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NUCLEAR
Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage
Kyrgyz premier vows to prevent German uranium contract
In Beijing, Nuclear Talks Seem Mired in Discord
A Mother's Journey
Foreign Office denies secret test with North Korea
Pakistan may have helped N Korea test nukes
Pakistan May Have Aided North Korea A-Test
Pakistan rejects report of joint nuclear tests with North Korea
Pakistan Threatened to Give Nukes to Iran
Israeli arms mole vows to fight on after release
Six nations agree draft joint statement after NKorea nuclear talks
US stands firm as nuclear talks extended by a day
N. Korea Says U.S. Demand Is Stalling Nuclear Talks
Six - Nation Nuclear Talks to End Saturday
North Korea Nuclear Talks Wind Down With Little Progress
North Korea Talks May Continue in April
Ottawa affirms commitment to missile defence talks
Diablo Canyon fuel storage plan approved
New York Lawmakers Would Expand Atomic Workers' Compensation
Audit Released on Uranium Processing Plant
Coalition sets up whistleblower hotline for Yankee workers
Opposition Hardens as Bush Boosts Nuclear Waste Plan
The Rumsfeld-Bush Legal Black Hole
Cheney hit by election rumours
Impeach Bush? Would you want 'President Cheney'?
Impeach Bush?
MILITARY
After Rumsfeld Visit, Afghan Leader Asserts Taliban Is Beaten
Nigeria converts US Coast Guard vessel for pipeline patrols
Largest Japanese Contingent So Far Enters Iraq
Raytheon Contracts For PASSUR Services To Develop Patriot Missile
Lockheed Martin Introduces New Paveway Dual Mode Guided Bomb
Metal Storm To Weaponize UAVs For DoD Demonstration
U.S. Is Arming Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Rebels Take Crossroads Town Near Haiti's Capital
Scenes From a Nasty, Brutish, Long War
Iraqi National Congress faces growing number of investigations
Iraqi Ayatollah Insists on Vote by End of Year
Iraqi Cleric Yields on Elections
Palestinian authority demands Israel to return stolen money,
2 Palestinians Are Killed and Dozens Wounded
U.S. pitches Sharon plan to Europe, Arabs
Two Palestinians Shot Dead, 20 Wounded in Fence Protest
U.S. will ditch some land mines
New U.S. Land Mines to Pose Less Long-Term Danger
Bush Shifts U.S. Stance On Use of Land Mines
U.S. Plan for Mideast Reform Draws Ire of Arab Leaders
NATO helps with Athens security
Russia says air force out of decade-old tailspin, ready to strike
Moscow's terminators retain their deadly skills
Memoir: Reagan approved Soviet sabotage
QATAR - Russia demands spies' release
Russia demands release of agents from Qatar
British pre-war spying allegations expand
Ex-Aide to Blair Says the British Spied on Annan
UN weapons inspector 'well aware' of spying
Britain Accused of Spying On Annan Before Iraq War
Reagan Approved Plan to Sabotage Soviets
US Pushes UN to Endorse Preemptive Action Against Suspected WMDs
UN Demands Halt to Spying in Premises
Spying Much Denied but Done a Lot at U.N., Experts Say
Pentagon to probe anti-malaria drug
Inside the Ring
Pentagon downplays report identifying climate change
UN Spying and Evasions of American Journalism
ZIMBABWE - VOA dubbed 'security threat'
Germany In 1933: The Easy Slide Into Fascism
Mother Nature, The Hate Crime
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Senate Panel Presses Bush on War's Plan
Extension of the 9/11 Panel Is Said to Hinge on Speaker
Freedom v. The Pentagon in the U.S. Supreme Court
Court Allows Medicinal Use of Marijuana
Advocates for Immigrants Scorn Bush Policy on Haitian Refugees
FBI bars crime-scene item removal
U.S. Says 13 FBI Agents Stole Trade Center Debris
ENERGY
'Hydrogen highway' by 2010 says California official
OTHER
Rocky Mountain Park Violates Air Standards
Marine Sponges Provide Model For Nanoscale Materials Production
One Producer of U.S. Beef Wants to Test All Its Cattle
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage
February 2004
World Nuclear Association
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf67.htm
- Operators of nuclear plants are liable for any damage caused by them, regardless of fault.
- Liability is limited by both international conventions and by national legislation, so that beyond the limit (normally covered by insurance) the state can accept responsibility as insurer of last resort.
International Framework
Ever since the first commercial nuclear power reactors were built, there has concern about the possible effects of a severe nuclear accident, coupled with the question of who would be liable.
Before 1997, the international liability regime was embodied primarily in two instruments:
- the IAEA's Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage of 1963, and
- the OECD's Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy of 1960 which was bolstered by the Brussels Supplementary Convention in 1963.
- Parties to both Paris & Brussels are: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, UK. Paris only: Greece, Portugal, Turkey.
These Conventions were linked by the Joint Protocol adopted in 1988. They are based on the concept of civil law and share the following main principles:
1. Liability is channelled exclusively to the operators of the nuclear installations;
2. Liability of the operator is absolute, i.e. the operator is held liable irrespective of fault, except for "acts of armed conflict, hostilities, civil war or insurrection";
3. Liability of the operator is limited in amount. Under the Vienna Convention the upper ceiling is not fixed; but it may be limited by legislation in each State.
4. Liability is limited in time. Generally, compensation rights are extinguished under both Conventions if an action is not brought within ten years;
5. The operator must maintain insurance or other financial security for an amount corresponding to his liability or the limit set by the Installation State, beyond this level the Installation State cn provide public funds but can also have recourse to the operator;
6. Jurisdiction over actions lies exclusively with the courts of the Contracting Party in whose territory the nuclear incident occurred;
7. Non-discrimination of victims on the grounds of nationality, domicile or residence.
- The Paris Convention set a maximum liability of 15 million Special Drawing Rights - SDR (about US$ 20 million), but this was increased under the Brussels Supplementary Convention up to a total of 300 million SDRs (about US$ 400 million), including contributions by the installation State up to SDR 175 million and other Parties to the Convention collectively on the basis of their installed nuclear capacity for the balance.
Following the Chernobyl accident in 1986, the IAEA initiated work on all aspects of nuclear liability with a view to improving the basic Conventions and establishing a comprehensive liability regime. In 1988, as a result of joint efforts by the IAEA and OECD/NEA, the Joint Protocol Relating to the Application of the Vienna Convention and the Paris Convention was adopted. This broadened the coverage of the two Conventions combining them into one expanded liability regime. It was also intended to obviate any possible conflicts of law in the case of international transport of nuclear material. It entered in force in 1992.
In 1997 governments took a significant step forward in improving the liability regime for nuclear damage when delegates from over 80 States adopted a Protocol to Amend the Vienna Convention and also adopted a Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage. The amended IAEA Vienna Convention sets the possible limit of the operator's liability at not less than 300 million SDRs (about US$ 400 million). The 1997 Convention on Supplementary Compensation defines additional amounts to be provided through contributions by States Parties collectively on the basis of installed nuclear capacity and a UN rate of assessment, basically at 300 SDRs per MW thermal (ie about US$ 400 million total).
The 1997 Convention - not yet ratified - is an instrument to which all States may adhere regardless of whether they are parties to any existing nuclear liability conventions or have nuclear installations on their territories. The Protocol - ratified in 2003 - contains a better definition of nuclear damage (now also addressing the concept of environmental damage and preventive measures), extends the geographical scope of the Vienna Convention, and extends the period during which claims may be brought for loss of life and personal injury. It also provides for jurisdiction of coastal states over actions incurring nuclear damage during transport.
In 2004, contracting parties to the OECD Paris and Brussels Conventions signed Protocols shifting the main onus from governments to industry and setting new limits on liability: Operators (insured) € 700 million, Installation State (public funds) € 500 million, Collective state contribution (Brussels) € 300 million => total € 1500 M. The definition of "nuclear damage" is broadened and the scope of application is widened. These Protocols are expected to be ratified by the EU Council as soon as states have enacted relevant legislation.
Beyond such provision there is at least a tacit acceptance that the installation state will make available funds to cover anything in excess of these provisions.
US Framework
The USA takes a somewhat different approach. Here, the Price Anderson Act has since 1957 been central to addressing the question of liability for nuclear accidents. It is renewed every ten years or so, with strong bipartisan support, and requires individual operators to be responsible for two layers of insurance cover. The first layer is where each nuclear site is required to purchase US$ 300 million cover from private insurers. The second layer if required is jointly provided by all US reactor operators. It is funded through retrospective payments of up to $96 million per reactor collected in annual instalments of $15 million (and adjusted with inflation). Combined, the total provision comes to over $10 billion paid for by the utilities. (The Dept. of Energy provides $9.5 billion for its nuclear activities.) Beyond this cover and irrespective of fault, Congress, as insurer of last resort, must decide how compensation is provided in the event of a major accident.
In 2002, the Act was renewed again by Congress and a fuller review is incorporated in pending legislation.
Other countries
In the UK, the Energy Act 1983 brought legislation into line with revisions to the Paris/Brussels Conventions and set a limit of liability for particular installations. In 1994 this limit was increased to £140 million for each major installation, so that the operator is liable for claims up to this amount and must insure accordingly. . This is covered through a pool comprising 13 insurance companies and 40 Lloyds syndicates. Beyond £140 million, the Paris/Brussels system applies. Beyond £140 million, the Paris/Brussels system applies up to SDR 300 million.
In mainland Europe, individual countries have legislation in line with the international conventions and where set, cap levels vary, eg France: FF 600 million, Sweden: SDR 300 million. These will be superseded by the 2001 Euro currency figures above. Germany has unlimited liability and requires DM 1 billion security of which DM 500 million is normally provided by the State.
In Canada the Nuclear Liability Act 1976 is also in line with the international conventions and establishes the licensee's absolute and exclusive liability for third party damage. Suppliers of goods and services are given an absolute discharge of liability. At present a limit of C$75 million per power plant is set on the insurance cover required for individual licensees, but this is under review. Cover is provided by a pool of insurers, and claimants need not establish fault on anyone's part, but must show injury. Beyond the cap level, any further funds would have to be provided by the government.
Main Sources: IAEA Worldatom web site http://www.iaea.org Nuclear Risks, by G.C.Warren, British Nuclear Insurers, 2000; & personal comm 2002. NEI Nuclear Energy Overview 13/8/01, UNECAN News 9/6/00. Nucleonics Week 19/2/04.
-------- asia
Kyrgyz premier vows to prevent German uranium contract
Friday, February 27, 2004
By Kadyr Toktogulov,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-02-27/s_13535.asp
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - Kyrgyzstan's prime minister vowed Thursday to prevent this former Soviet republic from further becoming a uranium wasteland, following public outcry protesting a Kyrgyz company's plans to process uranium from Germany.
"The country first needs to solve problems regarding its own uranium waste sites," Nikolai Tanayev told a Cabinet meeting.
Kyrgyzstan's Kara-Balta Ore Processing Factory signed a US$1 million contract with German-based RWE NUKEM GmbH to process graphite containing uranium, according to Jalgap Kazakbayev, a senior adviser to the factory's general director. The deal was signed in October 2002, but the factory is still trying to get a government license to start work.
Impoverished Kyrgyzstan is still coping with uranium waste sites leftover from Soviet times when the country was a key supplier of uranium. Some waste sites in landslide-prone areas in the south are decaying, potentially threatening water supplies in Central Asia's Ferghana valley, the region's most densely populated area and agricultural heartland.
On Tuesday, a humanitarian group had expressed its concerns about the contract.
"Kyrgyzstan should not expand its uranium waste sites, which have existed and have not been rehabilitated yet," the Association of Non-Governmental Organizations said in a statement.
The Kara-Balta facility has already been processing uranium-containing materials from Kazakhstan, Kazakbayev said. He said the materials from Kazakhstan had a higher percentage of uranium, 50 percent, than the 3 percent in the materials to be processed from Germany.
Kazakbayev said waste from processed material would be buried at special sites under strict measures, and expressed hope Tanayev would endorse the new deal after realizing the benefits for Kyrgyz industry.
-------- china
In Beijing, Nuclear Talks Seem Mired in Discord
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/international/asia/27KORE.html
BEIJING, Feb. 26 - The United States, North Korea and four other nations on Thursday discussed freezing North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for energy aid. But the continuing talks here also exposed stark disagreements that left diplomats wondering whether they could emerge with much more than a commitment to keep negotiating.
Both the United States and North Korea appeared to make modest concessions at the talks, several participants said, and the tone was described as constructive and lacking the invective that often punctuates discussions with North Korea. The two had private meetings during each of the first two days as well as participating in group discussions.
But it was clear that the United States and North Korea made scant progress in resolving their differences over the scope of North Korea's nuclear program, the steps it would have to take to abolish it and the timing of any aid packages for North Korea.
To underscore their differences, North Korea hurriedly convened international reporters Thursday night and denounced the "hard line stance" of the United States for preventing progress.
"The second round of six-nation talks isn't making progress because of the United States' hard-line position," said Choe Jin Su, the North Korean ambassador in Beijing.
"We will abandon our nuclear weapons program when the United States drops its hostile policy toward North Korea," Mr. Choe said. "The United States should take all the responsibility for the meeting not making progress."
It was not clear whether North Korea's statement was a warning that it planned to withdraw from the talks or merely public posturing before the third and possibly final day of negotiations on Friday.
Assessments of how well the talks were going depended heavily on which party was doing the assessing. In addition to the United States and North Korea, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia are taking part in the discussions.
China, which brokered the talks, said the participants had made significant progress in discussing the "comprehensive stopping of nuclear activities."
South Korea also presented an upbeat view of the first two days of discussions, which Lee Soo Hyuck, South Korea's chief negotiator, said focused largely on South Korea's own plan for freezing and later dismantling North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for energy aid.
Speaking to reporters after the talks, Mr. Lee said China and Russia joined South Korea in offering energy assistance to North Korea if its agreed to a comprehensive freeze on the way to finally abolishing its nuclear program.
Mr. Lee said the United States and Japan said they would not participate in such an aid program. But he added that the United States signaled "its understanding and support" for the plan, a stance that might be interpreted as a modest concession by the Bush administration. The administration had said that it opposed any aid for North Korea until the country unilaterally dismantled all atomic weapons facilities.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called the meetings "positive." Speaking in Washington, he said, "There is a promising attitude that is emerging from those meetings, and hopefully we can move in the right direction from there."
The Russian delegate at the talks, Aleksandr Losyukov, provided a more skeptical analysis, telling reporters that significant differences emerged between the United States and North Korea and that some splits were evident among the other parties as well.
He said North Korea insisted that it would abolish only the military component of its nuclear program and would retain a "peaceful nuclear program" for the purpose of generating electricity.
The United States has firmly opposed that idea, in part because North Korea does not currently produce any electricity from nuclear power plants. Keeping a civilian program might make it easier for North Korea to quickly resume an arms program.
Mr. Losyukov and South Korean diplomats also made it clear that North Korea continued to deny that it had two distinct efforts to produce fissile material for nuclear bombs - one from plutonium and the other by uranium enrichment. The United States has demanded that North Korea admit to seeking the raw fuel for atomic weapons from both sources.
-------- depleted uranium
A Mother's Journey
Susan Galleymore,
February 27, 2004
Guerrilla News Network
http://www.guerrillanews.com/human_rights/doc3989.html
Bound for Baghdad
After serving nine months in Afghanistan, my son was deployed to the Sunni Triangle on January 9, 2004. I sought support from "military moms" then realized that none amongst us knew what was really going on there.
Three weeks ago, I packed my bag, traveled to Baghdad with a women's delegation, and talked to GIs, Iraqi professionals, and with no help from the U.S. military, I located and visited my son.
Nick was not pleased I was bound for Baghdad. He told me, "Don't come. Its too dangerous. Iraqis are fine. If you do come, go to a rifle range first and practice shooting. Then carry a big gun while you're here. "
I didn't carry a gun nor did I go to the rifle range. But Iraq is dangerous. Just driving from Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad was an ordeal.
We landed in Amman at 1:15am and discovered the three SUV drivers hired to convoy us across the desert expected us the following day. The delegation leader scrambled and found three different drivers. When we left Amman at 4:15am we were two hours behind schedule. A delay of two hours in a twelve hour trip may not seem like much until you consider that we had to be in Baghdad by early afternoon to avoid Ali Baba, the notorious highway robbers; failing that, we had to be in Baghdad before dark and certainly before curfew at 8pm (January is mid-winter in Iraq and daylight hours are short).
We lost another three hours at Jordanian passport control where two administrators manually checked passports. The Jordanian visa of a fellow delegate was expired after she was jailed for nine days by Israel for assisting Palestinians. I was detained momentarily for snapping a photograph in the passport office. Another delegate was hysterical over the state of the women's toilet. It was a mess, with soiled toilet paper strewn about, water an inch deep on the floor, and feces piled high in the squat-style toilet bowl. When she fled outside to shake someone else's urine from her shoes and her own urine from her fingers. I stifled a giggle --anyone would think she was contaminated with depleted uranium - and attempted to joke her out of it, "Well, you could have your driver trying to interest you in his penis." For, yes, our driver had flashed his manhood - perhaps as a hospitable display for the snacks I'd shared with him earlier.
Our anxious drivers sped across the desert at 140 - 180 kmp, driving within inches of one another on the highway. Daylight faded and one driver lagged. We slowed, waited, and were relieved when he was sighted. Alas, he and his passengers had been hijacked by Ali Baba in a black Mercedes sedan capable of higher speeds than our vehicles. Delegates had been overtaken, pushed off the road, and, at gun point, money, a passport, return air tickets, and a digital camera stolen.
Fear spurred us on until we noticed headlights coming towards us on the freeway. Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) had been found on the road and the U.S. military was turning traffic back. Half an hour later, after detouring through rush-hour traffic, we arrived at our hotel. Another surprise awaited: the hotel expected us the following day. Like a litter of exhausted puppies, four of us flopped onto mattresses on the floor.
A dawn explosion woke me; then the pop-pop of automatic gunfire and helicopters overhead. Two CNN reporters were killed in that attack.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Our delegation traveled to University of Baghdad to meet psychiatrist Dr. Ali Hameed, working with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dr. Ali admits that its tough to measure current psychological health of children as Iraq has been traumatized by war since the beginning of the 1980s: the Iran-Iraq war, Desert Storm (the Gulf War) UN sanctions, and the current war and occupation. Iraq has children traumatized from earlier wars growing up to parent children traumatized by the current wars. He explains that, while US and adult Iraqi citizens were jubilant at Saddam's demise, Iraqi children witnessed a mythical figure disappear, someone who loomed larger than life, whose image was everywhere, and for whom school songs were sung and national holidays held. In the void, children watch TV images of statues toppling, the exhuming of mass graves, Iraqis huddling in bombed out building, children, like themselves, begging in the streets, bombs destroying familiar places, and family members wracked with fear. They experience mid-night visits by soldiers searching insurgents, smashing in doors, yelling incomprehensible orders, dragging family members outside in their nightclothes; too often they witness fathers - the heads of families -- humiliated in front of them. Outside their homes, children witness uniformed and heavily armed foreigners, razor wire and other barricades in their streets, military tanks and humvees patrolling their neighborhoods, arbitrary arrests with Iraqis forced to the ground, boots placed upon their necks, nylon bags on their head; in extreme cases, they witness random shootings in their streets.
"No child should witness such events," says Dr. Hameed.
"Tell Them there is Tragedy in Iraq...."
After Dr. Ali Hameed, we visited Anwar Jeward. Her husband, son, and two daughters were killed by coalition forces, guilty of nothing more than driving home after dark from a visit with Anwar's parents. For such random shootings, victims are occassionally paid nominal compensation, anything from $100 - $1000 under the Foreign Claims Act. The Act, however, is void in "combat situations"; definitions of "combat" and "non-combat" situations are elastic and Rules of Engagement easily misunderstood.
This visit casts the occupation in a different light: for the first time I feel I'm in a war zone. There's tremendous tragedy and loss in Iraq. Anwar, who will carry darkness in her heart for the rest of her life, wants me to tell outsiders that "there is tragedy in Iraq."
Anwar and her remaining children will always mourn the loss of their father and siblings, and the soldiers responsible for the destruction of this family will always carry the knowledge of their shameful actions. How can they not? I'm angry at the leaders of our country, the United States, who willingly place our young people in situations they cannot handle. The creativity, high ideals, and sacred spirits of young Americans deserve much more than death and destruction in this ravaged land.
On to a hospital
A well-known American comedic actor has pledged money to a hospital on our delegation's recommendation. Might it be the pediatric wing of Al Mansoor Teaching Hospital for Children's Medical City? Built in 1986 with 220 beds, this hospital is poor in resources (understaffed, under funded, under equipped) but rich in patients. Unfortunately, the pediatric wing is rich in young patients dying of various forms of cancer; leukemia predominates. Can the actor's donation get the pediatric wing of Al Mansoor Teaching Hospital up and running and spur the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to do the same? Dr. Faisal Al-Jadiry shows us around the pediatric oncology wards. He explains that he's living with his father so that he can continue to practice medicine in this very needy place; without his father's generosity he would be driving taxis to make ends meet as former colleagues are doing. Happily his salary, hovering around the equivalent of US $5 per month since UN sanctions, will soon increase, perhaps to as much as US $250 per month. Many competent nurses have left the hospital, too; the equivalent of U.S. $3 or less per month was simply not enough to live on. But, with unemployment hovering at 60 percent there is little hope that nurses will find alternate employment paying a lot more.
The hospital is so under funded that food is sparse and of poor quality; family members of patients bring food from home. Nevertheless, malnourishment exacerbates illness.
UN sanctions banned many chemotherapy drugs as potentially aiding the manufacture of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The drugs that are permitted are so expensive that families sell cars, belongings, even homes, to pay for one 8-day round of chemotherapy treatment; frequently, two to three years of treatment is required.
As a professional scientist Dr. Jadiry is unwilling to guess at why rates of cancer in Iraqi children are sky-rocketing, especially in children from northern Iraq. He eagerly seeks funds to conduct a study.
At a Police Station
The delegation visits a police station to report the Ali Baba hi-jacking. During our interview, the Police Chief expresses his opinion as to who is carrying out the many bombings around Iraq.
"These terrorist attacks, we believe and we have evidence of this, are committed by foreigners from Kuwait, Jordan, Iran, Saudi, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan...people from all over. Some of them are supported by Ba'athist Iraqis who lost everything with the downfall of Saddam. As you know Iraq's border are wide open and no one is trying to stop these terrorists." His Supervisor opines that the U.S. is using Iraq as a huge honey pot attracting terrorists, like honey bees, from around the world to take pot-shots at Americans. (This opinion is repeated frequently at different venues.)
A Trip to an Internet Cafe
I find my way to an internet café between the Istar Sheraton and Palestine Meridian hotels on Saadun Street. Both hotels hunker behind walls of concrete, rolls of razor wire, sandbagged lookout towers armed with GIs and artillery, and assorted barriers. Both hotels are known to shelter western visitors, particularly American contractors generating big bucks from the war and its aftermath, the occupation. Both hotels have been attacked with RPGs and IEDs.
The internet connection is slow but charges are minimal: $1 for a half hour. When the electricity fails I leave the computer and join a young U.S. military man enjoying a cup of coffee. When I saw him step into the hotel, uniformed, helmeted, carrying a huge gun I was afraid he might attract the wrong kind of attention, perhaps an attack from the ever-vigilant and opportunistic resistance. I kept an eye on him as he settled onto a sofa with his gun on his lap. When I heard him order Turkish coffee like a pro I understood this wasn't his first visit to the hotel.
I introduce myself as a mother with a son in the 82nd who I'm trying to track down. Staff Sgt Juan doesn't offer advice on how to do that but I learn that he is a long way from home. So, too, is his wife. They're both stationed in Iraq: he guards the Sheraton; she guards Baghdad Airport. They talk on the phone sometimes but seldom see one another. Their two children, ages 2 and 3, are cared for by Juan's parents in San Francisco's Mission District.
Juan has been in the military for seven years and in Iraq for two tours of duty totaling one year to date. He's with the 4th Armored Division and, as Staff Sergeant, is responsible for nine soldiers. He tells me they're young and easily distraught; he's had to send one back to the States due to stress. Two of his soldiers were killed in Baghdad. One, 18 years old, straight out of boot camp, died when shrapnel from a grenade exploded in his face. His replacement, 19, was killed when a RPG hit the humvee in which he was a passenger.
I relate Anwar Jeward's story to him and ask his opinion. He responds. "That's heavy but I know it happens. Some soldiers are inexperienced and not well trained."
A Visit with My Son
After a week of seeking and emailing and questioning the whereabouts of my son, I receive an email from him. The next day I hire a driver/translator and we travel north of Baghdad into the notorious Sunni Triangle. I have a hunch he's on a military base but the military Public Affairs Officer never responds to my email so Ahmed, the driver, and I could be on a wild goose chase. Happily, we stumble onto the right base and, still wearing my hijab to disguise my western origins, I approach the military check point on foot. Afraid of spooking the GIs conducting searches with guns slung over their shoulders, I gently say, "I'm coming up behind you, I mean you no harm. I have my U.S. passport in my hand. I have business here and I want to speak to your Sergeant."
"Ma,am, get back in your car, ma'am!"
"I will do that as soon as I talk to your Sergeant."
The Sergeant notices me and, surprised, asks, "You're American?"
I'm allowed into the Check Point Office where I state my name and my mission. The GI manning the office says, "You're Sgt. N's mom? I know him. We were in Afghanistan together. Gee, I wish my mom would visit me. On second thoughts, maybe not. She's just cry all the time."
My son is called on the radio and, when he arrives, I give him a big hug, hand over the goodies I'd brought and we spend a good hour or more in mother-son chit chat.
Yes, Iraq is dangerous. But now I know where my child is, I know the environment he's in, I know the dangers he faces every day, I even know some of the GIs working with him. And that knowledge is well worth the danger I risked getting it.
California resident Susan Galleymore is an interactive producer, writer, and mother who travelled to Baghdad between January 24 and February 4, 2004. You can contact her at motherspeak@motherspeak.org and view the web site, www.motherspeak.org. This article was originally published in Susan's hometown paper the Natal Witness (South Africa).
To discuss this Article and other issues please visit the Guerrilla News Forum http://www.guerrillanews.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/wwwthreads.pl?Cat=&C=1
-------- india / pakistan
Foreign Office denies secret test with North Korea
Feb 27, 2004
Hi Pakistan
http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en55645&F_catID=&f_type=source
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday strongly rejected news reports that it had conducted joint nuclear tests with North Korea and dismissed it as a "wild, mischievous and irresponsible speculation".
According to APP, foreign office spokesman Masood Khan, when asked about a report published by the New York Times on Friday, said: "This news report is incorrect and fallacious. We take it as no more than wild, mischievous and irresponsible speculation."
He said Pakistan had conducted its nuclear tests in 1998 exclusively by indigenous means which, he said, was a matter of pride for the people of Pakistan.
"The fanciful conjecture that it might have been a 'joint test' is a mere fantasy, nothing more," Mr Khan added. He said Pakistan did not have nuclear cooperation with any country. "The government of Pakistan has had no interaction with North Korea in the nuclear field. None whatsoever," he said.
The NYT report, according to our correspodent, said: "Startling clues were detected after underground tests that Pakistan carried out in May 1998, when it proved to the world that its own efforts to build nuclear weapons had succeeded.
According to former and current American intelligence officials, an American military jet sent to sample the air after the final test in the wastelands of the Balochistan desert picked up traces of plutonium."
That surprised experts at the Los Alamos national laboratory, because Pakistan said openly that all of its bombs were fuelled by highly-enriched uranium produced at Dr Khan's laboratories, the newspaper said.
Among the possible explanations hotly debated after the tests was that North Korea "perhaps in return for the help from Dr Khan" might have given Pakistan some of its precious supply of plutonium to conduct a joint test of an atomic weapon.
The debate over the 1998 tests was never settled and fell into obscurity, until Dr Khan confessed last month that he had spread nuclear skills and equipment over more than a decade.
----
Pakistan may have helped N Korea test nukes
February 27 2004
Sapa-AFP
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1077867360224B212&set_id=1
Washington - Pakistan may have helped North Korea test a plutonium-based nuclear device in 1998, The New York Times said on Friday, quoting former and current United States intelligence officials.
The report could influence the ongoing six-party talks in Beijing over North Korea's alleged nuclear weapons programme.
Clues to the possible joint nuclear test followed underground nuclear tests carried out by Pakistan in May 1998, the paper said.
According to the sources, a US military jet sent to sample the air over Baluchistan, Pakistan, after the final nuclear test found traces of plutonium, which surprised US experts since Pakistan had openly stated that it was testing bombs fueled by highly enriched uranium.
'The report could influence the ongoing six-party talks' The explanations for the plutonium included the possibility that North Korea could have given Pakistan some of its plutonium to conduct a joint test of an atomic weapon, the sources said.
The matter was debated but never settled and was mostly forgotten until Pakistani scientist and architect of the country's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, confessed in January that he passed nuclear technology on to North Korea, Libya and Iran.
The daily said the plutonium North Korea may have provided Pakistan for the joint test could have been a form of compensation for Khan's assistance.
If the joint Pakistani-North Korean nuclear test in 1998 is confirmed, it would strongly suggest that North Korea can not only produce plutonium but also build a weapon it has claimed it possesses, the daily said.
The US Central Intelligence Agency says it has been urgently preparing a report this week on what North Korea may have gained from its dealings with Khan. -
----
Pakistan May Have Aided North Korea A-Test
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/international/asia/27NUKE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - The revelations about the international nuclear trading of the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan have rekindled a debate inside the American intelligence community over an unresolved but crucial strategic question from the last decade: did Pakistan conduct a secret nuclear weapons test in partnership with North Korea?
Startling clues were detected after underground tests that Pakistan carried out in May 1998, when it proved to the world that its own efforts to build nuclear weapons had succeeded. According to former and current American intelligence officials, an American military jet sent to sample the air after the final test in the wastelands of the Baluchistan desert picked up traces of plutonium.
That surprised experts at the Los Alamos national laboratory, because Pakistan said openly that all of its bombs were fueled by highly enriched uranium, produced at Dr. Khan's laboratories.
Among the possible explanations hotly debated after the tests was that North Korea - perhaps in return for the help from Dr. Khan - might have given Pakistan some of its precious supply of plutonium to conduct a joint test of an atomic weapon.
The debate over the 1998 tests was never settled and fell into obscurity, until Dr. Khan confessed last month that he had spread nuclear skills and equipment to North Korea, as well as Libya and Iran, over more than a decade.
Now the old argument has been reignited in the United States' national laboratories, and it gained new urgency in light of multilateral talks this week in Beijing to persuade North Korea to halt and dismantle its nuclear weapons programs. If experts confirm that the 1998 tests involved both Pakistan and North Korea, it would strongly suggest that North Korea can not only produce plutonium but build a weapon, the "nuclear deterrent force" it claimed to possess before the talks.
The Central Intelligence Agency has been urgently preparing a report this week on what North Korea may have gained from Dr. Khan's nuclear dealings, American officials said, to supply new evidence to American negotiators in the Beijing talks.
The on-again-off-again history of the discussion about the Pakistani test contrasts notably with the Bush administration's handling of the intelligence on Iraq's possible nuclear efforts in advance of the war last year. Every clue suggesting that Saddam Hussein might be trying to revive his nuclear arms program was minutely reviewed by several agencies and the White House.
The debate about the 1998 tests has apparently not bubbled up to senior policy makers. In recent days, both President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said they had no recollection of theories of a joint test.
Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is a crucial ally in the administration's fight against terrorism, and American officials do not want to undermine his stability. So there is comparatively little curiosity in Washington about how Pakistan may have secretly helped to arm North Korea.
For years, Pakistan focused on making weapons out of highly enriched uranium, using centrifuge enrichment technology that Dr. Khan stole from Europe, improved in his laboratories and ultimately began to sell. The North Koreans, meanwhile, focused on plutonium, producing a few bombs' worth from the spent nuclear fuel it extracted from its small nuclear reactors making electrical energy. It takes far less plutonium to make a large nuclear explosion, so plutonium missile warheads are smaller and more powerful.
North Korea was forced under a 1994 accord with the United States to freeze its plutonium program. It secretly began purchasing Dr. Khan's uranium enrichment technology, according to both American officials and Dr. Khan's testimony. When caught by South Korea and the United States in 2002, North Korea expelled international inspectors, and now appears to be moving forward with both uranium and plutonium programs. The Bush administration says both must be dismantled if an accord is to be reached.
North Korea has never tested a weapon on its own territory, leading many to wonder whether it can make working bombs. That is why the mystery of the last Pakistani test, on May 30, 1998, is tantalizing.
Of several tests Pakistan conducted then, the last one differed from those that preceded it in other ways besides the plutonium traces it produced. It was 60 miles away from the first test site. The shaft leading to the bomb was dug vertically rather than horizontally, experts said, a lower cost method. The detonation was also smaller. Pakistani officials said they had used a "miniaturized" device, but gave no other details. By all accounts, Dr. Khan was closely involved with that final test. The next day, asked by a reporter about rumors that Pakistan had once tested a weapon in China, Dr. Khan snapped, "No country allows another country to explode a weapon."
But at the Los Alamos laboratory, some experts believed that might have been exactly what happened. Pakistan, most analysts believed, had insufficient material and experience to make a plutonium bomb.
"It could only have come from one of two places: China or North Korea," said one senior intelligence official involved in the debate. "And it seemed like China had nothing to gain," he said, from providing plutonium to Pakistan.
In a clash between old rivals, the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory raised questions, claiming Los Alamos had erred, experts familiar with the dispute said. The problem was inadvertent contamination of the sample by American researchers, Livermore experts said. Eventually, a consensus emerged that the plutonium did come from Pakistan.
A compromise hypothesis, experts said, was that Pakistan had exploded a uranium bomb with a plutonium experiment on the side.
Robert J. Einhorn, a nuclear intelligence official in the State Department at the time, noted that Pakistan and North Korea had common interests. "The Pakistanis had already purchased long-range missiles from North Korea," he recalled.
But he said it was "speculation" that North Korea supplied plutonium for the test. "It's conceivable that Pakistani testing was providing data that was benefit to the North Koreans, but hard evidence doesn't exist on it," he said.
A senior defense official in the Clinton administration agreed. "We thought the most plausible explanation was that it was a joint test," he said. "But there was nothing that formed compelling evidence."
Eventually the debate faded, until Dr. Khan's admissions. A retired Pakistani military officer said this week North Korean technicians worked at Dr. Khan's lab in 1998. But he said the collaboration was on missiles, and he never suspected Dr. Khan of nuclear proliferation.
Today, skeptics ask why North Korea would have wanted to test a bomb in Pakistan in 1998 when it was thought to have only a limited supply of plutonium. "It doesn't seem logical," a federal nuclear analyst said. Another said some evidence suggested the plutonium was older than the North Korean program.
However, a third analyst urged new analyses. American agents could gather material from the top of the Pakistani test shaft to settle the question of whether it really vented plutonium, he suggested.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has made progress on a plutonium program parallel to uranium, and it "recently developed the capability to produce plutonium for potential weapons use," Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in Senate testimony earlier this week.
David E. Sanger reported from Washington for this article and William J. Broad from New York. David Rohde contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
----
Pakistan rejects report of joint nuclear tests with North Korea
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Feb 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040227181900.bbw77szq.html
Pakistan on Friday strongly rejected news reports that it may have conducted joint nuclear tests with North Korea, state media reported.
Foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan dismissed the report, which appeared in the New York Times, as "wild, mischievous and irresponsible speculation", a report by state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) said.
"This news report is incorrect and fallacious."
Khan said Pakistan conducted its nuclear tests in 1998 exclusively. "The fanciful conjecture that it might have been a "joint test" is a mere fantasy, nothing more," Khan added.
The New York Times quoted US intelligence officials as saying that Pakistan may have helped North Korea test a plutonium-based nuclear device in 1998.
Clues to the possible joint nuclear test followed underground nuclear tests carried out by Pakistan in May 1998, the paper said.
----
Pakistan Threatened to Give Nukes to Iran
February 27, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Pakistan-Nuclear.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pakistan warned the United States 14 years ago that it might give nuclear technology to Iran, but the administration of President Bush's father did little to follow up, former Pentagon officials say.
Word of the 1990 threat from Pakistan's top general apparently was not passed along to the Clinton administration when it took office three years later, according to interviews by The Associated Press.
One of Pakistan's top nuclear scientists admitted last month that he sold nuclear technology to Iran, as well as North Korea and Libya -- all nations on the U.S. list of terrorism sponsors. President Bush said the underground nuclear network was exposed by U.S. and British intelligence agencies' work over the past few years.
But former government arms control officials and declassified documents show the United States knew about Pakistan's nuclear procurement network since 1983 and suspected the transfers to Iran since the mid-1980s. The United States had hints of the transfers to North Korea in the mid-1990s, officials say.
The clearest evidence of the Iran link came in January 1990, when Pakistan's army chief of staff conveyed his threat to arm Iran to a top Pentagon official. Henry S. Rowen, at the time an assistant defense secretary, said Pakistani Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg issued the warning in a face-to-face meeting in Pakistan.
``Beg said something like, 'If we don't get adequate support from the U.S., then we may be forced to share nuclear technology with Iran,''' said Rowen, now a professor at Stanford University.
Beg has acknowledged Iran approached him seeking nuclear assistance that year and he publicly advocated military cooperation between Pakistan and Iran to counter U.S. power in the region. Beg said he never authorized nuclear transfers to Iran or made threats to the United States.
``I have said many times it's all pure lies,'' Beg said in a telephone interview. ``Am I a fool, to tell the U.S. what to do or what not to do?''
In recent weeks, evidence has emerged that Pakistani nuclear aid to Iran began in the mid-1980s but accelerated after 1990 and included transfer of some of Pakistan's most advanced nuclear technology.
The former Pentagon officials' accounts suggest the United States may have missed an early opportunity to thwart some of those transfers.
``We knew they were up to no good,'' said Henry Sokolski, the Pentagon's top arms control official in 1990.
The Pakistani scientist at the center of the nuclear network, Abdul Qadeer Khan, made a public confession this month and said Pakistan's leadership was unaware and uninvolved. President Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan a day later.
President Bush has said the United States became aware of Khan's network only in the past few years through daring work by U.S. and British intelligence agents.
``We unraveled the Khan network and we are putting an end to its criminal enterprise,'' Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said in a speech Thursday.
But Sokolski and Rowen said former President Bush's administration did little to follow up on Beg's warning. ``In hindsight, maybe before or after that they did make some transfers,'' Rowen said.
Ashton Carter, an assistant defense secretary from 1993 to 1996, said he doesn't remember even being told about the problem when he joined the Pentagon.
Rowen said he told Beg that Pakistan would be ``in deep trouble'' if it gave nuclear weapons to Iran. Rowen said he was surprised by the threat because at the time Americans thought Pakistan's secular government dominated by Sunni Muslims wouldn't aid Iran's Shiite Muslim theocracy.
``There was no particular reason to think it was a bluff, but on the other hand, we didn't know,'' Rowen said.
Declassified documents and former officials say U.S. officials knew since at least 1983 about Pakistan's extensive underground supply network for its nuclear weapons program, which first tested nuclear explosives in 1998. Former officials say Washington had other murky clues about Pakistani help to Iran and strong suspicions of the North Korea link by the late 1990s.
Most of the middlemen for Khan's network in the 1990s were either investigated or convicted in Europe for supplying Pakistan's nuclear program in the 1980s.
Pakistan never cracked down on its scientists when former President Clinton and other U.S. officials shared their suspicions with Pakistani leaders, former U.S. officials say.
``The response was, 'Yes, we'll examine your concerns, but we don't believe they are well founded,''' said Robert Einhorn, who was the head arms control official in the State Department from 1999 to 2001.
While Islamabad and Washington squabbled about the evidence, the Khan network provided sophisticated technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran, three countries the United States considered among the most dangerous.
A decade earlier, the Reagan administration had looked the other way on Pakistan's nuclear program, said Stephen P. Cohen, a State Department expert on the region from 1985 to 1987. Back then, Washington used Pakistan as a conduit for sending weapons and money to guerrillas fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
``They were covering up our involvement in Afghanistan, pretending we played no role in Afghanistan, so they expected us to cover up their role in procuring a weapons system they saw as vital to their survival,'' said Cohen, now with the Brookings Institution think tank.
American officials scolded Pakistan repeatedly for buying nuclear technology from sources in Europe, Asia and the United States, Cohen said. But often those warnings were with ``a wink and a nod'' that Washington would tolerate those activities, he said. A declassified State Department memo from 1983 says Pakistan clearly had a nuclear weapons program that relied on stolen European technology and ``energetic procurement activities in various countries.''
Cohen said the United States suspected Pakistan was helping Iran in the late 1980s, in part because Pakistan had cooperated with Iran on nuclear matters before Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. The evidence, however, was murky, Cohen said.
-------- israel
Israeli arms mole vows to fight on after release
By Eric Silver in Jerusalem
27 February 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=495515
Mordechai Vanunu, whose imprisonment for spilling Israel's nuclear weapons secrets has made him an international cause célèbre, opened a battle this week against government plans to restrict his freedom after he is released from 18 years' solitary confinement on 21 April.
In a defiant statement, issued through his brother Meir, he boasted that he had won. "In the end the locks will be open," he said. "They didn't break me or drive me mad after all those years of isolation." He wants to move to the United States.
Ariel Sharon decided on Tuesday that Mr Vanunu should "be subjected to appropriate supervisory measures in order to prevent him from perpetrating additional security offences". Among the measures being considered are a ban on leaving the country, monitoring his phone calls and supervising whom he meets and what they talk about.
"They say I have additional secrets," Mr Vanunu said, "but that is a lie, an excuse, a cover-up. All that was known to me has been published. Anything I can say will be a repetition."
Although he denied any intention of fighting the state, he insisted on his right "to express my position against nuclear weapons, in the world or in Israel". That is what worries ministers. They accept that his knowledge of the Dimona reactor, where he worked as a technician for nine years, is long out of date. But they fear that any campaign he inspires will threaten Israel's traditional policy of "nuclear ambiguity".
They prefer to say "Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East" than to rattle sabres. That way, they claim, the Arab states are deterred from aggression, but they are not provoked into a nuclear arms race.
A senior security official said: "He may not have any new secrets, but it is sufficient that he will mount a campaign. People around the world will use him as a banner. There is no reason for us to allow this kind of provocation when we can stop it."
Dan Yakir, legal counsel for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said that they would fight any new restrictions. "Having served a full term, he will be a citizen with all the basic rights like anyone else. If he breaks the law, they can put him on trial."
Mr Vanunu was lured into a honey trap in Leicester Square in 1986 by "Cindy", a blond, American-born Mossad agent. She enticed him to Rome, where the secret service abducted him home to stand trial. A court in Jerusalem sentenced him to 18 years for treason.
His brother, Meir, said yesterday that Mr Vanunu, aged 51, was in "relatively good" fettle, although he showed the effects of his incarceration. The doors of his narrow cell are open 12 hours a day and he is free to go out into a small yard.
ISRAEL AND THE BOMB
Israel's official line is still that it "will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East", although the late defence minister Moshe Dayan used to add slyly that it wouldn't be the second either. They call it "constructive ambiguity".
Israel, one of the world's top five nuclear powers, wants the Arabs to know that they have the bomb, but they don't want to provoke a nuclear arms race.
As long ago as 1974, the then president, Ephraim Katzir, let the cat out of the bag. "It has always been our intention to develop the nuclear potential," he announced. "We now have that potential."
Within a year the CIA was talking about a stockpile of 10 bombs. A decade later, Mordechai Vanunu, a technician who had worked for nine years at the Dimona nuclear installation, provided a first-hand insider's account. Websites display aerial photographs of the reactor, as well Vanunu's photographs and reconstructions.
Estimates of how many bombs Israel has range from 100 to 400.
Vanunu said it could produce 40kg (88lb) of plutonium a year.
Israel is equally coy about its delivery capability, but its Jericho II missile has a range of 930 miles and can carry 1,000kg.
-------- korea
Six nations agree draft joint statement after NKorea nuclear talks: report
SEOUL (AFP)
Feb 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040227154549.hh8gx9l8.html
The six countries holding talks on North Korea's nuclear program agreed on a draft joint statement to be issued at the end of the meetings on Saturday, the South Korean news agency said late on Friday.
Yonhap news agency, quoting an unnamed diplomatic source, said the draft had been sent to the countries' capitals for approval.
The document was said to contain an agreement on establishing a working group to handle technical and other matters related to the dispute as well as a rough schedule for the next meeting.
----
US stands firm as nuclear talks extended by a day
27 February 2004
AFP
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/72988/1/.html
BEIJING: The United States refused to back down from its hardline stance on North Korea's nuclear weapons, as six-party talks were extended an extra day in the quest to find a compromise.
Washington's apparent refusal to give any ground followed a North Korean offer to disarm if the US takes a "corresponding" measure, while in the same breath slammed America's instransigence.
In a sign that all six sides are willing to push for an end to the impasse, the talks were extended into Saturday, their fourth day.
"The talks have been extended by one day. The talks will continue on Saturday February 28," South Korean delegation spokesman Shin Bong-Kil told journalists.
Despite US Secretary of State Colin Powell characterising the first two days of talks as "promising" and moving in the "right direction," the US embassy in Beijing took a tougher line, and insisted there would be no inducements.
"The US goal remains the complete, irreversible and verifiable dismantling (CVID) of North Korea's nuclear programs, including both the DPRK's plutonium and uranium program," an embassy spokeswoman told AFP.
"Our objective in the six-party process is to achieve CVID. The US will not provide North Korea with rewards and inducements for complying with its international obligations and commitments."
In a hastily arranged press briefing Thursday evening, a North Korean official said in Beijing that Pyongyang was willing to freeze its nuclear weapons program if Washington took an unspecified "corresponding" step.
The embassy said it would not comment on specific proposals with the talks still in progress.
"Each party has come to the table with ideas and proposals that we are collectively discussing," the spokeswoman said.
"With the talks still ongoing, it is premature for us to respond publicly to specific proposals. This is a deliberate process of intense consultations."
The embassy however repeated that an admission from North Korea that it has a uranium-based nuclear program remained a key demand before any resolution was reached.
"As we have said in the past, we know what the North Koreans told us in October 2002," said the spokeswoman.
"Our judgement on the enrichment program has not changed. We did not learn from the North Koreans that they had a uranium enrichment program. We were already aware of the program and informed them of our knowledge in October 2002.
"The North Koreans acknowledged their program. Our policy however is based on our own assessment of their capability."
Powell earlier said: "There is a promising attitude that is emerging from those meetings and hopefully we can move in the right direction there."
In tentative steps to end the 16-month crisis, China, Russia and South Korea have proposed offering North Korea energy aid in return for freezing and dismantling of its nuclear weapons programs.
The aid would most likely involve fuel shipments which were cut off by the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union in late 2002 after US envoy James Kelly said North Korea had admitted having an uranium enrichment program and was trying to build nuclear weapons.
North Korea has few bargaining chips other than its nuclear weapons and has a history of brinkmanship, pushing for every concession it can get.
At the very least, China wants all sides to issue a joint document at the conclusion of the talks setting out what has been achieved so far and for working groups to be established to carry the process forward.
----
N. Korea Says U.S. Demand Is Stalling Nuclear Talks
By Philip P. Pan and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 27, 2004; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9644-2004Feb26.html
BEIJING, Feb. 26 -- North Korea blamed the United States for blocking progress in six-nation talks aimed at resolving the crisis over its nuclear weapons program and, according to a U.S. official, refused to attend a working-level meeting Thursday to draft a possible joint declaration to close the conference.
In its first public statement since the talks began, the reclusive North Korean government again offered to freeze and give up its nuclear weapons program if the United States abandoned what Pyongyang called "hostile" policies. But it criticized U.S. demands that it cease all nuclear activities, including civilian programs, before discussions about security guarantees could begin.
"Despite our flexible position, [the United States] continues with its stale demand that we give up nuclear programs first," said the statement, which was released by the North Korean Embassy at the end of the second day of talks. "It is because of this that there has not been a breakthrough in the solution of the problems."
In another sign that the talks might have stalled, North Korea refused to send a representative to a meeting earlier in the day of the No. 2 officials from each delegation. The other officials haggled over some of the wording of a possible closing statement, but the exercise seemed pointless since "the guest of honor didn't even show up," said a U.S. official familiar with the talks.
Still, North Korea refrained from inflammatory rhetoric in the public statement, and its negotiators have adopted a more cordial tone than in past talks. They also have not threatened to test a nuclear device, unlike in discussions with U.S. officials in August and April.
"The differences are being gradually narrowed down, and the common ground is now accumulating," said Liu Jianchao, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, adding that the nations had not yet decided how long the talks would continue. China is hosting the meeting, which South Korea, Japan and Russia are also attending.
South Korea's chief delegate to the talks, deputy foreign minister Lee Soo Hyuck, said support was building for the South Korean proposal to provide energy assistance to the North if it verifiably froze all of its nuclear programs and committed to dismantling them. China and Russia agreed to help provide the energy aid, he said.
The Bush administration had directed its chief negotiator, James A. Kelly, an assistant secretary of state, to remain neutral on South Korea's offer. But in a slight shift, Kelly described the plan as "creative" during Thursday's plenary session, the U.S. official said.
The official said the shift did not signal a change in the U.S. position that discussions about economic aid to North Korea should begin only after Pyongyang commits to dismantling all its nuclear programs and begins to meet certain benchmarks.
Things are not going well, the official said, noting that the North Koreans spoke out of turn in the plenary session and declared that they had heard nothing new in the U.S. response to their offer to freeze its nuclear weapons programs in exchange for what they have termed "compensation."
No progress was reported in a second bilateral meeting between the North Korean and the U.S. delegations either, he said. Kessler reported from Washington.
----
Six - Nation Nuclear Talks to End Saturday
February 27, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
BEIJING (AP) -- High-level talks between six nations on North Korea's nuclear program will end Saturday after encountering ``differences'' and ``difficulties'' and will be continued by less formal working groups, news reports and Chinese officials said.
The reports, from South Korea's Yonhap News Agency, said the next round of talks by senior delegates from the United States, China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas would be held before April 30. It said the details came from a joint draft document created by delegates to the talks but yet to be officially endorsed by their governments.
Yonhap said the lower-level working groups will discuss energy aid to the impoverished North in return for a nuclear freeze and ``comprehensive nuclear abandonment'' by Pyongyang.
The agency cited no source for its information, but its reports were issued after the South's chief spokesman held a briefing exclusively for reporters from South Korean news organizations. The spokesman, Shin Bong-kil, would not confirm the report and said it was ``way too ahead.''
The agency's reports came as China said the current round of talks would end Saturday. Little apparent progress has been made and both main players -- the United States and North Korea -- remain deeply at odds over the fate of the North's nuclear ambitions.
China's chief delegate, Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, said earlier Friday that there were ``differences, difficulties and contradictions'' among the sides.
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 -- thus violating a 1994 agreement.
North Korea publicly denies having a uranium program in addition to its known plutonium-based program, but it brandishes the threat of what it vaguely describes as its ``nuclear deterrent'' in an effort to extract concessions.
U.S. officials believe North Korea already has one or two nuclear bombs and could make several more within months.
North Korea's five negotiating partners all say they want the Korean Peninsula to be nuclear-free.
During this week's talks, South Korea, China and Russia offered to give the impoverished North crucial energy aid if it agrees to disarm. The North also said it would eliminate its nuclear program, but went on hours later to condemn what it called American intransigence.
The last negotiations between the six nations were held in August and concluded after three days with little progress.
The United States promised to see these talks through even though there were no concrete signs Pyongyang would meet Washington's demands to completely dismantle its program. Pyongyang insists on aid and security guarantees first.
``The American delegation is prepared to stay through the end of the talks,'' a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman in Beijing said on condition of anonymity.
Chinese spokesman Liu Jianchao said the sides were still consulting over whether this round of talks would end with a formal document -- something China initially said it wanted. That would represent a more formal commitment even if the agreement was not binding.
South Korean delegate Lee Soo-hyuck also said deputies from the six governments were working on a joint statement and seeking an ``agreement on wording.''
Liu also reiterated language suggesting the North would end its nuclear program entirely, not merely the weapons portion of it. Russia's delegate said Thursday the offer consisted only of the military program.
``The North Korean side came out with a proposal for the comprehensive stopping of its nuclear activities, and it was welcomed by the various parties,'' Liu said.
The U.S. delegation in Beijing has made no public comment about the substance of the talks. On Thursday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Washington that the meetings displayed a ``promising attitude.''
However, a U.S. official familiar with the talks said North Korea showed no interest in meeting America's insistence on a complete and verifiable dismantling of its atomic weapons programs before the North receives any concessions.
On Thursday, North Korea put an offer of nuclear disarmament on the bargaining table, then struck a characteristically tough stance by accusing the United States of blocking progress and calling on it to drop ``its hostile policy.''
The conflicting signs 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 unusual because it was delivered during formal six-nation talks.
-------
North Korea Nuclear Talks Wind Down With Little Progress
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/international/asia/27CND-KORE.html
BEIJING, Feb. 27 - Talks to end North Korea's nuclear weapons program were extended an extra day today, but diplomats made it clear that the main antagonists made little progress in bridging their differences.
The stalemate raised the possibility that for the second time in six months the six nations involved in discussing North Korea's atomic arms programs would fail to agree even on joint negotiating goals, though most parties said they held out hope that the talks could continue at a future date.
Despite hints of early progress, the United States and North Korea remained far apart on several crucial questions, participants said. These include whether North Korea is using enriched uranium as well as plutonium for bomb fuel, whether it must discontinue both military and civilian nuclear programs, and whether it must agree to dismantle its nuclear program fully before receiving aid.
China, the host of the talks, which also involve Japan, South Korea and Russia, was scrambling to find enough common ground so that the parties could issue a communiqué at the conclusion of the discussions, which are expected to end by noon on Saturday. China has pushed the participating countries to endorse the broad goal of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, Chinese officials and state-media said.
But Liu Jianchao, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, gave a sober assessment of the status of those efforts in a news conference this afternoon. He made clear that the meeting was unlikely to produce a breakthrough.
"The objective fact is that there are still some significant
differences and contradictions," Mr. Liu said. "This is a very complex problem that clearly cannot be solved in one meeting."
The impasse began 16 months ago, when Bush administration officials accused North Korea, a former Cold War-era adversary, of violating an agreement to end its nuclear program that had been reached with the Clinton administration.
Two sessions held last year to restart negotiations ended without even a firm plan to meet again, requiring extended shuttle diplomacy by China to bring North Korea and the United States back to the bargaining table.
Chinese foreign ministry officials said their plan this time was to extract a written commitment from the parties to meet again in the near future, perhaps in smaller and less diplomatically cumbersome working groups. Mr. Liu said today that this plan was still under discussion.
The talks were described as more substantive than previous rounds. North Korea put forward a plan to freeze its weapons program in return for economic benefits. South Korea offered a proposal to provide energy aid to its northern neighbor after a freeze under certain conditions.
Diplomats said that all parties greeted North Korea's offer to stop its nuclear program as a positive development. China and Russia offered to join South Korea in providing energy aid were North Korea to implement a freeze, though the United States and Japan said they would not offer aid at that stage.
But the discussions bogged down when North Korea made a new distinction between its civilian and military nuclear programs and insisted it will continue to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Analysts say the regime does not now have a civilian nuclear program to generate electricity.
Analysts speculated that the North's insistence on retaining a civilian program was mainly a bargaining chip, allowing it to demand compensation for potential losses it would suffer by giving up a source of energy.
Pyongyang has also continued to deny that its has undertaken to make fissile material for nuclear bombs by uranium enrichment in addition to its larger and better know facility for extracting plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods.
The United States says it has solid intelligence that Pyongyang pursued this second clandestine channel for developing atomic weapons, a claim that was bolstered by the recent confession by a Pakistani nuclear scientist who said he provided such technology to North Korea.
Bush administration officials have also taken a tough stance in the talks, demanding that any statement of common goals include reference to the administration's bottom line - the "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement" of all nuclear programs undertaken by the North, a spokeswoman for the American embassy in Beijing said Friday.
A Japanese diplomat said that North Korea has resisted using that phrase in a final communiqué and that it had become a major stumbling block in settling on wording for a common statement.
----
North Korea Talks May Continue in April
February 27, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
BEIJING (AP) -- After ``difficulties and contradictions,'' delegates to a six-nation meeting on North Korea's nuclear program reached tentative agreement Friday to try again within two months and create lower-level working groups to help, news reports and Chinese officials said.
The nations also agreed to create lower-level working groups that would begin meeting within two weeks to discuss energy aid for the impoverished North in return for a ``comprehensive nuclear abandonment'' by Pyongyang, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said in a report from Beijing.
It cited a joint draft document fashioned by delegates from the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas but not yet officially endorsed by their governments.
Yonhap's bulletins were issued minutes after Shin Bong-kil, Seoul's chief spokesman, held a briefing exclusively for South Korean reporters. Shin would not confirm the Yonhap report, saying it was ``way too ahead.''
On Saturday morning, the Japanese news agency Kyodo News said the six countries would call for ``the coordinated denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula'' -- a long-stated and expected goal. It cited ``negotiation sources.''
China's official Xinhua News Agency said that a closing ceremony for the talks would be held at 11 a.m. Saturday.
On Friday, the third day of negotiations, outward optimism was tempered by fissures that for 16 months have undermined chances at an agreement. North Korea stuck by its statement that the Americans' ``hostile policy'' was to blame, and Friday's talks produced no specific claims of progress toward the meeting's goal.
The United States repeatedly has demanded the ``complete, verifiable and irreversible'' dismantling of the North's nuclear program, and refuses to grant concessions if Pyongyang freezes the program but does not abolish it entirely.
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 -- thus violating a 1994 agreement.
North Korea publicly denies having a uranium program in addition to its known plutonium-based program, but it brandishes the threat of what it vaguely describes as its ``nuclear deterrent'' in an effort to extract concessions.
U.S. officials believe North Korea already has one or two nuclear bombs and could make several more within months. The North's five negotiating partners all say they want the Korean Peninsula to be nuclear-free.
The last negotiations between the six nations were held in August and concluded after three days with little progress.
Earlier Friday, Wang Yi, China's chief negotiator and a vice foreign minister, acknowledged ``differences, difficulties and contradictions'' during the current talks even as a Chinese government spokesman said the divide was gradually narrowing.
Lee Soo-hyuck, South Korea's head delegate, said the countries were still trying to find ``a common denominator'' but offered no details.
``You can call it rough sailing, but we are spending a lot of time on working it out,'' Lee said.
Friday's talks followed a tumultuous second day of attempts at dealmaking, with South Korea, China and Russia offering the impoverished North crucial energy aid if it agreed to disarm.
Pyongyang also took the striking step of offering formally, at the negotiating table, to eliminate its nuclear program, but lashed out hours later at what it called Washington's ``hostile policy.''
The conflicting signals are a hallmark of North Korean diplomacy.
Still, the United States promised Friday to see the negotiations through even though there were no concrete signs Pyongyang would meet Washington's demands to completely dismantle its program.
Liu Jianchao, a Chinese government spokesman, sounded an upbeat note Friday, saying ``common ground is growing'' among participants.
``Gaps between the various parties are gradually narrowing, but it is still an objective fact that there are differences,'' Liu said.
Even before talks started Wednesday, participants -- particularly China -- mentioned a ``regular framework'' for continuing six-party negotiations at a lower official level. That would enable work to be done beyond high-profile, high-security gatherings like this week's.
``It's China's hope that the process of the six-party talks can go on and on,'' Liu said.
In Tokyo, Japan's top diplomat said it had no plans to offer aid to North Korea and expressed skepticism about any partial dismantlement of its nuclear program.
Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said while Japan would ``understand and support'' other countries offering such aid, ``we are currently not in a situation to do so ourselves.''
-------- missile defense
Ottawa affirms commitment to missile defence talks
Nunavut high on list of possible missile, radar sites
JANE GEORGE
February 27, 2004
Nunatsiaq News
http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/nunavut/40227_01.html
Despite growing controversy in Ottawa, the federal government reaffirmed its commitment this week to talks about becoming involved in the U.S. missile defence scheme.
On Tuesday, a motion from the Bloc Québécois calling for the federal government to "cease all discussions with the Bush administration on possible Canadian participation" in missile defence was defeated 155 to 71 in the House of Commons.
Canada is talking with the U.S. about participation in a missile system that would theoretically fend off attacks by so-called "rogue" countries such as North Korea or Iran by knocking out these missiles with other ballistic missiles over northern North America.
During a debate last week in Parliament on missile defence, MP Claude Bachand, defense critic for the BQ, said the Liberal government was heading down a "slippery slope" with the ballistic missile defence (BMD) system.
"The federal government's proposal is the new foreign affairs doctrine: total domination. Domination by air, by land by sea, and by space," Bachand said. "Canada is in the process of jumping on the American bandwagon."
Bachand said the BQ is handing out 20,000 postcards with an anti-missile defence message, so Quebeckers can tell their elected representatives to oppose the system.
If Canada eventually decides to back involvement in BMD, Nunavut may find missiles and radar in its backyard.
Last week, federal defence minister David Pratt refused to rule out U.S.-controlled missile launches from northern Canada as part of the missile defence shield.
"We're not saying no. We're not saying yes," Pratt said on the CTV program, Question period.
Pratt later said that the "possible use of Canadian territory for radar sites" might be Canada's contribution to the multi-billion-dollar BMD, although he said it was too early to tell whether any use of Canadian territory would be needed.
"I would simply say that what we are looking at is a limited system of land- and sea-based interceptors," Pratt said in the House of Commons.
But Greenland has been less than keen about letting the U.S. upgrade its Thule air base in north Greenland into a BMD site, and has demanded compensation and a voice at the table during negotiations.
So, northern Canada is the next logical place for the installation of missile and radar sites, anywhere in a line down from Alert to Goose Bay, Labrador.
To make the proposed system work, the U.S. must have radar and missile sites circling the Arctic because two or three missile radar sites would be necessary to cover the intercept line for missiles headed toward the U.S. east coast.
Based on missile trajectory maps, these sites could be located at Alert in North Baffin, Iqaluit, or Goose Bay.
At a meeting in Ottawa on Arctic sovereignty and security in January, 2002, Lt. General George MacDonald, who was then the vice-chief of Canada's defence staff, said he wouldn't rule out Ellesmere Island for a BMD site.
The abandoned mine site at Nanisivik as well as bases at Eureka and Alert on Ellesmere Island could be possible alternatives to Thule.
Dale Grant, editor of the Defence Policy Review bulletin told Nunatsiaq News in May 2002 the "battle management headquarters" could be located in Goose Bay as a way of sealing the southern border of the BMD system - a plan that would also assure the future of the base, which is an economic force in Labrador.
Fort Greeley, a former U.S. Army facility 200 kilometres southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, is already slated for five missile silos, which will be part of the Pacific test bed that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency will have running by September 2004. The U.S. is also considering arming these missiles with nuclear warheads.
Yukon MP Larry Bagnell, also the parliamentary secretary to the minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, said Yukoners are split on the BMD.
"There are a number of Yukoners who think that Canada should not participate, but we are the closest riding to the system. We are a few seconds away from the missiles at Fort Greely. Therefore, a number of Yukoners feel that, without spending any money, we should be at the table so we know what is happening."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
Diablo Canyon fuel storage plan approved
By April Charlton/Staff Writer
Friday, February 27, 2004
Santa Maria Times (California)
http://www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2004/02/27/news/local/news03.txt
SAN LUIS OBISPO - The County Planning Commission paved the way Thursday for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to construct seven above-ground concrete storage pads that will house Diablo Nuclear Power Plant's spent fuel rods.
With a 3-0 vote - commissioners Sandra Nielsen, who represents the 3rd District, and Doreen Liberto-Blanck were absent - the commission approved PG&E's coastal development permit, which allows for construction of the flat concrete pads that will support up to 140 storage casks on four acres.
The commissioners also certified the $10 million project's environmental impact report, which allows the project to go forward once the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission issues PG&E a license to proceed with dry-cask storage.
The NRC issued a draft permit this week for the project, which would extend the life of Diablo by another 20 years, according to County Counsel Tim McNaulty.
Nielsen recused herself from the hearing because of a conflict of interest: Her San Luis Obispo environmental firm has a contract with PG&E.
PG&E proposed the dry-cask storage plan because Diablo will be out of space for spent-fuel storage by 2006 unless it replaces the racks in the plant's two existing storage pools, and the power company feels the dry-cask method is the safer way to store Diablo's used plutonium rods.
However, the project has met with great opposition from many residents across the county, and Thursday's hearing was no different, as speaker after speaker urged the commission to hold off on granting the permit.
"I'm alarmed this project isn't as safe as it could be," said Fred Frank, former county fire chief. The spent rods "are a deadly material, and it looks like we're talking about putting more out there."
Spent rods would be moved over a two- to three-year period from Diablo's storage pools to the concrete casks, which would measure 8 feet across and stand 16 feet high.
County staff members had recommended that the approval be conditioned on PG&E paying $12 million in mitigation costs to offset the loss of public access to the coast, but the commissioners rejected that advice after finding no loss of access to support the notion.
Staff writer April Charlton can be reached at 489-4206, Ext. 5016, or by e-mail at acharlton@ pulitzer.net.
-------- new york
New York Lawmakers Would Expand Atomic Workers' Compensation
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
February 27, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2004/2004-02-27-09.asp#anchor2
Workers who became ill from working in contaminated atomic weapons plants after weapons production ended are not eligible for benefits under the current compensation law. On Thursday, Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat, introduced legislation in the Senate that would close that loophole.
In the House, New York Representatives Louise Slaughter, a Democrat, and Jack Quinn, a Republican, introduced companion legislation.
Under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA), workers are eligible for a payment of $150,000 and medical coverage for expenses associated with the treatment of diseases due to radiation exposure at atomic weapons plants.
The program was established by Congress in 2000 to compensate workers who developed diseases because of their work on the U.S. atomic weapons program.
The bills introduced Thursday would allow workers who developed cancers and other radiation related diseases from their work in facilities that were not properly decontaminated after the end of the nuclear weapons program to apply for compensation under EEOICPA.
In November 2003, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) released a report which concluded that "significant" residual radioactive contamination existed in many of these plants for decades, posing a risk of radiation related cancers or disease to unknowing workers.
Out of a list of 219 plants supplied to NIOSH by the U.S. Energy Department, 97 plants, 44 percent, were identified as having the potential for "significant residual contamination" outside of the periods when weapons production took place.
The report showed potential for significant residual radioactivity at several sites in Western New York, including Linde Ceramics (Tonawanda), Ashland Oil, Bethlehem Steel and Bliss and Laughlin.
"Our atomic weapons program workers are true Cold War heroes, and deserve the 'timely, uniform, and adequate compensation' that Congress promised them more than three years ago," said Senator Clinton. "This bill will address one of the most glaring gaps in current law by making workers who were exposed to residual radiation eligible for benefits."
In addition to expanding eligibility to workers employed at facilities where NIOSH has found potential for significant radioactive contamination, the Residual Radioactive Contamination Compensation Act would require NIOSH to update the list of such facilities annually. This addresses the fact that there was insufficient information for NIOSH to characterize a number of sites in its 2003 report.
-------- tennessee
Audit Released on Uranium Processing Plant
February 27, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Weapons-Plant.html
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- The restart of bomb-grade uranium processing at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge is five years overdue and about $300 million over budget, according to an internal audit.
Since Y-12 is the only facility in the United States capable of recovering and purifying highly enriched uranium for warheads, the delay may have greater significance than the cost.
``As a result, the enriched uranium operations necessary for national security are not available to meet future mission needs,'' said the Energy Department's inspector general's office. The audit was released Thursday.
Y-12 also is the country's primary storehouse for weapons-grade uranium. The delay in processing is causing a buildup of salvageable material that is placing enormous pressure on its storage facilities, the inspector general added.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, the semiautonomous agency within the Energy Department that oversees the nuclear weapons program, blamed the delays on Y-12's previous managing contractor.
A new contractor has gotten the program back on track, said Michael Kane, the NNSA's associate administrator for management and administration. BWXT, a partnership of BWX Technologies and Bechtel National, assumed Y-12's management contract in 2000.
Y-12's uranium processing operation was shuttered in 1994 after an accidental release of hydrogen fluoride raised safety concerns. The original estimate was to restart the program by December 1998 at a cost of $119 million.
Some processes within the program have been restored, but the inspector general's report said full operation may be at least three years away.
-------- vermont
Coalition sets up whistleblower hotline for Yankee workers
By CAROLYN LORIÉ
BRATTLEBORO Reformer Staff
February 27, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8862~1982798,00.html
BRATTLEBORO -- Peter Alexander, executive director of the New England Coalition, announced at a public forum last night that the coalition has set up a hotline for Vermont Yankee workers who have safety concerns about the plant.
"It is our feeling that there are many people [at Vermont Yankee] who are unsure about the new management and who are feeling the pressure to cut corners because of the profit-driven needs of the company," said Alexander.
Ray Shadis, staff advisor to the Coalition, said there is a history of Vermont Yankee employees contacting the coalition with concerns but added that recently information about the plant has come only secondhand.
What is done with information gathered through the hotline will be decided on a case by case basis. Shadis said that steps to address concerns will be taken only if the caller gives permission and will be done in a manner that will not reveal the identity of the informant.
According to Shadis and Alexander, informants can sometimes be found out by the details of their complaints.
"It's problematic," said Shadis. "These are things that we need to negotiate with each individual whistleblower."
Rob Williams, spokesperson for Vermont Yankee, said that the company offers workers many different ways to voice their safety concerns, including an internal Web-page where complaints can be made anonymously.
If workers are not satisfied with the long list of options within the company, he added, they can also go directly to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with their concerns. "In fact they would be expected to do that because safety is our top priority here," said Williams.
According to Shadis, however, the NRC has not always protected the anonymity of informants or taken action after receiving information.
The coalition, which is an intervener in the process involving Vermont Yankee's uprate request, has worked closely with several industry whistleblowers, including Paul Blanch.
Blanch was the featured speaker at Thursday night's event, which was held at the West Village Meeting House, where the announcement about the hotline was made.
In 1988 Blanch went public with allegations of safety violations against Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in Connecticut, after the company refused to address them.
Before turning to the media, Blanch says he reported his concerns to the NRC but did not get the response he expected. "They harassed the daylights out of me," he said.
The coalition has been working closely with Blanch, who served as one of the organization's expert witnesses during the uprate hearings. Working so intensely with Blanch and others, said Shadis, has made the group sensitive to the challenges facing whistleblowers.
Alexander said that he was grateful to the employees who keep Vermont Yankee running safely. "The people in the control room are our friends and neighbors but Entergy is not," he added.
The line will operate during normal business hours, although messages can be left at any time, and will be dedicated solely to whistleblowers. The hotline can be reached at (802) 246-3300.
Carolyn Lorié can be reached at clorie@reformer.com New England Coalition may be reached at 802-257-0336
-------- us nuc waste
Opposition Hardens as Bush Boosts Nuclear Waste Plan
by Daniel Porras
February 27, 2004
(Inter Press Service)
http://antiwar.com/ips/porras.php?articleid=2046
Critics are condemning as irresponsible and illegal the Bush administration's recent proposal to increase the budget for the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump in western Nevada State despite unresolved safety issues and legal challenges.
After more than two decades of contesting the selection of their state as the nation's primary repository for high-level nuclear waste, many Nevadans feel they now possess the legal and scientific grounds to undo the project.
In addition to multiple pending suits brought by the State of Nevada, the indigenous Western Shoshone National Council is challenging the U.S. Government over land rights to the area, a case that has garnered the council international support from the Organization of American States (OAS).
Washington hopes to store around 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste in metal containers beneath Yucca Mountain. Now, most of the nation's nuclear waste is kept above ground at hundreds of nuclear energy, military and former weapons facilities throughout the country.
Bush's 2005 budget, released earlier this month, increases spending on the Yucca Mountain storage facility by 50 percent to 880 million dollars, a move one Nevada State official called "highly optimistic," given the number of unanswered questions surrounding the project.
"The government is far from having the requisite amount of data required by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to recommend Yucca Mountain as the primary repository for the country's nuclear waste," said Bob Loux, executive director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects at the Office of the Governor of Nevada.
Irrespective of claims by Loux and others that the Yucca Mountain site has not been proven geologically sound to serve as a long-term repository, the US Department of Energy (DOE) recently formally recommended to Bush that the site be developed.
Citing "sound science" and "compelling national interests," Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said that more than 20 years and four billion dollars worth of scientific studies have demonstrated the site's suitability, according to a Feb. 14 DOE statement.
"The Department of Energy is obviously trying to sink so much money into this hole in the ground that the project becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy," said Wenonah Hauter, director of the Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program of the non-profit group Public Citizen, in a statement.
But the DOE claims to be standing on firm scientific ground. "I have considered whether sound science supports the determination that the Yucca Mountain site is scientifically and technically suitable for the development of a repository. I am convinced that it does," said Abraham in a letter to Bush.
Loux is unconvinced, and argues that science has proven that the site is not suitable. The State of Nevada brought multiple lawsuits against the DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and awaits ruling on the cases, which Loux feels could derail the project.
"One of our main concerns is that the DOE discovered that the physical characteristics of the site contribute less than one percent of the needed isolation to contain the waste," he told IPS, adding that the law requires geology to be the primary factor in protecting the environment from nuclear waste.
To compensate, the DOE has used the largest aquifer in southern Nevada as a waste containment mechanism in its calculations, violating the Clean Water Act and a host of other regulations, according to Loux.
Also, the US Geological Survey admits there are 33 known earthquake faults in and around the Yucca Mountain site and volcanoes dot the region, including one just 16 km away.
Water seeps quickly through the desert rock strata and both Loux and Shoshone Chief Raymond Yowell worry that radioactive water will contaminate nearby farms where food and livestock are raised and some of it shipped around the country.
Not surprisingly, most Nevadans are adamantly opposed to hosting the nation's high-level nuclear waste.
"For more than two decades the State of Nevada has protested its designation as the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump," said Loux.
"This governor as well as the last five governors have been adamantly opposed to Yucca Mountain, and over 75 percent of the population is telling the state to do all they can to stop the dump," he added.
The Western Shoshone National Council is challenging the US Government on different grounds: that the federal government does not own the land where it proposes to build the nuclear waste dump.
That land, according to Yowell, is part of the Western Shoshone Territory that extends through six western states and was never legally ceded to the government.
"The US can't show how they got it from us, so they don't own it," Yowell said in a telephone interview.
The OAS agrees with Yowell. In January 2003 its Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) found Washington in violation of international law and infringing on the aboriginal land rights of the Western Shoshone.
Deborah Schaff, an attorney with the Indian Law Resource Center, said that as a member of the OAS, the United States is subject to the jurisdiction of the commission and is obligated to abide by its charter.
Yowell cites other national and international laws to bolster his case.
In addition to an U.S. 1832 Supreme Court decision (Worcester v. Georgia) that found a treaty between an Indian nation and the United States "involves no surrender" of the nation's independence or its "national character," he cites a principle of international law that states that the long-held possession of territory by one nation excludes the claim of every other nation.
Yowell says the Shoshone people and their ancestors occupied the territory that is modern Nevada thousands of years before the existence of the United States, and refuse to accept monetary compensation for the sacred land.
He is incensed at the idea of 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste being buried inside the Earth.
"Mother Earth is the most sacred thing in our religious beliefs," he said. "To store nuclear waste within her is not acceptable to us."
Successive administrations have sought to compensate the Shoshone for the use of the land and have attempted to establish US ownership through legal maneuvering. But the Shoshone remain steadfast in their claim to the territory.
The Nuclear Energy Institute's website quotes Bush as saying Yucca Mountain "is important for our national security and our energy future." Yowell disagrees, saying that to achieve national energy security, Washington must direct all funding of the nuclear and oil industries toward the development of renewable energy.
But he is not waiting for the Bush administration to transform its unsustainable energy policy, and has his own plans for the Yucca Mountain territory, including installing a solar energy farm.
"We'll be looking more into solar energy," said the chief. "We get quite a bit of sunshine on our land."
-------- us politics
The Rumsfeld-Bush Legal Black Hole
Powers Formerly Reserved Only for Kings
Nat Hentoff
February 27th, 2004
Village Voice
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0409/hentoff.php
"[After the American Revolution], there was to be no king. . . . Allegiance would go, not to a man with a crown, but to the law. . . . It was to be a 'government of laws and not men.' " -Law in America, Lawrence M. Friedman
"Pick your favorite constitutional amendment or right: its survival during the war on terror cannot be assumed if the legitimacy of these indefinite detentions is sustained." -Thomas H. Moreland, chair of the Federal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, February 6, 2004 The headline on a February 13 BBC News World Edition dispatch, "Guantánamo Inmates Get New Rights," concerned an announcement by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the hundreds of alleged Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists imprisoned on an American military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would from now on get an annual review by a three-person panel to decide whether or not they should be released.
This was a classic misleading headline on a story that left out all the significant details except one: "Mr. Rumsfeld added that the U.S. was planning to hold many of the detainees for 'as long as necessary.'"
The February 13 front-page New York Times story was much more revealing of Bush's parallel legal system. The story began, "Senior Defense Department officials said Thursday that they were planning to keep a large portion of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, there for many years, perhaps indefinitely." (Emphasis added.)
Furthermore, the decisions of this new three-person panel Rumsfeld will choose to determine the fates of these prisoners will ultimately get a final review-but only by Donald Rumsfeld, acting for King George. As Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights-a key litigator in the battle to rescue the Constitution from Bush's warriors-told the Times: "The idea that you could theoretically keep someone locked up forever under these circumstances is reprehensible. . . . It's nothing to do with law as any person should understand it, at least since the Magna Carta. How do you know without a trial that these people are even dangerous? It all depends on the military's word."
Well, some of these prisoners may get what passes for a trial before a military commission. But what kind of trial? That is the subject of a brief to the Supreme Court by five of the military lawyers assigned by the Defense Department to defend prisoners brought before these tribunals in the case of Fawzi Al Odah et al. v. United States.
This is the first time in American history that military lawyers have imperiled their careers by making public statements such as this one, from Marine Corps Major Michael Mori, who told a Washington press conference in January: "The military commissions will not provide a full and fair trial. . . . The commission process has been created and controlled by those with a vested interest only in convictions." (Emphasis added.)
But even if these rigged commissions, also called tribunals, were to give specific sentences to prisoners, there would be no guarantee that they would be released after serving their time. Deep in the New York Times February 13 story is this chilling admission by a "senior defense official [who] said that it was possible that an individual could be convicted by a tribunal and serve a five-year sentence and then not be released if he were judged to remain a danger." (Emphasis added.)
The authority to unilaterally keep a defendant locked up-conceivably for the rest of his or her life-used to be reserved solely for kings, who could ignore any part of the realm's legal system. This monarchical power-as I've indicated in reporting on the indefinite imprisonment, without charges, of American citizens Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla-has been expanded by George W. Bush to include defendants at Guantánamo.
The Supreme Court of the United States will decide, during the current term, whether the prisoners at Guantánamo have any recourse to our civilian courts to challenge the Bush-Rumsfeld power to keep them in a legal black hole. This hole is now so bottomless that even if some were to be convicted by an American military tribunal, they might never be released-no matter what their sentences were.
Keep in mind that the rules Rumsfeld and Bush have set for these military tribunals include the denial of any appeals by the defendants to American civilian courts! This door of last resort has been closed even though-contrary to the statements by the president and his solicitor general, Theodore Olson-these proceedings are taking place on territory that, according to the U.S.'s lease with Cuba, is wholly under American jurisdiction.
The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, one of this nation's most influential bar associations, issued an exceptionally valuable 153-page report on February 6, "The Indefinite Detention of 'Enemy Combatants': Balancing Due Process and National Security in the Context of the War on Terror."
Much of the report concerns the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla. But the conclusion of the report is also crucially relevant to the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. If we can strip non-American citizens of all meaningful due process rights, this precedent will also be used by other countries who imprison American "enemy combatants." And the administration's professed concern with spreading the seeds of constitutional democracy to other nations will be farcical. The Association of the Bar of the City of New York's report concludes:
"It should take far more than the monstrous brutality of a handful of terrorists to drive us to abandon our core constitutional values. We can effectively combat terrorism in the United States without jettisoning the core due process principles that form the essence of the rule of law underlying our system of government.
"Insistence on the rule of law will not undermine our national security. Abandoning the rule of law will threaten our national identity." (Emphasis added.)
I have seen nothing of this bar association report in the media. I hope the justices of the Supreme Court will read-and remember-it. "Law," said Thomas Jefferson, "is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of the individual."
----
Cheney hit by election rumours
By Caren Bohan
February 27, 2004
Reuters
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/26/1077676896340.html
Washington - US President George Bush and other Republicans are rallying around Vice-President Dick Cheney as they seek to quash rumours that Mr Bush might ultimately replace him on his re-election ticket.
Some pundits believe that if Mr Bush is struggling in the polls a few months from now as the 2004 campaign moves into high gear, he might boost his chances for re-election by picking a running mate other than Mr Cheney.
Helping to spur an already active Washington rumour mill was the February 14 cover story in the National Journal that depicted a stern-faced Mr Cheney standing beside Mr Bush.
"Just the ticket?" queried the headline. "Does having Dick Cheney as his running mate help or hurt George W. Bush in 2004?"
The article mentioned potential successors to Mr Cheney such as former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Mr Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
At a Republican governors' fund-raiser that marked the kickoff of his 2004 campaign, Mr Bush gave a ringing endorsement of Mr Cheney and, in a joking way, alluded obliquely to rumours he might be mulling a change.
He quipped that he had put Mr Cheney in charge of his vice-presidential search committee, as he had originally done in the 2000 campaign.
"He tells me he's reviewed all the candidates, and he's come back with the same recommendation as last time," Mr Bush said. "In fact, I made the choice myself, and I have taken the measure of this man. They don't come any better, and I am proud to have Dick Cheney by my side."
The National Journal article said there were grumblings among some Republicans who felt that removing Mr Cheney from the ticket might be helpful because the Vice-President has been a target of Democrat attacks for such issues as his past role as head of Halliburton, the energy company with contracts in post-war Iraq.
Mr Cheney's negative ratings in public opinion polls regularly are the worst of anyone in the Administration.
There seem to be far more Democrats than Republicans, however, who buy into the rumours that he might end up off the re-election ticket.
The scenario envisioned by some political analysts is that Mr Cheney might bow out of the race before the Republican convention in late August.
The Vice-President, who has a history of heart trouble, could cite his health as a way to take himself out of the race without it appearing that he was pushed, said Douglas Brinkley, a historian and author of a book about the front-runner for the Democrat nomination, Massachusetts senator John Kerry.
"If there's a feeling that if Democrats have momentum (ahead of the Republican convention), a shake-up will be in order and Cheney will, due to health reasons, resign," Mr Brinkley said.
While opposition to Mr Cheney may help energise the Democrat base, the flip side is that he also spurs the base of his own party.
Mr Cheney, considered by many historians to be one of the most influential vice-presidents in modern times, has had crucial roles in everything from helping to shape and sell Mr Bush's tax cuts to advocating the Iraq war.
He is frequently the White House's crucial liaison to Capitol Hill when sensitive issues arise, such as last year's deadlock over Mr Bush's proposals to overhaul energy policy and decisions over a commission to investigate flaws in prewar intelligence on Iraq regarding weapons of mass destruction.
----
Impeach Bush? Would you want 'President Cheney'?
2/27/2004
Fredericksburg Freelance Star
http://www.freelancestar.com/News/FLS/2004/022004/02272004/1259295
The logical answer to Mr. Charles O. McCullough's question ["Why isn't President Bush facing impeachment?" Feb. 8] is that the current House of Representatives is controlled by the Republican Party, and the fires of Hades would go out before they would bring impeachment proceedings, regardless of Mr. Bush's transgressions.
His actions, I agree, have been far more egregious than Clinton's Monica-gate, but let's get serious.
Even if this administration's actions warranted that impeachment proceedings be instituted, would you really want Vice President Richard Cheney to ascend the throne?
Or to carry it to the extreme, if the first five people in the line of succession were unable to succeed, would you want to be "blessed" with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as our leader? Or Attorney General John Ashcroft?
Who could decide which would be the "best" replacement from among members of a group that shares the responsibility along with the president? This is a classic case of Catch-22.
John K. Duegaw
Stafford
----
Impeach Bush?
Ralph Nader says that Rep. John Conyers is going to be filing a request for impeachment. Is the Impeach Bush movement gathering steam?
by Jonathan V. Last,
Daily Standard
02/27/2004
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/781ywdsl.asp
THE POLITICAL WORLD spent this past week analyzing Ralph Nader's decision to run for president, but lost was this nugget from Sunday's "Meet the Press" appearance:
TIM RUSSERT: In terms of what you stand for, this is what you said in July of last year about George Bush: "Mr. Bush was not only 'beatable but impeachable,' for deceptions and prevarications on national security matters . . ." Will part of your platform be the impeachment of George Bush?
RALPH NADER: Let me put it this way. When a president misleads, if not fabricates, going to war and sending our sons and daughters to war with no exit strategy, with a quagmire over there, that is very serious, Tim. If there's any better definition of high crimes and misdemeanors in our Constitution, then misleading or fabricating the basis for going to war, as the press has documented ad infinitum, I don't know any cause of impeachment that's worse. . .
RUSSERT: So there should be an impeachment hearing and trial?
NADER: I think Congressman John Conyers is going to file such a request.
It would be big news, if true. Unfortunately for Nader, it's not.
"I am fairly certain--but not positive--that [Conyers] is not contemplating anything like that," says a senior staffer for the Detroit congressman. "He's been hearing from lots of people all sorts of suggestions about what should be done regarding the administration's course of conduct in Iraq and a few other areas. He's basically been in a listening mode. I think he's interested in possibly having some scholarly consideration [about impeachment]. . . but drafting articles? No."
How Nader became confused on so important an issue is a little unclear. Sources say he met with Conyers, but that Conyers made it clear (his remarks at an ANSWER rally notwithstanding) that he was not going to pursue impeachment. Nader's office ignored repeated requests for comment.
But just because John Conyers isn't with him, doesn't mean that Nader is alone on the idea of impeaching the president. Indeed, he has all sorts of company.
THE HANDFUL of impeachment drafts floating around the web have a few common themes. They want to get rid of Bush for "crimes against peace and humanity," "war crimes," and the "deprivations of the civil rights of the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law."
The cudgels have been taken up here and there by brave individuals. Last July, Sen. Bob Graham intimated that Bush should go the way of Nixon and Clinton; the Los Angeles Times's Robert Scheer is also on board. However only Clair Callan, an 82-year-old former congressman from Nebraska, has been gallant enough to put his money where his mouth is: Last spring he filed a federal suit alleging that Bush had violated the 1973 War Powers Act. His suit was dismissed.
Not all of the loony left has glommed onto impeachment, of course. Lyndon LaRouche, for one, is cautious on the subject: "Is 'W' impeachable? Should he be impeached? To impeach 'W' while Cheney is still Vice President, would be tantamount to treason against the entire human race!"
Last August in the tiny northern California town of Arcata, town councilman Dave Meserve found a way around the Cheney problem by proposing a resolution calling for the impeachment of both the president and vice president. After months of deliberation, the council compromised with Meserve by sending a letter to Congress asking them to look into the president's conduct during the Iraq war. The Santa Cruz city council took similar action in September.
Standing firmly against this sort of lily-livered compromise are the two chief engines of the impeachment movement: Francis Boyle's Impeach-Bush-Now.org and Ramsey Clark's VoteToImpeach.org.
PROFESSOR FRANCIS A. BOYLE teaches international law at the University of Illinois and is something of an impeachment regular. "This is Boyle's second impeachment campaign," his website bio says proudly, "the first of which took place in 1991 when he co-authored the resolution to impeach George H.W. Bush . . ."
Boyle's operation is small and, truth be told, one gets the sense that it might be motivated not entirely out of political, or even ideological, principle. Impeach-Bush-Now.org is littered with links to Boyle's legal writings, links to Real Audio files of Boyle's interviews, and lots and lots of contact info for the professor. Sample letters Boyle provides for voters to send to their elected representatives, say things such as, "International Law Professor Francis A. Boyle . . . is willing to help any member of Congress draft articles of impeachment free of charge" and "I recommend you contact Professor Boyle." In his bio, Boyle notes that he's been on "The O'Reilly Factor."
In contrast, Ramsey Clark's VoteToImpeach.org is a serious operation. The site claims that over 383,000 people have voted in their "referendum" to impeach the president. They have a large print ad which ran in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. And they have tchotchkes!
BUT IF YOU WANT more than T-shirts and bumper stickers, you'll need to visit ImpeachCentral.com for your free impeachment kit. A spin-off of Democrats.com, ImpeachCentral takes a Deaniac approach to the impeachment battle, waging the fight with MeetUps and Martin Luther King quotes. What is interesting is that its sister site, Democrats.com, was founded by David Lytel and Bob Fertig and has an advisory board made up of the kind of people--such as Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg, Gore advisor Greg Simon, and Jared Shutz, the cofounder of BlueMountainArts.com--who would normally be uncomfortable rubbing elbows with Ramsey Clark.
Not that they should be held responsible for the site's impeachment drive, mind you. Democrats.com has this nifty disclaimer:
Note to right wing conspiracy theorists: Democrats.com Advisory Board members provide occasional advice upon request from the founders--just like asking a wise relative for advice. Naturally, if one ignores such advice when sought, or fails to seek it in the first place, those individuals are not responsible for your actions. Except for writing articles under their names, these individuals are not involved in, or responsible for, the editorial content of this site. Nor are any of their present or past associates or employers, including President Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
Who knows how much trouble Webster Hubbell could have saved himself back in '93 if his all-white country club had carried a similar disclaimer for its members.
FOR DEMOCRATS, impeachment is a case of good news/bad news. The bad news is that impeachment isn't likely to progress past the angry petition stage. The good news is that the landscape would seem to suggest that Ralph Nader isn't positioning himself to peel off votes from either John Kerry or John Edwards. Lyndon LaRouche, however, should watch his left flank.
Jonathan V. Last in online editor of The Weekly Standard.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
After Rumsfeld Visit, Afghan Leader Asserts Taliban Is Beaten
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/international/asia/27AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb. 26 - President Hamid Karzai said Thursday that the Taliban had been defeated and that exiled former members of the leadership were appealing daily to his government to be allowed to return to Afghanistan.
Mr. Karzai made his comments at a news conference after meeting with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld at the presidential palace in Kabul. They came shortly after suspected terrorists shot dead five staff members of an Afghan nonprofit organization, and wounded three more in an area east of Kabul. It was one of the worst attacks in months.
Mr. Rumsfeld was on a one-day visit to Afghanistan, part of a five-country tour, amid speculation that United States forces are preparing a spring offensive to pursue and capture leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas that straddle the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Pakistan mounted a counterterrorist operation against Qaeda militants in the tribal areas this week, detaining 20 suspects, including Arabs and Uzbeks, local newspapers reported. American and Afghan forces have recently deployed to the south and southeast of Afghanistan, apparently in a coordinated operation to try to stem the infiltration of militants from Pakistan.
Neither Mr. Rumsfeld nor Mr. Karzai would comment on impending military operations or the possible capture of Osama bin Laden.
"It will happen when it happens, and I don't believe it's closer or farther at any given moment," Mr. Rumsfeld said, referring to the possible capture of the leader of Al Qaeda. He refused to say if special forces were being brought from Iraq to aid in the hunt for Mr. bin Laden.
Although Al Qaeda remains a preoccupation, both Mr. Karzai and Mr. Rumsfeld played down the threat from the former Taliban regime, which once harbored the terrorist group and has continued a violent insurgency against the Afghan government for the last year.
"As far as terrorism is concerned, as far as the Taliban is concerned, we strongly believe, with evidence, that they are defeated," Mr. Karzai said. "They are gone."
"You would be surprised if I disclosed to you how many approaches from the Taliban we have on a daily basis," he said, referring to appeals from former supporters. "Individuals, groups, coming to talk to us to let them back into the country."
"All those Taliban who are not involved with Al Qaeda or terrorism, or who have not committed terrorism in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the world, are free to return to their country and live a normal life," Mr. Karzai said.
He quoted the governor of Uruzgan province, one of the most unstable parts of the country, as saying there was not a Taliban threat there anymore.
Mr. Karzai ascribed much of the reported violence around the country to banditry and armed robbery.
The Afghan foreign minister, Dr. Abdullah, said after the news briefing, that threats from the Taliban of a spring offensive to seize control of border districts and disrupt elections were just "rhetoric."
Yet nine aid workers have been slain in the last 11 days, by gunmen apparently opposed to the government and its American backers.
In the latest attack, which occurred Wednesday evening, members of the Afghan nongovernmental organization, the Sanai Development Foundation, were lined up, questioned and then shot.
Five were killed and three escaped. The government has described it as a terrorist attack.
-------- africa
Nigeria converts US Coast Guard vessel for pipeline patrols
Friday, February 27, 2004
By Dulue Mbachu,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-02-27/s_13538.asp
LAGOS, Nigeria - A donated U.S. Coast Guard ship sailed Thursday to Nigeria, where navy commanders said they would rig it with cannon and machine guns to guard international oil production against pirates and militants.
The newly rechristened N.N.S. Obula, which arrived in the commercial capital of Lagos on Thursday following a 60-day voyage from Guam, is one of seven vessels the United States is donating to Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer. Three ships arrived last year and three more vessels are expected in coming months.
The ship, with an estimated worth of US$3.5 million, will be refitted with cannon and machine guns to battle militants and criminal gangs along the coast and the winding waterways of the violence-torn southern Niger Delta, said Lt. Commander Mohammed Wabi, spokesman for Nigeria's navy command post in Lagos.
"We will use the ships ... to check the activities of those who steal crude oil," Wabi said. "The ships will be fully geared with guns and such military equipment you would expect a navy ship to have."
Nigerian Vice Admiral Samuel Afolayan called upon the ship's new crew to "end the trouble in the Niger Delta," where ethnic and political militants frequently attack multinational oil installations.
U.S. Consul-General Robyn Hinson-Jones led an American delegation attending the vessel's official handover to Nigeria.
Activists and militants frequently sabotage oil facilities and kidnap workers, accusing the firms of colluding with Nigeria's government to deprive the impoverished, swampy region's residents of oil revenues.
Nigeria estimates it loses more than 10 percent of its daily oil exports of more than 2 million barrels to criminals siphoning crude from pipelines in the creeks and marshlands of the Niger Delta into barges and ships for sale abroad.
Authorities believe the illegal trade is the source of funds for illegal guns and ammunition used by ethnic militias in the region, where violence killed hundreds last year and severely disrupted operations of oil majors including ChevronTexaco and Shell.
Nigeria is the fifth-biggest supplier of U.S. oil imports.
-------- asia
Largest Japanese Contingent So Far Enters Iraq
February 27, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-japan-troops.html
KUWAIT/IRAQ BORDER (Reuters) - The largest contingent of Japanese troops so far crossed the Kuwait border into Iraq Friday as part of a mission that has divided public opinion in Japan.
Some 130 soldiers of the Ground Self-Defense Force, as the Japanese army is called, entered Iraq in a convoy of about 30 military vehicles, including armored personnel carriers. They will join about 100 Japanese soldiers already in Iraq.
``It is a great pleasure for us to be here today. I am very happy,'' Colonel Koichiro Bansho, the contingent's commanding officer, told reporters at the border.
Officials declined to let reporters speak to the soldiers themselves who were wearing helmets, camouflage gear and flak jackets.
The Japanese government says the planned deployment of about 1,000 military personnel to the southern Iraqi town of Samawa is a humanitarian mission, but the unit will operate with U.S.-led forces.
Japanese troops have not fired a shot in battle or suffered a casualty since World War II, and the country has a pacifist constitution.
The Japanese force says it will use its weapons, including Japanese-made submachine guns and anti-tank guns, only in self-defense.
Media reports last year said Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network had threatened to ``strike at the heart of Tokyo'' if Japanese troops entered Iraq.
In Japan, a National Police Agency official has said security had been stepped up at key sites around the country, including government offices, U.S. bases and nuclear power plants, to guard against a possible terror attack.
The 100 troops already in Iraq are constructing a base near Samawa.
The new contingent included a medical team and engineers.
The army will provide about 600 members of the force, with the rest coming from the navy and air force.
-------- business
Raytheon Contracts For PASSUR Services To Develop Patriot Missile
Feb 27, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/missiles-04d.html
Megadata Corporation announced today that Raytheon Company, of Waltham, Massachusetts has contracted to use a customized version of PASSUR AirportMonitor as a tool in the development of future Patriot missile system capabilities.
"We're pleased we can be a valuable contributor to the Raytheon project," stated Jim Barry, Megadata's President & CEO. "This defense application is one of many new programs from our PASSUR national database of flight information, a natural asset for those who need timely access to an independent source of airspace data and analysis tools."
Today's public version of AirportMonitor is the industry's leading web-based flight tracking and information program for airport community relations, provided on airport websites. AirportMonitor provides graphics and data on flights in the terminal airspace, from the runway threshold to about 100 miles.
The version developed specifically for Raytheon as part of its defense-related research is an enhanced variation of the AirportMonitor 2.0 Gold application, providing additional secure information and capabilities available to authorized users who meet a certain threshold of operational and security requirements.
All PASSUR software solutions are supported by the network of PASSUR installations; the only nationally deployed, independent flight tracking and information system.
Megadata is a supplier of information, data services, and decision support software applications addressing the needs of the aviation industry, primarily airlines and airports.
The company's principal business is the delivery of data and software applications in the form of subscription-based services from the over 50-airport PASSUR Network of flight tracking systems. Megadata distributes its products through a direct sales force and through premier aviation decision-support technology firms.
----
Lockheed Martin Introduces New Paveway Dual Mode Guided Bomb
Feb 27, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/gps-04u.html
Singapore - Lockheed Martin introduced its new Paveway Dual Mode Guided Bomb at the Asian Aerospace exhibition in Singapore.
"Lessons learned in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrated a need for a weapon that provides all-weather accuracy with the ability to engage semi-mobile targets," said David Landis, Paveway Senior Business Development Manager for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control in Archbald, PA.
"The combination of the Semi-Active Laser (SAL) seeker technology with Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation System (GPS/INS) is affordable and will improve the accuracy and mission capabilities in an existing weapons configuration. The technologies are mature, affordable and proven in combat."
The Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Archbald location currently produces GBU-10, -12 and -16 Paveway II Laser Guided Bomb (LGB) kits for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and international customers.
Lockheed Martin received 100 percent of a Department of Defense supplemental appropriation last November to provide Paveway II laser guided bomb kits, replacing those expended in Operation Iraqi Freedom. On November 20, 2003, Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, UT, awarded Lockheed Martin a $56 million contract to produce laser guided bomb kits for the Air Force, and $53 million to provide kits for the U.S. Navy.
This was in addition to a $106.6 million Air Force contract awarded in February 2003 to produce GBU-10, -12 and -16 laser guided bomb kits for both the Air Force and Navy. The Paveway II incorporates both a CCG (Computer Control Group) and Air Foil Group (AFG) for 500-, 1000- and 2000-lb.
Warheads that provides precision guidance. The Lockheed Martin Paveway Dual Mode Bomb provides increased accuracy with reduced number of sorties (20-50 percent) and collateral damage to accomplish mission requirements.
----
Metal Storm To Weaponize UAVs For DoD Demonstration
Feb 27, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/uav-04i.html
Arlington - Metal Storm Limited announced today that it is planning to live-fire its 40mm electronic-weapon system on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) helicopter in the U.S. shortly. Preparation and fabrication are well advanced and a UAV airframe has already been shipped into Australia to commence the weapon/UAV integration process.
The live firing, anticipated to be held in the U.S. during the second quarter of 2004, is the key deliverable under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that Metal Storm signed with Dragonfly Pictures Inc (DPI) on February 23. Under the MOU the company's electronic-weapon technology will be integrated with DPI's new Dragonfly DP-4X UAV helicopter for these live firings.
The Dragonfly DP-4X is a man-portable, remotely controlled, Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) UAV that is approximately 85.5 inches long, 32 inches wide, 44 inches high, has a rotor span of 118.5 inches, and weighs approximately 140 pounds. It is designed to carry imaging, communications and environmental sensors for aerial intelligence gathering and reconnaissance.
Dragonfly Pictures Inc. chief executive officer, Mr. Michael Piasecki, said the integration of Metal Storm's unique, lightweight, electronic, multi-shot weapon system complemented DPI's 'systems' approach in preparing the new Dragonfly DP-4X as a weaponized UAV helicopter.
"Metal Storm offers a genuinely transformational electronic-weapon system that will allow us to extend the application of UAVs beyond just information gathering," Mr. Piasecki said.
"Our affordable and versatile Dragonfly DP-4X is being prepared for riskier and more offensive missions to combat many of the new threats that defy traditional battlefield tactics," he said.
Metal Storm director of scientific innovation, Mr. Mike O'Dwyer, said DPI's UAV helicopters were an excellent platform for demonstrating Metal Storm's technology to the U.S. defense industry and military decision-makers because they have already been used in frontline operational locations.
"Currently, small to medium UAV helicopters and airplanes are restricted to the surveillance role as they have no real offensive capability," Mr. O'Dwyer said.
"This project provides us with an ideal means of showcasing the versatility of Metal Storm's electronic-weapon systems in the expanding UAV market, which is expected to grow to $10.5 billion in the next decade," he said.
"Integrating Metal Storm's electronic-weapon system with small, lightweight UAV helicopters, will enable them, for the first time, to undertake small-scale strikes to support ground troops by day or night, escort convoys, clear roads and retaliate against mobile, man-launched ordnance such as those used in Iraq recently," said Mr. O'Dwyer.
Metal Storm's chief executive officer, Mr. Charles Vehlow, said armed UAVs were seen as a vital and emerging defense requirement that could open a new and major market for Metal Storm technology.
"An extra $1 billion in funding for UAV programs was allocated in the 2003/2004 U.S. defense budget to rapidly progress the development of this capability," Mr. Vehlow said.
"Armed UAVs offer affordable support for manned military systems at a reduced cost and without unnecessarily risking soldiers' lives," he said.
"This project allows Metal Storm to support DPI demonstrations for enhanced UAV capabilities now under consideration for the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program.
"The MOU with DPI resulted from one of many U.S.-defense-industry inquiries and project opportunities that have arisen from the successful test-firing of our 24-barrel 40mm Grenade Pod in October of last year," said Mr. Vehlow.
Dragonfly Pictures Inchas pioneered a family of small vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned helicopters for military, civil and commercial users for twelve years. Originally, the platforms developed by DPI were built to support the special effects industry; now DPI's technology is being applied to Homeland Security roles and Convoy protection applications around the globe.
Under Mr. Michael W. Piasecki's leadership, DPI continues a strong tradition of 65+years of helicopter technology development, a legacy that started in 1942 by Frank N. Piasecki, the father of the Tandem Helicopter still in use today in Afghanistan and IRAQ.
DPI has focused its expertise to rapidly develop products that will directly assist small unit commanders which confront ambushes, Land Mines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) on a daily basis. These products are by design: multi-mission flexible, HMMWV compatible, and substantially reduce operator work load and support personnel.
Metal Storm Limited is a defense technology company, employing 60 staff, headquartered in Brisbane, Australia and incorporated in the US, with offices in Washington DC and a defense engineering capability located in Seattle, operating as ProCam Machine LLC. The Company has invented 100% electronic ballistics technology that has no known conventional equivalent.
-------- haiti
Haiti's Lawyer:
U.S. Is Arming Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries, Calls For UN Peacekeepers
By Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill
Feb 27, 2004
Democracy Now / Axis of Logic
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_5364.shtml
Axis Editor's Note: The transcript for Amy Goodman's live interview with Ira Kurzban is below this article. Listen to: Segment
February 25, 2004-As opponents of Haitian President Aristide reject a U.S.-brokered peace plan, we speak with Ira Kurzban who has served as General Counsel for the government of Haiti since 1991. [includes transcript]
The US lawyer representing the government of Haiti charged today that the US government is directly involved in a military coup attempt against the country's democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ira Kurzban, the Miami-based attorney who has served as General Counsel to the Haitian government since 1991, said that the paramilitaries fighting to overthrow Aristide are being backed by Washington.
"I believe that this is a group that is armed by, trained by, and employed by the intelligence services of the United States," Kurzban told the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. "This is clearly a military operation, and it's a military coup."
"There's enough indications from our point of view, at least from my point of view, that the United States certainly knew what was coming about two weeks before this military operation started," Kurzban said. "The United States made contingency plans for Guantanamo."
If a direct US connection is proven, it will mark the second time in just over a decade that Washington has been involved in a coup in Haiti.
Several of the paramilitary leaders now rampaging Haiti are men who were at the forefront of the US-backed campaign of terror during the 1991-94 coup against Aristide. Among the paramilitary figures now leading the current insurrection is Louis Jodel Chamblain, the former number 2 man in the FRAPH paramilitary death squad.
Chamblain was convicted and sentenced in absentia to hard-labor for life in trials for the April 23, 1994 massacre in the pro-democracy region of Raboteau and the September 11, 1993 assassination of democracy-activist Antoine Izméry. Chamblain recently arrived in Gonaives with about 25 other commandos based in the Dominican Republic, where Chamblain has been living since 1994. They were well equipped with rifles, camouflage uniforms, and all-terrain vehicles.
Among the victims of FRAPH under Chamblain's leadership was Haitian Justice Minister Guy Malary. He was ambushed and machine-gunned to death with his bodyguard and a driver on Oct. 14, 1993. According to an October 28, 1993 CIA Intelligence Memorandum obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights "FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to kill Malary." Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, was the founder of FRAPH.
An October 1994 article by journalist Allan Nairn in The Nation magazine quoted Constant as saying that he was contacted by a US Military officer named Col. Patrick Collins, who served as defense attaché at the United States Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Constant says Collins pressed him to set up a group to "balance the Aristide movement" and do "intelligence" work against it. Constant admitted that, at the time, he was working with CIA operatives in Haiti. Constant is now residing freely in the US. He is reportedly living in Queens, NY. At the time, James Woolsey was head of the CIA.
Another figure to recently reemerge is Guy Philippe, a former Haitian police chief who fled Haiti in October 2000 after authorities discovered him plotting a coup with a group of other police chiefs. All of the men were trained in Ecuador by US Special Forces during the 1991-1994 coup. Since that time, the Haitian government has accused Philippe of master-minding deadly attacks on the Police Academy and the National Palace in July and December 2001, as well as hit-and-run raids against police stations on Haiti's Central Plateau over the following two years.
Kurzban also points to the presence of another FRAPH veteran, Jean Tatun. Along with Chamblain, Tatun was convicted of gross violations of human rights and murder in the Raboteau massacre.
"These people came through the Dominican border after the United States had provided 20,000 M-16's to the Dominican army," says Kurzban. "I believe that the United States clearly knew about it before, and that given the fact of the history of these people, [Washington is] probably very, very deeply involved, and I think Congress needs to seriously look at what the involvement of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency has been in this operation. Because it is a military operation. It's not a rag-tag group of liberators, as has often been put in the press in the last week or two."
Kurzban says he has hired military analysts to review photos of the weapons being used by the paramilitary groups. He says that contrary to reports in the media that the armed groups are using weapons originally distributed by Aristide, the gangs are using highly sophisticated and powerful weapons; weapons that far out-gun Aristide's 3,000 member National Police force.
"I don't think that there's any question about the fact that the weapons that they have did not come from Haiti," says Kurzban. "They're organized as a military commando strike force that's going from city to city."
Kurzban says that among the weapons being used by the paramilitaries are: M-16's, M-60's, armor piercing weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. "They have weapons to shoot down the one helicopter that the government has," he said. "They have acted as a pretty tight-knit commando unit."
Chamblain and other paramilitary leaders have said they will march on the capital, Port-au-Prince within two weeks. The US has put forth a proposal, being referred to as a peace plan, that many viewed as favorable to Aristide's opponents. Aristide accepted the plan, but the opposition rejected it. Washington's point man on the crisis is Roger Noriega, Undersecretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs.
"I think Noriega has been an Aristide hater for over a decade," says Kurzban, adding that he believes Noriega allowed the opposition to delay their response to the plan to allow the paramilitaries to capture more territory. "My reaction was they're just giving them more time so they can take over more, that the military wing of the opposition can take over more ground in Haiti and create a fate accompli," Kurzban said. "Indeed, as soon as they said, 'we need an extra day,' I predicted, unfortunately, and correctly, that they would go into Cap Haitian (Haiti's 2nd largest city) and indeed the next morning they did."
The leader of the "opposition" is an American citizen named Andy Apaid. He was born in New York. Haitian law does not allow dual-nationality and he has not renounced his US citizenship. In a recent statement, Congressmember Maxine Waters blasted Apaid and his opposition front, saying she believes "Apaid is attempting to instigate a bloodbath in Haiti and then blame the government for the resulting disaster in the belief that the United States will aid the so-called protestors against President Aristide and his government."
"We have the leader of the opposition, who Mr. Noriega is negotiating with, who Secretary Powell calls and who tells Secretary Powell, you know, 'we need a couple more days' and Secretary Powell says 'that's fine,'" says Kurzban. "I mean, there's some kind of theater of the absurd going on with this opposition where it's led by an American citizen, where they're just clearly stalling for time until they can get more ground covered in Haiti through their military wing, and the United States and Noriega, with a wink and nod, is kind of letting them do that."
Kurzban says that because Aristide's opponents rejected Washington's plan, "the next step clearly is to send in some kind of UN peacekeeping force immediately."
"The question is," says Kurzban. "Will the international community stand by and allow a democracy in this hemisphere to be terminated by a brutal military coup of persons who have a very, very sordid history of gross violations of human rights?"
Democracy Now! (www.democracynow.org) is a nationally-syndicated radio and TV program broadcast on Pacifica Radio, NPR, community TV stations and Free Speech TV Channel 9415 of the DishNetwork. Mike Burke and Sharif Abdel Kouddous contributed to this report. mail@democracynow.org.
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to start with Ira Kurzban, a Miami based lawyer. Since 1991, he served as General Counsel for the government of Haiti. Welcome to Democracy Now!.
IRA KURZBAN: Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. What is your assessment of what's happening in Haiti right now?
IRA KURZBAN: Well, I think this is clearly a military operation, and it's a military coup. We have analyzed the kinds of weapons that these people have brought from the Dominican Republic, who they are, how they're organized, and they're organized, really, as a military commando strike force that's going from city to city. They're very well organized, and they're armed to the teeth with the kinds of weapons, Amy, that really, no one has ever seen in Haiti, except when Haiti had an army.
This notion that somehow, you know, this is kind of a rag-tag group of people who had arms that they got originally from Aristide, which is kind of what's playing in the press generally, is just totally untrue. When we have looked at the weapons that they have, they have M-16's, M-60's. They now have armor piercing weapons they have rocket propelled launchers. They have weapons to shoot down the one helicopter that the government has.
They have acted as a pretty tight-knit commando unit, and they're led by, as I think you were pointing out in the introduction -- they're led by people who were former associates of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Jodel Chamblin was the trigger man for FRAPH during the military coup, when FRAPH -- when FRAPH was written was a creation of the Defense Intelligence Agency of the United States. There's enough indications from our point of view, at least from my point of view, that the United States certainly knew what was coming about two weeks before this military operation started. The United States made contingency plans for Guantanamo.
The U.S. Ambassador in Port-au-Prince began the process of warning American citizens and asking them to register. This was a week before any of this, and two weeks before any of this happened. So, there was a clear feeling that something was going to happen, and what really happened is the combination of Jean Tatun who is a person that the press has rarely reported about in Gonaives, who was a former FRAPH person who we tried and convicted for gross violations of human rights and murder in Raboteau, and is behind what's going on in Gonaives. He had strong connections with Chamblain, the ex-head of FRAPH, and Guy Philippe, a former member of the Haitian armed forces who has attempted previous coups, not only against Aristide, but the Preval government.
These people came through the Dominican border after the United States had provided 20,000 M-16's to the Dominican army. They came through the border, that is Philippe and Chamblain with a really small army of about 20 or 30 highly trained military people with these M-16's and M-60's and all of this other equipment that came through the Dominican border with -- in several trucks with very, very heavy equipment. And quite frankly, I believe that the United States clearly knew about it before, and that given the fact of the history of these people, we are probably very, very deeply involved, and I think congress needs to seriously look at what the involvement of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency has been in this operation.
Because it is a military operation. It's not a rag-tag group of liberators, as has often been put in the press in the last week or two. The second part of it is that it's clear that as a result of a number of stories that have come out in the last two days that the so-called peaceful opposition has been working very, very closely with these people. Guy Philippe was quoted in the Associated Press yesterday saying with a big smile on his face that he has not been officially in contact with the opposition, but that he has received money and support from the Haitian business community. Well, the Haitian business community are the people who are behind what's called the group of 184. Those are the people who were so-called peaceful opposition. It's clear to us that they're stalling tactics in the last week have been designed to develop a fate accompli on the ground. I think that's what we're seeing right now.
AMY GOODMAN: Ira Kurzban, you're saying that you believe that the U.S. Is arming the opposition and did it through sending weapons to Dominican Republic, which were then given over to the opposition and came across the border?
IRA KURZBAN: That's right. I don't think that there's any question about the fact that the weapons that they have did not come from Haiti. They clearly came over the Dominican border when Philippe and Chamblain entered Haiti about two weeks ago.
AMY GOODMAN: Hadn't Guy Philippe been arrested in the Dominican Republic at one time?
IRA KURZBAN: Yes. Guy Philippe was heavily involved in drug dealing in Cap-Haitien and was involved in a coup against Preval. And the reason I point that out is because a lot of the press reports are saying this is all about Aristide and so forth. It has nothing really to do with Aristide. This is a military operation designed to bring back the Haitian army. And I think that the Defenses Intelligence Agency has always wanted to push to have the army reconstituted. So Philippe was involved in a coup in the year 2000 against President Preval and the thrust of that then just as the thrust of it now is, we want to bring back the Haitian Army.
So under the cover of this is all about Aristide and how undemocratic he has been and so forth, it's really an operation to bring back the army. When he tried the coup in 2000 he was fired from the police and fled to the Dominican Republic and the Haitian government has made many efforts to extradite him and to put him on trial. As a result of not only that effort but what happened on December 17 where one of his cohorts readily admitted that Philippe and his cohorts were involved in a coup to take the National Palace. They have tried this two or three times in different ways.
There was an effort in July of 2001 to capture the police stations in Haiti, and that was unsuccessful. There was another effort on December 17 to take the National Palace, and that was unsuccessful. And obviously, they have regrouped. They have obtained these kinds of very, very heavy weapons. And are coming across the border. Yes, I -- to be perfectly clear, Amy, I believe that this is a group that is armed by, trained by, and employed by the intelligence services of the United States. I think that the congress really needs to take a very careful look at this now.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Ira Kurzban, who since 1991 has been a lawyer for the Haitian government, a Miami-based attorney. We have to break and we'll come back in a minute.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman as we talk about the very dire situation in Haiti right now. On the line with us is Ira Kurzban, an attorney for the Haitian government. Do you expect to see Port-au-Prince fall to the opposition forces, heavily armed in the next few days? Is Aristide expecting this? Is Aristide expecting to be forced out again?
IRA KURZBAN: The president went on national TV in Haiti and also spoke with the international community yesterday saying what's really going on about this military coup and asking for international assistance. I mean, the Haitians who are in Port-au-Prince and the police who have acted very, very valiantly against very difficult odds and the palace security are all prepared to fight, and I think they will fight. I don't think that you are going to see the situation that you have seen in some other places where they -- this military operation has been able to roll into the cities because of their disproportionate fire power.
And one thing I think that needs to be made clear, Amy, in this is when the press reports that these people easily went into the city because there's so much opposition to Aristide, I think it's really doing a disservice to the American public because what's happening is people are trying to fight back with machetes and rocks and bottles, and they're facing M-60's which are the weapon that Rambo had in the movie. I mean, these are huge, powerful weapons against people who are trying to stand up for democracy and of course, you know, they are -- they have not been able to stop this well-armed and well-trained group of commandos.
And I think the situation, though, in Port-au-Prince is very different. There are many, many police now in Port-au-Prince. There are security forces in Port-au-Prince. I think they're prepared to fight. I think they will fight. I think the president, and really being a statesman, is trying to say to the world, we need to stop this. You know, this is the 21st century. Haiti should be moving forward. We should be moving forward toward peace. We should resolve this in a peaceful way. There's going to be a lot of bloodshed and with bloodshed, there's also going to be boat people who are going to be fleeing the country in the next six months or a year. If these guys do take over, they're bad actors. These are people who were killers and even as the Secretary of State acknowledged, thugs and criminals who have a very, very bad human rights history in Haiti.
AMY GOODMAN: Roger Noriega led the delegation to Haiti to broker the peace plan, the former aide to Jesse Helms. What do you think his role in this is, Ira Kurzban?
IRA KURZBAN: I think Noriega has been an Aristide hater for over a decade. I would like to think that he was really trying to broker a sincere agreement, but when I saw what happened, and I was there on Saturday before the President almost immediately agreed, after an hour or two discussion, to the peace plan where it would clearly result in his having to share power with people who have been his bitter enemies for a long time and then the opposition said we needed several more days, and you know, Noriega and the others were willing to give it to them, my reaction was they're just giving them more time so they can take over more, that the military wing of the opposition can take over more ground in Haiti and create a fate accompli and indeed, as soon as they said, we need an extra day, I predicted, unfortunately, and correctly, that they would go into Cap Haitian and indeed the next morning they did.
The thing that's peculiar and I don't think Americans understand this, the leader of the opposition, Andy Apaid, is an American citizen. He is not a Haitian citizen, because Haiti does not recognize dual nationality. One must choose either their Haitian citizenship or their U.S. citizenship. He has never renounced his U.S. Citizenship. We have the leader of the opposition, who Mr. Noriega is negotiating with, who Secretary Powell calls and who tells Secretary Powell, "you know, we need a couple more days" and Secretary Powell says that's fine. I mean, there's some kind of theater of the absurd going on with this opposition where it's led by an American citizen, where they're just clearly stalling for time until they can get more ground covered in Haiti through their military wing, and the United States and Noriega with a wink and nod as kind of letting them do that. Now they have said no. Presumably if the U.S. is serious, about what Secretary Powell said in preserving democracy and allowing President Aristide to fulfill his term, he agreed to the peace plan. They have not. The next step clearly is to send in some kind of U.N. Peacekeeping force immediately.
AMY GOODMAN: It's interesting that you said that Secretary of State Colin Powell called them, what did you say, criminals and thugs.
IRA KURZBAN: Thugs.
AMY GOODMAN: Because when President Clinton announced that the U.S. was going to be moving in, to challenge the coup of 1991-94, he talked about them as murderers and rapists and criminals. Meanwhile, Emmanuel Constant, the head of the FRAPH at the time was on the payroll of the Defense Intelligence Agency. This is when James Woolsey was the head of the C.I.A. On the one hand, you have the president attacking them and on the other hand, you have the people leading the coup on the U.S. payroll.
IRA KURZBAN: I think that there is -- as I said before, I believe that Congress should certainly look at, and investigate what the role of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the C.I.A. is here. You know, I personally believe that they are involved, given the history, given the nature of the weapons that these people have, and given that their major demand is the return of the Haitian army, even more than anything -- any other demand they have made in the last two weeks, and given these long-standing ties. So, yeah, I -- it's true that the Secretary has said what he said, and we hope that he is sincere in saying that. And we hope that he is going to act on it now, and that the administration is going to act on it.
The President of Haiti facing a military coup, has now said, we need international assistance. He said it to the world yesterday. And the question is, will the world act or will they allow a democracy to be destroyed. No one has ever contested that President Aristide's election was not a full, fair election and no one has ever said that Aristide would not have been elected in the year 2000 because of his overwhelming popularity. The question is will the international community stand by and allow a democracy in this hemisphere to be terminated by a brutal military coup of persons who have a very, very sordid history and gross violations of human rights.
AMY GOODMAN: Ira Kurzban, lawyer for the Haitian Government.
----
Rebels Take Crossroads Town Near Haiti's Capital
February 27, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Haiti-Uprising.html?hp
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Rebels who have overrun half of Haiti seized another town Friday and closed in on the tense capital, where looting erupted and supporters of embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fired guns in the air.
A new rebel group seized Haiti's third-largest city, Les Cayes, on the southern coast, in the 3-week-old uprising.
As the United States and France made clear that Aristide should resign, the rebels freed about 67 prisoners in Mirebalais, about 25 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince, witnesses said.
``The police ran. They left everything and went into Port-au-Prince,'' rebel leader Guy Philippe said from his base in the northern port of Cap-Haitien. ``They left hours before'' the rebel advance, he said.
Philippe said he did not expect much resistance from the outgunned and demoralized Haitian police force, and that he did not want to fight die-hard Aristide supporters.
At a police station in Croix-des-Bouquets, officers had shed their uniforms for civilian clothes, appeared to have abandoned their guns and were ready to flee.
People went about their business, though, with street vendors hawking goods.
Haiti's third-largest city, the southern port of Les Cayes, fell Thursday to the Base Resistance, a group allied with Haiti's opposition Democratic Platform but not tied to the rebels.
In Port-au-Prince, armed Aristide loyalists set up more blazing barricades to protect the presidential palace, and some fired shots into the air. Dozens of roadblocks were built overnight, where Aristide supporters were robbing motorists.
Hundreds of people attacked the port. In a chaotic scene, people looted containers of food, TVs and furniture. No police were in sight.
``There's a lot of humanitarian aid down there. If it gets worse, it could all go,'' said Wyk Lemke, head of the Haitian Shipping Association.
The international community continued efforts to resolve the crisis through diplomacy, demanding a political settlement between Aristide and opposition politicians before they would agree to send peacekeepers. But it appeared to be too late for that.
In Paris, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin met with Aristide's chief of staff Jean-Claude Desgranges and his Foreign Minister Joseph Antonio about the crisis in its former colony. Neither side would comment afterward, and Antonio abruptly canceled a scheduled news conference.
De Villepin, who on Wednesday urged Aristide to step down, had been expected to explore ideas for new leadership. France has taken the lead among nations in seeking the departure of Aristide. On Thursday, Secretary of State Colin Powell came close to telling Aristide he should bow out before his term expires in February 2006.
``Whether or not he is able to effectively continue as president is something he will have to examine carefully in the interests of the Haitian people,'' Powell said.
Aristide told CNN on Thursday he would not resign.
He also said it wouldn't take much international aid to crush the insurgency, which has been joined by former Haitian army death squad leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain and Philippe, an army officer who was Aristide's assistant police chief for north Haiti.
``From my point of view, if we have a couple of dozen of international soldiers, police, together right now, it could be enough to send a positive signal to those terrorists,'' Aristide said. ``Once they realize the international community refuses (to allow) the terrorists to keep killing people, we can prevent them to kill more people.''
Jamaica's Foreign Minister K.D. Knight, speaking for the 15-nation Caribbean Community that includes Haiti, appealed to the U.N. Security Council for immediate military assistance.
But Powell and his counterparts from France and Canada said Haiti's government and opposition politicians must reach a political agreement before any peacekeepers go.
The rebellion erupted Feb. 5 in western Gonaives, the fourth-largest city. Cap-Haitien, the second-largest city, fell easily Sunday.
About 80 people, half of them police officers, have been killed so far.
The crisis has been brewing since Aristide's party swept flawed legislative elections in 2000 and international donors froze millions of dollars in aid.
Aristide, a former priest of Haiti's slums who in 1990 became its first freely elected leader, has lost popularity amid accusations he condoned corruption, failed to help the poor and had thugs attack political opponents.
He has agreed to a U.S.-backed plan that requires him to share power with his opponents, but the opposition rejected the proposal, insisting he resign.
Many foreigners and Haitians have fled the country.
Americans with M-16s guarded a convoy of U.N. workers and their families on the way to Port-au-Prince's airport Thursday, passing the barricades of wrecked cars, rocks and tires.
Military helicopters of the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, ferried people from its embassy to the airport, which was packed.
American Airlines canceled flights to the United States, saying its workers couldn't reach the airport.
Brazil dispatched troops to evacuate its citizens and protect its embassy, as did the United States and Canada.
Haitians were fleeing their country in boats, but not in great numbers. The U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a dozen small craft carrying 546 Haitians near the Haitian coast this week, spokesman Luis Diaz said.
-------- iraq
Scenes From a Nasty, Brutish, Long War
By Christian Parenti,
The Nation
February 27, 2004
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17986
The explosion hits just as our omelets arrive. The air shakes and conversation is brought to a stunned halt by the forceful sonic jolt. Two blocks away a small convoy of US Humvees has been attacked by a remote activated bomb, known in military vernacular as an "improvised explosive device." Plastered into a narrow cement traffic median, the IED knocked out the windshields of two Humvees, badly wounded an Iraqi translator, killed an unlucky bystander and wounded several others with shrapnel and concrete.
The next day is New Year's Eve, and the cold night sky is crisscrossed with the gently arcing tracer rounds from bursts of celebratory gunfire. Below, the city is calm but tense. Everyone waits for "something big." It comes as a huge explosion with a dense angry core and wide rumbling echo. Following the path of police cars and an ambulance, several colleagues and I reach the smoldering remains of the upscale Nabil restaurant just as the first medics unload.
A car bomb has killed eight and wounded thirty-five. The scene is Armageddon in miniature. Illuminated by orange flame, the surrounding streets are strewn with debris: twisted metal, broken glass, part of a tweed jacket, a steering rod, half a human foot with toes.
Welcome to the new Baghdad, and to the vexing little war that now grips central Iraq. After a month of traveling to many of the so-called Sunni Triangle's hot spots, seeing the fighting firsthand and spending time with both the resistance and the US military, I am left with the impression that this is a war that will neither end soon nor dramatically escalate. Instead, the conflict seems to have settled into a lopsided and contradiction-fraught stalemate.
On the one hand, aggressive new counterinsurgency tactics - including high-tech surveillance, precision artillery, constant raids, mass detention and the fencing off of whole villages - are doing serious damage to the armed underground. But these same tactics also humiliate and enrage many otherwise pro-US Iraqis, possibly expanding the pool of potential recruits for the guerrillas.
Meanwhile, the highly decentralized and secretive resistance has enough popular support and equipment to continue reproducing itself for some time to come. But the insurgency lacks the ideological coherence or organization it would need to grow into a more formidable force. And its tactics, like the Americans', though at times effective, alienate many war-weary Iraqis.
The Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya is resistance country. The graffiti in this heavily Baathist and Sunni area strikes a defiant posture: "Saddam, in our souls and with our lives we will sacrifice for you!" Or, "God protect and guide the hand of al mujahedeen."
The US military considers Adhamiya one of the city's most dangerous sectors. American patrols are regularly attacked here. Two Time journalists were badly wounded by a December 10 grenade attack in Adhamiya, and when Saddam was captured three days later, the neighborhood's streets exploded in spontaneous protest.
In Adhamiya I meet Abu Hassan, a former army captain who now imports machinery and funds resistance "operations." He says he might introduce me to some of the fighters.
At our first meeting one of his sons shows up with a pistol. The young man empties the gun's chambers into his palm and shows me the flat-tipped and highly destructive dumdum bullets. Abu Hassan warns me to be completely honest about my identity and tells me to bring copies of the books I've written. "Otherwise some people might think you are CIA," he says with a smile.
Next he introduces me to a well-dressed man who speaks English but won't give his name. The man says he's a former general in the Iraqi Army. Over little glasses of strong sweet tea, he holds forth with a torrent of virulently anti-Shiite, hard-core Sunni Baathism.
"The Shia know nothing! The Sunni must govern Iraq," growls the ex-general. But his main grievance is America. "We could not fight their weapons, they bombed us from the sky. The Iraqi Army was very strong, very important. It was very bad when America destroyed it!" The former general is on the edge of the couch, gesticulating, driving home his points with an intense, contained rage. Behind him on a TV screen, a black-and-white Cary Grant chatters away in silence.
For the next meeting, I am given simple instructions: Go to a certain street corner and wait. Someone in a car will pick me up. When the car arrives it is Abu Hassan. He's tense and again warns of the dangers. "If anything goes wrong they will find your hotel and kill you."
By now it is night, and the electricity is out. After a circuitous drive through the dark city we arrive in the cramped and muddy Adhamiya souk; its old streets, crowded with stalls, shops and garbage, are too narrow for US Humvees to enter. There we pick up a man whose face is wrapped in a kaffiyeh and keep driving.
The man, in his late 40s, says he was a professional soldier and that he now runs a team of resistance fighters that has launched many operations. He says he is fighting because the war shamed and destroyed a once proud army and because the occupation is abusing and humiliating Iraqis and Islam. The goal of his team, which is made up of "less than twenty" local men, is to "repel the invaders and restore sovereignty."
Does his cell have a name, or is it part of any larger group? He pauses as the car lurches around a corner and then snaps, "We are al mujahedeen," using the general term for holy warriors. "Elsewhere the fighters are called Mohamed's Army. But the names do not matter. We are all fighting for our country." He adds that "our leaders have contact with Saddam's Fedayeen," referring to the old regime's paramilitary terror squads and suicide fighters.
He claims that his team, along with one from al Quds and one from Ramadi, were responsible for recent attacks in Karbala, and that contrary to press reports, no car bombs were used. "Some of our RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and small Katyusha rockets hit cars with gas in them and they exploded."
He also claims that the Iraqi resistance had nothing to do with the Nabil restaurant bombing. "We do not kill Iraqis, unless they are military interpreters or spies." And for these "traitors," his team maintains a "blacklist" of names, several of which have already been "crossed off" - that is, assassinated. To bolster his claim about not hurting Iraqis, he points out sites around Adhamiya where there have clearly been IED explosions. "See, there are no shops here, the roads are wide."
It would be very difficult to prove or disprove this masked man's assertions, short of watching him in action. But the man's apparent skittishness, the ubiquitous but discreetly stashed pistols and the grave risk to any Iraqi who would pretend to be a resistance leader together make his story credible.
As for the underground's structure and methods, the man confirms what is already known: The resistance is highly decentralized and kept that way by fear of spies and lack of secure communications. He adds that his group "believes in the ideology of the Baath Party and of Islam" and that it is loyal to Saddam, though it did not take orders from him. When asked how Saddam's capture will affect their war, he says: "We will keep fighting. Our goals are clear."
He adds that his group "has many eyes working inside the police and in the new Iraqi Army." When I ask about new American methods for jamming the frequencies used to trigger IEDs, he says, "We have our engineers; they use the remote-controls of car-door locks and garage door openers and other devices." He says they are constantly finding ways to foil the American military's technology. In light of the recent decline in IEDs, this last bit sounds like bluster.
Ultimately, the meeting leaves the impression of a resistance that is ideologically and organizationally fragmented, with tactics and tools but no clear strategy. The fighters seem to be less a movement than a collection of shamed and angry men with access to military training, weapons and targets.
And the masked man's allegiance to Saddam is not particularly surprising. Some reports in the Western press have portrayed the resistance as anti-Saddam nationalists, contradicting Donald Rumsfeld's assertions that they are "dead enders," loyal to the vanquished regime. But among the fighters and resistance supporters and Sunni in general I talked with, the former dictator is actually quite popular. This phenomenon may be difficult to explain, given Saddam's atrocities, but it is real.
One former Fedayeen fighter I interviewed loves Saddam Hussein despite having been jailed for a month and severely tortured by his police. Now this man is largely apolitical but he supports the resistance in principle (a family member was active but is now jailed, and other kin have stored weapons for the underground). When Saddam was captured the former torture victim wept openly, and in conversation he will defend the ex-dictator to the end.
An hour outside of Baghdad lies the city of al Falluja, aka "the wild west." This heavily Sunni desert region is one of Iraq's most religious and culturally traditional areas. Here, Iraq's large clans exercise considerable power. This is also one of the very worst places to be a US soldier. IEDs and mortar attacks are common, and in the first two weeks of January, guerrillas near Falluja shot down three helicopters.
A series of American units have cycled through Falluja, but since September the city has been the responsibility of a battalion from the elite 82nd Airborne. To see their counterinsurgency methods up close, I have "embedded" at forward operating base Volturno. Known informally among the troops as "camp dreamland," the base was once a middle-class resort. Its little bungalows are now sandbagged barracks, and the artificial lake is half empty but still visited by exotic birds. Not all of the soldiers' time is spent lakeside, however; they also take frequent trips to town.
It's a cool late afternoon, and "Operation Dozer" - a large-scale incursion into Falluja - is taking longer than expected, much longer.
"Man, this is turning into a cluster fuck," quips one of the paratroopers. Instead of lasting two or three hours, Dozer has lasted all day. And when the 82nd Airborne spends any extended period of time in Falluja, they get attacked.
The mission is to search houses and bulldoze roadside guardrails and other obstacles used to hide IEDs. Alpha Company has ridden to the edge of town in Humvees that look like sturdy, open-bed pick-up trucks. To stop bullets and shrapnel, the troops have welded thick metal sheets of Amox plating to the sides of truck beds. When that's unavailable they use sandbags and hang extra flak vests over the doors.
At the edge of Falluja the paratroopers dismount and fan out across the trash-strewn desert looking for booby traps, then sweep over the barren embankment of an elevated highway and down into the city. Overhead, two Kiowa choppers skim the rooftops looking for snipers.
Shortly after the 82nd arrived here in September, an IED killed one of its sergeants and wounded seven others, including a thoughtful 25-year-old lieutenant and platoon leader named Matt Bacik. Shrapnel caught Bacik in the side of his buttocks, exited through his right thigh, just missed his testicles and then ripped into his left thigh.
As the somewhat bashful Bacik explains, "I really don't know why my stuff is still there." He pauses. "The holes just don't line up." After two weeks in the hospital the young officer was back at Volturno and within a month back leading missions.
During Operation Dozer I am shadowing Bacik, who is in charge of Alpha Company's second platoon. At times I also follow one of his squads, led by the self-effacing and good-natured Staff Sgt. Chris Corcione.
After searching houses all morning, Bacik and another platoon leader from Alpha Company have moved up to "phase line dagger" and are about to cordon off and search more houses. They're briefing a superior on their progress when all of a sudden we hear two or three loud explosions, someone yells "RPG!" and the air fills with gunfire.
Bacik is running, sprinting as best he can under the weight of a flak vest, ammo and other gear. His young radio operator runs after him. The guns are still snapping away, the assault coming from several directions at once. Bacik rounds a corner and heads onto a narrow side street to link up with his most forward squad, which is closest to the explosions.
"Two-two move up, get those trucks out of the alley," Bacik says to the sergeant in charge of second squad, second platoon. We are a block from where the RPGs hit. When word comes in that some of the shots might have originated from an empty school, Bacik and Corcione's squad move to "search and clear."
Crossing a wide empty lot toward the school, an amplified and fiercely impassioned sermon belts out from the tower of a nearby mosque. If this were a movie the scene would reek of cliché. In Falluja there is almost always some lilting Arabic verse floating in the air, like eerie mood music. And now, during this high-noon-style walk across dusty open ground, some unseen imam is yelling wildly in a language few of the paratroopers understand.
"What the fuck is he saying?" someone asks nervously.
"Oh, you know, 'Kill the infidel Americans, they're over here by the school,'" deadpans Corcione. The school is cleared room by room, doors kicked in, locks sawed off, two stories and the roof searched. No RPGs and no brass shell casings from AK-47 rounds, and no one hiding out. It's back to phase line dagger to search more houses.
During these searches, the paratroopers are not unduly aggressive, but as in the school, they often damage property, and it is clear that the people, particularly the women and children, are humiliated and scared. As one soldier - who not unlike the people of Falluja is deeply religious - admits: "There's no nice way to search someone's house. I think about how if we did this in eastern Tennessee, where I am from, they'd just as soon shoot you as look at you."
Then it happens again, the rapid bomb-bomb-bomb of several RPGs and more small-arms fire. This time an armor-piercing RPG has hit one of the few tanklike Bradleys on the mission and destroyed its engine, but no one is hurt.
Again Bacik, along with his company commander, Capt. Terence Caliguire, and two squads, moves forward. Someone is seen dashing across rooftops. He's trapped. The paratroopers storm in and arrest the shooter, a kid of about 18. For good measure they also round up three men in the house from which the kid fired. Bound and hooded, these guys will likely end up in the vast and terrifying Abu Ghraib prison camp, home to almost 13,000 detainees.
Now it's really late. Several IDEs have been found and destroyed in huge controlled blasts. The longer we stay in town, the more time the resistance has to set up attacks. The paratroopers pull out of Falluja in slow, orderly stages and then, once on the road, make a high-speed dash back to the safety of FOB Volturno, where the only risks are occasional mortar rounds.
During the meeting to go over Operation Dozer's after-action report, which is a meeting of all the platoon and squad leaders, the issues discussed are, not surprisingly, all tactical. The very serious and bespectacled Captain Caliguire runs down the list of what worked and what didn't. Absent from the discussion is the issue of winning over hearts and minds.
"On that front," explains Caliguire later, "we do our best. We treat people with respect and dignity, but you can't win them all. Security comes first. Do people resent the house searches? Yes. But my job is to bring security to Falluja and keep my men safe. And there's not gonna be any reconstruction or NGOs or UN in here if there isn't security first."
Relaxing on his cot, Lieutenant Bacik makes similar points. "I do what I am told. If they want me to build a bridge, I'll do it. But now we have to suppress this resistance. We fight with restraint and discipline and concern for civilians, but this is a war."
In short, the 82nd is doing what seems to work best for its specific purposes - "search and attack." That means arresting and killing the underground and its supporters. They use cordon search operations, undercover Special Forces, local spies and information extracted from detainees - who, by the Pentagon's own admission, are subject to psychological torture such as isolation and prolonged sleep deprivation. With its intelligence, the 82nd launches continuous lightning raids in and out of Falluja.
As for the delicate task of winning the people's loyalty, that is up to the civilian-run Coalition Provisional Authority, which so far can't seem to provide jobs, fix the electricity, clean up the garbage or get the oil flowing. In the meantime, the war in Falluja is far from over.
Elsewhere in Iraq, one can find less precise US tactics that at times look like Israeli-style collective punishment. In Samarra I meet the newly arrived Stryker Brigade, named after the unit's special new armored personnel carriers that have high wheels and elaborate medieval looking metal grilles skirting their sides. The cagelike grilles are designed to catch and thus minimize the blast impact of RPGs.
Only three weeks "in country" and the Strykers have lost five guys and two vehicles. One of the nervous GIs, in the middle of a big cordon search operation, confirms what people in Samarra have been saying: Not far away the resistance knocked out a Stryker with a mine. In response, the Stryker Brigade destroyed two homes with bulldozers.
On the southern edge of Baghdad, under a date palm canopy and among the misty winter fields of al-Doura, a town known for its resistance activity, a farmer named Abdel gives a tour of his crop beds. Poking up from the brown stalks are between fifteen and twenty clean, white, unexploded US mortars. One local told a journalist that the military said the mortars would be removed when the farmers handed over resistance fighters. "How I am going to plant these fields?" asks Abdel.
North of Baghdad, not far from the town of Balad, lies the village of Abu Hishma, on a flat plain above a wide bend in the Tigris River. For the last two months, this hamlet of 7,000 has been totally surrounded by razor wire.
After a series of resistance attacks, one of which killed a GI, the local US commander, Lieut. Col. Nathan Sassaman, sealed the village and threatened to deport the residents to a resettlement camp further east if the violence continued. Now the people of Abu Hishma carry special identification cards and abide by a dusk-to-dawn curfew. On top of that, the colonel forced 126 community leaders, family sheiks and less powerful mukhtars, to sign a contract promising that each signatory will submit to incarceration if there is any resistance activity in the neighborhoods under their responsibility.
At the village gate, the mood is one of defeat. "They treat us like Palestinians," complains a farmer, then adds in English: "Sassaman - Ariel Sharon number one." Several Iraqi police are standing nearby but instead of trying to shut down the criticism, join in. "They treat us like dirt. We just take orders from the Americans. The whole thing is ridiculous." Then, breaking into laughter, the cop adds, "Our chief of police is in jail in Balad right now!"
Another razor-wire-surrounded village is Saddam's hometown, Awja, further north near Tikrit. Since the triple layer of wire went up and the residents started carrying new IDs, guerrilla activity has dropped off dramatically.
"Any hajji comes near the wire we shoot 'em. One of our scouts has like fifty-five confirmed kills," explains specialist Keltner, a soldier with the 22nd Infantry who is guarding the checkpoint at the village entrance.
Inside Awja all is quiet, and the few people around seem meek and resigned, but as we leave, the troops at the gate uncover a cache of RPGs. "Fucking Mortar Man!" says a GI, referring to a lone resistance fighter who still plagues them. "This was right on the other side of the berm. They were gonna hit the guard shack," explains the excited soldier.
To find out what the rural resistance thinks of these tactics I visit a farm on the muddy flood plains near Balad. My translator and I are here to meet a group of former - or momentarily retired - resistance fighters. They are farmers, all brothers and devout, ritualistic Sufis.
Sitting on the floor of a cold farmhouse waiting for a lunch of fried chicken, rice and soup, one young man explains: "My brothers and I did many operations against the Americans, but it is dangerous to talk about this. We spent a lot of money on remote controls."
In these tightly knit villages, the resistance seems to be even more informally structured than the networked cells described in Adhamiya. "Sometimes a group of brothers or cousins will do an action," explains the man. "Or maybe someone from Abu Hishma might ask you to help with an action. You'll go to a field and you will find, maybe, some of your friends and maybe other people you don't know." He says that fear and disparate beliefs have kept this network of overlapping "cells" from uniting.
According to this young farmer and his brothers, the guerrillas all have different reasons for fighting. Some fight for Islam, some for Saddam, some just to get the Americans out and some for revenge. These young men seem to have fought for all of the above: They lost their father to an American bomb, they feel humiliated by the occupation, they are intensely religious and a few of them really like Saddam but are not in the Baath Party.
So why have they stopped their attacks in the last few weeks? The man doing most of the talking thinks for a bit, and then, revealing the deep war weariness of many Iraqis, says, "It's hard to fight and kill other people." He adds, "The Americans are very brutal, they are monsters. They have killed whole families and arrested a quarter of the men in this area."
As if on cue, two deafeningly loud Apache helicopter gunships sweep low over the farm. "Last night they were shooting at the other bank of the river," says one of the men.
Just before lunch is served and the political talk winds down, the former guerrilla concludes, "Perhaps the resistance is just resting, waiting to see what the Americans will do next."
Back in Baghdad, it is clear that while some in the underground may be giving up, the war is still in full effect. Three truckers working for the Coalition Provisional Authority have been shot and one killed. At my hotel, a colleague mentions that an Arab TV crew from Reuters was almost killed by the resistance, who accused the reporters of collaborating with the Americans. Fast talking and perhaps a little help from Allah got the journalists home safely.
A week or so later another huge car bomb goes off at the aptly named "Assassins' Gate," one of the main entrances to the coalition's fortressed "Green Zone." Racing through a gloomy morning of thick, chilled smog, a friend and I get to the blast area just as American troops are pushing back the first wave of reporters. The bomb has killed more than twenty and wounded sixty. It is the usual hellish scene of gore and wreckage. Whatever party, or cell, set off the bomb has released no statement, made no demands. But the brutal semiotics of the casualties are clear: In addition to three US soldiers and three American contractors, the dead and wounded are all Iraqis who, whether as maids or managers, worked with the coalition.
Christian Parenti is the author, most recently, of "The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America From Slavery to the War on Terror" (Basic). His forthcoming book, "Empire of Chaos: Tripping Through Occupied Iraq" will be published this fall by the New Press.
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Iraqi National Congress faces growing number of investigations
By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Fri, Feb. 27, 2004
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8060399.htm
WASHINGTON - The Iraqi National Congress, long championed by officials at the White House, Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, is facing a growing number of investigations into its provision of bogus intelligence on Iraq and whether some of its members may have tried to cash in on the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Democrats in the House of Representatives have asked the Defense Intelligence Agency to turn over raw intelligence supplied by the Iraqi exile group. They plan to review it for its accuracy and reliability, according to officials in the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill.
The move follows a recent decision by the Senate Intelligence Committee to expand its probe of prewar intelligence on Saddam to include the INC and other groups that played important roles in President Bush's decision to invade Iraq last March.
Democrats on the House intelligence panel were angered by reports that the DIA is continuing to pay the Iraqi group $3 million to $4 million a year for information, despite findings that show most of the group's earlier information on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism was false.
The continuing payments were first reported on Feb. 22 by Knight Ridder.
The INC's leader, Ahmad Chalabi, has had powerful patrons in the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, as well as on both sides of the aisle in the U.S. Senate.
But three senior administration officials said the mood in Washington toward Chalabi has turned sharply cooler as a result of the revelations about prewar intelligence supplied by Iraqi defectors made available by his group.
In addition, several contracts for rebuilding Iraq that were won by firms with business or family ties to Chalabi are under intense scrutiny.
No criminal wrongdoing has been charged as a result of any of the probes.
One controversial contract for $327 million to supply equipment to the Iraqi armed forces was suspended by the U.S. Army this week following protests from the losing bidder.
A defense official said the DIA, the military's principal intelligence arm which is paying the INC to collect information on Iraq, isn't conducting any review of the INC's use of U.S. taxpayers' funds.
The senior officials said the White House's mood toward the INC changed markedly after Chalabi told a British newspaper on Feb. 18 that it didn't matter whether the group's prewar information was correct because its goal of ousting Saddam has been achieved.
Chalabi was quoted by the Daily Telegraph as saying: "As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important." In a Feb. 20 letter to the newspaper's editor, Chalabi claimed he was misquoted.
The article "implies that I admitted to disseminating false information, this is absolutely untrue," Chalabi wrote. "For the record, the INC never `coached' Iraqi defectors nor did we ever knowingly pass on false information."
Several officials said Bush was angered by Chalabi's comments and determined to find out whether the INC or anyone with ties to it is seeking personal gain from the war in Iraq.
"His (Chalabi's) time is rapidly coming," said one senior official.
He and others spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to speak for the administration and because of the political sensitivities involved.
A copy of the letter was supplied by former assistant defense secretary Richard Perle, a long-time Chalabi friend and booster.
The INC's Washington spokesman, Francis Brooke, was in Baghdad and couldn't be reached for comment.
The $327 million contract to equip the Iraqi armed forces was awarded to Nour USA, a Virginia firm incorporated last May.
Among Nour's management is A. Huda Farouki, a businessman with close ties to Chalabi.
The contract was suspended following protests by a Polish arms-trading firm that bid unsuccessfully for the work. The firm charged Nour submitted an unrealistically low bid and had insufficient experience.
The New York newspaper Newsday reported this week that Nour also bankrolled another firm, Erinys, which won an $80 million contract to provide security for Iraq's oil sector.
A U.S. military official engaged in Iraq policy and deeply critical of the INC and its leader said, "Chalabi's run is about over, and it's about time.
"A lot of the information they provided was suspect from the start - some of it was almost laughably false - but it got into the bloodstream anyway, and the minute he and his people got to Baghdad, we started hearing horror stories about them taking over other peoples' property - houses, cars and so on," the official said.
"Now we're looking to see whether they've stuck their noses into the (postwar reconstruction) contracting process, too," he said.
Chalabi lost a key Washington ally this week in Perle, who resigned from the Defense Policy Board, an influential committee that advises Rumsfeld. In his resignation letter, Perle said he didn't want his views to be misconstrued for Bush administration policy during the election season.
At a Washington event Friday, and in a later telephone interview, Perle denied reports that the Bush administration had asked him to resign.
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Iraqi Ayatollah Insists on Vote by End of Year
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/international/middleeast/27IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 26 - Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most powerful religious leader, demanded Thursday that nationwide elections be held by the end of the year, but dropped his earlier insistence on holding them before the United States transfers sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30.
In a statement released by his office in Najaf, Ayatollah Sistani called for "clear guarantees," possibly in the form of a resolution by the United Nations Security Council, that elections would be held in 2004. He said the caretaker government that is likely to take control of the country from the Americans at the end of June should confine itself to an agenda largely limited to setting up the elections.
"The period in which an unelected government should take control of this country must be short and for few months only," the ayatollah said.
His remarks increased pressure on the United Nations, the United States and Iraq's American-appointed leaders to get to work immediately on setting up the elections. There is no firm plan on how to do so, or for what shape the caretaker government would take after June 30. Nor is it clear how such a government would have the power to administer a country faced with violence and growing religious and ethnic differences.
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said last week that the earliest date for elections would be the end of this year, provided planning begins immediately. But he also implied that it would be difficult to stay on that timetable and suggested that elections could be held later in 2005.
Although Ayatollah Sistani has long maintained that he and other Shiite leaders should remain aloof from the give-and-take of politics, he is not hesitating to use his moral authority to affect decisions that will shape Iraq's future.
His remarks last month forced the United States to abandon a plan to hand over sovereignty through a system of nationwide caucuses. And it was his pleas that brought the United Nations back to Iraq after it had largely pulled out following the deadly truck-bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad last August.
A team of United Nations experts who visited Iraq issued a report last week concluding it would not be feasible to hold credible elections before June 30. The United States argued that Iraq lacked a roster of voters and other fundamental elements that could make elections possible.
In his statement on Thursday, Ayatollah Sistani said he accepted the United Nations team's assessment. He did not spell out any design for the caretaker government.
The 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council are drafting a temporary constitution that is supposed to lay out the shape of the government.
Ayatollah Sistani, leader of the country's Shiite Muslims, said the elections should select members of a national assembly, which could then draft a permanent constitution.
"Although the team has dismissed the idea of handing sovereignty over to an elected government, its decision that it is possible to hold elections at the end of this year is extremely important," the statement said.
Before issuing his statement, Ayatollah Sistani met for more than an hour with five Shiite members of the Iraqi Governing Council. It was not clear what was discussed.
Mr. Annan said last week that one of the first necessary steps would be to have an election commission establish the rules and structure for a national vote. After that, he said, it would take at least eight months to set up polling places and other election hardware.
"We support the statement made by Sistani in all its details," Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a member of the Governing Council, said after the meeting. "We have been blessed by visiting Sistani, and we took instructions from him." He gave no other details.
Officials at the United Nations said Thursday they would withhold publ comment on Ayatollah Sistani's statement.
While Iraqi leaders continue to wrestle with the timing and structure of the elections, they are also working to resolve several other potentially divisive issues, including an interim constitution, due on Saturday, and a status-of-forces agreement for the continuing presence of American troops, due by March.
The negotiations over the temporary constitution have been riven by disagreements over several issues, including the role of Islam in politics and the degree of autonomy that should be granted to the Kurdish people in the north.
Dan Senor, a spokesman for the civilian administrators here, predicted that the Iraqis would complete their work by their deadline Saturday. But he suggested that some important elements of the document might be left for later.
"It doesn't have to cover everything," Mr. Senor said of the temporary constitution. "But it certainly has to include the separation of powers, an independent judiciary. We believe that federalism should be addressed."
Ayatollah Sistani is said to be closely watching the debates over the interim constitution and is presumed by many people to have an effective veto power over it.
American occupation officials have pressed ahead rapidly with plans to pull back from the country's major cities, including Baghdad, and to hand over responsibility for much of the security to Iraq's reconstituted police, civil defense force and army.
The American military commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen Ricardo Sanchez, said at a news conference in Baghdad today that he expected the pullback of United States units to camps outside the cities, or on the cities' outskirts, to take place by "mid- to late April," two months ahead of the date for the sovereignty transfer. But he said any Iraqi resistance groups planning to exploit the pullback "will be making a deadly error," because American troops will remain poised with "quick-reaction forces" to strike against any attackers inside the cities.
"Let me emphasize that this does not mean that we are not going to be in the cities," General Sanchez said, outlining plans for American troops to mount joint patrols with Iraqi security forces and to conduct any other military operations inside the cities that are judged necessary.
He gave a cautiously optimistic assessment of American progress in the war, saying he was confident that the new Iraqi political structures could be successfully defended by American and Iraqi forces and their allied partners. He refused to be drawn out on the question of whether American troop commanders considered the June 30 date for the sovereignty transfer to be too hasty - a view common among other American officers in Iraq - saying that the date was fixed.
But when he was pressed on the challenges American troops may face after June 30, he offered a mixed view. "The security situation is manageable whatever governance situation there may be."
Later, he was more cautious. "Is it possible the country could move to civil war, and U.S. forces could end up having to separate ethnic groups?" he said. "I think it's possible, but I don't think it's likely."
Allied officials who spoke with reporters later said United States commanders were continuing to prepare for the risk of increasing attacks as June 30 neared, both by groups loyal to Saddam Hussein and Islamic terrorists - "either from people who are looking back to things as they used to be, or looking forward to a sort of apocalyptic, extremist country" like Afghanistan under the Taliban, as one official put it.
But General Sanchez said he was confident that historians would judge American military operations in Iraq favorably, once the mission ends, whenever that may be. Inside a year since Mr. Hussein was toppled, he said, the American occupation had defeated a dictatorial government, "taken care of the defeated" by restoring basic freedoms and starting an economic revival, and laid down plans for a return of sovereignty. "It will be a remarkable case study in what a powerful, benevolent army can do," he said.
John F. Burns contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.
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Iraqi Cleric Yields on Elections
Shiite Leader Agrees To Delay of Six Months
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 27, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8053-2004Feb26.html
BAGHDAD, Feb. 26 -- Iraq's most influential religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, declared Thursday that he would sanction a six-month delay in the nationwide elections that he had demanded be held this summer, giving the U.S. civil administration crucial leeway in its plan to formally end its occupation and transfer power to an Iraqi government by June 30.
But Sistani, who has emerged as a key power broker in Iraq, said he wanted the date of an election -- the end of 2004 -- enshrined in a U.N. Security Council resolution. He also insisted that an interim government must have sharply curtailed powers and focus its task on preparing for that election.
"The supreme religious authority demands clear guarantees, such as a resolution from the U.N. Security Council, to conduct elections by that time and to assure the Iraqi people that the matter will not be subjected again to more procrastination and maneuvering," Sistani said in a handwritten statement issued in Arabic by his office in the sacred Shiite city of Najaf.
The declaration by the reclusive, 73-year-old Sistani, his first public statement since a U.N. report this week ruled out elections by this summer, amounts to a partial victory for the Bush administration. Sistani is revered by Iraq's majority Shiite population, making him one of the most powerful figures in the country.
Opposition by Sistani had derailed two previous U.S. proposals for Iraq's political transition. By relenting on his demand for elections this summer, Sistani cleared the way for a June 30 transfer of sovereignty. Facing persistent attacks against its troops and eager to end the occupation before November presidential elections, the United States has said the date is not negotiable. The timing was endorsed by the U.N. report, written by Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister who led the U.N. mission to Iraq.
While U.S. officials have said elections in Iraq may not be possible for a year, perhaps longer -- a delay Sistani insisted he would not accept -- they have increasingly looked to the United Nations to take the lead on the timing and the mechanism. The U.N. report said that elections could be held by the end of the year or early next year if work begins immediately to organize them.
"We're looking forward to the U.N.'s input in terms of what they think is possible between now and the end of the year," said Daniel Senor, spokesman for L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq.
The Bush administration still faces a challenge in determining the shape an interim government should take. Earlier, the administration acknowledged that its plan to organize regional caucuses to choose a transitional assembly enjoyed too little support in Iraq. Iraqi leaders remain divided over the way forward. The U.N. report stopped short of providing an alternative, although Brahimi is expected to return in weeks to help mediate an agreement on transferring sovereignty.
Whatever form it takes, Sistani said its main task should be to "prepare the country for free, honest elections."
Sectarian and ethnic divisions are escalating in Iraq, and popular sentiment has leaned toward a strong hand in Baghdad to restore security, which remains a paramount concern. But Sistani's statement made clear he would oppose an assertive interim government, further hampering its credibility.
"If the powers are very, very limited, it will not be easy," said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. Just to prepare for elections, he said, an interim government would need to provide security in the country, ensure political stability and perhaps plan a census. "If it has limited authority, it can't do all these things."
The U.N. report this week outlined three options for a transitional government, without endorsing any: expanding the Governing Council and allowing it to take control temporarily; convening a national conference that would create a provisional government; or setting up a transitional government of technocrats that would have limited powers.
In his two-page statement, Sistani did not specify what shape that government should take. But he said he worried that the United States, United Nations and Iraqi officials would be unable to come up with a formula that enjoyed broad popular support. Ethnic and sectarian divisions have hamstrung the effectiveness of the council since its inception last June.
In that case, he said, "those same parties will find themselves in the same predicament of sectarian, racial and political quotas which the supreme religious authority tried to circumvent by calling for the adoption of general elections."
Sistani's statement comes at a sensitive time. The Governing Council is scheduled to issue a basic law on Saturday that will serve as an interim constitution. But questions over the degree of autonomy Kurds in northern Iraq will enjoy and the role of Islam in legislation have delayed an agreement.
Persistent violence has continued to cast a pall over that work. On Thursday, a bomb exploded near a police car in Baqubah, a town 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding four others.
Sistani's statement revealed an element of pragmatism in his character. The Iranian-born cleric has remained in virtual isolation since an assassination attempt in 1997 in Najaf and -- despite his influence -- remains little known, even to his supporters. While Sistani had signaled he would abide by the U.N. findings, the call marked the first time since the fall of former president Saddam Hussein's government that he has relented on a public position.
Correspondent Ariana Eunjung Cha contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Palestinian authority demands Israel to return stolen money,
Palestinian blood on the separation wall
Palestine-Israel, Military,
2/27/2004
Arabic News
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/040227/2004022714.html
The Palestinian blood splashed on the sides of the wall built by Israel in the West Bank when three Palestinians were killed and other 86 injured by the occupation forces bullets during protests against building the wall in Badow town, while two others died and one soldier was killed in an operation which targeted Eres crossing in Gaza, claimed to be responsible by al-Aqsa group of the Fatah movement.
Meantime, The Palestinian authority yesterday warned against the "spread of disorder " following the theft operation carried out by the occupation forces on Wednesday against banks in Ramullah and called on Israel to bring back the stolen money it had got. Officials and banks tried to smooth worries by the public and the creditors in the occupied Palestinian lands as millions of USD were stolen from the accounts of individuals and establishments in an unprecedented operation against the sector of banks, the only sector which is operational in the Palestinian authority area.
In the main branch of the Arab Bank in the downtown of Ramullah where the bank and two other banks affiliate to Amman and Cairo Bank and to Palestine International bank were exposed to a theft operation carried out by the occupation forces, telephone calls never stopped. Israel announced it had confiscated between USD 7 to 9 million for 400 creditors as individuals and societies, said that these sums came from Syria, Iran and Hizbullah to feed what it described as " the Palestinian terrorism."
However, the Palestinian monetary authority, which strongly deplored the operation said in an official statement circulated to the media that this operation will only spread chaos. the secretary of the monetary Fund in the Palestinian authority, Amin Haddad, who immediately visited the branches of the damaged banks described the Israeli operation as "an armed theft operation."
He stressed that no accounts for creditors were damaged by what Israel had done and the money Israel got were confiscated from the banks treasure rather than from creditors accounts."
The Palestinian prime minister Ahmad Qurei' called for returning back the stolen money. He told journalists after meeting with the directors of banks working the Palestinian lands "this money is stolen and should be restored back." Qurei' added "Israel does not have the right to use the money of others." Worthy mentioning that there are some 22 branches of banks working in the Palestinians territories including Egyptian, Jordanian and Foreign banks. The board of Cairo- Amman Bank, which is a Jordanian bank said that the Jordanian foreign ministry phoned yesterday morning the bank's administration to know what had happened before Jordan will talk officially to the Israeli side to protest over what the Israeli army had done and to call for restoring back the money.
The spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent said that Mahmoud Rayan ( 25 year old) was killed by the Israeli bullets in confrontations in Badow village to the west of Jerusalem during an attempt made by the Palestinians to prevent the building of the apartheid separation wall. Zakaraya Mahmoud Eid ( 28 year old) was killed in the same site by the bullets of the Israeli army during the confrontation.
A doctor at Sheikh Zayed hospital in Ramullah said that he had examined the body of a third Paletinian called Zakaraya Dahouk and found out he was killed by bullets of " M-16 " machine gun.
The spokesman for the Red Crescent said that there are 26 persons who were injured by bullets and other 21 by rubber bullets, and there are 60 persons hit by tear gas. Thereby the three Palestinians are the first three victims of the Palestinians in the anti- wall demonstrations. The three men were killed after the end of the sessions of the International Court of Justice in the Hague in considering the legality of the wall.
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2 Palestinians Are Killed and Dozens Wounded in Clashes With Israeli Troops Over Barrier
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By GREG MYRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/international/middleeast/27MIDE.html
BIDDU, West Bank, Feb. 26 - Israeli security forces shot dead two Palestinians and wounded dozens, according to Palestinian doctors, in daylong clashes on Thursday with stone-throwing protesters in two West Bank villages. It was the deadliest confrontation yet linked to Israel's separation barrier.
Also, two Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli soldier at an industrial zone in the northern Gaza Strip, where thousands of Palestinians work in Israeli-run factories. Both attackers were fatally shot by other soldiers.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, demanded that Israel return millions of dollars seized Wednesday during a raid of Palestinian banks in Ramallah. Israel said its troops took around $7 million to $9 million dollars in various currencies from some 400 accounts, saying the money was being used to finance terror attacks.
Mr. Qurei, after meeting with bank officials, said, "This money was stolen and must be given back."
Palestinians have been protesting the barrier all week to highlight the hearings on its legality, held Monday through Wednesday, at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
Any ruling by the court is only advisory, and none is expected for a couple of months. Still, the hearings focused international attention on the barrier, much of it being built inside the West Bank. Israel says the barrier is essential to preventing suicide bombings; Palestinians argue that it gobbles up land they seek for a future state.
Here in Biddu, a village just a few miles northwest of Jerusalem, hundreds of protesting Palestinians filled a narrow street. They turned a car on its side and hurled stones at Israeli forces from behind it.
The Israelis responded with repeated rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets. The military and police said they were not aware of live bullets being used. But Palestinian witnesses and doctors who treated the wounded said live rounds fired by the Israeli forces accounted for the two Palestinian deaths and several of the wounded.
One Palestinian man, Muhammad Bedwan, 21, raised his head from behind the car and was hit in the forehead, witnesses said. Other protesters carried him to one of the ambulances that shuttled from the protest to a nearby clinic throughout the day. He was later taken to nearby Ramallah for treatment.
Dr. Khaled Ayyash, director of the Biddu clinic, said that about 50 Palestinians were wounded. Around 20 were hit by live rounds or rubber bullets, and the rest suffered from tear gas inhalation, he said.
Several policemen were lightly wounded, the Israeli police said.
It was the third straight day of demonstrations in Biddu and a neighboring village, Beit Surik.
Israeli earthmovers began preparing the ground this week around the villages for a new segment of the barrier. Residents say they will be separated from farmland and trapped in an isolated enclave.
The area has been mostly calm during the current uprising, and because the villages are near the West Bank boundary, many residents have been working inside Israel.
"People feel they are going to be cut off by the wall," said Alauddin Shawahine, a Biddu pharmacist.
Israeli officials said the Palestinians were seeking access to the Israeli economy even as attacks on Israelis continued, pointing to the Thursday morning shooting in the Gaza industrial zone. The Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a faction loyal to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Dore Gold, an adviser to the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said the Palestinian leadership "wants to maintain the right of armed struggle against Israel and use The Hague to tear down Israel's defenses."
Last month, a young Palestinian mother carried out a suicide bombing in the same area in Gaza, killing four members of the Israeli security forces. As it did after that attack, Israel closed the area after the Thursday shooting, though it did not say for how long.
The closure affects at least 4,000 Palestinians who work in factories in the industrial zone, jobs that are highly prized in Gaza, where unemployment and poverty are rampant. It will also affect an even larger number who commute through the area to Israel.
In another incident on Thursday, Israeli troops temporarily blocked visitors from entering Mr. Arafat's compound in Ramallah.
Just outside the compound, the soldiers shot and wounded a Palestinian man after he threw a firebomb at the troops, Israeli security officials said.
Israeli troops have not operated that close to Mr. Arafat's compound in recent months. An Israeli security official described it as an arrest operation, but no one was detained, and the soldiers left after several hours.
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U.S. pitches Sharon plan to Europe, Arabs
Rice tells Europeans plan could start chain of events similar to fall of Berlin Wall
By Aluf Benn
Fri., February 27, 2004
Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/398866.html
The U.S. administration is trying to persuade European and Arab states as well as the Palestinian Authority to support Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has been telling European officials in recent days that Sharon is serious about his plan and that they should encourage Arab and Palestinian officials to respond in kind.
According to American sources, Rice said small steps could lead to larger processes and just as the fall of the Berlin Wall was the result of a chain of events, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza could lead to a "Middle East parallel" of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rice is a Sovietologist, and often uses images and analogies from the Cold War era.
According to reports from Washington, and White House briefings to reporters from The New York Times and Washington Post, the administration supports the Sharon plan and the only question is at what price and whether the U.S. will agree to Israeli demands like allowing Jerusalem to step up construction in the settlement blocs and freeing Israel of the need to negotiate with the Palestinians or propose any other alternative plans as long as Yasser Arafat heads the PA.
A White House official said the Sharon plan is a chance for "an enormous and historical change" in Israeli-Arab relations. But the reports also said the Americans will only accept the plan if it is executed in coordination with the Palestinians.
Sharon met yesterday for an update with his national security adviser, Giora Eiland, who is hammering out the details of the program. Sharon's bureau chief, attorney Dov Weisglass, is going to Washington next week with Eiland to give a detailed update to Rice and other officials, after two of her staffers, Steve Hadley and Elliott Abrams, visited here last week to hear from Sharon about the plan.
Opposition leader MK Shimon Peres of Labor met yesterday in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. Afterward, he said he thinks Egypt would agree to take security responsibility along the Philadelphi axis, the narrow strip between Rafah and Egypt in the southern Gaza Strip and Israel won't need to remain there after a Gaza withdrawal.
Peres thinks the Egyptians will do so on a number of conditions: a complete and absolute Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, withdrawals from the West Bank, and coordination of the evacuation of Gaza with the Palestinians and Egyptians. The Egyptians delivered a similar message to Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter when he was in Cairo recently.
Meanwhile, Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, visiting Israel yesterday, proposed posting an international force in Gaza and the West Bank after Israel's disengagement, and asked under which conditions Israel would agree. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom rejected it out of hand, saying an international force would not be able to halt terror, but would prevent Israel from doing so. Shalom said it was important the Palestinians meet their security commitments, and said an international force could only come "as a result of an agreement and not instead of an agreement."
The Danish foreign minister, who arrived here from Syria, said he left Damascus impressed with Syrian President Bashar Assad's seriousness when he speaks of renewing peace talks with Israel. The Syrians understand they are under pressure, see developments in the area and want to make progress. He asked if Israel would be ready to resume talks where they were cut off in 2000. Shalom said no. "Each side has to come with their proposals and not with positions that the current government did not accept," said Shalom.
----
Two Palestinians Shot Dead, 20 Wounded in Fence Protest
By John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 27, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10317-2004Feb26.html
BIDDU, West Bank, Feb. 26 -- Two Palestinians were shot and killed and more than 20 other protesters were wounded Thursday during the largest and most violent demonstrations so far against Israel's construction of a massive fence complex around and through the West Bank.
In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli soldier was shot and killed by two Palestinians who had crawled through a sewer pipe into an industrial zone on the border with Israel and staged an ambush, Israeli and Palestinian security officials said. The Palestinians were then killed in a firefight with Israeli soldiers, the officials said.
A few miles northwest of Jerusalem, hundreds of Palestinians and small groups of international and Israeli human rights activists tried to stop Israeli bulldozers from clearing a path for the fence around several villages near the West Bank town of Biddu. Palestinian youths threw stones at Israeli soldiers, police and border police, who responded by firing dozens of rounds of tear gas. Witnesses said the protesters also came under fire from Israeli forces.
Spokesmen for the Israeli police and army, however, denied that their forces used live ammunition in the clashes. The Israeli national police spokesman, Gil Kleiman, said police had used only tear gas and stun grenades, and a military spokesman said that soldiers and border police had fired only tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets.
"Soldiers and border police used only nonlethal means of crowd dispersal in an attempt to disperse a violent crowd. We do not know of any use of live arms during this disturbance," the military spokesman said, adding that the incident was under investigation.
Palestinian medical officials said two Palestinian men from nearby villages -- Muhammad Rayan, 27, and Zakariya Id, 25 -- were shot and killed by Israeli security forces during the protests.
A spokesman at Ramallah Government Hospital said six other protesters were admitted for treatment -- two for gunshot wounds to the stomach, one with a gunshot wound to the head and three wounded by rubber-coated steel bullets. The director of the Karmel Medical Clinic in Biddu, Khaled Ayyash, said 15 people were treated there for injuries from rubber-coated bullets and 30 for tear gas inhalation.
The violence, which began early in the morning and continued through late afternoon, came a day after the International Court of Justice in The Hague concluded three days of hearings about the legality of the fence.
On Wednesday, the State Department released its annual human rights survey for 2003, which said that "Israeli security forces often used excessive force when confronting Palestinian demonstrations."
Some Palestinians said the protests seemed to draw more people and spark more violence than previous demonstrations in the 41-month-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, potentially signaling a change in tactics or a new phase in the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"It seems like this is the first time there is a large-scale civilian movement and protest," said Ziad Mansour, 23, a resident of Biddu who joined dozens of other Palestinians in throwing stones at the Israeli forces. He compared the events with the more raucous violence of the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, in 1987-93. "It's like a new intifada. Sharon and the fence have woken up a sleeping people."
When completed, Israel's barrier will be made up of 450 miles of fences, trenches, walls and razor wire winding around and through the West Bank -- a project expected to cost about $1.5 billion. About 118 miles of the fence has been finished or is under construction.
Israelis say the goal of the barrier is to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from entering Israel. Palestinians, noting that the projected path of the fence would take it deep into the West Bank in order to surround Jewish settlements, complain that it could leave 40 percent or more of their territory on the Israeli side of the barrier.
If completed as projected by the Israeli Defense Ministry, the fence will surround Biddu, a village of 7,500 residents, on three sides. It could also isolate 15 Palestinian communities with about 49,000 residents from the rest of the West Bank and place impenetrable barriers between many people and their schools and jobs, human rights activists have said.
"This fence is going to suffocate our village," the mayor of Biddu, Bajis Sheikh, said, adding that construction of the barrier will consume more than 100 acres of the village's land and isolate almost 900 additional acres of agricultural land on the Israeli side. "This fence will turn us here into a prison."
The Israeli soldier killed in Gaza was identified as Sgt. Amir Tzimerman, 25. He was patrolling an industrial zone near the Erez border crossing with Israel at 7 a.m. when he was shot, an Israeli military spokesman said.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, asserted responsibility for the shooting in a statement faxed to news organizations in Gaza. The statement said the attack was in retaliation for the killing of an al-Aqsa leader by Israeli security forces in the southern Gaza border town of Rafah on Feb. 2.
Israeli officials closed the border crossing, which is used by Palestinians who work in factories in the industrial area, for the remainder of the day.
On Jan. 14, a Palestinian woman affiliated with the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, detonated a bomb at a security checkpoint leading into the same industrial compound, killing herself and four Israeli security officers.
Moore reported from Gaza. Researcher Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.
-------- landmines
U.S. will ditch some land mines
February 27, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040226-113804-5987r.htm
The Bush administration intends to end the U.S. military's use of land mines that are not timed to self-destruct, but will not sign a 150-nation anti-land-mine treaty, a senior administration official said yesterday.
The new policy also will double, to $70 million, what the United States spends annually to locate and remove mines considered hazardous to people and serving no deterrent purpose, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Lincoln Bloomfield, an assistant secretary of state who is President Bush's special adviser on land mines, was expected to announce the new policy at the State Department on Friday.
From now on, all new U.S. land mines will be detectable to U.S. authorities and designed to become inert. But those that are considered part of deterring attacks, such as in Korea, will remain in use. Those mines will be timed to self-destruct, but they can be reset to remain operable, the official said.
In Afghanistan and Cambodia, among other countries, the buried land mines serve no military purpose and are a menace to farmers, children and other people who accidentally trip over them. The mines maim or kill.
Stephen Goose, executive director of the arms control division of Human Rights Watch, praised the plan to increase spending for mine-clearance projects. But he said the United States is isolated by its insistence on using land mines in its defense programs.
"We have a great deal of momentum everywhere else around the world. The U.S. is the only country in NATO that hasn't banned this weapon. We have a situation where the U.S. is undermining the international norm against this weapon," said Mr. Goose.
Mr. Goose said that the U.S. goal, for a decade, has been to move toward the point where it could eliminate all antipersonnel mines.
----
New U.S. Land Mines to Pose Less Long-Term Danger
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/politics/27MINE.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - The Bush administration plans to announce that, in a step to lessen the dangers of land mines, it will end the use of long-lasting mines in warfare and instead concentrate on mines that go inert within hours or days, an administration official said Thursday.
The official said the policy would be announced on Friday, along with a doubling in American assistance to other countries to remove mines remaining from past conflicts. The increase will bring such aid to $70 million a year, the official said.
There will be limited exceptions in the switch to so-called inert land mines, but the official would not specify them.
The United States has had an extensive program to remove land mines in Afghanistan, Cambodia and the Balkans, where combatants sowed farmlands and fields with mines as a deterrent against invading forces in conflicts that have been over for years.
Despite the latest steps, the administration official said, there are no plans for the United States to sign the international treaty to ban land mines, which has been in effect since 1997. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, was instrumental in getting the treaty signed.
The Clinton administration, yielding to concerns of the American military, decided against signing the treaty out of concern that in some limited cases, particularly South Korea, land mines have been a part of a policy of deterrence, in that case against thousands of North Korean troops near the border.
The Bush administration has said that a policy of using inert mines might ease the problem of clearing mines that pose a threat to civilians. Those that remain intact are known as persistent land mines.
"We are going to move ourselves to use, with possibly limited exceptions, land mines that go inert in a period of hours or days," the administration official said. "We'll be the first ones to end the use of persistent land mines, both for antipersonnel and antivehicle land mines."
The official said the United States would also make its mines detectable so they can be removed when a conflict is over. But he did not say what would prevent an enemy from detecting them during a conflict.
It was not clear where the United States continues to use mines, outside of South Korea, or specifically whether any were used in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Mines have been in use at least since the Civil War. In 1980, the United States signed a Convention on Conventional Weapons, regulating the use of certain land mines. Since the 1980's, the United States has also adopted a policy of helping nations find mines on their soil.
Among other actions taken by the United States in recent years was the removal of antipersonnel and antitank mines from the perimeter of its military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, starting in 1996.
The United States has also announced the destruction of millions of mines, while saying that some needed to be retained for training, research and the defense of South Korea.
----
Bush Shifts U.S. Stance On Use of Land Mines
Policy Slated for 2010 Won't Ban All Devices Designed to Kill Troops
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 27, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10711-2004Feb26.html
President Bush will bar the U.S. military from using certain types of land mines after 2010 but will allow forces to continue to employ more sophisticated mines that the administration argues pose little threat to civilians, officials said yesterday.
The new policy, due to be announced today, represents a departure from the previous U.S. goal of banning all land mines designed to kill troops. That plan, established by President Bill Clinton, set a target of 2006 for giving up antipersonnel mines, depending on the success of Pentagon efforts to develop alternatives.
Bush, however, has decided to impose no limits on the use of "smart" land mines, which have timing devices to automatically defuse the explosives within hours or days, officials said.
His ban will apply only to "dumb" mines -- those without self-destruct features. But it will cover devices not only aimed at people but also meant to destroy vehicles. In that way, Bush's policy will extend to a category of mines not included in Clinton's plan, which was limited to antipersonnel devices.
Bush will also propose a 50 percent jump in spending, up to $70 million in fiscal 2005, for a State Department program that provides mine-removal assistance in more than 40 countries, officials said. The program also funds mine-awareness programs abroad and offers some aid to survivors of mine explosions.
A senior State Department official, who disclosed Bush's decision on the condition that he not be named, said the new policy aims at striking a balance between the Pentagon's desire to retain effective weapons and humanitarian concerns about civilian casualties caused by unexploded bombs, which can remain hidden long after combat ends and battlefields return to peaceful use.
The safety problem stems from dumb bombs, which kill as many as 10,000 civilians a year, the official said. Smart bombs, he added, "are not contributors to this humanitarian crisis."
Bush's decision drew expressions of outrage and surprise from representatives of humanitarian organizations that have pressed for a more comprehensive U.S. ban on land mines. They say the danger to civilians and allied soldiers during and after a war outweighs the benefits of such weapons. They also dispute the contention that unexploded smart mines are safe, saying there isn't enough evidence to know.
"We expected we wouldn't be pleased by the president's decision, but we hadn't expected a complete rejection of what has been U.S. policy for the past 10 years," said Steve Goose, who heads the arms division of Human Rights Watch.
"It looks like a victory for those in the Pentagon who want to cling to outmoded weapons, and a failure of political leadership on the part of the White House. And it is stunningly at odds with what's happening in the rest of the world, where governments and armies are giving up these weapons."
The Pentagon maintains a stockpile of about 18 million land mines, including 15 million of the newer, self-destructing kinds. The U.S. arsenal of 10.4 million antipersonnel mines is third in size, after those held by China and Russia. But the United States has not used land mines in combat since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
In 1994, Clinton called for an eventual end to use of antipersonnel mines. But he declined to endorse a 1997 treaty that 150 other countries have joined. It banned the production, use, stockpiling and transfer of antipersonnel mines.
Instead, Clinton restricted use of dumb mines to U.S. forces in South Korea. In a 1998 directive, he instructed the Pentagon to develop alternatives to antipersonnel mines and envisioned the possibility of banning all such weapons in 2006.
The policy has been under review since Bush took office in 2001. With two wars in the interim and the nation still engaged in a worldwide battle against terrorist networks, officials said Bush is particularly sensitive to Pentagon arguments for retaining some types of land mines.
By focusing on eliminating dumb -- or what the administration calls "persistent" -- land mines, Bush and his aides intend to make the case that they are addressing the root cause of the humanitarian problem.
"It's a different formula from the past," the senior official said, "but it comports with the reality of the humanitarian crisis, which is that persistent mines are the ones that are causing the casualties and polluting lands and preventing recovering from wars."
But critics noted that the United States tried with little success to draw a distinction between smart and dumb mines in international treaty negotiations in the mid-1990s.
"The rest of the world rejected this distinction for a number of reasons," Goose said. "Some were technical, based on concerns that smart mines would still have an unacceptable failure rate. Some were political, along the lines of 'How can you expect other nations to give up their antipersonnel mines but allow the United States to keep theirs, claiming they're more technologically advanced?' "
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), a leading opponent of land mines, noted "some positive aspects" to Bush's decision. But he said, "On the whole, it is a deeply disappointing step backward."
Under Bush's new policy, dumb mines will continue to be used only for the defense of South Korea until their elimination after 2010. Use of dumb anti-vehicle mines will require special presidential approval.
Further, within a year, the United States will ensure that all of its land mines can be detected by minesweeping devices, meaning they will contain at least eight grams of iron, the international standard. Bush also plans to seek a worldwide ban on the sale or export of persistent land mines, officials said.
-------- mideast
U.S. Plan for Mideast Reform Draws Ire of Arab Leaders
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN and NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/politics/27DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - An American proposal for the world's wealthiest nations to press for economic, political and cultural changes in the Middle East has drawn harsh criticism from Arab leaders and European officials, who say the Bush administration did not consult the countries it seeks to transform.
In addition, a Bush administration official said Thursday that some European officials had suggested they might block the initiative if there was no progress toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
The administration, seeking to overcome anti-Western and anti-American sentiments in the Arab world, is circulating a draft of what it calls a "Greater Middle East initiative." It hopes the idea will be adopted at the summit meeting of the eight leading industrial nations in June.
The draft has not been officially released, but after a copy was published earlier this month in Al Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, and an English-language version was posted on its Web site, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia criticized it as an attempt to dictate change.
"Whoever imagines that it is possible to impose solutions or reform from abroad on any society or region is delusional," Mr. Mubarak said on Wednesday. "All peoples by their nature reject whoever tries to impose ideas on them."
Egypt's three semiofficial dailies - Al Ahram, Al Akhbar and Al Gumhuriya - all reported Mr. Mubarak's remarks, including another pointed statement that the Bush administration was behaving "as if the region and its states do not exist, as if they have no people or societies, as if they have no sovereignty over their land, no ownership."
White House officials said it was unfortunate that the document was published before everyone could be consulted, but they believed they would secure Arab and European cooperation.
The Washington Post and other newspapers had reported earlier this month that the administration was preparing such a plan, but its details had not been spelled out.
Among the changes advocated by the draft paper are the establishment of business and trade zones in the Middle East, more financing for small businesses and more help conducting elections.
In addition, the paper calls for efforts to strengthen ties between the West and nongovernmental groups that promote democracy in Arab countries. It also urges support for new education initiatives in the region, especially for women.
The summit meeting, the paper says, should try to "forge a long-term partnership with the Greater Middle East's reform leaders and launch a coordinated response to promote political, economic and social reform in the region."
Leaders from the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia will be at the meeting, scheduled to take place in June at Sea Island, Ga.
Conspicuous by its absence in the draft is any significant increase in financial aid to the region, which might be used as leverage for effecting such changes. The centerpiece of the administration's aid program to the region, the Middle East Partnership Initiative, is providing $120 million in financial assistance this year to encourage democratic reforms. American foreign aid totals nearly $18 billion annually.
The administration devised its new initiative to conplement similar European efforts. The European Union announced its own program to push for democratic reforms in the region last year, much of which is similar to the American proposals.
The idea of putting the two efforts together is not sitting especially well in Europe. Some officials there fear that their program might be tainted by association with Washington, which is widely criticized in the region because of the war in Iraq and its perceived bias toward Israel.
One European diplomat said the American approach, which used strong language about change and did not reflect any consultation with local governments, was likely to be seen as "a clash of civilizations" between the Western and Arab worlds.
American officials say that they have no intention of absorbing the European initiative. "This is not an either-or situation," said an administration official. "It's really a coordinating mechanism to make sure that together we make best use of our resources. I don't see a lot of turf battles going on."
But administration officials appear to have been surprised by the amount of criticism the draft provoked. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was asked about the criticism by Egypt and Saudi Arabia on Al Hurra, the American-sponsored, Arabic-language satellite television station. He denied that the administration had ignored the governments in the region and promised that they would be consulted before the plan was presented at the Georgia summit meeting.
"We would never suggest a reform plan that should come from outside," Mr. Powell said, adding that the initiative "must be something that is acceptable to the parties in the region" and that the United States would consult all parties concerned.
"These are sovereign nations," he said. "They have their own interests to protect. They have their own people, their own culture, their own identity, their own history. What we are trying to do is help each of them, in the way that they choose, to move forward down a path that I think is in their interests to move down."
An Arab diplomat in Washington said he told administration officials that he did not disagree with any of the initiative's elements, but that "it's very important how it is to be packaged." Further, the diplomat said, the United States is tarnished by its failure to ease the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
"It's not the message, it's the messenger," he said. "But I don't think the administration will be affected by the criticism. I don't think they regard such opinions very highly. They're going to forge ahead."
-------- nato
NATO helps with Athens security
Agence France-Presse
February 27, 2004
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8805333%255E1702,00.html
ATHENS mayor Dora Bakoyannis confirmed today NATO would help provide security for the Athens Olympics in August.
There are concerns the first summer games since the 11 September 2001 attacks against the US could be targeted by terrorist groups.
"Olympic Games 2004 are a very big challenge for Greece and the world. They are the first Games after September 11th," Bakoyannis told a news conference.
"Greece cooperates with many countries around the world and NATO participates and is involved," she added.
"Security is an international responsibility."
She did not go into details of how the alliance would be involved. The issue is politically sensitive and prime minister Costas Simitis would not go beyond saying last week that Greece was prepared to co-operate with NATO.
"The problem in Greece is that different responsibilities being mixed between state agencies and it takes much more time to take a decision," Bakoyannis explained.
"We are working on that. I hope with the new government part of this problem will be solved and decisions will be quicker."
Greece may delay a formal request for NATO co-operation until after parliamentary elections in March.
The Greek constitution stipulates that the government must seek approval from parliament before allowing uniformed foreign troops into the country.
NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last week after talks with Greek Foreign Minister Tassos Giannitsis the alliance could be involved.
In what would be an unprecedented role for the alliance, NATO may provide surveillance planes and make plans to provide relief in case of attack.
The Greek authorities are leaving nothing to chance and are preparing the biggest security operation in the history of the Olympics.
More than 50,000 members of the security forces and emergency services will be directly involved in protecting the athletes, officials and visitors.
The total cost for Greece will be more than 650 million euro ($1.06 billion).
A specially formed Olympics advisory group of seven countries - Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Israel and the US - meets monthly to provide advice about security measures.
Greek forces recently carried out exercises to test the ability of around 2000 members of the police, military, coast guard, fire brigade and medical services to react to an attack involving a weapon of mass destruction.
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge has stressed that security has been the IOC's top priority since the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by a Palestinian group during the Munich Olympics.
"Security now is not a national problem when it comes to the Olympics it's an international problem and everybody has to play their part," a senior IOC member closely linked with security said.
"The new age in terrorism has moved the load of responsibility on to all of us, not just the host city."
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia says air force out of decade-old tailspin, ready to strike
MOSCOW (AFP)
Feb 27, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040227155041.z6889haa.html
Russia's air force chief told dozens of international military attaches Friday that his force was for the first time getting the funding it needed to rapidly strike anywhere around the globe.
Air Force General Vladimir Mikhailov said that training time for pilots has doubled over the past year and that Russian strategic bombers have recently staged exercises in the Arctic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The Moscow-based military attaches in response quizzed him closely on Russia's future air ambitions.
Mikhailov confirmed that strategic bombers shot cruise missiles over the Arctic as part of broad military exercises staged earlier this month -- billed as the most wide-ranging war games in some 20 years.
He said Russia's bombers never launched their missiles over the Atlantic in a move that would have likely prompted protest from NATO and the United States.
But he cautioned that Russia was ready at any moment to do so.
"We are ready to go there today if necessary," Mikhailov announced in an address in the defense ministry's imposing central Moscow headquarters opposite the Kremlin.
The Russian air force -- along with the other branches of Russia's military -- has suffered from poor financing since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
Training has been limited because the air force lacked cash for fuel and spare parts to update rundown equipment.
But Mikhailov said this has all changed.
"The average pilot training time has doubled since 2002," he said.
"I would not want to name the exact average number of hours -- this is not a state secret but that figure is measured differently by different countries. Some measure the time spent in the air and others from the engine's ignition."
He was peppered by questions from diplomats keen to figure out the course of Russia's military under President Vladimir Putin -- who has announced reforms as one of his top government priorities.
Mikhailov said that his agency has now changed track by agreeing that some of its plane and chopper models were outdated or not wanted by foreign customers.
"We are now only upgrading a small range of planes," he said. "This makes more sense."
His comments came amid displeasure in the Russian military that NATO this week flew AWACS reconnaissance planes over Baltic states that will soon join the US-led alliance.
Russia has feared NATO expansion and issued protests over the AWACSs flights since the sensitive radars can see deep into Russia's own territory.
Mikhailov said Russia has staged several reconnaissance missions in the same area in recent days but said those flights were made over neutral international waters.
"This should not be seen as an act of revenge," Mikhailov said with a grin.
And he stressed that Russia was ready to cooperate with NATO in "anti-terror" operations in Afghanistan and share its new Kant base in the Central Asia republic of Kyrgyzstan in case of emergency.
"But we would need two commanders in that case -- one who speaks Russian and one who speaks English," he said. "And, of course, an interpreter."
----
Moscow's terminators retain their deadly skills
By Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow
27/02/2004
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/27/wqatar127.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/02/27/ixworld.html
The killers of the former KGB have not been idle since the Cold War when they and their Eastern bloc allies strolled the streets of European capitals meting out summary justice.
But dissidents such as Georgi Markov, killed by a poison-tipped umbrella in a 1978 Soviet-Bulgarian operation on Waterloo Bridge, are no longer their preferred target.
The KGB's successors focus on killing rebel Chechens.
Dzhokhar Dudayev, the former Soviet air force general who declared Chechnya independent in 1991, died in a spectacular missile strike in 1996. He was holding talks with a Moscow official when a Russian fighter jet locked on to the signal from his satellite phone. His death failed to undermine the separatist movement, and radicalised rebels who forged links with fundamentalist Muslim groups in the Middle East.
Omar ibn al Khattab, a Jordanian with links to Osama bin Laden, arrived in Chechnya and soon became a target. The Russians got their man in April 2002, when he died minutes after opening a poisoned letter.
-------- spies
Memoir: Reagan approved Soviet sabotage
February 27, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040227-111312-7526r.htm
WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 -- Memoirs of a former U.S. security official say as part of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the United States provided faulty technology to the Soviets.
Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who was serving in the National Security Council, describes one incident in 1982 in "At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War," to be published next month by Ballantine Books.
He says President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union using software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline.
At the time, there were signs the Soviets were trying to steal a wide variety of Western technology. A KGB insider revealed a specific shopping list, and the CIA slipped the flawed software to the Soviets in a way they couldn't detect.
"The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space," Reed recalls, adding that U.S. satellites picked up the explosion. Reed told the New York Times the blast occurred in the summer of 1982.
"While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy," he wrote.
----
QATAR - Russia demands spies' release
February 27, 2004
Washington Times
World Scene
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/worldscene.htm
DOHA - Qatar said yesterday it had charged two Russians with involvement in the assassination of a former rebel Chechen president, prompting a furious Moscow to demand the release of the men it said were Russian spies.
In a statement on Russian television, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the agents had been "illegally detained." He said they had been waging a war against international terrorism but "had nothing whatsoever to do" with the death of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who was killed by a car bomb in Qatar on Feb. 13.
A Qatari Interior Ministry official said three men had been arrested last week but one was freed after Russian officials met Qatari Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani on Tuesday.
----
Russia demands release of agents from Qatar
Friday February 27, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2004-daily/27-02-2004/world/w13.htm
MOSCOW: Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Thursday that three Russian intelligence agents had been arrested in Qatar on suspicion of involvement in the killing of former separatist Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, and he flatly rejected the allegation.
Ivanov said that the three Russians were arrested in Doha, a week ago. He accused Qatari officials of failing to report the arrest to the Russian Embassy and refusing it the opportunity to meet with those arrested for seven days.
"Attempts by the Qatari authorities to hold the arrested Russian citizens responsible for the attempt on Yandarbiyev's life are totally unsubstantiated," Ivanov said in a statement released by the Foreign Ministry claiming, "They have no relation whatsoever to the incident."
Russia's Ambassador to Qatar, Viktor Kudryavtsev, said Qatari authorities finally allowed the embassy officials to meet with the two who are still in custody, the Interfax news agency said. Ivanov demanded that Qatar immediately release the Russian citizens being held unlawfully and allow them to return to Russia unimpeded and added that Qatar bears full responsibility for their life and health. The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday summoned the Qatari ambassador to Moscow for a second time in as many days to file a formal protest.
On the other hand, Qatar said on Thursday it had arrested two Russians and charged them with involvement in the assassination of a former rebel Chechen president. Russia accused Qatar of conniving with global terrorism in giving refuge to Yandarbiyev.
Qatar strongly rejected the Russian accusation that it had supported terrorism. "The charge is absurd," a Qatari Foreign Ministry official, who declined to be named, told Reuters. "Qatar is at the forefront of the fight against terrorism and we never had any case of terrorism before this," he said.
A Qatari Interior Ministry official said authorities were still investigating the records and possible motives of the two Russians and declined to identify them as secret service agents. "The law is taking its own course," the official said.
He said a third man was freed after a Russian envoy met Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani on Tuesday. The Russian interior ministry said on Thursday four women and two men, all civilians, were killed when a crudely made bomb exploded in the southwest of Chechnya. The bomb, concealed in a bush near the village of Assinovskaya, also wounded four young women and three other people when it exploded on Wednesday.
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British pre-war spying allegations expand
February 27, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040227-122406-8262r.htm
LONDON, Feb. 27 -- More allegations of British security agents tapping U.N. officials' telephones before the war in Iraq emerged Friday, The Guardian said.
The telephones of former U.N. chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Richard Butler were also tapped while on missions abroad, Butler said in an interview with the Australia Broadcasting Corporation.
The claims follow Thursday's allegations by former cabinet minister Clare Short she had read transcripts of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's telephone calls.
Butler told ABC radio he was forced to hold confidential talks with contacts on walks in New York's Central Park because of the phone tapping in his office at the U.N. headquarters while he was investigating Iraq's weapons program.
Butler, who was chief weapons inspector in Iraq from 1997 to 1999, claimed at least four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council monitored his calls.
He said while he was weapons inspector he learned from unnamed sources that his office was bugged.
"I was being listened to by the Americans, British, the French and the Russians and they also had people on my staff reporting what I was trying to do privately," he said.
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Ex-Aide to Blair Says the British Spied on Annan
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/international/europe/27BRIT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
LONDON, Feb. 26 - A former member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet asserted Thursday that British intelligence services conducted electronic surveillance of the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, in the weeks before the Iraq war.
The former minister, Clare Short, who is still a member of Parliament, received a harsh rebuke from Mr. Blair, who told a news conference later in the day that he would not comment on any espionage operations. But he accused Ms. Short, who was the international development secretary, of endangering Britain's national security with "totally irresponsible" remarks.
At the United Nations, Mr. Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said in a news conference that the secretary general believed that it would be illegal to conduct bugging operations on the premises of the United Nations, and that he would be disappointed if Britain had done so.
Mr. Eckhard said efforts were under way to ensure the security of Mr. Annan's confidential conversations, but he refused to say whether any bugging devices had been found during "sweeps" of Mr. Annan's office.
"We're throwing down a red flag and saying that if this is true, please stop it," Mr. Eckhard said.
The news conference in New York added to the diplomatic embarrassment for Mr. Blair, who was said to be outraged that a member of his own Labor Party had spoken publicly about one of the most sensitive types of espionage in the diplomatic arena.
Most governments have spy agencies, and nearly all conduct espionage on friends as well as foes, but spy operations against friendly forces are rarely acknowledged.
Ms. Short's blunt disclosure demonstrated how difficult it has been for Mr. Blair to lay to rest the continuing public anger in Britain about the war in Iraq, despite an earlier report by Lord Hutton that cleared Mr. Blair and his aides of accusations that they manipulated intelligence to amplify the threat of Iraq's unconventional weapons. It also exposed the bitterness between Mr. Blair and a sizable group of rebels within his own party.
Michael Howard, the Tory opposition leader, called Thursday's developments "a complete mess" for Britain.
The diplomatic tempest began when Ms. Short, who initially supported the war but later resigned from the cabinet after the fall of Baghdad, told a BBC radio interviewer on Thursday morning that transcripts of Mr. Annan's private conversations circulated last year among Mr. Blair's cabinet members.
"I read some of the transcripts of the accounts of his conversations," she said, asserting that Mr. Annan's office had been bugged. "These things are done, and in the case of Kofi's office, it's been done for some time."
She said she was so certain of the surveillance that she recalled "having conversations with Kofi in the run-up to war, thinking, `Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying.' "
A number of experts said Ms. Short's statement violated Britain's Official Secrets Act. Her remarks reflected the continued hemorrhaging of secrets related to espionage conducted during the bitter political debate at the United Nations in March 2003 as the Bush administration and Mr. Blair's government sought to overcome resistance from France, Germany, Russia and a number of smaller countries that opposed a resolution authorizing war.
A resolution in November 2002 gave Saddam Hussein a final opportunity to comply with demands to disarm, but some Security Council members asserted that the resolution carried no automatic authorization for war if Iraq did not comply.
A second resolution, favored by Britain and the United States, failed, but British and American officials maintained that previous United Nations resolutions gave them the authority to invade Iraq under international law.
The revelation of espionage in the executive suites of the United Nations building - physically in New York City, but legally the organization's own territory - came a day after Mr. Blair's government declined to prosecute a 29-year-old government linguist, Katharine Gun, who admitted leaking details of another bugging operation, also targeted at the United Nations, during the war debate last year. In her comments, Ms. Short drew no connection between the bugging of Mr. Annan's office and the surveillance that had been undertaken in the Gun case.
Ms. Gun worked for the intelligence agency known as General Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, which intercepts and decodes communications. She said she had been "shocked" when she received a copy of a top secret message from the United States National Security Agency requesting British assistance in conducting electronic surveillance against the diplomats of swing nations - Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Chile, Mexico and Pakistan - whose votes were critical to passing a war resolution.
She leaked the message to The London Observer and turned herself in for arrest.
Ms. Gun's lawyers were preparing a defense that she felt it was necessary to expose what she believed was espionage activity that fell outside international law. As part of that strategy, they were going to insist on seeing the full private assessment of Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, on whether Britain could go to war without specific authorization from the Security Council.
Government reaction to these disclosures sharply contrasted with the era of the cold war, when significant breaches of secrecy like Ms. Gun's and Ms. Short's most often resulted in immediate censure and prosecution.
Mr. Blair said Thursday that major threats still existed, but he offered no coherent explanation on why the government was not prosecuting these violations of the Official Secrets Act, except to say that the act perhaps needed to be reviewed.
A number of political analysts pointed out that the prosecution of Ms. Gun, who said she had acted out of conscience to expose what she considered illegal espionage activities, would have reignited the debate over the war when Mr. Blair was trying to move the country on to a new agenda of domestic reforms.
On Thursday Mr. Blair accused his critics of using conspiracy theories and allegations of government lying and wrongdoing as "cover for people who want to have a debate about the rightness or wrongness of the conflict, and we should have that."
"It is actually a debate on was it right to remove Saddam Hussein the way you did or should you have waited and given the inspectors more time," Mr. Blair said, adding, "That is the heart of the debate."
----
UN weapons inspector 'well aware' of spying
Associated Press
Friday, Feb. 27, 2004
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040227.wweapons/BNStory/Front/
Sydney - Former United Nations chief weapons inspector Richard Butler said he was "well aware" that his telephone calls were being monitored during his tenure, as he weighed into the debate surrounding allegations Britain spied on the UN before the Iraq war.
Mr. Butler said Friday that while he was in charge of investigating Iraq's weapons programs he was forced to go for walks in New York's Central Park for confidential discussions with his contacts, because the phones in his office at the UN headquarters were bugged.
"Of course I was (bugged)," he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) radio. "I was well aware of it. How did I know? Because those who did it would come to me and show me the recordings that they had made on others to help me do my job disarming Iraq."
Butler, the UN's chief weapons inspector in Iraq from 1997 to 1999, said at least four permanent members of the UN Security Council monitored his calls - the United States, Britain, France and Russia.
His comments came after an Australian intelligence analyst told the ABC that the phone of the UN's most recent weapons inspector, Hans Blix, was tapped whenever he was in Iraq hunting for banned weapons and the information was shared between the United States, Britain and its allies.
The revelations were prompted by accusations on Thursday by former British cabinet minister Clare Short that Britain spied on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the build up to the Iraq war. She said she had read transcripts of Mr. Annan's conversations while she was a member of the government.
The UN said any bugging of Mr. Annan's office would be illegal and should end immediately.
ABC radio cited an unnamed intelligence source at the Australian intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, who claimed that Mr. Blix's cellphone was monitored and his conversations recorded while he was in Iraq prior to the war last year.
"That's what I'm told, specifically each time he entered Iraq, his phone was targeted and recorded and the transcripts were then made available to the United States, Australia, Canada, the U.K. and also New Zealand," ABC investigative reporter Andrew Fowler said, citing his intelligence contacts. He did not say who tapped Mr. Blix's phone.
Australia is a close ally of Britain and the United States and the three countries shared intelligence in the lead-up to last year's invasion of Iraq. Canberra also dispatched troops to take part in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Steve Ingram, a spokesman for Attorney General Philip Ruddock, who is ultimately responsible for security and intelligence matters, refused comment.
"We don't make it a practice of commenting on what we might and might not have seen in relation to intelligence matters," he told The Associated Press.
Mr. Blix, 75, who headed the UN inspectors from 2000 to mid-2003, was in Iraq for months before the war looking for evidence that Saddam Hussein was developing a weapons program.
No weapons of mass destruction have been found.
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Britain Accused of Spying On Annan Before Iraq War
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 27, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8045-2004Feb26.html
LONDON, Feb. 26 -- British spies conducted surveillance on the office of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in New York during the intense diplomatic struggle over whether to invade Iraq, a former cabinet minister alleged Thursday.
Clare Short, who resigned in protest after the invasion, said she had seen transcripts of Annan's conversations in the weeks before the war, which was launched last March. "The U.K. in this time was also getting spies on Kofi Annan's office and getting reports from him about what was going on," Short told BBC radio. "These things are done, and in the case of Kofi's office, it was being done for some time."
Asked about Britain's role in the eavesdropping, she replied: "Well I know -- I've seen transcripts of Kofi Annan's conversations." She added: "In fact, I have 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.' "
Prime Minister Tony Blair branded Short's allegations deeply irresponsible but refused to confirm or deny them, saying that to do so would violate his government's policy of not discussing intelligence matters. He said at a news conference that Britain's intelligence services always act in accordance with domestic and international law, and those who disclose intelligence activities, whether intentionally or not, undermine the essential security of the country.
The United Nations reacted sharply to the allegations, asserting that any attempt to eavesdrop on the secretary general would constitute a violation of three international treaties that govern diplomatic relations.
"From our point of view it is indeed illegal" to spy on U.N. premises, said Annan's chief spokesman, Fred Eckhard. But he noted that there was little the United Nations could do about it. "The United Nations doesn't have a police force or any other means of enforcing these laws," he said.
Eckhard stopped short of accusing the British of spying. "We have seen today's media reports alleging that the secretary general's phone conversations were tapped by British intelligence. We would be disappointed if this were true," he said in a statement. "Such activities would undermine the integrity and confidential nature of diplomatic exchanges."
Short was one of two cabinet secretaries to resign over the war. Since stepping down as international development secretary in May, she has become one of Blair's most vociferous critics, claiming he misled the British public about the reasons for backing the U.S.-led invasion and calling for him to resign.
Thursday's new disclosure was the latest controversy for Blair over the Iraq war. His steadfast support for the Bush administration's campaign in Iraq has been a source of continual political turmoil here. He had hoped to spend his monthly news conference talking about a new British-led initiative on African economic development, but instead spent virtually the entire hour fending off questions about Short's allegation.
Short made her remarks during a BBC interview in which she was asked about the collapse on Wednesday of the trial of a former British intelligence service employee accused of leaking a classified memo from the National Security Agency in the United States last January. The memo asked for British help in eavesdropping on U.N. missions of governments that were undecided about whether to endorse military action against Iraq.
Katharine Gun, 29, a former translator with Britain's Government Communications Headquarters listening station, said she leaked the memo, which was published in the Observer newspaper last March, to expose what she said was an illegal spying operation.
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.
None of the governments involved have confirmed or denied that spying operations took place.
Prosecutors dropped all charges against Gun on Wednesday, saying they no longer believed they could obtain a conviction.
Stephen Dorril, author of a history of Britain's secret intelligence service, MI6, said it was not a surprise to learn the British had spied on U.N. officials. He said the CIA and MI6 had a long history of collaboration, including asking for help in spying operations that might be deemed illegal for the host nation.
Dorril said the collapse of the Gun case could open the door for other intelligence employees to disclose secrets for reasons of personal conscience.
Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.
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Reagan Approved Plan to Sabotage Soviets
Book Recounts Cold War Program That Made Technology Go Haywire
By David E. Hoffman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 27, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10432-2004Feb26.html
In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official.
Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who was serving in the National Security Council at the time, describes the episode in "At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War," to be published next month by Ballantine Books. Reed writes that the pipeline explosion was just one example of "cold-eyed economic warfare" against the Soviet Union that the CIA carried out under Director William J. Casey during the final years of the Cold War.
At the time, the United States was attempting to block Western Europe from importing Soviet natural gas. There were also signs that the Soviets were trying to steal a wide variety of Western technology. Then, a KGB insider revealed the specific shopping list and the CIA slipped the flawed software to the Soviets in a way they would not detect it.
"In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines, and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds," Reed writes.
"The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space," he recalls, adding that U.S. satellites picked up the explosion. Reed said in an interview that the blast occurred in the summer of 1982.
"While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy," he writes. "Its ultimate bankruptcy, not a bloody battle or nuclear exchange, is what brought the Cold War to an end. In time the Soviets came to understand that they had been stealing bogus technology, but now what were they to do? By implication, every cell of the Soviet leviathan might be infected. They had no way of knowing which equipment was sound, which was bogus. All was suspect, which was the intended endgame for the entire operation."
Reed said he obtained CIA approval to publish details about the operation. The CIA learned of the full extent of the KGB's pursuit of Western technology in an intelligence operation known as the Farewell Dossier. Portions of the operation have been disclosed earlier, including in a 1996 paper in Studies in Intelligence, a CIA journal. The paper was written by Gus W. Weiss, an expert on technology and intelligence who was instrumental in devising the plan to send the flawed materials and served with Reed on the National Security Council. Weiss died Nov. 25 at 72.
According to the Weiss article and Reed's book, the Soviet authorities in 1970 set up a new KGB section, known as Directorate T, to plumb Western research and development for badly needed technology. Directorate T's operating arm to steal the technology was known as Line X. Its spies were often sprinkled throughout Soviet delegations to the United States; on one visit to a Boeing plant, "a Soviet guest applied adhesive to his shoes to obtain metal samples," Weiss recalled in his article.
Then, at a July 1981 economic summit in Ottawa, President Francois Mitterrand of France told Reagan that French intelligence had obtained the services of an agent they dubbed "Farewell," Col. Vladimir Vetrov, a 53-year-old engineer who was assigned to evaluate the intelligence collected by Directorate T.
Vetrov, who Weiss recalled had provided his services for ideological reasons, photographed and supplied 4,000 documents on the program. The documents revealed the names of more than 200 Line X officers around the world and showed how the Soviets were carrying out a broad-based effort to steal Western technology.
"Reagan expressed great interest in Mitterrand's sensitive revelations and was grateful for his offer to make the material available to the U.S. administration," Reed writes. The Farewell Dossier arrived at the CIA in August 1981. "It immediately caused a storm," Reed says in the book. "The files were incredibly explicit. They set forth the extent of Soviet penetration into U.S. and other Western laboratories, factories and government agencies."
"Reading the material caused my worst nightmares to come true," Weiss recalled. The documents showed the Soviets had stolen valuable data on radar, computers, machine tools and semiconductors, he wrote. "Our science was supporting their national defense."
The Farewell Dossier included a shopping list of future Soviet priorities. In January 1982, Weiss said he proposed to Casey a program to slip the Soviets technology that would work for a while, then fail. Reed said the CIA "would add 'extra ingredients' to the software and hardware on the KGB's shopping list."
"Reagan received the plan enthusiastically," Reed writes. "Casey was given a go." According to Weiss, "American industry helped in the preparation of items to be 'marketed' to Line X." Some details about the flawed technology were reported in Aviation Week and Space Technology in 1986 and in a 1995 book by Peter Schweizer, "Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union."
The sabotage of the gas pipeline has not been previously disclosed, and at the time was a closely guarded secret. When the pipeline exploded, Reed writes, the first reports caused concern in the U.S. military and at the White House. "NORAD feared a missile liftoff from a place where no rockets were known to be based," he said, referring to North American Air Defense Command. "Or perhaps it was the detonation of a small nuclear device." However, satellites did not pick up any telltale signs of a nuclear explosion.
"Before these conflicting indicators could turn into an international crisis," he added, "Gus Weiss came down the hall to tell his fellow NSC staffers not to worry."
The role that Reagan and the United States played in the collapse of the Soviet Union is still a matter of intense debate. Some argue that U.S. policy was the key factor -- Reagan's military buildup; the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan's proposed missile defense system; confronting the Soviets in regional conflicts; and rapid advances in U.S. high technology. But others say that internal Soviet factors were more important, including economic decline and President Mikhail Gorbachev's revolutionary policies of glasnost and perestroika.
Reed, who served in the National Security Council from January 1982 to June 1983, said the United States and its NATO allies later "rolled up the entire Line X collection network, both in the U.S. and overseas." Weiss said "the heart of Soviet technology collection crumbled and would not recover."
However, Vetrov's espionage was discovered by the KGB, and he was executed in 1983.
-------- un
US Pushes UN to Endorse Preemptive Action Against Suspected WMDs
by Haider Rizvi,
February 27, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://antiwar.com/ips/rizvi.php?articleid=2056
The United States is pressing the U.N. Security Council to endorse a draft resolution that would allow the use of force against "entities and individuals" suspected of trying to develop, possess or transfer weapons of mass destruction (WMD), diplomats and observers here say.
Though they say they are equally concerned about proliferation of the weapons, many Security Council members fear the resolution would give Washington a free hand to unilaterally deal with the as yet undefined "entities and individuals".
The draft resolution states that some countries "may require assistance within their territories, and invite states in a position to" prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, rockets and vehicles capable of delivering such weapons, a phrase that makes many suspicious of U.S. intentions.
The proposal "should not be a context to whip the countries", says an Asian diplomat who did not want to be named. "How can we talk about faceless actors when there's no agreed definition of terrorists? You know, whom you called a terrorist yesterday could be a president today".
According to the draft, Washington wants the Security Council to ask all member nations to help prevent and "if necessary, interdict shipment of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, their means of delivery and related material in accordance with the international and national laws".
"This is a dangerous concept," says an Asian diplomat who also requested anonymity. "This can be misused by adversaries in the name of interdiction".
The US resolution stems from the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a plan announced by President George W. Bush in May last year as a step towards creating new legal agreements authorizing the search of planes and ships carrying suspect cargo.
The PSI has been endorsed by nine European nations, including Britain, Germany and France, as well as Australia. Washington and its allies claim the proposal is legal under the UN Charter and the Security Council Presidential Statement of 1992.
But legal experts say neither of those regulations gives nations the authority to interdict shipments on the high seas.
Diplomats say negotiations have stalled on the question of the definition of "interdiction" because two of five permanent Council members, China and Russia, have refused to go along with the current draft resolution.
"The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is a serious issue," Russia's UN Ambassador Sergey Lavrov told reporters recently. "But we need to develop a language which is clear".
"It's a sensitive issue," said Chinese ambassador Wang Guangya, who is also president of the Security Council for February. "It can be best solved by the judgments of the International Atomic Energy Agency" (IAEA), the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, he added.
Recent IAEA investigations into Iran's nuclear program led to the arrest of Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who publicly confessed his involvement in transferring his country's nuclear technology to other nations.
Diplomats say so far that case is the only example that could be used to define the "entities and individuals" in the draft US resolution.
But Pakistan, a non-permanent Security Council member, sees the case in a different light. "Dr. Khan was an aberration," a Pakistani diplomat told IPS. "He has been taken care of."
A US diplomat had a different interpretation. "This resolution is trouble for (Pakistan)," he said.
Negotiations on the resolution have so far been confined to the five permanent members of the Security Council, which frustrates some non-permanent but elected members.
"Why is it up to the P-5 (permanent five) to determine the agenda of non-proliferation?" asked a diplomat from a non-permanent member nation. "On the one hand, they are the preachers. On the other hand, they are the sinners".
All permanent members - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - continue to posses thousands of nuclear weapons in their arsenals. Washington is no longer making it a secret that it is producing a new generation of those weapons.
Experts on international law say they share the concerns of the elected members of the Security Council - that Washington might use force against some nations under the pretext of implementing a UN Security Council resolution.
"They are right," says John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Nuclear Policy, a U.S.-based non-profit disarmament advocacy group.
"They think if you get this resolution on paper, the US may use military force like it did in Iraq, even though the UN did not approve it."
Washington is seeking Security Council approval under chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which binds states to implement Council decisions. But Burroughs says he and his colleagues, who have been working on issues related to weapons of mass destruction for more than two decades, doubt if the move to adopt the WMD resolution is legitimate.
"There is nothing in the UN Charter that gives the Security Council the authority to adopt global legislation," he says. "This resolution deals with complex situations" and involves individuals not acting on behalf of states.
Burroughs suggests that any effective implementation of such a proposal would require the involvement of the UN secretary-general and the body's department of disarmament, in addition to negotiations on multilateral agreements such as the Biological Weapons Convention.
Diplomats say non-permanent Security Council members want to address the issue of proliferation by enhancing the agenda on disarmament. But Washington and other permanent members prefer to deal with it separately, they add.
"This is the basic problem with the US and others," says Burroughs. "They think the terrorism threat can be solved with nonproliferation efforts. That's not right. It's going to require eliminating weapons of mass destruction everywhere. It requires political will to do so."
(Inter Press Service)
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UN Demands Halt to Spying in Premises
by Thalif Deen
(Inter Press Service)
February 27, 2004
http://antiwar.com/ips/deen.php?articleid=2049
UN premises are inviolable - and any country defying that sanctity is guilty of an illegal act, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said Thursday, responding to assertions that intelligence officers spied on Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
"We have seen today's media reports alleging that the secretary-general's phone conversations were tapped by British intelligence," Eckhard told reporters. "We would be disappointed if this was true."
The spokesman was commenting on claims that UK intelligence intercepted phone calls to Annan's offices in the run-up to the U.S.-led military attack on Iraq last March.
Eckhard said such actions would undermine the integrity and confidential nature of diplomatic exchanges. "Those who speak to the secretary-general are entitled to assume that their exchanges are confidential", he added.
Clare Short, Britain's former minister for international development, told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Thursday that UK intelligence agents routinely spied on Annan before the war against Iraq.
Just weeks before the attack, the secretary-general was constantly in touch with several world leaders in an attempt to stall an invasion of Iraq and find a peaceful solution to the crisis.
"The UK in this time was also getting spies on Kofi Annan's office and getting reports from him about what was going on," Short said. "In the case of Kofi's office, it was being done for some time. I read some of the transcripts of the accounts of his conversations," she added.
Asked whether anyone close to Annan could have been involved in leaking information to British intelligence, Eckhard said there was no reason to suspect staff members who worked in the secretary-general's office on the 38th floor of the UN Secretariat in New York.
"All UN staff are expressly prohibited from taking instructions from governments," he added.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair dismissed the allegations as "deeply irresponsible". "I am 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", he told reporters.
"I really do regard what Clare Short said this morning as totally irresponsible and entirely consistent," Blair added.
Short resigned her cabinet post last year in disagreement with Blair over the war on Iraq.
Eckhard said the secretariat routinely takes technical measures to guard against such invasions of privacy, and those efforts will now be intensified.
He added that the alleged spying would violate three international treaties: the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations; the 1947 Headquarters Agreement between the United Nations and the United States; and the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
Last month reports surfaced that at least two UN missions in New York - of Mexico and Chile - were bugged by U.S. intelligence just before the Iraq war.
At the time, both countries were non-permanent members of the Security Council whose votes were being canvassed by the United States for a resolution calling for a military attack on Iraq.
Washington eventually dropped the resolution because it failed to generate the necessary nine votes - and no vetoes - for adoption by the Security Council.
Mexico's former UN Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser was quoted as saying, "yes, there was spying. The United States has always used spying to anticipate decisions of other countries and to try to rope them in".
Last year, there were reports of a "surge" of eavesdropping on ambassadors and diplomats representing several other member states in the Security Council, including Angola, Cameroon, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan.
A London newspaper published a memo nearly three weeks before the invasion of Iraq from the US National Security Agency, which sought help from British intelligence in bugging the delegates' homes and office telephones.
On Wednesday, the British government dropped charges against 29-year-old translator Katharine Gun, who was accused of breaking the UK's Official Secrets Act by leaking the memo. Gun is a former employee of British intelligence.
Asked about the bugging of member states' missions, Eckhard said that too was illegal. Although it was outside the UN purview, any such spying violated the 1961 Vienna Convention, he added.
Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, said that both Blair and US President George W. Bush want the issue of spying at the United Nations to go away.
"That's one of the reasons the Blair government ended its prosecution of whistleblower Katharine Gun on Wednesday," he said. But within 24 hours, Solomon added, the scandal of UN spying has exploded again.
"Truly, the integrity of the United Nations is at stake here. If top officials in Washington and London believe that there's nothing wrong with bugging the most private conversations of any and all diplomats in New York, those US and British officials must be persuaded otherwise," Solomon told IPS.
This is a time when delegations to the United Nations from around the world should "connect the dots", and see the links between a US foreign policy that bullies the world into war yet is contemptuous of basic diplomatic standards at the United Nations, he added.
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Spying Much Denied but Done a Lot at U.N., Experts Say
By Dana Priest and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 27, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10951-2004Feb26.html
From the very first day it convened, the United Nations has been a magnet for spies, according to U.N. diplomats and U.S. intelligence experts.
The tapping of phone lines and the planting of microphones in U.N. offices are common enough that the organization employs a team of debuggers, headed by a former New York police officer, to routinely sweep offices and respond to requests from nations that suspect their officials are being monitored.
"In my opinion everybody spies on everybody, and when there's a crisis, big countries spy a lot," said Inocencio F. Arias, Spain's ambassador to the United Nations. "I wouldn't be surprised if this secretary general and other secretary generals have been listened to by a handful of big powers, and not only the ones you are thinking."
An ambassador of a Security Council member nation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it would almost be an insult to be spared the attention of foreign intelligence agencies. "It used to be a shame; now it's a matter of status. If your mission is not bugged, then you are really worth nothing."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt "fought hard for the United States to host the opening session" of the United Nations" in April 1945, says James Bamford in his book about the National Security Agency, "Body of Secrets."
"It seemed like a magnanimous gesture to most of the delegates. But the real reason was to better enable the United States to eavesdrop on its guests," according to Bamford.
"They're doing it today," said Stephen C. Schlesinger, author of "Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations." "States always will be using spying to further their own national security interests."
Regardless of how common spying is, it is not common to get caught, as the NSA apparently was last March when a British translator gave the Observer newspaper copies of an agency memo requesting a "surge" in eavesdropping on Security Council members during the debate on authorizing the use of force against Iraq. Yesterday, a former British cabinet member told BBC radio that she had seen transcripts of Secretary General Kofi Annan's surreptitiously recorded conversations.
Experts say it would be highly unusual if the United States did not know about the Annan eavesdropping. Under a secret pact between Britain, Canada, Australia and the United States, Washington has responsibility for surveilling and sharing information on targets within the United States, NSA experts said.
No wiretapping is allowed in the United States without a court order. When the eavesdropping involves foreign officials, the FBI or the NSA must obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act order, although classified executive orders permit surveillance of specific targets.
Besides U.S. law, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said, three treaties -- the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the 1947 agreement between the United Nations and the United States regarding the headquarters of the United Nations, and the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations -- affirm the inviolability of U.N. premises. "The premises of the United Nations shall be inviolable," states the 1947 agreement, signed by Britain and the United States. It adds that the United Nations' "property and assets . . . shall be immune" from any form of "interference, whether by executive, administrative, judicial or legislative action."
At the same time, most diplomats acknowledge spying as a fact of life. It was at its height during the Cold War, when U.S. and Soviet agents competed for secret information, and the two rival countries filled their U.N. delegations with CIA and KGB officers. Still, it is a subject few diplomats discuss openly.
"I take it as something that could take place," Sergey Lavrov, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, said of the recent allegations. "I think it is illegal, but this shows that the British intelligence service at least technically are very professional." Lavrov said Russian intelligence would not engage in the same activity. "Never, never," he said. "I don't think you could find any even suspicion that the secretary general's office was bugged by the Russian intelligence service."
Another Security Council member nation's ambassador reacted with incredulity. "On the record, if Lavrov says so, I have to believe Lavrov," the diplomat said. "Off the record: Is he joking?"
"The U.N. spends millions a year on anti-bugging equipment," said James Atkinson, president of the Granite Island Group, a firm that provides debugging services to governments and private firms. Atkinson recently drove into New York for fun, passing by many foreign missions to the United Nations. "My equipment picked up so many bugs that it nearly tipped over."
"The secretariat routinely takes technical measures to guard against such invasions of privacy," Eckhard said, "and those efforts will now be intensified."
Lynch reported from the United Nations.
-------- us
Pentagon to probe anti-malaria drug
By Mark Benjamin and Dan Olmsted
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL,
February 27, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040226-113753-9757r.htm
The Pentagon said Wednesday that it will investigate the possible side effects of an anti-malaria drug developed by the Army, including whether it might be a factor in suicides.
Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, told a House Armed Services Committee panel that he would begin a study into the drug Lariam, "to include suicide and neuropsychiatric outcomes."
He said the Pentagon will appoint a panel to help design the study, but said it could take months or years to complete. Pentagon health officials also said they no longer would use Lariam in Iraq because the risk of malaria was slight compared with the risk of the drug.
The Pentagon is studying suicides committed in Iraq and Kuwait during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Mr. Winkenwerder said 21 Army soldiers from units assigned to the operation committed suicide.
Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. James B. Peake told the panel that the Army is investigating five more deaths in Iraq as possible suicides, and six deaths among soldiers in Iraq who killed themselves after returning to the United States.
When asked about the suicide investigation late last month, Army spokeswoman Martha Rudd said the Pentagon would not consider Lariam.
"We don't believe there is any connection between Lariam and suicide," Miss Rudd said at the time. "There is nothing to indicate that is a factor."
Four of the 21 soldiers who committed suicide in Iraq or Kuwait came from units that took Lariam, the Pentagon health officials said Wednesday. One tested positive for Lariam in the blood, they said.
Developed by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Lariam, known generically as mefloquine, is one of the drugs used by soldiers to prevent malaria, which is a particular concern during the summer months.
----
Inside the Ring
February 27, 2004
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
Covert warrior
Word is that the Pentagon may further reinvigorate U.S. Special Operations Command by dispatching Maj. Gen. Del Dailey to lead its battle-planning staff.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last year gave SoCom orders to plan missions to kill or capture al Qaeda terrorists around the world. Previously, SoCom was a supporting command, buying equipment and supervising training for the 40,000-strong special operations corps.
Now, the Tampa, Fla.-based command is combatant, or "supported," command. It has been putting together a battle staff to plan self-contained missions based on actionable intelligence developed by SoCom itself and the intelligence community.
Part of Mr. Rumsfeld's SoCom plan is for commandos, such as Army Green Berets, also called Special Forces, to collect their own intelligence.
In Gen. Dailey, SoCom would get a proven leader who commanded Joint Special Operations Command during the war in Afghanistan and later led commandos in the war to topple Saddam Hussein. Gen. Dailey is a hands-on commander and made frequent trips from JSOC headquarters at Fort Bragg, N.C., to help his teams of Army Delta Force soldiers and Navy SEALs.
Under the plan talked about in the Pentagon, Gen. Dailey would earn promotion to lieutenant general. Gen. Doug Brown, also a veteran of JSOC, is SoCom commander.
Tracking weapons
The Pentagon has started an effort with the difficult task of tracking conventional arms transfers around the world and working to fix weak weapons-export controls.
The program is led by John Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, who also is a Pentagon inspector general for international armament and trade through a memorandum of understanding with the Pentagon inspector general.
"We handle international technology-transfer issues, as well as the investigative side of things," said Edward Timperlake, the Pentagon's director of technology assessment, who works with Mr. Shaw.
The focus of the effort is not on weapons of mass destruction. Rather, the group is looking at conventional arms and dual-use items with commercial as well as military applications. The program began after Operation Iraqi Freedom, which uncovered huge stockpiles of foreign weapons in Iraq. The weapons came from a variety of suppliers, including Russia, France and China.
Iraq 'ebb and flow'
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disclosed a few details of the Pentagon's strategy for the transition from U.S. and coalition forces to local troops in Iraq. U.S. military forces will be "ebbing and flowing" in support of the local military and police security forces, he said.
The transition from U.S. control to Iraqi leadership is set for July 1.
Depending on how hot different parts of Iraq remain in the coming months, "I think that what you'll see is that it will vary in different parts of the country over time and there will be an ebb and flow," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him in the Middle East.
"It may very well be in one section of the country, the military commander will make a judgment that they can move back and put the Iraqi forces out front, and that that will stick permanently. It may also be that in some parts of the country that will happen, and they'll make a judgment a month or two or three or four later that they need to press back in and support the Iraqi security forces and that you'll see that ebb and flowing for a period of time, I suspect."
Civvies
Some folks in the special operations community got a good laugh last week over a Pentagon spokesman's assertion that the Green Berets perform no duties in civilian clothes.
The assertion came after the spokesman was asked about a story in The Washington Times that Green Berets would take on more intelligence roles in the war on terror, including stints under diplomatic cover in some U.S. embassies. The idea is to get the lay of the land in some al Qaeda-infested country. Perhaps a Green Beret's network could finger some of Osama bin Laden's operatives for assassination.
When the spokesman was asked about the story, he said that they will not do anything in civilian clothes.
A Green Beret told us, "He doesn't know what he's talking about."
After the spokesman made the assertion, Larry Di Rita, the Pentagon's top spokesman, quickly added, "Let me pull back on that question. Would we do something that's contrary to military regulations and the law, is your question. And the answer is no."
Iraq chat
The U.S. military has set up a "coalition chat line" at U.S. and allied military facilities in Iraq. The line allows commanders and troops in the field who speak different languages to communicate via instant messaging on laptop computers.
According to the Office of Naval Research, which helped develop the multilingual chat software, the communications link is a big hit.
The chat line is being used to communicate with the U.S. and allied Multi-National Division and Polish troops at Al Hilla, Spanish troops at Ad Diwaniyah, and Ukrainian troops at Al Kut. The Ukrainians are using Cyrillic characters on their chat system.
Ten laptops with the chat line were sent to Iraq in November. Now, about 200 are being used.
•Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are Pentagon reporters. Mr. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at bgertz@washingtontimes.com. Mr. Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at rscarborough@washingtontimes.com.
-------- propaganda wars
Pentagon downplays report identifying climate change as national security threat
Friday, February 27, 2004
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-02-27/s_13527.asp
WASHINGTON, D.C. - 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.
----
UN Spying and Evasions of American Journalism
by Norman Solomon
February 27, 2004
http://antiwar.com/orig/solomon.php?articleid=2044
Tony Blair and George W. Bush want the issue of spying at the United Nations to go away. That's one of the reasons the Blair government ended its prosecution of whistleblower Katharine Gun on Wednesday. But within 24 hours, the scandal of U.N. spying exploded further when one of Blair's former cabinet ministers said that British spies closely monitored conversations of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq last year.
The new allegations, which have the ring of truth, are now coming from ex-secretary of international development Clare Short. "I have seen transcripts of Kofi Annan's conversations," she said in an interview with BBC Radio. "In fact I have had conversations with Kofi in the run-up to war thinking 'Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying.'" Short added that British intelligence had been explicitly directed to spy on Annan and other top U.N. officials.
Few can doubt that some major British news outlets will thoroughly dig below the surface of Short's charges. But on the other side of the Atlantic, the journalistic evasion on the subject of U.N. spying has been so extreme that we can have no confidence in the mainstream media's inclination to adequately cover this new bombshell.
For 51 weeks - from the day that the Observer newspaper in London broke the news about spying at the United Nations until the moment that British prosecutors dropped charges against Gun on Wednesday - major news outlets in the United States almost completely ignored the story.
The Observer's expose, under the headline "Revealed: U.S. Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War," came 18 days before the invasion of Iraq began. By unveiling a top secret U.S. National Security Agency memo, the newspaper provided key information when it counted most: before the war started.
That NSA memo outlined surveillance of a half-dozen delegations with swing votes on the U.N. Security Council, noting a focus on "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policy-makers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals" - support for war on Iraq. The memo said that the agency had started a "surge" of spying on U.N. diplomats, including wiretaps of home and office telephones along with reading of e-mails.
Three days after the story came out, I asked for an assessment from the man who gave the Pentagon Papers to journalists in 1971. Daniel Ellsberg responded: "This leak is more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers. ... Truth-telling like this can stop a war."
But even though - or perhaps especially because - the memo was from the U.S. government and showed that Washington was spying on U.N. diplomats, the big American media showed scant interest. The coverage was either shoddy or non-existent.
A year ago, at the brink of war, the New York Times did not cover the U.N. spying revelation. Nearly 96 hours after the Observer had reported it, I called Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale and asked why not. "We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting," Smale replied. She added that "we could get no confirmation or comment." In other words, U.S. intelligence officials refused to confirm or discuss the memo - so the Times did not see fit to report on it.
The Washington Post didn't do much better. It printed a 514-word article on a back page with the headline "Spying Report No Shock to U.N." Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times published a longer piece emphasizing from the outset that U.S. spy activities at the United Nations are "long-standing." For good measure, the piece reported "some experts suspected that it could be a forgery" - and "several former top intelligence officials said they were skeptical of the memo's authenticity."
Within days, any doubt about the memo's "authenticity" was gone. The British media reported that the U.K. government had arrested an unnamed female employee at a British intelligence agency in connection with the leak.
By then, however, the spotty coverage in the mainstream U.S. press had disappeared. In fact - except for a high-quality detailed news story by a pair of Baltimore Sun reporters that appeared in that newspaper on March 4 - there isn't an example of mainstream U.S. news reporting on the story last year that's worthy of any pride.
In mid-November, for the first time, Katharine Gun's name became public when the British press reported that she'd been formally charged with violating the draconian Official Secrets Act. Appearing briefly at court proceedings, she was a beacon of moral clarity. Disclosure of the NSA memo, Gun said, was "necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed." And: "I have only ever followed my conscience."
A search of the comprehensive LexisNexis database finds that for nearly three months after Katharine Gun's name first appeared in the British media, U.S. news stories mentioning her scarcely existed. When Gun's name did appear in U.S. dailies it was almost always on an opinion page. News sections were oblivious: Again with the notable exception of the Baltimore Sun (which ran an in-depth news article about Gun and Ellsberg on Feb. 1), mainstream U.S. news departments proceeded as though Katharine Gun were a non-person. She only became "newsworthy" after charges were dropped.
"Mr. Blair's spokesmen were conspicuously silent on Wednesday, apparently hopeful that the case would disappear from the public agenda," the New York Times reported in Thursday's paper. But the case had never been on the public agenda as far as the Times news department was concerned.
(Background about the Gun case has been posted at the Institute for Public Accuracy, where my colleagues and I have worked to make information available about the U.N. spying story.)
Overall, the matter of Washington's spying at the United Nations has been off the American media map until February. Whether the major U.S. news outlets will do a better job on the subject this spring remains to be seen. But it would be a mistake to assume that they will.
Although the prosecution of Gun has ended, the issue of U.N. spying has not. At stake is the integrity of a world body that should not tolerate intrusive abuses by the government of its host country.
We can assume that Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, a former Mexican ambassador to the United Nations, did not speak lightly when he made a strong statement that appeared in an Associated Press dispatch from Mexico City on Feb. 12: "They are violating the U.N. headquarters covenant." He was referring to officials of the U.S. government.
That statement now resonates more loudly than ever. With British and American intelligence agencies working closely together, both have been locked in a shamefully duplicitous embrace. In the interests of war, their nefarious activities served as direct counterpoints to the deceptions coming from 10 Downing Street and the White House. In the interests of journalism, reporters should now pursue truth wherever it might lead.
----
ZIMBABWE - VOA dubbed 'security threat'
February 27, 2004
Washington Times
World Scene
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/worldscene.htm
HARARE - Zimbabwean journalists working for Voice of America pose a threat to Zimbabwe's national security, the state media commission said yesterday.
"The Voice of America is an arm of the U.S. State Department, which is on record as seeking to overthrow the government of Zimbabwe through unconstitutional means and [illegally] under the United Nations charter," the commission said.
----
Germany In 1933: The Easy Slide Into Fascism
by Bernard Weiner,
February 27, 2004
Information Clearinghouse
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5775.htm
June : 2003: If my email is any indication, a goodly number of folks wonder if they're living in America in 2003 or Germany in 1933.
All this emphasis on nationalism, the militarization of society, identifying The Leader as the nation, a constant state of fear and anxiety heightened by the authorities, repressive laws that shred constitutional guarantees of due process, wars of aggression launched on weaker nations, the desire to assume global hegemony, the merging of corporate and governmental interests, vast mass-media propaganda campaigns, a populace that tends to believe the slogans and lies it's fed without asking too many questions, a timid opposition that barely contests the administration's reckless adventurism abroad and police-state policies at home, etc. etc.
The parallels are not exact, of course; America in 2003 and Germany seventy years earlier are not the same, and Bush certainly is not Adolf Hitler. But there are enough disquieting similarities in the two periods at least to see what we can learn -- cautionary tales, as it were -- and then figure out what to do with our knowledge.
The veneer of civilization is thin. We know this from our own observations, and various writers -- from Shakespeare to Sinclair Lewis ("It Can't Happen Here") -- have shown us how easily populations can be manipulated by leaders skillfully playing on patriotic emotion or racial or nationalist feelings.
Whole peoples, like individuals, can become irrational on occasion -- sometimes for a brief moment, sometimes for years, sometimes for decades. Ambition, hatred, fear can get the better of them, and gross lies told by their leaders can deceive their otherwise rational minds. It has happened, it happens, it will continue to happen.
One of the most outrageous and horrific examples of an entire country falling into national madness probably was Hitler's Germany from 1933-45. The resulting world war was disastrous, leading to more than 40,000,000 deaths.
A good share of what we know about how this happened in Germany usually comes to us many years later from post-facto books, looking backward to the horror. There are very few examples of accounts written from the inside at the very time the events were unfolding.
One such book is "Defying Hitler," by the noted German journalist/author Sebastian Haffner. The manuscript was found, stuffed away in a drawer, by Haffner's son in 1999 after his father's death at age 91. Published in 2000, the book became an immediate best-seller in Germany and was published last year in English, translated by the son, Oliver Pretzel. (His father's original name was Raimund Pretzel; as Sebastian Haffner, he went on to a highly successful career, writing in England during the war and then later back in Germany. He authored "From Bismarck to Hitler" and "The Meaning of Hitler," among many other works.)
"Defying Hitler" is a brilliantly written social document, begun (and ended abruptly) in 1939; even though it fills in the reader on German history from the First World War on, its major focus is on the year 1933, when, as Hitler assumed power, Haffner was a 25-year-old law student, in-training to join the German courts as a junior administrator.
You find yourself reading this book in amazement; there is so much historical perspective, so much sweep of what was going on and predictions of what later was to happen, so many insights into what led so many ordinary Germans to join with or acquiesce to the Nazi program -- how could anyone so young be so prescient in the midst of the brutal sordidness that was Nazism? (Indeed, some critics claimed that Haffner must have rewritten the book decades later; every page of the original manuscript was sent to laboratories, which authenticated that it indeed had been composed in 1939.)
The Individual in Society
What distinguishes "Defying Hitler," in addition to its superb writing, is that Haffner focuses on "little people" like himself, rather than on the machinations of leaders. He wants to explore how ordinary Germans, especially non-Nazi and anti-Nazi Germans, permitted themselves to be swallowed whole into the Hitlerian maw.
Haffner makes occasional broad pronouncements about German character traits ("As Bismarck once remarked in a famous speech, moral courage is, in any case, a rare virtue in Germany, but it deserts a German completely the moment he puts on a uniform"), but he devotes a good deal of his attention to the question of personal responsibility. If you read ordinary history books, he says, "you get the impression that no more than a few dozen people are involved, who happen to be 'at the helm of the ship of state' and whose deeds and decisions form what is called history.
"According to this view, the history of the present decade [the 1930s] is a kind of chess game among Hitler, Mussolini, Chiang Kai-Shek, Roosevelt, Chamberlain, Daladier, and a number of other men whose names are on everybody's lips. We anonymous others seem at best to be the objects of history, pawns in the chess game, who may be pushed forward or left standing, sacrificed or captured, but whose lives, for what they are worth, take place in a totally different world, unrelated to what is happening on the chessboard.
"...It may seem a paradox, but it is nonetheless the simple truth, to say that on the contrary, the decisive historical events take place among us, the anonymous masses. The most powerful dictators, ministers, and generals are powerless against the simultaneous mass decisions taken individually and almost unconsciously by the population at large...Decisions that influence the course of history arise out of the individual experiences of thousands or millions of individuals."
The Riddle of Hitler's Rise
Haffner tries to solve the riddle of the easy acceptance of fascism in Hitler's Third Reich. In March of 1933, a majority of German citizens did not vote for Hitler. "What happened to that majority? Did they die? Did they disappear from the face of the earth? Did they become Nazis at this late stage? How was it possible that there was not the slightest visible reaction from them" as Hitler, installed by the authorities as Chancellor, began slowly and then more quickly consolidating power and moving Germany from a democratic state to a totalitarian one?
All along the way, Hitler would propose or actually promulgate regulations that sliced away at German citizens' freedoms -- usually aimed at small, vulnerable sectors of society (labor unionists, communists, Jews, mental defectives, et al.) -- and few said or did anything to indicate serious displeasure. In the early days, on those rare occasions when there was concerted negative reaction, Hitler would back off a bit. And so the Nazis grew bolder and more voracious as they continued slicing away at civil society. Many Germans (including some of Hitler's original corporate backers) were convinced Nazism would collapse as it became more and more extreme; others chose denial. It was easier to look the other way.
Haffner saw what was starting to happen, but retreated into his law studies. Even while the Brownshirts were beating and killing people in the streets, the courts with which he worked remained a solid bulwark in defense of traditional democratic principles. And then one day, the Nazis simply marched into the Berlin court buildings and took over Germany's judicial system. Haffner was shaken to the core, but continued studying for his final exams.
Shortly thereafter, he and his fellow students were dispatched to a kind of boot camp for ideological and military training. Haffner, a Christian anti-Nazi, found himself, to his astonishment and horror, wearing jackboots, a swastika and learning how to kill.
In an inner monologue, Haffner says: "There are some things I must never do: never say anything that I would be ashamed of later. Shooting at targets is all right. But not at people. I must not commit myself, or sell my soul...Oh dear! It dawned on me that I had already relinquished and lost everything. I wore a uniform with a swastika armband. I stood to attention and cleaned my rifle....But that did not count: it was not me that did it; it was a game and I was acting a part.
"Only what if, dear God, there was some court that did not recognize this defense, but simply wrote down everything as it happened; that did not look into my heart, but simply noted the swastika armband? Before that court I was in a wretched position. Dear God, where had I gone wrong? What should I say to the judge who asked, 'You wear a swastika armband and say that you do not want to. Then why do you wear it?'"
Nazi propaganda, policies and terror had broken down traditional support-networks. You couldn't be sure whom to trust. Everyone could be on the government payroll, or could turn into informants to save their skins. And so arms went out in Nazi salutes, militarist songs were sung at rallies and on the streets, "each one of us the Gestapo of the others." In fear, individualism was crushed, leaving most citizens to relate only to The Leader, or to their military units, the comradeship offered by fascism.
Millions of Marks for a Loaf of Bread
Then there was the economic factor, the terror associated with having no money with which to live. One reads Haffner's description of the hyper-inflation crisis, but it's difficult to accept or understand: "No other nation has experienced anything comparable to the events of 1923 in Germany. All nations went through the Great War, and most of them have also experienced revolutions, social crises, strikes, redistributions of wealth, and currency devaluation. None but Germany has undergone the fantastic, grotesque extreme of all of these together; none has experienced the gigantic, carnival dance of death, the unending, bloody Saturnalia, in which not only money but all standards lost their value.
"...Anyone who had savings in a bank or bonds saw their value disappear overnight. Soon it did not matter whether it was a penny put away for a rainy day or a vast fortune. Everything was obliterated...A pound of potatoes which yesterday had cost fifty thousand marks now cost a hundred thousand. The salary of sixty-five thousand marks brought home the previous Friday was no longer sufficient to buy a packet of cigarettes on Tuesday...In August, the dollar reached a million [marks]....In September, a million marks no longer had any practical value...At the end of October, it was a billion...The atmosphere became revolutionary once again."
When citizens face uncertainty on this scale -- and the fear and dislocation that attend all such social traumas -- a man on a white horse promising to restore order has great appeal, even to some staunch democrats.
There were other ingredients that went into the bubbling fascist vat: the humiliating terms of the Versailles Treaty that were placed on defeated Germany after World War I; the unceasing propaganda barrage in the mass media, helping citizens to agree with the government; the martial mentality that pervaded society. ("From 1914 to 1918 a generation of German schoolboys daily experienced war as a great, thrilling, enthralling game between nations, which provided far more excitement and emotional satisfaction than anything peace could offer; and that is where [Nazism] draws its allure from: its simplicity, its appeal to the imagination, and its zest for action; but also its intolerance and its cruelty toward internal opponents...Ultimately, that is also the source of Nazism's belligerent attitude toward neighboring states. Other countries are not regarded as neighbors, but must be opponents, whether they like it or not."
And then there is the inexplicable mystique that surrounds such men as Hitler, that mesmerizes and lures millions into their web. "If my experience of Germany has taught me anything, it is this: Rathenau [who led a progressive government in 1921-22, and was then assassinated by anti-Semitic thugs] and Hitler are the two men who excited the imagination of the German masses to the utmost; the one by his ineffable culture, the other by his ineffable vileness. Both, and this is decisive, came from inaccessible regions, from sort of 'beyond.' the one from a sphere of sublime spirituality where the cultures of three millennia and two continents hold a symposium; the other from a jungle far below the depths plumbed by the basest penny dreadfuls, from an underworld where demons rise from a brewed-up stench of petty-bourgeois back rooms, doss-houses, barrack latrines, and the hangman's yard. From their respective 'beyonds,' they both drew a spellbinding power, quite irrespective of their politics."
When Hitler's in-your-face brand of "beyond" power -- with its meanness and arrogance and menace, throwing opponents in jail, beating them, even killing them -- met the traditional democratic culture, those on the other end often had no tools at their disposal to combat the new hardball politics: "It was then that the real mystery of the Hitler phenomenon began to show itself: the strange befuddlement and numbness of his opponents, who could not cope with his behavior and found themselves transfixed by the gaze of the basilisk, unable to see that it was hell personified that challenged them."
The Big Lie Technique
And how did Haffner deal for so long with this menacing force in front of him? "What saved me was...my nose. I have a fairly well developed figurative sense of smell, or to put it differently, a sense of the worth (or worthlessness!) of human, moral, political views and attitudes. Most Germans unfortunately lack this sense almost completely. The cleverest of them are capable of discussing themselves stupid with their abstractions and deductions, when just using their noses would tell them that something stinks."
Given their built-in weakness and their willingness to swallow the most outrageous Big Lies emanating from the propaganda ministry and the media, most Germans were fruit waiting to be plucked by the Nazi harvesters. "They still fall for anything. After all that, I do not see that one can blame the majority of Germans who, in 1933, believed that the Reichstag fire was the work of the Communists. [The Parliament burned down and a convenient Communist arsonist was fingered, which the Nazis used as the excuse to unleash police-state tactics against all opponents.] What one can blame them for, and what shows their terrible collective weakness of character clearly for the first time during the Nazi period, is that this settled the matter. With sheepish submissiveness the German people accepted that, as a result of the fire, each one of them lost what little personal freedom and dignity was guaranteed by the constitution; as though it followed as a necessary consequence."
In short, what should have been a strong political and moral opposition movement to Hitlerian policies, meekly acceded to the destruction of their country's institutions of law and social harmony. The result in society was a clear leaning toward the dynamic, muscular policies advocated by the Nazis, and a seething "anger and disgust with the cowardly treachery of their own [opposition] leadership."
Of course, fear of police-state action always was operative. "Join the thugs to avoid being beaten up. Less clear was a kind of exhilaration, the intoxication of unity, the magnetism of the masses. Many also felt a need for revenge against those who had abandoned them. Then there was a peculiarly German line of thought: 'All the predictions of the opponents of the Nazis have not come true. They said the Nazis could not win. Now they have won. Therefore the opponents were wrong. So the Nazis must be right.' There was also (particularly among intellectuals) the belief that they could change the face of the Nazi Party by becoming a member, even now shift its direction."
All of this follows the normal range of psychology, Haffner says. "The only thing that is missing is what in animals is called 'breeding.' This is a solid inner kernel that cannot be shaken by external pressures and forces, something noble and steely, a reserve of pride, principle, and dignity to be drawn on in the hour of trial. It is missing in the Germans. As a nation they are soft, unreliable, and without backbone. That was shown in March 1933. At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown. The result of this million-fold nervous breakdown is the unified nation, ready for anything, that is today the nightmare of the rest of the world."
Haffner laments that the crimes of the Hitler administration, given this collective nervous breakdown, have very little impact on the population, which seems to accept everything done in its name with a shrug of the shoulders. "It is one of the uncanny aspects of events in Germany that the deeds have no doers, the suffering has no martyrs. Everything takes place under a kind of anesthesia. Objectively dreadful deeds produce a thin, puny emotional response. Murders are committed like schoolboy pranks. Humiliation and moral decay are accepted like minor incidents. Even death under torture only produces the response 'Bad luck'."
The Slide Towards Fascism
And so it becomes easier to simply permit oneself to sink, ever so slowly into this collective illness, into accommodation with the ruling party, even though the police-state is constantly violating citizens' privacy. "We were pursued into the farthest corners of our private lives; in all areas of life there was rout, panic, and flight. No one could tell where it would end. At the same time we were called upon, not to surrender, but to renege. Just a little pact with the devil -- and you were no longer one of the captured quarry. Instead you were one of the victorious hunters."
Certainly, Haffner and others like him felt their own slide toward complicity with the Nazis, as their sense of self faded. "Things were quite deliberately arranged so that the individual had no room to maneuver. What one represented, what one's opinions were in 'private' and 'actually,' were of no concern and set aside, put on ice, as it were. On the other hand, in moments when one had the leisure to think of one's individuality...one had the feeling that what was actually happening, in which one participated mechanically, had no real existence or validity. It was only in these hours that one could attempt to call oneself morally to account and prepare a last position of defense for one's inner self."
Haffner was approaching decision time about his future if he stayed in the Third Reich. But it's clear which way he was leaning, as his analyses got darker and darker. "It is said that the Germans are subjugated. That is only half true. They are also something else, something worse, for which there is no word: they are 'comraded,' a dreadfully dangerous condition. They are under a spell. They live a drugged life in a dream world. They are terribly happy, but terribly demeaned; so self-satisified, but so boundlessly loathsome; so proud and yet so despicable and inhuman. They think they are scaling high mountains, when in reality they are crawling through a swamp. As long as the spell lasts, there is almost no antidote."
He hung in until 1938. Just prior to the Second World War, Haffner left Germany for England to join the war-effort against fascism. He did not return until the mid-'50s.
So, dear reader, examine the above descriptive passages from the Germany of the 1930s, when the Nazis were assuming full power, and see what lessons can be learned for our situation today.
As I write this, Ashcroft is telling the Congress that the Patriot Act -- the same act that more than 100 cities have voted not to honor because of its numerous violations of rights guaranteed by the Constitution -- does not give the Bush Administration enough police power and needs to be expanded. (This at a time when American citizens have been arrested, not charged and then stashed away on military bases, outside the judicial system; and hundreds of foreign prisoners are being held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva conventions.)
Demonstrable government falsehoods are being published by a compliant media, while that same media, owned by corporate giants, refuses to report factual information that is embarrassing to the Administration. And finally, the Pentagon is working on "contingency plans" for the next unilateral invasion of a sovereign state by the U.S. military.
About the Author: Dr. Bernard Weiner has taught American politics and international relations at Western Washington University and San Diego State University. He was an anti-war activist and activist journalist in the '60s and '70s, and served as an editor of Northwest Passage in the Pacific Northwest. He was with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly twenty years as a writer/editor/critic, and has published in The Nation, Village Voice, The Progressive, CounterPunch, The Progressive Populist, and widely on the internet. He is the author of "Boy Into Man: A Fathers' Guide to Initiation of Teenage Sons" (Transformation Press), four volumes of poetry, and numerous plays. He lives in San Francisco.
Copyright 2003 by Bernard Weiner: Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers (http://www.crisispapers.org)
----
Mother Nature, The Hate Crime
More than 60 world-class scientists agree: BushCo just really, really loathes this planet
By Mark Morford,
SF Gate Columnist
Friday, February 27, 2004
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/02/27/notes022704.DTL&nl=fix
Today's question: What do you get when more than 60 of the world's top scientists, 20 Nobel Laureates among them, get together and write one of the most scathing, damning reports in the history of modern science, aimed squarely at BushCo's thoroughly atrocious record of cover-ups and obfuscations and outright lies regarding the health of the planet?
What do you get when those very scientists, a highly respected, nonpartisan group called the Union of Concerned Scientists, go on to claim that no other president in modern history has so openly misled the public or been so flagrantly disrespectful of scientific fact and mountains of irrefutable research, deliberately and systematically mutilating scientific data in the service of its rather brutal, pro-corporate, antienvironment agenda?
If you answered, "Why, you get even more painful polyps of sadness and disgust on your soul due to the BushCo onslaught," consider yourself among the millions who are right now rather horrified and appalled and who are wondering just what sort of human -- not what sort of politician, mind you, not what sort of power broker, not what sort of failed Texas oilman corporate lackey -- but what sort of human being you have to be to enact such insidious ongoing planet-gouging legislation, smirking and shrugging all the way.
It is not an easy one to answer, as you can only wonder what has gone so horribly wrong, what sort of line has been crossed so that not even the basic dignity of the planet, not even a modicum of respect for it, is the slightest factor anymore in modern American right-wing politics. What, too extreme? Hardly.
The story about the scientist's report is >here. It was broadcast over many major media channels, somewhat loud and mostly clear, though most media was far more eager to bury it under all those more hotly controversial pics of happy gay people smooching on the steps of S.F.'s city hall than they were to trumpet the dire claims of a bunch of boring genius scientists.
Such is the national priority. After all, no one wants to hear how badly we've been duped by this administration, again. Given the nonexistent WMDs and the complete lack of Iraqi nukes and the bogus wars and manufactured fear and a galling budget deficit and nearly 3 million lost jobs and a raft of BushCo lies so thick you need a jackhammer to see some light, no one wants to know that even the world's top scientists are disgusted with our nation's leadership.
We can, after all, take only so much abuse, can be only so karmically and ideologically hammered, before we become so utterly exhausted that we just stop caring.
And, in fact, BushCo would love nothing more than to cripple our outrage and deflect attention away from all the dead U.S. soldiers in Iraq and his overall atrocious record on the war, jobs, the environment and foreign policy, and center it all on divisive issues of God-centric moral righteousness, like all those sicko gay people trying to dignify their sinful love.
This is a president, after all, who truly believes he is doing God's will by turning this country into the most lawless, internationally loathed aggressor on the planet, something I'm sure is very reassuring to those countless thousands of dead Iraqi civilians.
Does it really matter anymore? After all, as any child can tell you, politics has always been a wildly corrupt and slimy profession, valued somewhere between professional wrestler and professional baby-seal clubber on the moral and spiritual scale o' delicious karmic significance.
And, yes, it must be noted that there isn't a U.S. president on record who hasn't somehow deliberately mangled scientific data and covered up important reports during his term in order to further favored policies. Goes almost without saying.
But, as the Union of Concerned Scientists point out, never has the oppression of fact been so systematic, so widespread, so repulsive as that which Bush has wrought. Never has the abuse been so flagrant, the border marking what's morally acceptable so shamelessly crossed.
Maybe you don't believe the hippie environmentalists who are always spouting off about saving the whales and protecting the forests. Maybe you like to hiss at and dismiss, say, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s outstanding, powerfully researched articles in the recent issue of Rolling Stone and the latest issue of The Nation that carefully delineate just how Bush's enviro record is the worst in history, and call Kennedy just another typical left-wing liberal. You wish to be that small and boorish? Fine.
Not so easy, however, to dismiss a small army of nonpartisan, internationally respected scientists as just more agenda-thick political BS, as BushCo has done. To do so reeks of something far beyond mere name calling and dumb party maneuvering. It reeks of sheer heartlessness regarding the planet. It reeks of abuse. It reeks of hate.
This, then, is the gist of the BushCo attack on the planet: a hate crime. An intentional, ferocious dismantling of protections and guidelines, a view that Mother Nature is nothing but a cheap resource to be exploited, a giant oil can to be suckled, a hunk of toilet paper for Dick Cheney to -- well, let's not imagine.
Look at it this way. It's like music videos. Over and over again, endless droning shots of gyrating sweating booty-pumping faux-sexy bodies pretending to writhe in bogus orgasmic bliss, video after video and hour after hour where you watch and watch and go slowly numb and say, Jesus with a skimpy thong and a spray bottle of baby oil, how much further can they go?
How much more naked and sexist and overblown and abusive can they get before they say oh screw it and just strip down and have sex with a live chicken as 50 Cent downs a bottle of Crystal and grins maniacally?
This is like the saturation level of BushCo. Something's gotta give, you say. Surely some sort of ugly orgiastic critical mass has been reached wherein Bush and his planet-reaming policies simply cannot go any further without some sort of meltdown, some sort of massive international cosmic recoil whereby we finally see the Bush admin for what it is, quite possibly the most self-serving, egomaniacal cluster of enviro thugs in modern history.
But with the Union of Concerned Scientists report, this sentiment goes one step further -- this is not just hate for the planet, not merely a blatant right-wing revulsion for those much-loathed intangible New Age-y touchstones like earthly vibration, energy, true spiritual connection and a deep veneration and sense of profound awe for the raw divinity of nature.
This is more sinister, and more disturbing. BushCo's ugly rejection of not merely the "liberal" environmental politicking but also of the factual science of the natural world is, ultimately, a form of self-loathing.
It is a snide and self-destructive rejection of the human-nature connection, of the very real and very direct correlation between how we treat our world and how we view ourselves, between what we choose to celebrate/annihilate in nature and what we venerate/devastate in own spirits. After all, the less regard you have for one, the less you care about the other. Simple, really.
Look. We reflect the planet. The planet reflects us. And 60 out of 60 scientists agree: BushCo's time of reflecting nothing but cruel blackness and abuse needs to come to an end, right now.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Senate Panel Presses Bush on War's Plan
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/politics/27INTE.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - Faced with a refusal by the Bush administration to provide certain documents related to prewar intelligence on Iraq, the Senate intelligence committee voted in a closed session on Thursday to move toward a possible subpoena, according to senior Congressional officials.
The bipartisan vote on the Republican-led panel sets a three-week deadline for a voluntary handover by the administration, after which the committee would employ unspecified "further action," which could only mean a subpoena, the officials said.
In a brief telephone interview, the top Democrat on the panel said that "there's no other interpretation" of the committee's action if the White House fails to turn over the documents by late March.
"We need these things, we want them, and if we don't get them, we will resort to other means," said the Democrat, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, who declined to discuss the committee's deliberations in detail.
The plan approved by the panel calls for Senator Rockefeller and Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the top Republican, to issue an explicit warning in a letter to President Bush if the documents are not received, Congressional officials said.
The panel requested the information as part of its inquiry into the administration's prewar intelligence about Iraq, including the disputed intelligence about Iraq's illicit weapons and ties to terrorism, the officials said.
The White House has said publicly that it is complying with the panel's requests. But Congressional officials say the administration is continuing to withhold important information, including copies of the president's detailed daily written intelligence digest.
After the independent commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks issued its own subpoena threat, the White House and the commission agreed earlier this year on a plan that is to allow representatives of that panel to review some copies of the presidential briefings, which are highly classified. But in discussions with the Senate committee, the White House has so far insisted that the documents be kept away from Congress, on the ground that they are covered by executive privilege.
In a letter in October to Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, the committee demanded that the White House lift its objections to releasing the documents.
Earlier this month, the committee staff completed a draft report on the first phase of its investigation, covering the quantity and quality of prewar intelligence on Iraq. But Congressional officials say that to complete their work, they still need access to documents and interviews that have not been provided.
----
Extension of the 9/11 Panel Is Said to Hinge on Speaker
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/politics/27PANE.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - The Senate is expected to approve legislation within days to extend the life of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, with commission members and Republican lawmakers vowing on Thursday to press Speaker J. Dennis Hastert to drop his plans to block the measure in the House.
The 10-member commission has warned that without a two-month extension of the deadline for its final report, now set by law at May 27, the panel will not be able to complete its investigation, which focuses in part on intelligence and law enforcement blunders in the weeks and months before the 2001 terrorist attacks.
After some initial reluctance to support an extension, the White House agreed this month to endorse the two-month delay requested by the panel, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
Republican Senate leaders support the extension as well, and the Senate Intelligence Committee voted Thursday to extend the panel's work by two months. Republican Congressional aides said on Thursday that the legislation would be approved in the Senate and sent to the House as early as this week, possibly attached to an otherwise uncontroversial bill to extend federal highway programs.
The stumbling block is Mr. Hastert, an Illinois Republican. He has said through his spokesman that he will prevent a House vote on any bill to extend the life of the commission, arguing that any extension would risk turning the commission's findings into a political issue in the midst of this summer's campaigning.
"We want this report out as soon as possible," Mr. Hastert's spokesman, John Feehery, said on Thursday. "The recommendations only really work if they come out quickly. And any delay will only make this become a political football."
Mr. Feehery said Mr. Hastert had spoken on Monday with the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., and made clear his opposition to any extension. Asked if there was any chance that Mr. Hastert might change his mind, Mr. Feehery replied, "I don't think so."
Members of the commission and lawmakers who support the extension seemed convinced, however, that Mr. Hastert would change his mind, especially if he was placed under pressure by fellow Republicans and the groups of families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, who are seeking an even longer extension of the life of the commission.
They say that attaching the measure to a popular federal highway bill could also force Mr. Hastert's hand because he would have to derail the highway bill to kill the extension.
"I hope the speaker will change his position and allow the House to vote," said Thomas H. Kean, the commission's chairman and a former Republican governor of New Jersey.
Mr. Kean said in a telephone interview that without the extension "we would not do as good a report as we could."
"It would be a disappointment to us and something of a disservice to the American people," he said.
The commission has warned that without an extension it might sharply reduce the number of public hearings it will hold on the events of Sept. 11 and will have to curtail other parts of the investigation.
"The commission is clear," said Lee H. Hamilton, the panel's vice chairman and a former Democratic House member of Indiana. "We unanimously support the additional two months, and from our standpoint, it's important to get quick passage of the extension so we've got to plan. As of now, we have to assume that our May 27 deadline is the deadline."
The House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, said at a meeting with reporters on Thursday that "Mr. Hastert is a reasonable man and that he will agree" to allow legislation extending the commission to be approved in the House.
"I don't think this House of Representatives wants to take responsibility for our having less information than we need as to how this happened," Mr. Pelosi said, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks.
If Mr. Hastert blocked the extension, she said, "I can only assume he is doing the heavy lifting for the White House, which never wanted this commission in the first place."
A White House spokeswoman, Claire Buchan, insisted on Thursday that the White House was eager to see the deadline extended but she rebuffed questions on whether President Bush and his aides were pressuring Mr. Hastert to reverse his decision.
-------- courts
Freedom v. The Pentagon in the U.S. Supreme Court
by Jacob G. Hornberger,
February 27, 2004
Future of Freedom Foundation
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0402l.asp
Last week, a federal judge in Virginia, Leonie M. Brinkema (the same judge presiding in the Zacarias Moussaoui case) acquitted a man whom the feds were prosecuting for terrorism. The judge dismissed the case after the feds had presented all of their evidence in a court of a law against a person they were absolutely convinced was a terrorist. The reason for the judge's decision? Insufficient evidence of guilt.
The acquittal comes on the heels of a terrorism case brought in federal district court in Detroit, where the feds were again convinced that the people they were prosecuting were terrorists. After hearing all the government's evidence presented in the case, however, a Detroit jury acquitted two of the defendants. Federal prosecutors in that case are now being charged with wrongdoing for intentionally and knowingly withholding evidence that was favorable to the accused, which might mean that the convictions of other defendants in the case will have to be set aside.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide the case of Jose Padilla, an American citizen who has been held by U.S. military officials in a military brig located inside the United States, where they've denied him due process of law, habeas corpus, a jury trial, and access to the federal court system for some two years.
The Supreme Court has also agreed to decide the case of Yaser Hamdi, an American citizen whom U.S. military officials took into custody during their invasion of Afghanistan two years ago and whom they have also been holding in a military brig inside the United States, denying him the same rights that they have been denying Padilla.
The Pentagon's position in the Padilla and Hamdi cases? It can be summarized as follows: "Trust us. We're the military. When it comes to terrorism, we're the experts. We know who among you is a terrorist and therefore must be punished. We don't need courts to interfere with us."
Also last week, the Pentagon announced the release of several more terrorist suspects from its military base at Guantanamo, Cuba, after imprisoning them for some two years without benefit of counsel, trial, due process of law, and habeas corpus. The reason for the release? No reason has been given because the Pentagon takes the position that its power is supreme in Cuba and, therefore, that it doesn't have to explain anything to anybody.
Much to the surprise and chagrin of U.S. military officials, the Supreme Court has also agreed to decide the constitutionality of the Pentagon's Guantanamo actions.
Question: If acts of terrorism are acts of war rather than criminal acts, as U.S. government officials maintain, empowering the Pentagon to treat suspected terrorists, Americans and foreigners alike, as "enemy combatants," denying them rights that stretch all the way back to Magna Carta, then how do the feds explain their prosecution of accused terrorists in federal district courts in Virginia and Michigan?
Indeed, why did the feds use federal courts to prosecute
- Zacarias Moussaoui (the accused "20th hijacker" in the September 11 terrorist attacks, which federal officials have said was an act of war rather than a criminal act);
- Ramzi Yousef (the terrorist who attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, which presumably the feds also considered an act of war);
- John Walker Lindh (the "American Taliban" who was captured in Afghanistan);
- Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma City bomber terrorist); and
- Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber terrorist)?
Indeed, why did federal officials permit John Allen Mohammed and John Lee Malvo (the D.C. sniper terrorists) to be presecuted and convicted in state courts rather than seize them and deliver them to the Pentagon for punishment?
In a nation that prides itself for operating under the "rule of law," how can such an ad hoc, arbitrary process - a process by which some accused terrorists are turned over to the Pentagon for punishment and others are turned over to the U.S. criminal-justice system for determination of guilt and punishment - be justified?
Like it or not, the rights and freedoms of the American people turn on how the Supreme Court decides the Padilla, Hamdi, and Guantanamo cases. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Pentagon, then U.S. military officials will have the same omnipotent power that the military wielded in such countries as Argentina and Chile during their "wars on terrorism." That means that the Pentagon will have the unrestricted power to take any American it wants into custody, accuse him of being a terrorist and an "illegal combatant," and "disappear" him to Cuba for punishment, including execution - or "rendition" him to a foreign country for torture, as U.S. officials recently did to a man they sent to Syria for that purpose.
Given the overwhelming power that Americans have vested in the military-industrial complex, and given the supine and cowardly manner in which the U.S. Congress rubber-stamps actions of the Pentagon, there will be nothing the American people will be able to do to stop this deadly and destructive military process. That's why, if the American people value their freedom, they had better hope that the Supreme Court rules in favor of freedom and against the Pentagon.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.
-------- drug war
Court Allows Medicinal Use of Marijuana
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By DEAN E. MURPHY
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/national/27MARI.html
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 26 - The federal appeals court here has refused to reconsider its ruling that allows Californians to grow and use marijuana to treat their illnesses.
The Bush administration had asked the court, for the Ninth Circuit, to hold a new hearing on that ruling, issued by a three-judge panel in December on a lawsuit filed by two women with chronic illnesses. But in an order issued Wednesday and made public on Thursday, the court denied the request.
Justice Department officials declined to comment on the order or whether it would be appealed to the Supreme Court. Medicinal-marijuana advocates said it would allow tens of thousands of people in California and six other Western states with laws that permit such marijuana use to continue it without fearing federal prosecution.
The new order "means medical marijuana patients throughout the Western states can sleep easier tonight," Steph Sherer, executive director of the advocacy group Americans for Safe Access, said in a statement.
Though California voters approved a 1996 ballot measure legalizing medicinal use of marijuana, federal officials have continued prosecutions under the interstate commerce clause of the Controlled Substances Act.
In its 2-to-1 vote in December, the court found that medicinal marijuana "does not have any direct or obvious effect on interstate commerce" when it is grown locally for personal consumption under the advice of a physician and when patients do not pay for it.
Writing for himself and Judge Richard A. Paez, Judge Harry Pregerson said such use of the drug was "different in kind from drug trafficking." Judge C. Arlen Beam dissented.
-------- immigration / refugees
Advocates for Immigrants Scorn Bush Policy on Haitian Refugees
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/politics/27IMMI.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - Advocates for immigrants, and more than two dozen Democrats in Congress, criticized the Bush administration on Thursday for continuing to return Haitian migrants to a country in turmoil as government officials warned that the number of Haitians taking to the seas had begun to surge.
Coast Guard officials said they had picked up 695 Haitians at sea this month, including a freighter carrying 21 Haitians that was stopped seven miles off Miami on Wednesday.
The figure for February alone exceeds the number of Haitians interdicted during the first four months of the last fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30, 2003, and provides the first indication that growing numbers of people have begun to flee.
Officials said about 500 migrants were being held aboard Coast Guard cutters on Thursday and would be sent back to Haiti on Friday. At least three people, who expressed fear of persecution in Haiti, have been sent to the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The rest have been returned to Haiti.
Government officials say they plan to continue deporting illegal immigrants and those caught at sea, saying the overwhelming majority of Haitian migrants are fleeing poverty, not political repression.
But advocacy groups and several members of Congress argue that the government is denying refugees fair access to the American asylum process. They said the government should not send Haitians home when it has deemed the country dangerous enough to evacuate non-essential personnel and deploy marines to guard the American Embassy.
"To send people back into the kind of killing field that Haiti has descended to is a violation of all that refugee status and humanitarianism calls for," Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, said in a telephone interview.
Coast Guard officials have returned at least 233 Haitians caught fleeing Haiti by boat since Dec. 30.
Bill Strassberger, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said Haitians living in the United States illegally would continue to be deported and those picked up at sea would continue to be sent back, unless they presented a well-founded fear of persecution. Advocates for immigrants said they feared that the government was abdicating its responsibilities to Haitian refugees.
President Bush said Wednesday that American officials would "turn back any refugee that attempts to reach our shore" from Haiti.
Eleanor Acer, asylum director for Human Rights First, said, "It sends a very clear message that the U.S. is not willing to step up and accept its legal and moral obligation to accept refugees, particularly when the refugees at issue are at our own doorstep." Immigration officials said they believed that Mr. Bush had misspoken. They said they were screening Haitians migrants and sending economic migrants back to Haiti.
-------- police
FBI bars crime-scene item removal
February 27, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040226-113755-5047r.htm
FBI agents have been banned from taking any items from crime scenes or evidence sites in response to a report by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General that 13 agents removed items from the rubble of the World Trade Center towers.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asked FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III yesterday to spell out plans, if any, the bureau has for reprimanding the agents, noting that although private contractors had been charged with taking items from the site, "not a single FBI agent has been prosecuted."
"Findings of the inspector general show two things: disrespect for the people who lost their lives that day and disregard for crime-scene evidence," said Mr. Grassley, also a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the FBI.
"The FBI needs to make the necessary internal reforms so that its agents are held to the highest standard, in addition to abiding by the letter of the law. The FBI should be a model of integrity," he said.
Before the release of the inspector general's report in December, the FBI had no written policy barring agents from taking items from a crime scene that had been determined not to be evidentiary in nature or having a forensics value.
In January, the FBI instituted a policy calling for greater management oversight and providing its employees with clear instructions on the removal of mementos from a recovery site. It effectively prohibits personnel from taking any debris from a site.
The FBI statement also noted that although 13 agents had been cited for removing debris, more than 400 agents had joined with thousands of local, state and federal officers to process 2 million tons of debris recovered from the World Trade Center. It added that there was no indication that anything had been taken for personal gain.
"The nearly 28,000 dedicated men and women of the FBI are committed to the highest standards of professional conduct," the statement said. "Even the perception of anything less is not acceptable and is a disservice to the American public."
Mr. Grassley also questioned Mr. Mueller about FBI Agent Jane Turner in the bureau's Minneapolis field office, who was the first to report that another agent, a member of an FBI Emergency Response Team, had taken a Tiffany crystal globe from the World Trade Center site.
The senator said Mrs. Turner was subjected to "continued hostility" and eventually retired after being threatened with termination.
He said the Inspector General's Office not only confirmed Mrs. Turner's accusations, but also found that her disclosure "was just the tip of the iceberg about FBI agents filching from the hallowed ground of that terrible terrorist attack." He said FBI agents participated in or condoned "grave robbing."
"This ghoulish practice by a few agents tarnishes the integrity of the FBI in the eyes of the public and demands a strong response from you," he said.
Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, in a Dec. 16 report, said agents took items from the World Trade Center site and from the evidence and rubble examination site at the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, N.Y., including an elevator wheel, airplane spare tires, a firetruck door, four police cruiser doors, melted guns, airplane pieces, lampposts, street sign, eight American flags, a World Trade Center observation deck plate and other items.
Three of the agents who worked at the site have been referred to the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility for further disciplinary action. The office investigates suspected wrongdoing by FBI employees.
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U.S. Says 13 FBI Agents Stole Trade Center Debris
By Michael Powell and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 27, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10445-2004Feb26.html
NEW YORK -- Thirteen FBI agents have been accused of grabbing items including uniform patches, chunks of marble and a Tiffany globe from the World Trade Center's wreckage, the latest in a two-year line of contractors, firefighters and even Mafia gangs accused of ghoulish thefts from Ground Zero and the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.
A confidential report by the Justice Department's inspector general highlights the alleged pilferage by FBI agents. It prompted FBI officials to announce a new policy this week banning agents from taking anything from crime or evidence scenes.
The FBI has disciplined just one agent so far -- an Oklahoma-based agent who hauled away about 80 pounds of World Trade Center detritus, including clothing patches and rubble, according to FBI and congressional sources who have seen a report by the Justice Department's inspector general. The agent was suspended for 10 days and has returned to the job, these sources said. The inspector general's findings were first reported Wednesday by NBC News.
Many Americans view Ground Zero, and the Staten Island landfill where so many officers sifted debris for human remains, as hallowed sites akin to graveyards.
In the 21/2 years since the World Trade Center towers were destroyed, however, dozens of civilians and a handful of uniformed employees have been prosecuted for stealing items from the site. Mafia gangs are accused of stealing tons of steel while helping to truck it to the Fresh Kills landfill.
"The FBI agents are not the only ones accused of this," said Sally Regenhard, who lost a son in the twin towers and now directs the Skyscraper Safety Campaign. "We lost 85 percent of the steel -- there was a gross mishandling of the material from the World Trade Center."
In a particularly ghoulish recent example of theft, a retired city firefighter is on trial in Manhattan Criminal Court on 11 counts of petty larceny for allegedly taking IDs, a wedding photo and a mangled radio. Samuel Brandon, a Ground Zero cleanup volunteer, bragged to undercover cops that he had discovered a human head, according to tapes played in court. He subsequently said he turned the head over to investigators. On the wall of his home, Brandon displayed a photo of himself holding a human hip bone.
Brandon also acknowledged possessing two IDs from victims whose remains were never identified by forensic investigators. "It makes me feel bad," Brandon told an investigator on a tape played in court.
More prosaic accounts of human foibles have also emerged. Local newspapers have offered stories of firefighters -- 343 of whom died that day -- who befriended the wives of fallen comrades and then fell in love. The New York Post cited cases in which firefighters left their families to be with the widows.
This week's report is the second time in the past two years that FBI agents have been accused of acting improperly at the World Trade Center cleanup. In August 2002, FBI agent Jane Turner discovered that a member of the FBI's elite evidence response team had taken a Tiffany globe valued at $350 from the complex's wreckage. She put the globe in an evidence bag and turned it over to the Justice Department's inspector general.
Turner, a 25-year veteran, was later accused of tarnishing the image of the FBI and the agency moved to dismiss her for poor performance. The case is mentioned in this week's inspector general's report, according to sources.
In a letter yesterday to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, demanded criminal prosecution of FBI agents who took items from Ground Zero or Fresh Kills.
"Many . . . agents, including supervisors, participated in or condoned what I can only describe as graverobbing," Grassley wrote to Mueller. "This ghoulish practice by a few agents tarnishes the integrity of the FBI in the eyes of the public."
Grassley noted that private contractors had been prosecuted for such thefts. A judge sentenced one man, caught stealing watches, cameras and credit cards, to 10 years in prison. "You were down there at Ground Zero at a time of great stress in this country," New York State Judge Lewis Stone declared at the sentencing. "And you were there for stealing things."
The FBI said in a statement that more than 400 FBI agents worked on recovery operations in the World Trade Center case and that "there was no indication that anything was taken for personal gain" or use. FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell said it appeared the items were intended as harmless mementos.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
'Hydrogen highway' by 2010 says California official
Friday, February 27, 2004
By Don Thompson,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-02-27/s_13532.asp
SACRAMENTO, California - Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's top environmental aide told state lawmakers the governor's vision of a "hydrogen highway" that would usher in an age of cleaner cars is realistic by 2010, and won't even cost the state much money.
Schwarzenegger pledged to build hydrogen fueling stations every 20 miles along major highways, allowing motorists to buy clean-burning hydrogen-fueled vehicles without fear they will run out of gas.
He chose 2010 because that's when automakers have said such vehicles will be affordable and readily available, said Environmental Protection Secretary Terry Tamminen.
"California does invent the future," Tamminen said. Though there are plenty of unknowns, "there are no show-stoppers. The only area where some of us disagree is on timing."
California Energy Commission member Jim Boyd warned that the cost is too high. And Toyota Motor Co.'s Bill Reinert said that despite a decade of research and development, any promises are premature.
The automotive industry still is years away from developing the smaller, cheaper, more efficient and longer-lasting fuel cells that are needed before consumers will buy many hydrogen-fueled vehicles, Reinert said.
"We're not even close to solving storage technology issues yet," Reinert said. Though he expects technology will develop "dramatically" over the next few years, "we still have significant challenges along the way."
Other witnesses before the Assembly Select Committee on Air and Water Quality said a strong push by the state and federal governments is needed.
S. David Freeman, a top energy aide to former Governor Gray Davis who now heads a company involved in hydrogen-powered vehicles, said the state should consider floating more long-term debt to pay for the project. But Tamminen said the cost to the state could be minimal.
Schwarzenegger's proposed network amounts to about 200 fueling stations, a fraction of California's 10,000 retail gasoline stations, Tamminen said.
Twenty-five of those stations will soon be available, and Tamminen projected more can be built by universities, waste conversion stations and automakers at little cost to the state.
-------- environment
Rocky Mountain Park Violates Air Standards
February 27, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Mile-High-Murk.html
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, Colo. (AP) -- Hike through Rocky Mountain National Park, enjoy the wildlife and take a deep breath of mountain air -- as long as you're not asthmatic.
The wind blows enough pollution from the sprawling metropolitan Denver area on some days that the park violates federal clean air standards for ozone. The Environmental Protection Agency probably will include the park when it declares 11 counties along Colorado's Front Range in violation of the Clean Air Act.
``2003 was a giant step backward in what has been an ongoing effort to try and protect public health and the environment from ozone and smog,'' said Vickie Patton, senior attorney for Environmental Defense in Boulder.
Two years ago, federal officials said Denver no longer violated major air quality rules, making it the first city in the nation to get a clean bill of health for the five federal air quality standards it once violated.
But the EPA is about to strip that badge of honor after the implementation of a tougher standard and some of the highest levels of ground-level ozone ever recorded in Denver. One monitor last summer recorded the highest level of ozone since 1986 and the city overall violated tougher new air quality standards at least 33 times.
Ozone, a colorless, odorless gas made up of industrial pollution and car exhaust, becomes a problem on bright sunny days when the air heats up. Experts say it is the latest headache to come out of Denver's booming population -- which reached 2.2 million in 2002 -- and it poses significant health risks, especially for people with respiratory problems.
At Rocky Mountain National Park, an air monitor last summer found seven incidents in which ozone exceeded federal health standards, said Mike Silverstein of the state Department of Public Health and Environment.
``The air comes and goes, and most of the days it's good to excellent air quality,'' said park biologist Karl Cordova. ``On other days, it's not what we hope it would be.''
There are no documented cases of people suffering direct ills from ozone at the park, and Cordova said there is no evidence on whether ozone is hurting the plants.
However, Cordova said studies show 13 species of flora -- including ponderosa pine and quaking aspen -- can suffer significant damage from exposure to ozone. The ozone penetrates leaves and can alter their chemical composition to prevent photosynthesis.
Colorado and the EPA have agreed on a plan to reduce and control ozone in the Denver area and comply with federal standards.
Richard Long, the EPA's director of regional air and radiation programs, said the state has met all deadlines so far and is not in danger of sanctions for nonattainment -- sanctions that can include greater oversight of cars, fuels, factories and gas wells in the metro area.
Whether the state's efforts to control ground-level ozone are adequate, however, is open for debate.
Patton, the Environmental Defense attorney, said she is looking forward to a meeting in March of the state Air Quality Control Commission to see whether political and business leaders are taking the lead in ensuring environmental safety.
``I think we are at a crossroads right now, and over the next couple of months, senior state officials will be faced with making some important decisions about Colorado's commitment to protecting public health and the environment,'' Patton said.
Rocky Mountain National Park isn't the only national park with air quality troubles, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.
The South's Great Smoky Mountains National Park, for example, has had 30 plant species visibly damaged by ozone, the association says. Since 1998, there have been 175 days with unhealthy ozone levels in the park, the country's most-visited.
``In Colorado, trends show that ozone pollution is increasing and while you might not be at the level of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, you don't want to be in such a grave situation that that designation can be reversed,'' said Jill Stephens, a program analyst for the group.
On the Net:
National Park Service: http://www.nps.gov
Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.epa.gov
National Parks Conservation Association: http://www.npca.org
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Marine Sponges Provide Model For Nanoscale Materials Production
Feb 27, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanotech-04j.html
Santa Barbara - "Nature was nano before nano was cool," stated Henry Fountain in a recent New York Times article on the proliferation of nanotechnology research projects. No one is more aware of this fact of nature than Dan Morse of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
His research groups have been studying the ways that nature builds ocean organisms at the nanoscale for over ten years. For example, they have studied the abalone shell for its high-performance, super-resistant, composite mineral structure.
Now they are now looking to learn new biotechnological routes to make high performance electronic and optical materials.
"We are now learning how to harness the biomolecular mechanism that directs the nanofabrication of silica in living organisms," says Morse. "This is to learn to direct the synthesis of photovoltaic and semiconductor nanocrystals of titanium dioxide, gallium oxide and other semiconductors -- materials with which nature has never built structures before."
Most recently, Morse and his students have made advances in copying the way marine sponges construct skeletal glass needles at the nanoscale. The research group is using nature's example to produce semiconductors and photovoltaic materials in an environmentally benign way -- as they report in a recent issue of the journal Chemistry of Materials.
"Sponges are abundant right here off-shore and they provide a uniquely tractable model system that opens the paths to the discovery of the molecular mechanism that governs biological synthesis from silicon," says Morse. "This sponge produces copious quantities of fiberglass needles made from silicon and oxygen."
Morse directs the new Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, a UCSB-led initiative funded by a grant of $50 million from the Army Research Office, which operates in partnership with MIT and Caltech. He also directs the Marine Biotechnology Center of UCSB's Marine Science Institute.
The work is particularly exciting, according to Morse, because silicon has been called the most important element on the planet technologically -- silicon chips are fundamental components of computers, telecommunications devices, and in combination with oxygen forms fiber optics and drives other high-tech applications.
He explains that his research group discovered that the center of the sponge's fine glass needles contains a filament of protein that controls the synthesis of the needles.
By cloning and sequencing the DNA of the gene that codes for this protein, they discovered that the protein is an enzyme that acts as a catalyst, a surprising discovery. Never before had a protein been found to serve as a catalyst to promote chemical reactions to form the glass or a rock-like material of a biomineral.
From that discovery, the research group learned that this enzyme actively promotes the formation of the glass while simultaneously serving as a template to guide the shape of the growing mineral (glass) that it produces.
"Most recently in this research, which is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Sea Grant Program and the Department of Energy, we've discovered that these activities can be applied to the synthesis of valuable semiconductors, metal oxides such as titanium and gallium that have photovoltaic and semiconductor properties," says Morse. The group is using a synthetic mimic of the enzymes found in marine sponges.
These discoveries are significant because they represent a low temperature, biotechnological, catalytic route to the nanostructural fabrication of valuable materials. The research group is now translating these discoveries into practical engineering.
Currently these materials are produced at very high temperatures in high vacuums, using caustic chemicals. With these latest discoveries, scientists have found that nanotechnology can copy nature and produce materials in a much more environmentally friendly way than the current state-of-the-art.
-------- health
One Producer of U.S. Beef Wants to Test All Its Cattle
February 27, 2004
New York Times
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/27/national/nationalspecial2/27COW.html
A beef producer in Kansas has proposed testing all its cattle for mad cow disease so it can resume exports to Japan, but it is encountering resistance from the Agriculture Department and other beef producers.
American beef exports have plummeted since Dec. 23 when a cow in Washington State was diagnosed with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or B.S.E., a fatal disease that can be passed to humans who eat infected cattle tissue.
To assure the safety of its meat, the company, Creekstone Farms of Arkansas City, Kan., a subsidiary of the Enterprise Management Group, wants to use rapid diagnostic tests that are routinely used in Japan and many European nations.
But no rapid tests have been approved by the United States Department of Agriculture, and department officials pointed out yesterday that it was against the law for any company to sell or market any unapproved diagnostic test. They said they would not respond to Creekstone's request until they evaluated the legal, regulatory and trade implications raised.
Other meat producers are upset by the company's request, saying it has broken ranks in an industry besieged by bad news. Dan Murphy, vice president for public affairs at the American Meat Industry, said American beef was so safe that widescale testing was unnecessary.
"Everybody is hurting from the export ban," Mr. Murphy said, "but their solution is not the right one." Any testing, he added, should take place under government oversight.
Creekstone's president, John Stewart, said in an interview that the company used to sell a quarter of its premium black Angus beef to Asian markets. Those markets are now closed, and the company is losing $80,000 a day. The Japanese government, he said, indicated it would probably buy meat that was tested with the same equipment.
"We have been looking at the idea of testing all our animals for some time," Mr. Stewart said. "This moved to the forefront with the most recent episode in Washington State. The problem we're having now is that the U.S.D.A. is not wanting to do this. They don't want to test. They don't want to recognize B.S.E. is a problem. They are not going to allow anyone to test until they decide how or when. We believe that may be never."
Mr. Stewart declined to identify the companies whose tests he was hoping to use.
But Bio-Rad, Inc. of Hercules, Calif., confirmed that it had talked with Creekstone about the mad cow testing equipment and rapid test kits it sends to Japan.
"We are talking to them to offer our expertise," a Bio-Rad spokeswoman, Susan Berg, said of Creekstone Farms. "But we can't do anything legally. We have no intention of breaking the law." She said that Bio-Rad submitted data for licensing approval earlier this year but has not heard back from the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
According to a statement from J. B. Penn, the under secretary for farm and foreign agricultural services, the Agriculture Department will respond to Creekstone when it has completed its evaluation.
A press spokesman, Jim Rogers, said that the reply will "take some time" and that anyone interested should "check back in future."
Details of the standoff were reported yesterday on a Web site, meatingplace.com, run by Meat Marketing Technology, a Chicago magazine that writes about the United States and Canadian meat processing industries. Lisa Ferguson, a senior staff veterinarian at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service told the magazine's editor, Daniel Yovich, that Creekstone would be violating a 1913 law that states that only the inspection service can license the use of animal diagnostic test kits.
But yesterday, Mr. Rogers said that the agency did not mean to imply that Creekstone Farms would face criminal penalties if it adopted mad cow testing. On the other hand, any company that sold such testing equipment to a meat processor could be breaking the law, he said.
Frustrated by the Agriculture Department's apparent foot dragging, Creekstone Farms went to its congressman, Todd Tiahrt, a Republican, for help. Chuck Napp, an aide, said, "We have contacted U.S.D.A. about this situation and are still waiting for a response."
"We believe farms ought to be able to do screening that meets the protocols of Asian governments," Mr. Napp said.
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