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NUCLEAR
How a Trident missile mishap reportedly occurred
Black Market for Nuclear Weapons Technology Raises Concerns
Zambia Police Hold Two for Suspected Uranium Cache
UK report on generation costs.
New Chinese reactor starts up
Air Force plans to evaluate cleanup of depleted uranium
No pressure on Pakistan to give up nukes
India, Pakistan each call for recognition as nuclear powers
Iran postpones UN nuclear inspection mission
Japan Company Sold Atomic Plant to Libya
N.Korea Nuclear Program Older Than First Believed
US warns NKorea to stop exporting dangerous weapons
US does not expect nuclear talks to be disrupted
Missile Defense Still Uncertain
Pointed Questions on Missile Defense System
Russia proposes leasing reactors.
Nuclear Solutions Developing Nuclear Weapons Detection Technology
UN nuclear watchdog chief likely to meet Bush next week
Turf Wars with Wise Guys
Uranium levels at Nevada mine stir fears of water contamination
Davis-Besse woes rated among America's worst
Lawmakers seek facts in nuke incident
UN nuclear watchdog chief likely to meet Bush next week
MILITARY
Africa's child soldiers shellshocked like World War I troops: study
S. Korean parliament impeaches president
Divided S. Koreans Impeach President
South Korea Parliament Votes to Strip President of Powers
U.S. to Buy Anthrax Vaccine
Army Corps ignored warning on Halliburton
Democrat Says Pentagon Questions Estimates on Iraq
U.S. Auditors Criticize Halliburton Subsidiary
General Dynamics Agrees To Buy British Tank Maker
Pentagon awards 1.1 bln dollars in Iraq contracts
Iraqi police accused in killings
Hardline Shi'ites Denounce Iraq's New Constitution
U.S. Seeks Details on Israeli Withdrawal
Sanctions Against Syria Nearly Ready
NATO expansion will make Europe a safer place: NATO chief
My Hell in Camp X-Ray
Ex-Hill aide charged in spying for Iraq
Former U.S. Aide Accused of Working With Iraq
Too much U.S. foreign policy is unsupported
Panel in Camp Lejeune Water Probe Criticized
Democrats attack Bush for negative ad
For the Record Bush Exaggerates Kerry's Position on Intelligence Budget
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Senate Panel Agrees to Seek Federal Probe
U.S. Rail Agencies Tighten Security After Blasts in Spain
Budget worries Border Patrol
Ex-detainee alleges abuses at Guantanamo
Ex-Guantánamo Detainee Charges Beating
3 Afghan Youths Question U.S. Captivity
Bombs kill 192 in Spain
Madrid Train Blasts Kill at Least 190
ACTIVISTS
Police to Use Containment Pens to Handle Protest on March 20
Thousands Protest S. Korea Impeachment
Albert Einstein: Man of Imagination
------- NUCLEAR
How a Trident missile mishap reportedly occurred
Friday, March 12, 2004
Bremerton (WA) Sun-Link
http://www.thesunlink.com/redesign/2004-03-12/local/423493.shtml
During the offloading of a nuclear missile from the Trident submarine USS Georgia on Nov. 7, a hoist reportedly pulled the missile up into a ladder that punctured its nose cone.
March 12, 2004
At the conclusion of each patrol by a Trident submarine, the Navy offloads two of a sub's 24 nuclear missiles for inspection. During the offloading process, a protective casing is placed into a missile tube so that the nuclear missile is not exposed and can be lifted out by an overhead hoist.
During the November incident at Naval Submarine Base Bangor's explosives handling wharf, a ladder was mistakenly left in the missile tube of USS Georgia, according to several sources. The ladder is used to secure cables to the nuclear missile so it can be lifted up into the protective casing.
With the ladder in the missile tube, the missile was lifted up in the protective casing.
As the ladder ripped a hole into the nose cone, the lifting of the missile was stopped with the ladder inches from one of the nuclear warheads mounted under the nose cone.
Each warhead has a plutonium pit surrounded by conventional explosives. Had the ladder hit a warhead, it's unclear what would have happened next. It's possible that a non-nuclear explosion could have occurred, causing the radioactive plutonium to be released into the water of Hood Canal or the air.
----
Black Market for Nuclear Weapons Technology Raises Concerns
By Michael Kitchen
Mar 12, 2004
VOA News
http://english.epochtimes.com/news/4-3-12/20373.html
ISLAMABAD - The recent revelation of an international black market in nuclear weapons technology emanating from Pakistan has raised concern around the world. Nuclear weapons experts say the threat of a terrorist group building and detonating a nuclear bomb is very real. Concern over nuclear proliferation has risen following last month's confession by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan that he sold nuclear weapons plans and materials abroad.
The scale of this nuclear black market worries many observers, including experts at the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, which serves as a watchdog against the spread of nuclear weapons.
While Libya, Iran and North Korea have already been named in the scandal, Melissa Fleming, head of public affairs for the IAEA, says the agency is concerned that others, including terrorist groups, also may have purchased weapons technology. She says Dr. Khan's apparent sale of bomb specifications is especially troubling. "One of the most disturbing signs in Libya was blueprints for nuclear weapons," says Ms. Fleming "And should a non-state actor, a terrorist group, get their hands on that, and then somehow through a black market, also get ready-made nuclear material - this could be very dangerous."
Even without ready-made plans, building a nuclear bomb is within the reach of any group with enough time and money. Pakistani nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy says the science behind bomb building is no longer the secret it once was. "The physics of that is now fairly easy. It requires maybe a graduate student. This could be his PhD project," he says. "And then to put together the whole thing, it needs engineers, technologists - maybe a group of 15 or 20 would be fine for this. And it needs something like a year or two."
The main difficulty for terrorists seeking a nuclear weapon would involve finding bomb-grade uranium or plutonium. Fortunately, neither of those materials occurs naturally, and experts agree that manufacturing either would require a major industrial base that even some nations would find impossible.
But Dr. Hoodbhoy notes that plutonium and enriched uranium can be obtained either as a by-product of nuclear power plants or from scrapped nuclear missiles. He says the nations of the former Soviet Union are among the likely sources of bomb material. "I think that's a cause for genuine worry, because . those stocks exist in Russia and in ex-Soviet Union countries where there are many hundreds if not thousands of nuclear weapons that have been dumped," says Dr. Hoodbhoy.
How well Russia and other nuclear states are faring at keeping such material out of the wrong hands is hard to know for sure, as the IAEA's Ms. Fleming explains. "The good news is that cases in trafficking in nuclear material have been few and far between, and the last major case, was several years back," she says. "So that could be a sign of either we're not detecting any kind of trafficking or, more hopefully, that nuclear material is as it should be: very well secured."
In an effort to keep bomb material safe, the IAEA works with U.N. members to track suspected cases of proliferation. Ms. Fleming says this cooperation is very strong, but adds that there is still room for improvement. "While we do get some very information from intelligence agencies, we consistently let them know that we can be more effective the better and the quicker the information we get."
The international effort to safeguard weapons materials is not the only factor limiting the chance of a nuclear terror attack.
Environmental physicist Fred Singer says terror groups would find it very difficult to build a weapon small enough to smuggle easily into a target nation. "If you want to make a bomb that fits into a suitcase, you need to have a fairly high efficiency," he says. "That's more difficult than assembling a bomb that you could put into a truck."
As a result, he says, would-be bombers would have to build their weapon piece by piece near the target site, perhaps increasing the likelihood of their being discovered.
-------- africa
Zambia Police Hold Two for Suspected Uranium Cache
March 12, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-zambia-uranium.html
LUSAKA (Reuters) - Zambia has detained two men suspected of possessing a cache of what police believe could be bomb-grade uranium, police and the men's lawyer said on Friday.
Police said they were conducting tests with scientists at the country's best-equipped laboratory to determine the potency of the uranium.
The two men were arrested by state intelligence officers at the Lusaka Stock Exchange on February 16, when Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa had been due to tour it, said a senior police officer.
Francis Changufu and Andrew Milambo, both Zambians, had yet to be formally charged, their lawyer said.
``They have been in custody since their arrest and we are waiting for scientists to verify whether what they were found with is uranium,'' Kelvin Bwalya told Reuters.
He said the pair would appear in a high court in the capital Lusaka on Monday to apply for bail, after their initial bail bid in a lower court failed last week.
Under Zambian law, suspects should be charged within 48 hours of their arrest but Changufu and Milambo have been in police cells for more than three weeks without charge.
``They cannot be released on police bond because the case they have committed is very serious... We don't know the reasons why they had bomb-grade uranium and what they wanted to use it for,'' a police source said.
President Mwanawasa, who has pledged Zambia's support for U.S. and British efforts to fight international terrorism, canceled his trip to the exchange and sent a minister instead.
Lusaka division police chief Chendela Musonda said police were conducting laboratory tests on the substance with analysts at the University Teaching Hospital laboratory, the biggest multipurpose lab in the country.
TESTS
The police source said it was too early to link the two men with any extremist group and could not specify the quantity of purported uranium that was found.
``Our experts have been carrying out tests on the uranium since last week and we expect the process to be completed by the coming week,'' Musonda said.
Musonda said the Zambian laboratory analysts would seek opinions of British weapons experts to identify the substance.
``We will ask the British to help us to determine the potency of the uranium after our investigations are completed... we want to get concrete information whether the uranium is for dangerous weapons or it is just good for other energy uses,'' Musonda said.
Musonda said Changufu and Milambo would still face criminal charges if the substance was found to be uranium even below weapons grade because its possession in Zambia was illegal.
``Uranium is only supposed to be handled by authorized government experts,'' he said. ``They could be jailed for a minimum of 25 years, if found guilty, because this is a serious crime.'' Musonda did not say what charges they would face.
Musonda said although Zambia had no stocks of mined uranium, the Gwembe valley, 300km (190 miles) south of Lusaka, had plenty non-mined uranium.
``We have a lot of unexploited uranium in the Gwembe valley... we, however, suspect they could have got the uranium from the (Democratic Republic of) Congo,'' Musonda said.
-------- britain
UK report on generation costs.
12 March 2004
World Nuclear Association
Weekly Digest
http://www.world-nuclear.org/news/2004/wd_mar12.htm
A new report for the Royal Academy of Engineering looks at electricity generation costs from new plant in the UK on a more credible basis than hitherto. In particular it aims to develop "a robust approach to compare directly the costs of intermittent generation with more dependable sources of generation". This means adding the cost of standby capacity for wind, as well as carbon values up to £30 per tonne CO2 (£110/tC) for coal and gas.
Without the carbon increment, coal, nuclear and gas CCGT range 2.2-2.6 p/kWh and coal gasification IGCC is 3.2 p/kWh - all base-load plant. Adding the carbon value (up to 2.5 p) takes coal close to onshore wind (with back-up) at 5.4 p/kWh - offshore wind is 7.2 p/kWh, while nuclear remains at 2.3 p/kWh. Nuclear figures are based on a conservative £1150/kW (US$ 2100/kW) plant cost (including decommissioning). The report does not look at energy security, which looms as a major issue for UK in respect to natural gas, as an increasing proportion comes from Siberia.
Meanwhile a parliamentary Trade & Industry select committee set up after last year's blackouts has said that investment in replacing electricity network infrastructure needs to double, and an extra £1.5 billion needs to be found from retail customers over the next ten years. It accused the government regulator of being short-sighted for pursuing lower consumer prices at the expense of longer-term investment.
Report 10/3/04 - www.raeng.org.uk, Times 11/3/04.
-------- china
New Chinese reactor starts up
World Nuclear Association
Weekly Digest
12 March 2004
http://www.world-nuclear.org/news/2004/wd_mar12.htm
The second unit of Qinshan phase 2 project in Zhejiang province (Q-3) has been connected to the Chinese grid, after some delays in its completion.
Its 610 MWe twin, Qinshan-2, started up at the end of 2001. The units are locally-designed and constructed pressurised water reactors, scaled up from Qinshan-1 (279 MWe). Construction of the US$ 1.8 billion project started in 1996. Qinshan phase 3 project (units 4 and 5, each 665 MWe) used the CANDU 6 technology, with Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL) being the main contractor on a turnkey basis. Construction began in 1997. Unit 4 started up in 2002, unit 5 in 2003.
Qinshan phase 4 is proposed as two 1000 MWe reactors, possibly scaled up from phase 2 project, but more likely standardised with four other units likely to be ordered in 2005. Xinhua 11/3/04.
-------- depleted uranium
Air Force plans to evaluate cleanup of depleted uranium
MEETING SCHEDULED MARCH 25 IN PAHRUMP
March 12, 2004
Pahrump (Nevada) Valley Times
http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2004/03/12/news/nts.html
Nye County Department of Natural Resources and Federal Facilities Director Les Bradshaw reported on Monday officials from the United States Air Force will be in Pahrump at 6 p.m. March 25 to hold a public meeting at the Bob Ruud Community Center. The topic is the Air Force's intent to conduct an environmental assessment regarding the cleanup of depleted uranium targets on the nearby Nevada Test Site and Training Range.
In a summary published this week in the Federal Register, the depleted uranium came from 30-millimeter armor piercing incendiary rounds fired by A-10 pilots. The rounds contain "sub-caliber, high-density depleted uranium penetrators" at the test site and range.
The summary further states the assessment will be conducted in compliance with several environmental authorities and is being done to "determine the potential environmental impacts of removing targets formerly used by A-10 aircraft to test the weapon.
According to the information contained in the Federal Register, the Air Force will look at a number of potential disposal methods since the range of damage to targets varies.
The Pahrump meeting is one of three planned for later this month and is designed to receive public input "on alternatives, concerns, and issues to be addressed in the environmental assessment."
-------- india / pakistan
No pressure on Pakistan to give up nukes
March 12, 2004
By Anwar Iqbal
UPI South Asian Affairs Analyst
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040312-090425-5045r.htm
WASHINGTON, March 12 (UPI) -- No world power, including the United States, ever asked Pakistan to give up its nuclear option, not even after the current nuclear scandal, foreign policy experts told United Press International.
The experts, while reviewing the issues that might be discussed when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell arrives in Islamabad next week, said even during the visit there will be no pressure on Pakistan to roll back or cap its nuclear or missile programs.
They said the United States understands that Pakistan has its nuclear option because of India, which started the nuclear race in the Subcontinent. Until Pakistan's relations with India improve to an extent where it no longer feels threatened by its larger neighbor, Pakistan will retain its nuclear assets, the experts said.
"There never was any pressure on Pakistan to give up its nuclear program. It's the political opposition in Pakistan that thought so," said Michael Krepon, founding president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, Washington. "I don't foresee Pakistan giving up the nuclear option. It's not going to happen. What Pakistan must do is to control its nuclear materials, its equipment. No country has a worse record on this than Pakistan."
He was referring to the discovery last month that Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan was running a network of nuclear proliferators who sold nuclear secrets and technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
"If a country acquires the nuclear option, it has an obligation to be able to be responsible for that capability. Pakistan has not demonstrated that, and that's what world capitals are saying to Pakistan," said Krepon.
Robert Oakley, a former State Department coordinator for counterterrorism who also has served as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, said world powers, including the United States were "very pleased with what Pakistan is doing to control the damage" done by the network of nuclear proliferators. The question of Pakistan giving up its nuclear program was never raised, he added.
Pramit Mitra, a scholar with the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, said the United States was not asking Pakistan to give up the nuclear option because "they know that Pakistan will never do it. If you can work with Pakistan, why derail the cart?" he asked.
William Milam, another former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, says that despite the proliferation, the United States is not going to re-impose nuclear related sanctions on Pakistan that were removed after Pakistan joined the U.S.-led war on terrorism in 2001.
"A whole range of sanctions, we could re-apply, we are not about to do that," said Milam. "And it is not just because we want their support in the war against terrorism. Our relationship with Pakistan is much wider. We want India-Pakistan talks to move forward. Pakistan is a big country and an important Muslim country. We should have had a steadier relationship ... and I think this administration is trying to do that," Milam said.
"In Pakistan, Powell is most likely to focus on the fallout of the nuclear network," said Hussain Huqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, Washington. "He may personally ask President Musharraf to share in its entirety the intelligence that has been gained from the debriefing of Khan."
Mitra believes that "in closed door talks with Gen. Musharraf, Powell may express a lot of concern about Khan and how worried the U.S. administration is." He said that the two sides may also discuss a possible deal for getting Pakistan's cooperation in the hunt for Osama bin Laden in return for U.S. help to Islamabad in overcoming the nuclear scandal.
Oakley believes that besides the nuclear issue, Powell will also focus on cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the fight against terrorism. "The U.S. administration wants to see Afghanistan developing into stability rather than terrorism," he said.
Other issues likely to be discussed include Kashmir, relations between India and Pakistan, and U.S. cooperation in countering terrorism inside Pakistan, said Oakley. "They all interact. It's not just one issue or another."
Mitra disagreed with Powell, who says that the Bush administration has endorsed the pardon for Khan in exchange for the information he could provide about his network. "What possibly can they do now? Whatever they could give to Iran, Libya and North Korea, they have. They are not going to do it again."
--------
India, Pakistan each call for recognition as nuclear powers
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Mar 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040312142215.bumdmxr8.html
The foreign ministers of India and Pakistan each appealed for their countries to be fully accepted as nuclear powers, six years after the neighbours conducted back-to-back nuclear tests. Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said Friday that New Delhi became a "reluctant nuclear power" because of the world's "imperfect non-proliferation order".
He rejected suggestions that the 1998 nuclear tests carried out by his just-installed Hindu nationalist government were "purely a political act aimed at enhancing its status in the world by breaking into the exclusive nuclear club".
"In a world where weapons of mass destruction are still to be eliminated, nuclear weapons are sadly the ultimate guarantor of a nation's security," Sinha told a seminar in New Delhi.
Indian officials had said in 1998 that the nuclear deterrent was aimed at China -- not Pakistan, with which India has fought three wars and which carried out its own nuclear tests just days after India.
Pakistan's nuclear program is under the spotlight after top scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan publicly admitted in early February that he sold nuclear secrets abroad. Khan, considered a national hero, was pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri told a separate seminar Thursday in Islamabad that the world should recognise Pakistan, India -- and Israel -- as nuclear powers.
He called for changes in the international Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which restricts nuclear weapons to five states: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
"Some method should be found whether it is through the multilateral arrangements or any other method, if NPT cannot be amended," Kasuri said, according to the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.
Kasuri said the Pakistani government had never proliferated and would never do so as it was fully conscious of its international obligations.
But he said Pakistan "will never freeze or roll back" its nuclear program as it guaranteed national security.
The US imposed sanctions on India and Pakistan after their nuclear tests but lifted many of them when they joined the coalition against terrorism after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Israel has never acknowledged having a nuclear arsenal.
-------- iran
Iran postpones UN nuclear inspection mission
VIENNA (AFP)
Mar 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040312205812.g9h8e7vh.html
Iran has put off an inspection mission from the UN nuclear watchdog until the end of April, a diplomat close to the international agency said Friday, describing the move as "potentially a large problem in the verification process."
The Iranian ambassador to the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Pirooz Hosseini said earlier his country had put back the mission, scheduled to start this week, "due to the approach of the Iranian New Year." However, he had not given a new date.
But the postponement of more than a month has the IAEA thinking that if the Iranians "really had nothing to hide, this is fully against their interests," the diplomat said.
The diplomat said the decision was like giving countries such as the United States who accuse Iran of hiding a nuclear weapons program "a big pile of ammunition."
The postponement means that the IAEA inspectors will be in Iran "really only a month" ahead of a June board meeting that is to review the Iran situation, based on an IAEA report to be written in May.
The inspectors will have "not enough time" now to get a full report to the June board.
The diplomat said: "If the Iranians don't reconsider, this could be potentially a large problem in the verification process."
The IAEA, which verifies the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has since February 2003 been inspecting to determine whether Iran's nuclear program is peaceful, or devoted to secretly developing atomic weapons, as the United States has charged.
The diplomat said that maybe Iran "felt the agency's inspectors were coming too close to them or wanted to show some political muscle of their own to defy those countries casting strong-worded resolutions condemning them."
The delay comes as the watchdog IAEA is debating at a board of governors meeting in Vienna a resolution that criticizes Iran for hiding parts of its nuclear program.
IAEA officials refused to comment on the inspection mission.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi had threatened in Iran this week that the Islamic Republic would end cooperation with the IAEA unless the agency stopped being "influenced by the Americans".
Hosseini insisted that the delay in the inspection mission was not politically motivated.
He said that people will be out of their offices, since when the Iranian new
year begins next week "there are five or six days of official holiday and then schools are closed for 15 days and parents take off to be with their children."
But the diplomat close to the IAEA said "of course it's political", and added that "the delay in inspections will definitely slow down what the IAEA is trying to do."
The diplomat said the postponed inspection was "likely to have been crucial to major inspections of still open questions such as P-2 (centrifuges to enrich uranium that Iran failed to declare), how far this went, laser enrichment programs, and HEU (highly enriched uranium) programs."
The inspection was aimed at verifying Iran's "suspension of uranium enrichment and other parts of it," the diplomat said, referring to a voluntary suspension by Iran of the manufacture of potentially weapon-grade uranium which the IAEA wants widened to included related activities such a building centrigures.
-------- japan
Japan Company Sold Atomic Plant to Libya
Fri Mar 12, 2004
By GEORGE JAHN,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u;=/ap/20040312/ap_on_re_eu/nuclear_black_market_1
VIENNA, Austria - A Japanese company supplied Libya decades ago with a key piece of the technology needed to make nuclear weapons, and the Japanese government must have known about the transaction, diplomats told The Associated Press on Friday.
One diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the 1984 sale of
a uranium conversion plant as a "flagrant example" of the failure of export controls meant to keep such equipment away from rogue nations and terrorists.
Such plants are used in the process of enriching uranium that at lower levels can be used to generate power but at levels above 90 percent - or weapons grade - can be used in nuclear warheads.
The company was not named.
A report presented earlier this week to the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency mentioned a "pilot scale uranium conversion facility" ordered in 1984 by Libya but did not specify the country of origin.
Japan's top government spokesman, Yasuo Fukuda, said Tokyo was looking into the findings by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.
"We are conducting an investigation. But we can't discuss the details of our investigation due to our previous agreement with the IAEA not to disclose anything," Fukuda said.
If confirmed, the transaction would violate Tokyo's strict export controls and its long-standing policy against possessing or trading nuclear weapons. Japan was the target of the only atomic bomb attacks.
One of the diplomats said Japan's export controls were generally considered effective, meaning the government must have known about the sales.
"Had Japan reported such a deal to the IAEA earlier, that could have helped to get an earlier start on" investigations of the nuclear black market, which only became exposed in recent months, he told the AP on condition of anonymity.
Unlike other deals made by Libya, Iran and North Korea, the sale was apparently directly arranged with the Japanese instead of through middlemen linked to a loose international nuclear sales network headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the diplomat said.
But other countries were involved because the packing material originated from outside Japan, a diplomat said. The plant components were subsequently moved within Libya to keep them hidden before being taken out of the country.
Libya owned up in December to having programs for weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms, and pledged to scrap them.
Earlier this week, the IAEA board of governors passed a resolution praising Tripoli for its admission but criticizing it for its earlier nuclear weapons plans. Libya also signed an agreement with the IAEA opening its nuclear program to far-reaching agency inspections.
Progress on Libya has been rapid since it agreed to give up its programs for weapons of mass destruction. A ship left the country for the United States last weekend carrying 500 tons of cargo - the last of the equipment that Moammar Gadhafi's government used for its nuclear weapons program.
Among the most startling discoveries in Libya were blueprints of a nuclear warhead from Pakistan supplied by the black market network that also sold technology and know-how to Iran and North Korea.
The IAEA report also found that Libya processed minute quantities of plutonium that - in much larger amounts - are used in the cores of nuclear warheads.
Libya did not manage to make enriched uranium or achieve other substantial successes in efforts to make nuclear arms.
Japan was named earlier by investigators active in the probe into the black market network, which also extends from Pakistan to Dubai, Malaysia, South Korea, Switzerland, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and beyond - with potential ties to Syria, Turkey and Spain.
Investigators expect to complete the probe by June, eight months after U.S. officials confronted Pakistan with suspicions about Khan, setting into motion events that led the father of Islamabad's nuclear program to confess last month.
-------- korea
N.Korea Nuclear Program Older Than First Believed
Fri Mar 12, 2004
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=2&u=/nm/20040312/wl_nm/nuclear_usa_khan_dc
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Information obtained from accused Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan suggests North Korea began to pursue a highly enriched uranium program for nuclear weapons several years earlier than originally thought, U.S. officials said on Friday.
The officials, interviewed by Reuters, cited this disclosure as evidence that Pakistan has been cooperative in sharing with Washington the secrets of Khan's global network that sold nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
U.S. allegations about an HEU program are central to six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program and U.S. officials said they have used Khan's information to buttress their case with their negotiating partners.
But officials also said that five weeks after Khan confessed his deeds, the United States still has not had direct access to the disgraced scientist, who is known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear program.
Khan presumably could provide concrete answers to many key questions including whether he sold nuclear weapon designs to Iran, which claims its program is only peaceful.
Some U.S. sources said the Bush administration was unhappy with Pakistan's cooperation but a senior U.S. official said these reports are "highly exaggerated."
Asked if Islamabad's cooperation was sufficient, the senior official replied: "I think we think it is an ongoing process."
"We get regular briefings from the Pakistanis about what they are finding out and have been able to share this with other partners in the six-party talks" on the North's nuclear program, he said.
KHAN ACCESS
But a second senior official said: "We don't know what Khan has ... We've been told that it's coming."
"The Pakistanis are going to give us what they feel like giving us," a third U.S. source said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell is due to visit Pakistan as part of a South Asia trip next week and he is expected to discuss Khan and related proliferation issues with President Pervez Musharraf and other officials.
After saying he acted alone in nuclear trafficking, Khan was pardoned by Musharraf but remains in custody and apparently is being questioned by authorities.
One of Khan's recent revelations is that he began working with Pyongyang on an HEU program around 1991, not in the mid-1990s as officials had believed, two U.S. officials said.
Khan supplied the North "with equipment for centrifuges for over a decade ending in 2001," one senior official said. He declined to say if Khan provided documentary proof.
Another official said that just when Khan supplied actual centrifuges to Pyongyang remains unclear but there was "information exchange" and discussions about the "parameters of cooperation" on an HEU program as far back as 1991.
"It does suggest that the cooperation was somewhat earlier, that North Korea began HEU at an earlier date than might have been thought before," he said.
Pyongyang admits to producing plutonium, the other major fuel for nuclear weapons, but has denied the HEU program.
One U.S. official said the Khan information "has not changed our view that the year 2000 was the tipping point where Pyongyang went from an active R&D (research and development) program to production of a full scale HEU program."
--------
US warns NKorea to stop exporting dangerous weapons or face world action
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Mar 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040312175223.op74jir6.html
The United States warned North Korea Friday that it would face action from the international community if it does not stop exporting dangerous weapons and other illegal activities.
"If North Korea will not act, it will find the United States, its allies and other partners equally prepared to respond with measures that ensure North Korea cannot threaten our countries or international stability," said Mitchell Reiss, the department's director of policy planning.
Speaking at the Heritage Foundation, one of Washington's leading repositories of expertise on East Asia, Reiss said the United States was taking steps to enforce its laws against alleged narcotics trafficking and counterfeiting of US currency by the rogue state.
He said these steps were ongoing and unrelated to the current six-party negotiations -- which include North and South Korea, Japan, the United States, China and Russia -- to ease the nuclear standoff in North Korea.
"We are entitled to expect legal behaviour from all countries.
"With or without a denuclearization agreement, North Korea must cease its exports of dangerous weapons and the wide scope of its illegal activities," Reiss said.
Washington would also pursue with its so called proliferation security initiative, a programme to counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles, he said.
"We will insist on full accountability by the North Korean regime and its agents for their behaviour," Reiss said. "The choice, ultimately, is theirs."
If North Korea rises to the occasion and abandons its "self destructive and dangerous path, it can begin to work with the United States and the other nations in the nuclear talks to enable its diplomatic and economic integration into the global system.
The six party talks are due to resume in Beijing by the end of June after the last round in the Chinese capital in February fizzled out with only an agreement to establish working groups to study the problem.
The talks failed to resolve differences over the core US demand for the complete dismantling of the secretive Stalinist country's nuclear programmes.
North Korea called the US demand "criminal" and said progress was impossible because of "the fundamental difference between the DPRK and the US in their stands."
North Korea and the United States have been locked in the impasse since Washington accused the Stalinist state in October 2002 of having a program to enrich uranium in defiance of a 1994 anti-nuclear pact.
The United States considers the 1994 deal ruptured and suspended fuel oil shipments to North Korea.
North Korea has denied having an enriched uranium program but admits it has plutonium bombs.
Pyongyang has sought security guarantees and economic aid in return for denuclearization while Washington has insisted that a verifiable dismantling of the Stalinist state's nuclear program come first.
----
US does not expect nuclear talks to be disrupted by SKorean political crisis
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Mar 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040312201748.0lua7s0r.html
The United States said it does not expect the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis will be affected by South Korea's political turmoil, the State Department said Friday.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell and his South Korean counterpart Ban Ki-Moon spoke over the telephone Friday and they "reaffirmed to each other that we keep working together and cooperating as this unfolds in Korea," department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
Stressing that Washington did not want to interfere in South Korea's politics, Boucher said the two countries would "continue to work together on issues of mutual concern," including the six-party talks.
The talks, which include North and South Korea, Japan, the United States, China and Russia to ease the nuclear standoff in North Korea, are due to resume in Beijing by the end of June.
South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun was suspended from office on Friday following an unprecedented impeachment vote that triggered panic in financial markets and deepened political turmoil ahead of next month's general elections.
Mitchell Reiss, the US State Department's director of policy planning, said separately that parties discussing the Korean nuclear crisis were "working hard to prepare for the working groups and I expect this to go forward."
The most recent round of talks fizzled out last week in Beijing after four days, yielding no more than an agreement to establish working groups and to convene before June.
The talks failed to resolve differences over the core US demand for the complete dismantling of the secretive Stalinist country's nuclear programmes.
North Korea called the US demand "criminal" and said progress was impossible because of "the fundamental difference between the DPRK and the US in their stands."
North Korea and the United States have been locked in the impasse since Washington accused the Stalinist state in October 2002 of having a program to enrich uranium in defiance of a 1994 anti-nuclear pact. The United States considers the 1994 deal ruptured and suspended fuel oil shipments to North Korea.
North Korea has denied having an enriched uranium program but claims to have enough plutonium to build nuclear bombs.
Pyongyang has sought security guarantees and economic aid in return for denuclearization while Washington has said insisted that a verifiable dismantling of the Stalinist state's nuclear program come first.
-------- missile defense
Missile Defense Still Uncertain
Test Chief Unsure System Would Work on N. Korean Target
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51626-2004Mar11.html
With the Bush administration only several months away from fielding a national antimissile defense, the Pentagon's chief weapons evaluator told Congress yesterday he could not be sure that the system will be able to knock down North Korean missiles launched at the United States, the system's main initial purpose.
Under sharp questioning from Democratic senators troubled by soaring costs and a shortage of realistic testing, Thomas P. Christie said the system is not yet sufficiently developed to validate Pentagon computer models showing it would be effective.
"So at this time, we cannot be sure that the actual system would work against a real North Korean missile threat?" asked Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.).
"I would say that's true," replied Christie, the Pentagon's director of Operational Test and Evaluation.
Nonetheless, Adm. James O. Ellis Jr., who heads the U.S. Strategic Command, which will control the system, said he is "comfortable" with the test data he has seen, and declared the system will have definite -- if rudimentary -- military usefulness.
The disparate assessments at a contentious hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee underscored the extent to which the Bush administration is departing from traditional procedures for developing new weapons to get some kind of antimissile system in place.
Normally, a new weapon would undergo extensive operational testing before being fielded. Instead, the Pentagon plans to start deploying interceptor missiles in Alaska and California this summer, declare the system operational by September and progress toward increasingly realistic flight tests.
Pentagon officials testified yesterday that the urgency of the threat and the technological difficulties inherent in developing an antimissile system for defending the entire United States justify the exceptional approach. But Democratic lawmakers accused the administration of turning the traditional "fly-before-you-buy" standard on its head.
The system, designed to knock down warheads by launching ground-based missile interceptors into space, has flown eight intercept attempts since 1999, scoring five hits. But the tests have involved surrogate elements and other artificial conditions.
Production delays have forced a halt to flight testing since December 2002. Only one more intercept attempt is now planned before the system is due to become operational.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the committee's senior Democrat, questioned whether the program violates federal law, which requires major new weapons systems to be tested under combat-like conditions before going into mass production and being deployed. Such tests are supposed to be overseen by Christie, whose office was chartered by Congress to provide an independent assessment.
"If we don't demand realistic operational tests of this system now, when will we?" Levin asked. "How many more billions of dollars should we spend on this system prior to knowing whether it will really work against a real threat?"
Said Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.): "I cannot conceive of business executives, responsible corporate leaders, who would go to their board of directors or to their shareholders and say, 'Well, we've got this major new product we're going to bring out, and it's a breakthrough technology -- unproven, untried -- but we're already building this first site.' I would think realism would be the starting point, not the ending point, of test programs."
Such concerns appeared unlikely to halt or even slow Bush's plan to deploy the system that has strong Republican support. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the committee's chairman, cited several previous instances in which "urgent need" caused weapons still in development to be pressed into service.
The Pentagon's chief acquisition officer, Michael W. Wynne, said the missile defense program is "living within the law." Both he and Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, who heads the Missile Defense Agency, declared the testing adequate and said the system is "on track" for delivery this year, although both stressed its capability would be very limited at first.
Even Christie said he is satisfied with the cooperation he has been receiving from the Missile Defense Agency, noting that about 100 of his test personnel are "embedded" in the program influencing test plans.
--------
Pointed Questions on Missile Defense System
March 12, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/12/politics/12MISS.html
WASHINGTON, March 11 - As early as July, silos in Alaska could be filled with three-stage interceptors meant to destroy incoming ballistic missiles with the help of ground- and space-based sensors. It would be the first time the nation has had a system for destroying warheads aimed at American soil since the short-lived Safeguard program in the 1970's.
But for now, the system's credibility is under attack. With the Bush administration requesting $10.2 billion for missile defense in the 2005 fiscal year alone, officials on the project faced intense questioning at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday.
Democrats on the panel expressed doubt about the wisdom of moving ahead with a project so vast and complicated that it will not receive full operational testing until the first interceptors are placed on alert and the sensors are scanning the skies for targets.
"Standing up there and saying, this is a deployed system that will protect this country against a real threat stretches my imagination," said Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island.
Deploying a national missile defense system would fulfill a campaign pledge George W. Bush made in 2000 when he was running for president. In December 2002, President Bush called for a system by the end of this year.
Weapons experts outside the Pentagon have argued that there is no imminent threat that would justify the program's huge expenditures, up $1.2 billion from the previous year, and the deployment of a system whose capabilities are unknown. Some critics say they see only one thing on the horizon that could be driving such a breakneck schedule: a presidential election season.
During the hearing, missile defense officials said there had been no political influence in the timing of their program or in a decision to postpone a series of planned tests. But they conceded that missile defense was a program like no other - partly because it is so big and costly that building prototypes before fielding a final system would require an overwhelming financial investment.
"The idea of fly before buy is very difficult for this system," said Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, director of the Missile Defense Agency at the Pentagon, speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee. "This is fly as we buy."
The hearing came as the General Accounting Office released a report that contained criticisms of the program. The office said that while the program had addressed many earlier criticisms, none of the components of the system had been tested in "its deployed configuration."
The degree to which the senators accepted the approach varied largely along party lines, with Republicans - including the committee chairman, John W. Warner of Virginia - showing strong support and some Democrats scathing critiques.
The witnesses faced a stiff barrage from Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, who asked General Kadish, "Is there any relationship between the fact that the president made a decision to deploy in December of 2002, and shortly thereafter you decided to cancel all these tests?"
After General Kadish replied that there was not, Mr. Levin said, "That's a coincidence?" Finally the general said, "Senator, we didn't cancel those tests, we reoriented, and rescheduled them, put their objectives in different pots."
Others were less veiled in suggesting a political role.
"Every other piece of the time line has slipped," said Lisbeth Gronlund, co-director of the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization often at odds with administration policy. "The one thing that has remained constant is the deployment date. That's completely political."
A White House spokesman, Sean McCormack, said political pressure had played no role. "Decisions regarding deployment of these assets were based solely on the progress in developing missile defense technologies as well as on the threats we face," Mr. McCormack said.
In the hearing, Thomas P. Christie, director of the Pentagon's operational test and evaluation office, largely gave the missile defense agency positive grades, but pointed out that many of its tests are based on models, not on real flights.
"Model-based estimates will almost always contain uncertainties," Mr. Christie said.
In an interview Thursday, Mr. Christie's predecessor at the Pentagon, Philip E. Coyle, expressed far more doubt about the tests.
"Ever since the president made his decision, the priority of the program has been on deployment, not on understanding whether the system works," said Mr. Coyle, now a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information, a private research group. "Most people don't appreciate how complicated this system is, nor how much all of the tests so far have been artificially scripted to be successful."
-------- russia
Russia proposes leasing reactors.
World Nuclear Association
Weekly Digest
12 March 2004
http://www.world-nuclear.org/news/2004/wd_mar12.htm
For some years the concept of floating nuclear power plants based on a pair of Russian KLT-40 reactors - well-proven in Russian icebreakers - has been advanced. A new proposal is to lease such floating power plants to India, China, Indonesia and other SE Asian countries. The twin unit plants would produce 70 MWe of power plus substantial amounts of heat for desalination. Construction cost of each plant is put at US$ 180 million, to be paid off over eight years and the plants would then be returned to Russia for major servicing. NucNet news #56/04.
-------- terrorism
Nuclear Solutions Developing Advanced Portable Nuclear Weapons Detection Technology
March 12, 2004
BUSINESS WIRE
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040312005149&newsLang=en
WASHINGTON -- Nuclear Solutions, Inc., (OTCBB: NSOL) announced that it is developing an advanced detection device to detect and localize the presence of portable nuclear weapons and shielded nuclear materials.
"We are developing a new and unique technology to be integrated into a passive primary portal system that would screen trucks and shipping containers in real time for the presence of nuclear weapons useable materials such as Uranium(U-235) and Plutonium (Pu-239)." said, Patrick Herda, company CEO.
The radiation emitted from weapons grade Uranium and Plutonium is relatively weak and easy to shield. This makes identification with conventional radiation detectors unreliable and in some cases not possible at all.
The company is working on funding the prototype construction of a highly sensitive, portable, low cost and ruggedized detection device that responds to minute gravitational gradient anomalies. These disturbances are produced by high density nuclear materials such as Uranium and Plutonium. Unlike radiation, the force of gravity cannot be shielded and is a unique new concept for the detection of shielded nuclear weapons. The company is unaware of any other device with similar target price/performance and size.
In order to engage government support for this project, the company has submitted a white paper to the newly formed Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) and plans to submit a full proposal in response to their solicitation titled "Detection Systems for Radiological and Nuclear Countermeasure" (DSRNC BAA04-02) (More information available at http://www.hsarpabaa.com)
Disclaimer: A limited amount of funding is available under the HSARPA DSRNC program and is awarded on a competitive basis. There is no guarantee that we will receive funding for this program and that the program will be successful. The matters discussed in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. The actual future results of the Company could differ significantly from those statements. Factors that could adversely affect actual results and performance include, among others, the Company's limited operating history, dependence on key management, financing requirements, technical difficulties commercializing any projects, government regulation, technological change and competition. In any event, undue reliance should not be placed on any forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of this press release. Accordingly, reference should be made to the Company's periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
About Nuclear Solutions, Inc:
Nuclear Solutions, Inc. (OTCBB: NSOL) is dedicated to developing proprietary product technologies responding to the needs and opportunities of the 21st century in the areas of:
Nanotechnology:
Development of long-lived nuclear micro-power sources, based on three U.S. Patents, to power applications in the emerging field of Nanotechnology, Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, and the new generation of low power microelectronics.
Homeland Security & Defense:
Development of new technologies and services to detect shielded nuclear materials and nuclear devices.
Environmental Technology:
Development of a process to remediate tritiated water
Our goal is to provide the underlying technologies that will enable partner companies to offer new and improved products in these areas.
More information about Nuclear Solutions, Inc. may be found on its website, www.nuclearsolutions.com.
Contacts
Nuclear Solutions, Inc.
Patrick Herda,
202-787-1951
info@nuclearsolutions.com
-------- u.n.
UN nuclear watchdog chief likely to meet Bush next week
Saturday March 13
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040312/1/3ipta.html
UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei will fly to Washington next week for talks with US officials on strengthening non-proliferation measures.
"The director general will fly to Washington next week for working meetings with senior US government officials likely including US President Bush," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said Friday. "The purpose of the trip is to discuss current efforts to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime," he added.
ElBaradei is to leave Vienna Sunday and is expected to meet with Bush, as well as Bush's national security adviser Condeleeza Rice on Wednesday, sources close to the IAEA said.
A Western diplomat said both ElBaradei and Bush "have recently put forward proposals on how to fix the nuclear non-proliferation systemm."
"They will be looking at areas where their ideas meet and how to work together," the diplomat said.
ElBaradei's Washington trip will follow an IAEA board of governors meeting in Vienna this week that has reviewed progress in guaranteeing the peaceful nature of the Libyan and Iranian nuclear programs.
ElBaradei called at the Vienna board meeting for strengthening the international mandate to verify nuclear non-proliferation.
ElBaradei has urged countries to impose tougher export controls in the wake of reports of a Pakistani-run nuclear black market that supplied programs in Iran, Libya and North Korea.
He has also said the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which went into effect in 1970, needs updating in order to keep tighter control on possible atomic weapons development.
Bush said in a speech in February that the NPT regime needs to be strengthened.
Bush sought global support for tighter curbs on nuclear technology, taking aim at North Korea, Iran, and black-market sales by Pakistan's former top atomic expert Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Experts have said Iran is an example of a country which could be developing the technology to make atomic weapons, even while honoring the NPT by claiming its nuclear program is peaceful. Much of sensitive nuclear technology, such as enriching uranium, can have both civilian and military applications.
The IAEA said in a report issued last month ahead of the board meeting that Iran had failed to report possibly weapons-related atomic activities despite promising full disclosure and warned Tehran to make sure this didn't happen again.
Iran had not told the IAEA it had designs for sophisticated "P-2" centrifuges for enriching uranium nor that it had produced polonium-210, an element which could be used as a "neutron initiator (to start the chain reaction) in some designs of nuclear weapons," the report said.
This was despite Iran's claim last October that it had given the IAEA a full picture of its nuclear program.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
Turf Wars with Wise Guys
From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Date: Sat Mar 13, 2004
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 12th, 2004
To The Editor:
It is a sad state of affairs in America that the job of regulating our energy options has become a position where only doublespeak is permitted.
Mr. Stan Wise, president of the National Association of Regulatory Commissioners and a member of the Georgia Public Service Commission (and guest columnist in your paper on March 11th, 2004 - http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0304/11wise.html ), is very accomplished at the art of misrepresentation. I guess that's why his fellow regulators consider him to be the king of the tribe.
It is far sadder to think that our 4th Estate has stooped so low as to permit itself (time and again these days) to be used to spread such ridiculous statements as Mr. Wise has made in your paper.
But saddest of all is that policies based on his seemingly-wise opinions (for he starts with a number of intricate numbers, to show he's supposedly done his homework) will become ecological disasters for future Georgians.
You are being duped by the best, I'll credit you with that. But you are being duped, and badly.
Wise up!
Or Stan Wise will outwit you!
Mr. Wise's plans are for a nuclear future for Georgia. After attacking local Georgian environmentalists for seeking accreditation from a national organization "based in California", he closes his ridiculous justification of a nuclear future by speaking out of the complete opposite side of his mouth, saying that "turf wars" are to be avoided because the issues of "fuel diversity and green power" are "too important".
Let's set the record straight. First of all, nuclear power has never been cheap -- it's been subsidized by the ratepayers and taxpayers for decades. Second, green power is obtainable, and cheaply, by all Americans. If we all invest in it together, it will provide both needed employment AND, after a few years, all the cheap energy America needs. But we do need a national commitment to clean, green energy.
Inexpensive, reliable energy is the key to solving hundreds of problems in society, from heating the homes of the poor to providing street lighting, to allowing you to leave three or four televisions on throughout the house, and at least as many computers, with four-drive RAID systems for reliability, and UPS backup systems, and chargers for your electric toothbrushes, and on and on and on. The price of electricity in America is way, way too high. And there's just not nearly enough electricity for everything, like -- what about a switch to electric cars? I see them almost every day these days -- in California. But electricity prices are "through the roof" here, partly because of those pesky out-of-state interests, like Enron (and there were many others during the phony "energy crisis" we had here a few years ago, when prices really shot up).
But the truth is, the citizens of California were ripped off by in-state energy interests as well, such as PG&E, which operates Diablo Canyon's two reactors, and Southern California Edison, which operates California's other two commercial reactors. (Like Georgia, California has four commercial reactors located at two facilities.)
Our future has been stolen from us, and for what? For unreliable power, that's what! San Onofre's two reactors, the reactors nearest to where I live, like all reactors, are prone to instantaneous power outages, which last anywhere from days to months. Concentrating all your power sources in so few places is an accident waiting to happen in ANY industry, but particularly so in the nuclear industry, where you have the twin problems of it being a known and obvious terrorist target, and being, at the same time, the most lethal concentration of undestroyable carcinogenic filth anywhere except, of course, at another nuclear facility. (Nuclear waste can be generated but not destroyed by any known force, be it thermal, chemical, nuclear, laser, pressure, or whatever. Sure, there ARE several processes which can be used to reduce the volume of the waste a little, and Sure, there ARE several processes which can transmute SOME of the waste into less dangerous waste (at great cost and risk), but overall, there is NO solution to the problem of nuclear waste.)
Yucca Mountain, being almost as far away from Georgia as Wise's dreaded San Francisco, is strongly opposed by the people and governing officials of Nevada. The people who oppose Yucca Mountain in Nevada generally oppose nuclear power, too, but it's not a big issue for them because the nearby Colorado River supplies billions of kilowatts of clean energy to the state. But the elected officials who represent them nationally are in a bit of a pickle, so what do THEY say? They say the waste can be properly stored ON SITE at each nuclear power plant.
It can, indeed, be stored on site. But not safely. Not properly.
(It should be noted that Yucca Mountain is a terrible idea, and it can only be said that it's probably a better idea than any on-site storage system currently envisioned by any "expert". Getting the waste to Yucca Mountain is a disaster waiting to happen. Yucca Mountain should not be allowed to open, and probably won't, despite any claims by the nuclear industry (or its supporters like Mr. Wise) to the contrary.)
At my local plant, just in the last few years, we've had fires, explosions, more explosions, more fires, and about 100 other serious problems. Every incident that does come to light usually shows up at least a dozen other problems with management, with operations, with equipment, with attitude, with training, and so on, but the regulators -- the people who elected Stan Wise president of themselves -- do nothing. They allow the facility to regulate itself, even to the extent of refusing to investigate if the spokespeople lie to the press or not. (I have a registered letter I received from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on March 30th, 2002, which tates that "Statements made by the public affairs officer of a NRC licensee are not regulated activities. Therefore, the veracity of such statements will not be investigated by the NRC." That is a license to lie to the public, the press, and even to the regulators themselves.)
In addition, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has effectively kicked out all other regulatory agencies, which, in virtually all other industries, would normally provide some sort of overlap in the regulatory environment. For example, prior to the "crane drop incident" mentioned above, one cannot find a single record of any inspection of the facility by California's Crane inspection division of the state's OSHA. Yet they lift thousands of tons of the most dangerous stuff on earth there, and they've had a long history of dangerous close-calls.
That's what people like Stan Wise have given us.
One day, the spokesperson at the local nuke plant, on local television, declared that people opposed to nuclear power didn't understand the laws of physics. The exact same day, crane operators at the plant dropped an 80,000 lb crane about 80 feet, nearly killing at least one worker and scaring everyone else that was in the turbine room at the time. It was the same day they were bringing one of the reactors up to full power for the first time in about 6 months, because they had suffered an explosion and fire which bent the turbine and stopped the reactor. Most of the reasons they have had such problems are because, LIKE ALL NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS, they are actually short on operating revenue, and maintenance suffers as a result.
However, some of the accidents are clearly because the people working at nuclear plants are not properly trained and NOT PROPERLY REGULATED. Mr. Wise should take note of that.
I have several statements, sent to me by retired plant workers, that would chill you to the bone if you read them, about how lax the NRC is at San Onofre and other nuclear power plants. I have yet to see one Nuclear Regulatory Commission official make any attempt to actually answer serious technical questions I've asked.
Questions like, how do you plan to stop Al Queda? Here are 25 different scenarios terrorists might use to attack the plant. How do you respond? Mr. Wise simply chooses to attack the messenger, saying that those who have questioned nuclear power's safety after 9-11 are "injecting paranoia" into the debate. The hell we are, Mr. Wise! First of all, some of us have been saying for decades that just such a threat exists. There is documented proof the question had been asked by nuclear activists, but ignored by the government overseers prior to 9-11. Then suddenly they claim it was all a big surprise! And 911 days latter, on 3/11/04, Spain is hit by an attack so coordinated there should be little doubt that a nuclear facility could have been destroyed just as easily, but with a thousand times -- that is NOT an exaggeration, it might be even more -- the death toll.
Those of us who support a truly green energy solution are asking America to face reality -- BEFORE it's too late.
America SHOULD be very paranoid about what will happen when a terrorist crashes an airplane into a SPENT FUEL POOL or DRY STORAGE CASK, or uses one of the other dozens of tactics available to them to get through our defenses. They call these facilities "hardened" but anyone who knows a thing about terrorism knows that's ridiculous. When a small band of suicidal terrorists take over an operating nuclear reactor, the apologists for the nuclear industry will tell us they never imagined the attack could possibly have come the way it did. That's because the attackers have thousands of ways to attack, and we are not ready. As long as the plants are running, we CANNOT be ready. Spent fuel is the most hazardous stuff on earth, but it is the most hazardous when it is A) being created in the reactor, and then, B), fresh out of the reactor. It has to cool. The longer it cools, the more difficult a target it is from a terrorist point of view, PROVIDING it is stored safely, away from terrorists (not like Dry Cask Storage, which is an OPEN INVITATION to terrorism).
All nuclear reactors are always, while they operate, within milliseconds of meltdown. If the right combination of events occurs, a meltdown becomes inevitable.
No "green energy" can deliver that kind of terror, but nuclear energy does it every day, and one of these days, we'll lose one completely -- as the eve of the 25th anniversary of Three Mile Island approaches, we should not forget how lucky we all were that day -- it was NOTHING LIKE what could happen. Hundreds of thousands of dead, millions injured, is a possible result from one nuclear power accident.
All PWR (Pressurized Water Reactors) should have been immediately shut down for inspection (or, preferably, forever), after Davis-Besse's Reactor Pressure Vessel was discovered to have nearly corroded through. Instead, regulators, lap-dogs of the industry, allowed industry to inspect their reactors during the next refueling, which only happens about once every year and a half!
But even that wasn't good enough. Just a couple of weeks ago, one of the San Onofre reactors (PWRs like Davis-Besse) went into emergency shut down because it developed a corrosion-type leak. The company is not being very open about what exactly happened, and would not supply pictures to the press during the shutdown, for instance (and still haven't, as far as I know). Such an accident, in a reactor that supposedly was thoroughly inspected when it was finally shut down after the Davis-Besse discovery, is a sure sign that the lessons of Davis-Besse have not been heeded by the nuclear industry. And don't think for a minute that an accident at San Onofre would be "too far away" to kill many, many Georgians! It depends on the weather. Often, the most damaging effects occurs wherever it rains downwind of the reactor, which could be thousands of miles away.
Your water already has tritium and other hazardous chemicals, some radioactive, because of "research" reactors, commercial reactors, and military reactors and weapons facilities. Cancer is a leading cause of death everywhere in the world but especially in America. These are NOT isolated events! They are directly and conclusively connected! One causes the other.
When it comes to power production, nobody in power is acting much like an American these days, unless being an American now means being short-sighted, selfish, and irrational. Mr Wise calls for there to be no "hidden agenda" but we are all still waiting for Vice-President Dick Cheney to reveal who helped produce his pro-nuclear, anti-environment (that means "anti-health", okay?) national energy policy.
There are plenty of systems which can provide green energy,and they are exactly what all of America needs to invest in. It is a lie to say we need nuclear power. Nuclear power is dangerous, dirty, unreliable, and inefficient. It is a terrorist's target. All of its waste is a terrorist's target. Mother Nature and Professor Murphy (of "Murphy's Law") can do even more damage than even a skilled terrorist can do.
No one talks about the dangers of asteroid impacts on nuclear facilities, but we should. It will happen. Originally, people like Dr. Edward Teller, who loved nukes, wanted them put underground. He felt that was the ONLY logical place to put them! But economics won out, probably because of the "need" for military plutonium and uranium, and the plants were placed above ground, and he and everyone got used to it.
A mixture of different types of green power is by far the most reliable form of power in the world. But if we listen to experts like Stan Wise, we'll just never learn. And doing so will be fatal.
Sincerely,
Russell Hoffman Concerned Citizen Carlsbad, CA
Related web sites by this author:
Internet Glossary of Nuclear Terminology: http://www.animatedsoftware.com/hotwords/index.htm
Internet Glossary of Nuclear Power Plants: http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/nukelist.htm
Shut San Onofre!: http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/index.htm
--
[NucNews Editor's Note: This is the editorial to which Mr. Hoffman is responding]
Environmental lobby's efforts backfire
By STAN WISE
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
03/11/2004
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0304/11wise.html
Stan Wise is a member of the Georgia Public Service Commission and president of the National Association of Regulatory Commissioners.
Forum . Should Georgia build more nuclear plants?
Guest columns
In an attempt to shut down coal-fired power plants and make us feel bad about driving our SUVs, the environmental lobby would have us believe that smog and pollution are hitting record highs and shortening our lives.
Science tells us, however, that sulfur dioxide in metro Atlanta has decreased 75 percent since the 1970s, even though the population has more than doubled and the number of cars has quadrupled during this same period. Since 1990, Georgia Power Co. has decreased sulfur dioxide emissions by 42 percent and nitrogen oxide by 38 percent, while increasing power generation by 21 percent.
Although we have abundant coal resources and cleaner technologies available for its use in generating power, the environmental lobby has stymied attempts to expand and has all but eliminated any attempt to construct new, coal-fired electric generators. Nuclear power -- one of the cheapest, cleanest and safest ways to produce electricity and protect our environment -- has suffered the same fate. This industry was in the midst of a comeback until the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when environmentalists used the tragic events of that day to inject paranoia into the debate.
Unfortunately, the power industry now relies on one primary alternative -- natural gas. Almost every electric generating unit in this country that has gone on line in the past five years is fueled by natural gas. This overreliance on a single fuel source has caused prices for natural gas to fluctuate as much as 300 percent in recent years, leaving our more vulnerable residents at risk.
The latest energy source to be hijacked by the environmental lobby is green power, a term used to describe electricity produced by more environmentally friendly means such as solar, wind power, geothermal and biomass, and small hydroelectric sources.
This emerging source of energy provides the benefits of renewable resources, less air pollution, less fuel exploration and less dependence on foreign fuel. Energy derived from green sources is not specifically delivered to the customers who choose it, but to the power grid, which displaces power that would have otherwise been produced from traditional generating sources.
Only a few thousand customers have taken advantage of green power purchase plans offered by several electric membership cooperatives in our state. Georgia Power Co. has a plan before the Georgia Public Service Commission to initiate a similar program for its customers, but the environmental lobby is pushing its own agenda.
The current costs of producing green power are significantly greater than through traditional means. To encourage its use, some states subsidize these costs. The environmental lobby wants Georgia to follow this same misguided path.
Though I am committed to expanding the development and procurement of green energy, I will not ask ratepayers of Georgia to pay more so that a select few can feel good about what powers their light bulb. This fiscally conservative approach has served us well in Georgia, where we enjoy power rates far below the national average. Consumers who want to purchase green power do so at a premium so as not to put others at risk. Georgia Power is not permitted to make a profit on the program; excess earnings are used to expand the program or lower the cost.
Like the EMC providers, Georgia Power will use landfill gas to generate green energy. The environmental lobby is objecting to Georgia Power's plan because they do not consider it to be a "new source" and they are preoccupied with whether the program meets "Green-E" accreditation by the Center for Resource Solutions based in California.
The only criterion that was not met by this resource was the date the resource was developed. It didn't matter that the actual results of using the resource would accomplish every single environmental concern listed by the accreditation process; because it was not "new" it could not get accredited. There are many successful green energy programs across the country that are not accredited.
As an elected official, it is my duty to make decisions that are best for Georgia consumers. I applaud the efforts of the Green-E certification process and will vote to include certified contracts every time they make sense for Georgia.
However, I will not have the environmental lobby dictate that I must turn down an otherwise good program simply because a company in San Francisco has not recognized it. Efforts to develop new resources are admirable and worthwhile, but Georgia should not tie its hands to a single group's agenda. The issues of fuel diversity and green power are too important to be held hostage by turf wars and hidden agendas.
-------- nevada
Uranium levels at Nevada mine stir fears of water contamination
By SCOTT SONNER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 12, 2004
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2004/mar/12/031210272.html
RENO, Nev. (AP) - New tests show extremely high levels of uranium in groundwater beneath an abandoned northern Nevada copper mine, and federal regulators say more tests are needed to determine if nearby wells could be contaminated.
The Atlantic Richfield Co. has agreed to provide bottled water to at least 10 households with wells near the mine even though most private wells and all of the municipal wells met U.S. drinking water standards in the latest round of tests. The company is responsible for cleaning up the 3,500-acre former Anaconda mine site that has been mined since 1953.
Tests conducted in December found concentrations of uranium in a monitoring well at the mine at more than 200 times the Environmental Protection Agency's standard for public drinking water. Tests found the well had 7,280 micrograms of uranium compared with the legal limit of 30. One mine collection pond recorded 11,200 micrograms of uranium per liter. Uranium is considered a carcinogen.
Armed with the new data, the EPA, with added pressure from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is pushing the state to broaden its investigation into how far the pollution may have moved off the site bordering the small, rural community of Yerington.
Aides to Reid resumed talks this week with Gov. Kenny Guinn and the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection to explore whether the state should reverse its long-held opposition to declaring the mine a Superfund site.
"The site practically glows," said Tom Myers, executive director of the Reno-based watchdog group Great Basin Mine Watch.
"It's good to know that apparently the uranium has not yet made its way into Yerington's drinking water," he said. "But some of these (uranium) levels on the site are screaming. To me, this really increases the need for Superfund cleanup that goes as far as removing the contaminated soils and tailings away from the city and to a hazardous waste facility."
Superfund status would put EPA in charge of the cleanup and potentially make additional federal money available.
Of the 29 wells sampled outside the mine property, eight had uranium concentrations exceeding 30 micrograms - mostly in a residential area just to the north. The highest reading was 108 micrograms. Three wells had levels from 33 to 37.
Bureau of Land Management and EPA officials said the new tests confirm uranium still poses threats at the mine.
"This data says the ponds probably leaked processing material that had concentrated uranium in it. ... and that it got into the groundwater. The question is how far in the groundwater has it gone?" said Jim Sickles, a remedial project manager for EPA's regional office in San Francisco.
"We may have caught it before it went very far. That is going to be part of the additional investigation," he said.
Arco officials said the new data does not show any direct connection between uranium on the mine site and in the private wells.
"I don't think we have any evidence right now that the uranium got off the site," Arco environmental manager Dan Ferriter said Friday. He said the company was providing the bottled water as a precaution
Eight of the 10 households with elevated uranium levels have accepted the bottled water, he said.
Earle Dixon, a BLM environmental protection specialist, said there's not enough data to determine if there is "a direct cause and effect relationship between the mine and the wells." But he said the reading of 108 micrograms was a concern and reason to do more testing.
State Environmental Protection Department Administrator Allen Biaggi agreed the reading of 108 "sticks out like a sore thumb" because other wells nearby have much lower levels.
Arco and state officials think the uranium in the private wells most likely comes from naturally occurring uranium ore in the earth.
The state and Arco agreed to the tests in October after the discovery of documents that showed Anaconda considered producing yellowcake uranium at the site in the 1970s because of high radiation levels recorded in evaporation ponds as a byproduct of leaching copper from the ore. The ponds did not have the modern liners used today to keep contaminants from seeping through the soil into the groundwater.
On the Net:
Nevada Division of Environmental Protection: http://ndep.nv.gov/yerington/MINESITE.htm
-------- ohio
Davis-Besse woes rated among America's worst
By TOM HENRY
TOLEDO BLADE STAFF WRITER
Friday, March 12, 2004
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040312/NEWS17/103120128/-1/NEWS
WASHINGTON - Former President Jimmy Carter's point man at the scene of the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979 yesterday said he ranks the near-rupture of Davis-Besse's reactor head in 2002 as "the second most important event in the history of [U.S.] nuclear safety."
Harold Denton, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's nuclear reactor regulation chief in 1979, ranked the 1985 Davis-Besse shutdown because of reactor coolant as the third worst safety failure at any of the nation's 103 nuclear plants.
Mr. Denton, credited with helping a troubled nation make sense of the accident at Three Mile Island on March 28, 1979, appeared on countless television newscasts on behalf of Mr. Carter after he arrived on the scene on the crisis' third day.
Concern over the situation at the plant along the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pa., was so high at the time that federal officials - admittedly unsure themselves what was happening and often unable to get through to key people because of jammed phone lines - feared chaos could have ensued.
Now retired and a private nuclear consultant in Knoxville, Tenn., Mr. Denton yesterday became the latest former or current NRC official to put Davis-Besse's safety lapses into a national context with Three Mile Island.
"If you had asked me a couple of years ago, I would have said the demons of Three Mile Island had been exorcised. But you can't quite say that today because of Davis-Besse," Mr. Denton told about 1,300 people from 21 countries attending the NRC's 16th annual Regulatory Information Conference at the Capitol Hilton here.
"I would rank [Davis-Besse's reactor head corrosion] the second-most important event in the history of [U.S.] nuclear safety. And the third also would be at Davis-Besse, for the 1985 loss-of-feedwater event there," he said.
FirstEnergy Corp., which got authorization Monday to restart Davis-Besse, expects to be generating electricity at the plant near Oak Harbor next week for the first time in more than two years, said Richard Wilkins, company spokesman. Nuclear reactors need to operate at 15 percent or greater power to generate electricity.
FirstEnergy got Davis-Besse's reactor running at 1:42 p.m. yesterday for the first time since it had been shut down Feb. 16, 2002.
Prior to that, the utility had been diluting the reactor's boron concentrate enough for the fission process to resume. It is taking a slow, conservative approach while an enhanced NRC inspection team performs heightened evaluations, Mr. Wilkins said.
The company plans to stop at various intervals before taking the reactor back to full power. Full power capacity won't likely be achieved for at least a week after the point in which electricity starts being generated again, he said.
The two-year shutdown at Davis-Besse has cost FirstEnergy more than $605 million for a new reactor lid, other new equipment, repairs, and replacement power.
NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan, Jr. yesterday urged nuclear executives to remember their industry is "only as strong as its weakest members."
"Unfortunately, there are some who get themselves in trouble with us and with the industry. Obviously, Davis-Besse is the poster child for this," Mr. McGaffigan told conference attendees.
He cited a recent article in which Alex Marion, the Nuclear Energy Institute 's engineering director, was quoted as saying that the industry itself was taken by surprise by the problems at Davis-Besse because it "never expected anybody to ignore the obvious for so long."
"I couldn't agree more with Mr. Marion," Mr. McGaffigan said. "... You have to make sure complacency is rooted out of your industry."
NRC Commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield ranked implementation of lessons learned from the Davis-Besse safety failures as sixth among what he sees as the NRC' s top eight nationwide priorities for 2004.
"When you look at the past history of this agency, we do a great job of putting together Lessons Learned Task Forces," Mr. Merrifield said. "We do not do a good job of follow-up."
Tom Henry can be reached at thenry@theblade.com or 419-724-6079. For earlier stories on Davis-Besse, go to www.toledoblade.com/davisbesse.
-------- washington
Lawmakers seek facts in nuke incident
Reps. Norm Dicks and Jay Insleee want a full briefing from the Navy next week.
Chris Barron
Bremerton (WA) Sun Staff
March 12, 2004
http://www.thesunlink.com/redesign/2004-03-12/local/423492.shtml
The Navy's continuing refusal to discuss the serious mishandling of a nuclear missile at Bangor in November has angered the region's two congressmen, who have demanded a full briefing about the incident next week. U.S. Reps. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, and Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, said Thursday that the Navy should be more open and forthright in acknowledging serious mishaps involving the handling of nuclear weapons.
"I don't think questions (about the incident) were answered, and answers that were provided were very general and unspecific," Dicks said after viewing answers sent to The Sun on Thursday by the Navy.
The answers, sent in response to a series of questions from The Sun about the incident, failed even to acknowledge that an incident had taken place.
"I'm determined to have a briefing and find out what the facts are ...," Dicks said. "I want to have a full understanding of what happened.
"I always think we're better off in society if we have a good knowledge and understanding of what happened. If there was a mistake made, I don't think it should be covered up."
According to a posting this month on a military-related Web site and a growing number of other sources who have requested anonymity, the November incident involved the nose cone of a nuclear-armed Trident C-4 missile being punctured as it was being offloaded from a submarine at Bangor.
A ladder mistakenly left in the missile tube on the submarine USS Georgia's tore a 9-inch hole in the missile's nose cone and came within inches of hitting a nuclear warhead, sources said.
The incident ultimately led to the dismissal of four top officers at Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific, which stores and handles nuclear missiles and warheads at Naval Submarine Base Bangor.
The Navy said national security requirements prevent it from discussing operations at its nuclear weapons facilities, but added no weapons-handling incidents at the base have ever "threatened the safety of the base, the local population or the environment."
Inslee said it's that very population that deserves answers and reassurances from the Navy that safety is its top concern and that no danger exists.
"I am very troubled by the circumstances surrounding the reported mishap at the Bangor facility," Inslee said. "The safety of the residents and employees is of the utmost importance when moving nuclear weapons."
Inslee added, "We're going to go into considerable detail with the Navy to make sure they're going to the Nth degree for safety."
Dicks and Inslee are scheduled next week to meet with Rear Adm. Charles Young, director of the Navy's Strategic Systems Programs, which oversees the service's nuclear weapons facilities.
While the Navy didn't acknowledge -- or deny -- Thursday that the November mishandling incident happened, Pat Sims, Strategic Systems Programs spokeswoman, said the likelihood of a warhead exploding during weapons handling is remote.
"Warheads in the U.S. inventory are designed to be extremely robust," she said. "During development they are tested in a wide range of extreme environments, far more severe than those encountered during weapons handling operations."
Because the incident didn't involve an explosion or a release of contaminants, the Navy didn't report it to local emergency management officials.
Phyllis Mann, director of Kitsap County Department of Emergency Management, didn't have a problem with that. She said the Navy followed proper protocols in not notifying her agency.
"They would have to notify us if there was imminent danger, but it doesn't appear in this case that there was," Mann said.
Mann, who has received nuclear training by the Navy, said her agency and the Navy have trained for such an incident at Bangor. And she's confident the Navy would have notified her had a warhead been struck.
Following the November mishandling incident, Bangor's SWFPAC failed a weeklong nuclear inspection.
A few days later, Capt. Keith Lyles was relieved of command. Since then, Lyles' top two officers -- Cmdr. Phillip Jackson, executive officer, and Cmdr. Marshall Millett, weapons officer -- also were reportedly reassigned.
Other sailors involved in the mishap are facing courts-martial or other disciplinary action.
Inslee said the Navy's removal of its top officers shows it took the incident seriously.
"The Navy appears to have understood the severity of this due to their personnel decisions," he said. "Those are significant decisions."
The Navy came closest to acknowledging missile-handling procedures were violated in its explanation of why the SWFPAC officers were removed.
"Strategic weapons facilities use very detailed procedures to which we require strict compliance," Sims said. "Even the smallest deviations from procedure are not tolerated. We take these issues very seriously and take rapid and thorough action to retrain and rectify the individuals involved before allowing them to return to work.
"We hold leadership responsible for the effectiveness of training and certification."
Following the November missile incident, the Navy shut down missile handling operations at SWFPAC for nearly nine weeks, according to the Web site posting about the incident. The Navy said a halt in the operations at SWFPAC didn't hinder the mission of its nuclear-powered subs.
Walter Fitzpatrick, a former Navy officer whose career was ended by a court-martial and now spends much of his time working for reforms in the military justice system, was the first to publicly describe the incident on the Web site "The JAG Hunter."
He based the description on information provided by others, but would not name them.
"People can't come forward when they know something bad has happened," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "If you come out and report something like that you stand in jeopardy of court-martial."
Reach reporter Chris Barron at (360) 792-9228 or at cbarron@thesunlink.com.
-------- us politics
UN nuclear watchdog chief likely to meet Bush next week
VIENNA (AFP)
Mar 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040312150127.llmyi2fg.html
UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei will fly to Washington next week for talks with US officials, "likely including US President (George W). Bush", on strengthening non-proliferation measures, an IAEA spokesman said Friday.
"The director general will fly to Washington next week for working meetings with senior US government officials likely including US President Bush," International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said. "The purpose of the trip is to discuss current efforts to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime."
ElBaradei is to leave Vienna Sunday and is expected to meet with Bush, as well as Bush's national security adviser Condeleeza Rice on Wednesday, sources close to the IAEA said.
A Western diplomat said both ElBaradei and Bush "have recently put forward proposals on how to fix the nuclear non-proliferation systemm."
"They will be looking at areas where their ideas meet and how to work together," the diplomat said.
ElBaradei's Washington trip will follow an IAEA board of governors meeting in Vienna this week that has reviewed progress in guaranteeing the peaceful nature of the Libyan and Iranian nuclear programs.
ElBaradei called at the Vienna board meeting for strengthening the international mandate to verify nuclear non-proliferation.
ElBaradei has urged countries to impose tougher export controls in the wake of reports of a Pakistani-run nuclear black market that supplied programs in Iran, Libya and North Korea.
He has also said the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which went into effect in 1970, needs updating in order to keep tighter control on possible atomic weapons development.
Bush said in a speech in February that the NPT regime needs to be strengthened.
Bush sought global support for tighter curbs on nuclear technology, taking aim at North Korea, Iran, and black-market sales by Pakistan's former top atomic expert Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Experts have said Iran is an example of a country which could be developing the technology to make atomic weapons, even while honoring the NPT by claiming its nuclear program is peaceful. Much of sensitive nuclear technology, such as enriching uranium, can have both civilian and military applications.
The IAEA said in a report issued last month ahead of the board meeting that Iran had failed to report possibly weapons-related atomic activities despite promising full disclosure and warned Tehran to make sure this didn't happen again.
Iran had not told the IAEA it had designs for sophisticated "P-2" centrifuges for enriching uranium nor that it had produced polonium-210, an element which could be used as a "neutron initiator (to start the chain reaction) in some designs of nuclear weapons," the report said.
This was despite Iran's claim last October that it had given the IAEA a full picture of its nuclear program.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Africa's child soldiers shellshocked like World War I troops: study
Mar 12, 2004
PARIS (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040312000131.ow2bp7sg.html
Former child soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, the ailment once known among World War I troops as "shell shock," according to a study published on Saturday.
Several hundred youngsters who had been abducted by the notoriously brutal Ugandan rebel group, the Lord's Resistance's Army (LRA), were interviewed for the study, one of the few pieces of research to scientifically analyse the experiences and mental health of child soldiers.
Seventy-seven percent of the interviewees had seen someone being killed; 39 percent had to kill someone themselves. Six percent had seen their own father, mother, brother or sister being killed. Two percent had had to kill their own father, brother or another relative.
More than a third of the girls had been sexually abused and nearly one in five of them had given birth to one or more children in captivity.
Of the 301 interviewees, 71 were selected at random and asked to take part in a survey to assess their psychiatric state.
A scorecard of their responses showed a massive 97 percent suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), regardless of the time they had spent as child soldiers or the time that had elapsed since they were involved in the conflict.
PTSD is now a recognised state of mental health for soldiers and civilians who have seen or suffered extreme acts of violence.
Its symptoms are nightmares, flashbacks and sleeplessness. The condition is also linked with drug and alcohol abuse, memory problems, family discord and inability to function in social life.
The study, led by Ilse Derluyn, a specialist in child health at Belgium's Ghent University, is published on Saturday in the British medical weekly The Lancet.
According to UN estimates, around 300,000 children worldwide, many of them in African civil wars, are forced into soldiering, experiencing traumas that become a huge social problem for that country after the conflict ends.
An estimated 20,000 children have been abducted in the 16-year-old conflict in northern Uganda.
The interviewees were former child soldiers who responded to a request in Gulu and Lira town. Their average age at the time of abduction was 12.9 years.
-------- asia
S. Korean parliament impeaches president
March 12, 2004
From combined dispatches
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040312-120440-8995r.htm
SEOUL - South Korea's parliament impeached President Roh Moo-hyun on charges of illegal electioneering and incompetence today, stripping him of his constitutional powers in an unprecedented vote that came after hours of scuffles and protests.
Prime Minister Goh Kun assumed Mr. Roh's presidential duties, including his role as military commander in chief. The Constitutional Court must now give final approval to unseat the president.
The move comes as the government prepares for nationwide parliamentary elections next month and tries to balance tensions over North Korea's nuclear program with a fragile economic recovery.
The Constitutional Court has 180 days to rule on whether Mr. Roh must permanently step down. If it does, a by-election will choose a new president.
Mr. Goh, the prime minister, planned to convene a meeting of foreign affairs- and security-related ministers later today, his office said. Finance Minister Lee Hun-jai also called an emergency meeting of senior policy-makers.
The impeachment passed by a vote of 193-2, well above the 181 votes needed for the measure. Many pro-Roh lawmakers had been forcibly removed from the chamber by Assembly security and were unable to vote.
A shoving match was sparked earlier when pro-Roh Uri Party members tried to stop Assembly Speaker Park Kwan-yong from taking the podium, the only place he can call a vote.
Assembly security officers then moved in to begin removing lawmakers trying to block his progress. Mr. Park had warned yesterday that he might exercise his right to have security officials clear the lawmakers.
Live television footage showed security officers dragging out screaming Uri members one by one.
As the voting proceeded by secret ballot, opposition members applauded and screaming Roh backers chanted that it was a "coup." Other Uri Party members broke into tears and sang the national anthem.
Earlier, in an apparent last-minute attempt to ward off the vote, Mr. Roh apologized for the crisis, but the opposition said he was too late.
"I deeply apologize to the people for the country being led into this impeachment crisis," Mr. Roh said. "I couldn't sleep at all last night."
Mr. Roh said he was heartbroken after a businessman apparently had killed himself after the president mentioned him in a briefing yesterday at which Mr. Roh had refused to apologize for illegal electioneering. Mr. Roh urged supporters not to take extreme actions, as one did yesterday by setting himself on fire.
Even before the apology, there was drama in parliament. In the middle of the night, opposition parliamentarians stormed into the chamber to try to secure the occupied speaker's podium from sleeping pro-Roh Uri Party members.
Politicians fought, wrestled, argued and shoved. The Uri Party kept the speaker's chair but opposition parliamentarians gained a foothold on the podium.
The speaker had adjourned yesterday's session after he failed to persuade the Uri Party members to clear the podium.
Adding to the high-stakes atmosphere, police detained a man after he drove his off-road vehicle on to the steps of the imposing National Assembly and then set fire to the car.
The vote comes barely a year into Mr. Roh's single five-year term and just weeks before an April 15 parliamentary election at the heart of the impeachment row.
Mr. Roh does not belong to a party, but has said he wants to join Uri.
The National Elections Commission ruled last week that Mr. Roh had engaged in illegal electioneering, but that the infraction was minor and did not warrant criminal charges.
--------
Divided S. Koreans Impeach President
Violence Breaks Out Among Legislators
By Anthony Faiola and Joohee Cho
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49867-2004Mar11?language=printer
TOKYO, March 12 -- President Roh Moo Hyun on Friday became South Korea's first leader in history to be impeached, losing his constitutional powers in the climax of a political struggle that left South Koreans more sharply divided than at any point since the restoration of democracy in 1987.
After a drama in the National Assembly as pro- and anti-Roh legislators came to violent blows before, during and after the vote, Roh's opponents secured 193 votes for impeachment -- above the two-thirds mark of 181 needed.
Roh is to be automatically suspended from office for up to six months pending a ruling by South Korea's nine-member Constitutional Court, leaving Prime Minister Goh Kun temporarily in charge at a pivotal time. South Korea, with Asia's fourth-largest economy, faces political chaos as it struggles with a fragile economic recovery and as totalitarian North Korea has vowed to become a nuclear power. In Seoul, stock shares tumbled more than 5 percent after the vote.
Goh, while expressing regret about the impeachment, quickly moved to assume his role as commander in chief of South Korea's 650,000-member military, which defends against the North along the world's most heavily armed border.
"The people feel unease because the impeachment bill was passed at a time that the economy faces difficulties," Goh said. "The cabinet and all government officials must do all they can to stabilize the people's lives and ensure that the country's international credibility will not be damaged."
The key legal charge against Roh is that he made statements asking voters to support the Uri Party, made up of his core group of supporters. This was considered by the National Electoral Commission to be a minor infraction of electoral laws; presidents in South Korea are not allowed to campaign for legislators.
Roh was also accused of incompetence in leadership and connections to a swirling political corruption scandal that has hit his political opponents even harder than his own administration. Analysts said that it remained unclear whether the constitutional court would uphold the impeachment.
Hahm Sung Deuk, a leading political analyst at Korea University in Seoul, said: "There will be major fallout from this for South Korea; impeachment will mean increased economic and political uncertainty. This is a time when we need stability, and instead, we have the opposite."
For Roh, the impeachment capped months of struggle to shore up his year-old administration, under fire from South Korean conservatives and business leaders for steering the nation too far away from its traditional ally, the United States, while engaging in warmer relations with North Korea and China.
The onetime human rights attorney's campaign to empower the poor has led to charges that Roh launched class warfare against the rich through tax measures and government policy. The impeachment had more to do with those societal divisions -- and political angling ahead of key April 15 legislative elections -- than with the actual charges, analysts said.
Political experts say the Grand National Party, the largest opposition force in control of the largest block of seats in the National Assembly, gambled that the impeachment, even if not upheld, would at least tarnish Roh and his allies ahead of the elections.
Roh is trying to expand his base in the National Assembly through the Uri Party, now a relatively small band of 47 legislators. Opinion polls have shown that the party could gain ground in the upcoming elections, though the taint of Roh's impeachment could prove a significant setback.
Roh, while publicly fighting the impeachment, also appeared to be hoping the attempt would backfire, rallying the public around him.
He was given an opportunity to head off the impeachment vote. His opponents, also including the Millennium Democratic Party -- the nation's second largest political force, which had once been loyal to Roh -- had demanded only that he apologize for a televised remark urging support for the Uri Party
When Roh addressed the nation Thursday, he did apologize for corruption scandals that have rocked the nation and forced the arrest of several of his closest aides for accepting illicit funds. But he did not apologize for his call for Uri support.
"The opposition is abusing this case to attack me," Roh told reporters in Seoul. "The opposition should not use it for its political maneuvering." Rather, the president offered, as he has on several occasions, to resign if the people did not support him.
The president officially belongs to no party, though he has signaled his intention to join Uri, which is in line with both his domestic and foreign policies. His supporters -- Uri legislators and civilians united by pro-Roh Web sites -- dramatically sought to prevent the impeachment vote.
Pro-Roh legislators blocking the vote had to be moved away by security forces, and several collapsed in tears as the impeachment proceeded, while others flung objects, including shoes, at opposition party members. Early Friday morning, one Roh supporter set himself on fire, while another drove a vehicle onto the steps of the national assembly and set it ablaze.
Roh's supporters had succeeded in blocking a vote Thursday night by staging a sit-in at the National Assembly, although opposition party leaders made good on their vow to forge ahead Friday.
Roh called for calm.
"Regardless of which side is wrong, I offer my sincere apology for the situation in which the political confrontation has led to an impeachment move against me," Roh said in a statement read by his senior public relations secretary, Lee Byong Wan. "I strongly urge all sides to regain self-control."
Analysts, however, said the political battle underscored a dramatic schism in South Korea, a nation that now more than ever is sharply divided along ideological lines.
Roh and his supporters -- including millions of younger South Koreans -- are seeking more distance from Washington while supporting rapprochement with North Korea and establishing warmer ties with China.
On the other hand, the Grand National Party and its supporters, who tend to be older, more conservative voters, are generally pro-United States and argue that Roh is frightening away foreign investment.
Opposition leaders pledged, however, to work with Prime Minister Goh, who was to take over presidential duties by Friday afternoon.
Special correspondent Cho reported from Seoul.
--------
South Korea Parliament Votes to Strip President of Powers
March 12, 2004
By SAMUEL LEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/12/international/asia/12KORE.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Friday, March 12 - South Korea's opposition-dominated Parliament today passed an unprecedented bill to impeach President Roh Moo Hyun, accusing him of illegal campaigning and suspending his powers.
Prime Minister Goh Kun assumed leadership of the country and will keep the post until a ruling by the constitutional court. The court has up to 180 days to decide.
A total of 193 lawmakers in the 273-seat National Assembly voted in favor of impeaching Mr. Roh, surpassing the necessary two-thirds vote.
The police beefed up security around the National Assembly, where hundreds of Roh supporters rallied. Another large group of South Koreans who favor Mr. Roh's impeachment also staged their own rally near the National Assembly.
Demonstrating the level of emotion gripping the country, a supporter of the South Korean president doused himself with a flammable liquid and set himself on fire late Thursday night to protest the impeachment effort.
In a bid to diffuse the standoff, Mr. Roh, speaking through his aide, apologized Friday for his part in the political fracas. But his political opponents were not satisfied, and said it was too late.
The main opposition Grand National Party said it was appalled by the president's lack of legal and political awareness.
Politicians with the Uri Party that supports Mr. Roh had been staging a sit-in inside the National Assembly, blocking the speaker of the assembly from sitting in his chair to preside over the impeachment vote. Opposition lawmakers had until Friday evening to hold an impeachment vote after the impeachment motion was submitted Tuesday.
But around 11 a.m. on Friday, opposition lawmakers and the speaker of the assembly, Park Kwan Yong, entered the main hall of Parliament escorted by security guards.
Both opposition lawmakers and security guards dragged the protesting pro-Roh lawmakers off the speaker's podium and convened the impeachment vote session.
The scenes in the National Assembly were broadcast live on television.
The dramatic political development comes just ahead of crucial parliamentary elections in mid-April. It also raises questions about how the country's budding economic recovery and international attempts to stop North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions would be affected.
Mr. Roh raised the number of his political opponents last year when he left the Millennium Democratic Party that backed his bid for the presidency. That party is currently the second-largest opposition group in the National Assembly.
Mr. Roh set off the latest clash with his opponents when he said in a televised news conference last month that he wanted to do everything within legal limits to prompt votes for the Uri Party.
-------- biological weapons
U.S. to Buy Anthrax Vaccine
Stockpile Would Permit Mass Inoculations
By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51691-2004Mar11?language=printer
The government is preparing to buy enough experimental anthrax vaccine for 25 million people, a stockpile that would permit mass inoculations in numerous U.S. cities if terrorists launched a broad assault with the deadly germ.
The new vaccine would be the most significant addition to the national anti-terrorism stockpile since the Bush administration fulfilled a pledge to buy enough smallpox vaccine for every citizen of the United States. Up to now, there has been little commercial incentive for companies to develop a modern anthrax vaccine, but the new plan would change that, creating a reserve big enough in a year or two to immunize everyone in the New York and Washington metropolitan areas -- or in other cities that might be targeted in an anthrax attack.
Two biotechnology companies, in California and in Britain, have won contracts to make an early stockpile of the unlicensed vaccine sufficient to inoculate 2 million people, according to bidding documents released yesterday, and they are likely to bid soon on larger contracts. Coupled with the government's successes in stockpiling smallpox vaccine and antibiotics, the anthrax purchases mean the United States will soon have developed a wide array of defenses against the two most important biological weapons.
"The colleagues that I work with in this business would tell you that smallpox and anthrax are the two most-feared agents, and we've done a lot to take those off the table," said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who has advised the federal government on combating bioterrorism. He said a large-scale attack "would still be a tragic situation, but compared to what we had available two years ago, we have come a long, long way."
Government scientists are still discussing how the anthrax vaccine might be used, and how it compares with other drugs under development, such as artificial antibodies given over the short term to prevent or treat anthrax infection. But the documents released yesterday show the government has decided to order an additional 75 million doses, enough to vaccinate at least 25 million people. Added to the 2 million doses already on order, as much as 9 percent of the country's population would be covered.
The stockpile is projected to cost at least $700 million on top of nearly $200 million already spent, a congressional report said. The two companies involved, VaxGen Inc. of Brisbane, Calif., and Avecia Ltd. of Manchester, England, are racing to scale up their factories for rapid vaccine production.
The most likely use of the vaccine, experts said, would be to inoculate the entire population of a city immediately after a terrorist attack. People might need to take antibiotics for several weeks to prevent disease until the vaccine kicked in, but after that they would be immune even if anthrax spores lingered in the city for years, as the germs are believed capable of doing.
While preventive vaccination of entire cities isn't likely any time soon, said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, inoculations may be considered for some high-risk occupational groups, including the hazardous-materials teams that would respond to an anthrax attack.
"If the safety profile of this vaccine is as good as we think it's going to be, I think there's going to be at least a discussion among some of the unions of postal workers," he said. Two postal workers in Washington died in 2001 after letters containing anthrax spores were sent through the mail.
The new vaccine is designed to be a potent, highly purified replacement for an existing anthrax vaccine, a product developed in the 1950s that is used mostly by the Pentagon to inoculate troops.
The old vaccine, which contains a complex and poorly understood mix of substances, has been the subject of broad controversy and an ongoing court fight, with thousands of military personnel resisting vaccination and others attributing various health problems to the vaccine. The Food and Drug Administration has ruled it safe and effective, but another arm of the government, the National Institutes of Health, is intent on replacing it, awarding grants totaling nearly $200 million since the terrorist attacks of 2001 to help biotechnology companies develop alternatives.
Many postal workers who were offered the old vaccine after the 2001 attacks declined it, preferring to stay on antibiotics. Among numerous disadvantages, the old vaccine requires six doses over 18 months to induce immunity. The new vaccine is likely to require three or fewer doses over several weeks, and it's expected to contain far less of an additive that some suspect of causing side effects. The experimental vaccine has undergone initial tests in people and caused few problems, but bigger tests are planned and the full extent of any side effects or other safety concerns is not yet known.
The Pentagon has made no public statement about switching to the new vaccine, but most experts believe the military is likely to do so once it is licensed by the FDA. That could happen as soon as 2006.
The prime ingredient in the new vaccine is a protein vital to the life cycle of the anthrax germ. Research by U.S. Army scientists over many years has shown that the protein, when administered to animals by injection, causes the immune system to mount a powerful defense. When the animals were later exposed to large amounts of anthrax germs, they did not become ill.
Preliminary tests have already shown that the vaccine induces the same kind of immunity in people as in other animals, and broader tests are underway. Definitive proof of the vaccine's effectiveness in people is likely to come only with another anthrax attack, since exposing people to anthrax germs deliberately would be unethical. But the FDA has rules allowing it to license bioterror vaccines on the basis of animal tests.
It's unusual for the government to buy such a large amount of vaccine while it's still experimental, but it's not unprecedented. The Department of Health and Human Services bought millions of doses of a smallpox vaccine that had not been licensed. The theory is that in a large-scale attack, people will want access to vaccines even if they are experimental.
Smallpox, eradicated in the 1970s by worldwide vaccination campaigns, was able to spread from person to person. There is no proof that terrorists possess the smallpox germ, but many people suspect it. That is why the government bought enough vaccine for everyone in the country: A worst-case attack with smallpox weapons could produce a national epidemic.
Anthrax, by contrast, does not spread from person to person, but the spores can float through the air. The worst-case scenario is that terrorists would make enough anthrax to spray it over cities from airplanes.
The germ causes a lung disease that kills 30 percent to 50 percent of people who get it even if they receive medical care.
Anthrax spores can apparently hide in the lungs for long periods before germinating and causing disease. In the absence of a vaccine stockpile, people living in -- or possibly just visiting -- a city that had been attacked with anthrax might need to take powerful antibiotics for six months or longer. With a vaccine, doctors could inoculate a person and then, once immunity kicks in, discontinue the antibiotics. As a safeguard, the government has stockpiled enough antibiotics to treat 20 million people for 60 days.
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Army Corps ignored warning on Halliburton
March 12, 2004
By Pamela Hess Pentagon correspondent
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040311-070643-2861r.htm
WASHINGTON, March 11 (UPI) -- The Army Corps of Engineers disregarded the Pentagon's contract audit agency's request in January that it be consulted before a company with close ties to Vice President Dick Cheney was given any more work in Iraq, documents and government officials revealed Thursday.
Just three days after the corps was warned about significant systemic pricing problems with the Halliburton subsidiary, the corps gave it a $1.2 billion dollar contract.
The contracting official had the memo but did not contact the Defense Contract Audit Agency before he made his award, a top corps official confirmed Thursday.
"I know the contracting officer did have the 13 January memo in his hands when he made this ... decision," said Maj. Gen. Carl Strock, director of civil works in the Army Corps of Engineers, at a hearing of the House Government Reform Committee.
In question is the ability of Brown & Root Services, a subsidiary of Halliburton, to back up its estimated costs to perform work in Iraq with realistic data. This is critical to negotiations with the company because the Defense Department pays the company its cost plus a percentage of the costs as a profit.
According to the DCAA, Brown & Root doesn't do a very good job of it.
"We consider BRS's estimates ... to be inadequate," DCAA wrote Jan. 13. After reviewing more than $3 billion in proposals, the agency said: "Collectively, the deficiencies described above bring into question BRS's ability to consistently produce well-supported proposals that are acceptable as a basis for negotiations of fair and reasonable prices.
"We recommend you contact us to ascertain the status of BRS' estimating system prior to enter into future negotiations."
According to the DCAA, Brown a& Root failed to submit cost and pricing data; failed to provide data showing the degree of competition and reasonableness of price for subcontracts and procurements; and failed to analyze the prices and costs of subcontractors.
Three days later, on Jan. 16, the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Brown & Root a new $1.2 billion contract for work in Iraq.
The Pentagon released the Jan. 13 memorandum Thursday.
California Rep. Henry Waxman, the committee's highest ranking Democrat, spearheaded the assault. He laid out well-known but questionable facets of the deals Brown & Root Services entered into on behalf of the Defense Department in Iraq: a $61 million overcharge for fuel in Iraq; $6 million in kickbacks received by Brown & Root employees to do business with certain Kuwaiti contractors; a $700 million overcharge on a bill that was subsequently withdrawn; and an attempt to charge the Pentagon for thousands of meals to troops that were never served. The Pentagon's inspector general is investigating criminal charges on the $2.4 billion in oil contracts.
"It seems to me in the larger context of what's going on ... it seems to be that they are not doing a great job, but they are not doing a terrible job," said Dov Zakheim, the Defense Department's comptroller. "We believe the financial and internal control problems will solve themselves ... (but) DOD has enforced and will continue to enforce the highest standards for Iraq."
Brown & Root has two separate contracts for Iraq which, if all the options are exercised, are worth a combined $18 billion to Halliburton, Zakheim told the committee Thursday. One is for the provision of fuel to Iraqi gas stations for sale to Iraqi civilians. The second is for logistical services to American forces. Both of the contracts were awarded on a sole-source basis. The oil contract was made in secret in March. The logistics contract pre-existed the war, and tasks in Iraq were added to it Iraq reconstruction for reasons of speed and convenience.
Also Thursday, the Pentagon awarded two major construction contracts for work in Iraq worth $1.1 billion, the leading edge of about $5 billion in construction contracts that have been set aside for companies in the United States and other coalition countries.
FluorAMEC, LLC, of Greenville, S.C, won a contract of up to $500 million for design-build services for construction, rehabilitation, operation and maintenance of electrical power generation facilities.
Washington International, Inc./Black & Veatch Joint Venture, of Boise, Idaho, won a contract with a ceiling of $600 million to provide design-build services for national water-resource projects, including repair and/or construction of water resources supplies and transmission networks nationwide.
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Democrat Says Pentagon Questions Estimates on Iraq
March 12, 2004
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/12/politics/12CONT.html
WASHINGTON, March 11 - The ranking Democrat on a House committee investigating contracts in Iraq released Defense Department documents on Thursday detailing faulty cost estimates by Halliburton for services in Iraq and Kuwait.
The documents included correspondence between the company and Pentagon auditors. In one, a Halliburton executive conceded that the company provided faulty estimates, incorporating outdated information.
The committee's hearing had a strongly partisan tone. Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, said the Pentagon documents demostrated "systemic" problems in the contracts, but Republicans on the committee contended that they showed that the contracting process was being adequately supervised.
Halliburton, the Texas oil services company of which Vice President Dick Cheney was once chief executive, is the government's biggest contractor in Iraq, with multiple contracts worth billions of dollars.
A Defense Department official confirmed a report on Thursday in The Wall Street Journal that the Pentagon had asked the Justice Department to open its own investigation of the company.
Halliburton said that Mr. Waxman used incomplete information to cast the company in a harsh light.
"We are disappointed, once again, that selective portions of audit reports have been released publicly even before K.B.R. and the Army have made final reviews of the information," Randy Harl, president and chief executive of Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, said in a statement. "Releases of partial reports are inappropriate because the true and complete story cannot be conveyed."
The hearing was the first of the Committee on Government Reform to examine how government contracts are awarded for Iraq. Eight officials involved with the reconstruction of Iraq, most of them from the Defense Department, told lawmakers that the process of awarding contracts was proceeding as well as possible, given the dangers still posed in Iraq.
"We're doing a remarkable job," said Gen. Paul J. Kern of the Army Military Command. "It's not perfect, but we correct problems as we find them."
Halliburton's ties to Mr. Cheney prompted several questions during the committee meeting.
With his first question after opening statements, Representative Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, asked each of the eight officials if he had discussed a contract with the vice president's office. All said no.
Mr. Davis then asked if anyone from Mr. Cheney's office had influenced the selection of a company to do work. All said no.
He asked if they had been pressured "to go easy" on a company that had been awarded a contract. Again, all said no.
But Mr. Waxman persisted with questions about whether Halliburton had received preferential consideration in the award process even after the results of an audit by the Defense Department in January.
That audit, of a $2.1 billion contract with Kellogg Brown & Root, found that the company "failed to use current, accurate and complete information" in cost estimates.
Three days later, Halliburton won another contract, for $1.2 billion, from the Army Corps of Engineers.
Maj. Gen. Carl A. Strock, director of civil works for the Corps, said the Corps was aware of the auditors' report but disagreed with the implication that Halliburton should not have been awarded any subsequent contracts because of it.
Halliburton has been a steady target of critics with concerns over how the Bush administration is spending the $18.4 billion Congress has allocated for reconstruction in Iraq.
In January, Halliburton admitted that two employees had taken kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor who was providing services to American troops, and reimbursed the government $6.3 million.
Halliburton has also reimbursed the government $30 million in possible overcharges for for food services.
The Pentagon is looking into accusations that Kellogg Brown & Root overcharged the government $61 million for gasoline delivery.
While Mr. Waxman and other Democrats cited those examples as reason for concern, Republicans on the committee tried to show that they were anomalies, and pointed to the Defense Department audit as evidence that the government's oversight system works.
Recalling a recent trip to Iraq, Dov. S. Zakheim, chief financial officer for the Defense Department, told the lawmakers that he found "services provided, clean toilets and decent food."
"In the larger context, we seem to be doing not a great job," he added, "but they're not doing a terrible job, either."
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U.S. Auditors Criticize Halliburton Subsidiary
KBR Couldn't Back Up Iraq Costs, Report Finds
By Jackie Spinner and Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 12, 2004; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51961-2004Mar11?language=printer
Pentagon auditors found "significant discrepancies" in how a Halliburton Co. subsidiary negotiated and billed for billions of dollars in subcontract work in Iraq, Defense Department officials told a congressional hearing yesterday.
A January audit memo, which the House Government Reform Committee released, said the auditors found that Kellogg Brown & Root Inc. could not substantiate cost estimates that it passed on to the government.
The hearing, the first to review the rebuilding effort in Iraq, included a review of charges that KBR overpaid to bring fuel into Iraq and overcharged for meals it never served at dining facilities in Iraq and Kuwait. Only government officials, not contractors, were invited to testify.
The Pentagon opened a criminal investigation late last month into the fuel contract. It also has asked the Justice Department to look into the matter, said Karen Lightfoot, a spokeswoman for Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking minority member of the committee. The Justice Department declined to comment.
William H. Reed, director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, said many of the company's problems have resulted from a lack of documentation for how it bid and charged for subcontract work. "They simply were not following what we considered reasonable business practice to award bids," he said, "At least we couldn't tell . . . by the documentation."
In its written response to the auditors, KBR acknowledged that it had pricing issues on the meals contract. "There are many excuses and reasons available -- but -- in the end, KBR did not include the most current data in our proposal."
Pentagon comptroller Dov S. Zakheim said the issues are not surprising in a war zone. "Contractor performance in Iraq has not been perfect, but it has not been terrible," he said. "We believe that contractor financial and internal control problems will resolve themselves."
The hearing laid bare the political fault lines that lie beneath discussions of Iraqi contract awards, particularly contracts handled by Halliburton, which Dick Cheney headed from 1995 until 2000.
Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the committee, opened the questioning by asking each of the military and career civil servants seated at the witness table to answer individually under oath whether any of them had been pressured by Cheney to award any contract for reconstruction, whether they were aware of any influence to steer work to Halliburton and whether they had been pressured by any political appointee to award a contract to a certain company. Each witness said they had not been subjected to such pressure, repeating down the line, "No, sir, I have not."
Waxman countered by relating that there is an ongoing investigation by the Defense Department inspector general into allegations from an Army Corps contracting officer that she felt pressured by the Kuwaiti government and U.S. embassy in Kuwait to use a particular subcontractor on the controversial fuel contract.
Waxman listed a series of issues -- from the oil contract, to the food service contract, to what he regards as inconsistent or incomplete explanations about why certain contracting decisions were made about Halliburton -- and said, "I see a pattern here that I don't like."
While taking issue with many of Waxman's characterizations, Davis said at the end of the hearing that the Kuwait fuel contract "looks to me on its face that something went wrong here." But he added that "Halliburton may have been a victim" if the Kuwaiti government insisted on business going to certain local companies. Maj. Gen. Carl A. Strock, director of civil works for the Army Corps of Engineers, which is administering the fuel supply contract, said KBR had asked for more time last year to negotiate a better deal with its Kuwaiti fuel supplier, Altanmia. "We said, 'No, there is no time,' " Strock told the panel, referring to the fear at the time of potential civil unrest in Iraq because of fuel shortages.
Strock also said the Army Corps this week suspended the existing fuel supply contract with Altanmia.
In an exchange with Waxman, Zakheim disagreed that the Army should not have awarded KBR a second contract in January to follow on the work it already was doing to repair and restore the oil industry. Pentagon auditors already had raised their concerns about the company's internal systems.
"An investigation is simply that," Zakheim said. "It doesn't mean someone is guilty. Sometimes an investigation is undertaken to clear somebody's name."
KBR President Randy Harl said in a written statement: "They asked hard questions of our customers at the Army Corps and other Pentagon officials." He said he was pleased that Zakheim "acknowledged that the company is working diligently to resolve disagreements about billing issues."
Pentagon auditors also have found problems with other companies with Iraq contracts, according to Zakheim's written testimony. The auditors have asked Titan Corp. to withhold up to $4.9 million of the company's labor and consultant fees for providing translator services until billing deficiencies are corrected. The auditors also found problems with subcontractor costs submitted by Fluor Corp., Perini Corp. and Washington Group International, which have contracts with the Army Corps of Engineers to repair Iraq's electrical grid.
Meanwhile, the Defense Department announced yesterday that it had awarded two Iraq electrical reconstruction contracts worth $1.1 billion to ventures with Fluor and Washington Group International. The contracts are part of the $18.6 billion in supplemental funding that Congress authorized last fall.
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General Dynamics Agrees To Buy British Tank Maker
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 12, 2004; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51963-2004Mar11.html
General Dynamics Corp. announced a $556 million deal yesterday to buy London-based armored-vehicle maker Alvis PLC, potentially lifting it into the dominant position in the European tanks and armored vehicles market.
The deal, which is subject to shareholder and regulatory approval, could face resistance from London-based BAE Systems, which owns 29 percent of Alvis' shares, some analysts said.
"BAE Systems . . . could still choose to make a bid or make matters politically difficult for General Dynamics," said Philip Finnegan, director of corporate analysis at the Teal Group, a defense industry research firm.
Other analysts doubted that BAE, which bought its stake in Alvis last year, would seek to disrupt the deal.
A BAE spokesman and a General Dynamics official declined to comment on the prospect.
The deal would put two of the world's dominant tanks -- Alvis's Challenger and General Dynamics' Abrams -- under the control of Falls Church-based General Dynamics and could raise concerns among European regulators.
The European Union "may have concerns about so much of the European combat vehicle industry being concentrated in one company's hands," especially those of an American company, Finnegan said.
General Dynamics' pursuit of its competitors in the European combat vehicles' market follows a failed attempt to buy its chief American rival in that field, United Defense Industries Inc., in the 1990s.
The company purchased Santa Barbara Sistemas of Spain in 2001 and General Motors Defense of Canada and Steyr Spezialfahrzeug of Austria last year. General Dynamics' combat systems unit grew 42.5 percent last year to $4.1 billion. International sales now account for 16 percent of General Dynamics' revenue.
"The acquisition [of Alvis] is a continuation of GD's strategy of consolidating the fragmented European armored systems market," Byron Callan, a defense analyst for Merrill Lynch, said in a research note yesterday.
Though Alvis manufactures Challenger, a heavy tank, General Dynamics was attracted to the company for its production of a variety of medium and light-weight vehicles. Global spending on heavy tanks has declined in recent years while demand has surged for lighter-weight armored vehicles that can move swiftly across a battlefield. "No one is really buying new main battle tanks," said Arthur J. Veitch, group executive for General Dynamics Combat Systems.
The deal gives General Dynamics a potential place in Britain's Future Rapid Effect Systems, a modernization program that includes thousands of new medium-weight armored vehicles, industry officials said. There are also 30,000 Alvis vehicles already in use around the world, generating demand for maintenance and modernization services. The company has a $1.6 billion backlog in orders, they said.
"Alvis complements and strategically expands General Dynamics' European armored vehicle business," Nicholas D. Chabraja, chairman and chief executive of General Dynamics, said in a prepared statement. Nicholas Prest, chairman and chief executive of Alvis, said the deal is "in the best interests of Alvis and its shareholders."
The acquisition is expected to close later this year and will require approval from both U.S. and European regulators.
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Pentagon awards 1.1 bln dollars in Iraq contracts to US, British firms
BAGHDAD (AFP)
Mar 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040312155710.xwbs3b2n.html
US and British firms have won two contracts worth 1.1 billion dollars to help rebuild Iraq, and Washington will award a final eight major deals to companies from countries that supported the war effort in the coming days, officials said Friday.
But the dangers of working in the unstable country were again highlighted when one of the winning contractors, US-British joint venture FluorAMEC, revealed that two of its Iraqi staff were shot dead and another was injured late last month.
The US Defence Department late Thursday awarded one contract with a ceiling of 500 million dollars to FluorAMEC to work on Iraq's patchy electricity sector.
A second contract for public works with a ceiling of 600 million dollars was given to US partnership Washington International/Black and Veatch.
The two contracts were the biggest to date from a five-billion-dollar envelope earmarked for construction projects in the war-battered country, said Steven Susens, a spokesman for the Baghdad-based Program Management Office (PMO) that is managing US reconstruction funds in Iraq.
"The announcement for the other primary contracts -- worth some 3.8 billion dollars -- is expected soon," Susens said.
On Wednesday, the Pentagon served up seven contracts worth more than 120 million dollars to US and British companies to manage the reconstruction projects in six sectors -- electricity, public works, security and justice, transportation and communication, health and education and oil.
It doled out a series of smaller contracts on Monday to Iraqi, Polish and United Arab Emirate firms for housing developments.
The United States has pledged 18.4 billion dollars for reconstruction in Iraq, more than a third of the 55 billion dollars the World Bank estimates will be necessary to get the country back on its feet.
But Washington infuriated many countries last year by declaring that primary rebuilding contracts would exclude war opponents such as France and Germany, while primary contractors were free to hand out work to whomever they want.
Special criteria such as technical merits and past experience was used to select the successful applicants for the latest contracts from a combined list of 14 offers, said Bruce Cole, a second PMO spokesman.
"We wanted to have the best people here," he explained.
FluorAMEC will concentrate on helping to fix Iraq's electricity network, which suffers from daily blackouts. As of February 20, all 18 provinces had 10 hours of electricity per day with some peaking at more than 16.
But the death of an Iraqi driver, a female Iraqi interpreter and the wounding of her sister, a second translator, who all worked for the firm and were gunned down in Baghdad on February 24, cast a shadow over FluorAMEC's celebrations after securing the coveted contract.
"We do not know who did it or why but the local police and I believe the coalition forces are investigating," said Nick Welsh, a London-based spokesman for the AMEC side of the partnership.
FlourAMEC already has about 100 staff on the ground and plans to increase that number by about 80 as it starts work on the contract amid tight security.
The water deal will focus on repairing Iraq's water infrastructure, which has suffered due to a combination of war damage and 13 years of international sanctions, and include improving its decrepit sewage system.
Cole was unsure how many jobs the two contracts would create, but said the contractors had incentives to employ Iraqi staff and hire local firms.
Washington has said that it aims to create 50,000 jobs across Iraq by July through its rebuilding projects.
The 18.4-billion-dollar US fund for Iraq was unveiled with much fanfare in October, but Iraqis say it has had little real impact as unemployment remains high and living standards low.
Initially set to last two years, the latest contracts have an option to run for as long as five years if all parties agree, according to Cole.
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Iraqi police accused in killings
March 12, 2004
By P. Mitchell Prothero
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040311-105618-9531r.htm
HILLA, Iraq - Security forces in this southern Iraqi city say criminals recruited into the city's police force were responsible for the killing of two American civilians this week, contradicting initial reports that the killers were impostors in police uniforms.
Meanwhile, two U.S. soldiers were killed and another was wounded by a bomb in Habbaniyah, about 45 miles west of Baghdad late yesterday, the military said.
Fern Holland, a 33-year-old human rights expert from Oklahoma, and another American were killed along with their Iraqi translator on Tuesday by men in Iraqi police uniforms, according to witnesses. It was the first time that American civilian employees of the Coalition Provisional Authority have been killed in Iraq.
Authority officials said Wednesday that the three were fatally shot at a phony checkpoint between Hilla and Karbala by men posing as policemen, although by yesterday, officials were backing away from that version of events.
"They were in police uniforms. We haven't established that it was the police," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters yesterday.
"We are very concerned about it," he said. "We know that this has gone on ... that there are some policemen that have done criminal acts in the past."
Police commanders in Hilla, who arrested five men in uniform near the scene, went much further in interviews with United Press International.
"We were called to the scene, and the men were leaving," said Police Col. Jauad Khadam. "We caught them on the road back to Karbala. They said they were Iraqi police and had come on the scene to help."
One of the commander's men then interrupted: "But we knew they were lying because their guns were hot and had just been fired. So we knew we had them."
At the Hilla jail, where the men were held until Polish troops took them into custody, the guards insisted that the gunmen were known to them as real policemen.
"We knew some of them," one man said. "Their commander [in Karbala] had been a criminal before Saddam [Hussein] left, so we knew his gang. They had been in jail here before.
"But then they got jobs as policemen in Karbala - we knew this before this happened. We couldn't believe that the Americans gave police jobs to criminals like these."
The U.S.-led coalition has embarked on a crash program to recruit and train 35,000 police officers to serve in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities within the next two years.
Because of the urgency of providing a security presence on the streets, it has been difficult to screen all candidates effectively. This week, the military said U.S. forces captured two members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps who were "suspected of conducting anticoalition activities."
Col. Khadam, who lives near the isolated stretch of highway where the Americans were killed, took issue with the official explanation that the killings took place at a roadblock.
"A pickup truck - an Iraqi police truck - chased the car carrying the three victims," he said. "They shot the car until it went off the road. Then the men got out of the truck, walked up to the car and made sure they were dead."
Local drivers at a taxi stand 150 yards from the scene of the killings gave a similar account. They described watching men in a police truck chase the American vehicle, shoot until it swerved off the road, and then get out and fire dozens of rounds into the crashed vehicle.
Each man gave the same version of events until asked for his name, then each denied having seen the shooting and became uncooperative.
"They all saw it happen, but these people are very nervous," said one traffic policeman. "They know the police who did this murder. We are not far from Karbala, where they work. They think that if they are seen talking to you, they will be killed."
Tire tracks at the scene of the shooting clearly showed that a car had hit its brakes, skidded across a median strip and through the oncoming lane of traffic before going off the road and skidding about 50 yards and then slamming into a low wall of earth.
Other tire tracks showed that a second vehicle had followed the first car from the same direction. It had driven - not skidded - across the median and parked near the first vehicle.
Shell casings littered the road just before where the skid marks began, most of them from AK-47 assault rifles, which are ubiquitous in Iraq. More casings lay near where the cars came to rest.
There also was one casing from a 9 mm handgun, which are extremely uncommon in Iraq. Handguns of any kind are rare in Iraq, and those who do carry pistols usually have cheap Soviet-era weapons that use smaller rounds.
In the past three months, the majority of Iraqi police - including those in Karbala and Hilla - have been issued 9 mm pistols by the American occupation forces. Although it cannot be determined when the round was fired, a Hilla police officer identified it as police issue.
"Only real police would have this round," he said.
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Hardline Shi'ites Denounce Iraq's New Constitution
March 12, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-shiites.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Around 2,000 supporters of a hard-line Shi'ite Muslim group gathered in Baghdad Friday to denounce the country's new interim constitution, in the latest show of strength by Shi'ites demanding greater influence.
The protesters were mostly supporters of the ``Group of the Virtuous,'' a Shi'ite group calling for direct implementation of Islamic law and the establishment of a theocratic political system similar to Iran's.
``They want Iraq to split into many countries, and they want us to be their subjects,'' they chanted. ``We will never accept a constitution written by the Jews.''
Sheik Mohammad al-Yaaqubi, a self-proclaimed ayatollah who heads the group, said Shi'ite rights were being ignored.
``It's the first democracy in which the opinion of the minority is dominant, while the majority are fighting for survival,'' he said in a statement.
``This law has lots of gaps that can bring evil. Whatever is said to justify this document...is false.''
Shi'ites, who suffered years of oppression under Saddam Hussein, make up around 60 percent of the population.
Many say the interim constitution gives minority groups like the Kurds too much influence over Iraq's future.
Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council signed the document Monday, but most Shi'ite council members said they were unhappy with it and hoped to make changes.
Iraq's most revered Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a statement after the signing saying the interim constitution was deeply flawed.
The document will guide an Iraqi government due to take power on June 30 until a permanent constitution is drawn up next year.
At the Baghdad protest, young men waving Iraqi flags chanted slogans denouncing the United States and Israel.
``This constitution does not represent us. It is an attempt to stop the Islamists from taking power in this country. We denounce this constitution that was written by American hands.'' said Ahmad Saed, 32, a shop owner who attended the prayers.
``The religious authority was not consulted in this constitution, it's a pre-made dish cooked by the Americans and their puppets in the Governing Council. We are ready to sacrifice our lives to change this constitution,'' said Sheikh Hadi Waeli, another protester.
Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shi'ite cleric with a large following among the Shi'ite urban poor in Baghdad, also denounced the constitution in a Friday sermon.
-------- israel / palestine
U.S. Seeks Details on Israeli Withdrawal
Mar 12, 2004
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
Associated Press Writer
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Egypt will host talks between Yasser Arafat's government and various Palestinian factions, including Islamic militants, on how to control the Gaza Strip after a possible Israeli withdrawal, a senior Palestinian official said Friday.
Israel has suggested that if there is quiet in Gaza, it would begin negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on the fate of the West Bank, said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a top Arafat adviser.
There have been signs of growing lawlessness in Gaza in recent weeks, with rival armed gangs and security forces battling for influence.
U.S. envoys, meanwhile, shuttled between Israeli and Palestinian officials to press for details on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposal to withdraw from virtually all of Gaza and possibly parts of the West Bank.
Diplomatic activity surrounding Sharon's "disengagement" plan - which would include dismantling some Israeli settlements and imposing a boundary on the Palestinians - has picked up in recent weeks. U.S. officials have held separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials, both in Washington and the region.
Although presented as a unilateral withdrawal, Israel is seeking to coordinate with the United States and Egypt - and to a lesser extent with the Palestinians - to make sure "chaos and anarchy" do not prevail in Gaza, a senior Israeli official said on condition of anonymity.
A draft copy of a plan drawn up by Sharon's National Security Council proposes Israel withdraw from all but three of the 21 Gaza Strip settlements and from up to 24 West Bank communities. Israel has some 150 West Bank settlements.
Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia will discuss the plan, the official said. A long-delayed summit is tentatively set for Tuesday, though there is no final agreement.
Abu Rdeneh said Egyptian-sponsored talks, which will include all the Palestinian factions, will be held in Cairo and the Palestinian territories. "The dialogue will focus on the aftermath of an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, how the Palestinians should run Gaza," Abu Rdeneh said.
The three visiting U.S. envoys - Undersecretary of State William Burns, Deputy Director of the National Security Council Stephen Hadley, and the council's Mideast specialist, Elliot Abrams - met Sharon and his top advisers for more than three hours on Thursday.
Israeli media reported that the United States is seeking a broad West Bank withdrawal. The draft plan outlines such a scenario, but says that in such a case the United States would have to recognize the redeployment as Israel's final borders.
The United States has not yet given its response to Sharon's plan. David Satterfield, a senior U.S. State Department official, said Thursday that Sharon's steps must be in line with the U.S.-backed "road map" plan and contribute to the creation of a Palestinian state.
Sharon's proposals "should move us toward that goal, not complicate it," Satterfield said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel Radio, after meeting the U.S. envoys Friday, that Israel is seeking full U.S. support, not just "a nod of the head,"
The U.S. team also met Palestinian Cabinet ministers Saeb Erekat and Salam Fayyad.
Erekat said the U.S. envoys did not provide details of the withdrawal plan, and but wanted to hear the views of the Palestinian Authority. "We stressed ... that this should be part of the road map and part of President Bush's vision of a two-state solution," Erekat said.
The road map envisions a Palestinian state by next year, as a result of negotiations. However, implementation has stalled since its launch last year.
Palestinians suspect Sharon is pushing his unilateral plan to avoid negotiations and to entrench Israel in large parts of the West Bank, preventing them from establishing a viable state.
At the end of the talks on Israel's proposal - which could include a third Israeli-U.S. round in Washington - the sides might formalize a written agreement, including details on Israel's withdrawal and U.S. guarantees, the Israeli official said.
Egypt said Thursday - following a meeting between President Hosni Mubarak and Shalom - that it would beef up its security forces along its border with Gaza after Israel leaves the strip.
But Shalom said the Egyptians had not expressed outright support for the plan. The Egyptians, he said, want the withdrawal to be part of the road map.
Meanwhile, Israel wants details on Egyptian economic assistance and its plan to rebuild the shattered Palestinian security forces, as well as how the passage of people between the Egypt-Gaza border will work, the Israeli official said.
The sides are also looking into whether the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty will have to be amended to cover new border arrangements, the official said.
-------- mideast
Sanctions Against Syria Nearly Ready
Officials Say U.S. Aims to Preserve Cooperation on Intelligence, Business Deals
By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51605-2004Mar11.html
The Bush administration is in the final stages of deciding on new punitive measures to take against Syria, but is trying to limit any damage to intelligence cooperation from Damascus or to U.S. business deals on oil and communications, officials said yesterday.
The administration has settled on the broad outlines of its sanctions under the new Syrian Accountability Act but has struggled over the final details, according to U.S. officials. The result is now expected to be a balance of new restrictions on the government of President Bashar Assad that would include key exemptions to export restrictions, such as allowing the purchase of U.S. computers, cell phones and communications equipment, as well as aviation spare parts.
The exemptions covering communications products will be justified as allowing the "continued ability of people to gain information from the outside world and promote people-to-people exchanges," said a U.S. official involved in the interagency discussions. But pragmatic considerations shape both choices. Motorola Inc., a U.S. company, distributes cell phones in Syria. And aviation spare parts will be exempted because the United States does not want to be responsible for deaths or injuries in the event of aircraft problems, U.S. officials said.
The most interesting decision may be what the White House is choosing not to do. The administration is expected to opt against two provisions that would limit Syrian diplomatic activity and movement, officials said.
Washington does not want to face reciprocal restrictions in Syria, which could curtail U.S. intelligence activities in and with Syria at a key time in Iraq and the war on terrorism, the officials said. U.S. officials admit Syria's cooperation has been important, if uneven.
The new law has two key parts. First, it requires the administration to ban the export of any dual-use goods that could be channeled into the production of weapons of mass destruction. Some exemptions will be made for products that might be included, such as communications gear, congressional sources said.
Second, the act requires the administration to pick two of six punitive measures. The White House has indicated to congressional officials that it is leaning toward picking more than two. The main new sanctions will be economic, such as banning U.S. exports to Syria except for humanitarian goods such as food and medicine, congressional and administration officials said. Washington may also block financial transactions by Damascus.
In addition, the administration is expected to prohibit aircraft owned or operated by Syria from flying to the United States or using American airspace, a token measure since no Syrian planes fly anywhere near the United States, U.S. officials said.
The most problematic and debated step proposed by the act calls for banning U.S. businesses from investing or operating in Syria, congressional and administration officials said. U.S. oil companies, including ConocoPhillips Co. and Devon Energy Corp., have business interests in Syria.
The White House has notified Congress that it will make a decision no later than next week, according to congressional officials. "You'll see the implementation very shortly, and I think it will be a very firm implementation of the Syrian Accountability Act and the intent behind it," Assistant Secretary of State William Burns said in congressional testimony Wednesday.
The measures are important signals to Syria. "It is important to the United States that Syria look at the situation, that Syria understand that there is a changed circumstance in the world and the region, Syria stop its support for terrorism, Syria stop its allowing groups to operate there, that Syria take a serious attitude about borders and assets and issues like that that we've raised with them where we have, indeed, seen a little bit of progress here and there," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters yesterday.
"If Syria chooses to ignore all those facts and ignore the positions that we and others have taken, then there's not much prospect for our relationship," he added.
-------- nato
NATO expansion will make Europe a safer place: NATO chief
Mar 12, 2004
VILNIUS (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040312160740.ykjql990.html
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Friday the forthcoming expansion of the alliance to seven new countries would make Europe a safer place.
"The inclusion of Lithuania and six other countries will add to NATO's potential to shape the security environment in positive ways," he told the Lithuanian parliament during a visit to prepare the ground for the expansion.
"This will be a huge step towards a long-standing objective of the Alliance: a Europe without dividing lines. A Europe not only free of war, but also free from fear," he said.
Seven ex-communist countries -- Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia -- are on course to join the transatlantic alliance over the coming weeks.
De Hoop Scheffer, on the last leg of a visit to the three Baltic former republics which will join NATO, told Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas, that NATO would protect the airspace of the three Baltic states, the government press service said.
The Lithuanian parliament ratified the country's accession treaty earlier this week.
De Hoop Scheffer met Lithuanian President Rolandas Paksas, becoming one of the rare foreign dignitaries to meet him since parliament launched impeachment proceedings against him in a corruption scandal.
The NATO chief also met Brazauskas and parliamentary speaker Arturas Palauskas.
-------- prisoners of war
My Hell in Camp X-Ray
By Rosa Prince and Gary Jones
The Mirror UK
Friday 12 March 2004
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=14042696_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-MY%2DHELL%2DIN%2DCAMP%2DX%2DRAY-name_page.html
A BRITISH captive freed from Guantanamo Bay today tells the world of its full horror - and reveals how prostitutes were taken into the camp to degrade Muslim inmates.
Jamal al-Harith, 37, who arrived home three days ago after two years of confinement, is the first detainee to lift the lid on the US regime in Cuba's Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta.
The father-of-three, from Manchester, told how he was assaulted with fists, feet and batons after refusing a mystery injection.
He said detainees were shackled for up to 15 hours at a time in hand and leg cuffs with metal links which cut into the skin.
Their "cells" were wire cages with concrete floors and open to the elements - giving no privacy or protection from the rats, snakes and scorpions loose around the American base.
He claims punishment beatings were handed out by guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force. They waded into inmates in full riot-gear, raining blows on them.
Prisoners faced psychological torture and mind-games in attempts to make them confess to acts they had never committed. Even petty breaches of rules brought severe punishment.
Medical treatment was sparse and brutal and amputations of limbs were more drastic than required, claimed Jamal.
A diet of foul water and food up to 10 years out-of-date left inmates malnourished.
But Jamal's most shocking disclosure centred on the use of vice girls to torment the most religiously devout detainees.
Prisoners who had never seen an "unveiled" woman before would be forced to watch as the hookers touched their own naked bodies.
The men would return distraught. One said an American girl had smeared menstrual blood across his face in an act of humiliation.
Jamal said: "I knew of this happening about 10 times. It always seemed to be those who were very young or known to be particularly religious who would be taken away.
"I would joke with the other British lads, 'Bring them to us - we'll have them'. It made us laugh. But the Americans obviously knew we wouldn't be shocked by seeing Western women, so they didn't bother.
"It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They would refuse to speak about what had happened. It would take perhaps four weeks for them to tell a friend - and we would shout it out around the whole block."
Jamal added: "The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the psychological torture - bruises heal after a week - but the other stuff stays with you."
HE was talking from a secret location after being reunited with his family. The website designer, a convert to Islam, had gone to Pakistan in October 2001, a few weeks after September 11, to study Muslim culture.
He accidentally strayed into Afghanistan - believing he was being driven to Turkey - and was arrested as a spy, perhaps because of his British passport. He was held in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and fell into US hands.
Now Jamal bears the scars of Guantanamo. He stoops into a hunch as he walks because the shackles that bound him were too short.
As a punishment, inmates would be confined so tightly they would be forced to lie in a ball for hours. During lengthy interrogation, they would be tethered to a metal ring on the floor.
Jamal said: "Sometimes you would be chained up on the floor with your hands and feet actually bound together. One of my friends told me he was kept like that for 15 hours once.
"Recreation meant your legs were untied and you walked up and down a strip of gravel. In Camp X-Ray you only got five minutes but in Delta you walked for around 15 minutes."
Jamal said victims of the Extreme Reaction Force were paraded in front of cells. "It was a horrible sight and it was a frequent sight."
He said one unit used force-feeding to end a hunger strike by 70 per cent of the 600 inmates. The strike started after a guard deliberately kicked a copy of the Koran.
Rice and beans was the usual diet and the water was "filthy". Jamal added: "In Camp X-Ray it was yellow and in Delta it was black - the colour of Coca-Cola.
"We had it piped through with a tap in each 'cage' but they would often turn the water off as punishment.
"They would shut off the water before prayers so we couldn't wash ourselves according to our religion.
"The food was terrible as well, up to 10 years out-of-date. They would open a hatch and shove it through a section at a time.
"We had porridge and something they called 'like-milk', which was disgusting and 'like-tea' and a piece of fruit. The fruit had been frozen and pounded with chemicals. An apple might look red but there was waxy white stuff all over it and inside it would be black and brown.
"They would play tricks on people by denying them things - you might be the only person on your block who didn't get any bread. I prided myself on never asking them for anything. I would not beg." Jamal said they were told they had no rights. "They actually said that - 'You have no rights here'. After a while, we stopped asking for human rights - we wanted animal rights. In Camp X-Ray my cage was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog.
"He had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on. I said to the guards, 'I want his rights' and they replied, 'That dog is member of the US army'.
"You would be punished for anything - for having six packets of salt in your cell rather than five, for hanging your towel through the cage if it wasn't wet, even for having your spoon and things lined up in the wrong order."
Being forced to use a bucket as a toilet in view of other inmates and guards was particularly embarrassing. Jamal said: "I never got used to it - we would all put our towels and clothes around us.
"But the Military Police up in the tower would see us and would shout to each other.
"We were only allowed a shower once a week at the beginning and none at all in solitary confinement.
"This was very tough because you are supposed to be clean when you pray.
"Gradually the number of showers rose to three a week. They were always cold.
"You would be chained by two MPs while you were still in the cage before being taken off for what they called 'rec and shower'.
"You could sometimes see the guards tampering with the shower heads to make water squirt all over the inmate's clothes if he had put them up to protect his privacy."
Inmates were issued with "comfort items" - known as CIs - like shampoo, towels, a washcloth and boxer shorts. CIs would be removed as a punishment.
Jamal defiantly refused "treats", such as watching a James Bond film in a room dubbed The Love Shack by inmates.
He added: "Some people were given pizzas, ice-cream and McDonald's, but they didn't offer them to me. I guess they knew bribery would work with some and not with others."
To pass the time, inmates would chat to each other, pray, read the Koran and sing Islamic songs. In Camp X-Ray, they were given Mills and Boon-style romance novels in Arabic, which they refused to read.
Describing medical treatment, Jamal said he knew of 11 men who had legs amputated and two who lost toes and fingers. He was told that the Americans had removed far more tissue than was necessary.
HE added: "The man in the cell next to me had frostbite in two fingers and two toes. He also had it in his big toe, but they didn't treat that for a year by which time they had to cut off much more than was needed.
"All the men who had lost limbs complained they would chop them off high up and not bother to try to save as much as possible."
Jamal added that he didn't have close friends in Guantanamo, saying: "When I did meet the other Brits, we would reminisce about home - pa rticularly the food.
"We were all obsessed with Scottish Highland Shortbread - we wanted some so much.
"One of the Brits told me he was asked why he was a Muslim, because he ought to be praying to the Queen."
Jamal, who is divorced with daughters aged three and eight and a son of five, is convinced his refusal to succumb to mind-games gave him the will to come through.
He said: "It was very, very hard at times, but I tried to think about nothing but survival.
"I kept my thoughts from home as much as possible because it would drive me crazy.
"About a year into my time, I had a dream. A voice said, 'You will here for two years'.
"In my dream I said, 'Two years! You're joking'. But when I woke up, I was calmer because at least that meant I would be getting out one day.
"I was sent to Guantanamo on February 11, 2002 and left on March 9, 2004, so I was there for just over two years, just like the voice in the dream said."
TERROR OF TORTURE IN CUBA CAMP
'I was beaten by special squad in show of force. Guards chant while kicking and punching" JAMAL al-Harith told last night how he suffered a brutal attack by US military police because he refused to have a mystery injection.
A squad of five men used batons, fists, feet and knees in an assault that left him with severe bruising.
During the beating the officers barked in automated unison: "Comply, comply, comply. Do not resist. Do not resist."
Jamal told how the men swung into action after he politely refused a jab an orderly was trying to give him because he didn't know what it was and he was fit and healthy.
The squad was from the US military's Extreme Reaction Force, a unit trained to hand out beatings and known to prisoners at Guantanamo as ERF.
Jamal said: "I could hear their feet stomping on the ground as they got closer and closer to my cell. They were given a briefing about me refusing the injection, then I heard them readying themselves outside.
"I was terrified of what they were going to do. I had seen victims of ERF being paraded in front of my cell.
"They had been battered and bruised into submission. It was a horrible sight and a frequent sight."
Jamal, who had been warned by interrogators they would inject him with drugs if he did not answer their questions, cowered in his cell awaiting the inevitable.
When it came the full force of heavily protected men in riot gear, with batons and shields, was used against him.
He said: "They were really gung-ho, hyped up and aggressive. One of them attacked me really hard and left me with a deep red mark from my backbone down to my knee. I thought I was bleeding, but it was just really bad bruising.
"I said to myself, 'You shouldn't have put yourself through that', but said nothing to the ERFs. I didn't want to give them the satisfaction.
"There is principle and I wasn't going to take the injection so if they wanted to beat me up that was down to them. This huge black bruise was there for days after that."
But Jamal's ordeal didn't end there. Half an hour later as he was recovering, a second ERF squad arrived to dish out more punishment.
HE SAID: "They accused me of biting a military policeman. I said nothing. I knew it wouldn't help whatever I said.
"They laid into me again. When they were finished I sat down, picked up the Koran and started reading. Then two guards put me in more chains and said: 'Will you comply?'"
Jamal was taken to the feared isolation units, nicknamed ISOs, where those accused of misbehaving are kept in solitary confinement with just a mat and towel.
A toothbrush, toothpaste and soap, considered "comfort items", were denied. Jamal admits this was the first time he cried, although he did not let the guards see he was upset.
He added: "I sobbed a little, twice. Everything had been taken away from me. All I had was my dignity."
Jamal told of the psychological torture used on those in the isolation unit by guards who were trying to break their resolve.
Bright lights were left on in their cells overnight making it impossible to sleep properly. And the rooms were turned very hot in the day or freezing in the early morning by using fans in the ceiling.
Jamal said: "I'd wake up at 3am shivering like crazy. Just to keep a little bit warm I'd try to sleep under a metal bed to protect me from the cold air that was blowing in.
"I'd kept a towel which I hid from a guard to lie on. It wasn't much, but it made things a bit better."
He was put in the isolation unit twice more. Once when he kept ripping off wrist bands with his name and the number 490 written on and another time after guards set up a group of detainees by pretending some spoons had gone missing. Jamal said: "Non-compliance were the favourite words thrown at us."
Jamal told how he was interrogated on a regular basis by FBI and CIA agents and later MI5.
On 40 occasions he was quizzed in chains, which were bolted to the floor, for up to 12 hours at a time.
Jamal quickly became an expert in their interrogation techniques, often turning questions on his tormentors.
He said: "They'd ask me the same thing over and over again. Sometimes I'd say nothing and they asked me why I wasn't responding.
"I'd say: 'You're boring me, ask me something new and I will reply'." After the Americans failed to glean any information, MI5 officers and British consular officials interviewed him. On eight or nine occasions they tried to make him admit he was involved in terrorism.
Jamal said: "They would say: 'Are you a terrorist?' I'd say 'no, get me out of here'."
Speaking about his British interrogators, Jamal added: "They were a mixed bunch. There was one young nervous guy who looked about 21. I called him Youth Training Scheme MI5.
"He wasn't very professional and hadn't even checked out my background. One of them did say they had run my name and details through every Interpol check, but could find nothing. I told them that's because I'm innocent. There's nothing on me. I haven't even got a parking ticket.
"The young guy got a bit frustrated with me and said: 'Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?'
"One MI5 guy I just didn't want to talk to. He kept asking me questions and I'd say 'it's in my file'.
"In the end I said: 'I'm not talking any more.' He replied: 'I've come all this way from England to see you.' I only saw him for 10 minutes. He was very red faced and angry."
Jamal said his US interrogators were much meaner in their approach to questioning.
One told him after not getting the answers he wanted: "We are going to inject you with drugs."
Jamal said: "They were trying everything they could to frighten me. They even staged a mock beating up in the next room to me. They started shouting and pulling a chair around, but I knew there wasn't anyone there because I couldn't hear any chains clanking on the floor."
Another officer threatened Jamal with torture to get a confession. He told him: "Then we will kill your family and you."
Jamal said: "Sometimes they'd joke about what they were going to do to me. But I was determined to show no weakness. I didn't want to let them think they were getting to me.
"Other times they'd play a good cop, bad cop routine. I tried to remain calm, although I was fuming inside. It would been giving in to have lost my temper and I never did, not once.
"I don't swear and I didn't fight back. It was only on principles that I stood my ground.
"The mental torture was far tougher than any of the physical punishments. I knew I was being treated a lot worse than any of the other detainees. They tried everything to break me.
"Ridiculously, they even accused me of being an MI5 spy.
"I began to tease them a little because it was my way of coping. They could never work out when I was serious or not.
I HAD three plaits in my beard. I suggested, although I didn't say it, that it was for three people I had killed during drug deals in Moss Side, Manchester.
"I was making the whole thing up but they believed me. Next time I saw an officer he said MI5 had confirmed the story.
"They couldn't get a handle on me and that frustrated them. In the end one said: 'Who are you?' And I said: 'I've been here for over one a half years and you're asking who I am?'
"I took a stand against them because what they were doing to me was barbaric. I wouldn't get down on my knees for the chains to be pulled around my body because it was demeaning.
"About 20 per cent of us wouldn't co-operate. Eventually they backed down and we would stand while the guards went on their knees to chain us up.
"That was a small victory. There weren't many, but they were memorable. I will cherish them."
Despite the horror, Jamal said there were lighter moments.
One particular interrogation technique amused him. He said: "They started playing different music to see how I would react.
"They started with country singer Kris Kristofferson which I said I quite liked. Then some Fleetwood Mac songs.
"They watched my reactions on camera. I just said the music's great and even started singing along. They didn't play it again."
In the isolation unit, Jamal met for the first time fellow British detainee Tarek Dergoul.
He said: "He was suave and had a pencil moustache. We had a good chat about life back in Britain."
Jamal was released on Tuesday after being flown from Cuba to RAF Northolt, West London.
He arrived back with four other former Guantanamo Bay Britons - Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, both 22, and 26-year-olds Shafiq Rasul and Tarek.
They were freed on Wednesday night after being quizzed by anti-terrorist police in London.
Four other British suspects are still being held in Cuba.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last night said the US was right to keep the men locked up and the release of the five did not necessarily prove their innocence.
He added: "The Americans as far as they were concerned had good reason for detaining them."
Asked whether they were innocent, he replied: "I can't answer that question, nobody can."
I WAS IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME
JAMAL al-Harith's incredible journey to Guantanamo Bay began in the tough streets of Manchester's Moss Side.
He was born Ronald Fiddler in a family of Jamaican origin and grew up with his father and two sisters after their mother walked out.
At 23, Ronnie began learning about Islam and converted soon afterwards, taking the name Jamal al-Harith "just because I liked it".
He took a computer course alongside his religious studies and became a web designer.
He visited several European countries before deciding to go further afield to learn more about Muslims and how they lived.
He began studying the Koran and learned Arabic on a trip to Sudan.
The ill-fated trip to Pakistan in October 2001, just a few weeks after September 11, was his second and he planned to stay for three weeks, learning about Muslim culture and studying the holy book.
Divorced Jamal, who has three children aged three, five and eight, said: "Yes, I travelled to Pakistan in October 2001 but if that's my crime then you would have to arrest whole planeloads of people.
"When I was interrogated, the Americans used to say 'How come you're so clean? We've put your name and face through Interpol and we can't even find a speeding ticket'.
"I told them: 'That's because I've never done anything wrong in my life. You don't have anything on me and you still won't have anything on me when I walk out of here' - and that's exactly what happened.
"I think that's why they were so hard on me. They couldn't bear to admit they had made a mistake."
Jamal was in Quetta, on the border with Afghanistan and just four days into his trip to Pakistan, when the Americans began bombing Taliban strongholds.
He decided to leave for Turkey and paid a local truck driver 4,000 rupees - around £47 - to drive him.
He was told their route would take them through Iran, but he had no idea he would be passing through Afghanistan.
A few days into the trip, the truck was stopped by an armed gang.
They grew excited when they saw Jamal's British passport and after looking at his other possessions, which included a clockwork radio, accused him of being a spy.
He was taken to a filthy jail, held in solitary confinement then transferred to another prison.
He was again held in isolation and was beaten and interrogated, during which he denied he had been spying against the Taliban for the British.
Jamal later told the Americans how a man he presumed was a US agent had died after suffering a particularly brutal beating.
He said: "They tried to say the man wasn't an American, but I know he was. I am sure I would have got the same treatment but I made sure that every time my guards saw me I was praying.
"The Taliban liked me because I always had the Koran in my hands. I was beaten very badly, but not as badly as most of the other inmates.
"Afghanistan finally fell and I was visited in jail by the Red Cross.
"There were a couple of Pakistanis in the prison and they were allowed to go across the border.
"The Red Cross asked me if I wanted to go with them, but I had no money and no way of getting back to Britain so I asked them to put me in contact with the British Embassy in Kabul.
"That is incredible to me now - I could have gone home on my own."
Jamal stayed with the Red Cross in Kandahar for a week and, in phone calls to the British Embassy was assured he would soon be put on a flight to Kabul and then back to Britain.
But two days later, the Americans arrived. They drove him to a place described by Jamal as "a concentration camp", complete with watchtowers and barbed wire.
He said: "I begged the Red Cross to get me out or at least contact the embassy for me. On January 24, I was taken to a US air base and held there for another three weeks.
"Then my interrogator told me I was being sent to Cuba, but it was just standard procedure.
"I was assured it would take about two months to process me and then I could go free. I believed him."
For the next two years, Jamal continued to protest his innocence.
He said his interrogators would often taunt him by promising he was about to go home, only to pretend they had never said it.
But two weeks ago, Jamal and the four other Britons were met by the Red Cross and told they were finally to be freed.
Before they were released, the Americans asked the five men to sign a piece of paper confessing to links with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Jamal said: "This was given to me first by the Americans and then by a British diplomat who asked if I agreed to sign it. I just said 'No'.
"I would rather have stayed in Guantanamo than sign that paper.
"That night, all the inmates sang Islamic songs for me, wishing me well.
"The next morning, as I walked past them in chains for the last time, they shouted out: 'Don't forget us, Jamal. Tell the world, tell the Press, about what is happening here'."
Jamal was the only one of the five men not to be arrested when they landed at RAF Northolt in West London.
While Tarek Dergoul, 26, Ruhal Ahmed, 22, Asif Iqbal, 22, and Shafiq Rasul, 26, were taken to Paddington Green police station, Jamal was questioned with his solicitor.
"Then suddenly it was all over and they told me I could go," he said.
Jamal has vowed to sue America for compensation for his two lost years.
He said: "They deprived me of my liberty, interrogated and tortured me and let me go without even a word of apology."
He also plans to campaign for other detainees to be freed and given human rights.
He said: "I can speak freely at long last and let the world know what's happening there.
TO be honest I'd rather go on a camping holiday with my family, but I know I have a grave responsibility to those still there.
"That's why I want my story told in the Daily Mirror."
Jamal, who has yet to be reunited with his two girls and a boy, said: "I want so much to hug my children and tell them I love them.
"They think I have been on holiday. They don't know the truth.
"I woke up last night when I heard the keys of someone returning to their hotel room. I woke up in a fright and thought one of the guards was coming to put on my chains.
"I then realised that the light in the room was on. When locked up in our cages, the lights were on as well, and I thought to myself: 'You can sleep in the dark now' - and I switched it off."
Jamal added: "One thing good about being in Guantanamo, was that it made you think. Time actually went very quickly.
"There was always something or other on your mind. It didn't pay to dwell on things.
"I tried not to think about my family for two years, because it hurt so much.
"I tried to contain everything.
"It was very difficult, but I survived - and I survived well."
-------- spies
Ex-Hill aide charged in spying for Iraq
March 12, 2004
By Bill Gertz and David Drebes
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040311-113624-3981r.htm
A former congressional aide for several Democratic lawmakers was arrested yesterday as a spy and agent of influence for Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Susan Lindauer, 41, was arrested at her home in Takoma Park. She was charged in an indictment unsealed yesterday for conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent for Iraq from October 1999 until February.
As she was led to a car outside the Baltimore FBI office, Miss Lindauer shouted: "I'm an antiwar activist and I'm innocent.
"I did more to stop terrorism in this country than anybody else," she said. "I have done good things for this country. I worked to get weapons inspectors back to Iraq when everyone else said it was impossible. I'm very proud and I'll stand by my achievements."
An intelligence official said Miss Lindauer was first detected by U.S. counterintelligence methods, including surveillance of Iraq diplomats in New York.
Details of the effort were also disclosed in documents uncovered in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April, the official said.
The official declined to reveal any damage from the case. "She was more of an influence peddler," the official said. From March to May 2002, Miss Lindauer worked as a press secretary for Rep. Zoe Lofgren, California Democrat. Mrs. Lofgren, a Judiciary Committee member, said in a statement, "To my knowledge, this former employee had no access to sensitive information."
Miss Lindauer joined the staff of then-Sen. Carol Moseley Braun in January 1996 as a press secretary. Mrs. Moseley Braun said she does not remember the suspect, a spokeswoman said.
In 1994, Miss Lindauer was a press aide to Rep. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, who is now a senator, and Rep. Peter A. DeFazio, also a Oregon Democrat.
Before working on Capitol Hill, Miss Lindauer was a reporter for Northwest News Service, U.S. News & World Report, Fortune magazine and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She earned a bachelors' degree from Smith College in 1985 and a master's degree in public policy from the London School of Economics in 1986.
Jay Levy, the city-appointed chairman of the Takoma Park Nuclear Free Zone Committee, telephoned The Washington Times last night to insist that local peace activists know nothing about Miss Lindauer.
Mr. Levy, who also co-founded the Takoma Park Peace and Justice Committee, said he had been in contact with five of his colleagues on that panel and "no one has ever heard of this woman, let alone had any contact with her."
He said his group has organized at least 10 public events against the Iraq war in the past two years, and "it would have been very easy for her to have made contact with us."
In Takoma Park, Miss Lindauer's neighbors on Manor Circle were shocked to learn that their neighbor of four years is accused of being a spy.
"It's very surprising," Tom Kaufman said. "It's very hard to believe that anything they're alleging can be true."
Mr. Kaufman, along with his wife and two children, has lived in the neighborhood for 14 years.
"She's a very nice lady, very pleasant and gracious," he said, adding that he remembers Miss Lindauer attending parties at his house and letting his son play with her dogs.
"It makes me feel that a mistake has been made," Mr. Kaufman said.
Neighbors said that Miss Lindauer was usually home during the day, was renovating the house, and could often be seen walking her two dogs. But some thought she was distant.
"She was really not interested in anybody," Dean Paris said, who lives a block away from the suspect.
According to court papers filed in the case, Miss Lindauer met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Manhattan, N.Y., on Oct. 14 and Oct. 19, 1999, and "accepted a task" from the Iraqi agent.
Under an alias, Miss Lindauer supplied the Iraqis with the location, employment and family status of Iraqi expatriates in the United States, including the son of an Iraqi diplomat, the documents state.
She also accepted payments of several hundred dollars on several occasions from Iraqi intelligence officers as reimbursement for meals and travel.
According to the indictment, Miss Lindauer traveled to Baghdad several times, including a February 2002 trip when she was a "guest" of the Iraqi intelligence service. During the visit, she met several Iraqi intelligence officers in the Al-Rashid Hotel and received cash payments of about $5,000.
In all, prosecutors charge that she received about $10,000 from the Iraqi intelligence service.
In January 2003, Miss Lindauer delivered a letter to a U.S. government official that said she had "established access to and contacts with, members of the Saddam Hussein regime, in an unsuccessful attempt to influence United States foreign policy," the indictment states.
Charges against Miss Lindauer include conspiracy, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, taking money from a government designated as a terrorist sponsor and making false statements to investigators. If convicted of all counts she could face 25 years in prison.
•This article is based in part on wire service reports.
--------
Former U.S. Aide Accused of Working With Iraq
March 12, 2004
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/12/national/12AGEN.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, March 11 - Federal prosecutors charged a former Congressional aide on Thursday with working with the Iraqi intelligence service before the war, and investigators said she had sought to influence American policy by presenting herself to a highly placed relative, Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, as an intermediary.
The woman, Susan P. Lindauer, 40, was arrested Thursday morning by federal agents at her home in Takoma Park, Md., outside Washington. In New York, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment that said she had repeatedly met with representatives of the Iraqi intelligence service starting in 1999 and that she had traveled to Baghdad in 2002 for meetings with Iraqi intelligence officials.
Speaking to television news reporters as she was led away from an F.B.I. office outside Baltimore, Ms. Lindauer described herself as an antiwar activist and said she was innocent. "I did more to stop terrorism in this country than anybody else," she said.
She was later released to a halfway house on $500,000 bond after a bail hearing in Federal District Court in Baltimore. She faces arraignment on Monday in New York on charges of conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, acting as an unregistered agent and illegally accepting money from the Iraqi government, including $5,000 given to her while in Iraq. She was not charged with espionage.
The indictment said Ms. Lindauer delivered a letter early last year to a United States government official listing her access to and contacts with Saddam Hussein's government.
Investigators said the official was Mr. Card, one of President Bush's closest associates and a participant in nearly every high-level Oval Office meeting. White House and law enforcement officials described Ms. Lindauer as either a second cousin or a distant relative of Mr. Card.
Federal law enforcement officials said that despite Ms. Lindauer's extensive contacts with the Iraqis, there was little evidence to suggest that she had harmed national security by passing any sensitive intelligence to the Hussein government.
Instead, she was largely perceived, even by some law enforcement officials, as a woman who fancied herself a peacemaker. "She thought maybe she could do more than she really could as an intermediary" between Washington and Baghdad, said a law enforcement official.
Investigators said Ms. Lindauer had gone to Mr. Card's home in Washington around Jan. 8, 2003, more than two months before Mr. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, and dropped off the letter in what the indictment said was "an unsuccessful attempt to influence United States foreign policy."
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said that Mr. Card had not seen Ms. Lindauer since around the time of Mr. Bush's inauguration in 2001 but that Ms. Lindauer had tried to reach him a number of times subsequently. Mr. McClellan said Mr. Card "brought to the attention of the appropriate officials the various attempts by her to contact him." He added that Mr. Card viewed the matter as "a very sad and unfortunate incident."
After stints as a journalist in the 1980's and early 90's, Ms. Lindauer worked as press secretary for a number of Democrats on Capitol Hill, including, in 1996, Senator Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, who ran unsuccessfully for her party's presidential nomination this year.
In 2002, starting just four days after the period in which the indictment said she had traveled to Baghdad, she worked as a press secretary to Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California. Ms. Lofgren said in a statement that Ms. Lindauer left her staff after eight weeks. "To my knowledge, this employee had no access to sensitive information," Ms. Lofgren said.
The indictment also said Ms. Lindauer met last summer with an undercover F.B.I. agent posing as a Libyan intelligence officer seeking help in supporting resistance groups inside Iraq. She twice left documents for the undercover agent at designated spots in Takoma Park, the indictment said. It did not provide any details about the documents.
The claims of her involvement with Iraq had echoes of Ms. Lindauer's involvement in the international diplomacy that surrounded the bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
In that case, Ms. Lindauer met with Libyan officials in 1995 because, she said, she had information about the attack that could exculpate the Libyans - who have since acknowledged their role in the bombing.
Ms. Lindauer said in a deposition that an acquaintance had told her the Libyans had nothing to do with the Lockerbie attack and that she felt compelled to come forward to set the record straight, according to a copy of the deposition posted by the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin. "My reasons for coming forward reflect my own deepest personal values, and my sense of obligation to the cause of international peace and security," she said in the deposition.
She told the publication in an interview that she had been subject to surveillance, threats and attacks after meeting with the Libyans, including, she said, an incident in which someone put acid on her steering wheel. "Also, my house was bugged with listening devices and cameras - little red laser lights in the shower vent," she told the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin in its online edition of July 1, 2000. "And I survived several assassination attempts."
Ms. Lindauer is the fourth person charged in connection with what officials described as a widening investigation into improper intelligence gathering in the former Iraqi mission in New York City under the Hussein government.
Khalid Abdel-Latif Dumeisi, a Jordanian who lived in the Chicago region and who published Arabic periodicals, has been convicted of conspiring to pass information to Iraqi intelligence officials in New York City before the war, and he is due to be sentenced this month.
In addition, two sons of a former Iraqi diplomat in New York City have been charged with secretly aiding Iraqi intelligence officials. Ms. Lindauer was charged as part of the same indictment as the two brothers, Wisam Noman al-Anbuge and Raed al-Anbuge.
Thomas Nooter, a lawyer for Raed al-Anbuge, said the brothers appeared to have had contact with some of the same Iraqi intelligence agents Ms. Lindauer is accused of contacting. But he said he is aware of no other connections between the two cases, and he suggested that prosecutors had joined the cases only to delay the brothers' trial.
During the run-up to the Iraqi war, American officials became increasingly concerned about the possibility that Iraqi-Americans in the United States and others might have been secretly aiding the Hussein government. The desire to root out possible spies and conspirators led the F.B.I to interview some 11,000 Iraqis in the United States during the war.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting from New York for this article.
--------
Too much U.S. foreign policy is unsupported by intelligence
By PAT M. HOLT
Christian Science Monitor
March 12, 2004
http://www.courierpress.com/ecp/editorials/article/0,1626,ECP_768_2722279,00.html
In ancient days, kings hanged messengers who brought them bad news. In more recent times, the differences have been between intelligence analysts (those who interpret the meaning of raw intelligence) and policy-makers for whom the analysis is made.
Trouble arises when a policy-maker is committed to a policy that is unsupported by intelligence.
Former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara explains how this happens in "The Fog of War," the Academy Award-winning documentary film about his life. Believing something, he says in paraphrase, does not make it true.
The context was the Tonkin Gulf in August 1964. The Navy reported attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on two American destroyers patrolling international waters.
The entire policy-making apparatus of the Johnson administration - President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense McNamara and National Security Adviser Walt Rostow - passionately believed, and wanted the American people and the world to believe, that these reports were gospel truth. Johnson submitted, and Congress passed, a resolution authorizing the president to do whatever he wanted in Vietnam. This enabled Johnson to fight the wider war that he publicly said he was not seeking.
As the truth came out in bits and pieces over the following months, it developed that:
# One destroyer was not attacked at all, and the attack on the other was doubtful.
# The U.S. vessels were not on innocent patrol, but on a secret mission designed to provoke the North Vietnamese to turn on their coastal radar so that the Americans could learn its operating frequencies.
There is a striking parallel between this incident and the current dispute over intelligence from Iraq.
The Bush administration built its justification for war on the premise that Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction made the government of Saddam Hussein a clear and present danger to the United States. By Bush's reasoning, this made the overthrow of Saddam's government an imperative of American national security.
The basis of that policy collapsed when the CIA reported that the weapons of mass destruction did not exist. In the Tonkin case, policy required mistaken intelligence to be believed. In the Iraq case, policy required what appears to be correct intelligence to be disbelieved. In both cases, the error was more psychological than duplicitous. Policy-makers had determined the policy before they saw the intelligence. When the intelligence did not support the policy, they twisted the intelligence to make it conform. This practice is not limited to Vietnam and Iraq. Sometimes the distortion is subconscious, sometimes deliberate.
Recent U.S. foreign policy provides other examples of resistance to unwelcome facts. Johnson let his fear of a communist takeover in the Dominican Republic override intelligence minimizing that danger. He was so desirous of confirming what he believed that he sent the FBI to find evidence that the CIA said did not exist. (The FBI couldn't find it, either.)
In Iran, President Carter was so committed to supporting the shah that he ignored warnings of the shah's impending overthrow. Aside from the closed minds of policy-makers, the CIA in Iran was handicapped by an ill-considered agreement not to gather intelligence independently but to rely on SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence agency.
Better reporting was being done by American newspapers, which were under no such constraint. But the press's credibility was handicapped by a tendency on the part of government officials not to take seriously any report that was not classified top secret. The consequence was a radical Islamic revolution that held American diplomats hostage in their own embassy for 14 months.
President Reagan was so committed to fighting an anticommunist war in Central America, where radical liberals outnumbered communists, that he allowed his National Security Council staff to ignore legal restrictions about aid programs. The consequence was the Iran-Contra scandal.
The lesson that runs through these and other mishaps of U.S. foreign policy is that policy ought to be built on intelligence and not the other way around. If intelligence is shaped or distorted to support predetermined policy, trouble is sure to follow.
Intelligence analysts are sometimes mistaken. They sometimes have their own axes to grind. There is no simple solution to the conflict between policy-maker and intelligence analyst. It would help to have a more alert Congress, more willing to do battle with the White House or the intelligence community.
It would help even more to have a president more willing to admit the possibility of error. But that is perhaps asking too much.
-------- us
Panel in Camp Lejeune Water Probe Criticized
By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Catharine Skipp
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51550-2004Mar11.html
A former top Navy administrator appointed Wednesday by the head of the Marine Corps to investigate an escalating water contamination controversy at Camp Lejeune once oversaw a military department that denied the Marines were responsible for the contamination and resisted contributing money for a federal study to assess possible health risks.
The stance taken in 1997 by the office of Robert B. Pirie Jr., then assistant secretary of the Navy for installations and environment, is stoking an outpouring of criticism about the three-member panel named by Gen. Mike Hagee, the nation's top-ranking Marine. Hagee touted the panel as an independent group of "private sector professionals" that would investigate why tainted water was supplied to housing at the North Carolina base for five years after contaminated wells were discovered.
But critics said they are angry that all three members -- Pirie, retired Gen. Richard D. Hearney, who is a former assistant commandant of the Marines, and Ronald C. Packard, a former Republican congressman from California who served in the U.S. Navy Dental Corps -- have strong ties to the military.
"The panel the Marines have chosen is outrageous," said Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.). Dole wrote the Marines before the panel was selected, emphasizing the importance of the members' independence and "perceived impartiality." "The Marines have failed on both accounts," she said.
Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said he is "distressed at the absence of either a water-quality expert or an environmental engineer."
The Marine Corps defended the impartiality of the panel's members yesterday, saying the commission needed expertise in base procedures and "has no present affiliation with the government and is free to conduct its own inquiry and render its own unbiased opinions," according to a statement from spokesman Maj. Nathaniel Fahy. The corps did not comment on the contents of the letter from Pirie's office, which was signed by his deputy and stated that a dry cleaner off base was responsible for the contamination.
The Marines now acknowledge well contamination and have vowed to cooperate with a federal health study. The Marines estimate that 50,000 people may have consumed the water; victims groups place the figure at 200,000.
-------- propaganda wars
Democrats attack Bush for negative ad
March 12, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040312-100217-8079r.htm
WASHINGTON -- A new Bush-Cheney television spot about U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry's record on taxes and defense is drawing fire from Democrats for being negative.
A DNC spokesman said Thursday the ads represent, "the first time that a presidential candidate in this cycle has gone negative through paid media advertisements."
"Bush going up with negative ads this early in the season only proves that desperate times call for desperate measures. With negative job growth, a negative trade balance and a budget firmly in the negative, it seems only fitting for the Bush team to employ a negative campaign strategy," DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera said.
--------
For the Record Bush Exaggerates Kerry's Position on Intelligence Budget
By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51538-2004Mar11.html
President Bush, in his first major assault on Sen. John F. Kerry's legislative record, said this week that his Democratic opponent proposed a $1.5 billion cut in the intelligence budget, a proposal that would "gut the intelligence services," and one that had no co-sponsors because it was "deeply irresponsible."
In terms of accuracy, the parry by the president is about half right. Bush is correct that Kerry on Sept. 29, 1995, proposed a five-year, $1.5 billion cut to the intelligence budget. But Bush appears to be wrong when he said the proposed Kerry cut -- about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget for those years -- would have "gutted" intelligence. In fact, the Republican-led Congress that year approved legislation that resulted in $3.8 billion being cut over five years from the budget of the National Reconnaissance Office -- the same program Kerry said he was targeting.
The $1.5 billion cut Kerry proposed represented about the same amount Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), then chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told the Senate that same day he wanted cut from the intelligence spending bill based on unspent, secret funds that had been accumulated by one intelligence agency "without informing the Pentagon, CIA or Congress." The NRO, which designs, builds and operates spy satellites, had accumulated that amount of excess funds.
Bush's charge that Kerry's broader defense spending reduction bill had no co-sponsors is true, but not because it was seen as irresponsible, as the president suggested. Although Kerry's measure was never taken up, Specter's plan to reduce the NRO's funds, which Kerry co-sponsored with Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), did become law as part of a House-Senate package endorsed by the GOP leadership.
In his campaign speech Monday, Bush said that in 1995, "two years after the [first] attack on the World Trade Center, my opponent introduced a bill to cut the overall intelligence budget by one-and-a-half billion dollars. His bill was so deeply irresponsible that he didn't have a single co-sponsor in the United States Senate. Once again, Senator Kerry is trying to have it both ways. He's for good intelligence, yet he was willing to gut the intelligence services. And that is no way to lead a nation in a time of war."
Bush repeated the charge in New York last night, saying, "Intelligence spending is necessary, not wasteful."
White House spokesman Trent Duffy referred questions about Monday's speech to the Bush-Cheney campaign because "it was a campaign speech." Terry Holt, spokesman for the campaign, said he will look into the origins of the speech because he did not know about the situation in 1995. But, he said, "The president was using one very appropriate example of Kerry's lack of commitment to the intelligence community."
On Sept. 29, 1995, Kerry introduced S. 1290, the "Responsible Deficit Reduction Act of 1995." On page 5 of the 16-page bill, Kerry proposed to "Reduce the Intelligence budget by $300 million in each of fiscal years 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000." The item was one of 17 cuts Kerry proposed from the defense budget, including a phaseout of two Army light divisions and ending production of Trident D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The bill also proposed 17 nondefense cuts, including ending the international space station and reducing federal support for agriculture research and various changes to government purchasing.
Five days before Kerry introduced his legislation, The Washington Post reported that the NRO had hoarded $1 billion to $1.7 billion of unspent funds without informing the CIA or the Pentagon. Months earlier, the CIA had launched an inquiry into the NRO's funding after complaints by lawmakers that the agency had used more than $300 million of unspent classified funds to build a Virginia headquarters for the organization a year earlier.
Kerry campaign officials said yesterday that the $1.5 billion in cuts he proposed were meant to take back the $1 billion to $1.7 billion the NRO had salted away -- but the legislation and Kerry's floor statement, inserted in the Congressional Record that day, did not specify the reason for the proposed cuts. The campaign has no proof that the cuts were for this purpose, but officials point to his joining Specter and others in proposing legislation that resulted in reducing the NRO's fund reserves over the next five years.
Four days before Kerry's legislation was introduced, the chairmen of the House and Senate defense appropriations subcommittees, Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) announced they had "agreed upon additional reductions to NRO funding in order to ensure that only such amounts as are necessary." They did not at that time disclose amounts.
Under the congressional plan approved in late 1995, about $1.9 billion was taken from NRO reserve funds through 1997, and another $1.9 billion over the following two years, according to a senior intelligence official familiar with the NRO's activities.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Senate Panel Agrees to Seek Federal Probe
GOP Aides' Accessing of Democratic Files at Issue
By Helen Dewar Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52023-2004Mar11.html
Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats reached agreement with three Republicans last night on a request for a probe by federal prosecutors into whether criminal laws were violated when two Republican aides accessed and leaked Democratic computer files on strategy for blocking judicial nominations.
The bipartisan agreement capped a day of chaotic efforts by all members of the committee as they grappled with a dispute that focused on the scope of the proposed probe and what kind of prosecutor should be selected to lead it.
Release of the letter of request came only a couple of hours after Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) , expressing exasperation with the protracted squabbling, abruptly ended efforts to reach an official committee position on the issue.
Without any Democrats on hand to agree or disagree, Hatch said he was leaving the decision to Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle, who had conducted an earlier investigation on how the Republican aides accessed the Democratic memos.
Later, committee Democrats Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) were joined by Republicans Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.) and Mike DeWine (Ohio) in signing a letter to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft requesting an investigation along the lines rejected by Hatch.
Although only three Democrats signed, all nine committee Democrats supported the letter, Schumer said. Together with the three Republicans, they constituted a majority of the 19-member panel, he noted.
The letter sought the appointment of a "professional prosecutor who is free from all conflicts and appearances of conflict -- or, if appropriate, a special counsel -- who has full investigatory, charging and reporting authority."
It said Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney for the northern district of Illinois who is leading an investigation into the leaking of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, would be an "ideal candidate" for the job. At least, the choice should "be of Mr. Fitzgerald's integrity and have the same degree of independence," the letter said.
The probe, it added, should cover both the accessing and the dissemination of the files. Hatch and some other Republicans had objected to both the suggestion of a special counsel and including any reference to the dissemination of the memos.
A report released last week on a three-month investigation by Pickle noted that the two GOP aides, relying on lax security procedures, tapped into 4,670 files between 2001 and 2003, most of them in folders belonging to Democratic staffers.
Jason Lundell, the young aide who accessed the computer files, later left Capitol Hill to return to college. Manuel Miranda, who the report said was deeply involved in the computer snooping, served as a committee lawyer and then as a top aide to Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) until he resigned earlier this year as he was targeted by Pickle's probe.
"As a whole, we examined the Pickle report and found it remarkably negligent and biased," said Miranda attorney Adam Augustine Carter, who had urged the committee "not to refer this report any further."
Arthur D. McKey, another Miranda lawyer, said that all committee personnel had "an affirmative grant of access" to any unprotected documents on the committee's computer server and that, thus, there was no theft or "improper conveyance" of the files.
In a National Review Online article, Miranda asserted that Senate confidentiality rules protect official business, "but not the illicit activity that the Democrat memos display," a reference to his contention that that the memos reveal improper collusion between Democrats and liberal groups to block conservative judicial nominees.
At the committee meeting, Hatch, in response to complaints from several Republicans, said he and Pickle feel bad about the inadvertent public release of an unedited version of Pickle's report, but he said he doubts anyone was hurt by it. Before the release of the report, Hatch and others had agreed to give out only a "redacted" version, with names blacked out. But when reporters received their copies, only the table of contents was stripped of names; the rest of the report was not.
-------- homeland security
U.S. Rail Agencies Tighten Security After Blasts in Spain
March 12, 2004
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/12/national/12CND-TRAI.html?hp
fficials in the United States tightened security at railroads today as a precaution after 10 bombs ripped through commuter trains in Spain Thursday, killing nearly 200 people and wounding more than one thousand in rush-hour attacks some Spaniards called their country's "9/11."
While some officials in the United States said today they knew of no specific threats against American targets, the shock waves from the bomb blasts in Madrid continued to reverberate across the Atlantic.
The explosions were the deadliest terrorist attack on a European target since World War II.
While transportation authorities in the United States had increased security measures after 9/11, the Madrid attacks have prompted them to increase patrols and vigilance.
Thousands of miles of train tracks crisscross the United States, feeding millions of commuters into major cities every day.
A spokesman for Amtrak, which owns 700 miles of railroad track in the northeastern United States, said dog and police patrols were intensified, as were reinforcements of procedures on suspicious activity, such as reporting of unattended baggage.
"We have instituted additional protective countermeasures in the last 24 hours," said the spokesman, Dan Stessel. "They were taken in the absence of any specific or credible threat against Amtrak but in the wake of the Madrid incident."
Mr. Stessel also said Amtrak was reinforcing guidelines for employees to report suspicious activity. "If you see a package unattended, that happens all the time," he said. "But if you see someone leave a package and walk away that should really set off red flags."
Besides streaming along the busy Northeast Corridor route from Washington to Boston, Amtrak trains use more than 20,000 miles, some of which is owned by other rail companies, elsewhere in the country.
Since 9/11, the company has conducted increased random dog and hand searches of checked baggage as well as requiring passengers to show identification with a photograph.
Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates public transportation in the New York area, said uniformed forces and canine patrols were increased at Grand Central and Penn stations, as well as in other "sensitive security areas" like elevated rail lines.
The Chicago Transit Authority, which oversees more than 220 miles of subway and elevated rail tracks as well as 2,273 miles of bus routes serving Chicago and 40 suburbs, is stepping up a security tactic borrowed from the New York system, said a spokesperson, Noelle Gaffney.
The authority is making sure there are signs in buses and trains that read, "If you see something, say something" to remind passengers to report suspicious packages or people.
"We are making sure every rail car or bus has them," said Ms. Gaffney.
New measures include radio broadcasts to employees to report suspicious activity as well as requesting they wear high-visibility vests to make reporting easier for passengers, she said.
These measures were implemented "over the last 24 hours in response to heightened awareness because of the Madrid incidents," Ms. Gaffney said.
The Spanish authorities initially blamed the Basque separatist group ETA. But after finding a van near Madrid with detonators and a tape of Koran verses, they held open the possibility of Islamic terrorism.
A group claiming links to Al Qaeda took responsibility for the attacks in a letter delivered to an Arabic newspaper, but an American counterterrorism official said the claim should be viewed skeptically.
Spain, an American ally in the war on Iraq, has 1,300 troops stationed there and was explicitly threatened in an audiotape last October reportedly made by Osama bin Laden.
-------- immigration / refugees
Budget worries Border Patrol
March 12, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040311-113623-8745r.htm
The Bush administration is "rolling out the welcome mat for terrorists and illegal aliens" in seeking to legalize millions of foreign nationals illegally in the United States and in proposing budget cuts "thinning the ranks" of America's border force, says the head of the Border Patrol's 10,000-member union.
"Budget and personnel cuts, coupled with the proposed amnesty for illegal aliens, make it clear that this administration is not at all serious about securing our homeland or enforcing our immigration laws," T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), told a House subcommittee.
"Foreign terrorists continue to pose an extreme threat to the safety of our nation, and illegal immigration remains out of control," said Mr. Bonner, a Border Patrol agent for 26 years. "How can anyone contemplate cutting the funding and staffing of our first line of defense?"
At a budget hearing of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, border security and claims, Mr. Bonner said that despite a $3.6 billion increase proposed for Homeland Security for fiscal 2005, the Border Patrol - whose responsibilities include 6,000 miles of international border - is slated for cuts totaling more than $18.3 million.
He described as "unwise" a Bush plan to substitute $64 million for sensors and surveillance technology and $10 million for unmanned aerial vehicles instead of increasing the number of agents "by at least 1,000."
"While such technology can be useful in pinpointing the location of those who cross our borders illegally, it cannot catch a single violator," Mr. Bonner said, pointing out that the Border Patrol is the only agency within Homeland Security that has been targeted for staff cuts.
"Until control of the borders is achieved, it is irresponsible to propose cutting the Border Patrol's budget and staffing. As long as our borders remain porous, they are just as open to terrorists and other criminals as they are to illegal aliens," he said.
Chairman John N. Hostettler, Indiana Republican, said that while President Bush has proposed additional funding in 2005 for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which oversees the Border Patrol, there are no resources for additional agents - a decision, he said, that ended "a trend of several years."
Mr. Hostettler said the subcommittee is trying to determine whether the president's fiscal request adequately responds to what he called the "main immigration challenges facing the United States today" - reducing the illegal alien population, protecting the United States from criminal aliens and terrorists, and ensuring that immigration benefit applications are handled correctly and in a timely manner.
Michael W. Cutler, former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) senior agent, told the subcommittee that reducing the illegal alien population would require significant funding increases, but that failing to do so would "ultimately cost our country far more."
"The abysmal reputation that our nation has gained over the past several decades in terms of our ability and determination to enforce the immigration laws deters few, if any, aliens who would come here, either in violation of our laws or with the intention of violating our laws after they enter," he said. "We must do better."
Mr. Bonner also said laws regarding employer sanctions need to be strengthened, adding that without the draw of jobs, illegal immigration would be reduced dramatically.
Additionally, he said, Mr. Bush's guest worker proposal would encourage illegal immigration.
"Given the administration's support of amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, the proposed budget and personnel cuts for the Border Patrol should probably not come as a surprise to anyone. Nevertheless, they are disappointing and demoralizing to the front-line workers who risk their lives on a daily basis enforcing our nation's immigration laws," he said.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Ex-detainee alleges abuses at Guantanamo
March 12, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040312-112050-1841r.htm
LONDON -- One of the five British men released from the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay says prisoners were subjected to physical and psychological abuse.
Jamal al-Harith, 37, of Manchester, said detainees were shackled with leg cuffs with metal links that cut into the skin for as long as 15 hours.
He also claimed U.S. soldiers paraded naked prostitutes in front of the many devout Muslims, and alleged he was kicked, punched and assaulted with batons.
Harith told The Times of London the prisoners gave up on human rights.
"After a while we stopped asking for human rights -- we wanted animal rights," Harith said.
He was one of five British men returned home Tuesday, and was the first allowed complete freedom once home. Police and intelligence officials arrested the other four in London for further questioning.
Four other British nationals remain imprisoned at Guantanamo, and Home Secretary David Blunkett has said the government will continue to press for their release.
--------
Ex-Guantánamo Detainee Charges Beating
March 12, 2004
By PATRICK E. TYLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/12/international/europe/12BRIT.html
LONDON, March 11 - One of the British detainees released from Guantánamo Bay has charged that he was brutally beaten by the American military police, and that he and his fellow captives were subjected to mistreatment and humiliation.
In an interview published Thursday in The Daily Mirror, Jamal al-Harith, 37, who goes by the name Jamal Udeen, also said that American military officials had brought prostitutes to the detention facility "about 10 times" and had paraded them before the younger and more devout Muslim prisoners as a form of "psychological torture."
Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a Pentagon spokeswoman, dismissed Mr. Udeen's assertions as completely false.
"All detainees are treated humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in accordance with the principles of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949," she said. "As the president has said before, U.S. policy condemns and prohibits torture. When questioning enemy combatants, U.S. personnel are required to follow this policy and applicable law."
Mr. Udeen's account is the first to emerge from the five British prisoners who flew home from Guantánamo Bay on Tuesday and were released after a brief period of questioning by the antiterrorism police. The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair has been bracing for a still uncertain public reaction to the detainees' personal accounts of life at Camp Delta. More of the accounts are expected to emerge in the next few days.
Graphic portrayals of alleged deprivations and abuse at Guantánamo Bay could further inflame antiwar sentiment in Britain and complicate Mr. Blair's relations with the Bush administration, which was slow to respond to British requests for the release of Britons detained there.
Separately on Thursday, a reporter for The Times of London, Tim Reid, wrote that he had met Mr. Udeen in a jail in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where fleeing Taliban forces had left him in early January 2002. Mr. Reid wrote that Mr. Udeen said he had been arrested by the Taliban, during a journey across Afghanistan to Iran, because he carried a British passport.
"We were praying for the Americans to come," he reportedly said. Instead, according to Mr. Reid, Mr. Udeen was arrested when Central Intelligence Agency officers arrived in Kandahar and took charge of the prisoners the Taliban left behind.
"If I came here to fight, I wouldn't have been thrown in prison," Mr. Udeen reportedly said in 2002.
He and the other four British detainees remained in seclusion on Thursday as their lawyers expressed satisfaction that they are finally free while also calling for the release of the four British detainees still being held at the American facility.
Mr. Udeen, from Manchester, was the first to be released Tuesday night. Tarek Dergoul of London was released Wednesday, and the three others - Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal Ahmed and Asif Iqbal, all from Tipton - were freed Wednesday night.
In the Daily Mirror account on Thursday, Mr. Udeen said he was beaten after he refused to be injected with an unknown substance. He said an "extreme reaction force" of police officers carrying batons and shields had burst into his cell shouting: "Comply, comply, comply! Do not resist! Do not resist."
He said he was left bruised and battered after the alleged beating. He also asserted that detainees had been chained and shackled for up to 15 hours at a time, that they had been fed rations that were 10 years out of date and had been given "foul" water to drink.
Mr. Udeen claimed that the prostitutes had been used to "embarrass and degrade" the young Muslims, "including some who had never seen an unveiled woman before." He did not explain how he knew that the women were prostitutes.
Some family members of the detainees were reported to have left their homes to rendezvous with the detainees at "safe houses" away from the glare of reporters and television crews. At the same time, lawyers and agents for the released men were said to be negotiating publication rights for the first-person accounts of their long detention and interrogation at the facility in Cuba.
Family members were concerned about the physical and mental health of the detainees after long detention, forced isolation and interrogation. Each detainee must face reintegration into a society that will be of two minds about the young men. While many people will feel sympathy for those who claim to have been innocent bystanders in the Afghan war, others will harbor suspicions about those who went to Afghanistan at a time when it was a base for terrorism against the West.
The four Britons still incarcerated at Guantánamo are Feroz Abbasi, Richard Belmar and Martin Mubanga, all from London, and Moazzam Begg of Birmingham.
--------
3 Afghan Youths Question U.S. Captivity
March 12, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/12/international/asia/12KABU.html
KABUL, Afghanistan - There is no doubting their youth. Asadullah thinks he is 12 or 13 - certainly he is too young to grow a beard. His friend Naquibullah, 15, has just fuzz on his cheeks. Muhammad Ismail Agha says he is 15 but looks older.
Young as they are, the three were recently released from the United States detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after being held more than a year on suspicion of belonging to the Taliban. Never charged, given merely a spoken apology from American officers, they were freed in January and returned home, where they told stories of study and fun and games.
But their detention leaves unanswered the question of why three juveniles, none of whom were captured on a battlefield or were carrying weapons, were held for so long without explanation at the Bagram air base, near Kabul, and then at Guantánamo Bay.
More juveniles are still being held in Cuba, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which visits prisoners there. Juveniles continue to be picked up by the American military, Afghans say, often with scant justification.
"Already at Bagram they knew I was not a Talib," Asadullah, the youngest of the three, said in an interview below his mountain village, Khoja Angur. He was interrogated daily at Bagram for several months and then sent to Guantánamo for 11 more months.
Naquibullah, a little older, did not blame the Americans. "This is not their fault," he said in an interview at his home in the eastern province of Paktia. "They did not know if I was Taliban or not."
Ismail, the eldest of the three, never expected such a long imprisonment. "At the end they told me, `You were wrongly detained,' " he said in an interview in Nauzad, near his home in southern Afghanistan.
Aside from homesickness, the boys did not suffer at Guantánamo. They were kept apart from the adult prisoners, learned to read and write in their own language, Pashto, and studied English, math and astronomy. They played board games and soccer. Once they even went with their guards for a picnic on the beach and snorkeled, Asadullah said.
But the Red Cross has expressed concern that Bagram and Guantánamo are inappropriate places to hold juveniles.
The United States military defended detaining the three youths. "Age is not a determining factor in detention," Lt. Col. Matthew P. Beevers, chief spokesman for the United States military in Afghanistan, wrote in an e-mail message.
One of the boys, he wrote, was trying to procure weapons to fight against American forces. The two others were captured in raids on Taliban camps, at a time when the Taliban leadership was directing younger members to attack American forces, the colonel said.
Still, they were released, and the boys offer a substantially different account of how and why they were picked up. Naquibullah and Asadullah say they were captured at the same time that American troops raided the base of a notorious local bandit, Samud, who according to Asadullah had dealings with Taliban and anti-Taliban groups.
Asadullah said he had been working at the base washing dishes after his uncle had left him there to earn money. Naquibullah said he had just been passing the compound that day, but a local official in the nearby town of Zurmat said Naquibullah had been with the armed band for some time.
Asadullah said he was kicked by American soldiers in his first five days of captivity, once so badly in the stomach that he still felt pain when he got to Cuba several months later.
The third boy, Ismail, said he and a friend had been looking for work and spent the night at an Afghan militia post in Gereshk, in Helmand Province, when he was detained by Afghan troops, accused of being one of the Taliban and handed over to American soldiers.
"I am angry with the Afghans who handed me over to the Americans," Ismail said. "The Americans did not know what was happening." One of his relatives repeated a common assertion that American troops paid bounties for Taliban suspects, and so encouraged unscrupulous local militias to accuse people falsely.
The boys have returned home as minor celebrities because of their education and their ability to speak English, but there is also suspicion of their pro-American attitudes.
Ismail said his family had spent a great deal of money searching for him for 10 months before they received news that he was in Guantánamo. The United States should pay his family compensation for his lost earnings, he said.
Asadullah said his father had mortgaged his land to pay for the search for him. "We are ashamed that we owe a lot of money to people and we cannot go to our land now," he said.
Naquibullah is troubled that many Afghans are still being detained by American troops in his district.
"We know who is Taliban here and who is not," he said. "They took away some people just recently from a village nearby. They took away Mullah Abdul Manan. He is not a Talib, he is old and does not hear well, and he is sick."
"Thirty to 40 people were captured by the Americans in the last two months," Naquibullah added. "We don't know where they are. They are just farmers."
Janad Gul, a farmer from the eastern province of Khost, said he had been looking for his son Adel, 15, for seven months. Adel disappeared on his way to his religious school. The family did not know what happened to him for months, until they received a note saying he was being detained somewhere in Afghanistan. They think he is at Bagram.
"He committed no crime," his father said. "He is just a young boy." He suspects that tribal enemies gave information against him to the Americans, alleging that he was a member of the Taliban.
"We have not raised him in a bad way," he said of his son. "He had no weapon, and has never fired a gun in his life."
-------- terrorism
Bombs kill 192 in Spain
March 12, 2004
From combined dispatches
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040311-105621-2743r.htm
MADRID - Simultaneous bomb blasts ripped through four packed commuter trains in Madrid yesterday, killing 192 persons and injuring more than 1,400 in Europe's bloodiest guerrilla attack in more than 15 years.
Spain focused blame on the Basque separatist group ETA, but a purported al Qaeda letter claimed responsibility for the 10 blasts and said a big attack on the United States was nearly ready, causing jitters in world financial markets.
"March 11, 2004, now holds its place in the history of infamy," Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said.
President Bush called Mr. Aznar and King Juan Carlos, saying he expressed "our country's deepest sympathies toward those who lost their life."
"I told them we weep with the families. We stand strong with the people of Spain," he said.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who issued a statement "vehemently" condemning the bombings, spoke twice by phone with Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio in the hours after the attack.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said initial reports from the U.S. Embassy in Madrid found no Americans among the dead or wounded.
The 10 backpack bombs exploded within a 15-minute span, starting about 7:40 a.m., on trains along nine miles of commuter line from Santa Eugenia to the Atocha terminal, a bustling hub for subway, commuter and long-distance trains just south of the famed Prado Museum. Police also found and detonated three other bombs.
Panicked commuters trampled each other, abandoning their bags and shoes, after two of the bombs went off in one train at the Atocha station.
Worst hit was a double-decker train at El Pozo station, where two bombs killed 70 persons, fire department inspector Juan Redondo told the Associated Press. One body was blown onto the roof.
As pictures of the carnage were beamed around the globe, France said it would raise its terror-alert level and Greece, host of the Olympic Games in August, also stepped up security measures.
After initially blaming the ETA for the attack, three days before Spain's general election, Mr. Aznar's government said a stolen van had been found near Madrid carrying seven detonators and an Arabic tape of Koran verses.
"The conclusion of this morning that pointed to [the ETA] right now is still the main line of investigation. ... [But] I have given the security forces instructions not to rule out anything," Interior Minister Angel Acebes told reporters.
No authentication was available on the purported al Qaeda letter, a copy of which was faxed to Reuters by the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper. The letter was attributed to the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade, a group that aligns itself with al Qaeda.
A U.S. official who declined to be identified said the group had made false claims in the past.
"We have succeeded in infiltrating the heart of crusader Europe," the letter said, calling the attack "Operation Death Trains."
"We bring the good news to Muslims of the world that the expected 'Winds of Black Death' strike against America is now in its final stage," it added.
U.S. intelligence agencies said it was too early to say who was responsible for the train bombs but saw the hallmarks of both the ETA and al Qaeda, which has threatened to attack countries such as Spain that supported the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
The attack occurred precisely 911 days after "9/11," as the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States are widely known.
The Basque party Batasuna, accused by officials of being part of the ETA, said it "absolutely rejected" the bombings at three Madrid train stations and was convinced the ETA was not responsible.
"The train was cut open like a can of tuna," ambulance driver Enrique Sanchez said at Atocha station. "We didn't know who to treat first. There was a lot of blood, a lot of blood." Passenger Ana Maria Mayor's voice cracked as she told reporters, "I saw a baby torn to bits."
Mr. Aznar called on Spaniards, who have protested in millions against past attacks by the ETA, to take to the streets today.
His center-right government declared three days of national mourning and said schools, museums and the central bank would shut.
"An act of barbaric terrorism has engulfed Spain with profound pain, repulsion and anger," King Juan Carlos said on national television.
Spanish newspapers rushed out special editions with headlines such as "Massacre in Madrid" or "Our 9/11" and pictures of bloodied passengers and wrecked trains.
People lit candles in Madrid for the victims. Vigils were held elsewhere in Spain, and thousands gathered in the Basque region's capital Vitoria, some shouting "murderers" at Premier Juan Jose Ibarretxe.
In Barcelona, thousands banged pots and pans, saying they were protesting Mr. Aznar's support for the Iraq war because they said it had made Spain an al Qaeda target.
"We see a link between the Spanish state and its policy of intervention in Iraq with al Qaeda," said Manuel Fernandez, 25.
ETA has killed about 850 people since 1968 in its fight for a separate Basque state in northwest Spain and southwest France, and has been branded a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union.
The Basque group's most deadly confirmed attack killed 21 persons at a supermarket in Barcelona in 1987.
Yesterday's death toll was the biggest in a guerrilla attack in Europe since December 1988, when a bomb exploded on a Pan Am Boeing 747, bringing it down on the Scottish town of Lockerbie. In all, 270 persons died.
Many political analysts said that if the ETA was responsible for the attack, it would favor Mr. Aznar's Popular Party in Sunday's general election because of its hard line against the group.
"If, however, the rumors about al Qaeda gain credence, then things would be perceived in a very different way," said pollster Julian Santamaria. Mr. Aznar, who is not seeking re-election, defied main opposition parties and huge public antiwar sentiment to back the Iraq war.
European shares suffered their worst fall of 2004 as the attack, combined with fears about economic recovery, spooked investors. In the United States, the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 1.64 percent.
• Staff writer David R. Sands in Washington contributed to this report, which is based on wire services reports.
--------
Madrid Train Blasts Kill at Least 190
10 Bombs Detonate Almost at Once; Nearly 1,500 Hurt
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 12, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51736-2004Mar11?language=printer
MADRID, March 11 -- Ten nearly simultaneous explosions tore through four packed commuter trains in Madrid during rush hour Thursday morning, killing at least 190 people and wounding nearly 1,500 in the worst terrorist attack in modern Spanish history, three days before national elections.
The explosives were placed in backpacks and left aboard trains and on tracks at three stations. Witnesses describing the scenes of chaos and carnage said they heard multiple explosions at the city's busy Atocha station, which sent passengers scrambling in a panic. A makeshift emergency hospital was set up alongside the tracks at the station, just south of the Prado Museum. Buses were hurriedly converted into ambulances. The walking wounded were asked to make it to hospitals on their own, and leave vehicles available for the more severely injured.
Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar called the attacks "a mass murder" and compared them to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes in the United States. "March 11, 2004, now occupies a place in the history of infamy," he said.
Government officials and the media immediately blamed the attacks on the Basque separatist group ETA, which has fought for more than 30 years against the Spanish government.
Later Thursday, however, the Spanish interior minister, Angel Acebes, said the government was investigating a possible link to Islamic extremists after a van was discovered on the outskirts of Madrid carrying seven detonator caps and a cassette tape in Arabic containing verses from the Koran. The van was parked in the town of Alcala de Henares about 15 miles east of Madrid, where at least three of the targeted trains originated.
"I have given our security forces instructions not to rule out anything," Acebes said, adding that he still considered ETA the principal suspect.
The discovery of the van was followed by a report from London by the Arabic language Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper that it had received an e-mail from an Islamic militant group claiming responsibility for the attacks.
"This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally in its war against Islam," the letter said, claiming that it had been sent on behalf of the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, a group aligned with the al Qaeda terrorist network. The letter also said preparations for an attack on the United States were underway.
Spain has worked closely with the United States in the war against terrorism and has 1,300 troops in Iraq. Spanish officials have also rounded up al Qaeda suspects believed to be operating a terrorist cell in the country.
In October, Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, warned in an audiotape that countries, including Spain, that cooperated with the United States risked being targeted.
The Aznar government's support for the Iraq war was deeply unpopular among citizens, with polls indicating that 90 percent of the population was against it. Spain's involvement in Iraq had become a campaign issue, with the opposition Socialist Party promising to reverse the policy and bring troops home.
After the attacks, President Bush expressed "deepest sympathies" to Aznar and King Juan Carlos. "We stand strongly with the people of Spain," Bush said. "I appreciate so very much the Spanish government's fight against terror, their resolute stand against terrorist organizations like the ETA."
While the Aznar government's close ties to the Bush administration over Iraq have received little approval, its stance against ETA has been highly popular. The candidate of the governing Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy, has promised to continue the policy pursued by Aznar, who is stepping down after eight years in power. Rajoy's campaign had tacitly accused his Socialist challenger, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, of being softer on terrorism.
At Spain's insistence, the U.N. Security Council swiftly adopted a resolution condemning the attack and accusing ETA of carrying it out. After the vote, Spain's deputy ambassador, Ana Maria Menendez, declined to explain why officials had eliminated al Qaeda or other groups as potential perpetrators.
Security Council diplomats said they acted on the basis of Spain's assurances that ETA was responsible. "It is the judgment of the government of Spain that these attacks were carried out by the ETA, and we have no information to the contrary," said John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
ETA -- whose initials in the Basque language stand for Basque Homeland and Liberty -- has been held responsible for as many as 850 deaths since it began its campaign of violence in 1968. But the group is not known for carrying out attacks of this magnitude, and it typically has targeted government officials and members of the Spanish security forces. ETA also usually gives warnings before its strikes; no advance notice was reported Thursday.
The Spanish government in recent months had claimed that ETA had been severely weakened by arrests of its top commanders in Spain and in France, and by its labeling as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, steps that allowed for a more aggressive pursuit of the group's financial assets abroad.
But officials had lately warned that ETA was attempting to carry out a large-scale attack in advance of the elections Sunday. Last month, Spanish Civil Guard national police intercepted a van packed with a half-ton of explosive potassium chlorate, and arrested two suspected ETA members who they said were planning a major bombing attack in an industrial area of Madrid. Last year on Christmas Eve, police arrested two ETA suspects who they said were plotting a series of bombings on trains. Police in that case found a 44-pound bomb planted on a train heading from San Sebastian, in the Basque region, to Madrid.
At a news conference this afternoon, Acebes, the interior minister, said: "ETA had been looking for a massacre in Spain. Unfortunately, today, it achieved its goal."
But Arnaldo Otegi, the head of the banned political party Batasuna, charged by Aznar's government of being ETA's political wing, denied that ETA was responsible for Thursday's bombings. Otegi said in a telephone interview that "Batasuna strongly condemns today's attacks, like we condemned the 9/11 attacks."
Miren Azuarate, a spokeswoman for the Basque autonomous regional government based in Vitoria, also condemned the attacks and urged the Spanish government "not to use the attacks in a partisan or electoral way."
After the attacks, Spanish political parties suspended campaigning for the election, which the Popular Party had been widely expected to win. The government called for three days of national mourning, and demonstrations are being announced for Friday in Spain's largest cities.
The attacks were the worst in Western Europe since the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988 that killed 270 people.
The strikes appeared well coordinated and timed to carry the most lethal impact possible, coming at the peak of the morning rush hour and targeting mainly workers and students on their way to Madrid for jobs and classes.
The first explosion occurred at the Atocha station at 7:35 a.m. and was quickly followed by several other explosions that ripped apart train cars and blew metal debris and body parts across a wide area of track and onto an adjacent street.
There were also explosions at El Pozo and Santa Eugenia, two smaller stations served by commuter trains bringing passengers into Madrid from eastern suburbs.
Witnesses at Atocha, Madrid's principal station, said rescue workers had to climb into the mangled wreckage of cars to carry out victims. At one point, a woman at the scene said, the police discovered an unexploded bomb and shouted for the area to be cleared, forcing rescue workers to abandon their efforts and run for cover.
In all, the interior minister and others said there were 13 bombs, most of them placed in backpacks and all containing about 28 to 33 pounds of explosives. Ten of the packs exploded, and the others were destroyed in controlled explosions. Police also destroyed a suspicious car found near one of the stations, and the controlled explosions heightened the sense of confusion and panic, witnesses said.
Special correspondents Robert Scarcia and Pamela Rolfe and staff writer Colum Lynch in New York contributed to this report.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Police to Use Containment Pens to Handle Protest on March 20
March 12, 2004
By SHAILA K. DEWAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/12/nyregion/12protestors.html
the Police Department is denying a request to refrain from using interlocking metal barricades to contain demonstrators at a March 20 march and rally, the organizers said yesterday.
Demonstrators, civil rights advocates and the police say they view the protest, against the occupation of Iraq, as a test of how all sides will handle demonstrations during the Republican National Convention.
The police said the pens would increase safety, help crosstown traffic flow, and enable them to use fewer officers at big events. "It's not to create a hostile environment," said Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the department.
Protest organizers say the pens are more appropriate for controlling cattle than people, and they point out that countless demonstrations in New York and elsewhere have been held peaceably without them.
"They're very confusing for people," said Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, the organizers of the March 20 event. Mr. Browne said that the pens, which would be closed one by one as they fill with people, would be used only during the rally, not the march, and that people would be allowed to leave at will. He said the department would post directions for protesters on its Web site. "While they're there they can go to our recruitment page if they're interested in joining the department," he deadpanned.
United for Peace and Justice was responsible for a major antiwar demonstration in February 2003 in which demonstrators complained that the police used charging horses, unprovoked arrests and a maze of barricades to control the crowd, preventing some people from leaving and blocking tens of thousands from reaching the demonstration site.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly gave the police high marks for its handling of that event, which was attended by more than 100,000 people. He blamed problems on a lack of cooperation from organizers, who he said failed to advertise the correct location or provide the promised number of marshals.
After that demonstration, the New York Civil Liberties Union filed suit to prevent the police from using perimeter barricades and pens, dispersing crowds with horses without notice, and searching demonstrators. The group's fears that the police will use the threat of arrest to discourage protesters were heightened this week when Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, said his office was told to expect 1,000 arrests a day at the convention.
"They should be figuring out how not to arrest 1,000 people, not how to arrest 1,000 people," said Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the civil liberties union.
The police and the demonstration organizers also disagreed yesterday about arrangements. Mr. Browne said demonstrators would enter Madison Avenue at 42nd Street and walk down to assemble for the march. Ms. Cagan said they were also telling people to approach from the north, but from 34th Street.
One issue, however, was resolved: unlike last year, the police agreed to allow portable toilets at the rally.
--------
Thousands Protest S. Korea Impeachment
March 12, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-SKorea-Impeachment.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Thousands of angry South Koreans held candlelight vigils across the country to protest the historic impeachment of their president on Friday. An interim head of state known as ``Mr. Stability'' took control, pledging to keep foreign and economic policies on an even keel.
The spontaneous evening protests were peaceful but underlined widespread dismay at a political crisis that has rattled a nation already juggling the North Korean nuclear standoff, a sluggish economy and a tumultuous run-up to hotly contested parliamentary elections next month.
The presidential impeachment was a first in South Korea, and the vote followed hours of televised shoving matches in which lawmakers battled for control of the assembly's podium, throwing elbows and pulling hair. Security guards forcibly removed screaming supporters of President Roh Moo-hyun who tried to block the vote by commandeering the rostrum.
Prime Minister Goh Kun, who assumed executive powers from Roh, spoke of the need to ``stabilize the people's lives and ensure that the country's international credibility will not be damaged.''
In a phone call to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon stressed the government's commitment to continuity. He told Powell there would be no change in Seoul's policy toward North Korea and that the government would ``maintain its close alliance with the United States,'' according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
The 66-year-old Goh, who held various posts under six successive governments, earned the nicknames ``Mr. Stability'' and ``Master Administrator'' for his ability to survive military coups, civic unrest and parliamentary machinations.
Goh will perform the executive duties until the Constitutional Court rules on whether to unseat Roh, a decision that could take six months. The opposition-controlled National Assembly voted Friday morning to impeach Roh on the grounds of illegal electioneering and incompetence.
By Friday evening, protests erupted around the country, including rallies in Seoul, Busan, Taegu and Kwangju. Police estimated about 12,000 Roh supporters gathered outside the capital's National Assembly, waving candles and chanting, ``Impeachment is null and void!''
Riot police parked buses bumper-to-bumper to block protesters from marching on parliament.
Fueling the rallies was a widespread perception that the opposition Grand National and Millennium Democratic parties launched the impeachment bid for political gain ahead of nationwide parliamentary polls April 15.
Polls taken by broadcaster KBS and Yonhap news agency both found that 70 percent of South Koreans thought the impeachment was wrong. The KBS poll's margin of error was 3.3 percentage points; Yonhap's was 3.07 percentage points.
Roh, a 57-year-old former human rights lawyer, came to office last February on a populist ticket that promised South Koreans better relations with communist North Korea and a more equal footing with the country's biggest ally, the United States.
His 13-month tenure was dogged by corruption scandals, but Friday's vote was a crowning embarrassment for the feisty, independent leader.
Government leaders called emergency meetings to chart a stable course amid concerns the upheaval would fan the ongoing crisis over North Korea's nuclear programs or undermine the South's fragile economy.
Roh took power promising to continue his predecessor's ``Sunshine Policy'' of engagement with North Korea. South Korea has backed the idea of offering the communist North aid in return for a nuclear freeze and dismantlement.
North Korea watchers agreed the impeachment wouldn't alter the South's basic policy, but said it could lead to Seoul's taking a harder line toward the North -- especially if a new leader takes office.
``If there is any effect, Seoul may become a bit more stern toward North Korea,'' said Park Joon-young, a politics professor at Ewha Women's University in Seoul.
That scenario is more likely if the GNP, known for its tougher stance against the North and more Washington-friendly foreign policy, is able take the presidency.
South Korea heightened its military vigilance against the North on Friday but the Defense Ministry said it saw no signs of unusual North Korean troop movements. On Saturday, U.S. Gen. Leon J. LaPorte, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, was scheduled to meet Defense Minister Cho Young-kil.
Investors recoiled and sent the country's KOSPI stock index tumbling 5.5 percent at one point. It closed down 2.5 percent. South Korea's currency, the won, fell by about 1 percent, closing at 1,180 to the dollar.
The opposition-backed impeachment motion had cited Roh's alleged mismanagement of the economy as one reason for trying to oust him. South Korea's economic growth rate slowed to 2.9 percent last year, from 6.3 percent in 2002.
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Albert Einstein: Man of Imagination
From: The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation [mailto:wagingpeace@in.optinpro.com]
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2004 4:10 PM
Prepared by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
March 14th, 2004 marks the 125th birthday of the great physicist and peace champion Albert Einstein. Born in Germany on March 14th, 1879, Einstein is known for the general theory of relativity. His work dramatically altered the world's conception of space, time, and energy. In his quest to understand the universe, Einstein laid the theoretical foundations for nuclear energy and, ultimately, the atomic bomb. Although Einstein helped to usher in the Nuclear Age, he was not a scientist detached from social responsibility. He continues to be honored for his ceaseless struggle to achieve peace, world order, and international cooperation.
Einstein's Early Years
After receiving a Doctorate degree in 1905 from Eidgenossische Technishe Hockshule, a technical university in Zurich, Switzerland, Einstein worked as a technical assistant at the Swiss Patent Office. During his spare time he produced much of his remarkable scientific work. Einstein found Newtonian mechanics to be inadequate and, using his idea of relativity, attempted to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of electromagnetic fields. Einstein believed that a unified theory was possible to explain the seemingly contradictory laws of the movement in large objects to the laws governing subatomic particles. In 1921, Einstein received a Nobel Prize for his 1905 work on photoelectric effects.
Einstein's Contributions and Legacy
Albert Einstein's political activism began during World War I. After the war, he participated in the League of Nations (the predecessor to the United Nations) and in other disarmament groups. He soon became a leader and advocate for pacifism and non-violent conflict resolution. In December 1932, Einstein accepted an offer of a post at Princeton University and left Germany for the United States. The following month the Nazis came to power in Germany and Einstein was never to return there.
With the onset World War II in 1939, Europe was further destabilized and Einstein feared that the Nazi regime would be victorious. At the urging of fellow scientist Leo Szilard , Einstein wrote a letter to US President Roosevelt warning that the US must develop the atomic bomb before the Germans did. As a result, President Roosevelt initiated a research project to create an atomic bomb, and the Nuclear Age was set in motion. However, as the realization of nuclear weapons drew near, Einstein looked beyond World War II to future problems that such weapons could bring. In December 1944, Einstein wrote to physicist Niels Bohr, "When the war is over, then there will be in all countries a pursuit of secret war preparations with technological means which will lead inevitably to preventative wars and to destruction even more terrible than the present destruction of life."
While Einstein's recommendation led to the Manhattan Project, after the devastation of Japan by the atomic bomb - which occurred three months after the surrender of Germany - Einstein deeply regretted his role in encouraging the project. In November 1954, five months before his death, Einstein summarized his feelings about his role in the creation of the atomic bomb: "I made one great mistake in my life... when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them."
Following World War II, Einstein became even more outspoken. He was a leading figure in the World Government Movement and continued to work for peace and world order, campaigning for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. When asked what kind of weapons World War III would be fought with, Einstein responded, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
On July 9, 1955, Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto warning of the peril of nuclear weapons and the dangers of continuing an arms race and called upon Congress, scientists and the general public to join in a resolution. The Russell Einstein Manifesto resolved: "In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the Governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them."
What Would Einstein Say To Scientists Today?
"Today, the physicists who participate in watching the most formidable and dangerous weapon of all time...cannot desist from warning and warning again: we cannot and should not slacken in our efforts to make the nations of the world and especially their governments aware of the unspeakable disaster they are certain to provoke unless they change their attitude towards each other and towards the task of shaping the future."
Despite Einstein's call for the complete abolition of all nuclear weapons, scientists today are researching and developing a new generation of these indiscriminate weapons of mass murder. As world citizens, we must follow Einstein's example and assume our paramount responsibility of calling upon all scientists, elected officials and world leaders to publicly renounce nuclear weapons, immediately negotiate a treaty for their complete elimination and instead find a peaceful means for settling all matters of conflict.
Celebrating Einstein
Below are ideas for celebrating Einstein's legacy on his birthday.
1. One of Einstein's most important observations was that we need to think in a different mode than the one which produced our problems. Read and discuss the Russell-Einstein Manifesto or quotes from Einstein (see below) and then brainstorm one page of ideas, considering: In what new ways can we think about resolving conflict? Who or what organization is thinking differently about how to accomplish peace? Follow up the brainstorming activity with one action inspired by your thinking. Consider doing this with family and friends.
2. Learn more about leading scientists and scientific organizations who are speaking out for world peace:
International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility . International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation . Pugwash
3. Consider where you might be able to raise peace consciousness in your life.
Einstein Quotes on Peace & War
"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
" Imagination is more important than knowledge."
" I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
" Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"
" The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
" He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
" We must inoculate our children against militarism, by educating them in the spirit of pacifism... Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal its horrors. They indoctrinate children with hatred. I would teach peace rather than war, love rather than hate."
" Concern for man himself and his fate must always be the chief interest of all technical endeavors... In order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations."
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