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NUCLEAR
Panel says transfer of plutonium at Los Alamos taking too long
Lack of Safety Is Charged in Nuclear Site Cleanup
Report Reveals Malaysia Nuke Trafficking
Nuclear middleman reveals Iran and Libya deals: Malaysia
DEPLETED URANIUM: THE WAR CRIME THAT HAS NO END
DEPLETED URANIUM SAFETY FEARS CONTINUE
Officials hold talks in Vienna over nuclear fusion plan
Kazakhstan Probes Nuclear Black Market
Pakistan's nuclear mess
US, Pakistan discuss arms control and security issues
Pakistani Linked to Illegal Exports Has Ties to Military
Pakistani Admits Ties to Nuclear Suspect
Source Gives Details of Iran Nukes Deal
Iran denies presence of centrifuges at military base
U.N. Finds Uranium Enrichment Tools in Iran
Despite Iran Denials, Evidence of Nuke Plans Grows
Israeli suspected of selling nukes to India and Pakistan
Japan Raises Terror Alert to Highest Level
South Korea eyes inspection plan for North talks
S. Korea Has Plan to End Nukes Standoff
U.S. Urges North Korea to End Nuclear Work
Hopes Lowered for U.S.-N. Korea Talks
U.S. might lift travel ban against Libya
Libya's nuclear program relied heavily on foreign sources: IAEA
Pakistani ring 'fed Libya nuclear parts'
U.N.: Libya Processed Some Plutonium
Libya refined a small amount of plutonium
U.N. Says Libya Secretly Made Bomb - Grade Plutonium
National Missile Defense System Supports MDA War Game
Lockheed Martin Receives $505 Million for PAC-3 Missile Production
United Defense Wins Ground Based Missile Defense Canister Contract
Russia developing new ballistic missile technology: army colonel
NPT signatories must report all nuclear material
Hazwaste Handling Pits New Mexico Against Los Alamos Lab
Panel: Plutonium Transfer Taking Too Long
Nuke waste firm & foes to face NRC
MOX plant will open as scheduled
Hanford workers complete stabilization of remaining plutonium
Health complaints at nuclear cleanup site investigated
Lack of Safety Is Charged in Nuclear Site Cleanup
Wash. Attorney to Probe Nuke Site Cleanup
Kucinich Will Ban Nuclear Testing
An Opportunity for Debate on Nuclear Weapons
Chutzpah! Richard Perle's got plenty of it
MILITARY
U.S. Intensifies Anti - Terrorism Strategy in Africa
Taiwan's Chen Says Ballot Won't Affect Missile Deal
Leftists claim mortar attack on Japan Defense Agency: reports
Group claims responsibility for attempted attack on Defense Agency
Chen pledges not to declare independence
Americans Begin Leaving Haiti as Unrest Spreads
Iran Parliamentary Elections May Favor the Hard-Liners
Iranian Reformers Change Course
Antibomb efforts
Syria and Iran aiding militants, Iraq says
Pending a Vote, Some Iraqis Press for a Larger Governing Council
Plan for Caucuses In Iraq Is Dropped U.S. to Seek New Transition Process
No Predictions for U.S. Role in Iraq
Sharon Tells U.S. That Pullback Will Not Replace Peace Plan
Joint US-Yemeni military exercises set;
Serbia's NATO ambitions hinge on Karadzic arrest: NATO chief
NATO chief hopes Putin will attend bloc's June summit: interview
Azeri hacks Armenian at NATO event
Armenian hacked to death at Partnership for Peace conference
Farewell Guantánamo, and good riddance
Pentagon Preps for War in Space
The White House Coup Against NASA
Shuttle Flights Won't Resume Until 2005
CIA chief in Baghdad removed
Former Spy Chief Arrested In Mexican 'Dirty War' Case
Green Beret spies will help out CIA in war on terror
U.N. Chief to Leave Decision on Sovereignty to Iraqis
Old-Timers Teach Newcomers Iraq Survival
Pentagon, contractors use revolving door for jobs
Washington's Arabic TV Effort Gets Mixed Reviews
Rocking the Vote in the Middle East
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
9/11 Panel Head Assails Delay
Supreme Court Expands Review of 'Enemy Combatant' Rule
High Court to Decide Bush's Powers in Padilla Case
U.S. Will Free 5 Britons Held at Cuban Base
U.S. Agrees to Free 5 Britons, Dane From Guantanamo Jail
ENERGY AND
Energy sector generous to likely House energy chair
Revised Energy Bill Fails to Please Environmentalists
OTHER
Senators Ask For Larger Superfund Cleanup by Polluters
Researchers Find a Type of Stem Cell
ACTIVISTS
Netanyahu's refusenik nephew exempted from Israeli military service
Iraqis rally for free elections
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Panel says transfer of plutonium at Los Alamos taking too long
February 20, 2004
AP
http://www.wluctv6.com/Global/story.asp?S=1655798
Los Alamos, New Mexico -- A federal oversight board says the transfer of plutonium to more stable containers at Los Alamos National Laboratory is taking too long. A new report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Board shows 43-hundred plutonium packages need to be stabilized, repackaged or disposed of.
Workers found the plutonium stored in temporary packages in the early '90s. Thousands of pounds of plutonium had been left in containers at the New Mexico lab and other Department of Energy facilities at the end of the Cold War.
Work to stabilize the packages at Los Alamos began in 1994. Some seven thousand packages have been processed over the last several years.
Officials say the plutonium does not pose a public risk but could be a danger to workers.
----
Lack of Safety Is Charged in Nuclear Site Cleanup
February 20. 2004
New York Times
http://www.starbanner.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040220/ZNYT02/402200312/1009/BUSINESS
RICHLAND, Wash. - For almost half a century, the hulking factories across a vast nuclear reservation here churned out the plutonium for most of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, including the bomb used on Nagasaki.
But in the last several years, with the cold war long over, the shuttered silence of the nine nuclear reactors on this 586-square-mile site has been followed by one of the world's largest cleanups, costing $2 billion a year.
An army of workers numbering more than 11,000 faces the staggering cleanup task at the Hanford complex in the high desert of southeastern Washington, a project made more daunting with an accelerated timetable that slashed cleanup projections to 35 years from 70. The quicker pace has led to charges among some doctors, experts and lawmakers that speed has taken priority over worker health and safety. And some warn that, in its dormancy, the vast wasteland may pose even more danger to the cleanup workers than it did to those who built the nation's arsenal here when the complex was in full operation.
"Cleanup is a dangerous job," said Dr. Tim K. Takaro, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Washington who treats workers monthly at Hanford. Those at risk, he said, are the large numbers of workers who "enter the dark corners of these buildings that have not been touched for years."
The State of Washington has just begun a new investigation into accusations by an advocacy group that the federal Department of Energy and its on-site contractors are ignoring some of the risks associated with the cleanup. The state attorney general, Christine O. Gregoire, started the review after trying, her office said, without success, to get Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to look into the charges.
Federal energy officials and the Hanford cleanup contractors say they have made every effort to protect the workers, asserting that the new timetable did not result in hazardous conditions. A spokesman for the Energy Department said the number of cases involving loss of work because of injury has declined every year since 1998. And Jessie H. Roberson, the assistant secretary of energy for environmental management, said the department was approaching the cleanup with more caution than before. "You can't even compare it to 10 years ago."
But, she added, "I don't know if there is more or less risk."
At the post-nuclear Hanford, the cleanup is tangled in legal battles over workers' health, dangers to the environment and disputes among government agencies about oversight of safety. Hanford's biggest nuclear reactor closed in 1986, and the giant chemical processing complex that handled some of the world's most hazardous materials was mostly shut by 1988. But court battles continue between the federal government, states and environmental groups over how the nuclear waste will be handled and where it will be stored. Along with the reactors, Hanford's 177 underground tanks hold 53 million gallons of radioactive waste, and there are 270 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater near the banks of the Columbia River.
For the thousands of workers assigned to the cleanup, the specter of debilitating illness has resurfaced as the cleanup moves forward. Because some former plant workers have become cleanup workers, it is difficult to determine when they were exposed to the toxic substances. Still, experts say some of the cleanup workers are exhibiting illnesses like asbestos-related problems that are different from the obvious radiation illness.
Dr. Takaro says he has found that the project brings workers into closer contact with hazardous materials used to make bombs, like beryllium, a metal with various uses that can cause incurable lung disease if particles are inhaled.
The allegations under review by the state attorney general's office stem from a report by the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that represents some Hanford workers in legal actions. The report said that from 2002 through the middle of last year, there were 45 incidents in which 67 workers required medical attention because they were exposed to toxic vapors from the underground tanks.
"Hanford is in the process of creating a new generation of sick and injured workers," the report said.
Tom Peterson, 51, an ironworker rigger who has worked at Hanford for 25 years, is one of 21 workers with chronic beryllium disease, an illness unknown at the height of the cold war. Dr. Takaro said 84 more have been "sensitized," to beryllium, which means they are at high risk of contracting the full-blown disease.
"I went to work out there figuring I was going to support my family," Mr. Peterson said. "I didn't expect to go out there and be poisoned and nobody fess up to anything. If they would have told me ahead of time what I was getting into, maybe I wouldn't have taken the job."
Electricians, a group not generally thought at high risk, are among those showing symptoms of exposure to asbestos and other hazards, as well as health physics technicians, who help monitor workers' radiation exposure.
Last June, 12 workers inhaled radioactive gas and two also tested positive for skin contamination when they were working on the "tank farms," according to a report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an oversight panel established by Congress.
The report said that a health physics technician had "unsuccessfully tried to stop the work." The job, on a moveable pipe used to pump waste between tanks, had been downgraded by contractors from a "high radiological risk work," to a medium one, the report said.
Joel A. Eacker, a vice president at CH2M Hill, the contractor on the tank project, said those workers were exposed to a minimal amount of radiation. He called the June incident "unfortunate," and said procedures were changed.
Some newly sickened workers have been exposed to metal tools made of beryllium alloys. These are favored at the tank farms because there is a danger of hydrogen in the air, and the beryllium tools do not create sparks, experts say.
Some of these workers argued that on-site doctors under contract were reluctant to diagnose illnesses that could be related to their work. A diagnosis of beryllium sensitivity, for example, would be important because workers who have it, or whose blood tests show they have been sensitized, are supposed to be transferred to prevent further exposure. In addition, their chances for compensation depend on the disease being work-related.
Mr. Peterson and two other workers with chronic beryllium disease said in interviews that outside doctors issued their diagnoses, years after Hanford site doctors said other lung problems caused their symptoms. Those included primarily fatigue and shortness of breath, and abnormal lung X-rays.
The three men refer to themselves as the "Hanford Hemorrhoids," because they have organized with other workers and loudly criticized the Energy Department and its medical contractor, the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation.
The foundation has held the contract for treating workers at Hanford for 38 years, but in January lost a competition for renewal; its contract expires in March.
Craig Hall, 51, an electrician at Hanford for 23 years, says he was the first to receive the chronic beryllium disease diagnosis. Foundation doctors, he said, told him in 1991 that X-rays showed possibly lung cancer, tuberculosis or sarcoidosis, a fibrotic lung disease. "If you have an injury or something, I honestly believe they do everything in the world they can to do you under," Mr. Hall said.
The sick workers have various ailments: persistent cough, night sweats, extreme fatigue, and Mr. Hall, who learned he had the disease in 1996, said he had gout and had been hospitalized because of blockage of his salivary glands caused by the beryllium in his system.
In an e-mail message, Lee T. Ashjian, the president and chief executive of the Hanford health foundation, defended the nonprofit medical group's approach.
Beryllium screening and case management, Mr. Ashjian said, were "managed according to the highest standard of care." Workers can volunteer for blood tests, he said, and those who test positive are "assured timely referral for diagnosis and treatment."
Geoff T. Tyree, a spokesman for Fluor Hanford, one of the major contractors at the site, said that the Energy Department instituted a beryllium disease prevention program in the late 1990's. All contractors must identify places where beryllium may be present and notify employees.
Mr. Tyree acknowledged, however, that contractors were still identifying buildings where workers could come into contact with the metal.
"We believe the program is protective of employees," he said. "Certainly there is room for improvement. It's a developing program and a developing health issue."
Some members of Congress have been urging the department to exert more authority over the site contractors. And the oversight panel set up by Congress does not want to see safety rules relaxed. It has taken issue with a plan by the Energy Department that would allow Hanford contractors and other sites to draw up their own plans for meeting safety rules.
John Conway, chairman of the oversight panel, said the panel objected to the agency's plan because it would mean that many rules and requirements would be softened, or considered merely guidance, without enforcement teeth.
Ms. Roberson, of the Energy Department, disagreed, saying the agency would still control safety standards. But Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan and the ranking minority member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, complained in a recent letter to Secretary Abraham that "there has been very little evidence that D.O.E. contractors have made the interest of their workers a foremost concern."
Mr. Dingell added, "In the past, weapons production took priority over health and safety; currently, accelerated cleanup schedules and reduced cleanup budgets are taking priority."
The contractors are on notice that they must ensure safe working conditions, said Joseph Davis a spokesman for the Energy Department. "We will not put at any risk any of our workers for the benefit of a faster cleanup," Mr. Davis said. "We can terminate them any time if we think they're doing something really stupid."
-------- asia
Report Reveals Malaysia Nuke Trafficking
February 20, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Malaysia-Nuclear-Network.html
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- A Malaysian inquiry revealed that the father of Pakistan's nuclear program sold uranium enrichment equipment to Iran for $3 million and signed lucrative contracts for Libya, part of a thriving black market in nuclear arms, according to a police report released Friday.
The report -- based on interviews with one of the operation's purported middlemen, Bukhary Syed Abu Tahir -- reveals details about alleged deals between Pakistan, Iran and Libya. It lays out the extent of the black market, which appears to have included a company owned by the son of Malaysia's prime minister, as well as British and Swiss middlemen.
Tahir, a 44-year-old Sri Lankan, says he was one of several people who helped Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, sell nuclear technology to willing bidders. Khan confessed this month to leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Malaysia's investigation into Tahir began after a company controlled by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's son was said to have unwittingly supplied the network.
Police said the 12-page report on the three-month investigation will be given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nonproliferation watchdog. The Malaysians urged the agency to investigate European individuals and firms.
On Saturday, Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak claimed the investigation showed Malaysia didn't have any knowing role in the network. ``We have said has been totally vindicated,'' he told reporters.
President Bush singled out Tahir and Malaysia in a speech last week that urged tougher international regulations.
Among details supplied by Tahir and laid out in the report are deals between Khan's operatives to sell nuclear equipment to Iran for $3 million in cash and to supply a uranium compound used in the enrichment process to Libya.
According to Tahir's account, Libya approached Khan in 1997 for help building a uranium enrichment program. Negotiations began in Istanbul, Turkey, between the Pakistani scientist and a Libyan identified as Mohamad Matuq Mohamad.
Around 2001, Khan told Tahir that ``a certain amount'' of uranium used in the enrichment process was flown from Pakistan to Libya, the report said. Subsequently, a number of centrifuge units were flown from Pakistan to Libya.
What Khan's network couldn't get for Libya directly, it helped the country build, sending machines and technicians to set up centrifuge-making operations and calling it ``Project Machine Shop 1001,'' according to Tahir's account.
Centrifuges are sophisticated machines that can be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons or nuclear power.
Late last year, Libya acknowledged trying to develop weapons of mass destruction and pledged to scrap them. Unlike Libya, Iran denies ever having had such ambitions.
Tahir told police he was recruited to Khan's network in 1994. That year, on Khan's instructions, Tahir arranged for two containers of used centrifuge units from Pakistan to be sent to Iran aboard an Iranian-owned merchant ship, the report says.
An unidentified Iranian paid for the units with about $3 million worth of dirhams, the United Arab Emirates currency.
``The cash was brought in two briefcases and kept in an apartment that was used as a guesthouse by the Pakistani nuclear arms expert each time he visited Dubai,'' the report said.
One operative named as working for Khan is Peter Griffin, a Briton whom Tahir alleged designed the Libyan workshop and sent eight Libyan technicians to Spain to learn how to use lathes for centrifuge parts.
According to the report, two others were Freidrich Tinner, a Swiss engineer whom Khan met in the 1980s, and his son, Urs Tinner, 39, who allegedly worked with Tahir in getting Malaysian company Scomi Precision Engineering, or SCOPE, to produce centrifuge parts.
SCOPE engineered more than 25,000 individual parts for a Dubai-based company owned by Griffin, Gulf Technical Industries, under a contract negotiated by Tahir, and shipped them between December 2002 and August 2003.
Swiss authorities have launched an investigation into Urs Tinner's alleged role, officials there said Friday. The Tinner family sent The Associated Press a statement saying Urs Tinner worked for SCOPE in Kuala Lumpur as a technical consultant for the last three years.
It said he controlled the manufacture of machinery parts, but that ``information about the customer or the purpose of the goods was unavailable to him during the whole period.''
The parts, in boxes marked with SCOPE's name, were seized in the Mediterranean last October en route from Dubai to Libya.
The family statement said Urs Tinner stopped working for SCOPE last October because he had not been paid his consultancy fees for several months.
``Other family members were not involved in this process at any time,'' the statement said.
SCOPE is a subsidiary of Scomi Group, an oil-and-gas firm whose biggest stakeholder is Kaspadu, an investment company owned by the Malaysian prime minister's son, Kamaluddin Abdullah.
Tahir joined Kaspadu as a director in December 2000, about the same time that Scomi established SCOPE and built its factory to make the parts ordered by Gulf Technical Industries, according to public documents. Tahir left the board in early 2003.
Scomi and its staff thought the parts were to be used in the oil and gas industry in Dubai, the report said. Only Tahir and Tinner, whom he brought in to oversee the work, knew the true purpose and ultimate destination.
A Malaysian official, speaking to AP on condition of anonymity Friday, said there are no immediate plans to detain Tahir because investigators had found no ``compelling evidence'' that he broke Malaysian or other laws.
But Tahir is under close surveillance, the official said.
----
Nuclear middleman reveals Iran and Libya deals: Malaysia
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP)
Feb 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040220144624.eb28qwmo.html
The former head of Pakistan's nuclear programme Abdul Qadeer Khan sold nuclear centrifuge parts to Iran in the mid-1990s and sent enriched uranium to Libya in 2001, Malaysian police said Friday.
They said the information came from Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, named by US President George W. Bush as "deputy" to Khan in an international nuclear trafficking ring.
In a detailed insider's view of the proliferation scandal, Tahir told police Khan asked him to send centrifuges to Iran in 1994 or 1995, according to an official report which will be handed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Two containers of used centrifuge units -- which can be used for enriching uranium for nuclear weapons -- were shipped from Pakistan to Iran via Dubai and were paid for with about three million dollars in cash, Tahir said.
"The cash was brought in two briefcases and kept in an apartment that was used as a guesthouse by the Pakistani nuclear arms expert (Khan) each time he visited Dubai," according to the report.
Tahir also said Khan told him that a "certain amount of UF6 (enriched uranium) was sent by air from Pakistan to Libya" around 2001.
Khan, a disgraced one-time national hero credited with making Pakistan a nuclear power, confessed this month to leaking nuclear secrets. He was later pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf.
The latest revelations in the scandal were made in a 12-page police report on investigations into an alleged Malaysian link to the nuclear weapons black market and the role of Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman married to a Malaysian.
Tahir, 44, named by Bush as Khan's "chief financial officer and money launderer", appears to have spoken in great detail about the shadowy network.
According to the report, Tahir and Khan met Libyan representatives named as Mohamad Matuq Mohamad and Karim in Istanbul in 1997 when the Libyans asked for centrifuge units.
Between 1998 and 2002 several more meetings were held, one in Casablanca and others in Dubai.
The enriched uranium was sent from Pakistan to Libya by air around 2001, and "a certain number of centrifuge units were sent in 2001-2002".
The report says Khan developed a "network of middlemen" that involved not only Tahir, but "several people and companies from Europe seeking to make profits by selling certain materials and equipment."
It recommends that the IAEA should launch investigations into "several individuals from Europe allegedly involved in the proliferation of nuclear weapons".
Tahir named a Swiss citizen, Urs Friedrich Tinner as being "actively involved in the manufacturing operations" of the Malaysian factory which was the subject of the police probe.
US and British intelligence services had told Malaysia that centrifuge parts manufactured by a local company, Scomi Precision Engineering (SCOPE), had been found on a ship bound for Libya last October.
The Malaysian company admitted making the parts -- which were ordered by Tahir -- but said it believed they were for use in the oil and gas industries and did not know their final destination.
The company is owned by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's son Kamaluddin, and Malaysia has strenuously denied that either the company or the country was knowingly involved in the nuclear arms black market.
The report clears SCOPE of breaking any laws, saying the company was unaware that the components were part of a centrifuge unit for Libya as Tahir and Tinner did not declare "the true nature of the business".
Tinner was always careful to take back his drawings once a component was finished, saying he was safeguarding trade secrets and no suspicions were aroused at SCOPE, the report says.
The report made no mention of whether any action would be taken against Tahir and a police spokesman contacted by AFP refused to comment.
Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak told AFP earlier this week: "The question is has he broken any laws? We have to investigate and get the facts first before we can act on anything."
There has been no call from Washington, at least publicly, for Tahir's arrest.
-------- depleted uranium
DEPLETED URANIUM: THE WAR CRIME THAT HAS NO END
by Paul Rockwell
2004-02-20
UN Observer
http://www.unobserver.com/layout5.php?id=1462&blz=1
"Depleted uranium is a crime against God and humanity." Dr. Doug Rokke, U.S. Army health physicist
The international dispatches about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq - replete with graphic details about overcrowded hospitals, U.S. cluster bomb shrapnel buried in the flesh of children, babies deformed by U.S. depleted uranium, farms and markets destroyed by U.S. bombs - do not make pleasant reading. The mounting evidence from the invasion of Iraq establishes what many Americans may not want to face: that the highest leaders of our land violated many international agreements relating to the rules of war. Unless we address the war crimes of the Bush administration - and the prima facie evidence is overwhelming - we betray our conscience, our country, and our own faith in democracy.
The United States is bound by customary law and international laws of war: the Hague Conventions of 1889 and 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the Nuremberg Conventions adopted by the United Nations, December 11, 1945 - all of which set limits beyond which, by common consent, decent peoples will not go. Under the Constitution, all treaties are part of the supreme law of the land. Humanitarian law rests on a simple principle: that human rights are measured by one yardstick. Without that principle, all jurisprudence descends into mere piety and power. Nor do violations of the laws of war by one belligerent vindicate the war crimes of another.
Of all the violations of the laws of war by the highest officials of our country, none is more alarming or portentous than the widespread, premeditated use of depleted uranium in Iraq. Eleven miles north of the Kuwaiti border on the "Highway of Death," disabled tanks, armored personnel carriers, gutted public vehicles - the mangled metals of Desert Storm - are resting in the desert, radiating nuclear energy. American soldiers who lived for three months in the toxic wasteland now suffer from fatigue, joint and muscle pain, respiratory ailments - a host of maladies often known as the Gulf War Syndrome.
Ever since the end of Desert Storm, when the Pentagon unloaded 350 tons of depleted uranium, American officials have been well aware of the health hazards of the residue that is collected from the processing of nuclear fuel. When President Bush and the Pentagon authorized the use of depleted uranium for the shock-and-awe campaign against Iraq in March 1983, the Bush administration not only committed a war crime against the people of Iraq, it demonstrated reckless disregard for the health and safety of American troops.
Article 23 of the Geneva Convention IV is clear and unambiguous: "It is forbidden to employ poison or poisoned weapons, to kill treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army, to employ arms, projectiles or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering." The Geneva Protocol of 1925 explicitly prohibits "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gasses, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices."
The radiation produced by depleted uranium in battle is a poison, a carcinogenic material that causes birth defects, lung disease, kidney disease, leukemia, breast cancer, lymphoma, bone cancer, and neurological disabilities.
Depleted uranium is much denser than lead and enables U.S. weapons to penetrate steel, a great advantage in modern war. But under the Geneva Conventions, "the means of injuring the enemy are not unlimited." When DU munitions explode, the air is bathed in a fine radioactive dust, which carries on the wind, is easily inhaled, and eventually enters the soil, pollutes ground water, and enters the food chain. Unexploded casings gradually oxidize, releasing more uranium into the environment. Handlers of depleted uranium in the U.S. are required to wear masks and protective clothing - a requirement that Iraqi and American soldiers, not to mention civilians, are unable to fulfill.
After the Gulf War in 1991, Iraqi hospitals recorded a surge in cancer and birth defects. Hospital statistics from Basra show that in 1988 there were 11 cancer cases per 100,000 people. By 2001, after schools, homes, and entire neighborhoods were leveled from the air, the number increased to 116 per 100,000. Breast and lung cancer and leukemia showed up in all areas contaminated by depleted uranium. Dr. Jawad al-Ali, cancer specialist at the Basra Training Hospital, noted that, "The only factor that has changed here since the 1991 war is radiation." Thirteen members of his staff, all present when the hospital area was bombed, are now cancer patients.
The Christian Science Monitor recently sent reporters to Iraq to investigate long-term effects of depleted uranium. Staff writer Scott Peterson saw children playing on top of a burnt-out tank near a vegetable stand on the outskirts of Baghdad, a tank that had been destroyed by armor-piercing shells coated with depleted uranium. Wearing his mask and protective clothing, he pointed his Geiger counter toward the tank. It registered 1,000 times the normal background radiation.
The families who survived the tragic decade of sanctions, even the children who recently survived the bombing of Baghdad, may not survive the radiated aftermath of military profligacy. Uranium remains radioactive for two billion years. That's a long time for reconstruction.
According to Dr. Doug Rokke, U.S. Army health physicist who led the first clean-up of depleted uranium after the Gulf War, "Depleted uranium is a crime against God and humanity." Rokke's own crew, a hundred employees, was devastated by exposure to the fine dust. "When we went to the Gulf, we were all really healthy," he said. After performing clean-up operations in the desert (mistakenly without protective gear), thirty members of his staff died, and most others - including Rokke himself-developed serious health problems. Rokke now has reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts, and kidney problems. "We warned the Department of Defense in 1991 after the Gulf War. Their arrogance is beyond comprehension."
The growing outcry against the use of depleted uranium is not a matter of minor legal technicalities. The laws of war prohibit the use of weapons that have deadly and inhumane effects beyond the field of battle. Nor can weapons be legally deployed in war when they are known to remain active, or cause harm after the war concludes. The use of depleted uranium is a crime whose horrific consequences have yet to run their course.
Years ago in the midst of France's brutal war in Algeria, the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre admonished the French intelligentsia:
"It is not right, my fellow-countrymen, you who know very well all the crimes committed in our name. It's not at all right that you do not breathe a word about them to anyone, not even to your own soul, for fear of having to stand in judgment of yourself. I am willing to believe that at the beginning you did not realize what was happening; later, you doubted whether such things could be true; but now you know, and still you hold your tongues."
Paul Rockwell
For addtional information...
Afghan DU Recovery Fund: http://www.afghandufund.org/
Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association: http://members.shaw.ca/cpva/
Coalición Internacional para la Abolición de las Armas Radiactivas: http://www.amcmh.org/
The Eos life~work resource centre: http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm
GULF WAR SYNDROME UK SUPPORT GROUP: http://www.gwsuk.org.uk
Pandora DU Research Project:http://www.pandoraproject.org
Traprock Peace Center: http://traprockpeace.org/RokkePressConf23July03.html
United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/2/sc.htm
Uranium Medical Research Centre: http://www.umrc.net/
Uranium Weapons Conference; http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de
----
DEPLETED URANIUM SAFETY FEARS CONTINUE
2004-02-20
UN Observer
http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=1461&blz=1
It has been reported that the U.K. Ministry of Defence have performed an astonishing u-turn on the safety of Depleted Uranium. All serving personnel working in IRAQ have now been issued with a Depleted Uranium information card.
(
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" http://www.mod.uk/issues/depleted_uranium/index.htm
Related Article
ITALIAN SOLDIERS DON'T USE URANIUM PROTECTION MASKS - ASSOC PRESIDENT
(AGI) - Rome, Italy, Wednesday February 18, 2004
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."
http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200402161848-1185-RT1-CRO-0-NF11&page=0&id=agionline-eng.oggitalia
-------- europe
Officials hold talks in Vienna over nuclear fusion plan
VIENNA (AFP)
Feb 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040220152314.1ctz11fv.html
The European Union, Russia, China, the United States, South Korea and Japan held informal closed-door discussions here Friday on plans to build a multi-billion dollar nuclear fusion reactor, officials said.
But no final decision was expected on breaking the deadlock over where to base the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the officials added. The talks were to continue Saturday in plenary session.
Two sites, the French town of Cadarache and the northern Japanese village of Rokkasho-mura, are vying to host the 10-billion-dollar project.
The United States and South Korea are backing Japan while France has the support of the European Union, China and Russia.
Earlier Friday, the Japanese Nihon Keizai Shimbun said that Japan might start a new nuclear fusion plan if it failed to break the deadlock with France over the location of the project.
The economic daily quoted a ruling coalition source as saying Tokyo planned to notify the other parties of its intention at their meeting in Vienna on Saturday.
A Japanese official in charge of the ITER project denied the report.
"As we believe cooperation among the six parties is important, we are working to see an accord over the location," he said.
"We are making efforts to maintain the current scheme and have no intention of telling (the other partners) that we are breaking it up," he said, while declining to comment on what Japan would do if the talks broke down.
The Nihon Keizai quoted the anonymous ruling coalition source as saying the Japanese proposal would call for scrapping the plan and instead inviting participation in a Rokkasho-mura-based project.
The participation of the United States and South Korea would mainly be sought for the new project, it said.
ITER aims to test technology for nuclear fusion, billed as the clean, safe, inexhaustible energy source of the future, but it is not slated to become operational until 2014, and is expected to run for 20 years.
The six parties failed to decide on the site at a meeting in December.
--------
Kazakhstan Probes Nuclear Black Market
By BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA
Associated Press Writer
Feb 20, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KAZAKHSTAN_NUCLEAR_MARKET?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) -- Kazakhstan has opened an investigation into the nuclear black market that helped Iran, Libya and North Korea, exploring suspected ties in the country that housed much of the Soviet Union's atomic arsenal, officials told The Associated Press.
Kazakhstan's intelligence agency is examining the Almaty office of a Dubai company linked by President Bush to the market headed by the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, the officials said.
The black market's potential connection to Kazakhstan - which served as a nuclear testing ground until it disarmed after its 1991 independence - has raised concern about the proliferation of remnants of the Soviet weapons program. Kazakh officials strongly deny any highly enriched uranium - the form used in weapons - has leaked out of the country.
Bush accused Sri Lankan businessman Bukhary Syed Abu Tahir of brokering black-market deals for nuclear technology using his Dubai-based company SMB Computers as a front. That firm also has an office in the Kazakh commercial capital, Almaty.
The Kazakh intelligence agency, the National Security Committee, is investigating allegations that SMB Computers' affiliate was dealing with highly enriched uranium, spokesman Kenzhebulat Beknazarov said Thursday.
SMB Computers' office in Almaty was closed Thursday.
According to a receptionist in the building where the company rents a room, the only person who staffed the office hasn't shown up there for a week. The receptionist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he had been planning to "wrap up business" and move out.
The Dubai headquarters of SMB identified the head of its Almaty office as Shaul Hameed, but said they didn't have any further contact details for him. A receptionist there, who didn't give her name, said "our company has nothing to do with this," regarding allegations of nuclear smuggling.
Bush named SMB Computers' owner Tahir as a key link in a clandestine network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program who has confessed to leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Tahir was described as the network's chief financial officer, money launderer and shipping agent - using the firm as a cover to ship parts for centrifuges, used to enrich uranium.
Kazakhstan transferred all its Soviet nuclear warheads to Russia by April 1995, and destroyed its nuclear testing infrastructure at the major Semipalatinsk weapons test site by July 2000. About 1,320 pounds of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium was removed to the United States from the Ulba Metallurgy Plant in 1994.
Yet the Central Asian nation still holds weapons-grade nuclear material, including 3.3 tons of plutonium at a mothballed breeder reactor in the country's west, and small amounts of highly enriched uranium at two nuclear research institutes, according to the Web site of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a U.S.-based foundation.
Still, Kazakh nuclear officials denied the chance of any weapons-grade uranium leaks.
"It is impossible to illegally take any uranium out of Kazakhstan," said Shinar Zhanibekova, spokeswoman for Kazakhstan's national atomic energy company, KazAtomProm.
The Atomic Energy Committee, which grants licenses for the export of nuclear materials, said it had never done any business with SMB Computers and never granted it a license.
Kazakhstan has 30 percent of the world's uranium reserves and is the fourth biggest uranium producer, according to KazAtomProm.
Zhanibekova said the country now produces only low-enriched uranium tablets for nuclear power plants, which require a maximum 3 percent enrichment. Weapons-grade uranium has to be enriched to at least 98 percent.
She said all uranium exports from the country were monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, and tightly controlled by Kazakh nuclear and security agencies. All shipments are accompanied by armed guards, Zhanibekova said.
A Europe-based Western diplomat working on issues of nuclear proliferation questioned the reliability of Kazakh safeguards for its nuclear assets.
"Nobody can pretend that everything is perfectly secure," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. However, he had no further information on SMB Computers' possible activities in Kazakhstan.
Beknazarov, the intelligence agency spokesman, said there had never been leaks of highly enriched uranium from Kazakhstan.
However, huge amounts of unguarded nuclear waste - material that could potentially be used by terrorists to create a "dirty bomb," combining conventional explosives with radioactive materials - are scattered around the country and are unguarded.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan's nuclear mess
By Eric S. Margolis
Hi Pakistan
February 20 2004
http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en53909&F_catID=&f_type=source
The timing of the scandal over Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan is either an incredible coincidence, or it is part of a brilliantly orchestrated campaign to eliminate Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
This writer noted some months ago that Israel and its American supporters have been pressing the Bush administration to make dismantling Pakistan's nuclear forces a top priority. If that is not immediately possible, pro-Israel neo-conservatives in the Bush administration are agitating for a high degree of US control over Pakistan's nuclear weapons and nuclear industries.
Dr Khan's bizarre admission on national TV that he headed a massive, international smuggling operation supplying Iran, North Korea and Libya with assorted nuclear technology was not just an unprecedented political and public relations disaster for Pakistan. It also handed Washington a club with which to beat Pakistan over the nuclear issue.
It's hard to believe Pakistan's claims that it was all the fault of the miscreant Dr Khan. His TV confession next to a stern-looking President Musharraf looked more like a naughty school boy being reprimanded by the school director.
The prevailing view abroad is that the military and ISI could not have been unaware of Dr. Khan's activities and, indeed, may have been collaborators. Suspicions are even being voiced about how much President Musharraf knew in recent years, though he is being largely shielded by his continuing usefulness to the US strategic policy in South Asia.
The view among Pakistan-watchers is that Dr Khan has been made the fall guy for a much larger and more sinister conspiracy that may yet explode into view and consume the current regime in Islamabad.
What can a long-time observer and friend of Pakistan say about this ghastly mess? First, one can only hope that the diversion of nuclear technology to other nations was motivated by some sort of Islamic zeal to help defend small, vulnerable countries threatened by the United States. This argument certainly applies to Iran, which has as much right to nuclear weapons for self-defence as, say, France or India.
But selling even proto-type nuclear plans to Libya's erratic, mercurial leader, Col. Muammar Qadhafi, was unwise and dangerous in the extreme, no matter how much Libya was threatened from without.
Libya has admitted blowing up a French airliner and was almost certainly responsible for the downing of an American Pan Am transport. No Pakistani had any business supplying nuclear technology to a regime that would commit such crimes.
Selling or bartering nuclear technology to North Korea, a nightmarish, Stalinist dictatorship that has repeatedly threatened nuclear and chemical attack on North Korea and US Pacific bases, cannot under any circumstances be excused.
North Korea may have provided Pakistan with missile technology to counter India's extensive and very threatening missile programmes, but covert dealings with the Pyongyang regime - if true - badly besmirch Pakistan's name and leave it open to charges of reckless irresponsibility.
Pakistan's credibility in the West, and particularly Washington, is around zero. In fact, after Dr. Khan's bombshell revelations, it is highly likely Pakistan would have been hit with an oil embargo and crushing financial sanctions - or even declared a pariah state - were not General Musharraf so valuable to Washington's campaign against Islamic resistance forces.
India, which has long tried to brand Pakistan a 'terrorist state,' is crowing with delight. No one in the West cares a whit that important parts of Delhi's nuclear arms development was based on US technology stolen by Israel and then sold to India.
The US will now sharply intensify pressure on Islamabad to accept some form of 'joint control' over its nuclear arsenal. The first steps have already been accomplished by pressuring Pakistan to accept United States nuclear command and control technology and security codes.
Washington will now use the Khan scandal to demand integration of the CIA and US military personnel in Pakistan's nuclear forces structure. The next step: joint guarding of weapons and reactors and, finally, their total control by US forces.
Washington's long-standing contention that Muslim nations are too irresponsible, corrupt and unstable to be allowed nuclear weapons has now been vindicated in spades by the Khan disaster. It will be very hard for Islamabad to resist onrushing US demands - backed by financial and political threats - for nuclear joint control.
----
US, Pakistan discuss arms control and security issues
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Feb 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040220134545.qgfd65s4.html
The United States and Pakistan held talks Friday on arms control and strategic and security issues in the region as part of an ongoing dialogue between the two allies, officials said.
A 10-member US delegation led by US Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker held discussions with a Pakistani team headed by Tariq Usman Hyder, a foreign ministry statement said.
"These discussions are part of a broad on-going dialogue on strategic and security issues, including regional security," the statement said.
The two sides also discussed recent global developments in arms control, it said, without elaborating.
Rademaker "conveyed US views that in certain circumstances missile defence could contribute to regional stability and the US was ready to further discuss this issue with Pakistan.
"Both sides agreed to continue discussions on these issues."
The talks were the first since a recent nuclear proliferation scandal involving the architect of Pakistan's nuclear programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Foreign office spokesman Masood Khan told AFP that the talks had "nothing to with the nuclear proliferation issues."
----
Pakistani Linked to Illegal Exports Has Ties to Military
February 20, 2004
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/international/asia/20STAN.html?pagewanted=all&position=
ILAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 19 - A Pakistani businessman who has been linked to the illegal export from the United States to Pakistan of high-speed switches has longstanding ties to the country's powerful military, according to documents filed in an American court and interviews here. The switches can be used as triggers for nuclear weapons.
Humayun Khan, the Pakistani businessman whose office address was the final destination for the shipment last fall of 66 triggers, confirmed in interviews that he and his father had been suppliers of equipment and technology to the Pakistani military for the last 20 years.
Mr. Khan insisted that he had not been involved in the effort to smuggle the American-made triggers to Pakistan.
"I know it's my address, and everything is pointing to me and my company," Mr. Khan said as he sat in the offices here of his company, Pakland P.M.E. "Frankly speaking, if I want to deal in these things, I would never be so stupid as to use my own company."
But documents Mr. Khan presented to bolster his argument as well as court papers filed in Washington provide evidence that he did business supplying the Pakistani military with restricted technology.
The court documents are part of the case against Asher Karni, an Israeli businessman living in South Africa who was arrested on Jan. 1 by federal agents in Denver and charged with illegally exporting the sophisticated switches to Pakistan by way of South Africa. Mr. Karni is now in custody awaiting trial in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Karni told the American manufacturer of the switches, PerkinElmer Optoelectronics of Salem, Mass., that they would be sent to hospitals in South Africa for use in treating kidney stones.
American law enforcement officials said "voluminous" e-mails to Mr. Karni detail Mr. Khan's repeated requests between June and September 2003 for the trigger switches.
Before the switches were sent out of the United States to Mr. Karni's company in South Africa, they were disabled at the request of federal law enforcement officials, and became part of a sting operation.
In other e-mail messages in the court records, Mr. Khan wrote repeatedly to Mr. Karni between May 29 and June 16 of last year to inquire whether he could purchase infrared target detectors for Pakistani Air Force fighter missiles. The United States bars the sale of such equipment to Pakistan without American government approval. Mr. Khan himself produced letters showing that he tried to buy oscilloscopes, magnetometers, telemetry systems and airplane guidance systems from American companies in 2002 and 2003. He said all the devices were for civilian companies.
American nonproliferation experts said the items Mr. Khan sought to buy also had military applications.
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan has spent the last month trying to quell a nuclear proliferation scandal involving Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist who is called the founder of the country's nuclear weapons program. On Feb. 4, Dr. Khan, who is no relation to Humayun Khan, confessed to providing nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea for more than a decade.
A day later, General Musharraf granted a full pardon to the scientist. He said no other military or government official had been involved in the proliferation. He later declared that his government had stopped all Pakistani nuclear hardware smuggling when it removed Dr. Khan from his post in March 2001.
Pakistani officials declined to comment on the Karni case and the trigger devices. Syed Anwar Mahmood, the government's information secretary, said Thursday that Pakistan had received no official notification of the investigation of Mr. Karni.
"The concerned people say they can't comment on it because they have not been approached officially on it," Mr. Mahmood said.
In interviews Humayun Khan said his company supplied civilian companies and equipped college and high school chemistry, physics and television repair laboratories. He said he purchased equipment for the Pakistani military only occasionally.
Mr. Khan produced a letter from an Islamabad construction company asking that he purchase a sophisticated oscilloscope made by Tektronix, a Beaverton, Ore., company. The Pakistani construction company said it had never issued such a letter.
Mr. Khan also provided a letter from a television company that he said had requested another Tektronix oscilloscope. An official from the television company said he could not remember placing such an order, and did not respond to subsequent requests for comment.
Mr. Khan said that his company employed only four people and that military supplies made up only a small part of his business. At different points he suggested that a former employee, smugglers or his brother, a bitter business rival, might have framed him.
In a telephone interview, his brother, Faisal Khan, denied any role in the case.
Mr. Khan said he knew Mr. Karni as a supplier of electronic equipment, and had made contact with him to buy several pieces of American-made equipment that were not dual-use items - that is, that could not be used to make nuclear or other weapons.
American investigators have said the high-speed switches were ordered for a group called AJKMC Lithography Aid Society. Mr. Khan showed a letter from the group dated Dec. 27, 2003, saying the switches had gone to hospitals in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. But the group's letterhead listed its address as Humayun Khan's office in Islamabad.
Mr. Khan said he could not explain why the group had used his office address. He said did not know who they were, and had had contact with the group only by e-mail. He said his e-mail records had been destroyed the day before by a computer virus.
Alisha Goff, a spokeswoman for Tektronix, said that Mr. Khan was an independent distributor in Pakistan for the company and that all shipments made to his company had been approved by the Department of Commerce. She said most of the company's customers in Pakistan were schools and telecommunications companies.
She said all shipments to Mr. Khan's company had been stopped, pending the criminal investigation into the trigger case.
Eric Lichtblau contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
--------
Pakistani Admits Ties to Nuclear Suspect
February 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Nuclear-Trader.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- A Pakistani man named in U.S. court documents as part of a nuclear proliferation scheme acknowledged he had business dealings with a main suspect in the case, but said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press that he did nothing wrong.
The man, Humayun Khan, was named in a U.S. federal court case against Asher Karni, an Israeli who was arrested in Denver on New Year's Day. U.S. authorities accuse Karni of using front companies and falsified documents to buy nuclear bomb triggers in the United States for shipment to Pakistan.
Khan acknowledged that his company was a supplier of high-tech devices for the Pakistani military, but said he imported military products only for use in armed forces repair shops. He said he also supplied civilian companies and Pakistan's Education Ministry.
Khan said it was unthinkable that he would have openly used the name of his family company, Pakland PME Corp., if he were involved in an illicit arms deal.
``There is a saying we have that robbers and thieves wear masks,'' Khan told AP in an interview at his office in a dilapidated building in the Pakistani capital. ``Would I openly go and ask this man for something that I wanted to put in a nuclear system and use my own name? It is absurd.''
The father of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, acknowledged this month that he headed a clandestine group that supplied Pakistani nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Washington has accepted a decision by President Pervez Musharraf to pardon the scientist, but it is pressing Islamabad to clamp down on the weapons network
Humayun Khan showed an AP reporter documents that appeared to indicate he paid Karni's South Africa-based company, Top-Cape Technology, $4,580 in July 2002 for a specialized power supply box, but he said the device was for civilian use.
Khan said another deal to buy a magnetometer from Karni for use in an airport project in July 2003 fell through when he realized Karni had a dubious reputation and was an Israeli.
Pakistan and Israel have no diplomatic ties, and Pakistanis are banned from doing business with Israeli businesses. Khan said Karni had told him that he was a Palestinian.
Khan's claim to have cut off contact with Karni last summer seem undermined by e-mails from his account to Karni filed in court that date from August, September and October 2003.
Among the documents filed in court is a copy of an invoice for Karni's commission from Pakland PME for the originally attempted purchase of 200 devices called triggered spark gaps. The devices can be used in machines to break up kidney stones, but exports are restricted because they also are key to triggering nuclear detonations.
When Karni e-mailed Khan last summer that he couldn't get the spark gaps, Khan messaged back: ``I know it is difficult but thats (sic) why we came to know each other, please help to re-negotiate this from any other source.''
E-mails from Khan seeking infrared sensors for Sidewinder missiles refer to the part number from Lockheed Martin Naval Systems (619-A) and to the missile itself by its U.S. military designation, AIM-9L.
``Customer is anxious, please advise!'' Khan wrote to Karni last summer about the infrared detectors. In an e-mail dated May 29, Khan wrote, ``We urgently require the following detector,'' then listed the part number.
In the AP interview Friday, Khan denied he had ever requested the infrared sensors or a sophisticated oscilloscope, a measuring device that could be used in nuclear weapons programs.
Khan indicated it was possible, however, that a former employee may have used his name and e-mail address to contact Karni while he was out of the office because of his wife's illness. The man, Mohammed Ali Rafi, has fled to Dubai, Khan said.
``We're trying to track him down,'' he added.
The U.S. court documents indicate Karni had asked an oscilloscope manufacturer, Oregon-based Tektronix Inc., if he could buy one of the devices for shipment to Pakistan, but the company told him to seek a U.S. export license.
Khan said his company is a representative in Pakistan for Tektronix, and rejected any notion that he would have had Karni contact the company.
Khan said he could not prove his innocence because a computer virus destroyed all his company's records earlier this month.
``The timing is very unfortunate, I know,'' he said, adding later:
``When they find documents in Pakistan that prove that I was the one who did this, then they can come and take me away.''
Associated Press reporter Matt Kelley in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- iran
Source Gives Details of Iran Nukes Deal
By ROHAN SULLIVAN
Associated Press Writer
Feb 20, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MALAYSIA_NUCLEAR_NETWORK?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Rogue Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold nuclear weapons-making equipment to Iran for $3 million and had enriched uranium shipped to Libya for its atomic program, police said Friday, citing the alleged financier of an international trafficking network.
In the first insider's account of the black-market nuclear program, Buhary Syed Abu Tahir told Malaysian police that Khan asked him to send two containers of used centrifuge parts from Pakistan to Iran in 1994 or 1995.
Tahir also said Libya received enriched uranium from Pakistan in 2001, police said.
President Bush has called Tahir the "chief financial officer and money launderer" of the network run by Khan, who gave the Islamic world its first atomic bomb.
Tahir is in Malaysia and has been questioned by authorities about his connections to Khan in this Southeast Asian country.
A report released by police Friday provides a detailed account of the network headed by Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, who confessed earlier this month to leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Police said the 12-page report on Tahir's Malaysian connections will be given to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna, Austria-based U.N. organization that oversees the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Malaysian authorities say they will cooperate if the IAEA seeks further action.
Tahir told Malaysian authorities he organized the shipment of two containers of centrifuge parts from Dubai to Iran aboard an Iranian merchant ship, the report says. Centrifuges are machines that can enrich uranium for weapons and other purposes.
"Payment for the two containers of centrifuge units, amounting to about $3 million," was paid by an unnamed Iranian, the report said.
"The cash was brought in two briefcases and kept in an apartment that was used as a guesthouse by the Pakistani nuclear arms expert each time he visited Dubai," the report says, identifying Khan as the arms expert.
Tahir said Khan told him "a certain amount" of enriched uranium was flown to Libya from Pakistan on a Pakistani airliner in 2001, and a "certain number" of centrifuges were flown to Libya direct from Pakistan in 2001-02, the report said.
Malaysian officials said earlier that Tahir broke no Malaysian laws, but they would keep him under surveillance.
Tahir, 44, is married to a Malaysian and has permanent residency status here.
Tahir vacated his apartment in one of Kuala Lumpur's most exclusive suburbs Wednesday after an Associated Press reporter sought him out for comment on allegations he was a key deputy in the smuggling network.
He is a former business associate of Kamaluddin Abdullah, the son of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who promised the police investigation would be conducted "without fear or favor."
A Malaysian company controlled by Kamaluddin, Scomi Precision Engineering, has acknowledged making 14 "semifinished components" - which may amount to thousands of parts - for a Dubai-based company, Gulf Technical Industries, under a contract negotiated by Tahir. They were seized in October while being shipped from Dubai to Libya.
Authorities say the parts were for centrifuges, but Scomi says it did not know what the parts were for.
The release of the police report comes as the international investigation into Tahir widened to Kazakhstan.
The Kazakh intelligence agency, the National Security Committee, is investigating allegations that an affiliate of a company linked to Tahir, SMB Computers, was dealing with highly enriched uranium, spokesman Kenzhebulat Beknazarov said.
SMB is a Dubai-based company established by Tahir and his brother that Bush alleged Tahir used as a front to organize the clandestine movement of parts for centrifuges.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar complained Friday that his nation has been unfairly singled out by Bush in calling for a crackdown on the international nuclear black market.
"Malaysia should not be dragged into the debate of being a country that is involved in the supply of components or otherwise for weapons of mass destruction," Sayed Hamid said. "We have no capability."
He said most nuclear weapons came from Europe and the United States, "but nothing has been talked about these people."
----
Iran denies presence of centrifuges at military base
Friday February 20, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2004-daily/20-02-2004/main/main3.htm
TEHRAN: The Iranian foreign ministry denied "in the strongest possible terms" on Thursday reports from diplomats at the UN's nuclear watchdog that components of an advanced uranium enrichment centrifuge had been found by international inspectors at a military base.
"The reports that there are centrifuges of this type in a military base are without any basis or foundation and we deny them in the strongest possible terms," spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a statement.
Asefi asserted that Iran's research into advanced centrifuges was "a purely scientific project", in other words only the subject of research, and that such centrifuges had "never been put into service".
"There is no nuclear activity and no centrifuges of this type in any military bases," he insisted, asserting that the Islamic republic had "never carried out any nuclear activity for military purposes."
Earlier, diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna said that the UN teams in Iran had found components of an advanced uranium enrichment centrifuge of a type Tehran had failed to declare while claiming to provide full disclosure on its atomic programme.
A diplomat close to the IAEA said inspectors had found "design components of a G-2 centrifuge", an advanced model of what is the crucial machine used in configurations of hundreds of gas centrifuges to enrich uranium for either civilian power use or for making an atomic bomb.
The diplomats were confirming a report in the newspaper USA Today on Thursday that quoted US and foreign sources as saying the IAEA inspectors had found sophisticated uranium-enrichment machinery at an air force base outside Tehran.
The machinery, described as a gas-centrifuge system that had been constructed and tested, was found at Doshen-Tappen air base, said the daily. Meanwhile, the White House said that it had "serious concerns" about reports that UN inspectors had found components of an advanced uranium-enrichment centrifuge. "We have serious concerns about these reports," said spokesman Scott McClellan.
"We have long said that our belief is Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons programme under the cover of a peaceful effort. We look forward to the (IAEA) director general's next report on Iran and the discussion that will follow at the March board of governors meeting," he said.
----
U.N. Finds Uranium Enrichment Tools in Iran
Discovery Renews Doubts On Nation's Nuclear Goals
By Peter Slevin and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55755-2004Feb19.html
U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program have uncovered sophisticated uranium enrichment equipment, renewing doubts about the Iranian government's pledge that its intentions are peaceful and transparent, diplomatic officials said yesterday.
The discovery of several completed gas centrifuges, coupled with last week's find of blueprints for a previously unknown Iranian enrichment project, will be part of a critical International Atomic Energy Agency report expected to detail Iran's recent nuclear shortcomings, according to diplomats and government experts.
The lengthy IAEA report, scheduled to be released in coming days, will provide "evidence that the Iranians' dossier was neither complete nor correct," said a Vienna-based diplomat familiar with the U.N. watchdog's work. He said the list of IAEA descriptions will reveal "serious discrepancies."
The study will cite Iran's failure to account for traces of highly enriched uranium found on centrifuge equipment, according to U.S. and European weapons experts familiar with the IAEA's findings. That failure has fueled suspicions that Iran, which has often divulged details only when confronted with undeniable evidence, continues to conceal its nuclear efforts.
New test results show the presence in Iran of at least two distinct types of highly enriched uranium. One is believed to have originated in Pakistan. The existence of the other, whose origin remains unknown, suggests that Iran secretly imported material from a still-unidentified country -- or ran a concealed enrichment program that has not come to light.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Bush administration has "serious concerns" about Iran's ambitions. He said yesterday that Iran has "no legitimate need for nuclear energy" and called on Iran to abandon uranium enrichment activities.
Iranian officials publicly denied again yesterday that the country intends to develop nuclear weapons. But among a growing number of skeptics, including Bush administration officials, the discoveries raised fresh concerns about how to ensure that Iran does not perfect its atomic skills.
A State Department official said yesterday that an early referral to the U.N. Security Council for action remains unlikely because of the difficulty in winning support for tough measures. But the same official said Iran's recent behavior has diminished the chances for a U.S. diplomatic opening.
"It seems far less likely," the official said. "It was always the hope that you could lead them away from the conclusion that they needed a nuclear weapon through a policy of inducements. But it's starting to look more and more like they want the inducements and the bomb."
A significant worry in both Vienna and Washington is that Iran has not done enough to halt an existing uranium enrichment program revealed to inspectors last year. The government is continuing, for example, to manufacture components for an enrichment project at Natanz, diplomats report.
The IAEA sharply criticized Iran in November for operating a clandestine 18-year program that assembled designs, equipment and nuclear material -- and manufactured small amounts of plutonium and low enriched uranium. The U.N. agency said Iran breached agreements on nuclear safeguards that require full disclosure.
Despite promises from Iran, U.N. inspectors have continued to find surprises. Last week, diplomatic sources reported the discovery of blueprints that Iran had not disclosed in October when it promised transparency as a good-faith step toward a diplomatic and economic opening sought by the Tehran government.
News of the more sophisticated components, first reported by USA Today, show that Iran had begun testing a faster and more efficient enrichment machine known as a P2, used in producing the fuel used in nuclear power plants and atomic bombs. Iran said its only goal has been energy production.
A small number of complete, fully assembled P2 machines were found at one location in Iran, according to U.S. and European officials. In addition, U.N. officials found machine tools used in manufacturing centrifuge components at a different site, described by one official as a "military-related" facility.
Although Iran's failure to declare the equipment was viewed as a serious omission, the machines themselves do not represent a significant leap in Iran's ability to enrich uranium, said officials familiar with the discovery. Iran appears to have assembled a handful of centrifuges for testing nearly a decade ago.
"It is very serious, but it is not the end of the game, and it is not a smoking gun," said David Albright, a former IAEA inspector. "It is significant that these things are being dug up from the past, as opposed to current programs. It is important to keep the pressure on Iranians, but don't get out the sticks just yet."
Several analysts said policymakers could go to the Security Council in search of a credible threat of sanctions.
"Regrettably, Iran at this moment is looking more like Iraq than Libya: It is digging in its heels and refusing to disclose," said Leonard Spector, an expert at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
Henry Sokolski, a Defense Department nonproliferation official during the George H. W. Bush administration, said Iran's continuing deceit is "outrageous" and merits a strong international response.
"This isn't just the smoking gun, it's the bullet," said Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a Washington think tank. "The IAEA said it would not bring Iran before the U.N. Security Council unless it found something significant the Iranians were keeping from us. Well, this is it."
--------
Despite Iran Denials, Evidence of Nuke Plans Grows
February 20, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-iran.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Western diplomats who follow the U.N. nuclear agency are increasingly certain Iran had an atomic weapons program after recent reports that essential components had been found for making nuclear fuel or nuclear bombs.
Diplomats on the nuclear agency's governing board and a U.S. official said on Thursday U.N. inspectors in Iran had discovered components which were usable in advanced centrifuges for extracting enriched uranium.
Tehran repeated on Friday it had no such equipment, contradicting multiple reports that the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had discovered such technology.
``There was a report that they found (advanced P2 enrichment centrifuge) parts in some military base, which was not true,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told Reuters.
``What we have is a research project that hasn't been implemented yet. There are no (P2 centrifuge) parts in any place in Iran. They are just trying to create a fuss about this.''
But one diplomat said the U.N. inspectors had found several assembled centrifuges based on the ``P2'' design, which is a Pakistani version of the European-developed ``G2'' centrifuge.
``The centrifuges were apparently assembled but the Iranians say they never put uranium into them,'' the diplomat said.
Several Western diplomats dismissed the Iranian denials.
``The aggregate of evidence clearly demonstrates that Iran is pursuing a covert nuclear program in the best case and in the worst case a covert weapons program. The evidence points to the latter,'' a diplomat said.
The circle of diplomats who agree with the U.S. line that Iran has a nuclear weapons program appears to be widening, with even some non-Western diplomats saying it was becoming increasingly difficult to give Tehran the benefit of the doubt.
WEAPONS-GRADE MATERIAL
Experts say that acquiring weapons-grade material is the biggest hurdle that countries seeking to make an atomic bomb must overcome.
In October, Iran gave the Vienna-based IAEA a declaration of its nuclear program but made no mention of anything related to P2 technology, which some diplomats are now saying was a serious omission.
``We don't view that the information Iran provided was complete or correct,'' one of the diplomats said.
Iran's P2 designs, components and centrifuges are among the items IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei is expected to discuss in detail in a report expected to be circulated next week.
Experts say the P2 is twice as productive as the first-generation ``P1,'' which Iran has learned to mass-produce to outfit its underground Natanz enrichment facility with tens of thousands of the machines.
Tehran had kept its P1 centrifuge technology hidden from the IAEA but acknowledged last year it had secretly purchased enrichment technology through a global nuclear black market.
A key player in the global black market was the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who Malaysian police said on Friday sold Iran centrifuge parts for $3 million in the mid 1990s. It was unclear if this was P1 or P2 technology.
Western diplomats said both the P1 and P2 centrifuge almost certainly came from Khan through ``middlemen.'' Diplomats said Libya also acquired P1 and P2 technology through Khan. After months of denials by Pakistani officials that their country had provided any nuclear aid to any foreign country, Khan recently admitted to leaking nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
-------- israel
Israeli suspected of selling nukes to India and Pakistan
Associated Press
20/02/2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/396317.html
WASHINGTON - An Israeli businessman accused of being a middleman in the nuclear black market worked to supply not only Pakistan but also its arch-rival India, court records indicate. South Africa-based Asher Karni faces felony charges of exporting nuclear bomb triggers to Pakistan. But court files in the case also include e-mail exchanges between Karni and an Indian businessman who was trying secretly to buy material for two Indian rocket factories.
"Be careful to avoid any reference to the customer name," warned one message from Karni's Indian contact, Raghavendra "Ragu" Rao of Foretek Marketing (Pvt.) Ltd.
The messages offer a rare glimpse into such dealings. Federal prosecutors filed them in court as part of their attempts to persuade a judge to keep Karni behind bars before his trial.
After conferring with U.S. Magistrate Judge Alan Kay on Thursday, lawyers for both sides agreed to postpone a bond hearing for Karni until next Tuesday. L. Barrett Boss, one of Karni's lawyers, declined comment after the hearing.
Karni, 50, has pleaded innocent. Federal agents arrested him on New Year's Day when he arrived in Denver for a ski vacation.
Authorities accuse Karni of using front companies and falsified documents to buy nuclear bomb triggers in the United States and ship them to Pakistan.
The United States is pressuring Pakistan to shut down the black-market network it used to supply its nuclear weapons program and in turn to supply Iran, North Korea and Libya with nuclear technology. A key scientist in Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, said this month that he ran the network but insisted Pakistan's government was not involved.
Rao's e-mails from India ask Karni to procure three kinds of high-tech equipment while concealing that they were meant for the two rocket labs. The United States restricts exports of missile-related material to the two organizations, the Liquid Propulsion Systems Center and the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center.
An August 2002 e-mail from Rao to Karni warns Karni to conceal the final customer of an accelerometer to the LPSC, noting its export is restricted because of its "possibility of being used in guidance systems for missiles."
Rao did not respond to AP e-mails seeking comment Thursday.
Prosecutors said they found his e-mails while searching a laptop computer and six computer discs Karni had when he was arrested.
The court files also include records of other deals Karni made with his contact in Pakistan, Humayun Khan of the company Pakland PME. One involved Khan's urgent request last May for Karni to buy infrared sensors for AIM-9L Sidewinder missiles - which Pakistan uses on its F-16 fighter planes for air-to-air combat.
While it is unclear whether that deal went through, the request shows Karni must have known Khan had ties to the Pakistani military, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Bratt argued in court documents.
Another deal which apparently was completed was Humayun Khan's request for a sophisticated oscilloscope, a measuring device that could be used in nuclear weapons programs. For that deal, the documents indicate, Karni used the same U.S. intermediary he used for the bomb triggers: Giza Technologies Inc. of Seacaucus, New Jersey.
In an August e-mail to Giza head Zeki Bilmen, Karni said he had a "new project" for Giza. "It is very important that they will not know it is coming to S.A. (South Africa)," Karni wrote.
Karni in May had asked the oscilloscope maker, Tektronix Inc., if he could buy an oscilloscope for Pakistan, but the company told him to ask for a U.S. export license first, court records indicate. There is no indication Karni contacted Tektronix directly again.
Bilmen has declined comment. Neither he nor his company have been charged, though Bratt wrote that agents searched Giza's offices in December at the same time South African police raided Karni's offices in Cape Town.
The criminal case against Karni centers on his efforts to buy devices called triggered spark gaps from PerkinElmer Optoelectronics of Salem, Mass. The devices can be used in machines to break up kidney stones, but exports are restricted because they also are key to triggering nuclear detonations.
A PerkinElmer representative in France rebuffed Karni's efforts to buy spark gaps last spring, saying Karni had to certify they would not be used in nuclear weapons. Khan urged Karni to try harder, writing in an e-mail: "I know it is difficult but that's why we came to know each other."
Karni then used Giza as a front to buy 66 spark gaps from PerkinElmer, prosecutors allege.
Giza said on shipping documents the spark gaps were destined for a South African hospital, but Karni repackaged them and sent them on to Pakistan, court documents allege.
A court filing from Karni's Colorado lawyers includes a letter purportedly from the Pakistani user of the triggers, saying they had been sent to "Agha Khan Foundation University and Hospitals" in Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The Aga Khan Foundation does not have any hospitals in Sri Lanka, however. Its hospital in Karachi, Pakistan, has only one of the kidney stone treatment machines. PerkinElmer executives told U.S. authorities that even the largest hospital would need only two or three of the triggers for a kidney treatment center, not dozens of them.
-------- japan
Japan Raises Terror Alert to Highest Level
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 20, 2004
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan tightened security at hundreds of airports, nuclear plants and government facilities Friday, dispatching armed riot police to guard against possible terror attacks as the country dispatches troops on a humanitarian mission to Iraq.
A National Police Agency official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the heightened security but refused to say whether the government had new information about a possible terror strike. He said it was the highest show of security in Japan since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
About 650 vital facilities including U.S. bases in Japan were put under increased surveillance, the Yomiuri newspaper and other media reported. Agency spokesman could not be reached Saturday to confirm that figure.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Japan was stepping up security ahead of sending troops to Iraq. Japan dispatched a destroyer and an amphibious vessel for the Middle East on Friday.
``Japan for the last few weeks has been taking some measures to improve the police preparedness as they prepare to deploy troops to Iraq,'' he said. ``Japan has kept us apprised of the measures they are implementing.''
``The measures they are implementing are relating to police preparedness,'' McClellan added.
The tougher security also follows a failed attempt to hit the Defense Agency with projectiles earlier in the week and precedes an expected verdict in the trial of a cult leader accused of plotting a 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subways.
The security move sent a shiver through global financial markets, knocking the Japanese yen to 10-week lows against the U.S. dollar.
The National Police official said riot police armed with automatic rifles will guard Tokyo and Kansai international airports and nuclear power and reprocessing facilities.
A police officer at the Tokyo airport confirmed Saturday that riot police had been deployed but declined to elaborate.
Larger police forces were being mobilized and additional checkpoints set up around the prime minister's residence, the U.S. Embassy, military facilities and national and local assembly buildings, the official said. Security was also strengthened at ports, railway stations and shopping malls.
``We are going to beef up security at key facilities,'' the official said, confirming reports carried by Kyodo News agency's Japanese service, national broadcaster NHK and the Web site of Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest newspaper.
Japan is sending 1,000 air, sea and ground forces for the mission in Iraq, its largest military deployment since World War II. An advance team of 30 soldiers is already in Iraq.
Many fear that dispatch could draw terrorist attacks in Japan, and last November an alleged al-Qaida operative threatened to attack Tokyo if it sent troops to Iraq. Japan issued a series of travel advisories and alerts for citizens living abroad late last year.
On Tuesday assailants apparently attempted to fire projectiles at Japan's Defense Agency. Two blasts were heard near the Agency, and police later found two projectile launchers. There were no injuries or damage, but local media reported that a leftist group opposed to Japan's Iraqi mission had claimed responsibility.
The move also comes ahead of the verdict next Friday in the case of Shoko Asahara, the former leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that carried out the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subways that killed 12 people.
Police earlier this week raided offices of the cult, now named Aleph, concerned it could be planning reprisals if Asahara is convicted. Prosecutors have demanded the death penalty.
Beginning in late December, police tightened security at hundreds of facilities nationwide during the New Year holidays, and officers went on round-the-clock watch at train and subway stations and shipping docks. But the precautions were later eased.
-------- korea
South Korea eyes inspection plan for North talks
By Jack Kim
20 Feb 2004
(Reuters) http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp;:4035e0bb:8b3ebaa2d06ce?type=worldNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4401376
SEOUL - South Korea will propose a plan to push communist North Korea to agree to freeze its uranium-based nuclear arms programme at six-party talks in Beijing next week, a senior government official in Seoul said on Friday.
The plan would set strict verification measures among conditions the North would have to meet before Pyongyang's offer to freeze its nuclear programme would be acceptable as an initial measure towards resolving the nuclear standoff, the official said.
"There is an agreement on what elements constitute the answer to the question, 'What kind of a freeze?'," he said, referring to a shared view among allies South Korea, the United States and Japan that talks cover all of the North's nuclear programmes.
"We will be specific in presenting the proposal to the North and verification is part of that," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
North Korea proposed last month a freeze in its nuclear activities in exchange for aid and diplomatic concessions from its neighbours and the United States as a first step towards a resolution of the 16-month-old dispute.
But Pyongyang's freeze offer apparently covers only its plutonium-based nuclear arms programme, centred on a reactor and reprocessing facilities at Yongbyon. North Korea froze the Yongbyon facilities in 1994, but reactivated them last year.
The United States insists that North Korea put a second nuclear arms programme, one based on highly enriched uranium, on the table when the two countries join South Korea, China, Japan and Russia in talks that begin on February 25 in Beijing.
"The scope of the freeze is one of the key conditions," the South Korean official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"The six-party talks exist in the first place because of the highly enriched uranium programme," he said. "We can't just skip over the issue."
North Korea denies it has a programme for enriching uranium to make bomb fuel. The United States says Pyongyang officials acknowledged that covert programme in October 2002 when confronted with evidence presented by U.S. officials and only later denied it in the face of international criticism.
INSPECTIONS, CORRESPONDING MEASURES
Recent admissions by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan that he sold nuclear secrets to Pyongyang have not stopped the North from saying the United States fabricated the issue.
On Thursday, another South Korean official was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying North Korea had told a "third country" it was willing to discuss the highly enriched uranium programme, although Pyongyang did not acknowledge the scheme.
U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Thursday that the U.S. goal was a completely nuclear-free North Korea. But he said a freeze could have value as "as a step along the way" to the elimination of Pyongyang's nuclear programmes.
"It is important to make progress in this round, that we identify the activities and we start talking about how to eliminate them in a verifiable and irreversible manner," he said.
North Korea will be asked to take actions that represent the start of the dismantling of its nuclear programmes, the South Korean official said. The North would then be offered corresponding measures, he said without elaborating.
North Korea has demanded to be taken off a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism -- a step necessary for Pyongyang to borrow money from international financial institutions. It also wants energy aid and a U.S. pledge to coexist with North Korea.
South Korea will also propose in Beijing specific measures to address another central North Korean demand: guarantees against a U.S. pre-emptive attack, the Seoul official said.
----
S. Korea Has Plan to End Nukes Standoff
By HANS GREIMEL
Associated Press
02-20-04
http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/news/content/news/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V0835.AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)--South Korea will push a three-stage plan--starting with verbal commitments and progressing to reciprocal measures--on communist North Korea's nuclear weapons program, a diplomat said Friday.
The proposal will first likely focus on a nuclear freeze and be fine-tuned early next week when U.S., Japanese and South Korean delegates meet in Seoul ahead of Wednesday's critical six-nation talks in Beijing.
``Basically our approach to the question is that it can be resolved through three steps,'' said the South Korean diplomat, who handles North Korean relations and will travel to Beijing on his country's negotiating team.
``The first stage is verbal commitment, and the second stage is the dismantlement of the North Korean nuclear program and the reciprocity to this dismantlement,'' he told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
``The third stage is to improve overall relations among the participating countries,'' he said.
Once the nuclear issue is resolved, the official said South Korea is prepared to increase economic exchanges with the impoverished North, possibly including energy assistance.
He also said North Korea's tattered economy was buckling under the nuclear dispute and that the standoff was undermining fragile economic reforms that have otherwise seen modest success.
Last year, the North Korean economy grew 1 percent to 2 percent, thanks in part to price and market reforms introduced in July 2002, he said. It is unclear how the economy would fare in 2004, but a lingering dispute could cause the economy to shrink for the first time since 1998.
Since the nuclear crisis flared in the autumn of 2002, international economic pressure has tightened on North Korea--most notably with the United States cutting off free shipments of badly needed oil.
``Without the nuclear problem, there is the possibility that the North Korean economy could be on rather stable footing by now,'' the official said.
At the talks in Beijing next week, the goal would be to win agreement on the three-stage plan and settle on verbal agreements about what steps needed to be taken to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.
North Korea's alleged uranium-based nuclear program could be a key stumbling block in the talks, which include the United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan.
North Korea has denied a U.S. and South Korean contention that it has a secret uranium program in addition to its plutonium-based one. But the communist government has reportedly conveyed recently to a ``third country'' its willingness to discuss the matter with Washington.
The South Korean official would not say Friday what kind of reciprocal actions the other countries were considering in return for North Korea's dismantlement of its nuclear programs. But he said discussions would first likely focus on North Korea's offer for to freeze its activities.
``We will spend some time discussing how to stop North Korean nuclear activities and turn the direction toward the dismantlement of the nuclear program,'' he said.
``If what North Korea has to do is set, then we will turn discussion of what we would--other than North Korea, the international community especially those participating countries _ will do what for North Korean action.''
North Korea has said it would freeze its nuclear activities as a first step to resolving the standoff, in return for economic concessions from the United States.
Washington has demanded that North Korea first start dismantling its nuclear programs. Ultimately, the United States seeks their ``complete, verifiable and irreversible'' elimination.
--------
U.S. Urges North Korea to End Nuclear Work
February 20, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN and DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/politics/20DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 - The United States will demand next week that North Korea agree to dismantle all its nuclear weapons and development programs - including a uranium enrichment program that Pakistan is believed to have supplied in recent years - as a prerequisite for any assistance, a Bush administration official said Thursday.
But in a briefing on Thursday, in advance of talks with North Korea in Beijing next week, the administration official said he would not specify whether any commitment to dismantle the uranium enrichment program, along with other weapons programs, had to be explicit, or whether the administration would settle for a more vaguely worded commitment from North Korea to eliminate all its nuclear programs.
In an administration still split over how hard a line to take in the negotiations, the handling of the uranium program may determine whether the talks move forward or fail.
Confronted with intelligence gathered by the United States and South Korea, North Korea admitted to American officials in October 2002 that it had an active program to enrich uranium, in addition to its much older effort to turn spent plutonium into a bomb.
But it has denied the existence of the uranium program in subsequent meetings, and American intelligence officials said Thursday that they still could not determine where the uranium program was located.
In recent months, China, citing the failure to find weapons in Iraq, has questioned the quality of American intelligence about the North Korean program and suggested that it should not be a focus of the negotiations, which are to begin on Feb. 25. But the confession last month of Abdul Qadeer Khan, a founder of the Pakistani nuclear program, included an admission that he had provided nuclear technology to North Korea.
"Khan's statements have made it imperative that this program be dismantled right away," a senior administration official said Thursday.
Echoing what was said at the briefing, but taking a more threatening posture, another senior American official charged in Japan that any failure by North Korea to acknowledge its enriched uranium program could derail the plan for settling the issue without military force.
"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," the official, John R. Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control, said in an interview with NHK, the Japanese broadcast network.
The broader objective of the talks, the official at the briefing in Washington said, would be for North Korea to make a fundamental choice to abandon its nuclear aspirations altogether, as Libya did after lengthy negotiations last year. Otherwise, he argued, there could be no deal that would permit energy or economic assistance to North Korea.
The official's comments came at a session with reporters arranged before the trip to Beijing next week by the leader of the American delegation, James A. Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
Many of the comments echoed a speech by Mr. Kelly last Friday in which he said the American delegation was "prepared to listen carefully and respond to all positions." President Bush said on a trip to Asia last fall that he was willing to spell out security guarantees for North Korea as part of an overall deal.
The talks are sponsored by China and also include South Korea, Japan and Russia. American and Asian diplomats say the planning for the negotiations has been difficult, in part because of disagreements between the United States and two partners, China and South Korea.
The negotiations have largely focused, so far, on North Korea's decades-old program to produce nuclear weapons by extracting plutonium from spent fuel from its nuclear reactors. North Korea not only has acknowledged that program, but has boasted about it. American intelligence officials believe that the reprocessing operations are still going on.
The parallel effort to build a weapon from uranium is believed to be further behind. American officials believe that North Korea obtained from Dr. Khan's network designs and equipment similar to those sold to Libya.
But Bush administration officials say they came to know about the uranium program in 2002 and won an admission from North Korea that it existed after Mr. Kelly confronted officials in North Korea in the fall of that year. North Korea now denies that it made such an admission, but American officials reject that denial.
----
Hopes Lowered for U.S.-N. Korea Talks
Diplomacy Appears to Be a Priority
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55815-2004Feb19.html
The Bush administration sought yesterday to lower expectations for next week's six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis, suggesting that officials are eager to stick to the diplomatic track -- no matter how slow -- during this election year.
A senior State Department official, briefing reporters in advance of the meeting, set to start Wednesday in Beijing, said "this needs to be seen as a step in a process, that the success or failure will be judged at a later point in the process when we have results." He added that his expectations are "neither high nor low" but that "if the talks are less than completely successful, we'll continue to try to work along that line."
The Bush administration has reiterated a tough line in advance of the talks, noting that Pyongyang must agree to an irreversible and verifiable dismantling of its nuclear programs and weapons. While North Korea has offered to freeze a plutonium facility, U.S. officials have also said that North Korea must fully disclose and dismantle a separate program, identified by U.S. intelligence, to produce highly enriched uranium.
Some U.S. officials have suggested that they would consider pulling out of the talks if North Korea continues to insist it has no such program, but the State Department official said the U.S. delegation would keep probing for a possible opening to a solution. "There's a great deal of patience and resolve, I think, certainly on our side," he said.
Another U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that a decision has been made at the highest levels that "the criteria for success is that the North Koreans don't walk out." He said officials are hoping at best to win North Korea's agreement to hold regular meetings -- instead of talks that take place only after months of laborious negotiations. This option could take the form of lower-level "working groups," which would at least provide the illusion of continued progress. But North Korea has not yet accepted the proposal, which was transmitted to Pyongyang via Chinese diplomats.
"The motto is 'Do no harm,' " the official said. "This is a placeholder to get us through the election."
Asian officials say North Korea appears to have little incentive to strike an agreement this year as long as there is a chance President Bush could be ousted in the election.
U.S. officials are still haggling over the language of the U.S. presentation at the talks, but it will broadly describe a three-stage proposal, similar to what the Bush administration offered at the previous round of talks, in August.
The first stage would link a U.S. commitment to provide multilateral security assurances to North Korea's commitment to verifiably, irreversibly and completely dismantle its nuclear programs. The second stage would link North Korea's progress in carrying out its commitment to discussions on dismantling its programs, energy needs and Pyongyang's removal from a list of state sponsors of terrorism. The third stage would launch a discussion of a new era in U.S.-North Korea relations "in the context of" North Korea completing its commitment to end its nuclear programs.
North Korean officials have dropped hints in recent weeks that they may offer some movement. Asian diplomats have reported that North Korea has hinted it may acknowledge the existence of a uranium program, or at least an interest in the technology. The North Korean representative to the United Nations also recently told a senior U.S. official that Pyongyang will make a "bold concession" at the talks.
South Korea, Russia and Japan are participating in the talks. The Chinese have left the schedule open, but most officials not do not expect the talks to last longer than three days.
-------- mideast
U.S. might lift travel ban against Libya
2/20/2004
(AP)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-20-us-libya-travel-ban_x.htm
WASHINGTON - Pleased with Libya's cooperation in dismantling weapons facilities, the Bush administration probably soon will ease a ban on U.S. travel to Libya that dates back more than 20 years.
Lifting further restrictions on trade and other activities will depend on continued Libyan willingness to reveal details of its weapons programs and identify suppliers. The United States still lists Libya as a state sponsors of terrorism.
One official said a final decision has not been made, but the administration has signaled for some time that it may act on the travel ban, perhaps next week.
Secretary of State Colin Powell extended the prohibition last November but, in a departure from normal practice, said the measure would be reviewed at 90-day intervals. Sunday will be the 90th day since Powell's announcement.
Libya's decision to disarm has been among the administration's most significant breakthroughs in its bid to counter countries with terrorist links and programs for developing weapons of mass destruction.
The country is in the midst of dismantling its nuclear and missile programs and has shipped thousands of pounds of parts to the United States for storage and conversion.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said recently: "As the Libyan government takes these essential steps and demonstrates its seriousness, good faith will be returned."
There were fresh disclosures Friday on Libya's nuclear weapons program. In Vienna, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency is reported to have concluded that Libya used technology acquired on the black market to process uranium into a small amount of plutonium.
Diplomats familiar with a confidential International Atomic Energy Agency report said the amount appeared to be less than the roughly seven pounds needed to make a nuclear bomb.
Libyan officials have maintained that the country never produced chemical, biological or nuclear weapons but acknowledged having the material, the expertise and the facilities.
Administration officials said the Libya's decision to give up the programs resulted from President's Bush's decision to go to war against Iraq, which was believed at the time to possess large stockpiles of forbidden weapons.
Under the travel ban, Americans have been prohibited since early in President Reagan's administration from using U.S. passports to travel to Libya on grounds that the country was unsafe for American citizens.
The restriction has been renewed annually.
Besides the travel ban, Washington also forbids U.S. oil companies to operate in Libya.
Based on Libya's role as one of seven countries listed by the State Department as a sponsor of terrorism, trade ties with Libya are restricted severely. U.S. economic aid is banned, as is American support for Libyan loan requests in multilateral lending institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.
----
Libya's nuclear program relied heavily on foreign sources: IAEA
VIENNA (AFP)
Feb 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040220185732.01v546xh.html
Libya's secret nuclear program "relied heavily on support from foreign sources" the UN nuclear watchdog said Friday as it vowed to prevent the proliferation from spreading further.
In a secret report obtained by AFP, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was now investigating to ensure "that the sensitive nuclear technologies and equipment found in Libya have not proliferated further."
"Libya's undeclared nuclear programme involved frequent movements of key equipment and nuclear material, and relied heavily on support from foreign sources," said the IAEA report which is to be reviewed when the agency's 35-nation board of governors meets in Vienna on March 8.
"Libya imported nuclear material, sensitive equipment and technology and documents related to enrichment and the design and fabrication of nuclear weapons," the report said.
The report said it was already clear "that a network has existed whereby actual technological know-how originates from one source, while the delivery of equipment and some of the materials have taken place through intermediaries, who have played a co-ordinating role, sub-contracting the manufacturing to entities in yet other countries."
Libya has "provided information on nuclear cooperation with other countries as well as information on some of the sources of sensitive nuclear technology."
"Libya has acknowledged that it had received documentation related to nuclear weapons design and fabrication from a foreign source," the report said.
Libya had agreed in December with the United States and Britain to dismantle its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.
The IAEA is the lead agency verifying this disarmament.
"With the cooperation and support of member states, the agency is now proceeding with a thorough investigation of all aspects of Libya's undeclared nuclear program," the report said.
It said the IAEA was "investigating, with the support of member states, the supply routes and the sources of sensitive nuclear technology, and related equipment and nuclear and non-nuclear materials."
----
Pakistani ring 'fed Libya nuclear parts'
By John Burton in Singapore, Stephen Fidler and Mark Huband in London and Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad
February 20 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1075982711798
A Pakistani-led black-market network airlifted radioactive material to Libya in 2001 aboard a Pakistani airliner, a Malaysian police report said on Friday, as a new study from the international nuclear watchdog described a secret Libyan nuclear programme spanning two decades.
The International Energy Agency said Libya had successfully produced a small amount of plutonium and imported low- enriched uranium as part of its programme, diplomats who had seen the report said.
The IAEA's report, which will be considered by its board next week, discloses that Libya's nuclear abilities were further developed than UN inspectors had thought when its programme came to light last year. Libya agreed to give up its weapons of mass destruction programmes in December after negotiations with the US and Britain.
In the Malaysian report, the country's inspector-general of police said the airlifting to Libya of uranium hexafluoride, used as a feedstock for centrifuges that enrich uranium, took place in 2001.
The investigation into Malaysian involvement in the network, drawn largely from interviews from Bukhari Sayed Abu Tahir, a Sri Lankan-born businessmen at its heart, also says a number of centrifuge units - possibly Dutch-derived P-1 models - were sent direct by air to Libya from Pakistan in 2001-02.
In other disclosures, Mr Tahir said he had organised the shipment of two containers of used centrifuge units from Pakistan to Iran, via Dubai, in 1994-95. The cost was $3m.
The report says the shipment was made at the behest of a Pakistani scientist who also told Mr Tahir about the air shipments to Libya.
The scientist is not named, but is referred to on one occasion by the initials AQK. Abdul-Qadeer Khan, sometimes called the father of the Islamic atomic bomb, admitted this month he had given nuclear technology to other countries and was pardoned by General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president.
According to senior western and Pakistani officials, George Tenet, director of CIA, secretly paid a one-day visit to Pakistan last week to discuss the investigations into the network. The visit has not been confirmed by either of the two governments.
The Malaysian investigation began in November after an approach to the director of the Malaysian Special Branch, Bukit Aman, from representatives of the US Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's MI6.
Components thought to be destined for Libya's uranium enrichment programme had been confiscated aboard a German ship in October. Five shipping containers carried components manufactured in Malaysia by Scope, a subsidiary of the Scomi Group.
The report absolved Scope, saying it had not violated Malaysian law. Scomi is owned by Kamaluddin Abdullah, the only son of Malaysia's prime minister, Abdullah Badawi.
----
U.N.: Libya Processed Some Plutonium
February 20, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Libya.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Supplied by the worldwide black market, Libya processed a small amount of plutonium in a nuclear weapons program that remained undetected for 20 years until Tripoli went public with its efforts, the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Friday.
Citing a confidential report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, diplomats said Libya separated grams of the substance, much less than the nearly 7 pounds required to make a nuclear bomb.
Still, the revelation appeared to reflect a nuclear arms program that was substantially more advanced than the agency initially estimated.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei prepared the 10-page report ahead of an agency board of governors' meeting next month, and diplomats shared it with The Associated Press.
Libya announced in December it sought to develop weapons of mass destruction and promised to scrap its research programs. It was one of several moves by Moamar Gadhafi to end Libya's international isolation and shed its image as a rogue nation.
American and British intelligence agencies spoke of a fairly advanced nuclear program, but the IAEA initially described it as being at the beginning stages.
The report said Libya ``imported nuclear material and conducted a wide variety of nuclear activities which it had failed to report'' to the IAEA as required by agreements with the agency, diplomats said. Those imports included centrifuges, which are machines that can be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons or nuclear power.
Much of Libya's efforts focused on enriching uranium, the report said. That -- along with producing plutonium -- is one way to develop the nuclear material used in warheads.
David Albright, a former nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq who now runs the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, said the plutonium appeared to be a sideline, with the Libyans clearly more interested in enriching uranium to weapons grade.
``The main story in Libya is the centrifuge plant,'' Albright said.
From the early 1980s through 2003, ``Libya imported nuclear material and conducted a wide variety of (clandestine) nuclear activities,'' the report said.
For example, Libya failed to declare imports of uranium compound UF6, which is used in the enrichment process, in 1985, 2000 and 2001, the report said.
A Sri Lankan businessman, Bukhary Syed Abu Tahir, who is implicated in the nuclear black market, says a Pakistani scientist told him of UF6 shipments to Libya. That scientist, Abdul Qaheer Khan, led an illicit network supplying nuclear technology to rogue nations such as Libya, Iran and North Korea.
According to Tahir's account to Malaysian police, Libya approached Khan in 1997 for help building a uranium enrichment program.
Around 2001, Khan told Tahir that ``a certain amount'' of enriched uranium was flown from Pakistan to Libya, the Malaysian report said. Subsequently, centrifuge units arrived in Libya from Pakistan.
What Khan's network could not get for Libya directly, it helped the country build, sending machines and technicians to set up centrifuge-making operations and calling it ``Project Machine Shop 1001,'' according to Tahir's account.
The IAEA report, in its comments on the black market, alluded to Khan and his associates without naming them.
``It is evident already that a network has existed whereas actual technological know-how originates from one source, while the delivery of equipment and some of the materials have taken place through intermediaries who have played a coordinating role,'' the report said. These middlemen then subcontracted the manufacturing ``to entities in yet other countries,'' the report said.
After its December disclosure, Libya surrendered drawings of a nuclear warhead to American and British experts. The blueprints and accompanying documents now are in the United States under IAEA seal.
Diplomats recently told the AP that the drawing detailed how to build a warhead for a large ballistic missile, using technology developed by the Chinese in the 1960s that triggers a nuclear blast by a small conventional explosion.
In its comments on the drawings, the report said only that Libya acknowledged receiving ``documentation related to nuclear weapons design and fabrication from a foreign source.''
----
Libya refined a small amount of plutonium in nuclear program: IAEA
VIENNA (AFP)
Feb 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040220180707.eo576uvi.html
Libya refined a small amount of plutonium in a secret nuclear program that extended from the 1980s until the end of 2003, the UN nuclear watchdog said in a report obtained by AFP Friday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency report outlines a much more advanced Libyan program than had previously been shown publicly since Libya agreed in December to abandon efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Plutonium, as well as enriched uranium, is a key ingredient for making an atomic bomb.
The report, to be reviewed when the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors, meets in Vienna on March 8, also revealed that Libya had designs for nuclear weapons.
Libya acknowledged that it had received documents for "nuclear weapons design and fabrication from a foreign source," said the report. It said Tripoli "relied heavily on support from foreign sources" for the program.
The IAEA said that Libya's failures to report on its nuclear program in accordance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) shows Tripoli was "in breach of its obligation to comply with the provisions of the safeguards agreement."
This could be enough for the IAEA to refer Libya to the UN Security Council.
But this would probably be merely a pro forma measure, and not lead to sanctions, since Libya is actively working with the IAEA, as well as the United States and Britain with whom it struck the agreement in December, to disarm.
The IAEA said that "following disclosure of its undeclared activities, Libya stated it has adopted a policy of full transparency and has decided to provide the agency with a full picture of all its nuclear activities.
"Since that time Libya has shown active cooperation and opennenss," the report said.
It said "this is evidenced in particular by Libya's granting to the agency unrestricted access to all locations the agency requested to visit, by its prompt response to agency requests for information and by its decision to act as if an additional protocol (for wider, snap inspections) was in force."
"These are welcome developments," the IAEA said.
The report said that "starting in the early 1980s and continuing until the end of 2003, Libya imported nuclear material and conducted a wide variety of nuclear activities which it had failed to report to the agency as required under its safeguards agreement."
These included:
-- "failure to declare the import of uranium hexafluoride (gas) and its subsequent storage."
-- "failure to declare the import of other uranium compounds and their subsequent storage."
-- "failure to declare the fabrication and irradiation of uranium targets and the subsequent processing including the separation of a small amount of plutonium."
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei is to visit Libya Monday and Tuesday.
His visit comes at a time when revelations from Tripoli are helping unravel a nuclear black market from which Libya, Iran and North Korea have benefitted.
A Western diplomat close to the IAEA said "things have been moving very smoothly" in disarming Libya since it agreed with Britain and the United States on December 19 to dismantle its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.
The IAEA is the lead agency for verifying nuclear disarmament. ElBaradei visited Libya shortly after the December 19 announcement in order to start the agency's inspections there.
US and British arms experts, as well as IAEA inspectors, have been active in Libya over the past two months.
The IAEA inspectors have mainly been compiling inventories while the US and British teams have been carrying out the actual removing and destroying of equipment and documents, which have included blueprints for nuclear weapons.
----
U.N. Says Libya Secretly Made Bomb - Grade Plutonium
February 20, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-libya.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Over two decades, Libya secretly produced weapons grade nuclear material in a program to make an atomic bomb that was more extensive than previously believed, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a report on Friday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report outlines how Libya relied on an intricate network of illicit atomic suppliers who skirted international sanctions to sell sensitive technology to states like Libya, Iran and North Korea.
The report, authored by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, showed Libya's nuclear program began as far back as the early 1980s.
The agency said Libya failed to declare a number of highly sensitive experiments linked to weapons production, including ``the separation of a small amount of plutonium,'' albeit ``in very small quantities.''
``The key thing here is the know-how, not the amount,'' said one Western diplomat who follows the agency's work.
Plutonium and highly enriched uranium are two substances that can be used to form the core of a nuclear bomb.
The IAEA usually defines a ``significant'' amount of plutonium as the amount needed to build a nuclear weapon -- 22 pounds -- so the ``small amount'' would have been considerably less than that, most likely a matter of grams.
``This is very serious,'' David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and head of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), said of the report.
``Whether they'd have finished (building a weapon) in a year or five years, they'd have finished. Thank God Libya decided to give that up,'' he told Reuters of the program.
In December, Libya said it was scrapping its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs and invited U.S., British and international experts to help it disarm.
Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the most disturbing element of the report is how much went on in Libya for so long before anyone seemed to know about it.
``It is a disturbing sign that Libya was able to accumulate materials and technology without the IAEA or apparently U.S. intelligence being aware of these developments,'' he told Reuters. ``It is especially disturbing that Libya was able to use safeguarded facilities without detection by the IAEA.''
ElBaradei, who is also preparing a similar report on Iran for the March 8 IAEA board meeting, will travel to Libya next week to meet senior officials and review progress in the dismantling of its nuclear weapons program.
NO COMPETENT PERSONNEL
In addition to ordering 10,000 advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges capable of producing large amounts of bomb-grade uranium, one of the most sensitive items obtained by Libya were designs for a nuclear weapon.
Several Western diplomats have said this was likely a Chinese design provided by the father of Pakistan's atom bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan.
However, Libyan officials told the IAEA that ``it had no national personnel competent to evaluate'' the drawings and took no steps toward building a weapon. The IAEA said it would need time to verify whether this was the case.
The IAEA said that by hiding its activities Libya had breached its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). One Western diplomat said the verdict may prompt the IAEA governing board to report Libya to the U.N. Security Council.
However, he said the IAEA would not ask the Council to consider sanctions over the breach because it had praised Tripoli's coming clean about its nuclear past.
Albright said the report indicated the IAEA may need to know more about the massive nuclear black market and the companies that supplied it in order to stamp it out completely.
The IAEA report said: ``It is evident already that a network has existed whereby actual technological know-how originates from one source, while the delivery of equipment and some of the materials have taken place through intermediaries.''
In some cases, Libya got technology from suppliers who had no idea who the real end user was. But the IAEA said that in other cases the suppliers clearly knew ``since the identity of equipment such as serial numbers had been removed.''
Pakistan's Khan recently admitted playing a key role in this atomic black market. But ElBaradei said Khan was the ``tip of an iceberg'' for what he called a massive nuclear supermarket.
-------- missile defense
National Missile Defense System Supports MDA War Game
Feb 20, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/bmdo-04i.html
Colorado Springs - The Lockheed Martin-led Missile Defense National Team recently demonstrated a system architecture that links Joint services, Combatant Commands and disparate systems and sensors in a major Missile Defense Agency (MDA) war game.
The National Team's Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications (C2BMC) system, the integrating architecture for missile defense, enabled war game participants to plan, coordinate and execute an effective defense against a simulated missile attack in a multi-week war game conducted in late 2003.
"This exercise verified our design approach for the command and control of a global, layered missile defense shield for our troops and citizens," said Dave Kier, Lockheed Martin's vice president and general manager for missile defense.
"The integrated capabilities demonstrated by the C2BMC system show that the architecture we've developed in concert with MDA sponsors can effectively merge many different systems and sensors into a seamless enterprise, that will eventually enable the military to defend against all manner of missile threats with speed, precision and confidence."
The war game featured different scenarios that tested the pre-planning and execution capabilities of the system. In the planning scenario, MDA and defense officials drew up and executed strategic plans, deploying missile defense assets such as Aegis Cruisers, Patriot Advanced Capability - 3 (PAC-3) batteries, and Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) capabilities to threat areas in preparation for a potential attack.
Using the C2BMC system, planners used a global Single Integrated Ballistic Missile Picture (SIBMP) to coordinate across multiple Combatant Commands, reaching out to assets worldwide in order to establish a missile shield capable of defending against attacks from multiple locations.
At each stage of the operation, the C2BMC system analyzed different plans for potential weaknesses, and presented alternative arrangements to defend against the full spectrum of threats.
The execution scenario featured simulated theater, regional and strategic missile attacks that spanned numerous countries and theaters of operation, including the U.S. and its allies.
With dozens of missiles in the air at once, C2BMC effectively collected sensor data to create a fused picture of the attack, enabling decision-makers to quickly carry out a coordinated response. C2BMC enabled U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) officials to deploy Joint forces across numerous theaters in response to the attacks, coordinating missile defense activities on a global level.
Currently in release 4.2, C2BMC is continuing on a spiral development schedule, and is on track to establish Initial Defensive Operations (IDO) in September of 2004. IDO is the first "live" delivery of C2BMC, representing the baseline system of record for national missile defense.
Functional capabilities include collaborative deliberate and crisis planning, advanced situational awareness, and summary displays showing the status of the current engagement plus the overall missile defense system. Following IDO, spiral development will continue as C2BMC expands to cover additional mission areas.
In the future, the C2BMC program plans to demonstrate integrated sensor network technology that improves missile track characterization and accuracy, and advanced decision-aiding technologies that speed cycle times by automating many of the manual tasks that often delay real-time operations. For those computer-assisted, "learned" human-decision steps, C2BMC will automatically move the process forward, allowing the operator to focus on next-step, mission-critical decisions and actions.
The National Team was created by MDA Director, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish in January 2002 to bring together the best engineers and scientists in America. The Lockheed Martin-led team includes Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and Raytheon plus several specialized teammates that bring expertise in key niche areas.
Lockheed Martin is a world leader in systems integration and the development of air and missile defense systems and technologies, including the first operational hit-to-kill missile defense system.
It also has considerable experience in missile design and production, infrared seekers, command and control, battle management, and communications, precision pointing and tracking optics, as well as radar and signal processing. The company makes significant contributions to all major U.S. missile defense systems and participates in several global missile defense partnerships.
----
Lockheed Martin Receives $505 Million for PAC-3 Missile Production
Feb 20, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/bmdo-04h.html
Dallas - Lockheed Martin has received production contracts totaling $505 million for Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) Missiles and related support equipment. The battle- proven PAC-3 Missile is currently the world's only fielded hit-to-kill, pure kinetic energy air defense missile.
The contracts call for Lockheed Martin to produce a total of 159 PAC-3 Missiles, which includes 22 PAC-3 Missiles to replenish the Patriot missiles expended during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
In addition to the 159 PAC-3 Missiles, the contracts call for production of additional PAC-3 Missile Segment ground equipment, including six Enhanced Launcher Electronics Systems (ELES) and nine Fire Solution Computers. The U.S. Army Aviation & Missile Command, Huntsville, Ala., is the contracting agency. Delivery of all equipment and missiles should be completed by April 2006.
"As the Defense Department's Director of Operational Test & Evaluation noted in his most recent annual report, the PAC-3 Missile's performance in Operation Iraqi Freedom appears to have been highly effective and consistent with expectations," said Steve Graham, vice president - PAC-3 Missile program for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control.
"Although limited quantities of PAC-3 Missiles were available during the war, the missile proved itself during two ripple-fire missions, totally destroying two incoming Iraqi missiles and saving countless lives."
The 'hit-to-kill' PAC-3 Missile is the world's most advanced, capable and powerful theater air defense missile. It defeats the entire threat to the Patriot Air Defense System: tactical ballistic missiles (TBMs) carrying weapons of mass destruction, advanced cruise missiles and aircraft. PAC-3 Missiles significantly increase the Patriot system's firepower, since 16 PAC-3s load-out on a Patriot launcher, compared with four of the older Patriot PAC-2 missiles.
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control is prime contractor on the PAC-3 Missile Segment upgrade to the Patriot air defense system. The PAC-3 Missile Segment upgrade consists of the PAC-3 Missile, a highly agile hit-to-kill interceptor, the PAC-3 Missile canister (which holds four PAC-3 missiles), a Fire Solution Computer and an Enhanced Launcher Electronics System.
These elements are being integrated into the Patriot system, a high to medium altitude, long-range air defense missile system providing air defense of ground combat forces and high-value assets.
The PAC-3 Missile has been selected as the primary interceptor for the multi-national Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS). MEADS is a model transatlantic development program for the next generation of air and missile defense. MEADS will focus on risk reduction, application of key technologies and validation of a system design incorporating the PAC-3 Missile as the primary interceptor.
"We believe 2004 will be the year in which we see the first international sales of PAC-3 Missiles and equipment," Graham added.
"The PAC-3 Missile is already approved for export to our allies, and there are several nations that are close to placing their first order of PAC-3s, including The Netherlands, Taiwan and Japan. And as the MEADS interceptor, we should be seeing PAC-3 Missiles protecting forces for decades to come."
In July 2003, Lockheed Martin received a $260 million contract for a Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) to the PAC-3 Missile. The PAC-3 MSE provides performance enhancements to the missile that will counter evolving threat advancements.
The PAC-3 MSE program includes flight software, flight- testing, modification and qualification of subsystems, production planning and tooling, and support for full Patriot system integration. The MSE program will span 51 months, with flight-testing scheduled to begin in September 2006 and production projected for 2008.
Under the MSE initiative, the company will incorporate a larger, more powerful motor into the missile for added thrust, along with larger fins and other structural modifications for more agility.
The modifications will extend the missile's reach by up to 50 percent. The larger fins, which will fold to allow the missile to fit into the current PAC-3 launch canister, will give the missile more maneuverability against faster and more sophisticated ballistic and cruise missiles.
These enhancements are the natural, pre-planned evolution of a system that was baselined in 1994. The PAC-3 MSE is a true spiral development that will enable a very capable interceptor to grow to the requirements of defeating new and evolving threats. These enhancements will assure that the PAC-3 Missile will be capable of defeating threats far into the future.
----
United Defense Wins Ground Based Missile Defense Canister Contract
Feb 20, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/bmdo-04j.html
Minneapolis - United Defense Industries, Inc. has been awarded a contract for the refurbishment of existing canisters and production of new canisters for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system. The total value of the contract, awarded by Boeing is approximately $ 2.1 million if all options are exercised.
The Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system, a key component of U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense, has a primary objective to develop and demonstrate an integrated system capable of countering known and expected long-range ballistic missile threats.
The canister supports the missile subsystem which will be fired from ground based locations at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The Boeing Company is the Missile Defense Agency's prime contractor for Ground-Based Midcourse Defense.
"We won this competition due to our broad experience in Navy missile launching system design and production," said Keith Howe, Vice President and General Manager of United Defense's Armament Systems Division. "This award extends our market presence into ground based missile systems."
Work is expected to begin immediately and is scheduled to continue through the end of 2005. Production work will be centered at the United Defense facility in Aberdeen, South Dakota, with program management and engineering staff located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
------- russia
Russia developing new ballistic missile technology: army colonel
MOSCOW (AFP)
Feb 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040220035224.4nat3xwx.html
The Russian army is developing new ballistic missile technology that will be able to beat any other country's defence system, according to the army's second-in-command Colonel-General Yuri Baluyevsky.
The planned "hypersonic" system is a response to "the creation of new anti-missile defence systems by a state or a bloc of states," Colonel Baluyevsky told a press conference Thursday, in an apparent allusion to developments in the United States.
President George W. Bush's planned anti-missile shield has led the United States to renounce the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, a move which has many critics in Russia.
During recent military manoeuvres, the Russian army test-fired a "prototype" of the new system which "confirmed that we can build weapons which will render any anti-missile system defenceless against an attack by Russia's strategic forces," said Baluyevsky.
He refused reporters' prodding to disclose what rocket would be used to launch the new missile.
The new weapons "are not going to be there tomorrow," he said, adding that between now and 2010-2015 Russia would be capable of piercing existing anti-missile systems.
"We are against the creation of anti-missile systems which threaten Russia," Baluyevsky told reporters.
Russia wants to modernise its strategic arsenal and plans to equip itself with "new nuclear missile systems," by 2010, he added.
The Russian army should be capable of combatting "any aggressor".
President Vladimir Putin promised last week to develop a new generation of strategic arms to maintain its status as a nuclear power.
These arms will be "capable of hitting targets in an intercontinental scale at hypersonic speed and with high precisions," Putin said.
-------- treaties
NPT signatories must report all nuclear material
Feb 20, 2004
New Straits Times (Malaysia)
http://www.emedia.com.my/Current_News/NST/Saturday/National/20040221141905/Article/indexb_html
MALAYSIA is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty which oversees control over nuclear materials like uranium, thorium and plutonium.
Manufacturing, using, importing and exporting of uranium and plutonium and other materials like thorium that can be converted into uranium are controlled by the NPT.
All nations, including Malaysia, which are signatories to the treaty are required to report all inventories and the import and export of nuclear material to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria.
IAEA is the enforcement agency to the NPT but has no control over nuclear equipment such as centrifuge components.
SCOPE and Malaysia have, therefore, not broken any of the NPT rules as the components were not among the items listed in the treaty.
Malaysia also has yet to sign the additional protocol to the IAEA's enforcement control agreement.
In general, the additional protocol ensures control over specific nuclear equipment like single-use items that cover materials such as centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
It does not cover dual-use items like centrifuges for the petrol chemical industry, water treatment and the use of molecular biology for protein separation.
Therefore, Malaysia has not violated any of the provisions in the additional protocol because the components seized in Taranto, Italy, were basic components and not complete centrifuge units for uranium enrichment.
Moreover, under Malaysian Atomic Energy Licensing Act (Act 304), there is no provision for the control of components such as those seized.
What is clear from is that most individuals involved in the networking are from Europe whose countries are signatories to the additional protocol and also members of the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG).
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Hazwaste Handling Pits New Mexico Against Los Alamos Lab
SANTA FE, New Mexico, (ENS)
February 20, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2004/2004-02-20-02.asp
The state of New Mexico, headed by Governor Bill Richardson, a Democrat who served as Energy Secretary in the Clinton administration, is locked in a battle over hazardous waste cleanup with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, part of the Energy Department that Richardson oversaw just a few years ago.
Located 35 miles northwest of Santa Fe, the sprawling laboratory covers nearly 40 square miles with 47 technical areas, more than 2,100 individual facilities, and an annual budget of more than $2 billion.
Los Alamos is involved in nuclear science and technology, advanced materials and computing, anthrax identification, counter terrorism, climate and fuel cell research. The lab has stewardship over the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile.
In 2003, the lab proudly says, Los Alamos scientists restored U.S. ability to make nuclear weapons through production of the first nuclear weapons pit in 14 years, designed for the W88 warhead aboard the Trident II D5 submarine launched ballistic missile.
Also in 2003, the lab dedicated its High Power Detonator Facility to manufacture detonators for the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
Los Alamos scientists have developed the first practical superconducting tapes that the lab says will lead to more efficient electric power distribution systems, motors and other electrical devices.
But the lab's handling of hazardous materials has fallen far short of state standards, and since the first of the year, the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) has imposed a total of $2.5 million in fines for violations of state hazardous waste laws.
What NMED really wants is a "fence-to-fence" cleanup order for the vast lab, but Los Alamos officials say the state is overstepping its jurisdiction. The state asserts that the hazardous and radioactive contamination is "an imminent and substantial endangerment" and a legally enforceable order is the only way to ensure that the facility is cleaned up in a timely and complete manner.
But the state does not have such a comprehensive cleanup order, so for the time being state officials are issuing compliance orders and imposing fines for individual violations of state hazardous waste regulations.
On February 13, NMED issued Los Alamos a compliance order for numerous violations, imposing a total civil penalty of $1.4 million. The order was issued to DOE and the University of California, which operates the lab under contract with the Energy Department.
The violations were uncovered during a comprehensive April 2003 NMED inspection of the huge lab.
This is the 14th compliance order the New Mexico Environment Department has issued to the federal lab since 1993 for hazardous waste violations uncovered during inspections. The number and severity of the violations has prompted the state to classify Las Alamos Lab as a "significant non-complier," and to impose a 25 percent penalty surcharge for each violation based on this classification.
On February 4, NMED issued a compliance order to Los Alamos for violations of state hazardous waste management regulations and imposed a total civil penalty of $854,087. These violations were uncovered during what NMED calls a "wall to wall" inspection of the lab in 2001.
On January 16, NMED fined the Los Alamos lab $282,033 to resolve 32 violations, 12 of which the lab admitted, found during an unannounced inspection carried out in 1998.
"This is not the sort of record the DOE should be proud of," said NMED Secretary Ron Curry. "This string of violations year after year puts the lab in some very bad company, rubbing elbows with some of the state's worst offenders of environmental law."
The 21 violations listed in the compliance order issued February 13 include:
- failure to sample and analyze hazardous wastes
- failure to make a hazardous waste determination on five abandoned drums of waste
- failure to comply with the 90 day storage requirement for certain hazardous wastes
- failure to maintain operational decontamination equipment for workers in hazardous waste storage areas
- failure to include evacuation routes for workers in emergency plans for hazardous waste storage areas
Violations found earlier were similar.
"An abysmal record like this shows why independent environmental oversight of DOE operations at Los Alamos National Laboratory is so important," said Curry. "It is these sorts of bad environmental practices in the past that have made a comprehensive clean up order necessary."
The state Hazardous Waste Act authorizes the assessment of civil penalties of up to $10,000 per day for each violation. All penalties paid will go the State of New Mexico Hazardous Waste Emergency Fund where they will be available for emergency environmental cleanups.
Within 45 days of receiving the compliance order, the lab must provide proof to the state that the violations have been corrected. If this deadline is missed, NMED may assess additional civil penalties of up to $25,000 for each day of continued noncompliance.
Los Alamos has 30 days to request a hearing or a settlement conference on the terms of the order.
The fight between the lab and the state extends to the quality of water surrounding the lab site. In January 2003, NMED said water samples collected by its inspectors contained the highest levels of radioactive plutonium-239 in storm water runoff ever measured leaving lab property since the 2000 Cerro Grande fire that burned close to structures housing nuclear materials.
Los Alamos is using the state courts to block the establishment of state water quality standards for toxic pollutants. Last November, NMED received notification that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had approved the state's human health based surface water quality standards. But Los Alamos is attempting to fight these standards in state court.
The EPA's approval covers human health based standards for more than 100 toxic pollutants. This includes 15 persistent toxic pollutants such as PCBs, dioxins, DDT and certain metals. By establishing human health based surface water standards for these pollutants Curry says the Environment Department will be able to better protect fisheries all over the state of New Mexico.
The lab's court action, The Regents of the University of California v. New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission, is now pending before the New Mexico Court of Appeals.
"By trying to restrict the state from using water standards based upon potential human health impacts, LANL is again showing its lack of environmental leadership," said Curry in November. "Protecting people's health and limiting their exposure to toxic substances is at the core of what NMED does and these standards help us do that job effectively." The EPA's approval of state water standards does not end the court battle, said Curry, but it does establish the federal government's position that these standards are in agreement with the federal Clean Water Act.
The state-lab conflict appears to stem from an NMED order issued on May 2, 2002 requiring a comprehensive investigation and cleanup of contaminated sites at the lab. The draft order addresses "all significant environmental cleanup issues at LANL, including hundreds of contaminated sites, landfills, and surface and ground water." It marked the first time the state had set strict schedules and priorities for environmental cleanup work at Los Alamos.
The state order said that contamination from the nuclear legacy at Los Alamos represents an "imminent and substantial endangerment," to the people of New Mexico.
"Today signals the end of the way we have typically regulated New Mexico's federal facilities," said then NMED Secretary Peter Maggiore. "We have found that New Mexico's federal facilities have fallen far behind those in other states when it comes to environmental funding. The draft order we issued today requires LANL to accelerate its cleanup activities and direct more funding to environmental efforts than we've seen in the past."
But Los Alamos officials resisted this exercise of state authority over lab operations. The laboratory's response "strongly reaffirms its overall institutional commitment to environmental stewardship," but challenges the draft order's statement that legacy contamination is an "imminent and substantial endangerment," and objects to NMED's "attempt to regulate radionuclides and other substances that are regulated by other agencies."
"NMED, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency recently signed a letter of intent that would complete cleanup of legacy contamination and waste 15 years ahead of schedule," said Jim Holt, associate director for operations back in May 2002.
"That letter and the related Performance Management Plan gets us back on track to what we feel is most important," said Holt, "environmental restoration and continued environmental monitoring that will result in the greatest reduction of potential risk."
--------
Panel: Plutonium Transfer Taking Too Long
February 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Plutonium-Stabilizing.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- The transfer of plutonium to more stable containers at Los Alamos National Laboratory is taking too long, a federal oversight board said.
The lab has processed about 7,000 of the highest priority plutonium packages since 1995, said Steve Yarbro, leader of the lab's nuclear materials technology division.
But about 4,300 packages need to be stabilized, repackaged or disposed of, according to a Jan. 30 report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Board -- the independent oversight group created by Congress.
Workers found the plutonium stored in temporary packages in the early 90s. Thousands of pounds of plutonium had been left in containers at the lab and other Department of Energy facilities at the end of the Cold War.
Work to stabilize the packages at Los Alamos began in 1994.
The plutonium does not pose a public risk but could be a danger to workers, DOE officials said.
-------- new york
Nuke waste firm & foes to face NRC
By MELISSA GRACE
NY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
February 20, 2004
http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/166131p-145405c.html
Williamsburg activist Deborah Masters speaks in front of Radiac, a facility for storing low-level nuclear waste. Foes say site could be target for terrorists. Activist Linda Nagaoka totes her 9-week-old infant Nikko near Williamsburg Radiac facility. Local activists and officials from a nuclear waste site in Williamsburg are set to face off before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today.
In a bid to shut a facility that they see as a potential terrorist target, community activists say Radiac Research Corp. - a block from Public School 84 - is a looming threat since Sept. 11, 2001, and inappropriate in a residential neighborhood.
"In a post-9/11 climate, this kind of facility should not exist within city limits," said Deborah Masters of Williamsburg's environmental group, Neighbors Against Garbage.
"The potential for an incident or an accident that could create a dirty bomb is not worth the risk," she said.
The group petitioned the NRC in the fall to close Radiac on national security grounds.
The group contends the facility houses toxic radioactive waste and stores it next to highly flammable chemicals - and that a conflagration in the poorly secured facility could be as lethal as a dirty bomb.
The federal agency granted the neighbors group petition a public hearing, and several activists and experts - including scientists from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Natural Resources Defense Council - will testify against the facility, a lawyer for the group said.
Radiac's operations manager, John Tekin - who will testify in defense of Radiac along with their expert witnesses - denied the allegations the facility is unsafe.
"NAG has made environmental claims that are untrue and inaccurate," Tekin said.
The manager said Radiac stores only low-level nuclear waste and not refuse from nuclear power plants such as enriched uranium or plutonium.
Tekin said 70% of the materials in the facility are innocuous items, such as bed linens, gloves and diapers used to treat cancer patients in New York hospitals.
"You'll find more radioactive tritium in four exit signs in any New York City building than you'll find at Radiac," he said.
Responding to activists' assertions that Radiac has little if any security, he said, "Does that mean we should have armed guards in our restaurants, libraries and hospitals?"
Radiac is licensed to store radioactive waste by the state Department of Labor. If the NRC determines the facility is dangerous, it can revoke the permit.
Department of Labor officials, which recently renewed Radiac's permit, declined comment on whether the facility is appropriate for a residential neighborhood.
"Radiac has met all the requirements," said spokesman Robert Lillpop.
Even so, at a press conference yesterday outside Radiac, elected officials and community leaders called on the NRC to shut it down.
"In this era of Orange Alerts and Yellow Alerts, it's sheer craziness to put a radioactive waste facility in the most populated county on the Eastern seaboard," said City Councilman David Yassky.
-------- south carolina
MOX plant will open as scheduled
Friday, February 20, 2004
By Jim Nesbitt
Augusta Chronicle - South Carolina Bureau
http://www.augustachronicle.com/stories/022004/met_351438.shtml
AIKEN - A $1.6 billion nuclear fuel conversion plant to be built at the Savannah River Site will open on schedule despite an ongoing liability dispute between the United States and Russia, the U.S. secretary of energy said in a report to Congress.
In a mandated annual report released Thursday on the mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, project, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the plant will start converting plutonium from deactivated nuclear weapons to be burned in commercial nuclear reactors by January 2009.
"While the start of construction will be delayed due to our ongoing disagreement with Russia regarding liability, we are confident we will be able to meet overall program objectives - the elimination of enough weapon-grade plutonium for thousands of nuclear weapons," Mr. Abraham wrote in a letter to U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Conversion plants are slated for construction in both countries as part of a plan to reduce plutonium from nuclear stockpiles in the United States and Russia.
But Russian Federation officials want the U.S. to pick up the liability tab for work done in Russia, delaying construction of MOX facilities in both countries, Mr. Abraham said.
"The liability problem remains unsolved," the secretary wrote in his letter.
"However, we are determined to resolve this issue in time to prevent slippages that will prevent us from meeting our 2009 commitments."
In 2002, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., authored legislation with Sen. Strom Thurmond that sets strict timelines for the project, including fines of as much as $100 million a year for delays and a legal requirement to remove plutonium from South Carolina should the mixed oxide fuel project fail.
"I'm very pleased with the secretary's certification," Mr. Graham said in a prepared statement.
"This is an important program, taking the weapons of the Cold War and turning them into fuel to make electricity," he said.
Reach Jim Nesbitt at (803) 648-1395 or jim.nesbitt@augustachronicle.com.
-------- washington
Hanford workers complete stabilization of remaining plutonium
By SHANNON DININNY
02/20/2004
Associated Press
http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D80R8RBG1.html
State and federal officials and workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation on Friday celebrated the completion of a project to stabilize and package 4.4 tons of plutonium from the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal.
The project was one of three critical cleanup problems at Hanford, along with underground tanks containing highly radioactive waste and corroding spent fuel rods from the nuclear reactors.
"What we mark today is a real turning point in Hanford's history and the cleanup operation," said Keith Klein, manager of the Energy Department's Richland office. "As a result, our workers are safer, our environment is safer, and we have done our part in making this nation safer too."
Officials from the federal Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency, state Department of Ecology, state of Oregon, and Indian tribes joined hundreds of workers at the Plutonium Finishing Plant for the celebration.
Beginning in 1949, the Plutonium Finishing Plant was the last step in converting plutonium nitrate solutions into pure plutonium "buttons" about the size of hockey pucks, which were sent to other Energy Department sites to make atomic bombs. The work stopped in 1989 at the end of the Cold War, but more than 18 tons of materials containing plutonium in some form remained.
The final project to stabilize and package the remaining plutonium involved several tons of solid plutonium materials, including small plutonium-injected cubes used in lab tests and plutonium-laced powders.
Some of the waste from the site - close to 2,000 55-gallon drums - will be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
The remaining material that has higher concentrations of plutonium is being stored in nearly 2,250 50-pound containers until it can be turned into glass for long term storage. Federal officials have not yet announced where the vitrification process will take place, but eventually the material is slated to end up at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., also called completion of the project "a milestone," and said workers would continue to receive the funding necessary to complete cleanup at Hanford.
The 2004 budget for the Plutonium Finishing Plant, which is made up of 61 buildings, is about $160 million, which includes between $25 million and $30 million for stringent security measures needed at the site.
The plant employs about 650 people.
"Very few people appreciate the complexities of these materials and just how nasty they are and can be," Klein told the workers. "It really is a remarkable thing. Because so much of this is done in such secrecy and with such security, few people will recognize what you have done."
Current plans call for the plant to be demolished by 2009, several years ahead of the 2016 deadline in the Tri-Party Agreement, the 1989 cleanup pact signed by the state, the Energy Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
For 40 years, the 586-square-mile reservation in south-central Washington made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons, beginning with the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb.
Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.
----
Health complaints at nuclear cleanup site investigated
Friday, February 20, 2004
(CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/02/20/hanford.workers.ap/
SPOKANE, Washington (AP) -- The state attorney general is investigating complaints by workers that an accelerated cleanup at the Hanford nuclear reservation is endangering their health. Attorney General Christine Gregoire launched the probe after a letter she sent to the U.S. Department of Energy last year was not answered, Gregoire's spokesman Gary Larson said Friday.
"The issues are serious enough that they need to be addressed by somebody," Larson said.
The Department of Energy, which owns the sprawling Hanford site, did not receive the letter until recently for reasons that are unclear, spokesman Joe Davis said. They are in the process of answering it, he said.
The department rejects the notion that worker safety is being compromised.
"We will not put any worker at risk for the sake of accelerating cleanup," Davis said from Washington, D.C. "Worker safety comes first, and we take all reporting by workers of a safety issue very seriously."
Last September, a watchdog group issued a report that alleged scores of Hanford workers have been exposed to toxic vapors in the past two years as the government pushes for faster and cheaper waste cleanup.
The Seattle-based Government Accountability Project said documents and interviews show that toxic vapors escaping through pipes in the underground tanks have hurt 67 workers in 45 exposure events between January 2002 and August 2003. That compared to 16 vapor releases requiring medical attention between 1987 and 1992, the group said.
Gregoire's letter, sent after the health allegations surfaced last fall, asked for an investigation into the complaints and for the Energy Department to ensure that worker's compensation claims from Hanford employees are handled fairly.
Hanford, created as part of the Manhattan Project, made plutonium for nuclear weapons for four decades. The site is storing more than half the nation's high-level radioactive waste.
The cleanup, which costs about $2 billion a year, involves some 11,000 workers at the site near Richland, about 200 miles southeast of Seattle.
Gregoire wants to work with other state agencies to determine if the allegations are true. There is no deadline for completing the review, Gregoire's spokesman said.
----
Lack of Safety Is Charged in Nuclear Site Cleanup
By SARAH KERSHAW and MATTHEW L. WALD
New York Times
Friday, February 20, 2004
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040220/ZNYT02/402200448
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/national/20HANF.html?pagewanted=all&position=
RICHLAND, Wash. - For almost half a century, the hulking factories across a vast nuclear reservation here churned out the plutonium for most of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, including the bomb used on Nagasaki.
But in the last several years, with the cold war long over, the shuttered silence of the nine nuclear reactors on this 586-square-mile site has been followed by one of the world's largest cleanups, costing $2 billion a year.
An army of workers numbering more than 11,000 faces the staggering cleanup task at the Hanford complex in the high desert of southeastern Washington, a project made more daunting with an accelerated timetable that slashed cleanup projections to 35 years from 70. The quicker pace has led to charges among some doctors, experts and lawmakers that speed has taken priority over worker health and safety. And some warn that, in its dormancy, the vast wasteland may pose even more danger to the cleanup workers than it did to those who built the nation's arsenal here when the complex was in full operation.
"Cleanup is a dangerous job," said Dr. Tim K. Takaro, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Washington who treats workers monthly at Hanford. Those at risk, he said, are the large numbers of workers who "enter the dark corners of these buildings that have not been touched for years."
The State of Washington has just begun a new investigation into accusations by an advocacy group that the federal Department of Energy and its on-site contractors are ignoring some of the risks associated with the cleanup. The state attorney general, Christine O. Gregoire, started the review after trying, her office said, without success, to get Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to look into the charges.
Federal energy officials and the Hanford cleanup contractors say they have made every effort to protect the workers, asserting that the new timetable did not result in hazardous conditions. A spokesman for the Energy Department said the number of cases involving loss of work because of injury has declined every year since 1998. And Jessie H. Roberson, the assistant secretary of energy for environmental management, said the department was approaching the cleanup with more caution than before. "You can't even compare it to 10 years ago."
But, she added, "I don't know if there is more or less risk."
At the post-nuclear Hanford, the cleanup is tangled in legal battles over workers' health, dangers to the environment and disputes among government agencies about oversight of safety. Hanford's biggest nuclear reactor closed in 1986, and the giant chemical processing complex that handled some of the world's most hazardous materials was mostly shut by 1988. But court battles continue between the federal government, states and environmental groups over how the nuclear waste will be handled and where it will be stored. Along with the reactors, Hanford's 177 underground tanks hold 53 million gallons of radioactive waste, and there are 270 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater near the banks of the Columbia River.
For the thousands of workers assigned to the cleanup, the specter of debilitating illness has resurfaced as the cleanup moves forward. Because some former plant workers have become cleanup workers, it is difficult to determine when they were exposed to the toxic substances. Still, experts say some of the cleanup workers are exhibiting illnesses like asbestos-related problems that are different from the obvious radiation illness.
Dr. Takaro says he has found that the project brings workers into closer contact with hazardous materials used to make bombs, like beryllium, a metal with various uses that can cause incurable lung disease if particles are inhaled.
The allegations under review by the state attorney general's office stem from a report by the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that represents some Hanford workers in legal actions. The report said that from 2002 through the middle of last year, there were 45 incidents in which 67 workers required medical attention because they were exposed to toxic vapors from the underground tanks.
"Hanford is in the process of creating a new generation of sick and injured workers," the report said.
Tom Peterson, 51, an ironworker rigger who has worked at Hanford for 25 years, is one of 21 workers with chronic beryllium disease, an illness unknown at the height of the cold war. Dr. Takaro said 84 more have been "sensitized," to beryllium, which means they are at high risk of contracting the full-blown disease.
"I went to work out there figuring I was going to support my family," Mr. Peterson said. "I didn't expect to go out there and be poisoned and nobody fess up to anything. If they would have told me ahead of time what I was getting into, maybe I wouldn't have taken the job."
Electricians, a group not generally thought at high risk, are among those showing symptoms of exposure to asbestos and other hazards, as well as health physics technicians, who help monitor workers' radiation exposure.
Last June, 12 workers inhaled radioactive gas and two also tested positive for skin contamination when they were working on the "tank farms," according to a report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an oversight panel established by Congress.
The report said that a health physics technician had "unsuccessfully tried to stop the work." The job, on a moveable pipe used to pump waste between tanks, had been downgraded by contractors from a "high radiological risk work," to a medium one, the report said.
Joel A. Eacker, a vice president at CH2M Hill, the contractor on the tank project, said those workers were exposed to a minimal amount of radiation. He called the June incident "unfortunate," and said procedures were changed.
Some newly sickened workers have been exposed to metal tools made of beryllium alloys. These are favored at the tank farms because there is a danger of hydrogen in the air, and the beryllium tools do not create sparks, experts say.
Some of these workers argued that on-site doctors under contract were reluctant to diagnose illnesses that could be related to their work. A diagnosis of beryllium sensitivity, for example, would be important because workers who have it, or whose blood tests show they have been sensitized, are supposed to be transferred to prevent further exposure. In addition, their chances for compensation depend on the disease being work-related.
Mr. Peterson and two other workers with chronic beryllium disease said in interviews that outside doctors issued their diagnoses, years after Hanford site doctors said other lung problems caused their symptoms. Those included primarily fatigue and shortness of breath, and abnormal lung X-rays.
The three men refer to themselves as the "Hanford Hemorrhoids," because they have organized with other workers and loudly criticized the Energy Department and its medical contractor, the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation.
The foundation has held the contract for treating workers at Hanford for 38 years, but in January lost a competition for renewal; its contract expires in March.
Craig Hall, 51, an electrician at Hanford for 23 years, says he was the first to receive the chronic beryllium disease diagnosis. Foundation doctors, he said, told him in 1991 that X-rays showed possibly lung cancer, tuberculosis or sarcoidosis, a fibrotic lung disease. "If you have an injury or something, I honestly believe they do everything in the world they can to do you under," Mr. Hall said.
The sick workers have various ailments: persistent cough, night sweats, extreme fatigue, and Mr. Hall, who learned he had the disease in 1996, said he had gout and had been hospitalized because of blockage of his salivary glands caused by the beryllium in his system.
In an e-mail message, Lee T. Ashjian, the president and chief executive of the Hanford health foundation, defended the nonprofit medical group's approach.
Beryllium screening and case management, Mr. Ashjian said, were "managed according to the highest standard of care." Workers can volunteer for blood tests, he said, and those who test positive are "assured timely referral for diagnosis and treatment."
Geoff T. Tyree, a spokesman for Fluor Hanford, one of the major contractors at the site, said that the Energy Department instituted a beryllium disease prevention program in the late 1990's. All contractors must identify places where beryllium may be present and notify employees.
Mr. Tyree acknowledged, however, that contractors were still identifying buildings where workers could come into contact with the metal.
"We believe the program is protective of employees," he said. "Certainly there is room for improvement. It's a developing program and a developing health issue."
Some members of Congress have been urging the department to exert more authority over the site contractors. And the oversight panel set up by Congress does not want to see safety rules relaxed. It has taken issue with a plan by the Energy Department that would allow Hanford contractors and other sites to draw up their own plans for meeting safety rules.
John Conway, chairman of the oversight panel, said the panel objected to the agency's plan because it would mean that many rules and requirements would be softened, or considered merely guidance, without enforcement teeth.
Ms. Roberson, of the Energy Department, disagreed, saying the agency would still control safety standards. But Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan and the ranking minority member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, complained in a recent letter to Secretary Abraham that "there has been very little evidence that D.O.E. contractors have made the interest of their workers a foremost concern."
Mr. Dingell added, "In the past, weapons production took priority over health and safety; currently, accelerated cleanup schedules and reduced cleanup budgets are taking priority."
The contractors are on notice that they must ensure safe working conditions, said Joseph Davis a spokesman for the Energy Department. "We will not put at any risk any of our workers for the benefit of a faster cleanup," Mr. Davis said. "We can terminate them any time if we think they're doing something really stupid."
----
Wash. Attorney to Probe Nuke Site Cleanup
February 20, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hanford-Workers.html
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- The state attorney general is investigating complaints by workers that an accelerated cleanup at the Hanford nuclear reservation is endangering their health.
Attorney General Christine Gregoire launched the probe after a letter she sent to the U.S. Department of Energy last year was not answered, Gregoire's spokesman Gary Larson said Friday.
``The issues are serious enough that they need to be addressed by somebody,'' Larson said.
The Department of Energy, which owns the sprawling Hanford site, did not receive the letter until recently for reasons that are unclear, spokesman Joe Davis said. They are in the process of answering the letter, he said.
The department rejects the notion that worker safety is being compromised.
``We will not put any worker at risk for the sake of accelerating cleanup,'' Davis said from Washington, D.C. ``Worker safety comes first, and we take all reporting by workers of a safety issue very seriously.''
At the Energy Department's request, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health has agreed to come in March and investigate worker concerns and provide an independent review of site procedures, Erik Olds of the Energy Department's Office of River Protection said Friday.
Last September, a watchdog group issued a report that alleged scores of Hanford workers have been exposed to toxic vapors in the past two years as the government pushes for faster and cheaper waste cleanup.
The Seattle-based Government Accountability Project said documents and interviews show that toxic vapors escaping through pipes in the underground tanks have hurt 67 workers in 45 exposure events between January 2002 and August 2003. That compared to 16 vapor releases requiring medical attention between 1987 and 1992, the group said.
Gregoire's letter, sent after the health allegations surfaced last fall, asked for an investigation into the complaints and for the Energy Department to ensure that worker's compensation claims from Hanford employees are handled fairly.
Hanford, created as part of the Manhattan Project, made plutonium for nuclear weapons for four decades. The site is storing more than half the nation's high-level radioactive waste.
The cleanup, which costs about $2 billion a year, involves some 11,000 workers at the site near Richland, about 200 miles southeast of Seattle.
Gregoire wants to work with other state agencies to determine if the allegations are true. There is no deadline for completing the review, Gregoire's spokesman said.
-------- us politics
Kucinich Will Ban Nuclear Testing and Prevent Resumption of a Nuclear Arms Race
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 20, 2004
Contact: Terre Lundy/Matt Harris: 216.889.2004, press@kucinich.us
http://www.kucinich.us/pressreleases/pr_022004c.php
Salt Lake City -- Democratic Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis J. Kucinich will bring his campaign to Utah. At a press conference scheduled for 10:20 AM outside the security checkpoint at terminal 2 of the Salt Lake City International Airport on Sunday, February 22. Kucinich will discuss his vehement opposition to what appears to be the federal government's intention to develop new nuclear weapons and resume full-scale testing. "The cold war is over," says Kucinich. "We must not ever let it resume."
Yet another cold war is where we could be heading. Announcing his country's testing of new strategic missiles capable of defeating any conceivable American missile defense system, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that because of America's development of similar weapons, Russia had little choice but to "modernize our armed forces in the interest of ensuring the security of our own country." Says Kucinich: "Clearly this is indicative of nuclear proliferation. We have to end America's aggressive maneuvering and put a stop to this madness."
Responding to statements made by the National Nuclear Security Administration that scientists are preparing to conduct a nuclear materials experiment in a fashion similar to full-scale tests that were put on indefinite hold in 1993, Gandhi Peace Award recipient Kucinich made clear that under his administration such tests would be permanently banned.
Kucinich strongly supports the pending Congressional legislation drafted by Utah Congressman Jim Matheson -- "Safety for Americans from Nuclear Weapons Testing Act" -- that would protect the health and safety of Americans in the event that nuclear weapons testing resumes at the Nevada Test Site. Kucinich also applauds the bill that Utah House lawmakers passed on Friday that would require elected leaders to say "yes" before more radioactive waste hotter than "Class A" -- the least radioactive waste -- can be disposed of in Utah.
While the Bush administration is busy allocating funds to develop new nuclear weapons and prepare sites for testing, Kucinich is committed to complete nuclear disarmament and the renewal of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; to work with Russia to reinstate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; to encourage other nations to participate in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; and to begin new talks with Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Israel, and Pakistan to develop a plan aimed at the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.
The tragic federal lies told to the people of Utah to cover up their exposure to dangerous radiation is well documented. Says Kucinich: "America needs to lead the world by imposing a complete ban on nuclear weapons testing."
For more campaign information: http://www.kucinich.us
For Congressman Kucinich's Schedule: http://www.kucinich.us/schedule.htm.
To schedule an interview: jonathans@kucinich.us
National contacts: Jonathan Schwartz, (301) 928-7579 (cell), jonathans@kucinich.us National Deputy Press Secretary: Nate Wilkes, 602-405-8625, nate@kucinich.us
----
An Opportunity for Debate on Nuclear Weapons
By DAVID KRIEGER,
February 20 / 22, 2004
CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/krieger02202004.html
In the post 9/11 world there has been strong concern about nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists or "rogue" states. The pretext for the initiation of the US war against Iraq was the concern that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, including a suspected program to develop nuclear weapons, posed an "imminent threat" to the United States. While it turned out that Iraq had neither such weapons nor programs, the United States continues to maintain a large nuclear arsenal as a matter of long-standing national policy. Whether US nuclear weapons policies serve to promote prospects for world peace and national security, or conversely to undermine them, is a question that begs for serious public debate.
US nuclear weapons policy should be a subject of concern to every American. Yet there exists some kind of taboo that prevents the subject from being debated in public forums, in the media, or in Congress. The US presidential elections provide an important opportunity for national discussion and debate on this issue. With the US nuclear arsenal of some 10,000 nuclear weapons, along with policies to research more usable nuclear weapons while ignoring international obligations for nuclear disarmament, there are critical issues that require public attention and informed debate.
Throughout the Cold War, the US and USSR built up their nuclear forces so that each threatened massive retaliation in a standoff of mutually assured destruction. This was a high-risk strategy. In the event of an accident, miscalculation or miscommunication, the world could have been engulfed in an omnicidal conflagration. While today the US and Russia are on friendly terms, each continues to base its nuclear policy, in major part, on the potential threat posed by the other.
Despite the enormous changes in the world in the aftermath of the Cold War, there has not been a serious public debate in the United States about nuclear weapons policy that takes into account changes in the global security environment. To the extent that there has been consideration of nuclear weapons policy, it has been almost entirely about preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other states and to non-state actors, with virtually no consideration of how US nuclear policy affects US and global security.
Current US Nuclear Weapons Policy
The debate about the role of US nuclear weapons has been almost non-existent, and yet US nuclear policy affects the security of every person on the planet, including, of course, every American. Current US nuclear weapons policy, under the Bush administration, sends a message to other states that the US intends to rely upon nuclear weapons for the indefinite future.
The major outlines of current US nuclear weapons policy are as follows:
. The US continues to rely upon its nuclear arsenal to threaten retaliation against a nuclear attack, and has extended this threat of nuclear retaliation to chemical and biological weapons attacks or threats on the US, as well as its troops or allies, wherever they are located in the world.
. Despite previous promises not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states, the US has developed contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against five non-nuclear weapon states: Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya. (It is possible, but still not certain, that North Korea has now developed a small nuclear arsenal.)
. The US has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, in order to develop missile defenses, making way for the development of space weapons, despite promising to preserve and strengthen this treaty.
. The US has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, despite making commitments to do so. While it still adheres to the nuclear testing moratorium, except for sub-critical tests and computer simulations, it has allocated funds to reduce the time needed to ready the Nevada Test Site to resume testing.
. The US has entered into the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) with the Russians to reduce the deployed long-range nuclear weapons on each side to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the year 2012, but has failed to make these reductions irreversible in accord with the consensus agreement at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. Additionally, the treaty terminates in 2012 unless extended. Despite this agreement, each side continues to keep some 2,250 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, poised to attack the other at a moment's notice.
. The US has ended a decade-long Congressional ban on research and development of nuclear weapons under 5 kilotons (mini-nukes), and allocated funds to perform research on the development of such weapons, increasing the likelihood of use of nuclear weapons and blurring the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons.
. The US has allocated funds for researching more powerful Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator weapons, another way of making nuclear weapons more usable and therefore more likely to be used.
. The US has allocated funds to create a facility to produce some 450 plutonium pits annually that could only be used for new nuclear weapons. This suggests to other nations that the US is planning to further develop new nuclear weapons and to possess and rely upon nuclear weapons for the indefinite future.
. The US has not adhered to the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to in the year 2000 by the states that are parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including the five declared nuclear weapon states.
. The US has not challenged the reliance on nuclear weapons by our allies, including Israel, UK and France, and has made no attempt to provide leadership for broad-based nuclear disarmament.
In sum, the current US approach to nuclear weapons is to rely upon them for extended deterrence, to research more usable weapons, to indicate that its reliance on these weapons is long-term, to violate treaty agreements, to unilaterally reverse previous commitments, and to fail to provide leadership toward significant and irreversible reductions in nuclear arms. In a post Cold War environment, with the United States wielding overwhelming military superiority, there is concern in many parts of the world that the United States could succumb to what has been referred to by Richard Falk, a leading international law professor, as the "Hiroshima Temptation," to use nuclear weapons against a far weaker enemy without fear of meaningful response.
US nuclear weapons policy under the Bush administration appears to be rooted in a "do as I say, not as I do" approach. This raises two important questions: Does this policy make the US more secure? Is this a policy that the American people would support if they understood it? I believe the answer to both these questions is No.
A third question arises. Is it possible that members of the public could raise the issue of US nuclear weapons policy and stimulate a real debate on the current course of the country in this year's presidential elections? It is of utmost importance that the American people recognize the importance of these issues and raise them with the presidential and congressional candidates, forcing these issues into the public arena.
Considerations to Guide US Nuclear Weapons Policy
In the post-Cold War and post-9/11 world there are important considerations that should guide US policy on nuclear arms. These include:
. Nuclear weapons cannot be used against another country with nuclear weapons without facing retaliation unless a country can deliver a devastating first-strike (preventive) attack that would be calculated likely wrongly to destroy nearly all of the other side's retaliatory force (the remainder would be calculated likely wrongly to be stopped with missile defenses or to be "acceptable losses"). Such a first-strike attack would potentially kill tens of millions of innocent people, be highly immoral and unlikely to be successful.
. The use of nuclear weapons in a first-strike (preventive) attack against a country without nuclear weapons would be both immoral and illegal under international law.
. The only possible justification for nuclear weapons is their role as a deterrent. But, so long as nuclear weapons threaten other nuclear weapon states, the threatening nation will in turn be threatened, even if it possesses so-called missile defenses.
. The greater the number of nuclear weapons that exist in the world, the more likely that one or more of these weapons will fall into the hands of non-state extremists that could not be deterred from their use.
. Russia can no longer be considered an adversary of the United States, and this creates an ideal opportunity to negotiate with them far greater reductions in nuclear arms and to make these reductions irreversible.
. China can no longer be considered an adversary of the United States (in fact, it is a major trading partner), and US nuclear weapons policy should not provoke China to further develop its current minimal deterrent force. However, US development and deployment of missile defenses is causing China to increase its deterrence capability.
. By branding nations as part of an "Axis of Evil" and by demonstrating willingness to engage in preventive warfare against Iraq, the US provides incentives to other countries, such as North Korea, to develop nuclear deterrent forces.
. The greatest threat to US security arises from the possibility of extremists getting their hands on nuclear weapons and using them against a US city. The best way to prevent this possibility is to reduce nuclear weapons globally to a low number and assure that the remaining weapons are kept under strict control, preferably international control. It would also be necessary to establish a global inventory of weapons-grade fissile materials and the facilities capable of producing these materials and to place these under strict international control. The only way for this to happen is for the US to take leadership in promoting this course of action. The US would also have to provide additional funds to help assure the dismantlement and control of the aging Russian nuclear arsenal.
. India and Pakistan, relatively recent additions to the nuclear weapons club, have indicated that they are willing to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, but not unless all other countries will do so as well. They are not willing to live in a world of nuclear apartheid, further demonstrating that the effort to achieve nuclear disarmament requires US leadership.
. The widely recognized possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is provocative to other countries in the Middle East. Only the United States, due to the large amount of military aid it provides to Israel, can pressure Israel to forego its nuclear weapons and move forward with peace negotiations to resolve the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.
. North Korea has indicated that it is willing to dismantle its nuclear arsenal and rejoin the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty if it is given security assurances by the US and economic aid. This seems like a solid basis on which to establish an agreement that would benefit both North Korea and the international community.
Given these considerations and the extent to which current US policy does not reflect them, there needs to be broad public discussion of these issues. This should include, and perhaps be led by, a debate among presidential candidates on the direction of US nuclear policy. The American people should demand that the candidates for the presidency of the United States address these most important security issues facing our country that will affect the future of all Americans.
A Responsible US Nuclear Weapons Policy
A responsible US nuclear policy should include the following:
1. Removing all US nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert, in conjunction with similar initiatives from Russia.
2. Ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and supporting a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty that would place all weapons-grade nuclear materials in all countries under strict and effective international control.
3. Reinstituting US Negative Security Assurances not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states.
4. Pledging No First Use of nuclear weapons and making this legally binding.
5. Making all reductions in nuclear armaments irreversible through treaty agreements and verified inspection procedures.
6. Putting the development of missile defenses and space weaponization on hold while negotiating for the elimination of nuclear weapons under strict and effective international control.
7. Fulfilling US obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for "a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date" by ceasing to perform research on developing new nuclear weapons.
8. Fulfilling further US obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty "to pursue negotiations in good faith on ... nuclear disarmament" by adhering to the agreed upon 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament, including "an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals." The US should convene a meeting of all nuclear weapon states, declared and undeclared, to agree upon a treaty for the phased elimination of nuclear weapons.
Without such changes in US nuclear policy, it is likely that nuclear weapons will again be used by accident or design, including finding their way into the hands of extremists who will not hesitate to use them as a statement of rage against the US or other countries. Additionally, serious US efforts to achieve both regional and global prohibitions on weapons of mass destruction, nuclear and otherwise, will aid the country in resuming the leadership role that it has lost in recent years due to policies of unilateralism, exceptionalism and belligerence, policies reflective of double standards in both law and morality.
Each of us has a role to play in bringing these policy issues into the US presidential and congressional debates. Candidates should be asked to speak to his or her plan to reduce the security dangers that nuclear weapons continue to pose to the US and all humanity, indeed to all life on earth.
David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He can be contacted at dkrieger@napf.org.
----
Chutzpah! Richard Perle's got plenty of it
by Justin Raimondo
February 20, 2004
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=1996
"Utter nerve" - that's how the dictionary defines chutzpah, and that just about sums up, in a single, wonderfully descriptive Yiddish word, Richard Perle's recent suggestion that "heads should roll" in the U.S. intelligence community. We didn't find the "weapons of mass destruction" Perle and his neocon buddies insisted were there in the run-up to the Iraq war, and whose fault is that? CIA Director George Tenet's, says the neoconservative guru and former chairman of the Defense Policy Board:
"George Tenet has been at the CIA long enough to assume responsibility for its performance. There's a record of failure and it should be addressed in some serious way."
Perle, you remember, is the one who assured us that Iraq was crawling with WMD:
"We will find Saddam's well-hidden chemical and biological weapons programs, but only when people who know come forward and tell us where to look. While Saddam was in power, even a hint about his concealment and deception was a death sentence, often by unimaginable torture against whole families. Saddam had four years to hide things. We have had a few weeks to find them. Patience - and some help from free Iraqis - will be rewarded."
But Perle needn't take responsibility: only Tenet, whose Agency debunked cherry-picked "intelligence" that made the case for war, is so burdened.
It was Tenet who fought an unsuccessful battle to keep claims of an Iraqi nuclear program not far from success out of the President's 2003 State of the Union. It was Tenet whose Agency was sidelined by the Office of Special Plans (OSP), a division of the Defense Department set up especially to propagandize for war and "stovepipe" cherry-picked (and unverified) intelligence directly to the White House via the office of the Vice President. When Perle and his cohorts were concocting tall tales of Al Qaeda's "links" to the Iraqi government, and Saddam's mythical quest for Niger "yellowcake," CIA analysts were outspokenly (if anonymously) debunking these fanciful effusions. Even as the CIA was denying it, Perle was busy spreading the fable about an alleged meeting of Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague that turned out never to have happened. While Perle was confidently concurring with fellow Defense Policy Board member Ken Adelman's prediction that the conquest and occupation of Iraq would be a "cakewalk," a State Department study (shelved by the neocons) accurately foretold the mess we find ourselves in today.
So, tell me again why it is that Tenet has to step down.
Perle is right when he says:
"I think, of course, heads should roll. When you discover that you have an organization that doesn't get it right time after time, you change the organization, including the people."
Heads should roll, alright: starting with Perle's, and don't think he doesn't know it. That's what the chutzpah strategy is all about: brazening it out.
He blithely avers that "the CIA has an almost perfect record of getting it wrong in relation to the (Persian) Gulf going back to the Shah of Iran," but what about Perle's record? The vaunted "cakewalk" has turned into a major stumble that constantly threatens to become a flat-out failure. The WMD he confidently said would be found in Iraq dissipated like a desert mirage - along with the President's credibility. Now he wants the CIA to take responsibility for the lies he told, and he'll settle for nothing less than "a shakeup," i.e. a purge of anyone who opposed the neocon agenda and the forced march to war:
"'I'd start with the head head,' Perle said when asked which heads should roll at the CIA. Perle said the D[efense] I[ntelligence A[gency] 'is in at least as bad shape as CIA (and) needs new management.'"
But if you look at the National Intelligence Estimate [pdf file], a document prepared by the White House with input from all agencies, the section on Iraq, which postulates a whole arsenal of active WMD, is filled with dissenting footnotes authored by the very agencies Perle would purge: not only the CIA and the DIA, but also the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which described the African yellowcake story as "highly dubious." That didn't stop the President from proclaiming the infamous "16 words" to the country and the world as a prime reason for targeting Iraq.
Air Force intelligence appended a disdainful dissent to the claim that Saddam possessed "drones" capable of dropping biological agents on American cities. Bush didn't listen to his own Air Force: instead, he highlighted this ridiculous claim in a major speech.
Dick Cheney's henchmen were feeding both the President and the country a strict diet of pure science fiction and fantasy authored by the Office of Special Plans: in a very short time a whole new genre of speculative fiction was spawned by the neocons.
They always were a literary bunch. Besides being a full-time warmonger, Perle is also a novelist, author of Hard Line, a tale whose title says it all: so is Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice President's chief of staff and a special advisor to George W. Bush, whose name comes up often in reference to the investigation into who "outed" undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. Many have noted the influence of the literary theorist and philosopher Leo Strauss on the neoconservative imagination, while others contend the Straussian theme is overdrawn. However, the appearance of Abram Shulsky, one of Professor Strauss's top students, somewhere near the center of this narrative of deception, confirms the appeal of the philosopher of the "noble lie" within the inner sanctums of US power. Shulsky was the onsite overseer of the OSP operation, as described by retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski in an interview with the LA Weekly:
"Abe was the director of the Office of Special Plans. He was in our shared offices when I joined, in May 2002. He comes from an academic background; he's definitely a neoconservative. He is a student of Leo Strauss from the University of Chicago - so he has that Straussian academic perspective. He was the final proving authority on all the talking points that were generated from the Office of Special Plans and that were distributed throughout the Pentagon, certainly to staff officers. And it appears to me they were also distributed to the Vice President's Office and to the presidential speechwriters. Much of the phraseology that was in our talking points consists of the same things I heard the president say.
LA Weekly: "So Shulsky was the sort of controller, the disciplinarian, the overseeing monitor of the propaganda flow. From where you sat, did you see him manipulate the information?
"We had a whole staff to help him do that, and he was the approving authority. I can give you one example of how the talking points were altered. We were instructed by Bill Luti, on behalf of the Office of Special Plans, on behalf of Abe Shulsky, that we would not write anything about Iraq, WMD or terrorism in any papers that we prepared for our superiors except as instructed by the Office of Special Plans."
The OSP, with Defense Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, and his subordinates William Luti and Shulsky pulling the strings, was the command center for what Kwiatkowski calls a "neoconservative coup, a hijacking of the Pentagon" that preceded the invasion of Iraq. Perle and his neocon confreres, including columnist David Brooks, are intent on legitimizing the coup and making it permanent: having taken Baghdad, they've now turned their sights on Langley.
Affording a rare look into the inner workings of a secretive government agency, Kwiatkowski's anonymous columns written during the propaganda war that preceded the shooting war were posted on the website of Col. David Hackworth, American's most decorated veteran, and became enormously popular. After retiring, she began writing under her own name, and became what she calls "a soldier for truth," getting out the story of how we were lied into war, and pointing the finger at the liars. Her speaking out, along with the investigative work done by such journalists as Seymour Hersh, Jim Lobe, Robert Dreyfuss, Jason Vest, and others, is not unconnected to the announcement by the Senate Intelligence Committee that an investigation into the OSP, and a shadowy outfit known as the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, is underway. As Reuters reports:
"Critics of the Bush administration argue that these two offices, driven by ideology and a predisposition for war, operated outside normal intelligence channels to manipulate and politicise data to portray Saddam Hussein's government in the most threatening light. 'What is deeply troubling is that this was an administration that was hell-bent on using force,' said Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat who says these Pentagon operations 'cherry picked' intelligence to amplify bad news and nullify caveats.
"... Mr Feith and other Pentagon officials defended the two offices and dismissed what they said were 'urban legends' about shadowy intelligence cells."
The ultimate fallback position: the OSP is an "urban legend!" Where have we heard this pungent phrase, or a very similar version, before?
Move along, folks, nothing to see here....
Washington is rife with investigations these days: at least two grand juries are currently deliberating over the backstage machinations of the War Party, and, if Rep. Tauscher has her way, and there's a House version of the OSP inquiry, then we have a four-pronged assault on the neoconservative redoubt in this administration.
The chutzpah strategy is a desperate attempt to deflect this all-sided attack, by launching a preemptive - some would say suicidal - strike against the enemy. While the sheer effrontery of Perle's call for a purge of the US intelligence community is so bold as to be almost admirable, this isn't likely to save him from the consequences of his own hubris. For the umpteenth time, it looks like Perle is caught up in yet another scandal involving the intersection of his finances and his ideology. The Times of London reports:
"Richard Perle, the former US Assistant Defence Secretary and Hollinger International board member, is under investigation for allegedly failing to disclose bonuses worth about $3 million (£1.6 million) which he received for running an investment scheme, The Times has learnt. Mr Perle, a vocal supporter of President Bush, was awarded the money as a reward for investing Hollinger shareholder funds in a series of separate businesses. Mr Perle also held a stake in some of those businesses. While the scheme put Hollinger International shareholders' money at risk, it was never disclosed to them."
The Hollinger scandal that imploded Lord Conrad Black's media empire underscores Perle's role as the greediest of a greedy lot on the Hollinger board of directors. Lord Black's flagship papers - the British Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post, and the Chicago Sun-Times - are always reliable receptacles of the War Party's propaganda, advocates of policies that stand to enrich members of the Hollinger board, such as Perle.
Although he was exonerated on a technicality, Perle was forced to step down as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board because of the appearance of a conflict of interest. In Britain, as well as the US, the interaction of ideology and business on Perle's personal finances has been duly noted. A certain pattern, in relation to Perle's activities, is readily apparent, one that ought to give this administration pause. Mired in scandal, and hardly a team player of the sort that is supposed to be typical of Team Bush, here is someone who openly calls for the resignation of top officials and refuses to take any responsibility for the failure of policies that he championed.
Perle should have been kicked off the Defense Policy Board long ago, but perhaps even more puzzling than his continued association with the US government is why hasn't he suffered the same fate as Martha Stewart. After all, Martha has long since had the charges of "insider trading" against her dropped, in favor of prosecuting her statements as to her innocence. Her crime, in short, is defending herself. Perle's crimes are far more substantial - yet he has so far avoided prosecution, either by the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Justice Department.
Free Martha! Prosecute Perle! No justice - no peace!
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
U.S. Intensifies Anti - Terrorism Strategy in Africa
February 20, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-usa-africa.html
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The commander of U.S. forces in Europe met South African President Thabo Mbeki on Friday for talks on America's new security strategy in Africa to combat terrorism, military officials said.
``Africa is the logical place to be concerned about,'' General James L. Jones told local television after the meeting.
The United States sees Africa as a soft target for terror networks due to weak institutions, poor security and policing and long stretches of unguarded coastline.
U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were bombed in 1998. An Israeli hotel in the Kenyan resort of Mombasa was blown up in 2002 minutes after a failed missile attack on an Israeli plane taking off from the town's airport.
Mbeki told Jones that ``(fighting) terrorism is very much on the African agenda,'' the president's spokesman said.
Jones has been touring Africa both in his capacity as the commander of the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) and the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, for NATO.
Washington hopes to secure ``forward operating locations'' to enable it to react to security threats in Africa without setting up permanent bases, a U.S. military source told Reuters.
Officials have not confirmed reports Washington is looking at sites in Mozambique and Sao Tome & Principe off West Africa.
A U.S. embassy statement in Pretoria said only that Jones's visit and earlier ones to Morocco and Nigeria were significant ``as the U.S. military and NATO are assessing the increasing strategic importance of the African continent.''
INTENSE DIPLOMACY
A EUCOM spokeswoman in Stuttgart, Germany, said Jones and his deputy, General Charles Wald, were spearheading President Bush's plans for America's rapid reaction strategy for dealing with any security threat on the volatile continent.
U.S. military delegations recently visited Gabon as part of the strategic planning, she said.
Jones met West African ambassadors in Stuttgart two weeks ago and Wald is due in Africa again in coming weeks.
``What General Jones has said, what the (U.S.) leadership has said is that our current force structure needs to be transformed to meet the needs of a new security environment,'' the EUCOM spokeswoman said.
``Your threats are terrorism, international criminals -- those are the issues that we want to combat and focus our energies on.
``In a nutshell we need to have a lighter, leaner force that enables us to get quickly to places where there are problems.''
She said no decision had been taken yet on where any ``forward locations'' would be sited.
``It will not be big heavy armored units with thousands and thousands of people. Rather an expeditionary type of look, located in a place where we can go quickly, and small units to get the work done.''
Military officials said Jones visited Nigeria and South Africa as Sub-Saharan Africa's top military powers and economies and due to their experience in peacekeeping on the continent.
-------- arms
Taiwan's Chen Says Ballot Won't Affect Missile Deal
REUTERS TAIWAN:
February 20, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23901/story.htm
TAIPEI - Taiwan will press ahead with plans to buy advanced weaponry from the United States even if a referendum on boosting anti-missile capabilities is rejected next month, President Chen Shui-bian said.
Facing a rapid arms build-up by rival China, Chen told local radio in an interview that the government would not cancel an arms package offered by President Bush three years ago, the largest for the island in a decade.
"Whether or not this referendum is passed will not affect our ongoing research. Likewise, ongoing arms purchase items listed under existing annual and special budget will go ahead," he told UFO Radio.
Chen was referring to a proposed $15 billion special budget to help buy eight diesel-engine submarines, four Kidd-class destroyers -- powerful air-defense vessels -- 12 P-3C Orion submarine-hunting aircraft, and Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile missiles.
Taiwan and China have been military and political foes since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway province and has threatened to attack if the island declares independence or drags its feet on reunification talks.
Tensions have been simmering after President Chen said he would hold the island's first-ever referendum alongside the presidential election on March 20 -- a move Beijing sees as a dangerous step toward independence that could lead to war.
The referendum would ask voters whether Taiwan should buy more anti-missile equipment if China fails to withdraw nearly 500 missiles pointed at the island.
A second question would ask if Taipei should open talks with Beijing to set up a framework for peaceful ties.
Asked by an interviewer whether it would be contradictory for Taiwan to buy the Patriot PAC-3 missiles if the referendum were rejected, Chen said: "It's not contradictory at all."
He said the referendum refers to generally boosting national defense and buying anti-missile systems, not on specifically whether Taiwan should buy anti-missile missiles.
"Buying anti-missile equipment does not equal buying missiles," he said.
The United States, Taiwan's top arms supplier, has criticized the island for not spending enough on boosting its own defense.
"This referendum to some extent will show the will and determination of Taiwan's 23 million people under the threat of missile and force" from China, said Chen.
"It will show we have the determination to boost our self-defense capabilities."
-------- asia
Leftists claim mortar attack on Japan Defense Agency: reports
TOKYO (AFP)
Feb 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040220072022.i7m989bc.html
A Japanese militant leftist group said Friday it fired home-made mortar rounds at the Japan Defense Agency as a protest over the sending of Japanese troops to Iraq, reports said.
The group, calling itself "Kakumeigun (Revolutionary Army)," sent letters to several news organisations claiming responsibility for the attack in central Tokyo earlier this week.
The top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said a letter it received claimed the attack was carried out "in an effort to forcefully stop the deployment of the Self Defense Forces to take part in the counter-revolutionary war in Iraq."
The Asahi Shimbun said it also received the same letter, which expressed the group's opposition to the Iraq mission.
Tokyo police declined to comment on the letters.
Late on February 17, several explosions were heard near the Defense Agency.
Police found two launch detonators, two steel pipes and a fuse in a Buddhist temple graveyard about 800 metres (yards) from the agency. But no trace of the projectiles, assumed to be steel balls, was found and the attack caused no injuries or damage.
Police said at that time they suspected that leftist radicals, who have used explosives in previous protests, might be responsible.
Around 100 Japanese ground troops are already in southern Iraq, and a total of 600 will be deployed by late March, backed up some 400 naval and airforce personnel in the region, in the first dispatch of Japanese troops since World War II to a country where fighting is still going on.
Despite being a strictly humanitarian mission, the deployment has been opposed by around 50 percent of the Japanese people, according to opinion polls as it could violate the country's post-World War II constitution which bans the use of force in settling international disputes.
----
Group claims responsibility for attempted attack on Defense Agency
Friday February 20,
Kyodo
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/040220/kyodo/d80qocn82.html
A leftist group has claimed responsibility for an attempted attack Tuesday on Defense Agency headquarters in an effort to block Japan's troop deployment to Iraq, officials at media companies said Friday.
In letters to media dated Wednesday and received Friday, the group which calls itself Kakumeigun (revolutionary army) said it used projectile launchers around 11 p.m. Tuesday in the attack, and is resorting to violent means to prevent the deployment of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF).
Residents in the vicinity of the agency's headquarters in Shinjuku Ward's Ichigaya district reported two loud bangs at the time of the attack and police later found two timer-set projectile launchers in the premises of Zuikoji Temple, some 550 meters from the agency.
The launchers were targeted at the agency but projectiles have not been found.
Judging from the contents of the letters, the police suspect they were sent by nonmainstream members of the Kakurokyo radical leftist group, according to police sources.
The police said they resumed their search Friday for the projectiles around the agency and continued investigations in the vicinity to find those responsible.
The launchers, each 6 centimeters in diameter and 60 cm long, were similar to a timer-set projectile launcher found at a point close to the U.S. forces' Yokota air base in western Tokyo last March, the police said.
In statements sent to media organizations, nonmainstream members of the Kakurokyo radical leftist group claimed that they set the launcher near the air base.
-------- china
Chen pledges not to declare independence
Friday February 20, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2004-daily/20-02-2004/world/w1.htm
TAIPEI: Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian pledged on Thursday not to declare independence from China if re-elected next month, in an attempt to ease international concerns over his leadership.
Chen, who faces a tough battle to retain his job at polls on March 20, said he already considered Taiwan independent but would stick to the promise he made when he secured an historic election victory in 2000 not to declare a permanent split from China, a move that Beijing has promised would lead to war.
Chen, leader of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, said many people had doubted he would keep to his pledges, which included not changing the official name of the Island from the Republic of China and promoting a referendum to change the status quo with China.
"It's unlikely that I will say one thing in 2000 and a different thing in 2004," he said in an interview with UFO radio. "Declaring independence is not an issue because we are already an independent country," he added.
The opposition immediately dismissed Chen's claim. KMT spokesman Tsai Cheng-yuan said: "I believe that except his staunch supporters, nobody would believe him any more. "What he said was simply aimed to cheat those voters who are yet to decide."
Chen also sought to alleviate concerns about reforming the Island's complicated constitution, saying he only wanted to streamline the workings of government.
Chen added Taiwan would press ahead with plans to buy advanced weaponry from the US even if a referendum on boosting anti-missile capabilities is rejected next month.
Facing a rapid arms build-up by rival China, Chen said the government would not cancel an arms package offered by US President Bush three years ago, the largest for the Island in a decade.
"Whether or not this referendum is passed will not affect our ongoing research. Likewise, ongoing arms purchase items listed under existing annual and special budget will go ahead," Chen told the local UFO Radio.
Chen was referring to a proposed T$500 billion ($15 billion) special budget to help buy eight diesel-engine submarines, four Kidd Class destroyers, second-hand but powerful air-defence vessels, 12 P-3C Orion submarine-hunting aircraft, and Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile missiles. Opposition parties, which have described the referendum as meaningless and illegal, said Chen's latest comments proved the ballot was unnecessary.
"Chen Shui-bian keeps stressing the importance of the referendum, but now he says a decision has been made (on arms purchases) no matter what the outcome is," said Hwang Yih-jiau, lawmaker for the People First Party (PFP) adding, "it's an anti-democratic and bogus referendum." The PFP has submitted a joint bid with the main opposition Nationalist Party to unseat Chen.
Chen denied that it would be contradictory for Taiwan to buy the Patriot PAC-3 missiles if the referendum were rejected, saying the ballot referred to generally boosting national defence and anti-missile systems rather than specific deals. The United States, Taiwan's top arms supplier, has criticised the Island for not spending enough on boosting its own defence.
"This referendum to some extent will show the will and determination of Taiwan's 23 million people under the threat of missile and force from China," said Chen.
"It will show we have the determination to boost our self-defence capabilities," he said.
The organisers in Taiwan said on Thursday Hollywood actor Sir Sean Connery may join a huge Taiwanese rally in protest at China's missile threat. The former James Bond, a stalwart supporter of Scottish independence, was expected to appear at a concert organised by President Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). "The odds of Connery joining (the protest) are very high," Peter Wang, a spokesman for the organizers of the rally, told AFP.
The organizers said they hoped to mobilize at least one million people for the rally, stretching for 486 kms from Keelung in the north to Pingtung in the south, in a show of unity against China's deployment of hundreds of ballistic missiles targeting Taiwan.
-------- haiti
Americans Begin Leaving Haiti as Unrest Spreads
February 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Haiti-Uprising.html?hp
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Americans began fleeing Haiti on Friday after insurgents torched police outposts and threatened new attacks in a spreading rebellion against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who defiantly declared he's ready to die for his nation.
In Haiti's west, pro-Aristide supporters burned down homes in a seaside neighborhood and fired guns above the heads of residents who jumped into the ocean for safety.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Meanwhile, the new leader of several rebel groups, Guy Philippe, said he plans to attack Cap-Haitien, the government's last remaining stronghold in the north, during carnival celebrations starting Friday. Philippe was Aristide's police chief in Cap-Haitien but fled in 2002 amid charges he was plotting a coup.
Citing mounting violence, the United States on Thursday urged the more than 20,000 Americans in Haiti to leave while transportation was still available. The Peace Corps also said it was withdrawing about 70 volunteers.
The Pentagon said it was sending a small military team to assess the security of the U.S. Embassy and its staff.
The United States is putting air marshals on every flight in and out of Haiti, a federal official said on condition of anonymity. There are three flights every day from Miami and one from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
Authorities said they were worried about the possibility of an airline hijacking amid the clamor of people trying to get out of the country.
Radio stations reported that rebels torched the police station at the northeast border post of Ouanaminthe on Thursday, and witnesses said police fled in fear from their posts in northern Fort Liberte. No rebels were in sight.
The northern rebellion has killed dozens of people, including about 40 police officers, according to Jean-Gerard Dubreuil, undersecretary for public security.
During the night, truckloads of pro-Aristide gunmen attacked a neighborhood in western St. Marc and burned down seven houses, American missionary Terry Snow said, adding that 15 Americans in his group of 20 missionaries fled Haiti this week.
As their houses burned, residents jumped into the sea to get away from gunmen shooting into the air, said Snow, originally from Granbury, Texas.
``These are all innocent people -- they are not involved in the political conflict,'' said Snow, 39, who has lived in the neighborhood for 13 years.
``Innocent people are being killed and houses are burned down every day and night in St. Marc and the police are doing nothing.''
Snow said the city has been terrorized by the pro-Aristide ``Clean Sweep'' gang since police regained the city from about 100 rebels last week.
Aristide, wildly popular when he became Haiti's first freely elected leader in 1990, lost support after flawed legislative elections in 2000 led international donors to freeze millions of dollars in aid.
Even before the rebellion, about half of Haiti's 8 million people went hungry daily, according to aid groups.
The latest violence came as the United States and other nations prepared to present Aristide and opposition officials with a political plan as early as Friday.
The plan calls for an interim governing council to advise Aristide, the disarmament of politically allied street gangs and the appointment of a prime minister agreeable to both sides.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said the plan does not call for Aristide's resignation, but the United States would not object if he agreed during negotiations to leave office early. Aristide's term ends February 2006.
Aristide -- who has survived three assassination attempts and a coup d'etat -- was defiant Thursday, saying, ``I am ready to give my life if that is what it takes to defend my country.''
Aristide has said he could not negotiate with ``terrorists,'' though opposition leaders deny his charges that they back the rebels.
``If you are talking about the opposition that is publicly supporting terrorists, don't think I will have the irresponsibility of handing them over such a (prime ministerial) post,'' Aristide told Radio Canada.
Opposition leader Evans Paul countered by saying, ``It will be difficult for us to accept any proposal that doesn't include Aristide's resignation.''
The Organization of American States approved a resolution Thursday night expressing ``firm support'' for Aristide's government in its efforts to ``restore public order by constitutional means.''
OAS Secretary-General Cesar Gaviria said he was confident that a political solution could come ``not in months, but in weeks.''
U.S. Ambassador John Maisto told delegates that Haiti's crisis ``is due in large part to the failure of the government of Haiti to act in a timely manner to address problems that it knew were growing.''
He said the government had not fought police corruption, strengthened its judiciary or restored security.
At Cap-Haitien, armed supporters of Aristide patrolled and vowed to fight any rebel attack. Frightened police remained barricaded in their station, saying they were too few and poorly armed to repel the rebels.
Haiti's police force numbers less than 4,000 and demoralized officers this week deserted at least four provincial posts. Eight officers have sought asylum in Jamaica and the Dominican military said it arrested four fleeing officers this week.
Hungry people in rebel-held Gonaives looted food aid from a rebel storage facility Thursday after being turned away from an aid distribution. Thousands of people, some brandishing machetes and guns, marched through the city supporting the rebellion.
Meanwhile, 20 Haitian refugees arrived by boat in Jamaica -- the second group in less than a week -- saying they were fleeing the violence, Jamaican police said.
Haiti's rebellion has raised fears of a mass exodus on the scale of the tens of thousands who fled to Florida when Haiti was under brutal military dictatorships from 1991 to 1994.
President Clinton sent 20,000 troops in 1994 to restore Aristide, end the killings of his supporters and halt the flood of refugees.
-------- iran
Iran Parliamentary Elections May Favor the Hard-Liners
February 20, 2004
By NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/international/middleeast/20CND-IRAN.html?hp
TEHRAN, Feb. 20 - Iranians went to the polls today to cast their ballots in Iran's parliamentary elections, but the most important question to be decided may be just who, or how many people, actually show up to vote.
Voters hoping for change have lost most of their enthusiasm after more than 2,000 liberal candidates were disqualified last month by the clerics who control most of the political power.
Since then, the reformers have been divided between calls to boycott the vote or to heed appeals by the reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, to cast ballots for substitute candidates and prevent the hard-liners from reclaiming the Parliament.
An additional 1,179 candidates dropped out in protest after the disqualifications. Many of the candidates who have stepped in to run are unfamiliar to wary voters, who appear inclined to stay away.
"How can I vote when I do not feel I can elect somebody freely?" asked Mohammad Hassan Shateri, 55, the owner of a bookstore in Tehran. "They want to impose a situation on us, and I see no reason to take part in helping them create it."
Many city walls that were plastered with election posters in previous elections are almost bare this time.
Text messages circulated anonymously on mobile phones are urging people to shun the vote. "The ballot boxes are coffins for freedom," said one message. "Let's not participate in the funeral of freedom on Friday."
Opponents of President Khatami are hoping that conservatives will predominate among those who are motivated to turn out, and are confident that the lack of enthusiasm among in the reform camp will secure their victory.
One such man is Hussein Fadaee, a veteran of the war with Iraq in the 1980's, who is supported by the major pro-clerical group, the Developers of Islamic Iran. The group has promised economic development and more jobs for youths.
"We cannot describe in detail what policies we will pursue," Mr. Fadaee said in an interview, "but we will follow the same model that the city council did."
Supporters of clerical rule won control of the city council in the municipal election last year after a turnout of just 12 percent of Tehran's eligible voters. The new members abruptly suspended programs they considered un-Islamic.
The new mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, turned several art galleries into prayer centers during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan and canceled events in cultural centers.
"We believe that freedom should be defined," he responded when asked how his group would react to the overwhelming demand for more social freedoms by the country's youth. "We have to come up with a solution if that freedom is not in accordance with our beliefs and culture."
On Wednesday, the hard-line judiciary, which is controlled by opponents of President Khatami, shut down two leading newspapers in an effort to silence reformers before Friday's elections. The two dailies, Shargh and Yass-e-No, this week published an open letter from reformist members of Parliament criticizing Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for his election policies.
The election headquarters of the reformist Islamic Participation Front, led by the president's brother, Mohammad Reza Khatami, was also shut down on Thursday. The party has called for an election boycott.
Many of the candidates who have stepped in to run in place of the banned reformers have not gone out of their way to earn the support of voters. A banner on Enghelab Street pointed to a campaign headquarters for some of them, but neighbors said the office appeared to be a front.
Another such candidate, Mohsen Razian, is refusing to speak to journalists or meet with people. His campaign pamphlet indicated only his name and degree, a Ph.D. in management. Shopkeepers downstairs from his headquarters said they would not vote for him, because he had made no effort to meet them.
Still, not all supporters of change have been forced to give up.
Belgheis Khaloogh is one of the many disabled people the Guardian Council is allowing to run. Unlike most of them, she was not wounded in the war with Iraq.
Sitting in a wheelchair in downtown Tehran, Ms. Khaloogh, 32, who has a Ph.D. in history, has been campaigning on a platform to improve conditions for the more than five million disabled people in Iran.
"Life is like a prison for the handicapped in Iran," she said, as two other women in wheelchairs nodded enthusiastically.
Yet even her campaign has been far from easy. Her request to campaign at high schools was turned down by the Education Ministry, even though other candidates were allowed to do so.
Vigilantes shoved her wheelchair and forcibly prevented more than a dozen other candidates from distributing campaign pamphlets outside Tehran University last week. The candidates were told that they were not allowed to campaign in the area.
"We all know what the result of the election will be," Ms. Khaloogh said. "I am using this opportunity to tell people about our problems and tell them we exist in this society too."
--------
Iranian Reformers Change Course
Movement Likely To Eschew Politics
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56030-2004Feb19?language=printer
TEHRAN, Feb. 19 -- In the Wednesday night editorial meeting of a newspaper called Yas-e-No, the final hours of Iran's reform movement played out in characteristic fashion. Men in shirtsleeves shuffled papers and prepared to exercise rights it was not clear they actually had.
"If we're going to publish this letter, let's publish everything because they're going to close us anyway," one editor implored. He tapped a finger on the text of an unusual, almost combustible epistle to Iran's supreme leader. An hour earlier, it had been read aloud to foreign journalists, but everyone at Yas-e-No knew how dangerous it would be when they printed it in Thursday's editions.
Mohsen Mirdamadi, sitting across a table cluttered with page proofs and sugar cubes, thought for a moment.
Twenty-five years earlier, his angry eloquence inspired students to storm the U.S. Embassy, humiliating a superpower. On Feb. 1, he led 124 of his fellow lawmakers in a mass resignation to protest the disqualifications of thousands of reformist candidates from the nationwide parliamentary elections set for Friday.
Now Mirdamadi peered into a forbidding future and shook his head. "They're not going to do anything," he said, "until the results of the elections are known."
They did, though. The next day, security forces shut down Yas-e-No -- Farsi for "New Jasmine" -- and another newspaper. A few hours later, the authorities closed the downtown Tehran headquarters of the Iran Islamic Participation Front, the political party most closely associated with the reform movement.
In the almost seven years since Iranian voters stunned the ruling mullahs by thrusting a smiling reformer into the presidency, electoral politics has been the primary vehicle for change in a country where political power is sharply divided. Though ultimate authority remained in the hands of hard-line Islamic clerics in appointed positions, landslide after landslide gave reformers control over the government's elective positions and embodied the aspirations of a young majority craving liberty from chafing social regulations and economic atrophy.
That era will end with Friday's national ballot, widely condemned as a sham that many Iranians say they intend to boycott.
The outcome of the vote is a foregone conclusion: Iran's 290-member parliament will be dominated by conservatives, a result that was ensured with the ban on reformist candidates.
Only the boycott campaign, led by frustrated reformers and battered student leaders, gives the balloting an element of suspense. If voter turnout is dramatically low, conservatives may gain the parliament but not the legitimacy they crave.
But analysts agree the bigger question is what will become of the impulse for change.
"In these six years, there was a social demand exhibited in Iran that was much bigger than the capacity of the political system," said Emad Din Baghi, a sociologist and pro-reform journalist. "It has overloaded the system. But it will find its own way."
Once, the way seemed clear. The 1997 election of President Mohammad Khatami lifted the hopes of Iranians who felt ignored by the ruling clerics, including the majority of the population too young to cherish any memory of the 1979 revolution.
But Khatami, an erudite, soft-spoken cleric, proved no match for the hard-liners who have dominated Iran's theocracy for so long. Appointed conservatives repeatedly vetoed legislation passed by parliament, so frustrating the reform agenda that Khatami was in tears when he agreed to run for a second term in 2001. Many new lawmakers, however, displayed an appetite for the confrontation Khatami loathed.
"He's not a leader; he's an intellectual," said Nasser Hadian, a Tehran University professor on leave at Columbia University in New York.
It was characteristic of Khatami that as public confidence in him receded, his own Web site dutifully recorded the disappointment.
"Easy come, easy go!" reads a message posted after Khatami announced that his government would administer Friday's elections, despite an earlier promise to the contrary. "You said you came to put people on the train of hope. You have made them get off with despair."
Another citizen attacked the president for his abiding devotion to Iran's theocracy. "You have always said that preserving the regime is important for you. Apparently it seems it is more important than the nation itself!"
But the sharpest disappointment was on campus. When student protests resulted in activists being savagely beaten by right-wing militias, Khatami's aversion to showdowns led him to issue indirect condemnations of protesters. Student leaders rallied instead in recent years to leaders advocating fundamental change and demonstrating a willingness to sacrifice for it. This week they condemned Khatami for "slaughtering justice, freedom and people's rights" by holding the elections.
A favorite of the students is Hashem Aghajari, a history professor once sentenced to death for suggesting that Iranians are not obliged to obey ruling clerics "like monkeys." Aghajari this week agreed that reform from within the system was hopeless and counseled passive resistance instead.
"Tell the totalitarians no," he wrote from prison.
His advice appears to dovetail with the national mood. Iranians began a broad retreat from politics about two years ago, as the stalemate between reformers and conservatives became clear. Voter turnout for municipal elections a year ago barely topped 10 percent in Tehran. And interviews in the city's working-class south side a week ago found some people determined to sit out the parliamentary elections even before they had heard of a boycott.
"If everybody was courageous enough not to participate, we could make real change," said Samira Hojatti, 19. "By not participating, we are proving the state is not legitimate. Iranians are clever. They don't need to be told what to do. They know what to do."
Maryam Taleei, 18, wearing a colored scarf in a neighborhood where most women dress entirely in black, curled her lip.
"If they are going to be the same dull men in beards and women in chador, of course I'm not going to vote," she said.
But while it appears clear that a phase has ended in Iran, there is little agreement about what's next. Even the political complexion of the new conservative parliament is in doubt.
For all their failings, Khatami and company are credited with at least delivering a new political agenda in the country. The conservative camp is no longer a hard-line monolith; one wing of the movement calls itself "pragmatic."
In that new context, some analysts hold out hope that the new parliament will be dominated by centrists who will claim the reform mantle as their own. This view was encouraged when the main conservative coalition pointedly declined to include a pair of well-known hard-liners on its candidate list.
"I've heard many people say if the conservatives have the government to themselves, it'll be a good thing" because it would eliminate the stalemate that for six years served to excuse inaction, said a Tehran professional who spoke on condition of anonymity. "There is a kind of hope in this argument."
But in a broad swath of the capital, distrust of the system runs deep. Some disappointed reformers, while repeating the conventional wisdom that Iranians have little appetite for another revolution, draw unflattering comparisons between the behavior of the current government and the monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi that was overthrown in 1979, in part because of sham elections.
"Our cry now is referendum," said Ali Reza, a student at Tehran University. He echoed Aghajari's call for "fundamental change," an up-or-down vote on Iran's theocratic system.
"We hope this can come about because no one wants another revolution," Reza said. "What we should have is a kind of civil disobedience . . . the kind of actions that happened in Czechoslovakia."
He spoke on the street outside the gate of the university last week, trying in vain to get inside to a meeting between about 200 students and a handful of reformist lawmakers. After 25 years, the quest for political change had gone back to school. Mirdamadi and other senior reformers, who cut their revolutionary teeth on campus, said they were looking to channel the urge for reform into student and civic organizations.
But a student who had just emerged from the campus meeting said she saw "no hope."
"And I don't know how long they're going to stay in power," said the student, a chemistry major named Farkhondeh. "They're repressing every single movement."
She waved in exasperation at the phalanx of uniforms gathered at the gate.
"Just look: About 200 students are having a meeting," she said. "Look at all these guards, all these police, all these restrictions. So how is change going to happen?"
-------- iraq
Antibomb efforts
Inside the Ring
February 20, 2004
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
U.S. military forces continue to employ electronic signal broadcasters in Iraq as part of efforts to set off remote-controlled bombs before they damage passing vehicles.
At the same time, the terrorists are taking steps to make premature detonation more difficult, according to Pentagon officials.
Some convoys of military vehicles are using hand-held remote controls similar to garage-door openers in an effort to prevent being killed or injured by the deadly roadside bombs.
Officials tell us they are trying to use more-sophisticated methods to electronically jam the bombs, which have been the main killer of U.S. service personnel in Iraq since the end of major combat.
The terrorists, for their part, also are adapting their tactics by burying some of the bombs, making it more difficult for a remote signal to reach them.
----
Syria and Iran aiding militants, Iraq says
Intelligence officers claim evidence of infiltration
Michael Howard in Kirkuk
Friday February 20, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1152096,00.html
Senior Iraqi intelligence officers believe an Islamic militant group which has claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings in Irbil and a spate of deadly attacks in Baghdad, Falluja and Mosul is receiving significant help from Syria and Iran.
The officers, who have been tracking the activities of domestic and foreign jihadists in northern Iraq, claim that members of Jaish Ansar al-Sunna (the army of the supporters of the sayings of the prophet) have been "given shelter by Syrian and Iranian security agencies and have been able to enter Iraq with ease".
The group is suspected of training suicide bombers and deploying them against US forces in Iraq and Iraqis considered to be collaborating with the US-led authorities.
Jaish Ansar al-Sunna was one of a dozen Islamic militant organisations which issued a joint statement two weeks ago in Ramadi and Falluja warning Iraqis against cooperating with the occupation.
It distributed CDs carrying video footage of some of its operations, which included roadside bomb attacks on US military convoys.
US officials believe that since Saddam Hussein was captured in December the insurgency is being increasingly fought by Islamic guerrillas rather than former regime loyalists.
The emergence of Islamist extremist groups has added to the challenges faced by the occupation authorities and the local security forces.
While the Iraqi authorities are struggling to establish an effective intelligence operation in the centre and south of the country, in the north they have been able to build on the existing intelligence network in the Kurdish ruled area.
An intelligence officer in the northern city of Kirkuk said: "We have arrested a number of foreign Arabs that we believe may be connected to the global terror network.
"They all seemed to have Iranian or Syrian visas in their passports. A number of them told us they had received assistance in those countries."
He said Hassan Ghul, a suspected al-Qaida operative found to be carrying a document urging the fomenting of civil war in Iraq, had been arrested by Kurdish forces on the Iraqi side of the Iranian border near the town of Kalar.
The Americans have said the 17-page letter was written by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian fugitive allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden.
Jaish Ansar al-Sunna is suspected of coordinating the infiltration of foreign militants - experienced terrorists and young footsoldiers - from Europe through Syria, the intelligence officer said.
"We are not talking huge numbers, perhaps 100 since the war, but that is too much," he said.
"We believe that there is a safe house for them near Damsacus. They are crossing the border west of Mosul, then heading for Mosul before dispersing to other cities."
He said Iran and Syria wanted to use the militant issue as a bargaining point in their relations with the US.
Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, said: "There are incidents of infiltration from the outside.
"I do not want to accuse anyone, but we are not getting sufficient cooperation from our neighbours.
"If they believe they can play with the security of Iraq, they are playing with fire. It's very dangerous."
Damascus and Tehran reject the allegation they are harbouring or facilitating jihadists and point to their increased cooperation with George Bush's global war on terror.
The Iraqi intelligence officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Jaish Ansar al-Sunna was believed to be a splinter group of Ansar al-Islam (supporters of Islam), an extreme Kurdish group with suspected links to al-Qaida.
The group's leader is identified on its website as Abu Abdullah al-Hassan bin Mahmoud, thought to be the brother of a leading Ansar al-Islam fighter.
Until the invasion of Iraq Ansar al-Islam controlled a string of villages high in the Zagros mountains near the Iranian border.
There it introduced Taliban-style rule and despised the secular governments of the two main parties in the Kurdish ruled area, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Jalal Talabani, and the Kurdistan Democratic party, led by Massoud Barzani, whose Irbil offices were attacked with synchronised suicide bombers on February 1.
A total of 109 people were killed and scores more injured in the attacks, the worst since the fall of Saddam.
Ansar al-Islam was ousted from its stronghold at the beginning of the war by a joint operation involving PUK peshmerga forces and US air power.
About 200 fighters fled to Iran, the intelligence official said.
They had now had time to reorganise and had been filtering back into Iraq, where they had joined Sunni Arab extremists to form the new group.
----
Pending a Vote, Some Iraqis Press for a Larger Governing Council
February 20, 2004
New York Times
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/international/middleeast/20IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 19 - As prospects for early elections faded, several Iraqi leaders said Thursday that they wanted the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council to remain in place after the United States transferred power back to the people on June 30. Plans are already under way to expand the council, they added.
The leaders, including representatives from the major ethnic and religious groups and members of the council, said a consensus had emerged to increase the current council of 25 people to as many as 125, and to keep it in power until United Nations-assisted elections could be held in early 2005.
Several council members said the plan appeared to have cleared a potentially major obstacle: Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, indicated that he would accept an enlarged council as long as this was part of the United Nations recommendation. It was the ayatollah's call for early elections that brought the United Nations to Iraq in the first place.
The idea of enlarging the council, which has been in play for weeks, crystallized Thursday after the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said holding elections for an all-new government was impossible before June 30. Mr. Annan said he would not object to the continuation of the council, which emerged from an American-led process over the summer, as long as it was significantly changed.
"We have no other choice now," said one of the leaders, Yonadam Kanna, head of the Assyrian Democratic Party and a council member. "We are in the middle of a process and we can't have Iraq go in a random direction. The key now is to reach out to more groups so the people feel we represent them."
Although council members have not decided yet how new members should be selected, several agreed that it would be important to demonstrate independence from the Americans to win the people's trust.
The move to extend the council's rule represented another complication in the Bush administration's vision for a quick transfer of power. As late as this week, American officials were still clinging to an agreement, signed with Iraqi leaders in November, that called for the council to be replaced on June 30 and for a new Iraqi government to be selected by nationwide caucuses.
Several Iraqi politicians said the caucus plan was dead because it was too cumbersome and too foreign a concept to work here.
"The caucuses have been discarded," said Adnan Pachachi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.
At a news conference on Thursday, L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator, said there were now "dozens" of possibilities of how to transfer authority.
But the one fixed point was the June 30 deadline. "The date holds," he said.
Several times on Thursday, Mr. Bremer deferred to the United Nations, saying he was not going to make any decisions until the organization issued its recommendations on what to do about Iraq. "On all of these matters, we are going to wait until we hear what the secretary general has to say," he said.
Mr. Bremer's remarks were in line with the Bush administration's eagerness to have the United Nations engaged here, an important turnabout. Washington had shunned the United Nations in the weeks before the war, but officials are now courting it to boost the legitimacy of an increasingly nettlesome occupation.
Senior United Nations officials said they might not be ready to share their recommendations for another week, past the Feb. 28 deadline for an interim constitution.
"It's a bit disappointing that the U.N. can't make a recommendation, and that in fact imposes a delay," said Feisal al-Istrabadi, the legal adviser to Mr. Pachachi, who sits on the constitution committee. "They took a long time to come out here."
The interim constitution is a crucial milestone in the transition to independence. Before it can become law, the document must spell out how a new government will be selected by the end of 2005.
On Thursday, a fiery Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, said Iraqis might rebel if the constitution did not enshrine Islamic law, in answer to Mr. Bremer's earlier comments indicating that he would veto a constitution that did so.
The members of the Governing Council, appointed in July by American administrators, have long sought to remain in office. Many are exiles who had not lived in Iraq for years.
Some people, even within the Governing Council, said it was time to move on. "For many of my colleagues, their ideas about what is best for Iraq are clouded by their desire to keep their own jobs," said Mahmoud Othman, a council member and leader of the Kurdish Socialist Party. "It's quite selfish."
Mr. Othman said several of his colleagues had used the issue of early elections as a way to press American administrators to keep the council intact. He said that when the council signed the original agreement on its formation in November, many members hoped to negotiate to keep their own jobs.
But when American officials refused to budge, Mr. Othman said, discontented members went to Ayatollah Sistani and encouraged him to call for elections, knowing they were not possible. "He's the most powerful man in Iraq, and they manipulated him," he said.
Senior Shiite leaders dismissed Mr. Othman's remarks, saying they wanted elections for their own sake. Shiite Muslims are a numerical majority in Iraq; Saddam Hussein's rule was dominated by Sunnis.
Mr. Othman said he would prefer disbanding the council and replacing it with a much larger assembly of tribal elders, professional leaders and religious figures. "But my view is the minority," he said.
Mr. Pachachi said the leading plan called for an expanded council to preside over the country while United Nations experts begin laying the groundwork for nationwide elections. Many council members said this week that members of the United Nations team, led by an Algerian diplomat, Lakhdar Brahimi, had told them they would need about nine months to get the country ready.
That, Mr. Pachachi said, probably means that nationwide elections for a new government could be held in January 2005, to be followed by a constitutional convention and elections for a more permanent government later in the year.
Ideas for expanding the council range from doubling its current size, to 50, or even expanding to 125 members. Some Iraqi leaders said a larger council would probably serve as a national assembly and would choose a cabinet and a prime minister, calling upon tribal leaders and religious figures to nominate candidates.
Members said the crucial test would be whether the new council was viewed as legitimate by Iraqis. The current council is seen by many as a tool of American interests.
"Now, the Americans have to stay away," said Abdil Abdul Mahdi, a senior leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shiite party. "Anything we do, we have to be able to defend in front of our people."
Edward Wong contributed reporting for this article.
-------
Plan for Caucuses In Iraq Is Dropped U.S. to Seek New Transition Process
By Robin Wright and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56112-2004Feb19.html
The Bush administration is abandoning the core idea of its plan to hold regional caucuses for an Iraqi provisional government and will instead work with the United Nations and Iraqis to develop yet another plan for the transfer of political power by June 30, U.N. and U.S. officials said yesterday.
The decision, forced by rejection of the caucus system by a wide range of Iraqis, means that the Coalition Provisional Authority led by the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, will instead hand over authority to a caretaker government until direct elections can be held, officials said.
In a meeting at the United Nations yesterday, Secretary General Kofi Annan told a gathering of diplomats with interests in Iraq that the Iraqis themselves should determine the participants and form of a caretaker government that will be credible to Iraq's disparate society, according to U.N. officials who attended.
Annan is prepared to dispatch his special envoy, former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi, back to Baghdad in the coming weeks to help mediate a new formula if the Iraqis and the U.S.-led coalition do not come up with another plan, U.N. diplomats and U.S. officials said.
"We need to find a mechanism to create a caretaker government and . . . help prepare the elections later," Annan told reporters after briefing U.N. members who belong to the world body's 46-nation Friends of Iraq group.
As expected, Annan told the group the United Nations does not believe elections can be held before June 30, the date the U.S.-led coalition has said it will end the occupation. In a report to Annan, U.N. officials say, Brahimi cites broad agreement in Iraq that elections should be in late 2004 or early 2005.
The United States yesterday repeated its determination not to extend the June 30 deadline for ending the occupation.
"There are 133 days before sovereignty returns to an Iraqi government," Bremer said at a Baghdad news conference. "Changes in the mechanism for forming an interim government are possible, but the date holds. And hold it should."
With just more than four months remaining, the United States is effectively back at square one on how to create a provisional government to assume sovereignty. Because Iraqis have rejected other ideas, the challenge for the United States, the United Nations and Iraqi leaders will be to find a formula -- quickly -- that will provide political stability and be regarded as legitimate by the majority of Iraqis.
The Bush administration has essentially given up on the idea of further refining its troubled Iraq transition plan, already twice redesigned. The Nov. 15 plan, which the 25-member Iraqi Government Council initially accepted, called for a complex process culminating in 18 regional caucuses to pick members of a new national assembly, which in turn would pick a government and leadership.
"At the time we did this [plan] in November, it looked like a caucus system for finding a transitional assembly and a transitional government might have worked, but it does not appear that that caucus system has the support needed for it to work," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in an interview with ABC Radio. U.S. and U.N. officials say they have no preference on how to select a caretaker government. "We have absolutely no preferred options," Annan told reporters. "We need to have the Iraqis discuss it. They must take ownership, discuss it amongst themselves, and we will try and work with them to find a consensus."
But Annan told a private luncheon for the 15-nation Security Council he is considering a range of ideas, senior diplomats who attended said.
Among the new ideas was a suggestion that Iraq be administered by a government of "technocrats," rather than politicians, until direct national elections are held.
In other options, Annan outlined one proposal to expand the Governing Council and a second idea to appoint a national assembly -- possibly through a national conference -- like the loya jirga used in Afghanistan to select an interim government, U.N. diplomats said.
Expanding the council so that it is a cross section of Iraq's diverse ethnic and religious groups might be the easiest formula, U.S. officials say. But the Bush administration is not certain that transferring sovereignty to an expanded council would earn the approval of Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, whose initial objection to caucuses scuttled the administration's transition plan.
Annan plans to travel to Japan today and is expected to present U.S. and Iraqi leaders with recommendations after he returns on Feb. 25. Annan said the Security Council would probably have to adopt a new resolution in the months ahead to support his plans for political transition.
One issue still to be sorted out is the interim constitution, popularly known as the basic law. It is due to be concluded by Feb. 28 but has snagged on issues of religion and federalism. It was supposed to include provisions for a new provisional government.
To buy time for further negotiations, Annan said a new plan for the political transition did not have to be completed by Feb. 28.
In Baghdad, Bremer said the basic law must be based on secular, democratic principles and not draw on Islam as the sole source for legislation. "We have an obligation as the sovereign power that an appropriate democratic structure is put in place here while we are here so that we can deliver to the Iraqis what they want, which is a democratic, unified, stable country at peace with itself," Bremer said.
Violence continued Thursday as insurgents killed two American soldiers in a roadside bombing near Khaldiyah, 50 miles west of the capital, the U.S. command said.
Lynch reported from the United Nations. Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Baghdad contributed to this report.
--------
No Predictions for U.S. Role in Iraq
Duration Is 'Unknowable,' Myers Says
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55839-2004Feb19.html
The nation's top military officer declined yesterday to predict how long U.S. forces might remain in Iraq, saying events there would have to dictate when American troops could leave.
Pressed during a breakfast meeting with reporters on the likely duration of the U.S. presence in Iraq, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that he and other military commanders have "notions or thoughts on that." But he declined to share them, noting with a chuckle that their previous predictions have proved wrong.
"I really do believe it's unknowable," Myers said about trying to forecast the end of the U.S. military mission. "If I gave a good professional estimate, then that would be a standard that people would point to, and, knowing that we can't know it perfectly, we'd get hammered."
Myers's reluctance to project even a broad range of dates for a U.S. pullout reflects the uncertainty within the Bush administration over when a still-deadly insurgency can be squelched. President Bush has already faced embarrassment over his May 1 statement declaring an end to major combat operations in Iraq, only to see a significant rise in U.S. combat deaths since then.
While political control in Iraq is due to pass this summer to a new Iraqi interim authority, Myers dismissed the possibility that U.S. forces would be asked to leave.
He reported further progress in rounding up suspected enemy fighters. But he said ensuring a safe environment in Iraq would depend on continued improvement in the new Iraqi security services established under the U.S.-led occupation -- and that, he added, will take time.
"We're training these folks, we're mentoring them, we're going to have Americans with the major units for a long time to come," he said. "So this is not a cut-and-run sort of thing at all. Exactly the opposite."
With about 110,000 fresh U.S. troops now replacing about 120,000 who have been in Iraq for much of the past year, Myers said the Pentagon is looking at additional rotations in 2005 and 2006 involving "worst case" scenarios. Army leaders have said their plans assume that as many as 100,000 U.S. troops may be needed for at least two more years.
"But beyond the next step of rotations, we're going to have to let events dictate the force we have," Myers said.
Since January, when the current rotation began, about 40,000 troops have left for Iraq and about 30,000 troops have returned home -- all without attacks on U.S. troops entering or leaving Iraq, Myers said.
But U.S. troops in the country have continued to be killed or injured, many by homemade explosive devices in roadways. And Iraqi police and other security forces have suffered a series of bold attacks, culminating last Saturday in enemy fighters blasting an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps headquarters in Fallujah and overrunning the city's main police station, freeing the prisoners there.
At a Pentagon news conference yesterday, Army Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, an operations officer on the Joint Staff, reported that the former acting mayor of Fallujah and two civil defense members are being held on suspicion of involvement in the assaults. One of the attackers killed was a former Iraqi army major, Rodriguez said.
A U.S. "quick response force" located 5 to 10 minutes away "responded immediately" to the attack on the civil defense office, Rodriguez said.
But the Americans were waved away by the Iraqi commander there, who requested only ammunition and arms and used his own forces to retake the police station.
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon Tells U.S. That Pullback Will Not Replace Peace Plan
February 20, 2004
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/international/middleeast/20MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Feb. 19 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel courted American support on Thursday for his proposal for "unilateral disengagement" from the Palestinians, saying that it would not replace President Bush's peace initiative, the road map.
In a speech and a three-hour meeting here with envoys from Mr. Bush, Mr. Sharon said he was committed to the road map. He defended his plan for withdrawing from most of the Gaza Strip as necessary for Israel's security should the Palestinians fail to abide by the peace plan.
"We will not wait for them forever," he said.
Mr. Sharon's aides had previously said he would only implement his proposal once he judged that the road map had failed. But the Bush administration appears reluctant to have anyone make that judgment.
Warning of a potential "security and political vacuum" in Palestinian areas, Mr. Sharon said in his speech, "we must be realistic" and prepare other steps.
But, he continued, "I would like to stress that this disengagement plan is a security measure and not a political one. The steps that will be taken will not prevent the possibility of implementing the president's vision in reaching an agreed settlement if and when there will be a reliable partner on the Palestinian side."
Palestinian officials accuse Mr. Sharon of deliberately undermining the governing Palestinian Authority. They say he wants to avoid negotiations that might force him to yield more land than he plans to turn over unilaterally.
Neither side has abided by its first obligations under the road map, a three-phase plan for reciprocal, simultaneous concessions to achieve a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace in three years.
Under commitments made to Mr. Bush last June, the Palestinian leadership is supposed to begin breaking apart militant groups. Israel is supposed to dismantle dozens of settlement "outposts" set up in the West Bank over the last three years.
While Mr. Sharon has left the West Bank outposts largely alone, he is now proposing a far bolder step politically - evacuating most of the established settlements in Gaza. He would take that step not as part of an agreement but as a unilateral measure to draw what he called "security lines." He said any Israeli steps would be "fully coordinated" with the United States.
Saying he had not seen "even the slightest signs" of Palestinian action against terrorism, Mr. Sharon warned that his plan would leave the Palestinians with "much less" than they would have had under the road map.
With the plan under sharp criticism within his coalition government and his dominant faction, Likud, Mr. Sharon is trying to build support in the Bush administration, which has been seeking a fuller explanation of his plans. He met Thursday with Elliott Abrams, director of Middle East affairs at the National Security Council; Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and William J. Burns, head of the Middle East bureau at the State Department. He is also seeking a meeting with Mr. Bush, but the White House has not set a date.
Mr. Sharon delivered his speech here to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. James S. Tisch, the chairman of the organization, introduced the prime minister, praising him as having "gone against the dogma" of his faction to arrive at "a new way of looking at the situation."
But the Americans were also buzzing with questions about the prime minister's plan. They wondered whether it might strengthen Hamas militants in Gaza, as some Israeli security officials have suggested, and whether Israeli soldiers would still be able to fight in Gaza if necessary after the settlers leave.
Mr. Sharon did not address such specifics. He has not yet decided on the details of his proposal, a senior Israeli official said.
He has also not submitted the proposal for the approval of his cabinet or the Parliament. Dr. Eran Lerman, director of the Israel-Middle East office of the American Jewish Committee, said that Mr. Sharon was seeking "political cover" from his hoped-for meeting with Mr. Bush.
"He wants to come back from Washington with an ability to tell his people in the Likud, `Look, I'm doing this in partnership with George W. Bush,' " Dr. Lerman said.
Although he still dominates what, after more than three years of conflict, has become the Israeli political center, Mr. Sharon has seen his popularity slide in recent months. Some Likud leaders have withheld support for his unilateral steps, and far-right parties have threatened to bolt his coalition if the government votes to evacuate any settlements. The left-of-center Labor Party might then join the coalition.
Benyamin Elon, the minister of tourism and a settler opposed to any evacuation, said in an interview on Thursday that Mr. Sharon would need much greater political strength to push his plan through.
"Now, he's not strong anymore," Mr. Elon said, in an example of the hard words being spoken within the cabinet. "Sometimes it reminds me about the last days of Nixon."
------- mideast
Joint US-Yemeni military exercises set;
US commander delays visit
SANAA (AFP)
Feb 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040220190905.x5lgdjis.html
Joint US-Yemeni military exercises will be conducted in Yemen over the weekend but will not be observed by the head of the US Central Command who has delayed his visit due to developments in Iraq, a source close to the Yemeni president said Friday.
The joint manoeuvres between the US and Yemeni army, navy and air forces, which are to be watched over by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, "have not been delayed and will take place over the next two days," said the source, requesting anonymity.
The head of the US Central Command, General John Abizaid, has meanwhile delayed his visit to Yemen until March due to current developments in Iraq, the source added.
As many as 200,000 US troops currently are moving in or out of Iraq's restive Sunni Muslim belt north and west of Baghdad in the biggest US troop rotation since World War II.
Official government sources in Sanaa said Wednesday that Abizaid was due in Yemen on Saturday to observe the war games, which were to be staged off and around Yemen's southern port city of Aden.
Seven gunboats delivered by Washington to Sanaa last week as part of stepped-up military cooperation in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States would join the manoeuvres, the sources added.
Yemen, at the request of Washington, has cracked down on suspected members of the Al-Qaeda terror network which was blamed for the attacks and has received US help in fighting the militants.
Seventeen US sailors died and 38 were wounded when suspected Al-Qaeda suicide bombers blew up the destroyer USS Cole in Aden on October 12, 2000.
-------- nato
Serbia's NATO ambitions hinge on Karadzic arrest: NATO chief
ATHENS (AFP)
Feb 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040220092515.2ls3baoy.html
NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer reiterated Friday that Serbia's cooperation in the arrest of Bosnian Serb war crime suspects Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic was a key condition for membership in the alliance's Partnership for Peace (PFP) programme.
"Partnership for Peace has many conditions... but Mladic and Karadzic are certainly the most important obstacle," Scheffer said in an interview published Friday in the Greek daily Kathimerini.
"The sooner they are brought to the Hague, the better for the country's ambitions to find itself in 'Partnership for Peace'," the NATO chief added.
The UN's chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte said on February 11 that the Serbian capital Belgrade had become a "safe haven" for fugitives from her tribunal, including Karadzic. Around 15 war crimes suspects remained on the run in Serbia, del Ponte said.
But the Serbian government immediately denied all knowledge of the wheareabouts of Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader during the bloody 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
NATO-led troops launched surprise raids Thursday aimed at disrupting the support networks of war crimes indictees in Karadzic's former stronghold of Pale, Bosnia.
----
NATO chief hopes Putin will attend bloc's June summit: interview
ATHENS (AFP)
Feb 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040220094243.0z7eg4vd.html
NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer Friday expressed hopes that Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the alliance's June summit in Istanbul, a few days after Moscow voiced concerns over the alliance's eastward expansion.
"I hope President Putin will be present in the summit as NATO-Russian cooperation is very important," de Hoop Scheffer said in an interview with Greek daily Kathimerini, published Friday.
At the Istanbul summit the bloc will welcome the former Soviet Baltic republics into the fold. NATO already includes former Soviet satellites like Poland.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov urged NATO on February 7 not to put new military facilities in Poland and the Baltics, warning that Moscow could take measures if its interests were threatened.
Moscow has watched warily as the Atlantic alliance has expanded eastwards ever closer to its borders following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
NATO was conceived as a Cold War fighting bloc to stand against the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, but since May 2002, the alliance and Moscow have been working closely together in the Russia-NATO council.
----
Azeri hacks Armenian at NATO event
February 20, 2004
Washington Times
World Scene
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene.htm
BUDAPEST - An Armenian military officer attending a NATO Partnership for Peace program was hacked to death yesterday morning with an ax and a knife by a participant from Azerbaijan, police officials said.
The officers were attending an English-language course within the framework of the Partnership for Peace program, which is aimed at increasing cooperation between neutral and former Soviet bloc nations and NATO in peacekeeping and other areas.
----
Armenian hacked to death at Partnership for Peace conference
The Associated Press
02/20/04
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0204/20nopeace.html
BUDAPEST, Hungary -- An Armenian military officer attending a NATO Partnership for Peace program was hacked to death on Thursday morning with an ax and a knife by an Azerbaijani participant, police officials said. "We suspect Ramil S. of having committed murder with unusual cruelty," Budapest Police Maj. Valter Fulop told reporters. "We say 'unusual cruelty' because beside a number of knife wounds on his chest, the victim's head was practically severed from his body."
The Armenian Defense Ministry identified the suspect as Lt. Ramil Safarov of Azerbaijan and the victim as Lt. Gurgen Markarian of Armenia.
"We detained the suspect, who did not put up any resistance," Fulop said.
The interrogation of Safarov and witnesses - including Markarian's Hungarian roommate - was under way, said Police Maj. Jozsef Szigeti.
The officers were attending an English language course within the framework of the Partnership for Peace program, which is aimed at increasing cooperation between neutral and former Soviet bloc nations and NATO in peacekeeping and other areas.
NATO officials in Brussels said Hungarian authorities - not the alliance - were directly in charge of the language program, and refused further comment.
Police said a political motive for the murder was among the possibilities being considered and were also looking into how the suspect obtained the murder weapons.
The Armenian Defense Ministry's statement said the murder was "a result of the bellicose anti-Armenian propaganda, unleashed by the authorities of Azerbaijan lately."
The killing, at the Hungarian University of National Defense, comes a month after Azerbaijan refused to allow three Armenian officers to attend a conference held in the country's capital, Baku, under the aegis of the NATO program.
Relations between the two former Soviet Republics remain tense after Armenian-backed forces drove Azerbaijan's army out of the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s.
Despite a 1994 cease-fire ending the war that killed 30,000 people and left about 1 million homeless, no agreement has been reached on the territory's final status.
Azerbaijan's newly elected President Ilham Aliev said in January that Azerbaijan reserved the right to use "all possibilities" to solve the dispute.
-------- prisoners of war
Farewell Guantánamo, and good riddance
Feb 20th 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2455486
MORE than two years after America struck back against terrorists in Afghanistan, the cell blocks at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are releasing another trickle of prisoners. On Thursday February 19th, America announced plans to repatriate five British prisoners and a Dane who have been held there without charge since being captured. Spain reclaimed one of its four detainees last week, and in January America released its three youngest captives, all aged 15 or under. So far, reports say that nearly 100 prisoners have been sent back to their home countries. Most have gone free; others have returned to face trial. But not all countries want their prisoners back: Australia recently asked America to keep its two detainees, since it does not have the legal authority to prosecute them for terrorist-related offences.
For the hundreds of prisoners still at Guantánamo, the outlook remains bleak. George Bush has declared them "enemy combatants" on the grounds that they are stateless supporters of terrorism. This means (according to Mr Bush) that they are not to entitled to the usual protections accorded to prisoners of war under international law; nor are they being treated as ordinary criminals. None has been allowed to choose a lawyer (though human-rights lawyers around the world have taken up their cases, sight unseen), and none has been formally charged.
Those prisoners who are not released may eventually go before American military tribunals; the first batch have been assigned military lawyers. One exception has been the "American Taliban"-a California native captured in Afghanistan-who is now serving 20 years after having pleaded guilty in a federal court to fighting and carrying explosives for the Taliban regime.
Other countries and human-rights organisations continue to press America on its treatment of the Guantánamo prisoners, but to little avail. Even Britain, America's closest ally in the war on terror (and Iraq), has struggled to persuade Mr Bush to release its citizens. (The five due to be sent home over the next few weeks may face further questioning in Britain; four more Britons will remain at Guantánamo.) Donald Rumsfeld, America's defence secretary, said last week that a panel would be set up to review inmates' status annually. That seems only a small concession-so too does the Bush administration's agreement in December to create a special "review panel" composed of civilians to scrutinise military tribunals' findings.
For most prisoners, the best hope may lie with America's Supreme Court, which will hear two Guantánamo-related cases this spring. The first case challenges the Bush administration's assertion that America's normal court system has no jurisdiction over Guantánamo's inmates. Though the base is in Cuba, it is fully controlled by America's navy (America has leased the base in perpetuity since 1903). The second case has been brought by another "American Taliban", a Louisiana-born man of Saudi descent, who has been held in a navy brig as an enemy combatant since his capture in Afghanistan. A ruling on both cases is expected by the summer.
History, however, may not be on the detainees' side: not only does the current Supreme Court have a conservative leaning, but the court in the past has rarely intervened in wartime matters it deems to be the prerogative of the military. (During the second world war, for example, the court upheld President Franklin Roosevelt's right to send Japanese-Americans to internment camps.) Human-rights activists may pin their hopes for a change of policy on a Democrat beating Mr Bush in November's presidential election. But even a Democratic president would be well aware that giving suspected terrorists more rights would not be a popular first move.
-------- space
Pentagon Preps for War in Space
By Noah Shachtman
Feb. 20, 2004
Wired
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,62358,00.html
An Air Force report is giving what analysts call the most detailed picture since the end of the Cold War of the Pentagon's efforts to turn outer space into a battlefield.
For years, the American military has spoken in hints and whispers, if at all, about its plans to develop weapons in space. But the U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan (PDF) changes all that. Released in November, the report makes U.S. dominance of the heavens a top Pentagon priority in the new century. And it runs through dozens of research programs designed to ensure that America can never be challenged in orbit -- from anti-satellite lasers to weapons that "would provide the capability to strike ground targets anywhere in the world from space."
Space has become an increasingly important part of U.S. military efforts. Satellites are used more and more to talk to troops, keep tabs on foes and guide smart bombs. There's also long been recognition that satellites may need some sort of protection against attack.
But the Air Force report goes far beyond these defensive capabilities, calling for weapons that can cripple other countries' orbiters.
That prospect worries some analysts that the U.S. may spark a worldwide arms race in orbit.
"I don't think other countries will be taking this lying down," said Theresa Hitchens, the vice president of the Center for Defense Information.
The space weapons programs listed in the Air Force report went largely unnoticed until Hitchens circulated them in an e-mail Thursday.
"This will certainly prompt China into actually moving forward" on space weapon plans of its own, she added. "The Russians are likely to respond with something as well."
This year, the Air Force will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to find ways to track enemy satellites -- and, if necessary, blind those eyes in the sky.
Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Force Space Command, said $66.4 million is being spent on a research project to "deny, disrupt and degrade adversary space-based surveillance and reconnaissance systems." He said another $79 million is funding efforts to build a "constellation of optical sensing satellites to track and identify space forces."
"As we look to the future, space is where our adversaries are looking to cut us off," Kucharek said. "We know from the attempted jamming of our GPS (global positioning system, which relies on satellites) during OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) that our enemies are going to try to deny us from using space."
But it's unclear whether putting weapons into space would provide much protection. The arms themselves could become sitting ducks in orbit -- giving the United States a new weakness, not a new strength. Satellites are already a weak "center of gravity" in American militarty planning, argues Bruce DeBlois, the editor of Beyond the Paths of Heaven: The Emergence of Space Power Thought. They're vulnerbale to electronic jamming, orbiting projectiles and nuclear detonations in near-Earth space. The space-based weapons would have all of the same vulnerabilities -- and would make that center of gravity a more inviting target.
"Simply put, we would posture ourselves as a target in a volatile context that we create, and weaken ourselves at the same time," Bruce DeBlois, the editor of Beyond the Paths of Heaven: The Emergence of Space Power Thought, told a George Washington University audience last year.
However, there's more to the Air Force plan than keeping satellites safe. The Evolutionary Air and Space Global Laser Engagement, or EAGLE, project aims to put mirrors underneath an airship 25 times the size of the Goodyear blimp. In theory, lasers -- fired from the ground, from space, or from the air -- would bounce off these blimp-borne mirrors, to track or even destroy enemy missiles.
Incredible as it sounds, the EAGLE effort is underway at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy division, sources there confirm. Also under research at the lab is the Ground-Based Laser, which, according to the Air Force report, would shoot "laser beams through the atmosphere" to knock out enemy spacecraft in low-earth orbit.
Even more outlandish is the Hypervelocity Rod Bundles research project. That effort calls for creating a system of metal poles, fired from space, that could strike anywhere on the planet. It's a long-held -- and long-ridiculed -- idea. Keeping the rods from liquefying as they enter the atmosphere is a daunting task, noted Columbia University physics professor Richard Garwin in a 2003 presentation (PDF). In order to be considered effective weapons, he said, the "rods would need to be orbited at very low altitudes, and could only deliver one-ninth the destructive energy per gram as a conventional bomb."
Despite such technical hurdles, space-based arms are legal. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 only bans nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction from orbit.
Over the years, American administrations have looked into developing such weapons -- most notably, as part of President Reagan's Star Wars anti-missile initiative.
However, Hitchens said, "no U.S. president has authorized the deployment of a space weapon, at least in the white (unclassified) world."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on the other hand, long has advocated sending arms into orbit. Just before taking office in 2001, he chaired a commission on space and national security that warned that the country could face a "space Pearl Harbor" (PDF) in the years to come. This calamity must be avoided, the commission declared, asserting that the best way to do that is to "vigorously pursue the capabilities ... to ensure that the President will have the option to deploy weapons in space."
But pursuing such a strategy may actually put the United States in greater jeopardy, argues David Wright, with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"You're opening a door you might rather not have opened," he said.
"America is the country with the most satellites, he explained. By developing anti-satellite weapons, "it legitimizes systems that the U.S. has the most to lose from." Other countries could start pursuing long-taboo space weapons efforts. And while countries like China don't have the technical sophistication of the United States, they already have the capabilities to hurt us in space -- medium range missiles, and nuclear warheads.
Wright added, "This could trigger a backlash that actually leaves the U.S. worse off."
Also: February 20, 2004 Defense Tech http://www.defensetech.org/archives/000783.html
----
The White House Coup Against NASA
Submitted to Portside portside@yahoogroups.com
February 20, 2004
By Morton H. Frank
A rapid series of events makes evident that the Bush administration has moved to take direct control of NASA in order to serve the administration's own immediate political goals and perhaps also to support military objectives in space. Should the effort succeed, grave damage will be done to the scientific work now going on under NASA's auspices. While NASA overall is closely linked to the military, much significant science is currently supported under its budget. It is this civilian component of NASA that has come under attack.
On January 14th at NASA headquarters, George Bush announced a new vision for space exploration. "We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon." "[With] the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, "we will take the next steps of space exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond." The refocusing of NASA for these new tasks was delegated by Bush to the agency's administrator, Sean O'Keefe, a former White House budget official. These goals, he indicated, were to be accomplished on the cheap: All of NASA's activities are to be subordinated to this new space program, with $11 billion to be drawn from the agency's existing five-year budget and Congress expected to provide an additional billion in new money. (1, 2)
The next day, O'Keefe announced a reorganization of NASA around the new program. (3) Two days later he shocked the managers of the Hubble space telescope, telling them that there would be no further shuttle visits to maintain it. A shuttle flight planned to install new scientific instruments and replace gyroscopes and batteries in 2005 was now cancelled. (4) Without it, the great telescope, whose findings have revolutionized our understanding of the universe and whose sublime photographs of the heavens have inspired millions, is expected to deteriorate and have its life cut short. It has often been said that the Hubble is the most significant telescope since Galileo's own instrument in 1609.
As O'Keefe told it, the cancellation was due to safety considerations that had come to light after the shuttle disaster the year before, and was unrelated to NASA's reorganization. As shocking as the cancellation itself was the absence of scientific participation in the decision.
The evidence indicates that the cancellation of service to the Hubble was part and parcel of Bush's vision of human space exploration. The story of Bush's big plan has been well told by Andrew Lawler in the pages of Science magazine, the weekly published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Until December of last year, the visionary plan was "a tightly held set of options" prepared by "a small team of White House and federal agency officials." "That team, led by the National Security Council," included "O'Keefe as well as Pentagon and Commerce and State department officials" (5) and presidential science advisor John Marburger (6, 7). Its product was "vetted by Vice President Dick Cheney, Presidential Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and the president's top political adviser, Karl Rove." Here too, there was little or no scientific input into the decision to send people to explore space. Also, in following these preparations Lawler recognized that "any new mission will have to fit into an agency budget [that is] already strained...." (5) At a hearing on February 12th, several members of the House Science Committee also expressed skepticism about NASA's ability to support the new project without starving ongoing programs. (8, 9)
In his January 14th presentation, Bush named Edward "Pete" Aldridge to chair a commission to think up, within four months, what should actually be done to carry out his vision. Aldridge, a onetime astronaut and former Secretary of the Air Force, currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Lockheed Martin Corp. (10) On February 11th, Pete Aldridge held a public hearing of his hastily assembled commission to try to get some ideas. Among those attending was Norman Augustine, retired chairman of Lockheed Martin and leader of a panel that had once examined the space program for the elder President Bush. Augustine cited the enormous costs that NASA already faces in carrying out its ongoing programs and remarked that the nation has traditionally underestimated the cost of big programs. He clearly recognized that the project Bush was calling for would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but Aldridge responded that both the White House and NASA believe the new space initiative is affordable with small budget increases, at least for the foreseeable future. (9)
The authors of Bush's January 14th speech put into his mouth that "Our first goal is to complete the International Space Station by 2020.... We will focus our future research aboard the station on the long term effects of space travel on human biology." (1) Here the authors of the speech reveal themselves as unaware that definitive physiology has already been done. They fail to grasp just how hazardous to the human organism are the prolonged exposure to the zero gravity, radiation and social isolation of outer space. Space travel would be far more risky than a shuttle mission to service the Hubble.
Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) has called on NASA administrator O'Keefe to appoint an independent panel of outside experts to review his decision calling off further visits to the Hubble. (11, 12) O'Keefe did agree to a limited review, to be carried out by the head of last year's investigation into the Columbia shuttle disaster, while stressing that he himself retains authority over the final decision.
Press reports have not favored O'Keefe's decision to discontinue Hubble maintenance, but actual criticism has been sparse. An internet search led to only six editorials or articles in U.S. newspapers in opposition.
On the other hand, the reaction of Science magazine has been strong and immediate, with an editorial calling for resistance: (13) "Nearly 50 years of space exploration have seen the contribution of humans to space science shrink while the cost of putting humans in space has risen. Over the same period, robotic missions have grown in effectiveness and efficiency.... [Is] human exploration still required to gain public support for space science and exploration, as the president claims? We think not. The scientific community may have been missing the opportunity to present and explain the rationale for robotic exploration in space and the wonder that can be gained from it.... This is the year to do it."
Professional organizations immediately affected have sounded the alarm. The American Physical Society (physicists) demanded that any panel to review NASA's dumping of the Hubble be truly independent and include research scientists. (14) The American Astronomical Society supported Mikulski's call for an independent review. "The Hubble Space Telescope" said the astronomers "is a national treasure.... Its impact, not only on science, but on the dreams and imagination of our young people, cannot be overstated."(15)
Finally, a petition campaign to "Save the Hubble" addressed to Congress and NASA has gotten under way and already collected about 25,000 signatures. (16)
--
The new White House vision for NASA is too vague and unrealistic, and its stated costs too low, for it to be taken seriously. The primary intention seems to be votes in areas where NASA has major facilities, such as Florida, along with the creation of new business opportunities for aerospace corporations, and it's likely that the inadequate budgeting for human space exploration is intended to set the stage for squeezing out civilian science.
The Hubble is merely the most complex and famous of three telescopes now circling the earth, each examining the heavens in a different wavelength. And there are other NASA astronomical satellites in space, with more in preparation. Could the current White House occupant be so repelled by the emerging scientific picture of the universe, conflicting with fundamentalist dogma, that he welcomes a pretext to cut short the stream of data that all these instruments are sending down?
Sources
1. http://whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/0114-3.html
2. Andrew Lawler. President Bush Reaches for the Moon. Science, Jan. 16, 2004.
3. http://www.space.com/news/okeefe_update_040115.html
4. Dennis Overbye. NASA Cancels Trip to Supply Hubble, Sealing Early Doom. The New York Times, Jan. 17, 2004.
5. Andrew Lawler. Bush Plan for NASA: Watch This Space. Science, Dec. 12, 2003.
6. Andrew Lawler. How Much Space for Science? Science, January 30, 2004.
7. Through most of his career Marburger has been a science administrator, not a working scientist. The short period of his life when he did actual research was before 1980. See the net site of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which he heads, at http//ostp.gov
8. Franklin D. Roylance. NASA will still pursue science, Congress told. Baltimore Sun, Feb. 13, 2004.
9. Guy Gugliotta. Tests Likely to Delay Next Shuttle Launch. Washington Post, Feb. 13, 2004.
10. Marcia Dunn. Ex-Astronaut to Lead Moon-Mars Commission. AP dispatch posted Jan. 19, 2004 by Space.com. http://www.space.com/news/Aldridge_040119.html
11. Alex Dominguez. Sen. Mikulski asks NASA to review Hubble decision. USA Today, Jan. 23, 2004. http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2004-01-23-hubble-halt_x.htm
12. Andrew Lawler. Hubble Huggers Get a Reprieve. Science, Feb. 6, 2004.
13. Donald Kennedy and Brooks Hanson. A Time of Opportunity. Science, Jan. 30, 1994.
14. http://www.aas.org/policy/APSEExecBoardStatement.html
15. http://www.aas.org/governance/council/resolutions.html#CANCELLATION
16. http://savethehubble.org/petition.jsp
----
Shuttle Flights Won't Resume Until 2005
Associated Press
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55741-2004Feb19.html
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA said Thursday that the space shuttle will remain grounded until early next year, and once launches do resume, a second spaceship will be on standby to rescue the astronauts if their craft is damaged in flight.
Because of the Columbia disaster, NASA decided last month that all future shuttles will be devoted to completing the international space station. That way, the astronauts can inspect and repair their ships at the orbiting outpost and await rescue there if the damage is too grave.
The rescue shuttle will not necessarily be on the launchpad but will be ready to fly within 45 to 90 days, shuttle program manager Bill Parsons said. That is how long seven additional astronauts could remain aboard the space station before supplies ran out.
NASA had been aiming for its first post-Columbia launch as early as next fall, but Administrator Sean O'Keefe said it would now be no earlier than January 2005. Because of a new safety requirement for daylight launches to photograph the liftoff from multiple angles, NASA is limited in the number of days it can send a shuttle to the station.
O'Keefe said five or six potential launch dates are available in January. "If that looks like it's forcing anybody to do anything in a way that pressures that schedule at all, we'll defer it to March if need be," he said in Orlando.
The space agency has yet to decide which shuttle -- Atlantis or Discovery -- will make the first post-Columbia flight. The fleet has been grounded since Columbia broke apart over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003.
NASA has not had a rescue ship waiting in the wings since the 1970s, the era of its first space station, Skylab.
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CIA chief in Baghdad removed
Friday, February 20, 2004
Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001861627_iraqdig20.html
WASHINGTON - The CIA recently removed its top officer in Baghdad, Iraq, because of questions about his ability to lead the massive station there.
A senior U.S. official acknowledged that the CIA station chief in Baghdad was removed in December after weeks of increasingly deadly and sophisticated attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces and civilian targets.
"There was just a belief that it was a huge operation and we needed a very senior, very experienced person to run it," the official said.
The official declined to disclose the number of CIA personnel in Iraq, but other sources said it exceeded 500. The CIA's Baghdad station has become the largest in agency history, eclipsing the size of its post in Saigon at the height of the Vietnam War, a U.S. official said.
The high-profile post has been held by three senior officers since Bush declared an end to the major-combat phase of the war last May, sources said.
The first had served in the Baghdad station before the Persian Gulf War in 1991, went to "run operations (from) across the border" before the invasion last year, was fluent in Arabic and was "extraordinarily experienced" in setting up and running large intelligence operations, according to a former senior intelligence official. But that officer had always planned to leave the job in June 2003.
His replacement had served as station chief in a neighboring country and was pushed out in December amid internal personnel problems and growing concern in Washington that the agency was failing to get an adequate grip on the insurgency. Some speculated that the officer may have angered officials in the Bush administration with a report he produced in November saying that a growing number of Iraqis believed the U.S. coalition could be defeated.
The current station chief is a highly regarded officer who "rose rather meteorically" during operations in Kosovo, which was the agency's last major buildup of assets, a former CIA officer said.
Several sources said the CIA has been drawn too much into troop-protection work ordinarily done by the military. As a result, some are concerned that the agency has not been able to concentrate on recruiting spies.
Civil Defense Corps members detained in pair of attacks
WASHINGTON - Two members of Iraq's new Civil Defense Corps have been detained in connection with weekend attacks in Fallujah that left 25 Iraqis dead, Pentagon officials said yesterday.
The action followed the detention of the mayor of Fallujah, who had submitted his resignation a few days before the Saturday assaults. The two attacks took place simultaneously against an Iraqi police station and a Civil Defense Corps compound.
Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, the deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he had no conclusions on the degree to which insurgents had infiltrated Iraq's new security agencies.
"They were obviously vetted and were able to slip through somehow," Rodriguez said. But he added the detainees were suspected only of having information about the attacks, and were being interrogated.
Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said one of the dead attackers was a former major in the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein. There had been some earlier suggestions that the attackers were foreigners, perhaps al-Qaida, but senior military officials have since said all were Iraqis.
Report warns of tensions as Kurds return to homes
GENEVA - Some 100,000 Arabs have fled ethnically mixed northern Iraq as Kurds, forced out by former President Saddam Hussein's Arabization program, return to reclaim their homes, a U.N.-sponsored report said yesterday.
The report by the Geneva-based Global IDP Project warned that the unregulated return of thousands of Kurds could inflame simmering tensions in the oil-rich towns of Mosul and Kirkuk, where Arabs and Turkmen have protested growing Kurdish political influence. Some 800,000 Kurds and members of other non-Arab ethnic groups were forced out of areas around Kirkuk and Mosul under Saddam's Arabization program, and Arabs, seen as more loyal to his government, were settled in their place.
Many Kurds and members of the smaller Turkmen minority fled north to Kurdish-controlled areas. After U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam last year, the movement reversed.
The internal displacement report said Arabs had left areas around Mosul and Kirkuk either as a direct result of the return of some 30,000 Kurds "or out of fear of revenge attacks."
Many of the displaced Arabs are now living north of Baghdad in abandoned army camps and public buildings, largely without access to health care, electricity or running water.
Kurdish leaders say Kirkuk is a Kurdish city and should be part of a Kurdish region in a new federal Iraq.
----
Former Spy Chief Arrested In Mexican 'Dirty War' Case
By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56188-2004Feb19.html
MEXICO CITY, Feb. 19 -- Miguel Nazar Haro, a onetime domestic spy chief implicated in the killings of government critics in the 1970s and 1980s, was arrested Wednesday evening as he drove to his doctor's office, the first former official arrested for crimes committed during what was known as Mexico's "dirty war."
The dramatic arrest, hailed by human rights activists, comes three years after President Vicente Fox took office promising to punish officials responsible for the torture and disappearance of hundreds of student activists and anti-government guerrillas. Nazar Haro was seized as Fox's chief prosecutor was under increased pressure to show results in his investigations of dirty-war cases.
Nazar Haro, 80, who has denied the charges against him, is accused of not only ordering numerous murders but also directly participating in torture. As former director of the now disbanded Federal Security Directorate, he was once named in an FBI cable as an "essential contact" for the CIA in Mexico City. He is also wanted in the United States on 1982 charges involving a car theft ring.
The arrest was one of the few bright spots in stalled efforts to carry out democratic reforms in Mexico. Under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which Fox swept from office in the 2000 elections after seven decades in power, corruption and arbitrary abuses of power went unchecked.
Nazar Haro "was like a psychopath," said Fernando Pineda Ochoa, who said he was tortured by him in 1971. Pineda Ochoa, then a Marxist opposed to the authoritarian government, said Nazar Haro beat him, applied electric shocks to his mouth and told him he was going to torture his mother in his presence.
Now a teacher, Pineda Ochoa said his torture continued for more than a month as Nazar Haro and others sought names and addresses of other Marxists. He said he was hung from the ceiling by his arms for hours at a time. "I am not seeking revenge," Pineda Ochoa said about Nazar Haro. "But he is guilty. Everybody who suffered at his hands knows that."
Nazar Haro also has legal troubles in the United States. He was arrested in San Diego in 1982 on charges of participating in a multimillion-dollar car theft ring. A federal indictment said that hundreds of cars were stolen in California and brought into Mexico; some later turned up being driven by senior government officials. Nazar Haro fled after posting $200,000 bail.
In a highly sensitive and publicized incident at the time, the U.S. attorney in charge of that case said the CIA was hindering the prosecution because Nazar Haro had been an intelligence source. Nazar Haro -- whose job at the security directorate was roughly equivalent to the director of the FBI or the CIA -- had been named by officials at the time as helping the CIA monitor radical and communist groups in Mexico and Central America.
Kate Doyle, a senior analyst in Mexico for the National Security Archive, a private research institute based in Washington, said newly declassified documents show that there was a "deliberate decision on the part of the U.S. government" not to publicize or protest "grave human rights violations unfolding right under their noses." While U.S. officials were aware of the tactics being used by the Mexican government to eliminate its opponents, she said, they decided to stick to issues that "mattered most to Washington," such as trade and oil.
Federal police pulled over Nazar Haro's Pontiac Grand Am on the Periferico, Mexico City's beltway, during rush hour on Wednesday evening. Police said Nazar Haro was with his wife and daughter en route to a medical checkup; his family said he suffers from severe diabetes and heart problems.
He was then flown to the northern city of Monterrey, where he was to stand trial for the disappearance of Jesus Piedra Ibarra, a member of an anti-government guerrilla group who was abducted in 1975. Piedra Ibarra's mother, Rosario Ibarra, who has become a well-known activist for victims' families, said in an interview the arrest was "the culmination of a long fight."
Nazar Haro is "guilty of horrible things," she said, including using iron prods and electric shocks to torture people in basements of government buildings.
Ibarra said she hoped the federal investigation would now turn to former president Luis Echeverria, who served from 1970 to 1976. Echeverria, 82, was called last year to testify before the dirty-war special prosecutor, Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, but invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination. Former president Jose Lopez Portillo, an Echeverria protege whose term from 1976 to 1982 also coincided with dirty-war crimes, died this week.
The arrest was a major boost for Carrillo Prieto, who has been under intensifying pressure as his two-year investigation had dragged on without results. Late last year, at the prosecutor's behest, a judge issued arrest warrants for Nazar Haro and three other former officials, none of whom had been arrested until now. One of the fugitives, Isidro Galeana, a former state police commander, died of natural causes at his home in Acapulco on Jan. 3.
In a recent interview, Carrillo Prieto said he would ask Fox for more government resources to capture dirty-war fugitives.
"We need more elements of the state to help make arrests to keep this from becoming a joke," the prosecutor said. He said he was committed to finding Nazar Haro and the others even if he had to "look under every rock and in hell if they are there."
Nazar Haro, often described as a complicated man with uncommonly clear blue eyes and a mercurial demeanor, was called in for questioning by Carrillo Prieto last year but declined to answer any questions. As he entered the prosecutor's office, members of a crowd shouted: "Nazar, murderer! Nazar, murderer!"
Nazar Haro later told reporters that he was a Mexican patriot. He said he was not a torturer, but "just a good interrogator."
Police said Nazar Haro was able to elude capture for the last two months since his arrest warrant was issued by traveling in cars with darkened windows, dyeing his hair, growing a mustache and staying in different houses.
No trial date has been set. Daniel Wilkinson of Human Rights Watch in New York said that if the trial goes forward, "it would mark a turning point for Mexico, because for decades Mexico failed to hold government officials accountable for their crimes."
----
Green Beret spies will help out CIA in war on terror
IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent,
February 20 2004
UK Herald
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/10395.html
THE US Army is to train batches of its ultra-secret Green Berets special forces in espionage techniques to help the overstretched CIA in the global war against terror and bypass congressional scrutiny of covert operations abroad.
A new "school for spies" has been opened at Fort Lewis, Washington, home of the 1st special forces group, to allow selected troopers to learn how to set up, handle, and pay networks of agents,and to collect and sift raw intelligence.
The troopers, already experienced at operating behind enemy lines in their famous 12-man "A-teams", are now to expand their role from organising resistance among local fighters to gathering and acting on the data usually acquired by CIA agents.
Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, has given the Tampa-based special forces command the go-ahead to plan and carry out kill-or-capture missions against terrorists anywhere in the world.
The Green Berets' new skills are to be used to allow them to infiltrate un-cooperative or hostile countries and track down the fugitives from terrorist networks. A Pentagon spokesman said: "The project is designed to make everyone in that section of the special forces an intelligence agent. We cannot afford to wait for the spooks from the CIA to come up with the goods.
"That's what used to happen. They produced the data and we provided the shooters to act on it. The gap between one and the other often meant we passed up the chance of taking down key figures."
The other major benefit of using the army's special forces is that it allows the White House to sanction "black" kidnapping or assassination missions in another country without ready experienced at operating behind enemy lines in their famous 12-man "A-teams", are now to expand their role from organising resistance among local fighters to gathering and acting on the data usually acquired by CIA agents.
Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, has given the Tampa-based special forces command the go-ahead to plan and carry out kill-or-capture missions against terrorists anywhere in the world.
The Green Berets' new skills are to be used to allow them to infiltrate un-cooperative or hostile countries and track down the fugitives from terrorist networks. A Pentagon spokesman said: "The project is designed to make everyone in that section of the special forces an intelligence agent. We cannot afford to wait for the spooks from the CIA to come up with the goods.
"That's what used to happen. They produced the data and we provided the shooters to act on it. The gap between one and the other often meant we passed up the chance of taking down key figures."
The other major benefit of using the army's special forces is that it allows the White House to sanction "black" kidnapping or assassination missions in another country without having to inform Congress under US legislation governing CIA operations.
However, any appropriate intelligence picked up by the Green Berets would be passed to the CIA.
Meanwhile, A US National Guardsman accused of attempting to provide al Qaeda with information about US troop strength and tactics has been charged and could face a death sentence.
Ryan Anderson was charged in Fort Lewis, Washington, with three counts involving efforts to supply intelligence to the enemy.
-------- un
U.N. Chief to Leave Decision on Sovereignty to Iraqis
February 20, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/international/middleeast/20CND-NATI.html?hp
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 20 - Secretary General Kofi Annan has combined his finding that hasty elections in Iraq are not feasible before the June 30, the end of American governance, with a determination to leave to Iraqis themselves the decision on the best alternative way of restoring sovereignty, United Nations officials said today.
"The ball is back in the court of the Iraqis and the C.P.A., with the U.N. willing to be called in to help as requested," Mr. Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said, referring to the American-run Coalition Provisional Authority.
Mr. Annan, speaking after meeting with his special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, on Mr. Brahimi's return to New York on Thursday, said that the United Nations was eager to advise Iraqis on the political way forward but insistent on not being seen as imposing an outside solution.
"It is crucial that we not give the impression that Iraq's fate could be decided over the heads of its people," he told representatives of a 46-nation Iraqi support group at the United Nations.
Mr. Annan said that he and Mr. Brahimi had told the delegates "that elections cannot be held before the end of June, that the June 30 date for the handover of sovereignty must be respected, and that we need to find a mechanism to create the caretaker government and then prepare the elections sometime later in the future."
Diplomats say that the United Nations was also intent to avoid having its independence and neutrality compromised by appearing to have too close an association with the American occupation authorities. The current entry of the United Nations into the negotiations over Iraq's political future represents its first significant activity in the country since its Baghdad headquarters was blown up in a terror bombing in August, killing 22 people, including the mission chief, Sergio Viera de Mello.
Mr. Annan left New York today on a five-day trip to Japan, and his full recommendation on Iraq is being put off until late next week at the earliest after he has returned to United Nations headquarters. Mr. Brahimi is on a separate trip to Japan, and the two men will be continuing their conversations on Iraq there, Mr. Annan's office said.
Mr. Annan is now suggesting that his final report may not be definitive even then, and he is also leaving open the strong possibility that Mr. Brahimi will need to return to Iraq next month to consult further before reaching a conclusion of how the transition should occur.
Mr. Annan was emphatic in saying that he had not settled on any path of his own choosing. "We have absolutely no preferred options," he told reporters after briefing the members of the Security Council. "We need to have the Iraqis discuss it," he said. "They must take ownership, discuss it among themselves and we will try and work with them to find a consensus."
For his part, Mr. Brahimi, who just completed a weeklong mission to Iraq, discouraged proposals to hold "partial elections," votes in those parts of the country secure enough to hold them. "When elections take place," Mr. Brahimi said, speaking in Arabic, "all Iraqis from the south, the north and in the middle, all Iraqis must participate."
Mr. Brahimi and a team of United Nations election experts went to Iraq after the United States asked them to evaluate a complicated caucus-based plan it had devised for creating an interim government that was coming under attack by Iraqi leaders.
The invitation represented an about-face by the Bush administration, which had shunned United Nations involvement to the point where the world organization was not even mentioned in the Nov. 15 agreement between the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Governing Council that set up the now discredited plan for political transition.
Among the alternative possibilities under consideration are giving sovereignty to an expanded and more representative version of the Governing Council with elections early next year or to a transitional assembly selected by a broad national conference or Iraqis like the "loya jirga" gathering of leaders in Afghanistan. Mr. Brahimi was the United Nations envoy to Kabul during that process.
Mr. Annan strongly implied that he had discounted the possibility that the Americans' caucus plan could be refined to make it locally acceptable. "So we will assist the Iraqis in defining what the next approach should be," he said.
Mr. Annan acknowledged concern that the delay in issuing his final recommendation would probably overlap the Feb. 28 deadline for settling on an interim constitution, but he said that he thought the two issues had now been "decoupled."
"I don't think one has to come to an agreement on the transitional mechanism for it to be reflected in the basic law because I think there has been a decoupling, and we don't have to meet the deadline," he said.
He turned aside questions over speculation that his final report would recommend an advanced date for the national elections now proposed for the end of 2005. "It is being looked at," is all he would say.
-------- us
Old-Timers Teach Newcomers Iraq Survival
By CHRIS BRUMMITT
Associated Press Writer
February 20, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-iraq-lessons-learned,0,620270.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
TIKRIT, Iraq -- The new arrivals sat mostly in silence, watching the dangers flash by on the laptop: a Humvee destroyed by a roadside bomb, a mound of shrapnel-laced plastic explosives, a booby-trapped poster of Saddam Hussein.
The slide show was being given by a soldier heading home after a one-year tour in the Tikrit region, where mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and bombings are a constant threat.
Those huddled around the computer in a quiet corner of their sleeping quarters in this sprawling U.S. military base were only five days in Iraq, and on their first deployment to a combat zone.
"It goes to show that this is a deadly place," said one soldier, unwilling to give his name. "This is not just another Bosnia rotation."
Over the next six weeks the 30,000 troops of Task Force Ironhorse, who have patrolled a West Virginia-sized swath of north and central Iraq for the past year, will be replaced. The first soldiers began the journey home this week.
In one of the largest troop rotations in U.S. history, up to 200,000 soldiers are moving in or out of Iraq between now and May.
In long chats over chow and in more formal familiarization sessions, the threat posed by roadside bombs comes up again and again. More than half the 39 U.S. soldiers killed last month fell victim to what the military calls IEDs -- improvised explosive devices.
The computer presentation showed different types of explosives and timers; IEDs hidden in soft-drink cans and inside animal carcasses; decoy bombs, left to cause a convoy to stop and investigate only to be hit by other devices hidden nearby.
One photo showed a placard of Saddam Hussein attached to a fence. It was rigged to blow up if a soldier ripped it down.
Advice ranges from the technical -- add armor to your Humvee if possible, drive fast and in the middle of the road -- to the more philosophical.
"People should make peace with their family members because they might not get to see them again," said Sgt. Andrew Antolik, from Dyersville, Iowa. "Stuff happens out here. People get killed."
Most returning soldiers are from the 4th Infantry Division, out of Fort Hood, Texas. They will be replaced by the Germany-based 1st Infantry Division. The handover is scheduled for mid-March.
Dangers still abound for returning soldiers until they fly out of neighboring Kuwait. Many will travel in slow-moving convoys along the risky roads north of Baghdad before hitting the country's friendlier south.
For troops working with Iraqi officials or contractors on reconstruction projects, the transition period is essential for advising the new arrivals about whom to trust and how to get things done.
"Every moment is precious," said Capt. Tami Morgan of Millville, Mass., who is deployed to a medical unit charged with reconstructing the country's crumbling hospitals.
In Iraq less then a week, Morgan has been busy meeting Iraqi health officials and talking to outgoing unit commander Maj. Alex Garza.
Talking to Garza is critical, she said, because "On Wednesday our umbilical cord is cut and he won't be answering e-mails for three months."
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Pentagon, contractors use revolving door for jobs
By Renae Merle
The Washington Post
Friday, February 20, 2004
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2001861597_contractors20.html
WASHINGTON - George Muellner spent more than 30 years in the Air Force, rising eventually to the position of deputy acquisition chief. Now he's the senior vice president of Air Force Systems for Boeing's defense unit.
E.C. "Pete" Aldridge, the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer, resigned in May 2003. A month later, he joined the board of the nation's largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin.
General Dynamics got a prized recruit in David Heebner. He was hired in 2000 after more than 30 years in the military, most recently as the Army's assistant vice chief of staff. The company was so pleased to have snagged a member of the top brass that it announced the hiring a month before Heebner's official retirement.
Earlier this month, General Dynamics, which counts the Army among its largest customers, reeled in another veteran: John "Jack" Keane, who was named to the company's board. Keane spent 37 years in the Army before retiring as the vice chief of staff.
The career moves of these military veterans created barely a ripple in Washington. Traffic between the Pentagon and big defense contractors has been busy for as long as anyone can remember.
Not until someone gets stuck in the revolving door - as an Air Force official recently did - does the debate about its propriety heat up again. Darleen Druyun
Boeing hired Darleen Druyun, deputy acquisition chief for the Air Force, in January 2003 and fired her in November for allegedly holding job talks while she still supervised Boeing contracts. Her role at the Air Force included weighing the government's lease and purchase of Boeing tanker jets potentially worth $17 billion to $18 billion.
Boeing also fired its chief financial officer, Mike Sears, for allegedly concealing the improper discussions and violating its hiring policies.
The Druyun case has put the revolving door under its sharpest scrutiny in years.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has ordered an examination of the Pentagon's rules on post-government employment for senior officials to ensure they are tough enough and working. At least two congressional hearings on hiring practices of defense contractors are expected in 2004.
The General Accounting Office has formed a team to study the revolving door throughout the government and industry.
And the White House has ordered federal agencies to stop issuing waivers that permit presidential appointees to negotiate for private-sector jobs while they still decide issues important to their potential employers. The White House must now approve all such waivers.
The rules that allow Pentagon officials to accept defense-industry jobs are complex and varied, depending on seniority and position. Before government officials can begin negotiating jobs in the private sector, they must recuse themselves from making decisions that could have a financial impact on their potential employers.
Also, officials who take jobs with contractors are barred from representing those companies on projects they supervised or worked on while they were in the government.
But the defense companies are so huge and the rules so elastic that loopholes exist.
For instance, if a contracting official has awarded a significant deal to a company, he or she generally can't accept compensation from that company for a year after leaving the government. But the official can avoid the restriction by taking a job at an unrelated unit of the same company, industry analysts say.
Also, senior government officials who move into the business world are prohibited from lobbying their former agencies for a year. But they can work behind the scenes to help a company develop strategies to pursue federal contracts.
"I was really shocked at how lax the law was," said Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Ill., chairman of the Governmental Affairs subcommittee on financial management, the budget and international security. "Clearly there is the potential for procurement officers to give contracts to companies and then go cash in by getting lucrative jobs."
Critics want to lengthen the time a Pentagon official must wait before joining a contractor. They also question whether it's appropriate at all for a Defense Department official to move to a contractor whose projects the official oversaw.
But a host of factors is working against any significant revamping of the revolving door, say industry, congressional and watchdog observers.
The defense industry has come to depend on a regular flow of highly experienced government officials into its top ranks. The companies pay top dollar to recruits who can instruct them in the ways of the Pentagon and help focus their contracting efforts. Pentagon officials often have high-tech knowledge that contractors crave.
"In many cases, individuals with critical technical expertise have gained this unique experience in government positions," said Randy Belote, a spokesman for Northrop Grumman. "To dismiss these people from consideration just because they once worked for the government would be doing our customers and shareholders a disservice."
The new hires often have dedicated themselves to public service in the expectation of one day turning their expertise into lucrative salaries, said some industry officials. Some officials worry that an overhaul could diminish the attractiveness of the government work.
"I have met a number of people who really want to serve the public, and they go into the government because they want to serve their country," said Stuart Gilman, president of the Ethics Resource Center, a nonprofit group. "But they wouldn't want to do this if they thought they couldn't get a job to support their family when they left the government."
Congress may find itself unwilling to push the issue too hard because it could raise questions about the movement of its own employees into the private sector, industry officials said.
In 2002, Northrop hired Capitol Hill veteran Eric Womble and later trumpeted his appointment to the position of vice president of programs. Northrop noted Womble "was instrumental in setting and passing legislation and appropriations that positively impacted the Department of Defense, its service members and families" when he was an assistant for Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.
President Clinton tried to tackle the issue but ultimately backed off. On his first day in office in 1993, he barred senior government officials from lobbying their former colleagues for five years.
Weeks before leaving office in 2000, he lifted the ban, restoring the one-year waiting period. His staffers had complained about the difficulty of getting another job in government after the Republicans won the White House.
The scandal involving Boeing's Druyun has put the revolving door at the top of the agenda for some critics. "In the Boeing case, we have seen compelling evidence that there is an incestuous relationship between the defense industry and defense officials that is not good for America," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.
Druyun's attorney has declined to comment and Sears, the fired chief financial officer, has denied any wrongdoing.
Druyun was able to go to work directly after she retired from the Air Force because she signed on with Boeing's national missile-defense unit instead of the company's air-systems business that she dealt with at the Pentagon.
Fitzgerald points to Druyun's example as evidence that the restrictions need revision. "That's such a big exception that it seems to make the general rule meaningless. If the statute doesn't prevent Darleen Druyun from going to Boeing, it doesn't mean anything," he said. "Some could interpret the job offer to her as a payoff for help while at the Air Force."
Druyun was among industry's most highly sought recruits. After more than 30 years with the military, she had a reputation as a hard-nosed negotiator with an unparalleled understanding of the procurement process. In an acknowledgement of her power, Druyun's boss, Marvin Sambur, the Air Force acquisition chief, did not replace her when she retired in November 2002.
"I felt that the position had taken on a lot more power than it deserved. I wanted to get more intimately involved in the decision-making process, and that layer of management did not allow me to," Sambur said in December.
Druyun held employment discussions with the industry's four largest contractors - Boeing, Northrop, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin - before going with Boeing. Northrop said it had talked with Druyun once but made no offer. Raytheon said it has no record of employment discussions with her, while Druyun's attorney has said the two sides did have talks.
Sambur said he had advised Druyun not to talk with Boeing because she was a chief negotiator with the company on a plan to lease, then buy its refueling tankers, a plan criticized in Congress as too costly.
"I felt at the time that it was not a particular company she should pursue because of the highly visible nature of the tanker program," said Sambur, who managed the $1.5 billion defense business of ITT before being appointed to his position.
"When I leave the Air Force, I am not going to be working for Boeing, that's for sure. There is no contract activity that has had as much scrutiny."
-------- propaganda wars
Washington's Arabic TV Effort Gets Mixed Reviews
February 20, 2004
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/international/middleeast/20ARAB.html?pagewanted=all&position=
CAIRO, Feb. 19 - An American-sponsored satellite television station broadcasting in Arabic, probably Washington's biggest propaganda effort since the attempts to undermine the Soviet bloc and the Castro government, is drawing mixed reviews in the Middle East, ranging from praise for slick packaging to criticism for trying to improve the image of "Satan."
Those watching the station, which started over the weekend with an interview with President Bush, find some appeal in the mix of news and pop culture. But many remain wary of the underlying political message.
The Bush administration began Al Hurra, whose name means the Free One, with the announced intent of challenging Al Jazeera and other Arab satellite stations frequently critical of American policy.
Some differences in tone between Al Hurra and the Arab broadcasters were immediately apparent, like references to the "coalition forces" in Iraq rather than the "occupation forces."
Instead of referring to Palestinians trying to free themselves from the Israeli occupation, one anchor asked an analyst whether the Palestinians were ready to abandon their "historical dispute" for the economic prosperity surely to follow.
The station is being pilloried in the Arab press as a propaganda arm of the United States government, trying to gloss over America's anti-Arab bias. Analysts have labeled it "Fox News in Arabic" and a spiritual descendant of TV Martí, the American government's anti-Castro broadcasts in Cuba.
The station is not yet available in all markets. Given that it has been on the air just a few days, academics and other professionals say it is too early to say whether its journalistic credentials will overcome the taint of being underwritten by the American government.
"The people they have hired look modern, hip, and the beat is fast, but it won't have an impact on the perception of the United States," predicted Mustafa B. Hamarneh, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan.
"I think the Americans are mistaken if they assume they can change their image in the region," he said. "People became anti-American because they don't like American policies."
The Virginia-based station, with a budget of $62 million for the first year, is the latest in a series of attempts to improve the dismal standing of America in the Arab world. Some have fallen flat, like a series of television spots called hopelessly naïve because they focused on non-issues like freedom of religion in the United States.
Another effort, Radio Sawa, or Together, proved more resilient since it started broadcasting two years ago with a combination of pop music and rapid-fire news broadcasts, much like AM radio fare in the United States. But it also spawned competitors, and some Jordanians, for example, say those who tired of the relentlessly American point of view abandoned the station.
Much criticism of Al Hurra in the Arab press and among people interviewed on the streets focused on the vast gap in perception between Washington and the Arab world.
While President Bush spoke about the need to foster freedom and democracy in the Arab world in his interview, for example, critics say he has done nothing concrete to encourage Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to end Israel's occupation of Arab lands and note that the United States has now occupied Iraq.
"As long as this policy continues, any attempt to improve this image will ultimately be no more than an attempt to market a new face for Satan," wrote Muhammad Abdalah Nab, a columnist on the news Web site Elaph. "Only one Apache, which American policy makers gave to Sharon for free to kill unarmed children, women and elderly Palestinians, makes the mission of this channel not only difficult, but impossible and stupid at the same time."
Salem Hamad, 22, a resident of Gaza City, said he had watched the station a few times but would most likely switch back to Al Jazeera. He was bracing for the day that Al Hurra station labeled a Palestinian attack against the Israelis as terrorism.
"They will renovate the image of the Americans, but they will sell the idea that Palestinians are terrorists," he said.
Al Jazeera's critics in the Arab world find its news analysis or talk shows overly influenced by old Arab nationalist ideas or those of Islamic movements, but it broke taboos with its coverage of breaking news and its discussions of repression in Arab countries and other touchy topics.
One reason Al Jazeera won such a huge following is by broadcasting unvarnished, often gory reports about the Arab-Israeli dispute, something government-run stations in the Arab world long avoided for fear of igniting restive populations.
Al Jazeera also gives a higher priority to breaking news on the Palestinian front than any other story, again reflecting widespread Arab sentiment. In the newscasts on Monday, for example, Al Jazeera led its afternoon broadcasts with a report that the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, might meet with Mr. Sharon. On Al Hurra the report was the third or fourth news item broadcast for much of the day, but it ultimately led the main evening news bulletin.
While Al Jazeera was broadcasting live the afternoon briefing from Baghdad given by a United States general and the senior United States civilian spokesman, Al Hurra was showing a documentary about the actor Anthony Hopkins.
Al Hurra broadcasts only 14 hours a day, and many programs are repeated several times. There is a technology program subtitled in Arabic, with segments called "Hot Topic" and "Cool Stuff," as well as a magazine show that talks about exercise, fashion and movies.
Some of the segments would be unlikely to appear on other Arab channels. The technology show included a report about a man arrested in the United States for going on the Internet pretending that he was his aunt and soliciting sex, because he was mad at her. A segment on a chic Moscow night club included a shot of a bare-chested male bartender.
Some viewers praised the documentaries, also shown in English with subtitles, which are a rarity on Arab channels. Viewers also suggested that the calm tone of the talk shows might influence the scream fests on Arab satellite shows.
Between programs, Al Hurra presents unsubtle promotional spots. Heavy orchestral music surges behind images of horses running free, or men walking against the crowd, or eye after eye opening wide. "You think, you aspire, you chose, you express, you are free, Al Hurra, just the way you are," read the text on one.
There was some public giggling about the channel's name. "I've neither watched Al Hurra nor Al Abda," joked Sad Saleh al-Folihi, a laborer in the Yemeni capital of Sana, using the Arabic word for slave.
Hussein Amin, chairman of the department of mass communication at the American University in Cairo, noted that the station had been introduced when the standing of the United States was at an all-time low in this part of the world. It takes years for any station to establish its credibility, even one not facing such a hurdle, he said.
"Their credibility is open to question right now," he said. "If they take the position of the U.S. and color everything with its policies, then people will reject the message and it will not achieve success in any form."
-------
Rocking the Vote in the Middle East
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A23
By Al Kamen
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55840-2004Feb19?language=printer
It is axiomatic that politicians, even if they think they'll win by huge margins, must always lowball when asked for predictions. For example: "We've always known this was going to be a competitive race," candidate Alsoran said yesterday, "but we hope to prevail."
But President Bush threw that rule out the window recently and predicted a huge win this fall against any Democratic opponent, including a sweep in the Mideast.
Bush, interviewed a couple weeks ago by Mouafac Harb of the U.S.-run Middle East Television Network, was asked: "If, hypothetically, people in the Middle East could vote . . . why would they vote for you?
"Well, they'd vote for me because I am strong on the war on terror, for starters," Bush explained, according to a White House transcript. "I refuse to relent to terrorist groups. There's no negotiation with these people."
Middle East voters, he said, "would appreciate George W. in the future because I understand that freedom and prosperity go hand in hand. And a free society is more likely to be a prosperous society where people can realize their hopes and aspirations."
So the Middle East goes red in '04! Bush can even lose a couple of states he won last time and still enjoy an electoral landslide.
Picture-Worth-a-Thousand-Words Dept.
In that wide-ranging interview, Bush rejected criticisms that he's been AWOL on the Mideast peace process. He noted that in Aqaba, Jordan, "I stood up with Mr. Abu Mazen, at that time the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, with [Israeli] Prime Minister [ Ariel] Sharon . . . and . . . King Abdullah [of Jordan], and we linked arms and said, 'Let us move forward on the road map to peace.' "
"Why then," Harb asked, "are some people in the U.S. or some of your friends and allies in the Middle East say[ing] that you're not personally doing enough? How do you respond to that?"
"Well, I would remind them of the pictures of Aqaba, Jordan," Bush said. "I mean, it's a rare occurrence when the president stands up with Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and says we're linked together to move toward peace. The problem was, that somebody undermined that peace process . . . and that somebody was Chairman [ Yasser] Arafat."
Those were beautiful photos, indeed. Kind of like the ones of President Bill Clinton and Abdullah's dad and Israel's Itzhak Rabin and Arafat at the White House, or ones at Camp David, Sharm-el-Sheikh and so on, or, in a different context, President Jimmy Carter and former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin. All these rare photos . . .
The interview, conducted in the White House Map Room, tested Bush not only on generalities, but on specifics as well.
"You mentioned in the State of the Union address that you would be doubling the budget for the National Endowment of Democracy towards the Middle East," Harb said. "What's your vision? How are you trying to accomplish that?"
"Well, I think we need to work with governments and institutions and NGOs to encourage the institutions of a free society," Bush said. "See, one of the interesting things in the Oval Office -- I love to bring people into the Oval Office -- right around the corner from here, and say, this is where I [have an] office, but I want you to know the office is always bigger than the person. In other words, free societies are societies where people come and go, but the institutions that protect the rights of people never leave. And that's what the institute is going to be working on -- free press . . . free elections, free society."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
9/11 Panel Head Assails Delay
Chairman Warns That Inquiry Might Have to Be Limited
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55891-2004Feb19.html
The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will have to consider scaling back the scope of its inquiry and limiting public hearings unless Congress agrees by next week to give the panel more time to finish its work, its chairman said yesterday.
Former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean (R) also said in an interview that the commission has not decided whether to accept an offer from the White House under which President Bush would meet privately with a small delegation, rather than with the panel as a whole.
Kean's comments indicate that two of the most important issues facing the 10-member bipartisan panel have yet to be resolved just three months before its current deadline of May 27. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, created in late 2002 after months of fierce congressional debate, has been hobbled by a series of disputes with the Bush administration over access to documents and other issues.
The White House reversed course earlier this month and announced it would support a two-month extension of the commission's deadline, to July 26, with the panel shutting down a month later. But House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has said he is opposed to any delay. Many Republicans fear that a later deadline would put the release of a potentially damaging report on the terrorist attacks in the middle of the presidential campaign.
Kean said yesterday that he and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, have not yet met with Hastert, but that time is running short for the commission.
"Every week that goes by makes the extension less valuable," Kean said. "When you have to work toward the earlier deadline, you have to start canceling things and you can't go over things quite as clearly as you might like. . . . Congress comes back into session next week, and we really need to hear something by then."
A spokesman for Hastert did not return telephone messages left late yesterday.
Kean and other commission officials said that without an extended deadline, the panel would not be able to hold all eight days of public hearings it is planning. Already scheduled is a two-day session in late March that will include testimony from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, CIA Director George J. Tenet and senior officials from the Clinton administration.
The commission has secured tentative agreements for private meetings with Bush, Vice President Cheney, former president Bill Clinton and former vice president Al Gore.
White House officials have said Bush does not intend to meet with the entire commission -- which includes a number of outspoken Democratic critics -- but instead would meet with a few of its representatives.
Kean said he does not know whether such restrictions would be acceptable to the commission as a whole, which is scheduled to hold closed-door meetings next week.
-------- courts
Supreme Court Expands Review of 'Enemy Combatant' Rule
February 20, 2004
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/politics/20CND-PADI.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 - The United States Supreme Court announced today that it would review the case of Jose Padilla, an American citizen being held in a Navy brig as an enemy combatant, thus setting the stage for an historic debate on the balance between individual liberties and national security.
The justices will hear the case of Mr. Padilla in April, when they will hear a related case, that of Yaser Esam Hamdi, another American citizen being held in a brig without charges as an enemy combatant.
Still another case already scheduled to be argued before the court in April concerns nearly 700 foreigners being detained as enemy combatants at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The justices are expected to rule on all three cases before their summer recess. Collectively, the rulings are likely to be of profound importance, drawing lines between the powers of courts and the administration and, perhaps, affecting the civil liberties of Americans in ways not yet imagined.
Lawyers for Mr. Padilla and Mr. Hamdi have contended that their treatment is unconstitutional. President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft and lawyers for the Bush administration have argued that Mr. Padilla and Mr. Hamdi are being treated fairly, essentially like prisoners of war, and that detaining them is appropriate and essential in the new kind of conflict the United States has been fighting since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
While the cases of Mr. Padilla, Mr. Hamdi and the Guantánamo detainees all revolve around the antiterrorism measures instituted by the government after Sept. 11, they have significant differences.
The treatment of the Guantánamo detainees, captured during the American military operation in Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban in the fall of 2001, has brought international criticism upon the United States. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unequivocally supported the Bush administration's position that the Guantánamo detention camp was beyond the reach of American law.
But in December, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, issued a contrary ruling. It declared that the administration's policy of imprisoning the foreigners without access to United States legal protections was unconstitutional as well as a violation of international law.
The Hamdi and Padilla cases, while both involving American citizens, differ markedly in one respect. Mr. Hamdi, an American citizen of Saudi descent, was captured while fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But Mr. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member with a long criminal record, was arrested on American soil: at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago in May 2002, after returning to the United States from travels in the Middle East and Pakistan. The American authorities said Mr. Padilla, a convert to Islam, had planned to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States as part of an Al Qaeda operation.
In December, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, dealt a severe defeat to the administration's policies, ruling in the case of Mr. Padilla that that President Bush lacked the authority to detain indefinitely a United States citizen arrested on American soil on suspicion of terrorism simply by declaring him "an enemy combatant."
While Congress might have the power to authorize the detention of an American, the president, acting on his own, did not, the Second Circuit declared.
The Bush administration fared better in the Hamdi case. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, ruled last year that a two-page declaration by a Pentagon official was a "sufficient basis" for concluding that Mr. Hamdi's confinement was within the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief.
Having already accepted the Hamdi case and that of the Guantánamo detainees, the Supreme Court was widely expected to take that of Mr. Padilla as well. Today, it did, with the usual words: "The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted."
--------
High Court to Decide Bush's Powers in Padilla Case
February 20, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-court-security-padilla.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court said on Friday it would decide whether President Bush has the power to order an American citizen seized on U.S. soil held as an enemy combatant, another case arising from Washington's war on terror.
Expanding its review of the government's actions, the high court agreed to decide the case of Jose Padilla, who has been held since May 2002 as a suspect in an alleged al Qaeda plot to detonate a radioactive ``dirty bomb'' in the United States.
Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and convert to Islam, has been held in a military brig in Charleston, South Carolina, without any charges brought against him and without access to his lawyers. The Pentagon said on Feb. 11 it would allow him to meet with his attorneys, who said the meeting had yet to be arranged.
His case involved fundamental constitutional questions about Bush's powers as commander in chief. It has pitted the government's national security arguments adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against concerns that civil liberties have been violated.
As part of its broad assertion of presidential authority, the Bush administration has sought to sharply limit the role of federal judges to review the government's decisions in the designation and treatment of enemy combatants.
The Justice Department appealed to the top court after a U.S. appeals court in New York ordered Padilla's release because Bush overstepped his authority. That ruling has been stayed, pending the appeal.
The high court already has agreed to decide a similar enemy combatant case involving Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American-born citizen and suspected Taliban soldier who was captured in November 2001 in Afghanistan.time the rights of U.S. citizens who have been captured abroad, like Hamdi, and those seized in this country, like Padilla.
OPEN-ENDED DETENTIONS, HELD INCOMMUNICADO
Both Hamdi and Padilla challenged the constitutionality of their open-ended detentions and being held incommunicado. A U.S. appeals court in Virginia upheld Hamdi's detention.
In another case related to Washington's terror war, the Supreme Court will decide whether foreigners captured abroad can go to American courts to challenge their incarceration at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
About 650 foreign nationals, also designated enemy combatants, are being held at the base as suspected al Qaeda members or Taliban fighters.
All of the cases surrounding the government's anti-terror policies are expected to be argued at the end of April, with a decision due by the end of June.
Solicitor General Theodore Olson of the Justice Department said in the Padilla appeal the appeals court ruling undermined Bush's powers ``to protect the United States against additional enemy attacks launched within the nation's borders.''
He argued the detention of enemy combatants -- as opposed to bringing charges against them in the U.S. criminal justice system -- allows the government to get ``vital intelligence.''
Olson also argued that a federal court in New York does not have jurisdiction over the case. He said it should have been brought in South Carolina, where Padilla is being held.
Padilla's lawyers opposed the appeal. ``The government's assertion of executive power in this case is raw and stark,'' they said.
If Bush has the power to imprison Americans seized in this country as enemy combatants, then they asked the Supreme Court to decide whether there are any limits on when the authority can be used and on the length of imprisonment.
They also urged the justices to decide whether the individual may challenge the president's assertion of power at a hearing, with the assistance of lawyers.
-------- prisons / prisoners
U.S. Will Free 5 Britons Held at Cuban Base
February 20, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/politics/20GITM.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 - American and British officials said Thursday that five British subjects who are prisoners of the United States military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would be sent back to Britain soon.
In London, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who first disclosed the impending transfer of the prisoners, said they would be arrested on their return and prosecuted under British antiterrorism laws.
At the same time, American officials said they would soon release another Guantánamo prisoner to Denmark, his home country. The Danish foreign minister, Per Stig Moller, told Parliament on Thursday that there was no law under which that man could be prosecuted and that he would be set free upon returning home.
With the impending releases, more than 90 detainees at the Guantánamo base will have been released to other countries. The base houses some 650 detainees, most of them captured at the end of the Afghan war.
American officials have said the transfers from Guantánamo are a result of a long and arduous intelligence process of deciding who remains a danger and who can be released. Last week, Defense Department officials said some detainees could be held for many years.
For those prisoners, the Pentagon is setting up a special three-member panel that would annually consider their eligibility for release.
Nine Britons are being held at Guantánamo, including the five set for release in what Mr. Straw said would be the next few weeks.
Their detention has been a major irritant in relations between the United States and Britain, which was Washington's staunchest ally in the war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Prime Minister Tony Blair faced pressure at home, where there was strong sentiment that the United States was exceeding its authority in detaining people at Guantánamo, some for nearly two years, without bringing charges or giving them access to lawyers.
"These detainees who are at Guantánamo Bay are people who are a threat to our country," Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said Thursday. "That's why they were detained there; they are a danger to America and our friends and allies."
--------
U.S. Agrees to Free 5 Britons, Dane From Guantanamo Jail
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55892-2004Feb19.html
LONDON, Feb. 19 -- Five Britons and a Dane will be released from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they have been held for two years without trial as terrorism suspects, officials in Britain, Denmark and the United States announced Thursday.
After months of protracted discussions between British and U.S. officials, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the five British citizens who were rounded up during U.S. military action in Afghanistan in late 2001 would be returned home in the next few weeks. Straw said the men could face investigation and prosecution for terrorism offenses, but legal experts and supporters of the detainees said they believed it unlikely that any cases would be brought against them.
Four other Britons whom U.S. authorities consider greater security threats remain at Camp Delta, the Guantanamo prison camp formerly known as Camp X-Ray, which holds about 600 suspects. There was no word on whether or when they might be released.
In Copenhagen, Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller announced the pending release of one of its citizens. Moller said the detainee, Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, would not face charges in Denmark.
The detainees' family members and other supporters responded with cautious delight but said they would continue to press for the release of the remaining four Britons. "It's a start at least, but we have to ask why they've been held for two years if they're not guilty of anything," said Stephen Jakobi, director of Fair Trials Abroad, one of the pressure groups that has been lobbying for the men's return. He said he feared that the other detainees would be held until Britain further toughened its anti-terrorism laws to make it possible to successfully prosecute the men here.
Two of the remaining British detainees -- Feroz Abbasi, 23, and Moazzam Begg, 36 -- have been designated by U.S. authorities as eligible to face charges before special military tribunals set up to try terrorism suspects.
Peter Goldsmith, Britain's attorney general, has been negotiating with lawyers at the White House and the Pentagon for nearly a year seeking procedures for the tribunals that would be recognized as fair by British standards. Straw said at a news conference that "some progress" had been made in these talks but that Goldsmith still believed the tribunals "as presently constituted would not provide the type of process which we would afford British nationals."
British and U.S. officials have refused to disclose the points in dispute. But one official said on condition of anonymity that Goldsmith had questions about the kind of evidence that might be admissible before the tribunal. British legal authorities say the fact that the men have been interrogated without their attorneys present and that some of the evidence is secret would virtually rule out any chance of a successful prosecution in Britain.
British legal experts have been nearly unanimous in condemning the Guantanamo detentions and demanding the return of the prisoners. Justice Johan Steyn, one of Britain's most senior judges, gave a speech last fall condemning Camp Delta as "a monstrous failure of justice." He said the detainees were "beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts and at the mercy of the victors."
Two British detainees have joined as plaintiffs in a legal case against the detentions that is due to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this year. Several dozen members of Parliament said they planned to file friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the detainees.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, however, has defended the detentions as necessary for national security.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States had released 87 Guantanamo prisoners and was reviewing the cases of others. He called Britain and Denmark "among our closest allies in the fight against terrorism."
"We have full confidence that they will take the responsibility to ensure that these people do not become a threat to the United States or to their own citizens," he said. "This is part of an ongoing process of making determinations and resolving as many of these cases as we can."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Energy sector generous to likely House energy chair
REUTERS USA:
February 20, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23888/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The chairman-designate of the powerful House committee on energy has received more campaign contributions from that sector since 1989 than any other House member, a group which tracks donations to politicians, said this week.
Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, nominated last week to be the new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has received $1.6 million in campaign contributions from the energy sector since 1989, the Center for Responsive Politics said.
A champion of President Bush's energy bill, Barton was nominated as committee chairman by Republican leaders but must still be confirmed in this post by the entire House of Representatives. This is expected to happen later this month.
Barton, 54, in his tenth term as congressman, worked as an engineering consultant before he was elected to Congress in 1974 and has long been considered an energy expert on Capitol Hill. He is currently chairman of the panel's subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality.
He is an advocate of oil and gas drilling on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. The Center said his top campaign contributor so far in the current election cycle is Anadarko Petroleum (APC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , of Houston, which is already drilling in parts of Alaska. Anadarko couldn't be reached immediately for comment.
It said Anadarko's employees and their families had given Barton's campaign $48,000 last year, according to data from the Federal Election Commission. House members are up for re-election every two years; the next election is in November.
Barton's Washington office referred calls about the Center's report to a spokesman for his campaign, who could not be reached for comment.
Outgoing committee chairman Rep. Billy Tauzin, who is leaving Congress this year, has received $1.2 million from the energy sector since 1989, the Center said.
And Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, got $1.1 million in campaign contributions from the energy sector since 1989, the Center said.
Tauzin announced recently he was stepping down because of a bleeding ulcer. The Louisiana Republican has been pursued for a top job at the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying group.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is one of the most important panels in Congress, with influence on energy policy, clean air rules, food and drug safety and telecommunications.
The Center's figures on campaign contributions include donations from political action committees, company employees and their families. 1989 was the year the Center started getting complete data from the Federal Election Commission.
-------- environment
Revised Energy Bill Fails to Please Environmentalists
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
February 20, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2004/2004-02-20-09.asp#anchor4
The newly trimmed version of the Bush administration's energy bill set is little better than the original and should be rejected, environmentalists say. The original, which was supposed to be the centerpiece of President George W. Bush's legislative agenda, failed to pass the Senate late last year.
The revised bill has a price tag of only $14 billion - compared to the $31 billion version rejected by senators in November. It does not contain a controversial liability waiver for manufacturers of the gasoline oxygenate MTBE, but it is still laden with tax breaks for fossil fuel and nuclear energy.
In trimming the bill, Senate leaders cut one of the few programs environmentalists supported - a $3 billion fund for energy efficiency and savings programs.
In addition, the proposed legislation has damaging implications for weakening states' environmental authority and undermining longstanding bipartisan protections for America's oceans, according to Richard Charter, marine conservation advocate with Environmental Defense.
The revised bill still proposes a controversial plan to assign unilateral permitting and regulatory authority to the Secretary of Interior for all offshore energy related industrial facilities within the 200 mile U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone.
The bill would also arbitrarily interfere with decades of successful federal consultation with coastal states under the Coastal Zone Management Act.
In addition, it includes a giveaway of free undersea oil in fragile Alaskan areas to petroleum companies in an attempt to promote new offshore drilling in rough and spill prone waters.
"The Senate had a reasonable chance to repair the previously fatal problems with this bill between legislative sessions, but unfortunately, the current flawed version continues to unduly threaten America's coastline," Charter said. "The revised bill still bulges with expensive taxpayer funded offshore drilling incentives and budget busting tax breaks for the oil industry, while seriously jeopardizing our economically important living marine resources."
The Senate is in recess this week - debate on the new bill could begin Monday.
--------
Senators Ask For Larger Superfund Cleanup by Polluters
Offsets Reduced Funding, EPA Says
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 20, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55841-2004Feb19.html
A steady decline in Superfund funding has alarmed lawmakers and some Environmental Protection Agency officials, who argue dangerous sites are not being cleaned up because of a lack of funds.
Sens. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) released an updated General Accounting Office report yesterday showing that in inflation-adjusted dollars, the Superfund program has seen a 35 percent decline in funding, or $633 million, since 1993.
Jeffords and Boxer are pushing for reauthorization of an environmental tax that expired in 1995 on all corporations.
"This analysis shows just how backward we have moved in cleaning up toxic waste sites," Jeffords said in a statement. "How can we explain to the one in four Americans who live within four miles of a Superfund site that making their community cleaner is not a priority? It is time to reauthorize the Superfund fees on polluters and get the program moving again."
The report came as the National Environmental Trust released a rash of internal memos by EPA officials warning the lack of resources are impeding their ability to complete critical work.
In one Aug. 12, 2002, memo, for example, a regional official wrote, "I am very concerned about mortgaging the program's future in favor of relatively small gains today."
EPA officials countered that they are tackling more complex, larger sites than they did in the past. Last year, for example, 50 percent of the EPA's long-term cleanup budget was concentrated at eight sites. Seventy percent of all cleanup costs are paid for by the companies responsible for the pollution, EPA officials said.
Last year, for example, EPA paid $272 million out of $800 million spent to clean up contaminated sites, said Marianne L. Horinko, assistant administrator for the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. "The vast majority of Superfund sites are cleaned up by polluters," she said.
"These very large, complex sites are taking up the majority of these cleanup dollars," Horinko added. She cited the example of New Bedford Harbor in Massachusetts, where the EPA is cleaning up sediments contaminated by carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) formerly used in electrical transformers.
The release of the GAO report and the internal memos fueled an ongoing battle over how the 20-year-old program is funded. President Bush has declined to push for the reauthorization of the Superfund tax, instead relying on taxpayer funds and money from identified polluters to pay for cleanups across the country.
Both sides offer competing statistics to buttress arguments about the success of the program. EPA officials note that in 2002 the program had ongoing construction work at 384 sites, involving 502 construction projects. In 1990, by contrast, there were 200 projects going on at 179 sites. But critics note that the number of completed projects dropped from 80 in 2001 to 40 in 2002.
Environmentalists argue that this falls short of what is needed to protect the public health.
"Superfund is fundamentally exhausted," said Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust. Clapp questioned why the agency decided to shift $15 million from another Superfund account to the pipeline operations program, which is the last stage in the cleanup process. "What the administration has decided to do is take as much money as possible and shove it toward the end of the process to show they're cleaning up toxic waste sites."
Horinko responded, "We are shifting more dollars to cleanup." She added that user fees are not the only way to raise funds.
"I got more money out of the president than I did out of Senate Democrats," she said. "Even without the tax, the trust fund gets replenished because we go out and sue people."
Local environmentalists have also begun complaining about the lack of action. Bob Walker, a member of the Citizen Advisory Board in Stafford, Vt., said he has been pushing to clean up mining tailings from the abandoned Elizabeth Mine, which have become a source of water pollution. EPA officials have pledged to stabilize the site, but they lack the money to clean it up.
"It's an environmental threat," Walker said. "It's polluting the mine, and it's killed all life in the brook."
But even Boxer acknowledged it would be difficult to pass a new fee given Bush's opposition.
"It's very difficult to get through anything they don't support," Boxer said.
-------- health
Researchers Find a Type of Stem Cell May Have the Ability to Repair the Brain
February 20, 2004
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/science/20CELL.html
A type of self-renewing cell found in the adult human brain may have the potential to repair brain damage or disease, scientists reported yesterday.
The cells, neural stem cells, have been known about for some time. But their function has been a mystery. Researchers theorized that the cells, as in rats and monkeys, generated new neurons that migrated to olfactory regions, helping maintain the sense of smell.
But the study, reported yesterday in Nature, indicates that in humans, the stem cells behave differently. They form ribbons that produce different types of brain cells, including neurons. The new neurons do not migrate to olfactory regions, and they are not involved in the human capacity for smell, the study found.
Dr. Nader Sanai, a resident neurosurgeon at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine and the study's lead author, said much remained to be learned before scientists knew whether the cells could be harnessed to regenerate or replace tissue lost to disease or injury.
"First we need to understand the biology of these cells," Dr. Sanai said. "We don't know enough to predict their usefulness."
One possibility, he said, is that the cells, found in the lining of two fluid-filled pockets near the front of the head, will turn out to serve no purpose. Or they may migrate to other parts of the brain to carry out repairs.
Dr. Pasko Rakic of Yale, a leading expert on stem cells who was not involved in the research, called the study "important and interesting." The big challenge, Dr. Rakic said, remains to find a way to induce the potential neuronal stem cells to migrate into the right positions and replace lost or damaged neurons.
Researchers are keenly interested in the cells because they do not pose ethical questions raised by stem cells drawn from embryos. Many tissues in the body produce localized stem cells that presumably exist to replenish lost cells throughout a person's lifetime.
The study was conducted in the laboratory of its senior author, Dr. Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, a professor of neurological surgery at San Francisco. To learn more about human brain stem cells, the researchers collected target tissue from 65 people who had brain surgery and from 45 autopsied brains.
The researchers were struck by the fact that the tissue, when stained, contained ribbons of astrocytes, a kind of brain cell known to support many aspects of brain function.
"We immediately knew we had to investigate them further," Dr. Sanai said.
When the researchers added growth factors to the ribbons in a culture dish, tiny spherical balls appeared. Those balls in turn gave rise to neurons, other astrocytes and a kind of cell that insulates neurons.
In a second experiment, the scientists placed individual ribbon astrocytes on a warm layer of ordinary astrocytes. Again, the ribbon astrocytes produced new neurons and two types of helper cells.
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Netanyahu's refusenik nephew exempted from Israeli military service
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Feb 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040220121125.zg0oo6vh.html
Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's nephew, Yoni Ben Artzi, has been exempted from military duty after spending more than a year in jail for refusing to serve, his family told AFP Friday.
But a military commission refused to grant him conscientious objector status, publicly accusing him of "refusing to contribute to society."
A military appeals court near Tel Aviv ruled last November that Ben Artzi was guilty of "refusing to obey" but acknowledged that he was sincere in his plea to be exempted from military service and be classified as a conscentious objector on the grounds he is a pacifist.
But the army very rarely grants such dispensation, especially when it considers that someone does not want to serve for political reasons.
Ben Artzi was first sentenced to renewable terms of 35 days in jail but faced the prospect of a harsher punishment after being accused of "rebellion."
Besides him, another five refuseniks have spent more than a year in prison.
Israelis are called to arms when they turn 18. Men serve for three years and women for 21 months, while ultra-Orthodox Jews are exempted on religious grounds.
Israeli Arabs are barred from serving in the army.
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Iraqis rally for free elections
IRIB NEWS
2004/02/20
http://www.iribnews.com/Full_en.asp?news_id=198925
Najaf, Iraq, Feb 20 - About 2,000 Iraqis took to the streets Friday in this Shiite holy city to demand general elections, a day after UN Chief Kofi Annan crushed hopes of an early vote.
"We call on the Iraqi people, those who are duty bound, to defend their right for legitimate elections," declared a statement by the organisers of the rally in this city 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Baghdad. But the statement did not call for a vote before June 30 -- the date when the US-led occupation is due to end -- which had been a key demand by Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim cleric, grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani.
The demonstrators came from Sadr city in Baghdad, a bastion of supporters of young cleric Moqtada Sadr, who has defied the will of more senior clerics and pushed for confrontation with the US-led forces. "We call on the United Nations and other authorities not to oppose the desire of the Iraqi people to choose their own representatives," the statement said.
Iraq's political landscape was muddied on Thursday after the United Nations secretary general said elections would be impossible before June 30.
The coalition provisional authority is due to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on that date, and political figures are now deliberating over the shape of the caretaker body that will rule the country.
The protestors, who included doctors and engineers, gathered in front of Sistani's office in Najaf, brandishing banners on which they had written "no, no to community divisions."
They also called for a constitution "after the elections" and a clear timetable setting out when the occupying forces will withdraw from Iraq.
Meanwhile, the popular Shiite political party, the Supreme Assembly for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), demanded a date for elections.
"We insist on holding elections and choosing the date. We insist on the importance of accelerating the transfer of powers," Sheikh Sadreddin Al-Kubbanji told worshippers at friday prayer.
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