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NUCLEAR
Federal Inspectors Check Troubled Arizona Nuclear Plant
Top US official meets Malaysian PM over nuclear scandal
India Nuke Chief Defends Atomic Security
Inspector Upbeat on Iran Nuke Cooperation
UN Iraq Inspectors Say U.S. Has Not Cooperated
Israeli Nuke Informer Details Abduction
UN's Annan welcomes "step forward" in North Korea nuclear talks
North Korea to Consider U.S. Nuke Demand
U.S.: 'Quite Possible' N. Korea Reprocessed Fuel Rods
Quirks found in Libyan weapons program
Libya's nuclear trail
Libya's Disclosures Put Weapons in New Light
Nuclear exec is an expert at wordplay
Senators request a Vt. meeting on Yankee
Parties can request NRC review of Vt. Yankee uprate proposal
Q & A Nuclear Waste in Space
Greenspan Testimony Highlights Bush Plan
MILITARY
Afghan farmers defy efforts to curb heroin crop
Soldiers demobilised in Eritrea
UN warns of 'atrocities' in Sudan
U.S. training Algeria to fight desert rebels
Radar system sale to India approved
Predators Move To Balad
Cambodia secures US funding to destroy anti-aircraft missiles
Sending Blair to Prison
EU imposes sanctions on United States
Boeing nets $114 Million Defence system
Tanker deal 'in jeopardy,' supporter in Senate says
Aristide accuses U.S. of forcing his ouster
Aristide not a prisoner in Africa: French defense minister
Pentagon Gives Marines Limited Job in Haiti
U.S. Assembles Peacekeeping Coalition in Haiti
Haiti: Dangerous Middle
U.S. Tells Haiti Rebels to Disarm
Haitian Rebel Leader
U.S. to send 'small' operation to Haiti
Haitian Rebels Enter Capital; Aristide Bitter
Rebels Enter Haiti Capital In Triumph
Iraqi council OKs bill of rights
A Convenient Carnage
Iraqi exile attains his goal
Blasts at Shiite Ceremonies in Iraq Kill More Than 140
Iraqis Receive U.S. Approval of Constitution
Iraqis Hail Compromise On Interim Constitution
U.S. Considers Larger Iraqi Governing Council
Israel's Army Markets to Foreign Armies
Israeli jet circles Shia gathering
Israel May Ask Egypt to Help Secure Gaza After a Pullout
U.S. Says Middle East Reform Cannot Wait for Peace
Gunmen Attack Shiite Worshippers in Pakistan
Chechen Rebels Say They Bombed Subway
China Holds Group From Hong Kong For Espionage Charges
U.N. Nuke Agency Assumes It's Bugged All the Time
Defense may have wasted $8 billion on bad software
Navy plans sharp reduction in active duty force
Call-Up Notice for National Guard Units
Military Still Able to Respond to New Crisis
Weekend Warriors Go Full Time
A Media War?
Blair 'war crimes' case launched
Milosevic's prosecutor rests questionable case
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Justices Agree to Evaluate Prison Policy Based on Race
Trial Proceeds for Defendant in Oklahoma City Bombing
Jury Selection Begins in Trial Of Terry Nichols
Court Leaves Up to Scalia a Recusal From Energy Case
U.S. Wants to Place Its Own Inspectors at Airports Abroad
FBI Failing to Seek Files for Defendants
U.S. Sends to Russia 7 Held at Guantanamo
ENERGY
Ocean power techologies to harness Spanish waves
More alternative fuel vehicles seen in U.S. in 2004
OTHER
Toxic Combination Common in Fish Impairs Motor Skills
ACTIVISTS
Israeli nuclear whistle-blower gives details of abduction in Europe
3 actions to help stop a nuclear relapse
Galapagos fishers end protest in contested pact
MoveOn.org to Counter Bush's Ad Blitz
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Federal Inspectors Check Troubled Arizona Nuclear Plant
PHOENIX, Arizona, (ENS)
March 2, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2004/2004-03-02-09.asp#anchor2
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has begun a special inspection to evaluate problems at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, located 50 miles west of Phoenix, Arizona. The power plant is operated by the Arizona Public Service Company.
Originally, the problems related to a leak found February 19 in one of two steam generators that had been replaced last fall, and in the operation of the shutdown cooling system in Palo Verde Unit 2.
The NRC's Special Inspection Team, consisting of two reactor engineers from the NRC's Region IV Office in Arlington, Texas, an inspector from the Callaway nuclear plant in Missouri, and a Headquarters specialist, arrived on site last week and began their review.
While the inspectors were on site, Palo Verde Unit 3 shut down Saturday morning due to electrical issues regarding the turbine generator. It is expected to return to service early this week, Arizona Public Service officials said.
During an inspection of Unit 3 on Sunday, engineering personnel found boric acid residue on a pressurizer heater sleeve that the NRC characterized as "degradation of a principal safety barrier."
The engineers reported a small white buildup of boron residue around the heater sleeve as the sleeve enters the pressurizer bottom head. There does not appear to be residue running down the outside of the sleeve. There were no signs of dripping, spraying, puddles of liquid, or liquid running down the nozzle or pressurizer. The residue appeared dry.
But the reactor's technical specifications permit no coolant system pressure boundary leakage, so the residue is considered degradation of a principal safety barrier.
The inspectors originally came to the plant to investigate problems that arose after the steam generator leak was discovered. On February 19, operators shut down Palo Verde Unit 2 after monitors detected the leak.
After the reactor cooled, operators reduced the level of water in the reactor coolant system to facilitate access to the leaking steam generator. But equipment problems led them to prolong the time that the plant remained in this condition.
Workers discovered that air had displaced some of the water in the reactor shutdown cooling system, forcing them to open valves to vent air into the auxiliary building every two hours.
The NRC said these events "did not result in the release of radioactivity to the environment and did not adversely affect the safe operation of the plant or health and safety of the public."
But still the agency decided to conduct a special inspection to evaluate the adequacy of the Arizona Public Service Company's response to the situation, the root cause, and corrective actions.
"It is important to understand that these events are unrelated," said Jim Levine, executive vice president of Generation for Arizona Public Service Company, which operates Palo Verde. "In each case we are taking steps that place safety first."
-------- asia
Top US official meets Malaysian PM over nuclear scandal
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP)
Mar 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040302112856.ln23505c.html
A top US official charged with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons met Tuesday with Malaysia's prime minister, whose son owns a company which has been embroiled in the nuclear black market scandal, sources told AFP.
The meeting between US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Nonproliferation, John Stern Wolf, and Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, was not immediately acknowledged by the premier's aides.
They refused to confirm or deny the talks when telephoned several times throughout the day. A source involved with Wolf's visit told AFP, however, that the envoy had in fact met Abdullah Tuesday morning.
The nuclear issue is a sensitive one here, with opposition parties using it as a campaign topic ahead of elections expected within a month, while the government has accused Washington of unfairly targeting Malaysia.
The mainly-Muslim Southeast Asian nation has strong trade ties with the US but political relations have at times been prickly, particularly under former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad who retired last October.
The foreign ministry initially announced that Wolf would meet Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar and that a news conference would be held, but later issued a statement cancelling the briefing without elaborating.
The US embassy also remained tight-lipped about Wolf's programme, saying only that he was "meeting with senior government officials, discussing ways to increase the existing cooperation between the two countries, specifically on non-proliferation".
Wolf would "review several issues that are under consideration at the United Nations and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and provide some information to Malaysians and discuss the proliferation security initiative and export controls," spokesman Frank Whitaker told AFP.
The US wants Malaysia to beef up its export controls after the company owned by Abdullah's son Kamaluddin admitted manufacturing centrifuge parts seized on a ship bound for Libya, where they were allegedly to be used in its nuclear weapons programme.
The company, Scomi Precision Engineering (SCOPE), said it had been misled about the purpose and destination of the parts and has been cleared of any wrongdoing by a Malaysian police investigation.
The government has lodged a formal protest over remarks by US President George W. Bush linking Malaysia to the black market network run by Pakistan's disgraced scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has admitted selling nuclear secrets.
It says companies and individuals in many other countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa have been implicated wittingly or unwittingly in the scandal but only Malaysia has been singled out.
Bush also focused attention on a Sri Lankan businessman living in Malaysia, B.S.A. Tahir, whom he described as Khan's "chief financial officer and money launderer".
Tahir placed the order for the parts with SCOPE and has been questioned by Malaysian police but not arrested, with the government saying he had not broken any laws. There has been no call from Washington, at least publicly, for Tahir's arrest.
Malaysia is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which governs the movement of materials which can be used to make atomic bombs, such as uranium, but has not signed an additional protocol covering nuclear-related parts.
Foreign Minister Syed Hamid said Tuesday that Malaysia did not see the need to sign the protocol "at present", the official Bernama news agency reported.
He said that as a signatory to the treaty the country had acted on its responsibility to the best of its ability.
-------- india / pakistan
India Nuke Chief Defends Atomic Security
By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM
Associated Press Writer
Mar 2, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/INDIA_NUCLEAR_SECURITY?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BOMBAY, India (AP) -- India's nuclear chief defended the country's atomic security, telling The Associated Press Monday that weapons secrets can't easily leak and that facilities are safe from terrorist threats.
"Our installations are very secure," said Anil Kakodkar, chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission. "There is a scare arising out of terrorism, but there need be no fear on that count here."
Since testing nuclear weapons in 1998, India has repeatedly said it is a responsible nuclear-armed state with laws preventing the illegal sale of information on nuclear arms and missiles.
A. Gopalakrishnan, a top nuclear engineer, also said he believed India's facilities were secure.
"I am 100 percent sure that there is no chance of anything going out of India," said Gopalakrishnan, chairman of India's nuclear regulatory board from 1993-96.
"In strong contrast to Pakistan, the Department of Atomic Energy tightly controls the material here, and no senior scientist or senior person can take out any material."
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said last week that India was increasing security measures in view of the transfer of nuclear knowledge from Pakistan to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
India and other countries fear the nuclear secrets sold by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father is the country's nuclear program, could fall into the hands of international terrorist groups.
At all of India's nuclear installations, electrified fencing and four barriers manned by armed guards protect critical areas, while high sensitivity detectors are installed along the gates, according to a top scientist, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"We have been vigilant from the very beginning," said K.S. Parthasarthy, who retired in January after 16 years as the secretary of the Indian Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, which regulates India's 14 civilian nuclear installations.
There was speculation last week that India and Pakistan may be using the same black market network to supply their nuclear programs.
This came after a Washington court document showed that a South Africa-based Israeli businessman - facing felony charges of exporting nuclear bomb triggers to Pakistan - was also dealing with an Indian trader trying to buy material for Indian rocket facilities.
Atomic energy officials have said their dealings are aboveboard, and the Indian businessman told AP the material he sought was for the country's civilian space program and not for weapons.
Shannon Kile, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said India's nuclear program was home grown.
"There have been illicit transfers to India, but largely the Indian nuclear program is based on indigenous technology and indigenous expertise, while Pakistan depends heavily on imported technology," said Kile in a telephone interview.
Kile said India was "not considered a problem in the way installations in the former Soviet Union are - that's where most of the material is."
He said insurgency threats in various parts of India have made the nuclear establishment alert. India has faced lingering tension in strife-torn Kashmir and insurgencies in northeast regions.
"Fundamentalists, terrorists wanting to attack nuclear facilities - this is something India has had to contend with for the last 10 to 15 years," said Gopalakrishnan, who returned to India last year after a research program with the Belfer Center at Harvard University during which he visited top American nuclear facilities.
"The kind of terrorism the West woke up to since 9/11 has been known to us and has troubled us over for the last two decades."
He recalled carrying a bag and walking unchecked into sensitive areas of major American nuclear installations because he was accompanied by a senior American scientist - something he could have never done in India even when he held a top nuclear post.
On the Net:
Department of Atomic Energy: http://www.dae.gov.in
Bhabha Atomic Research Center: http://www.barc.ernet.in
-------- iran
Inspector Upbeat on Iran Nuke Cooperation
March 2, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The head of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency gave an upbeat assessment Tuesday of Iran's cooperation with international inspectors despite continuing concerns over the Islamic republic's nuclear program.
Mohamed ElBaradei said there had been a major in Iran's relations with the International Atomic Energy Agency over the past year.
``If you look at the big picture, we are clearly moving in the right direction,'' the IAEA director-general told reporters, alluding to Tehran's commitment under pressure last year to reveal past nuclear secrets and cooperate with agency inspectors.
ElBaradei acknowledged, however, relations had been damaged by discoveries by IAEA inspectors of traces of radioactive elements and advanced equipment in Iran that could be used to make atomic weapons.
``The bad news is that they have some R&D (research and development)activities that have not been declared,'' said ElBaradei. ``That is a setback in the confidence building.''
He confirmed that the IAEA is in contact with Pakistan to verify Iran's claims that the traces of enriched uranium and polonium-210 were the result of contamination of components imported for legitimate nuclear power programs.
``It's really important for us to get particle samples from Pakistan,'' ElBaradei. He praised the Pakistani authorities for cooperating with the agency and expressed hope they would soon provide the samples.
ElBaradei refused to speculate on how the IAEA's board might react next week when it convenes in Vienna, Austria, to discuss Iran's nuclear program.
The United States is seeking a declaration that Iran is in breach of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran is hoping a positive declaration from the agency could lead to the resumption of trade talks with the European Union.
ElBaradei was in Brussels to attend an EU conference on nuclear energy. He was also scheduled to hold talks on Iran and other proliferation issues with the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
After Iran's decision last year to open up to international inspectors and halt its uranium enrichment program, and a commitment by Libya to end weapons of mass destruction programs, ElBaradei said North Korea had become ``the No. 1 proliferation concern.''
He said the agency had little firsthand knowledge of what was happening in the Communist state since its inspectors were thrown out in 2002, but the IAEA was ``very concerned'' about North Korea's capability to develop nuclear arms.
Following revelations of the black-market network in nuclear technology headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, ElBaradei said the agency was making good progress in identifying middlemen in Europe and Asia suspected of involvement.
He said the information would be passed on to governments in expectation that sanctions against illicit traders would ``make sure that this will not be a model for people to follow.''
Reacting to allegations that British intelligence spied on U.N. officials in the run up to the Iraq war last year, ElBaradei said he'd seen no evidence that IAEA offices had been bugged, but said the agency ``worked on the assumption that we are bugged all the time.''
-------- iraq / inspections
UN Iraq Inspectors Say U.S. Has Not Cooperated
March 2, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-un-inspectors.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. arms inspectors on Tuesday complained that a lack of cooperation by the United States had stymied their efforts to completely account for Iraqi weapons.
The latest quarterly report by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, says Washington never gave the commission a copy of U.S. inspector David Kay's findings on Iraqi weapons, and it failed to seek any U.N. information for Kay's team.
U.N. inspectors withdrew from Iraq a year ago, shortly before the U.S.-led invasion of the country. After the war, the United States deployed its own team under Kay and refused to allow U.N. inspectors to return. Kay's team concluded that Iraq did not have stockpiles banned weapons as alleged by President Bush in making his case for war.
``During the period under review, no official information was available to UNMOVIC on either the work of, or the results of, the investigations of the United States-led Iraq Survey Group in Iraq. Nor has the (U.S.) survey group requested any information from UNMOVIC,'' the U.N. report said.
It sets out Kay's findings that it was unlikely large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons were deployed in Iraq after 1994, but makes no comment on them.
The report also said it was hoping for more cooperation from the new U.S. search team, led by Charles Duelfer, who was formerly the deputy chairman of the U.N. inspectors and replaced Kay in January.
Demetrius Perricos, acting executive chairman of UNMOVIC, said the agency now hoped to get a copy of Duelfer's findings. ``The commission hopes that this report will be provided to it,'' he said.
The U.N. group, seeking a permanent role in monitoring arms programs internationally, is hoping to complete is accounting of Iraqi arms as a model for future investigations.
The UNMOVIC report urges the U.N. Security Council to set a ``time frame'' to discuss UNMOVIC's future before expert staff, now down to just 51 people in New York, leave for other jobs.
``Trained and experienced experts once dispersed are difficult to reassemble at short notice,'' it said.
LESSONS LEARNED
UNMOVIC said it was preparing a compendium of lessons learned in Iraq. One focus will be on analyzing how Iraq gradually developed banned weapons of mass destruction from 1973 to 1991, the report said.
Iraq also established elaborate networks of front companies to obtain materials. The compendium would attempt to chart a financial and organizational infrastructure established to support this network both inside and outside Iraq.
Despite being barred from Iraq, UNMOVIC said it has been reviewing plans for the ongoing monitoring and verification of Iraq's chemical, biological and missile programs, gathering information from public material and post-war commercial satellite imagery.
It said many items on a list of goods with possible military uses that Iraq could only import with special permission had not been updated since 1995.
The U.N. inspectors were banned from Iraq in 1998 after a U.S. bombing raid and did not return until invited back under U.S. and U.N. pressure in late 2002 in the run-up to war.
The report cites several problems inspectors were unable to resolve before they left. These include an aluminum part possibly intended for a chemical warhead, a mold intended to produce a cluster warhead for a rocket, and steel spheres designed for use in a cluster bomb.
But UNMOVIC, in all its reports, has never alleged that Iraq still maintained a stockpile of dangerous weapons as the Bush administration did before the war.
-------- israel
Israeli Nuke Informer Details Abduction
March 2, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Nuclear-Whistleblower.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Outlining vivid details about his abduction by the Mossad spy agency, Israel's most famous nuclear informer claimed in a letter published Tuesday that he was lured by a young woman to agents who drugged, bound and shipped him from Rome to Israel.
Mordechai Vanunu, whose 18-year prison sentence ends in April, recently issued a statement through his brother saying he has no more nuclear secrets to reveal.
But Israel, citing security concerns, has said it would keep Vanunu under strict supervision, possibly confiscating his passport, when he is released from prison on April 21.
Vanunu was nabbed by the Mossad in Europe in 1986 after he gave details and photos of Israel's top-secret nuclear plant in the Negev Desert to The Sunday Times of London.
He was later convicted in an Israeli court of treason and espionage. He spent more than a decade in solitary confinement. It was unclear how the letter, first shown on Israel's Channel Two TV late Monday and republished in the Maariv daily on Tuesday, passed through prison censorship. Israeli Defense Ministry officials were not immediately available to comment.
It is widely believed -- largely based on photographs Vanunu provided the British newspaper -- that Israel has the sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. The CIA recently estimated Israel has between 200-400 atomic weapons.
Israel has an official policy of ``nuclear ambiguity,'' saying only that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East.
In the letter, Vanunu said he would not ``concede or fold, regret or apologize, be deaf or shut up.''
Vanunu wrote that on Sept. 24, 1986, he first met an American woman in Leicester Square in London. Six days later, he wrote, she persuaded him to go with her to Rome to visit her sister.
In 1988, The Sunday Times reported that American-born Cheryl Bentov, 27, was the Mossad agent who persuaded Vanunu to go with her to Rome. The Times said her parents lived in Orlando, Fla., and that Bentov had moved to Israel as a teenager.
In his letter, Vanunu said he and the American woman flew to Rome on a British Airways flight. A man who identified himself as an Italian friend of the woman's sister met them at the airport, Vanunu wrote. The Italian man drove them in a private car to an apartment outside Rome, he wrote.
``As soon as I entered the apartment I was attacked by two men who then drugged me with needles,'' Vanunu wrote in Hebrew. ``Under influence of the drugs I went with them to the car. In the car I woke up and tried to cause an accident, but they attacked me again and drugged me.''
Vanunu wrote that when he next woke up they were on the coast. He said he was taken on a stretcher to a commando boat and on to a waiting yacht.
``On the yacht, they held me in a cell tied to the bed with handcuffs and chains for seven days until we reached the Israeli coast, where I was given to the Shin Bet,'' Vanunu wrote, referring to Israel's internal security service.
-------- korea
UN's Annan welcomes "step forward" in North Korea nuclear talks
UNITED NATIONS (AFP)
Mar 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040302225836.rjefdp9a.html
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Tuesday welcomed a "noticeable step forward" in last week's six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions.
The United States, China, Russia, Japan and both Koreas agreed after the Beijing talks, their second on the nuclear issue, to launch working level meetings to discuss various technical issues.
They also agreed to a third round of talks by June.
"This round of talks has produced a noticeable step forward toward a nuclear-weapons-free Korean peninsula," Annan said in a statement through his spokesman.
"It has opened a pathway to full-fledged and continuing negotiations aimed at a comprehensive approach to durable peace in the region," the spokesman said.
"The secretary general will continue supporting this multilateral collective effort to resolve through negotiations the issues threatening the security and stability of the (Korean) peninsula," the spokesman added.
----
North Korea to Consider U.S. Nuke Demand
By BARRY SCHWEID
Associated Press
03/03/04
http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/news/content/news/ap_story.html/Washington/AP.V5939.AP-US-Korea-Nuclea.html
WASHINGTON (AP)--North Korea agreed in the latest nuclear weapons talks to consider a U.S. demand that it dismantle its programs based both on plutonium and uranium, the chief U.S. negotiator told lawmakers Tuesday.
``The North Koreans came to the table denying a uranium enrichment program,'' Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
But, in a reversal, he said, ``It was clear by the conclusion of the talks that this is now very much on the table.''
Kelly cited the developments in Beijing as evidence of ``a very different, promising atmosphere'' in the latest round of negotiations.
As Kelly spoke, Secretary of State Colin Powell avoided specifics but offered an upbeat assessment of the talks and said cooperation at the negotiating table with South Korea and other allies was unprecedented.
In a speech to an Asian studies group, Powell said North Korea can expect good relations with its neighbors in the North Pacific once it ends its program and embraces a policy of political and economic openness now sweeping the area.
While the Bush administration has ruled out concessions to North Korea as a payoff to end its nuclear weapons program, Powell said without elaboration: ``We want to help the people of North Korea, who are in such difficulty now.''
Referring to the U.S. partners in the six-nation talks that recessed last week in Beijing, Powell said the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia ``have made it clear to North Korea that a better future awaits them, that none of these nations is intent on attacking them or destroying them.''
There was a good deal of progress at the latest round, Powell said. ``We haven't gotten where we need to be,'' he said, ``but what I am especially pleased about is that we have institutionalized now the process with working groups and we're already getting ready for the next meeting.''
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the six-party talks ``produced a noticeable step forward'' toward a nuclear weapons-free Korean peninsula. He said the four-day meeting ``opened a pathway to full-fledged and continuing negotiations aimed at a comprehensive approach to durable peace in the region.''
Only Monday in Seoul, however, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun spoke of creating a foreign policy more independent of the United States. ``Step by step, we should strengthen our independence and build our strength as an independent nation,'' he said in a nationally televised speech.
On Tuesday, the new South Korean foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, met with President Bush and Powell at the White House. U.S. officials provided no account of the meeting.
The main theme of Powell's speech to the Asia Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation, a private research group, was that democracy was on the rise in Asia.
Just 40 years ago, he said, only one genuine democracy existed in East Asia, Japan, and two incomplete democracies, the Philippines and Malaysia.
In the rest of Asia, he said, only India had a solid democratic tradition.
The common conclusion, accepted even by some Asians, was that Asian societies had no interest in democratic government, Powell said.
Then came democratic successes in South Korea and Thailand and later Mongolia and Indonesia, Powell said. Taiwan followed, and then East Timor, and last year half a million people marched through Hong Kong in peaceful opposition to legislation that would have curbed civil liberties, he said.
Powell, in a pointed message to China, said Hong Kong must remain open and tolerant, even though the former British colony is under Chinese law.
He said in another message that the United States strongly opposes any use by China of force or threats across the Taiwan Strait, meaning against Taiwan.
The secretary said, however, that the United States does not support independence for Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.
--------
U.S.: 'Quite Possible' N. Korea Reprocessed Fuel Rods
March 2, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chief U.S. negotiator said on Tuesday it is ``quite possible'' North Korea reprocessed 8,000 spent fuel rods, which could provide material for at least six more nuclear weapons on top of the one or two weapons Pyonyang is believed to already possess.
Some experts said the comments by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly were more forward leaning than previous U.S. statements and underscored the need for greater urgency in dealing with North Korea.
But a State Department spokesman denied Kelly's remarks represented a new assessment of Pyongyang's capabilities.
Kelly, in U.S. Senate testimony, and Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a speech, were enthusiastic about six-party talks on the North's nuclear crisis held in Beijing last week.
Both men stressed the economic and political benefits that would accrue if Pyongyang scuttled its suspected nuclear weapons programs. ``The talks are working to our benefit and are moving a serious process forward,'' Kelly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He said that since U.N. experts were ousted from the reclusive communist state in January 2003, hard evidence was difficult to come by so ``we don't know what's happened'' to the fuel rods stored at the Yongbyon nuclear complex.
But he also said: ``There's probably more that you could learn in a closed hearing ... but the fact is it's quite possible they reprocessed all of them.''
An aide said Kelly ``wasn't trying to signal some new conclusion.''
Charles ``Jack'' Pritchard, who resigned as U.S. envoy to North Korea last year, told Reuters the administration ``has been tiptoeing up to now on that'' conclusion.
DISPUTED VIEW
``It's a reflection of a prudent view that the Bush administration really does need to consider'' because it could mean the North has produced fuel for eight nuclear weapons instead of the one or two weapons U.S. intelligence for more than a decade estimated is in Pyongyang's possession, he said.
U.S. officials and experts have long worried that if the economically strapped North expanded its arsenal it would start to sell nuclear weapons to other states to earn hard currency.
Pritchard, now at the Brookings Institution, was part of an unofficial U.S. delegation that visited Yongbyon in January, the first Americans to see the site since U.N. inspectors were kicked out one year earlier.
Group members said they were shown an empty holding pond that once contained the spent nuclear fuel rods, but did not know for sure the rods were reprocessed into fuel for bombs.
Pritchard said the administration should treat the North Korea issue more urgently and not wait months to hold more six-party negotiations.
The United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia agreed in Beijing to hold the next round before June and, in the interim, have a working group seek common ground. The Beijing talks made no progress on core disputed issues.
While Washington has ruled out any ``quid pro quo'' if North Korea scuttles its nuclear programs, it has offered security guarantees and suggested other nations could provide aid.
Kelly seemed to go further on Tuesday, endorsing what he called South Korea's ``valuable commitment'' to provide fuel aid if Pyongyang ``were to halt or freeze'' its nuclear programs.
Speaking to the Heritage Foundation, Powell also dangled the carrot of greater economic integration, a ``bold approach'' that was effectively suspended after U.S. officials in 2002 accused Pyongyang of having a clandestine program for enriching uranium that violated its international commitments.
``The United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia have made it clear to North Korea that a better future awaits them -- that none of these nations is intent on attacking them or destroying them or exhibiting hostile intent,'' he said.
-------- libya
Quirks found in Libyan weapons program
March 02, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040302-081332-9724r.htm
TRIPOLI, Libya, March 2 (UPI) -- Some unusual and innovative discoveries have been made since Libya abandoned its nuclear and chemical programs, the Washington Post said Tuesday.
One of the findings by a U.S. team was at an alleged turkey farm outside Tripoli, where there were no birds, but rather a metal barn filled with empty chemical bomb canisters.
"It was not a place where we would have looked," said one U.S. official who requested anonymity.
But each of Libya's major programs also was plagued with serious problems and hobbled by shortages of parts and technical expertise, a consequence of years of sanctions.
As well, investigators have determined the Libyans had no long-range missiles or other systems capable of delivering chemical warheads beyond the country's borders.
"It was interesting to see the effects of sanctions," said a senior State Department official familiar with the investigation of Libya's weapons programs. "The things they got weren't the best, and they weren't in a position to go to the supplier and complain."
----
Libya's nuclear trail
The world still has much to learn about how Libya got its weapons technology.
By Matthew Clark,
Christian Science Monitor
March 2, 2004
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0302/dailyUpdate.html
With the arrival Monday of seven members of the United States Congress to Tripoli for talks Tuesday with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi comes the latest sign that decades-old icy relations between the two countries are beginning to thaw. Heralding the improved ties, the delegation's leader, Rep. Curt Weldon (D) of Pennsylvania, announced Monday that full diplomatic relations could be restored by the end of the year.
In the nine weeks since Mr. Qaddafi's surprise move to publicly renounce weapons of mass destruction, and allow international inspectors access to previously secret weapons manufacturing facilities, the country has received overtures from many other foreign governments, companies, and rights groups eager to resume cooperation. As The New York Times reports, the increased transparency displayed by Qaddafi has "helped cement trust between US and Libyan scientists, while persuading Bush administration officials to believe that Qaddafi's December announcement was sincere."
But, while the increased access granted by Libya has led to helpful revelations about the scope of the country's weapons programs, it has prompted more questions than it has answered about the complex supply networks that provided Libya with most of its technology and parts in the first place.
The Times report speaks to how much Libya has relied on these underground networks throughout the decades.
UN weapons inspectors have concluded that Libya's effort to acquire equipment for enriching uranium was even more ambitious than previously believed. Working with numerous black-market suppliers, Libya was in the process of acquiring a large uranium enrichment plant that could have produced enough fuel for several nuclear bombs a year. One nuclear expert familiar with the findings said Libya had purchased a "virtual turnkey facility" in which foreign suppliers and experts would not only supply the parts for the machines, known as gas centrifuges, but also assemble and test them.
But who were these foreign suppliers?
A report published March 1 by the Institute for Science and International Security, co-written by former UN inspector and president of the institute David Albright, aims to address this question. The report points out that "significant new information was provided on February 20, 2004, when the police in Malaysia released the report of its investigation into Scomi Precision Engineering SDN BHD (SCOPE) (a local firm), which has been named publicly as a supplier to Libya's secret nuclear program."
But the institute's report also says that US and UN officials still have not identified many of the companies that were supplying Libya with components for its uranium enrichment plant, a key component to any viable nuclear weapons program. Getting to the bottom of the supply networks will be crucial. "Understanding these activities in their entirety is vital to making sure the network cannot resume its traffic in illegal nuclear components and caches of sensitive centrifuge design information are tracked down and destroyed."
Something the international community had long suspected, and was recently confirmed, is that much of Pakistan's nuclear technology was leaked to other countries by Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered the "father" of his country's nuclear program. The Pakistani government has also been widely accused of various degrees of involvement in the spread of nuclear know-how, a charge it vehmently denies.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that Mr. Khan gleaned the knowledge necessary to build Pakistan's nuclear program from his experience at a Dutch factory in the 1970s. The Monitor also points out that similar technology has turned up in Libya recently.
Libya has admitted to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials that it first bought centrifuges and centrifuge parts in 1997. This initial batch - enough for at least 220 machines, according to IAEA documents - was similar in design to the first centrifuge model produced by the British-German-Dutch Urenco consortium.
In a related topic, The Los Angeles Times reports that fresh details about the 1998 death of a North Korean woman in Islamabad, Pakistan may provide clues to Pakistani nuclear deals. The shooting of Kim Sa Nae is "taking on new meaning" after Mr. Khan's confession last month that he sold nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, Iran, and Libya, according to the Times.
A senior Pakistani police officer told the Times that Ms. Kim was shot at point-blank range a few yards from Khan's house. The few Pakistani officials who would talk about Kim's death said it was an accident. Pakistan's foreign office spokesman, Masood Khan, has declined to speak about Kim's death. But reports have circulated throughout the years that Kim, the wife of a North Korean diplomat based in Islamabad at the time, was killed by the North Koreans for her suspected relationship to Western countries.
There has long been speculation that Kim was killed by her own government because she was suspected of spying for the United States or another Western power. Officials in both Pakistan and rival India, whose intelligence services closely monitor Pakistan's nuclear and missile programs, backed that version of events.
A Pakistani official said his country's intelligence agents suspected that the United States was using Kim as a mole inside the North Korean delegation, but that her actions were uncovered by Pakistani and North Korean agents.
----
Libya's Disclosures Put Weapons in New Light
Programs for Unconventional Arms Were Ambitious, but Plagued With Problems
By Joby Warrick and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 2, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20971-2004Mar1?language=printer
The small desert ranch near Tripoli was described as a turkey farm, but there were no birds in sight when a group of U.S. weapons experts visited six weeks ago. Guided by Libyan officials, the Americans entered a plain metal barn to discover the farm's true purpose: to hide hundreds of chemical bombs.
Inside the barn were stacks upon stacks of wooden boxes, each containing a single torpedo-shaped shell. The olive-green weapons were specially designed to spread deadly mustard gas and nerve agents that were stored separately, said two senior U.S. officials familiar with the surprise disclosure. "The Libyans took us right to them," said one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It was not a place where we would have looked."
The turkey farm is one of a number of formerly secret weapons sites Libya has shown to U.S., British and U.N. officials in the nine weeks since Moammar Gaddafi publicly renounced weapons of mass destruction. Libya's willingness to open its weapons laboratories and storage depots -- including some that were previously unknown -- has helped cement trust between U.S. and Libyan scientists, while persuading Bush administration officials to believe that Gaddafi's December announcement was sincere.
At the same time, the remarkable access granted by Libya has exposed a struggling weapons program that, while ambitious, was also disorganized, incomplete and likely years away from producing actual nuclear warheads or advanced delivery systems for unconventional weapons, according to government officials, diplomats and weapons experts.
The disclosures also led to a sobering reassessment of the scale of the underground supply network that is known to have provided Libya with technology and parts for its weapons programs. Investigators now acknowledge that they still have not identified the companies or individuals responsible for supplying the bulk of the parts for a large uranium enrichment plant Libya was seeking to build.
According to U.S. and U.N. experts who have toured Libyan weapons facilities and interviewed key scientists, Libya made impressive strides with many of its weapons programs, due in large measure to help from outsiders, including the Pakistani nuclear trading network that delivered uranium enrichment equipment and designs for a nuclear bomb.
Recent disclosures have revealed even more about Libya's nuclear acquisitions. For example, U.N. weapons inspectors have concluded that Libya's effort to acquire equipment for enriching uranium was even more ambitious than previously believed. Working with numerous black-market suppliers, Libya was in the process of acquiring a large uranium enrichment plant that could have produced enough fuel for several nuclear bombs a year. One nuclear expert familiar with the findings said Libya had purchased a "virtual turnkey facility" in which foreign suppliers and experts would not only supply the parts for the machines, known as gas centrifuges, but also assemble and test them.
"Libya would have needed to do relatively little to assemble and start the centrifuges," according to a study scheduled for release later this week by the Institute for Science and International Security, a research group in Washington that has studied the Libyan nuclear program.
But each of Libya's major programs also was plagued with serious problems and hobbled by shortages of parts and technical expertise, a consequence of years of sanctions, according to U.S. officials, diplomats and independent experts.
For instance, while Libya had managed to acquire a serviceable design for a nuclear warhead, the bomb depicted in the blueprints was too big to fit on any of the aging Scud-C missiles in its arsenal. Also, key parts of the weapons design were missing, and Libya's small cadre of nuclear scientists lacked the expertise to fully evaluate the plans or launch a serious program to build such a device.
Even Libya's ability to effectively use chemical munitions, such as the ones found on the turkey farm, was far from clear, U.S. officials concluded. The Libyans had no long-range missiles or other systems capable of delivering chemical warheads beyond the country's borders. Libyan scientists complained of other difficulties that hampered their ability to load the deadly chemicals into containers for storage, the officials said.
"It was interesting to see the effects of sanctions," said one senior State Department official familiar with the U.S.-led investigation of Libya's weapons programs. "The things they got weren't the best, and they weren't in a position to go to the supplier and complain."
Libya began the long march toward disclosing and eliminating its unconventional weapons in March 2003, when Gaddafi initiated a series of quiet overtures to U.S. and British intelligence officials. The country's cooperation increased dramatically in October, after the discovery of nuclear components on a German freighter bound for Libya, and again in December following Gaddafi's dramatic pledge to give up nuclear and chemical weapons.
On Jan. 18, one month after Gaddafi's announcement, the State Department dispatched the first of several teams of arms experts to Libya to visit weapons labs and factories. The U.N. nuclear monitoring organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is conducting a parallel probe of Libya's nuclear program and the black-market groups that supplied it. Scheduled for Destruction
An early objective of the visiting U.S. teams was to remove the most sensitive weapons designs and components. In late January, two U.S. aircraft departed Libya for the United States carrying nuclear weapons plans, centrifuge parts and designs, and several containers of uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock used in uranium enrichment plants. Other sensitive equipment was scheduled for destruction in Libya under international supervision.
Overall, the Libyan disclosures have provided U.N. investigators with an important glimpse of how global weapons proliferation actually works, exposing what the head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, described last month as "the most dangerous phenomenon we have seen in the nonproliferation area for many years." U.S. and U.N. officials have praised Gaddafi for his decision and have suggested that Libya serve as a model to other nations.
"Colonel Gaddafi made an historic decision to bring his country into compliance with crucial treaties banning weapons of mass destruction," Paula A. DeSutter, assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance and a key figure in the Bush administration's Libya policy, said last week in testimony to a Senate panel. "We only hope that states with even more advanced nuclear weapons programs, like Iran and North Korea, will learn from Libya's example." Technology Shortcomings
U.S. officials have avoided publicly criticizing Gaddafi or pointing out technological shortcomings in his weapons programs that might embarrass the Libyan leader. "There shouldn't be a downside to what they did: They are taking things they invested a lot of money in and they're destroying them in U.S. presence," one senior State Department official said.
But according to former U.S. officials and independent weapons experts, the shortcomings are impossible to ignore.
"The Libyans certainly accumulated a lot of bits and pieces, but that's very different from putting it all together," said Gary Samore, a top nonproliferation official in the Clinton administration and now a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in London. "I may have all the bits and pieces of a car in my garage, but that's not the same as having a working automobile."
The investigation of Libya's nuclear program also has exposed gaps in officials' understanding of the nuclear black market that supplied parts and know-how to Libya, as well as Iran, North Korea and possibly other countries, weapons experts say.
According to the draft report by the Institute for Science and International Security, U.S. and U.N. officials still have not identified many of the companies that were supplying Libya with components for its uranium enrichment plant. The most prominent supplier named so far -- Scomi Precision Engineering of Malaysia -- produced only 14 of the roughly 100 major components needed for a gas centrifuge, the report says. Those 14 components are not even the most technically challenging parts, said David Albright, a former IAEA inspector in Iraq and president of the Washington-based institute.
"The priority now should be finding all the major suppliers to Libya's turnkey centrifuge plant," said Albright, co-author of the report with researcher Corey Hinderstein.
"One troubling realization is that many people had access to the kind of detailed, technical information needed to manufacture sensitive centrifuge components," Albright said. "An urgent goal is to try to get centrifuge designs out of the hands of members of the network and prevent it from spreading to others. Otherwise this information could form the basis of a new or reconstituted network that will later sell centrifuges to other countries."
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Nuclear exec is an expert at wordplay
Request for $6.6 billion carefully crafted to leave door open for future weapons 'development'
By Ian Hoffman,
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Oakland Tribune
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~1991286,00.html or http://makeashorterlink.com/?I5C012797
In asking Congress recently for $6.6 billion, the nation's top executive for nuclear weapons made a point of saying none of the money was for developing new H-bombs, much less the "mini-nukes" that captivated congressional debate last year.
"There is no program to develop new, low-yield nuclear weapons," said Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration. He later elaborated: "There is nothing in the budget that is aimed at producing low-yield weapons. We have no requirements for developing new weapons."
Taken at face value, it was a perplexing statement. Was the Bush administration ending its three-year pursuit of a new, updated nuclear arsenal? Could the Defense and Energy departments walk away from last year's triumphant repeal of a 10-year ban on low-yield weapons research, cited by Russia last week as a reason for practice launches of its nuclear ICBMs and cruise missiles?
In a word: Nyet.
Brooks is a former treaty negotiator who knows the value of precise language and the Washingtonian skill of saying less than a listener might think.
It pays to parse every word, according to his deputy, Everett Beckner.
"What he said was, in our present plans, there's nothing specific," Beckner said. "There is no work at present that is specific to the development of a low-yield weapon."
The watchword here is "development." Before a nuclear weapon enters its third, or "development engineering," phase, the weapons labs perform a good deal of work. Physicists can dream up a new, full-scale weapon and run multiple computer simulations of its detonation to refine its design. Senior scientists might assail the design, and arguments may ensue over whether it is safe, whether it will deliver the specified explosive yield, radiation and heat reliably, whether it is a robust and worthy bomb.
Engineers may fashion prototypes of its components, or perhaps the full bomb, and shake them, chill them, slam them into walls or bake them in burning jet fuel. Accountants could join in the feasibility study, tallying the costs of turning out blueprints and manufacturing the weapon, from the first production unit to the last.
That's the case with the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. So far, the Pentagon has yet to ask for the weapon. The military has not issued formal requirements for what it is supposed to do. Yet, assuming Congress approves one more round of appropriations, more than$47 million would be spent by the end of 2005 on a high-yield bomb for destroying buried, fortified command bunkers and tunnels. The money is to make an existing H-bomb more rigid and rugged, encased in the toughest metals to survive a plunge into a few dozen feet of rock or concrete and detonate.
Only then would the administration ask Congress to authorize the bomb's development and production, estimated at a cost of $457 million more through 2009.
Technically, out of $36 million that the Bush administration wants next year for research into new and modified weapons designs, not a dime is devoted to developing any bombs.
"That in no way rules out the possibility that such exploratory work could be done," Beckner said.
Scientists at the nation's three nuclear weapons labs -- Lawrence Livermore in California, Los Alamos in New Mexico and Sandia in both states -- are waiting for the first small flushes of cash to fund return of their Advanced Concepts teams, defunct since 1994.
The teams today are minuscule, just a couple of scientists or so at each lab who will dream up new designs and carry them toward development. Their work for the immediate future would amount to a fraction of a percent of the overall U.S. nuclear-weapons research budget. So far, studies of mini-nukes at the labs are mostly limited to simulating the effects of radiation, heat and blast on chemical and biological weapons.
Asked recently what he wants of the Advanced Concepts teams, Brooks told the Arms Control Association, "Well, we don't know. We're going to work with the Department of Defense. There are a number of ideas."
The teams are likely to explore destroying chemical and biological weapons without blasting them into the environment, unneutralized. Brooks said they also might come up with ideas for improving the safety of the weapons in accidents or strengthening their internal security devices to guard against unauthorized use or making existing weapons more "robust" and potentially less susceptible to aging.
Scientists at the labs also expect to look at low-yield weapons for a variety of uses, possibly including missile defenses and electromagnetic-pulse weapons.
"There could be some exploration of any or all of those," Brooks said. "But probably, it will be more of that effort will be focused on safety, security, flexibility, greater margins than on fundamental, new capabilities."
Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com .
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- vermont
Senators request a Vt. meeting on Yankee
By SUSAN SMALLHEER
Rutland Herald Staff
Mar. 2, 2004
http://www.rutlandherald.com/04/story/79798.html
Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., have asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to hold a public meeting in Vermont on a plan to increase power production by 20 percent at Vermont Yankee.
In a letter sent Friday to the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Vermont's two senators cited concerns raised by their constituents in asking for the Vermont meeting.
"We have been contacted by Vermonters expressing concern regarding the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC's) process for evaluating such an uprate and requesting an independent review of the proposal," the letter to NRC Chairman Nils Diaz read. "We write to share these constituent concerns with the NRC and to confirm our understanding of the NRC's newly revised guidance and standards for conducting the review process." The letter didn't ask for a public hearing, a much more formal process, akin to the technical hearings that were held in the past eight months by the state's Public Service Board on the uprate request.
The Jeffords-Leahy letter noted that they hoped Entergy Nuclear's application for the Yankee increase would be reviewed under the new standards on nuclear power uprates adopted by the NRC in December 2003.
Once Entergy's request for a license amendment to increase power is published in the National Register, then a hearing could be requested, and Jeffords is keeping that option open once the formal review process begins, according to a staffer.
But Diane Screnci, spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commis_sion, said late Monday that even after the Entergy license amendment is published, the public has 30 days to comment, but that a formal public hearing is not one of the options.
Screnci said she had not seen the two senators' letter, but that they would get a response. Staff from the senators' offices met with NRC staff last month, raising concerns first brought up by constituents.
Raymond Shadis, staff advisor for the New England Coalition, contested that, saying that any license amendment could be subject to a public hearing, and he said his organization planned on seeking such a review.
He said what the senators had asked for amounted to a "simple public venting session," and not a substantial review of the Entergy application.
Shadis noted that only the NRC deals with safety issues associated with the power increase, since Vermont state review focused on economics and some environmental questions.
"It's nothing more than a public relations tool," Shadis said. "It would be useless. In a public meeting, there is no NRC accountability. They are making a huge mistake if they think it will make the uprate one teeny-weeny bit safer."
"Window dressing? It's more like barn dressing, which is a polite term for what we clean out behind the stalls," Shadis said. "Nothing comes of it."
Shadis said the NRC has never held a formal public hearing on any uprate case involving power increases at any of the nation's 110 commercial nuclear reactors.
Screnci said she hadn't seen the Jeffords-Leahy letter, and she declined specific comment on their request.
But she said the NRC regularly holds public meetings to discuss the NRC review process, and she said the NRC held a similar meeting in Connecticut two weeks ago to discuss its process involving license extension.
"It is not unusual for the NRC to hold a meeting," she said.
Shadis said the NRC was turning a "blind eye" to serious safety issues in the Entergy Nuclear proposal, which would retrofit key components at the Yankee reactor in Vernon and increase the amount of steam generated by the plant, which in turn creates more electricity.
The New England Coalition, an anti-nuclear group based in Brattleboro, has been fighting Entergy Nuclear's request, saying that it puts too much pressure on an aging nuclear reactor, which doesn't meet some current NRC requirements for nuclear plants.
The NRC concedes the point, but says Vermont Yankee has been "grandfathered" on some newer regulations.
Shadis also pointed to the fact that Vermont's lone congressman, Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., had held a public meeting in Brattleboro a few months after the terrorist attacks of 2001 about safety at Vermont Yankee.
"Nothing came of that either," Shadis said.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
----
Parties can request NRC review of Vt. Yankee uprate proposal
Mar. 2, 2004
By SUSAN SMALLHEER,
Rutland Herald Staff
http://www.rutlandherald.com/04/State/Story/79851.html
Interested parties can request a formal public hearing from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Entergy Nuclear's proposed power increase, contrary to a statement on Monday, an NRC spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Diane Screnci said she misspoke on Monday when she said that a public hearing was not an option under power increase license amendments.
Screnci said that her research into the issue failed to turn up any such public hearings on power increases at nuclear reactors. She said she hadn't been able to determine whether any requests had ever been filed.
"We've never had a hearing on a power uprate," she said.
Last week, Vermont's two U.S. senators, James Jeffords and Patrick Leahy, asked for a public meeting in Vermont by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission but held back asking for the more detailed and formal public hearing.
Screnci said she realized Tuesday morning she had misspoken and wanted the issue to be clear to Vermont residents.
Screnci said a recent rule change gave interested parties more time to request the formal public hearing once the proposed license amendment is published in the Federal Register. The old standard was 30 days, and the new standard is 60 days.
The New England Coalition, an anti-nuclear group that has been fighting Entergy Nuclear's proposal, said earlier this week it planned on requesting a public hearing, which is similar to the technical hearings held by Vermont Public Service Board on the power increase.
Vermont regulators didn't address safety issues, however, since that is the NRC's responsibility.
Entergy Nuclear spokesman Robert Williams said his company was happy to "welcome" the NRC to Vermont for such a public meeting.
"The more people who learn about it the better. We would welcome the NRC back to talk about its process," Williams said.
Vermont's two U.S. senators said they asked for the public meeting in Vermont in response to their constituents' concerns about safety at the plant because of the increased power production, and many residents' concerns that an independent safety assessment be done at the reactor before any project is approved.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
-------- us nuc waste
Q & A Nuclear Waste in Space
March 2, 2004
By C. CLAIBORNE RAY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/science/space/02QNA.html
Q. Rather than put the earth's environment at risk, why not periodically shoot small loads of the waste from atomic power plants into space?
A. While the idea of launching such waste into orbit or into deep space was given serious consideration by some government and private scientists early in the space program, it was not deemed practical.
A federal law passed in 1982 mandates disposing of dangerous American nuclear wastes in deep geological storage areas on earth, rather than placed in orbit, fired at the sun or sent into deep space.
One earlier idea was to use the space shuttle as a regular garbage disposal vehicle, but shuttle flights never became regular enough or frequent enough. Another potential problem was the catastrophic loss of a dangerous nuclear cargo through a spacecraft failure. In the early 1980's, hardened waste containers built to withstand re-entry if a vehicle failed before entering orbit were tested.
Even with projected frequent shuttle flights, the expense of space disposal would probably have been too high for any but the most dangerous of wastes, which would have had to be separated from other less unstable materials. Such reprocessing is now illegal.
-------- us politics
Greenspan Testimony Highlights Bush Plan for Deliberate Federal Bankruptcy
By Michael Meurer
truthout | Perspective
Tuesday 02 March 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/030304F.shtml
Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's Feb. 25 testimony to the House Budget Committee provided an unintentionally candid look at the Bush administration's deliberate fiscal policy of bankrupting the federal government to justify a sweeping program of privatization.
During his February 25 testimony before the House Budget Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan generated sensational national headlines by recommending that President Bush's $1.5 trillion in tax cuts be made permanent while Social Security and Medicare benefits be dramatically cut to achieve long term deficit reduction and a balanced budget.
In spite of the media furor and across the board condemnation by the remaining Democratic presidential candidates, there should be no reason for surprise at Greenspan's remarks. In his capacity as shill for the Bush administration, the Chairman's recommendations make perfect sense, as long as one is not foolish enough to believe the window dressing about a long term balanced budget. Mr. Greenspan is laying the groundwork for a second Bush administration, not a balanced budget. His remarks, and most of the economic policies of the Bush administration, can only be understood against the backdrop of the little remarked right wing agenda of deliberate federal bankruptcy.
From the first months of the Bush administration, when their initial breathtaking tax cuts were presented to Congress, it has been obvious that the explicit goal of this administration is to bankrupt the federal government to justify a sweeping program of privatization. Pursuing federal bankruptcy is a deliberate policy.
This administration's pursuit of bankruptcy as deliberate policy had to be extraordinarily bold from day one because public programs such as Social Security were so extraordinarily solvent into the distant future, and the underlying strength and diversity of the U.S. economy was sufficient to keep them that way if spending priorities were not radically altered. The events of 9/11 provided the perfect cover for pursuing federal bankruptcy in the guise of an open ended war on terror.
We know that the constituency for the Bush economic program consists of the military-industrial complex and the wealthy. The Bush administration's policies of massive defense spending and unprecedented tax cuts for upper income brackets reward both constituencies, while the short term economic lift from more than $450 billion in defense spending (dubbed "Military Keynesianism" by Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others) is part of a conscious election year strategy to give at least the appearance of economic recovery. But the longer term goal of these policies, cutting revenues while increasing spending into the indefinite future, is still federal insolvency.
A massive federal deficit, it is hoped, will justify to the public the wholesale privatization of social security, medicare, prisons, schools, water, the Federal Aviation Administration, Amtrak, welfare services, public power utilities, the federal postal service, etc., etc., etc. Visit the websites of any of the major right wing think tanks from which this administration has drawn its highest officials, and you will find entire sections of archived documents and books arguing the case for privatization of nearly the entire public sector.
From the American Enterprise Institute to the Heritage Foundation, from the Hoover Institution to the Cato Institute to the Reason Foundation, privatization has been a prime objective of the right for the past 25 years. The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) even provides a handy list of potential targets for privatization.
There are plenty of examples of the Bush administration's attempts to push privatization, such as their effort to change federal funding rules for public water utilities, making such federal funding contingent upon proof that the utilities each have a privatization plan in place. Amtrak, Social Security and public schools are explicitly in their sights. Education factories such as Edison Schools are the preferred Republican solution to education.
The public, so far, is resistant to an explicit agenda of mass privatization. But if Bush and his corporate backers were to be given a second term, pursuit of this privatization agenda would be unfettered, with the bulging Social Security trust fund at the top of the list among prospective candidate programs. That is what Mr. Greenspan is really signaling with his Congressional testimony in favor of permanent tax cuts today. The pursuit of federal insolvency increases the financial pressure on all elements of the public sector, making the argument for privatization theoretically more compelling. Indeed, Bush and company would read their election to a second term as a tacit mandate for their privatization agenda, and the consequences for the commonweal would be devastating.
Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean have talked explicitly about the Republican privatization agenda in this election year. Dean has noted that the Bush economic model for the U.S. is Argentina, although the sophistication of that analogy is lost on the average voter. Kucinich has talked about the dangers of privatizing water.
Privatization deserves to be front and center in this country's political debate, and privatization's history of miserable failure needs to be placed squarely on the table in plain language for the electorate to consider. The history of failed privatization schemes includes doomed water privatization projects in South America and the U.S. (Atlanta is the poster child), rail privatization in Britain, and school and prison privatization in the U.S.
The Bush administration's pursuit of federal bankruptcy on behalf of their largest corporate sponsors, who will be the primary beneficiaries of privatization, represents an all out assault on the idea that the federal government should represent the commonweal and act as a wise custodian of our collective resources. We see instead a vision of a global battlefield where scarce resources go to the strongest and to those who already have. Mr. Greenspan's comments today tell us that this world view extends to the domestic front and will continue and accelerate in a second Bush administration.
We would do well to heed the underlying message and put an end to the Bush administration's Imperial misadventures abroad and fiscal malfeasance at home.
Michael Meurer owns a communications firm in Los Angeles serving clients ranging from the Center for Law in the Pubic Interest to Environmental Defense.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan farmers defy efforts to curb heroin crop
By Salamander Davoudi in Washington
March 2 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1077690813112&p=1012571727169
Cultivation of the poppy crop in Afghanistan, the source of most of the world's opium and heroin, reached alarming levels last year despite internationally backed efforts to stem the tide of drug production.
An annual report published by the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) estimates the size of Afghanistan's 2002-2003 opium crop to be 61,000 hectares, nearly twice the estimate for the previous year.
"If we get to a point two years from now where we have the same environment we have now, we will basically be on course to institutionalise cartels in Afghanistan," said Robert Charles, assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement.
Mr Charles was quick to remove blame from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. Drug traffickers, he said, had taken advantage of rural farmers who faced drought and an economy ravaged by war.
"President Karzai, in front of his entire cabinet, made it crystal clear that counter-narcotics is something he will make a fundamental element of the national security of the country," Mr Charles said.
"Poppy eradication is physically and politically difficult for a young government recovering from the aftermath of war," he added.
The State Department hopes to see a 10-15 per cent reduction in crop levels this year by working under the lead of the British in the Afghan provinces.
By the end of June, 20,000 Afghan police are due to finish their training with the INL but there are lingering worries over the availability of funds.
"My biggest concern is whether we going to have the money - not so much from the international community but more importantly can we get our own programmes up and running?" said Mr Charles.
Western-backed anti-narcotics efforts are mainly focused on offering long-term economic alternatives and building up law enforcement capacity.
Opium is now growing in 28 of the country's 32 provinces, up from 24 in the preceding year, according to the State Department report.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that between 40 to 60 per cent of the country's GDP is derived from the opium trade. Afghanistan is the world's leading supplier of illicit opium, morphine and heroin.
- The UK yesterday announced an extra Ј300m ($560m, Ђ450m) of aid for Afghanistan over five years, building on an original commitment made in January 2002, Christopher Adams writes from London. The additional funding takes the total amount of assistance to Ј500m for the financial years 2002-03 to 2006-07.
-------- africa
Soldiers demobilised in Eritrea
The situation on the border with Ethiopia is still tense
2 March, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3527133.stm
The Eritrean authorities say they have begun demobilising 65,000 personnel who served during the conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia.
Demobilisation commissioner Tekeste Fekadu said this was the first stage of a process to re-integrate former fighters into civilian life.
Eritrea fought a bitter territorial war with its neighbour until December 2000at the cost of around 100,000 lives.
A UN peacekeeping force is patrolling the security zone between the states.
But the situation along the border is still said to be dangerous, especially around the disputed town of Badme.
The town was at the centre of a row which led to the start of the war in May 1998.
----
UN warns of 'atrocities' in Sudan
By Grant Ferret,
Tuesday, 2 March, 2004
BBC correspondent in Farchana refugee camp, Chad
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3527583.stm
The war in Sudan has created a huge refugee problem The head of the UN refugee agency, Ruud Lubbers, says atrocities are being committed in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.
Mr Lubbers was speaking during a visit to a refugee camp in Chad which has become home to some of the 130,000 Sudanese who fled their homes over the past year.
In sweltering heat, the 2,000 people at Farchana refugee camp greeted Mr Lubbers with a rousing chorus of "Down, down, Al-Bashir!" - a reference to the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir.
They believe the government of Sudan supports the militia which has killed their relatives, looted their belongings and destroyed their homes.
They are unanimous in their approval of the camp, which is well away from the Sudanese border, an area which is subject to daily raids by the militia.
Violence continues
In spite of the denials by the government of Sudan that the violence is still going on in Darfur, Mr Lubbers was in no doubt.
"In a way, it's strange because it's peace here - you don't hear the noises of fighting - but there in Darfur just to the other side of the border, where we hear about more and more incidents," he said.
"The violence is not over - it's continuing. This is not peace - this is atrocities."
The head of the UNHCR said any peace agreement between the Sudanese Government and rebels in the south of the country should not be made at the expense of the people of Darfur in the west.
But there is no sign that the region will be included in any peace deal, and for now, the number of refugees crossing into Chad continues to grow by the day.
Unless the UN can move more of them further away from the border, the vast majority will continue to live in fear of further attacks by the Sudanese militia.
----
U.S. training Algeria to fight desert rebels
By Paul de Bendern,
March 2, 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L02626884.htm
ALGIERS - U.S. military experts are training Algerian forces to fight the threat posed by rebels in the vast Sahara desert as part of the global war on terror, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.
The unprecedented training, an indication of warming U.S.-Algerian ties, follows a separate U.S. initiative to help four nations on the southern edge of the Sahara combat security threats -- Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad.
"U.S.-Algerian cooperation, including military, is expanding in many areas. Last year we increased our military education and training programmes," a U.S. embassy spokesperson in Algiers said. The official declined to elaborate on the training.
Military experts say the cooperation is a major step for Algeria's powerful military, which has been shunned in the past partly due of its involvement in national politics. Officials would not elaborate on the sort of training involved.
More than 150,000 people have died in rebel-linked violence in Algeria, according to human rights groups, sparked by the annulment of elections an Islamic party was set to win in 1992.
Washington sees Africa as a potentially fertile recruiting and training ground for terror networks because of its weak political institutions and poor policing of huge swathes of desert and long stretches of coastlines.
Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem declined to comment on U.S.-Algeria training but told Reuters: "There is normal (anti-terrorism) cooperation between all countries, including the United States."
Large parts of the Sahara, much of it in Algeria, are lawless no-man's lands, where bandits, hostage-takers and Islamic rebels seek refuge.
A hardline Algerian Islamic militant group, which recently pledged its allegiance to al Qaeda, has persuaded Washington to look more carefully at Algeria's isolated south, experts say.
The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) -- on the U.S. foreign "terrorist" organisation list -- has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 32 European tourists in the desert in 2003 and the killing of a Saudi poet earlier this year.
Algeria is seen as an important ally because of its experience in fighting rebels for more than a decade.
"Counter-terrorism is a key area of U.S.-Algerian cooperation; Algeria's cooperation in the fight against terrorism has been outstanding," the embassy spokesperson said.
The official dismissed newspaper reports that Washington planned to build a base in the Algerian desert.
"The United States has no military bases and is not seeking bases in Algeria or the Sahel countries," the official said, referring to Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad.
The Ministry of Defence declined to comment.
Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said recently that rebels fighting for a Taliban-style state were no longer a threat to Algeria but that they might try to strike on the eve of presidential elections on April 8.
GSPC chief Abu Ibrahim Mustafa warned last month that the war on the authorities was far from over. It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the statement obtained by Reuters in late February.
(Additional reporting by Lamine Chikhi)
-------- arms
Radar system sale to India approved
March 02, 2004
By Jay Bushinsky
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040301-100359-6990r.htm
JERUSALEM - Israel's security Cabinet on Sunday approved the $1.1 billion sale of three airborne radar systems to India, the biggest move yet in a burgeoning military relationship between the two democracies.
India's longtime rival, Pakistan, protested the sale of the Israeli-made Phalcon systems, which are modeled on the U.S. Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), one of the most sensitive systems in the American arsenal.
The Bush administration blocked Israel from selling the Phalcon system to China early last year but has approved the latest deal, which follows India's purchases of Barak (Lightning) sea-to-sea missiles and laser-guided bombs, also manufactured by the state-owned Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd. (IAI).
Israel was the second-biggest exporter of weaponry to India even before the Phalcon sale, which at one stroke more than doubles Israel's $720.2 million in total exports to India in the past year.
For the Phalcon sale, IAI's sophisticated electronic and avionics systems will be mounted on Ilyushin-76 aircraft purchased from Uzbekistan. New and more powerful jet engines are being installed.
"When operational, [the Phalcons] will be able to detect air and sea targets simultaneously, including hostile aircraft over any terrain," an IAI official said.
Pakistan, which has fought three wars with India, said the sale "will accentuate strategic and conventional imbalance in South Asia."
Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan told state television that such transactions "undermine the spirit of peace and stability being pushed by Pakistan, India and the international community in the region."
First Secretary Sabrata Das at the Indian Embassy in Israel said before the announcement yesterday that his country's commercial contacts with Israel were purely "pragmatic and businesslike," stressing that they "do not impinge on other Indian relationships," presumably including those with Pakistan and China.
Nevertheless, India's neighbors have watched nervously as the South Asian giant has opened negotiations with Israel on its antimissile technology - especially the Arrow projectile developed in conjunction with the United States - and expressed interest in a joint space venture.
The latter project would use an Indian space vehicle to launch scientific equipment developed at Tel Aviv University.
India's most important previous weapons purchase in Israel was the Barak-1, produced by the IAI and RAFAEL - a Hebrew acronym that stands for Combat Weapons Development Authority.
The Barak-1 can intercept aircraft at seven miles and is said to be effective against Pakistan's U.S.-made P3-CII Orion strike aircraft.
Israel also has offered the Indian navy advanced radar equipment with a detection range of 30 nautical miles and the ELM-2022 A, which can track 100 targets at a time and can be fitted on airborne platforms.
Other Israeli weapons systems thought to be of interest to India include the long-range Green Pine radar system, which can identify missile launchers at great distances, and the EL/M-2080 search, acquisition and fire-control radar, which was developed in conjunction with the U.S.-Israeli Arrow project.
According to Efraim Inbar, director of Bar-Ilan University's BESA Center for Strategic Studies (BESA is short for Begin-Sadat), the United States is the largest exporter of weaponry to India, with Israel second and France third.
Russia, which was India's top weapons supplier throughout the Cold War, lost its pre-eminence after the collapse of the Soviet Union because "it was unable to deliver on budget and on schedule," Mr. Inbar said.
--------
Predators Move To Balad
Balad, Iraq (AFPN)
Mar 02, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/uav-04k.html
The unit came packed and ready to position themselves autonomously, so they could pursue their prey quietly, unseen for hours. Arriving ready to set up one of the most impressive unmanned aerial aircraft in the U.S. inventory, the Nevada unit was ready for business within days of their arrival here. "We are self-sufficient," said Maj. Russell Lee, 46th ERS commander who is deployed from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.
The RQ-1 Predator unit is one of Balad's newest missions. It moved here from Tallil Air Base, Iraq, and within five days flew its first mission.
The only Predator unit in Iraq has a 55-person crew that includes medics, comptrollers, contractors, and communications, weapons, fuels and aircraft-generation specialists. They bring their own shelters, tents and vehicles.
"We're not under the air (and space) expeditionary force system," said Major Lee, who was deployed here to specifically oversee the move. "We keep our assets here and rotate crews out every 90 days. It's a low density, high-demand asset."
The Predator is a medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle system, containing four air vehicles, a ground-control station and a primary satellite link communication suite.
"The sleek 27-foot-long UAV is comparable in wing span to an F-16 Fighting Falcon at 48 feet. Its electrical optical infrared cameras are the heart of the system, said Major Lee. "It is a multitargeting system."
The cameras allow the aircraft to capture images even through clouds. These abilities give the Predator an advantage over the U-2 and Global Hawk aircraft which are used for strategic reconnaissance. "We're tactical," he said. "We provide real-time information."
With their four-cylinder engines, the UAV can fly nearly 20 hours from altitudes up to 25,000 feet, providing up-to-the second information to those who need it the most -- soldiers on the ground.
Although the Army initially led the Predator program, Pentagon officials chose the Air Force as the lead service in 1995. The Predator has also been deployed supporting air campaigns in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
"We work with Army war fighters," Major Lee explained, "to help with the capture of enemy targets including the capture of Saddam [Hussein]." The unit provides intelligence gathering, surveillance and strike capability to engage ground targets, he said. "We do it every day. It is all we do," said Major Lee. "We literally fly every day. There is always a Predator airborne around the world."
The unit's airmen work 12 hour shifts, seven days a week for 90 days. "If someone gets sick, we have no replacement," the major said. "The only time off is when we don't fly, and I've never seen that."
Each crew -- a pilot and a sensor operator or co-pilot -- flies about three times a day. The pilot is a rated pilot. Currently, the unit has two fighter pilots and a bomber pilot to fly the craft. The sensor operators are imagery analysts in the Air Force on flying status.
The crew receives air tasking orders, briefings, and talks to the tower and aircraft just like other flying units.
Major Lee, an F-15E Strike Eagle pilot who has been with the Predator for two years, said it is not an easy system to operate. "We physically fly the airplane; we just do it sitting on the ground," Major Lee said. "It's much more challenging than flying an F-15 because you can't feel the airplane."
From a ground-control station, the pilots maneuver the Predator just like any other aircraft. Pilots can comply with headings, altitudes and airspeeds directed by air traffic control, just as if they were in the cockpit.
"The crews must make themselves believe they are flying the aircraft," he said. "If you become detached and lose focus on what you're doing, it's less effective."
While in the ground station, the two-person crew watches a video monitor that displays images transmitted from the Predator's nose-mounted camera. All missions are recorded, and information is disseminated to various intelligence units worldwide. "What we see is unique," said the major. "We see things most people don't have a clue that's going on."
Although the Predator unit has been flying missions throughout Iraq for quite some time, the major said flying missions from Balad has been challenging.
"This airport is a lot busier than others we've worked at," Major Lee said.
-------- asia
Cambodia secures US funding to destroy anti-aircraft missiles
PHNOM PENH (AFP)
Mar 02, 2004
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2693379&C=america
Cambodia is set to become the first Asian nation to destroy its cache of outdated anti-aircraft missiles after the US embassy announced Tuesday it would pay for the weapons to be destroyed.
The United States has initiated a global drive to secure or eliminate Man Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADS, which it fears international terrorists could use to launch devastating attacks on civilian aircraft.
"I am pleased to announce today that US government funding has been approved so that Cambodia can implement this initiative and that the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces... will destroy the entire stock of Cambodian MANPADS," US ambassador to Phnom Penh Charles Ray told a press briefing.
Cambodia is accused of being a major source of illegal weapons which arm rebel groups across Asia including the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and militants in Indonesia's Aceh province.
The kingdom is awash with small arms after more than three decades of war which formally ended only in 1998.
The United States will provide 233,000 dollars to destroy Cambodia's 233 Soviet-era MANPADS and develop stockpile management techniques for the remainder of its weapons inventory, a US embassy spokesman said.
He told AFP that US ordnance experts would arrive in Cambodia on March 22 to assess the stockpile and that the destruction was expected to be completed by April 2.
Ray said that so far the United States has received commitments from eight countries to destroy more than 10,000 MANPADS and lauded Cambodia for being the only nation in Asia to make the pledge.
Cambodia's co-defence minister Tea Banh said the destruction of the missiles, imported from the former USSR during the 1980s, would ensure the kingdom was no longer accused of being a potential source of the weapons.
"I am confident that after the destruction of our missiles stockpile, Cambodia would no longer be subject to any assertion of being a source for channelling this kind of weapons to criminals," he said.
Thai authorities said last October that they were hunting for missiles believed to have been smuggled in from Cambodia, which it feared were destined for use in attacks during a summit of Pacific leaders including US President George W. Bush.
Global alarm over MANPADS was heightened last year when two of the weapons were fired at a chartered Israeli commercial jet as it was taking off in the Kenyan city of Mombasa.
-------- britain
Sending Blair to Prison
by John Laughland
March 2, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://antiwar.com/laughland/index.php?articleid=2066
Following the decision not to prosecute the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun, the suspicion is that the government will do anything to keep secret the advice submitted to it by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, on the legality of the Iraq war. There is a very simple reason why the government would want to do this. If it turns out that the Iraq war was illegal, then Tony Blair could go to prison.
In 2000, the United Kingdom ratified the Rome treaty which created the International Criminal Court. In the run-up to the war, therefore, the government was well aware that an illegal war could spark a prosecution against senior ministers. This is why so much emphasis was placed on weapons of mass destruction: without them, the war had no basis in law at all.
With the failure to find any weapons, Tony Blair's chickens may now be coming home to roost. His government was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the International Criminal Court: he might be one of the first world leaders to be indicted by it. For a group of international lawyers, most of them based in Britain, have written to the Prosecutor of the new Court, asking him to look into allegations that the British government committed war crimes during the invasion of Iraq. If the Prosecutor decides that there is a case to answer, Tony Blair, Geoff Hoon and other ministers could end up in the dock.
When the government pushed for the creation of the ICC, it never expected that prosecutions would be brought against itself. It took the complacent view that only "lesser" nations in the third world would ever be prosecuted. Robin Cook, who was foreign secretary at the time, said, 'This is not a court set up to bring to book Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom or Presidents of the United States.'
The Americans did not believe such general reassurances. They recognised that the ICC could indict their own soldiers and leaders, and so they refused to ratify the ICC treaty. Thus there is no question of President Bush being dragged into the international dock.
But the case against the British government over Iraq is strong. There was no United Nations authorisation for the attack - whatever Blair and Hoon try to claim now resolution 1441 was not a mandate for war - and there was no claim that a war was necessary to combat an alleged humanitarian crisis, as in Kosovo.
It is true that the International Criminal Court does not yet have jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. This was the central crime of which the Nazis were convicted at Nuremberg, and yet the authors of the ICC treaty decided that they could not agree on a general definition of it. So no prosecution can be brought against Tony Blair for the actual decision to attack Iraq. It is also unlikely that Tony Blair would face charges for genocide or crimes against humanity.
Instead, any potential prosecution would concentrate on the way the war was waged. The ICC most definitely does have jurisdiction over the rules of war. These include the various provisions laid out in scores of Conventions signed over the last hundred years, of which the most famous are those drawn up in Geneva, and which are drawn together and summarised in the ICC's charter. There is strong prima facie evidence that Britain broke some of those rules, or was complicit in breaking them, and this is where the lawyers have concentrated their fire.
Since we went to war to eradicate WMD, they ask, did we confine our attacks to alleged weapons factories or storehouses in Iraq? Or were the attacks motivated by a desire to ensure regime change, rather than destroy Iraq's alleged WMD capability? Both the British and American governments agreed to the bombing of a whole range of targets which had nothing to do with alleged weapons facilities. For instance, the well-publicised attack on a Baghdad restaurant, where Saddam Hussein was supposed to be having lunch, could easily be deemed illegal. And what about the attacks on TV stations in Iraq or on civilian means of transport? Britain would have to explain how these were linked to the weapons programme. If it turns out that the real goal was regime change, and not the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, then there is a case for saying that illegal acts may have been committed.
Then there are the rules about the proportional use of force, and rules about doing one's best to avoid civilian casualties. Cluster bombs and bunker-busters were dropped on Iraq, killing and maiming large numbers of civilian. Some estimate that 7,000 - 10,000 civilians were killed. If it came to court, the Government would also have to prove that all precautions were taken to minimise civilian casualties and damage to civilian objects.
The eight lawyers even argue that Tony Blair could be investigated for crimes committed by the Americans. If it can be established that some of the Americans' actions were illegal under the ICC's charter, then the British government might be accused of complicity in a 'joint criminal enterprise' with the US.
The official line from the Ministry of Defence is that the ICC Prosecutor would not dare override the domestic judicial procedures of an advanced democracy like ours. But what if he deems that the Attorney General himself, who is responsible for bringing prosecutions for war crimes committed by British subjects, is himself hopelessly compromised? The ICC Prosecutor might decide that his own authority would suffer greatly in this, a test case, if he failed to open an investigation. He may argue that, because Britain was one of the most enthusiastic initiators of the ICC project, it should take a lead by submitting to its jurisdiction.
In the event of a conviction of Tony Blair or other ministers, any sentence would be based on the precedents set by the currently existing International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), created in 1993. The longest sentence which the new International Criminal Court can impose is life imprisonment, like the ICTY. But the longest sentence which the ICTY has in fact imposed is 46 years, for genocide (General Krstic, a Bosnian Serb). A Bosnian Croat general, Blaskic, was given 45 years for various violations of the laws of war. These are exactly the kinds of acts for which Tony Blair might himself face prosecution.
Many opponents of the Iraq war would take great pleasure in seeing Tony Blair walk into a trap of his own making. But there are dangers in handing over power to decide the rights and wrongs of a war to a foreign international organisation. In practice, modern international humanitarian law has very little to do with the traditional laws of war. In the past, war crimes were dealt with by courts martial, ie by military lawyers who were themselves soldiers, and who knew what war was really like. By contrast, modern international tribunals are fundamentally political. They are stuffed full of human rights activists who have never been in battle, and who are both politically motivated and politically correct.
Their political motivation can be seen in the fact that ministers, not soldiers, are in the lawyers' line of the fire on Iraq. How can the political decision to go to war be subjected to the adjudication of judges? The politicisation is also visible in the fact that many humanitarian lawyers who protest against the Iraq war today were happy to go along with the attack on Yugoslavia in 1999, even though there was no legal basis for that war either. The ICTY has refused to open an investigation into allegations that NATO had itself committed war crimes against Yugoslavia.
The ICC treaty allows the Prosecutor to open an investigation if a signatory state is 'unwilling' to do so itself. If our Attorney General fails to act, some people will be delighted at the thought of foreign judges indicting the British prime minister. But, in my view, that would be a terrible day for British democracy. It would show that our own judicial and political system was incapable of holding our own leaders to account. And yet, in the last resort, the only people responsible for our leaders and their acts are the British people themselves.
Originally published in The Mail on Sunday (UK).
John Laughland is European Director of the European Foundation. He is an editor and author of The Tainted Source.
-------- business
EU imposes sanctions on United States
Tuesday 02 March 2004,
Reuters
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/93485735-B9C1-4D17-BE8B-F8AB21E66E59.htm
The European Union has imposed sanctions on the United States for the first time as a dispute over tax breaks for US firms turned into a trade war that could cost American exporters $300mn this year.
The lower tax rates for exports for firms, including Boeing and Microsoft, were judged an illegal subsidy by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which ruled the EU could impose $4bn in sanctions a year on US goods.
But European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy decided to apply gradual pressure by phasing in the measures, which will hit a wide range of goods, including textiles, jewellery and toys.
The sanctions are intended to prod the US Congress to replace the tax breaks quickly with measures in line with WTO rules.
They start at $16mn as an extra five per cent duty on selected US products in March and rise by one per cent a month to $315mn in 2004 and $666mn if they run throughout 2005.
Based on the full $4bn, the main sector to be hit would be US jewellery at an estimated $1.43bn.
Illegal subsidy
"The EU's objective remains the withdrawal of the US illegal subsidy," the commission said in a statement. "The EU has opted for a response which is measured, gradual and geared towards focusing the mind of the US legislature to comply."
Officials have tried to play down the impact of the trade row, the first time since the WTO was created in 1995 that the EU has retaliated on US goods.
"This is not the beginning of a trade war. WTO disputes are all part of the system," one Washington official told reporters ahead of the 1 March deadline for the sanctions to apply.
EU firms worried
But EU firms have expressed worries over the escalation of a dispute that could lead to extra costs as the economy splutters back to life.
Lamy has said sanctions should be seen in the light of daily transatlantic trade of $1bn, and the EU has coped since 1999 with more than $100mn of imposed US sanctions a year in a fight over beef.
The dollar's weakness is likely to lessen the pain on US exporters and the administration of President George Bush has pressured Congress to change the disputed tax laws.
----
Boeing nets $114 Million Defence system
March 02, 2004
Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8844242%255E15306,00.html
THE Australian Defence Force (ADF) has signed a $114 million contract with Boeing for a state-of-the-art air defence command and control system. Defence Minister Robert Hill said the new Vigilare system would provide the ADF with the ability to support surveillance and air defence of the entire country from operations centres at RAAF Bases at Williamtown, NSW, and Tindal, Northern Territory.
Senator Hill said Vigilare would combine information from a variety of sources to produce a comprehensive picture of the skies above and around Australia.
"This means we will be able to better respond to possible future incursions into Australia's airspace, not only by aircraft but also by any missiles that are detected," he said in a statement.
Vigilare will use information from sources such the Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN), airborne early warning and control aircraft, civil and military radars, fighter and maritime patrol aircraft, navy warships and various intelligence sources.
Senator Hill said it would provide high-tech communication facilities to enable ADF commanders to control widely dispersed air, sea and ground forces.
He said these facilities would be networked with other ADF and allied surveillance and combat assets.
Senator Hill said the Vigilare contract had been delayed for far too long but Defence had used the opportunity to incorporate additional communications and sensor integration work into the contract.
"The contract involves the complex task of integrating and installing high technology systems and will bring together capabilities developed both overseas and within Australia," he said.
Boeing will maintain the Vigilare system in Australia under a five-year support contract valued at $11.4 million that was also signed yesterday.
The first command and control system is expected to be installed and operational at RAAF Base Tindal by mid-2007.
----
Tanker deal 'in jeopardy,' supporter in Senate says
By Seattle Times
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2001869011_tanker02.html
WASHINGTON - Boeing's $17 billion proposal to lease and sell the Pentagon as many as 100 aerial refueling tankers is "in jeopardy," the Senate's leading supporter of the program said yesterday.
"I think that there's no question that that's the case - it is in jeopardy now, but I have no answer to it," said Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, after a hearing on the fiscal 2005 defense budget.
Boeing is under investigation into whether negotiations for the tanker contract were tainted. The proposal is on hold pending several investigations, including reviews by the Pentagon inspector general, general counsel and Defense Science Board.
Stevens is the lawmaker who first proposed in 2001 that the Pentagon lease new tanker jets instead of buying them because it would be a quicker way to replace the Air Force's aging fleet.
Stevens said there's been no wavering of support from most lawmakers, but "there's no question there are serious people committed to just destroying the program."
Separately yesterday, Air Force Secretary James Roche said no false information was provided to the Senate even though officials "amended" documents about the threat of corrosion to current refueling tankers and omitted data they believed could be misunderstood.
In a letter to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., obtained by Reuters yesterday, Roche defended the actions of Air Force officials, although he said he had instructed his staff to give Congress precisely what it requested in the future and not omit data.
McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who spearheaded a congressional investigation into the lease deal, has accused the Air Force of trying to hide data that undercut its drive to lease the Boeing tankers.
Roche acknowledged that, during a visit to Tinker Air Force Base in October by two senior staff of the Senate panel, Air Force officials omitted informational slides that contained data solely about tanker maintenance performed at Tinker because it was not fleetwide.
But McCain says it was precisely the Tinker-only data that staff wanted, because they showed lower levels of decay on the aging planes than officials in Washington had been claiming.
-------- haiti
Aristide accuses U.S. of forcing his ouster
March 02, 2004
By Steve Miller and Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040302-124204-5668r.htm
Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said last night that he was forced from his country by the U.S. military early Sunday morning, an accusation the Bush administration dismissed as "complete nonsense."
Calling his ouster a "coup d'etat" by the United States, Mr. Aristide said, "I was told that to avoid bloodshed I'd better leave." The soldiers who came to get him, he said, were "white American, white military."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, responding to complaints earlier in the day from black U.S. lawmakers and activists, said Mr. Aristide "was not kidnapped. We did not force him on the airplane. He went on the plane willingly."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the accusations were "complete nonsense," and administration officials outlined a detailed chain of events that led to Mr. Aristide's weekend departure.
"We took steps to protect Mr. Aristide, we took steps to protect his family, and they departed Haiti," he said. "It was Mr. Aristide's decision to resign."
"The idea that someone was abducted is just totally inconsistent with everything I heard or saw," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said.
But Mr. Aristide told a different story in interviews last night with CNN and the Associated Press, arranged by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, one of many black lawmakers and activists who support Mr. Aristide.
"Agents were telling me that if I don't leave they would start shooting and killing in a matter of time," Mr. Aristide said last night in an interview with the AP from Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, where he landed early yesterday.
Mr. Aristide admitted signing documents that removed him from power, but he said he had done so out of fear that the violence in his country, which has raged during the nearly monthlong political siege, would continue.
"And then, despite of diplomatic conversations we had, despite of all we did in a diplomatic way to prevent them to organize that massacre which would lead to a bloodshed, we had to leave and spent 20 hours in an American plane," he said.
His captors, he told CNN, "were not Haitian forces. They were ... Americans and Haitians together, acting to surround the airport, my house, the palace."
"No one should force an elected president to move in order to avoid bloodshed," Mr. Aristide said. "They lied to me, and they may lie to you, too."
White House officials last night had no new comment on Mr. Aristide's interviews and stood by their remarks from earlier in the day.
Democratic Reps. Maxine Waters of California and Charles B. Rangel of New York, as well as black activist and Aristide friend Randall Robinson, said in separate statements yesterday that armed U.S. guards took the Haitian leader out of his presidential home in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and put him on a plane.
Mrs. Waters told CNN that she had talked on the phone with Mr. Aristide's wife, Mildred, who said he had been "forced to leave his home."
Mrs. Waters also said that a U.S. Embassy official told Mr. Aristide that he "had to go now - that if he didn't go, he would be killed and a lot of Haitians would be killed."
Mr. Robinson, speaking from his home on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, said Mr. Aristide had called him on a cellular phone yesterday from the Central African Republic, where the deposed leader said he was being guarded by African and French soldiers.
"The president said to me that he had been abducted from his home by about 20 American soldiers in full battle gear with automatic weapons and put on a plane" on Sunday morning, Mr. Robinson said.
Mr. Rangel said he had a similar cell-phone conversation with Mr. Aristide, who was elected to a five-year term in fractious balloting in 2001.
Administration officials yesterday offered their account of the weekend events.
Late Saturday night, James B. Foley, U.S. ambassador to Haiti, got a phone call from a high-level aide to Mr. Aristide, with a simple question: If Mr. Aristide resigned, would the United States be able to protect him?
The call prompted a series of events that included a middle-of-the-night phone call to President Bush and a scramble to find a plane to carry Mr. Aristide into exile.
The call to Mr. Foley followed consultations between Mr. Aristide and U.S. officials as Haiti plunged deeper into civil war and rebels prepared to take Port-au-Prince.
Earlier that day, the leader had learned that the United States had no plans to protect him if rebels swarmed into his presidential compound, according to a Bush administration official.
Mr. Powell had called former Rep. Ron Dellums, California Democrat, whom Mr. Aristide had hired as a Washington lobbyist, and told him that the United States had no plans to protect the deposed leader.
During the Saturday call with Mr. Foley, Mr. Aristide's aide asked whether the United States could "help facilitate his departure," Mr. McClellan said yesterday.
Mr. Foley then called the Department of State and consulted with Mr. Powell and Roger Noriega, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. After more discussions, the ambassador called Mr. Aristide's office to say "that if he decided to leave, the United States could facilitate his departure," Mr. McClellan said.
At 1:30 a.m. Sunday, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice called Mr. Bush to inform him that Mr. Aristide was resigning, Mr. McClellan said. Mr. Bush called Mr. Rumsfeld to authorize deployment of the Marines.
Around 4:30 a.m. Sunday, Mr. Foley's deputy, Luis Moreno, went to the Haitian president's residence, where they had a "very civil, pleasant conversation," according to a senior-level State Department official.
The United States arranged for a plane to Haiti to pick up Mr. Aristide, who traveled via motorcade to the airport with his own retinue of security guards, including some contracted Americans.
Before takeoff at 6:15 a.m., Mr. Aristide gave a copy of his resignation letter to Mr. Moreno.
The aircraft had no destination until it stopped to refuel in Antigua, after which it flew to the Central African Republic, where it landed at 1 a.m. yesterday, the senior State official said.
Mr. Powell said "some 15 members of [Mr. Aristide's] personal security detachment were with him from his house to the airport, onto the plane with him, onto the refueling locations and onto the Central African Republic, and that's what's happened, notwithstanding any cell phone reports to the contrary."
The United States is supporting the creation of a "council of elders" to run Haiti, organize elections and disarm rebels in the capital.
U.S. diplomats yesterday began working to form a council of rebel leaders, Haiti government officials and the international community that within days should have about a dozen "eminent" Haitians, the State Department said.
The council would arrange presidential and parliamentary elections and regroup Haitian police who fled this month as rebels swept across the country.
Washington was focusing on forming the commission with Mr. Aristide's interim successor, Chief Justice Boniface Alexandre, Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and probably a representative from the Caribbean Community, a White House official said.
Last night, Mr. Rangel hedged his earlier remarks, saying Mr. Aristide "felt as though he was kidnapped."
"They strongly suggested that he get out of town. The military helped him make the decision," Mr. Rangel told reporters as a Congressional Black Caucus delegation met in New York last night with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Tom Harkin said the Iowa Democrat also doubted Mr. Aristide's accusation based on a conversation with the deposed leader.
"Senator Harkin does not believe [Mr. Aristide] was kidnapped and does believe that he resigned," Allison Dobson told Newsday.
•Nicholas Kralev contributed to this report.
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Aristide not a prisoner in Africa: French defense minister
PARIS (AFP)
Mar 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040302081159.wfqbz9to.html
Former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide, who has arrived in exile in Africa, is "being protected and not imprisoned", French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said Tuesday.
"If he wants to leave he can leave," she said in a French radio interview.
Aristide, interviewed by CNN television by telephone from the Central African Republic, where he flew into exile on Sunday, said he resigned under pressure and that his decision to step down was made only because he was told it was the only way to avoid bloodshed.
"I call it again and again a coup d'etat," Aristide said. "I called it a coup d'etat because it is a modern kidnapping."
Washington strongly rejects the allegations and a US diplomat said he had escorted Aristide voluntarily to the Haitian capital's airport prior to his departure.
Alliot-Marie said France was not controling Aristide whereabouts in the African country where France has military officers.
"We are making sure that his temporary stay passes under normal conditions," she added.
Alliot-Marie said the situation in Haiti was back to calm but remained "extremely volatile".
France has decided to reinforce its military contingent in Haiti by sending 140 foreign legionnaires from French Guiana, bringing the projected total force to around 350.
Alliot-Marie said French forces there had three tasks: provide security for French and other European nationals as well as the airport and help bring life in the Caribbean nation back to normal.
French troops in Haiti may "act to protect people and notably our citizens", she said.
"It is often up to the French soldiers to try and make people talk. They have a big diplomatic role to play by calling officials on either side to reason, persuading them that troops under their control do not commit acts of violence or fight."
Alliot-Marie said that military reinforcements from southwest France and French Guiana would arrive in Haiti Wednesday.
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Pentagon Gives Marines Limited Job in Haiti
Tue Mar 2, 2004
By Will Dunham
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4483028
WASHINGTON - U.S. Marines, dispatched by President Bush to Haiti, do not plan to disarm the rebels who drove President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power or intervene to stop looting in the Caribbean nation, defense officials said on Tuesday.
Pentagon officials described a limited mission for the Marines and said they will not act as the new cop on the beat even as they seek to stabilize Haiti. But some analysts said any U.S. failure to assert supremacy over the armed rebels quickly would only complicate the job in the long-term.
The United States has announced plans to send 1,500-2,000 Marines to Haiti to lead a multinational force, to be in place for 90 days, to restore order and stability after Aristide resigned and fled to Africa in the face of an armed rebellion. Miami-based U.S. Southern Command said the number of U.S. Marines in Haiti will reach 500 by the end of the day.
Hundreds of rebels, many donning military fatigues and brandishing automatic weapons, have entered the capital Port-au-Prince, and rebel leader Guy Philippe has declared himself chief of the Haitian military and police. The State Department called on the rebels to lay down their arms.
But Col. David Berger, head of the U.S. Marine contingent, said in Haiti he had "no instruction to disarm the rebels."
"I'm not here to coordinate or make arrangements with either the police or armed rebel groups," Berger said.
A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the strategy is for the Marines to create conditions for the arrival in 90 days of a U.N. stabilization force to which Washington may or may not contribute troops.
The official said one important task was to ensure that commercial and military aircraft can arrive and depart safely so other countries can start bringing in their forces.
"They're not stopping looting," the official said.
The official stressed that the Marines will not be used as Haiti's new police force, saying, "Haiti has a police force."
Berger said the Marines would operate under standard rules of engagement. "All the Marines are trained in them...They all have the right to self defense and they'll handle the threats like they would anywhere else."
Analyst Frederick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies called on the Pentagon to deal decisively and quickly with the rebels. Barton said the United States would send a message by taking Philippe into custody.
"I don't think we've made it clear to them that it's over, the game has ended, and, by the way, we think you guys are criminals," Barton said. "Somebody (a rebel) may have to get shot for that message to be understood."
Barton, a former U.S. Agency for International Development official who worked extensively in Haiti, noted that the Pentagon in 1994 sent 17 dozen-man teams of Special Operations troops into Haiti to assist the Marines.
He encouraged the Pentagon to repeat this use of special forces to help extend the reach of the U.S. military into parts of the country where the Marines are not located. (Additional reporting by Jim Loney)
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U.S. Assembles Peacekeeping Coalition in Haiti
Aristide Says American Troops Ousted Him Against His Will
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 2, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20862-2004Mar1?language=printer
Twenty-four hours after ushering Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile, the Bush administration hurried yesterday to assemble an international peacekeeping force and a credible caretaker government, dismissing Aristide's sharp claim that he had been kidnapped by U.S. troops.
Aristide telephoned U.S. politicians and activists from the Central African Republic to charge that U.S. forces expelled him against his will, an allegation that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell rejected as "absolutely baseless" and "absurd."
While Powell signaled to Aristide in his final hours that his position was unsustainable, he said Aristide made his own decision to flee in the face of broad political opposition and an angry rebel militia. He said the former Haitian leader did a "wise and patriotic thing."
U.S. authorities, who less than a week ago believed that Aristide would share power and that U.S. troops would be unnecessary, faced a changed landscape yesterday. Diplomats worked with foreign governments and Haitian political leaders to establish a coalition backed by as many as 5,000 soldiers and police from abroad.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld estimated 1,500 to 2,000 U.S. troops would take part in an operation to be commanded for no longer than three months by U.S. officers before being turned over to the United Nations. American military transports ferried supplies into the Haitian capital as the number of Marines there reached 300.
U.S. officials appeared to have few answers about the likely makeup of the force, its mission or its operating procedure. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to say whether the Marines would try to control street violence or had authority to fire on looters.
"They are going to be adequately armed, not just with their personal protective gear and their offensive weapons but with the rules that allow them to do the job," Myers said. Although Powell said he does not "expect much fighting," he said troops "have to be prepared for that."
On the political front, Bush administration officials worked from a plan developed by Caribbean nations, calling for an independent prime minister and unity cabinet to be chosen through compromise among Haiti's political movements. Aristide is gone, but his former Lavalas party and Prime Minister Yvon Neptune are taking part.
Aristide's departure was influenced strongly by the determination of Haiti's democratic opposition not to enter a power-sharing deal with him. It was when Powell saw that the opposition would not budge that U.S. policy shifted radically toward Aristide's ouster. A challenge now is to convert the defiance into concerted action.
"The only thing the opposition agreed upon was that they despised Aristide. Beyond that, there is no consensus," cautioned a Capitol Hill aide who is following the situation.
Frederick D. Barton, a Haiti watcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, identified complexities that make Haiti "combustible." He cited suspicion over Aristide's departure, the presence of armed rebels with an unclear political agenda and the democratic opposition's "real lack of any political standing."
"The rapid insertion of the Marines shows a willingness to do something," Barton said of U.S. authorities, "but now they've got complications. Now the orphan has been left on their doorstep."
Aristide, flown from Haiti at dawn Sunday with his wife, Mildred, and 15 aides and bodyguards, grabbed attention yesterday with his contention that U.S. troops had kidnapped him. As the exiled leader telephoned U.S. politicians to say he was the victim of a U.S.-led coup d'etat, his Miami lawyer, Ira Kurzban, vowed to help him regain his job.
"I was forced to leave," Aristide said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press. "They came at night. . . . There were too many. I couldn't count them."
He called them "agents" and identified them as "white American, white military."
Powell countered that Aristide, feeling embattled amid a spreading rebellion, left freely after sending an emissary to ask U.S. Ambassador James B. Foley what would be best. Powell, Foley and Assistant Secretary of State Roger F. Noriega discussed Aristide's questions before Powell cued Foley to advise Aristide that his position was no longer tenable.
Aristide "said he wanted to think about it. He wanted to speak to his wife," Powell told reporters. "And he came back to [Foley] and said that it was his decision -- based on what his security people were also telling him about the deteriorating situation -- that he should leave."
An aircraft chartered by the U.S. government landed in Port-au-Prince before dawn Sunday as Aristide packed and prepared to leave the downtown palace he occupied as Haiti's first democratically elected president. The jet took off before its destination had been chosen.
Powell said he worked the telephone in search of a refuge for Aristide, who had mentioned an interest in South Africa. The South African government refused, but at least three other countries agreed to accept him, said State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos, who reported that Aristide chose the Central African Republic.
"We will get to the bottom of this," said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. "As far as what has happened to President Aristide, we members of Congress will not stand around and watch a democracy being taken apart by our country."
Eight caucus members met yesterday with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to discuss Haiti's prospects for peace. The United Nations intends to send a team to Haiti in coming days to assess a peacekeeping mission to replace the U.S.-led operation in three months, chief spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
Eckhard said the United Nations' humanitarian work was hampered by chaos and looting. Citing particular worries about food shortages in Haiti's Central Plateau, which has been cut off from aid by the rebel insurgency, Eckhard said delivery of supplies would resume "as soon as the security situation allows."
Rumsfeld expressed an eagerness to yield responsibility for the security force as soon as another country is willing.
"Obviously, we'd like to see some other country take that lead. We've got a lot of things we're doing," he said, adding that it "would be appropriate to pass the lead off" once the situation has been "stabilized."
Although the Marines made no effort on their first day in Haiti to assert their authority beyond the airport and the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, defense officials voiced confidence that the mere presence of the U.S. troops along with other international soldiers will help restore peace.
"They've already had a calming effect," a senior officer said, "and they've sent a signal that the international community is ready to step in and ensure security."
Staff writers Colum Lynch at the United Nations and Bradley Graham and Dana Milbank in Washington contributed to this report.
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Haiti: Dangerous Middle
by Conn Hallinan www.dissidentvoice.org
March 2, 2004
Foreign Policy in Focus
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar04/Hallinan0302.htm
In 1994, when President Bill Clinton sent 20,000 American troops into Haiti to restore Jean-Bernard Aristide to the presidency, there was widespread support for a mission aimed at restoring democracy and relieving the misery of the Haitian people. It also seemed to herald a new day in the post-cold war world, when American invasions were not automatically synonymous with supporting some Latin American caudillo or South East Asian despot.
With the exception of the isolationist Right, virtually every voice in the political spectrum cheered the policy of "liberal intervention." The use of American power to make good things happen was a heady drug.
Unfortunately, an addictive one.
Although there is no question that the 1994 intervention was good for Haiti , military intervention has turned out to be fraught with problems, particularly when it is wielded by one country.
Liberal Interventionism Ran Off the Rails, Key Points
- There is no question that the 1994 intervention was good for Haiti , but military intervention has turned out to be fraught with problems, particularly when it is wielded by one country.
- Liberal intervention ran off the rails in Yugoslavia when the Clinton administration sidelined the United Nations and used the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) instead.
- Modern wars are not won or lost on battlefields, they are won or lost in the streets and byways of everyday life.
It is tempting to pin the problematical aspects of the policy on the Bush administration and its coterie of aggressive, neocon policymakers. But the fissures in "liberal intervention" began showing up long before the Republicans took control of the White House.
The Yugoslav war is a case in point.
On the surface the rationale for an intervention seemed straightforward. Serbia's President, Slobodan Milosevic was a thug who was oppressing Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo . Or at least that was how the war was sold. On the ground things were a little more complex, as they often are in the Balkans.
Milosevic was certainly a thug, but so was Croatia's President, Franjo Tudjman, and we were fine with him. Milosevic did, indeed, oppress Albanians in Kosovo, but the Kosovo Liberation Army was hardly representative of goodness and democracy. Many KLA members--including most the leaders--were no less thuggish than Milosevic, and according to Interpol, deeply engaged in Europe's largest drug ring.
Was there cause for military intervention? Could there have been a resolution short of war? We will never know, because the Serbs were presented with an ultimatum at Rambouillet designed to start a war.
The Americans demanded that Serbia surrender its sovereignty, exactly what the Austro-Hungarian Empire demanded of Serbia following the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. Back then the Serbs said no and the Austrians launched World War I.
"Rambouillet," argues Dan Goure of the conservative Center for Strategic and International Studies, "was not a negotiation, it was a setup, a lynch party."
Was Yugoslavia "liberal intervention" like Haiti? Questionable. There was a human rights crisis in Kosovo, but it was the war that kicked off the worst aspect of it, the forced expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo. And unlike Haiti, in Yugoslavia the U.S. and NATO went for the jugular. Power plants and water pumping stations were bombed. The electrical grid and energy systems were flattened, and transportation networks were systemically destroyed. The bombing campaign was a direct violation of articles 48, 51, and 54 of Protocol I, Part IV, of the Geneva Conventions. In short, a war crime.
The allies also saturated the country with depleted uranium and cluster bombs. Needless to say, the victims of the war were primarily Serbian civilians.
The Yugoslav war was where "liberal intervention" ran off the rails. The first sign of that was when the Clinton administration sidelined the United Nations and used the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) instead. The U.S. dominates NATO in a way that it could never hope to dominate the UN, and that fact allowed the U.S. military to carry out the kind of war it wanted, a war the UN might well have put the brakes on.
Not a NATO or UN War, But Another U.S. Affair
In the end it was hardly even a NATO war. The U.S. picked all the targets, carried out upwards of 90% of the air attacks, and excluded its allies from the operational aspects of the war. It was, pure and simple, a U.S. affair. It was also a dry run for a new kind of war, one that maximized destruction and minimized casualties.
Was it successful? Well, the Albanians have largely cleansed Kosovo of the Serb and Roma minority populations. NATO still occupies Kosovo. The humiliation of the war, and its painful aftermath, continues to stoke the fires of Serbian nationalism. Serbia refuses to give up its war criminals. Success? War has never produced "success" in the Balkans before, why anyone thought it would this time is a mystery.
The most troubling aspect of the Yugoslav war was the exclusion of the UN. It has been downhill ever since. Afghanistan is a case in point. Yes, it was very nice to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban (although we nursed the pinion that impelled that steel), and it certainly struck a blow at al Qaeda, the organization which carried out the 9/11 attacks.
But again, it was a U.S. operation. The UN was sidelined, and even NATO was brought in after the fact. Our ally in Afghanistan was the homicidal Northern Alliance , steeped in violence and drug dealing. And as in Yugoslavia , the war was a high tech, slice-and-dice air operation that killed lots of civilians. There was an uncomfortable feeling that the war might be about Central Asian oil and gas, but it was hard to protest freeing Afghan women and ending the rule of the Mad Mullahs.
Yet Afghanistan reflects the dangers of "liberal intervention" by one country. The U.S. certainly "won" the war, although the outcome was hardly in doubt. But the war is not over. Indeed, it appears to be getting worse, in part because the Bush administration spent tens of billions busting up the place, but not a whole lot putting it back together. Modern wars are not won or lost on the battlefield s, they are won or lost in the streets and byways of everyday life. Fix what you break or the bill gets dear. This is hardly a new observation. For 800-plus years the English won every major "battle" in Ireland. In the end they lost the war. It is a lesson the Israelis should pay some attention to.
Haiti Illustrates Failures of Single-Power Intervention, Key Problems
- Seven weeks after the 1994 invasion of Haiti, the Republicans took control of Congress and systematically dismantled aid to the impoverished, war-torn country.
- The opposition forces that converged on Port au Prince are the very thugs and murderers the U.S. invaded to get rid of in 1994.
- Whether through enmity or indifference, U.S. fingerprints are all over the overthrow of Aristide.
The 1994 Haiti intervention illustrates the problem of single power intervention even when authorized by the United Nations.
Seven weeks after the invasion, the Republicans took control of Congress and systematically dismantled aid to the impoverished, war-torn country.
The cuts meant there was no effort to rebuild roads, ports, airports, or infrastructure. When Aristide's opposition cried foul over eight contested seats in the 2000 election, the U.S. froze the final $500 million in aid.
The aid was never very substantial. Per capita, the U.S. was giving Haiti one fifth what it was spending in Bosnia, and one tenth what it was distributing in Kosovo. After 1996, U.S. aid to Haiti was the same as what it had given the dictatorship that deposed Aristide. Aid did flow, but not to Aristide. Instead, U.S. organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the opposition.
Shortly after the demonstrations and attacks on Aristide began, the U.S. State Department made it clear it would do nothing to impede his overthrow. In early February, an anonymous State Department official told the New York Times that the U.S. was not adverse to replacing Aristide, "When we talk about undergoing change in the way Haiti is governed, I think that could indeed involve changes in Aristide's position," the official said. This past week, shortly before Aristide was driven out, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, and President George W. Bush, essentially called for him to step down.
There is no question that the Aristide government was a troubled one, and some of the opposition was composed of former supporters alienated by corruption, violent pro-Aristide gangs, and the contested 2000 election. Most of this group was non-violent, and based mainly among Haiti 's elites and the business community. But the forces that converged on Port au Prince are the very thugs and murderers the U.S. invaded to get rid of in 1994.
Louis-Jodel Chamblain, one of the principal leaders of the armed opposition, is a former death-squad leader and one of the founders of the brutal Front for the Advancement of Progress in Haiti (FRAPH) that killed thousands of people between 1991 and 1994.
The shady nature of people like Chamblain and Andre Apaid of Group 184, has deeply worried human rights groups, and generated some anger in Washington. U.S. Representatives Barbara Lee (D-Ca) and Maxine Waters (D-Ca) have both challenged the "neutrality" of the U.S. State Department. In a recent letter to Powell, Lee wrote, "with all due respect, this looks like regime change." It would appear that Lee was right on target.
There is certainly reason to suspect the two men in charge of diplomacy in the region. Otto Reich , U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), played an important role in the coup attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Noriega, has been a long-time critic of Aristide.
Whether through enmity or indifference, U.S. fingerprints are all over the overthrow of Aristide.
Single-Power Intervention Responds to Single-Power Interests
If one could turn back the clock, and transform the 20,000 American troops into a UN peacekeeping force, working from the beginning in close conjunction with the OAS and the Caribbean Community (Caricom), the outcome might have been different. The Republicans would still have sabotaged the U.S. part of the aid package, but international aid would have kept flowing since there would have been a real regional and international commitment to the liberal intervention. As it was, the U.S. insisted from the beginning on total control of the peacekeeping venture. When U.S. political will for the peacekeeping and nation-building missions waned, there was no multilateral commitment to ensure that the democratic transition was consolidated.
Which brings us back to the initial problem with "liberal intervention." It may be a good idea at times, but there are caveats.
First, intervention by one country, or even a group of countries dominated by one country--NATO in Yugoslavia--is a bad idea. Individual nations have their own interests. Take the recent Iraq War. Maybe some people invaded Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Others might have deluded themselves into thinking there were weapons of mass destruction, but anyone who thinks it had nothing to do with Middle East oil simply needs to do the math.
In 2001, Vice-President Dick Cheney's National Energy Policy Development Group recommended that the U.S. "make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy." It is hardly a surprising conclusion. U.S. oil demands will increase by one third over the next 20 years, and two thirds of that will be imported. Since 65% of the world's oil reserves lie in the Middle East, one doesn't need a crystal ball to predict American policy in the region.
So was Iraq just about oil? No. Was it about oil? Of course.
Second, an intervention that isn't willing to invest in raising living standards will fail. No single country has the resources. Only international organizations can spread out the costs necessary for the long-term work needed to rebuild a country and to deflect the very natural suspicion that "liberal intervention" is really "occupation" by another name.
The Republicans call this "nation-building," and everywhere but in Iraq the Republicans hate it.
But it isn't nation-building, it's payback.
Afghanistan is indeed poor and backward, but it would have been less so if the colonial powers (and then the cold war) had not played the "great game" at the expense of its people. Haiti is unquestionably a basket case. And don't the French who colonized it and the Americans who occupied it and exploited it bear some responsibility for that condition?
Colonialism smashed up the world, deliberately squelched economic progress by the colonized, drew arbitrary lines on maps, and sowed the dragon's teeth of ethnic division and uneven development. Do we now get to shake our heads over "failed states," wash out hands, and walk away?
From the Caribbean to Africa, the great imperial powers loaded the dice for nations, and the world can ill afford to let the consequences of this rigged game go on. Does this mean military intervention on occasion? Yes. But not under one flag, only under the auspices of international organizations like the UN.
This strategy will have to confront the heart of the Bush administration and its Praetorian Guard of think tanks: the Heritage Foundation, the National Institute for Policy Study, the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for New American Century, and the Center for Security Policy.
For these ideologues, international organizations--and particularly the UN--are the anti-Christ. Last March, neoconservative guru Richard Perle hailed the Iraq war as an opportunity "to take the UN down."
It is interesting to note, however, that obituaries about the UN's imminent demise fall off in direct relationship to the number of American casualties and roadside bombs in Iraq. Back in February of last year, President Bush warned the UN General Assembly that its "last chance" to prove "its relevance" was to adopt a war resolution against Iraq . For the past two months the administration has literally begged the UN to bail it out from the morass in which it is now entrapped.
A cynic might point out that the mills of God grind slowly, but they do grind most exceedingly fine.
Key Solutions
- Unilateral "liberal intervention" is not only a bad idea politically, it doesn't work. International intervention isn't successful all the time either, but its chances are better.
- Neocon historian Max Boot describes the UN as a bunch of "Lilliputians," which is exactly what is needed: power restrained by laws, rules, and treaties.
- The U.S. should immediately take the crisis in Haiti to the UN Security Council, with a parallel effort in the OAS and Caricom. The Haitian opposition members--both nonviolent and violent--should understand that they have no automatic claim to political legitimacy. The hasty departure of the country's duly elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was the sad result of the threat of massive political violence by feared former members of Haiti's security forces and intense U.S. pressure. Haiti's interim government should call quickly for new elections under multilateral supervision.
Not only is unilateral "liberal intervention" a bad idea politically, it doesn't work. International intervention isn't successful all the time either, but its chances are better. Neocon historian Max Boot describes the UN as a bunch of "Lilliputians," which, suggests Jorge Castenada, Mexico's former foreign minister, is exactly what is needed: power restrained by laws, rules, and treaties. Successful intervention doesn't demand centralized command control, it requires legions of doubting Thomases. In the case of Haiti, the U.S. should immediately take the matter to the UN Security Council, with a parallel effort in the OAS and Caricom. The Haitian opposition members--both nonviolent and violent--should understand that they have no automatic claim to political legitimacy. The hasty departure of the country's duly elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was the sad result of the threat of massive political violence by feared former members of Haiti's security forces and intense strong-arming and political pressure by the U.S. government. If President Aristide did resign as has been widely reported, then Haiti's interim government should call quickly for new elections under multilateral supervision. What's more, all U.S. aid should be released immediately, and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank should back off from their austerity prescriptions, which would only serve to further impoverish the poorest country in the hemisphere.
There are some who dismiss the OAS, and even the UN, as little more than cat's paws for U.S. policy, and certainly both organizations have served as its hand maidens in the past. Supporting the criminal sanctions against Iraq was a shameful blot on the UN's history, and the OAS should have suspended the U.S. for supporting the military coup in Venezuela.
But both organizations have independent streaks that appear to be strengthening. In any case, they are the only game in town, and the UN has scored some notable successes. It helped end the Iran-Iraq war, facilitated the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and has overseen elections in El Salvador, East Timor, and Eritrea. It also had disastrous failures in Rwanda and Bosnia. In the long run, however, it is the only serious solution to international crises.
Sir Brian Urquhart, author of A Life in Peace and War, and a longtime UN diplomat who has served from the Congo to the Middle East, recently put his finger on why the UN still represents the best hope for the world: "The world is a dangerous place," he says, "and when governments find themselves into another dangerous muddle, they will come back."
Conn Hallinan is the provost at the University of California at Santa Cruz and a political analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus, where this article first appeared (http://www.fpif.org). Email: connm@cats.ucsc.edu
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U.S. Tells Haiti Rebels to Disarm; Peacekeepers Grow (Update1)
March 2, 2004
(Bloomberg)
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a49PtuBEcsy0&refer=us
The U.S. demanded that rebels in Haiti lay down their arms after their leader declared today he was taking over Haiti's defense forces amid an American and allied military buildup in the Caribbean country.
``The rebels don't have a role in the political process,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington. ``The rebels need to disband and go back to their homes.''
Guy Philippe, leader of the insurgents that forced the resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide Sunday, told a news conference he was assuming the role of head of the military, potentially complicating security conditions. The military, an instigator of past coups, was dismantled under Aristide.
``I am the chief,'' Philippe said, according to the Associated Press.
Human Rights Watch said Philippe, a former provincial police chief under Aristide, has a ``dubious human rights record.'' Dozens of suspected gang members were executed while Philippe was police chief of Delmas, in northern Port-au-Prince, from 1997 to 1999, according to United Nations and Organization of American States studies cited by the New York-based group.
While Haitians work out their political future, the U.S. said sectarian violence in Haiti was decreasing, as the Pentagon built its force to about 400 Marines today.
``We are helping the Haitian police to reassert control,'' Boucher said. ``Overall, we can say that violent incidents are decreasing. There is more order.''
At least 100 French and Canadian soldiers are also operating in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.
Neptune Pursued
Agence France-Presse reported insurgents were pursuing Yvon Neptune, the interim head of government, and that U.S. Marines were protecting him. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said U.S. Ambassador James Foley met with Neptune today as well as with members of Haiti's opposition movement, which has waged a nonviolent campaign to unseat Aristide.
The U.S. diplomat who oversees Haiti, assistant secretary of State Roger Noriega, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today that Philippe is only in control of ``a ragtag band of people,'' AP reported.
Noriega said Philippe ``will probably want to make himself scarce'' as the peacekeepers boost their presence.
U.S. Southern Command, whose area of responsibility extends across much of Latin America and the Caribbean, is sending more Marines into the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, Air Force Master Sergeant Jose Ruiz, a spokesman, said in Miami.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld estimated yesterday about 1,500-2,000 U.S. soldiers will be deployed to the Caribbean country as a vanguard of an international peacekeeping force that might climb toward 5,000.
Chile is sending a battalion of 120 soldiers to Haiti and Brazil has promised to contribute forces, AFP reported.
To contact the reporter on this story: Todd Zeranski in New York, or tzeranski@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor of this story: Edward DeMarco at edemarco1@bloomberg.net.
----
Haitian Rebel Leader: I'm Military Chief
Tue Mar 2, 2004
By PAISLEY DODDS and IAN JAMES,
Associated Press Writers
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&e=1&u=/ap/20040302/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/haiti_uprising
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Rebel leader Guy Philippe declared himself the new chief of Haiti's military, which was disbanded by ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and pledged Tuesday that rebel forces will disarm.
Philippe then said he would arrest Prime Minister Yvon Neptune on corruption charges.
"The country is in my hands!" Philippe announced on Radio Signal FM.
Philippe, flanked by other rebel leaders and senior officers of Haiti's police force, told reporters, "I am the chief," then clarified that he meant "the military chief."
He said he was "not interested in politics" and was ready to follow the orders of interim President Boniface Alexandre, chief justice of the Supreme Court, who was installed Sunday.
Asked whether he would disarm if requested to, he said, "We will."
He then summoned 20 police commanders to meet with him Tuesday and warned that if they failed to appear he would arrest them.
U.S. Marines guarded Neptune's office in the Petionville suburb, where Philippe was headed with hundreds of supporters in a convoy impeded by adoring and cheering crowds.
Neptune's whereabouts were not immediately known. Local radio reported that he was evacuated by helicopter. It was also unclear whether American or French marines - who arrived in recent days to secure diplomatic missions and other sites - would try to protect him. Neptune is a top member of Aristide's Lavalas party and his former presidential spokesman.
In a phone call to The Associated Press, Philippe said Neptune would face corruption charges. The rebels appear to be taking advantage of a power vacuum in the wake of Aristide's abrupt departure Sunday.
Shortly before that phone call, Philippe appeared on the second-floor balcony of the colonnaded former army headquarters before a cheering crowd of hundreds. A burly rebel standing next to Philippe urged them to accompany the rebel chief to Neptune's house.
"Arrest Neptune!" the crowd chanted.
In Washington, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Roger Noriega said Philippe "is not in control of anything but a ragtag band of people."
The international military buildup in Haiti will make Philippe's role "less and less central in Haitian life. And I think he will probably want to make himself scarce," Noriega told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"We have sent that message to him. He obviously hasn't received it."
Philippe, who arrived in Port-au-Prince in a rebel convoy Monday, apparently plans to transform his fighters into a reconstituted Haitian army.
The army ousted Aristide in 1991 but then was disbanded by him in 1995, a year after he was returned to power by 20,000 American troops.
Meanwhile, killings continued in the seaside, fetid capital. At least two more bodies showed up Tuesday on streets still littered with charred barricades set up by Aristide supporters, who rampaged and looted the capital before he fled Sunday.
A young boy with a bullet hole in the head lay by a market square. Residents said he may have been shot for looting.
At the state morgue, six more bodies arrived overnight and more than two dozen had been recovered in recent days, according to a worker there.
The rebellion began Feb. 5 in Haiti's north. Aristide opponents accused him of breaking promises to help the poor, allowing corruption fueled by drug trafficking and masterminding attacks on opponents by armed gangs - charges the president denied.
More than 100 people died in the three-week insurgency and reprisal killings that, combined with pressure from the United States and France, prompted Aristide to flee. He currently is in the Central African Republic, trying to arrange asylum elsewhere.
The crisis was brewing since Aristide's party swept flawed legislative elections in 2000, prompting international donors to freeze millions of dollars in aid.
Politicians and rebels in Port-au-Prince have made no public comment on Aristide's charges Monday that the United States forced him out of power. He was Haiti's first freely elected president in 200 years of independence.
Secretary of State Colin Powell has called those claims "absolutely baseless, absurd."
But American officials acknowledged privately that Aristide was told that if he remained in Haiti, U.S. forces would not protect him from the rebels who wanted to arrest him on corruption and murder charges.
Some 300 U.S. Marines and 140 French troops were in Haiti on Tuesday. In Washington, U.S. defense officials said the Marines would not act to stop looting or other crimes, but would return fire if fired upon. Commanders of both forces said they also had no orders to disarm Haiti's armed factions and instead planned to secure key sites and protect their countries' citizens and government property.
"We are not a police force," U.S. Marine Col. Dave Berger said.
His forces were expected to reach 500 by Tuesday night, U.S. defense officials said.
Chile also said it was sending 120 special forces to Haiti on Wednesday as part of a 300-soldier contingent that will join an international security force authorized by the U.N. Security Council.
As scattered looting continued, Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former death squad leader convicted of murders while in exile, said the rebels planned patrols Tuesday, possibly to the Cite Soleil seaside slum that is a stronghold of die-hard Aristide followers.
Brian Concannon, who had successfully prosecuted Chamblain, in absentia for a 1994 massacre, expressed concern the violence could continue. "I'm extremely afraid for all people who have fought for democracy because they all could be killed."
Philippe, whom Human Rights Watch said had a "dubious human rights record" as police chief of the capital's Delmas section, was expected to meet Tuesday with opposition coalition members, who pointedly have not met with other rebel leaders notorious for human rights violations.
Aristide, meanwhile, was staying in the palace of Central African Republic President Francois Bozize, said Bozize's communications minister, Parfait Mbaye.
A diplomatic source in Washington, asking not to be identified, said Wednesday that Aristide wanted exile in either Morocco or South Africa but both said no.
Previously, Panama and Costa Rica said they would offer Aristide exile.
Associated Press reporter Mark Stevenson in Port-au-Prince contributed to this report.
----
U.S. to send 'small' [2000 troops] operation to Haiti
March 02, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040302-124237-3685r.htm
The Pentagon will dispatch up to 2,000 Marines to Haiti to restore order in the country before an international peacekeeping force takes over.
"Certainly, the number of people that need to be involved in a peacekeeping operation in Haiti is relatively small," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon, noting that a large number of countries have volunteered to send forces.
Yesterday, U.S. Marines and French troops secured key sites in the capital, Port-au-Prince, as rebels rolled into the city to the cheers of hundreds of residents celebrating the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
When the rebels arrived at a plaza outside the National Palace and a nearby police station, thousands of Haitians converged on the square, shouting "liberty" and "Aristide is gone."
A half-dozen Marines in combat fatigues and rifles were on the grounds of the National Palace. The rebels and the Marines did not immediately approach each other.
Mr. Rumsfeld said that between 1,500 and 2,000 U.S. troops are available to take part in a force in Haiti that will help control the country after Mr. Aristide's departure Sunday and the assumption of a new president.
Up to 5,000 international troops, including U.S. forces, will make up the interim stability force, he said.
"We'll have what's needed, and as additional forces come in, we'll be able to size it and determine what makes the most sense, and that will be subject to the recommendations of the commanders," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
The defense secretary also said it is "an open question" whether U.S. troops will take part in the U.N. peacekeeping operation.
How long troops will stay in the country also is undecided, he said, because the United Nations is still organizing the effort.
"The U.S. will take on the initial leadership of the multinational interim force in Haiti," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "The leadership of the follow-on U.N. force will be determined in the period ahead. Indeed, the leadership of the interim force might very well pass even before the U.N. force arrives."
A senior Bush administration official said several countries in the region, including Brazil, are set to participate in both the interim force and the U.N. peacekeeping force.
The dispatch of Brazilian troops could be announced soon, defense officials said, and will augment additional U.S., French, Canadian and Brazilian troops, as well as others from unidentified countries.
Asked whether the Bush administration is reluctant to order military force for peacekeeping, Mr. Rumsfeld said there is a need for a global peacekeeping capability.
"I think that what we have to do is recognize that the world needs that capability," he said. "And there are probably things that the United States can do to assist the world in developing, sustaining and funding that capability, and it doesn't mean that it has to be us in every instance."
Mr. Rumsfeld said the United States "stepped up" to help the transition of power in Haiti to avoid any gaps in authority.
"The judgment was made, and properly, in my view, that the gap should be very short," he said. "And when you look around as to who can fill a gap in a very short period of time, there are not a lot of candidates. We stepped up, and the president asked the United States to do that. The United States is doing that.
"We are the lead elements of the interim force, and we would be in the lead of that force until such a time as the circumstances were such that we could pass it over to some other country. Obviously, we'd like to see some other country take that lead, and they will, eventually," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Col. David Berger, head of the U.S. Marine contingent, described the capital as "definitely not a hostile environment" for U.S. troops.
"Most of [Haitians] are going to welcome us. We're glad to be here," he told reporters in Port-au-Prince.
Asked whether the Marines in Haiti are allowed to prevent violence and looting, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to specify the rules of engagement.
"They are going to be adequately armed not just with their personal protective gear and their offensive weapons, but with the rules that allow them to do the job," said Gen. Myers, who appeared with Mr. Rumsfeld in Washington yesterday.
A force of 200 U.S. Marines arrived in Haiti on Sunday by aircraft from Camp Lejune, N.C., and joined about 50 Marines that had been dispatched last month to protect the U.S. Embassy.
"The Marines are there to secure key sites in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince and to set the environment for the arrival of a following interim multinational force," said Raul Duany, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command in Florida, which is in command of the forces.
Most of the Marines who arrived Sunday night were at the capital's airport, some doing overflights in a helicopter.
U.S. officials said up to an additional 200 Marines are expected to arrive in Port-au-Prince during the next two days.
The Southern Command is in the planning stages for U.S. participation in the peacekeeping operation, which is likely to include several hundred French and Canadian troops.
Other nations are expected to participate. Mr. Duany said the Marines are equipped with light armored vehicles and Humvees.
According to a Southern Command statement, the troops have five goals: stabilizing the Haitian capital and promoting the political process, assisting the delivery of humanitarian assistance, protecting U.S. citizens, repatriating Haitian migrants stopped at sea, and helping prepare for the U.N. forces.
Mr. Rumsfeld said violence has decreased since the ouster of Mr. Aristide.
Gen. Myers said about 1,000 Haitians who tried to flee the country were returned during the past three days and there were very few repatriations yesterday.
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Haitian Rebels Enter Capital; Aristide Bitter
March 2, 2004
By TIM WEINER and LYDIA POLGREEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/international/americas/02HAIT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 1 - Armed rebels swept into this capital on Monday and occupied the national police headquarters, staking a claim to power as United States forces kept watch at the international airport and the presidential palace.
A wave of dancing, cheering people following the rebel leaders flooded the boulevard to the palace minutes after the police headquarters was occupied.
No clear leader took charge. The chief justice of the Supreme Court, Boniface Alexandre, was sworn in on Sunday as the leader of a transitional government until elections in 2005. Under Haiti's Constitution, the legislature is supposed to ratify Mr. Alexandre's succession, but there is no legislature, owing to the breakdown of the government.
The deposed president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, landed in a temporary exile in the Central African Republic. He said he had been overthrown by the United States, a charge dismissed by the White House as "complete nonsense."
President Bush convened a meeting of the National Security Council on Monday to discuss a multinational peacekeeping force to take over within a few months from United States marines who landed here on Sunday.
France and Canada have pledged to help police Haiti. The United States is also discussing contributions from Caribbean nations, Brazil, Chile and Argentina.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said an international force could install a "responsive, functioning, noncorrupt" government.
He said the armed rebel leaders include "individuals we would not want to see re-enter civil society in Haiti because of their past records, and this is something we will have to work through."
At least four men identified by witnesses as supporters of the deposed president were found shot dead on the edge of town, three of them bound at the wrists.
The rebels, followed by throngs of cheering supporters, also occupied the former headquarters of the Haitian Army, vowing to revive the military, a force known for brutality. Several rebel leaders are former members of the Haitian Army and affiliated death squads.
The army overthrew Mr. Aristide in 1991 and ran a violent junta until 1994. United States armed forces reinstated the president, who then disbanded the Haitian military.
Now that he is gone, the army may be back. In the rebels' ranks at the old army headquarters was Paul Arcelin, 60, who identified himself as a former ambassador to the Dominican Republic and "an adviser to the Haitian Army."
"This is our headquarters," he said. "The army has come back. We don't need peacekeepers."
Mr. Powell told CNN: "We have ways of talking to the various rebel leaders. And I am pleased that at least so far they said they are not interested in violence any more, and they want to put down their arms."
They did not put down their guns.
Two rebel leaders, Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former death-squad member and convicted assassin, and Guy Philippe, a former police chief, did thank the United States for moving to secure Haiti after the fall of Mr. Aristide.
"We're grateful to the United States!" Mr. Chamblain shouted through the window of his truck en route to the presidential palace.
Mr. Philippe said: "The United States soldiers are like us. We're brothers. We're grateful for their service to our nation and against the terrorists of Aristide."
These men, whom Mr. Powell characterized last week as "thugs," and a few hundred of their followers are for now the domestic face of national security in Haiti.
Several truckloads of the national police, the ineffectual force formed by Mr. Aristide after he dissolved the army in 1995, joined Mr. Chamblain's caravan after exchanging hugs and handshakes with the rebels.
Mr. Philippe vowed that the Haitian Army would rise again. "We are going to remobilize the army, constitutionally," he said. "We are going to make a new Haiti."
Mr. Chamblain drove down to the capital from the town of St.-Marc this morning in a caravan of about a dozen vehicles, stopping at two national police stations, where he was embraced. Mr. Philippe drove down from Gonaпves, where the uprising against Mr. Aristide began Feb. 5.
Many rebels wore surplus United States military garb. One sported a souvenir Drug Enforcement Administration baseball cap. They all carried assault weapons, carbines and handguns.
As they entered the heart of Port-au-Prince, heading up Martin Luther King Boulevard, other trucks and vans joined them, including one with a sign reading, "Liberation Front - Armed Forces of Haiti."
The procession grew like a river fed by rivulets in a heavy rain, ending in a small sea of humanity at the presidential palace. By the palace gates stood Americans wearing the uniforms and insignia of marines and the State Department's diplomatic security service.
Col. David Berger, head of the Marine contingent based at the airport, said the capital was "definitely not a hostile environment."
Mr. Aristide's home in the suburb of Tavarre was sacked overnight. A grand piano lay amid the rubble.
Joy at his departure was hardly universal. Jackson Thomas, 32, who lives in La Saline, a tough slum where Mr. Aristide's strongest support lay, said: "It's a violation of our Constitution. This president was elected for five years. It feels like we don't have any friends in the international community."
Historians and folklorists of Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, are fond of citing a Haitian proverb: "The Constitution is made of paper; the bayonet is made of steel."
There is another political force here: the unarmed opposition, a broad but very loosely knit group dominated by wealthy and politically sophisticated people, including former Aristide supporters.
Some of their leaders said they had met with the American ambassador on Monday afternoon. The American Embassy had no comment.
Charles Baker, a well-to-do businessman, said the unarmed opposition, under the guidance of the United States, was trying to form an unofficial ruling coalition, an unelected council of elders to run Haiti.
The unarmed opposition has maintained publicly, since the uprising began Feb. 5, that while they shared the goals of the armed rebels in ousting Mr. Aristide, they had no taste for their methods and no real contact with them.
It might prove difficult, not to mention dangerous, to exclude the armed rebels from that council.
After streaming into the capital, the leaders of the armed rebels and the unarmed opposition gathered at a hotel called El Rancho, some sipping beer, others strutting in camouflage gear past the swimming pool.
The upper-class opponents of Mr. Aristide made uneasy talk among themselves. The sweaty soldiers and rebel leaders exchanged hugs and grins. The men with the guns seemed to be in charge.
The new faces of leadership included a well-spoken man near the pool at El Rancho, with an M-4 assault weapon strapped around his neck, who gave his name as Faustin. He said he was an industrial engineer educated in the United States.
"Right now it's very euphoric; everybody's happy," he said. "But behind that happiness, look out." He said he had killed former Aristide supporters in the streets of Port-au-Prince in the last month, and would kill again in the name of the new government if so ordered.
"I'm not a loose cannon," he said. "I report to someone. But I won't tell you who."
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Rebels Enter Haiti Capital In Triumph
Signs Surface of Reprisals Against Aristide Loyalists
By Scott Wilson and Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20983-2004Mar1?language=printer
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 1 -- Thousands of Haitians danced in the streets Monday as rebels made a triumphant entrance into this burned and looted city a day after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide flew into exile.
But there were signs of political reprisals against Aristide supporters in the capital of a country with a history of political upheaval followed by bloody revenge. Haitian police operating alongside armed civilians shot and killed several people in slums that are home to Aristide loyalists, and two police officers also were killed, witnesses said.
Aristide arrived Monday in the Central African Republic, having left behind a statement that he resigned to avoid further bloodshed after a three-week insurgency in which more than 70 people were killed. However, he told members of the Congressional Black Caucus and others by telephone that he was kidnapped by U.S. forces and forced to leave Haiti at gunpoint -- an allegation that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell rejected as "absolutely baseless" and "absurd."
Haiti's temporary president, Boniface Alexandre, huddled privately with other Haitian officials to determine the shape of an interim government. A plan endorsed by the United States and other countries calls for establishment of a citizens council to choose a new prime minister and eventually to call new elections, but no details have been set.
Guy Philippe, the leader of the rebel insurrection that helped force Aristide from office, rolled into the city in a pickup truck to thunderous cheers at the head of a column of about 150 rebels. By the time he entered the capital Monday, his forces had taken over nearly the entire country.
A small group of U.S. Marines watched Philippe's victory lap as they patrolled the National Palace grounds in combat gear, part of a force of several hundred ordered to Haiti Sunday by President Bush. Marines and forces from Canada and France also took up positions at embassies and at the airport. They were the first contingent of what U.S. officials said would be a U.N.-mandated force of less than 5,000.
In Washington, a senior U.S. military officer said there were about 250 Marines in Haiti on Monday. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a news conference that the total number of U.S. forces could rise to "1,500 or 2,000," depending on conditions and contributions from other countries.
The swift political change after Aristide's downfall raised questions among Haitians about whether they faced change for the better or no more than a transfer of power from one group of armed thugs to another. Pro-Aristide gangs and members of his Lavalas party, which dominated Haitian politics for a decade, went into hiding, while new alliances emerged among their opponents.
In the Central African Republic, Aristide issued a brief statement on radio saying that those who ousted him had "cut down the tree of peace," but said "it will grow again." The sudden power shift left this impoverished country of 8 million with few functioning institutions, deep class divisions and fears of more violence.
"Our determination has proven to the world that we don't want to live in a dictatorship," said Harry Adeclat, a physician who joined about 2,000 other people in front of the National Palace to welcome Philippe's arrival.
Some Haitians called for Aristide's arrest and return to Haiti to stand trial on charges of official corruption and human rights violations. Groups of students outside the palace also chanted for the arrest of Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, Aristide's loyal lieutenant, who has remained in office pending the formation of an interim government.
"That's the only thing we want out of this -- to judge him and put him in jail," Leopold Sabbat, 52, said of Aristide while standing in front of a looted downtown office building he owns. "We don't need revenge. The only thing that bothers me is seeing him live somewhere with the fortune of this country."
It was not clear under whose command groups of police and civilians were operating. But their patrols were based at the Petionville station, primary command post for the uniformed police, armed civilians and former military officers who appeared to make up the security forces in the city.
The forces entered slums where many pro-Aristide gangs have hidden amid warrens of tin-roof shacks and piles of trash.
In La Saline, a seaside slum loyal to Aristide, witnesses said uniformed police and armed civilians entered the port Monday morning driving sport-utility vehicles, and shot and killed several people.
Witnesses identified the armed civilians as mulattos, a reference to the light-skinned Haitians who control much of the economy. They said the police were trying to reassert control over private docks at the port, which local residents said were controlled until recently by gangs loyal to Aristide. Not far away, in the pro-Aristide neighborhood of Belair, two police officers were killed, police officials said.
"We are worried that we will be killed, and that the guys with the guns will not put them down," said Jean-Renault, 39, a La Saline resident who declined to give his full name. "We will have to fight back."
Police raided the home of Jonas Petit, appointed by Aristide in 2000 to head the Lavalas party, and searched for weapons. Neighbors in the wealthy Petionville district said Petit abandoned the house when Aristide resigned. Since then, looters had emptied the house of its contents. The officers found no weapons, but rounded up and arrested a half-dozen young men and women from neighboring houses. One burly officer, looking for a house where weapons might be hidden, slapped one man in the face and squeezed his neck, shouting, "Tell us where the house is."
"He was the one giving the guns out to keep Aristide in power," said one officer, referring to Petit. "If we had found him, he'd have been put under arrest."
There were concerns here and in Washington about the intentions of Philippe and the other rebel leaders, many of them former soldiers or death squad members and some convicted of human rights abuses. In Washington, Powell said, "Some of these individuals we would not want to see re-enter civil society in Haiti because of their past records."
Aristide supporters said they feared Philippe would reconstitute the army and use it to influence politics -- perhaps even overthrowing the new government if he did not like its actions. Aristide was overthrown in 1991 by the army; he disbanded it in 1994 following his return under U.S. military protection.
Philippe told reporters Monday that "when the government is formed, as promised we will lay down our weapons."
In a statement, the pro-Aristide Haiti Support Group warned that the army's "primary roles have been to defend the country's tiny and reactionary economic elite and to repress movements for progressive political change. We fully expect a reborn Haitian army to play exactly the same role."
At a police station near the National Palace, reporters asked Louis Jodel Chamblain, a former death squad leader who is now a top rebel leader, if he intended to take control of a reconstituted army. "That's my secret," he said with a smile.
Staff writers Peter Slevin and Bradley Graham in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- iraq
Iraqi council OKs bill of rights
March 02, 2004
By Willis Witter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040302-123023-2851r.htm
BAGHDAD - A bill of rights with clearly defined protections for women, religious groups and ethnic minorities - a rarity in the Arab world - won unanimous backing yesterday from the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council as part of a temporary constitution to take effect when the U.S.-led rule formally ends June 30.
Marathon talks with the U.S.-picked council and American officials, led by chief administrator L. Paul Bremer, reached a final consensus on the constitution at 4:20 a.m.
"We got it," Mr. Bremer said yesterday, paraphrasing his statement, "We got him," when announcing in December that Saddam Hussein had been caught.
Members of the council, who are to sign the document at a ceremony tomorrow, called it a turning point in Iraq's history and perhaps in the entire Middle East.
"We won the battle against dictatorship, and today, we took the first step on the path of freedom and democracy," said Younadem Kana, who was chosen to represent Iraq's 1 million-member Christian community and was the only non-Muslim member of the council.
"This is the birth of a new Iraq," said council member Mouwafak al-Rabii, a Shi'ite Muslim physician, author and human rights activist.
The document, known as the "fundamental law," is to serve as an interim constitution until an elected legislature is in place and able to write a permanent one.
It includes:
• Recognition of Islam as "a source" - instead of "the source" of Iraqi law, implying but not explicitly saying other sources exist.
• A call for a legislature with at least 25 percent women, not with direct quotas, but by requiring undefined future legislation that would make the 25 percent goal a tough target to miss.
• Permission for the Kurds to maintain their militia, a force of about 50,000 that battled Saddam and aided U.S. forces, while bringing them under nominal control of a central government in Baghdad.
• A bill of rights guaranteeing freedom of speech, assembly, religion and due process.
• A ban on any measure that is contrary to Islam. Council members spoke of the end product as a remarkable compromise, especially given the post-Saddam assertiveness of Iraq's fractious ethnic and religious groups.
"That's our understanding of democracy: rule of the majority but guarantees for the minority as well," said council member Mahmoud Othman, who represents the Kurdish Socialist Party.
In Washington, the Bush administration praised the measure.
"This is a major achievement, only a day late, which I think is terrific," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told CBS in Washington.
For the Bush administration, which is determined to make Iraq a platform to introduce democracy in the Middle East, the draft illustrates its vision of popular rule in a region dominated by kings and strongmen presidents.
It also marks a milestone in U.S. plans to transfer power to an undefined Iraqi government on June 30. When that happens, the convention center in downtown Baghdad will change from the U.S. military headquarters to the largest U.S. Embassy in the world.
In describing the scope of the document, the official said, "This is for a society that has been tortured and devastated for 35 years by an authoritarian system that shares the company of the Nazis, the Third Reich and the Stalin regime.
"To suddenly be presented with this incredible progress in a bill of rights that protects every individual regardless of their ethnicity - regardless of their gender, their religion, their socio-economic status - we believe the Iraqi people will embrace it," the official said.
The bulk of the negotiating was among factions in the Iraqi council - a body appointed by the U.S.-led coalition to reflect Iraq's ethnic and religious mix.
It included 13 Shi'ites, some who are secular and others who are from Islamist parties that had sought to make Iraq an Islamic state similar to Iran. The Shi'ites, concentrated in southern Iraq, account for up to 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people.
The other 12 seats were divided among Sunni Muslims and Kurds, with one seat held by an Assyrian Christian and another by a member of the Turkmen minority.
Throughout the negotiations, Iraqi council members said, the United States had set clear parameters, as evidenced by Washington's objections to an Islamic state and its insistence on protecting minorities and giving power to women.
Over Arab objections, it pushed for a federal state on the lines of Canada, Brazil and India, in which provinces and regions would have considerable autonomy.
The Kurdish minority's attempts to expand the territory it has ruled in near total autonomy since 1991 were vetoed by the United States - partly in deference to neighboring Turkey, which opposes any expansion of the Kurdish presence in the region.
But overall, Mr. Othman said he was pleased with the outcome.
"This is a compromise. It doesn't include everything for everybody. It includes some things for everybody.
The new constitution takes effect with the transfer of power on June 30 to an interim government that is to be indirectly elected through a caucus-style system in each of Iraq's 18 provinces.
The document sets a deadline for popular elections of Dec. 31 "if possible" and "no later than" Jan. 31 for voters to choose a national legislature.
----
A Convenient Carnage
All This Talk of Civil War, Now This
March 2, 2004
By ROBERT FISK
The Independent
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk03022004.html
Odd, isn't it? There never has been a civil war in Iraq. I have never heard a single word of animosity between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq.
Al-Qa'ida has never uttered a threat against Shias - even though al-Qa'ida is a Sunni-only organisation. Yet for weeks, the American occupation authorities have been warning us about civil war, have even produced a letter said to have been written by an al-Qa'ida operative, advocating a Sunni-Shia conflict. Normally sane journalists have enthusiastically taken up this theme. Civil war.
Somehow I don't believe it. No, I don't believe the Americans were behind yesterday's carnage despite the screams of accusation by the Iraqi survivors yesterday. But I do worry about the Iraqi exile groups who think that their own actions might produce what the Americans want: a fear of civil war so intense that Iraqis will go along with any plan the United States produces for Mesopotamia.
I think of the French OAS in Algeria in 1962, setting off bombs among France's Muslim Algerian community. I recall the desperate efforts of the French authorities to set Algerian Muslim against Algerian Muslim which led to half a million dead souls.
And I'm afraid I also think of Ireland and the bombings in Dublin and Monaghan in 1974, which, as the years go by, appear to have an ever closer link, via Protestant "loyalist" paramilitaries, to elements of British military security.
But the bombs in Karbala and Baghdad were clearly co-ordinated. The same brain worked behind them. Was it a Sunni brain? When the occupation authorities' spokesman suggested yesterday that it was the work of al-Qa'ida, he must have known what he was saying: that al-Qa'ida is a Sunni movement, that the victims were Shias.
It's not that I believe al-Qa'ida incapable of such a bloodbath. But I ask myself why the Americans are rubbing this Sunni-Shia thing so hard. Let's turn the glass round the other way. If a violent Sunni movement wished to evict the Americans from Iraq - and there is indeed a resistance movement fighting very cruelly to do just that - why would it want to turn the Shia population of Iraq, 60 per cent of Iraqis, against them? The last thing such a resistance would want is to have the majority of Iraqis against it.
So what about al-Qa'ida? Repeatedly, the Americans have told us that the suicide bombers were "foreigners". And so they may be. But can we have some identities, nationalities? The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has talked of the hundreds of "foreign" fighters crossing Saudi Arabia's "porous" borders.
The US press have dutifully repeated this. The Iraqi police keep announcing that they have found the bombers' passports, so can we have the numbers?
We are entering a dark and sinister period of Iraqi history. But an occupation authority which should regard civil war as the last prospect it ever wants to contemplate, keeps shouting "civil war" in our ears and I worry about that. Especially when the bombs make it real.
Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism.
----
Iraqi exile attains his goal
By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS
Tuesday, March 2, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/162728_thomas02.html
WASHINGTON -- With friends like Ahmad Chalabi, the United States doesn't need enemies.
Chalabi is the Iraqi exile who now brags that his years of lobbying and coaxing American officialdom into war against Iraq have paid off.
He achieved his goal of dethroning Saddam Hussein by feeding the Bush administration his smarmy "intelligence" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. His neo-conservative friends here, mostly in the Pentagon, eagerly lapped up his blathering because they were looking for an excuse to attack Iraq. Chalabi, who can claim parenthood of the U.S.-led invasion, headed the Iraqi National Congress, which was formed in exile and nurtured with U.S. financial aid.
Last week, he gave an interview to London's Daily Telegraph that added to the embarrassment of the Bush administration. The fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been uncovered, he declared, is of no importance.
Come to think about it, that's just what the administration is saying while keeping up the pretext that it is still scouring Iraq for those doomsday weapons. That is the same arsenal that just a year ago posed such a danger to the United States that President Bush said he was required to order an attack.
"As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful," Chalabi told the newspaper. "That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."
The Telegraph reported that Chalabi dismissed accusations that he deliberately misled the administration.
"We are heroes in error," he claimed.
Appalled at Chalabi's arrogant comments, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, a presidential aspirant and consistent foe of the Iraqi invasion, issued a statement. "At every step along the way, we have been lied to and misled," Kucinich said. "We were lied to about the reasons for going to war, the cost, the length of our occupation and the real long-term agenda of the Bush administration. Every American citizen should be outraged."
Kucinich added "there's been enough deception and more than enough bloodshed but there continues to be no end in sight."
Chalabi's influence in Washington stems from his close friends in government, folks like Vice President Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defense Policy Board.
Those contacts not only helped him achieve his goal of provoking a U.S. attack but now serve to make him a big man on campus after Baghdad was conquered.
He disclaims leadership ambitions in Iraq, a modesty unbecoming him amid speculation that he aims to be the first president of the U.S.-created new Iraq.
Chalabi hailed from an aristocratic Iraqi family, which fled when the Baath Party deposed the monarchy and established dictatorial rule in 1958.
He cannot travel to neighboring Jordan where he is a wanted man after being convicted in 1992 of embezzlement and fraud in connection with the Petra Bank, which he once headed. He claims the charges were "political."
Chalabi later became a high-rolling silk-suited figure on the London scene.
Although a favorite at the Pentagon, he does not have the same standing at the State Department or the CIA. Those agencies first questioned and then rejected the information that Chalabi eagerly provided in his campaign to spur U.S. military action.
He makes no bones that he tried for more than a decade -- and succeeded -- to get the United States involved in his fight.
Chalabi is a Shiite and a member of the U.S.-created Iraq Governing Council that will be handed political authority on June 30 when L. Paul Bremer, the American administrator, turns over the reins of government to the council.
American troops will not be pulled out at that time; Bremer has indicated that they could stay as long as another year. Others are predicting many more years of military occupation. A White House spokesman said U.S. forces will leave "when the job is done," whatever that means.
Meanwhile, plans for an Iraqi election sputter along toward an as-yet-unknown structure or timetable. But given his deep entrenchment with his Pentagon sponsors, Chalabi is my best bet to emerge at the top of the heap. After all, what are friends for?
----
Blasts at Shiite Ceremonies in Iraq Kill More Than 140
March 2, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/international/middleeast/02CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 2 - Terrorist attacks ripped through Shiite Muslim religious ceremonies in Baghdad and the city of Karbala today, killing more than 140 people in the deadliest day of violence since the American-led occupation of Iraq began.
The attacks came on Ashoura, one of the holiest occasions for Shiites and a time when hundreds of thousands of religious pilgrims pack into mosques and shrines.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for the coalition forces, said at a news conference that the blasts killed at least 85 in Karbala and 58 in Baghdad. Streaks of blood and bits of flesh clung to the tiled walls and stone floors of the Imam Musa al-Khadam shrine in the Khadamiya district of Baghdad after a suicide bomb blast at its gates.
"I saw the bomber walk into the crowd and explode," a caretaker at the shrine, Saad Abdul-Zahara said. "He just dissolved into air."
Witnesses said children were among the dead. The streets around the gold-domed shrine and its walled courtyard erupted into chaos and panic.
Another bomber then blew himself up inside the shrine, at a spot where hundreds of pilgrims were bending down to slip off their shoes. As the crowds ran screaming across the plaza, squeezing through a pair of 12-foot-tall doors, a third bomber struck, said Hussein Hamid, an officer with the Badr Brigade, a Shiite militia that protects many of the holy sites.
The bomber had planted himself at the mouth of the doors and the explosion ripped into the trapped crowd, hurling one of the huge wooden doors across the plaza.
"There was no escape," Mr. Hamid said.
He and other witnesses said grenades were thrown into the crowd from the windows of the nearby Sharaf hotel. Witnesses also said that a man was dragged from the hotel and beaten by a mob.
A fourth man at Khadamiya, a would-be suicide bomber, was arrested and was being interrogated.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attacks. American officials said they suspected associates of Al Qaeda, saying the tightly-coordinated attacks bore the terror group's signature and fit a strategy to foment strife between Iraq's sectarian groups.
"This was a clear and tragically well organized act of terrorism," General Kimmitt said.
General Kimmitt said that while there was no direct evidence, a "prime suspect" was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In February, American officials had captured a document they attributed to Mr. Zarqawi, a suspected Jordanian terrorist, which outlines a strategy for setting off a "sectarian war" in Iraq by striking Shiite targets.
General Kimmitt said Shiite leaders and the American forces had agreed that American troops should stay well back from Shiite mosques and shrines out of respect for what the general called "cultural differences." The only sign of the American military presence at the Khadamiya shrine was in helicopters circling overhead.
Hospital officials said that a final death toll from the Khadamiya blast had been difficult to establish because many of the bodies were in pieces.
"I cannot count them," said a morgue attendant, Abdullah Hatam.
In the holy city of Karbala, about 50 miles south of Baghdad, at least five powerful blasts struck in the middle of crowds of pilgrims who had packed the streets and shrines for the Ashoura ceremony, when Shiite Muslims commemorate the martyrdom in 680 A.D. of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
"People told us mortars had landed among a group of people walking to the shrine," said a New York Times contract photographer, Joao Silva.
The assistant director of the Karbala hospital, Ali Hussein, said there were 112 dead and 210 wounded, most of them Iranian pilgrims. Corpses of men, women and children were wrapped in tarpaulin or blankets and laid out in the hospital yard and in a corridor. Frantic people searched for relatives or friends.
Mr. Hussein said that the police reported at least five explosions, at least one of them a suicide bomber. The stench of burned flesh had wafted into the air, and Mr. Hussein said many of the wounded were burn victims.
In Khadamiya, among the body parts taken to the morgue were two severed heads, which in the past have been among the signs of a suicide bombing.
Corpses of women in black veils and the long robes worn by Shiites were laid out in the morgue. Outside, frantic Iraqis slapped their cheeks in grief and anger, searching the chaos for missing friends or relatives.
"Tell me about Hussein - is he okay?" one man asked, approaching the Iraqis trying to get inside the hospital. "No, he is dead," another replied.
Iraqis waited for word of those still unaccounted for, some doubled over in grief as it filtered out. "He's gone, he's dead," said one. Rough-hewn wood coffins were loaded onto pickup trucks.
At one point a hospital official emerged and read a list of the names of the bodies that had been identified "Adnan Khurdaya, Mohammad Hussein . . ."
Men wailed, flailing their fists in the air.
"We are here to pay our condolences to the dead!" chanted a procession of men carrying the black flags associated with the mourning rituals of Ashoura as they marched to the hospital. "We defy you, America and Israel."
American troops in Humvees, machine guns mounted on top, were positioned at the hospital complex. As they drove through the gates, the crowd of Iraqis parted sullenly , letting them pass, but some shouted curses and threats.
Thousands of Iraqis packed the streets surrounding the Khadamiya shrine, beating their chests and chanting prayers to Imam Hussein. Some men with whips and knives flagellated themselves, part of the ritual of Ashoura which is meant to unite pilgrims in a re-enactment of Imam Hussein's suffering.
After the attack at the Khadamiya shrine, an angry crowd estimated in the thousands marched to a nearby American base where they started pelting soldiers and tanks with stones. A witness, Ali Heider, said the soldiers opened fire and he saw at least two Iraqis in the crowd shot.
The American-led coalition authority is planning to hand back sovereignty to Iraqis, but it is not clear what shape the caretaker government would take once in place after June 30, nor is it clear how such a government would rule in a country faced with violence and growing religious and ethnic differences.
After the attacks in Karbala, pilgrims filtered through the streets on their way to the domed shrines, pausing to gaze at the blast sites. And hours after the attacks in Khadamiya, men with masks on their faces climbed ladders to scrape flesh and clothing from the shrine's golden brick walls.
Survivors gathered the shoes and sandals of victims. One distraught man clawed through the piles until he found the small pink sandals of a child. He held them up.
"Look at what they are doing to our children!" he said.
Neela Banerjee contributed from Karbala to this article
--------
Iraqis Receive U.S. Approval of Constitution
March 2, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/international/middleeast/02IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 1 - American officials said Monday that they would approve a temporary Iraqi constitution, all but ensuring that the document would serve as the framework for a new Iraqi state.
But the celebratory mood was muted by the knowledge that Iraqi leaders had put off for later many of the most intractable issues. The negotiators struck several important compromises, including ones on women's rights and the role of Islam. But they deferred issues like the disarming of private militias, the composition of the interim government that will take charge on June 30 and a mechanism for elections.
A senior American official here said that L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator in Iraq, was prepared to sign the document, hammered out during an overnight session early Monday morning. Mr. Bremer's assent is necessary for the new Iraqi constitution to take effect.
"This is a major achievement, only a day late, which I think is terrific," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said during an appearance on the CBS "Early Show," referring to the Feb. 28 deadline.
The relief among the Americans was matched by the excitement that swept Iraq's government on Monday afternoon. "This is a great day in the history of Iraq, an unforgettable day," said Adnan Pachachi, the 80-year-old former foreign minister who began his diplomatic career when Iraq was ruled by a king. "It is a unique day perhaps in the history of the whole region."
The interim constitution, which is likely to remain in force until the end of 2005, grants broad protections for individuals within a federal system intended to hold the country's fractious parts together. The Iraqi leaders said they would gather to sign the new constitution on Wednesday, after the Shiite holy day of Ashoura, which in Karbala began on Monday with a procession.
The 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council, appointed by the Americans last summer, had tried at different times to resolve the outstanding issues but found that the conflicts they created had threatened to scuttle the rest of the constitution.
The agreement struck Monday grants broad autonomy to the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, which has been largely governing itself since the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
The proposed constitution recognizes the relative independence of the Kurdish judiciary and legislature in lands occupied by the Kurds when the war to topple Saddam Hussein began last March.
But the Kurds, under intense American pressure, backed away from some of their principal demands: that they be given a fixed percentage of the country's oil revenue and that they be allowed to expand their domain into heavily populated Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.
The document appears to leave unresolved the question of what to do with the private militias that now roam the country, some of them large enough to challenge the security forces of the Iraqi state. They include the Kurdish militia known as the pesh merga, which battled the Iraq army, and the Badr Brigade, the private security force of one of the country's most powerful Shiite political parties.
American and Iraqi officials are concerned that those groups, if left intact, could turn on one another or on the Iraqi state. Both the Kurds and the Shiites, who suffered under Mr. Hussein's rule, are reluctant to give up what they regard as their most loyal protectors.
The agreement reached on Monday prohibits militias that are not under the control of the federal government, but envisions a law that would "govern the entry of their members into federal security services or transition to civilian life."
Under some interpretations, that could take months or even years. A senior American official here suggested that American officials would clearly understand any Kurdish reluctance to force their militiamen to put down their guns.
"We are sympathetic to their fears and their concerns, and therefore all the more grateful and all the more appreciative of their commitment to wanting to be part of a unified Iraq," the American official said.
The role of Islam is more limited than some members of the governing council wanted. The interim constitution designates Islam as the official religion of the Iraqi state, but at the same time guarantees the free exercise of religion. Islam is described as only "a source" of legislation among others, not "the primary source" of law, as some Iraqi leaders wanted.
The issue may have been resolved last month, when Mr. Bremer hinted that he would strike down any attempt to set up an Islamic republic. During the recent debates, Iraqi leaders inserted language into the interim constitution that would forbid the passing of laws that would undermine Islam.
Yet for all of the compromises, there were hints of difficulties to come. On Monday afternoon, five of the governing council members stood to speak to reporters. Absent on the dais were any representatives from the Kurdish parties, who face an especially daunting job in selling the interim constitution to their people. Absent, too, were representatives from the two main Shiite political parties, who represent the country's largest single group.
Of the five Iraqis who stood on the stage, four of them had spent most of the past several years living in the West.
"We are trying to deal with questions that have developed over many years," said Adil Abdul Mahdi, a powerful leader of one of those Shiite parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. "I am sure we will not have solutions for all of our problems here," Mr. Mahdi said. "But the most important thing is that we are on the right path."
As described by members of the Iraqi Governing Council, the interim constitution approved Monday lays out a vision for an Iraqi state that has all of the attributes of a Western-style democracy. That includes an independent judiciary, civilian control of the military and a system of checks and balances to prevent any branch of government from becoming too strong.
The document calls for nationwide elections to be held no later than Jan. 31, 2005. In those elections, Iraqi voters would pick a 275-member national assembly, which would then chose a president and two deputy presidents. The three together would choose a prime minister, where much of the executive power would reside.
The document spells out broad freedoms for individuals, including the rights of free speech, assembly and press. The interim constitution also spells out a substantial role for women in the new state, calling for an election system that would be devised in such a way that women would occupy at least 25 percent of the seats in the national assembly.
That fell short of the 40 percent quota proposed initially, but the Iraqi leaders who pushed for the revised language proclaimed themselves satisfied.
"This has no precedent in the past or present time," Dr. Raja Habib Khuzai said at the news conference. "Not in the Middle East, and not in America."
In the spirit of the day, American and Iraqi leaders expressed hope that the difficult issues could be resolved as the new Iraqi state began to take shape.
But the hard part, some said, was just beginning.
"Now," Mr. Mahdi, the Shiite leader, said of the interim constitution, "we have to explain all of this to our people."
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Iraqis Hail Compromise On Interim Constitution
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 2, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20883-2004Mar1.html
BAGHDAD, March 1 -- Iraqi politicians hailed the agreement on the terms of an interim constitution Monday as a model of compromise between the country's principal religious and ethnic groups that will create the most progressive, democratic government in the Arab world.
The interim constitution's bill of rights is "something that is unheard-of, unprecedented in this part of the world," said Adnan Pachachi, a leader of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council. Another council member, Shiite Muslim politician Mowaffak Rubaie, proclaimed "a historic day in the long march toward building a new Iraq."
But the council's 25 members, who hashed out the interim constitution in marathon meetings with American and British officials, were reluctant to provide details of the document on Monday. Officials with the U.S.-led occupation authority also refused to disclose the specifics. The plan is to be unveiled to the Iraqi public on Wednesday, after English and Arabic drafts are reconciled and Shiites finish celebrating a religious holiday. "The final wording still has to be agreed upon," said Jeremy Greenstock, the top British diplomat in Iraq.
Pachachi was asked by reporters to list some of the liberties enshrined in the bill of rights. Reading from the final draft, he said it included the freedom of expression, assembly, demonstration, privacy, thought, conscience and religious belief, among others.
He also said it contains a broad social contract that appears far more extensive than some in the Bush administration favor. The document guarantees all Iraqis health care, education and the right to strike, he said. But one right the document does not endorse, he said, is the freedom to bear arms.
The lack of an official summary of just what the interim constitution says, however, has resulted in political leaders describing the language of the 63-article law in ways favorable to them, even if they are not entirely accurate.
Rajaa Habib Khuzai, one of the council's three female members, insisted at a news conference on Monday that the interim constitution, formally known as the Transitional Administrative Law, would guarantee women at least 25 percent of seats in a transitional assembly to be elected by the end of this year or early next year. A senior Kurdish leader contended that Kurdish pesh merga militiamen would be allowed to remain as a national guard force in an autonomous swath of northern Iraq administered by a Kurdish government.
In reality, the document does not include a quota for women in the transitional assembly, several council members and a senior U.S. official said. The interim constitution sets the 25 percent figure as a goal that should guide the writing of election laws, they said.
"We hope the electoral law will be designed in a such a way that it will ensure 25 percent," Pachachi said.
On the issue of the pesh merga, several council members said there was no provision to transform the Kurdish militia into a national guard. The document, they said, says that all armed forces and militias are prohibited, except as provided by federal law. Kurdish leaders have said they plan to push for a federal law over the next month that will legitimize the pesh merga.
Other elements of Kurdish autonomy also have been described differently. Some members said the document includes provisions for oil revenue to be divided proportionally among Iraq's provinces and for territory claimed by both Kurds and Arabs to be resolved by an independent mediator. Others said the document did not make such explicit commitments.
"Everyone says they are pleased and they got a good deal," a Kurdish politician said. "The truth is that we all had to make compromises."
Kurdish politicians said the document recognizes the legitimacy of the Kurdistan Regional Government, which has administered three northern provinces since they became autonomous in 1991 through the protection of U.S. and British warplanes. Rowsch Schaways, a senior Kurdish leader, said the transitional law allows the Kurdish parliament final say over federal government rules that apply to Kurds.
To win that concession from Shiite leaders, council members said a similar power was offered to other groups of Iraqi provinces, although members provided differing accounts of what provinces would have to do to qualify for greater autonomy.
Similar confusion surrounds the role of Islam in government. Those who want a stricter interpretation of Islam have claimed victory, as well as those who want more flexibility.
According to council members, the final draft calls for Islam to be only "a source" of legislation, instead of "the source." But in an apparent effort to placate Shiites who wanted a stronger role for Islam, the document states that during the transition, legislation cannot be enacted that infringes upon the "universally agreed upon tenets of Islam." At the same time, there is other language that appears to provide a safety valve for those who wanted less emphasis on Islam, stating that legislation cannot contradict any of the rights stipulated in the bill of rights, members said.
Several members said the document calls for elections to be held by Jan. 31, 2005, to choose a 275-member transitional assembly. Pachachi said the assembly would select a president and two vice presidents. They, in turn, would choose a prime minister and a cabinet, he said. The members of the transitional assembly also would serve as drafters of a permanent constitution.
Left unspecified in the transitional law is what sort of government will rule Iraq between June 30 -- the date when the occupation authority has said it will hand over power to Iraqis -- and the day the assembly is seated. When that is resolved, it will appended to the interim constitution, Pachachi said.
Also undecided were rules governing the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq. American officials have said that will be addressed in a separate agreement with the council.
One of the few things council members did acknowledge in public on Monday was that many specific issues still have to be addressed. "This document is a document of principles," said council member Samir Shakir Mahmoud Sumaidy.
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U.S. Considers Larger Iraqi Governing Council
Plan Could Limit Powers in a Nod to Ayatollah
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 2, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20885-2004Mar1.html
The United States is working on a new plan for turning over political power to Iraq by June 30 that could expand the Iraqi Governing Council but limit its powers to avoid another confrontation with Iraq's leading religious cleric, U.S. officials said.
This latest proposal would create a new Consultative Council to assume sovereignty from the U.S.-led coalition and run Iraq until direct elections can be held, the officials added. Although the coalition has developed several other options, the Bush administration discussed this plan with its partners in the coalition and U.N. diplomats last week, according to U.S. officials.
The coalition is now considering relying on an expanded Governing Council in part because starting from scratch could delay or complicate the transition. The Bush administration fears that a new authority might generate the same problems that L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, had in getting the original Iraqi Governing Council to function as a viable Iraqi partner last year. The council's 25 members, appointed by the coalition, had disparate goals and little or no government experience.
"The Governing Council may not be perfect, but it has learned to work together, and there's some important merit to that. If we had to bring a whole new group together, they would have to go through the same thing. The current council members have learned how to operate together, and they know each other's red lines," said a U.S. official familiar with the decision.
With just four months until the handover, the U.S.-led coalition is anxious to get a new plan in place. The Governing Council's agreement Sunday night on a new basic law -- the equivalent of a temporary constitution -- shifts the focus to finding an acceptable plan to form a temporary Iraqi government.
The Bush administration is counting on the United Nations to eventually mediate with Iraqis on that issue and in the meantime insists it will not impose any plan on Iraq. "We're discussing a number of options with the Iraqis and the United Nations, but we have not settled on one preferred option. Ultimately, it will be for the Iraqis to settle on the best mechanism by which sovereignty will be transferred," said a White House official.
In considering an expanded Governing Council, the United States has revived an idea that it had earlier abandoned out of concern that the 25 council members did not have sufficient local support. With few viable alternatives and the June 30 deadline bearing down, some in the administration see the expanded council idea as the least troubled of several possibilities that all have serious flaws.
One of the key undercurrents behind all U.S. planning now is the position of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's leading cleric, who has stipulated that only a directly elected Iraqi government should have the power to legislate new laws. Sistani's objections were instrumental in scuttling the previous two U.S. plans for creating a provisional government, so any expanded council may not be given authority to enact new laws.
The latest U.S. proposal includes three options to select the new council's members. One possible approach would be for a national conference of 200 to 300 Iraqis, an idea similar to the loya jirga assembly held to select a new government for Afghanistan after the fall of the ruling Taliban.
The second option is a "roundtable meeting" of 40 to 50 Iraqis, what one U.S. official called a "thin version" of a loya jirga that would be more manageable than a larger assembly. The third idea is to let Iraq's 18 provincial councils select new members, a spinoff of the caucus idea that had to be abandoned last month, although this idea has the least support, officials said.
The aim is to increase the size of the council so the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish populations and key minorities feel it fairly represents Iraq's disparate society, but to avoid making it too large to become cohesive or effective in the short time it will govern, U.S. officials said.
Serious discussions on this and other proposals are expected to begin at the United Nations next week when U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi returns to New York. The United States and Britain are eager to have Brahimi, a veteran diplomat and former Algerian foreign minister who most recently oversaw the Afghan transition, return to Baghdad to help negotiate the options among Iraqis, according to officials from coalition countries.
Even if this latest proposal is eventually embraced, several issues would still have to be sorted out. A pivotal issue is who selects the Iraqis to attend either a national conference or roundtable meeting, for example. The credibility of the current council, made up predominantly of exiles, has been questioned in part because it was created by the U.S.-led coalition, not selected by Iraqis.
But Brahimi is not eager to go soon to Iraq, U.S. officials said, and instead has talked about waiting until mid-April, U.S. officials said. That would leave less than 10 weeks for mediation and implementation, which officials from coalition countries say is unworkable.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel's Army Markets to Foreign Armies
By PETER ENAV
The Associated Press
Tuesday, March 2, 2004; 4:09 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21529-2004Mar2?language=printer
JERUSALEM - Israel is building a mock Arab town at a military base in southern Israel for millions of dollars - part of a new sales pitch to foreign armies to teach them how to fight insurgencies.
Later this month, the Israeli military is hosting an arms show and seminar on "low-intensity conflict" for defense officials from 20 countries.
The campaign comes as the country moves into the 42nd month of its current round of fighting with the Palestinians.
Some experts wondered, however, how Israel could market "success," since it has failed to halt attacks by Palestinian militants and is considering withdrawing unilaterally from parts of the West Bank and most of the Gaza Strip.
In recent years, Israel has emerged as one of the largest exporters of weapons and defense systems in the world. Israeli security sales reached $4 billion in 2002 before falling to $2.8 billion in 2003, Defense Ministry Director General Amos Yaron told a Cabinet meeting Sunday.
Capt. Jacob Dallal, an army spokesman, said the Israeli military has learned valuable lessons from the Palestinian uprising, or intefadeh.
"We think this (experience) is interesting for other countries because it has become the main method of warfare in our time," Dallal said. "For better or worse, Israel has been a pioneer in the field in terms of methods and doctrine in dealing with a prolonged conflict fighting terrorists."
The mock Arab town is going up at the Tseelim army base in southern Israel, Dallal said.
Security officials say it will contain four distinct neighborhoods - a complex of high-rise buildings, a crowded commercial district, a marketplace, and a low-rise, agricultural-type environment. They say the neighborhoods are designed to replicate conditions in a typical Middle Eastern setting.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say the town will be fitted with laser technology and video cameras to analyze soldiers' performances, including firing guided missiles from helicopters and checking the trajectory of tank shells.
Construction should be completed within two years, the officials say.
Later this month, Israel's military will sponsor an international conference on intefadeh lessons, coupled with an arms show. Items on sale include early warning systems, bomb discovery and removal devices and night vision scopes.
Thirty-eight lectures are to be delivered at the three-day conference, including on subjects such as "protecting roads and settlements" and "deception, communications and intelligence operations in low-intensity conflict."
The event will be attended by defense officials and academics from 20 countries in North America, Asia and Europe, Dallal told a news conference Monday.
"It's a new world out there in terms of combat operations, and there's is a lot for foreign armies to learn to adopt," he said.
Methods Israel has adopted include vastly expanded use of snipers, use of drone aircraft to present field commanders with real time intelligence, and deployment of state of the art radar to identify enemy firing positions.
Some military analysts don't think Israel has much to offer.
Military historian Martin Van Creveld of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem said that instead of winning the conflict - as Israel's army chief claimed last July - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's recent announcement that Israel will unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip proves the opposite.
"I can't understand if they're so successful why they're going to get out of the Gaza Strip," Van Creveld said.
He said Israel's continuing inability to stop Palestinian suicide bombers was a clear indication of the shortcoming of Israeli military tactics, despite the Israeli military's seeming success in dealing with day-by-day missions. Since September 2000, the conflict has claimed 2,688 lives on the Palestinian side and 930 lives on the Israeli side.
----
Israeli jet circles Shia gathering
Hizb Allah's leader Hassan Nasr Allah continued his address
Tuesday 02 March 2004
AFP Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/149A3E80-18B2-4F15-B08A-038A713D3C1F.htm
An Israeli reconnaissance plane circled over Beirut's southern suburbs when Hizb Allah leaders were addressing a mass Shia gathering.
Commemorating Ashura on Tuesday, crowd members confirmed that a plane illegally entered Lebanese airspace just west of Beirut at about 10:00 local time.
Briefly circling the capital's southern suburbs and Baabda, where Lebanon's president lives, the airspace violation failed to prevent Hizb Allah from addressing a crowd of more than 100,000.
Hizb Allah was the resistance group largely responsible for driving Israel from southern Lebanon after a 22-year occupation.
However, despite the withdrawal, Israel has flown regular sorties over southern Lebanon.
UN criticism
The United Nations views these overflights, and Hizb Allah's frequent retaliatory fire, as violations of the terms of Israel's pullout.
But there were no reports of any Hizb Allah retaliation on Tuesday.
Last month, the personal representative of the UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan for Southern Lebanon Staffan de Mistura criticised Israel's numerous incursions.
"These aerial violations of the Blue Line are not conducive to helping restore peace and security to this area.
"We reiterate the calls made by various UN officials, most notably the Secretary-General himself, and a number of other concerned Member States that Israel cease these violations."
----
Israel May Ask Egypt to Help Secure Gaza After a Pullout
March 2, 2004
New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/international/middleeast/02DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, March 1 - A senior Israeli official said Monday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wanted Egypt to help secure the Gaza Strip after a proposed withdrawal of Israeli forces and settlers from the area and that there should be no concern that such a pullout would lead to a takeover by the militant group Hamas.
"Our intention is to withdraw completely from Gaza," said the Israeli official. He added that Egypt could help with security, especially in the area near its border. About 7,500 Israeli settlers now live in the strip.
Israel is also talking about a withdrawal from the West Bank, but the official said plans for that area were less certain. He said Israel planned to withdraw military forces from large parts of the area west of the Jordan River and relocate them to a buffer zone in the western part of the West Bank, where they would protect Israeli settlements.
In addition, he said, Israel was considering dismantling "a few rather remote settlements" in the West Bank and relocating them, leaving "a very large Palestinian area" free of Israeli presence, providing residents with "better contiguity, better transportation mobility and so on."
The official said Israel's plans to withdraw could be likened to the country's finding "a convenient parking place" while it waited for the Palestinians to negotiate the final boundaries of a Palestinian state.
"We are preparing to park conveniently for the next hundred years or for the next few months - I don't know," the official said. It is up to the Palestinians, he added, to decide if it is time to negotiate with Israel and take actions themselves to dismantle militant groups in their midst.
The official's comments came as a group of top Israelis led by Mr. Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weisglass, briefed Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, on Mr. Sharon's latest thinking regarding a pullout from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.
Bush administration officials say they are receptive to the Sharon plan, which has never been fully outlined in detail. But American officials say many questions remain.
Mr. Sharon wants President Bush's blessing for the plan, to help him rebut criticsm among Israelis, in the Arab world and among Europeans, Israeli officials say. Preventing Hamas, which has carried out suicide bombings and other lethal attacks, from effectively taking over Gaza after an Israeli withdrawal is foremost among the concerns of the administration, the American officials say. But the Israeli official said such a concern was unwarranted.
"The best evaluation of our experts, intelligence and otherwise, is that there is no danger that Hamas will take over," the Israeli official said. "Hamas has no intention of taking over the responsibility of meeting the daily needs of almost two million people in Gaza."
An administration official said that there was still a fear that Hamas could fill a vacuum left by an Israeli withdrawal and that it was highly doubtful that Egypt would want to go along in policing any part of Gaza, including the tiny area near the Egyptian border that is a conduit for arms smuggling.
There was no immediate reaction from Egypt, but it has played an on-again, off-again role in helping the Palestinian Authority control militant groups in the last few years.
The Israeli official denied that a negotiation was under way between the two countries on the pullout plan. But he said it would be unthinkable for Israel to carry out any such bold plan without presenting it first to the United States.
The overall vision of the Israeli official, he acknowledged, is to carve out a predominantly Palestinian area free of Israel's presence and to complete the Israeli separation barrier on the western side of the West Bank, along a route closer to where the border between Israel and Jordan ran before the 1967 war.
Arafat Adviser Killed in Gaza
GAZA, Tuesday, March 2 (Reuters) - Gunmen killed an adviser to the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, outside his office in Gaza City on Tuesday, witnesses and medics said.
They said unknown assailants fatally shot Khalil al-Zebin, 59, who advised Mr. Arafat on human rights and media issues and ran a magazine financed by the Palestinian Authority.
-------- mideast
U.S. Says Middle East Reform Cannot Wait for Peace
Tue Mar 2, 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4478596
CAIRO - A senior U.S. official said on Tuesday Washington's Middle East democracy plan should not depend on a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, prompting a public disagreement with Egypt's foreign minister.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, on a Middle East tour to counter skepticism about the Bush administration's Greater Middle East Initiative, said reforms did not have to wait for peace, contradicting the view of his host Egypt.
"The effort for reform and the effort for dignity and the effort for individuality in Arab countries does not have to wait until there is a full peace," he told reporters after talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher.
"This effort is not a substitute for all of the effort that we are making in the Middle East peace process ... because bringing peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and between Israel and the Palestinians, is a priority for the United States of America," he added.
Maher disagreed. "Mr Grossman has the right to say that but Egypt's position is that one of the basic obstacles to the reform process is the continuation of Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and the Arab peoples," he said.
"That is not likely to provide the right atmosphere to achieve reform," the minister said.
A draft copy of the reform plan seen by Reuters showed the proposals focused on solving the region's political, economic and social problems without mentioning the Arab-Israeli conflict -- which Arabs say lies at the heart of the region's woes.
Most Arab governments and commentators have been hostile to the initiative, seeing it as a high-handed attempt to reshape the region to serve the interests of Washington and Israel.
The initiative also ignores the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, another foreign policy concern of Arabs.
Grossman tried to reassure Egyptians about Washington's intentions, dismissing the idea that the United States was trying to impose its own ideas on the region.
"We agree with people in Egypt that the best ideas for reform, the ideas that will work for reform, are ideas that will come from the region and from each country. Reform cannot and will not be imposed from the outside," he said.
Grossman's visit to Egypt coincides with a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo with an agenda which includes the U.S. initiative.
He said that while in Cairo he would also meet the foreign ministers of Jordan and Saudi Arabia before traveling on to Bahrain, Jordan and Turkey.
Grossman said that Turkey, one of Washington's favorite Muslim countries, was an important model for the Arab world.
"Turkey is a place where it is possible to be very democratic and Islamic. Turkey is a place where it is possible to have connections to the West and to the rest of the world," said the official, a former ambassador to Turkey.
-------- pakistan / india
Gunmen Attack Shiite Worshippers in Pakistan
March 2, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Religious-Violence.html
QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) -- Three men opened fire, hurled grenades and then blew themselves up Tuesday in the midst of a huge crowd of Shiite Muslims during a religious procession in Pakistan. At least 42 people died -- including two of the attackers -- and more than 160 others were wounded.
The killers struck in Quetta on the Ashoura holiday -- the holiest day in the Shiite calendar -- just hours after a series of coordinated blasts in Iraq hit major Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing at least 143 people. There was no indication attacks in the two countries were connected.
The attacks in Quetta ignited rioting in the city. A Sunni Muslim mosque, a television network office and several shops were set afire, and an exchange of gunfire took place near the scene of the initial attack, police said.
The attack was among the most deadly in a long series of assaults on the Shiite Muslim minority in Pakistan.
Quetta's Mayor Abdul Rahim Kakar told The Associated Press that the three terrorists first opened fire and threw grenades at the procession, and then, walking among the crowd with explosives tied to their bodies, blew themselves up as the police approached. Two terrorists died at the scene and one was in critical condition.
He would not reveal the identity of the man. Other suspects were being questioned in connection with the attack, but it was not immediately clear if they were under arrest.
Mohammed Wasim, a doctor at the Central Government Hospital in Quetta, said the facility had received 19 bodies. The Combined Military Hospital reported 23 bodies were brought in since the attack early Tuesday afternoon.
Qamar Zaman, an assistant police inspector in Quetta, said more than 160 people had been wounded, some of them critically.
Government officials said the carnage was an effort by extremist groups to destabilize the country. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been a staunch ally of the U.S. war on terrorism, earning the ire of Islamic fundamentalists. He narrowly escaped two assassination attempts in December.
``Obviously, the purpose of this attack was to create unrest,'' Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told the AP. ``This is a very sad incident and we condemn it.''
Kakar told AP he had imposed an immediate curfew in the city of 1.2 million. He said troops and paramilitary forces had been deployed and were maintaining law and order.
Meanwhile, two people -- one Shiite and one Sunni -- were killed and 40 other people wounded in a clash between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Phalia, a town in Punjab province about 100 miles east of Islamabad, said local police official Nisar Ali Shah.
The shootout happened during a Shiite procession, and people from the two sides then set several houses on fire, Shah said.
Riaz Khan, Quetta's police chief, said a Sunni mosque was partially destroyed by fire. There also was an exchange of gunfire between Shiite Muslims and unidentified rivals, he said.
Ijaz Khan, a reporter for the private GEO television network, said six unidentified people entered the GEO office there and set it afire. The office was empty and no one was injured.
Last week, the network broadcast a talk show that allegedly aired offensive comments against Shiites.
Quetta was the site of one of the deadliest acts of sectarian violence in years in Pakistan. Attackers armed with machine-guns and grenades stormed a Shiite Muslim mosque there in July, killing 50 worshippers inside.
Police said a leading suspect in the July attack is the brother-in-law of al-Qaida terrorist Ramzi Yousef, convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Shiites are a substantial minority in Quetta. Sectarian violence runs strong in Quetta's Baluchistan province, where radical Islamic groups share power with more moderate Sunni parties.
Allama Hassan Turabi, a senior Pakistani Shiite leader, demanded that Musharraf -- who has repeatedly vowed to defeat extremism in the Islamic country -- sack government officials, including the interior minister, for failing to prevent Tuesday's attack.
``This is not the first attack against us. Our people are not safe at homes. They are not safe in mosques,'' he said by telephone from Karachi.
Security had been stepped up nationwide in anticipation of Muharram, a month of mourning when Shiite Muslims recall the seventh-century death of Hussein, grandson of Islam's prophet, Muhammad.
-------- russia / chechnya
Chechen Rebels Say They Bombed Subway
By Associated Press
March 2, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-russia-subway-bombing,0,1387087.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
MOSCOW -- A previously unknown Chechen rebel group has claimed responsibility for last month's subway bombing in Moscow that killed 41 people, according to a Chechen rebel web site.
The Kavkaz Center site, a mouthpiece for the separatist rebels, said the claim came from a group calling itself Gazoton Murdash, led by Lom-Ali ("Ali the Lion") Chechensky.
The claim was first made by e-mail on Feb. 8, two days after the morning rush-hour blast on the Moscow subway, but the center said on its web site Monday that it held off reporting it. But after the center received two more e-mails and a call from a man claiming to be the group's leader, it decided to post the information.
According to the information, the group launched the attack to mark the fourth anniversary of the killing of scores of Chechen civilians by Russian soldiers who took control of the Chechen capital Grozny.
It called the bombing "our first mopping-up operation," referring to Russian soldiers' widespread practice of sealing off Chechen villages and detaining males in search of rebels and their collaborators. Civilians and human rights groups say hundreds of Chechens have disappeared during these operations.
The group is not previously known and it was not possible to verify if it exists.
Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have placed blame for the bombing on Chechen rebel groups, but have not publicly offered any evidence.
Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after a disastrous 20-month war against separatists ended in a stalemate, leaving the republic de-facto independent and largely lawless.
The Russian army swept in again in September 1999 after Chechnya-based fighters launched incursions into neighboring Dagestan and after the deaths of some 300 people in apartment bombings blamed on the separatists.
-------- spies
China Holds Group From Hong Kong For Espionage Charges May Signal Push for Security Bill
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 2, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20798-2004Mar1.html
BEIJING, March 1 -- China has quietly detained a group of Hong Kong residents, including at least three British citizens, and begun to prosecute them on espionage charges, according to people familiar with the cases. The prosecutions may signal a new push to enact the stringent internal security bill that prompted huge demonstrations in the territory last year before it was withdrawn.
The exact number of people arrested is uncertain, but the group appears small. Most are former employees of the Hong Kong branch of the New China News Agency, the Chinese government's representative office in Hong Kong before the British handed over the territory in 1997.
One of the British citizens, Chan Yu-lam, 53, a businessman and former official at the branch office, has been accused of spying for Britain between 1988 and 1995, according to his wife, Zhao Dongdong.
She said her husband was tried behind closed doors in a courtroom in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou on Feb. 24. A verdict and sentence are scheduled to be announced Friday, she said.
Prosecutors have argued that Chan violated Chinese law by discussing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre with a British agent and by giving the agent phone numbers for a Chinese investment firm and the local branch of the New China News Agency, she said.
Prosecutors also argued that Chan leaked secrets about the Chinese-British talks leading to Hong Kong's return, she said. But Zhao said the charges were groundless and questioned how Chinese law could be used to prosecute her husband for activities that allegedly took place in Hong Kong before China resumed control of the territory.
"We're very worried," she said by telephone on Monday. "We're worried there are political motives."
Chan's trial comes as China's ruling Communist Party is stepping up its verbal attacks against the pro-democracy opposition in Hong Kong, which succeeded in forcing the government to withdraw the internal security bill in July and is now pressing Beijing to allow direct elections to choose the territory's next chief executive.
More than 500,000 people protested against the internal security bill on July 1, one of the largest demonstrations in Hong Kong's history. Critics of the bill said it would give the authorities wide latitude to prosecute vaguely defined crimes against national security and that it threatened civil liberties in the territory, which was promised a high degree of autonomy when it returned to Chinese rule.
The arrests suggest Beijing may be trying to justify another campaign to pressure Hong Kong to adopt the bill. They also highlight long-standing suspicions in the Communist Party leadership that the United States and Britain are trying to use Hong Kong to undermine its rule of mainland China.
"Foreign forces have never stopped trying to make Hong Kong an independent or semi-independent political entity and a base to overthrow the mainland under the camouflage of democracy," Zhou Nan, the retired cabinet minister who was China's chief negotiator in the talks on Hong Kong's return, said in a recent interview published in the territory. "Some external forces have interfered in Hong Kong's internal affairs with unbelievable enthusiasm recently."
Zhou served as director of Beijing's representative office in Hong Kong from 1990 to 1997, after his predecessor, Xu Jiatun, sided with the student protesters in Tiananmen Square and defected to the United States. At least three of the detained Hong Kong residents were employed in the office and appear to have served under both men.
Chan, who was born in Hong Kong, worked in the office from 1985 to 1993, serving as chief of a division that maintained relations with foreign chambers of commerce and as a secretary to an official who fled to the United States in 1999. Chan then worked for a Hong Kong investment firm owned by the Guangdong provincial government, his wife said.
He obtained British citizenship before 1997 and a British passport in 2002, she said. He was detained in January 2003 in Shenzhen, a city in mainland China near Hong Kong, but the Chinese government did not confirm his arrest until June, when it told British diplomats he was under investigation for economic crimes, she said.
A British Embassy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed Chan's arrest and that of another British citizen, Wei Pingyuan, another former division chief in the representative office. But he declined to identify a third British citizen who has been detained or comment on the charges against the three.
He said British diplomats have raised the cases with China but have not been granted consular access because the three individuals entered the mainland using Hong Kong residency papers instead of British passports.
"We recognize them as British citizens, but we recognize that we don't have a formal right of consular access," he said. "Nevertheless, we've approached the Chinese informally about it and we continue to be in touch with the families."
The Chinese government declined to comment on the cases. But in December it announced that one of its senior officials in Hong Kong, Cai Xiaohong, had been detained on suspicion of espionage and said "there are other matters" regarding spies in Hong Kong. Pro-Beijing politicians seized on the news to argue that the anti-subversion legislation should be revived.
Cai, who arrived in the liaison office in 1989 and served as its chief administrator before his arrest, allegedly received payments of up to $6 million from Britain in exchange for state secrets, according to the semi-official Hong Kong China News Agency and other Hong Kong news media.
A Hong Kong magazine has reported two other arrests, that of Liu Lin, another Chinese official in Hong Kong, and a retired police superintendent who allegedly was an agent for British intelligence.
"Hong Kong is a place where foreign intelligence agencies conduct a lot of activity," Li Gang, deputy director of China's liaison office in Hong Kong, told reporters in December. "Cai's case is just the tip of the iceberg."
-------- un
U.N. Nuke Agency Assumes It's Bugged All the Time
March 2, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-bugging.html
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog has no evidence it is being spied on but works on the assumption it is bugged all the time, International Atomic Energy Agency Chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Tuesday.
``Can we stop it? No. Is it going to stop? No,'' ElBaradei told a news conference in Brussels. ``I think unfortunately it's a fact of life.''
A former member of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet sparked a furor last week by accusing the government of bugging U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan before the Iraq war last year.
The United Nations said such action would be illegal, and on Tuesday ElBaradei described bugging as a violation of the basic human right to privacy.
However, the IAEA chief said he was resigned to the inevitability of bugging, particularly given that spies can now snoop by satellite rather than rely on installing devices.
``We haven't come across any evidence that we are being bugged but we work on the assumption that we are being bugged all the time,'' he said. ``It's unfortunate but this is part of the rules of the game.''
-------- us
Defense may have wasted $8 billion on bad software
By Brad Grimes Staff Writer,
Washington Technology,
March 2, 2004
http://www.wtonline.com/news/1_1/daily_news/22885-1.html
The Defense Department may have spent as much as $8 billion in fiscal 2003 reworking software "because of quality-related issues," according to a General Accounting Office report released today.
The reported stated, "In recent years, DOD has attributed significant cost and schedule overruns of software-intensive systems to difficulties in developing and delivering software."
The report was made to John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the committee's ranking minority member. The committee had asked the GAO to examine practices used by private companies when they acquire software and compare them to Defense Department procedures.
In reviewing five Defense Department programs, the GAO found that two programs adhered to good practices, while three programs, including the recently discontinued Comanche helicopter program, experienced schedule delays and cost overruns because they did not follow software management strategies. The Army spent $6.9 billion and 21 years on the Comanche project before it was canceled last week for a variety of reasons.
The GAO identified three strategies that successful software developers and procurers followed: They worked in an evolutionary environment, employed disciplined development processes, and collected meaningful metrics to gauge progress.
In addition to the Comanche program, the GAO studied the Space-Based Infrared System, a missile-detection program, and the F/A-22, an air superiority and ground attack aircraft. Neither employed what the GAO identified as best practices in acquiring software. Such lapses have contributed to a 127 percent increase in the research, development, test, and evaluation cost estimate for the F/A-22 and an 88 percent overrun for the SBIRS program.
The two successful programs that the GAO studied-the Tactical Tomahawk missile and the F/A-18 C/D fighter aircraft-were also deemed late and over budget, but not by as much as the other programs. Both programs employed the three best practices identified by the GAO.
According to the report, the Defense Department and the Missile Defense Agency are currently taking steps to improve their software acquisition processes.
The Defense Department estimates it spends about 40 percent of its the research, development, test, and evaluation budget on software, which has become a larger and more critical component of weapon systems. In the 1960s, 10 percent of the functionality in the F-4 fighter jet was provided through software. The F/A-22, under development today, will rely on software for 80 percent of its functionality, according to the Defense Science Board.
----
Navy plans sharp reduction in active duty force
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Mar 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040302183650.96mv2vtn.html
The US Navy plans to sharply reduce the size of its active duty force over the next five years by changing the way it mans its fleet and building high-tech warships that require smaller crews, the chief of the navy said Tuesday.
From a high of 400,000 sailors at the height of the US invasion of Iraq, the Navy plans to pare its active duty force to around 350,000 by 2009, Admiral Vernon Clark told reporters.
"I am actively pursuing a Navy with more capability but fewer people in it," he said.
The trend stands in sharp contrast with demands for more troops by the army to cope with deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans.
Clark said he is reshaping the Navy into a high tech force that will require fewer but more highly skilled sailors.
"We are building combat capable forces that have dramatically fewer people in them.," he said
As an example, he cite a new generation destroyer now under development that will require a crew of about 100 to 125 instead of the 500-member crews found aboard existing destroyers.
The navy also has had success with a scheme to swap crews at sea to keep warships available for operations longer, he said.
"We're not trying to scare anybody, but I'll tell you what we're after," he said. "We're after a navy where every job has incredible job content in them. Fundamentally I want to get rid of the non-rated sailor positions in my Navy. I want them out of here."
The navy's active duty force currently stands at just under 380,000, he said.
He calculated that the Navy can save between 1.2 and 1.5 billion dollars for every 10,000 sailors it lops off the payroll.
----
Call-Up Notice for National Guard Units
March 2, 2004
NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/politics/02TROO.html
WASHINGTON, March 1 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered on Monday that 18,000 National Guard soldiers be alerted for possible duty in Iraq, beginning this fall or early in 2005.
The unusually early warning of potential duty in a third yearlong rotation of troops is part of the Defense Department's new policy to give National Guard members and reservists, as well as their families and employers, as much notice of call-ups and deployments as possible.
The units affected by Monday's order including the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division of the New York National Guard in Troy; the 256th Infantry Brigade of the Louisiana National Guard; the 116th Armored Brigade of the Idaho National Guard; and the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment from the Tennessee National Guard.
The Pentagon said these units would be mobilized in the coming months for more training before deploying to the Persian Gulf.
--------
MILITARY ANALYSIS: THE TROOPS
Military Still Able to Respond to New Crisis
March 2, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/politics/02STRA.html
WASHINGTON, March 1 - The decision to send up to 2,000 marines to Haiti to help stabilize the country shows that the United States military can still intervene in crises large and small, even at a time when so many ground troops are already called upon for major missions.
But it also is one more unexpected military commitment that the Bush administration is not eager to embrace, especially in an election year, and underscores how far-flung the American military's missions have become.
Sending the marines to Haiti is not especially complicated. A battalion of about 1,000 marines at Camp Lejeune, N.C., is always on alert to fly to an emergency. The first 200 or so marines landed in Port-au-Prince overnight Sunday, and more were expected to flow in this week with trucks and Humvees equipped with heavy machine guns.
That does not unduly tax a Marine Corps that is in the midst of sending 25,000 troops to Iraq, and preparing to move another 25,000 there later this year. "This isn't the straw that will break the camel's back," said Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington group that studies the military.
But it will put more strain on a system already under stress. About 110,000 soldiers and marines are now replacing 130,000 soldiers in Iraq in the largest two-way movement of American troops since World War II. There are 11,000 American troops in Afghanistan and about 3,000 in Bosnia and Kosovo. Overall, nearly 183,000 National Guard and Reserve forces are on active duty at home and abroad.
"When you look around as to who can fill a gap in a very short period of time, there are not a lot of candidates," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a news conference on Monday. "We stepped up."
Mr. Rumsfeld said the marines would have five immediate missions: create a more secure and stable environment to promote Haiti's constitutional political process; protect United States citizens; help repatriate any Haitian migrants seized at sea; help form an interim force; and make way for a United Nations-backed force.
Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointedly declined Monday to say whether marines would intervene to stop looting or to protect Haitian civilians.
Mr. Rumsfeld said that as many 1,500 to 2,000 American troops would lead an interim force of fewer than 5,000 from several nations, but that the ultimate size hinged on many factors.
"It depends on the facts on the ground," he said. "Second, it depends on how fast other countries that have volunteered forces can get those forces there in a trained and organized way, and a way that's equipped and supported."
Pentagon officials were reluctant to say how many troops the United States would send, lest it dissuade some allies from offering forces of their own.
But Mr. Rumsfeld emphasized that unlike the situation in 1994 when more than 20,000 American troops stayed in Haiti for months to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide's presidency, American troops this time would not remain long. He said it was still "an open question" whether the United States would provide troops or support to the longer-term United Nations force.
"It's a hemisphere problem," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "It's not just the United States' problem. We've got a lot of things we're doing. And once the situation's stabilized, I think it would be appropriate to pass the lead off."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, also played down the size and duration of America's military commitment. "I don't think it will be a very large presence," he said, adding that the force is not intended for combat.
But even the relatively modest force for Haiti handed new ammunition to critics in Congress who have argued that the United States military is overstretched and needs to grow to meet its expanding missions.
"This is another example of an unexpected use of military force," said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who has proposed increasing the military by 30,000 troops. "Whether expected or unexpected, these deployments are stressing the system enormously."
Other military experts disputed the immediate burden the Haiti deployment placed on the marines now, but warned of problems down the road if the mission lasted months, not weeks.
"There's no question that we have to respond to instability in this hemisphere," said Joseph Hoar, a retired four-star Marine officer. "And this can be handled with a relatively small force."
But even a modest mission, if it lasts long, could be felt in other operations, General Hoar said: "It could disrupt their training to be ready to go to Iraq."
-------
Weekend Warriors Go Full Time
National Guard Deployment Is the Biggest Since World War II
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20873-2004Mar1?language=printer
FORT POLK, La. -- Deep in "The Box," big blue buses morph into rolling, apocalyptic explosive devices. Danger crouches in the high brush and glares down from the pines. Smoke and flame interrupt breakfast, obliterate lunch, upend dinner. Sleep is for the weak or the foolish.
A tireless teenager's constitution is all that keeps Bret Roberts, a 19-year-old National Guardsman from Depoe Bay, Ore., alert. Under the weary gaze of his squad leader, Roberts peers down a lonely Louisiana road as he leans hard into a belt-fed M249 machine gun capable of delivering 750 rounds per minute. "Looking for the big blue bus of love," he says with the devil-may-care aplomb of a grizzled veteran.
The bus Roberts is looking for is a prop, just as the explosions and the menace in the woods are artful fictions, all part of an elaborate training exercise concocted to prepare thousands of National Guard troops engaged in the biggest deployment of citizen soldiers in more than half a century. Sometime this spring, not long after Roberts and his pals leave the 200,000-acre training pod known as "The Box," National Guard and reserve troops will come to represent nearly 40 percent of the 105,000 U.S. military men and women in Iraq.
Not since World War II have so many National Guard units been pressed into service abroad. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, more than 143,000 National Guard members have been mobilized worldwide, with the biggest single concentration expected this spring when more than 35,000 Army National Guard troops -- topping the wartime peak of 30,000 -- are slated to arrive in Iraq as thousands of their colleagues rotate home.
Yesterday, the Pentagon announced that units from New York, Louisiana, Idaho and Tennessee would be deployed to Iraq by late this year or early next.
The massive call-up is beginning to make governors, who rely on the National Guard to respond to disasters, exceedingly nervous. In Arkansas, for instance, more than half of the state's 8,200 National Guard troops have been mobilized. The state has had to call out the National Guard over the past six years for two giant tornadoes and a devastating ice storm, and Arkansas officials wonder whether they would be too shorthanded to respond quickly to another crisis. One-fourth of Maryland's National Guard has been mobilized, as has 30 percent of Virginia's.
N. Wayne Ruthven, director of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, estimates the outflow of National Guard troops from his state could cause 40 percent delays in disaster response time and "a 40 percent time delay may mean the difference between life and death."
The huge deployment is also redefining the nature of National Guard service, transforming weekend warriors into something very close to full-time soldiers, who regularly leave behind jobs, businesses, families -- entire lives -- for extended periods. Roberts and his unit, the Oregon Guard's 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry, nicknamed "The Volunteers," are nearing the end of six months of training away from home to be followed by a one-year assignment in Iraq. Some of Roberts's colleagues are already old hands at this; they are not that far removed from lengthy stints in the Sinai and in Kuwait in the past few years.
No one knows what all this packing and repacking will mean for the future of the National Guard. The guard is currently meeting its retention and recruiting goals, but there is no way to know whether those now enlisted will opt to return to duty.
The fears are palpable. Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina and an Air Force reservist, predicted at last week's National Governors Association meeting in Washington that a flood of the butchers, insurance agents, small-business people and others who make up the Guard will be reluctant to reenlist because of the increasing demands on their time.
"It's going to be a testing time for the Guard," said Eric Parnell, who at 43 is the oldest soldier shipping out for Iraq with the Oregon Guard unit. "It's transformed from a weekend with the boys to an integral part of the Army."
Gone are the days when the Guard's abilities were routinely disparaged. During Desert Storm in the early 1990s, the Guard was humiliated when three of its brigades intended to supplement active-duty divisions were not sent into battle because top military brass deemed them unfit for combat. This time around, with the Guard receiving spanking new equipment and months of enhanced training, there has been little criticism of its readiness.
Iraq will be Parnell's last go-round, he says while picking through a mess-tent breakfast of gristly ham slices. He has had enough after four years of active duty and 17 years in the Guard. He wants to get back to cutting meat at Albertsons. He wants his life back. Many will take the same path, but an upsurge in patriotism could counterbalance the departures, he said.
Parnell is one of the steady hands navigating the crazy quilt of manufactured obstacles and complications invented by the Army's training gurus at Fort Polk. The people who run the Joint Readiness Training Center here have built a network of simulated Iraqi villages and populated them with more than 200 actors, who assume the role of Iraqi citizens -- some friendly to the United States, some not so friendly. The scenarios are seemingly endless, each one mapped out on a chart that slightly resembles a Hollywood movie treatment. This makes sense because the Army sent some of its trainers to California studios to study war-movie special effects -- it is a case of art imitating life, then life imitating art. The script calls for bursts of looting, roadside bombings, the quandary of discovering sensitive religious artifacts and the death of a prominent Shiite cleric.
A group of soldiers based at Fort Polk -- known as "the most hated unit in the Army" -- plays the starring role of Iraqi insurgents with ruthless efficiency, popping out of the giant fort's byzantine nooks to simulate the slaughter of unsuspecting National Guard troops. It looks a bit like the world's greatest game of laser tag, with each soldier carrying a laser-fitted weapon and wearing a sensor-studded vest that registers hits. Teams of observers monitor the proceedings, grimly jotting notes that will be used during critiques at the end of the eight-day course.
Roberts's squad spent hours of boredom manning a damp mortar pit ringed with sandbags and marked by a sign that read "Don't Feed the Animals." Under a camouflage tarp, which kept their 81-inch weapon relatively dry, they nibbled through gloppy Meals Ready to Eat and waited for the inevitable.
One afternoon, a breathless battalion officer ran up with word of a hazardous-material spill. Roberts piled into the back of an open Humvee with his squad leader, a rawboned sergeant from Toledo, Ore., named Aaron Strom. Strom, 23, had big plans for 2004. He was going to go back to school and learn enough about motors to open his own repair shop, instead of working for someone else.
He even changed Guard units, hoping to avoid an overseas deployment, figuring he'd done his part by going to the Sinai for Uncle Sam. But it didn't work out that way. Strom, who joined the Guard when he was 17, got the deployment call and he had a big problem to face. His former girlfriend wasn't emotionally prepared to care for their 2-year-old daughter, who was beset by nightmares, and he was worried that his current girlfriend wouldn't be happy about him running off just months into their new relationship.
He had to make a move.
Within days, he had proposed to and married his girlfriend, Jessica, and arranged for his daughter, Mikayla, to stay with his mother while his ex-girlfriend sorted out her life.
"I did a whole 180 with my life real quick," Strom said of the deployment order. "That was the last thing I needed."
Next to Strom, William Wiese, a soft-spoken specialist, crouched with an automatic weapon against his shoulder, peering through the drizzle. Wiese is as close to a pacifist as it gets in the little six-man squad. In spare moments, he read a book called "The Buddhist Tradition" and argued with Roberts -- who loves to blow things up and has been dubbed "a stone-cold killer" by his mentors -- about the ethics of hunting for sport.
The deployment was a conflicting event for Wiese, who was recently laid off from his job at a lumber mill. The call-up meant a steady paycheck to support his wife, Arya, and their children, Aaron, 21/2, and Samuel, 1.
But it also meant a painful separation. "Emotionally, I'm not sure it was such a good thing," he said in a barely audible voice.
After a bumpy, half-hour ride, their Humvee pulled up near a pile of debris marking the mock chemical spill and the squad scrambled out to secure the area. An officer from another Humvee told them to check for explosive devices and Roberts bounded off enthusiastically into the woods, blithely running past a real-world sign marking an old target range that read: "Danger Unexploded Ammunition."
The official observer watching them was apoplectic. Strom, composed beyond his years, calmly corralled his youthful charge and lectured him at the side of the road.
"Sometimes he tries my patience," said Brant Gilmore, 27, the squad's driver. "But then, I have to think to myself, 'He's only 19 years old.' "
Properly scolded, but unbowed, Roberts lay next to the road, aiming his big machine gun and sucking the mound of Copenhagen he had stuffed along his gumline.
He is mindful of the real-life dangers that await -- 76 of the 547 soldiers killed in Iraq have been members of the Army National Guard or the reserves -- but says he is prepared for anything. One of the casualties -- a National Guard specialist named Chris Taylor, 25 -- was laid to rest, just to the east of them in Kentwood, La., on one of the days that Roberts and his squad were training at Fort Polk.
Roberts's boss -- a lovably crusty 43-year-old captain named Daniel Morris -- knows the risks, too. Morris is a trumpet player, and he has already packed two horns for Iraq. One is for happy tunes; the other, he'll set aside in case he needs it for a funeral.
-------- propaganda wars
A Media War?
Tell Me Lies
Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq
Reviewed by Jon Wright
02/03/2004
Islam Online
http://www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/Iraq_Aftermath/2004/03/article_01.shtml
Edited by David Miller Publisher: Pluto Press,2004 ISBN: 0745322026 (Paperback) Pages:310
The US-led invasion of Iraq was undoubtedly the most televised conflict in history. The theater of war was broadcast 24 hours a day on a host of TV networks around the globe: Cut to our embedded reporter on the front line, over to the million-dollar media center in Doha, now a live feed from Basra, and then back to the studio for some more discussion of the scores so far. But in the rush to be the first with the breaking story, did such small things like "accuracy" and "objectivity" get overlooked? Or, was media compliance with the British and US governments a conscious decision by producers and editors?
"If the broadcast media had a plan to present a view that was anything other than base propaganda, then surely they should have embedded journalists in the Iraqi hospitals," points out Mark Thomas in the forward to Tell Me Lies. This essentially sets the tone of the whole book which breaks down the issues of government propaganda and media distortion into a series of accessible reports by a host of experienced and respected journalists. The arguments for war are taken apart and the magnitude of the psychological battle for "hearts and minds" is exploded.
Part one is a collection of articles - by John Pilger, written from February to April 2003 - that place the pre-invasion build-up in a historical context. Part two, titled "Propaganda Wars," sets out the techniques used and the impact such psychological operations (re-named "information support" by the British New Labour Government) have on both the British and international public. The third section focuses on "Misreporting the War" and offers detailed breakdowns of the coverage from both British and US media organizations as well as background on the history of war reporting and the relationship between the intelligence services and journalists. Finally, the book concludes with "Alternatives," which offers accounts of the war from Al Jazeera's perspective, and internet-based alternative media, and highlights activism from media workers and the anti-war movement.
Propaganda is now almost expected to compliment any military attack. Governments, especially the US and UK, have become increasingly adept at disseminating their message both at home and against the enemy. "The techniques being used to sell a war in Iraq are familiar PR strategies. The delivery of the message is tightly controlled. Relevant information flows to the media and the public through a limited number of well-trained messengers, including seemingly independent third parties." The cost and extent of this "information flow" are considerable, but in addition to the more obvious leaflet bombardments of Afghanistan and Iraq, areas of grey propaganda are also at work. The British government's Foreign and Commonwealth Office contracts third parties to provide what appears to be news - professionally produced and free - to the overseas media. The London Press Service is run by Intelfax Ltd. whose mandate is to produce "features and news items aimed at increasing overseas perceptions of the UK as an innovative forward looking and dynamic country."
When it comes to criticizing western mainstream media, it has to be acknowledged that there is considerable variety across the spectrum of print, radio and TV. Even within the BBC, different news outlets pursue slightly different agendas. Yet, the findings of the book's analytical studies show failings across the board. Issues of the effects of depleted uranium-coated shells and the horrific, often child, casualties of cluster bombs were scant in the UK press and absent in the US. "Despite a clear anti-war majority in Britain and significant anti-war minority in the US, most media outlets supported the war and failed systematically to challenge the arguments for an invasion or to expose the brutality and consequences of the war."
The climax of media compliance were the images of a statute of Saddam being toppled in Baghdad's Firdos Square repeatedly broadcast and printed and then held aloft as though it was somehow a vindication of the whole invasion; job done. Cheering Iraqis surround the effigy, rope around the neck, as it buckles and falls to the ground. But wider shots of the scene reveal, not just the US vehicle which pulled it down, but that the hundred or so celebrating Iraqis were let through by US forces who were surrounding the square. The event also, very conveniently, was staged outside the Palestine Hotel where the world's media were based.
Tell Me Lies is well-sourced and gives anyone interested in alternative perspectives on the war plenty of specific information. But is the message reaching further than people who already agree? At a recent conference about media perspectives, I asked David Miller, editor of Tell Me Lies, if the book was making an impact. "The build-up [of opposition] to the Iraq war is a process," he told me, "and that has meant that radical ideas and critical ideas about the media and propaganda have been distributed wider than previously. So you're actually finding [that] the kind of ideas which used to be confined to a minority are reaching out to a much wider audience."
As for the final consumers of the news product, it is only consistent public pressure that will force a change in media culture. The increase in alternative sources of information is fuelling the movement of people demanding more accountability from those who shape the news agenda. However, "in the end it's not just a question of reforming the media, it's a question of reforming society."
Jon Wright is a freelance writer and broadcaster based in Sheffield, UK.
-------- war crimes
Blair 'war crimes' case launched
Questions over the legality of the war are being raised
Tuesday, 2 March, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3524133.stm
The International Criminal Court in the Hague is being asked to probe allegations of war crimes by Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Geoff Hoon.
The claims surround the UK's role in invading Iraq and have been raised by the group Legal Action Against War.
They say a "principal charge" is "intentionally launching an attack knowing it will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians".
Michael Mansfield QC said the group wanted to re-establish the rule of law.
As well as the prime minister, foreign secretary and defence secretary, the group is also targeting Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, who advised that the war was lawful.
The Foreign Office declined to comment on the petition, saying only that it stood by the legal basis given for the war.
Mr Mansfield said none of the reasons given for the war - weapons of mass destruction, violation of United Nations resolutions and removing Saddam Hussein - provided a satisfactory legal basis for attacking Iraq. What is the point of having the ICC if on one of the gravest things this country has even done the ICC is going to turn its back on it? Michael Mansfield QC
The International Criminal Court (ICC) did not have jurisdiction to rule that unlawful aggression was a war crime, he told a news conference.
But he continued: "The context of considering the particular individual war crimes has to be set against what we claim is an unlawful war.
"Even if the ICC decided that the war was lawful, they still have to examine whether what was carried out was proportionate."
Court coverage
The use of weapons such as cluster bombs, which had killed many innocent civilians, meant more force than necessary had been used, argued the top lawyer.
"We are saying that there are matters here that need to be investigated," he said.
"What is the point of having the ICC if on one of the gravest things this country has even done the ICC is going to turn its back on it?"
The court should not just address alleged war crimes in "banana republics" but should investigate the world's powerful nations too, argued Mr Mansfield.
Britain, unlike America, signed up to the court's creation.
Mr Mansfield acknowledged there might be "extraordinary reluctance" in indicting ministers on such charges but it was right they were investigated.
The Ministry of Defence has previously said it supports the use of cluster bombs against legitimate military targets in order to protect British troops and civilians from further harm.
Test limits?
Anthony Aust, a former deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, said the petition would not work if the real idea was to test the legality of the war.
He told BBC Radio 4's World At One: "If they are merely going to seek a ruling as to the legality of the use of cluster bombs, matters of that sort, then I don't see how the ICC could get involved in the question of whether the war was lawful."
Mr Aust said there were good grounds for saying the war was legally justified, as well as counter arguments.
"No one is going to have a decision on that point unless it were to go, say, to the International Court of Justice," he added.
The International Court of Justice is separate from the ICC and rather than examining individual war crimes, it settles legal disputes put to it by states.
The legal petition was launched as the government continued to defy pressure to publish the full legal advice it received on the war's legality.
----
Milosevic's prosecutor rests questionable case
Proof of genocide lacks 'smoking gun'
Marlise Simons
NY Times / IHT
Tuesday, March 2, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/132090.html
THE HAGUE The familiar morning mantra "Case No. 0254, the Prosecutor vs. Slobodan Milosevic" will not ring through Courtroom I at the UN war crimes tribunal for a few months.
The prosecution has rested its case, and Milosevic, the first modern head of state who has to answer charges of atrocities before international judges, has until June 8 to prepare his defense.
Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, said she was relieved that after 24 months, this portion of the trial was finally closed. She was certain of a conviction on all charges, but conceded that she had presented only circumstantial evidence, "no simple smoking gun," - no written order or letter signed by Milosevic - to support the gravest charge, genocide.
But then, few may have expected such proof from the former Serbian leader and Yugoslav president. He wrote down very little and went to extraordinary lengths to hide his hand in the three wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The Belgrade authorities have sanitized and cut crucial portions from the minutes of wartime meetings of the Supreme Defense Council, which Milosevic attended, an official close to the case said last week. . Officials in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, recently handed over the incomplete records after much international pressure. There was credible information, the court official said, that the complete records had contained instructions providing a link to killings and even genocide.
All the same, prosecutors have compiled the most detailed record known of the Milosevic era, reconstructing the methods and secret machinery they say Milosevic used for his plan to seize more territory for ethnic Serbs in a collapsing Yugoslavia.
Del Ponte said there was abundant evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia's Kosovo Province. "I believe we have proved genocide with many pieces of the puzzle," she said.
Legal experts agree that the evidence of war crimes is ample. Some, however, dispute whether the prosecution has proved that Milosevic was guilty of genocide in Bosnia. A finding of genocide requires proof that the accused intended to destroy a people or group, not just to kill many of its members.
"Intention of course is a subjective element, a difficult element," Del Ponte said. "We will fully demonstrate this intent at the end of the trial."
It has now become known that since well before the trial, a debate has raged among prosecutors over whether the Serbian-led campaign to expel and often kill non-Serbs would meet the legal definition of genocide.
Some argued that there was enough evidence to secure a conviction for war crimes and crimes against humanity and no need to take on the burden of demonstrating genocide.
"We had more than enough to prove that Milosevic created, instigated, aided and abetted great conflict and bloodshed and upheaval to stay in power," said a lawyer involved in the discussions. "Enough for a life sentence."
But Del Ponte and others on her team decided to charge Milosevic with two counts of genocide or complicity in genocide in Bosnia.
"I could not leave out the charges of genocide, based on what we knew," she said. But many questions still surround the issue of genocide. The judges must decide whether the large-scale persecution and killing of Bosnian Muslims, called "ethnic cleansing" by many, was a deliberate genocidal campaign.
"Ethnic cleansing can lead to genocide, but did it in Bosnia? I'm not sure," said Antoine Garapon, director of the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies in Paris, a research group that monitors the trial. "I am sure of the proof that Milosevic ordered ethnic cleansing."
Some lawyers note that the crime of genocide is often misunderstood and defined in political or humanitarian terms.
Tribunal staff and those monitoring the trial say that getting to this halfway point has been an ordeal. The scope of the indictment, linking allegations in three very different wars over nine years, was enormous.
Progress was hampered by Milosevic who, acting as his own lawyer, engaged in filibustering and frequently fell ill. A week ago, the presiding judge, Richard May, resigned because of illness.
Evaluating the strength and weaknesses of the prosecution case has its pitfalls, trial watchers say. There was an impressive array of about 300 witnesses, and the evidence includes thousands of documents, private diaries, telephone intercepts and films.
But numerous witnesses testified in closed sessions, reportedly for their own protection, and many electronic intercepts and documents are only available to the judges.
Garapon believes the chain of command has been particularly difficult to reconstruct because the military, the police and the militias often operated under different guises.
Lawyers at the court say there is another reason why the Belgrade authorities still withhold important documents: not to protect Milosevic but to shield the country from Bosnia's lawsuit against Belgrade at the International Court of Justice, seeking enormous damages for aggression and genocide.
The New York Times
--
Proof of genocide lacks 'smoking gun'
THE HAGUE The familiar morning mantra "Case No. 0254, the Prosecutor vs. Slobodan Milosevic" will not ring through Courtroom I at the UN war crimes tribunal for a few months.
The prosecution has rested its case, and Milosevic, the first modern head of state who has to answer charges of atrocities before international judges, has until June 8 to prepare his defense.
Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, said she was relieved that after 24 months, this portion of the trial was finally closed. She was certain of a conviction on all charges, but conceded that she had presented only circumstantial evidence, "no simple smoking gun," - no written order or letter signed by Milosevic - to support the gravest charge, genocide.
But then, few may have expected such proof from the former Serbian leader and Yugoslav president. He wrote down very little and went to extraordinary lengths to hide his hand in the three wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The Belgrade authorities have sanitized and cut crucial portions from the minutes of wartime meetings of the Supreme Defense Council, which Milosevic attended, an official close to the case said last week.
Officials in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, recently handed over the incomplete records after much international pressure. There was credible information, the court official said, that the complete records had contained instructions providing a link to killings and even genocide.
All the same, prosecutors have compiled the most detailed record known of the Milosevic era, reconstructing the methods and secret machinery they say Milosevic used for his plan to seize more territory for ethnic Serbs in a collapsing Yugoslavia.
Del Ponte said there was abundant evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia's Kosovo Province. "I believe we have proved genocide with many pieces of the puzzle," she said.
Legal experts agree that the evidence of war crimes is ample. Some, however, dispute whether the prosecution has proved that Milosevic was guilty of genocide in Bosnia. A finding of genocide requires proof that the accused intended to destroy a people or group, not just to kill many of its members.
"Intention of course is a subjective element, a difficult element," Del Ponte said. "We will fully demonstrate this intent at the end of the trial."
It has now become known that since well before the trial, a debate has raged among prosecutors over whether the Serbian-led campaign to expel and often kill non-Serbs would meet the legal definition of genocide.
Some argued that there was enough evidence to secure a conviction for war crimes and crimes against humanity and no need to take on the burden of demonstrating genocide.
"We had more than enough to prove that Milosevic created, instigated, aided and abetted great conflict and bloodshed and upheaval to stay in power," said a lawyer involved in the discussions. "Enough for a life sentence."
But Del Ponte and others on her team decided to charge Milosevic with two counts of genocide or complicity in genocide in Bosnia.
"I could not leave out the charges of genocide, based on what we knew," she said. But many questions still surround the issue of genocide. The judges must decide whether the large-scale persecution and killing of Bosnian Muslims, called "ethnic cleansing" by many, was a deliberate genocidal campaign.
"Ethnic cleansing can lead to genocide, but did it in Bosnia? I'm not sure," said Antoine Garapon, director of the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies in Paris, a research group that monitors the trial. "I am sure of the proof that Milosevic ordered ethnic cleansing."
Some lawyers note that the crime of genocide is often misunderstood and defined in political or humanitarian terms.
Tribunal staff and those monitoring the trial say that getting to this halfway point has been an ordeal. The scope of the indictment, linking allegations in three very different wars over nine years, was enormous.
Progress was hampered by Milosevic who, acting as his own lawyer, engaged in filibustering and frequently fell ill. A week ago, the presiding judge, Richard May, resigned because of illness.
Evaluating the strength and weaknesses of the prosecution case has its pitfalls, trial watchers say. There was an impressive array of about 300 witnesses, and the evidence includes thousands of documents, private diaries, telephone intercepts and films.
But numerous witnesses testified in closed sessions, reportedly for their own protection, and many electronic intercepts and documents are only available to the judges.
Garapon believes the chain of command has been particularly difficult to reconstruct because the military, the police and the militias often operated under different guises.
Lawyers at the court say there is another reason why the Belgrade authorities still withhold important documents: not to protect Milosevic but to shield the country from Bosnia's lawsuit against Belgrade at the International Court of Justice, seeking enormous damages for aggression and genocide.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Justices Agree to Evaluate Prison Policy Based on Race
March 2, 2004
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/politics/02SCOT.html
WASHINGTON, March 1 - The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a challenge to a California prison system policy that segregates inmates by race during their first 60 days of incarceration.
The state has defended the policy, and a federal appeals court has upheld it, as a sensible way to minimize interracial violence at the reception centers where inmates are housed while being screened for long-term placement. One purpose of the screening is to assess a new inmate's potential for violence.
During this 60-day period, inmates are assigned to two-person cells based on whether they are black, white, Asian or "other." Within those categories, the authorities also separate some by national or geographic origin. For example, Japanese and Chinese inmates are not housed together, neither are Laotians and Vietnamese, or Hispanics from Northern and Southern California. The segregation policy is also used for the first 60 days after an inmate is transferred from one prison to another. In all instances, however, areas of the prison other than the actual cells - the yard, dining hall and work and recreation areas - are not segregated.
The policy has been in effect for more than 25 years. Garrison S. Johnson, a black inmate convicted of murder, challenged it in 1997 by filing a federal lawsuit that he drafted himself. The lower federal courts dismissed the suit while permitting him to amend it with a lawyer's help. Proskauer Rose, a New York law firm with an office in Los Angeles, has been handling the case without charge for the past three years.
In the amended lawsuit, both the Federal District Court in Los Angeles and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, upheld the policy. In its ruling in February 2003, the Ninth Circuit said there was "clearly a common-sense connection" between using race for the initial assignment and reducing racial violence in the prison system.
"The housing policy does not provide any advantage or disadvantage to any particular race, and the objective, reducing violence among the inmates and against the staff, has nothing to do with race, but rather with inmate and staff safety," Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain wrote for a three-judge panel of the appeals court.
In the Supreme Court appeal, Johnson v. Gomez, No. 03-636, Mr. Johnson's lawyers argue that the Ninth Circuit applied the wrong legal standard, and that a government policy that makes distinctions on the basis of race has to meet a more searching test than that of common sense or reasonableness. All such policies are presumptively unconstitutional, they said.
"The decision below undermines a national imperative to eliminate racial discrimination," the appeal argues. It adds that though segregating inmates by race might be justified in response to an "extraordinary circumstance involving prison security," it should not be a routine part of administering a prison system with 100,000 inmates.
A Supreme Court decision in 1968, Lee v. Washington, prohibited segregation in the Alabama prison system. Though Mr. Johnson's lawyers invoked that precedent, the Ninth Circuit disregarded it on the ground that the court in 1968 was addressing a policy that permanently segregated the prison population into whites-only and blacks-only cellblocks. The California policy, by contrast, imposes only short-term segregation and "is limited to the dangers it seeks to alleviate," the appeals court said.
Rather than the "strict scrutiny" usually applied in race discrimination cases, the Ninth Circuit applied a more relaxed standard of review derived from a prison regulation case the Supreme Court decided in 1987. The decision in that case, Turner v. Safley, said that courts should generally uphold prison regulations that are "reasonably related to a legitimate penological interest." The connection between the regulation and the administrators' goal in issuing it must be a valid and rational one, the court said in that case.
In a separate development Monday, the court declined to act on the Sierra Club's motion to disqualify Justice Antonin Scalia from taking part in a case challenging Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to disclose information about his energy task force. The justice and the vice president took a hunting trip together in January, after the Supreme Court had accepted the case.
In a brief order today, the court said that "in accordance with its historic practice, the court refers the motion to recuse in this case to Justice Scalia." In other words, the court will not tell Justice Scalia what to do, and he remains free to make up his own mind on whether to participate in the case, Cheney v. United States District Court, No. 03-475.
--------
Trial Proceeds for Defendant in Oklahoma City Bombing
March 2, 2004
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/national/02NICH.html
MCALESTER, Okla., March 1 - Sweeping aside defense contentions of official misconduct, a state judge opened the trial of Terry L. Nichols on Monday in the deaths of 160 people killed in the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995.
But in ruling that jury selection could proceed, the judge, Steven Taylor of District Court, warned that any improper withholding of information by state or federal prosecutors would void the case. "There will not be a mistrial," Judge Taylor said. "There will be a dismissal, period."
Mr. Nichols, 48, in a gray jacket and white button-down shirt, sat between his lawyers looking somber and at times appearing to doze.
Judge Taylor also voiced some impatience with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is reviewing its handling of certain leads in the case. The defense says these point to white-supremacist gang members as possible accomplices of Timothy J. McVeigh, who was executed in 2001 for blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Building with a 4,000-pound truck bomb.
But the judge said, "It would be irresponsible for this court to shut down this trial today based on speculation and guesswork what the F.B.I. can come up with."
Mr. Nichols is already serving life without parole on a 1997 federal conviction for assisting Mr. McVeigh in the attack, laid to antigovernment hatred. An associate, Michael Fortier, who became a government witness, is serving 12 years for concealing the plot.
In all, 168 people were killed in the attack. Mr. Nichols is being tried for the deaths of those who did not work for the federal government. If convicted in the state trial, he could face the death penalty.
The case was moved to Judge Taylor's rural hometown of 18,000 people in Pittsburg County, 130 miles from Oklahoma City, to find more impartial jurors. Jury selection could take several weeks and the trial could last four to six months.
In an unusual 7 a.m. hearing called by the judge before potential jurors were questioned, one of Mr. Nichols's lawyers, Barbara Bergman, argued a motion for delay, contending that Mr. McVeigh had been in league with undisclosed others, that he framed Mr. Nichols and that material that might help the defense was not being turned over as required.
"Everywhere we turn we are being stymied by the federal government, your honor," Ms. Bergman told the court. "It's outrageous. Why is the federal government so afraid?"
Sandra H. Elliott, an assistant district attorney, denied that information had been improperly withheld. Ms. Elliott also said that no overt act to further any conspiracy had come to light on the part of any of 48 groups she said people had tried to implicate in the bombing.
But she said, "Whether or not anybody else is involved, we can prove Mr. Nichols is."
The Associated Press reported last week that the F.B.I. had turned up links, never made public, between Mr. McVeigh and a gang of bank robbers called the Aryan Republican Army. The articles said that blasting caps similar to those used in the bombing had been found in a gang hideout. They also reported that the alias of a gun dealer who the government said had been robbed by Mr. Nichols turned up on a driver's license in the gang's possession.
Ms. Bergman cited the articles in her motion for a delay. But Judge Taylor was not swayed. "I'm not going to grant a continuance with respect to A.P. stories," he said. "The court finds it speculative and guesswork."
Instead, he emphasized several times, he was relying on the repeated assurances of state and federal prosecutors that all the evidence that could potentially help the defense - known as Brady material - had been turned over. "That better be correct after nine years," he said.
But the judge also made it clear he would give the defense considerable leeway in questioning government witnesses.
"Some call a trial a search for truth," he said. "If the F.B.I. thinks it important to search for truth while we're conducting this trial, then they should cooperate with the search for truth in this courtroom."
He said he would compel such testimony if necessary. "If a witness refuses to answer and I direct an answer, the remedy will be to strike the testimony," he said. "There are other more extreme remedies."
Dr. Paul Heath, a psychologist who worked in the Murrah building and knew a third of the victims, said many Oklahomans saw the prosecution as a waste of time and money.
"They say, `Why do you need to go ahead with the trial even if he gets the death penalty?' " Dr. Heath said. "Well, if it was 58 members of your family, you'd have a different take on it."
--------
Jury Selection Begins in Trial Of Terry Nichols
Okla. Seeks Death Penalty For Role in 1995 Bombing
By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 2, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20790-2004Mar1.html
McALESTER, Okla., March 1 -- An Oklahoma state judge began questioning potential jurors behind closed doors Monday for the state murder trial of Terry Lynn Nichols, who is already serving a life sentence in federal prison for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Judge Steven Taylor, prosecutors and defense lawyers quizzed prospective jurors individually about their knowledge of Nichols's involvement in the bombing of the Edward P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people. Nichols has already been convicted in federal court in connection with the bombing, and jurors were asked whether they could put that knowledge aside and weigh the evidence in this new trial impartially. For some, the answer was no.
About 160 jurors were called, and only 34 were questioned Monday. Jury selection could take two weeks.
"I told them I had already formed an opinion about his guilt," Charles Battles, 55, a stockyard worker, said in an interview after he was dismissed from the jury pool. Battles said that he was aware Nichols had been convicted in federal court and that he told the judge he could not be swayed in his belief about Nichols's guilt.
Another dismissed juror, Jeffrey Duane Adams, 41, said he also told Taylor that he would approach the case with a presumption of guilt. "He was found guilty in federal court. They asked me three or four times if I could consider the evidence just in this case. I said no," Adams said.
Nichols, 48, was convicted in 1997 in U.S. District Court in Denver and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in the deaths of the eight federal law enforcement officials killed in the blast. His convicted co-conspirator, Timothy J. McVeigh, was executed in 2001. Nichols, who was spared the death penalty in the federal trial, is being tried for the other 161 deaths, which include that of an unborn child. The state is seeking the death penalty.
A vast majority of the Oklahoma public views the state trial as a waste of money, and legal experts question whether Nichols can get a fair trial in a state whose residents still have vivid memories of the attack. On Monday, when the judge asked the first group of potential jurors in open court how many had heard about the case, every hand went up. "The fact that all of you have heard about this case will be the basis for a lot of questions," he said. "Can you set aside what you saw and heard?"
Earlier in the day, Taylor denied a request by Nichols's defense team to delay the trial while the FBI completes its review of old evidence in the case that could shed light on whether there were others involved in the bombing. But the judge warned that he would dismiss all charges against Nichols if it became known that either the state or the federal government withheld evidence that could be used to show Nichols's innocence.
Nichols was not in Oklahoma City the day of the blast, April 19, 1995. Defense lawyers in the federal case, as well as in this state case, have long contended that McVeigh had other accomplices and that the federal government withheld evidence that did not fit its theory of the crime. Prosecutors maintain that McVeigh and Nichols, fueled by a hatred of the government, conspired to blow up the eight-story federal building and spent months meticulously gathering the components to build the two-ton truck bomb. On Friday, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III ordered a review of documents that might show a connection between McVeigh and band of white supremacist bank robbers, and their connection to an Arkansas gun dealer who figured in the federal case.
"It's inexcusable that this has not surfaced before," said Michael Tigar, Nichols's attorney in the federal trial. "This information was clearly central to Terry's defense. . . . There should be an independent OIG [Office of Inspector General] investigation."
Defense lawyer Barbara Bergman argued Monday that Nichols's attorneys have been stymied "at every turn" by the federal government in their efforts to get all the documents related to the case. "Whether or not other people were involved does not negate Mr. Nichols's guilt," responded state prosecutor Sandra Elliott.
But Bergman countered that in a capital case, it does matter, because if the defense can show that others were more culpable that Nichols, it would be a mitigating factor when jurors consider the death penalty.
--------
Court Leaves Up to Scalia a Recusal From Energy Case
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 2, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20858-2004Mar1.html
The Supreme Court issued its first collective statement related to the controversy surrounding Justice Antonin Scalia's off-the-court contacts with Vice President Cheney, announcing in a brief order yesterday that the justices will let Scalia decide by himself whether he should sit on a case in which the vice president is a named plaintiff.
The Sierra Club, which is seeking access to internal documents related to the energy policy task force that Cheney once headed, filed papers addressed to the entire court last week arguing that Scalia's January hunting trip with Cheney raised reasonable questions about the justice's impartiality in the case, and that he was therefore required by federal law to recuse.
"In accordance with its historic practice the court refers the motion to recuse in this case to Justice Scalia," was the court's one-sentence reply.
The announcement has no bearing on the merits of the Sierra Club's demand that Scalia recuse. But, issued in the name of the court, it signaled that Scalia is not alone in guarding the prerogative each justice enjoys to decide ethical issues.
Scalia has said publicly that the decision is up to him and that he sees no appearance of impropriety. Previously, the only comment on the matter from the court had come in a letter from Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, responding to inquiries from Democratic Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) and Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.). Rehnquist rebuffed the senators in language similar to yesterday's order.
Neither Scalia nor the court as a whole is required to say anything further before oral argument, which will take place in late April. Scalia's final decision may become clear only when he appears -- or, less likely, does not appear -- for the hearing.
However, Alan B. Morrison of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, who is representing the Sierra Club at the Supreme Court, said yesterday that if there is no reply by March 11, when the Sierra Club's brief is due, he will file additional motions seeking action on Scalia from the full court.
"We do not believe the statute allows Justice Scalia to have the final word on that," Morrison said.
Separately, the court announced yesterday that it will hear a California prison inmate's challenge to the state's policy of separating prisoners by race during the first 60 days after they arrive at a new correctional institution.
Garrison Johnson, who is African American, says the Constitution forbids the policy, according to which prisoners are assigned to cellmates of the same race or ethnicity while officials determine where to house them in the rest of the prison, which is not racially segregated.
Prison officials say the policy is not a form of malicious discrimination but an effort to forestall racial violence among inmates, and should thus be immune from the high level of scrutiny the court usually applies to race-based state policies.
But Johnson argues that the policy is based only on anecdotal evidence and not on any systematic proof that blacks and whites cannot live in cells together.
The state, Johnson's petition to the court said, is replacing "individualized treatment with gross stereotyping."
So far, both a federal district judge and the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit have rejected Johnson's claim. But Johnson's petition argues that the 9th Circuit's ruling conflicts with those of other appeals courts.
The case is Johnson v. California, No. 03-636. Oral argument will take place in the fall, with a decision due by July 2005.
Also yesterday, the court refused to hear an appeal by the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Texas-based Muslim charity whose assets were frozen by the Treasury Department in December 2001 because of its alleged connections to the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, an organization that has carried out terrorist bombings in Israel.
The Holy Land Foundation, which was established in 1989 as the Occupied Land Fund, described itself as "the largest Muslim charity in the United States." The foundation, which denies any links to Hamas, argued in court that the government's designation of it as a terrorist front was a violation of religious freedom.
Both a federal district judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected that argument, citing what the D.C. Circuit called "ample evidence" linking the foundation to Hamas.
-------- homeland security
U.S. Wants to Place Its Own Inspectors at Airports Abroad
March 2, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/politics/02BORD.html
WASHINGTON, March 2 - Domestic security officials plan to station American inspectors at a number of airports in Europe, Asia and elsewhere to look for terrorists who may be using fraudulent travel documents, officials said Monday.
The plan, still preliminary, is seen as one way of avoiding the kind of repeated flight cancellations that have disrupted travel between Europe and the United States in the last two months.
"Had there been a program like this in place, it may well not have been necessary to cancel flights at significant costs to the airlines," Robert C. Bonner, the commissioner of customs and border protection, said in an interview. "We would have had the opportunity to screen passengers who pose a terrorist threat."
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security have begun discussions with some foreign counterparts to determine whether they would agree to allow American inspectors at their airports to assist in screening passengers bound for the United States.
Airports in Amsterdam and Warsaw are considered possible starting points for the program, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Also under discussion are other hub airports commonly used by American-bound travelers, including Heathrow and Gatwick in England, Narita outside Tokyo, Charles de Gaulle in Paris, as well as the hubs in Frankfurt and Mexico City.
Six or seven American inspectors would most likely be posted at participating airports.
The plan, first reported Monday in The Wall Street Journal, would essentially revive a pilot program adopted in 2002, but would seek to establish an even sharper focus on stopping terrorists, Mr. Bonner said.
The 2002 program, run by what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Service, was credited with stopping nearly 2,800 people around the world who were trying to board flights for the United States with fraudulent travel documents or posed other telltale signs of trouble, officials said.
-------- police
FBI Failing to Seek Files for Defendants
By JOHN SOLOMON
Associated Press Writer
March 2, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-fbi-documents,0,3786594.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines
WASHINGTON -- In an oversight that could affect cases nationwide, the FBI hasn't routinely searched a special computer space where agents store investigative documents to see whether the materials should be sent to defense lawyers, Congress or special investigative bodies.
The existence of the unsearched "I-drive" computer files, brought to the attention of The Associated Press by concerned FBI agents, could give lawyers an avenue to reopen numerous cases to determine whether documents that could have aided the defense of criminal defendants were withheld.
The FBI is uncertain about the nature or breadth of the documents on the computer space and has asked its internal investigation unit, its inspection division, to determine how many documents on I-drives in FBI offices across the country did not make it into official case files, officials said Monday.
If a large number are found, a review would begin to determine whether they should have been turned over to defense lawyers, bodies like the Sept. 11 commission or Congress, officials said. FBI supervisors said they were unaware of the problem until it was brought to their attention by AP.
"The only official records system the FBI has is our paper records. At no time did we ever ask anyone to look at the I-drives," said Robert J. Garrity Jr., the FBI deputy assistant director in charge of records management.
"We'll correct whatever we need to, learn from it and make sure it doesn't happen again," he added.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday that concerns about FBI document production were raised during Director Robert Mueller's confirmation hearings before senators in 2001 and "there has been too little progress in fixing this problem."
"This is the information age. With the computer technology that is available, the FBI should be getting better and more efficient at this, and it is not," said Leahy, D-Vt. "This is a core investigational, prosecutorial and legal responsibility, and getting this problem fixed needs to be a top priority."
Garrity said the I-drive was created in 1996 and is used by agents to upload investigative documents like interview reports, investigative inserts and teletypes so their supervisors can approve putting them into the FBI's official case files, which are still in paper format.
He acknowledged that those documents that do not get into the FBI's official case files or its automated computer case system would not be searched for materials that should be turned over to defense lawyers or Congress.
Under a landmark Supreme Court case known as Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors and police are required to disclose all materials they possess that might help defense lawyers prove the innocence of clients.
Prosecutors operate under an honor system, and numerous times in recent years there have been prominent cases in which relevant or exculpatory documents haven't been produced, touching off legal battles.
Lawrence Barcella, a prominent Washington defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said the discovery of the FBI's unsearched computer storage space could affect current cases in which guilt or innocence is still at issue and past cases where questions of the fairness of sentences or credibility of witnesses might be impacted.
"Under criminal case law, the failure to disclose may well result in a defendant being denied a fair trial. So it doesn't matter if it was negligence or willful, if potentially exculpatory information was not produced," Barcella said.
Barcella said FBI agents have complained for years that they have inadequate computer systems, and that remains a problem despite recent improvements under FBI Director Robert Mueller.
The FBI acknowledged last week that some documents unearthed by AP for a story Wednesday about the Oklahoma City bombing were inexplicably never turned over to its own investigators or to lawyers for Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for the April 1995 attack.
The documents included at least one teletype that clearly mentioned McVeigh's name, yet were never produced to defense lawyers. And in 2001, FBI officials belatedly found about 4,000 pages of relevant documents that also never were turned over, prompting a one-month delay in McVeigh's execution.
The retired chief of the FBI's Oklahoma City investigation, Dan Defenbaugh, said he learned of the existence of the I-drive during the 2001 controversy and was surprised the FBI wasn't searching it for materials required to be turned over to defense lawyers.
"I did not know prior to 2001 that agents were storing documents on this I-drive and that it was not routinely being searched," Defenbaugh said. "There are a number of executives who I have talked to since then that were as dumbfounded as myself."
Defenbaugh said the failure to ascertain, search and recover documents from computer hard drives should be the responsibility of the FBI computer specialists, not the investigating agents.
"That's not our job. That is why we have computer specialists," he said.
Meanwhile, FBI officials are pushing implementation of their next-generation case management system which will give the bureau its first fully computerized document system as early as this summer.
The FBI is working with the National Archives and Records Administration to ensure the rollout is smooth and meets all the requirements of government record keeping.
When the system is fully implemented, FBI agents will be able to search all investigative records by computer to ensure none are missed for production to lawyers and Congress, officials said.
On the Net:
FBI: http://www.fbi.gov
-------- prisons / prisoners
U.S. Sends to Russia 7 Held at Guantanamo
Transfer Is Largest Involving Detainees
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 2, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20927-2004Mar1.html
MOSCOW, March 1 -- The United States has turned over to Russia for prosecution seven men who were held in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the largest such transfer of detainees since the war on terrorism began in 2001, officials from both countries said Monday.
The detainees were transported to Moscow on Saturday and incarcerated, officials said. Russian prosecutors charged all seven with serving as illegal mercenaries for allegedly fighting alongside the Taliban militia in Afghanistan.
The U.S. government said it handed over the men, who were not identified, after securing assurances from Russian officials that they would be "treated humanely." The transfer came three days after the State Department issued a report harshly critical of Russia's human rights record, concluding that "law enforcement personnel frequently engaged in torture, violence and other brutal or humiliating treatment and often did so with impunity."
Eight Russians were known to be held at Guantanamo. Neither U.S. nor Russian officials would say why one remained.
The mother of one of the detainees said her son told her in a letter that all of the prisoners were resisting their return, fearing that they would be treated far worse in their homeland than at Guantanamo. Amina Khasanova said she did not know whether her son, Aryat Vakhitov, 26, was among the transferees.
"If he had been released, that would be great," Khasanova, 68, said in a telephone interview from her home in Tatarstan, a heavily Muslim republic. "But if he's been transferred only to be put back in jail, I don't know how I will endure all this. He's already been through Russian jails. It's something terrible. . . . In his letter, he wrote that compared to Russian prison, Guantanamo was a health resort."
Tatyana Lokshina of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights monitor, said: "I don't think there's much of a chance of a fair trial. It's a question of whether they'll even make it to trial."
The U.S. government previously sent four prisoners to authorities in Saudi Arabia and one to Spain. Eighty-eight other detainees have been released to their own countries without further investigation.
U.S. authorities last month agreed to release five Britons. About 650 other people remain incarcerated at Guantanamo without trial as terrorism suspects.
Four of the Russians held at Guantanamo were from Tatarstan or Bashkortostan, another predominantly Muslim region; two were from Kabardino-Balkaria in the Caucasus; and two were from Siberia.
The mother of another detainee said she was informed that they were taken to a prison in Pyatigorsk, near Chechnya.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Ocean power techologies to harness Spanish waves
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
By Andrew Callus,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-02/s_13602.asp
LONDON, England - The stormy, ship-wrecking seas of the Bay of Biscay are poised to take on a more constructive role as the site of the world's first wave-driven power station on a commercial scale.
Wave power firm Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) said on Monday it had signed a deal with Spanish electricity utility Iberdrola for a pilot project involving 10 power-generating buoys. These will be placed about a half-mile off Spain's north coast, midway between Santander and Bilbao.
OPT has been ocean testing its kit since late 1997, and has a similar pilot scheme running off Hawaii with the support of the U.S. Navy.
OPT Chief Executive and founder George Taylor says his firm has market leadership in "ocean experience" in the youthful wave power industry.
Although both the Hawaiian and Spanish projects will generate a tiny 1.25 megawatts, Taylor expects to have a 100 megawatt wave farm in place by 2006 - helping bring his loss-making company into profit the same year.
"Spain is very likely to be the first commercial site," he said. "We have a great partner in Iberdrola, and European governments are strongly committed to increasing power from renewable sources."
The full-sized wave power farms will use a new generation of 500 kilowatt "PowerBuoys" four times the size of those OPT will use in its Spanish pilot scheme.
The buoys, anchored to the sea bed and floating beneath the surface, capture and convert wave energy into a controlled mechanical force that drives a generator, linked by an undersea cable to the shore.
A smart sensor optimizes power in differing wave conditions, and switches the generator off when the wave activity is too strong, to avoid damaging the equipment. Severe storms therefore mean downtime for the buoys, as do periods of flat calm.
However, OPT says the buoys still offer between 80 and 90 percent availability, comparable with conventional fossil fuel generators, and enjoy a key advantage over wind (30-45 percent) and solar (20-30 percent) power generation.
They take up less space per megawatt than either windfarms or conventional shore-based generators. Ocean Power believes the 100 megawatt plants will be able to produce at an operating cost of 3-4 cents per kilowatt hour, compared with 5-6 cents for wind.
Hawaii's fishermen have welcomed the buoys as fish attractors, Taylor said.
Taylor also has high hopes for starting a project off Japan, where marine engineering and construction firm Penta Ocean Construction is his partner and financial backer.
OPT became the world's first listed wave power firm last year, raising 38 million pounds at an October initial public offering (IPO) on London's Alternative Investment Market.
Its shares have not performed well, dropping from a peak of 130 pence after the IPO to stand at 95-1/2 pence on Monday.
Robin Batchelor, who runs the Merrill Lynch New Energy Technology Fund, is not a holder of the stock at present but is keeping a cautious eye on its progress.
"I'm a great fan of wave power, but at the moment you've really got to believe the technology will work," he said.
"After the IPO, OPT are one of the best financed wave power companies out there, and if they start to deliver some results, there's some potential," he said.
Despite surging interest in the renewables industry, wave power remains in its infancy, he warned.
"It's quite early days for anybody in the wave industry to start saying that they have a lead," he said. "The technology is very immature, but there is some good progress being made."
----
More alternative fuel vehicles seen in U.S. in 2004
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-02/s_13592.asp
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The number of vehicles in the United States that run on alternative fuels is expected to increase 7.3 percent this year from 2003.
A total of 547,904 vehicles that run on natural gas, corn-based ethanol, electricity or liquefied petroleum gases will be on the road this year, up from 510,805 last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said.
That's slower growth than the 8.4 increase from the 471,098 alternative-fueled vehicles in use from 2002 to 2003, said the Energy Department's analytical arm.
The five states that had the most alternative-fueled vehicles last year were California (77,761), Texas (55,820), New York (37,559), Oklahoma (23,336) and Georgia (17,912).
At the bottom of the list were Maine (417), Vermont (844), Rhode Island (936), West Virginia (1,098) and New Hampshire (1,218), EIA said.
The agency's numbers do not include hybrid vehicles that are fueled by a combination of electricity and traditional gasoline.
The Bush administration wants to provide more than $1 billion for research to develop cars and trucks that run on pollution-free hydrogen.
The White House hopes the vehicles can be readily available to consumers at an affordable price near the year 2020.
Environmentalists argue that is too long to wait, and instead want the government to boost vehicle mileage requirements to reduce U.S. dependence on oil imports.
-------- environment
Toxic Combination Common in Fish Impairs Motor Skills
CHAMPAIGN, Illinois, (ENS)
March 2, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2004/2004-03-02-09.asp#anchor8
The toxic effects of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and methylmercury in juvenile rats are greater when the two chemicals are combined than when the rats were exposed to either chemical alone, new research has shown. The two chemicals often occur in the same fish, especially in industrial areas.
The findings, published in the February issue of the journal "Toxicological Sciences," come from a study focusing on the effects of combined exposure of the two commonly found environmental contaminants on motor function driven by the cerebellum.
The pups of female rats that were exposed to a combination of PCBs and methylmercury slip and fall more often trying to maneuver on a rotating rod than do pups from non-exposed moms, scientists say. "Because people are exposed to these toxicants by eating fish taken from ecosystems where these chemicals accumulate, our findings suggest that we should seriously consider the possible impact of their additive toxic effects on human health," said Susan Schantz, a professor of veterinary biosciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
A study in February's issue of the "Journal of Pediatrics" found that exposure to methylmercury causes heart damage and impairs brain growth.
Previous laboratory studies had suggested that the two chemicals act together to impair nervous system function.
The new study, conducted as part of the doctoral dissertation by Schantz's graduate student Cindy Roegge, shows that motor skills were not significantly affected by methylmercury exposure alone, but when paired with PCBs the combined effect during development impacted the pups' skills in one of three motor tests.
Inorganic mercury enters the air from mining ore deposits, burning coal and waste, and from manufacturing plants. It enters the water or soil from natural deposits, disposal of wastes, and volcanic activity. Methylmercury may be formed in water and soil by bacteria. Methylmercury builds up in the tissues of fish, and larger, older fish tend to have the highest levels of mercury.
Once used as coolants and lubricants in transformers and other electrical equipment, as of 1977 PCBs were no longer manufactured in the United States. But they do not break down in the environment and last for a very long time. PCBs entered the air, water, and soil during their manufacture, use, and disposal; from accidental spills and leaks during their transport; and from leaks or fires in products containing PCBs.
PCBs can still be released to the environment from hazardous waste sites, illegal or improper disposal of industrial wastes and consumer products, leaks from old electrical transformers containing PCBs, and burning of some wastes in incinerators.
In the study, female rats were exposed to just PCBs or just methylmercury or to both chemicals, beginning four weeks before breeding and ending when their pups were weaned. None of the female rats showed signs of toxicity, said Schantz, who also is a professor in the Neuroscience Program and psychology department at Illinois.
Two months later, one male and female pup from each litter were tested for the next four weeks on their abilities to navigate vertical ropes, parallel bars and various speeds of rotating rods.
On the rotating rods the impact of exposure to both PCBs and methylmercury became clear. As the speed of the rods exceeded 25 rpm, the pups, regardless of sex, that were exposed to both toxicants during their mothers' pregnancies slipped significantly more often than their control counterparts. Exposure to either of the chemicals alone did not significantly impact performance.
The research was done for the federally funded FRIENDS Children's Environmental Health Center, a five-institution consortium based at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Illinois. Schantz is director of FRIENDS (Fox River Environment and Diet Study), which is studying the effects of exposure to toxicants in fish being eaten in large quantities by Laotian and Hmong refugees in Green Bay and Appleton, Wisconsin.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Israeli nuclear whistle-blower gives details of abduction in Europe
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Mar 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040302130925.z1szv2zo.html
Mordechai Vanunu, the whistle-blower jailed for exposing Israel's nuclear arsenal, told in a letter published Tuesday how he was drugged by intelligence agents after being lured to Italy by an American woman he met in London.
Vanunu, who is due to be freed next month after 18 years in prison, also vowed in the letter published by the Maariv daily that he had "no intention of apologising or regretting, of being taciturn or silent" after his release.
The former nuclear technician was kidnapped in Italy by agents from Israel's overseas Mossad agency in September 1986 after giving details about Israel's secret weapons programme to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper.
In the letter from prison, Vanunu detailed how he had met the unnamed American woman in central London who subsequently persuaded him to travel to Rome to visit her sister. He was driven from the airport to an apartment by a man who introduced himself as a friend of the sister.
"As soon as I entered the apartment I was assaulted by two men, who subsequently drugged me with shots," he said.
He was then driven to the Mediterranean coast from where he was transported back to Italy.
"In the yacht I was held handcuffed in a cell and chained to the bed for seven days, until we reached the shores of Israel, where I was turned over to the GSS" (General Security Services), he added.
"I paid and I am continuing to pay a heavy price for my faith and my way and, therefore, I will continue at any price and in any situation."
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said last week that Vanunu would be kept under supervision after his release on April 21.
Sharon accepted the attorney-general's position that Vanunu be "subjected to appropriate supervisory measures, in accordance with the law, in order to prevent him from perpetrating additional security offences", it said.
Israel has firmly adhered to a policy of "nuclear ambiguity", never confirming or denying it possesses nuclear weapons. But foreign experts believe the Jewish state holds at least 200 atomic warheads.
There was no immediate comment from the prison authority about how the letter came to be published.
--------
3 actions to help stop a nuclear relapse
Tue, 02 Mar 2004
From: Michael Mariotte <nirsnet@nirs.org>
Dear Friends: Enclosed is information about 3 actions you can take to help stop a nuclear power resurgence. The first is a reminder about actions for the 25th anniversary of Three Mile Island. The second is a simple step you can take to help our colleagues in Russia shut down aging and dangerous nuclear reactors there. The third is a call for a European-wide action on Chernobyl Day at the French and Finnish embassies (although there is certainly no reason this could not be done in the U.S. and other countries as well!). We hope you'll join in these actions!
Michael Mariotte
Nuclear Information and Resource Service Washington, DC
TMI 25th Anniversary Anti-Nuclear Days of Action Posters for the TMI 25th Anniversary Anti-Nuclear Days of Action and"buttons" to add to your website or email alerts are now available from NIRS or from www.besafenet.com/nuclear.htm
- Please send us any information about your group's events as soon as you can (date, location, etc.). Thanks. To include your information in the special edition of the Nuclear Monitor, we need your information by Monday March 8.
- The posters can be downloaded on legal size paper for handouts or posting. TMI Poster 1 has a picture of a mom/child in front of cooling towers, and TMI Poster 2 has a TMI Meltdown picture.You can add your local contact information at the bottom. Let us know if you want us to do that for you. Also, let us know if you can't use pdf and we can send it in html.
- The buttons can be added to your website or email alerts. There are 8 buttons to choose from (it may take a few seconds to download).It will link to the BESAFE website "Nuclear" page (www.besafenet.com/nuclear.htm)--it includes the posters, NIRS nuclear power plant maps, BE SAFE nuclear brochures, etc.
Please help spread the word on the Anti-Nuclear Week of Action by sending out the posters and buttons this week. Many thanks.
NIRS and BeSafe
Close Unsafe Russian Reactors
To sign the declaration below send an e-mail with you name and contact information to bodrov@sbor.net or visit the web site www.greenworld.org.ru (in English).
Declaration of non-governmental environmental organizations on the problem of power units of Leningrad and Kola Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs), which have reached their design lifetime limit
The oldest existing Chernobyl-type RBMK-1000 power unit of Leningrad NPP and a VVER-440 power unit of Kola NPP have reached their design lifetime expiration in 2003.
Political decisions about the lifetime extension of these reactors have been taken without the comprehensive analysis of social, ecological, economical and political consequences for the people living in the North-West Russia and the whole Baltic-Scandinavian region, without the state environmental examination prescribed by law. The participation of concerned public was not provided in the decision-making.
We, those who have signed this declaration, consider this as a violation of the Constitution, laws and international commitments of the Russian Federation. we demand:
To shut down reactors operated beyond their lifetime limit, because they create a higher probability of nuclear accidents. Further fate of these power units is to comply with the RF Regulation on the state environmental examination and to be based on the presumption of a potential environmental hazard from any economic activity involving them.
To develop the feasibility studies of power units decommissioning and possible alternative scenarios for the disposal of aged power units. These scenarios must foresee:
resolution of energy problems by energy saving, renewable sources and improved efficiency of combined heat-and-power plants operating in the North-West of Russia;
solution of social problems emerging during the decommissioning of power units;
solution of the problem of reliable long-term disposal (repository) of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste.
To provide the availability of the feasibility studies for the environmental community of Russia and neighboring countries, as it is prescribed by the "RF Regulation of the state environmental examination" "Regulation on the Assessment of Environmental Impact from the Planned Economic and Other Activities in the Russian Federation" and International (Espoo) "Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context".
To organize public hearings on the feasibility studies, as the form of public participation in decisions taken about the fate of old power units.
To carry put the state environmental examination of the feasibility studies on possible decommissioning alternatives for the aged power units in accordance with the Regulation on the state environmental examination.
To comply with legislative provisions about establishing and financing the decommissioning fund and making it transparent for the public.
To introduce the market system, which ensures the consumer's freedom of choosing the electric energy from a source, which agrees with the consumer's idea of ecological safety. We believe that the fulfillment of these demands is the implementation of right for public participation in the provisions for sustainable development of the North-West Russia as a part of the Baltic-Scandinavian Region.
1. Oleg Bodrov, NGO GREEN WORLD, Sosnovy Bor of Leningrad Oblast, St. Petersburg, Russia, phone/fax +7 81269 72991
2. Vladimir Chuprov, GREENPEACE Russia, energy department, Moscow Phone/fax +7095 2574116
3. Elena Kruglikova, Apatity Environmental Centre, Apatity, Murmansk region, Russia, phone/fax +7 81555 75553
4. Dmitry Strazhinsky, NGO PIM (Nature and Youth), Kirovsk, Murmansk region, Russia: +7 81531 55280
5. Igor Babanin, GREENPEACE Russia, St. Petersburg department, St. Petersburg, Russia, phone/fax:+7812 3521022
6. Gennady Shabarin, Information Agency Sustainable Development, St. Petersburg, Russia, phone: +7 812 1728597
7. Lydia Popova, Co-chairperson of the International Socio-Ecological Union, Director of the Centre for Nuclear Ecology and Energy Policy, Moscow, Russia, phone/fax: +7095131 70 12
8. Aleksey Yablokov, President of the Centre Ecological Policy of Russia, Moscow, tel. +7(095) 952 80 19
9. Gennady Mingazov, editor-in-chief of the Karelsky ecological newspaper "Green Leaf", tel. +7095 9494087
10. Andrey Kozlovich, leader of the Fund youth and the childhood "Ariston", Segezha, Kareliya, tel. +7 (81431) 50032
11. Olga Vysockaya, leader of the youth ecological society Eco-As, Ekonord Centre, Apatity, Murmansk region, Russia, tel./факс (81555) 79762
12. Mikhail Piskunov, Council Chairman of the "Centre for support of the Civil Initiative" Dimitrovgrad, Uliyanovskaya area, tel/fax (84235) 3-66-26, e-mail: csgi@vinf.ru
13. Michael Mariotte, Executive Director, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, 1424 16th Street NW, #404, Washington, DC 20035, 202-328-0002, nirsnet@nirs.org
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APPEAL BY THE WIENER PLATTFORM "Atomkraftfreie Zukunft"
INTERNATIONAL PROTEST RALLY in front of the FRENCH and FINNISH EMBASSIES
26th April 2004 / Chernobyl day! as part of a European-wide Campaign Day
You are requested to join in this campaign and hold a demonstration on 26th April 2004 in front of the French and Finnish embassies.
A prompt response regarding your participation would be appreciated!!!
Nuclear energy is going to be further developed in Europe.
The shock of Chernobyl and the still prevalent disastrous consequences of this catastrophe seem to have been forgotten.
The final disposal of atomic waste worldwide has still not been solved!!!
There are plans to build 28 new atomic reactors, including the completion of, as well as new, reactors in Eastern Europe.
The European pressurized water reactor ( EPR) was developed in the 1990s by Siemens and Framatome (now Areva).
In 2004 the French government wants to start building a new nuclear reactor. The Finnish government has also given the go-ahead for a new pressurized water reactor.
These are not "energy political" decisions, they are "industrial political" ones!
By this means the nuclear lobby is trying to bring the constantly declining use of its capacity back into equilibrium!
EUROPEAN-WIDE WITHDRAWAL FROM THE NUCLEAR ENERGY PROGRAM!!!
PLEASE SUPPORT US!!!
Wiener Plattform " Atomkraftfreie Zukunft"
Fehnerweg 16, A 2380 Perchtoldsdorf / Wien
e-mail: i.scherff.b.brauchinger@aon.at
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Galapagos fishers end protest in contested pact
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-02/s_13596.asp
QUITO, Ecuador - Fishers ended a week-long strike in Ecuador's Galapagos islands on Friday after the government agreed to review norms in a pact that upset conservationists trying to protect the archipelago's unique wildlife.
The fishermen seized Galapagos National Park headquarters and a scientific research station last week to demand more freedoms such as permission to use long-line fishing and sell fins from sharks accidentally caught in the islands.
The strike had environmentalists worried that Quito would bend to pressure and loosen norms they say are key to protect marine life like sea lions and turtles, in order to restore park patrols, some of which were blocked by the protests.
The islands are home to sea lions, iguanas, giant tortoises and birds.
On Friday, Environment Minister Cesar Narvaez signed a pact with fishermen to form a committee to review the norms and regulate long-line fishing in the islands, some 600 miles west of Ecuador's coast in the Pacific Ocean.
"The protests have been suspended. We have cleaned up the areas of the park where we were camping out," said Rogelio Guaycha, head of Galapagos' 1,000-strong fisher's union.
But environmentalists saw the accord as a victory for the fishermen and a defeat for a participatory decision-making scheme designed to give the islands' 18,000 residents - who live off fishing and tourism - a say in their surroundings. "A four-year process to map out fishing norms has, as a result, been erased by the work of a single committee, where no conservation groups will be represented," said Cecilia Falconi, representative in Quito for environmental lobby group WildAid.
"This shows there's no need to respect the law in this country, but rather go on strike instead," she said.
Fishermen have long sought greater freedoms in the islands. One of the problems is that they are catching less during the key lobster and sea cucumber seasons due to a population boom in the islands that has depleted these resources.
The islands, which inspired British naturalist Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, are a magnet for tourism to Ecuador. Environmentalists are encouraging fishermen to abandon fishing and take up tourism but locals complain that big Quito-based tour operators dominate the market.
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MoveOn.org to Counter Bush's Ad Blitz
March 2, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-MoveOn-Ads.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Democratic-leaning online group will run television commercials in 17 presidential battleground states starting Thursday to counter President Bush's multimillion-dollar advertising blitz that will begin the same day.
The MoveOn.org Voter Fund has been airing commercials assailing Bush for months in several swing states, but its $1.9 million effort will be its most far-reaching. The ads will ensure that there is a Democratic presence on the TV airwaves in key states as Bush begins to make his case for re-election.
John Kerry, the Democratic front-runner, is considering a modest response designed to put the White House on the defensive, advisers say, but the Democratic National Committee is waiting until there is a nominee before it starts running ads. That leaves outside groups like MoveOn, acting independently of the campaign, as the primary Democratic voice.
In most states, MoveOn will run a new ad that takes Bush to task for his economic policies, including overtime pay and outsourcing jobs. In others, the group will run a previously released spot that shows images of children toiling on a grocery line and in a tire factory coupled with the text, ``Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?''
``We're really stepping up our efforts to make sure our members' voices are heard,'' Wes Boyd, the group's founder, said Tuesday. ``We are trying to get these messages out about these fundamental issues.
Ads will run over five days in 67 media markets in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Boyd said the buy may be extended after the group sees how the political landscape looks next week.
``We're worried about being swamped with ads after Super Tuesday so we're going to do our best,'' he said.
Bush's campaign plans to spend a large part of its $100 million war chest on ads and will begin running a positive ad about leadership on Thursday on broadcast stations in 17 swing states and nationally on cable networks targeting its GOP base.
MoveOn started running anti-Bush ads in September and says it has raised $10 million for its advertising fund. The group has broadcast some of the election season's most critical TV commercials against the president, taking him to task for the Iraq war, the economy, job losses and prescription drug policies. The ads usually label the incumbent Republican a ``misleader.''
The group's most recent commercial showed a polygraph machine reacting as Bush was heard saying sentences such as ``Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program.'' It also hosted an ad contest for the best anti-Bush spot.
Two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs founded the group during the Clinton impeachment debate as an online petition urging Congress to censure him and move on to other business. It claims 2.3 million members nationwide.
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