Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Hear the presentations from DU conference
Plea over Gulf War syndrome
Powell in Pakistan to Discuss Osama, Nuke Scandal
UN Nuclear Chief Can't Rule Out Iran A - Bomb Program
U.N. Official: No Proof of Iran Nukes
Khatami: Iran Will Work With Nuke Agency
Blix Says Weapons Inspections Work
Protesters slam Kepco MOX plan
Pluthermal projects still face obstacles
UN Watchdog Wants Unfettered N. Korea Inspections
N. Korea Increasing `nuclear Deterrent'
North Korea Threatens to Expand Nuclear Arsenal
Canada warned of 'untested' defence system
Russian Submarine Replays Failed Launch
Nuclear Stockpiles
Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction
Blix Says Weapons Inspections Work
Nuke labs reduce guard training
Security questioned at U.S. nuclear sites
Davis - Besse Nuclear Plant Is Shut Down
Davis-Besse Shutdown Shows Regulatory Flaws [PublicCitizen]
CLOSE SCRUTINY
Death of a patriot: No more
Bush defense spending restored
Opinion of U.S. Abroad Is Falling, Survey Finds
MILITARY
2 Kuwaiti Firms Win New Iraq Fuel Deals
Firm Seeks 'Termination Costs' for Iraq Contract
Tighter Security on Europe's Rails
Spain Grapples With Notion That Terrorism Trumped Democracy
The Ripples From Spain Could Rock Berlusconi
Bush tries to steel allies
Shiite Leader in Iraq Wants Help of U.N., Envoy Says
Dozens Pick Through Rubble in Search for Survivors
For Iraqis in Harm's Way, $5,000 and 'I'm Sorry'
US army launches new offensive in Baghdad
Israeli Airstrikes Kill at Least 3 in Gaza
Israel Kills 4 as It Steps Up Raids in Gaza
US eye Darwin for base
Pakistani Forces Kill 24 in Raid Near Afghan Border
Pakistani Troops Battle Militants Near Afghanistan
CIA Video Shows U.S. Had Eye on Bin Laden in 2000
Iraqi Leader Reaffirms U.N. Role in Transition
Simulated Attacks Repelled In Antimissile War Game
Spain Campaigned to Pin Blame on ETA
No It All
House Iraq Resolution Turns Into Debate
Bush: I'm God's Delivery Boy
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
White House Likens Terror Case to WWII
Guantánamo and Jailers: Mixed Review by Detainees
Report Faults Prison System in 7 Deaths in Vermont
Suspect in Madrid Bombings Was Under Scrutiny in 3 Countries
OTHER
U.S. National Parks Short-Staffed and Short-Changed
Further Study Ordered On Mercury Regulation
Report Critical of Interior Official
Probe Starts in Medicare Drug Cost Estimates
Williams Tells WASA To Mail 23,000 Filters
ACTIVISTS
Saudi Arabia Detains Reformers
Paraguay protesters march on farm, justice issues
Mid-East: Nuclear weapons found!
The Global Anti-War Movement and The Beast
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Hear the presentations from DU conference
From: davey garland <thunderelf@yahoo.co.uk>
Wed Mar 17, 2004 10:16am
Audio footage of speakers from the Uranium weapons conference in Hamburg last October is now available watch online from the Trapock Peace Centre. Go to:
http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html
----
Plea over Gulf War syndrome
Wednesday, 17 March, 2004,
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/3517034.stm
MSPs have demanded to know what the Scottish NHS is doing to help victims of so-called Gulf War Syndrome. They made their plea after hearing a petition from a former soldier.
Alexander Izett claims he has been left with brittle bone disease as a result of the nine injections he was given in preparation for the first Gulf War.
Mr Izett says up to 2,000 Scottish veterans have suffered from the effects of the inoculations and he wants them to be given special NHS treatment.
Last year, a war pensions appeal tribunal ruled that the brittle bone disease suffered by Mr Izett, who is originally from Cumbernauld but now lives in Germany, could be linked to the injections.
Many symptoms
The decision was hailed by Army veterans as the first official recognition of Gulf War syndrome.
The term is associated with a vast array of symptoms including fatigue, nausea, fever and depression.
It has been attributed to injections, depleted uranium ammunition or even Iraqi chemical weapons, although some believe it could be psychosomatic.
But the Ministry of Defence has never admitted there is any such thing as Gulf War syndrome.
This stance has infuriated many veterans who feel that there has never been a proper investigation into the issue.
On Wednesday Mr Izett asked the Scottish Parliament to mount its own inquiry.
-------- india / pakistan
Powell in Pakistan to Discuss Osama, Nuke Scandal
March 17, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-pakistan-powell.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Pakistan Wednesday, a day after Pakistani troops fought with suspected al Qaeda fighters in the bloodiest clash of a crackdown on militants.
Powell is in Islamabad for talks on the hunt for al Qaeda militants, including Osama bin Laden, and a recent nuclear proliferation scandal.
The day before his arrival, Pakistani paramilitary forces launched the latest in a series of operations aimed at flushing out foreign Islamic fighters in its semi-autonomous tribal belt in which at least 16 soldiers and 24 militants were killed.
Speaking to reporters in Kabul, Afghanistan, before he left for Islamabad, Powell welcomed the latest crackdown.
``The action in Pakistan yesterday suggests that Pakistanis have picked up the pace and we hope they continue to do that,'' he said. ``It shows the intention on the part of Pakistan not to allow these tribal areas to be used as a haven.''
U.S.-led forces numbering about 13,500 troops on the Afghan side of the border have also launched a fresh operation against militants, including al Qaeda fighters and remnants of the ousted Taliban militia.
Intensified efforts on both sides of the border have been seen as part of a concerted effort to find the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, blamed for plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Bin Laden, his al Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and notorious renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are all believed to be in the border area, possibly slipping across the frontier to evade capture.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, has vowed to stamp out Islamic extremists, who continue to pose a threat to stability in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Musharraf narrowly survived two attempts on his life in December blamed on al Qaeda militants, and a huge car bomb was found and defused outside the U.S. consulate in the southern port city of Karachi Monday.
NUCLEAR SCANDAL AND INDIA
Also high on Powell's packed agenda will be the recent nuclear proliferation scandal in Pakistan, which embarrassed Musharraf and the military.
Top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, revered in Pakistan as a hero for helping develop the atomic bomb, confessed to leaking nuclear weapons secrets to Libya, North Korea and Iran, but was publicly pardoned by Musharraf.
The United States has decided not to criticize Musharraf's decision, aware of his vulnerability and the key role he still has in the war on terror, including the capture of bin Laden.
Few experts in Pakistan believe Khan could have acted without the knowledge of the military and intelligence services, but he insists he acted alone in developing a ``one-stop shop'' black market for nuclear secrets.
In Afghanistan, Powell reassured President Hamid Karzai of U.S. support for his bid to stabilize the country and hold elections later this year.
He traveled to Afghanistan from India, where he urged Pakistan to stop Muslim militants from entering Indian Kashmir.
U.S. intervention was key to defusing tension between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan in 2002, when they came to the brink of a fourth war over the divided Himalayan region.
India blames Pakistan for fomenting a Muslim insurgency inside Indian-held Kashmir that has killed tens of thousands of people since 1989. Pakistan calls the insurgency a ``legitimate freedom struggle,'' but denies aiding the militants.
-------- iran
UN Nuclear Chief Can't Rule Out Iran A - Bomb Program
March 17, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran-elbaradei.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday he could not rule out the possibility that Iran has been pursuing atomic weapons, as the United States contends.
But Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told President Bush in a 45-minute meeting that it might be a good idea for Washington to begin direct talks with the Islamic republic to help break the standoff over Tehran's nuclear program.
Testifying at a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia, ElBaradei was asked if he thought Iran had begun the process of building a nuclear bomb.
``We have not yet seen that, but I am not excluding that possibility,'' said ElBaradei, the head of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency. ``The jury's still out.''
ElBaradei said the IAEA had to be cautious about what it said regarding a country's potential nuclear arsenal.
``Our statements can make the difference between war and peace. That's why we have to be careful,'' he said.
The crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear program was sparked in August 2002 when an exiled opposition group broke the news that Iran was hiding a massive underground uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy-water production plant at Arak.
Asked why he thought Iran had made the decision to mine, process and enrich uranium, rather than buying it as most power companies would, ElBaradei told the subcommittee: ``They know it's a deterrent. If you can enrich uranium, you don't need a weapon tomorrow. It sends a message.''
Speaking to reporters after meetings with Bush and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, ElBaradei said he suggested that dialogue might be a way out of the Iran crisis.
``I don't think I have heard rejection, but I think it's clearly an idea which they have to mull over,'' ElBaradei said. ``They (Iran and the U.S.) have talked about Afghanistan in the past, so it's nothing novel. It's just whether they feel something could come out of that.''
ElBaradei told reporters that it would not be easy for the Americans, who have no diplomatic relations with Tehran, to sit down with the Iranians at the negotiating table.
``I made it clear that in my view, in my narrow, discreet area, I think it would be good to have a dialogue,'' he said.
MORATORIUM ON ENRICHMENT
ElBaradei also proposed a global moratorium on the development of new uranium enrichment capabilities. Countries without enrichment would agree not to pursue the full fuel cycle in exchange ``for an assurance of some supply'' of fuel.
This could be proposed to Iran and other states, he said.
ElBaradei said Iran was cooperating once again after suspending inspections last week in reaction to a harsh IAEA resolution passed by the agency's governing board.
``I think today Iran is cooperating fully. It is regrettable, the suspension of inspections for a couple of weeks. Now they are back on track,'' he said.
Iran froze inspections on Friday, but said on Monday the IAEA could return on March 27 -- a delay of over two weeks.
However, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami warned on Wednesday that Tehran would cooperate with the IAEA as long as U.S. ``plots'' to send Iran to the U.N. Security Council for sanctions failed.
``We will continue our cooperation with the agency as long as we know the U.S. plots are not effective,'' Khatami told reporters after a cabinet meeting.
In its 13-month investigation of the Iranian nuclear program, the IAEA has uncovered traces of bomb-grade uranium and experiments with plutonium and polonium, a substance that can be used to initiate a chain reaction in an atom bomb.
--------
U.N. Official: No Proof of Iran Nukes
March 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iran-Nuclear.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency told Congress on Wednesday ``the jury is still out'' on whether Iran was developing nuclear weapons.
``I don't have any specific proof,'' Mohammed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told a Congressional panel on a day in which he also urged President Bush to open a dialogue with Iran on its nuclear program.
``They are mulling it over,'' ElBaradei said after a 45-minute White House session with Bush and another meeting with Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security assistant.
U.S. intelligence agencies are convinced Iran is edging closer to producing nuclear weapons.
ElBaradei told members of Congress, however, that he did not have specific proof.
``I have to be certain,'' he said.
The U.N. official said he was careful with statements about Iran's nuclear intentions. ``This could make a difference between peace and war,'' he said.
At the White House, ElBaradei told reporters that Iran was cooperating fully with U.N. inspectors after barring inspections for two weeks. They are to resume March 27.
Still, Bush expressed concern about Iran's program, said ElBaradei.
``My answer is that the jury is still out,'' ElBaradei said. ``We would like to continue to work hard on inspecting Iran before we come to a conclusion.''
After meeting with Bush, ElBaradei said he hoped he would have a more definitive assessment of Iran's nuclear activities by June, when he is due to give his next report to the IAEA Board of Governors.
Iran suspended inspections last weekend after the U.N. agency adopted a resolution deploring recent discoveries of uranium enrichment equipment and other suspicious activities that Iran had failed to reveal. Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hasan Rowhani, had described the IAEA resolution as ``unfair and deceitful.''
Though ElBaradei called the two-week suspension ``regrettable'' and ``a bad precedent,'' he said the inspection that was postponed was not time-sensitive and thus probably didn't offer Iran an opportunity to hide anything. And now, he said, Iran is ``back on track.''
U.N. inspectors are due to return to Iran on March 27.
``I think today Iran is cooperating fully,'' ElBaradei said. ``I expect them to be fully cooperative, to be fully transparent, to provide all information in the most detailed manner. ... We need 100 percent cooperation.''
Iran says its nuclear activities are designed to generate electricity. The Bush administration suspects Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
``There certainly is no reason why they need to have nuclear energy given all their vast oil and gas resources,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. ``So we continue to have concerns about their behavior and about their nuclear program.''
ElBaradei seemed to endorse Bush's recent call for a ban on allowing any additional countries to acquire the ability to enrich uranium or reprocess spent fuel for plutonium -- even if the stated intent is to build civilian nuclear power facilities.
``We believe there is enough supply in the world that we do not like to see many other countries developing reprocessing capability, enrichment capability, provided that we provide assurance of supply,'' ElBaradei said.
His White House visit came after Bush gave a speech at the National Defense University last month in which the president singled out the IAEA for criticism. Bush called for the creation of a special committee to focus on safeguards and verification and to ensure that nations comply with international obligations, and he complained that nations such as Iran have been allowed to sit on the IAEA board of governors.
The agency is seen as ineffective by many in the administration who cite its failure to stop weapons programs in Libya, North Korea and other countries.
Separately, ElBaradei was pleased with what he has heard during his Washington stay on the intelligence the United States is willing to provide the inspectors. At a meeting Tuesday with CIA Director George Tenet, he said he received ``assurance that the agency will get as much intelligence as we can get from the CIA and other intelligence agencies.''
``We all understand that we need intelligence, we need resources, we need technology for us to do a good job,'' he said.
Associated Press Diplomatic Writer Barry Schweid in Washington contributed to this story.
--------
Khatami: Iran Will Work With Nuke Agency
March 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran played down its brief freeze on international inspections, saying Wednesday it was willing to work with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency and resolve contentious issues over its weapons program.
President Mohammad Khatami said Iran will cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency to prove its nuclear program is peaceful -- as long as American calls for tougher treatment of Iran are not successful.
Iran announced an indefinite freeze on further inspections of its nuclear program after the IAEA board of governors censured Tehran last week for hiding suspicious activities. However, IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei said then he did not expect any substantive delay -- and Iran later reversed itself.
Inspections will resume March 27.
Iran insists its nuclear activities are for the generation of electricity. The United States suspects Iran of undertaking a secret program to build nuclear weapons.
Khatami said Wednesday the freeze was meant to show Iran's displeasure with the IAEA resolution and be ``a warning to the IAEA not to be influenced by the U.S.''
The Iranian president said Tehran will not accept any decision denying Iran the right to possess the whole nuclear-fuel cycle -- including uranium enrichment, a process that can create fuel for nuclear reactors or material for bombs. But he emphasized that Tehran's policy was based on cooperating with the Vienna, Austria-based IAEA.
``We have no obligation toward anybody other than what our interests require,'' Khatami said. ``We cooperate with the IAEA voluntarily.''
The United States accuses Iran of deceiving the IAEA and has lobbied for Iran to be declared in breach of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Washington also wants Iran's activity referred to the U.N. Security Council, where economic sanctions could be imposed.
Meanwhile, an Iranian nuclear official said U.N. inspectors visiting later this month will verify the nation's suspension of uranium enrichment at a facility in central Natanz and discuss other issues, including centrifuge systems advanced enough for weapons use that Tehran failed to report to the IAEA.
``The inspectors will discuss the few things Iran had not mentioned in its report and check the cameras at Natanz to make sure that uranium suspension by Iran is being implemented,'' said Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA, Amir Zamaninia.
Natanz, a site at the foot of a mountain in an otherwise barren desert some 200 miles south of Tehran, is Iran's only uranium enrichment facility.
In its report to the IAEA in October, Iran said it offered a ``complete account of Iran's past and present'' nuclear activities. But the discovery of an advanced P-2 centrifuge that Iran had not reported to the U.N. agency raised new concern.
The P-2 centrifuge system could enrich uranium for weapons use. Washington said the finding raises ``serious concerns'' about Tehran's intentions, but Iran said it was not required to report the system because it never got beyond the research stage.
``The P-2 issue has been played up in the media,'' Zamaninia said. ``We believe suspicions will be eased when inspectors visit different sites and talk to the authorities.''
ElBaradei, who met with State Department officials, reminded reporters in Washington that Iran had made ``a strategic decision to come clean'' and its leaders ``understand they must come forward.''
Khatami said Iran has suspended uranium enrichment temporarily to build trust with the IAEA.
``Possessing technology for the nuclear fuel cycle is our right and nobody can deny us of this right under international regulations,'' he said.
-------- iraq / inspections
Blix Says Weapons Inspections Work
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
Mar 17, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_BLIX?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Former U.N. chief inspector Hans Blix says many lessons can be learned from the Iraq war: Disarming a country by war is difficult. So is bringing democracy by occupation. But weapons inspections are an important tool and may be useful in the future, not only in Iraq but in North Korea.
Blix returned to U.N. headquarters eight months after he retired as head of the U.N. commission leading the search for Iraq's biological and chemical weapons, promoting his new book "Disarming Iraq" and criticizing the Bush administration for hyping the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
"Saddam was not a threat to his neighbors," Blix told a news conference Tuesday after signing about 300 books. "He was not a threat to the world. He was a horror to his own people - that was the reality. The spin wanted to make him an immediate threat to the rest of the world. That was an oversell."
Like most people, Blix said he was convinced as late as December 2002 that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction "because we'd seen cat and mouse play" for years by the Iraqis.
But U.N. inspectors had returned to Baghdad the previous month, and as their visits to the best sites provided by foreign intelligence agencies continued to turn up nothing, Blix said he became "more skeptical."
The inspectors were ordered out just before the war began last March, but Blix has said he knew by May "that there were no weapons to be found" because the Americans had interrogated many Iraqis and offered reward money for information - with no results.
By contrast, he said, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair "were genuinely convinced there were weapons of mass destruction." He accused the two leaders of exaggerating the nuclear threat posed by Iraq and misleading the U.S. and British public, but said they were not "deceptive."
Did he believe the war was decided on years ago by officials in the Bush administration?
"Pre-planned, yes," Blix replied. "Pre-determined as to date, no."
"It is like putting a train on a rail," he explained. "It moves forward, but you have an engineer somewhere and he can slow it, he can stop it, put it on a sideline, depending upon what happens."
As for Saddam, he said it appears that the Iraqi leader misread the situation in early March 2003 "and thought that it was not quite as ominous" as it turned out to be. People were marching in protest against a war, and many governments opposed an invasion, which perhaps misled him, Blix said.
He also speculated that the Iraqi leader, who was discovered hiding in a hole near his hometown of Tikrit in December, "might not have been all that well-informed" about Iraq's weapons.
Iraqi scientists or politicians "might have fooled him a bit about what they were doing, more optimistic about getting new weapons and so forth," he said. "I think there is always a risk in a totalitarian state that people will tell the dictator what they think he wants to hear."
As the first anniversary of the war approaches, Blix said, "there are many lessons" from Iraq.
On the negative side, he said, "disarming by war and bringing democracy by occupation seems difficult."
By contrast, he said, "for me one of the heartening lessons is that inspection has proved to be an important tool."
The past year has shown that through the 1990s the Iraqis were contained.
"Saddam was kept in his box by the combination of outside pressure, military, diplomatic, and by the inspectors being there," Blix said. "It was like succeeding in disarmament without knowing it."
He said there was "a lesson for the future" as well - that inspections may be needed in North Korea where the focus has been on the production of nuclear weapons, but should also be on chemical and biological weapons.
-------- japan
Protesters slam Kepco MOX plan
The Japan Times:
March 17, 2004
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20040317a8.htm
OSAKA -- Antinuclear protesters on Tuesday called on Kansai Electric Power Co. not to restart its mixed-plutonium uranium oxide (MOX) program and demanded a public hearing before the utility signs any contracts with a French firm to manufacture the fuel.
On Monday, Fukui Gov. Issei Nishikawa indicated he would allow the utility to use the controversial fuel at the nuclear plant in Takahama.
"It has been reported that Kepco is about to conclude a contract with Cogema to manufacture nuclear fuel," said Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action Kyoto. "We call on Kepco to hold a public hearing into the matter in Fukui and in the Kansai region before any such contracts are signed."
Kepco officials have denied media reports that the utility will soon sign a contract with Cogema to reprocess spent nuclear fuel from Japan into MOX fuel, but have refused to comment on the details of their contacts with Cogema. Kepco has said it wants to restart its MOX program by 2007.
Antinuclear activists are especially concerned about a possible agreement with Cogema because, in addition to reprocessing spent fuel from commercial reactors, it is heavily involved in France's nuclear weapons program.
While the fuel from Japan would not be reprocessed at the same Cogema facility that makes atomic weapons fuel, activists question the propriety of the deal.
"We are concerned about Kepco doing business with a company like Cogema, which is at the center of France's nuclear weapons program and will profit from the deal," Smith said.
----
Pluthermal projects still face obstacles
Yomiuri Shimbun
March 17, 2004
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20040317wo37.htm
The nation's pluthermal projects, under which plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel will be used in conventional nuclear reactors, finally have advanced after a lengthy delay following the Fukui governor's endorsement of a project in Takahamacho.
Gov. Issei Nishikawa officially announced his approval Monday for Kansai Electric Power Co. to implement its pluthermal projects in the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors of the Takahama nuclear power plant.
The pluthermal project is certain to decrease the nation's reliance on overseas producers for nuclear fuel.
"As Japan lacks a sufficient supply of natural resources, this system will help secure a stable source of energy," an official of the Federation of Electric Power Companies said.
Even though the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry supports the pluthermal project, the plan still faces many obstacles before it is implemented nationwide. One of the main obstacles is Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s preoccupation with the aftermath of a scandal in which it covered up defects with its reactors.
The nation's 11 electric power companies plan to implement pluthermal projects in 16 to 18 reactors, which is about one-third of the total number of reactors in the country, by fiscal 2010.
The ministry increased subsidies in fiscal 2003 to local governments that have agreed to permit pluthermal projects in their regions.
These projects are essential in the long run to maintain the nation's energy sources.
Following the Fukui prefectural government's approval, Kansai Electric will start the project in 2007. Kyushu Electric Power Co. also has decided to implement pluthermal projects in fiscal 2008.
Electric power companies have renewed their expectations that pluthermal projects will restart soon.
However, such moves remain deadlocked in TEPCO, which relies on nuclear power plants as much as Kansai Electric.
Used nuclear fuel has taken up 78 percent of the Takahama plant's storage capacity, while the figure has reached 68 percent at TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant.
Therefore, TEPCO also should implement pluthermal projects as soon as possible, but preparations for such projects have been delayed.
A reprocessing plant being constructed in Rokkashomura, Aomori Prefecture, is scheduled to start operations in July 2006.
However, the Aomori prefectural government has not approved the production of MOX fuel in the prefecture, which restricts the plant from being able to supply MOX fuel to the Takahama plant. Additionally, the price of MOX fuel is predicted to be higher than ordinary uranium fuel.
-------- korea
UN Watchdog Wants Unfettered N. Korea Inspections
March 17, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-korea-elbaradei.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday that if his inspectors ever return to North Korea, they would want unfettered access to all atomic sites to make sure Pyongyang is not cheating.
North Korea ordered all inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency out of the country on Dec. 27, 2002 and has not let them return. It then withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and began reprocessing spent fuel rods to extract weapons-usable plutonium.
ElBaradei made it clear that if current six-party talks eventually reach an agreement that calls for the IAEA's return to North Korea, he would not accept restrictions.
``We need a robust system where we can go at short notice and do environmental sampling, and do all it takes to make sure that we are not being cheated,'' ElBaradei told reporters after meeting President Bush and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
``If we want to go back and do inspections, it has be comprehensive inspections, everywhere with all the rights we need,'' he said.
Before the expulsions, the IAEA inspections were conducted according to the 1994 Agreed Framework, a pact with the Clinton administration. This gave the U.N watchdog limited inspection rights at the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which was frozen in exchange for oil shipments and two proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors.
``The system we had before was completely inadequate,'' said El Baradei ``If anything, we need to make sure that any future agreement will not repeat that. It also gave the North Koreans a green light to delay giving us full fledged inspections.''
Asked if he thought North Korea had a uranium enrichment program, as the United States suspects, as well as a plutonium production program, ElBaradei said only that Pyongyang had clearly obtained enrichment technology from Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's illicit network, which also supplied Iran and Libya.
He also said ``it is possible'' that Pyongyang had already reprocessed some 8,000 spent fuel rods, which could give North Korea enough plutonium for half a dozen nuclear weapons.
ElBaradei was blunt in his conclusion on the risk North Korea posed. ``They have the capability, if not the bomb already,'' he said.
Earlier, ElBaradei told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee that North Korea's security concerns would have to be addressed, though he acknowledged this could be difficult.
``It's a paranoid regime,'' he said.
--------
N. Korea Increasing `nuclear Deterrent'
By SANG-HUN CHOE
Associated Press Writer
03-17-04
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V7145.AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)--North Korea declared it is strengthening its ``nuclear deterrent,'' raising the stakes Wednesday in its standoff with South Korea and the United States.
South Korea's interim leader called for a stronger alliance with Washington, dismissing a claim by the North that the South's parliamentary impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyun last week reflected U.S. interference to ``install an ultra-right pro-U.S. regime'' in Seoul.
With the unprecedented impeachment spawning uncertainty, South Korea has ordered heightened military vigilance against the North. It is also going ahead with annual joint military exercises with the United States, scheduled to begin Sunday, to test the allies' defense readiness.
Pyongyang on Wednesday accused Seoul of ``kicking up a racket of confrontation with the North.''
``This attitude ... is a grave provocation to the compatriots in the North,'' said North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, a government agency handling relations with the South.
There are fears that Pyongyang may use the South's leadership crisis to stall six-nation nuclear talks aimed at defusing the nuclear standoff.
North Korea said Wednesday it was strengthening its ``nuclear deterrent''--its term for nuclear weapons development.
The North blamed the United States for the lack of breakthroughs in last month's six-nation talks, and accused Washington of raising tensions on the Korean peninsula by holding the joint military exercises.
Washington and Seoul say the annual drills, which run through March 28, are routine exercises.
``The Korean people, who consider independence to be their life and soul, are keeping a close eye on the U.S. moves, while further strengthening the self-defense nuclear deterrent to cope with them,'' said North Korea's official news agency, KCNA.
A second round of six-nation talks ended in Beijing in late February with little progress. Washington insisted on a ``complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling'' of all the North's nuclear facilities. Pyongyang said it would dismantle its nuclear programs only if the United States provides economic aid and security guarantees.
The talks involved the United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan. They agreed to meet again by July.
Prime Minister Goh Kun--who is leading South Korea's government until the Constitutional Court rules on whether to oust Roh or to restore his suspended presidential powers--moved quickly to dismiss the North's threats.
Amid political uncertainty, ``establishing a solid security posture is more important than anything else,'' Goh said in a speech Wednesday at the Air Force Academy's graduation ceremony.
``We must further strengthen our alliance with the United States,'' he said.
South Korea's parliament voted Friday to impeach Roh for alleged election-law violations and incompetence. The Constitutional Court has 180 days to rule.
North Korea has bitterly denounced the impeachment, initiated by South Korea's conservative opposition--which favors a tougher stance toward the North.
``The U.S. is chiefly to blame for the incident,'' KCNA said. ``The U.S. egged the South Korean political quacks, obsessed by the greed for power, on to stage such incident in a bid to install an ultra-right pro-U.S. regime there.''
About 1,500 people protested the impeachment Wednesday night in Seoul. The number of protesters was sharply lower than the 50,000 who gathered over the weekend to hold candles and chant for Roh's reinstatement.
--------
North Korea Threatens to Expand Nuclear Arsenal
VOA News
17 Mar 2004,
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=B76AE527-1B70-4633-8DCD90E89C251EEA
North Korea has again threatened to expand its nuclear arsenal, accusing the United States of making aggressive moves against the communist government in Pyongyang.
The official North Korean news agency said Pyongyang will strengthen what it called its "nuclear deterrent" to protect itself.
This comes as the United States and South Korea are preparing for joint annual military exercises that begin Sunday and run through the following week.
About 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea to deter aggression from the North.
Pyongyang says the joint exercises are a rehearsal for a U.S. invasion of North Korea, but the U.S. military counters by saying the exercises are defense-oriented.
North Korea often issues threats on the eve of joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States.
Pyongyang previously threatened to strengthen its nuclear program after a second round of multi-party talks in Beijing last month ended without a breakthrough.
China announced Tuesday it has circulated a draft plan for advancing the limited progress made at those talks. It did not reveal details of the proposal, except to say it covers the working groups all sides agreed to in Beijing.
The Beijing talks ended with a pledge to create working groups that would talk through obstacles and issues not deemed appropriate for the high-level agenda.
Some information for this report provided by AP and Bloomberg.
-------- missile defense
Canada warned of 'untested' defence system
TIM HARPER
[Toronto Star]
Mar. 17, 2004.
http://tinyurl.com/2ma84
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1079478611895&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724
WASHINGTON-A former senior Pentagon official has offered a blunt warning to the Canadian government: It is considering signing on to a missile defence system that's untested, over budget and likely to fuel the global arms race.
Philip Coyle, an assistant defence secretary in the Clinton administration, also said there's no doubt the defence system President George W. Bush wants to begin deploying by the end of this year will lead to the militarization of space.
And anyone who feels Canadian participation will lead to better protection for Canada misunderstands the system, he said.
The government of Prime Minister Paul Martin has made it clear it will not join any system that will weaponize space.
Coyle, who was in charge of the Pentagon testing and evaluation office under Clinton, spoke as the credibility of the Bush plan is facing a tough challenge from Democrats in the Senate, and questions from the non-partisan General Accounting Office about the system's lack of testing.
"I've heard some people in the government of Canada seem to think they will be left behind if they don't sign on," Coyle said in an interview.
"They needn't worry about that. This is going to take so long that those who are worried about being left behind aren't going to be in office when the technology matures anyway."
Ottawa is in the early stages of negotiating the terms of possible participation in the plan, but 30 Liberals broke ranks and voted with the Bloc Québécois last month in support of a motion to end negotiations with Washington.
The issue, while contentious in Canada, is moving to the forefront here as well, with more and more pointed questions being fired at the Pentagon.
Under questioning from Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, Thomas Christie, a Democrat who followed Coyle into the job under the Bush administration, conceded during hearings on Thursday that there is no certainty the system as currently configured could work against a real North Korean threat.
The U.S. missile defence system was begun under Clinton, and Coyle said that while he backs such "research" projects, the Bush plan is not a workable system.
"I think there is a misunderstanding in Canada that somehow the United States is going to defend it with missile defences," Coyle said. "That's not in the cards, at least not today, and it may never be."
Darren Gibb, a spokesperson for Defence Minister David Pratt, said the minister is looking for calm and reasoned debate in Canada, absent a number of myths that have sprung up surrounding the system.Negotiations between Ottawa and Washington have not progressed to the point where there's been any discussion of a financial commitment from Ottawa or the deployment of missiles on Canadian soil.
Coyle suggested Canada would be better advised to spend money on a quick-reaction force than any expenditure involved with the Bush plan.
He said politicians in Canada who believe the system will be the first step toward weaponization of space are correct, and one published study shows it would take 1,600 satellites to defend against one intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
"Once you have those satellites up in space, you can use them to attack other satellites," he said.
"You will automatically have war-in-space capability as soon as the space platforms for weapons defence are established."
Coyle, who's now based in California as a senior adviser at the independent Centre for Defence Information, also said the system is potentially "destabilizing," because it could lead Russia and China to build up arms in response. Russia has already announced it is producing manoeuvring warheads in response, and it could push China to follow suit, he said.
He pointed out that if North Korea was developing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the U.S. would know about it in advance and attack it on the ground.
It would not wait for it to be launched.
"It's not like we are defenceless against such weapons, like some politicians and the Bush administration would have you believe," Coyle said.
-------- russia
Russian Submarine Replays Failed Launch
March 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Missile-Launch.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- A Russian nuclear submarine successfully test-fired two ballistic missiles Wednesday in an apparent attempt by the navy to improve its image after two failed launches marred recent maneuvers.
The submarine Novomoskovsk successfully fired the RSM-54M missiles while submerged in the Barents Sea. They hit designated practice targets on the Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, said Northern Fleet spokesman Capt. Vladimir Navrotsky.
A launch from the same submarine did not go ahead as scheduled on Feb. 17 during maneuvers. The navy claimed it had never been planned despite earlier statements to the contrary, but government and military officials speaking on condition of anonymity said that the RSM-54 missile failed to come out of its silo because of an unspecified technical problem.
Apparently seeking to save face after the failure, the navy sent another Northern Fleet submarine to the Barents Sea to repeat the launch the next day -- only to fail again. A missile of the same type launched from the submarine Karelia strayed from its designated flight path and was blown up by it automatic self-destruct system.
The failures tarnished the maneuvers, which were seen as part of campaign efforts aimed at boosting President Vladimir Putin's image as a leader bent on restoring Russia's military power and global clout. Putin won his second four-year term in a landslide in Sunday's vote.
Many Russian media outlets and commentators said the two failures effectively meant the navy's nuclear component wasn't combat-ready, pointing at the increasing wear and tear on Soviet-built nuclear-powered submarines and their weapons.
After the maneuvers, Putin sternly urged Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to identify and correct the problems. Ivanov said the navy would repeat the launch once a team of Defense Ministry investigators completed an inquiry into malfunction in the Northern fleet.
The military never has officially reported the outcome of the investigation, but the ITAR-Tass news agency reported that a preliminary conclusion was that the Novomoskovsk's automatic safety system had blocked the launch.
The failed launch from another submarine had apparently been caused by a flaw in the missile's guidance system, ITAR-Tass said.
Navrotsky said Wednesday's launches were intended to prove the navy's combat readiness following the completion of the investigation.
He said the problems with last month's maneuvers resulted from equipment failures that he wouldn't specify. ``The reasons were technical and had nothing to do with human factor,'' Navrotsky said.
-------- terrorism
Nuclear Stockpiles
New York Times
March 17, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/opinion/L17NUKE.html?ex=1080190800&en=81192f1bfca9334a&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVER
To the Editor:
Nicholas D. Kristof ("A Nuclear 9/11," column, March 10 [ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Know_Nukes/message/6340 ]) accuses the Bush administration of ignoring nuclear nonproliferation before the Sept. 11 attacks and doing little thereafter to secure dangerous nuclear materials.
In fact, keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of rogue states and terrorists has been a top priority.
The Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, working with Russia and other governments, has achieved important nonproliferation successes, including securing 250 metric tons of weapons-usable material in the former Soviet Union; accelerating the time frame for securing weapons-usable nuclear material at 51 former Soviet sites by 2008; and installing radiation detection equipment at 39 Russian border sites to deter and interdict trafficking in nuclear and radioactive materials.
The administration has also begun a $500 million program to shut down Russia's last three remaining reactors that produce weapons-usable plutonium.
SPENCER ABRAHAM
Secretary of Energy Washington,
March 12, 2004
-------- treaties
Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction
by Larry M. Wortzel, Ph.D.
Testimony Delivered to the Armed Services Committee of the United States House of Representatives
March 17, 2004 Heritage Foundation
http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/tst031704a.cfm
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to address the threats posed by the proliferation of nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons and the means to deliver them.
The dangers posed to the American people and our allies by such weapons have multiplied significantly in the past few years. Military measures such as deterrence and political means like arms control, which proved reasonably effective during the Cold War, are more difficult in a world with multiple actors that have, seek, and may use such weapons. The existence of non-state actors that function on a global scale, such as al-Qaeda, that may gain access to weapons of mass destruction significantly changes the habitual calculus of deterrence and arms control, particularly because for the terrorists neither regime survival nor the survival of a state is involved in their decision calculus. Indeed, even personal survival is often not a consideration.
In today's threat environment a successful policy for combating weapons of mass destruction addresses the most serious danger to the peace of the world and the security of the United States. As President Bush pointed out in a White House fact sheet on February 11, 2004, chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists or rogue regimes could bring catastrophic harm to America and to the international community.
Diplomatic measures and nonproliferation regimes alone will never be sufficient to curb these dangerous threats; they lack the threat of force. The approach taken by the President in the Proliferation Security Initiative adds another tool to the toolbox as a means between holding meetings and declaring war. A successful policy for combating the spread of weapons of mass destruction, however, depends on using the following four tools in a balanced and concerted way: deterrence, defense, offensive operations, and arms control (including export controls).
Proliferation Security Initiative
The Proliferation Security Initiative, despite the fact that it was launched less than a year ago, has been quite successful in encouraging international cooperation on interdicting illicit trafficking of weapons. It is a creative approach that works to develop cooperation among like-minded states in a manner that allows each to enforce its customs and security programs within its own sovereign territory. Moreover, the PSI has the attraction of being a new international regime into which nations opt of their own volition, without some attempt to create a new external bureaucracy that limits national sovereignty or subordinates it to a supra-national organization. As the Bush Administration works to maintain momentum, the PSI should be driven by the following four principles:
- The PSI should seek a healthy competition with the treaty-based (NPT, BWC, CWC) non-proliferation regimes.
- It should avoid creating an international bureaucracy.
- It should seek to harness the power of sovereign states, not create an internationally based alternative power center.
- It should avoid quid pro quo deals in which non-proliferation obligations are obtained at the expense of accepting technology and trade obligations that undermine the non-proliferation goal.
As attractive as this new approach may be, it has limitations. Ships or aircraft that attempt to transport weapons of mass destruction, delivery means, or the technologies to manufacture such deadly weapons must pass through or stop at the customs territories of the cooperating nations. Any nation of terrorist group that attempts to move such things could simply operate through the territory of a non-cooperating state. Still, other means of arms control are necessary to complement this important initiative.
Deterrence
Deterrence through conventional military strength and a strong nuclear force has been the principal means of dissuading a potential adversary from attacking the United States. The strategy of mutually assured destruction, as frightening as it might be, was an effective way to deter the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and it continues to be a necessary tool to deter potential adversaries. China too, with its "minimum deterrent strategy" understands that a nuclear strike against U.S. forces and bases in East Asia, American allies, or the United States will invite swift, decisive retaliation. China's minimum deterrent strategy was designed to have the ability to inflict damage on an aggressor able to wage a nuclear war. Beijing is shifting its strategy to one of limited deterrence based on what Alistair I. Johnston, of Harvard University, has identified as a new war-fighting doctrine that includes both counterforce target and countervalue targets (missiles and the general population) in an adversary's homeland.
Deterrence works in cases in which leaders value the survival of their nation, its population, and its institutions, if not their own survival. Officials who accompanied then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright to North Korea report that even Kim Chong-il-who may not value his people very much but certainly values his own survival and that of his regime-understands that a nuclear attack on the United States would invite certain destruction. Indeed, North Korea has been effectively deterred since the Korean Armistice was signed in 1953, which is why President Bush is able to address the threat from Pyongyang in a patient manner with the cooperation of the other four nations with an interest in peace and security in Northeast Asia.
Defense
It is imperative that the United States develop effective ballistic missile defenses and deploy them as quickly as possible. Defenses minimize the effects of the potential use of weapons of mass destruction and make the threat of their delivery by missile by rogue states or enemies with minimal delivery means less credible. Such defenses would be more effective if combined with a broad architecture involving allies and friends. Thus, cooperation with Israel and NATO nations on ballistic missile defense programs is important, as are Britain's intent to upgrade the Fylingdales radar and the declarations by Australia and Canada of their willingness to cooperate. The December 17, 2003, decision by the Diet of Japan to move forward to develop ballistic missile defenses with the United States is also a welcome policy.
Effective missile defenses may even help dissuade potential adversaries from developing a long-range ballistic missile capability to begin with. The fact is that the United States adhered to a policy of purposeful vulnerability toward ballistic missiles until recently. This provided an attractive incentive for nations to develop a missile capability to exploit this obvious hole in the nation's defense. A 10,000 kilometer missile will be far less valuable to North Korea or Iran if the United States can effectively defend against it. This should translate into those nations being far less concerned about investing their scarce resources into those capabilities.
Of course, weapons of mass destruction can be delivered by many other means than just ballistic missile. Effective means of cruise missile defense are already available, and the Coast Guard and Navy are putting into place a maritime surveillance and security program to lessen the likelihood of such an attack. The other measures that the Department of Homeland Security is putting in place to protect the American people are equally important means of defense. Border protection, ensuring that we know what foreign persons are in our country and why, and the Container Security Initiative to prevent use of a shipping container to transport a weapon of mass destruction, are all defensive measures that make America safer.
Consequence management and the ability to minimize the effects of any weapons of mass destruction that may be used against the American people or our forces abroad are also important defensive measures. The old emphasis on civil defense in case of nuclear attack during the Cold War has shifted to a broad system of consequence management as part of a homeland security system. Thoughtful study has taught us that local responders are the most likely to have to handle any use of nuclear, radiological, biological, or chemical weapons against the American people. A systematic way of ensuring that local first responders are prepared for such an eventuality is one of the most serious responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security.
Offense
Preemption has always been an option for addressing a circumstance where the risk of attack is growing. As early as April 2002, The Heritage Foundation suggested in its publication Issues 2002 that the Bush Administration adopt a policy of preempting imminent attacks by terrorists or states when there is certain knowledge that weapons of mass destruction may be used or that an attack is imminent. The right to do so is not a new principle in international law. It has been an inherent right for centuries that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully defend themselves against imminent danger of attack. Making this an explicit strategy and policy highlights this option because of the unique threats posed by rogue states or terrorists who may be armed with weapons of mass destruction. A policy of preemption requires "certain knowledge." Imagine if you will that it is December 6, 1941, and United States ships and aircraft observe the assembled Japanese fleet launching armed aircraft off the shores of Hawaii. No rational person would argue that attacking those Japanese aircraft and ships before they reached American shores would have violated international law.
The failure of the American intelligence community to accurately portray the scope, nature and location of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program is a serious matter that Congress is investigating. Because a policy of preemption is so dependent on accurate intelligence, the international community will question the legitimacy of any future preemptive action by the United States (or any other nation), but the explicit statement of such a policy serves as a notice to terrorists and rogue states that they cannot prepare an attack against America with impunity. Given the potential scope of such an attack, preemption becomes a more important tool.
The President is justified in applying preemptive military force to fight the war on terrorism. Failure to do so in spite of a threat of imminent attack would be to ignore the lessons learned from September 11 regarding the nature of the threats against America in the 21st century.
- Deterrence alone is not sufficient to suppress aggression. Both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban could have predicted that the United States would respond to their attacks; yet, they acted anyway.
- Attacks can occur with little or no warning. The emergence of global communications, advances in technology, and the globalization of terrorism have significantly decreased the time it takes not only for a potential threat to be identified, but also for that threat to emerge as an act of aggression.
- The use of a weapon of mass destruction is reasonably likely. On September 11, Americans were killed on a massive scale. Hostile entities increasingly view weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as political assets.
- A deadly synergy is created when hostile state and non-state agents conspire. While hostile states continue to threaten America and its interests, the threat of non-state actors, such as al-Qaeda, is growing. The danger increases when states and non-state actors work together. States have resources-including territory, finances, an international diplomatic presence, and trade-that non-state actors do not have. On the other hand, non-state actors are able to operate globally and can act largely undetected.
- The future envisioned by America's enemies is incompatible with U.S. security. Prior to September 11, "soft diplomacy"-including multilateral arms control, aid incentives, and appeals to reason-was the preferred approach in dealing with hostile regimes. On September 11, however, the idea that such hostile regimes and the United States could simultaneously pursue their respective interests lost all credibility. It was clear that America's enemies were willing to use unprovoked violence to achieve their objectives. Other offensive measures include the development of new warheads that will penetrate hardened facilities and special warheads that may be effective in wiping out stocks of biological agents. Although it would be ideal to develop such new weapons without nuclear testing, most experts do not believe it is possible to build a totally new nuclear weapon otherwise. If testing is required at some future time to ensure the security of the American people, then the President should not hesitate to do so.
Arms Control
Arms control is only one of the four essential non-proliferation (counter-proliferation) tools, but it has been a principal tool for years. Its strength is that it shrinks the universe of threats, allowing the U.S. to concentrate its efforts with its military tools. International arms control treaties obtain their legitimacy (or should) from a proven track record of contributing to the realization of non-proliferation or disarmament goals.
The United States has responsibilities that are established in a number of arms control treaties dealing with WMD, as well as other treaties and agreements, some examples of which are: Nuclear Suppliers Group; Australia Group, Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, Chemical Weapons Convention, Threshold Test Ban Treaty, Plutonium Production Reactor Agreement, Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, and Vienna Document 1999 of the Negotiations on Confidence and Security Building Measures. Arms control is an important pillar in the control of WMD, but its success depends on the cooperation of all parties to agreements and treaties.
The weakness of depending too heavily on arms control alone is that an unbalanced policy will weaken the other tools for combating the spread of weapons. Still, the International Atomic Energy Agency has been helpful in the case of Iran, as has diplomacy from the European Union that patiently withheld economic assistance and expanded trade from Iran without cooperation with the IAEA. The G-8 agreement to commit up to $20 billion in a global partnership against proliferation is also an important step in arms control.
Export controls for technologies with application for weapons of mass destruction and delivery means are also important arms control measures. The United States should pursue such controls with friends and allies.
Cooperative Threat Reduction is also an important component of arms control. The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program is a congressionally mandated program to assist the former Soviet republics in securing and eliminating their WMD stockpiles. It also works to strengthen security at Russian nuclear weapons transportation and storage facilities; controls or eliminates strategic bombers, submarines, and missiles; and provides employment for Russian WMD scientists; including those from former biological weapons research facilities. It is a reasonably successful set of measures that are effective in eliminating threats at a reasonable cost to the American people. In the end, however, arms control measures must be verifiable. And verifiability cannot be part of a guessing game where the United States, or the United Nations, try to pick a spot where a WMD program is located while the nation maintaining that program plays "hide and seek."
The success of the programs with the former Soviet states is built on the foundation of years of arms control cooperation and mutual security building. Even in an era of mistrust, such as the Cold War, there were programs to build confidence and security, and these helped cooperation later.
The lessons of this cooperation should not be lost on North Korea. Pyongyang faces some serious choices. It can continue to be a failed state with a criminal economy working on weapons of mass destruction, or it can integrate itself into the international system economically and politically. The multilateral approach to North Korea taken by President Bush, coupled with patient diplomacy and the withholding of fuel and financial aid until North Korea agrees to a complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear programs is the correct approach. Some are skeptical of the word "irreversible" in this formula, arguing that so long as technology is available and scientists retain the knowledge to restart a program, it cannot be irreversible. But the verifiability of the program makes it far more difficult to reverse. I believe that the United States is prepared to respond to a serious decision by North Korea to end its nuclear program and that Congress would fund certain forms of economic and technical assistance as a means to help North Korea, but the blackmail payments of previous attempts at threat reduction with Pyongyang and the games of "hide and seek" cannot start again. Verifiability must be the standard against which arms control is measured.
Dictatorial Regimes and Regime Change
The United States seeks to promote democracy, economic freedom, and human rights around the world and advance these ideals through a variety of programs. Seeking regime change in dictatorships or in state sponsors of terrorism is no fault. Regime change may come about in a wide variety of ways and through the application of a wide variety of tools including popular action by the citizens of a state, sanctions, covert actions, public diplomacy, and moral suasion. This does not mean that regime change must be imminent or immediate, or that it is a hostile policy. Nor does it have to be a policy effected through military means. But the mere threat of regime change may lead to positive outcomes in the non-proliferation area. Libya is now divesting itself of its weapons of mass destruction, which is likely the result of that regime's fear of being removed from power.
The U.S. cannot depend solely on arms control negotiations to "solve" the problem because the regimes most likely to seek WMD are the ones least likely to abide by legal commitments. Iraq, Iran, and North Korea immediately come to mind as such nations. Inspectors cannot inspect what they cannot find, and unless a nation is willing to turn its programs over to outside inspectors to investigate, as Libya apparently has, the threat of regime change is still useful leverage.
Conclusion Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for holding this hearing. The threat of weapons of mass destruction and their proliferation is a complicated matter that cannot be addressed with one simple approach, whether that approach is arms control or deterrence. The United States has a number of tools available in the form of verifiable cooperative threat reduction, multilateral export controls, arms control treaties and regimes, deterrence, offensive action when attack is imminent, active and passive defenses, working to change hostile regimes, and ballistic missile defenses. Other arrangements might look at financial activity in the banking systems of cooperating nations to address another aspect of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It is important that the defensive programs and incident mitigation programs of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense continue. Your attention to the subject, support for such approaches, and active oversight of these matters makes America a safer place.
Larry M. Wortzel is Vice President and Director of The Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
-------- u.n.
Blix Says Weapons Inspections Work
March 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Blix.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Former U.N. chief inspector Hans Blix says many lessons can be learned from the Iraq war: Disarming a country by war is difficult. So is bringing democracy by occupation. But weapons inspections are an important tool and may be useful in the future, not only in Iraq but in North Korea.
Blix returned to U.N. headquarters eight months after he retired as head of the U.N. commission leading the search for Iraq's biological and chemical weapons, promoting his new book ``Disarming Iraq'' and criticizing the Bush administration for hyping the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
``Saddam was not a threat to his neighbors,'' Blix told a news conference Tuesday after signing about 300 books. ``He was not a threat to the world. He was a horror to his own people -- that was the reality. The spin wanted to make him an immediate threat to the rest of the world. That was an oversell.''
Like most people, Blix said he was convinced as late as December 2002 that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction ``because we'd seen cat and mouse play'' for years by the Iraqis.
But U.N. inspectors had returned to Baghdad the previous month, and as their visits to the best sites provided by foreign intelligence agencies continued to turn up nothing, Blix said he became ``more skeptical.''
The inspectors were ordered out just before the war began last March, but Blix has said he knew by May ``that there were no weapons to be found'' because the Americans had interrogated many Iraqis and offered reward money for information -- with no results.
By contrast, he said, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair ``were genuinely convinced there were weapons of mass destruction.'' He accused the two leaders of exaggerating the nuclear threat posed by Iraq and misleading the U.S. and British public, but said they were not ``deceptive.''
Did he believe the war was decided on years ago by officials in the Bush administration?
``Pre-planned, yes,'' Blix replied. ``Pre-determined as to date, no.''
``It is like putting a train on a rail,'' he explained. ``It moves forward, but you have an engineer somewhere and he can slow it, he can stop it, put it on a sideline, depending upon what happens.''
As for Saddam, he said it appears that the Iraqi leader misread the situation in early March 2003 ``and thought that it was not quite as ominous'' as it turned out to be. People were marching in protest against a war, and many governments opposed an invasion, which perhaps misled him, Blix said.
He also speculated that the Iraqi leader, who was discovered hiding in a hole near his hometown of Tikrit in December, ``might not have been all that well-informed'' about Iraq's weapons.
Iraqi scientists or politicians ``might have fooled him a bit about what they were doing, more optimistic about getting new weapons and so forth,'' he said. ``I think there is always a risk in a totalitarian state that people will tell the dictator what they think he wants to hear.''
As the first anniversary of the war approaches, Blix said, ``there are many lessons'' from Iraq.
On the negative side, he said, ``disarming by war and bringing democracy by occupation seems difficult.''
By contrast, he said, ``for me one of the heartening lessons is that inspection has proved to be an important tool.''
The past year has shown that through the 1990s the Iraqis were contained.
``Saddam was kept in his box by the combination of outside pressure, military, diplomatic, and by the inspectors being there,'' Blix said. ``It was like succeeding in disarmament without knowing it.''
He said there was ``a lesson for the future'' as well -- that inspections may be needed in North Korea where the focus has been on the production of nuclear weapons, but should also be on chemical and biological weapons.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Nuke labs reduce guard training
By STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Tri-Valley Herald
http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10671~2022782,00.html
WASHINGTON -- Nuclear weapons plants and labs have reduced training for guards responsible for repelling terrorist attacks, the Energy Department's internal watchdog said Tuesday.
One plant cut training hours 40 percent, and some plants conduct tactical training only in classrooms, according to a report from the department's inspector general.
Federal contractors cut back on security training at all 10 labs and plants, particularly at storage sites for nuclear weapons parts and materials, such as Pantex, near Amarillo, Texas; the Nevada Test Site, outside Las Vegas; the Oak Ridge Complex in Tennessee; Los Alamos lab in New Mexico; and Lawrence Livermore lab.
The federal government turned training over to its contractors in May 2001 on condition that they hew to the standard curriculum. The report said contractors cut some blocks of training and altered others, for example, by practicing hand-to-hand fighting only in slow motion or using wood mockups of terrorist vehicles for practice shooting.
Some contractors fear that injuries among guards during training exercises could reduce bonus payments from the government, the report said.
"Inconsistent training methods may increase the risk that the department's protective forces will not be able to safely respond to security incidents or will use excessive levels of force," said the report prepared by Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman's office.
But nuclear site officials say they had good reasons for reducing some training. According to the report, partly because a guard died rapelling in 1995, none of the 10 sites teaches security officers how to rappel down buildings or cliffs. Livermore lab has another reason: the buildings containing plutonium and other weapons materials that security officers protect are one story tall.
Only one nuclear site, Hanford, trains guards in the basic use of a shotgun, the report notes. That raises the risk that officers won't know how to breach a door quickly with a shotgun.
Livermore plans to start that training soon for its security officers. They will practice blasting door locks using a special slug that shatters on impact.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, which protects nuclear plants, acknowledged in a letter responding to the inspector general that training for guards has suffered because of overtime demands at weapons plants. It promised to review training to make sure it was adequate.
Energy Department spokeswoman Jeanne Lopatto said Tuesday the agency already has increased its budget request in fiscal 2005 for security and safeguards by more than $150 million over this year, hired more security guards and set up a new office to oversee security training.
The criticisms were the latest leveled against the government's ability to protect nuclear facilities, long considered prime targets for espionage and terrorist attacks.>
The inspector general complained in January that security guards who repelled four simulated terrorist attacks at the Y-12 weapons plant in Tennessee had been tipped in advance. The plant processes parts for nuclear weapons and maintains vast supplies of bomb-grade uranium.
That earlier report determined that at least two guards defending the mock attacks had been allowed to look at computer simulations one day before the attacks, and it also uncovered more evidence of cheating during mock attacks against U.S. nuclear plants over the past two decades.
The newest report said some of the nation's weapons plants aren't adequately training guards how to use handcuffs, fight hand-to-hand or defend against terrorists in vehicles. In some cases, mock fighting during exercises is performed in slow motion to avoid injuries.
"Defense tactics training should be as realistic as possible," the inspector general's report said. "Anything less may rob the trainee of the exposure to the levels of force, panic, and confusion that are usually present during an actual attack and increase the possibility of an inappropriate response in high stress situations."
At some weapons plants, for example, instructors used wooden mock-ups or removed windshields from the vehicles of mock terrorists for safety. But experts said that prevents guards from learning how glass affects gunfire or the visibility of a target inside.
The plants were the Lawrence Livermore lab and Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore; the Nevada Test Site near Nellis Air Force Base; the Oak Ridge Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site near Denver; the Hanford Site; the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas; the Savannah River Site in South Carolina; the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
Staff writer Ian Hoffman contributed to this report.
----
Security questioned at U.S. nuclear sites
By Dave Montgomery,
Wed, Mar. 17, 2004
Fort Worth / Dallas Star-Telegram Washington Bureau
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/8206952.htm
WASHINGTON - Security forces at the nation's nuclear facilities are being weakened by deteriorating training programs, manpower shortages, long hours and fatigue, raising doubts about their ability to respond to terrorist attacks, according to investigations by federal inspectors and a public watchdog group.
Ten nuclear weapons facilities, including the Pantex site near Amarillo, have curtailed or eliminated key elements of a training curriculum designed in part to fend off terrorist attackers, the Department of Energy's inspector general reported Tuesday.
One site dropped 40 percent of the required 320 hours of basic police training, the report said.
"Inconsistent training methods may increase the risk that the department's protective forces will not be able to safely respond to security incidents or will use excessive levels of force," said the audit by Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman.
Other recent inquiries have questioned the level of security ringing the nation's 65 nuclear power plants, which also are considered potential targets for terrorist attacks.
The Washington-based Project On Government Oversight, or POGO, which scrutinizes a wide range of federal programs, charged last week that nuclear power plants are "not even close" to being prepared for a potential terrorist threat.
Most plants would have to quadruple their security to adequately confront terrorist attackers, said POGO Director Danielle Brian. The number of security forces at one unidentified plant, she said, drops by as much as 25 percent on weekends and holidays, in violation of a plant security plan ordered after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Peter Stockton, a POGO investigator, said that manpower shortages at nuclear facilities have often forced guards to log more than 50 to 60 hours of overtime a week, resulting in "a horrendous fatigue factor."
"If these guys were attacked," he said, "they wouldn't know which end is up."
Two senior members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee charged this month that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is weakening fire protection regulations designed to ensure that a nuclear reactor can be safely and automatically shut down in the event of a fire caused by a terrorist attack or accident.
"Now is not the time to weaken fire safety at nuclear reactors," Reps. John Dingell of Michigan and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, said in a March 3 letter to NRC Chairman Nils J. Diaz. "As you know, Al Qaeda continues to place nuclear reactors at the top of its terrorist target list."
Pantex, the nation's only facility where nuclear weapons are assembled, drew dubious national attention in January after disclosures that workers taped together broken pieces of a high explosive being removed from the plutonium trigger of an old warhead. A federal oversight agency said the incident risked a "violent reaction."
The 3,500-employee weapons plant, 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, was included among the sites reviewed in the DOE inspector general's assessment of training programs. The Department of Energy earlier conducted a centralized training program in New Mexico but, in May 2001, allowed nuclear plants to individually conduct on-site training, provided they adhered to a core curriculum.
The auditor, however, concluded that each of the sites, including Pantex, had eliminated or substantially modified "significant portions of the training while others were not using realistic training delivery methods."
Only one site conducted basic training in the use of a shotgun, Friedman said. Seven sites modified or reduced the intensity of training "for skills that some security experts characterized as critical," including handcuffing, hand-to-hand combat and vehicle assaults.
The report did not elaborate on procedures at each site, and Pantex officials could not be reached to comment. POGO's Stockton, who has conducted extensive research at all the facilities, said Pantex generally takes training "more seriously" than many of the other sites.
Some of the facilities, the report said, used "unrealistic training methods" that fell short of introducing guards to the real-life situations they might confront in a terrorist attack.
Vehicle assault training, for instance, used wooden mock-ups or vehicles with the glass removed, apparently to avoid injuries.
Moreover, said the report, none of the sites conducted training in rappelling, even though it is part of the required curriculum for special response teams. Several sites excluded training with shotguns and batons because they didn't have the equipment.
Friedman said that "anything less" than realistic training "may rob the trainee of the exposure to the levels of force, panic and confusion that are usually present during an actual attack and increase the possibility of an inappropriate response."
The findings could give Democrats ammunition to bolster their election-year assertions that the Bush administration has failed to adequately safeguard the nation against another terrorist attack.
Markey said the review shows that security at the nation's nuclear complex is "woefully inadequate" and ill-prepared to defend against terrorists "who are highly-trained, well-armed and suicidal.
"The Bush administration cannot continue to nickel and dime security training at nuclear weapons labs," said the Democratic lawmaker. He said guards should be required to meet "tough fitness standards" and be spared from working "excessive overtime."
Dave Montgomery, (202) 383-6016 dmontgomery@krwashington.com
-------- ohio
Davis - Besse Nuclear Plant Is Shut Down
March 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Plant-Restart.html
OAK HARBOR, Ohio (AP) -- Valve problems caused the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant to stop producing electricity Wednesday, a day after it was restarted following a two year shutdown because of safety concerns.
During the plant's startup Tuesday, operators found three valves that will need to be repaired, said plant spokesman Richard Wilkins.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently granted FirstEnergy Corp. permission to restart the plant, which was shut down more than two years ago after inspectors found that acid had eaten nearly all the way through a steel lid on the reactor.
Several temporary halts are part of the restart schedule, which started with output at partial capacity. Had there not been valve problems, operators would have boosted output to 50 percent within days, Wilkins said.
``I've told people that this is going to be a long, methodical process, and we expect to find some issues along the way, and we'll stop and address those,'' Wilkins said. ``It'll add a few days to the process, but we kind of figured we would be finding something, given how long we were shut down.''
Operators hope to have the plant producing electricity again next week, said Todd Schneider, spokesman for FirstEnergy. NRC inspectors are monitoring the process.
The damage found at the plant in 2002 -- the most extensive corrosion ever found at a U.S. nuclear reactor -- prompted a review of 68 similar plants nationwide.
--------
Davis-Besse Shutdown Shows Regulatory Flaws [PublicCitizen]
From: "Joseph Malherek" <jmalherek@citizen.org>
March 17, 2004
Contact: Dave Ritter (202) 454-5176;
Erica Hartman (202) 454-5174
Davis-Besse Nuclear Plant Shutdown -- One Day After Restart -- Shows Flaws in Regulatory System
STATEMENT of Wenonah Hauter, Director,
Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program:
Barely 24 hours after the FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company restarted the Davis-Besse nuclear plant, it is being shut down again due to the failure of two types of valves, one of which could allow radioactive steam to be released into the air. Two of these valves at Davis-Besse were found to be inoperable as the reactor was being restarted.
While it is appropriate that the plant is being shut down after this discovery, it is troubling that these problems were not identified previously by either FirstEnergy engineers or U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) plant inspectors, especially since the valves were likely malfunctioning before the plant's February 2002 shutdown (otherwise, they wouldn't have malfunctioned so quickly) and apparently were not adequately tested during pre-startup exercises of the plant late last year and early this year. Worse, a list of problems that the NRC had with Davis-Besse -- a list that had not been fully addressed at the time that the NRC approved the restart of the plant -- did not even include the malfunction of the valves that caused this recent shutdown.
FirstEnergy, in downplaying this event, claims it expected to "find some issues along the way." It is important to note the original cause for shutdown two years ago, the massive corrosion and deterioration of the reactor's vessel head, was itself a problem found "along the way" as the plant was being refueled and inspected for other problems. According to NRC officials, Davis-Besse has the disturbing distinction of being the site for the second and third worst American nuclear incidents after the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in 1979. (The corrosion was the second; coolant problems in 1985 led to the third.)
It appears that Davis-Besse is, at best, a mediocre plant that still poses dangers to the surrounding region. This continuing saga highlights what happens when regulators act as promoters of the industry they are supposed to oversee. It is apparent that the NRC is captured by the nuclear industry -- Davis-Besse is a glaring example of this inherent conflict. What other dangers await discovery at the nation's 102 other nuclear reactors -- reactors that have not been the focus of increased industry and regulatory scrutiny for the past two years, as Davis-Besse has? It is astounding that even though Davis-Besse was under a magnifier, officials still missed problems. Again, we call for the NRC to keep Davis-Besse shut down and to penalize FirstEnergy appropriately by revoking its license to operate it.
--
Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based
in Washington, D.C.
For more information, please visit www.citizen.org.
-------- vermont
CLOSE SCRUTINY
Rutland Herald Editorial
March 17, 2004
http://www.rutlandherald.com/04/Editorials/Story/80710.html
It is now up to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to hear what Vermonters are saying about the wisdom of allowing Vermont Yankee to increase power production by 20 percent.
The state Public Service Board gave conditional approval to the request by Entergy Nuclear to boost its power output, and one of those conditions was that the NRC conduct an independent engineering assessment to ensure that the plant is capable of handling the increased production. Critics of the Yankee proposal have argued that Yankee is an old plant that is not up to the latest standards and that similar projects to increase power at other plants have encountered problems.
The state Senate on Tuesday passed a resolution unanimously urging the NRC to institute the independent assessment of Vermont Yankee that the state PSB had called for. So far the NRC has not said what it plans to do.
Entergy officials have argued that the customary NRC review in a project of this sort amounts to an independent assessment, but the PSB and the Senate have something else in mind. In 1996 the Maine Yankee nuclear plant was subject to an assessment carried out by a team of engineers working independently of Maine Yankee or the NRC. That review uncovered a variety of problems at Maine Yankee that led its owners to shut the plant down.
Everyone was putting on a brave face after the PSB issued its ruling earlier this week. Neither Entergy nor Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien had thought an independent safety assessment of Vermont Yankee was necessary. It was their view that the customary NRC review would be sufficient and the independent review would be redundant. But after the PSB made the independent review a condition of approval, both expressed satisfaction with the board's ruling.
Now that the PSB has demanded an independent review Entergy may find it hard to resist. If the power boost is no threat to the safety or reliability of the plant, what does the plant have to hide? Of course, if an independent review uncovered serious shortcomings at the plant, the future of the plant could be in jeopardy. But if there are serious shortcomings, that is something the people of Vermont need to know. If Entergy's assurances are to be believed, then an independent assessment ought to create no problems.
The NRC has come under additional pressure from Vermont's two senators, Patrick Leahy and James Jeffords, to make sure that Entergy's plans for a power boost receive close scrutiny. It is hard to see how the NRC could back away from its responsibility to give the Entergy project the close look it deserves.
Nuclear energy critics may view opposition to Entergy's proposed boost in output as a way to torpedo Vermont Yankee as a useful source of energy. But the question before the state and the NRC is not an up-or-down vote on Vermont Yankee or nuclear power. Vermont depends on Vermont Yankee as a reliable, relatively affordable source of power that is also providing a good profit for Entergy. The question is the safety and reliability of a major project to boost power at a 31-year-old nuclear plant. The NRC ought to make sure that the concerns of the Vermont Public Service Board and the people of Vermont are answered.
-------- us politics
Death of a patriot: No more
March 17, 2004
Ohio Free Press Columns mailto:truth@freepress.org
by Bob Fitrakis
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/853
The subject line on yesterday's email read: "Another mysterious accident solves a Bush problem. Athan Gibbs dead, Diebold lives." The attached news story briefly described the untimely Friday, March 12th death of perhaps America's most influential advocate of a verified voting paper trail in the era of touch screen computer voting. Gibbs, an accountant for more than 30 years and the inventor of the TruVote system, died when his vehicle collided with an 18-wheeled truck which rolled his Chevy Blazer several times and forced it over the highway retaining wall where it came to rest on its roof.
Coincidence theorists will simply dismiss the death of Gibbs as a tragic accident - the same conclusion these coincidence theorists came to when anti-nuclear activist Karen Silkwood died in November 1974 when her car struck a concrete embankment en route to a meeting with New York Times reporter David Burnham. Prominent independent investigators concluded that Silkwood's car was hit from behind and forced off the road. Silkwood was reportedly carrying documents that would expose illegal activities at the Kerr-McGee nuclear fuel plant. The FBI report found that she fell asleep at the wheel after overdosing on Quaaludes and that there never were any such files. A journalist secretly employed by the FBI, and a veteran of the Bureau's COINTELPRO operation against political activists, provided testimony for the FBI report.
Gibbs' death bears heightened scrutiny because of the way he lived his life after the 2000 Florida election debacle. I interviewed Athan Gibbs in January of this year. "I've been an accountant, an auditor, for more than thirty years. Electronic voting machines that don't supply a paper trail go against every principle of accounting and auditing that's being taught in American business schools," he insisted.
"These machines are set up to provide paper trails. No business in America would buy a machine that didn't provide a paper trail to audit and verify its transaction. Now, they want the people to purchase machines that you can 't audit? It's absurd."
Gibbs was in Columbus, Ohio proudly displaying his TruVote machine that offered a "VVPAT, that's a voter verified paper audit trail" he noted.
Gibbs also suggested that I look into the "people behind the other machines." He offered that "Diebold and ES&S are real interesting and all Republicans. If you're an investigative reporter go ahead and investigate. You'll find some interesting material."
Gibbs' TruVote machine is a marvel. After voters touch the screen, a paper ballot prints out under plexiglass and once the voter compares it to his actual vote and approves it, the ballot drops into a lockbox and is issued a numbered receipt. The voter's receipt allows the track his particular vote to make sure that it was transferred from the polling place to the election tabulation center.
My encounter with Gibbs led to a cover story in the Columbus Free Press March-April issue, entitled, "Diebold, electronic voting and the vast right-wing conspiracy." The thesis I advanced in the Free Press article (www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/834) is that some of the same right-wing individuals who backed the CIA's covert actions and overthrowing of democratic elections in the Third World in the 1980s are now involved in privatized touch screen voting. Additionally I co-wrote an article with Harvey Wasserman that was posted at MotherJones.com (www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html) on March 5, 2004. Both articles outlined ties between far right elements of the Republican Party and Diebold and ES&S, which count the majority of the nation's electronic votes.
As I wrote in the Free Press article, "Proponents of a paper trail were emboldened when Athan Gibbs, President and CEO of TruVote International, demonstrated a voting machine at a vendor's fair in Columbus that provides two separate voting receipts."
In an interview on WVKO radio, Gibbs calmly and methodically explained the dangers of "black box" touch screen voting. "It absolutely makes no sense to buy electronic voting machines that can't produce a paper trail. Inevitably, computers mess up. How are you going to have a recount, or correct malfunctions without a paper trail?
Now, the man asking the obvious question, and demonstrating an obvious tangible solution is dead in another tragic accident, a week after both articles were in circulation.
When I called TruVote International to verify Gibbs' death, I reached Chief Financial Officer Adrenne Brandon who assured me "We're going on in his memory. We're going to make this happen."
Every American concerned with democracy should pledge to make this happen. To beat back the rush for state governments to purchase privatized, partisan and unreliable electronic voting machines without verified paper trails.
Gibbs' last words to me were "How do you explain what happened to Senator Max Cleland in Georgia. How do you explain that? The Maryland study and the Johns Hopkins scientists have warned us against 'blind faith voting.' These systems can be hacked into. They found patches in Georgia and the people servicing the machine had entered the machines during the voting process. How can we the people accept this? No more blind faith voting."
Dr. Bob Fitrakis is Senior Editor of The Free Press (http://freepress.org), a political science professor, and author of numerous articles and books.
--------
Bush defense spending restored
March 17, 2004
By Amy Fagan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040316-102251-7163r.htm
House Republicans have followed their Senate colleagues and decided against proposed cuts to President Bush's defense spending request as the House Budget Committee tries again today to move the 2005 Republican budget proposal forward.
House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, Iowa Republican, initially tried to appease Republican deficit hawks by proposing to trim $2 billion from Mr. Bush's 2005 request for defense spending. But after a revolt by more than 30 Republicans led by Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter of California, Mr. Nussle backed down and restored defense funding to Mr. Bush's full request of $401.7 billion.
"Several members of the conference said that everything needed to be on the table [for cuts]," said Nussle spokesman Sean Spicer. "So when the defense folks drew a line in the sand, we worked to a point where we said, 'If this is what it has to be, this is what it has to be.' "
Before passing its budget last week, the Senate also adopted an amendment to give Mr. Bush his full defense funding request for 2005 by restoring the $7 billion cut proposed by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles, Oklahoma Republican. The amendment passed by a 95-4 vote, with support from even the fiscal conservatives who had fought for spending restraint.
In the House, Rep. Mike Pence, Indiana Republican, said he could have supported a cut in defense spending "if it made it possible for us to achieve significant spending restraint," but "it came down to the practical concern that the last time you should ever cut defense is when you have troops in harm's way."
Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland Republican and one of the Armed Services Committee members who initially fought Mr. Nussle's proposed defense cut, agreed.
"When our young men and women are out there bleeding and dying, we can't send a message that we're shortchanging them," he said.
Mr. Nussle's budget proposes a total of $819 billion in discretionary spending. It recommends about $31 billion for homeland security and holds non-defense discretionary spending to last year's levels, at about $386 billion.
Mr. Nussle had to delay a vote on his proposal last week after conservative and moderate Republicans on the panel demanded that Congress create mechanisms to enforce budget limits. The tentative agreement yesterday, Mr. Spicer said, was to consider a separate bill to address these concerns.
Details of that bill were not available, but Rep. Trent Franks, Arizona Republican and one of the budget committee members who revolted, said it likely would impose discretionary spending caps and "pay-as-you-go" rules that would make it more difficult to increase spending without finding offsets to pay for it.
Some moderate Republicans want these rules to apply to tax cuts as well, but House Republican leaders and the Bush administration oppose it.
The Senate, by a vote of 51-48, approved an amendment to its budget plan last week that would apply "pay-as-you-go" rules to both tax cuts and spending.
--------
Opinion of U.S. Abroad Is Falling, Survey Finds
Majorities Doubt War in Iraq Is Quelling Terrorism
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64388-2004Mar16.html
A year after the invasion of Iraq, anti-American views have hardened in Europe and in Muslim countries, where lopsided majorities oppose President Bush and are suspicious of U.S. motives, according to a new nine-country opinion poll.
The survey, the largest of its kind, found slipping support for the U.S. war on terrorism in Europe and negative views of the United States in all foreign countries polled except Britain. Big majorities said that the United States does not consider other countries' interests and that Europe should develop more diplomatic and military independence.
Majorities in seven of the eight foreign countries said the war in Iraq hurt or had no effect on the war on terrorism, and only in the United States did a majority believe that the ouster of Saddam Hussein will make the Middle East more democratic.
The nonpartisan Pew Research Center, which conducted the survey, said the image of the United States in the world has never polled lower. "This poll says to me the discontent with America is a long-term problem that U.S. leaders have to confront," said poll director Andrew Kohut. "We've never seen ratings as low as this for America." The Pew poll is three years old, and Kohut has been conducting similar surveys in Europe for two decades.
The findings add fuel to an argument over the United States' standing in the world sparked by last week's bombings in Madrid and the subsequent election of a new Spanish government that is reconsidering that country's presence in Iraq. The issue has gained prominence in the presidential campaign since Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said last week that many foreign leaders hope he defeats Bush.
Bush urged allies yesterday to remain devoted to the fight against terrorism despite the defeat of a Spanish government partly because of its support of U.S. policy. Terrorists will "never shake the will of the United States," he said in an Oval Office meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. Bush said, "It's essential that the free world remain strong and resolute and determined."
The president urged free societies such as the Netherlands -- where the public also supports a withdrawal from Iraq -- "to remain side by side with the Iraqi people." But Balkenende said no decision had been made on whether to leave Dutch troops in Iraq.
The administration continued yesterday to deride Kerry's statement of foreign support and his refusal to name the leaders who professed support. "If you're going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you ought to back it up with facts," Bush said.
Vice President Cheney, at a fundraiser yesterday, hinted that Kerry's claim was disloyal. "We are the ones who get to determine the outcome of this election, not unnamed foreign leaders," he said.
In response, former Vermont governor Howard Dean, Kerry's onetime rival for the Democratic nomination, defended the refusal to identify the foreign leaders, saying, "This administration would clearly make their lives difficult."
The dispute is part of a broader split between the two parties over foreign policy. Democrats accuse the Bush administration of squandering goodwill toward the United States, while the Bush administration says Democrats would surrender American sovereignty to the United Nations. Cheney, in another swipe apparently intended for Kerry, has been praising the administration's decision to act in Iraq without support from the United Nations. "The United States will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country," he said.
The Pew poll, conducted before the Madrid bombings, showed that Americans are increasingly inclined to agree with Cheney's criticism of the United Nations. But the poll also broadly supported Kerry's charge that foreign opinion -- if not foreign leadership -- is decidedly anti-Bush.
Fifty-five percent of Americans had a favorable view of the United Nations, down from 77 percent in 2001. Public support for the world body was higher in Britain, France, Germany and Russia and lower in the Muslim countries of Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan and Morocco.
At the same time, views of Bush were strikingly low in Europe and the Muslim countries. Only 14 percent of Germans, 15 percent of the French, 28 percent of Russians and 7 percent of Pakistanis viewed Bush favorably. Britons, 39 percent of whom viewed Bush favorably, had the most enthusiastic view among foreigners. The opinions represented a dramatic reversal from 1991, when 75 percent of Germans and 72 percent of Russians had a favorable view of President George H.W. Bush, the current president's father.
Views of the United States were somewhat higher, although Britain was the only country where a majority had a favorable impression. In 2002, Russia, Germany and France had majorities supportive of the United States. Americans themselves continued to be viewed favorably by Britain, France, Germany and Russia but not the Muslim countries.
While Britain and Russia continued to support the U.S. fight against terrorism, support has dropped sharply in France and Germany, where 50 percent and 55 percent, respectively, favor U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. Support in the Muslim world has improved but remains low.
Pluralities in all countries but Britain said the United States is not sincere in its anti-terrorism fight, while pluralities in all foreign countries said that they had less trust in America as a result of the war in Iraq. Majorities in many countries said the true reason for the war on terrorism is to control Middle Eastern oil and to dominate the world.
Ominously, the poll showed some increased support in Muslim countries for suicide bombings and other forms of violence; 82 percent of Jordanians, 40 percent of Moroccans, 41 percent of Pakistanis and 15 percent of Turks said such violence could be justified. Majorities in Pakistan and Jordan had favorable views of Osama bin Laden, while majorities in Jordan and Morocco said attacks against Americans and Westerners in Iraq are justified.
-------- MILITARY
-------- business
2 Kuwaiti Firms Win New Iraq Fuel Deals
Both Were Halliburton Subcontractors
By Mary Pat Flaherty and Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64895-2004Mar16.html
Two Kuwaiti companies involved in the Pentagon's criminal investigation of possible overcharges in a previous Halliburton Co. contract to import fuel into Iraq have been awarded new contracts for the same purpose.
Altanmia Commercial Marketing Co. yesterday won a $39.9 million contract to transport gasoline and diesel fuel to southern Iraq. Altanmia was the lowest of 19 bidders, said Lynette Ebberts, a spokeswoman for the Defense Energy Support Center.
The support center took over the job of finding fuel suppliers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which gave the original contract to KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary. The Pentagon is investigating possible overcharges of $61 million in that contract and has referred the matter to the Justice Department.
Altanmia will transport fuel on behalf of Kuwait Petroleum Corp., which yesterday won an $80 million contract to supply fuel to southern Iraq -- and was also the supplier under the KBR contract. Kuwait Petroleum is a private corporation that manages Kuwait's state-owned oil sector.
An Altanmia spokesman could not be reached last night and a spokeswoman for Kuwait Petroleum in Washington declined to comment, referring questions to headquarters in Kuwait, where offices were closed.
Kuwait Petroleum will charge $1.08 a gallon for gasoline and Altanmia will charge 42 cents a gallon to transport it, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. The deal under investigation included a price of $1.17 a gallon for gasoline and $1.21 a gallon for transportation, according to U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.). With Halliburton's markup, the price rose to $2.64 a gallon, said Waxman, who has been a strong critic of Iraqi contracts awarded to Halliburton, which Dick Cheney headed from 1995 until 2000.
The Corps of Engineers yesterday declined to comment on the original contract because it is under investigation. The new contract is for three months, while the original was month-to-month.
"Altanmia dramatically reduced its transportation prices to win this contract. This raises many questions about why Halliburton was charging taxpayers so much more for the very same services," Waxman said in a written statement yesterday. "The new contract shows that real competition can save the taxpayers millions of dollars."
In a separate deal yesterday, the Shaheen Business and Investment Group (SBIG) won a $71.8 million contract to purchase and transport gasoline to southern Iraq from Jordan, at $1.18 a gallon. Headquartered in Amman, Jordan, SBIG is a multinational set of companies that includes Cemex Global Inc. of Washington. It also has a contract to train Iraqi police.
--------
Firm Seeks 'Termination Costs' for Iraq Contract
March 17, 2004
From a Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/latimes100.html
WASHINGTON - Nour USA, a Virginia-based company whose $327-million contract to equip the Iraqi army was canceled because of "irregularities" in the bidding process, formally protested the action in a filing with the U.S.-led Iraq occupation authority.
Nour asked for $20 million to $30 million in "termination costs" and argued that the cancellation and subsequent disclosure of the company's proposal had "done considerable harm" to it.
Nour also reiterated that it has no business relationship with Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, despite his ties with Nour's chairman, A. Huda Farouki of Washington.
A U.S. Army official cited errors made by contracting officers as well as "ambiguities" in the phrasing of the contract in canceling the deal with Nour and seeking new bids.
The process is expected to further delay the equipping of the Iraqi army.
-------- europe
Tighter Security on Europe's Rails
Riders Weigh Risks as Officials Concede They Can Make No Guarantees
By John Burgess
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64387-2004Mar16.html
BERLIN, March 16 -- The crowds aboard the commuter trains that feed central Berlin haven't thinned noticeably since last Thursday, when bombs killed 201 people riding into Madrid. Some rail users here said they believed that Germany was probably safe from such attacks; others feared attacks were inevitable but said that there was just no other practical way to get around.
"Germany did a good job of keeping itself out" of Iraq, said Tina Maibach, 19, as she waited Tuesday at Berlin's Zoo station, a busy crossing point of commuter, long-haul and subway trains. The Madrid bombings, she said, were retaliation for the deployment of Spanish troops in Iraq. "I'm not so afraid" that it could happen in Germany, she said.
But a few steps down the platform, Inge Berktold spoke with concern. "I have a very bad feeling to go on a train now," she said. "And I'm always anxious when my nephews go on a train. . . . It can happen anywhere."
All over Europe, which is served by one of the most advanced and heavily traveled rail systems in the world, people have had to sort out what the bombings in Madrid might mean for their daily rides. Governments have tightened security, but officials concede that they can make no guarantees of safety.
Mounting evidence pointing to the responsibility of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in the Madrid blasts has raised official and public fear that attacks in other countries could be on the way. Germany's interior minister, Otto Schily, said after a cabinet meeting Sunday that al Qaeda's involvement would mean that Islamic terrorism in Europe had "taken on a new quality."
While Germany and France stayed out of the war in Iraq, they and many other European countries are contributing to U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan, once al Qaeda's training ground, and their governments say that this could make their countries targets.
Tightened security is perhaps most visible in France, where authorities have placed transit facilities on "red" alert, the second-highest level. In part, that's because the French rail system faces a double threat, al Qaeda and an obscure extortionist group calling itself AZF, which has threatened to detonate 10 bombs along the tracks unless it is paid millions of dollars. This month, the group led police to a bomb; in recent days, French newspapers have reported that the group has been back in touch with authorities, apparently hoping to capitalize on Madrid-related fears.
In addition, the French prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, said on television Tuesday that the government had received a letter from an Islamic group called the Movsar Barayev Commando that contained threats of attacks against French interests, the Reuters news agency reported. Last month, the al-Arabiya television channel in Dubai broadcast an audiotape in which a man purporting to be Ayman Zawahiri, the top lieutenant to bin Laden, said a recently approved French law banning Islamic head scarves in schools was "another example of the Crusader's malice, which Westerners have against Muslims."
During a visit to Paris's Saint-Lazare train station on Monday afternoon, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said that "all security forces . . . are working together to guarantee the highest level of security." He cautioned, however, that there was "no such thing as zero risk."
Police in the Paris region were conducting luggage and identity checks at peak travel hours, Sarkozy said. At 160 railway stations, police stopped about 5,000 people and detained about 30, for reasons unrelated to terror.
A police clampdown like this "is not just a measure to reassure the public," said Kevin O'Brien, senior policy analyst in the British office of Rand Europe, the European unit of the U.S.-based Rand Corp. research organization. "Certainly, increased police presence has been demonstrated in countries like Israel to actually have an impact."
Passengers boarding Eurostar trains that pass under the English Channel between Britain and France undergo security screenings similar to those employed for air travelers. But otherwise, Europeans generally step onto trains unchecked. There are just too many people to screen, officials say. In Germany alone, short-haul trains carry 4.2 million people a day; long-distance trains add another 350,000, according to Claudia Triebs, spokeswoman for the national rail system Deutsche Bahn. She said that rail officials had observed no sign of a drop-off in passenger volume after the Madrid attacks.
But a poll taken by the TNS-Emnid organization March 12, the day after the Madrid bombings, found that 56 percent of respondents said they feared terror attacks in Germany. That was up from 43 percent in a similar poll on July 7.
At Saint-Lazare station in Paris, one married couple, Gisele and Ababacar Diop, felt little comfort from the heightened patrols. "We are only taking the train because we have no other choices," said Ababacar, 32. "I just hope bin Laden is not angry with France."
Special correspondents Pan Yuk in Paris and Shannon Smiley in Berlin contributed to this report.
--------
ELECTION OUTCOME
Spain Grapples With Notion That Terrorism Trumped Democracy
March 17, 2004
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ and ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/international/europe/17SPAI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
MADRID, March 16 - In the aftermath of its national election, Spain, along with the rest of the world, is struggling to answer a harrowing question: who really won on Sunday, the Socialists or the terrorists?
For the departing foreign minister, Ana Palacio, whose center-right government staunchly supported the American-led war in Iraq and lost the election, the answer is clear. "We are giving birth to a new world, and it is sad and dangerous and sick," Mrs. Palacio said in an interview. "We are giving a signal to terrorists that they can have their way because we have given in."
For José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist who will soon become the next prime minister, the answer is far different. Asked at a news conference on Monday whether terrorist bombs had catapulted him to power, Mr. Zapatero said nothing could be further from the truth.
"Spaniards have always expressed great maturity and common sense at the time of voting," he said, emphasizing each word. "There was a desire for change because there was a government that had done bad things. And on Sunday, the people voted for change."
The reverberations from the ballot box here have been felt around the world. Spain, with Britain, had embraced the American war effort in Iraq, despite widespread popular opposition. The Madrid bombings raised the possibility that Europe was a fresh target for violence and that terrorists could undermine democracy and manipulate elections.
In Washington, President Bush tried to dispel the notion that the Spanish election would lead other European nations to seek distance from Washington's approach to terrorism and Iraq. During a meeting with the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, Mr. Bush asked the Dutch people - and by extension other Europeans - to think hard before they followed any impulse to pull their troops out of Iraq.
"I would ask them to think about the Iraqi citizens, who don't want people to withdraw, because they want to be free," Mr. Bush said. "And I would remind the Dutch citizens that Al Qaeda has an interest in Iraq for a reason." He added, "They realize this is a front in the war on terror, and they fear the spread of freedom and democracy in places like the greater Middle East."
The contest in Spain had always been close between the governing Popular Party, which backed Mr. Bush's policies, and the Socialists, who opposed them. Other issues at stake before the bombings were unemployment, a housing shortage, women's rights and social benefits.
In March 2003, at the height of opposition to the Iraq war, the Socialists were ahead in polls. With the economy roaring and the Socialist Party in disarray, the Popular Party pulled ahead. On March 7, the last date in which polls were published, an Opina poll showed that the gap had narrowed, giving the Popular Party 42 percent, compared with 38 percent for the Socialists.
Four days later, terror struck. With Madrid under siege, voters were expected to rally around the flag and stick with the party that had talked the toughest against terrorism, at least initially. Even the Socialists braced themselves for that outcome, said two senior party officials.
But interviews with scores of Spaniards of both parties indicated that a number of things happened after the attacks that shifted the balance to the Socialists. Voters flooded the polls on Sunday in record numbers, especially young people who had not planned to vote. In interviews, they said they did so not so much out of fear of terror as out of anger against a government they saw as increasingly authoritarian, arrogant and stubborn. The government, they said, mishandled the crisis in the emotional days after the attacks.
Voters said they were enraged not only by the government's insistence that the Basque separatist group ETA was responsible, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, but they also resented its clumsy attempts to quell antigovernment sentiment.
For example, the main television channel TVE, which is state-owned, showed scant and selective scenes of antigovernment demonstrations on Saturday night, just as it ran very little coverage of the large demonstrations against the war in Iraq last year. It also suddenly changed its regular programming to air a documentary on the horrors of ETA.
That was the last straw for some Spaniards, who said it evoked the nightmare of censorship during the Franco dictatorship little more than a quarter of a century ago.
Prime Minister José María Aznar personally called the top editors of Spain's major dailies twice on the day of the attacks. In the first round of calls, Mr. Aznar said he was convinced that ETA was responsible.
"He said, `It was ETA, Antonio, don't doubt it in the least,' " said Antonio Franco, editor in chief of the Barcelona-based El Periódico de Catalunya, in an interview.
Mr. Franco's newspaper published a special edition based on Mr. Aznar's call, then Mr. Franco published an editorial rectifying the mistake as new information came to light. "It was shameful to me that the whole world was taking precautions and debating about Al Qaeda except in Spain, where the attack occurred," he said.
At the Spanish news agency EFE, Alfonso Bauluz, a correspondent and member of the agency's union, said, "I received information from my colleagues, who have good sources, about the Al Qaeda hypothesis, but the editor said we don't want that, don't pay attention. On Saturday, the editor wrote a story with his own byline saying all possibilities of an Al Qaeda connection were thrown out."
During Mr. Aznar's second call that evening, he acknowledged that other avenues were being investigated, but discounted them, Mr. Franco said.
Meanwhile, within 24 hours of the terrorist attacks, the Socialists, through their own intelligence and diplomatic contacts in the Muslim world, were already leaning toward the theory that Al Qaeda and not ETA was responsible, two senior Socialist Party officials said.
Spaniards are still struggling to absorb both the shock of the terror attacks and interpret the result of the upset election on Sunday.
"The terrorism attack has changed the result of the election, but the people were also deceived by the government, so it's a combination, a mix of the two of things," said Elena Roldán, a 28-year-old law librarian who voted Socialist.
Asked whether she felt the United States bore some responsibility for encouraging Spain to join its war against Iraq, she replied, "Nobody forced Aznar to go to war; the entire country was against it. Nobody has been saying that the United States was responsible for this attack, but everybody holds the Spanish government responsible."
At the bus and train terminal at Plaza de la Castilla in northern Madrid, Alberto Martín, a 31-year-old nuclear physicist who voted Socialist, said, "If the government had said, `We don't know who did it,' nothing would have happened and Zapatero would not be there. Aznar was making decisions without any consideration for people's concerns. Look at the war in Iraq. Aznar thought he was God! There was no dialogue."
The election, Mr. Martín added, "is a victory for the people, not for terrorism. You see, I'm now going to take the train."
Hélène Fouquet and Dale Fuchs contributed reporting for this article.
--------
ITALY
The Ripples From Spain Could Rock Berlusconi
By FRANK BRUNI
March 17, 2004
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/international/europe/17ITAL.html
ROME, March 16 - At several tense junctures since Italy dispatched troops to Iraq last year, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has emphatically stated his commitment to keeping troops there, and he did so again this week.
Even as voters in Spain toppled a government that had also sent armed forces, Mr. Berlusconi vowed to stand firm. His political allies and adversaries alike say they expect him to make good on that pledge.
But Italian political analysts say the terrorist attacks in Madrid, the election upset in Spain and the proposed withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq have unequivocally put the Italian prime minister in a delicate, difficult position.
Those events, they say, are sure to embolden his opponents, who are clearly trying to calculate whether the prime minister's support for America's intervention in Iraq makes him even more vulnerable than they had previously imagined.
Those opponents are once again raising questions about the Italian policy, a development that partly reflects Italians' fears that this country could pay for the closeness of its alliance with the United States.
As a result, analysts say, Mr. Berlusconi may find himself challenged as never before to defend the help that Italy has provided the United States in Iraq.
"There is this fear of terrorism here that will maybe - I don't know yet - strengthen the party that wants to go away from Iraq, and this is a problem for Berlusconi," said Renato Mannheimer, an Italian political analyst and sociologist.
"The only luck for Berlusconi is that his opponents are so divided," Mr. Mannheimer said Tuesday.
That is just one of many ways in which the political situation in Italy, at least in terms of the country's involvement in Iraq, is more complicated than in Spain.
Like Spain, Britain and Poland, Italy sent troops to Iraq, but only after the fall of Baghdad.
Mr. Berlusconi made a clear concession to Italian public opinion, which was overwhelmingly against the war, by not even asking the Italian Parliament to authorize a deployment of troops at the outset of the war. When he did seek such an authorization last April, it was for a limited contingent, which now stands at about 3,000 soldiers, paramilitary officers and civilians.
The center-left opposition in Parliament abstained from that vote, partly reflecting the opposition's profound internal divisions over the situation. Those divisions have not disappeared.
Nor have Mr. Berlusconi's opponents come to any confident conclusion about what, precisely, most Italians really want their leaders to do.
After the deaths of 19 Italians in a suicide bombing in Iraq, last November, there was no resounding public outcry to move Italians out of harm's way. But there were plenty of expressions of defiance - of not wanting to capitulate to terrorism.
"It's not easy to say what's going on in the Italian mood," Lapo Pistelli, a center-left member of Parliament, said Tuesday. "Within one person, you often find two moods: a sense that the risk in Italy is high and that Italy could be a target of terrorism and yet, on the other hand, a strange feeling of pride."
He also noted that the moral of the Spanish elections on Sunday was unclear. He said that the party of Prime Minister José María Aznar was perhaps being punished not for supporting the United States in Iraq but for initially blaming Basque separatists for the terrorist attacks.
--------
Bush tries to steel allies
Netherlands and Honduras may also be leaving Iraq
Paul Richter,
Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/17/MNGEQ5MBKU1.DTL
Washington -- President Bush urged wavering members of the U.S. led-coalition Tuesday to keep their troops in Iraq, but his plea did not win over at least two nations that are considering joining Spain in plans to withdraw their forces by early summer.
As the White House downplayed suggestions that its coalition was beginning to fray, Bush lobbied the Dutch prime minister on the issue, but won no commitment that 1,300 troops from the Netherlands would remain in Iraq beyond June. At the same time, Honduran officials said Tuesday they would pull their 370 troops out of Iraq during the summer, and diplomats speculated El Salvador and Guatemala could follow suit.
Spain's new Socialist leaders vowed this week to withdraw their 1,300 troops from Iraq by June 30 unless they were serving under a new U.N. mandate. Calling the war "an error" based on "lies," incoming Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero's condemnations of U.S. and British war efforts has helped stimulate anti-war public sentiments in other countries.
A new poll showed two-thirds of Italians favor the withdrawal of 3,000 troops -- although Italy's leaders vowed to stand pat -- and opposition Dutch political parties called for force withdrawals.
Although small in number compared with the 110,000 U.S. troops, the other nations' forces are important for giving the war effort an international face, with 35 other nations now contributing troops. Besides the British, with 8,220 troops, the other coalition members have contributed a total of 14,680 troops.
Leaders of several coalition nations have expressed concerns about terrorist retribution for their participation in the Iraq war after last week's commuter train bombings in Spain, which killed 201 and for which a previously unknown al Qaeda figure has claimed responsibility. South Korea announced late Tuesday it was boosting security measures because its plan to increase its troop levels in Iraq make it a terrorist target.
In response, Bush Tuesday argued that the United States and its allies must remain "strong and resolute and determined" in the fight against terrorism.
"I would remind Dutch citizens that al Qaeda has an interest in Iraq for a reason," Bush said after meeting Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands, which is considering bringing its troops home in July. "They realize this is a front in the war on terror, and they fear the spread of freedom and democracy in places like the greater Middle East."
As he seeks to reassure allies, Bush planned Friday to speak to ambassadors from about 60 nations that have supported U.S.-led military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan in a special gathering at the White House.
Bush said citizens in coalition countries should "think about the Iraqi citizens who don't want people to withdraw because they want to be free. "
Despite Bush's efforts, Honduras announced it would withdraw its 370 troops from a Spanish-led humanitarian and peacekeeping brigade as scheduled at the end of June. The decision was announced by Defense Secretary Federico Breve only one day after Honduran President Ricardo Maduro said the troops would stay.
Breve said the Honduran decision "coincides with the decision of the prime minister elect of the Spanish government."
Honduras sent its troops last August with a one-year commitment. They depend heavily on the Spanish military for logistical support. But the deployment was unpopular with many at home.
Diplomats said it is unclear whether El Salvador and Guatemala, whose troops went to Iraq with the Hondurans, and also rely on Spanish military help, will continue their mission beyond June. Officials in the United Kingdom, Italy and Poland have insisted this week that they will keep their troops in Iraq, despite the Spanish withdrawal.
Yet the uncertainty over other allies' course has complicated a week that the White House has hoped would be an affirmation of the accomplishments of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"This was planned as 'Iraq week,' " one official said.
Dutch officials, who had been expected to extend the mission of their 1, 300 troops, are facing opposition at home. The Labor Party, which holds 42 of 150 seats in the parliament, called Tuesday for withdrawal of the troops when their current deployment ends in July.
The first Dutch death in the war was reported Tuesday. A Dutch civilian was one of several victims of an ambush in Baghdad.
An official of the Dutch embassy in Washington said later that his country might not make its decision on troops for several months, and emphasized that the government's choice will depend in part on whether the United Nations is given a new role in helping guide the new country.
"In this process, what is important is the role of the United Nations,'' said the official.
The Bush administration has been ambivalent about sharing authority with the United Nations. But in recent days, as the bloody bombing in Madrid has reminded many ordinary Europeans of their dislike of the Iraq war, U.S. officials have realized that it needs the United Nations imprimatur in Iraq to maintain support from governments.
One U.S. official said the administration is planning a broad effort involving the United Nations to relieve the pressure on governments that have been taking heat at because of their participation in a controversial Iraq mission.
"That's one area where we're hoping to get progress that would make people feel under less pressure,'' the official said.
In Los Angeles on Tuesday, a European Union official also stressed the importance of working out such a resolution.
But several diplomats said they saw major obstacles ahead.
One is the continuing reluctance of the office of secretary-general Kofi Annan, who is worried both about the security of U.N. representatives in the unstable country, and also about having U.N. neutrality comprised by its need for protection from U.S. forces.
A second problem is the increasing opposition to a U.N. role from some Shiite members of the Iraqi Governing Council.
"I've never been optimistic about the chances for a new resolution,'' said one senior diplomat. "It won't be easy." Troop moves
Some countries that are evaluating their plans to keep troops in Iraq
Spain: Will pull out 1,300 troops unless the U.N. takes over
Netherlands: No commitment to keep 1,300 troops beyond June.
Honduras: Plans to pull its 370 troops in the summer.
-------- iraq
Shiite Leader in Iraq Wants Help of U.N., Envoy Says
By Colum Lynch and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64386-2004Mar16.html
UNITED NATIONS, March 16 -- Iraq's most influential Shiite religious leader has formally assured the United Nations that he wants the organization to help guide Iraq through its transition to self-rule, a senior U.N. official said Tuesday.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani told U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in a written message several days ago that there was no basis for recent news reports saying that Sistani opposed a continuing role for the United Nations, said Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations' special envoy for Iraq. Sistani told Annan that "he wants the U.N. to play a role, to continue to play a role in Iraq," Brahimi said.
Sistani appears to be distancing himself from the Shiites on the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council -- including Ahmed Chalabi, a former Iraqi exile -- who have objected to U.N. oversight of the political transition.
The split on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council over the proper U.N. role has prevented the body from issuing the formal invitation that the United Nations wants before it returns to Iraq to help with the transition and to plan for elections. At the request of the United States, the world body had earlier agreed to help broker an agreement over a caretaker government taking power when the U.S.-led occupation ends on June 30, and to organize national elections late this year or early next year.
But Brahimi has made it clear that he wants both the Governing Council and the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to send a formal invitation before he or a team of U.N. electoral experts heads to Iraq.
"The impression we have so far is a lot of Iraqis do want the United Nations back," Brahimi said. "We are now waiting for the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Governing Council to tell us if the United Nations is required to play a role, and we will take it from there. . . . We are waiting to hear from them."
A senior White House official, Robert Blackwill, traveled to Iraq over the weekend to try to break the political impasse on the Governing Council. With about three months until the end of the U.S. occupation, the Bush administration is anxious to see Brahimi return to Iraq within two to three weeks to provide momentum for the political transition.
Blackwill and L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, have been working to persuade the council to extend the invitation. The matter is expected to be taken up at a council meeting in Baghdad on Wednesday. "Blackwill is trying to break this logjam," a U.S. official said. "We're trying to get the Governing Council to cough up a letter."
In Baghdad, a U.S. official voiced optimism that Sistani's communication would prompt a change of position among the Shiite members of the Governing Council who have resisted issuing an invitation to Brahimi.
Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for Chalabi, who had opposed Brahimi's return, suggested Tuesday night that Chalabi would be open to a limited U.N. role. "We think that the United Nations has the expertise and could be very helpful," Qanbar said. "We will benefit from their expertise, but we're not going to accept a role where they control the process."
Brahimi, meanwhile, said Tuesday that there has been "no structured debate" in Iraq over the composition of a provisional government since Annan issued a report on Feb. 23 urging Iraq's leaders to begin a national discussion of the matter. He said the Iraqis must reach agreement on an electoral law by the end of May if they want to hold elections by the end of the year.
Chandrasekaran reported from Baghdad.
--------
Dozens Pick Through Rubble in Search for Survivors
March 17, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS, JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/international/middleeast/17CND-BAGH.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 17 - A massive explosion ripped through a Baghdad neighborhood today, killing at least 27 people, the military said. The blast caused severe damage to an apartment building and a hotel, the Mount Lebanon, in the Karada district of Baghdad, and it shot a huge fireball into the night sky.
Col. Ralph Baker, commander of the Second Brigade of the Army's First Armored Division, said that in addition to the 27 dead, 41 people were injured.
There were differing reports initially on whether the explosion was caused by a car bomb or a rocket. But later Colonel Baker said that it was most likely a 1,000-pound car bomb and that the attack fit the profile of either Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian with ties to Al Qaeda, or the militant Islamic group Ansar al-Islam. He described the bomb as being a combination of plastic explosives and artillery shells, according to The Associated Press. The mixture is the same as that used in August in the bombing of United Nations headquarters here.
Today's attack comes two days before the first anniversary of the start of the war, at a time when the occupying forces have been eager to show that the security situation is under control. It also continued a week of violence that has extended to attacks on foreign civilians. On Tuesday, two Europeans were killed in a drive-by shooting in southern Iraq. On Monday, a similar attack resulted in the deaths of four American missionaries.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation will assist the Iraqi police in the inquiry into the explosion, CNN reported.
The explosion tonight gouged a crater 10 feet deep and 20 feet wide in front of the medium-size hotel. Hundreds of people packed the street around the bomb crater and the burning hotel as clouds of sparks crackled in the air. Generators, oil drums and power lines were on fire. People in bloody clothes fought through the masses in front of them as they carried injured and dead out of the building - sometimes on stretchers, other times in their arms.
People dug through the rubble with their hands. At a hospital near the site of the blast, injured people were covered in blankets. Gurneys were covered in blood, and the sirens of ambulances wailed.
President Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, said in Washington, "We do not have details on who is responsible for this latest attack in Baghdad, but all indications are that this is a terrible terrorist attack on innocent civilians."
When the explosion happened, Heider Abbas, a 24-year-old car washer, said he was drinking tea down the street and ran into the burning building. "I carried seven bodies out and three people who were badly hurt," Mr. Abbas said. "There were many other people screaming for help. Some were trapped under the rubble, others had been badly burned. I saw some bodies that were completely black. There was fire everywhere."
He was one of dozens of people who were picking through the still-flaming rubble minutes after the explosion happened.
Dr. Hanan Hamid, who works for the Iraq Center for Rehabilitation and Care of Children, said she was using her car to take an injured man to the hospital.
"This is terrible," Dr. Hamid said. "It is some barbarian work. These are civilian people. Why are the terrorists attacking our people every day? It is a crime."
Several ambulances rushed to the scene with the drivers shouting over their loudspeakers: "Don't bring us the dead people. We can't help them. Bring us the injured."
Two ambulances that tried to leave the scene were quickly surrounded by an angry crowd that blocked the streets as men shouted: "You can't leave now. There are children buried inside."
Crowds of Iraqis gathered at the site. Some of them expressed anger at insurgents who have launched attacks in Iraq, calling on the Americans to crack down on the insurgency.
Dozens of American soldiers cordoned off the streets, shouting at people to "move, move, move" and pointing their guns at anybody who did not.
One bystander, Faiz Sadeh, a 28-year-old construction worker, criticized the American soldiers for not doing enough to help. "Why are you blocking us from rescuing our people?" Mr. Sadeh shouted at the soldiers. "Can't you do more to help than just shout at us and push us away?"
Iraqi police were also holding back crowds at the blast site and at the hospital.
One of the Iraqis, Zaki Mohammad, 31, said of the people behind the attack: "They have to hang these people as criminals in front of the people in the city of Baghdad."
"Long live U.S.A.," said Ali Mohammad, a 36-year-old Iraqi graduate student and friend of Mr. Mohammad. "We support the U.S.A."
Qahcan Shukur, the owner of a furniture factory, said he was standing across the road when the explosion occurred. "I was just standing here," he said. "It was unbelievable."
He added: "All this shattered glass and junk from over there came all over me. It's impossible that this was done by Iraqi people. Iraqi people don't kill civilians."
He then turned his wrath on Americans, saying: "Why don't Americans maintain security? Why don't they keep us safe?"
The hotel was popular with foreign travelers and housed the offices of Orascom, an Egyptian cellphone company that employs many Dutch engineers.
Some Iraqis said that cellphones had been selling quickly in Baghdad in recent weeks and that perhaps the company was singled out as a symbol of modernity.
--------
For Iraqis in Harm's Way, $5,000 and 'I'm Sorry'
March 17, 2004
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/international/middleeast/17CIVI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 16 - Nearly a year ago, Ali Kadem Hashem watched his wife burn to death and his three children die after an American missile hit his house.
Last week, he got $5,000 from the United States government and an "I'm sorry" from a young captain.
Mr. Hashem sat for a few moments staring at the stack of bills, crisp $100's.
"Part of me didn't want to take it," he said. "It was an insult."
But the captain, Jonathan Tracy, insisted. "A few thousand dollars isn't going to bring anybody back," he explained later. "But right now, it's all we can do."
It has been nearly a year since the war in Iraq started but American military commanders are just now reckoning with the volume of civilian casualties streaming in for assistance. Twice a week, at a center in Baghdad, masses of grief-weary Iraqis line up, some on crutches, some disfigured, some clutching photographs of smashed houses and silenced children, all ready to file a claim for money or medical treatment. It is part of a compensation process devised for this war.
Outside the room where the captain was saying he was sorry, a long line of people waited. One was Ayad Bressem, a 12-year-old boy scorched by a cluster bomb. His face is covered by ugly blue freckles. Children call him "Mr. Gunpowder."
"I just want something," the burned boy said.
"Come back later," a guard told him. "You'll get some money. But we're busy."
Military officials say they do not have precise figures or even estimates of the number of noncombatant Iraqis killed and wounded by American-led forces in Iraq.
"We don't keep a list," said a Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Cmdr. Jane Campbell. "It's just not policy."
But nonprofit groups in Iraq and the United States say there were thousands of civilian casualties. According to Civic, a nonprofit organization that has surveyed Iraqi hospitals, burial societies and hundreds of families, more than 5,000 civilians were killed between March 20, when the war started, and May 1, when major combat operations ended. "It says a lot that the military doesn't even keep track of these things," said Marla Ruzicka, Civic's founder.
The Project on Defense Alternatives, a nonpartisan arms control think tank in Cambridge, Mass., tracked Iraqi civilian casualties through hospital surveys and demographic analysis. The group estimated that the number of innocents killed in heavy combat was between 3,200 and 4,300.
Whatever the true figures, the list is growing. Since May 1, many Iraqi civilians have been cut down by American forces in checkpoint shootings and crossfires, accidents and mishaps. Last week, a 14-year-old Kurdish girl was killed by an American mortar round near the northern city of Mosul. Army officials said soldiers fired the mortar at terrorists. It fell short. A few months ago, according to an official with the Iraqi Interior Ministry, American soldiers shot and killed a man driving in his car because he had a hole in his muffler and the sputtering exhaust sounded like gunfire.
"The Americas are so jumpy," said Jameel Ghani Hashim, manager of homicide statistics for the Interior Ministry. Mr. Hashim has a five-inch-thick stack of reports detailing civilian casualties. He said preliminary figures indicated that about 500 Iraqi civilians had been killed by American-led forces during the occupation. Mohammed al-Mosawi, deputy director of the Human Rights Organization of Iraq, said more than 400 families had filed reports of wrongful deaths at the hands of American soldiers.
American commanders declined to quantify how many Iraqi civilians had been killed by their forces during the occupation. "We do keep records of innocent civilians who are killed accidentally by coalition force soldiers," said Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, assistant commander for the First Armored Division, which patrols Baghdad. "And, in fact, in every one of those innocent death situations, we conduct internal investigations to determine what happened."
Nonprofit groups tracking civilian casualties said the military had learned some lessons from the conflict in Afghanistan, in which hundreds of civilians were killed after faulty intelligence steered bombs into the wrong villages. The groups credited the military with doing a better job in Iraq of selecting targets to minimize civilian casualties.
But many groups faulted the military for its continued use of cluster bombs, explosives within explosives that sprinkle hundreds of soda-can size "bomblets" over a wide area. Steve Goose, an arms expert at Human Rights Watch, an organization that published two reports on civilian casualties in Iraq, said that while the Air Force showed greater restraint using cluster bombs, the Army did not. "The Army is still using older weapons and firing them into heavily populated areas," Mr. Goose said.
A Pentagon spokesman defended the use of cluster bombs, saying, "Coalition forces used cluster munitions in very specific cases against valid military targets."
One of the problems with cluster bombs is that some bomblets do not explode right away. That is what disfigured Ayad, the boy whose face looks as if it was tattooed. Ayad said that on April 25, he was tending cows in the village of Kifil, south of Baghdad, when a bomblet in the grass burst open. It embedded bits of metal in his face, leaving him blind in one eye and coating his skin with dark dots that look like pencil stabs.
His mother, Nazar, rushed him to the village doctor. Ayad was in a coma for weeks. When he emerged, his mother looked down at a face she barely knew. "He used to be so beautiful," she said. His father, Ali, went to dozens of Army hospitals and bases. Army doctors said Ayad's cornea was scarred and that rehabilitation would be difficult.
Ayad is a smiley boy but sometimes he flies into rage. "He beats me for no reason," his mother said. "He threatens to cut my throat. But I don't care. I am his mother."
This week, Ayad and his father took a bus to Baghdad. Ayad wore sunglasses and a scarf over his face. He does that often, even when it is boiling hot. "The children tease him," his father explained.
When the two arrived at the center run by Captain Tracy, there was a crowd pressing against the doors. On Sundays and Thursdays, Captain Tracy sits in a room on the second floor of the convention center and doles out stacks of cash to civilian casualty victims. The Army calls them "sympathy payments."
Captain Tracy also helps process claims under the Foreign Claims Act, which covers damages and wrongful deaths but only in noncombat situations. Captain Tracy checks each claim a civilian files against a database of military incident reports. If they match, the military pays the civilians, but does not issue a formal apology or claim of responsibility. Of 540 claims filed, he said he had paid 261. While occasional payments were made to families wrongly bombed in Afghanistan, there was nothing this formalized before.
Captain Tracy, 27, said he had absorbed a lot of grief in that little room. "I'm getting pretty burned out," he said.
He is limited in what he can pay. Guidelines set the maximum sympathy payments at $1,000 per injury, $2,500 per life. With the daily patter of bombings, rocket attacks and inadvertent killings, life in Iraq may seem cheap. But many Iraqis say it is not that cheap.
"This war of yours cost billions," said Said Abbas Ahmed, who was given $6,000 after an American missile killed his brother, his sister, his wife and his six children. "Are we not worth more than a few thousand?"
In the cases of Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Hashem, whose wife and three children were killed, military officials acknowledged the victims' houses had been hit by allied missiles.
Ayad's family say they need money to pay for eye surgery. But by the time Ayad and his father reached the front of the line, Captain Tracy was closing for the day. While Ayad pleaded with a guard, his father held up a small piece of paper to the glass doors. "I have a serious problem," it read. "I need help. I wish I have a translator."
Nobody responded. A few hours later, the two were back on the bus, headed home.
--------
US army launches new offensive in Baghdad
BAGHDAD (AFP)
Mar 17, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040317102255.ueva8gss.html
The US army kicked off a campaign to crush insurgents in Baghdad Wednesday after four civilians, including three children, were killed in a rocket attack and bombs claimed the lives of three soldiers over the weekend.
A 1st Armoured Division (1AD) spokesman confirmed Operation Iron Promise had kicked off Wednesday in Baghdad but gave no further details.
The operation groups the 1AD with the 1st Cavalry Division, which will take over duties in Baghdad by April as part of the largest US troop rotation since World War Two.
A senior military officer had actually announced the offensive two weeks ago, describing it as targeting foreign fighters and extremists as the army no longer considers Saddam Hussein's followers their main adversary.
"We've relooked the enemy," the officer told reporters in Baghdad. "The motivation of the enemy is changing from former regime to extremists."
The campaign replaces Operation Iron Grip, which focused on the dwindling cells of fighters loyal to Saddam, the officer said.
Of 14 pro-Saddam guerrilla cells operating in Baghdad since last April, eight have been defeated while the other six have been severely impaired, the officier said.
The officer warned that Islamic extremists and foreign fighters remained the greatest threat and cautioned: "The risk of sensational attack has probably gone up."
On March 2, suicide bombings on a Shiite religious holiday killed at least 170 people and wounded more than 500 in Baghdad and Karbala.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Airstrikes Kill at Least 3 in Gaza
Fresh Campaign Follows Suicide Attack on Sunday
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64382-2004Mar16.html
JERUSALEM, March 17 -- Israeli air force helicopters fired three missiles at the home of a leader of the radical Islamic Jihad movement in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday night, killing two Palestinian men in what Israeli officials called the start of a new campaign against Palestinian guerrillas following a suicide bombing that killed 10 Israelis on Sunday.
At least one other Palestinian was killed early Wednesday in an Israeli helicopter attack in southern Gaza, witnesses and an official said.
In Tuesday's 6 p.m. attack on a building in the northern Gaza City neighborhood of Nasser, 13 people were injured, two critically, according to witnesses and Palestinian hospital officials.
Israeli television said the two dead men were the intended targets of the attack, but neighbors said that the targeted men had escaped and that all of the victims were bystanders.
Israeli officials would not identify the targets but said the building belonged to a member of Islamic Jihad, one of the three groups at the forefront of militant Palestinians' 31/2-year-old campaign of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel. About 950 Israelis and 2,800 Palestinians have been killed in the violence.
"We will not wait for the next attack before we take the necessary steps to defend our people," said David Baker, an official in the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "Israel is compelled to take a series of steps to stem the ongoing tide of Palestinian terrorism."
Neighbors confirmed that members of Islamic Jihad used the building that was struck by the missiles, but they would not identify them, saying they feared for their safety.
Palestinian hospital officials identified the dead men as Nasser Yasin and Hosni Sarafandi, both in their mid-twenties.
Early Wednesday, at least one Palestinian man was killed and several people were injured when an AH-64 Apache helicopter fired a missile at a house in the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza, along the border with Egypt, according to witnesses and a Palestinian security official. A hospital official told the Associated Press that two people were killed and nine injured in the attack.
An Israeli military official said the 2:30 a.m. strike targeted four gunmen who were spotted outside a house trying to plant a roadside bomb. The official added that the bomb was likely intended for Israeli soldiers who were in Rafah on an operation to locate and destroy cross-border smuggling tunnels.
Tuesday's attack came shortly after Israel's security cabinet approved an aggressive campaign against Palestinian guerrillas and organizations, according to Israeli media reports. Authorization was also given for the further killing of militant leaders. Sharon called the cabinet meeting to craft a response to recent attacks, particularly Sunday's double suicide bombing in the busy Mediterranean port of Ashdod, about 20 miles north of the Gaza Strip, according to a statement by Sharon's office.
Sharon had previously canceled preparations for his first meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, which had been tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, and on Monday Israel indefinitely closed the Erez border crossing to the estimated 19,000 Palestinians with permits to work in Israel. Tuesday night, large formations of Israeli armored vehicles reportedly were gathering outside the Gaza Strip.
"We are going to be quite present in Gaza in the coming days and weeks, and we are going to go after the terrorist organizations," said an Israeli security source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This will be a long, continuous operation" that includes more of what Israel describes as targeted killings of Palestinian leaders "and other methods, too -- everything we can to crack down on the infrastructure that is feeding the operation of terrorist organizations."
The Ashdod attack was the first bombing of a civilian infrastructure target since the start of the renewed Israeli-Palestinian conflict 41 months ago, and the first by Palestinian suicide bombers who infiltrated into Israel from Gaza, which is surrounded by heavily patrolled, fortified fences.
"The terror attack in Ashdod strengthens the understanding that there is no leader on the Palestinian side with the courage and ability to fight terror," Sharon said in a speech Monday to Israel's parliament. "It is clear that in such a situation, there will be no political negotiations with the Palestinians."
Special correspondent Islam Abdulkarim in Gaza City contributed to this report.
--------
Israel Kills 4 as It Steps Up Raids in Gaza
March 17, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/international/middleeast/17CND-MIDE.html
GAZA, March 17 - Israeli helicopters launched more missile strikes in the Gaza Strip today, killing a Palestinian militant and three civilians, Palestinian hospital and security officials said.
It was the third consecutive day that Israeli forces attacked targets in the Gaza Strip in the wake of a double Palestinian suicide bombing on Sunday that killed 10 people at an Israeli port.
Two of the civilians killed in today's action, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, were teenage boys, the Palestinian officials said. The dead militant's identity was not disclosed.
The Israeli Army said its forces had fired at gunmen or militants approaching its troops in Rafah, where Israel occasionally sends forces to search for tunnels that Israel says are used to smuggle weapons.
On Tuesday, Israeli helicopters blasted a Gaza City house with missiles, killing two Islamic Jihad members in what Israel called the start of an intensified military campaign in the Gaza Strip. On Monday, helicopters attacked workshops in Gaza City where, Israeli officials say, the militant group Hamas made weapons.
The security cabinet of Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, approved military action on Tuesday in response to recent Palestinian attacks mounted from Gaza, including the double suicide bombing on Sunday, in the port of Ashdod.
On Tuesday, Israeli tanks and other armored vehicles gathered at the main entrance points to Gaza. Today, shops in Gaza City were open and Palestinians went about their business there, although newspapers and radio broadcasts spoke expectantly of an imminent Israeli incursion.
In remarks reported by the Palestinian news agency WAFA, the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat called Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip today a "crime" and said that Israel was planning to "escalate its aggression," especially in Gaza, before it left.
Mr. Sharon said this week that he was going to pursue plans for unilateral Israeli action that could involve withdrawing soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.
The Israeli authorities have not divulged the full scope of the latest Gaza military operation but indicated that it would include airstrikes and ground troops and could last for days, if not longer.
"We are going to put these terrorist groups under continuous pressure," a spokesman for Mr. Sharon, Raanan Gissin, said on Tuesday.
The attack in Ashdod was particularly alarming to Israelis because it was the first time that Palestinian suicide bombers had slipped out of Gaza to strike inside Israel.
Christine Hauser contributed reporting from New York for this article.
-------- pacific
US eye Darwin for base
Jon Lamb, Darwin
From Green Left Weekly,
March 17, 2004.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/575/575p9.htm
While the federal Coalition government remains tight-lipped about the likelyhood of a new United States military base in Australia, opposition to such a facility continues to grow. Darwin has been earmarked as a suitable site for a base, raising the concerns of many local residents and anti-war activists.
During a tour of South East Asia in late January, US General Richard Meyers, Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reaffirmed that the US is planning to establish a military training facility in northern Australia as part of its network of bases to "pre-position equipment and material".
In response, the Northern Territory News has featured articles and editorials highlighting the economic and strategic "benefits" that a new US base would bring, supplementing the role Darwin already plays by hosting US warship visits.
Little is actually known about what is being proposed, other than that it will be a training facility potentially involving thousands of US troops, and will store large amounts of equipment such as tanks, artillery and ammunition.
The US has also indicated that its pre-positioning of equipment in Australia will include seeking to deploy F-16 fighters for extended periods at the RAAF Tindal base.
"While only hints have been revealed so far, it's obvious that there has been a lot of discussion going on between the Australian and US governments about the placing of US facilities or training bases here in Darwin", Ray Hayes, a member of the local No War collective told Green Left Weekly .
"They're trying to soften up the population with all the little hints" added Hayes.
Along with many others, Hayes is concerned about the presence of a touted 5000 US troops to be stationed at the new base: "Already, when US troops have been here from visiting warships there have been problems. Recently there were three charged with sexual assault on two women... they are now on bail. So we can expect more of those kind of incidents to happen."
Hayes believes the base will create community divisions in Darwin. "There are people in the community who are going to be quite happy to have them here because they are going to be spending money. But there are lots of people who are deeply disturbed about America's push everywhere in the world and they don't want them here".
No War member Jude Conway is also concerned about what might be stored at a new base. "If the base was a storage dump for armaments, what kind? Would the Pentagon agree to any restrictions on the type of armaments stored? If depleted uranium was used in training what would happen to the cases afterwards?"
Conway also raised the implications of increased military exercises. "Darwin already has air force training with US and other countries' air forces for three months a year resulting in considerable noise harassment of local residents".
Noting the existing US bases and military presence in Australia, Conway is concerned about the lack of accountability. "Federal, state and territory governments don't know the full extent of their activities - the US bases are a law unto themselves".
The attitude of the ALP Territory government to the establishment of another US base in the Northern Territory has been one of mild concern. Former Country Liberal Party premier, Denis Burke, believes that " many Territorians would view any increased US presence in Australia's north positively".
"The NT government is very pragmatic... they are going to be listening to their business constituency more than those that are opposed to placing a base here", Hayes commented.
"I think they will quietly go along with it unless they are pushed... unless there is a really strong movement against the bases - and there is already a strong sentiment against another base being here. The government needs to be pushed on it so they know it's not just the business community that they have to listen to", added Hayes.
The existing level of opposition to a new US base provides the foundation for a strong community campaign. According to a February ABC Online poll, 62% of respondents were opposed to more US military training in the Top End.
"March 20 is an ideal opportunity to raise the issue in the community", Hayes told GLW, arguing to "continue to build the anti-war movement and link it into a `no bases' campaign, which has possibilities right throughout the Territory".
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistani Forces Kill 24 in Raid Near Afghan Border
Associated Press
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64383-2004Mar16.html
WANA, Pakistan, March 16 -- Paramilitary troops stormed a fortress-like compound Tuesday with mortar and machine-gun fire, killing two dozen suspects in a crackdown on al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives in the rugged tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, an army spokesman said.
The operation, in which at least eight Pakistani troops were killed and 15 wounded, was "the most deadly" of several anti-terrorist operations in the semiautonomous tribal belt in recent months, said Brig. Mahmood Shah, security chief in the region. It occurred one day after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, promised to rid the territory of foreign terrorists. The army spokesman, Gen. Shaukat Sultan, said 24 suspects were killed in the raid, which began shortly after 5 a.m. near Wana, in the South Waziristan region, a few miles from the Afghan border.
The majority of those killed appeared to be Pakistani tribesmen suspected of sheltering terrorists, but Sultan said several others were foreigners presumed to be members of al Qaeda. There was no indication any senior al Qaeda or Taliban leaders were among the dead, but most of those killed had not yet been identified.
The operation followed an announcement over the weekend that U.S. forces were stepping up a sweep on the Afghan side of the border in an attempt to capture al Qaeda and Taliban holdouts, including Osama bin Laden and the Taliban's leader, Mohammad Omar.
About 700 paramilitary troops began the operation early Tuesday in Kaloosha, a village about six miles west of Wana. A Kaloosha resident, Qasim Khan, said paramilitary troops exchanged fire with people inside a mud-brick compound, which had several low buildings in it and was surrounded by a high wall with several lookout towers. The fortress-like design is common in the tribal belt.
It was unclear who was inside the compound, but it was believed to belong to one of seven tribesmen from the Yargul Khel clan accused of harboring al Qaeda and Taliban suspects. The seven have refused to surrender to authorities.
--------
Pakistani Troops Battle Militants Near Afghanistan
March 17, 2004
By DAVID ROHDE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/international/asia/17STAN.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 16 - Hundreds of Islamic militants and Pakistani government paramilitary troops engaged in heavy fighting for more than six hours on Tuesday at a fort in the Pakistani tribal areas, just miles from the Afghan border, Pakistani officials said.
At least 8 soldiers and an estimated 24 Islamic militants were killed, officials added, while 18 soldiers were reported missing.
Pakistani officials said the fighting had not involved Osama bin Laden or other senior leaders of Al Qaeda, who are believed to be hiding in the border area. But the officials said it was by far the heaviest clash since Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, sent 70,000 troops into the country's isolated tribal areas two years ago to capture suspected Qaeda members.
In the past several weeks, Pakistani and American forces have stepped up operations in the border region in a spring offensive intended to rout Taliban fighters from their hiding places and, apparently, to capture Mr. bin Laden.
Pakistani officials have said they are under enormous pressure from Washington to find him. This week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is to visit Islamabad, the capital, to discuss the hunt for the Qaeda leaders and other matters.
Pakistani officials said the clashes had erupted when a force of about 300 Pakistani paramilitary fighters had tried to detain suspected Qaeda members and local tribesmen believed to be sheltering them in a mud-brick compound in the village of Kaloosha in South Waziristan.
Before they could get inside, they found themselves surrounded by 400 to 500 militants, officials said.
The officials expressed surprise at the strength and breadth of the resistance, which they said had come from both local and foreign militants. "Their level of training and resilience has surprised us all," said a senior government official in Wana, the administrative center of South Waziristan.
The government forces were eventually rescued when reinforcements arrived, but not before they suffered heavy casualties, the senior official said. Militants also ambushed government forces in at least two other locations in South Waziristan, including the village of Dabkoot.
An alliance of hard-line religious parties has accused General Musharraf of bowing to American pressure and has warned that civil war will erupt in the tribal areas if the government continues its raids.
In the last six months, the death toll from raids in South Waziristan has sharply risen. Last month soldiers mistakenly killed 11 civilians at a checkpoint. In January four soldiers died in attack by militants. And in October, 8 soldiers and 18 suspected Qaeda members died in a clash. Before that, 10 Pakistani soldiers were killed in a failed raid in June 2002.
Officials in Islamabad played down the clashes on Tuesday. "Let me make it clear that it is a routine search operation," said the army's official spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan.
But a statement from the government agency that administers the tribal areas said at least 8 soldiers had been killed and 15 wounded when "foreigners supported by local harborers" opened fire with "heavy and light weapons." The statement said only 2 of an estimated 24 militants killed in the clashes were foreigners.
The battle began at 6:30 a.m. when roughly 300 Pakistani paramilitary troops, known as Scouts, surrounded a large mud-brick compound, said government officials and residents of Azam Warsak, a nearby village.
When the raid began, several vehicles were able to escape while militants inside the compound provided covering fire, the senior government official said.
Later, militants were able to take positions in apple orchards and virtually encircle the paramilitary forces, including their local commander, Col. Khalid Usman, government officials said. Four hundred Pakistani regular army troops sent to the scene rescued them.
Residents reached by telephone in Azam Warsak, described the fighting as fierce and the atmosphere as tense. They said efforts by local religious leaders to calm the situation had failed, including calls for restraint broadcast from local mosques.
They also complained that the clash had come after three months of Pakistani officials putting pressure on tribes along the border to hand over suspected militants and those who harbor them. American military officials say Taliban and Al Qaeda forces use the Pakistani side of the border as a base to attack American forces inside nearby Afghanistan.
But Al Qaeda and the Taliban are believed to enjoy widespread popular support in the mountainous and isolated tribal areas, the poorest and most religiously conservative parts of Pakistan.
South Waziristan, the scene of the fighting on Tuesday, is the largest and poorest of seven federally administered tribal areas where fiercely independent tribes have been allowed to govern their own affairs for centuries.
Mohammed Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, for this article.
-------- spies
CIA Video Shows U.S. Had Eye on Bin Laden in 2000
March 17, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-security-binladen.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A CIA video believed to show Osama bin Laden at an al Qaeda camp has revealed how close the United States got to him long before the Sept. 11 attacks, but the unmanned and unarmed spy plane that shot the film was unable to kill him, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.
The videotape of an al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan known as Tarnak Farms was filmed around September 2000, and shows a very tall, white-clad figure surrounded by several others dressed in darker clothes.
The group is too distant to make out faces, but the U.S. government is convinced the man in white was bin Laden. ``It was widely believed that that was UBL (bin Laden), believed then, believed now,'' a U.S. official told Reuters.
The video, which was kept secret until it was broadcast by NBC on Tuesday, was made about a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America that killed about 3,000 people and were blamed on al Qaeda.
U.S. forces recently have stepped up the hunt for bin Laden, who is believed to be hiding in the rugged and remote border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Clashes this week near Wana, Pakistan, were aimed at al Qaeda and Taliban guerrillas but not because of any evidence that bin Laden was nearby, U.S. officials said.
``Those strikes were not aimed at him, they were aimed at other lower level (al Qaeda members),'' one U.S. official said.
``To my knowledge he's not in anybody's sights,'' said another. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
Predator drones like the pilotless spy plane that shot the film had not been outfitted with missiles at the time the video was taken, but the film played a major role in accelerating the process to arm the drones, a U.S. official said.
The U.S. government was testing Predators armed with missiles during the summer of 2001, and after the Sept. 11 attacks the armed drones were used by the CIA in Afghanistan to strike targets for the first time.
In February 2002 on a mountain in eastern Afghanistan, a CIA Predator fired on a small group of men that included a very tall figure being treated with deference by the others. The strike led to speculation, later proved wrong, that bin Laden, who is about 6 feet 5 inches tall, had been killed.
The capture of bin Laden is a huge political issue ahead of November's presidential elections. Republicans are implying that President Bill Clinton's administration dropped the ball by not trying hard enough to catch him, while Democrats say President Bush diverted crucial resources from the hunt for bin Laden by taking the United States to war in Iraq.
In investigation is now under way in Washington to find out who leaked the highly classified video to the news media.
In the fall of 2000, when the videotape was made, there were no guarantees that a successful U.S. strike on bin Laden could have been launched quickly enough. Cruise missiles would have taken several hours to reach the target and an air bombing that required flying over reticent countries would also have taken time to organize, U.S. officials and experts said.
The United States responded to the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa with a cruise missile strike on al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. But by the time the missiles arrived, bin Laden was gone.
``In 1998 we had good information about where he might be, launched cruise missiles, but by the time the missiles got there he had moved on somewhere,'' a U.S. official said.
Even if bin Laden had been killed at the time the video was taken, there was no way to know whether the Sept. 11 plot a year later could have been disrupted, experts said.
``I would guess that the plot may well have gone forward,'' said Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. ``I think by the summer of 2000 we were past the magic bullet stage, past the stage where bin Laden's death all by itself would have punctured al Qaeda.''
-------- un
Iraqi Leader Reaffirms U.N. Role in Transition
March 17, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/international/middleeast/17NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, March 16 - The United Nations said Tuesday that the spiritual leader of Iraq's majority Shiites had dissociated himself from reports that some Shiites did not want the organization to play a role in Iraq's political transition.
Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy to Iraq, said Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani had written to Secretary General Kofi Annan this week to say he was not behind comments from some Iraqi Governing Council members who had questioned a further United Nations role.
"There were quite a little bit of vibes coming out of Iraq now saying that the U.N. is not wanted, but that is not the impression we have," Mr. Brahimi said at a news conference here. "The impression we have is that a lot of Iraqis do want the U.N. there."
Several members of the American-appointed council, who earlier had called for the United Nations to lend legitimacy to the transfer of power scheduled for June 30, have been saying in recent days that they want the organization to stay away. One member, Intifad Qanbar, a spokesman for Ahmad Chalabi, a high-profile Shiite member of the council, said that the United Nations was an unwelcome and inefficient outside influence and that many Shiites were unhappy with its past involvement in Iraq.
The United Nations withdrew international staff members from Iraq in October, after a series of attacks on relief workers and the August bombing of its Baghdad headquarters that killed 22 people, including its mission chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
The United States initially kept the United Nations out of its transition plans, but when those plans ran into difficulties in January, the Bush administration asked the organization to take on major responsibility for shaping the transfer.
The most vocal advocate for a United Nations return was then Ayatollah Sistani, who said he would drop his insistence on full national elections in June - a proposal that threatened to scuttle the American plans - only if the United Nations sent a team to Iraq and verified that planning a credible vote in such a short period of time was not feasible.
Mr. Brahimi went to Iraq in February and concluded that the transfer of sovereignty should take place on June 30 and that elections should be held in 2005. "The impression, or even more than an impression, we came back with then was that the Iraqis more than agreed with this finding," Mr. Brahimi said Tuesday.
He said that the United Nations needed a formal invitation to return and that it was still awaiting word from the council and the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority. He added that he expected that an invitation was forthcoming and said that the United Nations stood ready to help in any way it was asked.
"We are not pressing for a job, we are not begging for a role, but if we are needed, we will help," he said. "If we are not needed, that would be great."
Regardless of what happens now, the United Nations is expected to return to Iraq in force after the transition to help plan elections and write a new constitution.
-------- us
Simulated Attacks Repelled In Antimissile War Game
U.S. Almost Exhausted Arsenal of Interceptors
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64578-2004Mar16.html
SCHRIEVER AIR FORCE BASE, Colo., March 16 -- In a war game run here Tuesday, a country resembling North Korea launched six ballistic missiles at the United States and put to the test an antimissile system modeled after the one being developed by the Bush administration.
The size of the salvo threatened to exhaust the U.S. arsenal of long-range interceptors, which was set at six in the game. When one of the interceptors missed, role players who were standing in for chains of authority stretching from the U.S. president to firing crews were confronted with the possibility that they might not have enough remaining interceptors to save both Anchorage and Boise, Idaho, and would have to choose one of them to protect.
As things turned out, all the enemy missiles were destroyed in flight -- two were hit very early after launch by an airborne laser system -- and a Sophie's choice was averted.
But the simulation highlighted the potential complexities facing U.S. officials as they consider how they intend to use the national antimissile system that, in its most rudimentary form, is scheduled to begin operations later this year.
Lifting a veil on some of the planning to devise operating procedures and rules of engagement for the new system, the Pentagon invited a small group of reporters to view a brief missile defense war game at the Joint National Integration Center.
The center, on this Air Force base in sparsely populated grasslands about 10 miles east of Colorado Springs, is responsible for designing a missile defense simulation dubbed MDWAR and training the military crews that will operate the antimissile system. Here, at computer consoles with displays like those that will be used to monitor enemy missile launches around the world and launch interceptors, senior commanders and field teams can "test drive" the system to learn its probable behavior and refine draft concepts and practices.
The Pentagon's chief weapons evaluator, Thomas Christie, recently called into question the ability of such simulations to predict the system's operation, saying not enough flight test data exist to enable him to validate all of the modeling. But officials here defended their work, saying it is based on years of study and noting that the models have accurately predicted flight performance in a number of previous tests.
The war game played for the journalists was a much-simplified version, shorn of classified details about the antimissile system. It also incorporated elements that will not be part of the initial deployment, including airborne lasers to knock down missiles soon after launch in their "boost phase."
For the near term, at least, the Pentagon intends to rely on a system of ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California that would be carried into space by rockets and would home in on and obliterate incoming enemy missiles. The missiles would be detected by infrared satellites and tracked by early-warning radars in Alaska and California, all linked by a network of battle management computers and communication facilities.
One of the main purposes of the simulation here, officials said, was to demonstrate the short timelines involved in missile defense. War games with actual operators often result in frenzied activity and lots of stress. "It's what war gamers call 'organized chaos,' " said Robert L. McKinney Jr., the center's spokesman.
A missile fired from North Korea could reach the northwestern United States in 25 to 30 minutes. But detecting it and figuring out where it is headed, then computing a course for an interceptor, could require eight minutes or so, officials said.
Complicating matters is the challenge of coordinating various U.S. military commands. While Strategic Command will have responsibility for maintaining the antimissile system, the order to fire will come through Northern Command, which is in charge of protecting U.S. territory. Depending also on where the missile is launched, other regional commands -- Pacific Command in Asia, Central Command in the Middle East -- could be involved.
"The missile trajectories will cross traditional areas of responsibility," said Jim Armstrong, the center's deputy director.
In the scenario prepared for the journalists, a fictitious nation of Midland, in the Sea of Japan and angry at the United States, fired all six of its missiles. The tensest moment came when two interceptors were in the air against two remaining missiles -- one headed toward Boise, the other toward Anchorage.
Only one U.S. interceptor was still available for firing. If the interceptors already airborne missed, U.S. authorities would have to choose between saving either Anchorage or Boise with the one that remained.
Officials said that in real life, factors such as population size would weigh in such a decision. In this case, after the Anchorage-bound missile was hit, the remaining interceptor was fired for extra measure at the Boise missile, although that proved unnecessary.
-------- propaganda wars
Spain Campaigned to Pin Blame on ETA
Despite Evidence to Contrary, Basque Group Was Focus in Blasts
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64633-2004Mar16?language=printer
MADRID, March 16 -- In the first frantic hours after coordinated bomb blasts ripped through several packed commuter trains Thursday morning, the government of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar undertook an intense campaign to convince the Spanish public and world opinion-makers that the Basque separatist group ETA had carried out the attacks, which killed 201 people and wounded more than 1,500.
Beginning immediately after the blasts, Aznar and other officials telephoned journalists, stressing ETA's responsibility and dismissing speculation that Islamic extremists might be involved. Spanish diplomats pushed a hastily drafted resolution blaming ETA through the U.N. Security Council. At an afternoon news conference, when a reporter suggested the possibility of an al Qaeda connection, the interior minister, Angel Acebes, angrily denounced it as "a miserable attempt to disrupt information and confuse people."
"There is no doubt that ETA is responsible," Acebes said.
Within days, that assertion was in tatters, and with it the reputation and fortunes of the ruling party. Suspicion that the government manipulated information -- blaming ETA in order to divert any possible link between the bombings and Aznar's unpopular support for the war in Iraq -- helped fuel the upset victory of the Socialist Workers' Party in Sunday's elections. By then, Islamic extremists linked to al Qaeda had become the focus of the investigation.
Government officials insist that they never misled the public, and that they released in a timely manner all the information and evidence they had gathered. "We told the truth at all times to the Spanish people," Acebes said on Monday.
In retrospect, however, there were signs that the government was at least selective in releasing information about possible culprits. By 11 a.m. Thursday, police had already discovered an abandoned white van in Alcala de Henares -- a town where the bombed trains passed through -- containing seven detonators and a cassette tape with verses of the Koran recited in Arabic, officials said later. Sources familiar with Spanish intelligence services said the CNI, the National Intelligence Center, had suspected al Qaeda from the beginning.
The existence of a potential link to Islamic radicals was not revealed to the public until just before King Juan Carlos spoke on national television at 8:30 p.m.
Significantly, Spanish observers said, the king, in his solemn address, expressed confidence that "the criminals will be put in prison," but never mentioned ETA or any other possible culprit. Asked whether the king was satisfied with the way the government had handled information, the palace declined to respond, citing its customary refusal to comment on government matters.
The first bomb went off at 7:39 a.m., on a jam-packed commuter train at the Atocha station in central Madrid. By 7:42, 10 bombs had exploded -- seven at Atocha, two at nearby El Pozo station and one at Santa Eugenia. Although the initial figures put the death toll at about 20, authorities knew the number would rise dramatically and that this would be the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history.
That was when officials began their campaign to pin the blame on ETA, which the Aznar government has pursued vigorously and successfully.
The government had good reason to suspect ETA, whose initials in Basque stand for Basque Homeland and Freedom. The group has killed hundreds of civilians in terrorist attacks stretching back decades. Police reported on Christmas Eve having thwarted an ETA plot to set off two bombs at a Madrid train station. On Feb. 29, police arrested two ETA members near Madrid as they drove a van packed with a half-ton of explosives.
Immediately after Thursday's bombings, Foreign Minister Ana Palacio telephoned her British counterpart, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, to say that it was ETA, according to a British official, who added, "We had no independent evidence of our own that the Spanish were wrong." Less than two hours later, Straw was on television saying, "It looks to be an ETA terrorist outrage, and that is the information we've received from Madrid."
At the same time, the Spanish Foreign Ministry was sending instructions to its embassies, saying diplomats "should use any opportunity to confirm ETA's responsibility for these brutal attacks," according to a copy of the letter published in the Spanish daily El Pais. Spanish officials have confirmed that the instructions went out, but said they were only for "guidance."
Meanwhile, Arnaldo Otegi, head of the banned Batasuna party, which Aznar's government alleges to be ETA's political wing, condemned the attack, which experts on the Basque situation said was unusual. Otegi's condemnation was given wide coverage on radio stations outside Madrid. Between noon and 2 p.m. Thursday, Catalan radio was airing discussion programs exploring the possibility of al Qaeda involvement. On one Catalan station, 91.0 FM, Otegi said in an interview that the attacks were carried out by "the Arab resistance, possibly in retaliation for the Spanish presence in Iraq."
But in Madrid, radio stations were referring to "the ETA attacks" and carried none of the discussion about whether others might have been involved.
Managing the coverage of the disaster became a priority for the government, which contacted both the Spanish and international news media, stressing the official line that the bombings were the work of ETA.
El Pais, which was preparing a special edition on the attacks, received several calls directly from Aznar, its reporters confirmed. The editor of the Catalan-based paper El Periodico said Aznar called twice. Aznar "courteously cautioned me not to be mistaken. ETA was responsible," the editor, Antonio Franco, wrote in an editorial Tuesday. At a news conference on Friday, Aznar said he had called several newspapers, saying he wanted to explain the government's view.
The government spokesman's office at Moncloa, the prime minister's office, also placed calls to at least 10 foreign correspondents during the day, according to Steven Adolf, a Dutch reporter for NRC Handelsblatt and president of the foreign correspondents club here. Most of the calls were identical, journalists said.
Henk Boom, another Dutch journalist, said he received a call from a spokeswoman at about 5 p.m. "She said she was told to tell foreign correspondents that there was one official version -- that ETA was responsible for the attacks, and only ETA," he said.
Reading from a text, the spokeswoman gave three reasons why ETA was the culprit, Boom said: No one had asserted responsibility, which followed ETA's style of not making claims for at least a week; the type of explosive was similar to that normally used by ETA; and there was no call beforehand warning of the attacks, another characteristic of ETA -- a point some journalists have disputed.
By Thursday night, with the announcement of the discovery of the van with the Arabic tape and the claim of responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda in a London Arabic-language newspaper, public doubt began to set in. The morning newspapers Friday ran side-by-side articles comparing the possibilities of al Qaeda and ETA involvement.
By Friday night, police found new leads -- the discovery of a sports bag containing undetonated explosives and a mobile telephone. At a news conference, however, Acebes continued to insist ETA was the main suspect. "How is it that after 30 years of attacks, they are not going to be the prime suspects?" Acebes said. Still, he said, "We haven't closed off any line of investigation."
At the makeshift shrines set up to honor the victims, young people gathering to light candles and lay flowers were starting to voice skepticism about the ETA claim.
On Saturday night -- hours before the polls opened -- the government announced the arrests of three Moroccans and two Indians, and the discovery of a videotape from a purported al Qaeda official asserting responsibility for the attacks. Thousands of Spaniards responded by taking to the streets, banging pots and pans in protests and denouncing the government.
That voter anger swept the Socialists back to power for the first time in eight years.
Special correspondents Pamela Rolfe and Robert Scarcia contributed to this report.
--------
No It All
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
By Al Kamen
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64488-2004Mar16.html
It seemed for a while that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's appearance Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation" would degenerate into yet another tiresome "did so-did not" spat over whether anyone in the administration said Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed an "immediate threat" to the United States.
"You," Rumsfeld said to host Bob Schieffer, "and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase 'immediate threat.' I didn't; the president didn't." Despite that, "it's become kind of folklore that that's what's happened."
So New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, not previously known as a folklorist, pulled out a Rumsfeld quote from 2002. "Right here it says," Friedman said, " 'Some have argued' -- this is you speaking, 'some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons; I would not be so certain.' " Friedman said that was "close to imminent."
"Well, I've tried to be precise," Rumsfeld said, "and I've tried to be accurate."
" 'No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people,' " Friedman quoted Rumsfeld as telling Congress in September 2002, " 'and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.' "
"Mmm, ah, my view of the, the situation," Rumsfeld said, "was that he, he, had -- we believed, the best intelligence that we had, and other countries had, and that we believe, and we still do not know, we will know."
And while Basque separatists, known as ETA, had immediately and adamantly denied involvement in the horrific bombings in Madrid, and al Qaeda had taken credit for them and three Moroccans and two Indians had been arrested, Rumsfeld cautiously said, "We don't know if this is the ETA or some other terrorist activity." Maybe the Irish Republican Army? Tamil separatists?
Appearing on other networks that morning, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said much the same thing, basing their views on the now-outgoing Spanish government's discredited claims of ETA involvement.
Well, best to be cautious, lest the administration be accused of interfering in the Spanish vote, what with the polls still open over there.
--------
House Iraq Resolution Turns Into Debate
JIM ABRAMS
Wed, Mar. 17, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/breaking_news/8208744.htm
WASHINGTON - A four-paragraph resolution praising U.S. troops and the Iraqi people on the first anniversary of the war in Iraq turned into a partisan brawl on the House floor Wednesday, with Democrats saying the Republican-written measure was aimed at endorsing President Bush's policies.
Republicans defended language stating that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power had made the United States and the world a safer place.
The resolution, said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., "really sends a message to the world that this country stands resolute in celebration of the first anniversary of our commitment to Iraq." The measure was subject to several hours of debate Wednesday. It listed the acts of crimes and terrorism perpetrated by the Saddam regime and concluded that the world has been made safer by Saddam's demise. It commends the Iraqi people for their courage in the face of Saddam's oppression, commends Iraqis for adopting an interim constitution and commends U.S. and coalition forces for their service.
Democrats, while stressing their gratitude to the troops, questioned the idea that the military action in Iraq had reduced threats from America's enemies, and expressed anger that the resolution was written by Republicans without any Democratic input.
"This resolution is more about what the Republican leadership wants us to forget about the past year," said Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., "the costs, the bloated contracts, the lies, no weapons, no ties to Al-Qaida, the flawed intelligence, the wounded and the dead."
Democrats wanted to substitute language stating that "a final judgment on the value of activities in Iraq cannot be made until Iraq is stable and secure." They also sought assurances from the president that steps were being taken to better protect U.S. troops from attacks and acknowledgment of serious deficiencies in pre-war intelligence.
"The American people have not sent us here just to be an amen chorus for this administration. There are serious problems and we should be debating serious solutions," said Rep. Tom Lantos of California, top Democrat on the House International Relations Committee.
Outside the Capitol, opponents of the Iraqi operation, including military families, rallied against administration policies. "Our message to Congress today is clear: spare us the platitudes, the pious rhetoric, the empty slogans. Give us the truth," said Sue Niederer, of Pennington, N.J., whose 24-year-old son, Dvorin, was killed in Iraq in February.
But Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., countered that U.S. action had "brought freedom for tens of millions, toppled one of the most despicable regimes in the history of the world and strengthened the national security for the American people." He said Republicans simply wanted to congratulate the troops and "I don't understand why there is any controversy."
--
The resolution is H.Res. 557
On the NET:
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov/
--------
Bush: I'm God's Delivery Boy
by Matthew Rothschild
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
by The Progressive
http://www.progressive.org/webex04/wx031604.html
Bush's messianic militarism was on full display on March 11, when he addressed, via satellite, the National Association of Evangelicals Convention in Colorado Springs.
First, acting as pastor in chief, he said, "You're doing God's work with conviction and kindness, and, on behalf of our country, I thank you."
Separation of church and state, anyone?
Bush charged right through that wall, citing religion as his basis for opposing stem-cell research, abortion, and same-sex marriage.
He also ignored the wall when he returned to his favorite, post 9/11 theme: that God is calling America to free the world, and Bush himself is heeding that call.
"America is a nation with a mission," Bush said, not afraid, in this crowd, to connote the crusade he is on.
"We're called to fight terrorism around the world," he said, intentionally using the religious term "called," a term he has repeatedly invoked over the last two and a half years.
"As freedom's home and freedom's defender, we are called to expand the realm of human liberty," he said. Viewing himself as the Great Liberator, he said, "By our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than 50 million people have been liberated from tyranny."
And then he laid the religion on thick: "Yet I know that liberty is not America's gift to the world-liberty and freedom are God's gift to every man and woman who lives in this world."
Follow the logic here: If God's gift is liberty, and if Bush has liberated millions, then he is God's delivery boy.
Now while Bush may invigorate himself by aligning his policies with the presumed wishes of the Almighty, there is something deeply offensive about foisting this theology on our constitutionally secular government.
And the tautological conviction that whatever he is doing he is fulfilling God's will defies democratic discussion and debate.
With his messianic strivings, Bush may not be satisfied believing that he has liberated 50 million people. He may feel it is his religious duty to liberate 22 million more living in godless North Korea.
The President told Bob Woodward in "Bush at War" that Kim Jong Il's massive prison complex "appalls me." He added: "It is visceral. Maybe it's my religion, maybe it's my-but I feel passionate about this." Toying with the idea of toppling Kim, Bush said, "I just don't buy" the argument that we need to worry about the financial burdens South Korea might have to assume if North Korea collapses. "Either you believe in freedom, and want to-and worry about the human condition, or you don't," he said.
The problem with such black-and-white thinking is that it could lead Bush to make a rash decision to attack North Korea.
The toll, according to the Pentagon's own war games, would be astronomical, perhaps as high as a million. But notice that Bush did not count the casualties of the Iraq War or the Afghan War. Everyone there was liberated, according to his speech, even the dead.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
White House Likens Terror Case to WWII
March 17, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Enemy-Combatant.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The case of a terrorism suspect arrested on U.S. soil and held in secret as a wartime enemy prisoner recalls treatment of German saboteurs caught in the United States during World War II, the Bush administration told the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The court will hear arguments next month in the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and convert to Islam who was captured as he got off an international flight at Chicago's O'Hare airport.
The government claims Padilla was part of a plot to detonate a radioactive ``dirty bomb'' in the United States and that he is affiliated with the al-Qaida terrorist network.
The Supreme Court upheld a president's authority to hold and try the group of the Germans captured before they could carry out any planned sabotage. One of the eight was also an American citizen, as Padilla is.
``The court's opinion ... confirms the military's authority to detain Padilla as an enemy combatant,'' Solicitor General Theodore Olson wrote in a court filing Wednesday. ``The court held that the authority to detain an enemy combatant is undiminished by the individual's American citizenship,'' Olson wrote.
Padilla has been held substantially incommunicado at a military brig in South Carolina. His lawyers say he is in legal limbo -- neither able to defend himself in a criminal court nor part of the group of foreign-born terrorism suspects who could be tried before military commissions.
President Bush has authority in commander in chief to prosecute the fight against terrorism, and Congress has backed him up, Olson argued. That authority extends to enemies captured outside the traditional boundaries of a battlefield, Olson argued.
``As the Sept. 11 attacks make manifestly clear, ... al-Qaida eschews conventional battlefields combat, yet inflicts damage that, if anything, is more devastating,'' Olson wrote.
The Padilla case will be argued along with the appeal of another American charged as an enemy combatant, Yaser Esam Hamdi. He was picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan. Lawyers for both men claim their treatment is unconstitutional. Hearing the cases together will simultaneously address the rights of U.S. citizens captured abroad and at home. A ruling is expected by summer.
The case is Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 03-1027. On the Net:
Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov
-------- police
Guantánamo and Jailers: Mixed Review by Detainees
March 17, 2004
By AMY WALDMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/international/asia/17AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 16 - Twenty-three Afghan detainees from the American detention center at Guantánamo, Cuba, were freed here on Tuesday, one of the largest releases of prisoners so far.
In Britain, three citizens released last week from Guantánamo said they had endured starvation, beatings, abusive interrogations and months of unwarranted solitary confinement. The three - Shafiq Rasul, 26; Ruhal Ahmed, 22; and Asif Iqbal, 22 - also said in the Sunday Observer that they had been arrested as they traveled to Pakistan for Mr. Iqbal's marriage to a young woman from Faisalabad.
Interviews with three of the freed Afghan prisoners offered distinctly different views of life in American custody. None of the accounts could be independently verified.
When similar accusations arose last Thursday, Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a Pentagon spokeswoman, dismissed them 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.
Together, the latest assertions suggested that the Americans maintain a two-tiered jail system.
One detainee, Haji Osman, 50, a businessman who spent 18 months at Guantánamo, is still not sure why. He was released along with an 18-year-old cousin. The Americans told him they were sorry, he said.
Haji Osman was been happy to be in prison, he said, away from his five children, but over all he was well treated. The container he and 9 or 10 other prisoners were housed in had electric lights, hot and cold running water, air conditioning, a bathroom, shampoo and soap - amenities his own home in the Barmal district of Paktika Province lacks.
"It was just like the house of a person with better economic conditions," he said.
He said that he was able to spend about six hours a day outside his cell, and that groups of prisoners were allowed to play table tennis, soccer and volleyball. He said he was chained only during interrogation, and ate well enough to put on weight.
Haji Osman said not all prisoners shared his relative level of comfort. At Bagram Air Base, where he was taken when he was first arrested, he said, some prisoners were forced to stand for up to two hours as punishment. At Guantánamo, some were kept in cells by themselves and allowed to play sports with only one other person.
Two other prisoners released here on Tuesday and interviewed at the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross offered decidedly darker views.
The first, Muhammad Sidiq, a 30-year-old truck driver from Kunduz Province, said he had been beaten, first at Bagram, then at Guantánamo. "They started covering our faces and they started beating us on our head and giving electric shock," he said. For two or three weeks, he thought he was going to go crazy, he said. But then the beating stopped, although he was often kept in chains.
Mr. Sidiq said he was put in an iron-style house like a container, and slept in a place that was about 9 feet long and 7 feet wide. He could not see other prisoners most of the time.
Newly free, he said he would go to Kunduz to try to find work and a wife. "I am illiterate but I can recite the holy Koran," he said.
The third man, Aziz Khan, a 45-year-old father of 10, said he was taken from Paktia Province more than two years ago because he had four Kalashnikov rifles in his home.
He was sometimes kept in chains and sometimes "put in a place like a cage for a bird," sometimes in a place like a freight container. "They had very bad treatment toward us," he said. "Americans are very cruel. They want to govern the world."
"May God not take any Muslim there," he said of Guantánamo.
The three men from Britain whose detention was described in The Observer also told of harsh treatment at Guantánamo. They told of beatings and abuse by American soldiers, who they said had stood on the backs of their legs as they kneeled and held guns to their heads during questioning.
They spoke of "extreme conditions," including frequent beatings.
Though the British government has asserted that it was seeking to win the release of the nine Britons still held in Guantánamo Bay, the three men said British intelligence was an integral part of the interrogation force that conducted more than 200 sessions with each one of them.
Patrick E. Tyler contributed reporting from London for this article and Sultan Munadi from Kabul.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Report Faults Prison System in 7 Deaths in Vermont
March 17, 2004
By KATIE ZEZIMA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/national/17PRIS.html
BOSTON, March 16 - A report released Tuesday by independent investigators looking into the deaths of seven inmates in Vermont prisons has at least partly blamed the state's correctional system.
The Vermont Agency of Human Services commissioned the report in December in response to seven deaths since 2002. The report described a system rife with communications problems and under "tremendous stress" from budget cuts and an increase in prisoners. The Department of Corrections can accommodate up to 1,600 inmates, but more than 2,400 are expected in the next three years.
The report cited instances when health workers failed to respond to inmate requests for medical services, mental health paperwork was lost in a prisoner transfer and reports about inmate deaths and other issues were incomplete.
It noted that visitors often brought drugs to inmates and that inmates routinely hoarded prescription drugs to sell or abuse.
Michael Marks, a Vermont lawyer, and Philip McLaughlin, a former attorney general of New Hampshire, wrote the report.
Charles Smith, state secretary of human services, said in a statement that the report was a blueprint for change, and that he had been instructed by Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican, to take "all necessary actions."
Critics of the department like State Senator Vincent Illuzzi, Republican of Newport, said the report "confirms and corroborates the complaints of offender advocates and lawyers that there has been a systemic breakdown in the administration of the Department of Corrections."
Some of the report's harshest language was reserved for the case of James Quigley, who committed suicide in his cell on Oct. 7. Mr. Quigley, who was serving a 25-year sentence for murder and attempted murder, was transferred to Vermont from Florida in 2001. He filed dozens of grievances in Vermont. He was classified a flight risk on June 10, 2003, after guards found maps of Vermont and Florida in his cell.
On July 17, he was transferred to the isolation unit of another prison, where he lodged more complaints. The report said filing the objections was Mr. Quigley's "only apparent noncooperation," and cited prison staff comments suggesting he was being punished for the complaints.
"Vermont's correctional system treated Mr. Quigley differently because he had filed grievances and objected to institutional practices," the report said. "We can discern no good reason for that different treatment."
-------- terrorism
Suspect in Madrid Bombings Was Under Scrutiny in 3 Countries
March 17, 2004
By TIM GOLDEN and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/international/europe/17TERR.html?pagewanted=all&position=
MADRID, March 16 - A key suspect in the Madrid terror attacks came under close scrutiny from law-enforcement and intelligence officials in at least three countries last year after bombings by Islamic militants in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, European law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
Officials said Jamal Zougam, a suspect in the train bombings last Thursday in Madrid, had been investigated and questioned last summer by law-enforcement officials in Spain, who received requests for information about him from both Morocco and France, the officials said.
Moroccan officials said they had uncovered ties between Mr. Zougam and several Islamist radicals who have been jailed since the May 16 Casablanca bombings. Spanish officials also opened their own inquiry into that attack because four Spanish citizens had been killed.
Mr. Zougam was arrested last Saturday along with two other Moroccans and two Indians after investigators traced a cellphone that was part of an unexploded bomb recovered from one of the destroyed trains.
Despite the attention Mr. Zougam received from the three governments after the Casablanca bombings, and the discovery of his ties to several important Qaeda figures, two Spanish officials said they had been unable to develop enough evidence to charge him with any crime. One of the officials said investigators eventually eased off their scrutiny of Mr. Zougam, simply because they had so many other suspects to monitor.
"There wasn't any physical surveillance of him, but there was an investigation," one of the officials said. "There was not enough evidence to move against him for the Casablanca matter."
Although it is not clear that any of the governments mishandled the case, the disclosures raise questions about the effectiveness of both their intelligence efforts and the antiterrorism cooperation among them.
"Morocco informed the Spanish that he went to Spain and that he was a quite dangerous person," a Moroccan official in Rabat said Tuesday evening. "There was no evidence against him in Morocco, but they asked Spain to investigate him."
Spanish counterterrorism officials are still uncertain what role Mr. Zougam, 30, might have played in the Madrid attacks last week, officials said.
Two survivors of the attacks have since told the police they think that they saw him on one of the trains, but one official said investigators remained skeptical of the witness accounts.
Nor did officials ever determine whether Mr. Zougam had any role in the Casablanca attacks, in which 12 suicide bombers and 32 other people were killed in synchronized strikes against targets that included a Spanish social club.
The Spanish inquiry into the Madrid bombings moved ahead slowly on Tuesday, officials said, as the police sought at least six more men, all of them apparently Moroccans, suspected of some involvement in the bombings last Thursday of four commuter trains in which 201 people were killed.
Tuesday evening, Spanish police agents spent more than an hour inside one of the two cramped storefront cellphone shops where Mr. Zougam had worked with Mohammed Chaoui, 34, who was said by friends to be his half-brother and who was arrested with him. The agents went into the store and came out leading a tall, handcuffed man whose head was covered with a dark hood.
Both Spanish and Moroccan officials noted that although Mr. Zougam had been linked to three important figures in the Casablanca bombings, he had never been conclusively tied to the attacks themselves.
After the Casablanca attacks, Moroccan officials said they quickly determined that Mr. Zougam had been in Morocco only weeks before. A senior Moroccan official said they also knew that he had "close relations" with an important suspect in the case, Abdelaziz Benyaich, a Moroccan who had fought with jihad groups in Bosnia and in Chechnya and Dagestan, Russia.
Other officials said Mr. Zougam was also close to Mr. Benyaich's brother, Salaheddin, a one-eyed Qaeda militant known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mughen.
Abdelaziz Benyaich was arrested that June in southern Spain and prosecuted by the Spanish investigative magistrate Baltasar Garzón on charges of belonging to a Qaeda cell. His brother, also wanted in Spain, was arrested in Morocco and charged in connection with an alleged plot to blow up a French oil refinery, officials said.
In Spain, Mr. Zougam was questioned in August at the request of French officials investigating the claims of Pierre Richard Robert, a French jihadi who also implicated the Benyaich brothers. Although the search of Mr. Zougam's apartment turned up Islamic militant books and videotapes, along with the phone numbers of several figures in a Madrid-based Qaeda cell, Mr. Zougam was not charged.
As far back as 2001, according to Spanish court documents, Spanish telephone intercepts showed Mr. Zougam in contact with the accused leader of that cell, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, who was charged with assisting the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington.
Other Spanish intelligence information shows that Mr. Zougam was known to have met in the summer of 2001 with Mohammed Fazazi, the spiritual leader of Salafia Jihadia, the Moroccan-based militant group accused of carrying out the Casablanca bombings, according to confidential Spanish court files obtained by Jean-Charles Brisard, the chief investigator in a lawsuit by relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Fazazi, an imam from a prominent religious family in Morocco, preached radical sermons at Al Quds mosque, once frequented by the Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta.
In addition to the three governments that had examined Mr. Zougam, Britain is now investigating whether he had contact with militants there.
Based on documents recovered in the search of Mr. Zougam's apartment, a senior British official said Tuesday, British counterterrorism officials are investigating whether he visited London in recent years, possibly to see Abu Qatada, a jailed militant whom they describe as Osama bin Laden's "ambassador" to Europe.
Tim Golden reported from Madrid for this article and Don Van Natta Jr. from London. Craig S. Smith contributed reporting from Morocco and Desmond Butler from Germany.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
U.S. National Parks Short-Staffed and Short-Changed
March 17, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2004/2004-03-17-11.asp
The national park system faces a staffing shortage caused by chronic underfunding, according to a report from the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization says the staff shortage is undermining the ability of the National Park Service to protect America's national parks and monuments and is short-changing park visitors.
"America's national park rangers have become an endangered species," said NPCA President Thomas Kiernan.
The number of commissioned permanent rangers has dropped some 16 percent since 1980 to 1,539 and the number of seasonal rangers has fallen to 147 individuals - a decline of 74 percent.
During this time period, the number of units in the national park system has grown by 54 units to 387 and annual visitors to the parks have increased by 60 million.
Permanent park staff are hired and paid from the Park Service's operating budget, which when adjusted for inflation has dropped some 20 percent in the past 25 years.
On average, U.S. national parks are operating with only two-thirds of the needed funding, according to the NPCA. The organization estimates this shortfall is some $600 million annually.
The Bush administration's $2.4 billion Park Service budget request for fiscal year 2005 sets aside $1.7 billion for the annual operations of the Park Service, an increase of $76.5 million.
In the first three Bush budget years, the total Park Service budget increased on average by one percent, according to NPCA, whereas at end of 1990s it was increasing at an annual rate of nine percent.
"By neglecting their duty to adequately fund our national parks, Congress and the administration are squandering the nation's legacy," Kiernan said.
The cuts in funds and staff are negatively impacting visitor experiences at the parks, NPCA says, and public education programs, scientific monitoring studies and general maintenance and upkeep of the parks are all suffering.
For example, the number of interpretative rangers - full time staffers on hand to tell visitors about the history of the parks - has fallen by 172 in the past five years.
There is now one interpretative ranger for every 100,000 park visitors and educational program funding at the parks faces a 50 percent shortfall, according to the report.
In fiscal year 2004, the parks received a 1.5 percent increase to cover a 4.1 percent pay raise for park staff - forcing the Park Service to siphon these funds from other programs.
NPCA says budget concerns and staff shortages have forced visitor centers in parks nationwide to reduce operating hours or close altogether for months at a time.
Added pressure on the Park Service budget has come from new responsibilities related to homeland security.
Each day the nation is under the Homeland's Code Orange alert, the agency must spend $63,500 on additional security costs - funds that must be siphoned off from elsewhere in the agency's budget. In fiscal year 2003, the agency estimates it spent $8 million for increased security for Code Orange alerts.
NPCA says a $50 million fund should be set aside for new security measures required of the Park Service.
It appears as if the Interior Department is muzzling employees who try to draw public attention to the staff shortage at the nation's parks.
Days after speaking to a "Washington Post" reporter revealing low staffing levels at parks in the nation's capital, National Park Service Police Chief Teresa Chambers, a 25 year veteran of the force, received a notice proposing her termination. On December 9, 2003, Deputy Park Service Director Donald Murphy asked Chambers to surrender her gun and badge, placed her on administrative leave and ordered her not to speak any further with the media.
Chief Chambers is in her 16th week on administrative leave, and Acting Chief Ben Holmes has announced his retirement, leaving the nation's oldest federal uniformed police force without stable leadership.
The situation has caused another park police officer to resign this month. Officer Bleu Lawless, one of the few officers who is also an attorney, notified his chain-of-command of his decision to leave. The organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which is supporting Chief Chambers, posted Lawless' letter of resignation on its website.
"I would like to emphasize that my experience with the U.S. Park Police has been nothing but positive," Lawless wrote. But, Lawless said, his desire to work with the Park Police has been shaken. "The recent unfair treatment of Chief Chambers creates enough doubt in my mind about my future as a U.S. Park Police Officer to justify a career change."
Administration officials say President George W. Bush is a good steward of the parks and is focused on addressing the estimated $5 billion maintenance backlog that plagues the national park system.
They contend the President on track to meet his campaign commitment to spend $4.9 billion over five years to address the National Park Service's maintenance backlog, but officials have backed away from saying this will indeed eliminate the backlog.
"We have really made a great deal of success in addressing the backlog, but the backlog is not really a number," National Park Service Director Fran Mainella told a Congressional panel last month. "It is a snapshot in time and it needs to be looked at as an evolving condition of the parks."
Mainella said the administration has spent $3.9 billion so far on the maintenance backlog and told Congress the fiscal year 2005 request will bring that spending to $4.9 billion.
But critics say the administration has manipulated budget figures and has been less than truthful about the real status of maintenance needs throughout the national park system.
Conservationists say the Bush budgets total some $660 million in new funding to address the maintenance backlog - far short of the administration's pledge.
The Bush administration is also keen to promote volunteerism at the parks and volunteers have increased some 5 percent a year since the 1990.
In 2002, some 125,000 volunteers donated time equivalent to 2,156 full time employees, according to NPCA.
The increase in volunteers is good, NPCA says in its report, but the Park Service has limited capacity to manage volunteers and concentrating on them to fill the gap is part of a "band-aid approach," according to the report.
"President Bush - and some of his predecessors - made strong commitments to the American people about protecting our national parks," Kiernan said. "But when push comes to shove, the parks are under funded year after year by Washington."
--------
Further Study Ordered On Mercury Regulation
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64853-2004Mar16.html
Concerned that the administration may not meet its target for reducing mercury emissions by 2018, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt has ordered additional studies to see how it might tighten the proposed rule.
The move followed revelations that the EPA had short-circuited the traditional rulemaking process and had adopted some industry recommendations verbatim. Although some environmental groups welcomed the policy shift, they argued the administration is still not doing enough to curb harmful emissions from power plants.
Leavitt, who took over the EPA in November, has been immersed in meetings about the issue for months, EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said, and decided to call for the new analyses last week.
Bergman said the agency is seeking "the maximum reduction of mercury in the most effective way given the nature of our current technology."
The decision was first reported by the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.
Administration officials initially projected that the proposal, which would lower caps on mercury emissions over time while allowing plants to trade pollution credits, would reduce mercury emissions by 70 percent by 2018, but they have recently expressed concern that the plan might miss that target by as much as a decade.
Bergman said Leavitt is seeking to "analyze the policy" and "wanted to have feedback" on how the proposal would work. The EPA is accepting comments on its proposal now and is expected to issue a final rule in December.
Critics have questioned for months whether EPA officials were relying too heavily on industry advisers in writing the rule. Until the new proposal was issued, states, industry and environmental groups had all operated on the assumption that under the Clean Air Act, utilities had to comply with sharply lower emissions standards by 2007.
Outside groups said even a tightening of the administration's proposed rule would fall short of what Congress intended.
"A few sandbags to stem the tide of this public outrage is not sufficient," said Susan West Marmagas, environment and health program director for Physicians for Social Responsibility, an advocacy group that seeks tighter mercury limits.
Some lawmakers and state officials said part of the problem stemmed from the agency's reliance on industry's analysis.
In one instance, the language of the proposed rule repeats word for word a report issued by West Associates, a consulting group funded by western power companies. West Associates used a statistical analysis that allows higher emissions and favors western coal, said Brad Campbell, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
Although the EPA modified the consultants' calculations slightly, the final result was nearly identical to the companies' proposal.
"The really troubling aspect of this is that every major element of the industry proposal was incorporated into this proposal," Campbell said.
--------
Report Critical of Interior Official
Inspector General Calls Deputy Secretary's Dealings Troubling but Not Illegal
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64647-2004Mar16?language=printer
An 18-month investigation by the Interior Department's inspector general has found multiple instances in which Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles had dealings with energy and mining industry clients of his former lobbying firm even as he continued to receive income from the firm's owner.
Among the actions detailed in the report was a dinner party Griles arranged for department officials at the home of his former lobbying partner, who was still paying Griles for his share of the company and who had mining and energy company clients with pending business before the department; a case in which one of Griles's former clients received preferential treatment for department contracts; and an instance in which Griles contacted Environmental Protection Agency officials regarding some of his former clients' efforts to gain coalbed methane extraction concessions in the Powder River basin of Wyoming and Montana.
The report sought only to lay out the facts and did not conclude that Griles, who assumed his post in July 2001, broke any law or was a party to conflicts of interest or ethics violations. The Office of Government Ethics, in reviewing the findings, said that, with two possible exceptions, Griles did not violate ethics rules.
But the inspector general made clear he was troubled by Griles's actions and by the inaction of the department's ethics office, which, he concluded, did a very poor job of helping Griles avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest until an "onslaught of public criticism erupted."
In the end, Inspector General Earl E. Devaney said in his transmittal letter to Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, the American people may never get "a sound legal conclusion" on Griles's complex activities inside and outside government. But even "mere appearances" of conflict can seriously erode the public trust, he said.
"This is only one in a series of cases in which we have observed an institutional failure" to consider the appearance of conflicts of interest by Interior Department employees and officials, Devaney noted in his letter. "It is my hope, however, that [the Griles case] may be the case that changes the ethical culture in the Department."
In a letter to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who initiated one aspect of the investigation, Devaney said the Office of Government Ethics left open the possibility that in two instances Griles did violate ethics rules. The office referred those two cases to Norton. But Norton said yesterday that she considers the cases closed.
In a statement, Norton said she was "pleased that Deputy Secretary Griles has been cleared of the allegations that have been raised against him over the past two years."
Norton noted that Griles has already conceded that "he should have used better judgement" when, soon after his arrival at Interior, he organized a dinner party for department officials and his former lobbying partner, Marc Himmelstein -- especially given that, as a condition of his Senate confirmation, Griles had signed at least three agreements to avoid such dealings for up to six years.
Since then, Griles "has taken a number of steps to strengthen ethics screening in his office," Norton said. "This closes the issue. I'm glad that we can now put these allegations behind us."
Griles released a brief written statement in which he said he was "gratified" by the report's conclusions, which he described as a final determination "that I have adhered to the ethics law and rules."
Others read the report differently.
"The inspector general's report is damning. It uncovers regular and consistent breaches of Griles's ethics agreements and, more importantly, blatant violations of the public's trust," said Kristen Sykes of Friends of the Earth, the environmental group that helped trigger the investigation after it obtained Griles's meeting calendar through the Freedom of Information Act. "If this White House is serious about ethics and accountability, Griles should be dismissed immediately."
In an unusual arrangement, Griles is receiving payments of more than $1 million over four years from his former partner in the lobbying firm while serving as deputy secretary.
The report bluntly outlines the many roadblocks it faced in its effort to determine whether Griles had violated ethics rules. Foremost among them was an inability to ascertain exactly which companies had been -- or still are -- clients of Griles's former lobbying firm. Lacking adequate records, the inspectors had to rely on Griles himself and a few others with stakes in the investigation's outcome to tell them about those relationships.
That effort was challenged by "an unanticipated lack of personal and institutional memory; conflicting recollections; [and] poor record-keeping," the report stated, adding: "When we interviewed the Deputy Secretary and discussed our efforts to discern the status of his client list, he commented simply, 'Good luck.' "
Some of the questioned meetings concerned industry proposals and demands for concessions or exemptions from regulations pertaining to, among other matters, offshore natural gas exploration, air pollution and mining -- each involving substantial corporate revenue.
When investigators questioned these meetings, Griles provided various explanations. He said that some of the meetings were strictly "social"; that he was unaware client firms would be present at others; that he had not represented the firms on the particular matters being discussed.
Some of his assertions were corroborated by Interior Department colleagues and officers of the firms, but others were contradicted, with no resolution by the investigators.
The report said Griles took part in deliberations and meetings concerning three former clients -- Chevron, Shell and Aera (a Shell subsidiary) -- regarding their lawsuit against the government seeking access to natural gas fields they had leased in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of California. Griles also discussed the issue with the chief of staff of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), the president's brother, who opposed the industry's plan, according to the report.
Although Griles had formally recused himself from dealings regarding Shell and Chevron, he said after being questioned that he had listed these companies erroneously on his recusal form. He said he had not lobbied for Chevron, for example, despite signing a contract while still at his firm that identified him as the firm's principal contact with Chevron, and despite having been listed as a Chevron lobbyist in filings with ethics offices.
The firm amended its forms to delete Griles's name after the controversy arose over his Interior Department meetings. The Office of Government Ethics accepted the assertion that he had not lobbied for the companies.
Griles told investigators he could not explain why Chevron's first six payments to his firm for lobbying included the annotation, "attn.: Steve Griles." He said at first that his meetings with Aera were permitted because his recusal did not apply to subsidiaries; later he said he was never aware that Aera was owned by Shell, according to the report.
Another possible conflict involved former client Advanced Power Technologies Inc. (APTI), which was lobbying the government for imaging technology contracts.
The report found that officials at the Bureau of Land Management's National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, worked closely -- and improperly -- with the company, sharing information that gave APTI vital information about how much money the government was willing to spend, and providing specific details that ensured only APTI could win the contract.
Although Griles called the fire center's director in March 2001 -- a couple of days before he was nominated -- to explain that he would not get involved in the negotiations, his name popped up a month later when the company discussed its proposal with the fire center.
At an April 2001 briefing, an information technology officer at the center took handwritten notes that included the comment: "Steve Griles (Deputy Sec. of Interior)." The officer later told investigators he could not recall why he had made that notation, or what its significance was.
A contracting officer at the fire center told investigators that it was "suspicious" that APTI's bid ended up being so close to the government's estimate.
The report also noted that requests for bids should have been sent out to three companies, but they went out only to one: APTI. In addition, the contract requirements, including the use of trademark equipment, were so specific that only APTI could have met it, according to the report.
In another case, the officer whom Griles had designated to handle all matters related to APTI directed two junior officials to examine whether additional projects could be found for APTI, the report said. It resulted in another contract for the company, worth $165,000.
One key meeting of ATPI personnel was held in Griles's conference room. Although Griles was not present, an Interior official told investigators he was uncomfortable with that and with being summoned to the meeting. As a career civil servant, he said, he had never seen such a thing before.
All told, the report concluded, "Mr. Griles' lax understanding of his ethics agreement and attendant recusals, combined with lax dispensation of ethics advice given to him, resulted in lax constraint over matters in which the Deputy Secretary involved himself."
Staff writers R. Jeffrey Smith and Shankar Vedantam contributed to this report.
-------- health
Probe Starts in Medicare Drug Cost Estimates
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64605-2004Mar16.html
The Department of Health and Human Services inspector general is launching an inquiry into whether Bush administration officials committed any wrongdoing last year by withholding from Congress internal analyses showing that Medicare prescription drug legislation the White House supported would cost significantly more than lawmakers believed.
President Bush's top health adviser, HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, said yesterday that he had asked the department's investigative arm to examine the failure to disclose such cost estimates and alleged threats made to the government's chief analyst of Medicare costs that he risked being fired if he sent lawmakers that information.
"There seems to be a cloud over the department because of this," Thompson said. He predicted the agency would be exonerated. But he also lashed out at a recently departed top assistant, blaming the episode on Thomas A. Scully, who ran the Medicare program for three years and was a key administration negotiator on changes to the program that narrowly passed Congress in November.
The internal inquiry into the handling of the cost estimates is part of a broad damage-control strategy HHS officials have begun mounting to defuse accusations that the administration has put politics above accuracy on an issue that Bush has cited in his reelection campaign as a prime domestic achievement.
Thompson and his lieutenants also sought yesterday to tamp down Democrats' complaints that a video the administration recently sent to television stations about the new Medicare prescription drug benefit is misleading.
The GOP had anticipated that the law's passage would give them a potent political victory. Instead, it has produced a partisan, election-year battle and polls indicating that older Americans covered by Medicare are largely unconvinced that the changes will help them.
The controversy escalated late last week when the Medicare program's longtime actuary, Richard S. Foster, said Scully had threatened to fire him in June if he answered lawmakers' requests for data about the fiscal implications of the Medicare bill. The administration did not disclose until January that its calculations suggested the law would cost $534 billion over the next decade, compared with the Congressional Budget Office's prediction of $395 billion. Foster said that as early as last spring, his analyses consistently had shown the bills would cost $500 billion to $600 billion.
Yesterday, Thompson said he had seen little of the cost estimates Foster was preparing at the time. Thompson said he had been aware of one prediction by Foster that an expansion of the role of private health plans would prove more expensive unless Congress accepted Bush's proposal to use a competitive bidding system in each region of the country; Thompson said he promptly relayed that information to lawmakers working on the bill.
As for other cost estimates, Thompson said: "Tom Scully was running this. Tom Scully was making those decisions."
Thompson also suggested that Scully, who left the government for private consulting work in December, was an unmanageable employee. Thompson told reporters that he stood by recent congressional testimony that he should have supervised the Medicare chief more closely, adding: "All of you know Tom Scully. Do you think that is possible?"
The HHS chief of staff, Scott Whitaker, echoed that theme as he said he had chastised Scully after learning last summer of the threat to fire Foster. "I called Tom, as I had the job of doing from time to time, to remind him those threats were not appropriate."
Last evening, Scully said of the inspector general's inquiry: "They can investigate till the cows come home, but I think I was right." He repeated his assertion that he had merely joked about firing Foster and that he only once barred him from quickly responding to a Democratic request that he believed was politically inspired.
The dispute continued to widen on Capitol Hill. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) became the latest lawmaker to call on Thompson to explain what he knew of Foster's assertion that his work had been suppressed. Democrats yesterday largely praised the inquiry, with Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) issuing a statement saying he was pleased the administration "has acknowledged the growing scandal" over the Medicare law.
HHS officials also countered criticism over the video news releases about the drug benefit, which end with what sounds like a journalist saying: "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." Kevin Keane, HHS assistant secretary for public affairs, said: "She is a freelance journalist. She is not an actor."
Ryan was a researcher at ABC and NBC before forming a communications consulting business a year ago.
To defend their video, Thompson and Keane aired for reporters two videos the department had made during the Clinton administration in which then-HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala appeared to explain Medicare changes that administration proposed.
Staff writers Ceci Connolly and Helen Dewar contributed to this report.
--------
Williams Tells WASA To Mail 23,000 Filters
By Craig Timberg and Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64645-2004Mar16.html
Mayor Anthony A. Williams instructed D.C. Water and Sewer Authority yesterday to begin mailing free water filters to each of the 23,000 homes in Washington officials believe have lead service lines.
The filter distribution's expansion results from concern that the large majority of residents most in danger of lead contamination have not picked up free filters that can make their tap water safe, officials said. About 2,200 filters have been given away so far.
There is no timetable for home delivery, and a shipping method has not been selected, officials said. But city officials said they would resolve those and other details soon.
"Every one of the 23,000 homes will get a filter shipped to their door," Williams (D) announced to a group of about three dozen residents meeting last night at Shiloh Baptist Church in Northwest Washington to discuss the city's lead problem.
"If you get a situation where people couldn't get out there to get a filter . . . everyone in that household, like the children, shouldn't be put at risk," Williams said after the meeting.
The move was the latest shift in the past seven weeks as city, federal and WASA officials have scrambled to refine their response since news reports disclosed widespread lead contamination in Washington's water supply.
The Environmental Protection Agency's standard for lead in drinking water is 15 parts per billion; some D.C. homes with the worst tainted water tested at more than 300 parts per billion. Filters are not effective at such levels.
Over the seven weeks, officials have changed their recommendation on how long residents with lead service lines should run their water before drinking it. They belatedly acknowledged that contamination goes beyond those with lead service lines. And they backed off proposals to begin widespread replacement of lead service lines after testing showed that such work often raises lead levels, not lowers them.
Officials first issued a health advisory last month urging pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under age 6 not to drink unfiltered water in homes with lead service lines. They began distributing free filters two weeks ago, but residents needed to go to distribution centers at designated times and, initially, had to prove that they lived in a home with a lead service line.
Even with yesterday's decision, city officials stopped short of offering filters to those with service lines made with materials other than lead. Recent WASA testing has shown that hundreds of homes -- beyond the 23,000 thought to have lead service lines -- likely have lead-contaminated tap water.
D.C. Council member Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4), who has urged a more aggressive response to lead problems, called the decision to mail filters "a step in the right direction" but said that thousands more residents also need them.
"It's not enough," he said.
Council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large), co-chairman of a lead issues task force that recommended mailing the filters, said the program may be broadened after city officials have more definitive test results on contamination in homes with other types of service lines.
D.C. and WASA officials have initiated broad testing of water in homes and of residents themselves. But many thousands more remain untested, and interviews across the city have shown limited understanding of the dangers that the toxic metal poses, especially to children, pregnant women and nursing mothers. High levels of lead can cause cognitive damage and behavioral problems.
At last night's community meeting, Daniel Lucey, the D.C. Health Department's interim chief medical officer, said that 1,898 residents have been tested at the city's blood screening sites. He said that 13 children younger than 6 and 3 adults had elevated lead levels but that none of the 51 pregnant women and 35 nursing women who were tested showed elevated levels.
The pitcher-style filters are being sent only to those thought to have lead service lines. Brita donated 10,600 filters, and city officials said more donations may be on the way from other companies. The filters last about two months and must be replaced regularly to remain effective. The EPA had demanded that the city provide filtered or bottled water to everyone with a lead service line.
WASA General Manager Jerry N. Johnson told residents at the meeting last night that the agency is developing plans to send residents replacement filters according to the manufacturer's recommendations. Brita replacement filters retail at $8.
Complicating the city's response has been uncertainty about which residents have lead service lines, which run from water mains to homes. WASA officials have acknowledged that their list of 23,000 such homes resulted from a mix of educated guesswork and flawed documentation. Beyond that, WASA officials acknowledge there are 37,000 homes where they don't know if the service lines are lead, copper or brass.
The distinction makes a difference in the likelihood of contamination. Recent WASA testing has shown that nearly three in five homes with lead service lines have levels beyond the federal "action level" of 15 parts per billion. Elevated lead levels have been found in about one in three of the homes for which WASA is unsure about the type of service line.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Saudi Arabia Detains Reformers
Reuters
Wednesday, March 17, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64814-2004Mar16.html
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, March 16 -- Saudi Arabia detained several prominent reformers Tuesday in a move their supporters described as a major setback to democratic change in the conservative Islamic kingdom. An Interior Ministry source, quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency, said the men were being questioned for issuing announcements that "do not serve national unity or the cohesion of society based on Islamic sharia law."
Sources close to the detainees said eight people had been taken in by police, including former university professors Abdullah Hamid and Tawfiq Qussayer. Hamid was one of more than 800 people who signed a letter to Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, urging that a timetable for political reforms be implemented in the Persian Gulf state, which is under pressure to open up its absolute monarchy.
Also detained were Matrouk Faleh, a professor of politics at King Saud University in Riyadh, and Mohammed Said Tayyib, a retired publisher. Four others, including poet Ali Dumaini, were also being held.
"This will make people lose trust in the government and their promises. It contradicts 100 percent what they have been promising," said one academic with ties among the detainees.
Saudi Arabia has come under pressure from Washington to reform following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which were carried out mainly by Saudis. The government has promised to hold municipal elections by October, and this month the country's first independent human rights organization won royal approval.
The country has also introduced changes to its educational and religious institutions, which promote an austere version of Sunni Islam and are blamed by critics for creating a fertile environment for militants.
On Monday, Saudi security forces killed a Yemeni man believed to be a leading al Qaeda figure in the kingdom, officials said.
The Saudi Press Agency quoted an Interior Ministry source as saying Khaled Ali Ali Haj, reported to be a senior al Qaeda figure, was killed in a shootout in Riyadh along with another suspected militant, Ibrahim bin Abdulaziz bin Mohammad Muzainy.
Haj had been wanted by Saudi authorities since May, when his name was published along with those of 18 other suspected al Qaeda operatives. Days later, suicide bombings blamed on the al Qaeda network killed at least 35 people in Riyadh, including several Americans.
--------
Paraguay protesters march on farm, justice issues
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-17/s_14091.asp
ASUNCION, Paraguay - About 5,000 farmers and leftists marched in Paraguay Tuesday to press such demands as the regulation of pesticide use and limiting the migration of Brazilian farmers to Paraguay.
Paraguay is the world's fourth-largest soybean exporter, and pesticide use has ballooned along with soy cultivation in recent years. The Brazilians are blamed for using mechanized farming methods, which leave few jobs for locals.
"We are peacefully protesting. Today there were no incidents at any of the protest points, but that could change radically if the government fails to listen to our demands," said farm leader Luis Aguayo.
The protesters, who marched in the capital, Asuncion, and in rural areas, raised other demands ranging from farm-related concerns to free education and health care, more social spending and job creation, and legalizing squatter settlements.
Protest organizers said they would march again in coming days if the government did not take steps to address their concerns.
"What the organizers must understand is that many of their demands are incorporated into government programs that have just recently been launched," Agriculture Minister Antonio Ibanez told reporters. "It's simply impossible to improve the lives of our compatriots in six months' time. Much of what they criticize are structural deficiencies that take time and effort to correct," Ibanez added.
President Nicanor Duarte Frutos took office last August. On Tuesday, his government dispatched 15,000 police officers to clear road blockades in Asuncion and the countryside
--------
Mid-East: Nuclear weapons found! (thank you, Mordechai Vanunu)
From: "Thank you Vanunu campaign" <vanunu@n...>
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Mordechai Vanunu is the arms inspector who found nuclear weapons. Unfortunately for him he found them in the "wrong" country: in Israel!
Instead of being thanked, he was kidnapped and jailed for 18 years.
Read more about this on http://www.peaceispossible.info/Vanunu.html
Now the good news: Vanunu will be free on April 21, 2004, after his excessive punishment, almost 12 years were served in total isolation.
He has suffered more than anyone else in the struggle against nuclear annihilation.
We hope you will thank him with "a flower" to celebrate his release, to do so go to: http://www.peaceispossible.info/thankyouvanunu.php
Citizens who alert the public to grave danger often get in trouble. They deserve - and need - our support.
Join us in thanking Vanunu for what he did for us all! Make one of his days in prison count for his future!
Greetings from the International Vanunu Committee Fredrik S. Heffermehl (Norway) Meir Vanunu (Israel)
Please pass this email on to your own networks.
--------
The Global Anti-War Movement and The Beast
By Les Blough, Editor
Mar 17, 2004,
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_5706.shtml
Axis of Logic's credo is "Finding Clarity in the 21st Century Mediaplex". In service to that credo, we want to make-clear our position on the current occupation of Iraq and Global Corporate Empire's war on the world.
Let us begin by welcoming with conditions, Rodriguez Zapatero's decision - http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_5663.shtml - this week to remove Spanish Troops from Iraq. We also have due appreciation for his strong statement,
"Mr Blair and Mr Bush must do some reflection and self-criticism... you can't organize a war with lies," he said in remarkably frank comments for the next prime minister of Western Europe's youngest democracy and fifth largest economy." However, we must also be quick to note that his decision is, in our judgement, seriously flawed with his attendant proviso:
"Zapatero, due to take office within the next month, repeated several times Monday his campaign pledge to pull out troops unless the United Nations takes charge in Iraq by mid-year -- a shift in control that he said was unlikely."
Invasion and Occupation in Clear Violation of Westphalian Sovereignty
Replacing U.S., British and Spanish and other occupying troops in Iraq with U.N. troops "taking charge" of Iraq by midsummer is a no more and no less than a thinly-veiled disguise for continued occupation of this sovereign nation. I make no claim to be an authority on all that is to be understood about the sovereignty of nations. But the violations and undermining of the sovereign state by Corporate Global Empire is not difficult to understand. In 1648, The Treaty of Westphalia - http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/westphal.htm - granted sovereignty to the world's nation-states as a protection from interference in domestic affairs and invasion by other nations. Westphalian sovereignty has been the standard to which nations have been held for over 400 years. The results of a simple internet search on "Westphalian Sovereignty" are replete with attacks against the sovereignty of the nation-state today by the empire. In his book, Hydra of Carnage, - http://craigbhulet.com/ , Craig B. Hulet provides an excellent treatment of how self-determination and sovereignty of all nations, including the U.S., is being undermined and violated by the Corporate Global Empire.
The Credo of the Global Anti-War Movement
The attacks of the American-led Corporate Global Empire on Afghanistan and Iraq are clear violations of that sovereignty and amount to nothing less than international war crimes. The anti-war movement should not, cannot compromise our position: Get all U.S., British, Spanish troops and any others participating in the invasion of Iraq - out of Iraq - unconditionally and now - not by midsummer and not to be replaced with another occupying force, as Zapatero seems to suggest. Any statement by the Anti-War movement supporting U.N. occupation of Iraq as an alternative is not "anti-war" or "anti-occupation" at all.
In the past, we have witnessed some contingents of the "anti-war" movement, using slogans like: "Sanctions not War" - a clear violation of national sovereignty. We saw it during the first invasion of Iraq in 1991 by Bush-the-Elder, when some "Anti-War Activists" marched down Pennsylvania Avenue with chants and slogans bearing these words. We also witnessed 8 years of sanctions against Iraq, enforced by the Clinton regime, commonly ignored by some who claim to be opposed to the war on Iraq and wistfully yearn for a more Clintonesque president.
These foreign polices of Bush the Elder and William Jefferson Clinton were also in service to Corporate Global Empire. Now we have some current "anti-war" activists rallying behind John Kerry as the one who will save Iraq and the world from the ignorant and brutal policies of the current Bush-the-Younger regime.
We must remember that William Jefferson Clinton was responsible for more deaths in Iraq than the brutal George Walker Bush. Estimates of up to 1.5 million deaths (many of them children) resulted from the sanctions and weekly missile attacks on Iraq during the Clinton Administration's 8 years in office. We remember well the chilling, infamous words of Clinton's Ambassador to the U.N., Madeleine Albright. When asked by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes - http://www.progressive.org/wx091400.htm - if Clinton's policies of sanctions and attacks on Iraq were worth the deaths of 500,000 children, she replied:
"We think it was worth it".
It should now be obvious to even the most casual observer that the members of Corporate Global Empire have added the deaths and suffering of the hundreds of thousands of Afghan, Iraqi and American military to that price-tag, and have collectively deemed their deaths and sufferings a price-worth-paying for reaching their global objectives.
Rationalizations for Invasion and Occupation
There are those today who claim the need for U.N. occupation of Iraq "because Iraq may fall into civil war"; others claim occupation is necessary to "save" the Iraqi people from theocratic control or another dictatorship; others claim Iraq must be occupied to save the Iraqi people from poverty, suffering and death - while the occupiers continue their killing; others use the villain, Saddam Hussein and his butcheries to justify the continuing, murderous occupation of Iraq; still others claim the Iraqi people must be protected from themselves and that democracy must be installed at the point of a gun.
But we remember the ludicrous U.S. justification for the ongoing invasion, killing, rape and pillaging of Afghanistan - to save the Afghan women from the "Burka"! Most sovereign nations have gone through all sorts of human suffering and even civil war (U.S. 1861-1865) to mature into what the people want for governance. Most have also had to fight off foreign invaders to protect their national sovereignty.
Which Iraqi would you rather be?
In a recent discussion with one of the organizers of the Anti-War movement in Boston, he facetiously proposed,
"Forming a committee for the re-election of George Bush" in 2004".
I knew why he made this proposal in the privacy of our home, but asked for his thoughts. In reply, he asked me,
"If you were an Iraqi, would you prefer helplessly watching a half million of your children die under the sanctions and missile attacks of the Clinton Administration, with no opportunity to fight back .... or would you prefer being an Iraqi under the Bush Regime now, with the opportunity to join the resistance and fight the occupiers for your lives and your national sovereignty?"
- Certainly two terrible alternatives - But it was not a difficult question to answer.
Empire's "Democratization" = Colonization
No foreign nation has the authority or responsibility to "protect" another sovereign nation "from themselves". Whether the empire be Roman, British, or the current U.S.-led Corporate Global Empire, the occupation is quite simply - colonization of other sovereign nations for empire's interest and profit. Empires' objectives are the same - World Domination. Their crimes are the same. The resulting humiliation and poverty of the victim-nation are the same. The suffering and death are the same. Only the weapons and size of the destruction are different. None of them- The U.S., the U.K., Spain, nor any other nation has been invited to occupy Iraq by the Iraqi people. They want us out now! In point of fact, the Iraqi people are leveling a formidable war of resistance against these occupying forces even as you read these words.
Whether in reference to the bloody hands of the Clinton Administration, the 2 Bush Administrations, the United Nations, or any other occupying force in Iraq, we must stand firm on our opposition to the violations of Iraq's sovereignty - regardless of the justifications and rationalizations perpetrated by the warring and occupying parties. Zapatero's promise to withdraw Spanish troops is not a valid promise, as long as it is predicated on the transparent, immoral and illegal premise that the current invader-occupiers are replaced by U.N. troops.
As a Global Anti-War Movement, we must be clear and remain strong in our resolve to fight for the independence and self-determination of the Iraqi people. In doing so, we fight for our own right to self-determination and national sovereignty. Foreign nations have a singular responsibility to the Iraqi people - to make reparations as the people of Iraq request them - to repay the destruction the U.S. and British militaries have wreaked upon these people. We must stand firm in our resolve. This is the only legal, moral and ethical position for a valid and honest Global Anti-War Movement to affirm.
The Beast
The Real Beast is the Corporate Global Empire that sets its boot down in every nation-state, making war, violating national sovereignty, attacking self-determination, making war where it will and making its own rules as it deems necessary. The Beast ponders, plans and executes it's nefarious decisions through the auspices of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and their globalization policies of NAFTA, FTAA and other international trade agreements. The Anti-War Movement will only facilitate and enable the world-wide mission of the Beast if it does not make clear the nature of the enemy and attack it at the jugular.
The Beast is One, but Wears a Coat of Many Colors
He may be American-Led, but he hails from almost every nation. He consists of the few, not the many. He is the regime in the U.S., the regime in the U.K., in China, Turkey, Russia, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, many other countries throughout the world, and possibly the new Zapatero regime in Spain. He is a beast that appears to be invincible - an image that is sculpted and polished daily by the corporate media conglomerates who are in his service.
The Beast Can and Will be Defeated
"Inevitability" is the doctrine sold day in and day out by the Beast's "economic experts" and uncritically accepted by so many of his victims. In his 1997 discourse, "Globalization, State Sovereignty, and the 'Endless' Accumulation of Capital", Giovanni Arrighi wrote:
"The chances are that the victory of the United States in what Fred Halliday (1983) has called the Second Cold War and the further Americanization of the world will appear in retrospect as closing moments of US world hegemony, just as Britain's victory in the First World War and the further expansion of its overseas empire were preludes to the final demise of British world hegemony in the 1930s and 1940s. As we shall see in section III, there are good reasons for expecting the demise of US hegemony to follow a different trajectory than the demise of British hegemony. But there are equally good reasons for expecting the present, US-led phase of financial expansion to be a temporary phenomenon, like the analogous British-led phase of a century ago."
http://fbc.binghamton.edu/gairvn97.htm
I often hear those opposed to war say that any attempt to reverse the course of empire's globalization is futile. They view world domination by the Corporate Global Empire as inevitable. I hear others take comfort in the notion that it will fall under its own weight. Many feel helpless and impotent in the face of advances by empire toward a new global exonomy. With all due respect, I believe those who succumb to those views are at best ill-informed and at worst, in unwitting complicity. The beast must be fought. There is no alternative.
There is a powerful and ominous military opposition to the Beast afoot today. Its work was seen on 9/11/01 and apparently, most recently, in Madrid on March 11, 2004. The military opposition to the Beast is currently organized and growing around the world in the form of Urban Guerilla Warfare is described in detail in Craig B. Hulet's book, Hydra of Carnage. - http://craigbhulet.com/
Every life taken by the Beast, every person wounded, every house demolished, every family destroyed, every material object taken anywhere in the world, produces new recruits for the Urban Guerillas. Some wonder why Empire attacked Afghanistan and Iraq with full knowledge it would lead to a world-wide guerilla war. The answer is as simple as it is cruel. The beast cares not about those trampled underfoot, be they Afghan children, Iraqi mothers or American soldiers. The Beast cares only about domination. It considers those dead and suffering in its tracks, "worth it".
The Beast would have us believe our enemies are comprised of a few rag-tag "terrorists" - making it necessary to take our civil rights and attack other nations and races with impunity. Make no mistake - the formidable guerilla resistance Iraq is not interested in attacking their own civilians, their sole source of support and survival, but rather the occupiers and those Iraqis who support the occupation.
The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11/01 were not directed at civilians, but at the symbols of the Corporate Empire that occupied their nations with military bases after "Desert Storm" in 1991. If indeed Al-Queda sponsored or executed the terrible bombing last week in Madrid, they did so with employment of Empire's murderous rationalization of "collateral damage". In Hydra of Carnage, Craig Hulet explains how the behaviors of the Urban Guerillas are patterned after the genius and powerful military strategies of Che Gueverra and Mao. He also reminds us that Guerillas have never lost a war, because their warfare is a warfare of attrition - Hit Empire hard. Then, rather than withdraw into the hills, as Che did, withdraw back into the cities and the populations around the world.
Did the Neocon/Bush/Rumsfeld headquarters really believe their clumsy "technology warfare" could kill every hidden, fleet-footed, street-savvy guerilla soldier throughout the world with it's destructive high-altitude bombers; imprecise, long-range missiles; Abram's tanks, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, and 130,000 troops trained for front-to-front combat? In order to defeat the guerillas, the Beast would have to kill every newly-recruited Guerilla and the massive populations that support and hide them. Not even Bush, Cheney, Blair, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and Ariel Sharon combined can kill that fast.
Our work and battle against the Beast is with the weapons of words and truth. Until the advent of the Internet, the Beast had dominated and controlled the Government/Corporate newspapers and air waves. The FBI in the U.S. is currently launching an attack
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_5633.shtml
The Beast's Clever Distractions
In every nation, the Principle Target must be identified and we must "name the name". It is not the ignorant and brutal Bush Regime. In the U.S. the Beast is not George Walker Bush, John Kerry, the "Republicans", the "Democrats". These "targets" are simply clever distractions from the "Real Beast". The so-called 2004 U.S. "elections"; George Bush; John Kerry; issues of "patriotism", religion, abortion, the death penalty, gun control, race, welfare, health-care, "national security", "terrorism" and "the economy" are clever distractions used by the Beast to distract us from the real face of the Beast. These distractions are carried out with dispatch by the Government/Corporate media. In the U.S. they are used to divide us one against another: Republican vs. Democrat and Conservative vs. Liberal, etc., to sap our energy and to prevent solidarity among us as a people - Solidarity, the one thing the Beast fears most.
Axis of Logic's Challenge to our Sisters and Brothers in the Global Anti-War Movement
To all those who are sacrificially joining the Global Anti-War Movement, we say,
"Take courage! Be of Good Cheer! Our fight against the Beast is one worthy of your time, money and energy! Many have gone before and have thwarted the enemy of the people in the past. Remember Chicago and Kent State in America's more recent history. Remember the invaders' humiliating defeat and retreat out of Viet Nam. In even more recent days, remember Chavez and the valiant people of Venezuela just last year!" Remember the Spanish people who stood 80%, "shoulder to shoulder" - demonstrating in the streets against Mr. Aznar - even before they suffered mass tragedy as a result of his war on Iraq.
Remember the many others in world history who have in solidarity, laid hold of the neck of the Beast and thrown him to the ground, time and time again! Let us lay aside our unworthy differences of method and ideology and unite on March 20, 2004 and in every Anti-War Mobilization that follows - in every countryside, pueblo, and city around the world, to confront the Real Beast - Corporate Global Empire. There can be no retreat. There can be no turning back.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.