Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
All air passengers to be screened for radioactivity
Senators Complain About Pakistan Scientist
Iran's top nuclear negotiator hopes for cooperation with India
Iran denies train explosion involved nuclear materials
Iran Official Disputes U.N. Nuclear Report
Showdown on Iran
Iraq to reopen nuclear site by end of next month: minister
Ex-Weapons Inspector Comments on Iraq War
Ex - Weapons Inspector Comments on Iraq War
Israeli nuclear arsenal a mystery to UN
Israeli Nuke Whistleblower Eyes Release
Powell Says Korea Nuke Talks Positive, Encouraging
N. Korea Repeats Uranium Denial
North Korea nuclear talks "promising": Powell
N. Korea Says U.S. Stalling Nuclear Talks
N. Korea Proposes Stopping Nuke Activities
N.Korea Offers Nuclear Plan, U.S. Sees Progress
Missile Defense: The Dangers and Lack of Realism
Russia Says Different Views on Nuclear Plants
Official says U.S. reconsidering nuke talks
Expert: Yankee too old for uprate
Wider Investigation Sought at Hanford Nuclear Site
Waste Cleanup May Have Human Price
Abraham Vows to Probe Hanford Allegations
9/11 panelist may quit over Bush secrecy
White House's limits upset 9/11 panel
Perle Resigns
Twilight of the Neocons
Senate plans secret session on Iraq
Dwight D. Eisenhower: The Wisdom of a Patriot
Bush Adviser Leaves Defense Policy Board
MILITARY
Afghan President Says Taliban Defeated
U.S. eyes terrorism networks, oil in Africa
West African defence chiefs meet on regional security
Bush seeks protection for gun dealers
Macedonian President Killed in Bosnia Plane Crash
Libya to Destroy Chemical Weapons from Friday
Denmark orders probe into leaks of secret pre-Iraq war reports
Haitian Rebels Eye Capital
Rebel Leader Says Fighters Are Converging on Haiti Capital
Bush warns Haitians not to flee to U.S.
Iraqi Cleric Calls for Elections by Year's End
2 Palestinians Killed During Protests of West Bank Barrier
U.S. Urges Israel to Work With Arabs in Any Pullout
Israelis Launch Raids on Palestinian Banks
Raids yield millions from Ramallah banks
The untold story of the great land grab
LIBYA DEVELOPS 800-KM SCUD C
NATO Chief Wants UN Resolution on Iraq Before July
US 'may hold cleared detainees'
Spy case casts fresh doubt on war legality
Britain, Citing Terrorist Threat, Plans to Expand Its Spy Agency
British Whistle-Blower Avoids Charges
Spy agency forced to make reforms
Ex-Minister Says British Spies Bugged Kofi Annan's Office
Mix of Chemicals Plus Stress Damages Brain
Rapes Reported by Servicewomen in the Persian Gulf and Elsewhere
Military Scolded on Assaults
Servicewomen cite 112 sexual assaults in 2 years
Bush Backs New Terrorism TV Series
Press Watch - Floating With the Tide
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Bush to Limit Testimony Before 9/11 Panel
Hastert Still Against Giving 9/11 Panel More Time
Report: Navy Drug Probe Leads to Charges
Personnel Changes at DHS Draw Skepticism
Homeland Security plans to secure communications
U.S. Report Criticizes Russia on Human Rights
U.S. human rights report criticizes friends, foes
State Department Reports Paint Dismal Human Rights Picture
F.B.I. Agents Took Mementos From Rubble of Twin Towers
Second Canadian Details Torture in Syrian Prison
ENERGY
UK wind power industry says set for rapid growth
Report Disputes U.S. High School Graduation Rates
OTHER
Ship Leaks Pesticide Off South Carolina Coast
Civilian, Military Agencies Partner to Manage Resources
Pentagon Study Looks at Global Climate
Cell Protein Gives Monkeys Innate Immunity to H.I.V., Researchers Discover
Bar Codes Favored to Cut Hospitals' Drug Errors
D.C. Assailed for 25-Day Delay in Acting
Protein resistant to AIDS discovered
ACTIVISTS
The Whos down in Whoville
Antiwar Quotes
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
All air passengers to be screened for radioactivity
By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
26 February 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=495158
All passengers, parcels and freight entering Britain will be screened for radioactivity to prevent terrorists smuggling weapons of mass destruction into the country, Jack Straw announced yesterday.
The Foreign Secretary said the Government had started screening traffic in British waters and airspace for radioactive materials and confirmed: "This will eventually cover all air, sea and Channel Tunnel traffic - passengers, parcels, vehicles, freight and containers."
He also announced plans to allow merchant ships suspected of carrying WMD to be boarded and said the Government was working to establish a new international offence of transporting WMD on commercial vessels.
In a written statement to MPs Mr Straw said the international community should consider a ban on nuclear fuel enrichment and processing activities by any nation found to have breached the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"Countering proliferation remains as important today as it ever was," he said. "The part our intelligence services play in it is vital. We and they can be proud of what we have achieved over the past year. But we cannot let up. There is much work still to do. The proposals I have outlined are designed to assist that."
He said Britain hoped to negotiate agreements with the 10 major flag states for commercial shipping to allow suspect vessels to be boarded. Mr Straw proposed that ships and planes of any country found to have transported illegal WMD might be denied landing and port rights worldwide and said an international register could be created of companies and individuals convicted of proliferation offences.
Mr Straw proposed banning states which fail to comply with agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency over reprocessing and enriching fuel.
His comments came just weeks after the scientist who led Pakistan's nuclear programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan, confessed to leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
The Foreign Secretary said the UK had worked with the US to counter Dr Khan's network.
Customs officials are installing permanent screening machines at ports and airports to detect radioactive material being smuggled into the country after a three-month trial of the equipment at Dover, Felixstowe and Portsmouth. Mobile scanners capable of detecting radiation are also planned.
Mr Straw backed the prospect of a UN Security Council resolution calling on states to pass tough new laws outlawing the possession or manufacture of WMD and develop strong export controls. He also called for the establishment of a UN counter-proliferation committee to monitor progress.
A global partnership against the spread of WMD was established at last year's G8 summit when leaders of the world's wealthiest industrialised nations agreed to help destroy chemical stocks and decommission nuclear submarines in Russia.
Similar programmes have been established to cover Libya and Iraq and Mr Straw appealed to more countries to donate towards a $20bn (£10.7) fund for decommissioning and anti-proliferation work worldwide.
-------- india / pakistan
Senators Complain About Pakistan Scientist
February 26, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Pakistan.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senators complained to Secretary of State Colin Powell Thursday about Pakistan's decision not to punish ``the worst proliferator ever,'' nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
``We have a guy in Pakistan that 10 years ago, if you would have found him selling that stuff, you'd have hung him in the marketplace,'' said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.
Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, was pardoned by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf after confessing to leaking nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Calling Khan ``the worst proliferator ever,'' Domenici made his comments as Powell testified before the Senate Budget Committee on his department's 2005 budget request.
The committee chairman, Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., also asked Powell about Khan.
``I don't see him being punished and I'm concerned,'' Nickles said. ``This one individual, and maybe his collaboration of scientists, evidently were spreading nuclear secrets throughout the world. It looks like he's getting off scot-free. And I am interested in your comment on that.''
Powell defended Musharraf's decision and said the United States is getting much information from Khan as part of the conditional pardon.
``As you know, senator, he was seen as a national hero in Pakistan,'' Powell told Nickles. ``I think (Musharraf) took a bold step, the right step to uncover it all and not hide from the reality of what A.Q. Khan had done.''
``And it's important to note that the amnesty he was given is a conditional one, meaning he has to meet conditions of the amnesty, which means full and open disclosure, and we're learning a lot from that,'' Powell said.
U.S. officials have said the pardon is an internal Pakistani matter, but the deal was criticized by others, including David Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq.
-------- iran
Iran's top nuclear negotiator hopes for cooperation with India
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Feb 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040226160952.xtps1vlj.html
Iran's top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani said Thursday he hoped India's "positive cooperation" would continue with Tehran on its nuclear programme, currently under international scrutiny.
"The two Indian representatives at the International Atomic Energy Agency have have always shown positive cooperation with Iran," Rowhani told reporters here after a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
"India's activities have always followed the tradition of NAM (Non Aligned Movement) and I hope this will continue," he added.
India has been the leader of the Non Aligned Movement, dating back to the days after its 1947 independence from British rule when it decided to pursue the policy of remaining neutral and not ally with superpowers.
The United States and Israel accuse Iran of using a nuclear energy programme as a cover for a secret bid to produce nuclear arms, a charge the Islamic republic fiercely denies.
In November the International Atomic Energy Agency condemned Tehran for 18 years of covert nuclear activities, although a report said there was no clear evidence Iran had been developing nuclear arms.
Rowhani said his country's nuclear programme had always been for peaceful purposes and would remain so.
----
Iran denies train explosion involved nuclear materials
TEHRAN (AFP)
Feb 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040226151012.e8y5v1dl.html
An Iranian official Thursday denied rumours that rail wagons involved in a freak explosion in northeast Iran earlier this month which claimed hundreds of lives were carrying nuclear materials.
"Following the rumours on the presence of nuclear materials in the explosion of the train wagons in Neyshabour, two nuclear physics experts were sent to the site and, after investigation, did not find any nuclear materials present," Mohammad Maghdouri, vice governor general of Khorassan province for development affairs, told the state news agency IRNA.
Last Wednesday, a string of 51 wagons loaded with chemicals, fuel and fertiliser derailed and exploded at Khayyam station near Neyshabour, some 75 kilometres (50 miles) from the northeastern city of Mashhad.
According to a new toll from the provincial officials, 289 people were killed in the blast which had an estimated force of 180 tons of dynamite.
Transport Minister Ahmad Khoram has blamed either human error or the actions of a disgruntled employee for the tragedy.
The United States charges that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons and has called for the UN atomic watchdog to refer the Islamic republic to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
Iran says its nuclear program is strictly peaceful.
----
Iran Official Disputes U.N. Nuclear Report
February 26, 2004
NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/international/middleeast/26TEHR.html
TEHRAN, Feb. 25 - Iran's top national security official said Wednesday that Iran was not required to proclaim its nuclear research programs, including advanced centrifuges, which it was accused of concealing by the International Atomic Energy Agency this week.
The Iranian official, Hassan Rowhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, had agreed in a meeting with the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Britain last October to allow thorough inspections and full disclosure of Iran's nuclear sites, but he said there were certain aspects of the Iranian research program that it was not required to report.
The nuclear agency, a branch of the United Nations, said Tuesday that Iran had failed to report that it had designs for a sophisticated centrifuge for enriching uranium.
A spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, Hamid Reza Assefi, called the episode a misunderstanding.
"What was published in the agency's report was about an unfinished work 13 years ago on polonium," he said. "It is just a misunderstanding and it will soon be resolved."
----
Showdown on Iran
February 26, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040225-090226-7304r.htm
On March 8, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors will discuss Iran's efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The meeting will be an important test of the Bush administration's willingness to challenge efforts by Europe and the IAEA bureaucracy to delay what should be inevitable: referring the issue to the U.N. Security Council.
Since June, when the IAEA reported that Iran has been secretly working to develop nuclear weapons, Washington has worked to intensify the pressure on Tehran to come clean. In September, the IAEA announced it had set an Oct. 31 deadline for Iran to disprove the mounting body of evidence that it was developing nuclear weapons. Right before the deadline, Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment in exchange for European promises to provide peaceful nuclear technology. Then, on Nov. 10, IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei issued a 30-page report documenting Iran's deceptions about its nuclear program dating back to the 1980s. But Mr. ElBaradei's report concluded that "no evidence" of an Iranian nuclear weapons program had been found.
Two days later, the State Department's undersecretary for arms control, John Bolton, said that this conclusion "is simply impossible to believe ... In what can only be an attempt to build a capacity to develop nuclear materials for nuclear weapons, Iran has enriched uranium with both centrifuges and lasers, and produced and reprocessed plutonium." The United States, he added, "believes that the massive and covert Iranian capabilities make sense only as part of a nuclear weapons program." In early December, Mr. Bolton said that Iran has "deliberately and repeatedly lied to the IAEA" about its nuclear weapons programs.
Since then, evidence of Iranian cheating has mounted. Last fall, Iran reached an agreement with Britain, France and Germany to suspend its uranium-processing and enrichment activities. Unfortunately, the world was jolted back to reality last month, when Iran brazenly announced it was building centrifuges. Then, in just the latest in a long series of new revelations, IAEA inspectors announced that they found traces of polonium, a radioactive substance which can help trigger a nuclear chain reaction - another item which Iran failed to declare. The IAEA's findings are "very incriminating," said Robert Einhorn, a Clinton administration anti-proliferation specialist.
Secretary of State Colin Powell last week made a speech pointing to the sharp contrast between Libya's cooperation on dismantling its weapons of mass destruction and Iran's failure to be forthcoming with the IAEA. Yet on Monday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher suggested that Iran had not lied and that the information it had provided was "more or less correct" but "not complete."
Mr. Boucher is wrong to suggest that Iran is simply guilty of providing incomplete information. The problem, as Mr. Bolton has pointed out, is a systematic campaign of lies by Iran. It's time for the issue to be referred to the Security Council for further action.
-------- iraq / inspections
Iraq to reopen nuclear site by end of next month: minister
BAGHDAD (AFP)
Feb 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040226151842.cjbzypug.html
Iraqi authorities will reopen an old nuclear site near Baghdad at the end of March for "peaceful scientific" research purposes, Science and Technology Minister Rashad Mandan Omar said on Thursday.
"We are working to transform al-Tuwaitha into a peaceful scientific site to serve the Iraqis and to participate in research and studies on a global level," Omar told AFP.
"Work is well underway and, at the end of March, we will unveil the first renovated buildings," he said.
The minister estimated that the total cost of rebuilding the site, 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Baghdad, would be about 30 million dollars.
It would be carried out in two phases, but Omar was unable to say when the job would be completed.
"We hope to invite journalists and locals to the site this year to receive information on our latest scientific progress and to look at our laboratories and experiments," he said.
The old site, which comprised more than 100 buildings and was once the hub of nuclear research under ousted president Saddam Hussein, was bombed in 1981 by the Israelis who suspected that Iraq was making an atomic bomb.
UN weapons inspectors visited the site, which was then being used to produce pharmaceutical products, before the US-led invasion of Iraq in March
The area was looted after the collapse of Saddam's regime and UN experts revisited it in June to see whether radioactive material had disappeared.
----
Ex-Weapons Inspector Comments on Iraq War
Thursday February 26, 2004
By T.A. BADGER,
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3790939,00.html
SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said Wednesday that President Bush may have been selective about the facts he used to make the case for going to war with Iraq.
That's not necessarily to say, though, that intelligence about Iraqi weapons was misused by the Bush White House, Kay told an audience at Trinity University.
Kay said any American president in office during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks would have been deeply concerned about Saddam Hussein, and would have sought to make the most persuasive appeal that he could to the nation.
``Politicians don't go around picking their weakest arguments,'' Kay said. ``The real charge that deserves careful scrutiny is not whether you picked the best argument out, but whether you actually manipulated and were dishonest about the data.''
He added that he's seen no evidence that the Bush administration mischaracterized intelligence from Iraq, ``but it is such a serious charge that it deserves investigation.''
The Bush administration claimed repeatedly last winter that Saddam had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but subsequent searches have turned up no such weapons.
Kay, who resigned his position as chief U.S. inspector last month, says he himself believed before the war began that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons, as well as a thriving nuclear weapons program.
He has since stated that, based on searches and other factors, that those weapons do not exist. He has also urged the president to acknowledge that the intelligence was wrong.
``We gave a lot of answers on the basis of very, very little fact,'' he said.
Kay said that while Iraq doesn't have weapons of mass destruction, Americans should be concerned about a bustling international bazaar trading in weapons parts and know-how that leverages the efficiencies of the Internet.
``Essentially we're getting a Sam's Club (warehouse store) combined with Amazon.com for weapons technology,'' he said. ``You want biological weapons? You want chemical weapons? You want nuclear? There are people who will shop their skills around.''
He pointed to Pakistani engineer A.Q. Khan, who is suspected of running a lucrative black market where North Korea, Iran and other nations obtained important nuclear secrets.
----
Ex - Weapons Inspector Comments on Iraq War
February 26, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Weapons-Inspector.html
SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said Wednesday that President Bush may have been selective about the facts he used to make the case for going to war with Iraq.
That's not necessarily to say, though, that intelligence about Iraqi weapons was misused by the Bush White House, Kay told an audience at Trinity University.
Kay said any American president in office during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks would have been deeply concerned about Saddam Hussein, and would have sought to make the most persuasive appeal that he could to the nation.
``Politicians don't go around picking their weakest arguments,'' Kay said. ``The real charge that deserves careful scrutiny is not whether you picked the best argument out, but whether you actually manipulated and were dishonest about the data.''
He added that he's seen no evidence that the Bush administration mischaracterized intelligence from Iraq, ``but it is such a serious charge that it deserves investigation.''
The Bush administration claimed repeatedly last winter that Saddam had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but subsequent searches have turned up no such weapons.
Kay, who resigned his position as chief U.S. inspector last month, says he himself believed before the war began that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons, as well as a thriving nuclear weapons program.
He has since stated that, based on searches and other factors, that those weapons do not exist. He has also urged the president to acknowledge that the intelligence was wrong.
``We gave a lot of answers on the basis of very, very little fact,'' he said.
Kay said that while Iraq doesn't have weapons of mass destruction, Americans should be concerned about a bustling international bazaar trading in weapons parts and know-how that leverages the efficiencies of the Internet.
``Essentially we're getting a Sam's Club (warehouse store) combined with Amazon.com for weapons technology,'' he said. ``You want biological weapons? You want chemical weapons? You want nuclear? There are people who will shop their skills around.''
He pointed to Pakistani engineer A.Q. Khan, who is suspected of running a lucrative black market where North Korea, Iran and other nations obtained important nuclear secrets.
-------- israel
Israeli nuclear arsenal a mystery to UN
February 26, 2004
Reuters
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/25/1077676838996.html
Vienna - The extent of Israel's atomic weapons program is a mystery to the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the agency's chief said in an interview broadcast yesterday.
"Unfortunately I can't give a precise opinion about it because we don't do any inspections in Israel," Mohamed ElBaradei told Al Arabiya television when asked about the size of Israel's nuclear weapons program.
"I know that it's a developed program, and Israel does not deny that it has nuclear capability, but the size of the program, the extent of its development, really I can't know."
Non-proliferation analysts estimate Israel has from 100 to 200 atomic weapons, but the country has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and does not confirm or deny having nuclear weapons.
"It's enough for me to know that it has nuclear capability, there is a conviction that it has a nuclear weapon," ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in the Arabic-language interview recorded in Libya on Tuesday.
The UN watchdog has long encouraged Israel to sign the NPT and help create a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Israel has refused to consider nuclear disarmament, citing a precarious security situation.
"Israel still thinks that in the absence of complete recognition by all countries in the region it can't talk about giving up the nuclear deterrent or limiting conventional and non-conventional weapons," ElBaradei said in the interview near the end of a two-day visit to the Libyan capital Tripoli.
Apart from North Korea, which Washington believes may already have at least one nuclear warhead, most of the suspicions of covert nuclear weapons programs have focused on the Middle East and countries considered to be Israel's enemies.
In December, Libya agreed to give up its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and invited the IAEA and other international experts to help it disarm.
Both the United States and Israel accuse Iran of having a secret atom bomb program, though Tehran denies this.
On Tuesday the IAEA said in a report that it had found new evidence Iran has been hiding sensitive atomic technology and research that could be linked to a weapons program.
----
Israeli Nuke Whistleblower Eyes Release
February 26, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Nuclear-Whistleblower.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- The former technician imprisoned for spilling Israel's nuclear weapons secrets to a newspaper 18 years ago said he has nothing more to reveal and just wants to live a quiet life in Minnesota after his release, according to a statement released Thursday.
But Israel, citing security concerns, said it planned to keep Mordechai Vanunu under strict supervision -- possibly confiscating his passport -- when he is released in April. ``What they say, that I have additional secrets, it's a lie, an excuse and a cover-up, and they know that very well,'' Vanunu said, according to a statement released by his brother, Meir.
``All that I know was published.''
Mordechai Vanunu, 50, infuriated the Israeli government in 1986 when he gave The Sunday Times of London pictures of Israel's top-secret nuclear reactor near the Negev Desert town of Dimona. During his trial, the former nuclear technician said peace activists persuaded him to smuggle a camera into the reactor.
The publication of the story and photos challenged Israel's official policy of nuclear ambiguity. Israel has never acknowledged having nuclear weapons, only saying it will not be the first nation to introduce them into the Middle East.
Based on Mordechai Vanunu's pictures, experts concluded Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. The CIA estimated recently that Israel has 200-400 atomic weapons.
``We know there is a suspicion about Israel. We don't deny it. But for the time being, we think suspicion is a good enough deterrent so we don't have to go further,'' former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said in Egypt on Thursday.
A few months after The Sunday Times story was published, Israeli intelligence agents lured Mordechai Vanunu into a trap and spirited him back to Israel. He was convicted of treason and espionage and sentenced to 18 years in prison -- a term ending April 21.
Over the years, Mordechai Vanunu has become a symbol for critics of Israel's nuclear program and repeatedly has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Some Israeli security officials have suggested Mordechai Vanunu be placed under indefinite administrative detention after his release, but Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rejected that idea this week in favor of strict supervision, which could include barring Mordechai Vanunu from traveling abroad, appearing in public or giving interviews.
Mordechai Vanunu is especially concerned he might be forced to remain in Israel.
``I have no interest in fighting the state,'' he said in the statement. ``I want to live a normal life, a simple life, as a free man outside of Israel.''
But he also said he was not done talking.
``It is my right like all others to express my stand against nuclear weapons in the world or here in Israel,'' he said.
Meir Vanunu, who received the statement during a prison visit Wednesday, said his brother hopes to move to the United States and live with a Minnesota couple, who adopted him in the mistaken belief it would entitle him to U.S. citizenship.
Peter Hounam, the journalist who interviewed Mordechai Vanunu for the Sunday Times, said it was inconceivable the technician did not reveal everything during five weeks of exhaustive interviews in 1986, which included questioning from nuclear scientists.
``We made sure that we extracted from him every ounce of information that he had,'' Hounam said, adding that Mordechai Vanunu had no knowledge of nuclear weapons design.
``The idea that he could cause any harm at all is nonsense.''
But Sharon spokesman Assaf Shariv disagreed, saying, ``We have people in the government who think otherwise.''
With his release date approaching, Mordechai Vanunu, who spent more than a decade in solitary confinement, appeared in high spirits, his brother said.
``I'll be free,'' Mordechai Vanunu said in the statement. ``I won. The gates and the locks will be opened. They didn't succeed in breaking me or driving me crazy.''
-------- korea
Powell Says Korea Nuke Talks Positive, Encouraging
Thu Feb 26, 2004
Reuters
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20040226/ts_nm/korea_north_usa_dc
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday six-way talks aimed at dismantling North Korea's suspected nuclear arms programs were promising, the most upbeat U.S. comments to date on the negotiations in China.
The top U.S. diplomat's assessment contrasted with communist North Korea's complaint that the United States was to blame for lack of progress in the talks.
"The results of the first two days of meetings are positive. There is a positive attitude. There's a promising attitude that is emerging from those meetings and hopefully we can move in the right direction there," Powell told the Senate Budget Committee.
The North has given no signs it is willing to halt its nuclear arms program. On Thursday, it fell back on familiar rhetoric and said that if the United States halted its "hostile policy" against Pyongyang, it would give up its programs.
After the talks in the exclusive Daioyutai State Guest House in Beijing, details of North Korean proposals were murky and it was not clear what would be agreed in the next session on Friday. Host China has said it wants a written agreement, but on Thursday could not predict how it would turn out.
Diplomatic sources said North Korea also continued to deny it had a uranium enrichment program for nuclear weapons, the crux of its disagreement with Washington.
The United States says the North may already have one or two nuclear bombs and insists Pyongyang dismantle not only the plutonium development but also the suspected uranium program.
Russia, Japan and South Korea are also participating in the negotiations, which are a follow-up to a first inconclusive round in August.
---
N. Korea Repeats Uranium Denial
Delegation Meets With U.S. on Day One of Talks in Beijing
By Glenn Kessler and Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6953-2004Feb25.html
On the first day of six-nation talks in Beijing to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis, North Korea again denied U.S. charges that it has a program to enrich uranium, U.S. officials said Wednesday. The denial was made in both the plenary session and in a rare bilateral meeting between the U.S. and North Korean delegations.
In the session attended by all the delegations, one official said, the North Koreans simply stated, "We do not have highly enriched uranium." Some U.S. officials thought this had left open the possibility North Korea might admit to at least having an interest in such technology. But those hopes were dashed in the one-hour bilateral meeting, when the North Koreans denied they had a program or the materials necessary for such a program, or had made any efforts to procure such materials.
The issue is important because U.S. officials have said they cannot reach a pact unless North Korea agrees to dismantle the uranium program -- identified by U.S. intelligence -- in addition to a plutonium facility, both of which can be used to make weapons. Diplomats said the Japanese and South Korean delegations also raised the uranium issue, with the South Koreans noting that North Korea had to answer questions raised by the confession of a Pakistani scientist that he had sold such technology to the government in Pyongyang. U.S. officials last night were debating how to handle the issue of North Korea's continuing denial of the uranium program and whether to make it a major issue at the talks.
China is hosting the talks, which also include Russia. The atmosphere was described by delegates as cordial and productive. But after the U.S presentation, North Korean officials declared that they detected no fundamental change in U.S. policy, a U.S. official familiar with the talks said.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the lead U.S. negotiator, James Kelly, an assistant secretary of state, described three "coordinated steps" that the United States was prepared to take if the North Koreans agreed to a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of its nuclear programs.
In the first stage, Kelly said, the United States was prepared to discuss multilateral security assurances if North Korea made such a commitment. In the second stage, Kelly said that as verifiable benchmarks were achieved, the United States was prepared to offer technical and financial assistance to dismantle North Korea's nuclear programs and discuss ways that the country's energy needs could be met. This is diplomatic code for negotiations on letting other nations at the table provide energy assistance, one official said.
Once the program was nearly dismantled, Kelly told the North Koreans, the United States was prepared to enter into comprehensive negotiations leading to diplomatic relations and a permanent mechanism to replace the armistice ending the Korean War.
North Korea, in its presentation, offered to freeze its nuclear weapons programs in exchange for what it termed "compensation," including security guarantees and economic aid, the U.S. official said.
South Korea, which for months has suggested it could provide energy assistance such as fuel oil if North Korea committed to freezing and dismantling its program, renewed the proposal. But South Korea added Wednesday that North Korea would need to meet three conditions: to specify what it meant by a freeze, to have the freeze subject to international inspections and to explain the uranium program.
U.S. officials say North Korea admitted to having a uranium program during an October 2002 meeting, but Pyongyang denies making such a statement. The reported admission triggered the current crisis and led the Bush administration to suspend fuel oil shipments to North Korea. Pyongyang responded by ejecting U.N. weapons inspectors and restarting the Yongbyon nuclear facility.
A Japanese official participating in the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity said Japan also pressed North Korea to disclose the uranium program and joined the United States in calling for a "clear commitment to dismantle swiftly all nuclear programs and activities."
He said the uranium issue was "very important and is understood as such by all parties" but stopped short of saying whether the dispute could derail the negotiations.
The diplomat added that there were "some positive elements" in the positions presented during the talks, but said, "It's much too early to say how it will develop. This is the first day. People have laid out their basic positions."
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Liu Jianchao, described the discussions as "sincere, frank and pragmatic and calm" and said the nations had not yet decided how long they would continue. The first round of talks in August ended without concrete results after North Korea announced it had developed a nuclear weapon and threatened to test it.
"The six parties affirmed solving the nuclear question through peaceful means," Liu said. "Whatever questions or difficulties arise, the talks process should be continued."
Five of the nations proposed trying to regularize the process. South Korea, for instance, proposed stepping up the negotiation process by holding six-party talks every two months and setting up working-level talks in Beijing within two weeks.
North Korea did not respond to the suggestion, a U.S. official said.
Pan reported from Beijing.
----
North Korea nuclear talks "promising": Powell
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Feb 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040226155658.0r8g0hu2.html
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday that two days of talks in Beijing on North Korea's nuclear program have been "promising" and the six-party discussions were moving in the "right direction."
"The results of the first two days' meetings are positive," Powell said during testimony here before the Senate Budget Committee.
"There is a positive attitude," Powell added. "There is a promising attitude that is emerging from those meetings, and hopefully we can move in the right direction there."
----
N. Korea Says U.S. Stalling Nuclear Talks
By STEPHANIE HOO
Feb 26, 2004
Associated Press Writer
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KOREAS_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BEIJING (AP) -- North Korea put an offer of nuclear disarmament on the bargaining table Thursday, then struck a characteristically tough stance by accusing the United States of blocking progress in six-nation talks on its weapons program.
The North's terse statement, read outside its Beijing embassy in the dark before a hastily assembled press corps, came after a day of apparent advances in which South Korea, China and Russia agreed to provide the impoverished North with crucial energy aid if it would agree to disarm.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the first two days of multilateral talks were positive. "There's a promising attitude that's emerging from those meetings, and hopefully we can move in the right direction there," he told the U.S. Senate Budget Committee.
However, a U.S. official familiar with the talks said North Korea showed no interest in meeting the American insistence on a complete and verifiable dismantling of its nuclear weapons programs before the North can receive any concessions.
North Korea insists it needs a nuclear "deterrent" against a possible U.S. attack but would freeze its efforts in return for aid and formal security assurances.
"We will abandon our nuclear weapons program when the United States drops its hostile policy toward North Korea," said a statement read by an unidentified North Korean official. "The United States should take all the responsibility for the meeting not making progress."
The statement said North Korea has a problem with Washington's "attitude," making it difficult for there to be progress during the current talks, which began Wednesday and were scheduled to continue at least through Friday.
The conflicting signs - progress and immediate public criticism - are a hallmark of North Korea. But behind the rhetoric, Pyongyang's offer to end a 16-month standoff by stopping its nuclear activities was made unusual by a first - its delivery in the formal six-nation talks.
China, which is the North's last major ally and is hosting the six-nation meeting, expressed hope that the talks are providing "an opportunity to build trust."
"The various parties welcomed the proposition from the North Korean side for the comprehensive stopping of nuclear activities," Chinese spokesman Liu Jianchao said at a briefing. "As for the details and specific arrangements for stopping the nuclear activities, it is still being discussed among the various parties."
The proposal to disarm came as China, the United States, North and South Korea, Japan and Russia met to try to resolve the dispute. North Korea's five negotiating partners all want the Korean Peninsula to be nuclear-free.
China has advocated continued lower-level discussions, not only to hammer out a disarmament plan but also to resolve Pyongyang's security concerns.
"It is essential to establish working-level groups," Liu said.
The last round of talks, in August, ended after three days with only vague plans to meet again.
Russia said a "gap" remained before the standoff could be solved fully. Its top delegate, Alexander Losyukov, said North Korea showed "readiness" to abolish its nuclear weapons program but wanted to maintain a "peaceful" nuclear capability.
"North Korea is not ready to drop all its nuclear programs. It's not realistic to ask them to do it," Losyukov said. "North Korea is ready to drop its nuclear defense program, but some countries are not satisfied with that."
He added: "We have certain doubts that it will be possible to remove it during this session of talks."
North Korea and the United States have been at odds over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions for years and especially since October 2002, when U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said the North told him it had a secret weapons program based on enriched uranium.
North Korea has publicly denied it has a uranium program in addition to its known plutonium-based program.
South Korea's chief delegate to the talks, Lee Soo-hyuck, said that China and Russia agreed Thursday to help the South provide energy aid to the North - a move China confirmed.
Such assistance could be delivered only after the North guaranteed that a freeze on its nuclear program would lead to dismantlement, Lee said, without specifying what form the energy aid would take.
Thursday's meetings came one day after a rare one-on-one session between officials from the United States and North Korea, which never signed a peace treaty following their 1950-53 war.
The U.S. official in Washington said that, during that meeting, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan expressed interest to Kelly in the North's removal from the State Department list of countries that sponsor terrorism. He wanted to know the steps North Korea needed to take, the official said.
Associated Press reporter George Gedda in Washington contributed to this report.
----
N. Korea Proposes Stopping Nuke Activities
February 26, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear-Defense.html
BEIJING (AP) -- North Korea on Thursday proposed ``the comprehensive stopping of nuclear activities,'' a Chinese government spokesman said. He said the details were still being discussed among the six nations meeting in the Chinese capital.
The development, in the middle of delicate talks about the North's nuclear ambitions, represented the most significant potential breakthrough since the stalemate between Washington and Pyongyang began in October 2002.
``The various parties welcomed the proposition from the North Korean side for the comprehensive stopping of nuclear activities,'' Chinese spokesman Liu Jianchao said at a briefing.
``As for the details and specific arrangements for stopping the nuclear activities, it is still being discussed among the various parties,'' he said.
His comments just after the official Xinhua News Agency cited Alexander Losyukov, head of the Russian delegation and his country's deputy foreign minister, as saying North Korea showed ``readiness'' to abolish its nuclear weapons program.
According to Losyukov, the North would retain its nuclear program related to ``peaceful purpose,'' Xinhua said. That's a major step but one somewhat less than what China described.
The announcement came during a second round of Beijing-based talks on the North's nuclear program. Participating in the talks are the Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.
The United States has demanded an immediate dismantling of the North's nuclear program. Pyongyang says it wants aid and security guarantees before it begins to do so.
----
N.Korea Offers Nuclear Plan, U.S. Sees Progress
February 26, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States and North Korea appeared to inch closer toward a settlement of the 16-month stalemate over the North's nuclear program on Friday, despite Pyongyang's accusation Washington was blocking progress.
Six-way talks on the crisis headed for their third day in Beijing on Friday with a North Korean proposal to freeze its nuclear weapon programs and a South Korean, Chinese and Russian-backed plan to offer energy aid in exchange.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the talks, which took six months of diplomacy to pull together, would continue at least through Saturday.
But the North returned to familiar territory on Thursday and accused the United States of having a ``hostile policy'' -- the North's justification for a nuclear weapons program in the first place.
Diplomatic sources said North Korea continued to deny U.S. it had a uranium enrichment program, the crux of its current disagreement with the United States.
Yet Secretary of State Colin Powell gave an upbeat assessment of the talks that also involve South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. ``The results of the first two days of meetings are positive,'' Powell told the Senate Budget Committee in Washington. ``There is a positive attitude. There's a promising attitude that is emerging from those meetings and hopefully we can move in the right direction there.''
Ahead of Friday's session, the six sides were working on a joint statement, the establishment of a working group and when next to meet, delegates said.
During Thursday's round, South Korea, China and Russia offered North Korea energy aid in exchange for freezing its weapons programs, delegates said.
Details of North Korean proposals were murky and it was not clear what could be agreed in Friday's session.
``The United States is saying that it can only discuss our demands after we give up all nuclear programs, including for peaceful purposes, as it continues with its stale demand that we give up nuclear programs first despite our flexible position,'' the North Korean embassy said in Beijing.
``It is because of this that there has not been a breakthrough in the solution of the problems.''
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted to a covert program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. It has since denied saying any such thing.
Russia said earlier the North was ready to freeze its military nuclear program, but not its ``peaceful'' one.
China's Foreign Ministry said the North proposed a ``comprehensive stopping'' of its nuclear programs and the Xinhua agency quoted a North Korean official as saying it was willing to freeze all its nuclear programs.
Russia said the U.S. and Japan were not ready to join the compensation plan. An official from Japan said it would not give such aid before establishing diplomatic ties with North Korea.
The six parties were close to agreement on a working group to discuss an energy-for-freeze proposal, South Korean negotiator Lee Soo-hyuck told reporters.
The United States says the North may already have one or two nuclear bombs and insists Pyongyang halt both plutonium development at its Yongbyon complex and the suspected uranium program.
North Korea has no fully operational nuclear power plants. A five-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon, which experts believe produced weapons-grade plutonium, is not connected to electric power lines.
Two larger nuclear reactors, a 50-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon and a 200-megawatt reactor at nearby Taechon, were suspended at early stages of construction in 1994 because of concerns about potential misuse.
-------- missile defense
Missile Defense: The Dangers and Lack of Realism
By George Rathjens and Carl Kaysen,
February 2004
Council for a Livable World
322 4th St. NE,
Washington, DC 20002
(202) 543-4100 clw@clw.org
http://64.177.207.201/pages/8_494.html
A year ago President Bush announced that he was ordering the deployment of an anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) system, with the first sites to be operational in 2004 in Alaska and California. In 1967 President Johnson made a strikingly similar decision. Both smacked of election-year domestic politics. President Johnson had reason to fear that Republican opponents would make a political issue in the 1968 election of a failure by him to begin deployment of ABM defenses. President Bush's core constituency of hawkish right wingers will be reassured by his decision.
Yet, notwithstanding very active systems development efforts in both administrations, there was not then, and there is not now even the remotest prospect that a near-term defense of population against a determined attack by a major power--then, the Soviet Union; now, Russia or China--would be effective. So, deployment is being rationalized now by the Bush Administration, as it was by Johnson's, as useful against emerging nuclear powers: then, China; now, North Korea--and possibly Iran .
The most fundamental problem is that the proposed system relies on a "hit-to-kill" interceptor to destroy incoming warheads above the atmosphere. We doubt that the problem of discriminating between warheads and decoys in the mid-part of their trajectories can be effectively solved in the near future, if ever. If it can not be, each American metropolitan area would have to be defended from a separate installation. But North Korea, or any other nation with a few nuclear-armed ICBMs, would need hold hostage only a few American cities, perhaps only one, to have an effective deterrent.
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has defended the President's deployment decision, arguing that, having "a limited capability to deal with a relatively small number of incoming ballistic missiles ...is better than nothing", and that Americans should feel "marginally safer" with such deployment than without it.
Given the overwhelming retaliatory capability of the United States, we question the premise underlying the Secretary's statements that North Korea (or perhaps another aspirant nuclear weapons state) would deliver a nuclear first strike against it once it had a capability to do so. It is more reasonable to assume that North Korea's rationale for acquiring a nuclear ICBM capability has been similar to that of the United Statesto be able to deter another nation with strong military capabilities (in North Korea's case, the United States; in that of the United States, the Soviet Union) from involvement in regions of conflict in ways inimical to its interests.
Moreover, there is the possibility that at a future date, when an ABM system might actually have some capability, it could, in a crisis, be oversold to a president who might then make catastrophic decisions based on an assumed level of performance that would not be realized. This is reason enough for us to conclude that, contrary to Secretary Rumsfeld's observations, we may be less safe if the President's program is implemented than if it is not. While we appreciate that such an error may seem a remote possibility to many, we call attention to the fact that President Bush, senior, believed that during the 1991 Gulf War, Patriot interceptor missiles had been 96% effective in destroying Iraqi Scud missiles. After later assessment, it was apparent that few, if any, successful interceptions occurred; Secretary of Defense Cohen said,"The Patriots didn't work".
An ABM system, even a very imperfect one, might have some value as a hedge against accidental attacks. Even so, two questions must arise. First, whether the resources required might be more wisely used on homeland security and to meet other objectives, both military and civil. Second, whether, with the deployment, the leaders and the public of the United States would feel more secure about its involvement in crises in northeast Asia, where American interests clash with those of North Korea, than if the United States were not to proceed with the deployment proposed.
An affirmative answer to this last question depends on whether any deployed defense might be essentially 100% effective. This, however, will certainly not be the case with President Bush's announced deployment, nor do we believe it likely with any system that might evolve from it.
Like it or not, nuclear deterrence is likely to be with us during the first part of this century, as it was during much of the last. But, the United States may more often be the deterred rather than the deterrer should it seek to involve itself militarily in regions where there may be others with nuclear capabilities and interests opposed to it. We think it important that Americans recognize that the United States may not hold all the high cards and that it will have to face the reality that the costs of getting its way on all points of difference with adversaries may be higher than its citizenry are willing to pay. Beyond deterrence, its choices in dealing with North Korea as an emerging nuclear power will be by negotiation or preemptively destroying North Korea's offending capabilities, with all the risks of massive civilian casualties and political costs that that would entail.
It is illusory to see an ABM defense system as an escape from this dilemma.
-
George Rathjens and Carl Kaysen are in the Securities Studies Program at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Rathjens is Professor Emeritus of Political Science. He was formerly Chief Scientist and then Deputy Director of the Advanced Research Project Agency of the Department of Defense, Assistant to the Director of the U. S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Director of the Systems Analysis Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses, Chairman of the Federation of American Scientists and of the Council for a Livable World, and Secretary-General of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.
Kaysen is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy. He was Deputy Special Assistant to President Kennedy for national security affairs, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study, and Chairman of the Federation of American Scientists.
-------- russia
Russia Says Different Views on Nuclear Plants
February 26, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-views.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - The chief Russian delegate to six-party talks aimed at ending the North Korean nuclear crisis said there was a ``lack of clarity'' on how North Korea's military nuclear plants should halt operations.
``The U.S., South Korea and Japan take the position that there must be total elimination of the nuclear program, both military and possibly components of the peaceful nuclear program,'' Russian delegate Alexander Losyukov told reporters.
``Russia and China, we are interested in the removal or elimination of the military nuclear program of North Korea.''
-------- treaties
Official says U.S. reconsidering nuke talks
February 26, 2004
By John Zarocostas
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040225-093217-5328r.htm
GENEVA - The prospect of a new U.S. offer has revived hopes that stalled United Nations talks on a treaty to ban the materials needed to make nuclear bombs can proceed.
Serious talks on the pact at the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament have been blocked for seven years owing to sharp disagreements among the great powers and developing countries over the negotiating agenda.
Many had thought that the Bush administration had little interest in the talks, but a senior administration official told The Washington Times that a formal interagency review of the administration's position is in a "well-advanced stage."
Decisions at the conference are made by consensus, and the U.S. official, speaking on background, said the administration is not prepared to "join any consensus."
An ambassador from a NATO member country, also speaking on background, said conference nations are awaiting the completion of the Washington review, but there has been no clear indication when it will be done.
The talks gained momentum when President Bush identified a global accord under the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty talks as a national security priority in a strategy review released in September 2002.
The U.S. shift comes after China last summer dropped a demand that the fissile-material agreement could proceed only if Washington stopped blocking separate talks aimed at prohibiting an arms race in outer space.
The Chinese shift cleared the way for a new effort on the treaty, diplomats said.
The U.S. review came at a time when many other nations in the U.N. Conference on Disarmament had become convinced that the Bush administration had written off a deal.
John Bolton, the State Department's top arms negotiator, failed to discuss the logjam during a secret visit to Geneva earlier this month.
"There is simply no willingness to start real negotiations," said Josef Goldblat, vice president of the Geneva International Peace Research Institute.
Mr. Goldblat blamed the new U.S. disarmament policy under Mr. Bush. "All the other countries are ready to make concessions," he said.
The conference also has been divided over a French initiative, backed by the United States and others, to include in the negotiating scope the new threats of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The conference successfully concluded the convention prohibiting chemical weapons in 1992, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which bans nuclear weapons test explosions, in 1996.
But the lack of progress on the fissile-material pact led U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to dispatch his top disarmament aide, Nobuyasu Abe, to Geneva to try to reinvigorate the process, diplomatic sources said.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency, made a similar plea earlier this month.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- vermont
Expert: Yankee too old for uprate
By SUSAN SMALLHEER
Rutland Herald Staff
Feb. 26, 2004
http://www.rutlandherald.com/04/Story/79520.html
WEST BRATTLEBORO - Vermont Yankee should comply with federal regulations for nuclear reactors before it is allowed to increase power output by 20 percent, a former nuclear executive said Thursday.
Paul Blanch of West Hartford, Conn., a nationally known nuclear industry whistleblower, said that Vermont Yankee - the oldest operating reactor in New England - was such an old facility that it had been "grandfathered" to several current regulations by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Blanch describes himself as "a dyed-in-the wool nuclear advocate," but he is opposed to the power increase sought by Entergy Nuclear for its Vermont reactor.
"I am a nuclear safety advocate," said Blanch, whose concerns landed the Millstone reactor in Connecticut on the cover of Time Magazine in 1996.
"Vermont Yankee today is not in compliance with today's regulations," Blanch said.
He spoke Thursday night at the All Souls Church in West Brattleboro, at a forum sponsored by the New England Coalition. NEC is an anti-nuclear group that is fighting the proposed power increase at the Vermont Yankee reactor.
The Brattleboro-based coalition had sought Blanch's expertise last year. He testified earlier this year before the state's Public Service Board, opposing the power increase that would add 110 megawatts to the 540-megawatt reactor in Vernon.
Blanch told his audience Thursday that he and William Sherman, a nuclear engineer with the Vermont Department of Public Service, had independently identified the same violation of regulations in Entergy Nuclear's plans.
Blanch called it "a very significant" problem.
He said the key safety component that led to the shutdown of other nuclear reactors in New England was also an issue at Vermont Yankee, but was being ignored because of the plant's vintage.Vermont Yankee was designed in the 1960s, Blanch said; it received its federal permit in 1967 and started operation in November 1972. He said Yankee is too old and there are too many questions about its condition to withstand the pressures of more nuclear fuel producing more steam, more vibration and more power.
Blanch said the state and its congressional delegation should demand that federal regulators hold Yankee to modern standards, rather than what he called turning a blind eye to design violations.
Blanch, who worked for Entergy Nuclear as recently as 18 months ago as a consultant at its Indian Point reactor outside New York City, said he didn't want Yankee shut down but he did want it reviewed more carefully than it has been to date.
He said an independent safety assessment, which would include a review of how many current regulations from which Yankee was exempt, would satisfy his concerns.
He said he had challenged Entergy, state nuclear engineer William Sherman and the NRC itself to have a "dialogue" about Vermont Yankee's issues. He said NRC officials turned him down earlier Thursday, saying they were too busy.
Blanch said that the power boost would increase water temperature in the plant's torus, which is part of its emergency core cooling system, from 184 degrees to 195 degrees - shaving the margin of error to an unsafe degree.
Blanch said he believed the pumps that circulate the cooling water would not work at 195 degrees.
"The NRC is knowingly looking the other way," he said. "Why are they intentionally ignoring this?"
Blanch also said that of the eight U.S. reactors that have increased power at rates similar to that proposed by Entergy, five have developed serious problems with plant components.
With that, Blanch said, there is an increased chance of an accident and failure of one of the key safety systems.
"The consequences of an accident are significantly increased" by the power increase, he said.
The Public Service Board is currently reviewing weeks and weeks of testimony on the project, which will cost more than $60 million. Its decision is expected next month.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently declared that Entergy's application was complete and it has started its own review of the power increase.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
-------- washington
Wider Investigation Sought at Hanford Nuclear Site
February 26, 2004
New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD and SARAH KERSHAW
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/politics/26HANF.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 - Members of Congress and advocates for workers said on Wednesday that they were calling for a broader investigation at the Hanford nuclear reservation, seeking information about whether Energy Department contractors had protected workers' health and safety.
The Washington State attorney general's office said last week that it was looking into whether the contractor that operates nuclear waste storage "tank farms" at Hanford had been lax in providing respiratory protection. The prosecutor's office also said it was looking into accusations that contracted medical clinics had failed to diagnose occupational illnesses among workers who sought treatment.
The Energy Department said that it had been conducting an investigation since last September and that it had asked its inspector general to become involved. According to two experts on health care at Hanford, among the subjects under investigation are a doctor's accusations that her patients' records at a contract clinic had been tampered with.
The clinic, the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, has denied wrongdoing. In a statement, it said it "categorically rejects any implication that its worker-oriented medical approach has been compromised." The clinic said it was "an honest broker of health-care services for Hanford workers, exercising independent judgment as to whether a worker's condition is actually related to occupational causes."
The clinic held the contract for 38 years, recently losing a competition to renew it.
A spokesman for the Energy Department, Joseph H. Davis, said that the officials in charge of awarding the contract were not aware of the allegations or the investigation and that other bids "offered a better product or better value for taxpayers' dollars."
Mr. Davis said other unsuccessful bidders were appealing the awarding of the contract to AdvanceMed, part of Computer Sciences of El Segundo, Calif.
Representative James C. Greenwood, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has asked the Energy Department to respond to reports that the Hanford clinic had mishandled medical records. In a letter to the department, Mr. Greenwood also said he wanted it to address accusations that officials had "intimidated workers who have requested medical attention and suppressed workers' efforts to make compensation claims related to tank farm exposure illness."
He said the accusations indicated that information on exposure to chemical vapors had been suppressed.
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said, "The situation is too murky to trust the Department of Energy's self-investigation, and the sooner some independent eyes are trained on Hanford worker safety, the better."
Mr. Wyden pointed out that Hanford had a joint panel formed by contractors, the State of Washington and nuclear safety groups to discuss safety but that the contractors disbanded it in May.
Heart of America Northwest has been one of the groups that focuses on the health and environmental dangers at Hanford, near Richland. Its executive director, Gerald M. Pollet, said the Energy Department and contractors, particularly the clinic, had long ignored the risks to clean up workers exposed to beryllium, a metal used to make bombs.
Eighty-four workers have been sensitized to beryllium, meaning they are at risk for contracting chronic beryllium disease, an incurable lung condition diagnosed in 21 workers so far, said doctors who treat the Hanford employees.
Mr. Pollet said his organization had asked the state attorney general's office to expand its inquiry to include other health risks to Hanford workers. He added that the group had documented numerous instances of workers with beryllium sensitivity being assigned to work in buildings where the metal was present.
The health contractor, Mr. Pollet said, had done little to protect them adequately from further exposure that could lead to the disease, even after the Energy Department allocated millions of dollars in recent years for a prevention program that was supposed to include comprehensive testing.
"That is unconscionable," Mr. Pollet said. "It means they are not practicing the most simple preventive medicine."
----
Waste Cleanup May Have Human Price
Nuclear Plant's Medical and Management Practices Questioned
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7073-2004Feb25?language=printer
RICHLAND, Wash. -- Steve Lewis became a seething malcontent after a visit to the doctor who presides over the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
Lewis, an electrician, had been exposed to a blast of ammonia vapor from Hanford's underground "tank farms." Down on these farms during the Cold War, as federal workers churned out plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal, they buried the largest haul of high-level nuclear waste in the Western Hemisphere. Lewis is part of another generation of Hanford workers that for more than a decade has been mopping up the festering mess.
His vapor exposure, which occurred in January 2002, flushed his face red and burned his lungs. Four months later, he had headaches and nosebleeds and was gagging on phlegm. He went to see Larry Smick, Hanford's acting medical director, who diagnosed Lewis's complaint as a preexisting condition: "Allergic disease likely making him more sensitive to irritant vapors at work," according to the doctor's handwritten notes.
Lewis was incredulous. He had never had allergies. He said he tried repeatedly during the exam to get the doctor to talk about chemical exposure out at the tank farms, but Smick would only talk allergies.
"Quite honestly, that is when my bubble popped," said Lewis, 51. "I could live with injury because these things do happen. I was not an angry employee up until they started trying to convince me that I hadn't been injured."
The diagnosis that infuriated the electrician is part of a years-long pattern of questionable medical and management practices at Hanford -- first disclosed last fall by a nonprofit watchdog group called the Government Accountability Project -- that is now triggering investigations by federal and Washington state officials.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, whose department oversees the cleanup here, announced Tuesday that he has ordered an investigation of the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, the private nonprofit clinic where Smick is the ranking doctor.
Department investigators, who descended on the clinic last week, are looking at allegations of fraud, supervisory misconduct and falsification of medical records at the clinic, which the Department of Energy has funded for 38 years.
Yet the scope of management practices that have endangered Hanford workers goes far beyond the clinic -- to the federal government itself and the private contractor it pays to clean up the tank farms, according to interviews with workers, union officials and outside experts in occupational health, as well as internal e-mails and memorandums and a continuing investigation by the Government Accountability Project.
These critics describe a Hanford culture -- dominated by profit-minded contractors and meekly supervised by federal bureaucrats -- where there are powerful financial incentives to cover up worker complaints, falsify reports of work-loss injuries and subordinate safety to production bonuses.
Contractors "have an incentive to minimize the number of workdays lost" to employee injuries, Alan Hopko, an Energy Department official who oversees contracting at Hanford, wrote in a 2002 e-mail. "On the other hand, if [contractors] can do the work faster and cheaper because of fewer workdays lost, they can possibly earn additional fee."
Tim Takaro, a physician who teaches at the University of Washington and treats tank farm workers, says there is "absolutely unequivocal pressure to reduce the number of time-loss injuries at Hanford. Workers are pressured not to complain. For some contractors and some supervisors, there is a cultural pressure not to report injuries."
The Energy Department says that safety is its top priority at Hanford and that it would fire any contractor who endangered workers. Smick and other health officials now facing investigation say they are doing everything they can to protect workers.
The Go-Fast Cleanup
When vapors sickened Lewis two years ago, the Bush administration was just beginning what it calls Hanford's "accelerated cleanup."
There are 177 waste tanks at Hanford, and more than a third of them have been leaking radioactive and cancer-causing toxins into groundwater for decades. The administration's goal is to keep these agents out of the Columbia River, while getting the federal government out of the cleanup business in Hanford as soon as possible. It wants to finish the job in three decades, rather than a previously projected seven. That could amount to a significant financial savings: The federal government now spends $2 billion a year at Hanford.
To that end, the Energy Department has begun offering bonuses of as much as $2 million to the principal contractor on the tank farms, a Colorado-based engineering and construction firm called CH2M Hill, for each waste tank it can empty by the completion of its four-year contract in 2006.
This has quickened the pace of cleanup -- CH2M Hill says it is on track to get its bonuses -- but union critics and some independent health experts say speed has come with a human price.
There has been an increase in the number of vapor injuries on the tank farms, with more than 90 workers at CH2M Hill seeking medical care for tank farm exposures in the past two years, according to data gathered by the Government Accountability Project.
The Energy Department says it has studied the increased number of vapor injuries but cannot figure out why they occurred. "We have not been able to attribute it conclusively to anything," said Roy Scheppens, manager of the tank farm cleanup for the department. "People can become sensitive all of a sudden to vapor."
CH2M Hill officials say the company is doing all it can to protect its workers. And senior Bush administration officials reject any causal link between the accelerated cleanup and the increasing number of workers being hurt by vapors. "We are very confident that accelerated cleanup and safety go hand in hand," said Jesse H. Roberson, the Energy Department's assistant secretary for environmental management.
Going to the Doctor
Larry Smick has issued orders saying that he should personally examine all tank farm workers who claim to be injured on the job, according to e-mails the doctor has sent to his staff.
After Smick saw Lewis on April 8, 2002, the clinic's medical record showed that the electrician said the reason for his visit was "not work-related."
"That is a blatant lie," Lewis said. "I was in there to emphasize to the doctor that I was having symptoms that were work-related." In an interview, Smick said he could not explain why Lewis's medical records listed his visit as not work-related.
Asked about the allergy diagnosis, Smick said: "It makes medical sense to me. . . . I couldn't, in all honesty, link the ongoing symptoms to an exposure." (Lewis later saw doctors in Seattle and Spokane, Wash., whose diagnoses supported his claim that he was injured by vapor exposure on the job.) The official reason for any worker's injury is a matter of considerable financial importance to private contractors at Hanford. CH2M Hill, for example, has a $1.4 billion federal contract.
Energy Department officials can refuse to pay as much as 10 percent of the money if the rate of "recordable" workplace injuries rises above 2.9 cases per 200,000 hours of work in a six-month period. Medical diagnoses help decide whether a worker's complaint is recordable.
Smick said in the interview that CH2M Hill and other contractors at Hanford often pressure him to reduce the number of work-related injuries, an accusation that CH2M Hill denied. "The company will call me up and say, 'Why did you make this work-related?' They are mad at me," he said.
The doctor said, though, that he and his staff never let this pressure interfere with the practice of responsible medicine. "We want to do everything we can to alleviate the concern and anxiety of workers," he said, adding that if a worker needs care, "recordability issues can go to hell."
But e-mails that Smick has sent in recent years to his medical staff show that he often tried to meet contractors' concerns.
The doctor warned his clinic staff members that they would "create a monster out there for the contractors and their recordability issues" if diagnoses for workers exposed to vapors were written up as anything other than a "normal exam."
The warning, in an e-mail dated June 28, 2001, came after several workers were exposed to smoke and tank farm vapors. They had been brought to the clinic, where nurses and physician assistants apparently angered Smick by writing diagnoses such as "exposure to unknown smell" or "exposure to burning ballast."
After telling his staff that the correct diagnoses should all have been "normal exam," Smick asked his secretary in the e-mail to "bring me all the charts today that had to do with exposure yesterday and I will make the necessary administrative changes by writing addendum. To the providers -- do I have your permission to make the changes to your charging or would you prefer to do it yourself?"
'Just Do It!'
On many occasions in recent years, Smick instructed clerks at the clinic to alter patient records to show that a worker's injury was not related to work, according to interviews with two clerks who worked for Smick and who have since left their jobs.
One of them, Nancy Morse, said she often made changes to patient records on direct orders from Smick.
"Dr. Smick would call me after the patient had been seen and was ready to walk out the door," Morse said. "He would order me to change it [the record of visit] to non-occupational. I would say, 'Why?' He would say, 'Just do it!' "
Asked about this, Smick initially denied ordering those kinds of changes. Later in the interview, he said that "years ago" he may have given such orders when "you wanted to make sure that the report that went back to the company reflected the truth."
Medical records are supposed to be written up at the same time the patient is seen. Changing records with intent to misrepresent a patient's condition could be grounds for suspension of a medical license and possible criminal charges, according to Washington state authorities.
For at least two years federal investigators have been trying to find out if the statistics on workplace injuries at the tank farms have been falsified, according to an internal Energy Department document.
Lee T. Ashjian, president of the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, said in a statement e-mailed to The Washington Post that the clinic "categorically rejects any implication that its worker-oriented medical approach has been compromised."
The Energy Department last month awarded the health care contract for Hanford to a new company, saying the new contractor, which will take over in three months, will be cheaper.
Back on the Tank Farm
After his exposure to toxic vapors and his visit to Smick, Steve Lewis became a nettlesome advocate for worker safety. He began to speak out during a time when CH2M Hill, his employer, was rushing to meet deadlines imposed by the Bush administration's accelerated cleanup.
On the tank farm, about 500 workers pumped waste out of leaky single-shell tanks and into double-shell tanks. For the first time in decades, large volumes of some of the world's most toxic and radioactive chemicals were being stirred up. The agitation caused the tank farms -- and the aging system of buried pipelines and valves that enable tank-to-tank transfers of waste -- to vent more vapor than they have in decades, workers and company managers said.
As workers smelled more odors coming out of the tank farms in the past two years, Lewis reported more complaints to his bosses, according to a whistle-blower lawsuit he filed last year. He complained that CH2M Hill was waiting to take readings until after dangerous gases had dissipated. He demanded that the company provide him and other workers with hooded breathing apparatus to protect them from vapors.
Lewis's complaints resulted in company-sponsored "harassment, ridicule, taunting and a hostile working environment," his lawsuit said. Last fall, CH2M Hill settled the lawsuit with Lewis and two other electricians for an undisclosed sum.
Two other tank farm workers who had often complained about safety were abruptly fired last fall.
Hanford police escorted Steve and Virginia Wallace -- he is an instrument technician, and she is a nuclear chemical operator -- off federal property Oct. 6. The couple said the contractor humiliated them in front of fellow workers, not least because it mobilized 16 security vehicles to escort them off federal property. They were fired, the company told them, for timecard irregularities.
Before their dismissal, though, the Wallaces had made a point of telling CH2M Hill how to improve safety practices on the tank farms.
The couple had taken safety classes at Hanford. They are certified instructors in respirator use and handling hazardous material. What they saw out at the tank farms did not square with their training, they said.
Twice last summer, Virginia demanded that her cleanup crew stop work until safety complaints could be addressed. Steve stood up in a public meeting in Richland last year and contradicted a claim by one of the meeting's speakers, Edward Aromi, president of CH2M Hill, about cleanup progress on the tank farms.
The day the Wallaces were fired, they called their local union chief, Randy Knowles. He happened to be in Washington, meeting with officials from the Energy Department and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a federal oversight agency.
"It was bad timing on the company's part and good timing for us," said Knowles, who raised the firings with the federal officials.
Three days later, CH2M Hill rehired the Wallaces. A courier delivered two letters to the couple at their home. Aromi, the president of CH2M Hill, wrote that he was hiring them back because he is "fully committed to creating and maintaining a work place that does not tolerate retaliation or even an appearance of retaliation against those who raise legitimate safety issues."
The contractor has undertaken measures to reduce worker risks. More hooded respirators are available and tank farm workers can wear them whenever they choose. Stacks that vent vapor from some tanks have been raised above face level. More areas of known vapor risk have been fenced off.
Workers and some union officials say that these are steps in the right direction, but that more needs to be done. That, too, was the finding of an expert panel that CH2M Hill commissioned to evaluate vapor risks. Four outside experts recommended in a report last October that the company should require that all tank farm workers wear hooded respirators on the job -- until workers, unions and outside critics can agree with the company on health risks caused by tank vapors.
CH2M Hill, however, killed the report. In its place, the company asked the four experts to each write separate opinions because they "don't all agree on everything," CH2M Hill Vice President Joel A. Eacker said. But in interviews three of the four authors said they all had been in agreement and two of them said they believe the report was killed because the company did not like it.
For its part, CH2M Hill said it continues to listen to all outside criticism and tries to learn from it. "We are ingraining safety into the way we do business," Eacker said.
Out at the tank farms in recent weeks, Steve Lewis said that safety has become more important. But he still finds "tremendous peer pressure" for workers not to wear respirators.
"I bet you in the next two years, we will have 50 more incidents," said Lewis, who is looking for a new job. "If people don't have protection, they are being set up for a lifetime of sickness and maybe even cancer."
----
Abraham Vows to Probe Hanford Allegations
February 26, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hanford-Investigation.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham vowed Thursday to aggressively investigate alleged misconduct by a private contractor that monitors and provides health care to workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.
``We certainly intend to conduct the investigation independently and aggressively, and we will take aggressive action if it is called for,'' Abraham told The Associated Press.
Abraham's comments came after he testified Thursday before a House Appropriations subcommittee.
Abraham told the panel the Energy Department is investigating allegations of fraud, supervisor misconduct and medical-records mismanagement at the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, a nonprofit DOE contractor that provides medical services to thousands of federal and contract employees at the nuclear site near Richland, Wash.
Under questioning from Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., Abraham said investigators are reviewing not only how workers were cared for, but how records were maintained and cases filed.
A report by a government watchdog group said workers cleaning up nuclear waste at the long-contaminated site were denied adequate safety equipment, and that workers who reported problems were often told by Hanford doctors that they were suffering from allergies or even psychological fears.
The investigation by the Energy Department's Office of Independent Oversight and Safety Assurance will go back at least until early 2002 and may go back even further if necessary, Abraham said.
The investigation follows several inquiries in recent months into whether Hanford workers have been harmed by vapors from 177 underground tanks that hold about 53 million gallons of radioactive waste.
Allegations of misconduct by the environmental health foundation include violation of patients' medical privacy rights, employee harassment and mismanagement of employee medical care.
The foundation, which has provided medical services at Hanford since 1965, has denied the allegations. Independent investigations last fall concluded the claims were false, the foundation said this week.
Abraham, in his testimony, noted that the foundation recently lost out in a competitive bid process and will soon be replaced by Virginia-based AdvanceMed.
The Energy Department's Richland, Wash., office began reviewing the health foundation's work last September, after the nonprofit Government Accountability Project asked the inspector general to investigate. Earlier that month, the watchdog group published a report contending toxic vapors escaping from the waste-storage tanks had hurt workers.
While the federal review was initiated because of concerns about the tanks, it is being expanded because of the new allegations, Abraham said.
Some of the underground tanks date back to World War II and have leaked into the groundwater. Between 800 and 900 people work in the tank farms for Colorado-based contractor CH2M Hill, hired to handle tank-waste cleanup.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a longtime Hanford critic, said he was skeptical of the DOE investigation.
``The situation is too murky to trust the Department of Energy's self-investigation, and the sooner some independent eyes are trained on Hanford worker safety, the better,'' Wyden said.
-------- us politics
9/11 panelist may quit over Bush secrecy
James Gordon Meek and Kenneth R. Bazinet
NY Daily News
February 26, 2004
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/168092p-146920c.html
WASHINGTON - Frustrated by Bush administration restrictions, a former senator said yesterday he might quit the special commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Ex-Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), now president of New York's New School University, told the Daily News that resigning is "on my list of possibilities" because the administration continues to block the full panel's access to top intelligence officials and materials.
"I am no longer ... feeling comfortable that I'm going to be able to read and process what I need in order to participate in writing a report about how it was that 19 men defeated every single defensive system the U.S. put up to kill 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11," said Kerrey.
The commission said yesterday that President Bush and Vice President Cheney would meet privately with only the panel's two chairmen - although former President Bill Clinton and his vice president, Al Gore, said they would meet with all 10 members.
The White House recently allowed only three commissioners and their staff director to read secret CIA briefings on Al Qaeda given to Bush and Clinton before the 2001 attacks.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) yesterday refused pleas by Bush to extend the commission's May 27 deadline by two months.
----
White House's limits upset 9/11 panel
Length of interviews, access restricted
Philip Shenon,
New York Times
San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, February 26, 2004
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/26/MNGQN58I701.DTL
Washington -- President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, saying they will meet only with the panel's top two officials and that Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning, panel members said Wednesday.
The commission, which has 10 members and is bipartisan, said it also had been informed by the White House that Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, had rejected its request that she testify in public about the intelligence reports she received before the attacks.
Democratic members of the panel said the administration's moves raised new questions about its willingness to cooperate with the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law enforcement blunders in the months and years before the attacks. The White House initially opposed creating the panel.
Republican congressional leaders have criticized the investigation's pace. House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Wednesday that he would block legislation that extended the commission's May 27 deadline, the Los Angeles Times reported.
"President Bush and Vice President Cheney have agreed to meet privately with the chair and vice chair but prefer not to meet with all members," the statement said, referring to the chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, a Republican, and the vice chairman, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind. "We hope the president and the vice president will reconsider."
The panel said it was disappointed by Rice's decision not to testify at a public hearing, adding, "We believe the nation would be well served by the contribution she can make to public understanding of the intelligence and policy issues being examined by the commission."
Rice has submitted to several hours of questioning at a private session. Her spokesman, Sean McCormack, said the decision against public testimony was made at the recommendation of administration lawyers who warned of separation- of-powers issues.
"Based on law and practice, White House staff members have not testified before legislative bodies," McCormack said, "and this is considered a legislative body."
A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, would not offer details of the administration's reasoning in trying to limit the meeting to Kean and Hamilton. Healy said she was unaware that the White House had wanted to limit the president's interview to one hour.
----
Perle Resigns
Controversial Figure Quits Advisory Panel Post
February 26, 2004
ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/Investigation/perle_resignation_040225.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25- A controversial associate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has resigned from his seat on a key Pentagon advisory panel, ABCNEWS has learned.
Richard Perle, a lightning rod for critics of the Bush administration's national security policies, informed Rumsfeld more than two weeks ago he was quitting the Defense Policy Board. He confirmed the decision in a letter to the defense chief last Wednesday.
"We are now approaching a long presidential election campaign, in the course of which issues on which I have strong views will be widely discussed and debated," Perle wrote. "I would not wish those views to be attributed to you or the President at any time, and especially not during a presidential campaign."
An Outspoken Figure
Perle is a leading figure of the "neo-conservative" ideological school, and outlines his strong views on wielding U.S. military power against Islamic radicals in his new book, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror.
He was a major advocate of the war in Iraq and has advocated a stronger U.S. hand in the entire Middle East region. More recently, he has called for the resignation of CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Intelligence Agency head Adm. Lowell Jacoby.
Senior Pentagon officials said that, despite the controversial statements and writings, Rumsfeld did not ask for Perle's resignation.
Last March, Perle stepped down as chairman of the same board. The move followed published news reports questioning whether his work with a company seeking favor with the Pentagon was a conflict of interest for such a senior adviser. Perle has consistently insisted he did nothing wrong.
And his attorney, Samuel Abeday, told ABCNEWS today Perle is quitting the board altogether so he can sue the news organizations that "falsely accused him of conflicts of interest."
Abeday also said the Defense Department's inspector general conducted a thorough investigation that "exonerated Perle 100 percent."
The Defense Policy Board has no actual authority but advises Pentagon leaders on defense policy matters.
ABCNEWS' Brian Hartman, Martha Raddatz and Chris Vlasto contributed to this report.
----
Twilight of the Neocons
Richard Perle has begun to panic.
By Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke
February 26, 2004,
Washington Monthly
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0403.clarke.html
Since 9/11 a cascade of books purveying instant analysis on the ramifications has hit the bookstores. A deep fault line runs between them. Those with "evil" or "jihad" in the title lie on one side of the divide; those with "empire" or "lies" are found on the other. Their mutually antagonistic readerships snarl at each other across the chasm. So it is with David Frum and Richard Perle's new book An End to Evil: What's Next in the War on Terrorism, in which they reinforce the thesis--now usually described as neoconservative--that American interests and values are best pursued with a maximum of military stick and minimum of negotiating carrot. It makes little difference whether the issue is Libya, Iran, or North Korea. The authors believe market-democracy is best delivered on the back of a Tomahawk missile.
The book's argument is easy to follow, consisting of three main propositions: America is an immense force for good in the world (who would disagree?); American military might is preeminent (again, universal agreement); therefore, the way to project American values is through American force of arms. Ah, there's the rub. And underlying these propositions is the authors' absolute certitude about the correctness of their solutions and the unreliability of what are darkly called the "accommodationists in the foreign-policy establishment."
Ideology informs the book like an iron spine. The authors seem less interested in imparting new information than in reminding the faithful about what they should be thinking. This may be the book's most interesting aspect, in as much as the authors betray a mild note of panic. They write that "the will to win is ebbing in Washington" and warn against "a reversion to the bad old habits of complacency and denial." It is as though they fear that, given the so-far fragile progress in both Afghanistan and Iraq and in their misconceived recommendations for North Korea, their 15 minutes of fame may be coming to an end. They are right to worry. The twilight of neoconservatism has arrived.
Tally the faithful
This book is essentially an attempt to plug leaks in what the authors feel may be a sinking ship. As such it has the shrill tone of a political manifesto. In the case of Frum, a former White House speechwriter who is more a political jingle-writer with an ear for a polemical catch phrase than a foreign-policy expert, the book's bludgeoning tone is unsurprising. Perle, however, a member of the administration's Defense Policy Board, has a record of real accomplishment in international affairs, having played a widely praised role in arms control negotiations under Ronald Reagan. He might have brought his experience to bear on the vexing dilemmas of a post-9/11 world--for instance, how to push democratic reform on resistant tyrants whose cooperation we need to apprehend terrorists. Instead he has chosen to put his name to a work that overlooks the existence of such quandaries, that oversimplifies the craft of international relations, and that betrays a worrying indifference to how the real world works.
The authors keep things simple, focusing on potential waverers from the cause and reminding readers of the sources of their discontent in the form of the familiar demons: President George H.W. Bush's blunder at the end of Desert Storm; Clinton's fecklessness; the State Department's relationship-mongering; the CIA's liberal political correctness; Chirac's duplicity; the futility of the United Nations; the BBC's defamations; and the bad faith, defeatism, or worse of anyone who disagrees. Some weasel wording aside, the book comes perilously close to embracing a religious war against Islam. These targets surely have charges to answer, but one wishes that the criticisms were less routine and more historically accurate. The first President Bush, for example, whose exquisite management of the Cold War endgame is one of the all-time gems of American statesmanship, may be surprised by the book's accusation that he favored keeping the Soviet Union intact--and the CIA's Bill Casey (the scourge of the Sandinistas) would certainly chuckle at being called liberal.
The real world makes only cameo appearances in the book. Readers are not asked to clutter their minds with the actual outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan--the continuing American casualties, the burgeoning heroin production or unsavory deals with despots in Central Asia. No. Electricity is back. Schools are reopening. Mission accomplished. Time to move on. Problems with Syria, Iran, North Korea, China? It's simple. Straight talk and a whiff of grapeshot. Terrorism? More of the same. The authors speak only of force. It is the only dimension, they say, through which the terrorist challenge can be approached. And, by implication, it is the only thing that the authors trust their readers to understand.
Perle and Frum set a low value on regional expertise (language skills, knowledge of foreign cultures and mores, foreign contacts, etc.) and propose a vast expansion of political appointments in the foreign affairs agencies. Every administration struggles with inevitable tensions between ideology at the center and expertise in the field. But the degree to which the authors embrace ideology as the core of the policy process sometimes leaves the impression that they spend little time actually following international developments, let alone analyzing them. In the short section on the Middle East peace process--this appears between obligatory quotation marks to signal the authors' disapproval of non-force-based tactics--there is no mention of the burgeoning initiatives on both the political left and right in Israel and within the military to come up with new thinking. Through clenched teeth, Perle and Frum concede their acceptance of what they call a Palestinian "mini-state." But they are silent on what happens if the Palestinians decide to reject this prospect and instead allow their birthrate to become the main pressure point upon Israel. Once again, the authors seem concerned that if they make any concessions to negotiation-based efforts, they will strengthen the hands of those seeking negotiated outcomes with Iran, Syria, or North Korea.
The few new ideas offered in this book rush by so quickly as to make it impossible to judge their merits. On North Korea, for example, once the authors have got out of their system the absurd (outside certain Strangeloveesque circles) option of a first strike on Yongbyon even at the cost of the certain destruction of Seoul (it's the South Koreans' fault, the authors argue, for not protecting themselves adequately), they propose an option short of war that may be worth considering: an air and naval blockade. This would have been the place to mention the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI)--a multilateral agreement crafted by the State Department with many of the United States' principal allies--which, aggressively interpreted, might usefully ratchet up multilateral pressure on North Korea. Perhaps the multilateral dimensions were too much for the authors to stomach. Similarly, with their suggestion of dismembering Saudi Arabia if it does not close down the Wahhabi madrasas. Is this a serious idea, with all the implications (the impact on Iraq and Jordan, the empowerment of Iran, the energy aspects etc.) thought through? Or is it just a bit of agitprop that bubbled up at an AEI "black coffee" teach-in? We are not given enough information to judge.
Underinformation and fear of real, fact-based debate are the lasting impressions that the book leaves. When the authors speak about a "war of ideas," they do not have in mind a search for common ground or an attempt to persuade, but total capitulation. As such, this book is one for true believers. If you loathe Clinton, despise the CIA, scorn the State Department, hate the French, or just generally feel contempt for most foreigners, and if you have nothing better to do on the Metroliner to New York, this book will deliver you at Penn Station if not wiser, at least with your anger fortified.
Which reinforces the thesis that the real purpose of the book is to ward off a policy shift by the administration. The dustcover claims that it "will define the conservative point of view on foreign policy for a new generation." The suspicion lingers, however, that the authors know full well that it will do nothing of the kind. As Ronald Reagan's worldview evolved, he, too, moved away from the neoconservatives whom he had accommodated in his first administration. The authors discern something similar in train with Bush. They detect "fatigue" in Washington and sense, probably correctly, that the fatigue is with their brand of zany, one-size-fits-all belligerence.
Dissent is indeed breaking out inside the neoconservative tent. One of their colleagues, Robert Kagan, recently wrote in The New York Times that the net result of U.S. policy since 9/11 has been that "America, for the first time since World War II, is suffering a crisis of international legitimacy. Americans will find that they cannot ignore this problem." This is a significant departure from neoconservative triumphalist orthodoxy. Circumstances have also prompted the Bush administration to take actions that are hard to square with neoconservative rectitude: turning to the United Nations to help cope with the Shi'ite demand for elections in Iraq; seeing the Joint Chiefs admit that U.S. forces are dangerously overstretched; relying on China to be our intermediary in negotiations with North Korea.
Allies of Perle and Frum still occupy powerful positions in the Bush administration, and the ideas and worldview expressed in their book remain influential there. Still, there is a growing sense within the GOP in Washington that the neoconservative agenda may have created problems whose solutions are elusive--or worse. As guardians of the flame, the authors see their book as a preemptive strike against potential backsliders in their own ranks, an effort--a sort of sting in the dying scorpion's tail--to rally the troops against the looming reassertion of mainstream, rational conservatism.
Stefan Halper, a senior fellow at The Centre of International Studies at Cambridge University, served in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, and Jonathan Clarke, a foreign-affairs scholar at the CATO Institute, are co-authors of America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and Global Order to be published by Cambridge University Press in the summer of 2004.
----
Senate plans secret session on Iraq
Thu Feb 26, 2004
Chicago Tribune
By Kristina Herrndobler Washington Bureau
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/chitribts/20040226/ts_chicagotrib/senateplanssecretsessiononiraq
The last time the Senate met in a closed-door session--excluding press and visitors, shutting out most staffers and imposing a television blackout--was during the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in 1999.
The Senate is again gearing up for a rare secret session, this time to scrutinize flaws in America's prewar intelligence about Iraqi weapons. And like last time, political charges and countercharges are swirling about the motivation and agenda for the session.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) agreed on the closed session, which will be held in coming weeks, after Democrats threatened to force the issue.
Any two senators can force a closed session, and Republican leaders decided to go along despite criticism from some in their ranks that the closed session is a political stunt designed to turn up the heat on President Bush.
Democrats insist the session is a legitimate, even important, way for lawmakers to explore how the intelligence community could have been as mistaken as it apparently was in saying that Iraq was concealing significant stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
That is of particular concern to senators who relied on such assertions when they voted to authorize Bush to use force in Iraq, Democratic leaders said.
`A very rare occasion'
"The senators who voted for the Iraq resolution want to see how the intelligence they based that vote on could be that wrong," said a senior Democratic aide. "This is a very rare occasion, and any time a closed session would be called, it would be about the most important type of debates."
Joe Shoemaker, spokesman for Intelligence Committee member Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), agreed.
"This has become too big of a topic for the Senate not to address it as a whole," he said.
But some Republicans questioned their opponents' motives, noting that the Intelligence Committee and an independent commission already are investigating flaws in the prewar intelligence.
"This is nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction or intelligence," Sen. Rick Santorum (news, bio, voting record) (R-Pa.) told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. "Everybody wants to get to the bottom of what is going on there, and the bottom line is they want to play politics with the issue."
Although no date has been set, Democrats are pressing to hold the session soon, while the GOP leadership wants to wait.
Daschle is calling for administration officials, including CIA chief George Tenet and Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to attend the session to answer questions. But Republicans object.
"Sending our troops to war is the most critical decision a lawmaker can make, so it makes sense to have people like that there to be able to comment and answer questions," said one Democratic aide.
Since David Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, asserted last month that Saddam Hussein likely had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, Bush has faced pressure to explain how the U.S. could go to war for a seemingly faulty reason.
Bush named an independent commission, headed by former Sen. Charles Robb (D-Va.) and retired federal Judge Laurence Silberman, to examine the nation's intelligence agencies.
It remains unclear how the closed session will proceed or what it will encompass. It is even uncertain how much of it will remain secret, given the participation of 100 senators. But the session is likely to add heat to a debate already fueled by the presidential campaign.
Frist's press secretary confirmed that the majority leader has agreed to a closed session, but he would not offer an estimate on when it would take place. "I wouldn't say it will be within a couple of weeks, because they just haven't gotten that far in discussions yet," Bob Stevenson said.
The Constitution does not require the Senate to meet in open session. In fact, said associate Senate historian Donald Ritchie, senators did not regularly open their debates to the public until 1929.
Precedent for secrecy
Susan Tolchin, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, said national security and intelligence are topics that have traditionally prompted the Senate to close its doors.
"Intelligence Committees have never been open," Tolchin said. "In many cases, national security has been used for frivolous reason. But in this case with Iraq, I think our policy of secrecy is sound."
Randall Strahan, a political science professor at Emory University, said it is important that the Senate strike a balance between transparency and security. "This is a case that most citizens might find understandable to hold in closed session," Strahan said.
Still, Strahan said there are obvious reasons Republicans would want to delay the issue.
"I can see why the Republicans would want to resist it," Strahan said. "The best-case scenario would be that they have this session and everyone is satisfied. But the worse case would be that something harmful to the administration comes out."
Strahan also said it is conceivable that the closed session could strengthen the administration's case for war, by informing senators of previously unknown intelligence.
While it might seem unlikely that any meeting of 100 publicity-friendly politicians would remain secret, any senator or staffer who violates the session's confidentiality would be taking a serious risk.
Ilona Nickels, a scholar at the Center on Congress at Indiana University, said the rules for closed sessions are strict and that there are severe ramifications, including dismissal from the Senate, if someone leaks information.
However rare a closed session is for the Senate, it is even more unlikely that the 435 members of the House of Representatives would hold such a secret meeting.
"I would not expect this to happen in the House," Strahan said. "The traditional role of the Senate is being the more important body in foreign policy matters."
----
Dwight D. Eisenhower: The Wisdom of a Patriot
It's too bad the Chickenhawks in Washington have ignored the words of this old soldier.
February 26, 2004
Intervention Magazine Commentary:
By Mick Youther
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=647
Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first President I remember. I saw him as a doddering old bald guy; who played golf a lot, and suffered a heart attack sometime during his presidency. I didn't have any idea of what he had done in WWII, nor did I care. Presidents were not really a top priority for me at that time. Since then, I've learned there was a lot more to Eisenhower, and that he had some very important things to say to America-then and now.
• "We have arrived at that point, my friends, when war does not present the possibility of victory or defeat. War would present to us only the alternative in degrees of destruction."-- 1954
• "We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence--economic, political, even spiritual--is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. . . . Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society."-- Farewell address, 1/17/61
• "The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without."
• "Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well."-- Farewell address, 1/17/61
• "There is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security, but it can bankrupt itself morally and economically in attempting to reach that illusory goal through arms alone."
• "If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads"-- as president of Colombia University, 12/8/49
• "May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."
In 1955 Eisenhower had his opportunity to wage preemptive war against Communist China after China invaded some islands near Taiwan (Formosa). Congress gave Eisenhower approval to attack China at the time and place of his choosing. Instead of attacking, Eisenhower sent his ambassador, John Foster Dulles, to Europe to gain support for a war; but Churchill refused, and so did NATO. If we went it alone, Pentagon officials assured Eisenhower that we could destroy China's military capability within three weeks.
So, what did Eisenhower do? Did he bribe together a "coalition of the willing", start handing out no-bid contracts, and mobilize the military? No, Eisenhower called together his top advisors and told them to find a diplomatic solution-which they did. There was no war.
• "A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility. I don't believe there is such a thing, and frankly I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing."-- Press conference in 1954
• "When it comes to the matter of war, there is only one place that I would go, and that is to the Congress of the United States." --January 1956 [A few months later, he explained]"I am not going to order any troops into anything that can be interpreted as war, until Congress directs it."
No law says our President has to have been in the military, but such service would certainly make a better President. It would give (him) the perspective that is so lacking in the current flock of Chicken Hawks that are misusing our troops in their ill-conceived plan for world domination.
• "Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field."-- From an address at Peoria, IL 9/25/56 (The same can be said for war.)
• "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."-- April 16, 1953
• "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
Mick Youther is an Instructor in the Department of Physiology at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL. You can email your comments to Mick@interventionmag.com
----
Bush Adviser Leaves Defense Policy Board
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7653-2004Feb26.html
Richard Perle, a prominent adviser to the Bush administration known for his hawkish views on Iraq and other national security matters, has resigned from the Defense Policy Board, saying he wanted to avoid being a lightning rod for criticism of the administration during a presidential election year.
Perle submitted his resignation from the board -- a bipartisan advisory group with no decision-making power -- in a Feb. 18 letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"We are now approaching a long presidential election campaign, in the course of which issues on which I have strong views will be widely discussed and debated," Perle wrote. "I would not wish those views to be attributed to you or the president at any time, and especially not during a presidential campaign."
A Pentagon spokesman confirmed the resignation and said Rumsfeld has accepted it, thanking Perle for his long service on the board, which spanned 17 years. The resignation was first reported late yesterday by Knight Ridder.
In his letter, Perle wrote that too often his views have been wrongly interpreted as reflecting administration policy.
"This results partly from a misunderstanding about the role and nature of the Defense Policy Board, exacerbated by the controversy surrounding policies I have advocated as a private citizen," he said.
The likelihood that he would become a further source of controversy for the administration had increased, he said, as a result of publication of a recent book he co-wrote with David Frum advocating "bold action" against Iran, North Korea and other "sponsors of terrorism," including Saudi Arabia.
"Many of the ideas in that book are controversial, and I wish to be free to argue them without those views or my arguments getting caught up in the campaign," Perle wrote.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan President Says Taliban Defeated
February 26, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Rumsfeld-Afghanistan.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday terrorists are on the run but that he could not say precisely what the prospects are for capturing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
``One would certainly hope so,'' said Rumsfeld, who held talks here with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The Pakistani offensive, taking place near the Afghan border, has had some effect on al-Qaida there, he said.
``Clearly there's pressure being put on terrorists all over the world, but most recently, and certainly with a great deal of energy and some success in Pakistan, for which we are very grateful,'' said the secretary.
Rumsfeld declined to say whether the Pentagon was shifting more special operations forces from Iraq to Afghanistan to aid in the hunt for bin Laden.
For his part, Karzai declared declared the Taliban defeated and suggested that much of the violence in his country is caused by criminals rather than guerrilla holdouts.
But neither he nor Rumsfeld, who appeared together at a press conference at the Afghan presidential palace, offered any specific hope that the U.S.-led coalition would capture bin Laden soon, despite a fresh offensive in neighboring Pakistan.
Karzai's statements on the Taliban, the former rulers of Afghanistan and bin Laden's native ally, were some of his strongest yet, however.
``The Taliban as a movement does not exist any more,'' he said. He said former Taliban members and leaders are frequently approaching his government to seek permission to return home.
Karzai said they could, as long as they were not members of al-Qaida and not committed terrorist acts.
Rumsfeld, visiting Afghanistan on a weeklong trip to U.S. allies in Asia, seemed to agree.
``I'm not seeing any indication the Taliban pose any military threat to Afghanistan,'' Rumsfeld said.
Karzai acknowledged that some Taliban holdouts remain a threat, but suggested that common criminals are the cause of much of the violence.
``Now every act committed by a Kalashnikov is not an act done by the Taliban or al-Qaida,'' Karzai said.
The Taliban is strongest in south-central Afghanistan, in the region around Kandahar. Al-Qaida is concentrated to the north, along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where bin Laden is thought to be hiding, U.S. military officials said.
Guerillas who serve Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, located to the north of Jalalabad, also are a threat, officials said.
During his visit to Afghanistan, Rumsfeld also traveled to the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, where he met with a graduating class of Afghan police and a U.S. military reconstruction team.
His visit came a day after gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying Afghan aid workers east Kabul, killing five and wounding two others. Another Afghan aid worker was missing.
The victims were from an Afghan aid group called FBF and were working on projects to rebuild the rural economy, devastated by more than two decades of violence.
More than two years after the fall of the Taliban, much of the country is still vulnerable. More than 100 people have died in violence this year, including aid workers and government employees as well as foreign and Afghan security forces.
Attacks have come mainly in the south and east of the country, but the capital and the far west also have been targeted in recent weeks, raising doubts about plans for landmark national elections this summer.
-------- africa
U.S. eyes terrorism networks, oil in Africa
February 26, 2004
By Ellen Knickmeyer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040225-093210-7499r.htm
DAKAR, Senegal - Top U.S. generals are touching down across Africa in unusual back-to-back trips, part of a change in military planning as U.S. interest grows in African terror links and African oil.
Trips by two top European Command generals follow last week's similarly low-profile Africa visit by the U.S. commander in Europe, Marine Gen. James L. Jones.
The generals are leaders in U.S. military proposals to shift from Cold War-era troop buildups in Western Europe to smaller concentrations closer to the world's trouble spots.
Gen. Jones' trip included stops in Morocco and Cameroon and talks with leaders of sub-Saharan Africa's military giants, Nigeria and South Africa, European Command spokesmen in Stuttgart, Germany, said.
This week, European Command deputy head Air Force Gen. Charles Wald also is traveling to Nigeria and South Africa, as well as oil-rich Gabon, European Command spokesman Maj. Andres Ortegon said.
Meanwhile, U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler is visiting Mauritania, Mali and Niger, Maj. Ortegon said.
Gen. Kohler is the European Command's point man on planning for force reconfiguration.
His trip is part of efforts to build relationships with government officials and discuss security issues as well as future exercises, Maj. Ortegon said.
An increased focus on Africa comes amid a push by some in the United States - conservative think tanks in particular - to do more to secure alternatives to oil from the volatile Middle East.
West Africa supplies the United States with 15 percent of its oil. The U.S. National Intelligence Council has projected the figure will grow to 25 percent by 2015.
Western security officials also are concerned about terror along Saharan routes linking Arab nations and north and west Africa.
U.S. security think tanks and others have listed Nigeria and Mauritania as being among nations that have al Qaeda cells.
The Algeria-based Salafist Group for Call and Combat, suspected to have links with al Qaeda, is believed to have spread across borders into Niger and Mali.
A State Department program drawing on members of the European Command is helping train and equip security forces of Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Chad to better guard their borders against incursions by terror groups.
Military proposals on overall reconfiguration of forces are awaiting a decision from Washington.
The European Command oversees U.S. military for Africa excluding the Horn of Africa, site of a U.S. counterterrorism effort for northeast Africa and Yemen.
----
West African defence chiefs meet on regional security
ABUJA (AFP)
Feb 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040226172152.vjb06iau.html
West African defence chiefs gathered in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Thursday to begin a meeting on peacekeeping and security in their sometimes unstable and dangerous region.
"We will discuss the general security situation in the whole sub-region, because if insecurity is not contained, it is going to engulf everybody," said General Alexander Ogomudia, Nigeria's chief of defence staff.
The forum, which is the eighth session of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Defence and Security Commission, will also consider proposals to set up a standing regional peacekeeping force.
"We still need to work hard at the creation of an ECOWAS stand-by force," said Ghana's chief of staff General Seth Obeng, chairman of the commissio.
Obeng urged his collaegues to demonstrate that "we are capable of providing the atmosphere of peace and stability for economic development".
Participants from Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo are attending the meeting.
ECOWAS was established in 1975 to promote economic integration, peace and security in the region.
Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in civil wars which raged for several years in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s.
West African peacekeeping forces, mostly made up of Nigerian troops, have helped in restore peace in both countries in a series of missions.
Meanwhile, some 1,500 west Africans from other member states have been deployed alongside a larger French contingent since early last year in Ivory Coast, policing a ceasefire line between government and former rebel forces.
-------- arms
Bush seeks protection for gun dealers
February 26, 2004
By Brian DeBose
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040226-120359-8140r.htm
President Bush urged the Senate to pass a bill that would protect gun dealers and manufacturers from frivolous lawsuits but without any amendments that would extend the assault-weapons ban or close gun-show loopholes.
"The administration urges the Senate to pass a clean bill, in order to ensure enactment of the legislation this year," the president said in a statement released late Tuesday. "Any amendment that would delay enactment of the bill beyond this year is unacceptable."
The legislation aims to protect gun makers and dealers from lawsuits that blame them for criminal acts by persons using their guns. The bill, if passed, would be retroactive and thus affect litigation in progress.
The president softened his stance on the gun-show loophole, which allows unlicensed dealers to sell guns without thorough background checks, and on the assault-weapons ban, since last week, when he said he supported those measures.
That stance irked Senate Democrats, who accused Mr. Bush of reneging on a promise to the American people and turning his back on his allies in the Senate.
"If we can't amend this bill, we don't have another vehicle," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat. "In effect, the president is breaking a promise he made to the American people."
White House spokeswoman Clare Buchan said the president hasn't changed his position on any of the gun-related issues but doesn't want the lawsuit-protection bill to fail because of amendments.
But Mr. Schumer said the Bush statement will lead at least 10 or 12 senators to shift their votes and oppose the assault-weapons and gun-show amendments.
"For the president to say he is for the assault-weapons ban and then act against it, well that is a flip-flop if I ever saw one," Mr. Schumer said.
But Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat, said that the bill had a good chance of passing with or without the amendments, but that the president's action has made it a tougher battle to extend the Clinton-era assault-weapons ban, which expires Sept. 13.
"I would think [President Bush] would be pleased to sign this bill, extend the ban and close the loophole because he pledged to support both," Mr. Reed said.
In the past weeks, Mr. Bush has taken great strides to solidify his political base leading up to the November election.
Last week, Mr. Bush appointed William H. Pryor, the Alabama attorney general and a conservative, to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while the Senate was on recess. This week, Mr. Bush called for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and woman.
Sen. Larry E. Craig, Idaho Republican and author of the lawsuit-protection bill, said, "The antigun lobby is using these lawsuits to bankrupt gun companies and put thousands of people they employ out of work."
Mr. Craig said the gun-show loophole and assault-weapons ban were not effective policies to reduce gun violence in America.
"The only effective way is to go full tilt after the criminals," he said.
However, House Democrats and moderate Republicans introduced companion bills that address assault weapons and the loopholes.
"We must break the stalemate on the renewal of the assault-weapons ban and the gun-show loophole issue in Washington, D.C., and this gun-liability legislation is likely our best legislative vehicle this year to do so," said Rep. Michael N. Castle, Delaware Republican, who introduced the bill with New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy.
And during floor debate yesterday, Mr. Reed, as did nearly every senator, invoked the memory of Conrad Johnson, the Montgomery County bus driver who became the last victim of the Washington-area snipers last year.
Mr. Johnson's widow, Denise Johnson, filed a lawsuit against the gun dealer and manufacturer who sold the men the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle used to kill her husband.
"This bill is retroactive and would kill the lawsuit Denise Johnson has against Bullseye and the manufacturer who were clearly negligent," Mr. Reed said, referring to Bullseye Shooters Supply, the Tacoma, Wash., gun store where the snipers bought their rifle.
The gun store had been cited by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for improper cataloguing and losing track of 237 guns.
Mr. Craig responded to Mr. Reed, saying, "The shop is closed, the owner is broke, and the ATF has referred the case to the Justice Department for prosecution," and there was no further need for a civil suit.
-------- balkans
Macedonian President Killed in Bosnia Plane Crash
by Christopher Deliso,
February 26, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=2043
Macedonians are in a state of shock today as the first incomplete reports of the death of their president, Boris Trajkovski, start to filter back from Bosnia, where the president and 8 others died early this morning in a plane crash, in mountainous terrain near Mostar.
"This is unbelievable... no one could imagine that something like this could happen to President Trajkovski," said one stunned man in Skopje. On the capital's radio stations, the quiet elegiac music is suspended only for brief updates giving new information on the crash.
According to Bloomberg, citing SFOR in Bosnia, Trajkovski's plane crashed near Stolac, a mountainous area near Croatia's southern coast. While the wreckage of the plane has been discovered by Bosnian search teams, only 4 bodies have so far been found. However, everyone aboard- Trajkovski, 6 advisors, guards and the two-man crew- are presumed dead.
Stormy weather that prevented the landing of other delegation planes is the most likely cause of the crash, according to Belgrade's B-92. Macedonia's TV-5 just reported that a Macedonian search team has just been dispatched to Bosnia, along with officers from the EU's Proxima police force serving in Macedonia.
The plane crash, called "one of the most tragic days in the history of the Republic of Macedonia," by Mirjana Kontevska of the Interior Ministry, will mean a dramatic surge in temporary security in this state without a president: "...we are putting extra security on the Parliament, government buildings and Petrovec Airport, and also pay greater attention to our borders and local controls."
The other persons killed were: Trajkovski's cabinet advisors, Dimka Ilkovska-Boskovic, Risto Blazevski, Anita Lozanovska, as well as Mile Krstevski from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; two security guards, Boris Velinov and Ace Bozinovski; and the plane's two pilots, Markom Markovski and Branko Ivanovski.
In a sad irony, the 47 year-old Trajkovski was on his way to make the official presentation of Macedonia's EU application at an investment conference in Mostar, said Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern. (Ireland is the current honorary president of the European Union). Macedonian Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski, who was in Dublin to meet with Irish leaders, was called back immediately and is now in Skopje.
Macedonian Radio 77 reported that Skopje's newspaper 'Dnevnik' will print a special commemorative issue devoted to Trajkovski at 3 PM, to be given out for free. Trajkovski, from the southeastern town of Strumica, was a lawyer by training and one of the founders of the modern VMRO-DPMNE party. He was elected by the party in 1999, and presided over Macedonia's most difficult period: the turbulence brought on by NATO's Kosovo bombardment and the 2001 war, with its uncertain aftermath. Through it all, Trajkovski was firmly pro-American. Although he was sometimes criticized, Macedonians felt a gentle fondness for their president. To be sure, he inspired none of the dislike or hatred that most other politicians in the country have.
Condolences from world leaders have started to come in to Skopje. Tony Blair and Jack Straw of the UK expressed their sadness, calling Trajkovski one of the most important people in making peace after the 2001 conflict. Bosnian president Dragan Covic said, "...We today lost a friend." According to Bloomberg, European Commission President Romano Prodi stated, "...we all owe very much to Boris Trajkovski and my sincere hope is that his vision will be a legacy for all Macedonians and will strengthen even further their determination to join the European institutions soon."
Nobody knows what will happen next in Macedonia. "This issue changes everything immediately," says one man close to Trajkovski's circle. The country is now without a president, and elections slated for the end of the year will probably be bumped up. For now, Parliamentary speaker Ljubco Jordanovski will serve as acting president.
The future of Macedonia's relations with Europe may now change as well. Croatian President Stipe Mesic said Trajkovski's death will have "political consequences" for the Balkans:
"...it is a human loss which hits not only his family and the republic of Macedonia but will have political consequences for the situation in the region...
This afternoon I was supposed to meet Boris at the conference on investment in Bosnia. Together with him and the presidents of other states we worked on the program of stabilization and reconciliation in southeastern Europe. Boris won't be with us today, but we shall I'm convinced continue the work on which Boris worked too. This will be the best way to continue our joint road."
Comments such as Mesic's and Prodi's are the first statements of many to come in the days and weeks ahead seeking to locate the legacy of Boris Trajkovski. Most likely, he will be eulogized as a moderate figure who tried to preserve the territorial integrity of Macedonia, while reaching out to the Albanian minority. Trajkovski constantly traveled during his 5 years in office, in efforts to raise money and win investments for the little Balkan state. As was the case with the shocking assassination of Serbian counterpart Zoran Djindjic almost exactly one year ago, it is likely that the occasional grumblings against Trajkovski will be forgiven, and that he will be remembered as a symbol for the kind of multi-ethnic, European-oriented Macedonia that seems to be the common goal of Macedonia's leaders and the West alike.
A clear example insinuating this was the statement of NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who said that Trajkovski "...demonstrated great leadership to preserve the unity of his country when it was under threat:"
"...In difficult circumstances, and in the face of opposition from many, he guided the peace process in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia... I pay tribute to this courageous statesman who fought to ensure that democratic values would prevail in his country."
------- chemical weapons
Libya to Destroy Chemical Weapons from Friday
February 26, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-libya-weapons-destruction.html
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Libya will start destroying its chemical weapons on Friday as the small Arab state tries to win back the confidence of the United States and Europe after agreeing to pay damages over the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing.
The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on Thursday that Libya would start destroying 3,300 unfilled bombs on February 27.
OPCW inspectors will monitor the destruction which is planned to last until March 5.
The United States on Thursday lifted a travel ban on Libya and will allow some U.S. firms to negotiate deals in the oil-rich country as it welcomed its progress on getting rid of illicit weapons.
The OPCW said the unfilled bombs had been intended for delivering chemical weapons. An inspection team has arrived in Libya and will carry out an inventory of all munitions prior to the ``irreversible'' destruction.from Libya and will then organize the destruction of all remaining chemical weapons and related facilities.
``This is a very positive step and a confirmation of Libya's intention to actually get rid of prohibited weapons, OPCW Director-General of the Technical Secretariat, Rogelio Pfirter, said in a statement.
``In a wider sense, one must see today's events as a confirmation of the validity and importance of multilateralism in the field of disarmament and the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,'' he added.
The Chemical Weapons Convention was opened in January 1993 for states that agreed to abandon these weapons. A total of 160 states have signed so far. The convention was closed to new signatories in 1997, but Libya has asked the United Nations whether it may also sign.
SIGNIFICANT STEPS
The White House said on Thursday that the country led by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had taken significant steps but more needed to be done.
``Over the course of the last two months, Libya has taken significant steps in implementing its commitment to disclose and dismantle all weapons of mass destructions programs,'' the White House said.
The United States said ``more remains to be done'' but it praised Libya's actions as ``serious, credible and consistent'' with Gaddafi's pledges.
On Tuesday, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on 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.
Lifting the travel ban will allow U.S. oil companies to travel to Tripoli to negotiate deals for the day that U.S. trade sanctions are lifted.
Libya is eager to bring U.S. companies back, especially in the oil industry, its main source of foreign earnings.
-------- europe
Denmark orders probe into leaks of secret pre-Iraq war reports
COPENHAGEN (AFP)
Feb 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040226164655.0zv4hsov.html
Denmark's military intelligence agency FE on Thursday asked the police to investigate leaks to the press of secret reports to the government that questioned the real threat posed by Saddam Hussein before the Iraq war.
The FE said in a statement it would file a lawsuit against the author of these leaks, which were published by the conservative daily Berlingske Tidende on Sunday.
The suit is based "on confidential assessment notes before the war in Iraq and on statements by an anonymous (FE) agent" to the paper.
According to these documents "no reliable information on operational weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) existed in Iraq. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen had publicly claimed the contrary.
The FE request for an investigation comes after controversy over the real motives behind the US-led war, since no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq since the official end of the war in May 2003.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said last month he had no doubt that pre-war intelligence about an active Iraqi quest for weapons of mass destruction was "genuine".
Grilled by US lawmakers, who voted to endorse the use of force in Iraq before the US-led invasion, CIA Director George Tenet said on Tuesday that the United States' intelligence community did not know what weapons capabilities Saddam's regime had.
US Senator Dianne Feinstein of California condemned pre-war statements by intelligence authorities. "People voted to authorise the use of force (to oust Saddam) based on what we read in these reports," she said.
Rasmussen had told the Danish parliament before the start of the US-led war on March 20, 2003, that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
"This is not something we just believe. We know," he said at the time.
But an FE agent told Berlingske Tidende that most of the documents were "mainly a rewriting of the reports by US and British (secret) services with just a touch of critical (Danish) commonsense".
The spokesman for the opposition Socialist People's Party, Villy Soendal, criticised the FE move. "The intelligence agency does not seek to protect state security but apparently the credibility of the head of government," he said.
Rasmussen "manipulated or passed over information on Saddam Hussein's WMD threat" to justify Denmark's membership of the US-led coalition that ousted the Iraqi leader, Soendal said.
Rasmussen has said Denmark joined the US-led coalition that occupied Iraq because Saddam did not comply with United Nations resolutions after the 1991 Gulf War.
"What decided us wasn't the WMD issue. This was not the reason for our engagement," he has said. "But Saddam Hussein's lack of cooperation with the (UN) Security Council was to have consequences for him and led us to join the international coalition."
Denmark has deployed 500 men in Iraq's southern Basra region under British command.
It has also given 350 million kroner (47 million euros, 59 million dollars) to Iraq to finance "democracy and good governance".
-------- haiti
Haitian Rebels Eye Capital
Assault Threatened 'Very Soon' if Aristide Remains
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6002-2004Feb25?language=printer
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti, Feb. 25 -- The leader of the armed insurgency against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Wednesday vowed a bloody assault on Port-au-Prince "very soon" if Aristide refuses to leave office.
Guy Philippe, a charismatic former army officer and police chief, said his forces were pausing to "give peace its opportunity," but said they were prepared to move on the capital.
"We don't want any blood. We don't want any violence," he said in an interview at the seaside resort hotel he is using as a command center in this rebel-controlled city. "We just need Aristide to hear what the people want and [to] leave."
Philippe, 35, and another rebel leader, Louis Jodel Chamblain, 42, said Aristide's departure and his replacement by an interim leader who would call new elections was the only possible peaceful solution to their three-week-old campaign, which has placed more than half the country in rebel hands.
"Aristide has two choices: prison or execution by firing squad," said Chamblain, a former army officer who said his wife, then seven months pregnant, was clubbed to death by a pro-Aristide gang in 1991. "Every time I remember it, it gives me more strength to fight them."
Preparations against a possible rebel assault were evident in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday. Pro-Aristide militia groups stepped up their vigilance in the increasingly tense capital, 100 miles south of Cap-Haitien. The armed groups set up roadblocks, burned tires after dark at intersections throughout the city and searched vehicles and their occupants.
The groups, known locally as chimère -- a reference to the chimera, a mythological, fire-breathing creature -- are a feared and unpredictable element in the current crisis. Philippe said the gangs, which threatened members of a Canadian television crew on Tuesday, have terrorized and killed Aristide opponents since his term began in 2001. Aristide on Tuesday rejected those allegations and called Philippe and his men "criminals, terrorists and killers."
"This is a battle against state-sponsored terrorism," said Philippe, wearing camouflage fatigues poolside in Cap-Haitien, which rebels seized with barely a fight on Sunday. He said he and three other rebel leaders walked five hours across the border 15 days ago from the Dominican Republic to lead the armed effort against Aristide.
At ease and jocular during an interview that lasted more than an hour, Philippe said that there were at least 300 rebels in Cap-Haitien and that their numbers were growing, because police and pro-Aristide gunmen in captured towns are switching their allegiances. He said that several rebel groups have now fused into a single National Resistance Front, and that he leads the group's 11-member Military Council.
Rebels are already present in Port-au-Prince, he said, including some under cover in the National Palace. He predicted that they would use intelligence to identify and locate leaders of pro-Aristide groups, "neutralize them" and take the city in "one or two hours."
Philippe, who turns 36 on Sunday and is married to an American from Wisconsin, said he had been in exile in the Dominican Republic since Aristide was elected. He denied numerous reports that he had participated in coup attempts in the past.
The rebels are using guns they kept when the military was disbanded in 1995, Philippe said. While many were carrying vintage M-1 rifles, Philippe, guarded by a helmeted man carrying an Uzi, said the group had enough heavier weapons to defeat the police that Aristide has posted outside the National Palace with .50-caliber machine guns.
Winter Etienne, a rebel leader who handles administrative matters, said the rebels' funding was coming largely from Haitians in the United States and Canada, who are either carrying money to family members in Haiti or making wire transfers. None would say exactly how much money they have received.
Cap-Haitien, the rebel stronghold, is a city of 500,000 people on Haiti's northern coast, the crumbled remains of a once-popular tourist resort. The rebels have taken over the Mont Joli Hotel, where rifle-toting men in camouflage looked out over the swimming pool and the turquoise blue Caribbean beyond.
Philippe, who said he earned a law degree in Ecuador and studied medicine in Mexico for a year, said rebels had been forced to take up arms because of the failure of international organizations to act against Aristide, who has said he will serve out his term, which ends in 2006. His opponents have said that his election was influenced by fraudulent congressional elections earlier in 2000.
Since then, disputes have grown and Aristide has been charged with running an increasingly autocratic and corrupt government while failing to solve economic problems. Haiti is wracked by AIDS, and 80 percent of its 8 million people live in poverty.
"I don't know why the international community is talking about 'the elected president,' " Philippe said in English. "They know he was not elected, so why the hypocrisy? Why can't they say the truth? Democracy is not a five-year term. Democracy is a set of principles, the right to live, the right to eat, the right to education, the right to health. Aristide is working against all those principles."
In Port-au-Prince, a coalition of civic groups demanding the president's resignation formally rejected a U.S.-backed proposal to allow Aristide, 50, to stay in office, but share power with opponents. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin and others have been pressing for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
Philippe said he would wait "some days" to allow the diplomats to find a solution and said his group would lay down arms if Aristide left office. He said he had no interest in running for president and that the new government should be civilian.
He said his forces would kill Aristide if he resisted an attack, but that a trial would be preferable, either in Haiti or at an international court. Philippe said he would welcome an international peacekeeping force, provided Aristide was gone. "If it comes to protect the Haitian people, we'll give all the help we can," he said. "But if it comes to obligate us to accept the dictatorship, I prefer dying."
Philippe denied reports here that he has funded his efforts by trafficking drugs; he alleged that Aristide was "the big drug trafficker in Haiti," which the president's supporters strongly deny.
Chamblain, a former army sergeant, was a leader of death squads in the 1980s and 1990s. He was convicted and sentenced, in absentia, to life imprisonment for his role in a 1994 raid on a slum in the city of Gonaives and for the 1993 assassination of an Aristide ally.
----
Rebel Leader Says Fighters Are Converging on Haiti Capital
February 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Haiti-Uprising.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti (AP) -- Rebels began moving toward Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince on Thursday and are awaiting the order to attack, a guerrilla leader told The Associated Press.
The leader, Guy Philippe, said their mission was to arrest President Jean-Bertrand Aristide if he did not resign, so he could be tried on charges ranging from corruption to murder.
``I don't want him to die. It would be too easy. He has to pay for what he has done to the Haitian people,'' Philippe said in an interview with the AP in Cap-Haitien, the country's second-largest city that fell to the rebels Sunday.
Pressure is mounting for Aristide to resign, with France blaming him for the chaos in its former colony in the 3-week-old rebellion and urging that he be replaced by a transitional government. The U.N. Security Council scheduled a meeting for later Thursday.
Foreigners are fleeing Haiti amid isolated looting, and President Bush said the United States is encouraging the international community to provide a strong ``security presence.''
``We've decided to go toward Port-au-Prince. They're on their way,'' said Philippe, leader of the uprising that has overrun half of Haiti and killed at least 80 people. ``They're taking their places. They know what to do.''
Aristide, who has shown determination to keep power, has said a rebel attack on the capital could kill thousands.
Most of the barricades that had been erected by Aristide supporters in Port-au-Prince were removed Thursday and streets were empty, except for motorists lining up for dwindling supplies of gasoline.
The rebel movement already has sleeper cells in the capital but they would be reinforced by fighters from rebel groups moving in from variety of locations in the north, Philippe said.
Asked if an attack was imminent, he said: ``It doesn't mean that we're going to attack today. We're just going to take our positions and wait for the right time.''
Scouts were checking ``pockets of resistance,'' he said. That might include the government-held town of St. Marc, on the main road from Gonaives to Port-au-Prince.
On Wednesday night, rebel commander Winter Etienne and others crowded around a map of Haiti on the wall of the Mont Joli Hotel, discussing the best route to take and whether to use boats to get around St. Marc.
``It won't take a lot of days. We don't have all our lives to wait for what a dictator is going to do,'' Philippe said Thursday.
A government official said Aristide's National Palace was defended by about 100 officers in Haiti's force of fewer than 4,000. Philippe has boasted he now commands 5,000 men -- thanks to volunteers from the scores of towns they have passed through in northern Haiti.
Philippe said Wednesday he was going to give Aristide a chance to step down. On Saturday, Aristide agreed to a U.S.-backed plan to share power, but the opposition rejected it, saying he must step down.
``We saw there was no hope for peace,'' Philippe said. ``We spent a week waiting for this peace to come. We can't stay waiting for him to decide while his people are killing people. ... Every day, innocent people are being killed, houses are being burned.''
Concerned about the increasing chaos, France called for Aristide's resignation, saying ``he bears grave responsibility for the current situation.''
``It's up to him to accept the consequences while respecting the rule of law,'' Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said in a statement.
French diplomatic officials confirmed Thursday that de Villepin was calling for Aristide to resign.
Abel Descollines, a member of the opposition Democratic Platform coalition, praised France's statement and asked the United States and Canada to do the same.
``We hope American and Canadian authorities will rally behind the French position to help Haiti avoid a civil war,'' he told French RTL radio.
French Defense Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said it was too early to discuss whether there would be a role for the military in ensuring a peaceful departure by Aristide, should he leave the island.
Aristide, a 50-year-old former slum priest, once commanded widespread support as Haiti's first democratically elected leader and savior to the poor, but he has steadily lost support as poverty deepened after his party swept flawed legislative elections in 2000 and international donors suspended aid.
De Villepin called for the establishment of a civilian peacekeeping force. ``This international force would be responsible for guaranteeing the return to public order and supporting the international community's action on the ground,'' de Villepin said.
As order in the impoverished country of 8 million unraveled, Aristide's two daughters flew to the United States.
American Airlines delayed three of its five daily flights to the United States on Wednesday because crew and passengers had trouble passing the roadblocks. Air Jamaica canceled its flights to Haiti indefinitely.
U.N. nonessential staff and their families were being evacuated, and dozens of Mormon missionaries also left.
Canada and the Dominican Republic sent small teams of soldiers to protect their embassies.
Fearing an exodus of Haitians, the Dominican Republic doubled the number of troops along its 225-mile border with Haiti.
Haitians fled a political crisis in large numbers 12 years ago. There has been little evidence of a repeat of that situation thus far although a freighter with 21 Haitians on board was intercepted by the Coast Guard off the coast of Miami Beach. Bush has said the U.S. Coast Guard would turn back Haitian refugees reaching American shores.
French and U.S. diplomats say Aristide used police and supporters to crush dissent, contributing to the violence, and failed to fight corruption in the police and judiciary. Aristide has, for his part, accused the rebels of leading the uprising through drug-trafficking proceeds.
A convicted drug lord, meanwhile, provided damning testimony against Aristide, saying the president had profited from cocaine trafficking.
Beaudoin ``Jacques'' Ketant testified Wednesday in Miami after being sentenced to 27 years for money laundering and allegedly shepherding 41 tons of drugs for Colombian drug cartels through Haiti to the United States from 1987 to 1996.
``He turned the country into a narco-country,'' Ketant said. Ira Kurzban, an attorney for the Haitian government, dismissed the allegations from ``a lying, convicted drug dealer''
----
Bush warns Haitians not to flee to U.S.
February 26, 2004
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040225-114721-5299r.htm
President Bush yesterday vowed to turn back any Haitian refugees trying to reach American shores, but pledged that the United States will encourage the international community to provide a "security presence" in the rebel-torn nation as part of a political settlement.
"I have made it abundantly clear to the Coast Guard that we will turn back any refugee that attempts to reach our shore," the president said in the Oval Office.
"That message needs to be very clear, as well, to the Haitian people. ... And so we encourage, strongly encourage the Haitian people to stay home as we work to reach a peaceful solution to this problem," he said.
"Incident to a political settlement, we will encourage the international community to provide a security presence," Mr. Bush told reporters.
France's foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, went a step further, saying such a force should be established immediately so it can get to work quickly once a government of national unity is formed.
Mr. Bush spoke as foreigners hurried to escape the country, some with assistance from U.S. Marines, in the face of an expected rebel assault on the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Supporters of embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide set up burning barricades throughout the city and looters surged through the streets as any semblance of order broke down, according to wire service reports.
Several other countries joined the United States in calling for diplomatic or military action to resolve the crisis, with France issuing a strong statement blaming Mr. Aristide for the breakdown.
The U.N. Security Council was scheduled to meet on the subject today.
Mr. Bush said he and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell have "been in close consultations" and working to "achieve a political settlement between the current government and the rebels," who already control the northern half of the country.
"We are watching the situation very carefully. The secretary of state has been in touch with Canadian officials and French officials and Caribbean officials, all aimed to convince the parties to come to the table and effect a peaceful solution."
Mr. Bush pledged to work toward a "political solution" and ensured Haitians that the United States will have "a robust presence with an effective strategy."
"We will encourage the international community to provide a security presence. And that is also being discussed right now," he said.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan elaborated on the warning for Haitians not to take to the seas, saying, "It's important that the Haitian people know that our migration policy is very clear and it remains the same. We are focused on bringing about a peaceful, political solution to the situation."
The spokesman ruled out a U.S. military presence in Haiti like the one that restored Mr. Aristide to power in 1994, but said the United States was "prepared ... to assist the international community in those efforts," which could include a "police force."
In Paris, Mr. de Villepin urged the "immediate" dispatch of an international civilian force to restore order in its former colony.
"As far as President Aristide is concerned, he bears grave responsibility for the current situation," Mr. de Villepin said in a statement that stopped short of calling for Mr. Aristide's resignation. "It's his decision, it's his responsibility. Everyone sees that this is about opening a new page in the history of Haiti."
Haitian opposition leaders, who have publicly rejected a U.S. plan that would place them in Cabinet posts but leave Mr. Aristide as president, yesterday asked the international community to help ensure a "timely and orderly" departure of Mr. Aristide and install a Supreme Court justice as interim president.
On Tuesday, Mr. Aristide warned that if rebels tried to take the capital, thousands could die. At least 70 people have been killed in the uprising, about 40 of them police officers.
On Capitol Hill, the State Department's top official for Latin America, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, told House members the United States is working with the Organization of American States, the Caribbean Community and other multinational bodies to find a peaceful, democratic solution, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Florida Republican told AP.
Mr. Diaz-Balart said Mr. Noriega told the legislators that if a political solution cannot be reached, "they'll consider a whole gamut of options, but they do not want to go in and simply prop up Aristide."
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus praised Mr. Powell in a letter yesterday for his unwillingness to "accept any outcome" that "illegally attempts to remove" Mr. Aristide.
But the group asked Mr. Powell to remove Mr. Noriega from the negotiations, arguing that he has a long history of "being aligned with anti-Aristide business owners."
In Port-au-Prince, diplomats appeared to be reconsidering their insistence that Mr. Aristide remain president. Two Western diplomats said in Port-au-Prince that they and colleagues were preparing to ask Mr. Aristide to resign, the AP reported.
An opposition politician, citing foreign diplomats, also said the international community had not rejected its counterproposal, sent Tuesday to Mr. Powell.
The plan would install a Supreme Court justice as interim president and ensure Mr. Aristide's "orderly departure."
•Staff writer Tom Carter contributed to this report.
-------- iraq
Iraqi Cleric Calls for Elections by Year's End
February 26, 2004
New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/international/middleeast/26CND-IRAQ.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Feb 26 - Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric said today that he wanted elections in Iraq by the end of 2004, and asked for guarantees - such as a United Nations Security Council resolution fixing a date - so there are no delays.
The demand by the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, essentially imposes a difficult deadline and new urgency on those involved in the process of planning for elections in a country, which is emerging from war and struggling during a time of insurgency. And while it signaled his willingness to accept an interim Iraqi government beginning June 30, it also showed he expected it to be limited and of short duration.
"The religious authority demands clear guarantees," Ayatollah Sistani said, "in order to assure the Iraqi people that this issue will not be delayed on some pretext." He referred to a Security Council resolution as an example of such a guarantee.
Ayatollah Sistani also referred to as "extremely important" remarks this week by the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, who said 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.
The cleric also made clear his view of the new Iraqi administration that will take over under the current American-backed plan, which has stuck to June 30 as the final date for handing back power and envisions national elections by the end of 2005.
Ayatollah Sistani said the temporary, non-elected Iraqi leaders who take over from the Americans this year should operate under limited authority and "work on preparing the country for free and honest elections" without making any decisions that would limit the future, elected government.
As the country's spiritual leader for Iraq's Shiites, the country's largest single group, Ayatollah Sistani's demands carry weight. The statement was issued after he met with some of the Shiite members of Iraq's interim council in the city of Najaf, south of Baghdad.
He has in the past insisted on direct elections of assembly members, not caucuses as proposed by the Americans.
In a report to the Security Council on Monday, Mr. Annan said his special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, and a team of United Nations elections experts had determined during a trip to Iraq that it would take until May to set up the planning framework and then at least eight months from that time to organize the elections.
Mr. Annan's 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.
Mr. Annan said it was important to stick to the June 30 deadline for the occupying powers to transfer authority to Iraq.
Christine Hauser contributed to this article
-------- israel / palestine
2 Palestinians Killed During Protests of West Bank Barrier
February 26, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- Israeli soldiers shot and killed two Palestinians during violent protests against Israel's West Bank barrier Thursday, and two Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli soldier at a Gaza Strip crossing before being gunned down by troops.
The West Bank protesters were trying to block construction workers from putting up a new section of fencing, signaling a new tactic in the fight against the barrier. In the past, demonstrators generally did not confront Israeli work crews. Thursday's clashes marked the first time Palestinians were killed in an anti-barrier protest.
Also Thursday, Israeli army jeeps surrounded the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He has not left the compound in nearly two years, and Israel has accused him of harboring militants there.
The violence came a day after Israeli forces raided three banks in the West Bank city of Ramallah and carted away between $6.7 million and $8.9 million they said was earmarked for terrorism. Palestinian officials feared the raid would destroy faith in the banking system.
In the anti-barrier protest in the West Bank village of Bidou, about 1,000 demonstrators threw stones at a jeep and bulldozers trying to prepare the ground for the erection of the partition, residents said. Troops responded with live fire, rubber bullets and tear gas, and the work was eventually stopped, witnesses said.
Bidou Mayor Mohammed Kandil said two Palestinians were killed. More than 40 demonstrators were wounded, including several who were beaten, hospital officials said.
Ali Daoud, 24, said he had been throwing stones when he was shot in the right leg by a sniper from a distance of about 30 yards. ``We were trying to prevent them from continuing the work on our land, but we found more than 200 soldiers there,'' he said from his hospital bed.
A second demonstration in the nearby village of Beit Surik also turned violent, witnesses said.
Police spokesman Gil Kleiman said six police were wounded in the clashes and three of them were sent to the hospital. The army, which was also there, had no immediate comment.
The barrier, which Israel says is needed to keep out suicide bombers, infuriates Palestinians who say its planned route, dipping deep into the West Bank, is a land grab meant to prevent them from establishing a state.
Three days of hearings on the issue at the world court ended Wednesday, with the judges expected to hand down a nonbinding opinion in the coming months.
The Gaza attack began when two Palestinians with assault rifles and hand grenades attacked Israeli soldiers at the Erez crossing, which is used by Palestinian workers to get from Gaza to Israel. Palestinian sources reported an hourlong, intense exchange of fire between the gunmen and soldiers. An Israeli soldier was killed, the army said.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militant group linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility. In response to the attack, Israel closed the crossing.
On Jan. 14, a female suicide bomber killed four Israeli guards at Erez. Following that attack, Israel tightened security at the crossing, causing long delays for the 19,000 Palestinian workers with permits to cross into Israel.
In the bank raids, Israelis sifted through 390 accounts -- some linked to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The money taken from the banks corresponded to the amounts found in the targeted accounts, Israeli officials said.
Palestinians denounced the unprecedented raid. Finance Minister Salam Fayad worried it would lead to a run on banks. However, the banks appeared to have only their normal daily crowds Thursday morning.
The State Department also criticized the raid, saying there was a risk it would destabilize the Palestinian banking system. Spokesman Richard Boucher said it would be better if Israel coordinated with the Palestinians on freezing and seizing funds earmarked for militant attacks.
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the money was ``the fuel for Palestinian terror.''
The funds taken from the banks would instead be used to ease the lives of Palestinians, battered by 41 months of violence. The money would go to Palestinian health services, school transport, food and improving infrastructure at Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints, Mofaz said. Palestinians demand that the barriers be removed, not improved.
An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas had funneled ``millions'' to violent Palestinian groups in the past year alone.
One of the confiscated accounts belonged to the al-Ihsan society, a Gaza organization that is part of Islamic Jihad.
``We don't have much money to confiscate,'' said Nafez Azzam, the society's head. He said the organization, which he said runs kindergartens and clinics for the poor, has had trouble raising money because of a U.S. law against sending funds to terror groups.
----
U.S. Urges Israel to Work With Arabs in Any Pullout
February 26, 2004
New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/politics/26DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 - The Bush administration, pressed by Israel to endorse its plan to withdraw from parts of Gaza and the West Bank, is urging Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to work with Palestinian leaders in carrying out the pullout, a senior Bush administration official said Wednesday.
The official said that the administration was encouraging Mr. Sharon to meet soon with Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian prime minister, and also to work with Palestinian security leaders, at least in the West Bank, so the situation there can be peaceful once a pullout occurs.
"The withdrawal is a good idea," said the official, in an interview, adding that it presented an opportunity for "an enormous and historic change" in Israel's relations with its neighbors comparable to the 1967 war, the withdrawal from Sinai and the peace accord with Egypt in the 1970's.
But the official said there was a lot of work ahead for the United States, Israel, the Palestinians and European and Arab countries "to make this happen."
A withdrawal of settlements from the West Bank and Gaza could help the peace effort, depending on how it is carried out, the official said.
Although the administration's own peace plan, known as the road map, does not say so explicitly, the official said it was understood that "any final negotiation is going to require the Israelis to pull out of a certain number of settlements."
The official's comments come as Mr. Sharon has stepped up his pressure for a meeting with President Bush in March or April. Israeli officials say he wants the president's endorsement to win support at home and forestall criticism of the withdrawal in Europe and the Arab world, where it is seen by some as a prelude to an Israeli land grab.
Mr. Bush, many American officials say, would also like to hold a joint session with Mr. Sharon hailing what seems to be progress as a way of defusing Democratic criticism that he has been passive on the search for peace.
Mr. Sharon is sending his top aide, Dov Weisglass, to Washington next week to answer the administration's questions about his intentions.
"I feel they support the concept," said Daniel Ayalon, the Israeli ambassador to the United States. "They would like to endorse it. But before that, they want to make sure what's involved. We will provide them with the full picture very soon."
The senior administration official emphasized that the United States was not negotiating with Israel on the extent of the withdrawal that Mr. Sharon plans, although he said it was clear that it would entail a pullout from nearly all Gaza and from parts of the West Bank. The full scope remains to be decided, he said.
"When the prime minister has made his decision, he is going to come and tell us about it," said the official. "This is not a negotiation between the United States and Israel. This is their plan, not ours."
Some other diplomats involved in the Middle East say that because Mr. Sharon is seeking American approval and taking American views into account, the American discussion with Israel is a functional equivalent of negotiations. The most recent round of talks occurred last week during a visit to Israel by Elliott Abrams, director of Middle East affairs at the National Security Council; Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser; and William J. Burns, head of the Middle East bureau at the State Department. The senior administration official's comments were based on those talks.
Among the issues that the United States hopes to see settled are the extent of involvement by Jordan and Egypt in any security arrangements in Gaza, and whether Mr. Sharon can ensure that violence against Israelis will not increase if Israeli forces pull out of densely populated areas.
The American fear, shared by Israelis, is that Hamas and other militant groups that have claimed responsibility for attacks on Israelis might assume greater political power in Gaza after an Israeli withdrawal. Involvement by Jordanian and Egyptian security forces could forestall that, the official said.
The administration official said that while the United States approved Israel's disengagement plan in concept, it hoped the military withdrawals would "re-energize" political and other reforms on the Palestinian side.
The failure of the Palestinian authorities to stop attacks emanating from the West Bank contributed to past breakdowns in talks with Israel.
Another potential problem, many diplomats say, are the settlers Israel intends to remove from Gaza. Palestinian and Arab officials have begun charging that Israel plans to move them into the parts of the West Bank, perhaps to existing settlements.
But the administration official implied that the United States did not expect that to happen. Such a move, he said, would violate a pledge Mr. Sharon made in December not to expand West Bank settlements.
Along with urging Israel to work with Palestinians on the withdrawals, the administration is also pressing it to alter the route of the security barrier it is building. The route dips deeply into the West Bank at points; the United States wants it to follow more closely the so-called Green Line, the de facto frontier between Israel and the West Bank.
The administration expects Israel to move the barrier "closer to the Green Line" and to "make it straighter and to diminish the impact on Palestinians." He added that Israel had moved as recently as this week to make these changes. "We have found Israel to be very responsive" to American concerns, the official said.
----
Israelis Launch Raids on Palestinian Banks
Troops Enter Ramallah to Seize Holdings With Suspected Links to Terror Groups
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6954-2004Feb25.html
JERUSALEM, Feb. 25 -- Israeli soldiers and police imposed a curfew on the West Bank town of Ramallah on Wednesday and launched raids against several Palestinian banks suspected of having customer accounts linked to terrorist activities, according to an Israeli government statement.
At least 45 Palestinian protesters were injured, four seriously, during street battles with the troops, Palestinian hospital officials said. It was one of the largest Israeli operations in months in Ramallah, a major political and commercial town just north of Jerusalem where Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters is located.
Witnesses said the protesters threw stones at the troops and Molotov cocktails at Israeli jeeps, armored personnel carriers and trucks that fanned out in several neighborhoods to enforce the curfew. Israeli soldiers threw stun grenades and fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets as agents from Shin Bet, Israel's general security service, entered the banks and searched computer and account records.
[Early Thursday, the Associated Press reported that two Palestinian gunmen opened fire at the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza, killing at least one Israeli before being shot dead. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant group linked to Arafat's Fatah movement, asserted responsibility for the attack.]
In the violence in Ramallah on Wednesday, two of the protesters were shot with live bullets, one in the chest and one in the leg, said Abed Rahmas Salim, an emergency room doctor at Sheik Zaid New Ramallah Emergency Hospital, where 29 people were treated for mostly minor injuries. Another 16 people were treated at Ramallah Government Hospital, a spokesman said.
Israeli officials denied that troops used live bullets during the operation.
A statement by Israel's Government Press Office said the operation targeted bank accounts that were controlled by or that had received money from three radical organizations: Hezbollah, which launches frequent cross-border attacks against Israel from its bases in southern Lebanon, Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas. The latter two are militant groups that have waged a deadly suicide bombing campaign against Israel in the last three years.
An Israeli security official said the raids also targeted accounts of "terrorist operatives" and their families and "outlawed organizations," principally Islamic charities that are suspected of funneling money to terrorist groups. A second security official said that about $8 million was confiscated from approximately 400 accounts that were reviewed.
"The goal of today's operation is to impede the terrorists organizations' activities and reduce their financial capabilities on the ground," the government statement said. It added that funds coming from terrorist organizations abroad were a main focus of the operation because those organizations "have become the main employers of terrorists in the field" who stage attacks against Israelis.
Four branches of two banks, the Arab Bank and the Cairo-Arab Bank, were raided, Israeli security officials said. Police had search warrants for specific accounts, and "the banks will get a list of the accounts," one of the officials said. "We are giving the banks clear notice of what we've done." Officials said that the account holders who had funds confiscated would be allowed to appeal the seizure.
--------
Raids yield millions from Ramallah banks
February 26, 2004
By Mohammed Daraghmeh
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040225-093219-7438r.htm
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israeli security forces seized millions of dollars in cash from four Palestinian bank branches yesterday, saying much of the money was sent by Iran, Syria and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas to fund Palestinian militants.
During the raids, dozens of Palestinians threw stones at soldiers who imposed a curfew on downtown Ramallah during the raids. Seventeen Palestinians were injured by rubber bullets and live rounds, including three who were in critical condition, doctors said.
The joint operation by police, the army and the Shin Bet security service marked Israel's largest-scale effort in more than three years of fighting to stop the flow of funds to Palestinian militant groups, including from Hezbollah, Israeli officials said.
Troops were accompanied by computer specialists from two of the banks who had been arrested overnight, Palestinian officials said. Soldiers covered the banks' cameras with sacks or disabled them and confined employees to back rooms, witnesses said. Customers were allowed to leave after identification checks.
"The purpose of this operation is to impair the funneling of funds, which oil the wheels of terror against Israel," an Israeli army statement said.
Israeli forces checked several hundred bank accounts, including some belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, security sources said. An Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the forces also were looking for evidence of any involvement by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in funding terror attacks.
The forces took the equivalent of $6.5 million to $9 million from the bank vaults, corresponding to the amount of money found in the targeted accounts, security sources said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia called the move "very, very dangerous" and others worried that the raid could cause Palestinians to lose confidence in their banking system and spark a run on the banks today.
"It's like the mafia," Mr. Qureia said of the raid. "I think it should be dealt with in a very serious way."
The operation is part of the "global war" on terrorist funding, an army statement said.
Much of the seized money came from Hezbollah, Iran and Syria, the sources said, adding that it would be used to fund Palestinian humanitarian projects.
Troops driving jeeps, armored personnel carriers and trucks blocked off main roads in Ramallah and declared a curfew before the raids.
Troops raided two branches of the Arab Bank, as well as offices of the Cairo Amman Bank and the International Palestine Bank, Palestinian security officials said. Soldiers also took over several other buildings, witnesses said.
The raids came a day after Palestinian security officials confirmed that Hezbollah helped fund the latest two Jerusalem bus bombings - on Jan. 29 and on Sunday - in which 18 Israelis and a foreign worker were killed.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed group with ties to Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack. The militant group and Hamas issued conflicting claims of responsibility for the Jan. 29 attack, and security officials said Hamas and Islamic Jihad were involved in both bombings.
----
The untold story of the great land grab
by George S. Hishmeh,
Gulf News
26-02-2004
http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/opinion.asp?ArticleID=112125
Israel is once again mixing apples and oranges when it declares that the deplorable suicide attack in Jerusalem this week is the reason for building the separation, or more aptly, the apartheid wall and the Palestinian case against the wall. This is a cover-up for a major land grab.
No Palestinian will disagree with Israel if it chooses to build a fence along the so-called Green Line, which has since 1949 divided Israelis from the indigenous Palestinians, to keep would-be suicide bombers or other guerrillas away. Basically, the issue is that the wall is being constructed on Palestinian land in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, causing extreme hardship and resentment.
And here, it is important to underline that the Green Line was only an armistice line and not an "internationally recognised border" as the well-meaning writer Noam Chomsky has mistakenly written in a praiseworthy Op-Ed column in the New York Times recently.
In fact, Israel has never identified its borders since the establishment of the state in 1948 or, for that matter, its constitution.
Regrettably, Israel and, shockingly, the United States and the Europeans, have stayed away from the International Court of Justice, ICJ, at The Hague, which began oral hearings earlier this week on the legality of the wall snaking through Palestinian territory.
The court's action was prompted by a UN General Assembly request for a non-binding advisory decision on the legality of the network of walls, razor-wire fences and electronic monitors that are being built on mostly Palestinian land.
To counter this Palestinian legal offensive, Israel has resorted to launching a well-financed media campaign. A case in point has been an incident involving two Israeli mothers who lost their children to suicide bombers.
They called last week on The Baltimore Sun, a visit arranged by the Israel Project, which is undertaking a "prolific" advertising campaign on major television outlets, including CNN and Fox, to support the partition wall.
The paper's Perspective editor, G. Jefferson Price III, blamed "the incapacity of the Jewish or the Palestinian leadership to make peace" for this calamitous situation and then he reported on the meeting he had with the two grieving mothers.
He wrote: "Astonishingly, though, my Friday visitors complained about a media bias against Israel, a notion that the Palestinians get a better break in the press because they 'offer ready-made stories and pictures, as (one of the mothers) put it.
"I was astonished by this because in a decade as foreign editor of this newspaper and in the last three years as editor of Perspective, I could not recall a visit like the one from the Israel Project from anyone representing the Palestinians.
"In eight years as Middle East correspondent in the 1970s and 1980s, I could not recall any presentation from any Palestinian group with the sophistication of the Israel Project. Certainly, I cannot recall an advertising campaign from the Palestinians as far-reaching as a week full of spots on major television networks in America."
This amazing and sad revelation by the honourable journalist from The Baltimore Sun came as I was being told by pro-Palestinian sources here that they were still hopeful, a day after the opening the hearings in The Hague, of placing a one-page advertisement in The New York Times at a cost of $42,000 to explain the Palestinian objections to the apartheid wall.
Another shocker came this week from another friend, Corinne Whitlatch, executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace, a coalition of 19 churches and related organisations. She said she has recently hired a firm for some research about mainstream American Christians.
"What we have found is that most of these people do not have an understanding of the historical developments of this area of the Middle East nor of the (Arab-Israeli) conflict. Many of them do not understand what the word 'occupation' means or have any concept about (the illegal Israeli) colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories," she said.
Negative impact
There can be no excuse for this Palestinian failure at getting their act together and presenting to the world in timely fashion a forceful message about the disastrous effects of the 680-kilometre long wall, 85 per cent of which is built on Palestinian-owned land.
Nino Kader, communications director of the newly-established American Task Force on Palestine, says the wall, in some areas 60 to 100 metres wide, covers 600,000 acres which is "equivalent to the crop land of Pennsylvania or the size of the State of Rhode Island."
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, estimated that over 500,000 Palestinians will be trapped between the wall and the Green Line. Nearly 18 per cent of the Palestinian share of the Western Groundwater Basin alone will be lost.
The negative impact of this annexation wall which, in the words of Senator George McGovern, "fractures whole societies and impedes the search for peace" in the Middle East, deserves to be told more effectively. But in no way should this failure be an excuse for the Bush administration and some European governments to stand idly by.
Hishmeh can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com
-------- libya
LIBYA DEVELOPS 800-KM SCUD C
Thu, 26 Feb 2004
[MENL]
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2004/february/02_27_1.html
WASHINGTON -- Libya has been developing a Scud-class ballistic missile with a range of 800 kilometers.
The CIA has reported that the missile being developed by Libya constitutes the extended-range Scud C. The agency said Libya has built an infrastructure and produced components for such a missile in cooperation with North Korea.
Officials said the extended-range Scud C found during British-U.S. inspections in Libya during late 2003 was far more advanced than originally thought. They said the CIA had played down Western intelligence reports that Libya obtained components of the No-Dong intermediate-range missile in 2002.
CIA director George Tenet said the agency understood the extent of Libya's medium-range missile development before the British-U.S. inspections. Tenet said Libya at first refused to acknowledge the development of the extended-range Scud C and offered to show facilities of the shorter-range Scud B.
-------- nato
NATO Chief Wants UN Resolution on Iraq Before July
Thu Feb 26, 2004
Reuters
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20040226/wl_nm/iraq_nato_dc
TOLEDO, Spain (Reuters) - NATO's secretary-general said Thursday he hoped to see a new U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing an alliance-led stabilization force in Iraq before the United States hands over sovereignty June 30.
"It would indeed be a very good development if we could see before the first of July a new resolution in the Security Council of the United Nations giving a mandate to a stabilization force," Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a joint news conference with Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio in Toledo.
NATO member France, Europe's fiercest critic of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, has made it clear it would demand a U.N. mandate before agreeing to put NATO in command of a peacekeeping mission.
"That would, I think be a very positive development although perhaps strictly legally speaking one could say we don't know if that's necessary but I consider it, from a political point of view, very important indeed," De Hoop Scheffer said.
The United States and several other allies are keen for NATO to take command of a force in south-central Iraq currently led by Poland.
While the United States says it is determined to hand over sovereignty June 30, some diplomats say any NATO-led troops may not arrive in Iraq until 2005.
French Foreign Minister Dominique Villepin was quoted as saying in an interview last week that any NATO force in Iraq would have to be approved by both the United Nations and a sovereign Iraqi government. He did not say whether France would contribute troops to a mission.
NATO member and war critic Germany has said it will not stand in the way of an alliance mission although it has repeatedly ruled out sending peacekeeping troops.
De Hoop Scheffer said 18 of 26 current and future NATO members had already sent troops to Iraq.
-------- prisoners of war
[Sounds like Israel and Vanunu. et]
US 'may hold cleared detainees'
Thursday, 26 February, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3487958.stm
Hundreds of terror suspects are held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba Pentagon officials have confirmed that Guantanamo detainees may still be kept in detention, even if they are found not guilty by a military tribunal.
They say detainees could be kept prisoner if they are considered a security risk.
If found guilty, they could also be held beyond any sentence laid down by the tribunal.
The Pentagon this week laid the first charges against two foreign detainees held in Guantanamo Bay.
'Not common sense'
US military officials argue that there are two processes under way, BBC Pentagon correspondent Nick Childs says .
Detainees are being held because they are suspected of being enemy combatants in an ongoing war.
Separately, some may be put before tribunals accused of specific war crimes or other offences.
But the officials say it would not be common sense to release detainees after trials if it was thought they might launch new attacks on US interests.
The officials add that anyone convicted of war crimes would have to serve out their sentences - even if other detainees were released because the war on terrorism was deemed to be over.
Concerned
The trial process has been widely criticised by human rights groups.
They say there is a lack of right to appeal, a lack of independence, and the defendants' rights to choose their own counsel and mount an effective defence will be restricted.
A lawyer appointed by the US military to represent one of the first detainees at Guantanamo Bay to be charged has also voiced his concerned.
"The tribunals don't have the safeguards that one would expect," he told the BBC's World Today programme.
"This is unlike any system we have seen since at least World War II - except perhaps similar military commissions in other countries that we frequently criticise as fundamentally unfair," he said.
-------- spies
Spy case casts fresh doubt on war legality
Richard Norton-Taylor and Ewen MacAskill
Thursday February 26, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1156539,00.html
Dramatic new evidence pointing to serious doubts in the government about the legality of the war in Iraq was passed to government lawyers shortly before they abandoned the prosecution of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun.
The prosecution offered no evidence yesterday against Ms Gun, a former GCHQ employee, despite her admitting that she leaked information about an American spying operation at the UN in the run-up to the war.
She said she acted to try to prevent Britain illegally invading Iraq. But the prosecution at the Old Bailey said there was no "realistic prospect" of convicting her. She was arrested nearly a year ago and charged eight months later under the Official Secrets Act.
The leading prosecutor, Mark Ellison, said it would not be "appropriate" to go into the reasons for dropping the case.
But the Guardian has learned that a key plank of the defence presented to the prosecutors shortly before they decided to abandon the case was new evidence that the legality of the war had been questioned by the Foreign Office.
It is contained in a document seen by the Guardian. Sensitive passages are blacked out, but one passage says: "The defence believes that the advice given by the Foreign Office Legal Adviser expressed serious doubts about the legality (in international law) of committing British troops in the absence of a second [UN] resolution."
It is understood that the FO legal team was particularly concerned about the lack of a second UN resolution authorising the use of force and pre-emptive military action.
Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a former deputy head of the legal team at the FO, has confirmed publicly for the first time that she resigned last year because she was unhappy with the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith's legal advice to the government on the legality of the Iraq war.
He argued that the series of consecutive UN resolutions provided a legal basis for the military action. But Ms Wilmshurst told the Guardian: "Some agreed with the legal advice of the attorney general. I did not." She refused to discuss the details of the advice.
She left on the eve of the war after 30 years on the FO's legal team, and deputy legal adviser since 1997. She is now at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, specialising in the legality of military intervention.
Yesterday James Welch, a solicitor for the civil rights group Liberty and Ms Gun's lawyer, said the final decision to abandon the case was taken after they had warned the prosecution that they would demand the disclosure of the attorney general's advice on the legality of the war.
"Our case was that any advice the government received on the legality of war was relevant to Katharine's case and we were prepared to go before a judge and argue for it to be disclosed," he said.
Ms Gun, 29, said after her brief appearance at the Old Bailey: "I have no regrets and I would do it again."
In an interview with the Guardian she described her reaction when she first saw the US National Security Agency email asking for GCHQ's help in bugging the offices and homes of UN diplomats.
"I thought, 'Good God, that's pretty outrageous'."
She felt she had no choice but to do what she did. The UN was being undermined. She thought about the destruction of people's lives in Iraq.
"I didn't feel at all guilty about what I did, so I couldn't plead guilty, even though I would get a more lenient sentence," she said.
She remembered her husband telling her: "Do nothing and die, or fight and die."
But the prospect of a criminal trial, "of having the whole government machine after you", was scary, she said.
Asked at a press conference what her advice would be to anyone responding to the recently announced recruitment to the intelligence services, she said: "The intelligence services do important and necessary work, but listen to your conscience is what I would advise."
She continued: "I know it's very difficult and people don't want to jeopardise their careers or lives, but if there are things out there that should really come out, hey, why not."
--------
Britain, Citing Terrorist Threat, Plans to Expand Its Spy Agency
February 26, 2004
New York Times
By ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/international/europe/26LOND.html
LONDON, Feb. 25 - Home Secretary David Blunkett, Britain's top law enforcement minister, announced a major expansion of the country's domestic espionage agency on Wednesday and urged a strengthening of antiterrorism laws including those allowing detention of foreigners without trial.
Mr. Blunkett spoke in Parliament after publishing a 51-page document setting out the government's belief that Britain - a close ally of the United States in the invasion of Iraq and the campaign against terrorism - faced a "particularly high" threat of terrorist attack "because of the evidence that terrorist cells are active" in this country.
"I am in no doubt that the terrorism threat remains and the need to have the right legislation in place is greater than ever," he told Parliament.
Mr. Blunkett said the country's MI5 internal espionage agency would be expanded by 50 percent with the recruitment of 1,000 new agents over the next few years, including desk officers and linguists.
The home secretary also said Britain would spend the equivalent of almost $6 million in improving intelligence gathering by the police Special Branch, which is supposed to deal with threats to internal security.
In future, Mr. Blunkett said, Britain would have to ponder how it ran trials of terror suspects to determine whether telephone intercepts by intelligence agencies could be used as evidence. In recent days he has also indicated he believes Britain should consider lowering the burden of proof to ensure convictions of would-be suicide bombers and to hold some terror trials behind closed doors.
In Parliament on Wednesday, Mr. Blunkett offered a staunch defense of powers acquired since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States to detain foreign terror suspects indefinitely without bringing them to trial.
"I am convinced that the current threat leaves us with no option but to continue to use these powers," he said. But he said it would be a "grave step" to seek legislation empowering the authorities to hold British citizens indefinitely without trial or charge.
At present Britain is holding 14 foreigners under the terrorism regulations, which expire in 2006. The 14 men have been in detention for two years, causing an outcry from human rights organizations.
"I cannot believe I am sitting here today to try and argue as to why it is wrong to detain a human being indefinitely without trial," Shami Chakrabarti, from the human rights group Liberty, said Wednesday. "When you create this symbol of injustice, you provide the greatest ammunition for extremists."
Gareth Peirce, a lawyer who represents the 14 detainees, was quoted by Britain's Press Association news agency as saying none of them had ever been questioned, let alone charged.
Under British rules, the 14 may leave at any time if they can find a country prepared to accept them.
David Davis, the spokesman on law and order for the opposition Conservatives, said he was not convinced by the argument that they could always leave the country.
"On the one hand, to return to some countries might in effect be to return to their deaths," Mr. Davis told Parliament. "On the other hand, releasing people we believe to be international terrorists to travel the world seems itself a peculiar policy."
----
British Whistle-Blower Avoids Charges
Government Drops Case Against Translator Who Leaked Memo on U.S. Espionage
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6889-2004Feb25.html
LONDON, Feb. 25 -- The British government dropped criminal charges on Wednesday against an intelligence employee who was fired after leaking a U.S. request for Britain's help in spying on countries at the United Nations.
The case of Katharine Gun, 29, who worked at the top-secret Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), had become a cause célèbre here for critics of the Iraq war who said she had blown the whistle on an illegal U.S. campaign to eavesdrop on the diplomatic exchanges of countries considering whether to support military action.
Gun was arrested last March and charged with violating the Official Secrets Act after the Observer newspaper published an e-mailed memo from a senior National Security Agency official. The memo, dated Jan. 31, 2003, disclosed that the agency was "mounting a surge particularly directed at U.N. Security Council members" for information on how countries intended to vote on a second U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.
The memo, sent by Frank Koza, chief of staff for the Regional Targets section of the agency, asked for British help on "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises." The memo cited six Security Council members -- Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan -- all of which were on the fence when the United States and Britain were in conflict with France, Germany and Russia over how to proceed against Iraq in the weeks before U.S. and British forces invaded.
The memo did not specify the kinds of assistance it was requesting, although both the NSA and Government Communications Headquarters specialize in intercepting and monitoring telephone calls, e-mails and other communications. It asked the British agency's support "in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar, more indirect access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines."
None of the countries named has formally complained about surveillance. But the former head of Chile's U.N. mission, Juan Gabriel Valdes, told El Pais newspaper in Madrid that technicians had determined phones at the mission had been bugged.
The United States and Britain have refused to comment on the allegations.
British officials offered only a minimal explanation for dropping the case against Gun. "There is no longer sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction," prosecutor Mark Ellison said at a hearing.
Gun, who worked as a Mandarin Chinese translator at Government Communications and strongly opposed the Iraq war, said at a news conference that she had been shocked to come across Koza's memo. "I felt that the British intelligence services were being asked to do something that would undermine the whole U.N. democratic processes," she said.
Gun said she knew when she passed the memo on to a former co-worker that she was violating the law on disclosing official secrets. The co-worker gave the memo to a freelance journalist, who in turn gave it to the Observer.
Gun's attorneys said they had been planning to argue a "defense of necessity" -- that their client had leaked the memo in order to help prevent an illegal war. The lawyers, whose fees were paid by the human rights group Liberty, had been hoping to compel the government to divulge details about its decision to go to war -- including Attorney General Peter Goldsmith's written finding on whether the war was legal under international law.
Legal observers said it was unlikely that the government had dismissed the case in order to avoid divulging such details, suggesting the decision was probably based on a desire to protect Government Communications Headquarters from public scrutiny. They said the prosecution could have been forced to call to the stand intelligence officials to testify about the agency's methods and activities. They also said a jury might have been hard-pressed to convict Gun, who came across in pretrial statements as a selfless idealist who acted to oppose an unpopular war. If convicted, she could have faced up to two years in prison.
----
Spy agency forced to make reforms
February 26, 2004
By Anwar Iqbal
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040225-093230-4984r.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Increasing U.S. pressure and two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf have forced Pakistan to reform its Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency.
One of the terrorists killed in the Dec. 25 attempt on Gen. Musharraf had been released recently by U.S. troops in Afghanistan on the ISI's recommendation. Diplomatic sources in Islamabad say U.S. officials, who had been urging Pakistan to reform the ISI, turned up the pressure after the failed attempt.
Under U.S. advice, the sources said, the Pakistani government decided not to allow officers to serve in the ISI for more than three years. This, it is hoped, will help reduce the influence of Muslim extremists within the agency and prevent ISI officials from developing links to the region's political and religious groups, sources said.
Although senior Pakistani military officials privately acknowledge that they are implementing the new policy, they are not willing to say so publicly.
"This has always been the government's policy, and ISI officers were transferred out of the agency soon after [completing] their three-year tenure," said Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan Khan, the chief spokesman for the Pakistani military.
ISI officials come from different branches of the Pakistani military. In the past, officers could remain in the agency as long as the ISI chief allowed.
"Some of them stayed for 10 years or even more, developing ties to various violent groups. In the process, some of them got converted to the fundamentalist ideology," says an Islamabad-based Western diplomat. "They are the ones who created the Taliban movement and were helping al Qaeda as well."
Gen. Khan denied links between the Taliban and the ISI but acknowledged that Pakistan was one of three countries that recognized the Taliban regime. The regime fell when U.S. troops invaded Kabul in December 2001.
Although Gen. Musharraf severed Pakistan's ties to the Taliban after the September 11 attacks, U.S. intelligence sources and news reports say some in the ISI continued to maintain links to remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda. This is one reason, critics say, that Pakistani agencies need to clean up.
"There's a desperate need to reform and professionalize Pakistani intelligence agencies ... taking away the enormous power of intimidation the agencies enjoy," said Ahmad Rasheed, a Pakistani journalist and author.
Mr. Rasheed, who is in Washington for meetings with senior U.S. officials, said the ISI was a small intelligence agency until the early 1980s. It expanded when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
"The CIA helped convert ISI into the huge organization that it is now ... with all the power it enjoys," he said.
Mr. Rasheed said the ISI helped the Taliban and trained Muslim militants.
After the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the United States quickly pulled out of South and Central Asia, allowing the ISI to expand its network with the help of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, Mr. Rasheed said.
Western intelligence analysts say that by the mid-1990s, the ISI was everywhere, dealing with Muslim militant groups in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and even China, Pakistan's closest ally in the region.
When terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, Mahmud Ahmad, who was the ISI chief, had been visiting Washington. The Bush administration asked him to visit Afghanistan and persuade the Taliban to surrender al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Instead, Gen. Ahmad advised the Taliban not to turn over bin Laden. He argued that the Americans were only bluffing. Gen. Musharraf fired him and introduced changes intended to purge the ISI of his sympathizers.
Analysts are divided over the extent of the purge's success.
"No efforts to purge religious elements from ISI and other branches of the Pakistani military will succeed," said Gen. Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief. "Our soldiers are religious by nature, and they will remain so."
Mr. Rasheed disagreed. "There may be some religious sentiments on the lower level, but the ISI and other branches of the military are tightly controlled by the high command ... and most of them want to maintain close relations with the United States," he said.
-------- un
Ex-Minister Says British Spies Bugged Kofi Annan's Office
February 26, 2004
New York Times
By TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/international/europe/26CND-BRIT.html
British spies have regularly bugged the office of Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations, including during the period leading to the invasion of Iraq, a former British government minister said today.
The ex-cabinet minister, Clare Short, who quit as international development secretary because of her opposition to the war, said she had seen transcripts of Mr. Annan's conversations.
"In fact," she added in a BBC radio interview, "I've had conversations with Kofi in the run-up to the war, thinking `Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying.' "
Mr. Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, was not available for immediate comment, but was quoted by the BBC as saying that Mr. Annan had nothing to hide, and that if the allegations were true the actions would have been illegal.
At his monthly news conference today, Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "I'm not going to comment on the work of our security services - do not take that as an indication that the allegations made by Clare Short are true.
"I really do regard what Clare Short has said this morning as totally irresponsible, and entirely consistent."
Mr. Blair insisted that the British security services had acted in accordance with domestic and international law.
Ms. Short said the spying at the United Nations had been carried out for some time. Asked if British spies had been instructed to carry out operations at the United Nations on people like Mr. Annan, Ms. Short replied, "Yes, absolutely."
Questioned about whether she had been aware of the spying at the United Nations during her time in the Blair cabinet, she said: "Absolutely. I read some of the transcripts of the accounts of his conversations."
Asked if the spying was legal, she replied: "I don't know. I presume so. It's odd. I don't know about the legalities."
Ms. Short was interviewed a day after Britain said it would not prosecute a 29-year-old government linguist, Katharine Gun, who admitted leaking a top-secret American request for assistance in bugging United Nations diplomats.
There has been speculation, denied by the government, that the case was dropped because ministers were concerned about the disclosure of secret documents during the trial, particularly the advice from the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, about the legality of the war.
The decision to go war was widely unpopular with the British public and has proved to be a political headache for Mr. Blair.
Today Ms. Short said: "The major issue here is the legal authority for war, and whether the Attorney General had to be persuaded at the last minute against the advice of one of the foreign ministry legal advisers who then resigned that he could give legal authority for war and whether there was exaggeration of the threat of the use of chemical and biological weapons to persuade him that there was legal authority. That is the big question."
-------- us
Mix of Chemicals Plus Stress Damages Brain, Liver in Animals and Likely in Humans
2/26/2004
Duke U Medical Center News
media contact : Becky Levine, levin005@mc.duke.edu
(919) 660-1308 or (919) 684-4148
http://dukemednews.org/news/article.php?id=7433
DURHAM, N.C. -- Stress is a well known culprit in disease, but now researchers have shown that stress can intensify the effects of relatively safe chemicals, making them very harmful to the brain and liver in animals and likely in humans, as well.
Even short-term exposure to specific chemicals -- just 28 days -- when combined with stress was enough to cause widespread cellular damage in the brain and liver of rats, said Mohamed Abou Donia, Ph.D., a Duke pharmacologist and senior author of the study.
Results of the study were published in the Feb. 27, 2004, issue of the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health.
Abou Donia's study was designed to reproduce the symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome, a disorder marked by chronic fatigue, muscle and joint pain, tremors, headaches, difficulties concentrating and learning, loss of memory, irritability and reproductive problems. The Gulf War Syndrome symptoms have been difficult to explain because veterans outwardly appear healthy and normal, said Abou Donia. Likewise, the chemically exposed animals in Abou Donia's studies looked and behaved normally.
But a decade of neurologic research has revealed widespread damage to the brain, nervous system, liver and testes of rats exposed to 60 days of low-dose chemicals -- the insect repellant DEET, the insecticide permethrin, and the anti-nerve gas agent pyridostigmine bromide. These are the same drugs that the soldiers received during the 1990 - 1991 Persian Gulf War, and Abou Donia's rats were exposed to the same levels -- in weight adjusted doses -- as the soldiers were reportedly given.
Now, Abou Donia has demonstrated that the combination of stress and short-term exposure to chemicals (28 days) can promote cellular death in specific brain regions and injury to the liver. Moreover, the chemical trio combined with stress caused damage to portions of the brain where its protective blood-brain barrier was still intact.
The latter finding suggests that the chemicals permeated the protective barrier in one region, then leaked into other regions of the brain where the barrier remained intact. The ability of chemicals to leak from one area of the brain to another holds the potential for much greater damage to occur to the entire brain.
Brain regions that sustained significant damage in this study were the cerebral cortex (motor and sensory function), the hippocampus (learning and memory) and the cerebellum (gait and coordination of movements). Abou Donia's earlier studies demonstrated severe damage to the cingulate cortex, dentate gyrus, thalamus and hypothalamus.(The thalamus is the major relay for visual and auditory information going to the cortex and is also responsible for subjective feelings. The hypothalamus regulates metabolism, sleep and sexual activity, as well as control of emotions.)
Abou Donia's team found a significant number of dead or dying brain cells in all of these brain regions, as well as major alterations to brain chemicals that are necessary for learning and memory, muscle strength and body movement. Stress alone caused little or no brain injury in the rats, nor did the three chemicals given together in low doses for 28 days.
"But when we put the animals under moderate stress by simply restricting their movement in a plastic holder for five minutes at a time every day, the animals experienced enough stress that it intensified the effects of the chemicals dramatically," said Abou Donia.
Soldiers in the Gulf War were likely under stress 24 hours a day for weeks or months at a time, a scenario which could explain the origins of their diverse physical and cognitive complaints, said Abou Donia.
"The brain deficits we found in rats reside in specific areas of the brain that we can't measure in living humans," said Abou Donia. "This is why the deficits are so difficult to assess clinically and why animal studies are so critical to understanding the cellular damage."
In addition to brain injuries, the Duke study found unexpected damage to the liver, including swollen cells, congested blood vessels and abnormal fatty deposits that diminish the liver cells' function. Liver cells also showed reduced activity of an important enzyme -- BuCHE -- that helps rid the body of some toxic substances. Neither stress by itself nor chemicals alone had any impact on BuCHE levels, but the combination did.
Such damage to the liver can reduce its ability to rid the body of toxic substances -- its primary function as a vital organ. And, the less effectively the liver filters out toxic substances, the more the chemicals can concentrate in the brain and nervous system, he added.
Finally, the study showed that stress plus chemicals increased the amount of destructive molecules in the brain called reactive oxygen species -- also known as oxygen free radicals. Reactive oxygen species are produced by the body as it metabolizes various substances in the presence of oxygen.
Reactive oxygen species attack DNA, RNA and proteins, causing cellular and membrane damage. Normally, the body removes these chemicals from the body and the brain. But excessive production of reactive oxygen species can overwhelm the body's ability to dispose of them.
"In our study, there was an increase in reactive oxygen species. We think that either the three chemicals and stress directly produce these free radicals, or the chemicals impede the body's ability to get rid of them," said Abou Donia.
relevant links : http://www.dukemednews.org/news/article.php?id=6326
----
Rapes Reported by Servicewomen in the Persian Gulf and Elsewhere
February 26, 2004
New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/national/26MILI.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 - The United States military is facing the gravest accusations of sexual misconduct in years, with dozens of servicewomen in the Persian Gulf area and elsewhere saying they were sexually assaulted or raped by fellow troops, lawmakers and victims advocates said on Wednesday.
There have been 112 reports of sexual misconduct over roughly the past 18 months in the Central Command area of operations, which includes Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, military officials said on Wednesday.
The Army has reported 86 incidents, the Navy 12, the Air Force 8 and the Marine Corps 6.
Military officials said that the bulk of the charges were being investigated and that some had already resulted in disciplinary actions, but they could not provide specifics. They said a small number of the reports had turned out to be unfounded.
In addition, about two dozen women at Sheppard Air Force Base, a large training facility in Texas, have reported to a local rape-crisis center that they were assaulted in 2002. The Air Force Academy in Colorado is still reeling from the disclosure last year of more than 50 reported assaults or rapes over the last decade.
The latest accusations are the most extensive set of sexual misconduct charges since the Navy's Tailhook incident of 1991 and the Army's drill sergeant scandal about five years later. In response, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this month ordered a senior-level inquiry into the reported sexual assaults in Iraq and Kuwait, and how the armed services treats victims of sexual attacks. The Army and Air Force have opened similar investigations.
The issue came to a boil at a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, where Senate Democrats and Republicans sharply questioned the Pentagon's top personnel official and four four-star officers for what the lawmakers said were lapses in the military's ability to protect servicewomen from sexual assaults, to provide medical care and counseling to victims of attacks and to punish violators.
Lawmakers said they were particularly appalled by reports that women serving in roles from military police to helicopter pilots had been assaulted by male colleagues in remote combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, where immediate medical treatment and a sense of justice seemed to be lacking.
"No war comes without cost, but the cost should be born out of conflict with the enemy, and not because of egregious violations by some of our own troops," said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican on the Armed Services personnel subcommittee.
Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, voiced concern that senior Pentagon leaders had not sufficiently addressed the problem. "I don't get a sense of outrage by military leadership," Mr. Nelson said.
The Pentagon's personnel chief, David S. C. Chu, assured the lawmakers that the Defense Department was treating the issue seriously and that "all policies are on the table" as part of the 90-day review, whose findings and recommendations are due by April 30.
He said the immediate priority would be to provide better care to assault victims.
In an effort to blunt criticism that the defense officials were not doing enough to address the issue, the Pentagon moved up the release of a Congressionally mandated survey conducted in 2002 - a period before most of the latest rash of complaints occurred - that found that the number of servicewomen who said they had been sexually assaulted had declined to 3 percent from 6 percent in 1995, when the last survey was taken.
But some senators questioned the survey's methodology and timing. "Why in the world did it take two years to take a survey?" asked Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the full committee, noting that politicians routinely ordered overnight polls for their campaigns.
The latest sexual assault scandals have burst into full public view largely because of a recent series of investigative articles by The Denver Post and growing pressure from lawmakers, especially from women in Congress like Senator Collins and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas.
But the numbers of reported assaults revealed on Wednesday exceeded the scope of what the Post articles had described. Christine Hansen, executive director of The Miles Foundation, a victims' advocacy group in Newtown, Conn., told senators at the hearing that it had received reports of 68 cases of sexual assault, mainly from servicewomen in Iraq and Kuwait.
The women's complaints ranged from the lack of emergency medical care and rape kits, to incomplete criminal investigations into their reports to retaliation by peers for reporting an assault, she said.
"We may just be beginning to see what the problem is," Ms. Hansen said in a telephone interview after the hearing.
The reported assaults have produced action and reviews in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.
At a budget hearing before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee said in response to a question that many sexual assaults went unreported. "We don't want that," Mr. Brownlee said. "We want an environment where these young women will feel free to report."
Senior officials from all the services said they were reviewing and, in some cases, increasing their training. Gen. William L. Nyland, the assistant Marine Corps commandant, told senators that beginning March 1, all newly enlisted marines will receive sexual-assault awareness and prevention training. Marine officers already receive the instruction.
----
Military Scolded on Assaults
Senators Seek More Protection for Female Soldiers
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6890-2004Feb25.html
Alarmed by reports of sexual assaults on dozens of female U.S. service members in the Persian Gulf region, senators admonished the Pentagon yesterday to do more to halt the attacks and to improve treatment for the victims.
Appearing before a panel of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a group of senior Pentagon officials acknowledged that significant shortcomings remained in the handling of sexual assault cases but insisted progress had been made and more improvements were on the way.
As evidence of progress, the Pentagon released a survey showing a drop in the number of those polled reporting sexual assault, from 6 percent in 1995 to 3 percent in 2002. The survey, based on responses from 20,000 service members across the armed forces, also found a decline in other offensive sexual conduct, including crude jokes and unwanted attention. And it reported higher ratings of military leaders for trying to stop sexual harassment.
But the senators made it clear they were not satisfied either with the level of misconduct that persists or existing measures for treating victims of assault.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), chairman of the personnel subcommittee, called the percentage of sexual assaults suffered by women in uniform "shocking" and labeled some of the recent allegations "very frightening."
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) declared that female U.S. soldiers in the field sometimes have "more to fear from fellow soldiers than from the enemy."
"I'm concerned because I don't feel a sense of outrage by military leadership, not at this point at least," added Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.)
And Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), who chairs the full committee, wondered out loud why it took the Pentagon nearly two years to release the results of a survey done in the first four months of 2002.
"This committee is prepared to back the U.S. military to achieve zero tolerance" of sexual abuse incidents, Warner said. But, he warned, "if you don't carry it out, we're going to take over."
Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a high-level review of the handling of reports of sexual assaults and the care provided victims, particularly in cases arising from overseas deployments to combat zones. The review is being conducted by a 10-member task force from the military services and the Pentagon's Joint Staff, with a report due in May. The Army and Air Force have launched their own investigations.
The moves came in the wake of 112 reported sexual misconduct cases over the past two years in the U.S. Central Command area of operations, which includes Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan.
In testimony yesterday, David Chu, the civilian head of the Pentagon's personnel and readiness office, conceded that the assault rate against female troops was "still too high" and that the Pentagon has "a long way to go" in addressing the problem.
But he and the vice chiefs of the four military services, who also appeared before the subcommittee, said they took the matter seriously and were intently reviewing what more could be done.
"As we work to rid our corps of these vile acts, every victim is a wounded comrade, one who will be treated with respect and dignity and one who will not be left behind," said Gen. William Nyland, assistant Marine Corps commandant.
Pressed on whether commanders should be given less latitude in how they handle sexual misconduct cases, the military officers defended the wide discretion currently allowed. They said they welcomed any review of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that would facilitate the criminal prosecution of misconduct cases, but they offered no specific changes in the code.
Chu said the Pentagon review underway would probably lead to increased assistance for the victims of assaults and to redoubled efforts at prevention. He noted that much of the misconduct appears concentrated in the most junior ranks, involving young troops who have not been as exposed to training programs aimed at curbing sexual offenses.
Chambliss expressed particular concern at the absence of a policy preventing the victim of an assault and the accused assailant from coming back into contact with each other, citing a case where a woman was put back in the unit with the man she said had attacked her. The senator also complained that investigations of assault allegations, particular those involving deployed troops, were taking too long.
"Everything takes longer in theater," said Gen. George Casey, the Army's vice chief, adding that Army authorities are looking at how to speed up action in misconduct cases.
Chambliss said he wanted the Pentagon review to lead to stronger written policies and a standardization of procedures across the services for treating victims and protecting them from retribution for reporting misconduct.
"The main thing we expect is enforcement," Chambliss said. "There obviously have been situations where the policies in every branch of the service have not been enforced."
----
Servicewomen cite 112 sexual assaults in 2 years
February 26, 2004
By Pam Hess
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040225-112049-4499r.htm
At least 112 women in the military have reported being sexually assaulted by fellow service members in Iraq and Afghanistan during the past two years, military officials told the Senate yesterday.
U.S. Central Command is investigating the accusations. "Why is there less public outrage when servicewomen suffer at the hands of fellow servicemen than at the [hands of the] enemy?" asked Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on personnel.
At least 86 sexual assault cases have been reported in the U.S. Army, 14 of which have been through the court-martial process, according to Gen. George W. Casey, Army vice chief of staff.
The Navy has had 12 cases, all of which reportedly happened in Bahrain. Seven are closed - in six of those cases the evidence didn't support the charge. The other five are still under investigation, according to Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael G. Mullen.
The Marine Corps has had six reported incidents since September 11, according to Gen. William L. Nyland, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps.
The Air Force has had eight cases, two of which implicated foreign nationals. Six Air Force members were accused, according to Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley.
Reported numbers may be low, according to Christine Hansen of the Miles Foundation, which works with victims of sexual violence in the military. Miss Hansen said her foundation knows of 68 cases of sexual assault in the military. Of those, just 11 have reported the incidents to military authorities.
Three weeks ago, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld called for an assessment of how sexual assaults are handled in the military. Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel David Chu said early results suggest the military must improve the treatment and protection of victims. The report is expected to be complete in about two months.
"I wonder, how many studies and task forces are going to be needed before we solve this problem?" said subcommittee Chairman Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Georgia Republican, noting a similar study that was carried out a decade ago. "There appears to be systemic problems in dealing with victims."
Also yesterday, the Pentagon released survey results on sexual harassment in the military, a study that took nearly two years to complete. The report says incidents of harassment and assault have declined over the past seven years, in some cases by half.
Between 1995 and 2002, sexual assault rates among servicewomen declined from 6 percent to 3 percent, according to the report. The rate for men was unchanged over the same period, at 1 percent. Junior-ranking enlisted women were most likely to be sexually assaulted, at a rate of about 5 percent.
The military has a checkered past on sexual assault. According to the Veteran's Administration, 8 percent of the female 1991 Gulf War veterans reported attempted or sexual assault during their deployments. About a third were "challenged" by sexual harassment. That is a tenfold increase over the civilian rate during the same time period, according to data cited by Miss Hansen.
In 1992, the Army released statistics that indicated 26 women had reported rape or other sexual abuse during the Persian Gulf war.
-------- propaganda wars
Bush Backs New Terrorism TV Series
by Jeffrey Jolson-Colburn
Feb 26, 2004,
(E Online)
http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,13584,00.html
In what would be a highly unusual action for a president, George W. Bush is apparently giving the White House seal of approval to a television series, D.H.S.--The Series, a drama about the Department of Home Security being introduced Thursday night to prospective networks at an Industry gathering.
President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge both "endorse and contribute sound bites to the introductions of the series," according to the show's producers.
Though the series' theme relates to the President's agenda on national security and international terrorism, it is virtually unprecedented for the White House to endorse such a fictional representation. It is unclear what input or relation if any the President or the real DHS would have with the show in the future.
HBO's recent series K-Street featured star turns from real-life politicos and the old F.B.I. show with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. was said to have direct involvement from then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, but sitting presidents generally distance themselves from dramatic interpretations like West Wing.
DHS, a multimillion-dollar episodic series, will explore the inner workings of the Department of Homeland Security, teaming the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and National Security Administration (NSA) together with "first responders" such as local police, fire and safety administrators.
Producers at Steeple Productions claim "no other television series has ever had such access and clearance at the highest levels of real-life counter-terrorism agencies: The White House, Dept. of Homeland Security, FBI, EPA, California State Counter-Terrorism Units, LAPD, LAFD and the Los Angeles and Orange County Sheriff's Departments. These government agencies have rallied their resources and support behind the vision of DHS--The Series, including President G. W. Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who both endorse and contribute sound bites to the introductions of the series."
When asked to elaborate on Bush and Ridge's involvement, show representatives told E! Online, "They love it. They think it is fantastic," and drew comparisons to the government's role on The F.B.I. No spokesperson for the White House who could comment on the show was available at press time; a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said he was aware of TV shows related to the department, but said nothing about this particular show.
The show is billed as a realistic action series following the exploits of Special DHS Agents Andrea Bacall and Jack Callahan, portrayed by actors Alison Heruth Waterbury and Timothy Patrick Cavanaugh. The characters venture from the halls of Washington, D.C., to war-torn locales as they fight fanatical terrorism. Producers claim "the series will educate, inform, and inspire the average citizens around the world about America's front-line defense/offense against those who have declared war on the U.S. and our democratic allies."
The APEX-Distribution/Steeple Productions reception for the show, to be held Thursday during the American Film Market in Santa Monica, teamed real-life government officials and the actors who portray them. Attendance was slated to include stars of the series Heruth-Waterbury and Cavenaugh, as well as Sean Astin, Kate Bosworth, Burt Reynolds, Eric Roberts, Kristy Swanson, Stephen Baldwin and Gary Busey. Homeland Security figures on the guest list included Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and Orange County Sheriff Juan Corona plus counter-terrorism heads from LAPD, FBI, NSA, EPA and LAFD.
----
Press Watch - Floating With the Tide
by Scott Sherman
February 26, 2004
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040315&s=sherman
he conduct of our major newspapers in the run-up to the Iraq war calls to mind William Hazlitt's famous appraisal of the Times of London. "It floats with the tide," Hazlitt wrote in 1823. "It sails with the stream." Two new studies--one by Michael Massing in the February 26 New York Review of Books, which surveys news articles; the other by Chris Mooney in the March/April Columbia Journalism Review, which examines unsigned editorials--document the extent to which our elite press sailed with the stream in the decisive months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Together, these articles paint a disconcerting portrait of a timid, credulous press corps that, when confronted by an Administration intent on war, sank to new depths of obsequiousness and docility.
Embedded in Massing's prosecutorial brief against the press are the following charges: the dissemination of White House misinformation on Iraq; the embrace of dubious Iraqi defectors and exiles as sources; a lack of curiosity about debates in the intelligence community concerning US allegations about Iraq's WMD capabilities; and a cavalier disregard for the International Atomic Energy Agency. Much of Massing's firepower is directed at the New York Times in general and one reporter--Judith Miller--in particular. It was Miller (with Michael Gordon) who produced, on September 8, 2002, an article titled "US Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts," which reported that Iraq had tried to import thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes with the purpose of producing enriched uranium and, eventually, an atomic weapon. Bush Administration "hard-liners," according to Miller and Gordon, feared nothing less than "a mushroom cloud." The same day the article appeared, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice parroted the charges about the tubes on the Sunday-morning chat shows. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," Rice intoned on CNN.
"In the following months," Massing writes, "the tubes would become a key prop in the administration's case for war, and the Times played a critical part in legitimizing it." A crucial element of the legitimation process was the Times's disregard for experts who didn't share the White House's dark view of Saddam's WMD capabilities. The only national news organization that emerges unscathed from Massing's inquiry is the low-profile Washington bureau of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain--which includes the Miami Herald, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Jose Mercury News--whose hard-hitting stories were based on the doubts and fears of military, intelligence and diplomatic officials, many of whom believed that the White House was misinterpreting and fabricating evidence about Iraq's bellicosity.
Miller has been the subject of much scrutiny [see Russ Baker, "'Scoops' and Truth at the Times," June 23, 2003], but Massing has produced the most authoritative account of her deferential posture vis-à-vis the Bush Administration. Massing asked Miller why her stories did not generally include the views of skeptical WMD experts; her reply is jaw-dropping: "My job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself," Miller averred. "My job is to tell readers of the New York Times what the government thought of Iraq's arsenal." Massing adds, with appropriate gravity: "Many journalists would disagree with this; instead they would consider offering an independent evaluation of official claims one of their chief responsibilities."
Miller, it turns out, has no monopoly on docility. CJR's survey of editorials makes it distressingly apparent that our top newspapers did not abstain from the chance to inform their readers about "what the government thought" of Iraq's supposed arsenal. Mooney examined more than eighty editorials in half a dozen papers--the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune--for a six-week period, starting with Colin Powell's February 5 speech to the United Nations and concluding with the onset of hostilities on March 19. It's worth noting that Mooney, a freelance writer in Washington, had no ideological ax to grind. In the months leading up to the war, he was a "liberal hawk" who expressed prowar sentiments on his blog. To a certain extent, his piece is a reckoning with himself. (Full disclosure: I was a CJR staff member from 2001-03 and remain on the magazine's masthead in an advisory capacity.)
The CJR report is largely about the reaction to Powell's speech, which was rapturously received by editorialists. "Irrefutable," proclaimed the Washington Post. Powell "may not have produced a 'smoking gun,'" ventured the New York Times, but the speech left "little question that Mr. Hussein had tried hard to conceal one." International newspapers--including the British Guardian--treated the speech as one side of an ongoing UN debate about Iraq's WMD capacities and gave ample coverage to the opposing views of Hans Blix and the IAEA's Mohammed ElBaradei, who maintained that Iraq did not have them. "Without appearing to weigh such contrary evidence," Mooney writes, "the US papers all essentially pronounced Powell right, though they couldn't possibly know for sure that he was. In short, they trusted him. And in so doing, they failed to bring even an elementary skepticism to the Bush case for war."
Mooney was struck by the "strongly nationalistic character" of the editorials under review and the "almost knee-jerk tendency to distrust international perspectives"--a sentiment that, in many cases, led editorialists to minimize and dismiss the findings of Blix and ElBaradei. In March 2003, the latter informed the UN that there was little evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear program, but the prowar newspapers in the CJR study simply "shrugged off" ElBaradei's critique. At least one of them--the Wall Street Journal--heaped scorn on the inspectors. When Saddam Hussein insisted that he did not possess WMDs, the Journal sneered, "If you believe that, you are probably a Swedish weapons inspector."
What do the editorial page editors say in their own defense? "We don't discuss the process that goes into writing the editorials," the New York Times's Gail Collins told CJR. "I will go off my normal rule to say I wish we'd known there were no weapons of mass destruction." Said Janet Clayton of the Los Angeles Times: "I do wish we'd been more skeptical of Powell's WMD claims before the UN." Others remain faithful to their own discredited narratives. "I'm not going to second-guess what we wrote," said the Chicago Tribune's Bruce Dold. "If indeed [Saddam] did not have weapons--and I think it's all still an open question--the fact was that he didn't comply, and the UN had looked the other way while hundreds of thousands of people had died in Iraq."
In the months after the war ended, major US newspapers--especially the Washington Post--recovered their skepticism and began to challenge aggressively the Administration's justifications for war. But it was too little, too late: When we needed them most, they weren't there. CJR gave the last word to the intelligence writer Thomas Powers. "All these papers are on notice," Powers said. "They've seen what happened. They were hustled."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Bush to Limit Testimony Before 9/11 Panel
February 26, 2004
New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/politics/26PANE.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 - President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that they will meet only with the panel's top two officials and that Mr. Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning, commission members said Wednesday.
The commission, which has 10 members and is bipartisan, said in a statement that it had also been informed by the White House that Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, had rejected its request that she testify in public about the intelligence reports that reached her desk before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Democratic members of the panel said the administration's moves raised new questions about its willingness to cooperate with the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law enforcement blunders in the months and years before the 2001 attacks. The White House initially opposed creating the panel.
Republican Congressional leaders have criticized the investigation's pace. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said he would not support and might block any legislation that extended the life of the panel, which is scheduled to complete its work in May.
The commission called on Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to reconsider their decision against meeting with all 10 members of the panel.
"President Bush and Vice President Cheney have agreed to meet privately with the chair and vice chair but prefer not to meet with all members," the statement said, referring to the chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey; and vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a Democrat and former House member from Indiana. "We hope the president and the vice president will reconsider."
The panel said it was "disappointed" by Ms. Rice's decision not to testify at a public hearing, adding, "We believe the nation would be well served by the contribution she can make to public understanding of the intelligence and policy issues being examined by the commission."
Ms. Rice has submitted to several hours of questioning at a private session. Her spokesman, Sean McCormack, said the decision against public testimony was made at the recommendation of administration lawyers who warned of separation-of-powers issues.
"Based on law and practice, White House staff members have not testified before legislative bodies," Mr. McCormack said, "and this is considered a legislative body."
The commission's statement suggested that the panel had received promises of greater cooperation from former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore, who have agreed to meet in private with all members. Ms. Rice's predecessor, Samuel R. Berger, is scheduled to testify in public next month.
A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, would not offer details of the White House's reasoning in trying to limit the meeting to Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton, and Ms. Healy said she was unaware that the White House had wanted to limit the president's interview to one hour.
"The president looks forward to meeting with the chairman and the vice chairman to provide the information necessary for the commission to complete its work," Ms. Healy said. "He's also confident that they'll be able to share that information with the rest of the commission."
In interviews, Democratic members of the commission were openly critical of the limits that the administration was trying to place on the interviews and of Ms. Rice's decision not to testify in public.
"This is not acceptable," said Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor and a Democrat on the commission.
Mr. Ben-Veniste said the commission believed that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney needed to meet with all 10 members and that it might consider a subpoena for Ms. Rice if she refused to testify in public.
Republicans on the panel, including Mr. Kean, said that while the White House should allow Ms. Rice to testify publicly and place fewer restrictions on the interviews with Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, that was not meant to suggest criticism of the White House.
"We appreciate the president giving us the time and the vice president, and we would respectfully suggest that all 10 commissioners should participate," Mr. Kean said, adding that he was disappointed by Ms. Rice's decision because "she was so very good in her private testimony - she was articulate, candid, helpful."
He said he doubted that the panel would consider a subpoena.
----
Hastert Still Against Giving 9/11 Panel More Time
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6948-2004Feb25.html
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has hardened his opposition to extending the deadline for the independent commission studying the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, even as the panel's leaders pleaded yesterday for more time to complete their work.
Hastert told Republican lawmakers in a meeting yesterday that he will not bring up any legislation to grant the commission extra time, said spokesman John Feehery. Hastert rejected a personal plea from White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. on the extension Monday, Feehery said.
"He still doesn't feel the commission needs any extra time" and he believes that the panel "should complete its report as soon as possible," Feehery said, adding that a later deadline would make the commission "a political issue" during the presidential campaign.
Hastert's stance casts serious doubt on the commission's efforts to secure a 60-day extension of its May 27 deadline. The panel contends it needs the additional time to produce a complete report and to avoid cutting back on public hearings.
Legislation to grant the panel extra time is moving ahead in the Senate, where Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has indicated his support. After opposing the idea, President Bush reversed himself earlier this month and agreed to support an extension.
In another blow to the commission, officials announced yesterday that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has rejected an invitation to testify publicly in front of the panel. Several senior Bush and Clinton administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, have agreed to appear at a public hearing in late March.
The commission has already interviewed Rice privately, and she is expected to be asked to return for more questioning behind closed doors. But Chairman Thomas H. Kean, a Republican former governor of New Jersey, said in an interview that he was disappointed by Rice's refusal to testify publicly.
Kean -- who has warned that the commission's final report may be compromised if the panel is not granted more time to complete its work -- also said he remains hopeful that Hastert will change his mind.
Republican commission member John F. Lehman, a former Navy secretary, said Hastert's opposition is "unacceptable" and suggested that the panel will continue its work with or without an extension.
The bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States has battled the Bush administration for more than a year over access to classified material and witnesses. Panel members say these fights have caused delays that threaten to undermine the credibility of their report.
As part of another ongoing dispute, the commission issued a statement yesterday urging Bush and Vice President Cheney to reconsider being interviewed by the full 10-member panel. The White House has said that Bush and Cheney would agree to questioning only by Kean and the panel's vice chairman, former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D) of Indiana.
Panel officials said former president Bill Clinton and former vice president Al Gore have agreed to meet with the commission. Former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger has also agreed to testify in public, Kean said.
-------- drug war
Report: Navy Drug Probe Leads to Charges
February 26, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Sailors-Drug-Charges.html
NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) -- A three-year Navy investigation has led to drug charges against 18 sailors on 10 nuclear vessels from Connecticut to Hawaii, Navy officials said.
Charges stemmed from the alleged sale and use of Ecstasy, LSD, cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana, Navy officials told The Day of New London for a story in Thursday editions.
All 18 sailors accused were trained to work on nuclear vessels. Some met during nuclear power training before being assigned to submarines and aircraft carriers, the newspaper reported. It was not clear when the arrests were made.
The probe led to charges against sailors on 10 ships -- eight submarines and two aircraft carriers -- as well as two shore commands. All the sailors were enlisted people, whose ranks ranged from seaman to petty officer 1st class.
The Navy said there was no evidence that any of the sailors had used drugs while on duty.
Lt. Phil Rosi, a spokesman for Submarine Group Two at the base in Groton, said a Naval Criminal Investigative Service probe uncovered the extent of the drug use.
``The Navy has a zero-tolerance policy on drug use,'' Rosi said. ``Drug use is inconsistent with Navy core values, and all allegations of drug use by Navy personnel are fully investigated.''
Nine of the sailors have been court-martialed, with prison sentences of up to 30 months in prison and forfeiture of up to $3,000 in pay. Two others have been kicked out of the Navy; three are awaiting court-martials, two are facing pretrial hearings and two more are being kicked out of the Navy.
The inquiry, which began nearly three years ago, spread to ships from both coasts and as far away as Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Ships involved included the USS Pittsburgh; USS Albuquerque; USS San Juan; USS Abraham Lincoln; USS Nimitz; USS Helena; USS Los Angeles; USS Nebraska; and USS Florida.
-------- homeland security
Personnel Changes at DHS Draw Skepticism
Limits on Unions, Independence of Board Questioned
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6891-2004Feb25.html
Several members of Congress yesterday questioned whether the Department of Homeland Security's proposed personnel system meets the federal government's standards of fairness and neutrality.
Lawmakers scrutinized the 167-page personnel plan, published in the Federal Register last week, during a three-hour joint hearing of two congressional committees that deal with civil service issues. The plan would dramatically change the way the majority of the department's 180,000 employees are paid, promoted, deployed and disciplined, all in the name of creating a workforce that can respond quickly to deter and detect threats to the country.
"It contains a lot of changes for our federal employees, and I know they are very nervous," said Rep. Jo Ann S. Davis (R-Va.), chairwoman of the House Government Reform subcommittee on the civil service.
One of the biggest changes would curtail the influence of labor unions. Department officials would no longer be required to bargain with unions over such matters as the shifts employees work, the type of duties they perform and the equipment they use. The Federal Labor Relations Authority, which now settles labor-management disputes, would yield the job to a three-member internal labor relations board appointed by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) told Deputy Secretary James Loy and Kay Coles James, director of the Office of Personnel Management, that safeguards may be needed to ensure the board is independent.
"It's really important that that be looked upon as something that is real legit and passes the straight-face test," said Voinovich, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee on the federal workforce.
Loy and James agreed that improvements could be made. "That board, in order to be effective, must be credible," James said.
The plan also would shorten to as few as 15 days an employee discipline and appeals process that now can take months to complete. Although employees still would be able to protest what they consider unfair treatment before the independent Merit Systems Protection Board, the board would no longer be able to alter the agency's chosen penalty. Moreover, managers could discipline employees after finding "substantial evidence" of wrongdoing, a lower standard than the current "preponderance of the evidence" requirement.
While Loy argued that such changes are "in the interest of supporting the mission of the department," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said they would do little more than remove important checks on abuse of power.
Union leaders also have complained about such changes, saying they restrict employee rights without advancing the work of the department. They also have criticized as poorly conceived the agency's proposal to toss out the 15-grade General Schedule pay system and replace it with broader salary ranges known as "pay bands."
Comptroller General David M. Walker testified yesterday that the plan is well designed in many respects but said officials must pay more attention to adequately measuring worker performance, creating a fair appeals process, and ensuring a true partnership exists between management and employees.
A 30-day public comment period began last Friday. When it concludes, Congress will review the plan for another month, although no formal legislative approval is required.
Loy indicated the document still may be fine-tuned, saying, "This remains a work in progress for us."
----
Homeland Security plans to secure communications
February 26, 2004
By Shaun Waterman
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040225-112042-9439r.htm
Homeland Security officials said yesterday that the department sent teams to cities under threat during the holiday season Code Orange alert because of a lack of secure communication channels to state and local officials.
Adm. James M. Loy, deputy secretary for homeland defense, said secure videoconferencing facilities were not available in the offices of all 50 of the nation's governors, but would be installed by July.
"That will allow a greater and much-needed dissemination of classified information to homeland security professionals around the country," Adm. Loy told a conference of military officials and defense contractors. "I can tell you that during this last orange alert over the holidays we actually ended up sending executive visit teams out to cities where we had particular concerns, because we didn't have that connectivity quite yet where we wanted it to be."
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on Tuesday rolled out plans for the expansion of a secure, Internet-based communications network, which will allow department officials to communicate in real time by voice, text and data with their state and local counterparts.
The Homeland Security Information Network will connect the department's 24-hour operations center with governors, National Guard offices, state emergency-operations centers, and first-responder and public-safety departments.
Governors will be able to obtain secret data through the videoconferencing facilities, but other network users will have access only to unclassified "law enforcement sensitive" information.
The system eventually will be expanded to handle classified data and to include county officials and private-sector entities, Mr. Ridge said.
Gen. Ralph Ebehardt, who runs Northern Command, the element of the U.S. military responsible for the defense of the United States, joined Adm. Loy at the conference Tuesday. He said that barriers to effective information sharing were 10 percent technological and 90 percent cultural.
The mind-set of the intelligence community has to change, he said.
"We need to replace the 'need to know' mentality of the Cold War with a 'need to share' mentality," he said.
The Homeland Security Information Network - an expansion of an existing system that links about 100 federal agencies, state offices, municipalities and other local government entities with a counterterrorism mission - is designed to do just that, Mr. Ridge said.
But others were quick to suggest it did not go nearly far enough.
"It's a good start," said John D. Cohen, a former police officer and intelligence official who now consults with state and local governments on homeland security issues.
But Mr. Cohen, who works with the Progressive Policy Institute think tank, says the network still is too centralized.
"The approach now is saying, 'Let's get the feds to collect all this information and then decide what's important enough to pump out.' "
Adm. Loy said the deployment of the executive teams was designed to improve information flow between the department and cities.
-------- human rights
U.S. Report Criticizes Russia on Human Rights
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6943-2004Feb25.html
The Bush administration bluntly criticized Russia yesterday for manipulating regional and national elections, cracking down on the news media, and prosecuting or threatening members of opposition groups -- a series of steps that the administration said raised questions about Moscow's commitment to the rule of law.
The State Department's annual human rights report cited frequent use by Russian law enforcement officials of "torture, violence, and other brutal or humiliating treatment." It said that arbitrary arrest remains a serious problem and that prison conditions are "frequently life-threatening." It also criticized police corruption, infringement on citizens' privacy rights and hazing in the armed forces.
The criticism comes at a time of tough public language from the administration about the tightening grip on power by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Last month, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell published a front-page commentary in the newspaper Izvestia in which he criticized Russia for interfering with political parties and taking other steps that breached democratic principles.
The report released yesterday also criticized China for "backsliding" after tentative earlier openings, citing the arrests in 2003 of democracy advocates, protesting workers, HIV/AIDS activists, defense lawyers and church members. The United States is now considering submitting a resolution critical of Beijing at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights meeting next month.
"We're heading in that direction. We are still talking to China, but we have over the past year not had much progress in our dialogue, and that has come against a backdrop of continued arrests within China," Lorne W. Craner, the assistant secretary of state for human rights, told reporters
In general, the administration warned that progress on basic human liberties was lacking in many countries. "Even a cursory reading of the country reports for 2003 confirms that many -- too many -- governments across the globe still violate the most basic rights of their citizens," Powell said at a news conference on the report. "These regimes cannot hold back freedom forever, and one day [from] prison camps and prison cells and from exile, the leaders of new democracies will arrive."
But human rights groups charged yesterday that the United States has also become a major violator of international standards because of its own conduct in the war on terrorism.
"There are increasingly glaring inconsistencies between the practices the State Department condemns in these reports and the practices that the Bush administration engages in at home, in particular the indefinite detention of people deemed a national security threat," said Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch.
The United States has now "lost the moral authority" to evaluate human rights worldwide while it detains both Americans and foreign nationals indefinitely, without charges or recourse to a speedy trial, in the name of national security, said a statement by the U.S. Human Rights Network, a new coalition of more than 100 legal and human rights groups.
"These dramatic and flagrant violations are occurring in the context of sustained general attacks on privacy, freedom of information and expression, due process, and economic and social rights, among others," the coalition said in a statement.
Amnesty International USA noted the Bush administration's "erratic and inconsistent" behavior on human rights. "The content of this report has little correspondence with the administration's foreign policy. Indeed, the U.S. is increasingly guilty of a 'sincerity gap,' " said William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
The United States also criticized other parts of the world, including important allies. The State Department charged that Israeli security forces tortured Palestinian detainees during interrogation and used excessive force, including bombing and shelling, against Palestinian civilian areas. The government has done "little" to change "institutional, legal and societal discrimination" against the 20 percent Arab minority who are citizens of Israel, the report added.
Pakistan, a linchpin state in the U.S. war on terrorism, was mentioned as engaging in a wide range of violations, from extrajudicial killings to the use of excessive force. A constitutional amendment consolidated the powers of President Pervez Musharraf. And the credibility of the judiciary is generally "low," the global survey said.
The State Department cited Saudi Arabia for torture and abuse of prisoners, arbitrary arrests, discrimination against minorities and women. It also noted that the government has yet to follow through on a pledge in October to hold elections for half the members of city councils.
In other regions, the administration charged that abuses "worsened dramatically" in Cuba, where 75 peaceful dissidents were sentenced to prison terms averaging 20 years for "trying to exercise their basic rights." It also described North Korea as one of the world's inhumane regimes, with "rigid controls" over most aspects of life and widespread abuses.
----
U.S. human rights report criticizes friends, foes
February 26, 2004
By Tom Carter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040225-113202-7064r.htm
The annual State Department report on human rights welcomes improved conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan but continues to hammer away at traditional violators such as China, North Korea, Cuba and Russia.
"We began 2003 with hopes that the incremental but unprecedented progress in China seen in 2002 would be continued and expanded; however throughout the year, we saw backsliding on key human rights issues," the report said.
The report, released yesterday, was particularly harsh about Beijing's practices in Tibet.
"The Chinese government's record in Tibet remains poor, and ongoing abuses include execution without due process, torture, arbitrary arrest, detention without public trial and lengthy detention of Tibetans for peacefully expressing their political or religious view," it said.
The State Department faulted China, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe and Burma, as expected, but also criticized U.S. allies Russia and Israel and supporters of the U.S. war on terrorism such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for systematically abusing their citizens' basic rights.
Human rights groups were mostly pleased with this year's report, but Amnesty International, while praising the report in general, said some countries would use the war on terror to dilute international criticism.
"The content of this report has little correspondence with the administration's foreign policy. Indeed, the U.S. is increasingly guilty of a 'sincerity gap,' overlooking abuses by allies and justifying action against foes by post-facto reference to human rights," said William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
"In response, many foreign governments will choose to blunt criticism of their abuses by increasing cooperation with the U.S. war on terror rather than by improving human rights."
Human Rights Watch, which issued reports on Uzbekistan and Indonesia, was pleased.
"It continues the tradition of honest, hard-hitting reporting on human rights abuses," said Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, which often is critical of the United States for not demanding more from its allies. "This report pulls no punches."
Israel, America's closest ally in the Middle East, is accused of "the use of excessive force by security forces, the shelling, bombing and raiding of Palestinian civilian areas."
Last month, Israel unsuccessfully lobbied Washington to postpone the release of the report.
In Cuba, the report said, "human rights abuses worsened dramatically."
Pakistan, which is on the front line in dealing with al Qaeda and the Taliban, is criticized for "abuse by members of the security forces, ranging from extrajudicial killings to excessive use of force."
The government of Russian President Vladimir Putin is accused of manipulating elections, eliminating the last major independent television station, intimidating the financial supporters of opposition political parties with threats of criminal prosecution and continued human rights abuses in Chechnya.
The report chastises the Saudi government for its lack of democracy, "violence and discrimination against women," as well as against religious and ethnic minorities. On the positive side, it credits the Saudi government with taking steps to "address religious extremism."
North Korea gets special mention "as one of the world's most inhumane regimes." The report says human rights abuses practiced by Pyongyang include killings, persecution of forcibly repatriated North Koreans, torture, forced abortion and infanticide.
----
State Department Reports Paint Dismal Human Rights Picture
by Jim Lobe,
February 26, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=2042
Releasing its annual "Country Reports" on human rights practices around the world Wednesday, the U.S. State Department claimed Afghanistan and Iraq as two major breakthroughs in an otherwise bleak human rights picture.
In an introductory overview, the report singled out several countries for poorer performances during 2003, including China, North Korea, Burma, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Russia.
Rights groups praised the report as generally fair and comprehensive, but stressed that the administration of President George W. Bush was failing to take it seriously in formulating policy.
"The content of this report has little correspondence with the administration's foreign policy," said William Schulz, executive director of the US chapter of Amnesty International (AIUSA).
"Indeed, the US is increasingly guilt of a 'sincerity gap,' overlooking abuses by allies and justifying action against foes by post-facto reference to human rights. In response, many foreign governments will choose to blunt criticism of their abuses by increasing cooperation with the US war on terror, rather than by improving human rights."
Neil Hicks, international director for Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) agreed, insisting the report will fuel charges that the administration is being hypocritical.
"On the one hand it's calling more vocally for other states to improve human rights," he said, "and at the same time it's backsliding in terms of its own record on human rights at home, and making alliances with states that the report makes clear are serious human rights violators - all in the name of the 'war on terrorism.'"
Anticipating the criticism, the report made a special point of denying that it was more tolerant of authoritarian allies in the war on terrorism.
"Not surprisingly, some authoritarian governments from the Middle East to Central Asia to China have attempted to justify old repression by cloaking it as part of the new 'war on terror,'" it said.
"American policymakers rejected and rebuked, often publicly, such attempts to label those peacefully expressing their thoughts and beliefs as 'terrorists.'"
The latest edition of the reports, which were first mandated by Congress in 1976, covers the human rights situation in almost 200 countries in 2003, and stretches well over 2,500 pages in length.
The reports are widely considered the world's single-most comprehensive source for human rights conditions. They are based on information collected by international and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as on the local press and reporting by US diplomats.
While the country reports avoid comparing the rights practices of different states, the introduction to the document, authored by Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Lorne Craner, often singles out specific nations for praise or blame.
In this year's edition, it highlighted what it claimed were advances in both Afghanistan - notably its production of a "moderate" constitution by the country's Loya Jirga, or assembly of notables, early last month - and in Iraq, whose "liberation by coalition forces in April ended years of grave human rights violations by (former president) Saddam Hussein's regime."
But in blaming continuing violence and insecurity in Afghanistan on the Taliban and drug traffickers, the introduction failed to mention the role played by regional and factional warlords who, until recently, received US backing.
"That's a rather important omission," noted Tom Malinowski, who heads the Washington office of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Similarly, the Iraq report simply confines itself to a recitation of abuses committed during Hussein's regime and ignores abuses committed by U.S.-led coalition forces or their Iraqi allies since they attacked and occupied Baghdad last March.
On the negative side of the ledger, the introduction accused China of "backsliding on key human rights issues" during 2002, particularly with respect to its treatment of Muslim Uighurs, Tibet and Hong Kong.
It accused North Korea, with which Washington is currently engaged in multilateral negotiations over the country's alleged nuclear programs, as "one of the world's most inhumane regimes," and noted that Burma's "extremely poor human rights record worsened in 2003" with the attack on opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters.
In Cuba, abuses "worsened dramatically" with the sentencing of 75 dissidents to prison terms averaging 20 years, while Zimbabwe's government "continued to conduct a concerted campaign of violence, repression and intimidation," said the report.
On Russia, the State Department accused the government of President Vladimir Putin of staging unfair elections in Chechnya and for parliament, and of exerting pressure on the media, the opposition and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in ways that "weakened civil society and raised questions about the rule of law."
HRW's Malinowski told IPS that the bluntness of the remarks about Russia came as "something of a surprise" to him.
As to the other former Soviet states, particularly in the Caucasus and Central Asia, some improvements were noted in creating space for civil society, but the overall picture, with the exception of Georgia, remained bleak.
Fraudulent elections and harassment and repression of opposition figures remained the norm throughout the region, according to the State Department.
Georgia, where Washington helped negotiate the resignation of former President Eduard Shevardnadze, making way for Jan. 4 elections won by U.S.-educated Mikheil Saakashvili, was the one bright spot, it added. Coincidentally, Saakashvili held his first meeting with Bush in the White House shortly before the report was released.
But if the former Soviet Union proved disappointing, the report insisted that a number of advances in Africa and the Arab world were worth noting, including the creation of power-sharing arrangements in Burundi and Liberia.
It also signaled a "slight" improvement in the otherwise "poor" human rights situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where an estimated three million people have died as a result of six years of conflict and foreign intervention.
The introduction was especially enthusiastic about human rights reforms and anti-corruption measures in Kenya, the adoption of a new constitution in Rwanda, and progress in stabilizing Sierra Leone, although it noted that elections in that country, Nigeria and Mauritania failed to meet international standards.
It also insisted that "change continued across much of the Arab world," most notably the approval of a new constitution by popular referendum in Qatar; parliamentary elections in Yemen; consultative council elections in Oman; municipal polls in Morocco; an increase in representation of women in Jordan's senate; and the creation of a high-level human rights commission in Egypt.
At the same time, despite talk of reforms in Saudi Arabia, many remained vague, while there, as in many other countries in the region - notably Syria, Tunisia and Egypt - torture continued to be practiced, said the report.
It also harshly criticized Iran's "poor" human rights record, particularly the harassment of opposition figures, including reformist members of parliament.
The report also condemned Israel's record in the Occupied Territories, including "continuing abuses, the use of excessive force by security forces, the shelling, bombing and raiding of Palestinian civilian areas, and demolitions of homes and property."
On Asia, the introduction labeled the human rights situations in both Cambodia and Vietnam as "poor." While Indonesia experienced improvements in some regions, it said, conditions in Aceh Province, where security forces are fighting an insurgency, "deteriorated rapidly" during the year.
Both sides in Nepal's civil conflict were faulted for abuses, although the introduction noted that the record of the Maoist insurgents was "worse" than that of the government.
On Latin America, the report praised the reduction in kidnappings, killings and forced deployments achieved in Colombia, and the prosecution of military commanders there, while it pointed out several reforms undertaken by Guatemala.
The introduction blamed what it called the "political impasse" in Haiti - which has resulted in violence and chaotic conditions in much of the country since earlier this month - on President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and "his supporters, henchmen and civilian opposition attaches."
-------- police
F.B.I. Agents Took Mementos From Rubble of Twin Towers
February 26, 2004
New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/nyregion/26agents.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 - Thirteen agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation took mementos, debris or valuables from the Staten Island landfill that held the rubble of the World Trade Center, and the F.B.I. now plans to formally ban the removal of crime-scene items as a result, officials said on Wednesday.
Among the items taken from the rubble, officials said, were a Tiffany globe paperweight, an American flag, chunks of concrete, bags of dust, bolts and pieces of metal, investigators from the Justice Department inspector general's office found.
The department first began investigating charges of possible theft last year after receiving a complaint that the Tiffany globe wound up on the desk of an F.B.I. secretary in Minneapolis. But the inspector general's investigation found that the removal of World Trade Center evidence was more widespread than previously realized and that the problem was a longstanding one at the F.B.I. at other crime scenes as well.
The results of the investigation, first reported Wednesday night by NBC News, outraged some survivors, who saw the removal of items from the rubble as insensitive to the memories of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I would have hoped that the F.B.I. was more concerned with conducting an investigation and gathering evidence, not gathering mementos to sit on their bookshelves as a relic from the worst national tragedy in the country's history," said Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband died in the trade center and who has helped lead a group of survivors pushing for more answers about the attacks. "This speaks to a real lack of focus by the F.B.I. in getting to the bottom of what really happened on Sept. 11," she said.
An agent from a field office in Oklahoma who was said to have taken large amounts of World Trade Center debris has been suspended for 10 days, officials said.
In addition, the agent who took the Tiffany globe from the rubble now faces the prospect of disciplinary action, as does Richard B. Marx, the agent who supervised the evidence recovery effort by some 400 bureau agents at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, officials said.
Mr. Marx was publicly credited last year for his work in retrieving World Trade Center relics that became part of an exhibition at the New-York Historical Society. His team was responsible for sifting through the vast amounts of human remains, personal effects and other items amid the rubble removed from ground zero to find items that could be returned to survivors or aid in the federal investigation. But in the course of the Justice Department investigation, he was accused of giving misleading accounts to investigators about whether he or his agents removed items from the scene for their own use, officials said. He could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.
None of the other agents implicated in the inspector general's investigation are facing disciplinary proceedings because there was no formal F.B.I. policy in place that prevented the removal of such items, according to a bureau official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"We didn't have a written policy relative to this type of activity, and that's one of the problems here," the F.B.I. official said. "Obviously we don't encourage this type of thing, and while it was inappropriate, there wasn't a policy we could say they violated."
Some of the agents who removed items from the scene apparently saw them as harmless mementos that would serve as reminders of the long, difficult hours they spent sifting through evidence at the landfill, officials said.
But in January the F.B.I. put in place a formal policy that prohibits members of evidence recovery teams from taking anything from a crime scene, no matter what its value, and it plans to expand the ban to the entire bureau soon, officials said.
"The policy calls for much greater management oversight and provides F.B.I. employees with clear instruction on the removal of mementos from a recovery site for any purpose," the agency said in a statement. "It effectively prohibits the removal of any debris by personnel at a site."
The inspector general's report found that the removal of evidence from disaster scenes was a problem long before the Sept. 11 attacks, with F.B.I. agents taking items after the Oklahoma City bombing, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and other disasters, investigators found.
"Our investigation found that memento taking at recovery sites has been a longstanding practice with F.B.I. agents," the inspector general's report found.
-------- torture
Second Canadian Details Torture in Syrian Prison
Montreal Muslim News,
February 26, 2004
http://www.montrealmuslimnews.net/syriantorture.htm
Major Questions Arise about Role of RCMP and CSIS in Setting Up Canadians for Torture Overseas
"A Syrian official told me that I would not see the sun again," traumatized Canadian tells press conference.
Lawyer says, "Mr. Nureddin's case, and Mr. Arar before it, appear to indicate that the RCMP and CSIS, or both of them, are moving into another form of targeting: Canadian citizens."
(report from the Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada and its growing subsidiary, the Campaign to Stop the Detention and Torture of Canadians Abroad - e-mail: tasc@web.ca)
TORONTO, FEBRUARY 26, 2004 -- It's the second time in the past few months that a Canadian has gone before the cameras to discuss his torture at the hands of Syrian authorities. It's the second time that serious questions have been raised about the potential role of CSIS and the RCMP in sharing the kind of information with overseas intelligence agencies that has prompted the torture of a Canadian detained abroad.
And there was an eerie sense at today's Toronto press conference with torture survivor Muayyad Nureddin -- who was held without charge or explanation just over one month in a Syrian prison and released in January -- that it may not be the last time we see such a sight: a quiet, dignified statement about the terror of torture visited upon a human being who made the mistake of travelling abroad while Muslim or Arab. Indeed, as Amnesty International's Canadian General Secretary Alex Neve pointed out, "two other Canadians, Abdullah Almalki and Anwar Al-Bouchi remain in Syrian jails. Reports of their torture emerged months ago. Canada must redouble its efforts on their behalf."
And yet there are still others. Recently detained overseas and just released from Egypt are Helmy Elsherief, a 64-year-old man who was "questioned" for two full weeks in Egypt before being released, and Ahmad Abou El-Maati, held over two years, tortured in Syria and then transferred to an Egyptian prison.
Israel has detained Windsor, Ontario resident Jamal Akkal based on what appears to be a trumped-up allegation that he was forced to confess to in a language he does not read nor speak after 20 days of round-the-clock interrogation.
In the U.S., Canadians are also held behind bars. There's the mysterious case of Mansour Jabarah (who was recently convicted in a secret trial of a slew of alleged crimes after apparently being kidnapped by CSIS while in Oman and turned over to the U.S.). Recently, Somali-Canadian Mohammad Warsame was arrested in Minneapolis and, after being held as a material witness in an undisclosed location in connection with a case related to Sept. 11, 2001, was indicted under the (recently declared unconstitutional) law against provision of materiel aid to a terrorist group, yet no details have been made public.
There's also the cases of Canadians held at the illegal Guantanamo Bay "enemy combatants" camp, including teenager Omar Khadr. This disturbing trend, especially with respect to those who call Canada home, seems to follow a particular pattern. Mr. Nureddin's attorney, Barbara Jackman, notes "CSIS has a long-standing practice--and the RCMP before it and still--of focusing and targetting of persons who are associated with particular centres. Certainly the Muslim centre is now being targetted. In the past it's been Tamils, Kurds, Sikhs, because of their association with particular ethnic centres.
"Associations with other persons and with particular centres have formed the basis of security certificates imposed on non-citizens in Canada, like Mr. Jaballah and Mr. Almrei and a number of others. In security certificate proceedings the government only needs to establish that the case might possibly be true, so inferences are drawn based merely on associations with persons or a particular centre that's a concern to CSIS. Mr. Nureddin's case, and Mr. Arar before it, appear to indicate that the RCMP and CSIS, or both of them, are moving into another form of targetting: Canadian citizens."
The unsettling conclusion to be drawn from these practices is clear. "Canadian citizens can't be made subject of security certificates because they're Canadian citizens," Jackman points out in reference to the mechanisms whereby secret trials in Canada are initiated, and under which five Muslim men have been detained without charge or bail a collective 124 months.
"So what appears to be happening is that CSIS or the RCMP are opportunistically taking advantage of times when people are travelling to provide information to other governments to get them to do their dirty work, to ask questions using means that would not be acceptable in Canada and that are not condoned internationally and in fact are prohibited internationally ... at this point in time, anybody -- any Canadian citizen or permanent resident from the Middle East who's ever been questioned by CSIS or the RCMP -- should be worried about travelling. They can't take a chance that if they travel they won't be detained in some other country because CSIS has passed information on about them." Nureddin's friend, Tawfik Kettanah, asks, "How do you feel when you know your fellow citizen is passing information about you that resulted in your torture and humiliation? I say definitely it's betrayal. This is not only about a fellow citizen, but an organization whose job is to protect the entire nation's security."
Many questions arose as a result of today's revelations. Mr. Nureddin himself states clearly: "I want to know why I was detained in Syria. I want to know if CSIS or any other Canadian security agency was responsible for my detention and torture in Syria. I want the Canadian government to hold a public inquiry so that I and the Canadian public know exactly what happened. I do not want this to happen to others ever again. It is wrong."
Other important questions arise. Why was it that the Canadian consular official in Syria learned of Nureddin's pending release not from Syrian authorities, but from CSIS? Why was it that the same questions asked by CSIS agents at Pearson airport in September, 2003, before Nureddin travelled overseas, were asked by Nureddin's torturers in a Syrian prison three months later? (Those questions concerned the cash he was carrying for his own and other families in Iraq (a fairly common practice for many in immigrant communities who visit overseas); questions about two individuals associated with the Salaheddin mosque in Scarborough and about another individual who has since left Canada; questions about whether Nureddin worked in Salaheddin's accounting department; and how many times he had visited Iraq.
Why is it that Nureddin, while crossing the Turkish-Syrian border earlier in his ill-fated trip, was again asked questions about the Muslim centre, when he had quit, whether he belonged to any organization? At that time his car was stripped down and searched, and his money counted. While today's conference called for the terms of the Arar inquiry to be broadened to include the case of Mr. Nureddin, it also served as another reminder of a question which demands its own inquiry (perhaps even moreso than the shocking -- yet not unexpected -- disappearing act of $100 million into Liberal patronage coffers.)
That question is on the minds of many refugee families, especially those whose loved ones have been subject to security certificates. After someone like Mr. Nureddin comes home from the hell of a Syrian torture chamber and shares his horrific story, how can the federal government proceed with plans to try and deport Syrian refugee Hassan Almrei, now 28 months in solitary confinement, knowing full well the substantial likelihood that Almrei will face torture or murder? How can the Canadian government, despite its own conclusion that they will be tortured and likely killed if returned to Egypt, proceed with efforts to deport secret trial detainees Mahmoud Jaballah (father of six, held since August 2001) and Mohammad Mahjoub (father of three, held since June 2000) to Egypt? How can Canada proceed with similar cases against Algerian refugee Mohamed Harkat (still behind bars in Ottawa as his wife Sophie Harkat wages an unending battle to free the detainees) and Adil Charkaoui, an art student and permanent resident from Morocco separated by concrete and steel bars from his loving family, in Montreal?
Given the soundbite nature of the news, it seems especially important given the gravity of this issue to reproduce below a transcript of today's press conference statements. Those who participated are Muayyad Nureddin, his friend Tawfik Kettanah, Alex Neve of Amnesty International and lawyer Barbara Jackman.
TAWFIK KETTANAH
(thanks media and all those who helped bring Muayyad home) This case started when I received a call from Muayyad's brother that he was being detained in Syria. His friends and I worked to get the message to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the media. The media and interviewed some of the people who knew Muayyad. I later learned that CSIS visited the other two gentlemen who sent money with Muayyad to their families in Iraq. These gentlemen and I were approached by CSIS in the same way and had been asked similar questions about Muayyad and the money, which seemed to be a concern to the security agency in the airport at the time when Muayyad was about to leave Canada. I personally never accused CSIS of planning this and the last comment I made to CTV News I remember was I need to hear from Muayyad to pass a judgment. I learned later that some newspapers quoted me as accusing CSIS, and this is not true. Now that Muayyad is back I am very concerned that there are indications that CSIS may have played a role in this case either directly or indirectly.
MUAYYAD NUREDDIN
My name is Muayyed Nureddin. I am an Iraqi Canadian. I am a computer programmer analyst. I completed a three year degree program at Centennial College in 2000. Before this I studied geology for two years at a university in Iraq.
In the past I was the principal of the Salaheddin Islamic School from January, 2001 to June, 2003. I have never been a member of a political party or joined a religious movement. I am not a member of a political party or a religious movement. I am not interested in joining a political party or a religious movement.
I was visited by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service sometime in 1999 or 2000. I was asked: If I had been to Afghanistan - I said no. If I knew any Egyptians, involved in the Muslim movement - I said I did not know. Where I went to pray - I said to many mosques including the Medina Masjid, Markham and Salaheddin. Sometime later CSIS visited me. I was not home. They talked to my room mate. They did not leave their card and did not return.
On September 16, 2003 I went to Pearson International Airport. I was planning to fly to Germany via Amsterdam to meet up with my brother and travel with him by car to Iraq to visit our family. When I was in the boarding line up, I was approached by two men who identified themselves as Canadian security agents. They escorted me to the sitting area and questioned me for about 45 minutes. They asked me: How many times I had visited Iraq - I told them two times before. How much money I was carrying with me - I had already declared my money. I gave them the details about whose money I had, because I was taking money from friends in Canada for their families in Iraq. They asked if I knew three gentlemen, two Canadians, Aly Hindy and Subhat Allah Rasul, and one landed immigrant, Hassan Farhat, who left Canada in 2001. I told them that I knew these men. Two were friends and one was my former boss. They asked if I was involved in the accounting department of the Islamic Centre, where I had been the principal. - I told them no.
After this 8 customs officers and a dog searched me and my luggage. I was allowed to board my flight. I met my brother in Germany and we traveled by car through Europe to Turkey, then to Syria and Iraq. I was held up at the Turkish-Syrian border for about 4 hours. Our car was searched - even the doors and inside the ceiling. My money was counted. I was questioned: Did I work at a Muslim Centre - I said yes, but I had quit. When did I quit - I said in June, 2003 Did I belong to any organization - I said no. When I was in the border office, the Turkish official received a call. I heard him say "why were they exaggerating" as I had nothing. When he hung up the phone the officer told me that they had to check me as they had received a report from higher officials. I had no problems after this. My brother and I traveled to Syria and Iraq.
In November, 2003 I traveled with one of my brothers to Jordan to arrange to have the cars released, which I had shipped from Canada, so that my brother and I could bring them to Iraq for resale. On my way back to Iraq, a Jordanian border official asked me if I had been told to report to any office in Jordan. I said no. He was surprised that I had not been told to report in Jordan. On December 11, 2003, I traveled by car with my mother, two sisters and three brothers to the Syrian border. I was planning to board a flight in Damascus to return to Canada via Amsterdam. One brother was to travel with me to Damascus and the rest of my family were to return to Syria. I was detained. My luggage was searched and then given to my brother. He was told to leave. We agreed he would go onto Damascus and wait for me there. I learned later that he stayed in Damascus a few days and then returned to Iraq to tell my family that I was detained in Syria. My family contacted my friend Tawfik Kettanah in Canada to ask him to help find out what had happened to me. At the border, I was searched and handcuffed to a bed.
A Syrian official told me that I would not see the sun again. I was questioned about my background. I overheard a Syrian official telling someone on the phone that I had not been detained when I traveled through Syria in September, 2003 because they only received a report on me on November 14, 2003. I was transferred that afternoon to a military detention centre in Kamashly. I was kept in a small 1 x 2 metre cell. One officer joked about me hiding a bomb in my shoe. I told him I was only trying to return to Canada.
The next evening I was transferred to the Palestine Branch of Syrian Military Intelligence in Damascus. I was detained at the Palestine Branch from December 12, 2003 to January 13, 2004. During this time, I was detained in an underground cell about 5 x 6 metres. There were 30 prisoners in the same cell and by the time I left there were 40 prisoners. I was interrogated a number of times. I was asked: What money I had brought to Iraq. I told them I had about $10,000. They told me exactly how much I had brought - $10,500 US and 4,000 Euros. They asked if I had given the money to an organization. I said no. They asked about the same three men that Canadian security agents had asked me about at the airport when I was leaving Canada in September, 2003. They asked me about the Salaheddin Centre. I told them I worked there before as school principal, and had quit. I went through one terrible torture session. I have never experienced this before and never want to again. I was taken to an interrogation room and questioned. I was left to think about what information I would give.
My interrogators returned and I was told to undress, but for my underwear. I was made to lie on the ground on my stomach. I was soaked with cold water and a ceiling fan was put on. I was interrogated again. The officers did not like my answers. I was made to lift my legs, still lying on my stomach. The soles of my feet were lashed with a cable more than a dozen times. I was told to stand and they poured cold water on my feet. I was made to walking, while standing in one place for ten minutes. Then they repeated the same process twice more. Each time I was asked for more information. They called me a liar, when I had nothing new to say to them. I was sent back to my cell and told I would be called back for more questions and that I had better think more about my answers. I was told the chair would be used next time. This is a chair frame into which a person is pushed and then his back bent. I could not walk for a number of days after this session. I lived with the constant fear that it would be repeated. I could not sleep. Every time any guard came to the door I was afraid. It was mental torture for me after the physical torture.
Early in January, 2004, I was made to sign statements without being permitted to read them. an outline of my family information, which appeared to be the statement that I had previously been told to write out. what appeared to be a statement which I had been made to write saying that I had been treated nicely while detained. a statement prepared by the jail authorities, which I think covered the answers I had provided to their questions. On January 13, 2004 I was told to get ready as I was being released. I was called to the Director's office and my passport, flight ticket, and other belongings were returned to me. I was taken to another office and told by Syrian officers to say that I had been treated nicely. I was taken to the Branch director's office and when asked I told him that I had been treated nicely. I was introduced to Leo Martel from the Canadian Embassy and left the prison with him. I spent time at the Embassy that day and the next and told them what had happened to me. I was taken to the Sheraton Hotel overnight. The Canadian government covered the cost of my hotel and flight back to Canada. I was told to sign a repayment agreement. I now owe them $3,073. I was told by Leo Martel that CSIS had advised the Canadian Embassy that I was to be released the morning of January 13, 2004.
Since my return to Canada, I have fully cooperated with CSIS. I met with them. They told me that they were involved in securing my release. They told me that I am not a person of concern to them. It has become clear that there is a pattern of people who held my job at the Islamic School being viewed with suspicion by the authorities. Helmy El Sherief was the principal at one time. He was held in an Egyptian jail for close to one month this year. Mahmoud Jaballah was the principal at one time. He has been held in a Canadian jail for more than two years. I was principal at one time and I have been tortured in Syria. I did know both of these men. I know nothing about them doing anything illegal. I have never done anything illegal. Why have I and they been targeted.
I have many questions: I want to know why I was detained in Syria. I want to know if CSIS or any other Canadian security agency was responsible for my detention and torture in Syria. I want the Canadian government to hold a public inquiry so that I and the Canadian public know exactly what happened. I do not want this to happen to others ever again. It is wrong. I thank the Canadian media and every person who helped in securing my release.
TAWFIK KETTANAH
It strongly appears that there may have been some government departments that passed information to Turkey, Jordan and Syria about him which resulted in him being detained in Syria. If the Canadian government takes part in such actions, that means we risk falling into the category of police state. I know and believe Prime Minister Paul Martin does not consider, or want, Canada to be one. I call on the Prime Minister to sincerely get to the bottom of this case and use all possible means to bring justice to this case. Now I want to ask a question: how do you feel when you know your fellow citizen is passing information about you that resulted in your torture and humiliation? I say definitely it's betrayal. This is not only about a fellow citizen, but an organization whose job is to protect the entire nation's security.
ALEX NEVE, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
The right to be free from torture is one of the most fundamental of all human rights. It applies to all people at all times without exception. No one should be tortured ever. Mr. Nureddin's description of arbitrary arrest leading to torture is not, sadly, the first time that Canadians have heard about torture in Syria., His alarming testimony comes of course on the heels of the frightening experience of Maher Arar, whose case is now to be the subject of a pubic inquiry.
The testimony Mr. Nureddin has provided regarding torture by military intelligence officials in Damascus is detailed, credible and consistent with well-established patterns of torture which Amnesty International has documented for many years in Syria.
Canada's response now to what Mr. Nureddin has suffered must be immediate and it must be two-fold. First, Canada must intervene clearly and unequivocally with Syrian authorities, expressing its outrage with what happened to Me. Nureddin, and making a firm demand that torture in Syria come to an end.
There are several elements needed here. First, two other Canadians, Abdullah Almalki and Anwar Al-Bouchi remain in Syrian jails. Reports of their torture emerged months ago. Canada must redouble its efforts on their behalf. Second, hundreds of other Syrian detainees, many held for political reasons, face the risk of torture every day. Canada must speak also on their behalf. Third, Canada must insist on an impartial investigation into Mr. Nureddin's allegations.
Four months since the release of Maher Arar, Syrians have not launched such an investigation into his allegations, and Canada's voice in pressing for such investigations has been notably and unacceptably silent. If Syrian officials are not prepared to investigate, they must be pressed to allow an international expert to do so, such as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. Fourth, Canada must also become an outspoken champion for justice for Mauled Nureddin. That means that those responsible for his torture must be brought to justice. It also means that Mr. Nureddin must be assisted in pursuing compensation, including here, in Canadian courts, if necessary.
But the second very critical element to this case is the need for Canada to examine its own role. The questions are many and are of profound importance. Did Canadian law enforcement or security agencies provide information that led to Mr. Nureddin's arrest and torture. if so, what did they do to guard against that information-sharing leading to serious human rights violations, including torture. Were they involved in any way during Mr. Nureddin's detention. Were they aware that he was at risk of torture during his detention? Were they clear and forceful in their efforts to protect him from torture? What Mr. Nureddin's case tells us is that what happened to Maher Arar is not an isolated and exceptional case. And there are of course worrying possibilities that similar concerns are at the heart of other recent cases, such as that of Ahmad El-Maati and Helmy Elsherief. Amnesty International has therefore called on the Canadian government to broaden the terms of reference to the Arar inquiry to include Mr. Nureddin's case and to specifically ask Mr. Justice O'Connor to consider what steps need to be taken to guard against the activities of Canadian law enforcement and security agencies in the area of national security leading to violations in the area outside of Canada of the basic rights of anyone. Specifically, Mr. Justice O'Connor should be asked to examine the facts of Mr. Nureddin's case. He should be asked to recommend a new, comprehensive process for ensuring thorough, impartial and transparent investigation of cases such as Mr. Arar's and Mr. Nureddin's. And he should be asked to recommend legal policy and institutional reforms that may be needed to ensure that the actions of Canadian officials do not directly or indirectly lead to human rights violations outside Canada. No one should ever be tortured. Canada should never play a role in torture, be it direct or indirect, be it through turning a blind eye to its occurrence. It's time now to make sure that Canada is a champion of the right to be free from torture everywhere and is not a witting or unwitting accomplice to torture in any country.
BARBARA JACKMAN
I'm an immigration lawyer and I've been involved in security cases since the 1970s, when it was the RCMP Security Service and then later with both CSIS and the RCMP. I think what happened with Mr. Nureddin should be put in context. CSIS has a long-standing practice--and the RCMP before it and still--of focusing and targetting of persons who are associated with particular centres. Certainly the Muslim centre is now being targetted. In the past it's been Tamils, Kurds, Sikhs, because of their association with particular ethnic centres.
Associations with other persons and with particular centres have formed the basis of security certificates imposed on non-citizens in Canada, like Mr. Jaballah and Mr. Almrei and a number of others. In security certificate proceedings the government only needs to establish that the case might possibly be true, so inferences are drawn based merely on associations with persons or a particular centre that's a concern to CSIS. Mr. Nureddin's case, and Mr. Arar before it, appear to indicate that the RCMP and CSIS, or both of them, are moving into another form of targetting: Canadian citizens.
I think it's important to realize that under the anti-terrorism act, there is no case to make against Mr. Nureddin or a number of the other persons. Canadian citizens can't be made subject of security certificates because they're Canadian citizens. So what appears to be happening is that CSIS or the RCMP are opportunistically taking advantage of times when people are travelling to provide information to other governments to get them to do their dirty work, to ask questions using means that would not be acceptable in Canada and that are not condoned internationally and in fact are prohibited internationally.
While the United States is returning people directly to countries to be tortured, it would appear that our services --or at least the question is raised -- that our security services are taking advantage of people's normal travels to have other countries question them using improper moves to do so. I think that it's important for the Canadian government to investigate what happened and like Alex Neve said, Mr. Nureddin and I would like his case to be added to Mr. Arar's inquiry. It's important not just in terms of what's happened but I think at this point in time, anybody, any Canadian citizen or permanent resident from the Middle East who's ever been questioned by CSIS or the RCMP should be worried about travelling. They can't take a chance that if they travel they won't be detained in some other country because CSIS has passed information on about them. That seems to be what is happening here and it's a very very serious concern which the government needs to investigate. I wrote a letter to Anne McLellan on behalf of Mr. Nureddin asking her to add him to Mr. Arar's inquiry, to do a second phase so to speak in order to investigate what happened to him and to emphasize that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service -- not just the RCMP -- needs to be investigated in terms of the practices that appear to be happening at the present time.
www.montrealmuslimnews.net
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
UK wind power industry says set for rapid growth
Story by Stuart Penson
REUTERS UK:
February 26, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23999/newsDate/26-Feb-2004/story.htm
LONDON - Britain's wind power industry said this week it is poised for rapid growth over the next two years as improved financial incentives encourage companies to pour a billion pounds ($1.87 billion) into new projects.
Europe's windiest country would nearly triple its capacity, giving Britain enough turbines to supply a million households, or 1.3 percent of total electricity demand, said the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA).
The upturn comes after the government, which wants greater use of wind power to help slash greenhouse gas emissions, last year extended to 2015 a system of financial incentives in a bid to reassure investors and kick-start sluggish growth in the renewable energy sector.
"The next two years will be critical for our industry," said Marcus Rand, chief executive of the BWEA. "We must build up a significant head of steam so that we can deliver the build rates required to hit our national renewable targets and help in the fight to combat climate change."
Ministers have set a target of renewable energy supplying 10 percent of the country's electricity by 2010, compared up from around three percent currently. The government aspires to raise the target to 20 percent by 2020.
"Wind energy will be the key contributor in helping us meet our national renewable targets," said energy minister Stephen Timms in a statement.
The BWEA said total installed capacity would rise to over 1,500 megawatts by the end of next year as developers installed both onshore and offshore turbines.
Financial services firm Ernst & Young (ERNY.UL: Quote, Profile, Research) recently named Britain the most attractive place to build wind farms, saying the government's move to extend incentives underlined the country's commitment to expanding the industry.
Even with the projected growth, Britain would still trail several other European countries including Germany, which has total capacity of about 14,000 megawatts and Spain with 6,000 megawatts, analysts said.
Last year, the UK government invited bids from companies to invest up to six billion pounds into offshore wind in the biggest boost the UK's green energy sector has ever seen.
The government last year also tweaked planning regulations in another move to stimulate growth in the sector.
Some projects have struggled to gain planning permission, with local residents often opposing the construction of turbines on the grounds that they spoil the landscape.
Some turbines have also been blocked due to potential interference with low flying aircraft and radar systems.
-------- education
Report Disputes U.S. High School Graduation Rates
By Linda Perlstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6946-2004Feb25.html
Barely half of all black, Hispanic and Native American students who entered U.S. high schools in 2000 will receive diplomas this year, according to a new report that challenges conventional methods of calculating graduation rates.
Of all students who entered ninth grade four years ago, only 68 percent are expected to graduate with regular diplomas this year. The rates for minorities are considerably lower -- 50 percent for blacks, 51 percent for Native Americans and 53 percent for Hispanics -- according to a measure devised by the Urban Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit organization.
Methods of calculating graduation rates are a perpetual subject of debate, and there are many differences in the ways states and school systems report data. By any measure, though, blacks and Hispanics graduate at lower rates than whites, a situation that has long concerned educators.
"We will never dissolve the hegemony of Jim Crow segregation . . . unless we get serious about this problem," said Christopher Edley, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, which joined the Urban Institute to write "Losing Our Future: How Minority Youth Are Being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis."
Some states determine the graduation rate by comparing the number of 12th-graders at the beginning of the year to the number of graduates. The prevailing measure, devised by the National Center for Education Statistics, considers the number of students who graduate and the number thought to have dropped out.
Christopher Swanson, the Urban Institute research associate who devised the new method, said that many dropouts go uncounted and that his "cumulative promotion index," which considers the number of students enrolled each year and the number who receive diplomas after four years, is more authentic.
Maryland recently reported a graduation rate of 85 percent; the cumulative promotion index, however, puts the state's rate at 75 percent. Virginia's declared rate, also 85 percent, compares to a promotion index of 74 percent. By both measures, whites were significantly more likely than minorities to graduate.
The District reported a 64 percent graduation rate; the promotion index was 65 percent. A racial gap was not calculated because of the small numbers of whites.
According to the report, the national graduation rate is 72 percent for girls and 64 percent for boys.
The authors criticized the federal No Child Left Behind law for requiring that test score data but not graduation rates be broken down by race. They suggested that the law's requirement that schools meet escalating proficiency goals, as well as the proliferation of state high school exit exams, might encourage school officials to nudge out lower-performing students. Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit organization, agreed that graduation rates are worse than is generally reported, but she opposed the notion that federal testing requirements cause students to leave.
"How can you possibly suggest that just making educators accountable for student learning makes them cheat and push students out of school?" she said.
-------- environment
Ship Leaks Pesticide Off South Carolina Coast
CHARLESTON, South Carolina, (ENS)
February 26, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2004/2004-02-26-09.asp#anchor1
The pesticide malathion is leaking from a Maersk Sealand container ship anchored about 15 miles off Charleston.
The Sealand Pride ran into rough seas about 200 miles off the coast of New York on February 19 that damaged some of the pesticide tanks in one of the containers on board, U.S. Coast Guard officials say.
Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Dave Murk said the 3,900 ton ship anchored off Charleston on Monday, with several containers damaged on deck.
Others had been lost overboard in the heavy seas.
Maersk has hired an environmental response team to stop the leak and clean up the pesticide, which is used to kill insects on farm crops and in gardens, to treat lice on humans, and to treat fleas on pets.
Murk said that as many as eight of the 16 pesticide tanks in the container could have been broken, and estimated that eight tanks could hold about 6,000 gallons of malathion.
The leak could be cleaned up today, if the weather permits, he said.
The ship left Bremerhaven, Germany on February 5 and was due in Charleston on February 17 on its way to Houston, Texas.
----
Civilian, Military Agencies Partner to Manage Resources
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
February 26, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2004/2004-02-26-09.asp#anchor7
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) have renewed their commitment to work together to provide information for science based management of the nation's resources.
With the signing of a Partnership Agreement and a Memorandum of Agreement Wednesday, both agencies are embarking on a renewed partnership for the collection, interpretation, management, and reporting of natural resource scientific information of mutual interest. Their collaboration will involve interagency training assignments.
"The USGS is pleased to announce its renewed commitment to work with the USACE. These new agreements will encourage and better enable scientists and engineers from both agencies to plan and collaborate where significant resource management and scientific challenges exist," said USGS Director Charles Groat.
Both agencies said they want to find more ways to work together. They are focusing on resource issues in the Florida Everglades, the Mississippi Delta region, the Missouri River, and the Pacific Northwest, and other areas that will be faced with resource management challenges in the future.
"We intend to build sustainability into our water resources activities, and it is critical that we adapt our management of America's rivers to meet the needs of the human and natural communities," said Lieutenant General Robert Flowers, the Army's Chief of Engineers. "The USGS has a great deal of expertise to help us make that possible."
As part of the renewed collaboration, the Corps has joined the Advisory Committee on Water Information, managed by the USGS on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior.
The Committee represents the interests of water information users and professionals in advising the federal government on the effectiveness of their programs in meeting the nation's water information needs.
----
Pentagon Study Looks at Global Climate
February 26, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Climate-Change-Wars.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon prides itself on preparing for the worst -- be it war, famine or other calamity.
So it may not seem surprising that the Pentagon last year asked two private consultants to consider the potential global impacts of an abrupt and severe change in the world's climate.
Which regions might be hurt the worst, they asked, and what would that mean for U.S. national security?
The scenario sketched out in the report, ``Imagining the Unthinkable,'' may surprise some, though it seems to have been largely discounted by the official who ordered the report.
The report suggests global warming already is approaching a threshold beyond which a sudden cooling will set in. The authors suggest a number of dire consequences in a scenario in which the current period of global warming ends in 2010, followed by a period of abrupt cooling.
-- As temperatures rise during this decade, some regions experience severe storms and flooding. In 2007, surging seas break through levees in the Netherlands, making the Hague ``unlivable.''
-- By 2020, after a decade of cooling, Europe's climate becomes ``more like Siberia's.''
-- ``Mega-droughts'' hit southern China and northern Europe around 2010 and last 10 years.
-- In the United States, agricultural areas suffer from soil loss due to higher winds and drier climate, but the country survives the economic disruption without catastrophic losses.
-- Widespread famine in China triggers chaos, and ``a cold and hungry China peers jealously'' at Russia's energy resources. In the 2020-2030 period, civil war and border wars break out in China.
-- In a ``world of warring states,'' more countries develop nuclear weapons, including Japan, South Korea, Germany, Iran and Egypt.
-- ``Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.''
Sounds pretty grim, and the authors of the report acknowledge in the introduction that the scientists with whom they consulted regard the gloomy scenario as extreme in scope and severity.
They said they were not predicting how climate change will happen but sought to ``dramatize the impact climate change could have on society if we are unprepared for it.'' The scenario they sketched was patterned after a climate event -- a sudden global cooling after an extended period of warming -- that is believed to have happened 8,200 years ago and lasted for 100 years.
The Pentagon official who commissioned the study, Andrew W. Marshall, issued a brief statement saying it ``reflects the limits of scientific models and information when it comes to predicting the effects of abrupt global warming. ... Much of what this study predicts is still speculation.''
Marshall, head of the Pentagon's internal think tank, known as the Office of Net Assessments, said his intent was to explore the question of whether countries affected by rapid climate change would suffer or benefit, and whether the change would make them more or less stable.
``More pragmatically, what kinds of climate change might our worldwide forces encounter in the future?'' Marshall said.
A spokesman for Marshall, Lt. Cmdr. Daniel Hetlage, said the report, which was commissioned last October and finished earlier this month, did not fully satisfy Marshall's needs. Hetlage said the report would not be passed along to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Still, the authors, Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, said their scenario was ``not implausible'' and would challenge U.S. national security in ways that should be considered immediately. Schwartz is a co-founder of Global Business Network, based in Emeryville, Calif., which says it uses ``out-of-the-box'' thinking in its consulting services to business and government.
Hetlage said the Pentagon paid about $100,000 for the report.
Schwartz and Randall asserted the plausibility of severe and rapid climate change is higher than most scientists and nearly all politicians think. They also concluded it could happen sooner than generally believed.
``This report suggests that because of the potentially dire consequences, the risk of abrupt climate change -- although uncertain and quite possibly small -- should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern,'' they wrote.
On the Net:
Global Business Network and its report: http://www.gbn.org
-------- health
Cell Protein Gives Monkeys Innate Immunity to H.I.V., Researchers Discover
February 26, 2004
New York Times
By GINA KOLATA
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/science/26HIV.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Scientists have discovered that monkey cells have innate protection against infection with the human AIDS virus, a clue that may help explain why some people are susceptible to certain viral infections while others are not.
The finding, reported in today's issue of the journal Nature, offers one of the first concrete examples of what researchers call an intracellular system of innate immunity and may open the door to the development of new antiviral therapies, the scientists said.
The monkeys were protected from the virus by a mechanism that resides within cells and that is independent of the antibodies and white blood cells of the immune system. The mechanism appears to have evolved to protect animals from specific viruses.
In the case of AIDS, the researchers found, the monkeys blocked the human immunodeficiency virus, or H.I.V., as soon as it slipped into cells, using a protein that prevented the virus from shedding the hard casing around its genes. The protein, called TRIM5-alpha, apparently floats inside the monkey cells, looking for H.I.V.
"This is really telling us about a system of natural immunity to viruses," said Dr. Joseph Sodroski, a professor of pathology at Harvard's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who was the lead author of the study. He described the protective mechanism used by the cells as "very specific, very potent and very targeted to particular viruses."
Dr. Nathaniel R. Landau, an AIDS researcher at the Salk Institute in San Diego, called the study "excellent," and predicted, "I think it's going to open up a new avenue of research."
Dr. Sodroski and other researchers said innate immunity might help explain why some people were more prone to getting H.I.V. or other viruses, or why the same types of infections were mild in some people and severe in others. The clue may lie in slight individual differences in cellular proteins conferring this immunity, they said.
The finding will not immediately lead to new AIDS drugs, the scientists said, but they said that any time a new way of intervening in a virus's life cycle is discovered, it can generate ideas for antiviral therapies.
"Once you know there is something that is important for a virus to do you can figure out a way to stop it," said Dr. John Coffin, a professor of molecular biology and microbiology at Tufts University.
In the new study, the researchers began with a well-known observation, that some species of Old World primates, including rhesus monkeys, macaques, mangabeys, baboons and African green monkeys, seem impervious to H.I.V., although they are susceptible to a similar virus, simian immunodeficiency virus, or S.I.V.
Dr. Sodroski and others who wanted to study human AIDS in animals began looking for a way to infect monkey cells with the human virus. A method that seemed to work, they found, was to make viruses that were part H.I.V. and part S.I.V.
Using such hybrids, Dr. Sodroski said, "we could infect monkeys and cause AIDS."
Then the researchers asked themselves what made the difference between a virus that could infect monkeys and one that could not. They focused on the capsid, the candy-corn shaped casing that surrounds the virus's genes when it enters a cell.
The hybrid viruses had the capsids of monkey viruses but the genes inside were from the human virus. What would happen, the researchers wondered, if they made viruses with capsids that were mixtures of humans and monkey?
Such viruses, the researchers found, could no longer infect monkey cells.
"As soon as you put the capsid from H.I.V. into the viruses, they suddenly were blocked in monkey cells," Dr. Sodroski said.
Seeking to understand why this was so, the researchers discovered that it was the monkey's TRIM5-alpha protein that, in a way not yet understood, prevented the infection.
If the scientists put the TRIM5-alpha gene into human cells, the human cells made the monkey protein and were protected from H.I.V. infection. If, however, the researchers blocked the gene in monkey cells, preventing the cells from making TRIM5-alpha, the cells became susceptible to H.I.V.
TRIM5-alpha, Dr. Sodroski said, is not just a peculiar monkey protein that happens to block H.I.V. It appears to be part of an elaborate collection of poorly understood proteins that cluster together, drifting through cells and apparently stopping viruses when they enter.
Dr. Sodroski said that proteins like TRIM were found only in vertebrates and that the proteins were not essential for life. Humans make a protein that is nearly identical to the monkey TRIM5-alpha, he added, but it is only half as effective in blocking H.I.V.
On the other hand, Dr. Sodroski said, the monkey TRIM5-alpha protein is only about 50 percent effective in blocking S.I.V., the monkey virus: its big effect is in blocking the human virus when it gets into monkey cells.
The idea of an innate intracellular immunity to viruses first emerged several decades ago but scientists have only recently begun to understand it. Researchers had noticed that some strains of mice were less susceptible to a mouse leukemia virus than others, and they found that whatever was protecting the mice was inside cells.
Nearly a decade ago, scientists learned that other mammals, including humans, also had an innate immunity to mouse leukemia viruses. A few years ago, they discovered why: cells that resist the mouse leukemia viruses make a protein that has an effect similar to that of TRIM5's on the AIDS virus. Its target is the capsid, and it prevents the early stages of infection.
But innate immunity may also stop viruses at other steps in the infection, Dr. Landau and his colleagues reported last summer. They found a protein that prevents the monkey AIDS virus from taking hold in human cells by mutating the viral genes, making the genes so aberrant that the viral DNA is destroyed by scavenger enzymes in cells. The protein does not protect against the human AIDS virus, the researchers found, because H.I.V. has evolved a viral protein that interferes with the mutation process.
Researchers say they are just beginning to understand innate immunity.
"There's an exploding number of these genes that so far as we know have these antiviral activities," said Dr. Stephen P. Goff, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics and a Howard Hughes investigator at Columbia University. "Presumably they evolved for that reason."
For now, Dr. Sodroski said, there are many more questions than answers.
Could differences in TRIM5-alpha explain the differences in people's responses to H.I.V.?
Dr. Sodroski described it as "a great question we're actively looking at it."
He said more research was needed to find out how TRIM5 worked and whether drugs or gene therapy might increase its levels so that even the less effective human form successfully blocked H.I.V.
"It's a fundamental discovery and I can see a lot of creative ways people might think about using it," Dr. Sodroski said. "We've just scratched the surface."
----
Bar Codes Favored to Cut Hospitals' Drug Errors
Health Chief Maps Rules To Encourage Their Use
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6995-2004Feb25.html
Many of the plastic identity bracelets that hospital patients wear will soon have an added bit of information embossed on them -- a bar code containing information designed to make sure patients do not get the wrong drug or dosage by mistake.
Federal officials said yesterday that the additional information, which makes it possible to match individuals to their prescribed medications by computerized scanners, has the potential to cut in half the 7,000 hospital deaths attributed to medication error every year.
The move to computerized error prevention systems in hospitals received a major boost when Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced a regulation that requires drugmakers and blood suppliers to add the codes to most of their products within two years.
"The pharmaceutical industry wants it, hospitals want it, doctors want it -- all we needed was the catalyst to put all it together," Thompson said yesterday. "By giving providers a way to check drugs and dosages quickly, we create the opportunity to reduce the risk of medication errors significantly."
Despite their interest, hospitals have been reluctant to spend the money needed to set up computerized facility-wide scanning systems because few drugs now come in individual blister packs with the bar coding. The new rule is designed to jump-start the nationwide adoption of bar-coding in hospitals and to eventually move drugmakers and hospitals to a system where most patients will receive their drugs in a single-dose blister pack with a tiny bar code that matches the code on their bracelet.
Except for their small size, the bar codes will be no different than those used to scan product prices at supermarkets. As explained by Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Mark McClellan, the bar codes will often be placed on individual blister packs and sometimes on the labels of larger bottles of medication that can be linked to specific patient information.
Under the most sophisticated systems, a nurse would scan a patient's bracelet and the medications being given, and a portable computer would compare them. If they did not match -- if the computer showed it was the wrong drug, the wrong dosage, or that the drug was being administered at the wrong time -- an unmistakable error alarm would go off.
The reliability and usefulness of the system has been proved at Veterans Affairs hospitals, which implemented a bar coding system in 1997.
Kenneth W. Kizer, who introduced the bar code system in the VA and now runs the National Quality Forum, a public/private group that helps set standards in health care, said the number of deaths from medical errors at VA facilities has plummeted. He applauded the new bar code rule, saying it was "long overdue."
"It's pretty striking that health care has been so far behind in terms of using new technologies," Kizer said. "There's a proven track record here that a bar code system will save lives, and fortunately more patients will now be getting the advantage of that."
While representatives of the drug and hospital industries welcomed the new rule, they both said it will not immediately usher in an era of error-proof drug dispensing. Hospitals will be under no obligation to adopt the system if they conclude it is too costly or cumbersome, and drugmakers can still send their products in bulk as long as those large bottles have a bar code. It will be up to the hospitals and drugmakers to negotiate over whether medications will be provided in individual blister packs with bar codes.
"The regulation does not mandate that companies change the packaging practices," said Alan Goldhammer, associate vice president for regulatory affairs for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. "The marketplace will be the big driver here in terms of the unit of packaging, but we certainly expect hospitals will want more of the individual blister packs."
The industry objected to earlier proposals that would have made bar coding mandatory for each dose and sought a two-year timetable, rather than one, for phasing in the new requirements.
"When you bring together the power of a large number of hospitals and the federal government on the side of the adoption of bar coding, it all becomes much easier," said Nancy Foster, senior associate director of policy for the American Hospital Association. "I would expect to see a large number of hospitals adopt the technology in the next few years."
McClellan said he expected the new technology to be used eventually in nursing homes as well.
Denean Rivera, president of Bridge Medical Inc., which makes software for the bar code systems, said only 2 percent to 3 percent of hospitals have full bar code systems now. But she said her company has seen a surge in orders since it became clear that the FDA was going to mandate some sort of system. Depending on the size of the hospital, a full system costs between $200,000 and $1 million, she said.
HHS Secretary Thompson said that he "virtually ordered" the FDA to speed the process of bringing the bar code technology into use in response to a report by the congressionally chartered Institute of Medicine on preventable medical errors. That 1999 report concluded that 98,000 Americans died annually because of medical errors, and that 770,000 were injured because of medication errors in addition to the 7,000 deaths.
----
D.C. Assailed for 25-Day Delay in Acting
Former Health Directors, Others Chide City, Saying Warnings Were Long Overdue
By Avram Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7038-2004Feb25.html
City health officials took center stage in addressing excessive lead in the District water supply yesterday, but many in the medical community criticized the 25-day delay in their response.
Several public health specialists, including former directors of the D.C. Health Department, expressed relief that lead in drinking water is finally being treated as a full-fledged public health concern and that residents are being given guidelines on how to protect themselves. But they said it had taken the city far too long to act.
City officials said yesterday they will mail letters this week to 23,000 homes with lead water service lines, advising pregnant women and children younger than 6 not to drink unfiltered tap water.
Georges C. Benjamin, former director of the District and Maryland health departments and now executive director of the American Public Health Association, said the actions should have occurred promptly after excessive lead in drinking water was reported Jan. 31.
"That should have been done on Day One," Benjamin said yesterday. "That's Public Health 101."
Two administration officials said Health Department Director James A. Buford rejected the idea of intervening and insisted that the water problems were the sole province of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
They said Buford did not heed advice given at staff meetings by Lynette Stokes, chief of the city's lead prevention program, who expressed alarm at the lead levels in water at thousands of District homes.
Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), at his weekly news briefing yesterday, said he could not explain why the Health Department -- which has always asserted itself in matters of food safety and air pollution -- was not involved in monitoring drinking water.
"That is a valid question," the mayor said. "We have been learning lessons about the roles and responsibilities of WASA and the roles and responsibilities of the Health Department. . . . It's been a major emergency in our city because of the widespread concern and anxiety, never mind the impact it has had on specific families."
Once City Administrator Robert C. Bobb made the decision to intervene, the Health Department was slowed because it had no data of its own. It had to evaluate WASA's information and data collection methods and bring in toxicology and pediatrics experts for advice.
Buford, who is not a physician, did not attend the mayor's news briefing because he is on sick leave. So were Ronald Lewis, the Health Department's chief operating officer, and Theodore J. Gordon, the director of environmental health services, who is recovering from surgery.
Gordon would have pressed hard for action if he had been around, said Buford's predecessor, Ivan C.A. Walks. "Ted Gordon is very aggressive," Walks said. "He steps up and handles things like this. . . . Ted has been running environmental health for decades. If he had been there, things would have been handled differently."
Last summer, Gordon clashed with Buford over what the department should do about substandard care at Greater Southeast Community Hospital. After rejecting Gordon's recommendation that the hospital be closed, Buford later negotiated a rehabilitation plan that enabled the hospital to regain its license and national accreditation.
Department spokeswoman Vera Jackson said no top officials of the agency were available yesterday to respond to the criticism. Earlier this week, interim chief medical officer Daniel R. Lucey, who took office two weeks ago for a 90-day term, said he could not explain why the Health Department had not taken charge of the issue until this week. "I don't know the answer to that," he said Tuesday. "When I got here, [lead] was here, and I was directed to get involved."
Victor Freeman, president-elect of the D.C. Medical Society and chairman of its public health council, said yesterday that he fears Lucey still may be hobbled in organizing the department's medical apparatus.
"There are few people in the world that I have more respect for than Dr. Daniel Lucey," Freeman said. "However, I worry that he will not be given the program authority or the true oversight that will allow him to use his talents to make that Department of Health one worthy of the nation's capital."
Former District health chief Mohammed Akhter said he had to take charge over the resistance of federal and local bureaucracies when cryptosporidium bacteria were found in D.C. drinking water in 1993. "They just simply were not doing what we thought needed to be done. . . . We stood up and declared a boil-water emergency. We had almost 1.2 million people in Washington, Arlington and parts of Falls Church boiling water until we had all the tests done." Akhter said bureaucrats at every level favor caution when District health and safety is involved. "There is a tendency not to confront head-on a health issue and instead to dance around it," he said.
Staff writer Craig Timberg contributed to this report.
--
Concerned About Lead in Water?
Washington Post reporters are interested in talking to customers of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority who have drinking water with high lead levels or other problems. Please e-mail dcwater@washpost.com if you would like to talk with a reporter, and include your name and phone number.
--
Quick Lead Facts
• How does lead get into the water? Most contamination results from corrosion of lead pipes in the home or in lead service lines that connect public water lines. Other sources include lead-based solder used to join copper pipes.
• Do household water filters remove lead? Some water pitchers and faucet filtration systems are certified to reduce lead; others remove things like chlorine, but not lead. Read product packaging to check its certification.
• How do I know if my water is contaminated? Since you can't see, taste or smell lead, testing is necessary. Call WASA's hotline, 202-787-2732.
• Should high levels of lead cause concern? Elevated levels of lead in the bloodstream can damage the brain, nervous system, red blood cells and kidneys. Children and pregnant women are at the greatest risk.
• How do I know if I have been affected? People worried about lead poisoning should get blood tests. The D.C. Department of Health can provide more information on testing; 202-535-2690 or 202-535-2626.
Source: Water and Sewer Authority, Water Quality Association, EPA
----
Protein resistant to AIDS discovered
February 26, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040225-112054-8507r.htm
Scientists say they have discovered how some monkeys resist infection by the AIDS virus, a finding that might lead to a treatment that blocks HIV in people.
Researchers found that once HIV enters monkey cells, it encounters a protein that stifles its attempts to replicate. That stops the virus from spreading in the animal.
"This is really important because it will help build a basis for hammering the virus before it gets started," said Paul Luciw, a microbiologist who specializes in AIDS research at the University of California at Davis.
The protein, called TRIM5-alpha, was identified in rhesus macaques by a team of Harvard researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. It is not clear exactly how the protein acts against HIV, said Dr. Joseph Sodroski, who led the Harvard study published today in the journal Nature.
Humans have their own version of TRIM5-alpha, but it's not as effective as the monkey version in countering HIV. However, researchers may be able to design a drug that makes the protein work better, Dr. Sodroski said.
"We expect that now that we've identified this protein factor, it is likely we'll find ways to manipulate it and increase its potency," Dr. Sodroski said, "and we hope to stimulate our own natural resistance to HIV by doing so."
The mechanism even may work against other viruses, he said. "What we're really uncovering is the first example of a natural system of defense that may be operating against other viruses besides HIV," Dr. Sodroski said. "We're looking at 'example one' here, and I highly doubt it will be the only example in nature."
HIV normally enters a cell and hijacks its "factory" for making proteins. It orders the machinery to churn out proteins to make new copies of HIV, which then leave to infect other cells.
The monkey protein blocks this process, apparently by interfering with HIV's attempts to remove the coating that surrounds its genetic material, researchers said. This coating must be shed before HIV can insert its genetic material into the cell's own DNA, a key step in replication.
The Nature report could help researchers test the effectiveness of a potential HIV vaccine on animals now that scientists have a better understanding of why monkeys resist the disease, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
-------- ACTIVISTS
The Whos down in Whoville
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004
From: Guin <guinstigator@yahoo.com>
The Whos down in Whoville liked people a lot, But the Grinch in the White House certainly did not. He didn't arrive there by the will of the Whos, But stole the election that he really did lose. Vowed to "rule from the middle," installed his regime. (Did this really happen, or is it just a bad dream?)
He didn't listen to voters, his friends he was pleasin' Now, please don't ask why, who knows what's the reason. It could be his heart wasn't working just right. It could be, perhaps, that he wasn't too bright. But I think that the most likely reason of all, Is that both brain and heart were two sizes too small. In times of great turmoil, this was bad news, To have a government that ignores its Whos.
The Whos shrugged their shoulders, went on with work, Their duties as citizens so casually did shirk. They shopped at the mall and watched their T.V. They drove a gas guzzling big S.U.V., Oblivious to what was going on in D.C., Ignoring the threats to democracy. They read the same papers that ran the same leads, Reporting what only served corporate needs. (For the policies affecting the lives of all nations Were made by the giant U.S. Corporations.) Big business grew fatter, fed by its own greed, And by people who shopped for things they didn't need.
But amidst all the apathy came signs of unrest, The Whos came to see we were fouling our nest. And the people who cared for the ideals of this nation Began to discuss and exchange information: Things they couldn't read, in the corporate-owned news, Of FTAA meetings and CIA coups, Of drilling for oil and restricting rights. They published some books, created Websites, Began to write letters, and use their e-mail Though Homeland Security might send them to jail!)
What began as a whisper soon grew to a roar, These things going on they could no longer ignore. They started to rise up and reach out to all et their voices be heard, they rose to the call, To vote, to petition, to gather, dissent, To question the policies of the "President."
As greed gained in power and power knew no shame The Whos came together, sang "Not in our name!" One by one from their sleep and their slumber they woke The old and the young, all kinds of folk, The black, brown and white, the gay, bi- and straight, All united to sing, "Feed our hope, not our hate! Stop stockpiling weapons and aiming for war! Stop feeding the rich, start feeding the poor! Stop storming the deserts to fuel SUV's! Stop telling us lies on the mainstream T.V.'s! Stop treating our children as a market to sack! Stop feeding them Barney, Barbie and Big Mac! Stop trying to addict them to lifelong consuming, In a time when severe global warming is looming! Stop sanctions that are killing the kids in Iraq! Start dealing with ours that are strung out on crack!"
A mighty sound started to rise and to grow, "The old way of thinking simply must go! Enough of God versus Allah, Muslim vs. Jew With what lies ahead, it simply won't do. No American dream that cares only for wealth Ignoring the need for community health The rivers and forests are demanding their pay, If we're to survive, we must walk a new way. No more excessive and mindless consumption Let's sharpen our minds and garner our gumption. For the ideas are simple, but the practice is hard, And not to be won by a poem on a card. It needs the ideas and the acts of each Who, So let's get together and plan what to do!"
And so they all gathered from all 'round the Earth And from it all came a miraculous birth. The hearts and the minds of the Whos they did grow, Three sizes to fit what they felt and they know. While the Grinches shrank from their hate and greed, Bearing the weight of their every foul deed.
From that day onward the standard of wealth, Was whatever fed the Whos spiritual health. They gathered together to revel and feast, And thanked all who worked to conquer their beast. For although our story pits Grinches 'gainst Whos, The true battle lies in what we daily choose. For inside each Grinch is a tiny small Who, And inside each Who is a tiny Grinch too. One thrives on love and one thrives on greed. Who will win out? It depends who you feed!
Author: Unknown
----
Antiwar Quotes
http://antiwar.com/quotes.php
Below is a listing of the quotes you see displayed on all Antiwar.com pages. We gladly welcome your suggestions for additions, which you can submit to us via our quote submission form: http://antiwar.com/quote-sub.php
Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
~Benjamin Franklin
The chain reaction of evil--wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.
~General Smedley Butler
Imperialism is an institution under which one nation asserts the right to seize the land or at least to control the government or resources of another people.
~John T. Flynn
The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics...
~Simone Weil
We may extend our dominion over the whole continent...but be assured it will be at the price of our free institutions.
~Rep. William Waters Boyce
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
~Georges Clemenceau
Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly.
~Senator Robert M. La Follette
After every ''victory'' you have more enemies.
~Jeanette Winterson
Wars are inevitable...as long as we believe that wars are inevitable. The moment we don't believe it anymore it is not inevitable.
~Lydia Sicher
The winds that blow our billions away return burdened with themes of scorn and dispraise.
~Garet Garrett
I hope....that mankind will at length, as they call themselves responsible creatures, have the reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats...
~Benjamin Franklin
[T]he essence of so-called war prosperity; it enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income.
~Ludwig von Mises
Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
~Benjamin Franklin
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
~James Madison
[War} might be avoidable were more emphasis placed on the training to social interest, less on the attainment of egotistical grandeur.
~Lydia Sicher
An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
~Thomas Paine
Modern war appears as a struggle led by all the State apparatuses and their general staffs against all men old enough to bear arms...
~Simone Weil
Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely.
~Senator Robert M. La Follette
It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.
~Albert Camus
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
~Edward R. Murrow
Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.
~W. L. George
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
~Margaret Mead
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
~James Madison
Look at you in war...There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war.
~Mark Twain
The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.
~James Madison
...Violence as a way of gaining power...is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor [and] national security...
~Alfred Adler
Every nation has its war party...It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. It tolerates no opposition.
~Senator Robert M. La Follette
War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.
~Alfred Adler
As long as we can talk with people, as long as one can keep the guns quiet, one has a chance.
~Lydia Sicher
It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
~Alfred Adler
We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
~Jimmy Carter
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.
~Voltaire
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
~Thomas Jefferson
...the executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.
~James Madison
To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.
~Alfred Adler
If there is no sufficient reason for war, the [war] party will make war on one pretext, then invent another...pretext after war is on.
~Sen. Robert M. La Follette
War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
~General Smedley Butler
War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation.
~Lois McMaster Bujold
War...is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror.
~Ludwig Von Mises
There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.
~Jimmy Carter
After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
~Brooks Atkinson
Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.
~Alfred Adler
The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst.
~Henry Emerson Fosdick
A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over...is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.
~G. K. Chesterton
War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.
~Alfred Adler
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter...
~Winston Churchill
War...is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror.
~Ludwig Von Mises
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
~A. J. Muste
The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.
~William Ellery Channing
The State thrives on war - unless, of course, it is defeated and crushed - expands on it, glories in it.
~Murray Rothbard
Old men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
~Herbert C. Hoover
Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things.
~Ludwig Von Mises
To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.
~Ludwig Von Mises
The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmies.
~Basil O'Connor
All government wars are unjust.
~Murray Rothbard
The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
~Herman Goering
Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.
~Ludwig Von Mises
...The very nature of interstate war puts innocent civilians into great jeopardy, especially with modern technology.
~Murray Rothbard
Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.
~John Greenleaf Whittier
War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.
~Ludwig Von Mises
War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.
~Ludwig Von Mises
The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.
~Ludwig Von Mises
Sovereignty must not be used for inflicting harm on anyone, whether citizen or foreigner.
~Ludwig Von Mises
Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.
~Ludwig Von Mises
Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace.
~Ludwig Von Mises
Men are fighting...because they are convinced that the extermination of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being.
~Ludwig Von Mises
If men do not now succeed in abolishing war, civilization and mankind are doomed.
~Ludwig Von Mises
The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.
~Ludwig Von Mises
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.
~John Stuart Mill
The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.
~Ron Paul
Force always attracts men of low morality.
~Albert Einstein
Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
~Martin Luther King
Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
~Martin Luther King
War is just a racket...I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.
~General Smedley Butler
War technology is science in the service of obscene anatomical vandalism.
~Stan Goff
There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
~General Smedley Butler
We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.
~Eleanor Roosevelt
The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.
~James Madison
Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose-and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
~Abraham Lincoln
Our nation is somewhat sad, but we're angry. There's a certain level of blood lust, but we won't let it drive our reaction. We're steady, clear-eyed and patient, but pretty soon we'll have to start displaying scalps.
~George W. Bush
It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.
~General Douglas MacArthur
If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace.
~Ludwig Von Mises
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
~Ernest Hemingway
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?
~Mahatma Ghandi
War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.
~Colin Powell
War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.
~Colin Powell
War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.
~Colin Powell
Vietnam was the first war ever fought without censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
~General William Westmoreland
Vietnam was the first war ever fought without censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
~General William Westmoreland
The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
~Ambrose Bierce
War, n: A time-tested political tactic guaranteed to raise a president's popularity rating by at least 30 points. It is especially useful during election years and economic downturns.
~Chaz Bufe
To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
~Calgacus
To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
~Calgacus
I learned nothing from war. War is not an activity for human beings; war is for criminals-rape, robbery and murder.
~Roman Podabedov (Russian anti-tank gunner)
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
~Howard Zinn
War is a racket.
~Smedley Butler
John 8:32: And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
~Josh Paige (Antiwar.com supporter)
We have to show the American People that war is not patriotic.
~Justin Raimondo
If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army.
~Frederick the Great
They talk about conscription as a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetary.
~Rep. Meyer London
Either war is obsolete, or men are.
~R. Buckminster Fuller
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
~Jeanette Rankin, first woman member of Congress
Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people? Is the human will as inert as the past two world-wide wars would indicate?
~Gregory Clark
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
~George McGovern
War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.
~Georges Clemenceau
Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won.
~Duke of Wellington
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.
~Malcolm X
I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
~James Baldwin
Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.
~John F. Kennedy
Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.
~Guy de Maupassant
Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being.
~Ludwig Von Mises
To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
~Calgacus
War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.
~Thomas Carlyle
Why should you ask blood be spilled for a cause that is not in the interest of the American people?
~Rep. Wally Herger
All wars are fought for money.
~Socrates
Tis nobler to lose honor to save the lives of men than it is to gain honor by taking them.
~David Borenstein
Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it.
~Mark Twain
Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
~Abraham Lincoln
The first casualty when war comes is the truth.
~Sen. Hiram Johnson
This war is not necessary. We are truly sleepwalking through history.
~Sen. Robert Byrd
The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.
~Lyndon B. Johnson
They talk about conscription as a democratic institution. Yes; so is a cemetery.
~Rep. Meyer London
Washington...has become an alien city-state that rules America, and much of the rest of the world, in the way that Rome ruled the Roman Empire.
~Richard Maybury
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
~George Washington
The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide.
~R. J. Rummel
Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.
~John Adams
A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.
~Sigmund Freud
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
~Thomas Mann
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
~Robert Lynd
In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.
~Herodotus
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.
~General Douglas MacArthur
After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
~Brooks Atkinson
I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world.
~General Colin Powell
If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.
~George W. Bush
We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
~Jimmy Carter
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
~Abraham Lincoln
Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men.
~Pope John Paul II
If peace...only had the music and pagaentry of war, there'd be no wars.
~Sophie Kerr
God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it.
~Euripides
Every man thinks god is on his side.
~Jean Anouilh
All the gods are dead except the god of war.
~Eldridge Cleaver
The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Wars should be over in three days or less...and the American people must be all for it from the outset.
~Evan Thomas
We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives...inside ourselves.
~Albert Camus
Only one thing can conquer war--that attitude of mind which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation...
~Ludwig Von Mises
The supreme excellence is to subde the armies of your enemies without even having to fight them.
~Sun Tzu
From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.
~Denis Diderot
The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.
~Walter Lippmann
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.
~George Washington
We must recognize the chief characteristic of the modern era--a permanent state of what I call violent peace.
~Admiral James D. Watkins
The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.
~Thomas Jefferson
No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace, or ensure it of victory in time of war.
~Calvin Coolidge
Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man has a right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has quarrel with mine, although I have none with him?
~Blaise Pascal
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
~Montesquieu
Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly.
~Ludwig Von Mises
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
~John F. Kennedy
Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards.
~E. M. Forster
It is the youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow...that are the aftermath of war.
~Herbert C. Hoover
There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.
~Golda Meir
The military doesn't start wars. The politicians start wars.
~General William Westmoreland
It is the merit of a general to impart good news, and to conceal the truth.
~Sophocles
In war, truth is the first casualty.
~Aeschylus
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
~Oscar Wilde
Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid...There is no harm in a well-fed lion. It has no ideals, no sect, no party...
~George Bernard Shaw
"My country right or wrong" is like saying, "My mother drunk or sober."
~G. K. Chesterton
As a rule, high culture and military power go hand in hand, as evidenced in the cases of Greece and Rome.
~Baron Colmar Von Der Goltz
History is littered with wars which everybody knew would never happen.
~Enoch Powell
At least we're getting the kind of experience we need for the next war.
~Allen Dulles
War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.
~Martin Luther
How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business.
~Albert Einstein
Have you ever thought that war is a madhouse and that everyone in the war is a patient?
~Oriana Fallaci
War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
~Barbara Tuchman
War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.
~Winston Churchill
It is far easier to make war than peace.
~Georges Clemeceau
Hate is able to provoke disorders, to ruin a social organization, to cast a country into a period of bloody revolutions; but it produces nothing.
~Georges Sorel
We are all familiar with the argument: Make war dreadful enough, and there will be no war. And we none of us believe it.
~John Galsworthy
War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.
~Antoine De Saint-Exupery
War is the health of the State.
~Randolph Bourne
War is the Health of the State.
~Randolph Bourne
War would end if the dead could return.
~Stanley Baldwin
There are no warlike people--just warlike leaders.
~Ralph Bunche
Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball.
~Charles V of France
As for being a General, well, at the age of four with paper hates and wooden swords, we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.
~Peter Ustinov
Putting aside all the fancy words and academic doubletalk, the basic reason for having a miltary is to do two jobs --to kill people and to destroy.
~General Thomas S. Power
To wage war, you need first of all money; second, you need money, and third, you also need money.
~Prince Montecuccoli
Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.
~Benjamin Franklin
A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.
~William Ralph Inge
You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.
~Ernest Hemingway
No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.
~Ernest Hemingway
You can't have this kind of war. There just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
The Atomic Age is here to stay--but are we?
~Bennett Cerf
You've got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you're going to hit civilians.
~Barry Goldwater
It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
~Eleanor Roosevelt
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
~Albert Einstein
Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction.
~Bernard M. Baruch
Only the winners decide what were war crimes.
~Gary Wills
True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.
~Clarence Darrow
You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotsim that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it or who says it.
~Malcolm X
It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it only takes twenty seconds of war to destroy him.
~King Baudouin I of Belgium
The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.
~E. B. White
In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons.
~Herodotus
When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.
~Winston Churchill
If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
~Simon de Beauvoir
One more such victory and we are undone.
~Pyrrhus of Epirus
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
~Edmund Burke
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
~H. L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
~H. L. Mencken
Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.
~Alexander Hamilton
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
~Plato
The obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.
~Ron Paul
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force...Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
~George Washington
It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world.
~George Washington
I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
~H. L. Mencken
America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
~John Quincy Adams
Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor...
~Julius Caesar
...patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.
~Julius Caesar
Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another...
~Sigmund Freud
The coward threatens when he is safe.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People who talk of outlawing the atomic bomb are mistaken - what needs to be outlawed is war.
~Leslie Richard Groves
Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn't have as many monuments to unveil.
~Kin Hubbard
A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.
~Thomas Jefferson
War is just one more big government program.
~Joseph Sobran
The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.
~Joseph Sobran
How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!
~Samuel Adams
Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
~Ayn Rand
Most wars are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.
~Thomas Sowell
The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.
~Ludwig Von Mises
The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.
~Ludwig Von Mises
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
~Justice Louis Brandeis
Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.
~Ludwig von Mises
War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.
~Ludwig von Mises
War is the Health of the State.
~Randolph Bourne
Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.
~Ludwig von Mises
The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace.
~Ludwig von Mises
History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents.... A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.
~Ludwig von Mises
Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.
~Thomas Jefferson
Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
~Thomas Jefferson
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
~Benjamin Franklin
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
~James Madison
The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.
~Joseph Sobran
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
~Thomas Jefferson
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
~H.L. Mencken
America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
~John Quincy Adams
The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects.
~R. J. Rummel
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
~Plato
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
~Plato
After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
~Brooks Atkinson
War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
~Carl von Clausewitz
In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
~Leo Tolstoy
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
~James Madison
The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.
~George Washington
We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.
~Benjamin Harrison
No one has deputized America to play Wyatt Earp to the world.
~Pat Buchanan
An eye for an eye makes us all blind.
~Gandhi
the expenditures for such warfare...have crippled the nation's livelihood and exhausted the resources of the people.
~Mo Tzu
All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
~Voltaire
You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.
~Noam Chomsky
Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
~Mikhail Gorbachev
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
~Edward Abbey
Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.
~Edward Abbey
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other--instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
~Edward Abbey
I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
~Edmund Burke
I think war is a dangerous place.
~George W. Bush
War's a brain spattering windpipe splitting art.
~Lord Byron
It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.
~Murray Rothbard
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
~Robert Lynd
It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.
~John C. Calhoun
The only defensible war is a war of defense.
~G. K. Chesterton
All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.
~Frank Chodorov
The pertinent question: if Americans did not want these wars should they have been compelled to fight them?
~Frank Chodorov
The State acquires power... and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates.
~Frank Chodorov
The more laws, the less justice.
~Marcus Tullius Cicero
The sinews of war are infinite money.
~Marcus Tullius Cicero
Politics is the womb in which war develops.
~Carl P. G. von Clausewitz
The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes.
~Carl P. G. von Clausewitz
Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce.
~Richard Cobden
Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.
~Davy Crockett
A standing army is a standing menace to liberty.
~Voltairine de Clayre
When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
War settles nothing.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you kill one person you are a murderer. If you kill ten people you are a monster. If you kill ten thousand you are a national hero.
~Vassilis Epaminondou
Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
~Sigmund Freud
When American presidents prepare for foreign wars, they lie.
~Robert Higgs
Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war.
~Robert Higgs
Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
~Thomas Hobbes
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.
~Aldous Huxley
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
~Thomas Jefferson
We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.
~Thomas Jefferson
Nations of eternal war [expend] all their energies. . . in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people.
~Thomas Jefferson
I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.
~Thomas Jefferson
The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.
~Thomas Jefferson
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!
~Helen Keller
Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!
~Helen Keller
Nothing good ever comes of violence.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied.
~Rudyard Kipling
War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
~George Orwell
Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
~George Orwell
One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.
~Howard Zinn
War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.
~Ludwig von Mises
Will . . . the threat of common extermination continue?. . . Must children receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance?
~Pope John Paul II
War--after all, what is it that the people get? Why--widows, taxes, wooden legs and debt.
~Samuel B. Pettengill
No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.
~A. J. P. Taylor
No war is inevitable until it breaks out.
~A. J. P. Taylor
Almost all war making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat- including men--from reluctant citizens...
~Charles Tilly
All warfare is based on deception.
~Sun Tzu
There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
~Sun Tzu
I hate it when they say, 'He gave his life for his country.' They don't die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.
~Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque
War has become a spectator sport for Americans.
~Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque
We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others.
~Martin Luther King III
Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.
~General Douglas MacArthur
Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
~James Madison
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
~James Madison
The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.
~James Madison
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
~James Madison
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
~James Madison
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
~Thomas Mann
Our poverty will be brought home to us to its full extent only after the war.
~Joseph A. Schumpeter
War is the statesmans game, the priests delight, the lawyers jest, the hired assassins trade.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
War is just one more big government program.
~Joseph Sobran
This president failed so miserably in diplomacy that we are now forced to war.
~Tom Daschle
The opposite of war is not peace, it's creation.
~Jonathan Larson
Either war is obsolete or men are.
~R. Buckminster Fuller
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is it security you want? There is no security at the top of the world.
~Garet Garrett
With no notice to the American people...this country entered the war...Stranger than the fact was the passive acceptance of it.
~Garet Garrett
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness god has given us in this world...
~Robert E. Lee
What a cruel thing war is...to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors.
~Robert E. Lee
"My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober."
~G. K. Chesterton
History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
~Ronald Reagan
It is not only the living who are killed in war.
~Isaac Asimov
We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.
~General Omar N. Bradley
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
~General Omar N. Bradley
Wars frequently begin ten years before the first shot is fired.
~K. K. V. Casey
Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people?
~Gregory Clark
Where is the indignation about the fact that the US and USSR have thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world?
~Norman Cousins
There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.
~Henry Havelock Ellis
The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
~David Friedman
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.
~Napoleon Hill
The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.
~John F. Kennedy
We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.
~Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
One does not create a human society on mounds of corpses.
~Louis Lecoin
In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.
~Jose Narosky
A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war.
~Herbert V. Prochnow
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses...
~Henry Emerson Fosdick
I hate war...for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it.
~Henry Emerson Fosdick
Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes...can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.
~John F. Kennedy
[War] can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.
~John F. Kennedy
We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
~General Omar N. Bradley
There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.
~Ralph Bunche
Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.
~Spinoza
Conflict cannot survive without your participation.
~Dr. Wayne Dyer
Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
~Abraham Flexner
How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon.
~David Lloyd
When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?
~Benjamin Franklin
All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.
~Benjamin Franklin
Mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide.
~Havelock Ellis
I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals.
~Joseph Heller
To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man.
~Michael Servetus
What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.
~Simone Weil
Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.
~Simone Weil
War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.
~Benjamin Disraeli
Force without judgement falls on its own weight.
~Horace
Dress it as we may...huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform?
~Douglas Jerrold
War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals.
~Charles Evans Hughes
Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war.
~John Andrew Holmes
I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
We have all taken risks in the making of war. Isn't it time that we should take risks to secure peace?
~J. Ramsay MacDonald
We shall never be able to effect physical disarmament until we have succeeded in effecting moral disarmament.
~J. Ramsay MacDonald
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
~Albert Einstein
During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.
~Howard Thurman
One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.
~Agatha Christie
We have guided missiles and misguided men.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle...your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
I am a steadfast follower of the doctrine of non-violence which was first preached by Lord Buddha, whose divine wisdom is absolute...
~Dalai Lama
The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.
~A.J.P. Taylor
It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
~Albert Einstein
--------
Korean Civil Society Statement on 6 - Party Talks on DPRK Nukes
From: "AoE-?u Gyung-Lan Jung" <humanrights@korea.com>
Date: Thu Feb 26, 2004 9:18pm
Dear friends,
Greetings from Seoul!
I would like to send you Korean Civil Society statement re. Six-Party Talks. Below is the statement.
I hope this statement will help you understand our position on the current cisis.
If you have any question, please send your email to my another emial account:humanrights@korea.com
Yours in peace, Gyung-Lan Jung Chairperson, Committee for International Solidarity Women Making Peace
Korean Civil Society Expects Forward-Looking Six-Party Talks Towards the Resolution of the Crisis Surrounding the Korean Peninsula
The second round of six-party talks begins on February 25 in Beijing, China. In view of the various expectations and concerns for the talks that is set to resume after much difficulty, we ardently hope that it develops into a turning point for a tangible resolution of the crisis that has hung over the Korean Peninsula for so long.
We believe the significance of the six-party talks does not lies just in the peaceful conclusion of the so-called problem of north Korean nuclear weapons development programme, but in laying the cornerstone for the dismantling of the Cold-War system that has been erected over the Korean Peninsula and the removal of the instability that has plagued northeast Asia.
The various diplomatic efforts addressing the 'Korean Peninsula crisis' that surfaced following the allegations concerning north Korean nuclear weapons development programme in October 2002 failed to bring about a resolution due to deeply entrenched distrust between the DPRK and the U.S. The prolonged stalemate between the two aggravated the tension that hangs over the Korean Peninsula and became a cause for a grave insecurity for the people of Korea. The efforts to resume the six-party talks before the end of 2003 came to naught due to the less than serious attitude of the U.S. in approaching the whole process of negotiations. It brought the expectations and prospects for an acceptable resolution of the crisis into a greater doubt. The south Korean Government, which stands as a party in the crisis and in a position to persuade the U.S. more actively, failed to undertake a more leading role in paving the way for a peaceful resolution of the issue of north Korean nuclear weapons development programme due to its self-imposed entrapment in the rhetoric of 'ROK-U.S. concertation'.
We note, however, that the conflict between DPRK and the U.S. over the nuclear issues, which has remained on the agenda for the last one-year or more, has, despite the intermittent false starts, entered into a new phase.
DPRK, which has insisted for long on the establishment of a non-aggression treaty between itself and the U.S. as a starting point, has demonstrated a more flexible attitude towards the negotiations in proposing a principle of simultaneous action involving its freeze on the nuclear weapons development programme and corresponding measures from the U.S. It is, while reiterating its commitment to nuclear deterrence, suggesting a terminal abandonment of nuclear weapons intentions to be obtained through a negotiated settlement. The U.S., which has stuck to its insistence that north Korea had to first dismantle its nuclear weapons development programme, however, has not produced any concrete proposal that could be put to a process of negotiation, apart from demanding a 'complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement'. Rather, the U.S. has stepped up its pressure on the DPRK through the expansion of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and the moves towards an enactment of a 'North Korea Freedom Act'. Furthermore, in insisting on the resolution of the issues concerning as yet unverified 'highly enriched uranium programme' as a pre-condition, the U.S. has created a doubt over its commitment for a peaceful resolution of the crisis over the nuclear weapons development programme.
What is clear is that, if there is no significant progress in the upcoming second round of the six-party talks, the conflict between the U.S. and the DPRK will catapult into an aggravated confrontation and the crisis hanging over the Korean Peninsula will become even graver. The DPRK and the U.S., therefore, will need to demonstrate in the process of the talks a clear commitment for the resolution of the crisis by producing a realistic platform for the settlement of the issues of nuclear weapons development programme. The other parties to the talks will need to redouble their effort in their roles as active mediators to identify areas and points of conversion and compromise aimed to bringing the issues to a resolution.
On the basis of our understanding of the situation as it stands, we present our views for the six-party talks as in the following:
First, in the process of the six-party talks, the DPRK needs to declare formally its commitment to abandon its nuclear weapons development programme and intentions to possess nuclear weapons while the U.S. needs to declare non-aggression towards DPRK and proclaim its commitment to normalise its relations with DPRK. The other parties in the talks would need to declare their support and guarantee for these commitments. Such a development will establish an important platform for the resolution of the Korean Peninsula crisis.
Second, the U.S. must accept the North Korean proposal for the principle of "freeze and compensation". The DPRK has already sketched out the substance of its offer of freeze to include a suspension of nuclear weapons production, restraint in the transfer of nuclear experiment and nuclear materials, and suspension of the operation of the nuclear reactor. It has called for corresponding action which includes, its delisting from terror supporting nations, lifting of the political, economic, and military sanctions and embargo, and provision of energy, in the form of heavy oil and electricity. Following on from these suggestions, the DPRK would need to re-admit the IAEA inspectors as a means to verify the freeze it has committed to undertake; the U.S. would need to resume the delivery of heavy oil, which it had suspended following allegation of north Korea's nuclear weapons development programme, and agree to withdrawing the various sanctions applied against the DPRK. These measures cannot be regarded or perceived as "reward for evil acts"; corresponding measures that constitute an agreement involving North Korea's commitment for "freeze", as in the measures contained in the Geneva Framework Agreement.
Third, the allegations about 'highly enriched uranium programme' should not be allowed to act as an obstacle in the negotiations in the six-party talks. The allegation raised by the U.S. in the days following the North Korean announcement of its willingness to put its programme to a freeze, has not been clearly substantiated. Instead of pressing North Korea, which has denied the allegation, to 'confess', the U.S. should make public the evidence which is said to have been presented to North Korea. The U.S. should not adopt the abandonment of the alleged 'highly enriched uranium programme' for which it has not presented any verifiable evidence as a precondition for negotiation, which wouldthe collapse of the six-party talks that has been brought to resumption after much difficulty. As the DPRK has already let its intention to respond to the allegation known, it could be dealt with in a separate process, such as an experts meeting, as it has suggested in January.
Fourth, the ROK government needs to take on a more active role in the effort to bring the Korean Peninsula crisis to a resolution, through efforts like proposing energy assistance led by South Korea to match North Korea's commitment to nuclear freeze. The South Korean government needs to respond positively with flexibility towards North Korea's negotiation proposal for stage-by-stage progress, and actively persuade the U.S. for the need to commit itself to matching corresponding measures in response to concrete actions. At the same time the south Korean government would need to consolidate its place in the process, vis-a-vis north Korea and the U.S. through a more active policy of inter-Korea cooperation. It should not fall into a mistake of undermining the whole six-party talks process by siding itself with the U.S.'s negotiation approach of demanding north Korea to undertake nuclear freeze first, including the issue of HEUP, as a pre-requisite for any negotiated settlement.
Fifth, the six-party talks needs to be developed into a regular arrangement to institute a process for resolving the outstanding issues brought about by the crisis over north Korea's nuclear weapons development programme. The maintenance of a tenuous momentum for dialogue is totally inadequate to address the continuing crisis engulfing the Korean Peninsula, in the context of unchanging distrust and confrontation between the DPRK and the U.S. A regular six-party talks regime could be instrumental in preventing eruption of extreme conflict between the U.S. and the DPRK and in continued coordination on the various issues related to the problems brought to surface by north Korean nuclear weapons development programme. Such a regular framework of dialogue may oversee a process of resolution of the greater issues of conflict between the DPRK and the U.S., and lay the foundations for future efforts to addressing the issues of greater instability in the broader northeast Asia.
February 23, 2004
Signed by
Korean Peace Forum/ Forum of the National Reunification/ Korea Democratic Labour Party/ Green Korea United/ Korea Women's Associations United/ Korean Federation forEnvironmental Movement/ MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society/ People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy/ People's Solidarity for Social Progress/ Solidarityfor Peace and Human Rights/ Korean Federation of Trade Union/ Korean Confederation of Trade Union/ Korea Anabaptist Center/ Korean Women's Associations United/ Korea Labour and Society Institute / Korean Farmers League/ Nationa Professor's Association for Democratic Society/ Network for Healthy Society/ Civil Network for Cultural Reform/ Socialist Party/ Good Friends/ Minjung Network/ Korean Institute for Labour Studies and Policy/ Korea National Congress for National Reunification/ Korea Women Farmers Association/ National Council for Peace on the Korean Peninsula/ Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea/ Women Link/Korean Women's Hot line/ Women Making Peace / Korean Christian Organisation/ Power of Working Class/ Civil Network for Peaceful Korea/ Heungsadan( Young Korean Academy)/ Association of Korean University Students / Korean Council for Democratic Martyrs/ My Sister's Place/ etc Total 60 organisations
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.