouted. "Yes," came the reply--but then they shut the gate, and both soldiers aimed their rifles at us and shouted at us to go away. One got down in sniper position. We backed away about twenty yards, and the soldiers left.
At 8:18 we again called Hamoked. They said they would call a higher occupation authority than the last time. But at 8:35 the shepherds gave up and went to try to find some grass on the eastern side of the wall for their sheep. We notified Hamoked, and they said they would protest with Israel's civil administration.
The fence in Jayyous is flanked by a road and dirt track. Israeli army jeeps driving along the length of the road punctuate the night with gunfire in the air.
The children of Jayyous are effectively caged into the village, away from their families' lands, watching their future being taken away. Sometimes they cut the razor wire on the fence, a cat-and-mouse game with the soldiers. They feel they have little to lose. This concerns the mayor, Faiz Selim. "Parents have no money to give their children to go to university, and can't go to their land to work. How can they care for their children?" Mayor Selim keeps the blinds on his window drawn shut, because he can't stand looking at the fruit rotting on his trees on his fields, which are beyond the wall. As he is being interviewed, a farmer comes in and an animated conversation ensues. The mayor later explains that the man is among those who cannot get to his land. The Palestinian Authority has promised to help blunt their losses, but so far no money has come.
When the village's permits expired in January, even fewer farmers were given new ones. Recently Israel delivered a set of new rules for permits. Farmers must now provide pictures for the permits, which will have magnetic strips. They must declare in Kedumim that they will not rent their lands, and that they own the land directly and work it themselves. (It is a common practice for the farmers to rent land and hire additional workers.) If their names do not match those on the title deeds, they have to prove in Israeli court in Kedumim that it is their land. They need the mayor's office to certify they own the land and work on it, and how much land they have. Then, the kicker: After all these conditions are fulfilled, all back taxes on the land must be paid. The Jayyousians stopped paying their taxes in 1995, when the village came under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, which it did not compel the farmers to pay. Now they are required to come up with nine years of back taxes, and send it to a bank account registered in the name of the Palestinian Authority.
This made the people of Jayyous suspicious. Was the PA collaborating with the Israeli authorities? The PA has never shown much concern for the farmers, and is now bankrupt. The Land Defense Committee went to PA ministers and asked them directly if they knew about this condition; they insisted they were never informed. The farmers left hoping that the PA Prime Minister, Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala), will be able to negotiate with the Israelis a slightly better deal--maybe to pay only every other year. At 22 shekels a year per irrigated dunam, and 8.5 per unirrigated, very few farmers can afford to pay the back taxes.
Many farmers can't even get the money to buy new plastic to cover their greenhouses. Three years of closures, added transportation costs because 90 percent of the old access roads have been cut off by the wall, difficulties in bringing in their harvests because of restrictive rules, harassment by Israeli security forces--all this has left the farmers with little money. Shareef Omar, the largest landowner in town, will have to come up with $8,000 to pay back taxes on his 175 dunams, a sum he doesn't have. He says many farmers will be forced to sell some of their lands in order to pay the taxes. As of February 4, only three farmers had managed to fill all the requirements and get permits to go to their land.
The wall has created a critical economic crisis in a very short time. About 140,000 olive and fruit trees have been demolished for the path of the wall in the West Bank already, says Abdel Latif Khaled, and about the same number have died behind the wall for lack of care. In one or two generations, says Khaled, it will change the culture of the people in a dramatic way. There is a very intense relationship between Jayyousians and their land. They refer to the very old olive trees as "grandfather trees," and consider them like members of their families; but soon, they may be able to see them only from the roofs of their homes, as most of them now lie on the other side of the fence.
----
Israelis Approve $22 Million for Settlements on West Bank
February 18, 2004
New York Times
By GREG MYRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/international/middleeast/18ISRA.html
JERUSALEM, Feb. 17 - Israeli lawmakers approved more than $20 million on Monday night for new spending on Jewish settlements, two weeks after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suggested he might remove most of the settlers in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians and Israeli opposition politicians said the move demonstrated that Mr. Sharon's government was committed to the overall development of settlements, despite his talk of a unilateral withdrawal from some of them.
The Palestinian labor minister, Ghassan Khatib, said: "In case there was any doubt, this shows that Sharon's policy is settlement expansion. This policy makes peace impossible now, and also in the future."
Mr. Sharon said on Feb. 2 that he was considering withdrawing most of the 7,500 settlers in Gaza. He has also suggested that Israel would have to give up some isolated settlements in the West Bank.
But he has given no indication that he would relinquish any of the larger settlements, which account for most of the roughly 230,000 Israelis living in the West Bank.
In the parliamentary vote on Monday, the finance committee approved nearly $22 million for housing projects, and lawmakers said almost all the money was likely go to settlements, primarily in the West Bank.
Yuval Steinitz, a prominent legislator from Mr. Sharon's Likud Party, said on Israel Radio, "It is our obligation and our right to care for the settlements that exist under difficult circumstances."
Palestinian factions have regularly attacked settlers during the last three years of violence.
Settlers and their supporters are working to prevent even a limited withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, areas the Palestinians claim for a future state. This week, a group of Gaza settlers has been marching toward Jerusalem to protest Mr. Sharon's talk of a pullout. "We have roots here - we are deepening our roots," Micha Hada, a resident of Gaza, said on Israel Radio.
Effi Eitam, leader of the National Religious Party, which belongs to Mr. Sharon's coalition government, said he planned to introduce a bill that would prohibit the Israeli military from dismantling settlements. Mr. Eitam, an ardent supporter of the settlers, said the Army's role in removing settlements would be deeply divisive. Such actions should be left to the police, he said.
In Berlin on Tuesday, the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, denied reports he had threatened to resign after a dispute with the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.
"Resigning? Why? I am here as the prime minister. I am not thinking about that," said Mr. Qurei, who was meeting with German leaders as part of a European tour.
Earlier in the day the Reuters news agency, citing unidentified Palestinian officials, said Mr. Qurei had threatened to quit, after less than five months in office.
The disagreement was linked to a long-running issue over how the Palestinian security forces are paid, The Associated Press reported. For years, senior Palestinian security officials have been given large sums of cash, which they use to pay tens of thousands of security workers.
Critics say that method has contributed to widespread corruption. Last Saturday, Mr. Qurei said that the practice would end and that salaries would be deposited directly into security officers' bank accounts.
Mr. Arafat has controlled the security forces since the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 and has resisted calls that he share or relinquish that authority.
-------
U.S. Seeks Safeguards for Israel's Gaza Pullout
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49073-2004Feb17.html
Three senior administration officials plan to impress upon Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon this week that his plan to withdraw Israeli settlers from Gaza needs safeguards to reduce the possibility that the Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as Hamas, or other radical Palestinian groups will fill a sudden power vacuum, U.S. officials said.
In the absence of Palestinian action against militant groups, the Bush administration has for many weeks signaled that it is supportive of Sharon's plan to "disengage" from the Palestinians. The officials -- deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, national security senior director Elliott Abrams and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns -- are arriving in Israel today with a list of questions to better understand how the plan would unfold, how it is connected to possible unilateral steps on the West Bank, and how it meshes with the broader goal of establishing a Palestinian state.
Administration officials, however, appear divided on how much leverage they have with the Israeli government, particularly as President Bush begins to enter the campaign fray. "The 'optimistic opportunists' believe any withdrawal is a good withdrawal, and this provides an opportunity to get a hook into Sharon and have him engage in the process," said an administration official who summarized the debate on the condition of anonymity. "The 'pessimistic realists' believe we can't oppose Sharon, but there's nothing to lose, since no matter what happens can be spun as a positive development."
Indeed, U.S. officials appear especially eager to obtain a commitment that Sharon's plan does not signal an abandonment of the U.S.-backed "road map" plan. While the road map has been moribund for months, Bush has staked his credibility on it, especially among his European and Arab counterparts. U.S. officials want to be able to make the case that Sharon's gambit -- unclear as it appears now -- offers the best hope for restarting the peace process, officials said.
"What we have said to the Israelis, 'That's interesting. We want the settlements closed,' " Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said last week. But "we have to understand the total picture. . . . We don't want to see a solution that is so unilateral that it doesn't really provide the kind of stability that we're looking for."
Sharon's plan is still evolving, Israeli officials said, and he appears likely to lay out a series of options when he meets with the U.S. delegation tomorrow. But Israeli officials said he is certain to offer a rhetorical commitment to fulfilling Bush's vision. At the same time, Sharon appears likely to offer concessions on the planned route of a fence separating Israelis and Palestinians, and to renew pledges to ease travel restrictions and road blocks in the West Bank.
"Everything we do will be in the context and framework of President Bush's vision and the road map," said Danny Ayalon, the Israeli ambassador to the United States. "This is a fundamental understanding we have with the administration."
Several U.S. officials conceded they are largely reacting to Sharon's initiatives, leaving him in control of the process in the absence of a U.S. plan for reviving the road map. But they said they hope the delegation's visit will force the Israelis to make decisions and allow the administration to shape the Israeli government's thinking.
U.S. officials are especially concerned that the Palestinian Authority is so weakened that a more radical party, such as Hamas, could emerge as the de facto ruler in the wake of the Israeli departure.
"Hamas is the strongest political party in Gaza, bar none," said Edward G. Abington, a consultant to the Palestinian Authority who just returned from a trip to the region. He said the Israeli departure could fuel a "real power struggle" among Palestinians, particularly between Hamas and Mohammed Dahlan, a former Palestinian cabinet minister with a strong following in Gaza.
Israeli officials say they also do not want a Hamas ascendancy in Gaza. But they appear to welcome a fracturing of the Palestinians, such as the emergence of Dahlan as a sort of mayor of Gaza. Such a struggle among the Palestinians might allow the Israeli government to cut deals with individual power centers in the West Bank, leaving Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat without a central power base.
The Israeli government is pressing for a White House invitation for Sharon to visit Washington next month. But U.S. officials suggested that the invitation will not be forthcoming until the administration reaches an understanding on the scope of Sharon's plan. An Israeli delegation led by Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, is to visit Washington, possibly as early as next week, to continue the discussions.
-------- japan
Sending troops to Iraq "historic mistake": Japanese opposition leader
TOKYO (AFP)
Feb 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040218114808.e026rkil.html
Japan's opposition leader Naoto Kan on Wednesday accused Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of making an "historic mistake" by sending troops to Iraq.
In a parliamentary exchange with Koizumi, Kan, head of the Democratic Party of Japan, the nation's largest opposition bloc, poured scorn on the government's claim that the troop deployment was not unconstitutional because it was sending its troops to a non-combat area.
Japan's pacifist constitution bans the use of force in settling international disputes.
"Can you tell us where the no-combat areas are in Iraq?" Kan demanded, noting a mortar blast last week near the Japanese base in the southern Iraqi city of Samawa.
Responding to US pressure for Japan's participation in US-led efforts to rebuild Iraq, Koizumi's ruling coalition approved a plan to allow the dispatch of Japanese troops on a strictly humanitarian mission to a "no-combat" zone in Iraq.
"How many people can agree that the Self Defence Forces were sent to Samawa and Baghdad airport because the places are no-combat areas?" Kan said, adding that the deployment was unconstitutional.
"It was an historic mistake," the opposition leader said, adding that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq meant Koizumi should admit he was wrong to support the US-led attack on Iraq "without legitimate reasons".
Koizumi defended his decision to send in troops. "The Self Defence Forces are going neither to exercise force nor for war," Koizumi replied. "They are going to carry out reconstruction in Iraq. Therefore, it is not unconstitutional."
Around 100 Japanese ground troops are already in Samawa, 270 kilometres (168 miles) south of Baghdad, marking the Japanese military's first deployment to a region where fighting is still going on since World War II.
A total of 600 ground troops will be deployed in Iraq by the end of March, with logistical support from around 400 air force and naval personnel in the region.
The troops will conduct only humanitarian and reconstruction work in Iraq.
-------- nato
Croatia confident of its NATO future
ZAGREB (AFP)
Feb 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040218171041.xrlvggd6.html
Croatian Defence Minister Berislav Roncevic voiced confidence Wednesday that his country would recieve strong assurances at the next NATO summit in Istanbul in June of its future within the alliance.
"We expect that the summit in Istanbul in the part of its declaration relating to Croatia will have a clear judgement that it is the right path and that we have the strong support and assurances that we will achieve our goal to enter NATO," Roncevic said.
He was speaking after meeting in Zagreb with a NATO delegation led by Robert Simmons, the deputy assistant to the secretary general for political issues.
The delegation is to assess Croatia's progress in the reform of its armed forces aimed at bringing the army in line with NATO standards ahead of the summit in Istanbul.
Croatia hopes to join NATO in 2006 and the European Union in 2007.
----
NATO chief heads to Turkey
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Feb 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040218134733.tnx9akk2.html
New NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer headed to Turkey Wednesday for talks with government leaders ahead of an alliance summit in Istanbul in June, NATO said.
The Dutch secretary general was due to hold talks with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul in separate meetings on Thursday, a NATO statement said.
It is de Hoop Scheffer's first trip to Turkey, the sole Muslim member of NATO, since he replaced George Robertson as NATO chief in January, and comes ahead of the Istanbul summit on June 28-29.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan Intensifying Hunt for Al Qaeda, U.S. General Says
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49321-2004Feb17.html
In northwestern territories of Pakistan where U.S. authorities suspect Osama bin Laden and members of his al Qaeda network may be hiding, Pakistani forces have begun confronting tribal leaders, in some cases threatening the destruction of homes to enlist help, the senior U.S. military commander in Afghanistan said yesterday.
Pakistan's past reluctance to take action in the territories, which have a tradition of semiautonomous rule under strong tribal chiefs, had frustrated U.S. authorities in their campaign against al Qaeda. There have been reports before of increased Pakistani military action, though few indications of solid success.
But Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, who commands about 11,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, said yesterday that the latest Pakistani efforts, which began in the past two months, "show the greatest promise we have seen in a while" of rooting out al Qaeda operatives.
Although he provided few details, Barno called some of the new Pakistani measures "quite innovative." He said he had seen reports of Pakistani forces trying, in some instances, to compel the cooperation of local leaders by threatening to destroy homes and by taking other steps "of that nature."
He said regular Pakistani troops are now "operating periodically" in the territories after having no significant presence in the region previously. "So the fact that they are now there, that they have got a presence, that they're confronting the tribal elders and they're holding them accountable for activities in their areas of influence is a major step forward," Barno said. "And it's something that we're watching with great interest and with some cautious optimism that it will have a positive effect."
Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon via a video connection from Afghanistan, Barno did not mention any U.S. military participation in the activities on the Pakistani side of the border. U.S. Special Operations forces have reportedly ventured into the rugged territories from time to time, but their presence in an area where many villagers are sympathetic to al Qaeda is a highly sensitive issue for Pakistani authorities and is rarely acknowledged.
Barno said the United States and Pakistan are continuing to coordinate operations in a kind of "hammer-and-anvil approach" to prevent al Qaeda fighters from escaping back-and-forth across the border. Barno said he confers monthly with Pakistani military authorities and hosts a meeting every four to six weeks of U.S., Pakistani and Afghan security officials to address border and intelligence issues.
He declined to repeat a prediction he made to reporters last month that bin Laden would be captured by the end of the year. But he said U.S. forces are "re-energizing" efforts to find not just bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda members but also leaders of other enemy groups -- most notably, Mohammad Omar, who headed the Taliban government ousted by U.S. forces in 2001, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a renegade Afghan warlord.
The intensified targeting of enemy leaders comes amid a broader adjustment in U.S. tactics that Barno described. Instead of venturing out for raids and then returning to base, Barno said, U.S. forces are staying in areas for sustained periods and operating continuously, in effect "owning" chunks of territory.
This allows troops to develop and maintain relations with local leaders and to gather better intelligence, Barno said. As a sign the approach is yielding results, Barno pointed to discoveries in the past month of caches of weapons and ammunition that set a six-month record.
In another new development, Barno also disclosed plans to set up "regional development zones" that are intended to better coordinate Afghan army and police forces with the assistance efforts of the United Nations, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other organizations. The first such zone is slated for the city of Kandahar.
Enemy fighters have shifted tactics, as well, Barno said, no longer trying to form large groups for combat as they did last summer. Instead, they have resorted increasingly to bombing attacks on aid workers and Afghan civilians.
"It's murder and mayhem, and it's sowing terror among those that don't have defenses," Barno said.
-------- russia / chechnya
Putin aide: Russia losing war on terror
WASHINGTON, (UPI)
Feb. 18, 2004
http://interestalert.com/brand/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/02180000aaa00e5c.upi&Sys=siteia&Fid=WORLDNEW&Type=News&Filter=World%20News
Russia is losing its war against economic crime and terrorism, a top aide to President Vladimir Putin has said.
"Peace is not yet with us. Terrorist activity is taking on the character of open defiance of the state and society," Viktor Ivanov, deputy chief of Putin's presidential staff in the Kremlin, told a conference at the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow last Thursday, according to a report in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper monitored by the BBC.
"Counterterrorism activity is not yet achieving its main purpose," Ivanov said. "We are still not succeeding in preventing terrorist attacks which have increased by 50 percent in the past year."
Russia's police are also losing their war against dirty money, Ivanov said. Around $11 billion is being illicitly converted into cash in Russia every year, he said.
"Analysis of the situation suggests that a significant proportion of this money consists of the proceeds of organized crime from the narcotics trade and illegal immigration and is very possibly financing terrorist activity," he said.
-------- spies
'Heads should roll' over Iraq
Adviser wants U.S. intelligence chiefs to quit Cites faulty conclusions on Saddam's weapons
ERIC ROSENBERG
THE TORONTO STAR HEARST NEWSPAPERS
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1077059707877&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724
WASHINGTON - Richard Perle, a chief proponent of last year's U.S. invasion of Iraq, yesterday called for the chiefs of the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency to step down because of their faulty conclusions that Saddam Hussein possessed mass-killing weapons.
Perle, a close adviser to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said top officials made no attempt to skew the intelligence about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he implied, top policymakers relied in good faith on the conclusions of the intelligence agencies.
"George Tenet has been at the CIA long enough to assume responsibility for its performance," Perle told reporters, referring to the director of the agency. "There's a record of failure and it should be addressed in some serious way."
"The CIA has an almost perfect record of getting it wrong in relation to the (Persian) Gulf going back to the Shah of Iran," Perle said. He called for "a shakeup" in the U.S. intelligence establishment.
"I think, of course, heads should roll," he said. "When you discover that you have an organization that doesn't get it right time after time, you change the organization, including the people.
"I'd start with the head head," Perle said when asked which heads should roll at the CIA. Perle said the DIA " is in at least as bad shape as CIA (and) needs new management."
Navy Vice-Adm. Lowell Jacoby has headed the agency since July, 2002.
U.S. President George W. Bush, Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell have said they relied on intelligence from the CIA and DIA in their assertions that Saddam had stockpiles of mass-casualty weapons. The claim was the main rationale for the U.S-led invasion.
David Kay, former head of the U.S. weapons-hunting team in Iraq, has concluded it was highly unlikely that Saddam possessed stockpiles of such weapons.
"It turns out we were all wrong, probably, in my judgment, and that is most disturbing," Kay said last month.
While Kay dismissed the prospect that stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction would ever be found in Iraq, Perle disputed him on two relatively minor claims: that Iraq wasn't seeking to enrich uranium or develop mobile weapons laboratories to manufacture chemical or biological weapons.
"The jury is still out" on those points, Perle said.
Perle, the former chairman of - and current member of - the Defence Policy Board, a senior level advisory panel to Rumsfeld, was an advocate for overthrowing Saddam, asserting in the months leading up to the war that the Iraqi dictator's weapons stockpiles posed a grave threat to the United States.
In the lead-up to the war, Perle regularly warned about Saddam's reputed arsenal and the danger that would follow if the United Nations failed to get the Iraqi dictator to disarm.
Tenet was first appointed by president Bill Clinton and confirmed by the Senate in 1997 and then moved over to the Bush administration after the 2000 election. His agency has been criticized for the Iraqi weapons episode and for failing to detect the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes.
----
Iraqi 'fabricator' told U.S. about bioweapons labs
By Tabassum Zakaria
18 Feb 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp?type=worldNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4379274
WASHINGTON - A major in the Iraqi intelligence service who was a source for a prewar U.S. intelligence claim that Iraq had mobile biological weapons labs was introduced to the Defense Intelligence Agency by the Iraqi National Congress exile group, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
The connection in 2002 was made at the request of a civilian Pentagon official in what is called an "executive referral." But government sources would not identify the defense official other than to say he was neither Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld nor his deputy Paul Wolfowitz.
Pentagon civilian officials were far more welcoming to the INC and its leader Ahmed Chalabi who were pushing for an end to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, than the CIA or State Department, intelligence experts say.
The Iraqi major told the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2002 that Baghdad had mobile laboratories for conducting research on biological weapons, a claim that ended up in intelligence assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.
Since the war, the Bush administration has been criticized for exaggerating the threat from Iraq before the war because no biological or chemical weapons have been found.
Investigations on the accuracy of prewar intelligence are being conducted by congressional intelligence committees, the CIA, and a commission newly appointed by the White House.
The Defense Intelligence Agency, which interviewed the Iraqi major outside the United States and Iraq, at first found his information to be credible and the major passed an initial polygraph.
But in further discussions it became apparent that he was stretching some of the information so the Defense Intelligence Agency gave the Iraqi major another lie detector test, which he failed.
"He oversold himself in who he knew and what he knew on a variety of things," a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
So the Defense Intelligence Agency put out a "fabrication notice" in May 2002 to warn intelligence agencies to consider any information from that source as suspect.
But intelligence analysts missed the notice and the information from the Iraqi major on the existence of biological weapons labs was included in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a key prewar report that assessed Iraq's banned weapons capabilities.
U.S. intelligence agencies are reviewing a wide range of information, including other material and sources provided by the Iraqi National Congress before the war, and more discrepancies are likely to turn up.
"I must tell you that we are finding discrepancies in some claims made by human sources about mobile biological weapons production before the war," CIA Director George Tenet said in a Feb. 5 speech.
"Because we lack direct access to the most important sources on this question, we have as yet been unable to resolve the differences," he said. Tenet was referring to sources other than the Iraqi major in that comment, a U.S. official said.
The new CIA-appointed chief weapons hunter, Charles Duelfer, left for Iraq last week and the team searching for banned arms continues to look for answers to why the arms have not been found.
----
WANTED... WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
EXCLUSIVE: CIA offer internet reward for Iraq missiles
Feb 18 2004
UK Mirror
By Oonagh Blackman, Deputy Political Editor
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13961731_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-WANTED----WEAPONS-OF-MASS-DESTRUCTION-name_page.html
CIA agents have resorted to offering cash rewards on the world wide web in the increasingly desperate hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
President Bush's spooks are pleading for help on the CIA website as the first anniversary of the Iraq War looms next month .
The "cash-for-weapons" deal underlines the desperation of Britain and the US to find any stocks of current chemical or biological weapons.
It also asks Iraqis to tip them off about unmanned drones, pilotless aircraft, they may have seen.
It reveals mounting jitters in Washington and London over the failure to find any weapons. The Prime Minister said Britain must go to war, in the face of UN opposition, because of the "current and serious" threat from Saddam's WMD.
President Bush is also feeling the pressure, even though he placed less emphasis on WMD in his case for war.
The CIA website has listed Weapons of Mass Destruction at the top of its list of priorities for its "Iraqi Rewards Program".
It says: "The presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq puts at risk the health and safety of all Iraqis. The US Government offers rewards to Iraqis who give specific and verifiable information that helps Iraqis rid their country of these dangerous materials and devices."
The web page says cash will be paid for details of the "location of stocks of recently made chemical or biological weapons, munitions, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, or their component parts".
It also asks for: "Iraqis who are able and willing to provide detailed information on Iraq's WMD programs and efforts to hide them."
Yesterday Hans Blix, the former head of the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq, said the US dismissed inspectors' doubts about WMD in favour of stories from Iraqi defectors.
Blix told a forum at the Swedish Embassy in Berlin: "The US didn't particularly register (the lack of information) and didn't care.
"They believed more in their defectors than in us. On the whole there was a lack of critical thinking."
-------- un
Administration Split Over Role Of U.N. in Iraq
How Much Control Will U.S. Cede?
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49335-2004Feb17?language=printer
The Bush administration is divided over how much authority to give the United Nations in Iraq, despite Washington's reliance on the world body to help rescue the political transition so the U.S.-led occupation can end June 30, U.S. and congressional officials say.
Over the past two months, a growing number of senior U.S. foreign policy officials and military officers have become convinced that the transition will succeed -- and have the widest support among Iraqis -- only if the United Nations crafts a plan and then oversees selection of a provisional Iraqi government, with help from the United States and other coalition partners.
But key U.S. officials in the offices of Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld oppose handing over significant authority or control of the pivotal process, preferring to keep the United Nations in an advisory or support role, according to U.S. and congressional officials.
"They say, 'Can the U.N. really do it better than we can?' These are not guys who think the U.N. is capable of assuming a massive undertaking like Iraq. They argue that we've invested billions of dollars, hundreds of lives, and the reputations of a nation and a president. We can't fail. But if we turn it over to others, we lose control of Iraq's destiny," a well-placed U.S. official said.
Even those who oppose handing over control to the United Nations are looking to the world body for help. "Right now, what we're interested in is having them be an adviser, help oversee this process of setting up a transitional government for the Iraqis," said a senior administration official traveling in Cheney's party on a trip to Europe last month.
The administration has struggled over how central a role to give the United Nations since it first contemplated taking action against Saddam Hussein. Now, with the United Nations working to help draft a new plan for the political transition, U.S. officials face a crossroads in this long-running debate. A failure to resolve the split could complicate final negotiations on how to create a stable Iraqi government.
Creation of that provisional government is the central plank in the U.S. exit strategy for both its civilian administrators and its troops. If the new government is not viewed by a significant majority of Iraqis as a legitimate reflection of Iraq's disparate society, it could become the target of insurgents, further destabilizing the oil-rich country and jeopardizing neighboring states, U.S. officials and Iraq experts fear.
Key officials at the State Department, which will assume responsibility for the U.S. presence in Iraq from the Pentagon after June 30, support a central or dominant U.N. role. "We're willing to hand the whole damn thing over to the United Nations. We can help run things on the ground [as a government is selected] but have the U.N. cover and legitimacy that this process now needs," said an administration official involved in the discussions.
"Having the U.N. in a leading role is a potential positive," the official added, "both for showing the U.S. can mend diplomatic fences and because they're worried about what Iraq may look like in November."
Some senior U.S. military officers involved in Iraq have also split with the Pentagon's civilian leadership and favor involving the United Nations as much as possible, and sooner rather than later, said one officer involved in policy discussions.
"The military is far more comfortable with relinquishing control to the U.N. as long as we achieve our objectives," the officer explained. "Others . . . are reluctant to relinquish control." Pentagon civilian officials declined to comment for this story.
The Iraqi political transition has been in crisis for months, after calls from Iraq's leading cleric and others to hold direct elections to choose a provisional government, rather than follow the U.S. plan for 18 regional caucuses. The Bush administration has argued it is not possible to hold elections in Iraq by June 30. In frustration, the administration turned to the United Nations, which sent a team to Iraq to assess options.
U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi met last week with the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and with other Iraqi leaders. On Friday, Brahimi said holding elections before sovereignty is handed over to Iraq could exacerbate tensions among rival groups. People who met with Brahimi say he indicated to them that elections could be held later this year, after the United States turns over political authority to Iraqis.
Brahimi's team is expected to work up proposals for the transition -- which could be revealed as early as this week -- including roles the United Nations could play, U.S. and U.N. officials say.
The debate within the administration over the U.N. role will come to a head once the world body outlines its ideas, U.S. officials say. And time is running short for decisions.
"From the beginning, one side has urged a greater and more vigorous role for the United Nations, and the other side has resisted. It's a continuing split. What's new is that we're getting into the endgame, and this time there'll be no time for regrouping later," the well-placed U.S. official said.
At the same time, U.S. officials say that the long-standing gap within the administration over the United Nations, which dates to prewar discussions about whether to try the U.N. route to press Hussein to disarm, has been narrowing over the past six months -- in part because of the increasingly messy situation on the ground. And the thinking continues to evolve, the officials insist.
"Across the administration, including in Cheney's office, there's a general understanding that we have got to make some changes," an administration official said.
Even those who support a central U.N. role are wary of allowing the Security Council to assume control over the Iraqi political transition, U.S. officials say.
"Nobody wants the U.N. in there more than we do. We're going to do everything we can to get them there. But we want experts on politics and democracy out in the field working on the transition, not a committee in New York trying to manage Iraq," a senior State Department official said.
The other problem is logistical. The United Nations pulled out its staff in October, after two bombings at its headquarters killed more than 20, including its chief representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
Secretary General Kofi Annan has been hesitant about putting his personnel in jeopardy again, which some U.S. officials say may lead him to insist that the U.N. role is worth the risks -- or to be reluctant about engaging again.
"They have not wanted to take over Iraq and don't seem to want to take it over now," a senior administration official said. "If we said take over Iraq now, they'd move back to San Francisco," where the United Nations was formed in the late 1940s.
Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.
-------- us
Paintball poor training for combat, says witness
February 18, 2004
By Arlo Wagner
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20040217-094316-6315r.htm
Paintball guns and light armor are inadequate equipment for training soldiers to fight in combat with deadly weapons, a defense witness said yesterday in the trial of four Muslims charged with conspiracy and preparing to fight the United States.
"They are very different," said Jessica Sparks, editor of Paintball magazine and the defense's first witness.
She also told U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria that paintball guns are only accurate to about 50 feet, compared with military rifles accurate at more than 100 yards.
The federal government contends that four Washington-area Muslim men used paintball games in Northern Virginia during 2000 and 2001 to learn battle tactics in preparation for fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
To show that paintball is more mainstream than covert, Ms. Sparks also said the equipment is available at most sporting-goods stores and at big retailers such as Wal-Mart.
She also identified photographs of two U.S. judges engaged in paintball games.
Ms. Sparks was called to testify in the middle of the prosecution's case.
Prosecuting attorneys yesterday called Kwaja Mahmood Hasan, a 27-year-old associate of the men on trial. He testified about traveling with three other paintball players to Pakistan after the September 11 attacks to train with Lashkar-e-Taiba in preparation for an anticipated invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S. military.
Hasan, a graduate of Marymount University in Arlington, is one of six defendants who pleaded guilty in agreements with the prosecution. He said he hopes his testimony will reduce his sentence of 11 years in prison.
On trial are Masoud Ahmad Khan, 32, of Gaithersburg; Seifullah Chapman, 30, of Alexandria; Hammad Abdur-Raheem, and Caliph Basha Ibn Abdur-Raheem, no relation. Mr. Khan remains in jail and has appeared in court wearing green jailhouse coveralls. The others are free on bail.
Hasan yesterday said he was urged to go to Pakistan during a meeting Sept. 16, 2001. The urging came from Ali al-Timini, 39, an Islamic scholar and an official for the Center for Islamic Information and Education in Falls Church, he said.
During the meeting, American taxpayers were identified as "legitimate targets" and it was predicted that U.S. forces would retaliate with an attack on Afghanistan, Hasan testified.
"At that moment, I was happy," said Hasan, who decided to travel to Pakistan, where he was born. However, Hasan said he renounced his anti-American stance when he returned from five weeks' training in Pakistan. The training with AK-47 rifles, handguns and rocket-propelled grenades reportedly took place on the top of a remote Ibn Masood mountain. Other Muslims training there were Mr. Khan and Yong Ki Kwan, 28, of Fairfax, Hasan said.
The trainees once hid for three or four hours on a mountainside while Pakistani intelligence officers searched the training camp for "foreigners," Hasan said.
Hasan said he returned to America after he heard U.S. forces had nearly defeated the Taliban and leader Mullah Mohammed Omar had ceased calling for Muslims to aid Afghanistan.
"We started hearing reports from the BBC that the war was coming to a quick end," Hasan testified, recalling his time at the mountaintop camp. • This article is based in part on wire service reports.
-------- propaganda wars
President's "Disgraceful" Treatment of Troops/Vets
February 18, 2004
Daily Mislead Archive
Yesterday at Ft. Polk, Louisiana, President Bush thanked American soldiers for their service, saying, "In the war, America depends on our military to meet the dangers abroad and to keep our country safe. The American people appreciate this sacrifice."1 And while this tribute is heartwarming, it has not been matched with the kind of resources that show appreciation. On the contrary, President Bush has refused to adequately fund some of the most important priorities to soldiers, veterans and their families.
Last year, while troops were at war, the president proposed slashing $1.5 billion from military family housing and tried to "roll back recent modest increases"2 in bonuses paid to soldiers serving in combat zones. Meanwhile, the president refused to extend the child tax credit to one million children living in military and veteran families.
And this year the misleading is only getting worse. While the president rambles on about how much he appreciates troops and veterans, Congressional Quarterly reported on February 4th that Bush's own Secretary for Veterans Affairs told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the president rejected a desperate request for $1.2 billion in funding needed for veterans' health care. Many lawmakers said the president's decision "only proved the administration's disinterest in supporting veterans' programs." The Veterans of Foreign Wars issued a statement after receiving the White House's budget, calling it "disgraceful" and saying it was a "disgrace and a sham."3
Sources:
1. Presidential Remarks, 02/17/2004. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040217-5.html
2. Bush FY 2004 Budget.
3. "Nothing but lip service", Army Times, 06/30/2003. http://www.armytimes.com/archivepaper.php?f=0-ARMYPAPER-1954515.php
4. Children's Defense Fund, 6/6/03.
5. VFW Terms President's VA Budget Proposal Harmful to Veterans; VFW Appeals to Congress for Relief, Veterans of Foreign Wars, 02/02/2004. http://www.vfw.org/index.cfm?fa=news.newsDtl&did=1576
----
Amid Iraq-Bound Guardsmen, Bush Acts to Blunt Foes' Barbs
February 18, 2004
New York Times
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/18/national/18BUSH.html
FORT POLK, La., Feb. 17 - President Bush on Tuesday defended the war in Iraq to cheering troops here and then had lunch with a National Guard unit on its way to Baghdad, a visit that combined Mr. Bush's role as commander in chief with his political need to rebut attacks on his own service record and foreign policy.
In a quick visit to Fort Polk, home to more than 6,300 troops who are in Iraq and a staging ground for thousands more on the way, Mr. Bush made it clear that he had no second thoughts about ordering an invasion that deposed Saddam Hussein, despite the failure so far to find the banned weapons that he had said were a major reason for going to war.
He also revived his assertion that Iraq had become "the central front in the war on terrorism," citing the interception of a letter that American officials have concluded was written by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who has long been under scrutiny by the United States for suspected ties to Al Qaeda. The letter sought help from Al Qaeda to wage a "sectarian war" in Iraq.
Mr. Bush concluded his three-hour stop here by meeting with families of soldiers killed in Iraq.
Republicans had expected Mr. Bush to enter the general election campaign benefiting from his leadership in the war on terrorism. But the continued deaths of American troops in Iraq, the apparent absence of stockpiles of banned weapons there and the questions about Mr. Bush's service in the Guard in the Vietnam era have all eaten into his support, left the White House scrambling and emboldened Democrats.
The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters en route here that the trip to Fort Polk had been arranged "several weeks" ago, before Democrats raised questions about whether Mr. Bush had fulfilled all his duties as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. On Friday night, the White House released hundreds of pages from Mr. Bush's military files in an effort to settle the matter, which Democrats have used to draw a contrast with their front-runner, Senator John Kerry, who was decorated for bravery in Vietnam around the same time Mr. Bush was at home serving in the Guard.
Mr. Bush did not directly address the issue here. But the White House arranged for him to have lunch under a tent here with about 500 members of the 39th Brigade Combat Team, a National Guard unit that is about to leave for a yearlong tour in Iraq. Mr. Bush ate an M.R.E. - meal ready to eat - with the troops, many of whom were not born when he was a Guard member from 1969 to 1973. Several members of the 39th Brigade said in brief interviews after the president's speech that they were not aware of the controversy over Mr. Bush's record.
But by producing pictures of Mr. Bush with Guard members who are heading into harm's way, the White House was clearly seeking to repair any damage done to the president's election-year prospects. And in offering a robust defense of his decision to invade Iraq, Mr. Bush seemed eager to get back on the offensive after weeks in which he has had to parry questions about whether he exaggerated the threat from Mr. Hussein's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.
In discussing Iraq and its weapons programs, Mr. Bush noted that he was not alone in judging Mr. Hussein to be a threat to the world. "My administration looked at the intelligence information and we saw danger," he said. "Members of Congress looked at the same intelligence, and they saw danger. The United Nations Security Council looked at the intelligence, and it saw danger."
Some Democrats in Congress say the intelligence they were shown by the administration had been stripped of caveats or ignored dissenting views about the threats it purported to document. The United States was unable to get the votes it needed in the United Nations Security Council to win explicit authorization to invade Iraq just before the war.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- death penalty
Book details last meals
February 18, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040217-103440-6714r.htm
CROCKETT, Texas - With recipes for "gallows gravy" and "rice rigor mortis," Brian Price's new cookbook brings a touch of dark wit to a subject seldom welcome at the dinner table: death.
But it's the taste of Price's humor, not the flavor of his dishes, that is raising questions about "Meals to Die For," a collection of 42 recipes for final meals requested by inmates on Texas' death row.
"Some folks think I'm poking fun at a serious and solemn subject," said Price, who prepared 220 such meals in a prison kitchen in Huntsville while serving time himself. "My intention is not to offend anyone."
His recipes - such as Old Sparky's Genuine Convict Chili, in levels of spice measured at 5,000, 10,000 or 20,000 volts - have drawn criticism from at least one victims' rights group.
"He's a scum-sucking bottom-feeder," said Dianne Clements, president of the Houston-based Justice For All, complaining that Price is trying to profit from crime at the expense of victims.
The book, scheduled to be published next month, is as much about prison experiences as food.
"There's a fascination with death, the macabre, a curiosity of the dark side," said Price, who was paroled last year after serving 14 years on a pair of convictions related to the abduction of his brother-in-law and a sexual assault on an ex-wife.
The book says the favorite last meal is cheeseburgers and french fries. Steak, ice cream and fried chicken are popular too, Price said.
Vegetables? Not so much, although one inmate wanted fried squash, fried eggplant, mashed potatoes, snap peas, boiled cabbage, corn on the cob, spinach and cheese-covered broccoli with his chicken.
Price is not the first to tap into the public's fascination with final meals.
Until December, the state Department of Criminal Justice listed on its Web site every item requested in a last meal since Texas resumed capital punishment in 1982. That was 313 meals until the list was eliminated after some people complained it was offensive.
"The subject of last meals is one that seems to captivate the public," department spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said. Price will "definitely find an audience."
Prison officials try to meet meal requests but usually choose from whatever is available in the prison pantry. That means a request for lobster may bring fish sticks, the closest thing to seafood in stock.
Price begins the book with the filet mignon he was asked to cook in 1991 for Lawrence Buxton, who was executed for a robbery and slaying in Houston. He received a T-bone instead because the pantry did not stock the more expensive cut of meat.
He later learned from a corrections officer that Buxton had complimented the meal.
"That little feedback - it moved me," he said.
-------- human rights
Brazilian Indians fear millennial way of life is threatened by development
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
By Michael Astor,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-02-18/s_13216.asp
XINGU NATIONAL PARK, Brazil - Naked children are leaping from mango trees and tumbling into the mild water of the Xingu River without a care. But up by the grass-roofed long houses, the village elders fret that their way of life may come to an end soon.
"We're worried for our children and grandchildren," said Rea, a Kayabi Indian woman. "Our Xingu is an island, and if the white man enters with his machines, he'll break it all down in no time."
Xingu is Brazil's oldest and probably its most successful Indian reservation - a 2.8-million-hectare (6.92-million-acre) sprawl of pristine rainforest where 14 Indian tribes live much as their people have for thousands of years. The reserve was established in 1961, just a few years after many of the tribes in the region had had their first contact with white civilization.
It sat in the middle of a vast undeveloped stretch in the state of Mato Grosso, or "thick forest" in English. Today, the park is surrounded by fields and pasture in the center of Brazil's fastest developing agricultural region.
The Indians, whose numbers have nearly doubled to about 5,000 since 1961, say they are feeling the pressure.
"In 20 years there won't be enough land for all of us. If you look at the park, it's just a triangle with a little rectangle on top," said Awata, the school teacher at Capivara, one of several Kayabi villages that line the river.
In the villages, life goes on much as it always has, but there are signs of the encroachment of white civilization all around. Shiny metal water faucets are now a fixture in most villages, thanks to a well-digging project that aims to protect the Indians from polluted headwaters outside the park. Once-crystalline rivers are muddied from erosion caused by farming and logging up river.
"We can no longer fish with bows and arrows so we need to buy fish hooks from the white man," said Mairawe Kayabi, the president of the Xingu Indian Land Association, who like many Indians uses his tribe's name as a last name.
The sound of Indians stomping and chanting is still heard in the villages, only now it is as likely to emerge from a cheap tape recorder as it is from a live ceremony. In the Ngojhwere village, the cooking grill is a bicycle wheel with its spokes hammered down. Three metal car wheels turned on their side raise the grill over the wood fire burning on the dirt floor.
Breakfast is piraucu, a big, freshly caught river fish. The Indians stew it in water and, when it's ready, wrap it in pieces of a big gummy manioc pancake called beiju with hot pepper and store-bought salt for seasoning.
The women now use steel pots instead of clay to fetch water and cook. Satellite dishes sit outside many of the long houses feeding a handful of Brazilian TV channels to generator-powered televisions.
"All the stuff on the television puts stuff in the young people's heads," Mairawe said. "They are attracted to whatever comes from outside. This is a cause for a lot of disagreement among the leadership."
For ceremonies, the Indians still strip naked and paint their bodies with red powder from ground urucum seeds and the black ink of the jenipapo fruit. But most days they wear Western clothing, the woman preferring long, cotton dresses, the men shorts and T-shirts.
Kuiussi, the Suya Indians' chief, wearing a skimpy swimsuit during a journalist's visit, warns visitors not to take pictures of Indians wearing Western clothes.
"If people see the pictures, they'll say we're not Indians - that we're mixed (race) - and that's not true," he says. "We are all Indians here."
While Kuiussi worries about outside influences, his son, Wetanti, 25, sees no problem keeping a foot in both worlds. He proudly displays a small album that begins with photos of him naked, painted, and feathered and ends with him looking disco-ready in white slacks, a black T-shirt, and wraparound sunglasses.
The Suya had their first contact with white people just over 40 years ago, in 1959. Today the village sits on the edge of the Xingu reservation: face to face with white civilization.
"Right now, we have to fight to maintain our traditions. The world won't be the same for our children and grandchildren so we have to hold on to what we have as long as we can," Kuiussi said. "Maybe in the future, they'll want to farm or do something with the land to make money, but not in my lifetime."
The park owes its existence to the Villas Boas brothers. During a government expedition to Brazil's hinterlands in the 1940s, the pioneering Indian defenders saw first hand the devastating effect that contact with white civilization was having on Indians and their culture.
The Villas Boas quartet - Orlando, Claudio, Alvaro, and Leonardo - lobbied the government to set aside land for the reservation and then convinced 14 tribes from around the region to move into it. At the time, wildcat miners, loggers, and farmers were just starting to make their way into the region.
"We taught them (the Indians) if they wanted to survive, if they wanted their children to survive, not to let anyone in. We told them if anyone came, to fight them," Orlando Villas Boas, who died last year, said in a 1998 interview.
On at least one occasion, Indians took the advice to heart. They killed 11 loggers who refused to leave, Villas Boas said. "No one even thought of coming here after that."
Today, the Indians perform joint patrols with the Federal Indian Bureau and Brazil's environmental protection agency. But when there are no officials around, the Indians aren't afraid to put on war paint and pick up bows, arrows, and even hunting rifles to expel invaders.
There can be problems among the Indians themselves. Many tribes moved to the park from hundreds of miles (kilometers) away, from places where the terrain was different, and they have had trouble adapting to life in the Xingu. Kayabi elders complain that the materials needed to make traditional objects are not available in the park.
"The old people didn't like it when they got here," said Jywapan Kayabi, one of the chiefs at Capivara. "They couldn't find the kind of wood they needed to make their bows and arrows or the kind of grass they used to weave their baskets."
Communication is another problem. Because each of the 14 tribes has a distinct language, they can communicate with each other only in Portuguese, a language few Indians speak even today.
The Indians in the northern part of the park still don't have much contact with tribes in the southern part, even though they share a more compatible culture and visit each others' villages occasionally for festivals.
"If we see their dances we might understand some of what they're singing, but we can't join in the singing," said Ionaluka, who is the rare offspring of a mixed-marriage between Suya and Kayabi parents.
-------- justice
Terrorism Prosecutor Sues Justice Dept.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alleges Smear Campaign
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49218-2004Feb17.html
A prominent terrorism prosecutor in Detroit has taken the highly unusual step of filing a lawsuit against Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other top Justice Department officials, alleging that he was the target of a smear campaign that resulted in the exposure of a valuable counterterrorism informant.
The lawsuit by Richard G. Convertino, a 15-year veteran prosecutor, also accuses senior Justice officials of "gross mismanagement" of terrorism cases, contending that "DOJ Washington had continuously placed 'perception' over 'reality' to the serious detriment of the war on terror."
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is the latest salvo in a battle between Justice officials and Convertino, who said he was removed from a major terrorism case after cooperating with a Senate inquiry and is under investigation for allegedly withholding crucial evidence from defense attorneys.
The move adds to the tumult that has roiled the offices of the U.S. attorney and the FBI in Detroit, which have overseen several major terrorism cases since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but have recently come under scrutiny for allegedly mishandling both informants and evidence.
One FBI agent there abruptly retired last month after questions were raised about his use of informants. And in the biggest terrorism case in Detroit since the attacks, a federal judge has indicated he may throw out the convictions of members of an alleged al Qaeda sleeper cell because of the allegations that Convertino did not give defense attorneys a letter from a jail inmate alleging that the government's key witness lied. Earlier in the same case, U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen upbraided Ashcroft for improperly commenting in public about it.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said a lawsuit like Convertino's is almost unheard of within the Justice Department and could undermine the government's credibility in other terrorism cases.
"This is really turning into the prosecutorial version of 'Peyton Place,' " Turley said. "Detroit has been a particular embarrassment for the government, because this is one of a number of such accusations there. . . . But most of these fights stay in-house. It's viewed with great disfavor for a prosecutor to be critical in public of either DOJ or the attorney general."
Justice spokesman Mark Corallo in Washington said yesterday that the department had not yet received a copy of the lawsuit and declined to comment. Gina Balaya, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Jeffrey G. Collins in Detroit, also declined to comment.
Those named in Convertino's lawsuit are Ashcroft; Collins; Alan Gershel, chief of the criminal division in Detroit; Jonathan Tukel, first assistant U.S. attorney; and Marshall Jarrett, head of the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) in Washington. Convertino is seeking damages for Privacy Act violations and protection under federal whistle-blower laws.
According to the lawsuit, Convertino's relations with senior officials at Justice soured early on as he pursued the case against the alleged al Qaeda sleeper cell. He and another prosecutor, Keith Corbett, were "vocal and consistent" in their complaints about a lack of resources, cooperation and support from Justice Department headquarters, but senior officials were concerned primarily with looking good in the media, the lawsuit says.
Things got worse, according to the lawsuit, late last summer, when Convertino was asked to testify on the use of identity fraud by terrorists by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who has since written Ashcroft expressing concern about Convertino's treatment. Convertino and Corbett were abruptly removed from the terror cell case and learned later that they were the subject of an internal investigation into alleged prosecutorial misconduct, according to the lawsuit.
Documents confirming that investigation were leaked to the media and included the name of a confidential informant, Marwan Farhat, that was published by the Detroit Free Press. Farhat fled the country as a result of the publicity and, in a letter he left behind, said his FBI handler had encouraged him to break the law by stealing mail, according to the lawsuit and law enforcement sources.
Convertino's attorney, Stephen M. Kohn of the National Whistleblower Center, called the disclosure of Farhat's name "one of the most egregious violations of the Privacy Act that I've ever heard of."
-------- terrorism
Prosecutor sues Justice, Ashcroft
February 18, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040217-094318-8644r.htm
A federal prosecutor who obtained guilty verdicts in the nation's first post-September 11 terrorism trial has accused Attorney General John Ashcroft and other key Justice Department officials of "gross mismanagement" in the war on terrorism.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino said in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that Justice Department executives violated his First Amendment and Privacy Act rights in retaliation for exposing what he called malfeasance and incompetence in the war against terrorists.
The suit, filed late Friday and made public yesterday, is the latest threat to Mr. Convertino's successful prosecution of three terrorists in a Detroit case Mr. Ashcroft has cited as proof the war on terrorism is working.
The lawsuit said department officials in Washington knowingly disclosed to the media false and misleading information about Mr. Convertino in retaliation for his criticism of the war on terrorism and his testimony to the Senate committee investigating terrorism.
Mr. Convertino became the focus of a Justice Department inquiry after he testified Sept. 9 under subpoena before the Senate Finance Committee and was then removed from the Detroit case.
But the lawsuit said the veteran prosecutor had been "vocal and consistent with his supervisors and officials within the Department of Justice" for more than a year over his concerns about a lack of support, cooperation, effective assistance and resources "that plagued and hindered" the government's ability to identify and prosecute suspected terrorists.
Justice Department officials yesterday declined to comment on the suit.
In June, Moroccans Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, 37, and Karim Koubriti, 24, were convicted of conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism. A co-defendant, Ahmed Hannan, 34, also a Moroccan, was convicted of document fraud. They were accused as members of a "sleeper cell" that schemed to commit terrorist acts against U.S. targets.
Sentencing was delayed pending a defense motion for a new trial, after U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen admonished federal prosecutors in the case for withholding documents he said "should have been turned over" to defense attorneys.
He has ordered the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI in Detroit to determine whether other documents should have been made available.
Defense attorneys said Mr. Convertino and his boss, Keith Corbett, head of the office's Organized Crime Strike Force, withheld documents their clients were entitled to see, thus denying them a fair trial. Mr. Convertino also was accused of making unapproved plea agreements to encourage witnesses to cooperate.
Both prosecutors denied the accusations. Earlier in the trial, Mr. Ashcroft was admonished by Judge Rosen for violating a gag order while trial in the matter was pending.
Judge Rosen, who said Mr. Ashcroft "exhibited a distressing lack of care" by making public statements about the then-ongoing trial despite the gag order, has since described the case as "a fine kettle of fish."
After the convictions in Detroit, Mr. Ashcroft said the case showed the Justice Department would "work diligently to detect, disrupt and dismantle" terrorist cells. Seven months before the verdict, he described the government's key witness, Youssef Hmimssa, as a "critical tool" in the war on terrorism, a remark that brought the threat of a contempt charge by the judge.
Mr. Ashcroft later apologized and promised to "make every effort" to avoid similar statements.
The suit also said Justice Department officials intentionally disclosed the name of a confidential informant as part of their retaliatory effort, forcing the informant to leave the country and eliminating the government's ability to obtain from him additional information on pending terrorist plans.
It targets, among others, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey G. Collins in Detroit, who removed Mr. Convertino from office. Mr. Collins has declined comment on the case.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Conservationists Sue to Halt Alaska Petroleum Reserve Leasing
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
February 18, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2004/2004-02-18-10.asp
A coalition of seven environmental groups filed suit in federal court Monday challenging the Interior Department's decision to open the northwest portion of Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve to oil and gas development. The plaintiffs say the plan fails to permanently protect a single acre of the 8.8 million acre planning area and violates several federal environmental laws.
"The administration had a chance to strike a real balance between conservation and development in the western Arctic, but instead they took the most extreme option," said Deirdre McDonnell, an Alaska based attorney for Earthjustice, which is representing the coalition. "Instead of looking for the middle ground, they said, 'Let us drill it all: permanently protect nothing, make environmental rules even weaker, and put wildlife and people at risk,'" McDonnell said.
The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Juneau by Earthjustice on behalf of the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and The Wilderness Society.
The legal challenge alleges that the January 22 decision violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Interior Secretary Gale Norton, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are named in the suit, which asks the court to order the agencies to rescind the decision and rewrite the plan.
The BLM plans to hold a lease sale for tracts in the northwest corner on June 2, 2004.
McDonnell said the plaintiffs will consider additional legal action - such as a preliminary injunction - to block the sale of any leases until a ruling is issued by the court.
The plaintiffs say the BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act because the agency failed to assess the impacts from and alternatives to oil development in the reserve.
They allege the decision violates the Endangered Species Act because it ignores the status of threatened bird species that could be adversely affected by oil and gas development.
The reserve is vital to endangered waterfowl, migratory birds, caribou, polar bears and other mammals as well as to several thousand Alaska natives who live in the area and depend on the land for subsistence.
It contains important breeding, molting, and migrating habitat for birds, including Steller's and spectacled eiders, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
"By approving this project without carefully considering the full impacts of additional oil and gas leasing on the eiders and their habitat, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has violated the law and put the survival of these species at risk," said Corrie Bosman of the Center for Biological Diversity.
The management plan approved and signed by Norton, immediately opened 7.23 million acres of the 8.8 million acre northwest planning area of the reserve to oil and gas development.
The plan defers the remaining 1.57 million acres from leasing for 10 years. These deferred areas include several coastal and inland ecosystems important to wildlife.
But the plaintiffs see this deferment as a ruse because exploratory studies are allowed and pipelines and other industry infrastructure would not reach these areas for a decade in any case.
"The Bush administration continues to mislead the public," said Eleanor Huffines of The Wilderness Society. "When you read the details of their plans, all their claims about protecting special areas turn out to be smoke and mirrors. The 'special areas' do not get special treatment, and the 'strict environmental rules' are weaker than what we have now."
The Bush plan allows the Bureau of Land Management to modify or waive all of environmental safeguards on a case by case basis for "economic" reasons and changes existing prescriptive lease stipulations to mirror industry guidelines.
"There is no guarantee what will happen when it comes to development or exploration - that is why we need special protected areas," Huffines said.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the entire 23.5 million acre reserve has between 5.9 and 13.2 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil with a mean estimate of 9.3 billion barrels. The area is the single largest block of public land in the United States and the majority of it is still wild.
Stan Senner, director of the National Audubon Society's Alaska State Office, told reporters his organization is not keen to sue the federal government over land management decisions, but felt it had no other option.
"This decision forever casts the die on how this area will be used and how it will look for years to come," he said, adding that the BLM had ample information and opportunity to come up with a more balanced plan.
Audubon Alaska published a report in December 2002 outlining a wildlife habitat alternative that was supported by tens of thousands of public comments, but it was never taken seriously by the BLM, Senner said.
The Audubon alternative preserved leasing in 75 percent of the area, including 65 percent of the lands identified by the BLM as having high oil and gas potential.
"Audubon does not oppose prudent oil development," said Senner, "and our two-year study demonstrated that the reserve is large enough to balance oil drilling and wildlife protection, if you protect the right places."
"We are asking Interior to go back and try again. And, this time, to do it right."
--------
Alaskan Reserve Drilling Plan Draws Lawsuit
By Tom Doggett
Reuters
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49018-2004Feb17.html
Environmental groups sued yesterday to block the Bush administration from opening millions more acres in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling.
The Interior Department last month finalized a plan to make the vast majority of an 8.8 million-acre portion in the northwest area of the reserve available for drilling.
However, a coalition of groups -- including the National Audubon Society, Wilderness Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Alaska Wilderness League and Sierra Club -- filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Alaska to stop the drilling.
The groups said the administration ignored several federal laws intended to protect key wildlife areas in the reserve for polar bears, caribou, wolves, grizzly bears and migrating birds, and did not adequately study the likely harm that drilling will cause.
"The administration is really bent over backwards to favor oil development over all other resource values in this area," said Deirdre McDonnell, staff attorney for Earthjustice, which is representing the groups.
The groups also pointed out that nearly 100,000 comments were sent by the public to the Interior Department asking that key wildlife areas in the reserve be protected. Government experts raised similar concerns.
Audubon President John Flicker said the department's plan "failed to give permanent protection to even one acre of wildlife habitat in the reserve and failed to evaluate any reasonable alternatives that would have done so."
The Interior Department, however, said it will restrict drilling in some areas of the reserve to protect water quality, wetlands, and fish and wildlife habitat. Some land use restrictions will also apply to coastal areas, near lakes and along rivers. Of the 8.8 million acres, leasing will be barred for a decade on 1.57 million acres, or about 17 percent of the area, the department said.
The government estimates the reserve holds between 5.9 billion and 13.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The United States consumes about 20 million barrels of crude a day.
The Interior Department plans to lease tracts in the reserve on June 2 to oil companies for exploration.
The 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve was created in 1923 to provide a source of energy for the U.S. military.
It is located in the northwest corner of Alaska, near the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The administration sought to open the ANWR to drilling, but the Senate rejected the plan. Despite sporadic exploration since the 1940s, there has never been commercial oil development in the National Petroleum Reserve.
The Clinton administration opened about 4 million acres in the eastern portion of the reserve to oil drilling after a long industry hiatus in the area.
--------
Landmark Toxics Treaty to Become Law
From World Wildlife Fund US
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
http://www.enn.com/direct/display-release.asp?objid=D1D1366D000000FAC945A82D3E69823F
WWF Congratulates France as the 50th Country to Ratify Stockholm Convention
Washington, DC - World Wildlife Fund (WWF) today applauds France and other countries that have joined the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants (POPs), a historic treaty that will significantly reduce toxic threats to wildlife and people throughout the world. France became a party on February 17, 2004, triggering a 90-day countdown for the treaty to become binding international law.
"POPs weaken the immune systems of whales and polar bears, contaminate the food supply of Inuit communities in the Arctic, and wreak havoc in wildlife and people throughout the world," said Brooks Yeager, vice president of WWF's Global Threats Program and formerly the chief U.S. negotiator for the POPs treaty. "The Stockholm Convention on POPs will ban or severely restrict these dangerous chemicals. WWF looks forward to working with convention parties to effectively implement this carefully crafted treaty."
The treaty targets 12 extremely harmful chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, and several pesticides, with provisions to add additional chemicals in the future. POPs are hazardous because they are toxic; they are persistent, resisting normal processes that break down contaminants; they accumulate in the body fat of people, marine mammals and other animals, and are passed from mother to fetus; and they can travel great distances on wind and water currents. Even small quantities of POPs can cause nervous system damage, diseases of the immune system, reproductive and developmental disorders, and cancers.
WWF played a lead NGO role in the treaty negotiations, which concluded in May 2001, and has been pressing governments to expedite their ratifications. "Achieving the requisite 50 parties in less than 3 years is a huge victory," said Clifton Curtis, director of WWF's Global Toxics Program. "The Stockholm Convention is unique in attacking the problem at its source, banning outright or severely restricting some of the world's most dangerous chemicals."
The United States is conspicuously absent from the list of parties to the convention. Although the U.S. signed the treaty in May 2001, there remains considerable disagreement about how to amend existing laws to implement the treaty. The Bush Administration's proposed legislation would create burdensome new administrative and cost-benefit requirements, making it more, rather than less, difficult to regulate any POPs chemicals that are later added to the treaty. WWF and other environmental and public health groups want the United States to become a party to the Stockholm Convention, but to do so in a way that fully and effectively implements the treaty.
For further information: Tina Skaar: 202-778-9606, 202-487-1181 (mobile); tina.skaar@wwfus.org Kerry Zobor: 202-778-9509; kerry.zobor@wwfus.org
Note: Additional information about the Stockholm Convention is available at www.panda.org/toxics/ratify -- WWF's Global Chemicals Conventions Web site.
List of 50 parties to the Stockholm Convention: Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Botswana, Canada, Côte d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Denmark, Dominica, Egypt, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Iceland, Japan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Luxembourg, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Nauru, Netherlands, Norway, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Vietnam, Yemen.
-------- health
USDA Accused of Misleading Public on Mad Cow
Whether Diseased Animal Was a 'Downer' Speaks to Surveillance System, Lawmakers Say
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49516-2004Feb17.html
After a month-long investigation, the Republican and Democratic leaders of a key congressional committee yesterday accused the Agriculture Department of misleading the public about a central fact in the nation's first known case of mad cow disease.
Since federal officials announced in December that an animal had tested positive for mad cow disease, they have consistently said the animal was a "downer," an ailing animal that could not walk. The USDA national surveillance system for mad cow disease is based primarily on sampling brain tissue of downer cows.
But an inquiry by the House Committee on Government Reform reported yesterday that three eyewitnesses to the slaughter of the sick animal have testified that it was not a "downer" and did not appear to be sick at all.
In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman, the committee's chairman, Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), and its ranking Democrat, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), said the new information "could have serious implications for both the adequacy of the national [mad cow] surveillance system and the credibility of the USDA."
The issue of whether the animal was a downer is important in the ongoing debate about how much testing and surveillance of the American cattle herd is required now that mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), has been found.
The UDSA has said that recently expanded surveillance and sampling of downer and other sick animals is sufficient, while importers of American beef in Japan, South Korea and elsewhere have said it is not. In addition, an international panel of experts created by the USDA concluded earlier this month that the American surveillance system was not broad enough, but the recommendation was hotly rejected by American cattlemen.
"For the chairman, this boils down to an issue of public awareness and public trust in government," committee spokesman David Marin said on behalf of Davis, who is in Iraq.
"If indeed it is true that the only . . . infected cow in the nation was walking around, then clearly it's not safe to assume that all infected cattle will be downers," Marin said. "That in turn has serious implications for the Agriculture Department's surveillance program and serious ramifications for the information that has been shared with the public."
USDA spokeswoman Julie Quick said yesterday that the department will not comment on the letter but that it is "important to get to the bottom of this issue." She said the USDA inspector general's office opened an investigation several weeks ago into the question of whether the infected animal was a downer.
Quick said the USDA based its conclusion that the animal was a downer on the report of an agency veterinarian at the scene when the animal arrived at the slaughterhouse. He reported that the cow was a downer, but the slaughterhouse co-manager, Thomas A. Ellestad, said that the animal stood up in the delivery truck soon after the vet left and that the animal walked to slaughter.
For the USDA, identifying the animal as a downer allowed the agency to say its surveillance system -- which focuses on visibly sick animals -- was working. It also conveyed a reassuring message to the public that diseased meat could be readily identified and kept away from consumers.
In their letter to Veneman, Davis and Waxman said they had reviewed affidavits or statements from Ellestad; from Randy Hull, who trucked the cow to slaughter; and from David Louthan, who killed the animal. All three said that the animal was ambulatory and showed no signs of sickness. While the statement from Hull is new, Ellestad told reporters at his slaughterhouse, Vern's Moses Lake Meats, that the animal was not a downer soon after the mad cow infection was found in December.
In their letter to Veneman, the committee leaders also reported that Ellestad provided a contract showing that he did not accept downer cows for slaughter, and Hull provided one saying that he did not haul them. The committee letter also introduced a Jan. 6 letter faxed by Ellestad to USDA officials in Boulder stating that the brainstem sample that tested positive for mad cow disease was not sent because the animal was a downer, but because of a preexisting contract that his business had with the USDA to provide a supply of brain tissue samples.
Davis and Waxman pointedly wrote that the Jan. 6 fax had not been released to Congress or the public, and concluded that "if it is confirmed the BSE-infected cow was not a downer, public confidence in USDA may suffer."
The letter cited reassuring public statements made by Veneman soon after the diseased animal was found. On Dec. 24, the secretary said on NBC's "Today" show that "the cow had difficulty standing on its own, which is why it was a downer cow. My understanding . . . is that this cow had given birth, and that it had not been able to get up since then."
The new information contradicting that account released by the committee was "checked and double-checked," said Marin, the committee spokesman. He said that some of the new testimony came directly to the committee and some was made to a Washington state senate committee. Ellestad's long affidavit was written with the help of the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit organization that usually works with government whistle-blowers.
Marin said the committee did not believe that the USDA veterinarian who called the cow a downer was being deceptive. "He may have seen what he said he saw," Marin said. "But others saw something different."
-------- ACTIVISTS
John Ashcroft's Subpoena Blitz:
Targeting Lawyers, Universities, Peaceful Demonstrators, Hospitals, and Patients, All With No Connection to Terrorism
By NOAH LEAVITT
Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2004
FindLaw
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20040218_leavitt.html
Over the past two weeks, the Justice Department has issued two intensely controversial sets of subpoenas. The first targeted peaceful demonstrators in Iowa. The second targeted medical caregivers in Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
None of the targets of these subpoenas is alleged to have anything to do with terrorism.
The Iowa Subpoenas: Information Related to An Anti-War Demonstration
The Ashcroft Justice Department has had its eye on peaceful demonstrators and dissenters for quite some time. In May 2002, for instance, the Attorney General announced the elimination of twenty-six-year-old regulations that had prevented the FBI from monitoring "open to the public" events held by domestic religious, political and civic organizations unless it had specific cause for doing so.
These regulations had been specifically developed to counter the COINTELPRO domestic spying program that had led to massive civil rights era abuses during the 1960s and 70s. Now, these restrictions no longer exist -- and such abuses may well be repeating themselves.
Indeed, in a November 23, 2003 article, the New York Times detailed how -- according to a leaked bureau memorandum -- the FBI was collecting extensive information about, and tracking, antiwar demonstrators. According to the Times, the memo "possessed no information that violent or terrorist activities are being planned" as a part of major protests. Still, even with no evidence of a link to terrorism, the surveillance continued -- and likely continues to this day.
Then, on February 3 of this year, a local county deputy sheriff working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force served subpoenas ordering Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, to turn over documents relating to a November 2003 anti-war conference.
The main theme of the conference had been to bring the Iowa National Guard safely back from Iraq. Attendees included the director of the local Catholic peace organization. The conference was followed the next day by a peaceful demonstration at the Guard's training center.
The subpoena asked for all records of Drake University campus security officers reflecting any observations made of the conference, including any records relating to the people in charge, or to any of the attendees. In addition, the subpoenas sought information about the local chapter of the left-wing National Lawyers Guild, which had helped to organize the conference.
This step, too, was ominous. In the 1950s and 60s, similar types of "fishing expedition" subpoenas, as well as the threat of grand juries, were often used to harass political dissenters and their lawyers, as well as to threaten people with jail terms or other penalties if they did not act as an informer on their colleagues. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin commented about the Drake situation, "I don't like the smell of it...It reminds me too much of Vietnam when war protestors were rounded up, when grand juries were convened to investigate people who were protesting the war."
(Moreover, under the USA PATRIOT Act, grand jury testimony, which is supposedly secret, can now be shared with the CIA, the FBI and various other law enforcement agencies whenever the government claims a possible connection to an anti-terrorism investigation.)
Despite the lack of any terrorism connection, the government put a gag order on the Drake staff before the subpoenas were withdrawn, which seems to confirm that the government plans to conduct its surveillance under cover of darkness. This is consistent with the USA PATRIOT Act, which lowered standards for government surveillance, and created a crime of "domestic terrorism," which many fear will be used to target organizations that criticize federal policies.
Sadly, this is hardly the first time such legislation has been misused. For instance, a September 27 New York Times article, which was based on a DOJ report, detailed literally hundreds of non-terrorism cases for which the USA PATRIOT Act had been used to prosecute drug cases, murder investigations, money smuggling/laundering and document forgery.
When the Iowa subpoenas became public, stunned public interest law firms said that, to their knowledge, they were the first of their kind issued against a university in decades. A furious outcry from civil libertarians, politicians and grassroots activists ensued.
In the end, the subpoenas were withdrawn, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa replaced them with a much more narrowly tailored request. For a moment, it seemed like the government had admitted that it had overstepped its boundaries -- but then, just a few days later, another set of equally abusive subpoenas was issued.
The New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Michigan Medical Subpoenas
Those subpoenas were directed to at least six major hospitals in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Ann Arbor. They demanded that the hospitals turn over hundreds of medical records -- relating to what may be dozens of patients who underwent certain types of abortions performed in these facilities over the past three years.
Plainly, these subpoenas sought private, sensitive medical information. They also attempted to second-guess doctors' judgment, and intrude into the confidential relationship between doctor and patient.
Why were they issued? The Attorney General claims these records are needed to defend litigation challenging the recently passed Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act (PBABA). Apparently, the Justice Department wants to show, specifically, that procedures doctors deemed medically necessary, actually were not.
But in fact, this kind of evidence ought to be utterly irrelevant to the litigation. The relevant evidence is the evidence that was before Congress when it passed the PBABA -- not subsequent evidence the Justice Department might later be able to dig up by violating patient privacy.
And in any event, the PBABA's central problems are constitutional -- not evidentiary. By its plain language, the law conflicts directly with the recent Supreme Court precedent of Stenberg v. Carhart -- which mandated the very "health of the mother" exception that the PBABA omits.
The subpoenas have met with a mixed reaction in the federal courts. On one hand, a federal judge in Manhattan allowed the subpoenas to go forward, and said that he would impose penalties -- and even sanction the attorneys -- if the medical records were not provided.
On the other hand, however, during the same week, the chief federal judge in Chicago threw out the subpoena against the Northwestern University Medical Center because he found that it was a significant intrusion on patients' personal privacy. The Justice Department has said it may appeal.
Sacrificing Liberties Without Any Plausible Security Concern
Since 9/11, we have heard repeatedly, from the Bush Administration and others, that we must sacrifice some of our civil liberties in order to increase security, and protect our country against terrorism. This argument has provided support for a variety of measures, including the USA PATRIOT Act. And studies have shown that the majority of Americans have accepted this argument: They are willing to give up some degree of privacy and freedom if it is necessary to prevent further terrorist attacks.
But now, the Justice Department has made clear that it views its powers as much greater than this. It won't just use its new powers to curtail privacy and liberty when terrorism is suspected -- it will do so whenever its political agenda makes it advantageous to do so.
The Administration has also insisted that peace-loving Americans who are innocent of any wrongdoing have nothing to fear from these new laws and regulations. But now, the Attorney General has sought information about innocent persons -- who did nothing more than exercise their First Amendment rights, or their right to obtain a legal abortion. (Remember, even on the Attorney General's theory, the women who obtained abortions did nothing wrong: It is the doctors' medical necessity judgment that is at issue.)
The message could not be more clear: The government is not going to stop at only investigating people connected to terrorism; it is willing to look at the most personal aspects of anyone's life. And the guiding principle won't be security; it will be politics.
And yet, this should not be a partisan issue. Suppose a Democratic Administration were to use subpoenas to secretly investigate peaceful pro-life demonstrators, using the USA PATRIOT Act, as if they were terrorists. Or suppose a Democratic Administration were to use subpoenas to check on pro-life women's medical histories, to see if there were abortions in their pasts. Certainly, these actions would be equally appalling and objectionable. In the end, this is not a political issue: It is an issue about individual rights.
An Ever-Expanding Assault on Americans' Rights and Freedoms
The past two weeks will likely be recorded in history books as the moment when President Bush's homeland security regime crossed the line, and significantly intruded upon the lives of law-abiding, innocent Americans.
It may also come to be known as the moment when people living in the U.S. suddenly realized the extensive powers that the government can exercise against anyone, regardless of any connection to national security -- especially now, with the advent of the USA PATRIOT Act.
In his recent book, Enemy Aliens (reviewed on this site by Elaine Cassel), Georgetown Law Professor David Cole describes how, over U.S. history, violations of U.S. citizens' rights have often been foreshadowed by violations of the rights of non-citizens. Indeed, according to Cole, the expansion of rights-violations from non-citizens to citizens has been "virtually inevitable."
Cole worries that we may be in another such cycle now, which began with the restrictions of the rights of Arab-Americans and Muslims after September 11 and may be spreading to wider sectors of American society. And the recent subpoenas against peaceful demonstrators and medical providers seem to be playing out Cole's fears.
In 1976, Supreme Court Justice William Douglas wrote: "As night fall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
The federal government has repeatedly promised -- and Americans have generally believed -- that the government would violate civil liberties only if necessary to pursue Al Qaeda and other terrorist threats. But the events of the past two weeks have proven that that simply isn't true.
It's not accused Al Qaeda cell members who are the targets here. Instead, the targets are universities, peaceful protesters, civil rights attorneys, hospitals, and patients. It is no overstatement, now, to say to all Americans: Tomorrow, it could be you -- your medical records; your civic organization meeting; your protest rally. The time to protest is now -- before it's too late.
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