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NUCLEAR
Key Player in Nuclear Trade Ring
Studies link birth defects, Gulf War
I refused to sell Pakistan's nuclear technology - Bhutto
Pakistan gives army new nuclear-capable missile
Another Nuclear Program Found in Iran
U.N. Finds Iran Hid Some Nuke Experiments
Iran to Expand Uranium Enrichment Freeze, IAEA Says
Hans Blix Says Iraq War Was Unfounded
Israel Says Won't Arrest Vanunu After Jail Term Ends
Israeli officials meet to debate imminent release
North Korean Candor to Be Central to New Nuclear Talks
U.S. Seeks Dismantling of N.Korea Weapons
Quotes From Delegates at N. Korea Talks
U.N. Agency, in Libya, Adds to List of Suppliers for A-Arms Programs
Al-Barad'e: we support Libya's keeping of a civilian atomic capability
Australia upgrading radar for potential U-S missile defense shield
Man With Uranium Caught at Ukraine Border
Canada seeking new treaty on space weapons
IAEA to Help Libya; Atom Bomb Focus Shifts to Iran
Kucinich Speaks Out Against Nuclear Testing
Energy Dept. Shifts on Nuclear Plant Rule
N.R.C. Staff Finds No Risk in Indian Pt. Cooling System
Kucinich 2nd with 30% in Hawaii Primary
Kerry and Kucinich win Hawaii Democratic delegates
Kerry opposed key weapons
Rumsfeld panel caught Bush's eye
When John Kerry's Courage Went M.I.A.
MILITARY
How Catapults Married Sciences With Politics
Afghan Attack Follows An Upsurge in Threats
Pentagon axes development of Comanche helicopter
Army Scraps $39 Billion Helicopter
Pentagon Says It Plans to Kill Copter Program
Japanese Critics File Suit on Deployment
Israeli Company to Supply Fuel to US Army in Iraq
Pentagon Opens Criminal Inquiry of Halliburton Pricing
Pentagon to Probe Halliburton Unit for Alleged Fraud in Iraq Deals
'Bankrupt' Forces may shut 5 bases
Haitian President Appeals for International Help
U.S. Marines Fortify Haiti Embassy
Rumsfeld Praises New Iraqi Forces
Palestinians Urge Rebuke of Barrier
Peres: Israel Has No Claim to West Bank
Pakistani Forces Launch New al - Qaida Hunt
Rights Groups Won't Get Seats at Guantánamo Base Tribunals
Putin Fires Premier and Cabinet Ahead of March 14 Election
Scientists Want to Be Ready to Block Asteroid
C.I.A. Chief Reports to Senate on Threats Facing U.S.
C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11
U.N. Chief Says Iraq Elections Could Be Held Within a Year
U.N. Plan For Iraq Foresees Elections
Army Shipping Less Gear Over to Iraq
Enlisting despite the risk of Iraq
White House Forecasts Often Miss The Mark
Bush Assertion on Tax Cuts Is at Odds With IRS Data
U.S. charges 2 with war crimes
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Sierra Club Wants Scalia To Sit Out Task Force Case
Court Denies Review of Post-9/11 Secrecy
Supreme Court Blocks Execution of Texas Inmate
Justices Agree to Hear Two Deportation Cases
Care of inmates criticized
FBI Releases Details Of Letter With Ricin
ENERGY
Fuel Cell Generates Energy From Cleaning Wastewater
Energy debate keeps going, and going
Five power companies commit to clean energy and limits on CO2
OTHER
Genetically Engineered DNA Found in Traditional U.S. Crops
Engineered DNA Found in Crop Seeds
UN Disease Early Warning System Proves Its Worth
Fatal Bird Flu Diagnosed in Texas Flock
ACTIVISTS
Hearing on West Bank Wall Draws Demonstrators
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- asia
Key Player in Nuclear Trade Ring Found Hospitable Base in Malaysia
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A697-2004Feb23?language=printer
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb. 23 -- When Sri Lankan businessman Buhary Syed Abu Tahir was scouting around three years ago for a country where he could manufacture parts for making nuclear weapons, he initially planned to set up shop in Turkey.
But Tahir, who helped Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan build a secret international network for supplying nuclear material and equipment, changed his mind, according to police in Kuala Lumpur. He decided instead to locate a crucial element of the operation in another developing Muslim country: Malaysia.
Tahir's choice was no surprise, say Malaysian and Western analysts, because Malaysia was a stable, relatively industrialized country that had been aggressively promoting business with the rest of the Muslim world. Its liberal visa policy, modern communications and welcoming environment for practicing Muslims had long made it a crossroads for political activists, militants and deal makers from the Middle East, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.
But the same attributes that have made Malaysia's economy one of the most successful in the Muslim world -- the country leads the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference in the production of non-oil goods and services -- have also attracted people considered undesirable by Western and Asian security officials.
"It's easy, quick, efficient. Do your business and disappear fast, in and out," said Karim Raslan, a Malaysian columnist and social commentator. "Countries that open their borders do become natural crossing points. They're a much easier place to do business. They're a much easier place to hatch dastardly plans."
Kuala Lumpur, for instance, was the place where two hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States met in January 2000 and probably discussed preparations for the operation, according to U.S. law enforcement officials. Those two Saudi men, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, traveled to Malaysia and stayed in the Kuala Lumpur condominium of a former Malaysian army captain, Yazid Sufaat, later identified by intelligence officials as a key participant in al Qaeda's efforts to develop biological weapons.
Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen facing federal charges in an Alexandria court of involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, stayed at the same condominium later that year. Malaysian officials say they believe he planned to attend flight school in Kuala Lumpur but could not find one.
The founders of the Southeast Asian terrorist network Jemaah Islamiah built their movement from a base in Malaysia. Activists from the Lebanese militant movement Hezbollah and radical Palestinian groups met periodically here in the 1990s, according to a Western analyst.
After the Sept. 11 hijackings, Malaysia cracked down on suspected Muslim militants. About 70 suspects are now being held under the country's Internal Security Act, which permits detention indefinitely without trial.
Mahathir Mohamad, who stepped down as prime minister last October after 22 years in office, had promoted closer ties among developing countries in part as a counterweight to the influence of the United States and Western nations.
Abdul Razak Baginda, executive director of the Malaysian Strategic Research Center, said Tahir took advantage of Malaysia's interest in pursuing economic ties with the Middle East.
"He found it relatively easy to get this thing going in Malaysia. We wanted to get business, and he was in a position to do that. He probably felt Malaysia was sympathetic to exports to a Muslim country, and he exploited that," Baginda said.
Tahir, 44, who gained residency in Malaysia when he married the daughter of a mid-level Malaysian diplomat in 1998, has not been charged with any crime by Malaysian police.
His business proposal -- to manufacture advanced machine components -- was especially attractive to Malaysia, Baginda said, because the country has been seeking to promote itself through economic incentives, infrastructure and marketing as an international center for advanced engineering. "It really fits into Malaysia's policy," he explained. "It fits nicely into our niche area we are trying to build."
With Malaysia pushing hard to attract foreign investment, local officials apparently did not press Tahir about the ultimate use of the components, Baginda said.
Malaysian and Western officials said authorities here -- and even employees of the company he had invested in, Scomi Precision Engineering -- were unaware that the components being manufactured in the company's plant at Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur, were meant for building centrifuges, used in producing weapons-grade uranium and ultimately bound for Libya's nuclear program.
One of the main investors in Scomi Precision Engineering is Kamaluddin Abdullah, the son of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Kamaluddin and a school classmate, Shah Hakim Zain, are controlling shareholders in two investment companies that own the majority of stock in Scomi Group.
After arriving in Malaysia in the mid-1990s, Tahir came to know Kamaluddin and befriended several influential members of Malaysian society. He moved into an upper-middle-class suburb of the capital and earned a reputation among local businessmen for driving flashy cars.
Tahir became a shareholder in one of the investment companies along with Kamaluddin. Later, Tahir's wife took his place, becoming a major shareholder. After Malaysian authorities began their investigation into Tahir's role in the international nuclear network, company officials asked her to sell her shares.
U.S. and other Western officials said the government has been actively investigating the role of the company since components it had made were discovered aboard a German ship intercepted in Italy last October. The parts had initially been shipped to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where Tahir ran a family computer business and continues to spend most of his time, police said.
Tahir left the Scomi staff "with the impression" that the parts were meant for the oil and gas industry, according to Malaysian investigators. Though the components were also usable in the nuclear industry, Malaysia does not ban the export of so-called dual-use products, making it even more appealing to Tahir as a manufacturing site, Western diplomats said.
Malaysian officials have balked at adopting the kind of restrictions that the United States and other developed countries place on dual-use items.
-------- depleted uranium
Studies link birth defects, Gulf War
Pentagon says there is no proven correlation
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
By BYRON HARRIS
WFAA-TV, Dallas Fort Worth Texas
http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/localnews/news8/stories/wfaa040223_am_birthdefects.201a00bc.html
News 8 has been looking at questions about birth defects among the children of Gulf War veterans for eight years. Vets said their kids had more birth defects than non-Gulf War vets. WFAA producer P.J. Ward has been gathering data from scientific journals, and News 8 is now able to report that data.
Cedric Miller of San Antonio is now twelve years old, conceived and born just after his father returned from the first war in the Persian Gulf.
Cedric suffers from Goldenhar Syndrome. He's had sixteen surgeries to repair and construct his face and body since he was born.
"The face was underdeveloped," said Cedric's father Steve Miller. "There was no eye on the left, there was no ear, the thumbs didn't work and there were some other things going on." Also Online
Cedric is literally a poster child for a controversy between veterans, scientists and the government. Just after the first Gulf War, those returning from duty said that their children were being stricken with birth defects at an alarming rate.
Steven Miller, Cedric's father, testified before Congress. Like tens of thousands of other fathers who served in the Gulf, he was exposed to a cocktail of chemicals.
Miller fathered a normal child before the war. After he returned, Cedric was born. Goldenhar cases like Cedric's were a signal to vets that something was amiss. The Department of Defense said there was no evidence, but many scientists said there was.
"The Gulf War vets had a three time higher risk of having Goldenhar Syndrome," said Maria Araneta, an epidemiologist at the University of California at San Diego.
Araneta knows Goldenhar normally happens to just one child in 26,000. But back in 1997, when she analyzed the birth records of 34,000 babies born to Gulf War vets, she found five cases of Goldenhar.
The number was unusual, but not big enough to be statistically significant, according to the Department of Defense. To this day, Pentagon officials maintain there's no correlation between Gulf War service and higher birth defects.
"There hasn't been any statistical difference in the deployed and non-deployed populations as far as birth defects in their children," said Dr. Michael Kilpatrick of the Department of Defense.
Pentagon researchers continue to study the issue.
"They've funded a lot of studies," said Betty Mekdici of the non-profit organization Birth Defect Research for Children. "I think they've funded some studies so that they could show us we were wrong and make us go away." Mekdici's organization collects data from parents across the country. She's now discovered 26 cases of Goldenhar among Gulf War veterans.
"Goldenhar is so rare that when we started to see that blip, we knew that something was going on," Mekdici said.
Government officials said Mekdici's numbers aren't valid. But the more studies Araneta does, the more evidence she finds.
"The results have changed, because the methods in ascertaining birth defects have improved," Araneta said.
News 8 found documentation from an internal Veterans Administration study, published within the last year, that shows children of Gulf War vets have twice the normal rate of birth defects.
A Department of Defense-funded study showed children of male Gulf War vets have three times the average rate of heart defects.
And a study just released this month shows women who served in the first Gulf War suffered three times the normal rate of miscarriages in the period just after the conflict.
Back in San Antonio, Cedric Miller faces five more surgeries to lengthen his jaw and create a new left ear. His sister and father help him face the emotional minefield he navigates every day.
"He wants to look like everybody else, but no matter what happens, he's still the same to me," sister Larissa Miller said.
The military pays for none of his medical needs, because his father is no longer in the Army.
"If he needs me for any reason, no matter where I am, I'll come," said Larissa.
No one knows if the war exposures that may have harmed Cedric are still in Iraq. But 100,000 potential mothers and fathers are now returning from service in the Gulf. This time, more women than ever were close to the chemicals and toxins of the front lines.
So, is this new crop of veterans potentially in danger?
"There are a lot of exposures in any warfare environment that are reproductive toxins, so I think that's something we have to take into account with any returning army," Mekdici said.
The Department of Defense is keeping better track of returning vets than it did after the first Gulf War, but the problem is complicated. More husbands and wives are in the war together than ever before, meaning that two parents, rather than one, may be carrying the toxins that produce birth defects. More science needs to be done, and better statistics need to be kept of birth defects to further research into the issue.
It should also be noted that Texas is one of the largest states not to have a birth defect registry program.
E-mail: bharris@wfaa.com (reporter), pjward@wfaa.com (producer)
-------- india / pakistan
I refused to sell Pakistan's nuclear technology - Bhutto
LONDON (AFP)
Feb 24, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040224052613.5ejnukoh.html
Benazir Bhutto said Tuesday that she was approached several times when she was Pakistani prime minister by military officials and scientists seeking permission to export nuclear technology, but turned down their requests.
In an interview with the Financial Times newspaper, Bhutto, who served two terms from 1988-90 and 1993-1996, said she and senior military officers had agreed on a bar on the export of nuclear technology in December 1988.
This, however, did not prevent senior military officials and scientists persisting with the idea and later in her first term broaching the subject of raising money by selling nuclear know-how, she said.
"It certainly was their belief that they could earn tons of money if they did this," she said.
"It was something that I was disabusing them of, that they could not get it. If they chose to sell it, only three countries would buy it, because it wasn't like McDonald's hamburgers that would have a big consumer market," she said.
She said the three countries she was referring to were Iran, Iraq and Libya and that she had told officials it would sell for no more than 100 million dollars (80 million euros) per country, not enough to help Pakistan's economy.
Bhutto's comments came two days after she said that the architect of the country's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, was "covering up" for President Pervez Musharraf by publicly confessing to transferring nuclear technology to other countries.
Musharraf on February 4 pardoned Khan, considered a national hero in Pakistan for guiding the programme which built the country's nuclear bomb, after the scientist confessed to giving nuclear information to groups working for Iran, Libya and North Korea.
But Musharraf, who was head of Pakistan's armed forces before seizing power in a bloodless coup in 1999, has insisted that Khan acted without the government's or the military's knowledge.
Bhutto, an arch-foe of Musharraf, has lived in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai since 1998.
--------
Pakistan gives army new nuclear-capable missile
REUTERS PAKISTAN:
February 24, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23936/newsDate/24-Feb-2004/story.htm
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan took delivery of a short-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile, a military statement said.
The "indigenously produced" surface-to-surface solid-fuel missile Hatf-III Ghaznavi was delivered to the Army Strategic Force Command at a ceremony attended by President Pervez Musharraf, it said.
It quoted Musharraf as saying that missile tests over the last four years and the delivery of systems to the military demonstrated his government's resolve to "consolidate and strengthen" Pakistan's nuclear deterrent.
Pakistan's nuclear programme has under come under close international scrutiny since the "father" of the country's atom bomb confessed publicly to having passed nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency has described the role of Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan as the "tip of an iceberg" in a massive international nuclear trade.
"Pakistan's nuclear capability is for the sole purpose of deterrence of aggression against Pakistan and for the defence of our sovereignty," the statement quoted Musharraf as saying.
"He assured the world that the (proliferation) network had been uprooted within Pakistan," it added.
Pakistan says its weapons programme is solely in response to that of its nuclear-armed arch-rival India, with which it has fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.
This month the two countries' foreign secretaries agreed on a roadmap for a peace process to resolve all outstanding issues including Kashmir, cause of two of their three wars.
The army statement said Hatf III had a range of 290 km and had successfully been tested in 2002 and 2003.
"It now forms an integral component of Pakistan's operational deterrence systems, which also include Shaheen series and Ghauri intermediate-range missiles," it added.
Pakistan's military already has the Hatf-IV missile, known as the Shaheen One, with a range of 750 km and capable of carrying all types of warheads and the Hatf V Ghauri missile, which has a range of up to 2,300 km.
-------- iran
Another Nuclear Program Found in Iran
Undisclosed Experiments Heighten Suspicions About Intent to Make Arms
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A551-2004Feb23.html
TEHRAN, Feb. 23 -- International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have discovered that Iran produced and experimented with polonium, an element useful in initiating the chain reaction that produces a nuclear explosion, according to two people familiar with a report the inspectors will submit to the United Nations this week.
Iran reportedly acknowledged the experiments but offered an explanation involving another of polonium's possible uses, which include power generation. The IAEA noted the explanation and left the issue "hanging there," said one person familiar with the matter. The experiments were described by this person as occurring "some time ago."
The discovery is the latest example of a nuclear activity that Iran had not previously disclosed. Earlier, it was revealed that Iran had obtained plans and parts for a nuclear centrifuge, a sophisticated machine used to enrich uranium for use in power plants, as well as in nuclear weapons. Iran insists it always intended its nuclear program to be used only to supply electrical power.
Polonium is a radioactive, silvery-gray or black metallic element. The most common natural isotope is polonium-210. It has some industrial purposes, but can also be utilized, in combination with beryllium, to make sure that the chain reaction leading to a nuclear explosion is initiated at precisely the right moment.
"It does heighten suspicions because polonium-210 is so linked to a certain type of neutron-initiator," said David Albright, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the Institute for Science and International Security. "But it's not an ideal neutron-initiator. It doesn't last long, so you've got to keep producing it."
Polonium-210 has a half-life of 138 days. Experts say research on polonium would be done early in a weapons program. "It's quite clear they were trying to make an explosive device," said one person with knowledge of the polonium discovery. "But they hadn't gotten far enough. No one will find a smoking gun because they weren't able to make a gun."
The disclosures present an unwelcome political challenge for Iran, which was hoping to put the nuclear issue behind it before March 8, when the full board of the IAEA convenes in Vienna. Instead, diplomats said, Iranian officials were bracing for a report raising enough questions to keep the nuclear issue alive.
"They are going to be facing this problem for a while," said one diplomat.
"We remain committed to our obligations under the International Atomic Energy Agency," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said on Sunday, while acknowledging to reporters that Iran had acquired nuclear equipment from "middlemen" representing a Pakistani nuclear scientist. "We've never pursued nuclear arms and will never do so," he said.
The disclosures come as Iran is undergoing fresh inspections by the IAEA, the U.N. body charged with enforcing the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran was facing a deadline for disclosing its nuclear activities late last year when three European countries persuaded its government to accede to international pressure to open its nuclear program. Iran agreed to permit more rigorous inspections, suspend uranium enrichment and make a full accounting of nuclear programs it had kept largely secret for 18 years.
Inspections appear to have gone smoothly. Iran's state-controlled media make no mention of the presence of the foreign inspectors. And though one foreign official said the IAEA would prefer that Iranian officials be "more pro-active" in revealing previously hidden elements, Iranian officials have made no effort to block the inspectors when they follow leads they generate themselves.
On the other hand, their discoveries corrode Iran's already fragile credibility. Neither the polonium work nor plans for a P-2 centrifuge were mentioned in Iran's earlier "comprehensive" summary. Discovery of the P-2 centrifuge design and components -- revealed after Libya exposed a black market in nuclear programs run out of Pakistan -- was especially damaging to trust, officials said.
"They say it was an oversight. The IAEA people don't think it was an oversight," said one analyst here. "You have forces that want to keep things secret."
Albright, who has written extensively on Iran's nuclear program, said, "The Libyan bomb design looks like what China gave Pakistan, and why wouldn't have Iran gotten it?
"There's a lot of pressure on Iran," he said. "And I don't think it's credible that Iran says it never had a military nuclear program. To me, it's not so much a suspicion, it's more of an assessment that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program."
Privately, many foreign and Iranian analysts agree. "The intention is clear from the fact they had a clandestine program," said one analyst, who would not be identified by nationality or position.
Begun by Iran's own accounting at the height of its 1980-88 war with Iraq, the nuclear program is believed to have been chiefly under the control of the hard-line Islamic Revolution Guard Corps. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons on the front line, and Iran was internationally isolated.
One Iranian political figure said powerful players in Iran's religious government -- who diplomats said agreed only reluctantly to the agreement brokered by Britain, France and Germany -- rebuffed the pleas of some inside the government to reveal the military side of the atomic program at the time, when it might have done so without penalty.
"I think it was because they wanted to conclude things in a way that it did not look like they had been totally defeated," he said.
In fact, no firm proof of a weapons program has emerged from Iran's far-ranging nuclear activities. But several analysts said they expect more evidence trails to emerge from a prodigious record that Iranian officials have pleaded they have trouble sorting through themselves.
By the time a working gas centrifuge and other advanced components of the clandestine program began coming to light a year ago, outside experts were stunned to see Iran had set out to produce enriched uranium by four distinct methods. The end product could be used either for generating power or, if enriched to weapons grade, for making warheads.
--------
U.N. Finds Iran Hid Some Nuke Experiments
February 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- U.N. inspectors in Iran have uncovered evidence of nuclear experiments that Tehran did not previously disclose, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday in a report warning the country anew to come clean.
The dossier, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, dealt the Tehran regime a setback in its efforts to convince the world that its nuclear program is peaceful and that it is fully cooperating with the U.N. agency.
IAEA inspectors combing Iran for evidence of a weapons program found signs of polonium, a radioactive element that can help trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the report said. It was distributed to the agency's 35-nation board of governors ahead of a key meeting on Iran early next month.
The agency said the traces of polonium-210 were found in September, and that the element ``could be used for military purposes ... specifically as a neutron initiator in some designs of nuclear weapons.''
Iran never mentioned working with polonium-210 in earlier declarations of its past and present nuclear activities, it said.
Polonium-210 also can be used to generate electricity, which Iran contends is the sole purpose of its atomic program. Saber Zaimian, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, declined to comment on the report, saying his organization was studying it.
The revelation came as the IAEA board prepares to convene in Vienna on March 8 to reassess the Iranian threat amid mounting pressure from the United States and other countries that contend Iran has been trying to build an atomic bomb.
The report suggested the agency is more concerned with the discovery earlier this month of an advanced P-2 centrifuge system in Iran that could enrich uranium for weapons use. The Bush administration, too, has said the finding raises ``serious concerns'' about Tehran's intentions.
``The omission ... of any reference to its possession of the P-2 centrifuge design drawings and associated research, manufacturing and mechanical testing activities is a matter of serious concern, particularly in view of the importance and sensitivity of those activities,'' the IAEA report said.
``We have seen some good cooperation from Iran, particularly in regard to access to sites,'' IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters en route back from a visit to Libya on Tuesday. ``I would like to see, however, much more prompt information coming from Iran.''
ElBaradei called the P-2 centrifuge discovery a ``setback,'' adding: ``I hope this will be the last time any aspect of the program has not been declared to us.''
``It creates suspicions why this was not disclosed to us,'' a senior diplomat told AP, speaking on condition of anonymity. ``They said it was a full and final declaration. The question is -- is there something else to be declared? We are trying to create confidence. This is a real setback.''
The agency said Tehran has assured the IAEA it will suspend the assembly and testing of centrifuges and the manufacture of centrifuge components by next week. It called on Iran to give a ``correct and complete'' accounting of its nuclear activities, but said the government was ``actively cooperating'' with the agency.
``As a result of its monitoring activities, the agency is able to confirm that there has been no operation or testing of any centrifuges, either with or without nuclear material,'' at Iran's pilot fuel enrichment plant, Tuesday's report said.
Confronted by evidence last year, Iran acknowledged hiding nearly two decades of nuclear activity, including importing enrichment technology linked to the black market network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Those imports of equipment and expertise have allowed Tehran to create a domestic production line of centrifuges that can be used both to process uranium for power -- or enrich it to levels high enough to manufacture warheads.
Under international pressure last year, Iran pledged to cooperate fully with the IAEA in efforts to prove it was not interested in nuclear weapons, including opening its activities to full outside scrutiny.
Iran suspended its enrichment program last year but continues to make and assemble centrifuges despite international criticism that such actions violate the spirit of its pledge to stop all enrichment activities.
The IAEA, along with the United States and other nations, wants Iran to scrap its enrichment program altogether. Tehran has refused to do so.
On the Net:
IAEA, www.iaea.org
--------
Iran to Expand Uranium Enrichment Freeze, IAEA Says
February 24, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear-suspension.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has agreed to stop assembling uranium centrifuges as part of a pledge to suspend ``remaining (uranium) enrichment activities,'' a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Tuesday.
Iran agreed to suspend all uranium enrichment activities in November last year, but failed to agree with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on a definition of what that meant exactly.
Enrichment is a process of purifying uranium for use in weapons or to make nuclear fuel for power plants.
The IAEA's report said Iran continued to assemble centrifuges, machines used to enrich uranium, after November. Washington had called for a comprehensive suspension, including the assembly of centrifuges.
The IAEA's report on Iran said the Islamic republic would, as of early March, ``suspend the assembly and testing of centrifuges, and suspend the domestic manufacture of centrifuge components, including those relating to existing contracts, to the furthest extent possible.''
The IAEA said this ``will contribute to confidence building.''
The United States says Tehran's nuclear program is a front for building nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is aimed solely at the production of electricity.
-------- iraq / inspections
Hans Blix Says Iraq War Was Unfounded
By Associated Press
February 24, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-iraq-blix,0,4495993.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
EDINBURGH, Scotland -- Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix argued Tuesday Saddam Hussein had not been an immediate threat, making the justification for the war against Iraq unfounded.
The U.S.-led invasion nearly a year ago damaged the authority of the United Nations Security Council and the credibility of the nations that went to war, Blix told an audience of 1,000 at the University of Edinburgh.
"The justification for the war -- the existence of weapons of mass destruction -- was without foundation," Blix said. "The military operation was successful, but the diagnosis was wrong.
"Saddam was dangerous to his own people but not a great, and certainly not an immediate, danger to his neighbors and the world," he added.
Going to war without U.N. damaged the world body, he said.
Blix, whose teams did not make significant weapons finds during months of searching Iraq before the war, has repeatedly criticized U.S. and British handling of information before the war.
Again on Tuesday he criticized the United States and Britain for trusting their own intelligence more than that of the weapons inspectors, who had not found "a smoking gun."
Blix, 75, who headed the U.N. inspectors from 2000 to mid-2003 said in a speech Feb. 15 that no hidden weapons had been found in Iraq since 1991, but he did not rule out that a minor cache of weapons might be exposed.
-------- israel
Israel Says Won't Arrest Vanunu After Jail Term Ends
February 24, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-vanunu.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided on Tuesday that nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu will be placed under supervision but not arrest after he completes an 18-year prison term in April, Sharon's office said.
It gave no details about restrictions but Israeli security sources said Israel would ban the former atomic reactor technician from traveling abroad, monitor his movements in Israel and tap his telephone.
Vanunu, who worked at Israel's main reactor in the southern desert town of Dimona, gave Britain's Sunday Times newspaper in 1986 details about the facility, leading independent experts to conclude Israel had between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads.
Sharon convened a meeting of top security and legal advisers to discuss the possibility of muzzling Vanunu, who was convicted of treason, to ensure he does not spill any more secrets after he completes his full sentence on April 21.
``A proposal to place Vanunu under administrative arrest on his release from jail was rejected,'' Sharon's office said, referring to detention without trial under long-standing emergency regulations that could be hard to defend in court.
But it said in a statement that ``proper supervisory measures will be applied to Vanunu in accordance with the law to prevent him from committing additional security crimes.''
MORE SECRETS TO TELL?
During the meeting in the prime minister's office, speakers voiced concern that even if Vanunu had no secrets left to tell, he could spread harmful disinformation about Israel's nuclear program, the security sources said.
But, they added, experts said at the session there was no legal cause to put Vanunu in ``administrative detention'' once he left jail, although such a move could be defended in court if his future monitors discovered he had broken secrecy laws.
Spirited home by Israel's Mossad spy agency, which used a female agent to lure Vanunu into the hands of his kidnappers, the now gray-haired prisoner is a hero to some anti-nuclear campaigners and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
He has won little public sympathy in Israel.
Israel maintains an official policy of ambiguity about its nuclear program, saying only that it will not be the first to introduce atomic weapons to the Middle East.
``All he wants to do is just be able to move about freely, to talk freely and lead a life that every other human being enjoys,'' Nicholas Eoloff, an American who with his wife Mary legally adopted Vanunu several years ago, told Israel Television.
Asked whether Vanunu planned to reveal more secrets, Eoloff, speaking from Arizona, said that under prison restrictions they had never discussed the issue with him. The couple last visited Vanunu in jail in November.
Israeli media reports said agents from the Shin Bet internal security service went to Vanunu's prison earlier on Tuesday and questioned him for three hours about his plans. The reports said Vanunu did not shed any light on his intentions.
Vanunu, who converted to Christianity, was recently reported to have told his brothers that he wants to leave the Jewish state permanently.
----
Israeli officials meet to debate imminent release of "nuclear spy": report
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Feb 24, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040224192004.h9zceahv.html
Senior defence and justice officials were meeting late Tuesday to discuss what to do about the forthcoming release of Mordechai Vanunu, the technician jailed for 18 years for exposing Israel's nuclear arsenal, public radio reported.
Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz and Justice Minister Tommy Lapid were meeting with Attorney General Meni Mazuz over ways of keeping the unrepentant whistleblower from divulging more of Israel's military secrets when he is released in just under two months' time, the radio said.
Secret service officials, trying to uncover Vanunu's plans on release, spent three hours with him in his cell in Shikma prison in the southern port town of Ashkelon earlier on Tuesday, the radio said.
There was no official confirmation of the report.
Last week, Parliamentary Relations Minister Gideon Ezra said the secret service could hold Vanunu in administrative detention "to keep him from divulging secrets."
Israeli authorities can detain a suspect in administrative detention for renewable periods of six months without charges or trial. It is a practice frequently used to detain suspected Palestinian militants.
Vanunu, 49, worked as a technician at the Dimona nuclear facility in southern Israel. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 1986 after giving details about Israel's secret weapons programme to Britain's Sunday Times.
Israeli agents lured Vanunu from London to Italy, where he was kidnapped and brought to Israel. He was tried in secret and found guilty of "espionage".
He is due to be released from prison on April 21.
Israel has firmly adhered to a policy of "nuclear ambiguity", never confirming or denying it possesses nuclear weapons. But foreign experts believe the Jewish state holds at least 200 atomic warheads.
-------- korea
North Korean Candor to Be Central to New Nuclear Talks
February 24, 2004
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/international/asia/24CND-KORE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BEIJING, Feb. 24 - The United States, North Korea and four other nations prepared to begin talks here on Wednesday about stopping North Korea's nuclear program, but diplomats said that progress would hinge on whether Pyongyang admitted to having - and agreed to dismantle - two means to produce atomic bombs.
Bush administration officials, as well as diplomats from Japan and South Korea, have called on the North to acknowledge producing the raw material for nuclear weapons by enriching uranium as well as by extracting plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods, warning that a failure to do so may result in a collapse of the six-party negotiations.
North Korea has repeatedly denied developing a second clandestine channel to become a nuclear power and has sent mixed signals about whether it is willing to confess to doing so now. But the reclusive regime is faced with international pressure to make a full disclosure after a Pakistani scientist said he had supplied uranium-enrichment technology to the country.
The talks, which were brokered by China and are to last through Friday, involve Russia, South Korea and Japan as well as North Korea and the United States. An earlier round of negotiations last August did not produce concrete results.
The six-party negotiations are the only established forum for addressing the Korean nuclear crisis, which many in the region fear could lead to armed conflict with the isolated and unpredictable North Korean regime of Kim Jong-il, if not resolved soon.
But the prospects for a settlement have been clouded by inconsistent statements by the North, disagreement about how far the country has gone toward developing or deploying nuclear weapons, and concerns that some in the Bush administration are more focused on overthrowing Mr. Kim than on reaching an agreement.
The United States has taken a firm line, asserting that it will not even begin detailed negotiations until Pyongyang commits to the "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement" of its nuclear programs. Some administration officials say they consider the likelihood of that happening in this round of discussion to be small.
But some Asian diplomats and analysts say that both North Korea and the United States have signaled modest flexibility and predict that this round may result in at least a statement of mutual goals as well as a commitment to keep talking, perhaps in a less diplomatically cumbersome forum.
China has pushed the participating countries to agree to issue a written statement at the conclusion of the talks and to set up smaller working groups that would tackle the main areas of dispute, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official said in a recent interview.
China's vice foreign minister, Wang Yi, who is acting as the host, told Chinese state news media that he saw an chance for progress.
"The opportunity has come for further promoting a peaceful solution," he said. "We urge all sides, for the sake of peace and stability, to grasp the opportunity to narrow their disparities and lay down specific goals."
North Korean diplomats told Chinese officials ahead of the talks that they will propose freezing the country's nuclear program as a first step toward ending it, Japanese and South Korea officials said this week. The North would later agree to dismantle the program in return for energy aid, the lifting of political and economic sanctions, and a pledge by the United States not to attack.
Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi of Japan said today that North Korea's freeze offer included its uranium program, suggesting that the North was prepared to acknowledge that it had sought fissile material through that method as well as its older and better known plutonium extraction facility at Yongbyon.
North Korea, however, has publicly denied having a uranium program and called accusations that it did a "whopping lie" by the United States.
Chinese officials have disputed the quality of American intelligence about the North's nuclear program and expressed doubts about whether it has uranium enrichment project - or, if it does, whether the effort has progressed far enough to make it a central element in the negotiations.
But Bush administration officials say the recent admission by Abdul Qadeer Khan, a founder of the Pakistani nuclear program, that he had sold nuclear technology to North Korea leaves little doubt about the matter. Pakistan's nuclear program uses uranium enrichment.
Moreover, the administration officials say, anything less than a full confession by the North will render the talks useless. They say the recent example of Libya, which admitted pursuing nuclear weapons and allowed international inspectors unrestricted access to its facilities, is the only way forward for North Korea.
"There are some positive signals, and optimistic people are getting their hopes up," said Shi Yinhong, a leading international relations specialist at People's University in Beijing. "But the reality is that the United States and North Korea are far apart and we should not expect a major breakthrough."
Some leading Korea experts have criticized the Bush administration's stance, arguing that the administration may be willing the negotiations to fail by refusing to draw up a detailed negotiating plan. These experts say they fear that the administration's main goal is to isolate Mr. Kim's regime and force its collapse, which they criticize as a dangerous strategy that could make war more likely.
Peter Hayes, a North Korea specialist at the Nautilus Institute in Berkeley, Calif., wrote in a recent analysis that hard-liners led by Vice President Dick Cheney had prevented the American negotiating team from engaging fully, which he called "self-induced diplomatic disablement."
But other experts have disputed that, saying they see fresh flexibility on both sides even as the United States publicly maintains that its stance has not changed.
Asian diplomats say that the United States has aligned its strategy with Japan and, perhaps more significantly, with South Korea, which in the past has been eager to engage the North. The diplomats said that the United States had signaled that it would not be opposed to South Korea's or Japan's resuming some forms of aid before final dismantlement occurred, though the United States has ruled out providing aid at an intermediate stage.
In return, South Korea and Japan are echoing American demands that the North must end its uranium program.
"The fundamental position of the three countries is that all nuclear programs, including the highly enriched uranium program, must be dismantled," said Lee Soo-hyuck, the deputy foreign minister of South Korea, its leader at the talks, told reporters before departing for Beijing.
Mr. Lee said the North's expected offer of a freeze had merit but only insofar as the freeze is verified by outside inspectors and leads directly to dismantlement. That position closely follows that of the United States.
"A freeze is meaningless by itself," Mr. Lee said. "It is only meaningful when it is the first step toward dismantlement."
--------
U.S. Seeks Dismantling of N.Korea Weapons
February 24, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - Envoys from North Korea and the United States staked out sharply different positions at the start of six-nation talks Wednesday to resolve a nuclear crisis, underscoring the difficulties of a breakthrough.
The United States repeated its call for the complete dismantling of North Korea's nuclear weapons programs and stressed it had no intention of attacking a country it has branded part of an ``axis of evil'' with Iran and pre-war Iraq.
Delegates from North and South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan shook hands before taking their places at a hexagonal table in the tightly guarded Diaoyutai State Guest House in Beijing for the second such meeting brokered by China.
``The United States seeks the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of all the DPRK'snuclear programs, both plutonium and uranium-based,'' Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said.
The impasse has persisted for nearly 16 months with U.S. insistence on irreversible dismantlement and North Korea saying only that it can freeze its program in return for compensation.
Many analysts see little hope of substantive progress at the first talks since an inconclusive round last August because of deep mistrust between the two protagonists and disagreement over Pyongyang's suspected uranium enrichment program.
North Korea said it wanted positive results from the talks.
``I hope through the efforts made by all the parties over time, we can create a positive result,'' North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Gye-gwan said.
BREAKING AN IMPASSE
Political will at this round of talks ``would serve as a basis for narrowing down the existing differences of position and opinions between the DPRK and the United States and break the current impasse,'' he said.
The participants, aside from North Korea, seek a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. The North has said it is willing to freeze its weapons program in exchange for compensation, a suggestion that raises hackles in the United States that is anxious not to be seen rewarding bad behavior, especially in an election year.
Kelly stressed that Pyongyang, which has demanded security guarantees from the United States in the form of a non-aggression pact, had no need for concern.
``The United States has no intention of invading or attacking the DPRK,'' he said, using North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. ``This remains the policy of the United States.''
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted to a covert program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
The North has since denied such a scheme, although it does say it is pursuing atomic weapons through a plutonium-based program.
U.S. officials and arms control experts say it would be meaningless to exclude the uranium program from efforts to disarm North Korea because, unlike the reactor-centered production of plutonium at Yongbyon, uranium enrichment can be hidden.
Tuesday, China's Xinhua news agency quoted a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman as warning the United States not to bring up the issue of highly enriched uranium at the talks.
``If the United States condemns North Korea for a 'highly enriched uranianium program' that is sheer fiction. This can only be seen as intentionally prolonging the nuclear issue,'' he was quoted as saying.
Several signs have emerged that Pyongyang's stance may be softening on the issue.
North Korean diplomats held informal talks this month in Vienna with officials from the U.N. nuclear watchdog on a possible resumption of inspections of the country's nuclear complex at Yongbyon, Japan's Kyodo news agency said Tuesday.
This was the first substantial contact between North Korea and the International Atomic Energy Agency since inspectors were kicked out of the reclusive communist country in December 2002.
North Korea's envoy sounded an upbeat note as he left home for Beijing. That was balanced by the Foreign Ministry, which issued a typically tough statement of the kind the secretive state has long used to try to strengthen its position when it sees it may have to compromise.
--------
Quotes From Delegates at N. Korea Talks
Associated Press
Tue, Feb. 24, 2004
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/fortwayne/news/local/8031941.htm
Excerpts of opening remarks Wednesday at talks on North Korea's nuclear program:
"The United States seeks complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of all North Korea's nuclear programs, both plutonium and uranium." - U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly.
"We are here to seek common ground." - North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan.
"We expect the second round of talks to solve some substantial issues. We want these talks to enlarge the common understanding, not differences." - Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
"If all countries participate with a sincere and tolerant attitude, I firmly believe that we can further expand common points while acknowledging differences between each other." - South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck.
"We will hold discussions with other delegations and propose constructive solutions." - Japanese Foreign Ministry Director General Mitoji Yabunaka.
"We hope that common sense will prevail, and we can come up with concrete agreements that will open the way to further work." - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov.
-------- libya
U.N. Agency, in Libya, Adds to List of Suppliers for A-Arms Programs
February 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/international/africa/24LIBY.html
TRIPOLI, Libya, Feb. 23 - The head of the United Nations atomic watchdog agency said Monday that meetings with Libyan officials were producing more names of people and companies involved in supplying other countries with the technology for nuclear arms programs.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also said crucial elements of Libya's nuclear weapons program remained in place three months after the government pledged to scrap them, though Tripoli is committed to their elimination.
Dr. ElBaradei did not elaborate, but another delegation member said centrifuge equipment that can enrich uranium to weapons grade remains assembled and is still in Libya.
Dr. ElBaradei arrived in Tripoli on Monday to oversee what needs to be scrapped or removed before Libya's nuclear program is stripped of all weapons applications. After meeting with Libyan officials, he said he was confident that that stage would be reached by June.
Other equipment has already been shipped to the United States, which along with Britain negotiated the process that led in December to Libya's declaring the existence of its nuclear weapons programs - and its desire to scrap them.
Dr. ElBaradei said additional countries with illicit nuclear arms programs might be disclosed in investigations by his agency and national intelligence services into the nuclear black market.
Libya, one of the nuclear black market's important customers, identified the market's main supplier, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, and more than a dozen of his middlemen. "We are still trying to understand the network," Dr. ElBaradei said. "We are still trying to see whether other countries have received technology, have received weapons designs."
He did not elaborate. But Iran has been identified by diplomats familiar with the agency's work as being suspected of buying nuclear warhead drawings along with the uranium enrichment equipment it now acknowledges having.
--------
Al-Barad'e: we support Libya's keeping of a civilian atomic capability
Libya-UN, Politics,
2/24/2004
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/040224/2004022419.html
The director general of the International Agency for Atomic Energy Muhammad al-Barad'e said in Tripoli, yesterday that the agency will support Libya's request to keep a nuclear program for civil purposes after it will get rid off its military nuclear program, noting that he has agreed with the Libyan officials to "exert all possible efforts to end dismantling the Libyan weapons program by the fall of June.
Al-Barad'e said after his meeting with the Libyan foreign minister Abdul Rahman Shalqam "they want to keep their reactor for research and this is a legitimate matter and they want clearly to expand activities used in peaceful purposes." He added that the Atomic energy will support this request when Libya "gets rid off its nuclear program." The Libyan reactor at the nuclear research center in Tajoura is currently using depleted Uranium at a rate of 80% which might be used in producing the atomic bomb. Al-Barad'e said that he is currently discussing with the Libyans the possibility of converting this reactor to be operated by Uranium that cannot be used to produce such weapons. He added "we should know how and when they get this substitute material because they want to continue operating this reactor."
It seems that Libya wants to keep other equipment like a factory for depleting Uranium but Barad'e said he thinks that dismantling this firm does not constitute a problem because Libya " cooperated for getting rid of all sensitive aspects in its program and will also dismantle what is left of it." Al-Barad'e said after his meeting with the Libya deputy prime minister, the chairman of the " Libyan agency for atomic energy" Matouk Muhammad Matouk that he had agreed with him to " exert every possible efforts to end the dismantling of the Libyan nuclear weapons program "by the fall of June at the meeting of the council of the secretaries at the Atomic Agency in June."
-------- missile defense
Australia upgrading radar for potential U-S missile defense shield
Tuesday, February 24, 2004,
KFOR (Australia)
http://www.kfor.com/Global/story.asp?S=1662716
Canberra, Australia-AP -- The Australian component in a potential U-S missile defense shield is evolving. Australia's defense minister says his country is spending 48 (m) million dollars to upgrade a radar system that detects ships and aircraft more than 12-hundred miles beyond Australia's northern border.
President Bush hopes Australia, Canada, England and other countries will help develop a global shield against ballistic missiles to protect it from potential threats.
Australia signed on to the idea in December.
-------- terrorism
Man With Uranium Caught at Ukraine Border
February 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ukraine-Nuclear.html
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukrainian border guards stopped a man trying to take nearly a pound of uranium into Hungary on Tuesday, an official said.
Border guards arrested the driver of a passenger van at the Tisa checkpoint after finding a container containing the potential nuclear bomb fuel, said border guards' spokesman Yevheniy Bargman.
It was unclear whether the uranium was in natural ore form or had been enriched for potential use in reactors or weapons.
Bargman said the man told officials he was paid an unspecified sum of money by men at a nearby gas station to take the material to Hungary for use ``by a dentist's office.''
Officials will send the material to Kiev, the capital, for analysis.
It was unclear where the uranium originated.
The United States and other nations repeatedly have voiced serious concern about the illegal trade in nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union.
Washington has bolstered programs to assist Ukraine in tightening its border controls to prevent weapons of mass destruction technology, materials and illegal weapons from flowing in and out of the country.
-------- treaties
Canada seeking new treaty on space weapons
By JEFF SALLOT
From Tuesday's Toronto Globe and Mail
Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004 http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040224.wxmissile24/BNStory/Front/
Ottawa - Canada is trying to get the United States and other countries to agree to a treaty banning weapons in outer space.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham has asked his counterparts in the Group of Eight leading industrial countries to consider how the nations of the world can keep space free of weapons.
Long a dream of peace activists, a ban on space weapons is an issue that could make its way back on to the international arms-control agenda as a result of the debate about the U.S. ballistic-missile defence program, senior Canadian officials said yesterday.
Mr. Graham wrote the other G-8 foreign ministers recently to see if they would join Canada in pushing the idea at the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, said Jim Wright, the assistant deputy minister of foreign affairs for security.
There has been no response yet to Mr. Graham's letter.
However, many of the other countries that are, like Canada, in discussions with Washington about possible participation on missile defence are also interested in an international ban on space weapons, Mr. Wright said.
China and Russia in particular are showing fresh interest.
Thus the time might be ripe to revisit what had been a stalemate in Geneva on a space-weapons ban and another arms-control proposal to cut off production of new fissile material that could be used to make nuclear weapons, Mr. Wright said.
The United States first tested a nuclear warhead in space in 1962, but reached agreement with the former Soviet Union and more than 80 other countries to ban weapons of mass destruction in the Earth's orbit, on the moon or on other planets in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.
U.S. military scientists are researching new kinds of weapons, such as high-energy directed lasers and "kinetic kill" interceptors. These weapons are not covered by the Outer Space Treaty.
The chairman of the Senate committee on national security, Liberal Colin Kenny, suggested weapons in space are inevitable. He asked why the Canadian government is "making a big deal" out of the issue of space weapons when the military of the U.S. and Canada already make extensive use of space for communications and surveillance.
Mr. Wright said "we make a clear distinction between the military in space and the weaponization of space. Space is a pristine environment" in regards to weapons.
Space is already crowded with satellites and debris. Putting weapons into space that could blast apart satellites will only make it more difficult for countries who want to use space for commercial purposes, such as telecommunications, global navigation, weather forecasting and for peaceful research, Mr. Wright said.
Mr. Wright, the government's chief negotiator in ballistic-missile defence talks with Washington, said the Americans fully understand Canada's strong opposition to weapons in space. "This policy will not change."
Many Americans in the U.S. Congress, and even the Pentagon, oppose space weapons, he said, if for no other reason than the huge estimated costs.
Meanwhile, the political debate about missile defence continued in the Commons yesterday with NDP critic Alexa McDonough angrily accusing the government of already committing itself to allowing the U.S. to put components of the system on Canadian territory. Mr. Pratt has left open the possibility that Canadian territory might be used for ballistic-missile defence facilities as the program grows.
This is still speculation, Mr. Pratt said, because no decision has been made yet about participating in the U.S. program. If all goes according to plan, the initial U.S. deployment of the system this fall involves putting missile interceptors in Alaska and California and advanced radars in Greenland and Britain.
-------- u.n.
IAEA to Help Libya; Atom Bomb Focus Shifts to Iran
February 24, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-libya.html
TRIPOLI, Libya (Reuters) - The United Nations nuclear watchdog said Tuesday it was ready to assist Libya, which has promised to abandon plans to develop atomic weapons, expand its peaceful nuclear program.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Libya had agreed to the dismantling of a sensitive uranium conversion plant and, as a goodwill gesture, to convert a research reactor from weapons-grade highly enriched uranium to one using low-enriched fuel.
His comments coincided with a newspaper report that looked set to shift the focus of international atomic scrutiny to Iran.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that IAEA inspectors in Iran had found a substance, polonium, that could be used to initiate a chain reaction for a nuclear explosion. It said Iran had experimented with polonium ``some time ago.''
Coupled with the recent discovery of designs, components and a few fully assembled ``P2'' centrifuges, which can be used to produce weapons-grade uranium, the discovery of the polonium would appear to cast doubt on Iran's statements that it had never sought nuclear weapons.
ElBaradei declined Tuesday to comment on the report.
``We have discussed ways to expand Libya's peaceful program,'' he told a news conference before leaving Libya, adding that the IAEA could help with desalination and other peaceful applications of nuclear technology.
All the sensitive parts of Libya's nuclear weapons program had been removed, he said, but there were a few issues that need to be clarified. The IAEA was awaiting the results of tests of environmental samples to check Tripoli's statements about the extent of its weapons-related activities, he said.
Monday he said he hoped the IAEA could finish dismantling Tripoli's nuclear weapons program by June and urged countries suspected of having similar projects, such as Iran and North Korea, to follow in Libya's footsteps.
``What I preach everywhere I go is full transparency, full cooperation,'' ElBaradei told reporters.
Diplomats in Vienna have told Reuters that Iranian officials have been lobbying envoys on the IAEA's governing board -- which meets on March 8 to discuss Iran and Libya -- to remove Tehran's nuclear program from the agenda by the board's June meeting.
``This is absurd,'' a non-aligned diplomat told Reuters.
LIBYA GOOD, IRAN BAD?
ElBaradei met Libyan Foreign Minister Mohamed Abderrhmane Chalgam Tuesday to discuss further disarmament steps before returning to IAEA headquarters in Vienna.
Chalgam affirmed Libya wanted to continue having a nuclear program but one devoted purely to peaceful purposes.
``It is better to use all this (nuclear technology and know-how) for peaceful purposes, without mass destruction weapons,'' he told the news conference with ElBaradei.
Several Western diplomats said Libya's openness with the U.N. watchdog contrasts sharply with Tehran's reluctant cooperation since an exiled opposition group broke the news Iran was hiding a huge underground uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz.
``We would like to see Iran showing the same kind of active cooperation that Libya has shown,'' a diplomat said.
The IAEA will release a report on Iran's nuclear program this week. Diplomats said it would list numerous failures by Iran to disclose sensitive nuclear technology and research that could be related to a weapons program.
The IAEA began inspections of Libya's nuclear program in December after Tripoli agreed to renounce its covert nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.
Last week the IAEA issued a report saying Libya had begun trying to develop nuclear arms as far back as the early 1980s, and the program was much bigger than previously thought.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Kucinich Speaks Out Against Nuclear Testing
At a recent press conference in Salt Lake City, Utah children stood next to Dennis as he discussed the elimination of nuclear testing in the nearby Nevada desert. Photo: Clarity Sanderson
At a press conference in Salt Lake City on Sunday, Congressman Kucinich condemned nuclear testing in the nearby Nevada desert. Past nuclear tests have been blamed for causing cancer in the region. Kucinich said, "We will stop the sacrifice of the health and the welfare of the people of Utah and every other state [who] would be affected by the testing of nuclear weapons. This must stop."
[Read the article] http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Feb/02232004/utah/utah.asp
[Read the press release] http://www.kucinich.us/pressreleases/pr_022004c.php
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Energy Dept. Shifts on Nuclear Plant Rule
February 24, 2004
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/24RULE.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 - The Energy Department said Monday that it was suspending its proposal to have the contractors who run nuclear weapons plants take charge of planning for how to ensure worker safety.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an oversight body created by Congress, had complained that the proposal could wipe out 50 years of rule making.
Spencer Abraham, the energy secretary, said in a letter to the chairman of the board that the department would work with the board to redraft the rule and that "any final rule will reflect my policy that safety standards will not be written by contractors." Mr. Abraham said the department would continue to seek a new rule that safety plans be reviewed by its headquarters, not field offices.
-------- new york
N.R.C. Staff Finds No Risk in Indian Pt. Cooling System
February 24, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/nyregion/24nuke.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has apparently decided that the two Indian Point nuclear reactors in Westchester County pose no special risk of having their emergency cooling systems clog with debris in the first few minutes of an emergency, despite an Energy Department study that singled them out as especially susceptible to such a failure.
The commission staff reached its conclusion in a draft of a report written in response to a petition by two nonprofit groups critical of Indian Point's safety, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Riverkeeper. The groups had asked that the plants, in Buchanan, N.Y., be shut down and fixed promptly.
The report is marked "proposed" because it has been sent to the two groups for their comment, but one of the three members of the commission, Edward McGaffigan, said it was "the staff's best description so far of their position.'' The plant's owner, Entergy Corporation, has said that the reactors are safe.
Eight years ago, the commission recognized the problem cited by the two groups: that in case of a major pipe break, the leaking water or steam would scour off pipe insulation and even paint. That debris, engineers fear, would wash into the sump in the reactor basement, then clog the pumps that are supposed to draw in the leaked water and recycle it back into the cooling system to prevent a meltdown.
In February 2003, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, acting as a contractor to the commission, studied the problem and said the Indian Point reactors were among those t in the nation likely to face the hazard.
But the commission staff's new report argues that that study "did not model individual plants in sufficient detail to provide information for drawing conclusions about the operability of a particular sump." The staff said that data in the report was not verified with the plant operators, and Entergy had said that the pumps would not draw in the spilled water as fast as the Los Alamos study assumed. The plant also has design features that the Los Alamos study did not consider, the staff said.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Monday in a telephone interview that in the absence of a plant-by-plant analysis, there was no basis for concluding that Indian Point or other reactors were safe. He said there had been plenty of time in the last 20 years, since the problem became obvious, to conduct such studies.
The commission expects that by 2007, the problem will be analyzed at all reactors and fixed where needed.
Mr. Lochbaum pointed out that the Davis-Besse reactor, near Toledo, Ohio, analyzed the possibility of debris clogging its sump after it was shut down in March 2002 because the top of its reactor vessel had corroded nearly all the way through. If the top had ruptured, the water inside, pressurized to more than 2,000 pounds per square inch, would have blown the thermal insulation off the top of the vessel, experts say.
Davis-Besse's operators concluded that the water-intake opening for their pumps was too small, and installed an opening that was 25 times larger, he said. But Davis-Besse ranked as one of the safer plants in the Los Alamos study.
-------- us politics
Kucinich 2nd with 30% in Hawaii Primary
From: Chris Ortman, Kucinich Campaign <info@kucinich.us>
The results from yesterday's primary are in, and Dennis placed 2nd in the Hawaii primary with 30% of the vote. This gives him 8 of Hawaii's 20 unpledged delegates, who will go to the national convention in Boston in July. In Maui, Dennis won with 50% of the vote. In other primaries yesterday, Dennis took 7% of the vote in Utah and 6% in Idaho.
[ Mahalo from Hawaii Organizer Ave Diaz]
http://www.kucinich.us/mahalo.php
----
Kerry and Kucinich win Hawaii Democratic delegates
Kerry wins, and Kucinich takes his first second-place finish in a Democratic contest
Richard Borreca rborreca@starbulletin.com
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Report on the Results
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
http://starbulletin.com/breaking/breaking.php?id=2408
A last-minute phone bank to seek support plus the endorsement of most of the Democratic establishment gave U.S. Sen. John Kerry a victory in the Hawaii Democratic caucus tonight.
Democrats across the state gathered in caucus meetings tonight to select a presidential candidate.
They gave U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich his first second place finish in a Democratic contest and his first elected delegates, according to Bart Dame, Hawaii Kucinich organizer.
The Hawaii win capped a day of caucus victories for Kerry in Utah and Idaho.
In Hawaii, Kerry and Kucinich were the only candidates to win delegates as the others failed to get the needed 15 percent of the votes.
Alex Santiago, Democratic Party chairman, said the caucuses were surprisingly well-attended, noting that there were 4,000 Democrats voting. Four years ago, there were only 1,200 ballots in a race that saw former Vice President Al Gore easily win over former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley.
Tonight, Kerry picked up 1,756 votes while Kucinich had 1,138 votes and Sen. John Edwards had 481. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean had 341 votes and Wesley Clark had 30.
Santiago said the tally represents 90 percent of votes cast last night in Hawaii. The remaining 10 percent, from some neighbor islands areas, had not been counted by press time.
Santiago said Kucinich had won half of the Democratic vote on Maui, considered the candidate's stronghold.
Kerry is expected to take 12 Hawaii delegates and Kucinich will take the remaining eight delegates to the national convention in Boston in July.
Two campaign trips to Hawaii by Kucinich helped the long-shot presidential candidate.
The issue of the Iraq war had changed in the last six months according to some Democrats, who tonight said President Bush hadn't proved his case for the invasion.
John Wadahara, a city employee, said he was originally for Howard Dean, but after the former Vermont governor withdrew, said he was looking for anyone who could beat Bush in November.
"I think I'm going with Kerry," Wadahara said before the caucus meeting started at Manoa Park.
"They haven't found any weapons of mass destruction, and his (Bush's) story is changing and I have no trust in him," Wadahara said.
Other Kerry supporters, such as City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi, said she hoped they would have a clear statewide support for the Massachusetts senator.
"I think we should all be behind one candidate," Kobayashi said.
That idea was seconded by Joe Blanco, a banker and state executive assistant under former Gov. Ben Cayetano.
"I came out to support Kerry," Blanco said. " He's a good man and it's my duty as a Democrat to come out."
Another Manoa resident, public relations executive Barbara Tanabe, said she was supporting Sen. John Edwards, D-S.C.
"I read about Edwards early in the campaign and his life story impressed me. He has a compelling history," Tanabe said.
Another Edwards supporter, architect Scott Wilson, said he was supporting the first-term senator because he would continue to provide Kerry with some competition.
Wilson explained he was first for Dean and had even contributed to his campaign, but after Dean withdrew, he started looking for another candidate.
"I wanted to support Kucinich, because he was best on the issues, but he didn't have a chance," Wilson said.
"I'm going with Edwards to keep Kerry on a more progressive track," Wilson said.
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Kerry opposed key weapons
February 24, 2004
By Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040223-115221-2572r.htm
Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry has opposed some of the most effective - and publicly popular - military weapons in the U.S. arsenal during the past 15 years.
The Massachusetts senator voted against defense appropriations bills that included money for weapons such as the Patriot missile, the Tomahawk cruise missile and the B-2 stealth bomber - all of which military leaders say have become integral to the U.S. force and were crucial to winning the 1991 Gulf war and last year's war in Iraq.
According to voting records, Mr. Kerry also favored cutting or canceling spending on the Apache helicopter, the M-1 Abrams tank and a wide range of fighter jets.
A skirmish over the issue broke out this weekend between Mr. Kerry and President Bush, with supporters of Mr. Bush accusing Mr. Kerry of being "weak on defense." In a letter to Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry wrote that he didn't want the "debate to be distorted through your $100 million campaign fund" and challenged the president to a face-to-face debate.
"That's the game they play," Mr. Kerry told reporters yesterday while campaigning in New York. "They haven't come to you and said we need this [weapons] system and John Kerry voted against the system. They're saying he voted against defense ... and I'm not going to let them nickel-and-dime us on one system or another that was an individual vote."
But for the most part, Mr. Kerry has failed to address many of his Senate votes on defense and intelligence matters.
"If he wants to be commander in chief, he has to answer these questions," Mr. Bush's campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, said yesterday.
Mr. Racicot also said Mr. Kerry is trying to "cloud the issue" by complaining that Republicans are attacking his patriotism rather than his votes on defense issues in the Senate.
"We have praised repeatedly Senator Kerry's service in Vietnam," Mr. Racicot said. "This is not a discussion about anything other than his record."
Mr. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who became a war protester, did defend some of his record yesterday, saying he had voted for the biggest Pentagon and intelligence budgets in U.S. history but had also challenged President Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense as well as some weapons systems such as the MX missile.
The Center for Security Policy has analyzed more than 75 votes over the past decade cast by Mr. Kerry and other senators. The Washington-based conservative think tank gave Mr. Kerry one of the lowest ratings of any senator.
In 1995, for instance, the group gave Mr. Kerry a rank of five out of a possible 100. In 1997, Mr. Kerry earned a zero from the Center for Security Policy, which identifies its goal as "promoting international peace through American strength."
Among the votes the group evaluated were nine Mr. Kerry cast against developing a missile-defense system envisioned to protect the United States from nuclear attack. Also noted are the six times in the past 10 years he voted to freeze or reduce defense spending. Mr. Kerry also cast two votes to loosen trade controls over "dual-use" technology such as U.S.-made high-speed computers that can also be used by enemies to build high-tech weaponry.
Over the weekend, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Georgia Republican, said during this time of terrorist alerts at home and suicide bombings overseas, it's an issue sure to make a difference for voters.
"When you have a 32-year history of voting to cut defense programs and cut defense systems, folks in Georgia are going to look beyond what he says and look at his voting record," Mr. Chambliss said in a conference call with reporters arranged by Mr. Bush's re-election campaign.
Mr. Kerry responded during a campaign stop this weekend in Georgia, where Democratic voters will vote in a primary next week.
"I'd like to know what it is Republicans who didn't serve in Vietnam have against those of us who did," he said in reference to Mr. Bush's stateside service in the Texas Air National Guard during the war.
Republicans have also produced a proposed bill that Mr. Kerry authored in 1996 to cut the deficit. The proposal, which would have cut spending on defense and intelligence by $6.5 billion, never attracted a co-sponsor or came to a vote.
"This bill was so reckless that it had no co-sponsors," said Mr. Racicot.
Mr. Kerry yesterday said embracing every weapons system proposed doesn't make Republicans stronger on defense.
"That's not the measure of whether you're strong on defense," he said.
•Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
----
Rumsfeld panel caught Bush's eye
This is the second of three exclusive excerpts from "Rumsfeld´s War" (Regnery Publishing Inc.), the new book by Rowan Scarborough, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times.
February 24, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040223-115242-2593r.htm
A phone call from House Speaker Newt Gingrich's office marked Donald H. Rumsfeld's re-entry to Washington and the good graces of the Republican majority in Congress.
In little more than two years, the practiced Washington hand would be named secretary of defense - again.
In 1998, Rumsfeld accepted Gingrich's offer of the chairmanship of a congressionally created panel charged with assessing the threat to the nation posed by ballistic missiles.
"We were looking for a strong team and I was a huge admirer of his and always thought he was a potential president," Gingrich recalls. "He was available. He was willing to do it."
Missile defense had become a core Republican issue.
President Reagan had spent billions trying to develop a virtual shield against attack. His "Star Wars" rhetoric rattled the Soviet politburo, helping to hasten the "Evil Empire's" collapse.
Gingrich thought Rumsfeld's resume impressive: Navy pilot, congressman from Illinois, head of the Office of Economic Opportunity and U.S. ambassador to NATO in the Nixon administration, White House chief of staff and defense secretary (the youngest ever) in the Ford administration, the chief executive officer who turned around pharmaceutical giant G.D. Searle & Co., special Middle East envoy for Reagan.
Since 1989, the argument for missile defense had focused on rogue nations like Iran, Iraq and North Korea, which appeared bent on building an arsenal of ballistic missiles armed with nuclear, biological or chemical warheads.
History showed that such rogue regimes made progress acquiring weapons at a faster pace than the CIA predicted. North Korea, for example, did not spend a lot of time on testing and perfecting missiles. The communist regime tested once and then deployed.
The Rumsfeld commission's formal name was the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. Conservative Republicans saw the panel - five Republicans and four Democrats - as a chance to debunk the CIA's latest national intelligence estimate (NIE) on missile proliferation.
An NIE is the intelligence community's best judgment on a national security issue. This particular NIE said the United States had a safety net of 15 years before a rogue nation could activate intercontinental ballistic missiles.
If the Rumsfeld commission could compile evidence to challenge that assessment, it would provide a boon to advocates of developing and deploying a missile defense.
The challenge
The nine-member commission was tilted in Rumsfeld's favor.
On the panel were his old friend Bill Schneider, a veteran of the Reagan administration; future deputy Paul Wolfowitz, who got his first Pentagon job in the Carter administration; William Graham, an early "Star Wars" enthusiast; and James Woolsey, President Clinton's former director of central intelligence.
But in achieving what Rumsfeld wanted - a unanimous report - two members might put up objections. One was Richard L. Garwin, a renowned scientist who had advised Democratic administrations, and the other was Barry M. Blechman, who ran his own consulting firm.
Garwin and Blechman long had supported the Anti?Ballistic Missile Treaty. Liberals cited the 30-year-old ABM Treaty with the Soviet Union as an impenetrable firewall between research, which the pact allowed, and deployment, which it did not.
Also working for the commission was Stephen Cambone, a young defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Introduced to Rumsfeld by Schneider, Cambone had passed the Rumsfeld test: He was smart and willing to work long hours on tough problems.
"Rumsfeld forces you to make a decision about whether you will take the time and energy to be his guy," says a person who worked on forming the commission.
Cambone became the panel's chief of staff and helped the chairman get the right intelligence information.
Rumsfeld immediately cleared away some stumbling blocks. He made it clear that the commission was to assess the current missile threat, not recommend what to do about it. That approach won over anti-missile critics like Garwin.
The full story
The chairman then worked to get access to the CIA's most sensitive intelligence on any given nation's arms programs. Initially, CIA briefers passed out useless information.
"When we started, they were trying to give us pap," Blechman recalls. "It was worse than a briefing for the Kiwanis Club: 'The Russian federation has a lot of missiles.' It was a joke."
After one briefing, Schneider commented, "That briefer is a waste of food."
No expert on one country seemed to know what was going on in other countries.
Rumsfeld took his complaints directly to CIA Director George Tenet. Soon, the commission not only got better information, it got office space at Langley to view the crown jewels.
"Rumsfeld pressed and pressed and pressed until we got the full story on these different countries," Blechman says.
Members remember Rumsfeld reading all the material himself.
"Rumsfeld got very concerned about the intelligence community's lack of willingness to fill in the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle - for which they didn't have direct evidence - with judgment," Woolsey recalls. "That's what you've got to do."
Rumsfeld culminated the research by having the staff write a first draft of findings only. He then reworked it and unveiled the product.
United voice
Only when the findings were agreed upon did the staff produce a 300-page report. In the end, all agreed on relatively simple, but important, language:
"The threat to the U.S. posed by these emerging capabilities is broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly than has been reported in estimates and reports by the intelligence community," the Rumsfeld commission concluded. ... "The warning times the U.S. can expect of new, threatening ballistic missile deployments are being reduced."
In spring and summer 1998, during the Rumsfeld commission's investigation and immediately afterward, two events reinforced the notion of a dangerous, unpredictable world.
In May, India conducted its first underground testing of a nuclear warhead since 1974. It did so while deceiving the United States, lying to the Clinton administration about its plans and preparing the site while U.S. spy satellites were not overhead. India's test prompted Pakistan to do the same.
On Aug. 31, a month after the Rumsfeld commission released its findings, North Korea, as if on cue, test-fired its Taepodong rocket over Japan.
"[Rumsfeld] figured out that a unanimous commission was worth everything, because a unanimous commission meant that [liberal Democrats] are voting yes and it's impossible to discredit the report," Gingrich says. "It's an example of his ability to strategically understand what's necessary and then discipline himself to get it.
"What he wanted to do was get to the hardest unanimous report he could get to, and that was an art form. I think it's a really great work of leadership."
Tapped by Bush
Rumsfeld's chairmanship of the ballistic missile commission gave him his first entry into the inner circle of presidential candidate George W. Bush, the governor of Texas.
In January 2000, about 10 months before the election, Bush invited Rumsfeld to Washington to brief him on missile threats. The setting was a private room at the Mayflower Hotel.
"I met with him for hours, just alone," Rumsfeld recalls.
Rumsfeld told me that he never had a formal job interview with Bush.
After the election, the president-elect sought Rumsfeld's advice on the qualities needed in a defense secretary.
"He wanted to ask me questions about what I thought about the intelligence community and what I thought about defense and foreign policy areas," Rumsfeld told me. "And not because I had any desire to come in or he had any desire to have me. I think that was out of the question. It wasn't on the radar screen." But Rumsfeld met again with Bush, this time in Austin, Texas. The president-elect did talk jobs, but made no direct offer. Rumsfeld also traveled to Bush's ranch in Taos, Texas.
A few days later, the phone rang. It was Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld's former protege in the Nixon and Ford administrations, offering him the defense job.
Gingrich analyzes the Bush-Rumsfeld marriage this way:
"Bush is talking to a first-rate politician, who won elective office, who's been chief of staff to a president, who was the youngest secretary of defense in history, who had been CEO of a big corporation, very successful big corporation.
"So [Bush] could say to him, do you think you could redo the Pentagon? Well, this Rumsfeld spent his career preparing for this."
Gingrich adds: "It doesn't hurt that the guy in charge of staffing the administration [Cheney] is Rumsfeld's former deputy. This is a small conspiracy."
--------
When John Kerry's Courage Went M.I.A.
February 24th, 2004
by Sydney H. Schanberg
Village Voice
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0408/schanberg.php
Senator John Kerry, a decorated battle veteran, was courageous as a navy lieutenant in the Vietnam War. But he was not so courageous more than two decades later, when he covered up voluminous evidence that a significant number of live American prisoners-perhaps hundreds-were never acknowledged or returned after the war-ending treaty was signed in January 1973.
The Massachusetts senator, now seeking the presidency, carried out this subterfuge a little over a decade ago- shredding documents, suppressing testimony, and sanitizing the committee's final report-when he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs.
Over the years, an abundance of evidence had come to light that the North Vietnamese, while returning 591 U.S. prisoners of war after the treaty signing, had held back many others as future bargaining chips for the $4 billion or more in war reparations that the Nixon administration had pledged. Hanoi didn't trust Washington to fulfill its pro-mise without pressure. Similarly, Washington didn't trust Hanoi to return all the prisoners and carry out all the treaty provisions. The mistrust on both sides was merited. Hanoi held back prisoners and the U.S. provided no reconstruction funds.
The stated purpose of the special Senate committee-which convened in mid 1991 and concluded in January 1993-was to investigate the evidence about prisoners who were never returned and find out what happened to the missing men. Committee chair Kerry's larger and different goal, though never stated publicly, emerged over time: He wanted to clear a path to normalization of relations with Hanoi. In any other context, that would have been an honorable goal. But getting at the truth of the unaccounted for P.O.W.'s and M.I.A.'s (Missing In Action) was the main obstacle to normalization-and therefore in conflict with his real intent and plan of action.
Kerry denied back then that he disguised his real goal, contending that he supported normalization only as a way to learn more about the missing men. But almost nothing has emerged about these prisoners since diplomatic and economic relations were restored in 1995, and thus it would appear-as most realists expected-that Kerry's explanation was hollow. He has also denied in the past the allegations of a cover-up, either by the Pentagon or himself. Asked for comment on this article, the Kerry campaign sent a quote from the senator: "In the end, I think what we can take pride in is that we put together the most significant, most thorough, most exhaustive accounting for missing and former P.O.W.'s in the history of human warfare."
What was the body of evidence that prisoners were held back? A short list would include more than 1,600 firsthand sightings of live U.S. prisoners; nearly 14,000 secondhand reports; numerous intercepted Communist radio messages from within Vietnam and Laos about American prisoners being moved by their captors from one site to another; a series of satellite photos that continued into the 1990s showing clear prisoner rescue signals carved into the ground in Laos and Vietnam, all labeled inconclusive by the Pentagon; multiple reports about unacknowledged prisoners from North Vietnamese informants working for U.S. intelligence agencies, all ignored or declared unreliable; persistent complaints by senior U.S. intelligence officials (some of them made publicly) that live-prisoner evidence was being suppressed; and clear proof that the Pentagon and other keepers of the "secret" destroyed a variety of files over the years to keep the P.O.W./M.I.A. families and the public from finding out and possibly setting off a major public outcry.
The resignation of Colonel Millard Peck in 1991, the first year of the Kerry committee's tenure, was one of many vivid landmarks in this saga's history. Peck had been the head of the Pentagon's P.O.W./M.I.A. office for only eight months when he resigned in disgust. In his damning departure statement, he wrote: "The mind-set to 'debunk' is alive and well. It is held at all levels . . . Practically all analysis is directed to finding fault with the source. Rarely has there been any effective, active follow-through on any of the sightings . . . The sad fact is that . . . a cover-up may be in progress. The entire charade does not appear to be an honest effort and may never have been."
Finally, Peck said: "From what I have witnessed, it appears that any soldier left in Vietnam, even inadvertently, was in fact abandoned years ago, and that the farce that is being played is no more than political legerdemain done with 'smoke and mirrors' to stall the issue until it dies a natural death."
What did Kerry do in furtherance of the cover-up? An overview would include the following: He allied himself with those carrying it out by treating the Pentagon and other prisoner debunkers as partners in the investigation instead of the targets they were supposed to be. In short, he did their bidding. When Defense Department officials were coming to testify, Kerry would have his staff director, Frances Zwenig, meet with them to "script" the hearings-as detailed in an internal Zwenig memo leaked by others. Zwenig also advised North Vietnamese officials on how to state their case. Further, Kerry never pushed or put up a fight to get key government documents unclassified; he just rolled over, no matter how obvious it was that the documents contained confirming data about prisoners. Moreover, after promising to turn over all committee records to the National Archives when the panel concluded its work, the senator destroyed crucial intelligence information the staff had gathered-to to keep the documents from becoming public. He refused to subpoena past presidents and other key witnesses.
When revelatory sworn testimony was given to the committee by President Reagan's national security adviser, Richard Allen-about a credible proposal from Hanoi in 1981 to return more than 50 prisoners for a $4 billion ransom-Kerry had that testimony taken in a closed door interview, not a public hearing. But word leaked out and a few weeks later, Allen sent a letter to the committee, not under oath, recanting his testimony, saying his memory had played tricks on him. Kerry never did any probe into Allen's original, detailed account, and instead accepted his recantation as gospel truth.
A Secret Service agent then working at the White House, John Syphrit, told committee staffers he had overheard part of a conversation about the Hanoi proposal for ransom. He said he was willing to testify but feared reprisal from his Treasury Department superiors and would need to be subpoenaed so that his appearance could not be regarded as voluntary. Kerry refused to subpoena him. Syphrit told me that four men were involved in that conversation-Reagan, Allen, Vice President George H.W. Bush, and CIA director William Casey. I wrote the story for Newsday.
The final Kerry report brushed off the entire episode like unsightly dust. It said: "The committee found no credible evidence of any such [ransom] offer being made."
A newcomer to this subject matter might reasonably ask why there was no great public outrage, no sustained headlines, no national demand for investigations, no penalties imposed on those who had hidden, and were still hiding, the truth. The simple, overarching explanation was that most Americans wanted to put Vietnam behind them as fast as possible. They wanted to forget this failed war, not deal with its truths or consequences. The press suffered from the same ostrich syndrome; no major media organization ever carried out an in-depth investigation by a reporting team into the prisoner issue. When prisoner stories did get into the press, they would have a one-day life span, never to be followed up on. When three secretaries of defense from the Vietnam era-James Schlesinger, Melvin Laird, and Elliot Richardson-testified before the Kerry committee, under oath, that intelligence they received at the time convinced them that numbers of unacknowledged prisoners were being held by the Communists, the story was reported by the press just that once and then dropped. The New York Times put the story on page one but never pursued it further to explore the obvious ramifications.
At that public hearing on September 21, 1992, toward the end of Schlesinger's testimony, the former defense secretary, who earlier had been CIA chief, was asked a simple question: "In your view, did we leave men behind?"
He replied: "I think that as of now, I can come to no other conclusion."
He was asked to explain why Nixon would have accepted leaving men behind. He said: "One must assume that we had concluded that the bargaining position of the United States . . . was quite weak. We were anxious to get our troops out and we were not going to roil the waters . . . "
Another example of a story not pursued occurred at the Paris peace talks. The North Vietnamese failed to provide a list of the prisoners until the treaty was signed. Afterward, when they turned over the list, U.S. intelligence officials were taken aback by how many believed prisoners were not included. The Vietnamese were returning only nine men from Laos. American records showed that more than 300 were probably being held. A story about this stunning gap, by New York Times Pentagon reporter John W. Finney, appeared on the paper's front page on February 2, 1973. The story said: "Officials emphasized that the United States would be seeking clarification . . . " No meaningful explanation was ever provided by the Vietnamese or by the Laotian Communist guerrillas, the Pathet Lao, who were satellites of Hanoi.
As a bombshell story for the media, particularly the Washington press corps, it was there for the taking. But there were no takers.
I was drawn to the P.O.W. issue because of my reporting years for The New York Times during the Vietnam War, where I came to believe that our soldiers were being misled and disserved by our government. After the war, military people who knew me and others who knew my work brought me information about live sightings of P.O.W.'s still in captivity and other evidence about their existence. When the Kerry committee was announced (I was by then a columnist at Newsday), I thought the senator-having himself become disillusioned about the Vietnam War, and eventually an advocate against it-might really be committed to digging out the truth. This was wishful thinking.
In the committee's early days, Kerry had given encouraging indications of being a committed investigator. He said he had "leads" to the existence of P.O.W.'s still in captivity. He said the number of these likely survivors was more than 100 and that this was the minimum. But in a very short time, he stopped saying such things and morphed his role into one of full alliance with the executive branch, the Pentagon, and other Washington hierarchies, joining their long-running effort to obscure and deny that a significant number of live American prisoners had not been returned. As many as 700 withheld P.O.W.'s were cited in credible intelligence documents, including a speech by a senior North Vietnamese general that was discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar.
Here are details of a few of the specific steps Kerry took to hide evidence about these P.O.W.'s.
* He gave orders to his committee staff to shred crucial intelligence documents. The shredding stopped only when some intelligence staffers staged a protest. Some wrote internal memos calling for a criminal investigation. One such memo-from John F. McCreary, a lawyer and staff intelligence analyst-reported that the committee's chief counsel, J. William Codinha, a longtime Kerry friend, "ridiculed the staff members" and said, "Who's the injured party?" When staffers cited "the 2,494 families of the unaccounted-for U.S. servicemen, among others," the McCreary memo continued, Codinha said: "Who's going to tell them? It's classified."
Kerry defended the shredding by saying the documents weren't originals, only copies-but the staff's fear was that with the destruction of the copies, the information would never get into the public domain, which it didn't. Kerry had promised the staff that all documents acquired and prepared by the committee would be turned over to the National Archives at the committee's expiration. This didn't happen. Both the staff and independent researchers reported that many critical documents were withheld.
Another protest memo from the staff reported: "An internal Department of Defense Memorandum identifies Frances Zwenig [Kerry's staff director] as the conduit to the Department of Defense for the acquisition of sensitive and restricted information from this Committee . . . lines of investigation have been seriously compromised by leaks" to the Pentagon and "other agencies of the executive branch." It also said the Zwenig leaks were "endangering the lives and livelihood of two witnesses."
A number of staffers became increasingly upset about Kerry's close relationship with the Department of Defense, which was supposed to be under examination. (Dick Cheney was then defense secretary.) It had become clear that Kerry, Zwenig, and others close to the chairman, such as Senator John McCain of Arizona, a dominant committee member, had gotten cozy with the officials and agencies supposedly being probed for obscuring P.O.W. information over the years. Committee hearings, for example, were being orchestrated to suit the examinees, who were receiving lists of potential questions in advance. Another internal memo from the period, by a staffer who requested anonymity, said: "Speaking for the other investigators, I can say we are sick and tired of this investigation being controlled by those we are supposedly investigating."
The Kerry investigative technique was equally soft in many other critical ways. He rejected all suggestions that the committee require former presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush to testify. All were in the Oval Office during the Vietnam era and its aftermath. They had information critical to the committee, for each president was carefully and regularly briefed by his national security adviser and others about P.O.W. developments. It was a huge issue at that time.
Kerry also refused to subpoena the Nixon office tapes (yes, the Watergate tapes) from the early months of 1973 when the P.O.W.'s were an intense subject because of the peace talks and the prisoner return that followed. (Nixon had rejected committee requests to provide the tapes voluntarily.) Information had seeped out for years that during the Paris talks and afterward, Nixon had been briefed in detail by then national security advisor Brent Scowcroft and others about the existence of P.O.W.'s whom Hanoi was not admitting to. Nixon, distracted by Watergate, apparently decided it was crucial to get out of the Vietnam mess immediately, even if it cost those lives. Maybe he thought there would be other chances down the road to bring these men back. So he approved the peace treaty and on March 29, 1973, the day the last of the 591 acknowledged prisoners were released in Hanoi, Nixon announced on national television: "All of our American P.O.W.'s are on their way home."
The Kerry committee's final report, issued in January 1993, delivered the ultimate insult to history. The 1,223-page document said there was "no compelling evidence that proves" there is anyone still in captivity. As for the primary investigative question -what happened to the men left behind in 1973-the report conceded only that there is "evidence . . . that indicates the possibility of survival, at least for a small number" of prisoners 31 years ago, after Hanoi released the 591 P.O.W.'s it had admitted to.
With these word games, the committee report buried the issue-and the men.
The huge document contained no findings about what happened to the supposedly "small number." If they were no longer alive, then how did they die? Were they executed when ransom offers were rejected by Washington?
Kerry now slides past all the radio messages, satellite photos, live sightings, and boxes of intelligence documents-all the evidence. In his comments for this piece, this candidate for the presidency said: "No nation has gone to the lengths that we did to account for their dead. None-ever in history."
Of the so-called "possibility" of a "small number" of men left behind, the committee report went on to say that if this did happen, the men were not "knowingly abandoned," just "shunted aside." How do you put that on a gravestone?
In the end, the fact that Senator Kerry covered up crucial evidence as committee chairman didn't seem to bother too many Massachusetts voters when he came up for re-election-or the recent voters in primary states. So I wouldn't predict it will be much of an issue in the presidential election come November. It seems there is no constituency in America for missing Vietnam P.O.W.'s except for their families and some veterans of that war.
A year after he issued the committee report, on the night of January 26, 1994, Kerry was on the Senate floor pushing through a resolution calling on President Clinton to lift the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam. In the debate, Kerry belittled the opposition, saying that those who still believed in abandoned P.O.W.'s were perpetrating a hoax. "This process," he declaimed, "has been led by a certain number of charlatans and exploiters, and we should not allow fiction to cloud what we are trying to do here."
Kerry's resolution passed, by a vote of 62 to 38. Sadly for him, the passage of ten thousand resolutions cannot make up for wants in a man's character.
-------- MILITARY
How Catapults Married Sciences With Politics
February 24, 2004
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/science/24CATA.html?8hpib=&pagewanted=all&position=
In wars of antiquity, no weapon struck greater terror than the catapult. It was the heavy artillery of that day, the sturdy springboard that shot menacing payloads over fortress walls and into enemy camps - flaming missiles, diseased corpses, lethal arrows and stony projectiles.
For centuries on end, at least until the proliferation of gunpowder in the 15th-century West, catapults saw action as the early weapons of mass destruction. They were prized assets in an arms race and had profound effects on affairs of state. Sound familiar?
Perhaps that is why a small but growing number of historians and classics scholars are taking a closer look at the role of catapults not only in warfare, but also the politics of antiquity. Out of their careful re-reading of old texts, combined with archaeological finds, has emerged a revised view of the convergence of science and political power in earlier times.
More than had been generally recognized, scholars are finding, such weapons drew on advances of science, elevated the influence and prestige of technologists and engendered ambivalent feelings of strength through might, as well a greater vulnerability - even a diminished humanity - than in past hand-to-hand combat with traditional swords and spears.
The changing interpretation was forcefully expressed in a recent essay by Dr. Serafina Cuomo, a British historian of science. She challenged a stereotype that in antiquity "theory and practice were on opposite sides of an unbridgeable divide and that science and technology were marginal in ancient society."
A study of catapults, Dr. Cuomo, of the Imperial College London, wrote in the Feb. 6 issue of the journal Science, "shows that such a divide did not exist in reality" and that "both engineers and their achievements were an important part of ancient society."
Dr. Cuomo cited several telling examples from Greek and Roman history in which rulers employed scientists for their knowledge of geometry, physics and engineering skills in developing more powerful and reliable catapults. Dionysius, a king of Syracuse in the fourth century B.C., gathered craftsmen "from everywhere into one place," as Diodorus wrote, and rewarded them with high wages, gifts, prizes and, for the best and brightest, places at his table.
Dr. Cuomo called it "an inspiring example of policy-driven research."
Later in the same century, catapult designers working for Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, raised the stakes in the arms race by improving the weapon with twisted sinews and ropes that acted as powerful springs. By 200 B.C., Philo of Byzantium was writing that catapult research had moved beyond trial-and-error methods to the recognition of a principle based on mathematics.
The principle, as Dr. Cuomo pointed out, was that "all parts of a catapult, including the weight or length of the projectile, were proportional to the size of the torsion springs." Mathematicians were then able to draw up precise tables of specifications for easy reference by builders, and also soldiers on the firing line.
The engineer Philo, the earliest direct source on this period of catapult design, reported that the improved weapons were something that ambitious rulers in the Mediterranean region "display the greatest enthusiasm over and would exchange anything for." Scientists and engineers, he said, were paid handsomely to match wits in the catapult competition.
A later king of Syracuse, it is said, persuaded the legendary Archimedes to design advanced catapults for defense against the Romans. In time, the Romans themselves had catapults capable of delivering 60-pound boulders at least 500 feet. A historian in that time described a Roman legion with 160 catapults, some for shooting incendiary missiles and others for rounded stones, lined up in battle alongside archers and slingers.
One aspect of this ancient weaponry that caught Dr. Cuomo's attention was something Hero of Alexander wrote in the first century A.D., which has the ring of the cold war policy of mutual deterrence.
"You didn't just have to have catapults to use them," the historian said in an interview. "You needed your potential enemy to know that you had catapults so they would not attack you in the first place."
Other scholars praised the essay, especially its insights into the close relationship of science and technology in ancient political affairs.
"She's right on target," Adrienne Mayor, an independent scholar in Princeton, said of Dr. Cuomo's thesis. "A lot of people still think of ancient science as something carried out in ivory towers. But war and science are intertwined from the beginning - something military historians have not ignored, but others have."
Ms. Mayor is a classical folklorist whose latest book, "Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs" (Overlook Duckworth, 2003), describes biochemical warfare in antiquity, including many instances of catapults that rained fire and pestilence in battle.
Dr. Alex Roland, a historian of technology at Duke University, agreed that at least as early as the fourth century B.C. rulers "kept mathematicians" and set up "what were essentially research and development laboratories," primarily to support military technology. One difference from today, he said, was a conspicuous lack of secrecy in these matters.
"Rulers seemed to promote the technology for immediate payoff for themselves and had not yet worked through the notion that you ought to protect your investment with secrecy and restrictions," Dr. Roland said. "So engineers shopped their wares around, and the information circulated freely among countries."
In fact, Dr. Cuomo said, the ancient engineers "saw themselves as an international community," and Philo mentioned with pride his exchanges with colleagues in cities throughout the Mediterranean basin.
A few other scholars have been studying and writing along similar lines, Dr. Roland noted, citing Dr. John G. Landels, a British historian whose book, "Engineering in the Ancient World," was reissued in 2000 by the University of California Press.
Dr. Cuomo pointed out in an interview that "what historians are doing at a more insider level has not really entered the general public level yet."
Dr. Josiah Ober, a professor of classics at Princeton, said that in the fourth and third centuries B.C. the new technology began stimulating changes in the architecture of defensive fortifications, providing, for example, openings in towers wide enough for catapult-launched projectiles to pass through from the inside. That, too, became the task of engineers who, he said, worked for "very centralized monarchies pushing military technology."
Dr. Ober suggested that scholars had been slow to recognize the importance of technology in antiquity's hierarchies of power because classical philosophers like Plato and Aristotle were known for the aristocratic view, he said, that "productive labor was destructive to your capacity to truly live the highest form of life."
The Greeks, who knew their Homer and his celebration of the courage of single-warrior combat, seemed to have deep qualms about the new projectile weapons, as Dr. Cuomo noted in a story of a king of Sparta in the fourth century B.C.
"On seeing the missile shot by a catapult which had been brought then for the first time from Sicily," Plutarch wrote, the king "cried out, `By Heracles, this is the end of man's valor.' "
Archaeological evidence indicates that catapults may be as old as ninth-century B.C. Nimrud in what is now Iraq. Some of the first crude instruments had large bows drawn back with winches for firing. They evolved into heavier timber frames with pulleys and iron levers by which hair or sinew cords were wound tightly as torsion springs for greater power and range.
So awesome was catapult technology that by the first century A.D. the Roman engineer Sextus Julius Frontinus allowed pride to blind him to human nature and ingenuity. The invention of these machines of war, Frontinus wrote, "has long ago been completed, and I don't see anything surpassing the state of the art."
-------- afghanistan
Afghan Attack Follows An Upsurge in Threats
Taliban Role in Question as 12 Are Arrested
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A581-2004Feb23.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb. 23 -- The white helicopter was about to take off from a southern Afghan village, where its passengers had inspected a health clinic being rebuilt with American aid. A crowd of villagers had gathered to wave goodbye when automatic-rifle fire burst from two hiding spots.
The pilot and four passengers -- an American woman, two security guards and an interpreter -- tried to jump out, but four of the five were hit by bullets. The guards, both wounded, returned fire, and one dialed his satellite phone for help. Within minutes a U.S. warplane was overhead, but the attackers escaped, leaving the pilot dead and two passengers seriously wounded.
These harrowing details were provided Monday by sources familiar with the Sunday morning incident in Kandahar province -- the latest in a series of assaults by armed extremist groups against foreign and Afghan aid workers. The helicopter crew and passengers worked for the Louis Berger Group, a U.S. aid contractor.
An Afghan official in the city of Kandahar, close to where the incident took place, said 12 men had been arrested in connection with the attack, the Reuters news service reported.
The attack came as spokesmen from the Taliban movement, the Islamic militia that once ruled most of Afghanistan, have stepped up threats to violently disrupt the country's economic and political reconstruction, including voter registration and elections planned for June. Two purported Taliban officials asserted responsibility for Sunday's assault.
The incident also coincided with reports that Pakistan's military government was preparing to launch several major search operations in the semi-autonomous tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, which Taliban and al Qaeda forces are believed to use as staging grounds for attacks inside Afghanistan.
In the past week, various unconfirmed press reports have said that a house recently used by Osama bin Laden, the fugitive Saudi leader of the al Qaeda terrorist network, had been discovered near the Pakistani city of Quetta, and that one of bin Laden's top lieutenants had been sighted in a border area that was now surrounded by Pakistani forces.
The top U.S. military spokesman here said Monday he could not confirm either report. He played down the seriousness of the Taliban threat, saying that Sunday's attack was the work of a lone gunman rather than a coordinated effort, and he derided a recent flurry of Taliban threats as "gibberish" and "hallucinations."
"The so-called Taliban spokesmen are not credible at all. They talk in complete gibberish," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty. He noted that self-proclaimed Taliban officials had described incidents in which 50 U.S. Special Forces troops were "dying in the snow" and 15 Italian troops were killed in Khost province. Both accounts were untrue, he said.
Jawad Luddin, spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, said Monday that although the Sunday attack was "extremely unfortunate," it came as no surprise given the repeated threats by revived Taliban forces to attack "people who help Afghanistan" and to disrupt the country's reconstruction.
Still, it remained unclear how the Kandahar attackers had known about the aid group's low-profile visit to a remote village and how they had been able to escape given the presence of a large crowd. Sources said they had fired first at the helicopter's engine and rotors, indicating they were trained in disabling aircraft.
In the past week, four different alleged Taliban officials have contacted various news agencies, either asserting credit for past attacks or threatening new ones. One such spokesman, Mohammed Saiful Adel, told journalists that the group would "stage attacks on an unprecedented scale in the spring," occupying large towns and assaulting U.S. military bases even if that meant suffering large numbers of casualties.
Adel also said the Taliban enjoyed good relations with local officials in many areas of the south, that it received financial support from al Qaeda and that it had compiled hit lists of Afghan "traitors" who worked with foreign governments.
In the past several months, Islamic extremists have carried out a series of attacks across southern Afghanistan, mostly targeting aid workers. Last fall, a French woman working for the U.N. refugee agency and four Afghan irrigation workers were shot dead in Ghazni province. Two weeks ago, four Afghans working for a land-mine clearing project were slain in western Farah province.
Terrorists have also targeted the Berger Group's major project, the repair of the 300-mile highway from Kabul, the capital, to Kandahar.
During work between June and December last year, alleged Taliban forces kidnapped or killed a half-dozen Afghans and foreigners who were working on the road or protecting it.
As a result of the attacks, U.N. and other foreign aid groups have gradually scaled back their projects in the south and now confine most activities to large cities. Since Sunday's attack on the helicopter, Berger has also temporarily suspended all projects to rebuild schools, clinics and smaller roads in rural areas.
Company officials have issued no detailed statements, but the dead pilot has been identified as Mark Burdorf, 45, of Australia, and the injured passengers as Suzanne Wheeler, an American working on clinic inspection; Paul Burke, a British security guard; and an Afghan guard.
Burke and Wheeler were flown to the U.S. military hospital at Bagram air base, near Kabul, and then to Germany.
The attack led to confusion and finger-pointing between U.S. aid and military officials over the lack of protection for Berger operations. Hilferty suggested the company should have coordinated with U.S. forces before setting out for a rural area known to harbor Taliban forces, but other sources said U.S. military officials had taken little interest in protecting Berger projects.
-------- arms
Pentagon axes development of Comanche helicopter
February 24, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040223-105809-1679r.htm
The Pentagon announced yesterday that it is canceling the Army's program to build a new helicopter after spending about $7 billion in development costs.
The cancellation of the Comanche helicopter is the second major Army weapons system killed by the Bush administration. The Crusader mobile artillery gun was halted in 2002 after $2 billion was spent on it.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, said the cancellation involved losing money but will save $39 billion by not buying an aircraft ill-suited for current missile threats.
"I would ask then the question: Is it prudent for us as an Army or for the taxpayer that we spend $39 billion on something that's not a good idea in the current context?" Gen. Schoomaker said during a Pentagon press conference.
The helicopter, under development since 1983, is not designed for threats from newer types of high-technology, antiaircraft missiles and antiaircraft artillery, Army officials said.
"To have Comanche survivable and to do the kinds of things we'd have to do in the current threat environment, we have to add things to Comanche, which takes away from its primary stealth capability and also requires an investment of several billion dollars to do that," Gen. Schoomaker said.
Army Lt. Gen. Richard A. Cody, the deputy chief of staff for operations and plans, said the money saved from the program will be spent buying existing helicopters, including the mainstay UH-60 Black Hawk, the AH-64 Apache Longbow and others.
Gen. Cody said $6.9 billion had been spent on the Comanche.
The cost of canceling the program is estimated by Army officials to be as much as $680 million.
The administration is seeking to save money as it reshapes the military for what it views as 21st-century military operations, ranging from counterterrorism to ousting rogue regimes.
The aircraft was being built as part of a joint venture between Boeing, based in Chicago, and Sikorsky Aircraft, in Stratford, Conn. It was scrapped as part of an Army reform effort undertaken by Gen. Schoomaker.
The cancellation was not expected. President Bush's most recent budget request to Congress included $1.2 billion for fiscal 2005 for the Comanche. The first helicopters had been set for deployment in 2009.
The Comanche program experienced cost overruns and missed schedules. It was restructured six times, most recently in 2002, when purchasing plans were cut nearly in half to 650 helicopters.
Gen. Schoomaker, a former Special Forces commando, is in the process of a major restructuring of Army forces.
According to Army documents obtained by The Washington Times, Gen. Schoomaker plans to restructure the current 10 active-duty Army divisions. The 33 total brigades of those divisions will be increased to 48 brigades, but will operate in smaller units.
The first change will be to transform the 3rd Infantry Division into five "maneuver units of action" that are combat-ready and trained for deployment to Iraq or other missions, according to the documents.
----
Army Scraps $39 Billion Helicopter
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A702-2004Feb23?language=printer
The Army yesterday canceled development of the $39 billion Comanche helicopter after 21 years of escalating costs, technological glitches and redesigns during a program that failed to produce a single operational aircraft.
The Comanche, once billed as a cornerstone of the military's high-tech transformation, had consumed $6.9 billion. The estimated cost of each aircraft had soared to $53 million from an original target of $8 million, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.
"It's had a long and troubled history," said Marcus Corbin, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information.
Acknowledging that the Comanche no longer fit into the requirements of the current battlefield, the Army said it would rather spend the money on an overhaul of its aviation system. If approved by Congress, the funds would be directed to buying new helicopters, modernizing the current fleet, enhancing the air capabilities of the National Guard and reserves and accelerating the development of unmanned aerial vehicles.
"It's about fixing Army aviation," said Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff. "It's a big decision. We know it's a big decision, but it's the right decision."
The program's demise -- one of the largest program cancellations in Pentagon history -- marks the second time in less than two years that a major Army weapons system has been eliminated. In 2002, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld canceled the mobile Crusader artillery system, which was seen as an $11 billion Cold War relic. The Crusader's cancellation came over the objections of the Army's leaders. But the Army's leadership initiated the cutback of the Comanche after a six-month study that assessed the Army's aviation capabilities.
The end of the Comanche also reflects an acknowledgement by the Pentagon that it simply cannot afford all the programs it wants. The move underscores the fact that the Pentagon must begin economizing as the federal budget deficit widens and demands on military spending grow, industry analysts said.
The Army would have spent $14 billion on the Comanche program through 2011 without getting aircraft significantly more capable than the upgraded Apaches it already plans to buy, Army officials said.
The Army intends to use the Comanche funds to buy nearly 800 new helicopters, including Apaches and Black Hawks. The money will also be used to modernize 1,400 current helicopters, establish three new helicopter programs and accelerate the development of unmanned aerial vehicle technology.
The Comanche is "no longer consistent with the changed operational environment," said Les Brownlee, acting secretary of the Army.
The Comanche was envisioned as a flying data center and gunship capable of receiving battlefield information and attacking enemy targets itself or calling in reinforcements. Many of the Comanche's tasks can now be performed by unmanned aerial vehicles, effectively eliminating its usefulness in the military of the future.
"It took so long to get into production it was simply overtaken by new threats and new capabilities," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute. "There are other ways of doing those jobs, and those ways have stronger support."
Lawmakers representing Connecticut, where the Comanche was being built, reacted angrily to the cancellation.
"I am outraged by the Army's decision to terminate the Comanche program given that the Army has long argued that it is a critical weapons system that plays a pivotal role in our military's transformation," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) "What has changed? And how does the Army plan to make up for the Comanche's lost capabilities?"
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), whose district includes a Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. plant, said: "It blows my mind that after spending 20 years and $8 billion in design costs, the Army would incur an additional $2 billion in cancellation costs and end up with nothing."
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the decision "reflects the difficulty that the services are facing with the cost of modernization requirements now coming to the fore."
Senior Army officials said the Comanche's stealth technology didn't fit current battlefield needs. "If you take a look at when Comanche was envisioned, starting in 1983, and you take a look at the threat that we faced at that time and the kind of battlefield that we envisioned," Schoomaker said, "Comanche made a lot of sense. But it makes less sense today as we go forward."
It would have cost several billion dollars to make the Comanche operate effectively in current battlefield environments, Army officials said.
Last year, the Army cut the number of Comanche helicopters it planned to order from 1,213 to 650. The initial plan called for 2,096 aircraft.
The cancellation was a blow to the Comanche's prime contractors, Boeing Co. and Sikorsky Aircraft, a unit of United Technologies Inc. "We are surprised and disappointed by the Army's announcement today to terminate the RAH-66 COMANCHE program," Boeing and Sikorsky said in a statement. "Five of these advanced technology aircraft are on the production line today, and we are on plan for the program."
The cancellation also raised concerns on Wall Street that the robust defense spending of recent years could slow. Defense stocks fell, with Boeing dropping 72 cents, to $43.62, and United Technologies declining $2.82, to $93.80.
A senior Army official said the Pentagon expects to have to pay a $450 million to $680 million termination fee to Boeing and Sikorsky.
The program's elimination, however, could benefit the two companies. The Army now plans to pour more money into the Apache, which is manufactured by Boeing, and step up the purchase of Black Hawk helicopters, made by Sikorsky.
Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.
--------
Pentagon Says It Plans to Kill Copter Program
February 24, 2004
New York Times
By LESLIE WAYNE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/24COPT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
he Pentagon yesterday announced the cancellation of the $38 billion Comanche helicopter program, a weapons system from the cold war era that was decades behind in development and that became a victim of new technology and rising concerns about military costs and the federal budget deficit.
The decision ends a program that began in 1983 and at a cost of $8 billion had yet to produce a single operational craft. Moreover, the Comanche, an armed reconnaissance helicopter, was designed for operations against Soviet and Warsaw Pact armies and has been overtaken by the Army's need for lighter and more flexible aircraft to fight terrorists and guerrillas.
"It's a big decision," said Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff. "We know it's a big decision. But it's the right decision."
The cancellation must be approved by Congress when it reviews the Pentagon's budget for the 2005 fiscal year, which contains allocations for the Comanche. But many Congressional aides say that the helicopter program lacks widespread support in Congress that many other weapons have and that the Pentagon may not have a difficult time scrapping it.
In a Pentagon briefing, General Schoomaker, along with acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee, said that ending the program would free up money for other Army aviation programs, mainly a modernization of the Apache attack helicopter now in combat use, along with more purchases of Blackhawk helicopters and continued development of drones.
Behind this decision is also a realization by the Army that the Comanche program did not fit in with the desire of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the administration to transform the military by eliminating outdated weapons programs and substituting newer technologies.
In that effort, the Comanche was vulnerable. A joint venture between the Boeing Company and the Sikorsky Aircraft unit of United Technologies, the Comanche was billions of dollars over budget, decades behind schedule and had been losing favor in Congress and in the Pentagon.
As the cost of each copter grew to $58.9 million from an initial $12 million each, the number of helicopters the Pentagon could afford to buy fell to around 650 from an initial estimate of more than 2,000.
"If the program cannot produce a single helicopter in 20 years, you've got a problem," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a nonprofit research group in Arlington, Va.
In addition, many questioned investing tens of billions of dollars more into a twin-engine, two-pilot craft when drones could perform many of the Comanche's battlefield surveillance tasks at a lower cost and with no risk to life.
"We looked very closely," Mr. Brownlee said, "at the operational environment in which we're currently operating and have operated in the last two and a half years and what we could see in the foreseeable future and decided that it was inconsistent with the capabilities that were in the Comanche as opposed to those things we could do to the rest of Army aviation with the resources if we applied it to other aircraft."
The decision drew cheers from some critics who had come to regard the Comanche as a symbol of Pentagon procurement gone awry, especially as financing continued long after the Soviet threat it was designed to counter had disappeared.
"The final curtain has fallen on one of the most wasteful military money pits in United States history," said Keith Ashdown, vice president of policy at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington nonprofit group that has long criticized Pentagon spending. "For too many years, taxpayer money has been chopped to ribbons by the gold-plated rotors of this over-priced boondoggle."
The cancellation also reflects some hard realities faced by the administration as it anticipates tough Congressional questioning about its proposed $401.7 billion military budget for fiscal 2005; that does not include supplementary funds of as much as $50 billion it is expected to request later this year for Iraq and Afghanistan.
The military request comes against a backdrop of a rising budget deficit, estimated to reach $521 billion this year, but which the administration says it wants to cut in half by 2009, the year when the Comanche production line was scheduled to begin.
The Comanche is the third major weapon system to be halted by the Bush administration. Over objections from many in the Pentagon, in December 2001 the administration killed a Raytheon missile defense system for the Navy budgeted at an estimated $9 billion, then killed the $11 billion Crusader mobile howitzer program by United Defense Industries in May 2002. In both cases, the Pentagon fought the administration with aggressive lobbying in Congress. This time, however, the Army decided to take the initiative and terminated the Comanche program itself.
"This program was going to get whacked sooner or later," said Richard L. Aboulafia, a military analyst with the Teal Group, a consulting firm in Fairfax, Va. "The budget would not have grown to accommodate it. For the Army, the handwriting was on the wall, so the best way was to be pro-active and look like they are reinventing themselves."
Sikorsky said that "while we regret the Army's announcement, we are committed to working closely with our customer."
The impact on Boeing, which has about $27 billion in military contracts, will be less as money that had been earmarked for Comanche will go for other programs, mainly the Apache upgrade and the construction of new unmanned reconnaissance craft.
In a statement, Boeing said it was "disappointed" with the cancellation, but added that "of course, we understand that the Army and the Department of Defense have critical priorities that they must address within limited resources." It added that the cancellation was "not expected to have a significant financial impact on the company."
Boeing's stock fell by 1.6 percent, or 72 cents a share, to $43.62; United Technologies shares fell by 2.9 percent, or $2.82, to $93.80.
Cushioning the loss to the companies are termination payments that analysts estimated could be as much as $2 billion. Mr. Thompson of the Lexington Institute called the cancellation a "body blow" to Sikorsky.
In Congress, the Pentagon's action was called "a sound decision" by Senator John Warner, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. While many Pentagon efforts to cancel weapons systems have been thwarted by legislators concerned about jobs in their home districts, it is expected that the Comanche may not have the same political support.
Since production was not scheduled to begin until 2009, the immediate number of jobs affected is about 700 in Connecticut and about 600 in Philadelphia, along with roughly 1,000 more scattered around the country. While many of these cuts would come in electoral swing states like Pennsylvania and Florida, a rising military budget, in general, is expected to tamp down concerns.
In addition, current concerns may trump politics. "If you take a look at when Comanche was envisioned, and you take a look at the threat that we faced at that time and the kind of battlefield that we envisioned, Comanche made a lot of sense, General Schoomaker said. "But it makes less sense today."
-------- asia
Japanese Critics File Suit on Deployment
Tuesday February 24, 2004
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3782431,00.html
TOKYO (AP) - Critics of Japan's deployment of troops in Iraq filed suit against the government Monday, saying it violates the nation's pacifist constitution, officials said.
The lawsuit, filed in Nagoya in central Japan, the 1,262 plaintiffs demand an end to the mission and nearly $100 each in compensation for mental suffering caused by the deployment, which they said violates their constitutional rights to live in peace, said plaintiff Yoshinori Ikezumi.
Former Postal Minister Noboru Minowa filed a similar suit in January, but Monday's lawsuit is the first group action against Japan's mission in Iraq.
Japan is deploying about 1,000 military personnel, including air and naval forces, in Iraq to help rebuild the country. The mission is non-combat and is aimed at purifying water and other tasks.
Japanese public opinion is split over the mission, arguing it violates the constitution and could lead to Japanese involvement in the fighting. The government, however, says the mission is needed to help stabilize Iraq and strengthen the alliance with Washington.
The Iraq mission is the first deployment of Japanese troops to a combat zone since 1945. Japan has contributed troops to U.N.-led peacekeeping operations for more than a decade, but they served only in countries where a cease-fire was in place.
-------- business
Israeli Company to Supply Fuel to US Army in Iraq
Feb 24, '04 / 2 Adar 5764
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=58458
Israel's Sonol gasoline company, along with its foreign partner Morgantown International, have won a tender valued at $70-80 million to supply fuel to US troops in Iraq. Sonol is expected to supply the US forces with some 25 million liters of fuel each month.
The tender was issued by the US-based KDR Company, a subsidiary of Halliburton, who has been entrusted with the majority of contracts for the US troops in Iraq. Among Sonol's competitors was Delek, another Israeli company. Until now, the US forces have received most of their fuel from Kuwait. However, following Halliburton's admission that it overcharged the US military by passing on the Kuwaitis' inflated price the US Army decided to approach other suppliers, among them Israel.
Sonol is one of Israel's three largest oil product marketing firms with a network of around 205 branded service stations.
Fuel, imported to Israel, will pass through the fuel terminal operated by the TASHAN (Oil and Energy Infrastructure Company) north of Beer Sheva and will then be shipped to Iraq by land through Jordan.
----
Pentagon Opens Criminal Inquiry of Halliburton Pricing
February 24, 2004
New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/24HALL.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 - Pentagon officials said Monday night that they have opened a criminal fraud investigation of Halliburton, the giant Texas oil-services concern, in an inquiry that will examine "potential overpricing" of fuel taken into Iraq by one of the company's subcontractors.
A Pentagon official said the investigation is focused on the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, which has drawn fire from critics in Congress since the disclosure in December that Pentagon auditors had found evidence that it had allowed a Kuwaiti subcontractor, Altanmia, to overcharge the government by at least $61 million for fuel shipped into Iraq from Kuwait.
A Pentagon spokesman said the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the criminal investigative arm of the Office of the Inspector General, would act as a result of a referral on Jan. 13 from officials at the Defense Contract Audit Agency.
The disclosure is the latest step in a long-running controversy over the imports, which Halliburton says were made with the approval of the government and were needed because an urgent fuel shortage in postwar Iraq. The company's chief executive until 2000 was Vice President Dick Cheney, and Democrats have sought to capitalize on the controversy over the fuel imports and several other recent negative disclosures by Halliburton.
A Halliburton spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said the company delivered fuel to Iraq "at the best value, the best price and the best terms." In a statement tonight, Ms. Hall said Halliburton has "not received any notification of a further development in the examination."
Ms. Hall said that "in the current political environment" an investigation "is to be expected." She also said that "it is unfair to accuse Halliburton of paying too much for Kuwaiti fuel when we were told to buy the fuel and given approval to purchase it from a specific supplier."
--------
Pentagon to Probe Halliburton Unit for Alleged Fraud in Iraq Deals
Reuters
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A850-2004Feb23.html
The Pentagon said yesterday it opened a criminal investigation of fraud allegations against a unit of Vice President Cheney's former firm Halliburton Co., including possible overpricing of fuel delivered to Iraq.
The investigation was focused on Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root Inc., the U.S. military's biggest contractor in Iraq, which has become a lightning rod for Democratic criticism during this presidential election year.
"The Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the criminal investigative arm of the Inspector General's office, is investigating allegations on the part of KBR of fraud, including the potential overpricing of fuel delivered to Baghdad by a KBR subcontractor," a Pentagon spokeswoman said.
Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said the company had not received any notification of the alleged fraud probe, adding it was important to understand the "difference between fact and allegation."
"In the current political environment, it is to be expected," Hall said of the latest development. "The facts show KBR delivered fuel to Iraq at the best value, best price and at the best terms," she said.
The White House had no immediate comment.
Halliburton, a Houston-based oil services company, has more than $8 billion in deals in Iraq, covering everything from doing laundry, building bases and providing meals to helping rebuild the oil industry. The contracts have drawn sharp comment from Democrats because of the company's ties with Cheney, who was chief executive officer from 1995 to 2000.
Potential overpricing of fuel was first raised in a draft audit by the military last year that found evidence the company might have over-billed by at least $61 million for fuel brought into Iraq by a Kuwaiti subcontractor. Kuwaiti authorities are also probing the fuel deal.
The allegations under investigation were included in a Jan. 13, 2004, referral to the Defense Department inspector general from the Defense Contract Audit Agency, the Pentagon spokeswoman said.
Halliburton launched a new ad campaign yesterday to show off its work in Iraq and to "address misstatements put forward during the 2004 presidential campaigns."
Aside from military auditors' questions, the U.S. Treasury, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into a range of issues, from whether the company paid kickbacks in Nigeria to whether it broke U.S. laws by dealing with Iran via a foreign subsidiary.
The company has consistently said all its dealings have been in line with U.S. laws and has strongly denied wrongdoing, except in the case of one or two former employees who it said may have paid $6.3 million in kickbacks to a Kuwaiti subcontractor.
-------- canada
'Bankrupt' Forces may shut 5 bases
Internal reports say $500M shortfall may cause closures from Winnipeg to Labrador
Chris Wattie
National Post
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=97f7dbbe-981a-4085-9686-e87fab611fbb
Canada's army, navy and air force are facing a funding shortfall of up to half a billion dollars, defence sources told the National Post, and the military is recommending drastic measures to make up the difference, including closing some of the largest bases in the country.
The federal government is stalling the release of internal documents that outline the looming financial crisis, but military sources said the reports indicate that in the fiscal year beginning on April 1, the air force expects to be $150-million short of funds needed to fulfill its commitments, the navy will be $150-million shy of its needs and the army will be as much as $200-million short.
The figures were submitted to General Ray Henault, the Chief of Defence Staff, last month by the heads of the land staff, the maritime staff and the air staff in anticipation of this year's defence budget.
The military sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the reports foresee a situation so dire that they recommend curtailing operations, dry-docking ships and mothballing vehicles or aircraft and closing at least four Canadian Forces bases.
Unless additional funding is awarded by the government, the air force is suggesting closing bases at Goose Bay, Nfld., Bagotville, Que., North Bay and Winnipeg, the sources said.
Further, the air force report says that unless its fleet of ageing CC-130 Hercules transport planes is replaced or modernized, the main transport base at Trenton should be closed within 10 years. "There won't be enough Hercs flying by then to justify keeping that base open," one air force source said.
The navy predicts it will not be able to live up to treaty obligations to NATO and other alliances and cannot carry out enough patrols of Canadian waters to comply with agreements with other government departments such as Immigration Canada or Fisheries and Oceans.
"We will not be able to meet our domestic defence obligations," one naval officer said.
The army is said to be in the worst financial state of all three branches of the Canadian Forces. "Everyone knows that the army's broke and has been for a couple of years," said one military source familiar with the reports.
Colonel Howard Marsh, a former senior army staff officer now working as an analyst for the Conference of Defence Associations, said he was not surprised by the size of the shortfall.
"This is a look forward ... at what they need in order to keep the army going," he said. "Nobody has ever seen a bankrupt military in a developed country.... This year I predict we will see that in Canada."
Col. Marsh said the military is saddled with ageing bases and increasingly dilapidated buildings that are fast reaching the point of collapse. "What they've been doing, year in and year out ... is not replace or repair those buildings, or buy new equipment," he said.
"The average age of the equipment in the Canadian Forces is over 20 years and it hasn't been well-maintained."
The Liberal government reduced defence spending by 23% and cut the number of regular military personnel to approximately 60,000 from 80,000 between 1993 and 2000. There were 120,000 people in the Canadian military in 1958.
In 2003, the defence budget was increased $800-million to $12.7-billion, the single largest increase since the Liberals came to power. But that still left the total below that of 1991, when the Mulroney Conservatives committed troops to the Gulf War and the defence budget stood at $12.8-billion.
Jay Hill, the Conservative defence critic, said the reports outline the result of more than a decade of Liberal cuts to the Canadian Forces.
"They shouldn't even be in this position," he said. "They shouldn't be having to look for nickel and dime savings when the government is blowing hundreds of millions on sponsorship programs."
Mr. Hill called on the government to make the three reports available immediately. "This flies in the face of this Prime Minister's stated commitment to being open and transparent," he said.
The Department of National Defence has refused to make public the annual reports, known as command impact assessments.
Defence officials this week turned down a request by the National Post and the influential defence publication Jane's Defence Weekly to see the reports under access to information legislation.
Judith Mooney, the director of access to information for the Department of National Defence, said the reports will not be made public for another three to five weeks because they are considered "draft" documents.
"I exercised my discretion to withhold the documents until the [Defence] Department's business-planning process is complete, at which time they will be released," she said.
Ms. Mooney could not say when exactly the reports would be released, but indicated they would be available by the end of March.
Although that would delay them until after the release of the federal budget, which is expected on March 23, she said David Pratt, the Defence Minister, was not involved in the decision to withhold the reports until then. Mr. Pratt did not reply to repeated requests for comment on the reports.
In previous years, the assessments have been made public.
This year's reports paint a picture even more bleak than last year's, which said the military would be unable to sustain itself without additional resources or a reduced workload.
They were the basis for a story last year in Jane's Defence Weekly, the prestigious London-based magazine, which caused a furor in Canadian and NATO defence circles. Under the headline "Running on Empty," the story said the army, navy and air force did not receive the money they needed.
The article said the navy asked for an additional $50-million to bridge the funding gap, but received only $6.7-million. The air force expected a $104-million shortfall but received about $7-million. The army had a larger gap between what was expected of it and the funding available, and received $85-million in extra money.
Major-General Terry Hearn, the chief of finance for the Canadian Forces, acknowledged the military has had "issues" with funding over the past four years.
But he said the department is implementing a long-term plan to stabilize its finances. "We'll become sustainable over the next couple of years," he said. "We have long-term strategies to deal with these issues ... [but] we're not going to solve them next year."
Peter Stoffer, a New Democrat MP whose Nova Scotia riding includes a large military base, called the government's refusal to release the reports "very suspicious."
"If anyone out there honestly believes that access to information will be any easier under this government, they are fooling themselves," he said. "They say one thing and do another."
-------- haiti
Haitian President Appeals for International Help
February 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Haiti-Uprising.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- President Jean-Bertrand Aristide appealed Tuesday for the world to come to Haiti's aid, warning that thousands of deaths and a wave of boat people could result from political chaos.
``Should those killers come to Port-au-Prince, you may have thousands of people who may be killed,'' Aristide said at a news conference. ``We need the presence of the international community as soon as possible.''
Aristide made the appeal as rebels threatened the capital and hours before opposition politicians were to give a formal response to a U.S.-backed peace plan at 5 p.m.
Asked if he was calling for a military intervention, Aristide said he wanted the international community to strengthen Haiti's police force, under an old agreement with the Organization of American States.
On Monday, Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned officials from the opposition coalition and persuaded them to delay their response as the United States and others appeared to be making last-ditch efforts to win a political compromise.
The rebels have set up a base in Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city 70 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince, and rebel leader Guy Philippe said he was setting up a second one in Cap-Haitien, the northern port and second-largest city that was seized Sunday.
But Philippe told The Associated Press that he has been using a strategy of seizing towns, systematically driving out enemies, winning over the population and moving to the next target. The rebels effectively control the north now and the central Artibonite District where more than 1 million people live.
He also said in an interview with the AP that he does not want to install a military dictatorship but is seeking to re-establish the army that was disbanded after ousting Aristide in 1991.
An attack on Port-au-Prince was unlikely Tuesday, as Philippe said his fighters had spent the night searching in vain for government forces.
Aristide agreed to the peace plan Saturday, but his political opponents have stalled, insisting that only his resignation can guarantee peace. The plan would allow him to remain president with diminished powers, sharing with political rivals a government that would organize elections.
Western diplomats in Port-au-Prince confirmed Tuesday that Aristide had asked France for military intervention last week, when he publicly was asking only for more international assistance to strengthen his demoralized police force.
French President Jacques Chirac said Tuesday his country is ready to consider contributing to any eventual peacekeeping force, but only one approved by the United Nations.
``France does not exclude contributing to a civilian force for peace,'' he said, adding however that such a deployment ``depends on a decision of the Security Council.''
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin is to meet later this week in Paris with representatives of the Haitian government and opposition to try to resolve the crisis, the ministry said.
``New efforts are being pursued today to persuade the legal opposition to adopt a constructive attitude,'' said ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous.
The United States sent 50 Marines to Port-au-Prince on Monday, but Western diplomats and a Defense Department official insisted their mission was only to protect the U.S. Embassy and staff.
At his news conference, Aristide made an emotional call for Haitians to stay in the country, instead of fleeing to Florida, so that they can vote in new elections.
``The criminals and terrorists went to the north, to Port-de-Paix, and burned private and public buses, killing people,'' Aristide said.
``Unfortunately many brothers and sisters in Port-de-Paix will not come down to Port-au-Prince; they will take to the sea, they will become boat people,'' he said.
Most boat people seeking to go to the United States are picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard and returned home. Others land up in the Bahamas and Cuba. On Monday, 32 Haitian boat people landed in Jamaica, bringing to 62 the number who have arrived there in three boatloads in the past 10 days.
Jamaica has not seen numbers like that since the flood of boat people that fled a brutal military dictatorship in Haiti in 1991-94. Then, tens of thousands of refugees reached Florida's shores.
Ten years ago, Washington sent 20,000 troops in 1994 to end the dictatorship, restore Aristide and halt the exodus to Florida. But the Bush administration has made clear it won't commit a large number of troops this time.
Philippe, still in Cap-Haitien, told the AP that his movement wants to re-establish the army but said a military dictatorship is ``not good for the country.''
``The military should stay in the barracks,'' said Philippe, formerly Aristide's assistant police chief for northern Haiti.
Even if the opposition coalition accepts the U.S. peace plan, the rebels insist they will disarm only when Aristide is out of power.
Asked if he was in contact with opposition politicians, Philippe smiled and said ``not officially.'' He refused to elaborate.
Opposition leaders disputed that.
``We refuse to have contacts with the rebels, as well as with Aristide,'' said Mischa Gaillard, a spokesman for the opposition coalition. ``We don't want to be tainted with any suspicion of condoning violence.''
The opposition has said it is a nonviolent movement that supports the rebel goal of getting Aristide to step down. Aristide maintains that opposition factions are supporting the rebellion and the rebels are an armed wing of the political opposition.
Philippe said he was on his way to a Western Union office to pick up donations being sent by Haitians in the United States and Canada. He said his rebellion also was being funded by businessmen in Haiti.
Cap-Haitien is just 90 miles north of Port-au-Prince, but is a seven-hour drive over potholed roads sometimes reduced to bedrock.
Aristide, hugely popular when he was elected especially among the destitute in the Western hemisphere's poorest country, has since lost a lot of support. Opponents accuse the former priest of failing to help those in need, condoning corruption and masterminding attacks on opponents by armed gangs. Aristide denies the charges. Flawed legislative elections in 2000 led international donors to freeze millions of dollars in aid.
At least 70 people have died in the unrest since the revolt began.
Associated Press reporters Paisley Dodds in Cap-Haitien and Michael Norton in Port-au-Prince contributed to this story.
--------
U.S. Marines Fortify Haiti Embassy
Anti-Aristide Group Gives Talks More Time
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A657-2004Feb23?language=printer
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 23 -- As 50 U.S. Marines arrived here Monday to protect the U.S. Embassy amid growing political violence, a broad coalition opposed to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said a U.S.-backed plan to share power with the embattled president was "an open door to bloodshed."
"We are tired of burying our people," said opposition leader Charles Baker, who said 18 days of rebel violence, which has left much of this impoverished country under the control of a few hundred anti-government militiamen, had been caused by three years of Aristide "terrorizing the Haitian people."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell telephoned opposition leaders on Monday, urging them to delay for one more day their final decision on the U.S.-led diplomatic proposal, which calls for replacing the prime minister and holding internationally monitored parliamentary elections. It would allow Aristide to stay in power until his term expires in 2006.
The plan was proposed Saturday by a group of international diplomats led by Roger F. Noriega, the top official for Latin America at the State Department, who met here with Aristide and his opponents. That diplomatic move came after weeks of reluctance by the Bush administration to become involved in resolving the latest violence in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.
The opposition leader said the coalition would honor Powell's request and welcomed his pledge to be "personally involved" in the crisis. Members of the group said they hoped that in the next 24 hours Powell would come up with a new proposal that would include Aristide's ouster. They said they were "adamant" that they would not accept any plan that left him in office.
"The people of Haiti are tired of being terrorized," Baker told reporters in the capital. "Going into an accord like the one that was presented to us means only one thing: two more years of terrorizing the Haitian people."
Evans Paul, another opposition leader, said that Powell's name means "does not see" in Haitian Creole. "Maybe if he comes back and really sees what's happening, he will definitely understand our position and give us more support," Paul said through an interpreter. Powell, along with former president Jimmy Carter, negotiated the return of Aristide to power in 1994, after he was ousted in a military coup.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said a political settlement would win support from worried Haitians and "have a calming effect on the violence."
If the deal is accepted, Boucher said, international police would be dispatched to "help the Haitian police establish themselves and maintain order." The Bush administration has not detailed the role it would play in such an effort.
A U.S. official said Ambassador James Foley was continuing to negotiate with opposition leaders Monday night, hoping to find a solution that would avert further bloodshed. Officials from Canada, France, the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Community also have been involved in the negotiations. Foreign diplomats said the international participants would be "guarantors," and would begin to monitor compliance within 48 hours of a deal being signed.
Although the opposition leaders in Port-au-Prince represent a broad range of business and civic groups, their calls for nonviolent political solutions are being drowned out by a few hundred armed anti-Aristide fighters, many former army officers who have been living in exile. Aristide disbanded the army after U.S. troops restored him to power in 1994, part of a $2.3 billion effort to establish order and democracy in a country where 80 percent of the 8 million people live in poverty.
The uprising has gathered momentum since Feb. 5, when rebels overran police in Gonaives, about 70 miles north of here, and took control of the city. Since then at least 60 people, mostly police, have been reported killed.
In the nearly three weeks since then, ragtag bands of rebels have taken larger and larger swaths of the northern part of the country with little resistance from Haiti's undermanned national police. On Sunday, rebels took Cap-Haitien, the country's second-largest city, with surprising ease. Armed militia groups loyal to Aristide have set up roadblocks to help the nation's 3,000 police officers keep the rebels away from this capital city of nearly 1.3 million people. It remains unclear whether the rebel groups are coordinating with each other or are simply fighting in parallel toward the shared goal of removing Aristide.
News reports said there were demonstrations in Cap-Haitien in favor of the rebellion Monday, some people chanting "Aristide get out!" and "Goodbye, Aristide." Looters stole 800 tons of food from the U.N. World Food Program warehouse, the Associated Press reported, quoting an agency employee. Streets in Port-au-Prince were calm as residents participated in pre-Lenten carnival celebrations.
In Cap-Haitien Monday, rebel leader Louis Jodel Chamblain, a former army officer, declared that he controlled insurgents in all parts of the country and that they intended to enter the National Palace in Port-au-Prince and remove Aristide by force, according to radio reports. He did not say when that might happen, but other rebel leaders have said it could occur in the coming days.
With that threat looming, the Marines arrived Monday in a C-130 transport plane, at the Port-au-Prince airport. Officials here said the Marines would protect the embassy and staff against any political violence or the looting and lawlessness that could accompany it. Most of the embassy's nonessential employees have already left the country, and the State Department has advised the roughly 20,000 U.S. citizens living here to leave as well.
Opposition leaders in Port-au-Prince condemned the rebels' violence, but they said the only way to stop it was with the departure of Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest who rose to prominence championing the poor in defiance of the brutal Duvalier family dictatorship that ended in 1986.
"The Haitian people's voice today is very clear; they want Aristide to leave," said opposition leader Hans Tippenhauer, who said that the anti-government rebels had been greeted as "freedom fighters" by people across Haiti. Aristide's opponents have charged that he has abandoned his commitment to the poor. They also contend that armed Aristide supporters have beaten and killed the president's opponents with impunity. Aristide has denied supporting or condoning violence.
"We feel crushed between two movements, an armed movement coming from the north and a terrorizing and criminal government in the palace right now," said Andre Apaid Jr., a U.S.-born businessman and prominent opposition leader. He said Aristide is responsible for all the violence, which is not allowing moderate Haitians to "build a democratic center."
"One man cannot keep hostage a nation," Apaid said. "He must resign."
Staff writer Peter Slevin in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- iraq
Rumsfeld Praises New Iraqi Forces
Car Bomb Kills Seven At Police Station in North
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A583-2004Feb23?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Feb. 23 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld flew into Iraq for a daylong tour Monday, touting the growth in Iraqi security forces as a sign of the country's progress toward self-rule. About an hour earlier, a car bomb detonated outside a police station in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing at least seven people and wounding more than 45.
The bomb exploded just as police were changing shifts at the Rahimawa station, located in a predominantly Kurdish neighborhood. A military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said a white Oldsmobile exploded outside the station.
The 8:30 a.m. blast on a snowy morning was the third bombing this month to target the Kurdish population in northern Iraq. More than 100 people were killed in suicide bombings on Feb. 1 at two political party offices in the city of Irbil.
In Baghdad, Rumsfeld toured training academies for the city's police department and the new Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, saying the five Iraqi security forces now have more than 210,000 members, all of them recruited in recent months.
"It's a tough business, it's a tough part of the world, and your heart certainly goes out to the innocent Iraqis that were killed by other Iraqis or by foreign terrorists," Rumsfeld told reporters at Baghdad International Airport.
He said that the attacks, which have killed about 300 Iraqis in the past three months, have failed to discourage prospective recruits from joining the security forces. "Let there be no doubt, they're putting their lives at risk," Rumsfeld said. "There have been a lot of Iraqi policemen and women killed in the last six, eight months, and they're aware of that."
The U.S. civilian administrator, L. Paul Bremer, told reporters that the Kirkuk bombing was consistent with recent attacks coordinated by terrorist groups. "It's quite clear in the last three months that we've seen a real step-up on the part of these professional terrorists from al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam conducting suicide attacks," Bremer said in an interview in his office at the Republican Palace, the headquarters for the occupation authority.
Rumsfeld repeated the Bush administration's assertions that two of Iraq's neighbors, Syria and Iran, have permitted foreign terrorists to enter the country. "We know that Iran has harbored al Qaeda," Rumsfeld said. "We know that Syria has been a hospitable place for escaping Iraqis and we know that Syria has facilitated terrorists with the cooperation of Iran."
After arriving here from Kuwait, the defense secretary boarded a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, which took him to the eastern outskirts of Baghdad. Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who commands the division that controls the city, then briefed Rumsfeld about plans to reduce its "footprint" in the capital by shifting forces to the city's outlying areas.
By April, the division will have 24,000 soldiers at eight bases outside the city, compared with 36,000 soldiers at 46 bases in May 2003, one month after the occupation began. By February 2005, Dempsey said, Baghdad will have 19,000 police officers, or one for every 300 residents -- the same proportion, he said, as in Chicago.
Nearby, at a Civil Defense Corps training academy, Rumsfeld spoke to a class of about 40 recruits, dressed in green camouflage, who were going through a six-day training course to join what will be an Iraqi equivalent to the National Guard.
Rumsfeld also toured the Baghdad Police Academy and told recruits that future generations will remember them. "They'll look back on each one of you and know that what you've done is help build a new life," he said.
The Iraqi deputy interior administrator, Ahmed Ibrahim, led the recruits in a throaty call-and-response. According to a translation provided by a Pentagon official, they shouted: "Long live the new Iraq! Victorious, O Baghdad!"
In addition to the police and Civil Defense Corps, the Iraqi security forces include the army, the border patrol and a service that guards government installations.
Rumsfeld also had closed-door meetings with his top two commanders in Iraq: Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the overall ground commander in Iraq, and Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, who commands the Army's III Corps and oversees day-to-day military operations in the country.
One sensitive topic of discussion, officials said, was an agreement that would formally spell out the U.S. military's role in Iraq after political power is transferred to a new Iraqi government June 30.
The Bush administration had sought to have such a document, known as a "status of forces" agreement, in place by July. But members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council recently signaled that they want to wait for a transitional government to negotiate such an agreement.
A spokesman for Bremer, Dan Senor, played down the significance of the Governing Council members' statements. "Whether they want to negotiate the status of U.S. forces here now or later, there is a pretty strong consensus that they want U.S. forces here going forward," he said.
Rumsfeld also met with Charles A. Duelfer, the top U.S. inspector searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and Maj. Gen. Keith W. Dayton, the commander of the inspection group.
The defense secretary said that Duelfer "did teach me some things," but he declined to be more specific. "Did I come away with some chemical or biological weapons in my pocket?" he asked rhetorically. "The answer is no."
Rumsfeld returned to Kuwait Monday night.
In Kirkuk, after the attack, Col. Thamer Abdul-Masih told the Associated Press that the bomber followed a convoy of police officers reporting for duty. "A civilian car followed them and ran into the last car in the convoy and exploded," he said. "Whoever did this had been watching and knew the procedure of the policemen's shifts."
"He took us by surprise," policeman Saman Ali told the Reuters news service. "We didn't even manage to fire a single bullet at the bomber."
Kirkuk, a northern city that sits atop some of Iraq's largest oil deposits, has been torn apart by ethnic tensions since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government. Kurds who were forcibly evicted from their homes by Hussein's government under a program to increase the city's Arab population have returned to reclaim their homes. Kurdish leaders, who contend Kirkuk should fall inside the borders of an autonomous region in northern Iraq, are seeking provisions in the country's interim constitution that would give Kurds greater control of the city.
Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Palestinians Urge Rebuke of Barrier
Supporters of Israel Also Rally Outside World Court as Hearings Begin
By John Burgess
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63718-2004Feb23.html
THE HAGUE, Feb. 23 -- The Israeli-Palestinian conflict arrived at the World Court for the first time on Monday, as a Palestinian delegation urged the U.N. body to condemn a separation barrier Israel is constructing in the West Bank.
Supporters of Israel, which is boycotting the hearing, rallied outside the courtroom around the charred remains of a bus destroyed in a suicide bombing last month in Jerusalem.
The head of the Palestinian delegation, Nasser Kidwa, told the panel of 15 judges, however, that the barrier was "not about security." "It is about entrenching the occupation and the de facto annexation of large areas of Palestinian land," he said.
Israel argues that the United Nations and the court's proceedings are politically stacked against it. "What will promote the peace," said Gideon Meir, head of an Israeli government delegation that is present for the hearing, "is face-to-face talks, like human beings, instead of bombarding the Israeli people with suicide bombings."
The World Court, which sits in a towering, century-old red-brick edifice known as the Peace Palace, is formally called the International Court of Justice and is the United Nations' highest legal authority. Although the U.N. General Assembly has repeatedly passed resolutions condemning Israel, this is the first time that it has sent an issue related to the conflict to the World Court.
After three days of hearings, it may take months before the court issues an opinion. Its rulings are not legally binding but can carry moral force and could become the legal basis for sanctions.
In theory, the assembly is seeking only a narrow legal opinion on the legality of the barrier, but the hearing is becoming a forum for airing broader issues of the conflict.
Kidwa and legal experts testifying for the Palestinian side called the project the latest in a series of Israeli violations of U.N. resolutions. Bringing hardships on ordinary Palestinians, such as separating students from their schools and compelling people to move, they said, violated rules of international law that protect civilians in conflicts.
"Israel cannot once again be permitted to continue its ceaseless taking of Palestinian property and rights," Kidwa told the court. To do so would play into the hands of extremists on both sides, he said. Kidwa condemned suicide bombings and said they should be distinguished from legitimate acts of resistance.
In the afternoon, the court heard presentations from South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Bangladesh. All endorsed the Palestinian position.
Israel contends that the barrier, a 450-mile complex of walls, fences, trenches and surveillance cameras that is being built through and around the West Bank, will be dismantled after peace is established. But in the meantime, Israeli officials say, the barrier is helping reduce suicide attacks.
Another bomber got through on Sunday, killing himself and eight Israelis on a bus in Jerusalem and wounding dozens more.
Israel submitted a 130-page brief to the court, in which it argues that the panel lacks the jurisdiction to rule on the question, that it has insufficient evidence to consider, and that its proceedings will interfere with the comprehensive peace plan known as the "road map" by encouraging Palestinians to try to settle issues piecemeal through litigation.
Outside the proceedings, Israeli officials are attempting to influence European public opinion that is heavily pro-Palestinian. Israeli organizations helped bring demonstrators to The Hague in an effort to balance the crowds, and have organized a series of seminars and news conferences aimed at disseminating the Israeli view.
An Israeli rescue group, ZAKA, shipped in from Israel the rusting shell of a bus demolished in a Jan. 29 suicide attack, which killed 11 passengers, and displayed it outside the court on a trailer. Demonstrators showed a collage of photos of suicide bomb victims and read out their names.
"We all stand here for Israel," said Dapha Wall, 45, a Dutch Jewish woman with family in Israel. "The wall must stay." She held a poster reading, "First there was terror, then there was the wall." She criticized the blocking of Palestinian territory but said that the principle behind building the barrier was sound, comparing it to the right to defend one's home.
At an Israeli news conference Monday evening, print shop operator Ron Kehrmann gave a tearful recounting of how he lost his teenage daughter in a suicide bombing.
Pro-Palestinian groups also mobilized to bring people to town, with supporters marching to the court building waving flags and holding posters. "The wall for me is a symbol of apartheid," Jose Angeli, who is active in Green party politics in Belgium, said at a rally. "Both peoples are not the same in front of the law."
George Rashmawi, a Palestinian doctor who came in from his home in Germany to demonstrate, said that "the court hasn't any powers."
"The court can only show the people of the world that there is a problem, a big problem," he said.
Special correspondent Juliette Vasterman contributed to this report.
--------
Peres: Israel Has No Claim to West Bank
February 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Mideast.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in turning over control of much of the West Bank to Yasser Arafat's Palestinians, said Monday that Israel has no moral claim to the land or to Gaza and must give up every inch of the territories.
Peres, in a speech after meetings with Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, said ``time is short'' -- no more than four months -- for Israel to come to terms with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia.
``The opening is not for a long time,'' he said at a dinner sponsored by the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation, a dovish private group.
While Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has proposed a withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank, Peres said the offer of his long-term political foe was inadequate and would only perpetuate conflict with the Palestinians.
Israel must give up all of the land that it captured in the 1967 Middle East war, he said. ``If you keep 10 percent of the land you keep 100 percent of the conflict,'' Peres said.
His prescription for a pullback includes gradual withdrawal from the West Bank after Israel gives up all of Gaza to the Palestinians. ``It is not a political decision, it is a moral decision,'' Peres said.
He said Israel should provide the Palestinians with a state that is viable and contiguous.
``I think Sharon is having a hard time making up his mind,'' Peres said. ``It won't be simple. It won't be easy.''
If Israel does not follow through with a total withdrawal, ``catastrophe is waiting in the corner,'' he said.
Earlier, at a news conference in the doorway of the State Department, Peres flashed his long-standing optimism that the Palestinians wanted peace with Israel.
Also, he said, ``good news'' was emerging all over the world, with Libya pledging to end its nuclear weapons program and Cyprus on a path to settle its 30-year division.
But mostly, Peres was cheered by Sharon's partial pullback proposal while insisting it was far from enough to bring peace to Israel and the Palestinians.
Peres was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, along with Arafat and then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, for the Oslo accords that gave the Palestinians wider control of their lives and of parts of the West Bank and Gaza.
Six years later, the accord crumbled into the violence of a Palestinian uprising that targeted Israelis both in the territories and in Israeli itself and took the lives of hundreds of people on both side as Israel fought back fiercely.
Peres became the focus of criticism as a symbol of a process many Israelis believe allowed the Palestinians to gain strength and weapons for their battle against the Jewish state.
Still, now over 80, Peres continues to push for far-reaching Israeli concessions as a pathway to a Palestinian state that he and President Bush say can coexist peaceably with Israel.
Even with peacemaking virtually nonexistent now, Peres said there is ``a new reality in the Middle East and Sharon has to face it like everyone else.''
``We shouldn't be blind,'' he said of Israelis who remain skeptical of Israel giving up land and the Palestinians setting up a state on it.
Most Palestinians want to live in peace with Israel, he said. But Palestinian leaders must decide ``which camp they want to live in,'' the one of terror or the one of counter-terror.
Three U.S. officials met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders last week in the Middle East and will report Friday to Powell and Saturday to Bush on their findings.
The White House and State Department gave no public account of the talks or what the officials found in the region. Nor did they offer any account of Peres' meetings with Powell and Rice.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistani Forces Launch New al - Qaida Hunt
February 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Military-Operation.html
WANA, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistani forces backed by helicopters on Tuesday swept through villages in a remote border region where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding in an operation to capture fugitive al-Qaida and Taliban suspects.
Two intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that at least two homes were leveled and as many as 20 people had been taken into custody, including three foreign women. Authorities were not immediately available to confirm the reports.
The searches near the town of Wana, just a few miles from the border with Afghanistan, began after dawn, as paramilitary and army troops moved into areas where the fugitives are believed to have taken refuge among local tribes.
``An operation has begun near Wana,'' said Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. ``That's all that I can tell you.''
People in Wana reported hearing explosions and gunshots throughout the morning.
``We have heard 25 to 30 explosions. The shooting started in the morning and it's continuing,'' said Shahzad Wazir, a resident in Wana.
Foreigners are not allowed to travel to the tribal region without government permission and an armed escort. The army said it had no plans to take journalists to the region, and the army on Tuesday turned away several Pakistani reporters who tried to travel there.
The operation, which included more than a dozen helicopter gunships, began in the village of Zarkai, a village in Pakistan's strategic South Waziristan tribal region. It is located about 190 miles west of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.
Authorities hope the operation will yield clues about bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader.
Intelligence officials have long believed that the Saudi fugitive has been hiding in the rugged mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan, though there has been no hard evidence of his whereabouts for nearly two years.
The sweep comes weeks after CIA director George Tenet made a secret trip to Pakistan to discuss the hunt for bin Laden as well as ways to fight nuclear proliferation, intelligence officials said.
Pakistan denies that any American troops are involved in operations on their soil, though local residents have in the past said they have seen what they believed to be U.S. special forces troops in the region.
In recent days, Pakistan stepped up security in the regions and received assurances that foreign nationals had been expelled by area tribes, said Mohammed Azam Khan, a local official.
The government had set Feb. 20 as the deadline for tribal elders to hand over al-Qaida fugitives and their supporters. So far, about 58 suspects have been turned over, though another 38 are still being sought.
Pakistan's government has limited authority in the tribal lands, but has been expanding its role under U.S. pressure to crack down on terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. However, under a centuries-old custom called ``collective responsibility,'' the government can punish an entire tribe if any of its members are suspected of harboring lawbreakers.
The operation is the fourth against al-Qaida and Taliban fugitives along the border since Pakistan became an ally of the United States following the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 500 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban fugitives have been captured, including key figures in bin Laden's terrorist network. Most have been turned over to U.S. authorities.
Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri said Monday that any top al-Qaida fugitives wanted in the United States would be handed over. However, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has assured tribal elders that suspects who turn over their weapons and surrender would not be extradited.
-------- prisoners of war
Rights Groups Won't Get Seats at Guantánamo Base Tribunals
February 24, 2004
New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/24GITM.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 - Pentagon officials say they do not expect to be able to provide space for representatives of human rights advocacy groups to observe any military tribunals at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prompting complaints from those groups that the military is trying to shut out potential critics.
In letters last week to Amnesty International, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch, a senior military official said it was unlikely that they would be allowed to attend any military tribunals at Guantánamo. The official, Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway, a chief legal adviser in the office of military commissions, wrote that space would be limited if and when tribunals were held at Guantánamo.
"It is expected that limited courtroom seating and other logistical issues will preclude attendance by many who desire to observe military commission proceedings," he wrote.
General Hemingway noted that there would be seats for the news media as well as for representatives of the International Red Cross.
Last Friday, the groups wrote to the defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, asking him to reconsider the matter, saying, "There can be no legitimate governmental reason for denying our access to the proceedings."
Wendy Patten, a Washington representative of Human Rights Watch, said Monday that the reasons given were implausible and that the groups should be entitled to at least one seat that they could rotate among themselves. She noted that the Bush administration had defended itself from critics of the possible tribunals by saying that the proceedings were to be open to wide scrutiny.
A senior military official said the deliberations over whether to allow the presence of human rights groups involved issues other than the availability of seats in the courtroom and the overflow room where some reporters will be able to view the proceedings on closed-circuit television. The official, who spoke about the deliberations on the condition of anonymity, said that planners considered the problems of security as well as limited food and housing facilities at the Guantánamo base, which is in an isolated location on the southeastern tip of Cuba.
The official acknowledged, however, that there would probably be arrangements for some members of Congress to attend the trials and perhaps for officials of organizations that represent victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
President Bush has designated six of the 650 prisoners at Guantánamo as eligible for trial but there have, as yet, been no specific plans to conduct any tribunals. More than 80 members of the news media, both from the United States and abroad, are expected to attend any tribunals, officials said.
-------- russia / chechnya
Putin Fires Premier and Cabinet Ahead of March 14 Election
February 24, 2004
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/international/europe/24CND-RUSS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
MOSCOW, Feb. 24 - President Vladimir V. Putin abruptly dismissed Russia's prime minister and his cabinet today, announcing that he would appoint a new government in a surprise reshuffling of ministers only days before an election that Mr. Putin is sure to win.
Mr. Putin, who announced his decision without warning, in a brief, emotionless address on state television, did not directly criticize the work of Prime Minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov, but said the country's voters deserved to know the shape of the new government before going to the polls on March 14. Then, neglecting to announce exactly what shape it would take, he made no immediate announcement of Mr. Kasyanov's permanent replacement.
The dismissal of Mr. Kasyanov, the second most powerful official in Russia, is not expected to produce any immediate or significant changes in policy, which is strictly managed by Mr. Putin's Kremlin anyway.
But by not immediately naming a successor, Mr. Putin injected an unexpected degree of political drama into a election season that his critics have increasingly derided as a charade of democracy.
"The advancement of all state and socio-economic reforms depends to the most vital extent precisely on the government," Mr. Putin said. "That is why I think it correct right now, not awaiting the end of the election campaign, to declare the composition of the highest executive organ of state power, which will have to take on its share of responsibility for the further development of our country."
Mr. Putin installed one of Mr. Kasyanov's deputies, Viktor B. Khristenko, as acting prime minister. Along with other ministers, including those overseeing the Foreign and Defense Ministries, Mr. Khristenko will serve until Mr. Putin appoints a new prime minister and cabinet, a move that a Kremlin spokesman said would not happen until next week.
That ensures a week of intrigue and speculation - which will almost certainly subsume any campaign news - over who Mr. Kasyanov's replacement might be. Some have suggested that Mr. Putin's next prime minister would be his designated political heir in 2008, and Mr. Putin himself indicated in a recent campaign speech that he intended to choose an heir.
Neither Mr. Putin nor other Kremlin officials discussed any possible candidates, but some of the leading ones are believed to include Sergei B. Ivanov, now the defense minister, who, like Mr. Putin, served in the former K.G.B., and Aleksei L. Kudrin, who is now the finance minister and deputy prime minister, who is considered a strong advocate of pro-market economic policies. Dmitri N. Kozak, a lawyer from St. Petersburg and close adviser to Mr. Putin, is also considered to be a candidate.
Mr. Putin's move, the first significant shake-up of the top levels of government since he rose to power in 2000, came on a day that two of his most prominent challengers indicated that they might drop out of the race because the Kremlin's dominance over government resources, especially over state television, made it impossible to compete fairly.
Irina M. Khakamada, a liberal and one of Mr. Putin's fiercest critics, said in a statement that the presidential campaign was increasingly characterized by "lawlessness and lies." She called on Mr. Putin's other challengers to join her in what would amount to a boycott of next month's election.
Sergei Y. Glazyev, a member of the Russian Parliament from the opposite side of the political spectrum, was urged by his campaign managers to withdraw, as well. A spokeswoman, Yanina S. Dubeikovskaya, said Mr. Glazyev had not yet decided to pull out, but could make an announcement as soon as Wednesday.
"This cannot be called an election," she said.
While Mr. Kasyanov's departure in Mr. Putin's second term had long been expected, the timing was not.
It appeared to surprise everyone, including senior members of the government and their aides, some of whom said they learned of the decision like everyone else, on television.
A cabinet meeting scheduled for this morning was repeatedly postponed until finally being canceled moments before Mr. Putin's televised decree. At a meeting of his security council later in the day, Mr. Khristenko appeared directly to his right. The Russian stock market quickly dropped because of the uncertainty surrounding Mr. Putin's announcement, though it recovered by the end of the day.
Mr. Kasyanov had served as prime minister since 2000, when Mr. Putin took over the presidency after Boris N. Yeltsin's New Year's Eve resignation. Mr. Kasyanov, who previously served as finance minister, was considered an expert economic policy maker and an advocate of pro-market policies.
He served loyally under Mr. Putin, but publicly differed with him last fall over the arrest of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the Russian oilman who remains in prison on charges of fraud and tax evasion that his lawyers and supporters call politically motivated. Mr. Kasyanov did not immediately make any public statement after his dismissal.
Lawmakers and political analysts differed widely on Mr. Putin's motives - a reflection in itself of the opacity of the Kremlin's inner workings.
"It reminded me of Boris Nikolayevich's time, when serious political and personnel decisions were made without any explanation," Vladimir A. Ryzhkov, a liberal member of the Russian Parliament, said on the radio station Ekho Moskvy, referring to Mr. Yeltsin's frequent dismissals of prime ministers in the 1990's.
Some saw it as a continuation of an internal power struggle between Mr. Putin's advisers, divided between democratic-minded reformers and those who represent the ascendant security services, known as the siloviki.
Others suggested that Mr. Putin's decision could be intended to shield him from criticism facing the government. It is one of the peculiarities of Russian politics that Mr. Putin remains overwhelmingly popular, while the government that he appointed is not.
In his remarks today, Mr. Putin also suggested, vaguely, that he planned to restructure the government as well. A Kremlin spokesman said that could result in a reorganization of cabinet posts and ministries.
Vladimir A. Pekhtin, vice speaker of parliament and a leader of the pro-Putin United Russia party, blamed Mr. Kasyanov's government for stalling changes in the government bureaucracy. In a statement, he praised Mr. Putin's "timely decision."
Olga V. Kryshtanovskaya, a scholar at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences who has closely studied Mr. Putin's appointees, said Mr. Putin's move appeared to be an answer to the growing questions about the course of democracy in Russia.
In an interview, she predicted that Mr. Putin would appoint a new prime minister who would be viewed, here and abroad, as a moderate committed to advancing Russia's so-far sputtering democratic evolution. If Mr. Putin intended to appoint a hard-liner from the siloviki, he would have waited until after his re-election, she said.
"It's purely a pre-election P.R. step," she said.
------- space
Scientists Want to Be Ready to Block Asteroid
A group gathered in O.C. says Earth could be hit in an hour -- or in a thousand years or more.
By David Haldane,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 24, 2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-asteroid24feb24,1,2862963.story?coll=la-headlines-california
A huge asteroid heading for Earth could kill 1.5 billion people and devastate the planet, scientists at an international gathering said Monday in Garden Grove.
The only question is when.
"It could happen this year or in a century or in a millennium" or far longer, said David Morrison, a space expert at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, in Northern California. Whenever it does, he said, we need to be ready.
Making sure that we are is the mission of 120 scientists and engineers attending the four-day gathering called the Planetary Defense Conference: Protecting Earth From Asteroids, which began Monday at the Hyatt Regency hotel. Billed as the first major conference of its kind, the confab has attracted astronomers, aerospace engineers, astronauts and emergency preparedness specialists from throughout the United States as well as Italy, Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany and Russia.
Among the strategies to be discussed are such extravagant-sounding scenarios as deflecting asteroids with nuclear warheads, lasers and mirrors - which would create gas jets that would disrupt the object's trajectory.
"We have reached a point in the evolution of life on this planet where we can actually do something about this, but not if we don't start planning," said Bill Ailor, director of the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies at the Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo, which organized the conference along with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Reston, Va. "Our goal," Ailor said, "is to raise the consciousness of the public and of people who work in the field."
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) who, among other things, chairs the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics and has introduced two bills encouraging research on threats from outer space, set the tone during a keynote address.
"Bin Laden was out there like a near-Earth object for a long time," he said. "It took 9/11 - the slaughter of 3,000 innocents - for us to pay attention to that threat. I hope it won't take that long for us to recognize the threat of near-Earth objects; so far we've had a very tepid response."
In fact, the U.S. government has been tracking and charting the paths of large asteroids since 1998. To date, Morrison said, about 60% of all those known have been charted; about 90% are expected to be done by 2008. "Among those charted," he said, "there appears to be no danger." As for the others, Morrison said, "I can't tell you anything about them - one could hit us in an hour, though it's not very likely."
He bases that mixed assessment on the belief of most scientists that truly catastrophic asteroid collisions occur only about once every million years. The uncertainty, he said, stems from the fact that, because the last such collision occurred in prerecorded history, its date is unknown. (A more minor incident - the magnitude of which occurs about once every 100 years - happened in 1908, leveling more than 1,000 square miles of Siberian forest.)
"We want certainty," Morrison said. "If you cross a street, you don't predict the probability of a car being there; you look to see if one's coming."
Conference organizers say that, for starters, they intend to encourage the continuation of that process. The conference - held in Garden Grove because, Ailor said, "it seemed like a good place to start [and] the weather is good this time of year" - is expected to be the first of many held at least once every four years.
At Monday's opening session, participants heard presentations on the threat posed by asteroids and the methods by which it is assessed. Sessions through the rest of the week, Ailor said, will cover such topics as how to move a near-Earth object off course (including the early planning of a mission to do so), how to prepare for the disaster that will ensue if preventive efforts fail, and how to affect political and policy issues related to the impending threat.
"We want people to get excited about this topic," Ailor said. "We want young people to consider it as a subject for future work."
-------- spies
C.I.A. Chief Reports to Senate on Threats Facing U.S.
February 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Intelligence-Congress.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- CIA Director George Tenet said Tuesday that the al-Qaida terror group is seriously damaged but has spread its radical anti-American agenda to other Islamic extremist groups that now pose the greatest threat to the United States.
``The steady growth of Osama bin Laden's anti-U.S. sentiment through the wider Sunni (Islamic) extremist movement, and the broad dissemination of al Qaida's destructive expertise, ensure that a serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future -- with or without al Qaida in the picture,'' Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee in his annual assessment of global threats.
The leadership of the original al-Qaida terror group, which the United States targeted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is seriously damaged, Tenet said. Beyond al-Qaida however, Tenet said, there is a continuing threat to the United States from a ``global movement infected by al-Qaida's radical agenda.''
``And what we've learned continues to validate my deepest concern -- that this enemy remains intent on obtaining and using catastrophic weapons,'' he said.
FBI Director Robert Mueller was expected to tell the committee that the Olympic Games in Greece and the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating conventions are among the FBI's top security concerns this year.
The public session comes after months of scrutiny of the intelligence community's pre-war and so-far faulty estimates that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq.
``The question I am wrestling with is whether in fact we are as a country and as a people safer today than we were when the three of you were here a year ago,'' Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va., said in opening statements, speaking to Tenet, Mueller and the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Security in Iraq remains elusive and ``we're paying a very high price in blood and resources ... and in world opinion,'' Rockefeller said of the U.S. decision to invade Iraq without more international support
While members of the Bush administration caution that the search in Iraq is not over, the debate heated up in last month when Tenet's former special adviser, David Kay, left his position as the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. He began saying publicly that he doesn't believe weapons of mass destruction will be found.
The hearing comes as officials continue to examine the performance of intelligence agencies on an array of fronts.
For example, the federal commission reviewing the Sept. 11 attacks is looking into whether the United States failed to aggressively track one of the 2001 hijackers after obtaining his first name and phone number from German authorities more than two years before the attacks.
``The commission has been actively investigating the issue for some time,'' Philip Zelikow, executive director of the Sept. 11 commission, said Monday.
The New York Times, in its Tuesday editions, quoted German intelligence officials who said they had given the CIA the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi, and asked U.S. officials to track him. The Germans said they never heard back from U.S. officials until after Sept. 11.
Al-Shehhi was a member of the al-Qaida cell in Hamburg, Germany, and a roommate of suspected Sept. 11 ringleader Mohammed Atta. Al-Shehhi was the hijacker who took the controls of United Airlines Flight 175, which flew into the south tower of the World Trade Center, while Atta took over American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into the north tower.
A U.S. official told The Associated Press late Monday that thousands of full names of suspected terrorists come across the intelligence community's screens on a regular basis, making them hard to always track.
``A first name -- and a common one at that -- is a scrap of information and doesn't take you anywhere without the benefit of hindsight,'' the U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The intelligence officials testifying Tuesday used last year's session -- about a month before the invasion of Iraq -- to help make the case that Saddam Hussein posed a serious threat. However, some predictions have yet to, or did not, pan out.
Associated Press Writer Curt Anderson contributed to this report.
--------
C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11
February 24, 2004
By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/24TERR.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 - American investigators were given the first name and telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers two and a half years before the attacks on New York and Washington, but the United States appears to have failed to pursue the lead aggressively, American and German officials say.
The information - the earliest known signal that the United States received about any of the hijackers - has now become an important element of an independent commission's investigation into the events of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said Monday. It is considered particularly significant because it may have represented a missed opportunity for American officials to penetrate the Qaeda terror cell in Germany that was at the heart of the plot. And it came roughly 16 months before the hijacker showed up at flight schools in the United States.
In March 1999, German intelligence officials gave the Central Intelligence Agency the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi, and asked the Americans to track him.
The name and phone number in the United Arab Emirates had been obtained by the Germans by monitoring the telephone of Mohamed Heidar Zammar, an Islamic militant in Hamburg who was closely linked to the important Qaeda plotters who ultimately mastermined the Sept. 11 attacks, German officials said.
After the Germans passed the information on to the C.I.A., they did not hear from the Americans about the matter until after Sept. 11, a senior German intelligence official said.
"There was no response" at the time, the official said. After receiving the tip, the C.I.A. decided that "Marwan" was probably an associate of Osama bin Laden, but never tracked him down, American officials say.
The Germans considered the information on Mr. Shehhi particularly valuable, and the commission is keenly interested in why it apparently did not lead to greater scrutiny of him.
The information concerning Mr. Shehhi, the man who took over the controls of United Airlines Flight 175, which flew into the south tower of the World Trade Center, came months earlier than well-documented tips about other hijackers, including two who were discovered to have attended a meeting of militants in Malaysia in January 2000.
The independent commission investigating the attacks has received information on the 1999 Shehhi tip, and is actively investigating the issue, said Philip Zelikow, executive director of the commission.
American intelligence officials and others involved with the matter say they are uncertain whether Mr. Shehhi's phone was ever monitored.
An American official said: "The Germans did give us the name `Marwan' and a phone number, but we were unable to come up with anything. It was an unlisted phone number in the U.A.E., which he was known to use."
The incident is of particular importance because Mr. Shehhi was a crucial member of the Qaeda cell in Hamburg at the heart of the Sept. 11 plot. Close surveillance of Mr. Shehhi in 1999 might have led investigators to other plot leaders, including Mohammed Atta, who was Mr. Shehhi's roommate. A native of the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Shehhi moved to Germany in 1996 and was almost inseparable from Mr. Atta in their time there. Both men attended the wedding of a fellow Muslim at a radical mosque in Hamburg in October 1999 - an event considered an important gathering for the Sept. 11 hijacking teams just as the plotting was getting under way. American and European authorities say that Mr. Shehhi was actively involved in the planning and logistics of the Sept. 11 plot.
"The Hamburg cell is very important" to the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Zelikow said. The intelligence on Mr. Shehhi "is an issue that's obviously of importance to us, and we're investigating it," he added.
Asked whether American intelligence officials gave sufficient attention to the information about Mr. Shehhi, Mr. Zelikow said, "We haven't reached any conclusions."
The joint Congressional inquiry that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks was told about the matter by the C.I.A., but only a small part of the information was declassified and made public in the panel's final report in December 2002, several officials said. The public report mentioned only that the C.I.A. had received Mr. Shehhi's first name, but made no mention that the agency had also obtained his telephone number.
Officials involved with the work of the joint Congressional investigation made it clear that the publication of a more complete version of the story was the subject of a declassification dispute with the C.I.A. A former official involved with the Congressional inquiry acknowledged that having a telephone number for one of the hijackers was far more significant than simply having a first name.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A., F.B.I. and other government agencies have been heavily criticized for failing to put together fragmentary pieces of information they received from a wide array of sources in order to predict or prevent the terrorist plot. The joint Congressional panel that investigated the attacks concluded that American authorities "missed opportunities to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot by denying entry to or detaining would-be hijackers; to at least try to unravel the plot through surveillance and other investigative work within the United States; and finally, to generate a heightened state of alert and thus harden the homeland against attack."
Until now, the most highly scrutinized failure has related to the C.I.A.'s handling of information about a meeting of extremists in Malaysia in January 2000 that involved two of the men who would become hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi. Although the C.I.A. identified the two men as suspected extremists, the agency did not request that they be placed on the government's watch lists to keep them out of the United States until late August 2001. By that time, they were both already in the country. In addition, while the two men lived in San Diego, their landlord was an F.B.I. informant, but the bureau did not learn of their terrorist links from the informant.
But unlike the leads to Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi in San Diego, the earlier information about Mr. Shehhi could have taken investigators to the core of the Qaeda cell at a time when the plot was probably in its formative stages. According to testimony in Germany in December in a criminal case related to the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Shehhi was one of only four members of the Hamburg cell who knew about the attacks beforehand.
Mr. Shehhi and Mr. Atta traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 to train at a Qaeda camp with several other Sept. 11 plotters. And after returning to Germany, Mr. Shehhi made an ominous reference to the World Trade Center to a Hamburg librarian, saying: "There will be thousands of dead. You will all think of me," German authorities said.
Soon after, Mr. Shehhi, Mr. Atta and another plotter, Ziad al-Jarrah, began e-mailing several dozen American flight schools from Germany to inquire about enrollment, and they arrived in the United States later in 2000 to begin flight training.
-------- un
U.N. Chief Says Iraq Elections Could Be Held Within a Year
February 24, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/international/middleeast/24NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 23 - Secretary General Kofi Annan said Monday that credible national elections could be held in Iraq by the end of this year or early in 2005, but only if planning a framework for them began immediately.
In a report to the Security Council that portrayed Iraq as a country in deepening crisis, Mr. Annan said his special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, and a team of United Nations elections experts had determined during a one-week trip there that it would take until May to set up that framework and then at least eight months from that point to organize the elections.
His report, written by Mr. Brahimi, said it was urgent that the Iraqis establish an independent election commission to come up with the technical and legal rules and structure for a national vote. The current American plan had envisioned full elections by the end of 2005.
While Mr. Annan said it was important to hold to the agreed June 30 deadline for the occupying powers to hand over power to Iraq, he pointedly did not make any recommendation on what form of caretaker government ought to be created by that date. He said defining the mechanism for transferring sovereignty would be up to the Iraqis themselves.
Reiterating in his presentation that the report's conclusions were based on the "Iraqi consensus," he pledged United Nations assistance throughout the entire elections process. Mr. Brahimi is expected to return to Baghdad next month.
Mr. Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister who recently completed two years of service as the United Nations envoy to Afghanistan, described Iraq darkly as a country of growing ethnic tensions that, unless urgently addressed, "could fuel the existing potential for civil strife and violence."
Outlining the stark dimensions of the problem, he said, "After more than three decades of despotic rule, without the basic elements of the rule of law, a ruined economy, a devastated country, the collapse of state institutions, low political will for reconciliation and distrust among some Iraqis, conditions in Iraq are daunting."
He said the political class was increasingly fragmented, communal politics were polarized and the political process "remains limited to a few actors, with varying credibility."
Some actions by the Iraqi Governing Council are serving to increase rather than relieve tensions, Mr. Brahimi said. He cited one in particular, a decision placing family law under the jurisdiction of religious doctrine. He said women saw the move as "an ominous indication of what might be coming."
In the report, Mr. Brahimi listed a number of alternative suggestions for a caretaker government that he had heard from Iraqis, without indicating which, if any, he might favor.
They included enlarging the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council to between 150 and 200 members and having it serve as the interim authority, calling a national conference of respected figures from across the country or establishing a small round-table group that would affirm a process of protecting human rights and drawing up a constitution.
In a conclusion that was reported last week on the United Nations team's return to New York, Mr. Annan said it was not feasible to hold direct elections before June 30, as several influential Iraqis had requested. At the same time, he dismissed the American-inspired caucus-based selection process for choosing a transitional government as one that "does not appear to enjoy sufficient support among Iraqis to be a viable option any longer."
It was complaints about that plan from local politicians and spiritual leaders that caused the United States to ask Mr. Annan last month to send his people into the country to assess possibilities and recommend alternatives.
The report did not explicitly call for a new Security Council resolution - a step the United States would like to avoid at the moment to keep nations that were critical of the war, like France and Germany, away from the political process. But Mr. Annan did speak of the need for "clear and unambiguous support of a united Security Council" for the United Nations actions on the ground, and officials said it was likely that there would be formal Security Council reconsideration of the United Nations role in Iraq sometime later.
The mission to Iraq, from Feb. 6 to 13, and the resulting report on Monday, marked the active re-engagement of the United Nations in Iraq, six months after its Baghdad headquarters was bombed, costing the lives of 22 people, including the mission chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
Mr. Annan had been a vocal opponent of the war, and the Security Council last spring turned aside efforts by the United States and Britain to pass a resolution authorizing military action. The United States had consequently excluded the United Nations from planning for the political transition until last month, when critics of the American arrangements made it clear that they would not take directions from people they viewed as occupiers and would respect only alternatives approved by the United Nations.
The new report was delivered Monday while Mr. Annan was in Tokyo on a five-day Japanese trip. Briefing reporters here, Carina Perelli, the director of the United Nations Election Assistance Division, said that the security situation in Iraq was very bad but that the United Nations had conducted other elections in similarly turbulent places. She cited the vote in East Timor in 1999 as an example.
As for the threats posed in Iraq by people who are set on blocking a vote, she said, "Every time you organize an election, you are gambling on the fact that people will do two things - first, prefer ballots to bullets and secondly, the silent majority of people who are fed up with death and war will take over the groups that aren't."
--------
U.N. Plan For Iraq Foresees Elections
Report Urges Work for Results by End of Year
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64237-2004Feb23.html
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 23 -- Elections to create a new national government in Iraq could be held as soon as the end of this year or early next year if work begins immediately to organize them, concludes a report released Monday by Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The U.N. report, prepared by Annan's envoy to Iraq, also backed the U.S. plan for relinquishing political authority in Iraq on June 30. It urged the U.S.-led governing authority and Iraqi leaders to work quickly to create a transitional government that would run the country until elections are held.
The United Nations is prepared to "play a supporting role" in reaching a consensus over how the transition should proceed, but Iraqis should play a leading role, envoy Lakhdar Brahimi wrote.
"I hope that we can build upon the groundwork that has been laid down and engage further with Iraqis on how to move forward," Annan said in a letter to the Security Council accompanying the report. "The U.N. remains fully committed to assisting the Iraqi people in completing the process of recovery and democratization."
U.S. officials, frustrated by the failure of their own plans for political transition in Iraq, have been waiting anxiously for Brahimi's findings, which they hope will point the way toward an orderly transfer of political power.
The report set the stage for a flurry of activity by U.S., Iraqi and U.N. officials to prepare for elections in a country in which there are no laws to govern them, let alone any voter rolls.
Brahimi said the first steps would be establishing an independent electoral commission and reaching agreement on election laws. That, he said, could be completed by late April or early May if U.S. and Iraqi officials get busy. Those moves would allow elections to be held eight months later.
But just as pressing -- and more urgent in assuring stability once the U.S. occupation ends -- is the question of what temporary government will assume control of Iraq at the end of June.
The United States had hoped to create a provisional government through a complex system of 18 regional caucuses, a plan that did not gain support among Iraqis. The caucus system, Brahimi wrote, is "not a viable option," and U.S. officials "themselves accept that it would be impractical to try and implement this system which is totally alien to Iraqis."
U.S. officials had hoped that Brahimi's report would propose an alternative plan. Instead, Brahimi outlined a "range of options" he said his team had discussed with Iraqis while on a fact-finding mission to that country this month.
Those options include expanding the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and allowing it to take control temporarily; convening a national conference of tribal and religious leaders that would create a provisional government; or setting up a transitional government of technocrats -- not politicians -- that would have limited powers.
But Brahimi said that Iraqi leaders, working with U.S. officials and the United Nations, must develop a consensus on which course to pursue.
"It is ultimately up to the people of Iraq to take the decisions required on these issues and to then implement them," Brahimi's report said. "They are more than capable of doing so."
Senior U.S. officials welcomed the U.N. report, even though it did not make specific proposals for a temporary government. They noted that it backed U.S. plans for the June 30 handover of power and for speedy elections, and said they would work closely with the United Nations to assure the transition succeeds.
President Bush said he is encouraged by the spirited, if often acrimonious, political debate underway in Iraq over the transition.
"I don't think it's all that bad that people are arguing about the nature of government," Bush said in remarks to a meeting of the National Governors Association in Washington. "We argue about government all the time here. . . . That's part of the process of heading for a society in which minority rights are recognized and human dignity is paramount."
Bush also sought to dispel concerns that the U.S. commitment to Iraq will wane as the United Nations increases its political profile in Iraq. "We're not going to cut and run," he said. "We've got to make it clear we're there to succeed, and we will."
Brahimi's report said the United Nations is prepared to help oversee the political transition and planning for elections in Iraq. But it said the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority must provide appropriate security arrangements, and said the Security Council would have to adopt a new mandate reflecting the new responsibilities.
"A precondition for the United Nations to succeed in Iraq is the clear and unambiguous support of a united Security Council and the establishment of a secure environment," Annan said in his letter.
-------- us
Army Shipping Less Gear Over to Iraq
By JIM KRANE
The Associated Press
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; 1:45 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1124-2004Feb24?language=printer
KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait - The slimming down of the U.S.-led occupation in neighboring Iraq can be seen in this city's main port, where the four Army divisions being shifted out of Iraq are sending home far more heavy weapons and gear than the replacement troops are bringing in.
The Army's 4th Infantry Division, which currently occupies a swath of Iraq north of Baghdad, will require 19 of the Navy's massive "roll-on, roll-off" or Ro-Ro ships to carry away its vast collection of tanks, armored vehicles and heavy bridging equipment, Army Maj. Faris Williams, the Army's operations officer at the port of al-Shuaiba, said Monday.
The Army's 1st Armored Division, which has just begun pulling out of Baghdad, will need as many as 20 ships, Williams said.
By contrast, the Army's 1st Infantry Division, which will replace the Tikrit-based 4th Infantry in the coming weeks, is arriving in Kuwait on just five Ro-Ro ships, Williams said. All three divisions' home bases are in Germany.
Before the war, the 4th Infantry's mountains of gear required 39 smaller vessels to transport - first to the Turkish coast, then, after being refused permission to land - to al-Shuaiba, Williams said.
"They brought absolutely everything with them," Williams said. The enormous multi-role bridging units needed for the war were a particular space-grabber.
"With all the bridging stuff they brought we could have bridged our way back to the States," Williams joked.
Military officials have said the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq will take on a less-intrusive hue when the massive rotation of U.S. troops now underway sends 110,000 fresh troops into neighboring Iraq to replace the 130,000 being sent home.
Instead of patrolling Iraq in Bradley armored vehicles and 70-ton Abrams tanks - brought in for the land invasion in March - incoming soldiers and Marines will rely more on armored Humvees and other lighter, more maneuverable vehicles. Hence the need for fewer trips by Navy ships like the hulking gray U.S.N.S. Pomeroy, which was being loaded Monday with Humvees from the Army's V Corps, which is in the process of returning to Germany.
The troop rotation also signals the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom 2, when most U.S. troops will be shifted from the current tight-knit occupation that uses dozens of bases inside Baghdad and other cities, to large camps lying on the outskirts of Iraqi cities. Several bases have already closed.
The Kuwaiti port of al-Shuaiba has been the U.S. military's chief landing area for war supplies used in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The port is now proving essential in the troop rotation, since 90 percent of the tonnage for the occupation is being shipped by sea.
Kuwaiti authorities have given most of the port over to the U.S. military, which has unloaded and loaded war supplies from 428 ships since the war preparations began, Williams said.
"Without them we couldn't do this operation. It's that simple," said Army Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Speakes, the commander in charge of the troop rotation.
Four U.S. ships were docked in the choppy waters on Monday, including the Pomeroy, which can carry 55,000 tons or 250,000 square feet of cargo.
Behind the Pomeroy's berth, a parking lot that stretched for a quarter-mile was packed with every type of American military vehicle, from helicopters to small trailers with portable electric generators.
The Pomeroy and other Ro-Ro ships have five stories of cargo holds and a large deck for shipping containers.
Later this month, the last ship bearing the equipment of the Army's 101st Airborne Division - which has pulled entirely out of Iraq - will steam out of al-Shuaiba.
After the Pomeroy departs, the Colorado-based Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment will begin shipping its gear back to the Texas port of Beaumont, Williams said.
----
Enlisting despite the risk of Iraq
Advancement hopes, and fatalism, at a U.S. recruitment post
Anemona Hartocollis
The New York Times
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/130926.html
NEW YORK In more complacent times, offering one's life for one's country has been a patriotic cliché, more popular among politicians than among mothers. Now it is a statistical fact. More than 540 American service members have died since the war in Iraq began nearly a year ago. Suicide bombings have become routine. The hidden casualties of the conflict include more that 2,600 wounded soldiers, some of them permanently maimed both physically and psychologically.
In the next few months, 110,000 more soldiers will be rotated into Iraq. And yet scores of young people still turn up each month at recruiting stations in New York, some seeking a way out of a tough job market and some just deeply fatalistic and wanting to do their part. "It's not that I'm afraid or not afraid," said Che Powdrill, who enlisted in the army at a recruitment station in Harlem.
"I feel when it's your time, it's your time," he said, fingering the gold Virgin Mary pendant given to him by a girlfriend. "You're gonna die regardless of where you are, in a tent, in a car, on the battlefield."
Like many of the others who turn up at the recruiting station, he said that he believed he had made an honorable choice for his country and the right one for him personally. There are not many jobs in the city these days, even for bright, ambitious, squeaky-clean youngsters like Powdrill and his fellow army recruit, Natasha LaGoff.
LaGoff is one of four children. Her mother is a homemaker, and she would rather not talk about her father. He is "not home with us," as she put it.
She was glad, she said, to be able to quit her job on kitchen and cashier duty at McDonald's to join the army. "It's hard working full-time and focusing on school," she said. LaGoff, 18, is a freshman accounting major at York College in New York.
But LaGoff said that even in the few weeks since she had signed up, she had heard over and over again: "Oh my God, you're going to Iraq!" She seriously doubts that, she tells her friends and family. The army recruiters have assured her, she said, that she has a good chance of getting the job she wants, a clerical job in army human resources, and a chance to finish college. The army's standards are high relative to those of many civilian employers, and recruits like LaGoff and Powdrill are proud of that. Sergeant First Class Luis Aviles, one of four Harlem recruiters, interviews dozens of people every month but processes only five or six who meet the minimal requirements: a high-school education, no criminal violations, good mental and physical health, and the ability to pass a basic reading and math test. Of those five or six, only about two people a month end up enlisting.
A steady stream of people who do not qualify head for the private employment office next door, where workers are taking applications for security guards - no high-school diploma needed.
"They don't want me, I don't want them," one candidate for such a job said resentfully of the army people. Turns out he had been expelled from high school.
LaGoff is not due to leave for basic training until July. Meanwhile, she plans to keep her nose clean and continue her studies. On many afternoons, she and Powdrill shoot the breeze with the officers at the West 125th Street recruitment station.
Though LaGoff and Powdrill are not yet in uniform, they have been welcomed as part of the club. Hanging out with sympathetic army personnel in crisp green shirts and patent leather dress shoes, they share jokes and bravado.
A friend of Powdrill's from the same neighborhood, Washington Heights, who gravitates to the recruiting station - as if it were his version of the local Kiwanis Club or Veterans of Foreign Wars post - is Private First Class Adony Batista, who returned for home leave from his second tour of duty in Iraq late last month.
In a way, the Harlem recruiting station is a haven. Whether the army will be as safe as LaGoff hopes - and as the warm embrace of the recruiting station seems to promise - is something the three friends do not care to examine too closely.
Batista tells them stories about his experience. He was in a firefight and thinks that he killed enemy soldiers. That was exciting. Funeral detail was more upsetting, because the bereaved parents screamed, "Why him? Why not you?" at the living.
He has had dreams about the war but mercifully no nightmares. He can turn off his wartime persona.
"When I'm not in uniform, I don't even shave," he said, smiling under his short beard.
Batista is 19. Told that he looks at least 25, he agrees
"I used to have a baby face," he said. "Iraq was tough on me."
-------- propaganda wars
White House Forecasts Often Miss The Mark
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A538-2004Feb23.html
President Bush last week caused a stir when he declined to endorse a projection, made by his own Council of Economic Advisers, that the economy would add 2.6 million jobs this year. But that forecast, derided as wildly optimistic, was one of the more modest predictions the administration has made about the economy over the past three years.
Two years ago, the administration forecast that there would be 3.4 million more jobs in 2003 than there were in 2000. And it predicted a budget deficit for fiscal 2004 of $14 billion. The economy ended up losing 1.7 million jobs over that period, and the budget deficit for this year is on course to be $521 billion.
These are not isolated cases. Over three years, the administration has repeatedly and significantly overstated the government's fiscal health and the number of jobs the economy would create, but economists and politicians disagree about why.
The president, though not addressing the predictions directly, regularly points to four events that altered economic expectations: the recession; the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; the corporate governance scandals; and war in Iraq. "We've been through a lot," Bush said in an economics speech Thursday. "But we acted, here in Washington. I led."
The opposition has sought to portray the economic forecasts as evidence of Bush's dishonesty, similar to the claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that have not materialized. "Every day, this administration's credibility gap grows wider," Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the leading prospect to challenge Bush in November, said Friday. "They didn't tell Americans the truth about Iraq. They didn't tell Americans the truth about the economy. And now they're trying to manufacture the 2.6 million manufacturing jobs they've destroyed."
Economists agree that economic forecasts are often unreliable, but they say there is at least one plausible explanation for the discrepancies of recent years: The Bush administration, like the Clinton administration before it and like most private economists, assumed that tax revenue and jobs would rise or fall with the gross domestic product in the same proportions as they had in previous recoveries.
But, because of structural changes in the economy such as soaring gains in productivity, the historical patterns have not held. Job growth and tax receipts were badly underestimated in the boom of the late 1990s, and overestimated since 2000, even as the economy has begun to improve.
Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said that the administration has been "a little exuberant" in its forecasts but that the problem is more a statistical one. "The patterns that prevailed before don't seem to be holding in this current recovery," Reischauer said.
Figures released by the White House show that its overestimate of job creation in 2003 was the largest forecast error made in at least 15 years, and its 2002 underestimate of the deficit was the largest in at least 21 years. But the statistics show that forecast errors began to increase considerably around 1997, under the Clinton administration. By contrast, the Bush administration's GDP forecasts have been relatively accurate, indicating job growth and tax receipts have shed their historical correlation to GDP growth.
"The old theories on predicting revenue proved themselves wildly wrong in the late 1990s and early 2000s," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy. "Nobody saw this happening -- not Wall Street, not Vegas, not Poor Richard, not Nostradamus."
Democrats agree that in 2001, when Congress passed Bush's first tax cut, there was no concrete evidence that there was an unusual decline in tax receipts. But Thomas S. Kahn, Democratic staff director of the House Budget Committee, faults the administration for continuing to rely on upbeat forecasts to pass new tax cuts even after it became obvious there was a problem.
In June 2001, the Treasury Department announced a sharper-than-expected drop in tax revenue. In January 2002, the Congressional Budget Office observed that tax receipts were lower "for reasons that are not entirely understood," and it warned that part of the phenomenon "will remain." The White House Office of Management and Budget, in July 2002, acknowledged that "the precise causes of this year's income tax drop-off will not be known for some time." Yet the administration continued to push for more tax cuts, as Bush promised that the deficit "will be small and short-term."
On employment, the administration continued to make optimistic forecasts even after it became clear that historical patterns were not holding. A year ago, for example, the Council of Economic Advisers predicted that the tax cut package alone that Bush was promoting would generate 510,000 jobs in 2003 and 891,000 in 2004. Even without the tax cut, the council was predicting that average employment would grow by 1.7 million jobs from 2002 to 2003, and 2.7 million jobs between 2003 and 2004.
"They ought to be held accountable for not taking seriously what happened to the jobs numbers," said Lee Price, research director for the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. Although Bush's jobs forecasts were plausible in 2002, before the extent of productivity gains were known, he said, the continually optimistic jobs forecasts "start to seem outlandish."
The administration used job-creation predictions to justify its 2001 and 2002 tax cuts, as well. In 2002, the economic advisers argued that failure to enact the stimulus package Bush proposed would cost the economy "about 300,000 jobs." The president's economists said that Bush's 2001 tax cuts would create an additional 800,000 jobs by the end of 2002.
In reality, the United States went from an average of 131.9 million jobs in 2001 to 130.4 million in 2002, and to an estimated 130.1 million in 2003. And it will need an extraordinary change to reach the 132.7 million jobs for 2004 that the economic advisers predicted -- the figure Bush declined to endorse.
The administration's budget forecasts have followed a similar pattern. A confident president proclaimed in March 2001: "We can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens." About that same time, the administration projected a budget surplus of $281 billion for 2001, $231 billion for 2002, $246 billion for 2003, $268 billion for 2004 and $273 billion for 2005.
Bush has since said that his optimism about budget deficits was based on the assumption that the economy would not hit a "trifecta" of trouble: recession, national emergency and war. But in February 2002 -- after the recession was declared, the terrorist attacks had occurred and war had begun in Afghanistan -- the administration continued to have upbeat predictions. Although it forecast a $106 billion deficit in 2002, it saw the deficit shrinking to $80 billion in 2003, $14 billion in 2004, and becoming a surplus of $61 billion in 2005. Those figures, too, quickly became seen as overly optimistic, as tax receipts continued to come in lower than expected. A year later, in 2003, the administration predicted a deficit of $304 billion for 2003 and $307 billion for 2004. In reality, the 2003 deficit was $375 billion, and the White House now expects a deficit of $521 billion for 2004.
Staff writer Jonathan Weisman contributed to this report.
--------
For the Record
Bush Assertion on Tax Cuts Is at Odds With IRS Data
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A488-2004Feb23.html
President Bush defended his tax cuts yesterday as economic fuel for the small-business sector in response to mounting criticism from Democratic presidential candidates that the cuts chiefly benefited the wealthiest Americans.
But the president's contention that upper-income tax cuts primarily benefit entrepreneurs conflicts with some of the government's own data.
Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and John Edwards (N.C.) have pledged to restore the top two income tax rates to a maximum of 39.6 percent if elected president, but Bush and Republican allies say such a move would disproportionately punish small businesses, most of which pay individual income tax rates on their profits.
"If you're worried about job growth, it seems like it makes sense to give a little fuel to those who create jobs, the small-business sector," Bush told a gathering of the nation's governors at the White House. "So I'll vigorously defend the permanency of the tax cuts, not only for the sake of the economy, but for the sake of the entrepreneurial spirit."
Internal Revenue Service statistics cited by a Democratic senator this month show that the vast majority of small businesses do not earn nearly enough money to fall into the highest income tax bracket. According to IRS data from the 2001 tax year, 3.8 percent of the 18.2 million business tax returns filed that year reported taxable income of $200,000 or more. The top tax bracket last year kicked in at $311,950 of taxable income.
In contrast, 62 percent of business filers reported incomes of less than $50,000, putting them at most in the 15 percent tax bracket, the second lowest. Nearly 88 percent of business filers reported income of less than $100,000, keeping them comfortably below the top two tax brackets of 33 percent and 35 percent, which Kerry and Edwards propose to raise.
Republicans point to a different statistic: Of the 750,000 tax filers that pay the top rate, more than two-thirds receive some small-business income from sole proprietorships, partnerships or small businesses incorporated as S corporations, according to the Treasury Department and the Republican staff of the congressional Joint Economic Committee.
Last week, the Republican National Committee cited that statistic in charging that Kerry "doesn't realize tax increases would hurt small businesses and farmers." Treasury officials asserted yesterday that about 75 percent of top-bracket tax returns are from "small-business owners." One official said the IRS was limiting its definition of small businesses to sole proprietorships, leaving out huge numbers of S corporations and partnerships.
But under Treasury's definition, both Bush and Vice President Cheney are members of the entrepreneurial class. In his 2002 tax return, the president reported $1,549 from rental real estate, royalties, partnerships, S corporations and trusts, including income from GWB Rangers Corp., a remnant of his days as co-owner of the Texas Rangers. Of the Cheney household's $1.2 million income, $238,682 was from business ventures within the White House's definition of small business.
Economists say the broad Republican definition of "small-business man" includes not only doctors, lawyers and management consultants but also chief executives who earn $3,000 renting out their chalets in Aspen or report $10,000 in speaking fees. An aide on the Joint Economic Committee conceded that the definition includes the army of accountants and consultants at such giant partnerships as KPMG LLP and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, not the firms that "small business" brings to mind.
The aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said committee economists are debating whether to update the statistics to trim out such behemoths. A Treasury official, who formerly worked for one of the accounting giants, defended their inclusion, saying the partners of the major accounting firms are entrepreneurs.
If the definition is revised to stipulate that more than half a small-business person's income has to be from small-business activities, then only one-quarter of filers in the top income tax brackets would be considered entrepreneurs, said William G. Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institution.
The contrasting claims came out this month when Treasury Secretary John W. Snow appeared before the Senate Finance Committee.
"Less than 4 percent, as a matter of fact, of the small businesses and the farm returns in America are bringing in $200,000 or more," Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) told Snow, confronting him with a chart on the tax rates paid by small businesses.
Pressed to respond, Snow replied: "You are asking me to comment on it, and I would like to think about it before I comment on it. The statistics we have -- I am trying to figure out how to reconcile them with the statistics you have."
-------- war crimes
U.S. charges 2 with war crimes, sets stage for military tribunal trials
2/24/2004
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-24-war-crimes_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Two men alleged to have been bodyguards and aides for Osama bin Laden have been charged with war crimes and will stand trial before the first U.S. military tribunals convened since World War II, officials announced Tuesday.
Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi, of Sudan, was a paymaster for al-Qaeda, and Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul, of Yemen, was a propagandist for bin Laden, the government charged in military indictments unsealed at the Pentagon.
The two men are among more than 600 foreign prisoners held at the U.S. Navy's Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba. According to the indictments, both spent time in terrorist training camps and served as bodyguards for bin Laden.
The military tribunals are expected to take place at Guantanamo Bay, though the indictments do not indicate when. The brief documents also provide no documentation for government claims the men were terrorist conspirators.
Military tribunals are traditionally used to try alleged war criminals, such as Nazi leaders after World War II. They are similar to military trials known as courts-martial but share some features of ordinary civilian trials as well.
Suspects are entitled to defense lawyers and to put on a vigorous defense. Rules of evidence are more favorable to the government, however, and the Guantanamo tribunal suspects will have only limited rights to appeal convictions.
Al Qosi joined al-Qaeda in 1989 and remained a member until his capture in December 2001, the indictment said. He traveled with bin Laden, serving as a driver and quartermaster, and also worked as an accountant and treasurer for a business intended to provide income and cover for al-Qaeda terror operations, the indictment said.
Among other activities, al Qosi signed checks on behalf of bin Laden, exchanged money on the black market and couriered money on behalf of al-Qaeda, the indictment said.
Bin Laden personally assigned al Bahlul to work in the al-Qaeda "media office," where he created videotapes used to motivate al-Qaeda members and recruit new terror soldiers, the indictment alleged.
The indictment contends that bin Laden ordered a video glorifying the attack on the USS Cole, a Navy ship nearly sunk by a suicide boat bombing in Yemen in 2000. The attack killed 17 sailors.
The video was intended to "inspire al-Qaeda members and others to continue violent attacks against property and nationals, both military and civilian, of the United States," the indictment said.
On Sept. 11, 2001, bin Laden told al Bahlul to set up a satellite connection so that bin Laden could watch televised news coverage of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the indictment said. Al Bahlul was unable to do so, it said.
Al Bahlul was also a bodyguard for bin Laden and traveled in a caravan with the al-Qaeda leader, the indictment said.
"While traveling, al Bahlul was armed and wore an explosives-laden belt so that he could provide Osama bin Laden with physical security and protection," the indictment alleged.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Sierra Club Wants Scalia To Sit Out Task Force Case
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A489-2004Feb23.html
An environmental organization suing for access to the records of Vice President Cheney's energy policy task force asked Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to disqualify himself from the case yesterday, telling the court that Scalia's January duck-hunting trip with Cheney had created "an appearance of impropriety."
In a 14-page motion for recusal filed with the Supreme Court last night, the Sierra Club argued that "by the objective standard required by federal law, Justice Scalia's impartiality has reasonably been called into question, and he must be recused."
Although Scalia's trip with Cheney has been the subject of controversy for weeks, the Sierra Club's motion raises the stakes because it is the first time a party to the case has embraced the view that Scalia's participation in the case would violate the law.
It is not clear what, if anything, Scalia and the other justices are required to do in response to the Sierra Club's motion. In another recent case, Scalia recused himself after Michael A. Newdow, a California atheist challenging the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, filed papers suggesting that Scalia's impartiality could be questioned because of comments he had made about an appellate ruling in the case.
But the justices ordinarily treat recusal decisions as a matter of individual judgment, unless a colleague specifically asks for advice. In the Cheney case, Scalia has already told the Los Angeles Times that he does not believe his impartiality could reasonably be questioned.
The case involves lawsuits by the Sierra Club and a conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, which believe that Cheney is resisting disclosure of the energy task force's records to cover up the undue influence of industry lobbyists on its deliberations.
For his part, Cheney says that the groups are on a fishing expedition, and that the task force is not covered by a federal law that would require disclosure of the internal workings of certain government commissions.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch last year, prompting Cheney's appeal to the Supreme Court. If Scalia were to withdraw from the case and the remaining justices split 4 to 4, the D.C. Circuit's ruling would be affirmed.
The court announced on Dec. 15 that it would hear the case. On Jan. 5, Scalia and one of his daughters flew to Louisiana with Cheney on an official aircraft. Scalia and the vice president hunted ducks on the private property of Wallace Carline, president of an energy services company.
Though the vice president is a named party in the case, Cheney v. U.S. District Court, No. 03-475, he does not face a civil fine or criminal penalties in the case -- a fact that Scalia has said is crucial to his decision not to recuse.
"Social contacts with high-level executive officials . . . have never been thought improper for judges who may have before them cases in which those people are involved in their official capacity, as opposed to their personal capacity," Scalia told the Times.
In its motion, however, the Sierra Club noted that Cheney's personal decisions and conduct are at issue in the case.
The Sierra Club buttressed its argument with citations of federal court cases in which judges were required to recuse over similar relationships with participants in cases before them -- and of critical references to Scalia's conduct from newspaper editorials, editorial cartoons and even monologues by comedian Jay Leno.
"The national media reflects the American public's great concern about the continuing damage this affair is doing to the prestige and credibility of this Court," the Sierra Club said in its motion.
Judicial Watch decided not to join the Sierra Club in asking for Scalia's recusal.
"We don't think the motion for recusal has a factual or legal basis," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. "To the degree it distracts the court's attention from the issue at hand, which is Dick Cheney's power grab . . . it's not helpful."
--------
Court Denies Review of Post-9/11 Secrecy
But Justices Will Hear Two Cases on Rules for Deporting Convicted Immigrants
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64058-2004Feb23.html
The Supreme Court said yesterday that it will not hear a Miami man's case against the unusual secrecy that enveloped the proceedings against him in lower federal courts, ending the court's involvement in one of the murkier legal stories to emerge from the Bush administration's investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel, 34, an Algerian immigrant, was detained on a visa violation in October 2001, then turned over to the FBI as a material witness after it developed that he had waited on a table occupied by some of the Sept. 11 hijackers at a Middle Eastern restaurant in the Miami area.
He was released on bond in March 2002 after testifying before a grand jury, but the government still sought to deport him -- and got both a federal district court in Florida and the Atlanta-based federal appeals court that heard Bellahouel's constitutional challenge to the deportation to agree they would not publicly acknowledge that the matter had even been before them.
Bellahouel had asked the Supreme Court to rule that the official blackout over his case violated the public's First Amendment right of access to court proceedings. Courts may not conduct proceedings in secret without providing a public explanation for doing so, Bellahouel's lawyers argued. His appeal was supported by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, but the court denied the organization's motion to join in the case.
Initially, U.S. Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson brushed off the case, declining the opportunity to respond to Bellahouel's petition for review. But in a sign the court did not regard the matter as routine, the justices asked him in November to reply. Olson's eventual response was filed under seal, as was the response from Bellahouel's lawyers.
Both Bellahouel's name and many of the facts of his case eventually leaked and were reported in Florida newspapers, thanks in part to a clerical error at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that left some of the facts on the Internet briefly.
Separately, the court overrode objections from the Bush administration and announced that it would hear two cases in which immigrants are fighting federal attempts to deport them to violent and chaotic countries.
In the first case, Jama v. INS, No. 03-674, a 24-year-old Somali refugee named Keyse G. Jama argues that he should be allowed to stay in the United States because the government may not deport him to Somalia unless that country's government agrees to accept him -- and Somalia has no functioning government.
The government seeks to deport Jama as an "aggravated felon" because he was convicted of assault in Minnesota in 1999. According to the Bush administration's Supreme Court brief, immigration law clearly provides for deportations without the permission of the receiving country's government. A victory for Jama, the administration argues, would prevent the deportation of "thousands" of Somalis in the United States who have been ordered out of the country or who entered illegally.
But Jama's lawyers argue that the government is essentially seeking to dump him in a lawless country where he would be subject to human rights abuses at the hands of contending warlords.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, based in St. Louis, ruled in the government's favor in May. But the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has since reached an opposite conclusion in a different case, setting up a conflict that the Supreme Court must settle.
In the second case, the justices agreed to decide whether drunk driving that injures another person qualifies as a "crime of violence" for which an immigrant can be deported.
The 11th Circuit ruled that Josue Leocal, a permanent resident from Haiti, must be sent back to that Caribbean country because of an October 2000 conviction in Florida for "driving under the influence causing serious bodily injury to another."
The case is Leocal v. Ashcroft, No. 03-583. Oral arguments in the two immigration matters will take place next fall; decisions are likely by July 2005.
-------- death penalty
Supreme Court Blocks Execution of Texas Inmate
February 24, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Death-Penalty.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court, acting on a case that has become a cause celebre among capital punishment opponents, overturned the death sentence of a long-serving Texas inmate who claimed prosecutors played dirty and withheld evidence at his trial.
The court's action, announced Tuesday, came in the case of a man who came within minutes of execution before the body stepped in last year to stop it.
Delma Banks, one of the country's longest-serving death row inmates, was sentenced to die for the 1980 killing of a 16-year-old former co-worker at a fast food restaurant.
The high court's 7-2 ruling means Banks can continue to press his appeals in lower courts.
He claims that prosecutors lied and that his original defense lawyer did not do enough to help him.
``When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold, it is ordinarily incumbent on the state to set the record straight,'' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the high court majority.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter and Stephen Breyer fully agreed with Ginsburg.
``A rule declaring 'prosecutor may hide, defendant must seek,' is not tenable in a system constitutionally bound to accord defendants due process,'' Ginsburg said.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia did not agree that Banks got a raw deal from prosecutors, but still would have sent his case back to a federal appeals court for further consideration.
Texas prosecutors said Banks lured Richard Whitehead to a quiet park and shot him three times to steal his car. Banks maintains he is innocent, and that he was framed by lying witnesses who were bought off by the state.
Banks' backers including former FBI Director William Sessions, and a group of former judges say Banks' case is a textbook example of the wrong way to run a capital trial.
Prosecutors knew of numerous serious legal errors during Banks' trial, but said nothing, Banks' new lawyers contended.
Banks was scheduled to die last March, and was nine minutes away from execution when the Supreme Court stepped in and agreed to hear his case.
Banks claims his original lawyer failed to present evidence about Banks' family and background that might have persuaded a jury to spare Banks a death sentence.
The case also raised questions about how to weigh the severity of courtroom errors long after the fact.
Banks claims prosecutors improperly sat on evidence that could have undermined the testimony of a key witness for the state. The witness later recanted parts of his testimony. Banks also claimed that prosecutors hid the fact that another trial witness was a paid informant.
The facts of the Banks case are tangled and unusual, meaning that Tuesday's ruling in his favor may have little effect on other death row inmates or on future prosecutions.
Throughout 24 years of court fights, the parents of Richard Whitehead have insisted on Banks' guilt while Banks and his mother have insisted on his innocence.
The Whiteheads were waiting at a Texas prison the night Banks was to die.
The case is Banks v. Dretke, 02-8286.
-------- immigration / refugees
SUPREME COURT ROUNDUP
Justices Agree to Hear Two Deportation Cases
February 24, 2004
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/24SCOT.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 - An immigrant who has been deported to Haiti and another facing imminent deportation to Somalia persuaded the Supreme Court on Monday to hear their appeals, each raising a separate and disputed question of current immigration law.
The issue in the first case is whether a conviction for drunken driving that causes injury can be considered an "aggravated felony," which makes a lawful permanent resident subject to deportation. In 2002, the government deported Josue Leocal, a Haitian-born resident of Miami, after he served a two-year state prison sentence for causing "serious bodily injury" while driving under the influence of alcohol.
Under Florida law, that offense is a "crime of violence," which in turn is part of the definition of "aggravated felony" under federal immigration law. The lower federal courts have disagreed on whether drunken driving can appropriately be placed in that category. Mr. Leocal had no previous arrests during his 19 years in the country.
The question in the second case is whether natives of Somalia, many who came here as refugees, can be sent back without the consent of the Somali government.
A Somali man, Keyse G. Jama, who entered the United States as a 17-year-old refugee in 1996, is arguing that federal law requires the consent of the receiving country before someone can be deported there. He was convicted of assault in Minnesota after a fight with another Somali man.
Somalia has no central government, and the United States has no diplomatic relations with the country. Nor does Somalia issue passports. Before a federal district judge in Minneapolis granted Mr. Jama's petition for a writ of habeas corpus, federal immigration officials had planned to take him to Dubai and put him on a flight from there to Somalia.
At that point, his lawyers say, he would have become "a stateless person with no travel documents or identity papers in a war-torn region with no central government." He is represented by Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights and without charge by Briggs & Morgan, a Minneapolis law firm.
An analysis of Somali deportations that was prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2002 concluded that "there exist extraordinary and temporary conditions in Somalia" that prevent the safe return of Somali citizens.
In both cases, the Bush administration urged the Supreme Court to reject the appeals.
In the Somali case, Jama v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, No. 03-674, the administration said the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, had correctly interpreted immigration law not to require the consent of the receiving country. The appeals court overturned the district court's grant of habeas corpus, but delayed issuing its opinion until the Supreme Court could review the case.
If consent were required, the administration told the justices, "foreign governments could prevent the United States from repatriating their nationals merely be failing to indicate acceptance of the repatriation."
The United States has deported 200 Somalis since 1997. In a separate case last year, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, issued an injunction barring further deportations to Somalia. The administration is seeking a rehearing by the full appeals court.
In the drunken driving case, Leocal v. Ashcroft, No. 03-583, the administration told the court that the case was inappropriate for review for procedural reasons. The relationship between drunken driving felony convictions and federal immigration law presents "difficult questions," the administration said.
The federal appeals courts are divided on the issue, with most ruling that drunken driving offenses, even those involving injury or death, cannot be considered crimes of violence without proof of some degree of criminal intent. In the Leocal case, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, held that it lacked jurisdiction to consider Mr. Leocal's appeal from an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. Mr. Leocal is being represented without charge by the King & Spalding law firm here.
In a separate development, the Sierra Club formally asked Justice Antonin Scalia to recuse himself from hearing Vice President Dick Cheney's appeal before the Supreme Court on whether he is legally entitled to keep secret the proceedings of his energy task force.
The Sierra Club, which sued for release of the information, is arguing that after Justice Scalia's duck-hunting trip with the vice president last month, his impartiality is open to reasonable question - a test for a judge's disqualification under federal law - and notes that in fact it has been widely questioned in news accounts and editorials around the country.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Care of inmates criticized
February 24, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040223-105800-9897r.htm
The U.S. Marshals Service has failed to provide basic and emergency medical treatment to the 40,000 federal prisoners it has in custody, a report said yesterday.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said his office also found that the Marshals Service did not obtain the lowest medical rates allowed by federal legislation, paying $7 million annually in excess fees for outside medical care.
"We recognize the serious challenges facing the U.S. Marshals Service as it deals with significant increases in prisoner population," Mr. Fine said. "However, our review found that the [service] needs to improve its management of prisoner medical care."
U.S. Marshal Benigno Reyna said in a letter to Mr. Fine that the number of prisoners his agency handles annually has increased by 53 percent since 1999, adding that although he agreed that prisoner health care is a high priority, "increases in workload make this problematic" unless Congress approves requested staff increases. Mr. Reyna said the service was developing a national managed care plan that will resolve many of the issues raised by the inspector general.
The 103-page report noted that the Marshals Service currently provides medical care to about 40,000 federal prisoners at local jails, contract facilities and at U.S. Bureau of Prisons detention centers. It said the prisoners remain in the service's custody throughout the trial process, which can run from several days to several years.
Last year, the report said, the service spent $43 million on outside medical services for prisoners, including $36 million for health care and $7 million in related guard costs. In addition, to the costs, the report cited what it called associated risks: the possibility of escape; death or injury to a bystander, a law-enforcement official or the prisoner; and exposure of the general public to possibly infectious diseases.
Mr. Fine said investigators found the service often ignored essential internal controls and procedures at its district offices that were designed to ensure that basic and emergency health care was administered properly and that necessary outside medical care was efficiently and safely provided.
Marshals Service district offices are located in Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Washington, D.C.
The report said the service did not adequately track and monitor communicable diseases among its prisoners, such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and HIV/AIDS; and failed to properly manage contract guards who transported prisoners to and from health care facilities, meaning it could not effectively control risks to the public when prisoners were transported to off-site facilities.
The report also said the service failed to ensure that federal prisoners housed in local detention facilities received proper health care, and it did not follow financial-control procedures established to guarantee that outside medical payments were legitimate, necessary, accurate or at the lowest cost.
-------- terrorism
FBI Releases Details Of Letter With Ricin Sent to White House
Postmark Was Weeks Before Discovery
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A578-2004Feb23.html
A letter containing ricin poison that was sent to the White House last fall threatened to "turn D.C. into a ghost town" and was postmarked in Tennessee three weeks before the Secret Service discovered it, the FBI said yesterday.
Officials also disclosed that the ricin powder found in the envelope was loosely sprinkled on the letter rather than contained in a vial, as it had been in a related case. The letter was one of two signed by "Fallen Angel," who complained about trucking regulations that require more rest periods for long-haul truckers.
Officials said the envelope was postmarked Oct. 17 in Chattanooga and received Nov. 6 at an off-site facility that processes mail addressed to the White House, and that Secret Service employees discovered it that day. Addressed by hand to "The White House," it contained a typewritten letter addressed to the "Department of transportation," according to a copy released by the FBI.
"If you change the hours of service on January 4, 2004 I will turn D.C into a ghost town," the letter read. "The powder on the letter is RICIN have a nice day Fallen Angel."
Laboratory tests confirmed that the powder in the envelope was ricin, a poison made from castor beans, federal officials said.
The information the FBI released yesterday casts new light on simultaneous probes into the two ricin letters and, to a lesser extent, into the discovery of a small amount of ricin Feb. 2 on a mail-opening machine in an office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). Investigators have not found a letter or envelope in connection with the discovery in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, and authorities said yesterday that they have found no direct evidence linking that case with the letters.
In addition to the letter sent to the White House, "Fallen Angel" signed another typewritten letter that was addressed to the Department of Transportation and found Oct. 15 at an airport mail facility in Greenville, S.C. The envelope included a metal vial that contained ricin and similar complaints about trucking regulations.
In its news release yesterday, the FBI formally extended a $100,000 reward to include either of the letters. The White House ricin mailing had been kept secret until after the Frist discovery, and the FBI had not officially acknowledged its existence until yesterday.
Postal and law enforcement officials yesterday had no detailed explanation why 20 days elapsed between the day the White House letter was postmarked and the day the processing facility received it.
A copy of the envelope released yesterday indicates that the Zip code on the letter was wrong, which would likely have led to some delay, postal officials said. Mail sent to the White House is also processed through an irradiation facility in New Jersey before it is passed on to the off-site mail facility, which is run by the Secret Service, the officials said.
Secret Service spokeswoman Ann Roman said her agency discovered the letter the day it was received, Nov. 6. Secret Service officials previously acknowledged waiting six days after that to alert the FBI and other federal agencies to the ricin mailing, and they have implemented new procedures to avoid other such delays.
Many lawmakers have complained about the decision to keep the case quiet. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Government Reform, criticized what he called "the administration's obsession with secrecy."
"It took the administration a week to inform the Postal Service about the ricin letter, nearly three months to tell the public, and another three weeks to disclose detailed information about the letter," Waxman said in a statement. "These delays arouse suspicions rather than reassure the public."
No illnesses have been identified in connection with the mailings, authorities said.
Tom O'Neill, a spokesman for the FBI field office in Columbia, S.C., said the writing on the White House envelope is the only handwriting evidence from the mailings. "We want to help generate some leads and make sure the information that was out there was accurate," O'Neill said.
FBI agents have focused largely on the trucking industry in their investigation, and they have issued subpoenas for the work records of nine truck drivers employed by a Little Rock company that transports mail for the Postal Service. Eight of the truckers at Mail Contractors of America Inc. make deliveries to a facility near Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport, where the vial of ricin was discovered in October, and the ninth is a former employee.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Fuel Cell Generates Energy From Cleaning Wastewater
STATE COLLEGE, Pennsylvania, (ENS)
February 24, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2004/2004-02-24-09.asp#anchor8
Environmental engineers have shown that a microbial fuel cell can generate electricity while simultaneously cleaning the wastewater that you flush down the drain or toilet.
The Penn State engineers credited with the development say they have produced between 10 and 50 milliWatts of power per square meter of electrode surface - or about five percent of the amount needed to run one mini-Christmas tree light - while removing up to 78 percent of organic matter.
Microbial fuel cells may represent a completely new approach to wastewater treatment, according to Dr. Bruce Logan, a Penn State professor of environmental engineering and director of the project.
"If power generation in these systems can be increased, [microbial fuel cell] technology may provide a new method to offset wastewater treatment plant operating costs, making advanced wastewater treatment more affordable for both developing and industrialized nations," Logan said.
Other researchers have shown that microbial fuel cells can be used to produce electricity from water containing pure chemicals including glucose, acetate or lactate.
But the Penn State researchers are the only ones to demonstrate that microbial fuel cells can produce electricity directly from wastewater skimmed from the settling pond of a treatment plant.
The researchers explain that microbial fuel cells work through the action of bacteria, which can pass electrons to an anode, the negative electrode of a fuel cell.
The electrons flow from the anode through a wire, producing a current, to a fuel cell cathode where they combine with hydrogen ions and oxygen to form water.
Logan notes that in microbial fuel cells currently under investigation in other laboratories, various kinds of bacteria are typically added to the system.
But for the Penn State model, no special bacteria are added. The naturally occurring bacteria in wastewater drive power production via a reaction that allows them to transport electrons from the cell surface to the anode.
In addition, the oxidation that occurs in the interior of the bacterial cell lowers the biochemical oxygen demand, cleaning the water.
The current Penn State microbial fuel cell is about six inches long and 2.5 inches in diameter.
It contains eight graphite anodes that supply about 36 square inches of surface area to which the bacteria can adhere and pass electrons.
"I am optimistic that microbial fuel cells may be able to help reduce the $25 billion annual cost of wastewater treatment in the U.S. and provide access to sanitation technologies to countries throughout the world," Logan said.
The project is described in a paper, "Production of Electricity During Wastewater Treatment Using a Single Chamber Microbial Fuel Cell," released online and slated for a future issue of "Environmental Science and Technology."
-------- energy
Energy debate keeps going, and going
February 24, 2004
Washington Times
Letters to the Editor
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040223-083824-5800r.htm
The current energy legislative environment fails to promote real infrastructure investment, which is critically needed, as we have seen in the electrical system failures of the past several years ("Wanted: an energy bill," Editorials, Wednesday).
The previous incarnation of the current energy bill, which failed in the last Congress, had loan guarantees to speed the construction of the next generation of nuclear plants. Without new power plants, we will have inadequate power supplies and be forced to keep old, polluting coal-burning plants limping along for decades more and also be dependent on high-cost gas-fired plants.
There are no incentives in the current economic structure of our electrical system for building transmission facilities, yet these are critically needed. No utility makes money selling transmission; they sell electricity. Without both real reform supporting electrical transmission and a new spurt of construction of major emission-free power plants, we will have neither the power and environment we need, nor a means for reliably delivering it.
JAMES S. TULENKO
Director Laboratory for Development of Advanced Nuclear Fuels and Materials
University of Florida Gainesville
•
The current energy bill is a disappointing, pale shadow of the original Senate bill, which, though full of pork, did have important infrastructure provisions that failed to be preserved. This economy is driven by electricity, and the two biggest sources are coal and nuclear power. Decades of subsidies, grants and other giveaways have not made alternative energy sources very attractive, and even windmills cannot compete with coal or nuclear power. We need to wake up to that fact and move to support the next generation of these major domestic sources.
While the current bill provides some help for "clean coal," it does little to promote new construction. Worse, the loan guarantees that were to jump-start the next generation of safe, more economical nuclear plants are gone. The United States cannot bet its future on the status quo or on future technologies that may or may not work. We need an energy bill that promotes a healthy economy, and this is not it.
SHELDON LANDSBERGER
Director Nuclear Engineering Teaching Lab
University of Texas at AustinTel: (512) 232-2467
--------
Five power companies commit to clean energy and limits on CO2
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
By GreenBiz.com
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-02-24/s_13263.asp
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Five electric power companies from across the U.S. have answered a challenge from World Wildlife Fund to become the first U.S. power companies to support a mandatory cap on heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions and confirm their commitment to clean energy.
"These commitments demonstrate that innovative electric companies can make the switch to clean energy and reduce heat-trapping CO2 emissions. Now energy companies and WWF are calling on the U.S. Congress to limit carbon dioxide pollution," said Ginette Hemley, managing vice president of World Wildlife Fund. "The survival of over a million species and many of the world's most biologically rich natural areas may hang in the balance, depending on whether we act responsibly now or continue to ignore global warming."
The five companies - Austin Energy, Burlington Electric Department, FPL Group, Inc., Sacramento Municipal Utility District, and Waverly Light and Power - and WWF are pioneering a way to revolutionize the CO2-intensive electric power industry. The power sector that has relied heavily on fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, is responsible for 37% of all man-made CO2 emissions worldwide - the main heat-trapping gas associated with global warming - now has the opportunity to become part of the solution to global warming.
"FPL Group is delighted to join today with WWF to take another step toward real improvements for our environment while preserving the economic viability of the U.S. economy," said Randy LaBauve, vice president, Environmental Services, FPL Group, Inc. "The WWF PowerSwitch! initiative today is about choices - responsibility...reliability...and results. Quite simply, it's the right thing to do."
By switching to clean renewable energy and increasing energy efficiency through innovative technologies and processes, each of these five power companies will significantly reduce their heat-trapping CO2 emissions and demonstrate how the whole U.S. power sector can help protect our living planet from global warming by following suit.
"Reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions has long been important to the people of Burlington," said Barbara Grimes, Burlington Electric Department's general manager. "We have a fairly clean power supply, and we have been running effective energy efficiency programs for years. But we know even we can do better, and we plan to. BED is thrilled to be part of WWF's PowerSwitch! program."
The WWF PowerSwitch! Challenge is for power companies to support binding limits on national CO2 emissions; and undertake one or more of the following action targets: renewables as the source for 20% of their electricity sold by 2020, or increase energy efficiency by 15% by 2020, or retire the least efficient half of coal generation by 2020. Under commitments to WWF, renewable sources of energy may include solar, wind, sustainably harvested biomass, low-impact small-scale hydropower, geothermal, and methane recovery from landfills or farms. Energy efficiency efforts may include such innovative approaches as improving energy efficiency in power production, upgrading distribution technologies, transmission optimization efforts, or reducing overall demand from customers in a service territory as part of a strategy to diminish the need for new electricity generation capacity.
Among these five power companies representing different geographical areas of the United States, each power company has chosen at least one action target in addition to supporting an emissions cap. Austin Energy committed to generating 20% of the electricity it sells from renewable sources of energy and increasing energy efficiency by 15% by 2020. Burlington Electric Department committed to generating 20% of the electricity it sells from renewable sources of power and increasing its energy efficiency by 15% by 2020. FPL Group, Inc., committed to increasing energy efficiency through its continued promotion of demand side management projects and improving energy efficiency by 15% in its power generation facilities. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District committed to generating 20% of the electricity it sells from renewable sources of energy. Waverly Light and Power of Iowa committed to increasing its energy efficiency by 15% by 2020.
-------- genetics
Genetically Engineered DNA Found in Traditional U.S. Crops
By J.R. Pegg
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
February 24, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2004/2004-02-24-10.asp
Scientists have found DNA from genetically engineered crops in traditional varieties of three major U.S. food crops that have no history of genetic engineering. The study released Monday by the Union of Concerned Scientists suggests this contamination is pervasive and the U.S. based research group warns that regulators are failing to address an issue that could have stark economic, environmental and public health consequences.
"This study shatters the presumption that at least one portion of the seed supply - that for traditional varieties of crops - is truly free of genetically engineered elements," said Dr. Margaret Mellon, a microbiologist with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and lead author of the new study.
"There is no reason to believe that the contamination of the seed supply is limited to what we found," Mellon said. "The door to the seed supply is wide open."
The research group purchased six traditional varieties of canola, corn and soybeans from commercial distributors and sent the seeds for testing at two independent commercial laboratories.
The labs tested for specific sequences of DNA that have been introduced by genetic engineering, varieties that are currently grown on U.S. farms. More than a third of corn grown in the United States is genetically engineered. (Photo courtesy Monsanto) One lab detected DNA in half of the corn and soybean varieties and in all six of the canola varieties tested. The second lab found the sequences in five of the six varieties of all three crops.
"Contamination appears not to be sporadic, but rather pervasive across the seed supplies for these crops," Mellon said.
The researchers acknowledge that their study is too limited to provide a reliable estimate of the levels of contamination across the entire U.S. seed supply, but say the study suggests a range of 0.05 percent to one percent genetically modified seeds in those tested.
But even those low levels could translate into hundreds of tons of contaminated corn and soybean seeds inadvertently planted on U.S. farms, according to Dr. Jane Rissler, a UCS plant pathologist and coauthor of the report.
"We must confront the reality of seed contamination now," said Rissler, who noted that most of the specific DNA sequences tested for in the study are found in popular genetically engineered varieties currently on the U.S. market.
These varieties have primarily been modified for pesticide resistance, but the labs were unable to test for a slew of other biotech crops - including plants modified for industrial or pharmaceutical purposes - that have been the subject of field trials in the United States.
Those future genetically engineered crops could pose much more serious health concerns.
"Until we know otherwise, it is prudent to assume that engineered sequences originating in any crop, whether it was approved and planted commercially or just field tested, could potentially contaminate the seed supply," Rissler said. "Among the potential contaminants are genes from crops engineered to produce drugs, plastics, and vaccines."
Rissler said the contamination likely occurred either through cross-pollination or physical mixing. U.S. regulators require buffers between genetically engineered and traditional crops, but critics say these are insufficient to prevent contamination.
The Union of Concerned Scientists warns that seed contamination, if left unchecked, could disrupt agricultural trade, unfairly burden the organic agricultural industry, and allow hazardous materials into the food supply.
Evidence of seed contamination could make it more difficult for U.S. exporters to assure Japan, South Korea, the European Union, and other export customers that grain and oilseed shipments do not contain unapproved genetically engineered crop varieties and to supply commodity products free of engineered sequences.
The reports call on U.S. regulators to launch a widespread study of seed contamination, tighten rules on biotech crops to address the concern and to set aside a reservoir of traditional seeds free from the DNA of genetically engineered crops.
"We need to acknowledge and confront the problem. This is a problem that will hurt the United States economically and could threaten our health," Mellon said. "No one wants drugs or plastics in our corn flakes."
Mellow did not have an estimate for how much it might cost the U.S. Department of Agriculture to conduct a widespread survey for seed contamination, but told reporters, "the costs of not doing it are going to be far greater than doing it."
The report comes as negotiators from some 86 nations and the European Union are meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at the first official conference of the parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.
The meeting began Sunday and will last through February 27.
Adopted in January 2000 as a supplementary agreement to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, the protocol is designed to protect biological diversity from the potential risks that may be posed by genetically modified organisms.
The nations that have signed onto the protocol are wrestling with issues of shipment labeling, liability, compliance and capacity building for those countries without the resources to develop their own regulatory regimes for biotech crops.
The United States, which produces about two-thirds of the world's biotech crops, pulled out of negotiations on the Cartagena Protocol in 1999, under the Clinton administration.
Some 34 percent of U.S. corn and 75 percent of U.S. soybeans are genetically modified and the United States is embroiled in a bitter dispute with the European Union over the biotech crops issue.
The EU has refused to grant import licenses for biotech crops since October 1998 because many Europeans are worried about possible health and environmental risks. Prior to October 1998 the EU had approved nine agriculture biotech products for planting or import.
The EU is moving forward with legislation on traceability and labeling, two issues that have irked Bush administration officials and some supporters of biotech foods who believe these requirements would scare consumers and result in higher food costs for consumers and producers.
----
Engineered DNA Found in Crop Seeds
Tests Show U.S. Failure to Block Contamination From Gene-Altered Varieties
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A486-2004Feb23?language=printer
Much of the U.S. supply of ordinary crop seeds has become contaminated with strands of engineered DNA, suggesting that current methods for segregating gene-altered seed plants from traditional varieties are failing, according to a pilot study released yesterday.
More than two-thirds of 36 conventional corn, soy and canola seed batches contained traces of DNA from genetically engineered crop varieties in lab tests commissioned by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based advocacy group.
The actual amount of foreign DNA present in U.S. seeds appears to be small, and most engineered genes getting into the seed supply are among those that regulators have deemed safe for consumption, the report acknowledges.
But if federal rules and farm practices are not tightened, it concludes, the United States may soon find it impossible to guarantee that any portion of its food supply is free of gene-altered elements, a situation that could seriously disrupt the export of U.S. foods, seeds and oils. Many believe it could also gravely harm the domestic market for organic food -- one of the fastest-growing and more lucrative segments of U.S. agriculture.
And with a growing number of crop varieties now being engineered to produce not just agricultural chemicals, but also potent pharmaceutical and industrial products in their leaves and stems, future incidents of cross-contamination may pose even more serious health and economic risks, the report warns.
"No one wants drugs or plastics in our cornflakes," said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental and health group that has taken a skeptical stance toward agricultural biotechnology but is generally respected by experts for hewing to science. "Left unchecked, this is a problem that will hurt the U.S. economically, and perhaps even affect our health."
The 70-page report, "Gone to Seed," recommends that the agriculture department conduct a thorough assessment of the extent of genetic contamination of the U.S. seed industry.
The report also calls for tighter restrictions on the outdoor planting of crops engineered to make drugs and industrial products. It suggests that reservoirs of still-pure seed stocks for major crops be set aside immediately as an "insurance policy" in case gene-altered varieties prove to be environmentally or medically harmful.
Industry officials said the findings were predictable.
"We were not surprised by this report . . . knowing that pollen travels and commodity grains might commingle at various places and you may have some mixing in transport or storage," said Lisa Dry, communications director for the Biotechnology Industry Association.
Rather than pursue the unrealistic goal of trying to keep seeds completely free of genetic contaminants, she and other industry representatives said, the United States should work harder to get European and other nations -- many of which have balked at engineered crops and foods -- to be more accepting of the technology.
"It's important for countries around the world to adopt a uniform standard" of acceptable levels of contamination, Dry said.
Dick Crowder, president of the Alexandria-based American Seed Trade Association, agreed, saying he believes U.S. regulators are doing an adequate job of keeping the food supply safe.
The Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture have been developing standards to keep unwanted engineered products out of the food supply. Spokesmen from both agencies said yesterday they would review the report.
Whatever their significance, the findings indicate a remarkable degree of inadvertent DNA redistribution since American farmers started growing genetically engineered crops on a commercial scale eight years ago. Most of the varieties in use today have either a bacterial gene that helps the plant fight insect pests or a gene that makes the crop resistant to a popular weedkiller.
Hundreds of other varieties are in testing. The group could not search for many of those possible contaminants, because more than half of their DNA sequences are trade secrets.
Engineered crops remain highly restricted in Japan, Europe and other regions of the world, but they have become popular with American farmers and accepted by most U.S. consumers. In recent years, about 80 percent of all soy grown in this country has been genetically engineered, as is most canola and about 40 percent of all corn.
Non-engineered products are generally mixed with engineered varieties, except when they are aimed at certain foreign or specialty markets. But plants that are grown specifically to replenish the nation's supply of conventional seeds are carefully segregated to retain their purity and are used to produce "certified" commercial grade seed.
Mellon's group bought certified soy, corn and canola seeds and had six popular varieties of each tested for contaminating DNA sequences at two different laboratories that specialize in such tests -- GeneScan USA of Belle Chasse, La., and Biogenetic Services of Brookings, S.D.
The first lab found engineered DNA in half the corn and soy varieties and in all six of the canola. The second lab, which was given larger amounts with which to work, got positive results on five of six varieties for all three crops.
The molecular test used, known as PCR, is extremely sensitive and is a standard workhorse of molecular biology today, though its use in plant materials is still being perfected. Although PCR does not do a good job of estimating amounts, the scientists estimated that probably 0.05 percent to 1 percent of each batch's total DNA was engineered DNA.
It remains unclear to what extent the contamination is biological -- the result of pollen spread in the field -- or mechanical, from inadvertent commingling of conventional seeds with engineered seeds in farm equipment or in storage areas, Mellon said.
-------- health
UN Disease Early Warning System Proves Its Worth
Story by Stephanie Nebehay
REUTERS SWITZERLAND:
February 24, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23962/newsDate/24-Feb-2004/story.htm
GENEVA - When Sudanese refugees reported that people were dying of a disease that caused fever and bleeding, alarm bells rang within hours at the World Health Organization (WHO) in far away Geneva.
The tip-off was relayed to relief agencies in southern Sudan, whose radio alert was picked up by Norwegian Church Aid. Aid workers confirmed cases of patients vomiting blood - symptoms similar to the deadly Ebola illness.
WHO arranged for technicians from the Kenyan Medical Research Institute to fly to the remote mountain area and collect blood samples from victims.
Just 72 hours after the initial alert, WHO had confirmed that the outbreak was yellow fever - still lethal but not as deadly as Ebola - and taken steps to mount a vaccination campaign.
"Even in an area without government, if you have the networks in place, the ways of cross-referencing your information and then capacity to investigate rapidly, you can put a whole package together," said Dr Mike Ryan, head of WHO's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN).
Since it was set up in April 2000, the unit has become the operational nerve center for global disease control in an era marked by new viruses and unprecedented travel.
Classic threats from cholera to plague, and new deadly viruses like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and avian flu, which have both crossed the species barriers from animals to humans, should flash up first on its round-the-clock radar screen.
Every morning GOARN experts gather to sift through media reports, Web sites, laboratory results or just plain rumors which point to potential health emergencies.
The unit, which employs 39 people at WHO headquarters in Geneva, could also be crucial to containing any disease outbreak provoked by terrorists unleashing toxic biological agents.
This would be the case if any such attack were launched in a poorer country where official systems of disease detection were not well developed.
"SARS proved how rapidly we could get information, verified evidence-based information out to the world on these outbreaks," Ryan said.
TAPPING NETWORKS Through its network of institutions and laboratories - including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Institut Pasteur and South Africa's National Institute for Virology - the unit identifies experts and sends them to health hotspots.
Last year it coordinated the response to SARS - battling China's initial reluctance to admit the extent of the threat.
The disease erupted onto the world scene in February 2003, some months after it made its first appearance in the Chinese province of Guangdong. It eventually killed nearly 800 people, mostly in Asia.
The network deployed some 50 experts across Asia to grapple with the avian flu virus amid fears of a global pandemic.
"SARS was the real test. That pushed all of us to the limits of human endurance, throughout the organization," Ryan said.
"But we learned a tremendous amount. We're hardened frontline troops in the world of international disease control now. And we are doing it a lot better this time."
The global roster of experts on stand-by includes epidemiologists, experts in case management, intensive care and laboratory training. Medical anthropologists have been deployed in Ebola outbreaks in Gabon and elsewhere.
WHO's 192 member states - taking advantage of a single, coordinated response unit - have stepped up reporting of epidemics and requests for technical aid, according to Ryan.
"That is not the same as admitting that you are incapable of dealing with the problem. What you are able to do is say 'we are dealing with the problem and we're transparent and realistic enough to know that we need help,"' he said.
ZONES OF EMERGENCE
More research is needed on "zones of emergence" of new infectious diseases, such as the central African rain forest and the Mekong Delta to southern China region, where people live in close contact with animals, according to Ryan.
When conflict erupts, prompting large population movements and the collapse of health care, such areas of huge biodiversity become breeding grounds for disease. "That is why we pay particular attention to places like Congo and Sudan. Because things can grow to a crisis level before the warning bells go off," Ryan said.
"But clearly you can see from likes of avian flu and SARS that even with good public health systems it is not very easy to prevent these diseases emerging as human health threats."
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Fatal Bird Flu Diagnosed in Texas Flock
Reuters
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A531-2004Feb23.html
A Texas chicken flock was diagnosed with an "extremely infectious and fatal" form of bird flu yesterday, and federal health officials began monitoring area farmworkers as a precaution against the first U.S. outbreak of a severe form of the disease in 20 years.
Although the strain in Texas was considered a low health threat to humans and different from the one blamed for the recent deaths of at least 22 people in Asia, officials could not rule out a risk.
Federal health experts acted after weekend tests showed the Texas flock had a more virulent flu virus, known as H5N2, than a mild strain found this month in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey.
"Past experience with H5N2 viruses has indicated there is a low threat to public health," Nancy Cox of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters.
She said there were no known cases of the strain infecting humans, but added: "Nevertheless, as we move forward with this situation, we must keep an open mind and really monitor the situation as we go."
U.S. animal health experts said consumers should not be concerned as bird flu cannot spread by eating poultry. Mild heating kills the virus.
The Agriculture Department classified the flu strain found in Gonzales County, Texas, about 50 miles east of San Antonio, as "highly pathogenic" to poultry and said it was "extremely infectious and fatal" to chickens.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Hearing on West Bank Wall Draws Demonstrators
February 24, 2004
By GREGORY CROUCH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/international/middleeast/24COUR.html
THE HAGUE, Feb. 23 - An international court opened a hearing on Monday about the Israeli barrier being built in and around the West Bank, as pro-Palestinian demonstrators here voiced encouragement in front of worried supporters of Israel.
In a three-hour presentation to the International Court of Justice, the Palestinian Authority argued that the partly built barrier of ditches, watchposts and concrete walls was a violation of international law and an attempt to annex Palestinian land.
Israel dismissed the assertions, saying the barrier was a necessary bulwark against suicide bombers and fell within the legal definition of self-defense. "Alongside the quality of life of Palestinians, we have to weigh the right to life for Israelis," Daniel Taub, an Israeli government legal adviser, said in an interview here. "And what we have to do is find the appropriate balance between the two."
But Nasser al-Kidwa, the head of the Palestinian observer mission to the United Nations, who made the opening remarks to the court, said the barrier was blocking any chance for a better future. "If completed, it will wall in most of the Palestinian people and will end the possibility of a two-state solution and thus end the chance of peace in the region," Mr. Kidwa said in an interview after the Palestinian presentation.
The legal proceedings topped an emotional day in which Palestinian and Israeli organizations carried out silent marches and noisy demonstrations here to gain ground in the court of public opinion.
Press photographers jostled to board the burned wreckage of a Jerusalem passenger bus flown in as a backdrop for the demonstrations. An El Al luggage tag was still affixed to the bus's bent and scarred frame.
Pro-Israeli organizations staged a silent march featuring photographs of nearly 1,000 victims of terrorism-related acts, including Rachel Koren Galran's husband and two sons.
All three were killed nearly two years ago in the suicide bombing of a Haifa restaurant. "I'm here today to scream my pain to the world," said Ms. Galran, 50, adding that a barrier back then might have saved her family. "If we can make peace, we can remove it," she said.
Pro-Palestinian organizations came together at the courthouse in the afternoon for their own rally, shouting along the way, "This wall must fall!"
The barrier has cut off a number of Palestinians from their farms and families. "This wall is the incarnation, the embodiment, of racism and apartheid," Azmi Bishara, an Arab member of the Israeli Parliament, told a crowd of more than a thousand. "Get rid of this wall."
The World Court is to continue its hearing for another two days.
The United Nations General Assembly has asked the court for a nonbinding, advisory opinion about the legal consequences of the barrier's construction.
Israel has filed a written brief to the court but will not appear before it, contending that the court lacks jurisdiction to rule in the matter.
"The court has been asked to pass judgment on a country's response to terrorism but not on the terrorists themselves," Mr. Taub said.
Signs that the proceedings were causing a stir in the Middle East were abundant. In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, thousands of Palestinians demonstrated against the barrier, and Israeli troops pushed back crowds in several areas with tear gas and rubber bullets.
In Jerusalem, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli finance minister and former prime minister, told a conference that the "Palestinian terror regimes," not Israel, should be on trial in The Hague.
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