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NUCLEAR
Nuclear plant safety concerns linger
Radiation devices deployed to ports
China pledges 12 million dollar military loan to Pakistan
Bulgaria and Romania agree on air defence of nuclear plant
S. Korea, Japan Aim for Early North Nuclear Talks
Russian Navy Chief Calls the Northern Fleet's Flagship Unsafe
Russia navy chief's exploding comments set off controversy
Russia Navy Chief Flip - Flops on Flagship
Expert doubts Russian cruiser has 'catastrophic' problem
Xtra-large X-ray scanning cargo
N.J. Gets Seaport Radiation Detectors
al - Qaida May Have Nuclear Weapons
Slender and Elegant, It Fuels the Bomb
Some History & Facts Re Nuclear Power
COMEDY OF ERRORS
Ex-Flats workers to help oversee safety of cleanup
Nanos: Los Alamos Lab, county in pivotal time
National Park Service B Reactor's best bet
Texas: State editorial roundup
Park Service Is Rebuked on Hill for Proposed Cuts
Ex-Bush Aide Sets Off Debate as 9/11 Hearing Opens
MILITARY
Afghan Troops Sent To Scene of Clashes
Kabul Sends Force to Quell Disorders After a Killing
US to increase African military presence
Hundreds of Nepali Maoists Die in Battle
BAE strikes out with laser lab
Beijing Walks Softly Around Taiwan Vote
Taiwanese President Agrees to Recount of Disputed Vote
Shiite Cleric Threatens to Shun U.N. Envoys in Iraq
U.S. Team in Baghdad Fights a Persistent Enemy: Rumors
Nine Iraqi Policemen Killed by Gunmen South of Baghdad
Calls for calm as the world condemns Israeli action
Emotional Protests In Slaying Of Sheik
Dire Portent Hangs Over Funeral in Gaza
U.S. 'Troubled' by Israeli Attack
Attack Draws Wide Condemnation
Palestinians Swear Vengeance for Killing of Cleric by Israelis
Israel Defends Killing of Hamas Leader
Hamas Names Hard-liner as New Leader in Gaza
Wave of Anger Rolls Across Arab World
Israel airs film of police firing on Kurds
NATO enlargement ceremony at White House March 29
Tribal Leaders Seek Truce in Pakistan
CIA Exec Meets Athens Olympic Officials
Shiite Ayatollah Is Warning U.N. Against Endorsing Charter
Pentagon certifies need for base closures
White House Counters Ex-Aide
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Preliminary Rulings From 9 / 11 Commission
Rumsfeld Counters 9 / 11 Panel Findings
Justices hear ID-showing case
Judges Are Urged to Quit Board Positions
Justices Debate Right to Withhold Name From Police
Okla. Opens Trial
The Draconian 'Law 1008' Will Be Revised
Truck Scanners Coming to All Port Terminals
FBI Tracked Kerry in Vietnam Vets Group
ENERGY
Government leans toward stretching out power plant cleanup
OTHER
Mohawk Indian tribe seeks court order to stop icebreaking
Climate Debate Gets Its Icon: Mt. Kilimanjaro
Moderate drinking may benefit heart
ACTIVISTS
The man who knew too much
Coalition Seeks to Block U.S. Army's Open Burn of PCBs
Republican Speaks at Crawford Texas Antiwar Protest
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Nuclear plant safety concerns linger
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/03/23/utilities.nuke.reut/index.html
WASHINGTON -- Twenty-five years after a near-catastrophe at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant exposed lax safety practices, owners and regulators of the nation's aging fleet of 103 reactors still face nagging questions about their ability to prevent mishaps.
These concerns, worsened by recent findings of massive corrosion at a plant in Ohio, have so far kept utilities away from pursuing new nuclear plants for over two decades despite their potential to replace aging, air-polluting coal units.
In a bid to change that trend, the Bush administration has promoted incentives to build new nuclear plants. But the outlook is uncertain because a Republican-written energy bill with some of the administration's proposals has long been stalled in the U.S. Senate.
On March 28, 1979, Walter Cronkite opened his nightly news broadcast for CBS television, calling the accident at the Pennsylvania plant "the first step in a nuclear nightmare."
That was the first time that many Americans heard of the mishap, the most serious accident in U.S. nuclear history.
Early that morning, pumps feeding cooling water to the plant's reactor failed, and 32,000 gallons of radioactive, superheated water spewed from a dodgy valve into the domed concrete reactor housing. Without water to cool them, over half of the reactor's 36,000 nuclear fuel rods ruptured.
Government scientists said that the 636,000 people living within 20 miles of the plant got only minor radiation doses.
A string of mechanical failures and human errors caused the Three Mile Island accident after operators with Metropolitan Edison Co. switched off crucial equipment that could have lessened the severity of the partial meltdown.
The near-catastrophe at the plant perched on an island in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg effectively halted any expansion in the U.S. nuclear energy industry, which generates about 20 percent of the nation's electricity.
The resulting cancellation of dozens of planned nuclear plants forced utilities to rely on decades-old nuclear and coal-burning plants for growing electric power demands.
For the last decade, utilities have looked almost exclusively to natural gas plants to fill the gap, which has exacerbated the nation's shortage of that clean-burning fuel.
And two years ago, massive corrosion found at an Ohio nuclear plant points to lingering safety questions.
"With plants aging and the number of checks dwindling, this is a troubling trend," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Activist groups also worry that current security measures cannot prevent a terrorist attack on a U.S. nuclear plant. Ohio plant raises fresh concerns
Safety concerns continue to plague the industry.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspectors in early 2002 found massive corrosion at a Ohio nuclear plant owned by FirstEnergy Corp Leaking boric acid used as a coolant ate a football-sized hole in the steel outer hull protecting the company's Davis-Besse plant's reactor core.
No radiation was released, and the NRC allowed FirstEnergy to begin reviving the unit this month after the utility agreed to change its "safety culture."
NRC Chairman Nils Diaz said the independent agency he has led since April, 2003, "dropped the ball" by not spotting the corrosion sooner. "It was no way to do business, either on the part of operators or regulators," Diaz said.
Nuclear industry officials bristle at any connection between the Three Mile Island and Davis-Besse incidents, and point to advances in operator training and plant design.
But industry watchdogs say the aging U.S. nuclear utility fleet could be nearing the end of its trouble-free life, with incidents like Davis-Besse foreshadowing mishaps to come.
"We haven't seen a lot of near-misses in this country since (Three Mile Island)," Lochbaum said. "But the other end of the curve is what we're approaching, if we're not there already."
The Bush administration, meanwhile, wants to jump-start the U.S. nuclear industry with an energy plan aimed at building at least one new nuclear power plant in the United States by 2010.
One version of the energy bill stalled in the Senate would give tax incentives to build new plants, with a cost of $10 billion. The incentives could be stripped from the bill to appease budget concerns from the administration and others.
Nuclear advocates say such incentives can make nuclear generation competitive with coal and natural gas, and allow utilities to shift from their heavy reliance on fossil fuels.
Utilities have relied on squeezing more megawatts from existing nuclear plants. Capacity factors went from 58 percent in 1980 to 92 percent in 2002, forestalling the need to build new plants, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.
The industry says that the NRC carefully reviews capacity increases to ensure safety.
But with a dearth of new building, aging nuclear plants pose a risk, said Jim Riccio, an anti-nuclear advocate at Greenpeace. "After Three Mile Island, the pendulum definitely swung in the direction of safety," he said. "In the last 25 years, it has swung in the other direction. They're running these plants to the verge of breakdown."
----
Radiation devices deployed to ports
March 23, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040322-104252-6739r.htm
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) yesterday introduced highly sophisticated radiation portal monitors designed to better prevent terrorists or others from attempting to smuggle "dirty bombs" into the United States through U.S. seaports.
CBP Commissioner Robert C. Bonner said the monitors, which detect the radiological materials used in nuclear and radiological dispersal devices, known as dirty bombs, are being deployed rapidly to all of the country's major seaports of entry.
In addition to the monitors, Mr. Bonner said, other sophisticated equipment used by CBP in its "layered enforcement strategy" already in use includes large-scale non-intrusive inspection technology, X-ray type machines that can scan entire sea containers in two to three minutes, personal radiation detection devices and radiation isotope identifiers that can pinpoint the source and nature of radiation.
These devices are important in detecting and identifying radioactive materials moving through a port of entry, he said.
"The best way to prevent a terrorist attack is by preventing terrorists or terrorist weapons from entering our country in the first instance. The recent terrorist attacks in Madrid drive home the increased need to secure our borders against terrorist penetration," Mr. Bonner said.
"The new highly sophisticated radiation detection devices U.S. Customs and Border Protection is deploying in our seaports are a major step in ensuring that our border and our country are more secure," he said.
CBP spokeswoman Paula Keicer said the radiation portals being deployed at U.S. seaports enhance the agency's "already formidable radiation detection capabilities."
She noted that CBP already has deployed more than 300 radiation isotope identifier devices, known as RIIDs, to every major seaport and land border crossing in the United States.
The devices are hand-held instruments capable of detecting and identifying various types of radiation emanating from radioactive materials, including those used in a dirty bombs as well as special nuclear materials, natural sources and isotopes commonly used in medicine and industry.
In May 2002, Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and convert to Islam, was arrested by the FBI in a suspected scheme to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States. Padilla, a New York native and convicted felon whose Arabic name, Abdullah al Muhajir, translates to "the emigrant," was stopped at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and later turned over to U.S. military authorities, who are holding him as an enemy combatant.
Authorities believe Padilla intended to detonate a bomb at several targets, including government buildings in Washington. His trip to Chicago in May 2002, authorities said, was to begin reconnaissance for a bombing target and seek a source for the radioactive material for a dirty bomb.
CBP is the agency within the Homeland Security Department charged with the protection of the nation's borders.
-------- asia
China pledges 12 million dollar military loan to Pakistan
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Mar 23, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040323165233.n3edkkma.html
China's visiting defence minister has pledged a 100 million yuan (12 million dollar) interest-free loan for Pakistan's armed forces, a report said on Tuesday.
The loan is to strengthen and develop ties between the two countries' armed forces, the official Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported.
Cao Gangchuan flew into Islamabad on Monday for a five-day visit.
"China attaches importance to its friendly relations with Pakistan and this relation had been unbeatable since decades," he said during a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Rao Sikandar Iqbal.
Iqbal praised "the invaluable assistance, extended by China to Pakistan, in the field of defence and defence production," APP said.
He also briefed the Chinese defence minister about the efforts being made Pakistan "to stamp out the menace of terrorism".
Pakistan has arrested more than 500 Al-Qaeda suspects since joining the US-led war on terror in late 2001 and is currently engaged in its biggest ever offensive against fighters in border areas with Afghanistan.
-------- europe
Bulgaria and Romania agree on air defence of nuclear plant
SOFIA (AFP)
Mar 23, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040323195451.nkbtvske.html
Bulgaria and Romania has agreed that Bulgaria could fire on aircraft in its neighbour's airspace if they threatened its nuclear plant at Kozloduy, Bulgarian Defence Minister Nikolai Svinarov said Tuesday.
The nuclear plant, which provides almost half of Bulgaria's electricity, is situated on the Danube river on the border with Romania.
Svinarov said the two countries will work out a formal accord allowing Bulgaria "to shoot down civilian aircraft who stray from their authorised route towards the plant."
He was speaking after a visit to Bucharest where he held talks with Romanian Defence Minister Yoan Pascu on border security between the two states who both hope to join the European Union in 2007.
-------- korea
S. Korea, Japan Aim for Early North Nuclear Talks
March 23, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-japan.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - The chief South Korean and Japanese delegates to the six-party North Korean nuclear talks vowed Tuesday to try to open working level talks on disarmament as soon as possible.
But South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck told reporters before talks in Seoul with Japanese counterpart Motoji Yabunaka that the trick would be getting North Korea to agree to launch talks approved last month by the six countries.
``We are holding discussions with the aim of holding the first working group meeting at the earliest possible date,'' Lee said.
``But as for setting a date, it appears that decision is in North Korea's hands,'' he said.
Six-country talks in Beijing last month -- involving the two Koreas, Japan, China, the United States and Russia -- agreed to establish the working groups to hammer out details of how to end the nuclear crisis that began in late 2002.
Lee said South Korea was hoping for results from the visit to North Korea by Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, who left Tuesday for a rare trip to Pyongyang to try to speed up consultations on the North's nuclear programs.
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon will follow Li's visit, the first by a Chinese foreign minister to North Korea in five years, with a trip to China for talks from March 28 to 30, Lee said.
China said last week it had circulated a draft plan for setting up the working groups.
The latest flurry of Asian diplomacy to resolve one of the most pressing security problems in the region comes amid stepped up cooperation between the United Nations and the United States on what they hope will be renewed nuclear inspections in North Korea.
The head of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, discussed the North Korean nuclear program with President Bush last week. The IAEA and Washington believe North Korea may already have an atom bomb.
ElBaradei said that if six-party talks reach any deal on the North's nuclear program, it should include unfettered U.N. inspections.
But Pyongyang has been suspicious of U.S. intentions since Bush branded the North, Iran and pre-war Iraq as part of an ``axis of evil.'' The North is demanding to be compensated for giving up its nuclear programs and has said the case of Iraq had taught the lesson that disarmament inspections lead to war.
-------- russia
Russian Navy Chief Calls the Northern Fleet's Flagship Unsafe
By REUTERS
March 23, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-navy.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The head of the Russian navy rang alarm bells Tuesday after being quoted saying one of the world's most powerful nuclear warships might be about to blow up.
But Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov then denied making the comment and said he meant only that the Peter the Great, the pride of Moscow's Northern Fleet, was being poorly maintained.
Russian military analysts said the incident may have had less to do with an imminent danger than with rivalries among the top brass of a navy struggling to stay afloat on a budget that has been dramatically cut since its Cold War heyday.
Two major news agencies, Itar-Tass and Interfax, quoted Kuroyedov as saying he had ordered the nuclear-powered cruiser back to port and warning that ``it may blow up any minute.''
But some hours later, the admiral said he had been misquoted and the agencies' reports were ``not true in any way.''
``The ship's nuclear safety system is fully tested and meets all vital requirements,'' he told Tass in his later remarks.
``However, the state of the living quarters and the general state of the ship is unsatisfactory and fails to meet requirements set down by regulations.''
He had given the crew two weeks to fix the problems. It was not clear where the ship was. Its home port is near Murmansk on Russia's Arctic coast, close to borders with Norway and Finland.
The 19,000-ton Kirov-class vessel has 20 cruise missiles that can be equipped with nuclear warheads.
Designed to challenge the U.S. Navy in the Cold War and originally named the Yuri Andropov after the former Soviet leader, the Peter the Great -- or Pyotr Veliky -- spent years in the dockyard after the Soviet Union collapsed before being finally commissioned, despite concerns over its cost, in 1998.
PUTIN EMBARRASSED
Declared the Northern Fleet's model ship last year, it plays a key role in maneuvers in the North Atlantic and has often hosted visits by officials, including President Vladimir Putin.
Kommersant newspaper quoted naval sources saying Kuroyedov's decision to recall the ship was motivated by rivalries among admirals, including Kuroyedov and the ship's master, Admiral Vladimir Kasatonov, who is a bitter critic of the navy chief.
The Northern Fleet upset Putin last month when three missile tests failed during his pre-election visit to the scene of Russia's biggest war games in two decades.
The fleet also saw Russia's worst incident with a nuclear-powered vessel. The state-of-the-art submarine Kursk sank with all hands in 2000, months after Putin was elected, creating public relations disaster for the new president.
But Tass quoted Sergei Perevoshchikov, technical director of the Northern Fleet's nuclear-powered vessels, as saying all vessels were fully maintained and reliable.
``The Kursk accident showed that even with such a powerful explosion on the ship, the reactor itself was undamaged,'' he was quoted as saying. ``This is the best proof of its reliability.''
----
Russia navy chief's exploding comments set off controversy
MOSCOW (AFP)
Mar 23, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040323191936.j09whn9o.html
Russia's navy chief startled the world Tuesday by saying his flagship nuclear cruiser was in such a dire state that it could explode at any moment -- comments some attributed to byzantine infighting in the troubled military.
Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov's remarks, on which he later backtracked, caught both Moscow and Western officials off guard while analysts searched for clues as to why the Russian navy chief would make such a provocative statement.
The nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great has been at sea for only seven years and remains the star of most vital Russian operations in northern waters.
It oversaw the failed efforts to save the 118 seamen who perished in the August 2000 Kursk nuclear submarine disaster and has been toured on festive military occasions by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But Kuroyedov said Tuesday that he had ordered the ship back into port after finding it in deplorable condition during a visit last week.
"The ship is in such a state that it could explode at any moment," the Interfax news agency quoted Kuroyedov as saying.
"The ship's condition is fine in those places where admirals walk, but where they don't go everything is in such a state that it could explode at any moment. This includes the upkeep of the nuclear reactor," Kuroyedov said.
Peter the Great has two nuclear reactors and an arsenal of cruise missiles that can be tipped with nuclear warheads.
Reports said the 26,000-tonne cruiser's flag was lowered in disgrace as it came into port.
But as alarm grew across Russia, Kuroyedov backtracked on his jarring statement, saying he was misquoted by state news agencies, which for their part refused to retract their reports.
"In this particular case, we are not talking about any danger to the nuclear reactor," the RIA-Novosti news agency quoted Kuroyedov as saying.
Even environmental watchdogs who monitor Russia's nuclear arsenal said that Kuroyedov's comments did not seem plausible and must be linked to some internal navy intrigues rather than an actual state of emergency.
"It is just not possible that it should just blow up without a reason," said Nils Boehmer, of the Bellona environment group in Oslo, of the cruiser's nuclear reactor.
"It is ironic that for once Bellona is trying to calm down the story while the Russian navy is talking about a catastrophe," Boehmer said.
Some Russian media speculated Tuesday that Kuroyedov made his comments because of a personal dispute between the navy's top commanders that did not actually reflect the state of the massive warship.
The Kommersant business daily said Peter the Great's commander is a nephew of a retired navy admiral who recently testified in a court case against Kuroyedov for his role in the failed rescue of another Russian nuclear submarine last August in which nine sailors died.
The analysts said that Kuroyedov was trying to deflect attention from that case by focusing his fury on the warship's command in order to save his own job. "It looks like he (Kuroyedov) is going to be ousted fairly soon," said military analyst Alexander Pashin from the Northern Fleet port town of Murmansk.
"He is scared about his future and amid the panic he is making strange comments that can really only hurt himself," Pashin said.
Peter the Great's call back to port came only weeks after the very same ship oversaw what were billed as Russia's biggest military war games in 20 years -- exercises which saw two intercontinental ballistic missiles fail in a test launch.
----
Russia Navy Chief Flip - Flops on Flagship
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 23, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Navy.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's naval chief alarmed his country on Tuesday by saying that one of the country's most advanced warships, the nuclear-powered crusier Peter the Great, was so decrepit it could ``explode any moment.''
Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov hastily took back his comments claiming Russian reporters had misunderstood him, but the salvo of contradictory statements was disturbing in a country with one of the world's largest nuclear fleets.
Some reports attributed the flap to infighting among the navy leadership and said it signaled a dangerous weakness that could undermine trust in the naval command.
Kuroyedov gave his comments to Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies in a smoking room on his way to a meeting of top military officials.
First, he said the massive cruiser, the flagship of the Northern Fleet, had been badly maintained and could ``explode any moment.''
``Everything is all right on the ship where admirals walk, but in the areas where they don't, everything is in such condition that it may blow up at any moment,'' Kuroyedov was quoted as saying. ``I mean, in particular, the maintenance of the nuclear reactor.''
At the same time, he said he had ordered the captain to fix the ship within two weeks -- a deadline that seemed to contradict the urgency of his warning.
Three hours later, he took it all back.
``There is no threat whatsoever to the ship's nuclear safety,'' he said in a statement. ``The ship's nuclear safety is fully guaranteed in line with existing norms.''
Some flaws in maintaining the cruiser's living quarters would be fixed within three weeks, he said, after which the ship would become fully combat-ready.
Commissioned in 1998, Peter the Great is one of the Russian navy's biggest and most modern ships. Experts said while there could be some problems with maintaining the expensive cruiser, its nuclear reactors were surely safe.
``Nuclear reactors have inbuilt safety system,'' Retired Vice Adm. Yevgeny Chernov, a Northern Fleet veteran, said in a telephone interview. ``It's ridiculous to even talk about an explosion.''
Retired Capt. Igor Kurdin, the head of St. Petersburg's Submariners Club, said that Kuroyedov's statement was an ``exaggeration ... people of such rank should be very careful.''
Kuroyedov's suggestion the ship was unfit for service could have stemmed from his personal feud with the uncle of the ship's captain, or from his role in the sinking of a decommissioned nuclear submarine last year, the business newspaper Kommersant said.
Nine of 10 crewmen aboard the K-159 sub died when it sank in a howling storm on its way to a scrapyard -- a disaster that deeply embarrassed the navy.
Kuroyedov also faced harsh criticism for his role in the August 2000 explosion of the Kursk nuclear submarine, in which 118 sailors died. Many expected Putin to fire Kuroyedov after that.
In the latest blow to Russian military prestige, the navy failed to perform missile launches from nuclear submarines during last month's ambitious maneuvers -- personally overseen by Putin.
Kuroyedov, who watched the maneuvers from the Peter the Great, claimed that the first of two scheduled launches had never been planned despite numerous announcements to the contrary. On Tuesday, he said the second failed launch of a RSM-54 missile was due to its age.
``The missile was manufactured in 1987 and had a designated lifetime of 7 1/2 years,'' Kuroyedov said, adding that the navy now considers its RSM-54 missiles only 95 percent reliable.
The post-Soviet funding squeeze has badly hurt the navy, prompting it to mothball a large number of ships and keep most others docked for years because of shortages of fuel and spare parts.
``The ships are in terrible condition with pipes leaking and metal rusting,'' said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst. ``And the navy is led by unprofessional commanders.''
----
Expert doubts Russian cruiser has 'catastrophic' problem
LONDON (AFP)
Mar 23, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040323141448.sa5ugr0z.html
The Russian battle cruiser Peter the Great probably has problems that need urgent attention, but its nuclear reactor is unlikely to be one of them, the editor of Jane's Fighting Ships said Tuesday.
Commodore Stephen Saunders played down fears of a nuclear blast aboard the 25,000 tonne warship, after Russia's navy chief, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, said its condition was so deplorable that "it could explode at any moment".
"Quite what he's found wrong (on the ship), I don't know, but I don't think it has anything to do with nuclear reactor safety," Saunders told AFP in London.
"It sounds to me like there are rather a number of safety issues which need to be resolved on board ... an accumulation of different things, rather than perhaps one catastrophic problem."
Kuroyedov, quoted by the Interfax news agency, said he had ordered the Peter the Great to be docked for two weeks, "during which the ship's commander ... must remove all deficiencies in the ship's upkeep".
The admiral made his damning comments after inspecting the ship last Wednesday during Russian naval exercises in the Barents Sea.
"The ship's condition is fine in those places where admirals walk, but where they don't go everything is in such a state that it could explode at any moment," he said, citing the "upkeep" of the nuclear reactor.
Kuroyedov did not specify the port to which the cruiser was taken, but it is normally based near the northern port of Murmansk, and Saunders believed that that was where the ship would dock.
Jane's Fighting Ships, published every year, is a highly detailed and authoritative review of all the world's navies.
Saunders is a former Royal Navy frigate commander who has also worked in the shipbuilding industry, defence consultancy and at the Royal College of Defence Studies.
He said that, thanks to the oil-driven rebound in the Russian economy, the Russian navy now has more money to rebuild itself after having fallen into a perilous state of disrepair following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
"There has been a major drive over the last year to improve operational effectiveness, major exercises in all three fleets (Black Sea, Pacific and Northern), and a general back-to-sea policy," he said.
It was possible, he added, that by making such a sharp critique of the Peter the Great, Kuroyedov was trying to catch the attention of the Kremlin so as to get even more funds for his navy overall.
Another theory is that the admiral was making an example of the Peter the Great, or giving it "a kick in the backside," to warn other Russian naval captains that they must immediately get their vessels shipshape as well.
On Monday, the RIA Novosti news agency quoted an unnamed navy source as saying that Kuroyedov had deemed Peter the Great's "crew's performance below standard" after observing the latest maneuvers.
-------- terrorism
Xtra-large X-ray scanning cargo
March 23, 2004
By THOMAS ZAMBITO
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/176419p-153447c.html
Federal officials announced a sweeping effort yesterday to keep "dirty bombs" off the nation's streets, using a New Jersey port to unveil giant X-ray machines that scan cargo for nuclear and radiological weapons. "The best way to prevent a terrorist attack is by preventing terrorists or terrorist weapons from entering our country in the first instance," said Robert Bonner, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
In the past, inspectors at the nation's seaports were forced into a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse, trying to identify through intelligence which containers to select for X-ray and hands-on inspection.
The five $1 million devices will allow CBP inspectors to peek inside all 500 containers that arrive each day at Jersey City's Global Marine Terminal before they are loaded onto trucks. The scan takes the 20-foot-high machine about 3 minutes.
The devices will be added to 90% of the nation's major seaports by the end of summer, CBP officials said. Twenty-eight units will be installed at Port Newark-Elizabeth, one of the nation's busiest.
The high-tech initiative is part of a broad federal effort to step up security at the nation's ports since the Sept. 11 attacks. CBP has won agreements with several offshore nations to step up their inspections of U.S.-bound cargo.
Among the new technology introduced yesterday were personal radiation detection devices that front-line inspectors wear on their uniforms and hand-held radiation isotope identifiers. Both devices already are being used at the nation's ports and border crossings.
Bonner said yesterday that the substances that would cause the greatest concern are plutonium and highly enriched uranium 235, which can be used to make nuclear weapons.
Two years ago, ABC News smuggled 15 pounds of depleted uranium aboard a ship that arrived in New York Harbor from overseas. Officials dismissed the network's report as a stunt, saying the smuggled substance was devoid of radioactive content and as harmful as dirt.
With News Wire Services
-------
N.J. Gets Seaport Radiation Detectors
March 23, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Seaport-Radiation-Detectors.html
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) -- Jersey City has become the nation's first seaport to use new radiation detectors that scan all incoming cargo for nuclear or radiological weapons, federal officials said Monday.
Similar devices are planned for 90 percent of the country's seaports by the end of summer, said U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert C. Bonner.
``The best way to prevent a terrorist attack is by preventing terrorists or terrorist weapons from entering our country in the first instance,'' Bonner said at the Global Marine Terminal in Jersey City.
Several million cargo containers -- about 95 percent of U.S. international trade -- enter the United States every year through its 361 sea and river ports. Since Sept. 11, many people have worried that terrorists might use the containers to sneak biological weapons or other arms into the country.
Previously, only about 8 percent of the cargo containers at Global Marine Terminal were examined for signs of radiation because the process was done by hand, said Richard O'Brien, the port's deputy chief inspector.
Now, all 500 or so containers that leave there each day will be screened by passing them through five 20-foot-high detectors, he said.
The terminal is part of Port Newark-Elizabeth, which is the largest seaport on the East Coast.
The new detectors, which were installed in February and cost nearly $1 million, have already flagged radiation in cargo, O'Brien said. In each case, he said, the culprit was something harmless such as natural radiation emitted by pottery or ceramic tiles.
The scanners resemble inverted football goal posts. Every container that has been taken off a ship and loaded on a truck must pass through one of four primary screening units before leaving the terminal.
If radiation is detected, the container goes through another unit for a closer scan and, if necessary, is scrutinized with hand-held or truck-mounted devices.
There are 248 of the portals already in use at border crossings with Canada and Mexico, O'Brien said.
--------
al - Qaida May Have Nuclear Weapons
March 23, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Al-Qaida-Nuclear.html
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Osama bin Laden's terror network claims to have bought ready-made nuclear weapons on the black market in central Asia, the biographer of al-Qaida's No. 2 leader was quoted as telling an Australian television station.
In an interview scheduled to be televised on Monday, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir said Ayman al-Zawahri claimed that ``smart briefcase bombs'' were available on the black market. It was not clear when the interview between Mir and al-Zawahri took place.
U.S. intelligence agencies have long believed that al-Qaida attempted to acquire a nuclear device on the black market, but say there is no evidence it was successful.
In the interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp. television, parts of which were released Sunday, Mir recalled telling al-Zawahri it was difficult to believe that al-Qaida had nuclear weapons when the terror network didn't have the equipment to maintain or use them.
``Dr Ayman al-Zawahri laughed and he said `Mr. Mir, if you have $30 million, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist, and a lot of ... smart briefcase bombs are available,''' Mir said in the interview.
``They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated, and we purchased some suitcase bombs,'' Mir quoted al-Zawahri as saying.
Al-Qaida has never hidden its interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.
The U.S. federal indictment of bin Laden charges that as far back as 1992 he ``and others known and unknown, made efforts to obtain the components of nuclear weapons.''
Bin Laden, in a November 2001 interview with a Pakistani journalist, boasted having hidden such components ``as a deterrent.'' And in 1998, a Russian nuclear weapons design expert was investigated for allegedly working with bin Laden's Taliban allies.
It was revealed last month that Pakistan's top nuclear scientist had sold sensitive equipment and nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, fueling fears the information could have also fallen into the hands of terrorists.
Earlier, Mir told Australian media that al-Zawahri also claimed to have visited Australia to recruit militants and collect funds.
``In those days, in early 1996, he was on a mission to organize his network all over the world,'' Mir was quoted as saying. ``He told me he stopped for a while in Darwin (in northern Australia), he was ... looking for help and collecting funds.''
Australia's Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the government could not rule out the possibility that al-Zawahri visited Australia in the 1990s under a different name.
``Under his own name or any known alias he hasn't traveled to Australia,'' Ruddock told reporters Saturday. ``That doesn't mean to say that he may not have come under some other false documentation, or some other alias that's not known to us.''
Mir describe al-Zawahri as ``the real brain behind Osama bin Laden.''
``He is the real strategist, Osama bin Laden is only a front man,'' Mir was quoted as saying during the interview. ``I think he is more dangerous than bin Laden.''
Al-Zawahri -- an Egyptian surgeon -- is believed to be hiding in the rugged region around the Pakistan-Afghan border where U.S. and Pakistani troops are conducting a major operation against Taliban and al-Qaida forces.
He is said to have played a leading role in orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Slender and Elegant, It Fuels the Bomb
March 23, 2004
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/science/23CENT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
There was no breakthrough, no eureka, no flash of insight. It happened slowly, the advances gradual until what Dr. Gernot Zippe and his colleagues had invented was a compact, almost elegant device for collecting uranium's rare U-235 isotope.
The feat might have remained obscure, except that it helped define the nuclear era: by the 1960's, Zippe-type machines had become the easiest way to make fuel for reactors as well as weapons of terrifying power, for lighting cities or destroying them.
The invention was the uranium centrifuge, and around the world, millions of them now spin in high-security plants often ringed by barbed wire.
If a chief inventor has any regrets, he keeps them private. In a recent interview, he was philosophical about his team's brainchild, saying nations had the responsibility to determine whether the work would ultimately be judged good or evil.
"With a kitchen knife you can peel a potato or kill your neighbor," Dr. Zippe (pronounced TSIP-eh) said by phone from Munich, where at 86 he still works occasionally and flies off to international meetings. "It's up to governments to use the centrifuge for the benefit of mankind."
And benefits there are. Nuclear reactors, with Zippe-type centrifuges often making their uranium fuel, now generate about 16 percent of the world's electricity. That figure may rise in the decades ahead as worries grow about global warming and oil shortages.
But news of Dr. Zippe's invention has recently centered on the dangers of its illicit spread. Experts warn that it may put nuclear weapons into the hands of terrorists or states sympathetic to them.
Last month, a Pakistani nuclear expert, Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted running a vast smuggling ring that had supplied at least three nations with Zippe-type centrifuges. It appears to be history's worst case of nuclear proliferation.
While nations congratulate themselves for exposing the network, private experts say the secretive centrifuge design at the heart of the illegal trade is still on the loose and the dangers of its misuse are far from over.
"It's small and you can procure the needed items in secret without being detected," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, an arms control group in Washington. "You end up with a small plant that's very hard to find."
The world may be in for an unsettling time if the future of the Zippe centrifuge is as surprising as its past. The tale of its development is full of striking twists, and no little sweat.
"It was very hard work," said Houston G. Wood, a centrifuge expert at the University of Virginia. "Problems of great difficulty had to be solved."
Born and raised in Austria, Dr. Zippe studied physics at the University of Vienna in the 30's and served in the German Luftwaffe as a flight instructor and a researcher on radar and airplane propellers. In 1945, the Russians took him as a prisoner to a special camp for the technically adept.
Moscow was desperate to catch up with Washington in nuclear arms. The hardest part was not the design but getting the fuel. Like all nuclear aspirants, Russia hoped to rearrange nature.
The work centered on isotopes, forms of the same element whose nuclei have different numbers of neutrons. The most prevalent isotope of uranium, which accounts for 99.3 percent of natural uranium, is U-238, with 146 neutrons. It is ever so slightly heavier than U-235, which has three fewer neutrons and accounts for just 0.7 percent of uranium in nature.
But U-235 is highly prized because it easily splits in two to produce bursts of atomic energy. When natural uranium is enriched to contain about 5 percent U-235, it can fuel nuclear reactors; to about 90 percent, atom bombs.
The Russians put Dr. Zippe and other German prisoners of war to work making centrifuges to obtain the rare U-235 isotope. The Americans had tried, but had turned to other methods that were quite bulky, arduous and costly.
The Russian team realized that uranium centrifuges would have to be linked up by the hundreds or thousands so that each could make tiny increases in the U-235 output, slowly raising the concentration. And to be economic and productive, the machines would have to spin continuously for years.
Centrifuges are common devices in industry and medicine that spin fast to separate materials of differing masses - for instance, blood cells from serum. Though they sound exotic, they are simple in principle. A washing machine on spin cycle is a centrifuge, its whirl creating artificial gravity that separates water (heavy) from clothes (light).
A good washing machine spins about 15 revolutions per second. The Russians - to have any hope of exploiting the minute differences in the masses of U-235 and U-238 in order to separate the nearly identical substances - needed centrifuges that spun about 100 times as fast, near the speed of sound.
"Everybody was laughing and said, `This will never work,' " Dr. Zippe recalled. "I was a young man. I had no idea how to do it. But I decided to do my best."
Among the 60 or so experts, Dr. Zippe, whose golden touch seemed to make mechanical things come to life, was soon appointed the team's lead experimenter. The general leader was Max Steenbeck, a physicist and former director of the German company Siemens.
The overall plan was clear, if not the means: start with a hollow, cylindrical rotor. Fill it with gaseous uranium. At the rotor's bottom, use pulsating magnetic fields (much like those of an electric motor) to spin it fast enough to throw the heavier U-238 toward the wall, letting the U-235 accumulate near the center. Slightly heating the bottom of the gaseous mix would produce currents that would tend to move the U-238 down and the U-235 up, where scoops could gather the isotopes.
To realize this ambitious plan, the team worked hard to defeat the main adversary of relentless spinning: friction, which can slow, cripple or destroy machines meant to work flawlessly for years. The rotor casing was evacuated to remove all air. A magnetic bearing was developed to hold the rotor's top steady, eliminating the need for physical support.
Perhaps most important, the team let the rotor rest on a needlelike bearing. It was the only point of physical contact for the spinning assembly, a tiny concession to the material world.
It took years of tinkering and experimentation. But the team finally got the complex devices to work.
The Germans "revolutionized the whole uranium fuel industry," said Pavel V. Oleynikov, a Russian historian of the postwar centrifuge effort.
In 1956, Dr. Zippe was set free, and he returned to Vienna. He went to a meeting in Amsterdam in 1957 and was astonished to learn that the West lagged far behind his team.
He decided to share what he knew. The Soviets had let him take no notes or reports. But as he recalled, "I had it in my head."
Dr. Zippe flew to the United States and, under government supervision, set up shop at the University of Virginia. There, he managed to recreate the Russian centrifuge.
Washington asked Dr. Zippe to join its secretive nuclear establishment and change his citizenship. He resisted. It was too reminiscent of his Soviet days. Instead, he wanted to use the invention for peaceful work, for enriching uranium for commercial reactor fuel.
Flying back to Europe in 1960, Dr. Zippe worked in industry, especially in West Germany, joining the European postwar drive for nuclear independence from the United States.
"He was a little like Oppenheimer," said Mr. Albright, of the arms control group, referring to Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American atom bomb leader who managed to get stubborn experts to work together. "He had a lot of help, but he was the real spark plug."
In the 1960's, Dr. Zippe and his associates managed to make the centrifuges even more efficient. They switched the rotor material from aluminum to the superhard alloy called maraging steel. That let the centrifuges spin faster, speeding the pace of enrichment without danger that the devices would tear themselves apart.
The team also managed to make the rotors longer, which increased the collection of U-235. It took special joints known as bellows, which let the long centrifuge, like a plucked string, flex and bow safely as its speed increased. "Ten times longer, ten times more," Dr. Zippe said.
In the 1970's, Urenco, a new European consortium for making nuclear fuel, adopted Zippe-type designs. But its security for the potentially deadly technology was lax. Dr. Khan, the Pakistani expert, worked as a consultant at a Urenco plant and stole the designs. He used them in Pakistan to build centrifuges to make nuclear arms fuel and, as recently disclosed, later sold centrifuge plans and machines to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
"This is a very sorry story," Dr. Zippe said.
A short man with a fondness for string ties and airplanes, which he piloted until he was 80, Dr. Zippe now divides his time between Vienna and Munich, where lives with a son. He says he still consults widely on technical issues, including centrifuges. "If they need something," he said of responsible companies, "I help them."
As for the future of the uranium centrifuge, many experts voice cautious optimism. Newer models are much harder to manufacture and less easily copied, especially illicitly. And the United States and its partners are still tracking down elements of the Khan network, insisting that the illegal traders will be put out of business.
For his part, Dr. Zippe foresees benign possibilities even if his handiwork continues to spread clandestinely. During the cold war, he pointed out, nations with nuclear arms restrained themselves because they understood that the awesome destructiveness could become mutual. "The reason America did not drop the bomb in Korea or Vietnam was fear that the Russians would retaliate," he said.
Today, he added, small states want nuclear arms not necessarily for the sake of aggression or terrorism but to deter foes.
"Let's hope," he said, "there's enough clever people not to use the bomb on people again."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Some History & Facts Re Nuclear Power
Transcript of Sid Goodman Presentation at Oyster Creek
From: ElieWestCAN@aol.com
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Oyster Creek Presentation @ Toms River, March 29th
by Sidney J. Goodman, P.E., M.S.M.E.
Sid is a licensed professional engineer with a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering. For forty-four years he was on the front line of all phases of engineering research, design, and development; in jet aircraft fuel controls, power tools, lawn and garden products, humidifiers, and fuel cells. Some of his projects won awards or set the lead in industry. He supervised the first energy lab of its type for the testing of humidifiers under ARI standard conditions. He did some work on the temperature control for a nuclear rocket.
--
Before I was Chief Engineer at Melnor, I was Director of Engineering for a company that made a product that could kill people and cause property damage if it had a structural failure. When I was pressured to approve an unsafe design, I resigned. I met other engineers who faced a similar ethical challenge. I learned that this kind of thing was happening in the nuclear industry. I took a deep interest and wrote the book "Asleep at the Geiger Counter". I'll do a book signing for anyone who wants one who wants one. There was censorship or persecution of top scientists who blew the whistle on bad policy or fraudulent statements.
There was .. .Dr. George L Weil, first Chief of the civilian reactor branch. He was forced out.
.Dr. John W. Gofman, a pioneering physicist who discovered fissionability processes. He was also a medical doctor who won a top medical award for research. He was Associate Director of the Lawrence Livermore Lab with hundreds of subordinates. He was forced to resign.
.Dr. Asaaf Durokovic, chief of nuclear medicine at a VA hospital, and a medical commander in the Gulf War. He was fired.
.Dr. Karl Z Morgan, director of health physics at Oak Ridge. He was censored.
.Dr. Gordon McLeod , director of the Pennsylvania Department of Health. He was fired for protesting the falsification of health data after the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident.
.Dr. Thomas Mancuso, who pioneered the science of health physics. He was censored.
.Inspectors were fired for refusing to falsify data.
There were many others who were harmed in some foul way.
My book documents many rigged tests and false reports.
The first casualty of nuclear power was the truth. The history of nuclear power is a history of silenced concerns, rigged studies, and suppressed scientists. The Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Atomic Commission once admitted to Congress that nuclear poisons are a million to a billion times worse than other chemicals. He said equipment flaws and human weaknesses must not be allowed. Famous last words!
Nuclear power poses more unsolved problems than a garbage dump dog has fleas. If you dare to face the truth, you will realize that nuclear power means cancer everywhere, birth defects forever, the uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear weapons, the loss of civil liberties, the undermining of our national defense, and unending multibillion dollar subsidies which have weakened our economy while delaying genuine energy independence.
For decades, nuclear power was the keystone of our energy policy. This pushed aside cleaner, safer, less costly energy alternatives. Oil companies own coal, oil, gas, and uranium. They kept us hooked on their sources to control of our destiny. As explained in my book, better sources got less than 300 times the support that dirty and dangerous sources got. Decades of irresponsible energy policy have cheated us out of what could have been a golden age of economic and environmental benefits, a more peaceful world, with less inflation.
Aside from the fact that every nuclear plant can be used to make nuclear weapons, each nuclear plant is a potential a weapon of mass destruction. Who said that? Dr. Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb said that. He wrote that each nuclear plant is potentially more deadly than a hydrogen bomb. He wrote that we must put nuclear plants deep underground as a safety precaution. (ref. "Energy from Oil and From the Nucleus", "Journal of Petroleum Technology", May, 1965). Utilities have refused to do this because it would add 10% to construction costs.
Who would have thought that the World Trade Center could have been so easily destroyed? We haven't seen anything yet, with regard to nuclear plants like Oyster Creek. Each nuclear plant has a protective dome that was never designed to take the impact of a large jet plane. Who said that? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission noted that before 9/11. After 9/11, they covered this up and assured us that nuclear plants are so safe they don't even require a no-fly zone over them. There are no-fly zones over Disney World and Disney Land, but not over nuclear plants. Mickey Mouse is protected better than you are.
The spent fuel rod pools at nuclear plants are much more dangerous than the than the reactors because the pools contain much more radioactivity. The pools have much less protective covering than the reactors. The roof of the Oyster Creek pool is particularly vulnerable.
What's more, under certain conditions, a power blackout can cause a fuming meltdown. A transcript of Congressional testimony about this is in my book. A meltdown would spew poisons widely..
Most of the poisons from the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident landed thousands of miles away. Many doctors in India are convinced that, the fallout from Chernobyl killed at least a million children, over the years.
The hot radioactive gases from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident rose high above the plant. They were carried away by the wind. After these gases left, readings of radioactivity at the boundary of the plant were low. Of course they were low. The readings were low because the poisons were gone. So, our government and the industry say there was too little radioactivity released to harm anyone. They say that no one was killed. It is a big lie. They are like skunks who claim that the Nazi holocaust never happened.
Extremely high readings were discovered many miles away by radiation chemist Dr. Chauncey Kepford. There were no government meters where he got high readings. His report was censored and his university fired him.
The nuclear folks don't know and don't want to know how much was released. More was released, and more casualties were caused than they will ever admit. Farmers were afflicted with stillborn and deformed animals. This never happened before, throughout generations of farming. There WAS an increase of cancer and other diseases despite official denials. 2000 victims sued for damages but their day in court was denied by a biased judiciary.
I live near the northern border of NJ. Since most of the poison can be deposited far away from a nuclear plant, I could be in greater danger than the people who live right next to old, crumbling Oyster Creek plant.
Yet, the industry insists that a ten-mile evacuation zone is good enough. They have discovered a new law of physics. They have discovered that when there is a nuclear disaster, the wind stops blowing.
As an engineer, one of the first things that struck me is how so many claims by the industry violate the most elementary principles of physics, engineering, common sense, and decency. I explain that in my book very simply. It is not necessary to be a technical person to understand things like their "discovery" that the wind stops blowing. Their claims about efficiency and net energy yield are at odds with the Carnot test, a basic engineering principle from the second law of thermodynamics. Their specifications for the transportation of radioactive wastes are at odds with the law of conservation of energy, mere high school physics.
A health physicist for the Indian Point nuke said. "Oh, we know the wind blows. We track it but we only evacuate 10 miles because the poisons are diluted" That is ridiculous. Each individual particle is poisonous. A microscopic speck of plutonium can cause cancer. It is toxic for 250,000 years. It is NOT diluted. Iodine 129 is toxic for 160 million years. It is NOT diluted. Each particle reaches more people after ten miles. Each particle lingers in the environment to poison countless victims in the future.
The conditions at nuclear plants are abysmal. The Indian Point complex is a poster child of the industry. My book documents a disgusting record of neglect and incompetence at Indian Point.
Oyster Creek is no better. It is the oldest nuclear plant we have. Radioactivity bombards structural materials with zillions of tiny bullets. It damages materials, just as it damages living cells. The Mark I Containment would probably be useless in the event of an accident because of its faulty design. Who said so? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said so in 1986. As bad as the containment was in 1986, it is weaker now, due to radioactive bombardment, over the years.
Like all nukes, Oyster Creek produces radioactive wastes, which are deadly for a long time. These wastes must be kept out of the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat. Given the known toxicity, they must be isolated with 99.999% perfection for hundreds of thousands of years. A lack of perfection of .001% is hazardous. In the first 30 years of the nuclear age, about 3% of our wastes leaked. Compare 3 % leakage with a dangerous .001 % lack of perfection and you will realize that they have already been thousands of times less reliable than they have to be to make good on their boasts about health and safety. To truly solve the waste problem, they must retrieve these leaked wastes and re-isolate them. This is impossible. The radioactive waste problem has not been solved and it will never be solved.
Putting nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain is no solution. It is the most earthquake prone region we have, where there is also a dormant volcano. They claim that the Yucca Mountain plan is good science. It is not science. It is technological prostitution. Actually, using the word "prostitution" is unfair to girls of the night who are least honest in what they do.
A safe evacuation of the Oyster Creek area is impossible, even for the inadequate - 10-mile zone. There will really be no place to hide.
The nuclear folks always say that nuclear power does not give off pollution and it eliminates the burning of fossil fuel. That not true. Nuclear plants routinely emit poisonous radioactivity and there have been many unplanned leaks. Enormous amounts of coal have been burned in the process of enriching uranium to make nuclear fuel. Coal, you might notice, is a fossil fuel.
Large amounts of energy will be guzzled for decommissioning and coping with radioactive wastes.
Uranium tailings are the debris of making nuclear fuel. They give off radioactive gases which blow clear across the country. The tailings are deadly for billions of years. As explained in my book, they pose a hazard, which is ten times worse than the dirtiest coal plant operation.
The overall efficiency of nuclear power is miserably poor. Government officials have been caught lying under oath about how much electricity we get from each ton of uranium. See the chapters in my book," Really How Much Energy From Nuclear Power" and "The Great Uranium Shell Game". When everything is accounted for, - nuclear power has never delivered anything close to what has been claimed as its energy contribution.
Furthermore, with realistic assessment, there isn't enough fissionable uranium for a greatly expanded nuclear program, unless we make a big commitment for the plutonium breeder reactor. But, that poses hideous economic, environmental, and nuclear weapons proliferation problems.
We need . The many forms of solar energy
. Wind power, which is getting better all the time
. We need to make hydrogen, the cleanest fuel imaginable. We can make it from solar energy, wind power, or bioconversion.
. Energy efficiency alone can release four times more energy than all our nukes at 1/20th the cost of building and operating nuclear plants, according to the "Rocky Mountain Institute".
. Nathanial Energy can generate electricity at 1.5 cents a kwhr by burning rubber tires. That is half the cost of conventional electricity. They burn the tires cleanly in a way which removes pollutants and converts them into useful bi-products. (www.nathanialenergy.com)
. Fuel cells can be employed. I spent almost three years in the design of fuel cells.
. We can make methane. Methane burns cleaner than coal or oil. We can makeit by building biogas digesters. Put organic greenery in tanks and expose the tanks to sunlight. After the tanks cook in the sun, methane is produced. There are millions of biogas digesters in China and India.
. Heat pumps can heat buildings cleanly in the dead of the Canadian winter, as reported by the Canadian Standards Association. We can certainly use them in NJ.
. Use daylight for lighting to save electricity. Half the electricity consumed in office buildings is for lighting.
. Use cheap hydroelectricity from the grid.
. Use cogeneration. Princeton University once reported that cogeneration alone can supply much of New Jersey's future energy needs at less than half the cost of nuclear power.
The trouble is, as Carl Sagan once noted, our government has been spending about as much money on non-nuclear alternatives to fossil fuel as we spent during one hour of the Gulf War. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are worst of the worst in spearheading corrupt priorities.
Take a look at this picture of a nine-legged frog. This is from using nuclear waste as a fertilizer. Kerr-Magee, the company that poisoned Karen Silkwood and other workers, took a little nitrogen, added it to nuclear waste and called it a fertilizer. They did it in Oklahoma. This frog is like other horrible deformities of animals living on this "fertilized" land. What kind of person would even think of using nuclear waste as a fertilizer? There is no other way to put it. Such people are not only insane, but they are evil.
As we speak, our government wants to put nuclear waste into ordinary garbage dumps and put nuclear waste into all kinds of consumer products. These are the ethics, which confront us.
There are two basic laws of nuclear politics. The first law: What they are doing is much worse than you think. The second law: You know they are doing something rotten when they deny it.
Who do you want to believe? Big guns in the industry don't believe one word of their own assurances. They insist that we must keep the Price Anderson Act. This is a federal law, which limits their liability to a microscopic fraction of the harm they can inflict on you. You can't even buy insurance to protect yourself. Insurance companies, even Loyd's of London, are afraid to take the risk. Price Anderson abolishes your property rights to protect the property rights of the utility. With Price Anderson, a bad accident will leave you holding the bag and possibly carrying the coffin (unless you are in that coffin).
But, if there is no risk, as they ALWAYS say, there is absolutely no justification for the mere existence of this abusive law.
If this abusive law were abolished, Oyster Creek would be shut down yesterday. Utilities are afraid to take full responsibility for the risk they happily impose on you. The risk to Americans could amount to hundreds of billions, and in some cases trillions of dollars, updating the CRAC-2 report of the federal Sandia Laboratory.
I wouldn't bet my life or yours on the assurances of the nuclear establishment!
Oyster Creek, with all its deficiencies and vulnerabilities, should have been shut down years ago.
Sidney J. Goodman, P.E., M.S.M.E.
-------- colorado
COMEDY OF ERRORS
Rocky Mountain News On Point
March 23, 2004
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion/article/0,1299,DRMN_38_2750256,00.html
The bungled handling of a fire in a plutonium-contaminated building at the former Rocky Mountain Flats nuclear weapons plant last May illustrates perfectly why such facilities belong as far away from urban areas as possible.
Mistake 1: Workers tried to douse the fire with water, which - oops - can cause a fatal nuclear reaction. Mistake 2: While using a chemical retardant, they exposed the flames to air, thus fueling the fire. Mistake 3: Exhaust fans were turned on, which could have released radiation into the atmosphere. Mistakes 4, 5 and 6: Workers didn't evacuate the building and instead of calling firefighters they telephoned their boss. While firefighters finally were en route, workers wrongly reported the blaze had been extinguished. Mistake 7: The fire site contained fire-prone trash left since 1986. We'll breathe easier the day Rocky Flats and every single trace of hazardous nuclear material there is a distant memory. In the meantime, the Department of Energy says it will create a better fire-prevention plan. Whatever it comes up with, let's hope Flats workers are required to read it.
----
Ex-Flats workers to help oversee safety of cleanup
By Theo Stein
Denver Post Environment Writer
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2034983,00.html
About 50 Department of Energy employees at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant will become part-time safety inspectors after a federal watchdog agency found significant problems in monitoring the cleanup contractor.
In December, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board faulted the Department of Energy and cleanup contractor Kaiser-Hill for safety failures in fighting and investigating a May fire in a plutonium-contaminated work area that was being demolished.
The safety board described the oversight of Kaiser-Hill as "ineffective."
"That's a criticism that, frankly, I agree with," Frazer Lockhart, manager of the department's Rocky Flats field office, said Monday.
As a result, 52 Energy workers will be expected to spend between one and eight hours weekly aiding safety inspectors who ensure compliance with federal safety guidelines.
In May, four workers suffered slight skin contamination in attempting to put out the fire, which started in a small pile of acid- soaked rags and other debris inside a sealed, two-story "glove box" once used to handle plutonium.
Their attempts to douse the fire with water and fire extinguishers created a risk of a radioactive flashover, and their subsequent decision to use exhaust fans could have led to a radioactive release.
Kaiser-Hill workers also erred by not immediately reporting the fire to firefighters and then mistakenly declaring it out - only to see it re-ignite.
That caused plant firefighters to arrive without the necessary equipment.
"Even though this event didn't cause any significant injuries or property damage, there were some things that were clearly done wrong," Lockhart said.
In February, Kaiser-Hill agreed to pay $522,000 in fines as a result of the fire and several other incidents. But company spokesman John Corsi denied that managers have asked workers to cut corners in order to obtain a $120 million performance bonus by finishing the $340 million cleanup at the plant near Arvada early and under budget.
Department of Energy officials noted that the company could also be docked up to six months' pay if a fatality or other serious safety violation occurs.
Corsi said Kaiser-Hill has drafted an "aggressive corrective plan" to respond to the safety board's report by April 1. Some problems have already been fixed, he said.
"Overall our safety program is solid and we're proud of our safety successes," he said.
In the future, Lockhart said, Kaiser-Hill's top managers will be on a new executive review board that will be notified of key safety violations.
He said the department will also track oversight activities better, following criticism by the nuclear facilities safety board that the 12 specialized safety inspectors spent too little time watching cleanup workers.
The department will also do a better job tracking its oversight activities, he said.
Rocky Flats made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons from the 1950s to 1989, when an FBI raid ended production.
The site will become a national wildlife refuge after the cleanup is done in 2006.
-------- new mexico
Nanos: Los Alamos Lab, county in pivotal time
ALLISON MAJURE, lareporter@lamonitor.com,
Los Alamos Monitor Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2004/03/23/headline_news/news01.txt
In a Monday morning presentation to employees reminiscent of a team-building meeting at a Fortune 500 company, Los Alamos National Laboratory director G. Peter Nanos unveiled the lab's new "unique value proposition," talked of adding value for the American taxpayer and returned often to the theme of overhead cost reduction in terms of "continuous improvement" with ongoing business process efficiencies.
But he never forgot the science.
"As someone who has watched the demise of the national laboratories, I know that the most important thing we have to do is keep Los Alamos the place to do the world's greatest science," Nanos said.
The new LANL value proposition, "The World's Greatest Science Protecting America" was met with strong applause from the 500 or so staff in attendance.
"We leverage the world's greatest science here," he said. "We have the greatest number of students, post docs and foreign scientists of any laboratory."
LANL employs roughly 12,000, 4,000 of whom are technical staff members. No other lab can boast as many.
"Around here, we don't say, 'It's the economy, stupid' but rather, 'It's the science, stupid,'" he jested at one point.
No longer secure in the continuation of University of California's management contract, the laboratory has been under several pressures for the last year following inquiries into alleged inventory, business, and security practices.
"The fact that we're here today has to do with some heroics from our business people," Nanos said. Footage from a previous Nanos talk, showed him saying, "If you see a 'BUS' person, hug them."
With just 30 days notice last year, the lab successfully completed a wall-to-wall inventory capturing more than 99 percent of their property. This would be a rate any public company would be hard pressed to achieve, Nanos commented.
Throughout the scrutiny and accelerated activity on the business and security side, Nanos was sure to emphasize that the awards and achievements of the scientists at LANL were once again unparalleled.
"During our darkest days of last spring we delivered the first certified plutonium pit to the nation. That was critical to have that occur."
The lab received eight R&D awards, more than any other lab, last year.
So many individual scientists and engineers were feted in 2003 that his talk could only capture a few such mentions, such as the 2004 Asian American Engineer of the Year, Wu-chun Feng.
Against a backdrop of inspirational fantasy mixed with hard fact, Nanos reconstructed the threats to America - from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 - with the use of movie, docudrama, and documentary video footage, that stressed teamwork, momentum, and commitment to winning.
Prior to Los Alamos, Nanos oversaw 10 defense laboratory divisions with over 20,000 employees as Commander of Strategic System Programs where he was accountable for the design, development and performance of the submarine-based strategic missile systems for the United States and the United Kingdom.
He said, "We are the only major laboratory without an enterprise project, we are now making that investment ... at this point the average manager at Los Alamos should be spending no more than 25 percent of their time on safety, security and administrative tasks."
When asked about the source for the 25 percent estimate, Nanos clarified that he was holding the lab to a commercial standard, referring to a standard rate often cited by Fortune 500 public companies that are fluent in best practices.
Even among laboratories, national or academic, Nanos cited more figures that set higher standards for the lab. "At the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics lab the overhead multiple is about 56 percent; ours is 114 percent, that's choking the science at Los Alamos National Laboratory."
Later he said, that for a national lab, an overhead multiple of 114 percent was considered within the range of normal, "but we're better than that," he said.
He closed by saying, "Excellence in all things ... It is what all of us do, not what each one of us does."
----
National Park Service B Reactor's best bet
Tri-City Herald (NM)
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2004
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/opinions/story/4880006p-4815836c.html
Many Tri-Citians would like to think that efforts to preserve the historic B Reactor cannot fail.
After all, turning the Manhattan Project artifact into a museum is such a terrific idea that virtually everyone is in favor of the plan.
But after years of agreement, no agency has stepped forward to take the job. In fact, the Department of Energy and the National Park Service both sound like they would rather have anyone else adopt this orphan.
It's enough to force a reluctant admission that the volunteers with the Tri-City-based B Reactor Museum Association may not succeed, especially without any champions in the federal government.
Not all the news is bad. U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings and U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell recently introduced bills to require a study of adding B Reactor and other Manhattan Project relics to the national park system.
But instead of fueling hope, the park agency's response to the legislation only highlighted the problem. Preservation of Manhattan Project sites is great in principle, an agency official acknowledged, but it might not be feasible for the National Park Service.
Since the proposal falls within the service's mandate to help Americans preserve and interpret their history, the hesitation is difficult to understand.
Places pivotal to nearly every aspect of American history, from pre-Columbian archaeological sites to the Civil Rights Movement, are under the National Park Service's protection.
The reason is simple. Nothing connects us to the past like standing in the places where history was made. That's self-evident to anyone who has ever visited Gettysburg or Pearl Harbor.
The events that occurred at Hanford, Los Alamos, N.M., Oak Ridge, Tenn., and other Manhattan Project sites are no less significant.
That first atomic blast at 5:29:45 a.m. on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, N.M., left no aspect of American life unchanged. The course of World War II was altered, the stage for the Cold War was set. The repercussions continue to influence world events.
It's folly not to preserve B Reactor, where plutonium was created for that initial explosion in New Mexico and for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.
The study proposed by Hastings and Cantwell is a modest first step in avoiding an irreversible mistake.
It makes sense that the eventual recommendation, despite the National Park Service's reaction, would be to put B Reactor and other Manhattan Project sites under the agency's control.
The objections raised by park agency officials have everything to do with current budget constraints and nothing to do with B Reactor's historical value.
Budgets fluctuate, and the lean times facing the National Park Service will end, but once lost, the relics of our past can never be replaced.
-------- texas
Texas: State editorial roundup
Tue, Mar. 23, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/8256442.htm
A sampling of editorial opinion around Texas:
March 20
Fort Worth Star-Telegram on nuclear preparedness:
Serious questions are being raised as to whether America's nuclear facilities have adequate security programs in place to thwart terrorist attacks.
Security operations are being weakened by deteriorating training programs, personnel shortages and employee fatigue resulting from excessive overtime work, according to federal inspectors and a public watchdog group.
Ten nuclear weapons facilities, including the Pantex site near Amarillo, have reduced or eliminated key elements of a training curriculum designed in part to fend off terrorists, the Department of Energy's inspector general reported Tuesday. Pantex, the nation's only facility where nuclear weapons are assembled, drew dubious 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 Washington-based Project On Government Oversight, or POGO, charged last week that the nation's 65 nuclear power plants are "not even close" to being prepared against terrorist threats. Most plants would have to quadruple their security to adequately deal with a terrorist strike, said POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian.
The admonitions should cause operators of nuclear facilities to at least re-examine their training programs and staffing levels to ensure that safeguards are adequate. The closest nuclear facility to Tarrant County is the Comanche Peak power plant at Glen Rose, 45 miles southwest of Fort Worth. Officials of Dallas-based TXU, owner and operator of Comanche Peak, previously have stressed that they significantly enhanced security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and have taken "appropriate measures" to guard against hostile actions.
Strong training programs and adequately staffed security teams are crucial to ensuring that terrorists will fail if they attack a nuclear facility. Everyone must remember that complacency is among America's deadliest enemies in its effort to foil future terrorist acts on American soil.
-------- us politics
Park Service Is Rebuked on Hill for Proposed Cuts
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16131-2004Mar22.html
Two key House members have rebuked National Park Service officials for plans to shorten park hours and trim services, saying better management and less foreign travel by parks officials would make such cuts unnecessary.
"The parks are a national treasure and the Park Service should not restrict our citizens' ability to enjoy them," wrote Reps. Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.) and Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.) in a two-page letter Friday to Park Service Director Fran P. Mainella. Taylor and Dicks are the chairman and ranking Democrat, respectively, of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Park Service.
Park Service spokesman David Barna had no immediate comment yesterday. Mainella is scheduled to appear before the panel Thursday, and "she will probably be responding to this then," he said.
A recent internal memo asked park superintendents in the Northeast to develop lists of cuts, such as closing parks on Sunday and Monday, that would help the agency cope with tight budgets. The memo was released last week by three outside groups that support increased park funding.
Taylor and Dicks acknowledged that the Park Service has had to absorb the cost of pay increases, storm damage and anti-terrorism efforts. But its budget has also increased by hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years, they wrote. The agency's operating budget is $1.61 billion this year, up from $1.1 billion in 1994, according to budget documents. Moreover, agency officials found $50 million to pay for foreign and domestic trips in fiscal 2002, and $44 million on such trips in fiscal 2003, the lawmakers noted.
"[T]here have been over 215 trips to China, South America, Africa, France, Italy and other countries since the beginning of 2003," they wrote. "With the parks facing operations shortfalls, there are clear choices that need to be made."
Beginning in October, all foreign travel must be approved by the subcommittee, Taylor and Dicks wrote. They suggest the agency increase teleconferencing, defer some training and redirect $10 million in grants for operations. Such steps could save as much as $25 million, they said.
Lawmakers also criticized Mainella for beginning four large construction projects, including a $100 million visitor center at Valley Forge National Historic Park in Pennsylvania, without obtaining the required approval of Congress.
--------
Ex-Bush Aide Sets Off Debate as 9/11 Hearing Opens
March 23, 2004
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and JUDITH MILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/politics/23CLAR.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, March 22 - As the White House opened an aggressive personal attack against its former counterterrorism chief, Richard A. Clarke, a furious debate broke out on Monday about the credibility of his assertion that President Bush pushed him the day after the Sept. 11 attacks to see if there was a link with Saddam Hussein.
The White House dismissed the accusations, described in a new book by Mr. Clarke, by casting him as a disgruntled, politically motivated job seeker and a "best buddy" of a top adviser to Senator John Kerry. But Mr. Clarke defended his account, and several allies rallied to his defense.
One ally, Mr. Clarke's former deputy, Roger Cressey, backed the thrust of one of the most incendiary accusations in the book, about a conversation that Mr. Clarke said he had with Mr. Bush in the White House Situation Room on the night of Sept. 12, 2001. Mr. Clarke said Mr. Bush pressed him three times to find evidence that Iraq was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The accusation is explosive because no such link has ever been proved.
"I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything," Mr. Clarke writes that Mr. Bush told him. "See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way."
When Mr. Clarke protested that the culprit was Al Qaeda, not Iraq, Mr. Bush testily ordered him, he writes, to "look into Iraq, Saddam," and then left the room.
Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, responded at a White House briefing on Monday that Mr. Bush did not remember having the conversation, and that there were no records that placed the president in the Situation Room at the time.
Mr. Clarke countered in a telephone interview on Monday that he had four witnesses, including Mr. Cressey, who is a partner with Mr. Clarke in a consulting company that advises on cybersecurity issues. In an interview, Mr. Cressey said the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, also witnessed the exchange. Administration officials said Ms. Rice had no recollection of it.
Mr. Cressey cast Mr. Bush's instructions to Mr. Clarke less as an order to come up with a link between Mr. Hussein and Sept. 11, and more as a request to "take a look at all options, including Iraq." He backed off Mr. Clarke's suggestion that the president's tone was intimidating. "I'm not going to get into that," Mr. Cressey said. "That is Dick's characterization."
Mr. Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," also asserts that the administration did not heed warnings about the Sept. 11 attacks, and then neglected the threat of Al Qaeda as it turned its attention to Saddam Hussein.
Another ally of Mr. Clarke, Thomas R. Maertens, confirmed the outlines of Mr. Clarke's critique of the White House. Mr. Maertens, who served as National Security Council director for nuclear nonproliferation on both the Clinton and Bush White House staffs, said that Mr. Clarke had repeatedly tried to warn senior officials in the Bush administration about the growing threat of Al Qaeda.
"He was the guy pushing hardest, saying again and again that something big was going to happen, including possibly here in the U.S.," Mr. Maertens said Monday from his home in Minnesota. But Mr. Maertens said that the Bush White House was reluctant to believe a holdover from the previous administration.
"They really believed their campaign rhetoric about the Clinton administration," Mr. Maertens said. "So anything they did was bad, and the Bushies were not going to repeat it. And it's disgusting to see the administration now putting a full-court smear on Clarke - for being right."
Mr. Clarke also charges in his book that Mr. Bush waged "an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq" that strengthened Islamic terrorist movements around the world, and has left the nation more vulnerable to future attacks.
His book is the first by a former administration member to challenge the president directly on what Mr. Bush considers his greatest electoral strength, national security. It is arriving in book stores not only during a presidential campaign, but in the same week that Mr. Clarke and Clinton and Bush administration officials are to publicly testify before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Clarke said last week that he was prepared to testify that Clinton administration officials repeatedly warned members of the incoming Bush administration in late 2000 about the threat posed by Al Qaeda.
In the hearings, which begin on Wednesday, the panel will call as witnesses four high-ranking officials from the Bush and Clinton administrations: Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; his predecessor, Madeleine K. Albright; Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; and his predecessor, William S. Cohen.
The angry White House response to Mr. Clarke, which was authorized by Mr. Bush, reflects the administration's fears over the book's potential political damage. In a daylong assault on Monday, administration officials portrayed Mr. Clarke, a secretive, combative terrorism expert who spent more than three decades working in the Reagan, Clinton and both Bush administrations, as a bitter former employee who had been denied the No. 2 position in the Department of Homeland Security and who was now trying to help the Kerry campaign.
Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, noted that Mr. Clarke was in charge of counterterrorism at the time of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 2000 attack on the American destroyer Cole, and "I didn't notice that they had any great success dealing with the terrorist threat."
Mr. McClellan told reporters: "He conveniently writes a book and releases it in the heat of a presidential campaign. We know that his best buddy is Senator Kerry's principal foreign policy adviser." Mr. McClellan was referring to Rand Beers, Mr. Kerry's chief foreign policy adviser.
Clearly, Mr. McClellan said, "this is more about politics and a book promotion than it is about policy."
Mr. Clarke fired back that the White House attacks were an effort to divert attention from the substantive information in his book, including his impression that Ms. Rice, as the new national security adviser in early 2001, had not heard of Al Qaeda. (Administration officials disputed the claim about Ms. Rice.)
"This is the way the Bush administration deals with people, with ad hominem attacks, and trying to suppress the truth," Mr. Clarke said by telephone from New York. He added that he had been friends for 25 years with Mr. Beers, "and I'm not going to run away from him just because he's John Kerry's national security adviser."
Administration officials said Mr. Clarke, who was on Ms. Rice's staff, was kept on after the Clinton administration because she wanted to maintain continuity in counterterrorism policy.
Mr. Clarke, they said, proved to be almost obsessive - a description he applies to himself in the book - about attacking Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and impatient that many of his ideas, like forging a closer alliance with the Northern Alliance, the Taliban resistance in Afghanistan, were not adopted.
But administration officials said that throughout his tenure in the Bush administration, Mr. Clarke appeared to be generally supportive of the president's policies, and never brought to Ms. Rice a broad critique of either the administration's approach to terrorism or its plan for invading Iraq.
Sean McCormack, Ms. Rice's spokesman, said that Mr. Clarke ate lunch with Ms. Rice in her West Wing office after he had left the administration, a month or two before the attack on Iraq, and gave none of the warnings he gave in the book.
In addition to Mr. Cressey, at least two other former officials with knowledge of what occurred in the Situation Room that day also backed up the thrust of Mr. Clarke's account, though one of the two challenged Mr. Clarke's assertion that Mr. Bush's demeanor and that of other senior White House officials was intimidating.
Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Washington for this article and Judith Miller from New York. Richard W. Stevenson contributed reporting from Washington.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan Troops Sent To Scene of Clashes
Kabul Officials to Meet With Governor
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16187-2004Mar22.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 22 -- Hundreds of troops from the new Afghan National Army were sent Monday to keep order in the remote western city of Herat, where a cabinet minister and more than 150 local fighters were reported killed Sunday in fierce clashes between militias.
Officials said Herat was calm Monday and that a high-level delegation sent by President Hamid Karzai had been received by Ismail Khan, a powerful militia leader and governor of Herat province whose son, Civil Aviation Minister Mir Wais Sadeq, was killed Sunday under still unexplained circumstances.
The violence appeared to leave Khan, an Islamic hard-liner who commands several thousand troops, in full control of the strategic Herat region, which borders Iran. Officials said Khan's troops had attacked the military barracks of Abdul Zaher Nahibzada, a pro-Karzai army commander accused of Sadeq's assassination, killing more than 150 rival troops during six hours of heavy combat Sunday.
Officials said privately that the violence was a serious setback for the government, which hopes to win pledges of $28 billion at a donors' conference in Berlin next week. But they also said the clashes had offered Karzai an excuse to send troops to Herat, where Khan has long resisted interference by central authorities.
Karzai's delegation, headed by Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim and Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali, was scheduled to begin negotiations with Khan after attending Sadeq's funeral on Tuesday.
Nahibzada, who late Sunday denied killing Sadeq, vanished Monday and was reported to have fled Herat on horseback with a small group of supporters after about 500 of his fighters surrendered to Khan's troops. The commander's house in the city was reportedly destroyed by Khan loyalists, and his wife and children have taken refuge with another senior military commander.
U.S. military officials said they did not plan to intervene, but they confirmed that they had sent several military aircraft, including a B-52 bomber, on low flights over Herat on Sunday night. A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, said this had been done in an effort to "restore calm."
Hilferty also said U.S. troops stationed at a military base in Herat had given shelter to German and Italian diplomats after the fighting erupted Sunday night near the German Consulate. But other U.S. military officials said that any additional military action should be taken by Afghan national troops.
While clashes between the militias ended overnight, other reports of violence continued to pour in from Herat on Monday. Angry crowds loyal to Khan reportedly gathered in the streets chanting slogans against Karzai and the United States. U.N. officials said the home of a senior Islamic judge was burned.
Meanwhile, forces loyal to Nahibzada were said to be marching toward Herat from several surrounding areas, including his native Badghis province to the north. Some government aides said there was concern over how to stop these forces and inform them that Afghan army troops were being sent in to keep peace.
There were also conflicting reports about Sadeq's killing, as well as events surrounding it. Several differing versions were offered by officials in Kabul, underscoring the political tensions that have hampered Karzai's efforts to unite a government riven by factional and ethnic rivalries.
According to some officials, including a Defense Ministry spokesman, the violence was set off by an assassination attempt Sunday against Khan while he was attending a literary event in a city park. The officials said Sadeq's car was later ambushed and rocketed by Nahibzada's troops, killing him and several associates.
But other senior security officials said neither the alleged attack on Khan nor the ambush of Sadeq had happened, and the reports were propaganda spread by Khan and his loyalists in an effort to destroy Nahibzada. The commander was part of a broad-based Herat leadership council, including professionals and clergy, that supported Karzai's efforts at political reform in the region.
"Psychologically, Khan feels he has to have total power," said one security official. "The [leadership council] wanted to work closely with the central government, and that was an obstacle for him."
One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an angry dispute erupted several days ago between troops loyal to Khan and Nahibzada, and after an altercation in the street, Sadeq went to the commander's house to pursue the issue. He attempted to enter the building forcibly, guards opened fire and Sadeq was killed along with two relatives who accompanied him.
Some officials said privately that Karzai should have sent army troops into the region much sooner to prevent factional fighting, but others said that even the decision to send the forces after Sunday's violence was difficult. They said the newly formed and trained army is a light infantry with little experience, while Khan's forces are seasoned guerrilla fighters with tanks and artillery at their disposal.
"It was really touch and go," said one adviser at the Defense Ministry. "There was fear that they would become caught between the two sides."
Spokesmen for Khan said Monday morning that there was "no need" to send in national troops, but the militia leader did nothing to prevent the arrival of the first 300, who came on hurriedly arranged Afghan and U.S. military flights from the capital. The defense minister said up to 1,500 troops would be sent if needed.
--------
Kabul Sends Force to Quell Disorders After a Killing
March 23, 2004
By AMY WALDMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/international/asia/23AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 22 - The central government is sending about 1,000 troops from the new Afghan National Army to the western city of Herat to maintain order after the killing of a government minister on Sunday. The deployment is the army's largest to date.
As many as 100 people died in factional fighting on Sunday after the assassination of the son of the powerful provincial governor, Ismail Khan. The killing set off fierce fighting between Mr. Khan's forces and those backing Zaher Naibzadah, a division commander appointed by the government of Afghanistan's American-backed president, Hamid Karzai.
Protesters supporting Mr. Khan filled the streets on Monday, according to radio reports, chanting "Death to Karzai!" and "Death to America!" They also burned the house of Herat's chief justice.
Officials said the funeral of Mr. Khan's son, Mir Wais Sadeq, the minister of civil aviation and tourism, had been postponed until Tuesday because of the demonstrations.
There were conflicting versions on Monday of what had set off the fighting, none of them confirmed and all of them reflecting the deep suspicion with which the various factions in Kabul and Herat view one another.
Whatever its cause, the fighting ended around 1 a.m. Monday, according to Herat residents, with Mr. Khan retaining control of the city. Mr. Karzai convened an emergency security meeting on Sunday night, and decided to send a delegation led by his defense and interior ministers. The government also decided to send a "stabilization force" numbering 1,000 to 1,500 Afghan Army troops to restore peace and order to the area.
For the first time, then, the central government will have a military presence in the fief of Mr. Khan, who has maintained his own army. Hundreds of troops were already at the Kabul airport Monday morning, waiting to be transported by allied and Afghan aircraft to Herat.
Once there, a defense official said, they will work closely with the Provincial Reconstruction Team with support from the American-led alliance if necessary.
Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an allied spokesman, said the American reconstruction team had called in a B-1 bomber to fly low overhead "to help try to calm down the fighting."
-------- africa
US to increase African military presence
By Martin Plaut
BBC regional analyst
Tuesday, 23 March, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3561619.stm
Gen Wald: The US is involved in the fight against Uganda's rebel LRA The US military interest in Africa has been transformed by its determination to win what it calls the war on terrorism in the wake of 11 September.
General Charles Wald, the US general who is in charge for African operations, told the BBC that the US plans to increase the number of facilities across the continent.
He said the facilities are vital if the US is to intervene in Africa's many conflicts.
"The distances are huge, the problems are multiple, and we need multiple options to respond to those problems," he said.
He said most of the facilities will not be full scale bases, but rather airfields with guaranteed access to fuel.
Home-grown defence
He said the US is willing to back African efforts to produce pan-African defence forces.
General Wald was enthusiastic about the African Union's concept of developing five regional brigades - rapid reaction forces to snuff out crises as they develop.
He said that US special operations training was already under way in Mali and Mauritania, and was planned for Chad and Niger.
General Wald also confirmed what had long been suspected - that the US is directly involved in the fight against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda - although he would not be drawn on the form this assistance is taking.
"I have met with [Uganda's] President Museveni. I have heard personally that he is very pleased with the support we are giving him," he said.
"Its not just moral support... But many things need to be kept a bit more private."
Overall, America's benign neglect of Africa after the end of the cold war is now clearly a thing of the past.
-------- asia
Hundreds of Nepali Maoists Die in Battle
March 23, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/international/asia/23NEPA.html
KATMANDU, Nepal, March 22 - Nepali forces dug up bodies of Maoist rebels and searched for scores of missing police officers on Monday after what appeared to have been one of the fiercest battles in an eight-year rebellion.
The rebels' leader also vowed to continue raids on government targets despite a 12-hour gun battle in western Nepal in which, the army said, 500 guerrillas, 28 government troops and 4 civilians died.
"The armed attacks will continue until a progressive political solution has been reached," the rebel leader, Prachanda, said in a statement.
The troops said they had found the bodies of 100 guerrillas. The Maoists, fighting to replace the monarchy with a Communist state, routinely carry their dead away from encounters, often burying them near rivers.
Fifty-eight police and district officials were missing. There was no independent confirmation of the official tally. Both sides routinely exaggerate enemy casualties and understate their own.
If the official toll is true, it would be the deadliest single battle since the revolt began in 1996. More than 9,000 people, most of them rebels, have died.
-------- business
BAE strikes out with laser lab
SCOTT REID,
Tue 23 Mar 2004
The Scotsman
http://business.scotsman.com/technology.cfm?id=335442004
MENTION the word laser to James Bond fans and their minds will flick to Goldfinger and the scene in which Sir Sean comes perilously close to being cut down in his prime.
The industrial laser featured in 007's famous 1964 outing was probably, forgive the pun, at the cutting edge of technology for the time.
Forty years on, however, lasers come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from the miniscule devices at the heart of every CD and DVD player to scientific Goliaths which, for a fraction of a second, can produce a pulse equivalent to 1300 times the entire electrical generating capacity of the United States.
Over the years, laser beams have even been used to measure the average distance between the centres of the Earth and the Moon.
Now defence giant BAE Systems has its sights set on airspace rather than outer space following the creation of a new multi-million pound Laser Centre of Excellence in the Capital.
The state-of-the-art laboratory, officially opened last night by Enterprise Minister Jim Wallace, has been built primarily to design and manufacture thousands of military lasers for American and British F35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft.
But the firm, whose Avionics Group employs more than 2000 people in Edinburgh, will also be targeting fresh overseas orders following the centre's opening. It is hoped the landmark JSF deal agreed last September with Lockheed This programme puts us very much in the driving seat - Graham Russell Martin - the largest ever airborne laser contract - will prompt a wave of new business for the Edinburgh complex.
In addition, the £4 million laser centre is expected to sustain at least 100 highly skilled engineering posts at BAE's Crewe Toll site.
Paul Holbourn, capability director at the group's Sensor Systems Division, says the centre of excellence represents a "significant investment" in the site and in the future of the business as a whole.
He adds: "We were delighted to be awarded the JSF laser designator contract by Lockheed Martin which confirmed our position as one of the industry leaders worldwide in the development of laser technology. This facility is testimony to the expertise we have within the business."
Site and operations director Graham Russell believes the scale of the JSF project has given the firm a financial competitive edge.
"This programme puts us very much in the driving seat," he says. "An order of 3000 units is a very big number. We have more buying power then anyone in the world in terms of components, which means we can lower the costs of production.
"Although we've been building military lasers for the last 30 years, it's been a lot of legacy business. For the last decade, a lot of the products have been coming to the end of their life cycle. This contract was key to the decision on whether we continued on manufacturing this technology."
Military experts reckon the supersonic JSF will be one of the last military planes to be manned by humans as new pilot-less technologies develop. If the programme is successful, more orders could come from other countries including Italy and Australia.
According to senior managers at BAE, the Lockheed Martin contract has opened the door to the potentially lucrative US laser market.
Clovis Younger, programme manager for BAE's Targeting Lasers Electro Optics Group, says: "On the laser side of things, business in the US has been pretty limited. The Americans are wary of buying critical components from non-US sources. By doing this contract, we get a seal of quality for supplying into other American military programmes."
In military hardware terms, the locally-designed laser will provide the JSF's targeting system with a precision range measurement and a laser-guided weapon designation capability.
The design and development stage will pave the way for full-scale manufacturing in about two years' time.
At the heart of the new centre lies 4000sq ft of flexible manufacturing space and 21 dedicated laser-firing rooms.
They are equipped with individual environmental controls to meet the testing standards required to produce high-power laser products.
BAE's Sensor Systems Division has a 30-year heritage of designing laser technology for applications such as range finding and target designation.
During that time, the company has produced some 4500 military lasers for more than 25 different platforms in over 20 countries.
BAE's laser systems, which were attached to light gun artillery pieces, allowed British troops to fire accurately during the worst sand storms of the recent Gulf war.
Mr Holbourn points out that lasers are set to remain a crucial part of BAE's business in the future.
He adds: "Our involvement in transatlantic partnerships is growing, and we were delighted when Lockheed Martin gave our facilities a score of 91 per cent on a recent JSF audit. "The contract has highlighted our capability to deliver the technology and this new laser centre ensures that we have the production capacity to deliver the goods, enabling us to continue to compete globally with the demands of large-scale production." The F35 deal has also become the impetus for investing in new research and development capability.
BAE has invested hundreds of thousands of pounds co-developing, with a Boston-based company, an automated assembly machine - the first of its kind in the world - that can fine tune the optical part of radar systems to increase reliability and cost effectiveness.
That technology will now also be applied to the UK group's laser systems.
Although some industry analysts have warned that BAE could be vulnerable to future cutbacks in defence spending, site and operations director Mr Russell stresses that the laser development work is not as likely to be affected because of a growing worldwide demand for the technology. The defence industry is also welcoming last week's budget announce-ment that spending on defence will actually rise in real terms.
Annual sales in the UK defence industry are currently running at £14 billion, of which some £9bn are to the Ministry of Defence.
Britain is the second-largest defence exporter in the world. Last year, the Ministry of Defence spent some £29bn, with about 40 per cent of that total being spent on equipment and the remainder on personnel.
A spokesman for the Society of British Aerospace Companies, whose members include BAE, Rolls-Royce and Smiths Group, says: "The proposed real terms increase in defence spending is good news - we were expecting significant cuts in the overall spend on defence.
"But we have to wait and see what the detail is to see how much more will actually be allocated for procurement."
Late last week it emerged that the British and Indian governments had signed a memorandum of understanding clearing the way for BAE to sell 66 Hawk training jets to the Indian air force.
The Indian authorities first expressed interest in the Hawk trainer jet during the mid-80s but it was not until five months ago they finally committed to a deal, worth almost £800m. Friday's announcement means a contract is a formality.
High-flying double act prepares for take-off
BAE Systems and Italy's Finmeccanica are to form two new joint ventures, including a combined avionics business, it was announced yesterday.
The pair said they had agreed in principle the operations to be included in their previously announced electronics joint ventures and also outlined their respective valuations.
The two defence equipment firms signed a tentative agreement to form the joint ventures last July.
One of the tie-ups will be an avionics business to be majority owned by Finmeccanica, focusing on sensors, airborne radar and electronic warfare systems.
The other will be a systems integration operation, to be majority owned by BAE, focusing on information and combat management systems as well as land and naval radar.
In addition, the Italian group, through Marconi Selenia Communications, will acquire the relevant BAE communications operations in the UK.
It has also been agreed in principle that Finmeccanica will acquire the Air Traffic Management activities of Alenia Marconi Systems. The overall turnover of the activities involved in the transaction is around £2.5 billion.
In a joint statement, Sir Richard Evans and Pier Francesco Guarguaglini, the chairmen of the respective parent companies, said: "Achieving this milestone is further evidence of the developing strategic relationships between our two groups. The agreement represents the major decision point to progress to complete this transaction by mid-year."
The next step is for the companies to conduct due diligence and prepare the contractual documents.
-------- china
Beijing Walks Softly Around Taiwan Vote
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16141-2004Mar22.html
BEIJING, March 22 -- Although China's people and government are passionate about reunification with Taiwan, the island's raucous election drama has been treated here with extreme caution, restricted news coverage and limited official comment.
Two days after President Chen Shui-bian's narrow election victory over challenger Lien Chan, Lien's followers were pressing for a recount, and thousands camped out in front of the presidential palace in Taipei, Taiwan's capital.
But the Beijing government has mostly held its tongue and kept most Chinese dimly informed, even though it could arguably reap benefits at home and abroad from the controversy over Chen's injury in an assassination attempt Friday and the unruly opposition protests demanding a recount of Saturday's vote.
China's repeated charges that Chen is reckless and not to be trusted seemed to be reinforced by a suggestion from Lien, the defeated Nationalist Party candidate, that there was something fishy about the still unsolved shooting. And the ruckus over Lien's charge that the vote may have been unfair seemed tailor-made for a Chinese leadership telling its people -- particularly in Hong Kong -- that stability must come before democracy.
But the government in Beijing is treading very carefully these days on Hong Kong as well as Taiwan; it felt pressured by unfavorable popular sentiment in both places recently. In Taiwan, the main problem has been support at the ballot box for Chen and his Taiwan-first policies. In Hong Kong, it has been a swell of public opinion backing demands for swift progress toward direct elections.
The cautious approach toward Taiwan this weekend to some degree reflected the Communist leadership's top-heavy decision-making process, requiring layers of approval before action or reaction, according to analysts. But it also flowed from an uncertain direction set by the island's split vote, in which a referendum opposed by China was defeated while the president opposed by China was reelected.
China's leaders expressed satisfaction in the referendum's outcome, which they viewed as an attempt to set a precedent for a future plebiscite on independence. Fewer than 50 percent of the voters backed it, an outcome that appeared to endorse China's contention that most Taiwanese do not want independence despite what their elected representatives say.
The Chinese government and the Communist Party's Taiwan affairs offices took note of the rejection in a joint statement late Saturday night in which they called the proposed referendum "a provocative attempt to undermine cross-straits relations and split the motherland."
"Facts have proven that this illegal act goes against the will of the people," they said.
As for Lien's charges that the presidential voting needs to be reexamined, the statement said the Chinese government was following the controversy closely. Since the statement was issued, the government has not commented on what its officials call China's number one foreign policy issue and the reelection of an independence-minded leader who, in Beijing's view, has poisoned relations across the Taiwan Strait.
According to a Beijing scholar and former official with access to the government's Taiwan specialists, President Hu Jintao's government decided even before the vote to move softly. Even if Chen were reelected, he said, the Beijing leadership had concluded the wisest course was to be patient and reconcile to the likelihood that Taiwan would remain difficult for the foreseeable future, or at least for Chen's second four-year term.
"If we could deal with the worst case for four years," the former official said, "we could deal with the worst case for another four years."
Against that background, China's officially controlled media have limited their reporting largely to what the government said Saturday night. The lead photograph on Monday's front page of China Daily, an English language newspaper published by the Communist Party's People's Daily, showed marchers in Vancouver, B.C., protesting the U.S. occupation of Iraq. There were no editorials or op-ed interpretations about Taiwan. The main government television news program Monday evening did not mention the issue at all.
The caution was not for lack of interest. Well-off Chinese with access to satellite dishes or computers turned overseas to follow the Taiwan news. One favorite was the Chinese-language Phoenix channel in Hong Kong, whose energetic coverage is beamed round-the-clock toward the mainland.
Many tuned-in Chinese, at dinner tables or in chat rooms, displayed the strong nationalist sentiment that holds, along with government policy, that Taiwan is part of China and must be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.
"Let's reject fantasy and get ready for a war," said a computer chatter who identified himself as Zhuan Pai Naodai. "We should solve the Taiwan problem ourselves rather than leaving it to the next generation."
Zhang Zhengfeng, 24, a recent graduate of Henan University of Science and Technology interviewed on a Beijing street while job-hunting, agreed: "I think China should take a more hard-line attitude and approach toward Taiwan, such as war. Only by this can we solve the problem."
But Guo Shengwen, 34, who works in a Beijing advertising agency, said he used his satellite scanner to watch reports directly from Taiwan and liked the pulse of democratic expression. "I think we can learn something from Taiwan," he said as he exited the subway. "And we will benefit from Taiwan's democratic process."
--------
Taiwanese President Agrees to Recount of Disputed Vote
March 23, 2004
By KEITH BRADSHER and JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/international/asia/23TAIW.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Tuesday, March 23 - President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan agreed Tuesday morning to a recount of his disputed victory by a razor-thin margin in the presidential elections on Saturday, giving in to pressure from street demonstrations and the United States.
President Chen said he would instruct lawmakers from his Democratic Progressive Party to vote with lawmakers from the opposition Nationalist Party to pass a special law making the recount possible. The government said a recount could start as soon as Thursday, but could then last for days because considerable work would be involved in recounting and verifying more than 13 million ballots.
Taiwanese law normally makes it very difficult to hold a recount. Even the closest of elections - President Chen defeated the Nationalist candidate, Lien Chan, in the initial count on Saturday by just two-tenths of one percent - do not automatically qualify for a recount.
Hundreds, and at times thousands, of Nationalist supporters have been occupying the boulevard in front of the Presidential Office since Saturday night. But a greater source of pressure on the government was the conspicuous silence of the United States in acknowledging Mr. Chen as the winner of a second four-year term.
Taiwan depends very heavily on the American military to defend it against a possible attack by mainland China, which has vowed to prevent the island from pursuing formal independence.
Current Taiwanese law provides for a recount only when fraud or other malfeasance can be demonstrated. The Nationalists contended Monday that they had found some hints of vote rigging. They said they were still looking for evidence to support another contention, first made Saturday, that President Chen might have staged a shooting incident on Friday afternoon - widely described as an assassination attempt - in which he was slightly injured in the abdomen, drawing national sympathy less than 19 hours before the polls opened.
The Nationalists criticized President Chen's proposal as not going far enough. Su Chi, the party's senior spokesman and senior foreign policy adviser, said the party was nervous that Mr. Chen's proposal could get stuck in the legislature, and wanted him to issue an immediate emergency order requiring a recount as well.
Mr. Su said the Nationalists also wanted the creation of a fact-finding investigation into the shooting, with particular attention given to why President Chen ordered a national military alert afterward. The party contends that the alert prevented as many as 200,000 police and military personnel from voting.
The Defense Ministry, which Mr. Chen's administration controls, denies that any personnel were prevented from voting beyond the usual numbers on duty. But the mystery deepened Monday, when the ministry announced that the defense minister, a retired general who used to be a member of the Nationalist Party, had submitted his resignation on Sunday, citing a need to seek treatment for an eye problem.
President Chen's proposal of the legislation marks his first public willingness to accept any recount at all, and may make one inevitable. Under the proposal, which would be retroactive to last Saturday, any election with a margin of victory of less than 1 percent would be subject to an automatic recount.
In a speech early Tuesday afternoon, President Chen expressed regret that anyone thought he might have staged the shooting and said he would welcome broad participation in an investigation of the incident, although he provided few details.
Taiwan's stock market, down as much as 5.1 percent on Tuesday morning, regained part of this lost ground after the Democratic Progressive Party accepted a recount, closing with a loss of 2.9 percent. The market remains well below the level of last week, having fallen 6.7 percent on Monday. [Page W1.]
On Sunday, Taiwan's High Court ordered that all ballot boxes be sealed, and on Monday it began considering the Nationalists' demand for a recount.
-------- iraq
Shiite Cleric Threatens to Shun U.N. Envoys in Iraq
By Anthony Shadid and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16185-2004Mar22.html
BAGHDAD, March 22 -- Iraq's most powerful Shiite Muslim cleric has intensified his opposition to the country's interim constitution, threatening to withhold cooperation with the United Nations during the transition to Iraqi sovereignty if the document is endorsed by the Security Council.
In a letter addressed to Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. envoy to Iraq, the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani said flaws in the constitution "will lead to a dead end and bring the country into an unstable situation and perhaps lead to its partition and division."
The letter, which was released Monday, marked another dramatic attempt by the reclusive, 73-year-old cleric to assert influence over the political system that will be put in place when the U.S. administration of Iraq ends June 30. Though Sistani had already made clear his objections to the interim constitution, the letter was forceful in questioning the charter's legitimacy and in demanding that it be amended.
Iraqi leaders have said they will ask the Security Council to pass a resolution legitimizing the U.S. handover of authority to a provisional government. Sistani said in the letter that he feared U.S. officials would seek to include an endorsement of the constitution in such a resolution. If it were endorsed in any way, Sistani said, he would boycott meetings with U.N. envoys due to arrive in Iraq soon to help craft an interim authority that is to take over from the U.S. administration in June and stay in power until elections in January.
"We warn that any such step will be unacceptable to the majority of Iraqis and will have dangerous consequences," Sistani said.
The interim constitution, known as the Transitional Administrative Law, was signed March 8 and was praised by Iraqi and U.S. leaders as a landmark in Iraq's progress toward becoming a democratic state. But the signing followed days of wrangling prompted by Sistani's objections, and within hours, Shiite members of Iraq's Governing Council insisted that parts of the document had to be revised.
The document calls for nationwide elections to be held by the end of January 2005 to choose a 275-member transitional assembly. That body will serve as a legislature, draft a permanent constitution and choose a president and two deputy presidents. The three-member executive will then choose by unanimous decision a prime minister and cabinet to run the government.
When the constitution was signed, Shiite members of the Governing Council said Sistani objected to two key provisions: a clause that gave Kurds effective veto power over a permanent constitution and another that allowed either of the deputy presidents -- likely a Kurd and a Sunni Arab -- to reject the decisions of a president, almost certainly a Shiite. While most groups in Iraq contest the precise figures, Shiites are believed to make up about 60 percent of the population, with Sunni Arabs and Kurds the largest minorities.
Sistani's letter, which was dated Friday and bore the stamp of his office in the sacred Shiite city of Najaf, specifically mentioned only Sistani's objection to the three-member executive. He said it "lays the foundation for sectarianism in a future political system." Supporters of the arrangement have contended that the veto power of the deputy presidents was the best way to protect the interests of minority Sunnis and Kurds. But it clearly curbs the authority of a Shiite president, and Sistani said he believed it would create deadlock.
U.S. officials in Baghdad had no immediate comment on Sistani's warning. "I have no knowledge of any such letter," said Daniel Senor, a spokesman for L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq.
The U.N.'s chief spokesman, Fred Eckhard, confirmed the authenticity of the Sistani letter but said the world body was not prepared to respond. Eckhard said Sistani's missive would have no impact on Secretary General Kofi Annan's plans to send Brahimi and an electoral team to Iraq.
But U.S. and U.N. officials said Sistani's letter would complicate deliberations over a new Security Council resolution being promoted by the United States and Britain that would define the international community's role in Iraq when the U.S.-led occupation ends.
The need for a new resolution has become more urgent since the government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was voted out of office in Spain last week. The incoming government has said it will announce plans to withdraw the country's troops from Iraq unless the United Nations is given authority to administer the country.
Brahimi has avoided commenting publicly on the transitional law, saying it is a matter between the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Governing Council. U.N. officials said it was unclear whether he would formally respond to the new demands.
But Brahimi and other senior U.N. officials had privately opposed U.S. plans to adopt a detailed interim constitution, warning that the process was insufficiently inclusive and would fuel resistance among groups not involved in drafting the document. "It would have been wiser to have a brief statement of principles, not a full-fledged constitution," said one U.N. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We were clear with the Americans. If they had listened to us, they would not have this problem."
Since the fall of President Saddam Hussein's government last April, the Iranian-born Sistani has intervened repeatedly at key moments in Iraq's political transition. The moves have collided with U.S. ambitions to guide a process that has repeatedly changed course. His supporters say his actions are calculated to empower a Shiite majority that has lacked political clout through Iraq's modern history.
Last year, he insisted that a constitutional convention be elected, forcing the Bush administration to scrap its original transition plan. The compromise that followed in November -- a process to choose a transitional assembly through regional caucuses -- was discarded after Sistani raised objections.
Lynch reported from the United Nations.
--------
U.S. Team in Baghdad Fights a Persistent Enemy: Rumors
March 23, 2004
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/international/middleeast/23RUMO.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 22 - The American project to build a stable democracy in Iraq has encountered many obstacles. But perhaps the most elusive enemy is an old phantom called rumor.
Less than 24 hours after a bombing in central Baghdad that tore the facade off the Mount Lebanon Hotel, the rumors began circulating in the marketplaces and teahouses: that the hotel was demolished not by a bomb, as the Americans maintained, but by an errant American missile.
Or, the whispers had it, the terrorist attack was actually an assassination attempt, because one hotel resident was said to be a relative of the man who had identified the hideout of Uday and Qusay Hussein, two of Mr. Hussein's sons, in Mosul last summer.
More chatter: Mr. Hussein's Baath Party, far from defeated, was even now operating from a secret exile headquarters in London and planning more such attacks ahead of the June 30 transition to a sovereign Iraqi state.
Those are just a few of the rumors collected by the staff of The Baghdad Mosquito, a daily intelligence document that chronicles the latest street talk in the Iraqi capital, however ill founded, bizarre or malevolent.
The Mosquito's staff includes 6 American intelligence analysts, 2 Arab-American translators and 11 Iraqis. One of the Iraqis is a doctor and one a university professor, but several come from some very tough neighborhoods. They are Sunni and Shiite and Kurd and Christian. Some of the women wear traditional head scarves; others work with heads uncovered.
The Mosquito began last fall after American military leaders realized that rumors themselves had become a security problem, and decided to fight back. It is distributed via e-mail to an elite group of military officers and policy planners and is posted on the military's classified Web server.
Under Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi state became an industry of untruth, where rumors often consigned people to the torture chambers, and propaganda was presented as fact.
Believing almost nothing, Iraqis turned by the millions to the base currency of all who live in closed societies: the whispers of unsanctioned truth. Throw in the natural suspicions now raised by the presence of an occupying power, and you have an almost ideal hothouse for rumors and gossip.
Seven days a week, a staff of Iraqis and Americans compile and analyze local press and satellite television reports. And once a week, in what has become required reading for senior American officials in Baghdad and a devoted readership in Washington, The Mosquito produces an exclusive collection of rumor, gossip and chatter called, "What's the Word on the Streets of Baghdad?"
The name may sound vaguely metaphoric for a report concerned with buzz, but in truth, employees said, it was named for the swarm of insects that terrorized the office last summer. "We want all the stuff they're saying," said William H. Putnam, the project director. "The good and the bad. We want to understand what we're dealing with."
Mr. Putnam, a former military intelligence officer, now an Army reservist here on contract as director of the Mosquito project, said his assignment was "to measure the effectiveness of what the coalition does."
"How do you do that? You can read the newspapers and listen to what satellite TV channels are saying." Just as important, Mr. Putnam says he realized, you can listen in on the talk of ordinary Iraqis.
The American civilian occupation bureaucracy is often criticized by Iraqis for hiding behind the 13-foot concrete blast walls surrounding its headquarters. In such isolation, those critics say, the coalition authorities have little grasp of Iraqis who live in what the Americans call the Red Zone - Baghdad beyond the Americans' gates.
In effect, then, the team's role is to fly over that divide and catch the amorphous, shifting sense of public angst and private hope that characterizes an Iraq emerging from dictatorship.
One of the problems they face is that against all odds, some of the street talk proves to be true. For much of last year, for instance, the word on the street was that Mr. Hussein had evaded capture by living low, having jettisoned his security entourage, and was riding in taxis. Sure enough, when American forces captured him in December outside Tikrit, a taxi was parked nearby.
As a result, almost no tale is too outlandish to be believed. Consider the following item, which made the pages of the latest Mosquito: American commanders, supposedly humiliated by a rising death toll, were seen throwing the bodies of American soldiers into lakes and rivers all across Iraq, especially troops who had been identified as having no next of kin. (A similar rumor is making the rounds on the Internet.)
More credibly, almost everybody worries about civil war, and that, too, was reported in the journal, which is published by the intelligence arm of the military's joint task force in Iraq.
With the growing number of killings of Iraqis who work with the Americans, they operate in a climate of fear. Few will tell anyone outside their immediate families about their job, and none agreed to be quoted by name.
At the journal's most recent meeting, an Iraqi staff member said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, suspected by the occupation authorities of organizing a string of deadly bombings, would already have been captured by Iraqi security forces had he not cut an amnesty deal with Polish troops near Hilla, or so he had heard. No, said another, that is not true. It was Bulgarian soldiers who intervened.
The Mosquito's buzz has already helped refine the information campaigns being run by the military and occupation authorities here, said a senior officer. "These people, after living 35 years under a very brutal regime, allow us to better understand what really are the concerns of the citizens on the streets of Baghdad," said Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, assistant commander of the First Armored Division, which is responsible for the security of Baghdad and central Iraq.
General Hertling said The Mosquito's reports helped the division fine-tune advertisements, posters and billboards that focus on new Iraqi security forces. "The feedback we received from The Mosquito was especially helpful in our design of a campaign countering the belief that all Iraqi police officers are corrupt and work contrary to the service of the citizens," he said.
The Mosquito also gathered wild negative rumors about the interim constitution, which was signed early this month by the 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council.
One of its main findings was that many of the document's sharpest critics appeared not to have read it - a fact that General Hertling said assisted the division in producing an Iraqi version of the Federalist Papers, an explanatory document to counter misunderstanding and apprehension.
--------
Nine Iraqi Policemen Killed by Gunmen South of Baghdad
March 23, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/international/middleeast/23CND-IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 23 - Nine Iraqi policemen were killed today in a small-arms attack on their convoy near Hilla, south of Baghdad, a coalition press spokesman said.
Two policemen were wounded in the attack, said the spokesman, Cpl. Craig Spowell.
Today's attack, on the road between Hilla and Musayeb, followed a spate of bombings in recent months at Iraqi police stations, which have killed scores of police officers.
Two other policemen were killed by gunmen and two were wounded today in the northern city of Kirkuk, Iraqi authorities said.
The United States command says there has been a radical change in the pattern of attacks by the anti-American underground since an American military offensive that began in November and carried through into January, when it was scaled back.
Attacks on American and allied military forces have dropped decisively to about 20 a day from about 50 in November.
At the same time there has been a corresponding increase in attacks on Iraqis, including the elements of the American-trained force of more than 200,000 Iraqis formed into the police, civil defense, border protection and other units.
Along with this, American officers say, have come attacks on Iraqi civilians, regarded as collaborators with the American occupation, including drivers and translators and other support personnel. On Monday, gunmen killed two Finnish businessmen as they drove in Baghdad.
At least three other bombings occurred close to the site of today's attack, one of them in December in the holy Shiite city of Karbala, another in February in the town of Iskandariya and, in January, an outpost a few miles from Musayeb.
Most of the police stations have been rebuilt within weeks of the attacks and American commanders say they are still receiving at least six applications from Iraqis for every post for which they recruit in the Iraqi security forces, including the police.
The recruitment flows, and the courage shown by the men already in the 70,000-man police force have been cited by American generals as one of the reasons why they are confident security across the country will be maintained effectively as the the United States progressively withdraws from major cities and towns ahead of the June 30 date for the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi provisional government.
Today's attack was only a few miles from the site of a fatal attack on American civilian employees of the Pentagon two weeks ago in which six Iraqi policemen have been arrested on suspicion of complicity in the murders.
Terence Neilan contributed reporting for this article from New York.
-------- israel / palestine
Calls for calm as the world condemns Israeli action
By Jonathan Brown
23 March 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=504104
The assassination of the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin provoked widespread condemnation from world leaders amid predictions of a new cycle of violence in the Middle East and calls for calm. Only the United States fell short of outright criticism of the attack. UNITED NATIONS
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan: "I do condemn the targeted assassination of Ahmed Yassin and the others who died with him. Such actions are not only contrary to international law but they do not help the search for a peaceful solution."
UNITED STATES
Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser: "Let's remember Hamas is a terrorist organisation and Sheikh Yassin has himself, we believe, been involved in terrorist planning."
Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman: "We are deeply troubled by this morning's actions in Gaza."
Lou Fintor, a state department spokesman: "The US urges all sides to remain calm and exercise restraint ... There was no warning given to us."
EUROPEAN UNION
Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief: "[This] is very bad news for the peace process."
EU foreign ministers' joint statement: "Not only are extra-judicial killings contrary to international law, they undermine the concept of the rule of law which is a key element in the fight against terrorism."
BRITAIN
Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary: "It is unacceptable, it is unjustified and it is very unlikely to achieve its objectives. This kind of so-called targeted killing is well outside international law. I believe it was impolitic. We have to try to ensure that there is, none the less, as calm a response as possible in the Arab world."
FRANCE
President Jacques Chirac: "France unreservedly condemn not only terrorism but all acts of violence, especially when it is a question of an attack which breaks international laws."
THE VATICAN
"The Holy See unites with the international community in deploring this act of violence that cannot be justified in any state of law. Lasting peace cannot come from a show of force."
GERMANY
Joschka Fischer, Foreign Minister: "[I am] concerned about the possible consequences. Everything must be done to avoid a further escalation. Progress must be made with initiatives in the Middle East."
AUSTRIA
Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Foreign Minister: "It would be good if the Quartet nations could meet again. We must contain the Middle East conflict."
NORWAY
Jan Petersen, Foreign Minister: "This act will contribute to increased tensions in the area and will make it more difficult to implement the road map for peace and a possible Israeli withdrawal from Gaza."
POLAND
Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Foreign Minister: "I'm afraid it may have negative consequences not only in terms of Israeli-Palestinian conflict but the threat of terrorist attacks on other countries, including European [ones], is growing."
DENMARK
Per Stig Moeller, Foreign Minister: "We have to fight terror everywhere. Israel also has to fight terror ... but extrajudicial killings is not one of the ways."
EGYPT
President Hosni Mubarak: "With this act we have aborted the peace process today. It will have big effects on the region."
JORDAN
King Abdullah II: "We are pained by what happened despite our persistent efforts with all sides, including the Israeli government, to refrain from its policy of military escalation."
SYRIA
President Bashar Assad: "[This is] the climax of terrorism that Israel is continuously practising."
LEBANON
Rafik Hariri, Prime Minister: "[The assasination] will push the region into a new cycle of violence and terrorism and undermine any hope for achieving peace in the Middle East."
IRAN
President Mohammed Khatami: "The heinous crime reflects a cowardly behaviour of the occupying Israeli regime as well as its fear of Palestinian resistance, which is centred on their religious faith."
KUWAIT
Mohammed al-Saqer, head of the foreign affairs committee in parliament, : "They [Israelis] say that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, but the truth is that Israel is a terrorist state."
SOUTH AFRICA
Government statement: "Extra judicial assassinations are in contravention of international law [and] strengthen those not committed to achieving peace in the Middle East."
SUDAN
Hassan Turabi, Sudanese Islamic leader: "I think that this will put pressure on the Arab governments that have so far let down the Palestinian cause."
CHINA
Kong Quan, foreign ministry spokesman: "We are deeply worried about the impact on the region. We are watching the development of the situation."
AUSTRALIA
A spokesman for the Foreign Minister Alexander Downer: "We would urge calm on both sides to try and prevent any further decline into violence in that region."
----
Emotional Protests In Slaying Of Sheik
Israel Defends Attack On Hamas Founder
By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14558-2004Mar22?language=printer
JERUSALEM, March 22 -- Israel's assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas and a man revered by many Palestinians as a symbol of resistance, drew emotional protests Monday across the Palestinian territories and the Arab world. Israel defended the killing and braced for an onslaught of violence. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he personally authorized the attack on Yassin, 67, who was hit by a helicopter-fired missile at 5:30 a.m. Monday after dawn prayers at a mosque in Gaza City.
"The state of Israel this morning hit the first and foremost leader of the Palestinian terrorist murderers," Sharon said Monday afternoon in a televised defense of the attack. "I want to make clear the war on terrorism is not over and will continue daily everywhere."
In Washington, the White House said it was "deeply troubled" by the killing, but did not condemn it. Press secretary Scott McClellan said the administration had not been given advance notice of the attack on Yassin but that "Israel has the right to defend herself."
Some senior Israeli government officials said they opposed the move in the belief that it would spark a backlash that would outweigh the benefit of killing the leader of Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement and one of the most radical Palestinian militant groups.
"I thought it would be a mistake," said Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, a member of the secular Shinui Party who opposed Sharon during a cabinet meeting several days ago when the decision was made to target Yassin, a quadriplegic. "He's a crippled person. He's also a religious leader. . . . He's a sort of a symbol. The benefits we can get out of this action compared with the damages, I thought we should avoid."
Hamas has been at the forefront of Palestinian groups conducting suicide bombings and other attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers since the second Palestinian uprising began 31/2 years ago. Yassin, who helped found the organization at the outset of the first uprising in late 1987, was seen by many Palestinians as more of a spiritual leader than a commander of guerrillas, but Israeli officials accused him of having a direct role in planning attacks.
Palestinian leaders said Monday that they feared that Yassin's killing would fan extremism and unite major Palestinian organizations in concerted revenge attacks.
"Israeli terror will unify the Palestinians in one trench," Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a senior Hamas official, said in an interview at Yassin's house in Gaza City, where Rantisi was accepting condolences. "The assassination of Sheik Yassin will strengthen Hamas."
Tayseer Nasrullah, the head of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah political movement in the West Bank city of Nablus, said in a telephone interview: "The assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin has crossed all the red lines. If Israel dares strike and assassinate a handicapped leader, a symbol for the Palestinian people . . . I think they bear the full responsibility of reaction from the Palestinian people."
Yassin's assassination prompted one of the largest public demonstrations in the Palestinian territories since the current uprising began. As details spread from the loudspeakers of mosques across the Gaza Strip and West Bank, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians -- some masked and carrying guns -- filled the streets of almost every major city.
Tens of thousands of people streamed through Gaza City in an angry and tearful three-hour funeral procession that was accorded the status of a state funeral by Palestinian television stations and Arab satellite networks, which covered it from start to finish. Palestinian prisoners at two Israeli jails rioted, according to Israeli officials.
In Nablus, stunned residents -- many of them in tears -- began filing into the streets at 6 a.m. By late morning, tens of thousands of people jammed the city's main square, residents said.
Mohammed Abu Haleemeh, a 22-year-old journalism student and reporter for a Nablus radio station, was shot and fatally wounded while covering a clash between Israeli military forces and stone-throwing youths in the Balata refugee camp on the edge of Nablus. He was one of five Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy, killed in clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces in the Palestinian territories after Yassin and seven others were slain in Gaza City.
Tens of thousands also converged in the streets of Jenin and Ramallah in the West Bank. Zakaria Zbeida, the Jenin area commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Fatah, said in a telephone interview that the group would "take a quantum leap that hasn't been witnessed before. All the Israeli people are on death row."
Arafat called for a three-day general strike to protest Yassin's assassination. At Arafat's heavily damaged presidential compound in Ramallah, flags were lowered to half-staff. Palestinian cabinet ministers stood as Arafat recited a Muslim prayer for Yassin and added: "May you join the martyrs and the prophets. To heaven, you martyr."
Schools shut down throughout the West Bank and Gaza and shops were shuttered across the Palestinian territories, as well as in East Jerusalem, where the majority of the city's Palestinians live. Hundreds of schoolchildren, released from their classrooms, dashed to the nearest Israeli checkpoint or patrol area and pelted soldiers and tanks with rocks.
In Bethlehem, 20 boys and young men were treated for injuries after Israeli troops fired on a group of rock throwers near Rachel's Tomb, Palestinian security officials said.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, massive demonstrations materialized from the university campuses of Cairo to the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon to the streets of Baghdad.
On Israel's northern border with Lebanon, Hezbollah guerrillas fired mortars and rockets at six Israeli military posts in a disputed border region in response to the killing of Yassin, according to Hezbollah's al-Manar Television. Israeli warplanes and tanks attacked targets on the edge of nearby Lebanese border towns, according to a spokesman for the Israeli military. The area is a frequent target of artillery skirmishes between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers.
Israeli and Palestinian officials and analysts interviewed Monday were unanimous in saying that the immediate impact of Yassin's death would be to spark more violence, rather than reduce the effectiveness of Hamas. But several Israelis said they expected the short-term risk would prove to be worthwhile if the longer-term effect were to diminish the attacks.
"All the terrorist organizations will try and do their utmost to carry out attacks in coming days and weeks," said Israel's chief military spokeswoman, Brig. Gen. Ruth Yaron. "In the long run, the significance of Yassin not being there is going to be more and more evident."
Yaron said Israeli military and security forces were on heightened alert for possible attacks.
Another senior military official said Yassin's death would likely prompt militant organizations to conduct more joint operations against Israelis.
Israeli forces tried once before to kill Yassin. On Sept. 6, the cleric was slightly wounded when an Israeli fighter plane dropped a 550-pound bomb on a house where he was meeting with other Hamas officials. Poraz, the interior minister, said Sharon decided to try to hit Yassin again after a suicide bombing by two Palestinians from Gaza on March 14 at the Israeli port city of Ashdod, which killed 10 Israelis. They were the first suicide attackers to escape the Gaza Strip and conduct a bombing inside Israel.
Israeli military officials had been tracking Yassin and decided to strike Monday morning as he returned from prayers at a mosque a few dozen yards from his house because he was surrounded primarily by family members and bodyguards, Yaron said. Two of Yassin's sons were injured in the attack, according to doctors at Shifa Hospital, where they were treated.
For many Palestinians, images of the mangled rim of one of the wheels from Yassin's wheelchair on a bloodstained sidewalk were incitement enough for violence.
"I was horrified because of the sense of what will be next," said Gaza human rights activist Eyad Sarraj, "and the fact that they killed a man sitting in his wheelchair."
Yaron dismissed sentimentality based on Yassin's physical condition and religious stature: "I really take issue describing him as a paralyzed old man and spiritual leader. . . . It's as if to claim Osama bin Laden is a spiritual leader."
Anderson reported from Gaza City. Researchers Samuel Sockol and Sufian Taha contributed to this report.
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Dire Portent Hangs Over Funeral in Gaza
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16188-2004Mar22?language=printer
GAZA CITY, March 22 -- When Sheik Ahmed Yassin returned triumphantly to Gaza City in 1997 after eight years in an Israeli prison, thousands of flag-waving Palestinians carried the wheelchair-bound spiritual leader of Hamas above their heads while throngs of adoring followers stretched to touch him.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians escorted Yassin's body Monday in a final procession through the streets of Gaza -- accompanied by hundreds of flags, blasts from automatic weapons and loudspeakers booming vows of revenge -- after an early morning Israeli missile strike killed the 67-year-old cleric as he was being wheeled home from morning prayers at a local mosque. Seven other Palestinians died in the attack.
The jubilation of Yassin's return nearly seven years ago stood in harsh contrast to his farewell, although Palestinians called both portentous for the conflict with Israel.
"It's obvious to me that in killing Ahmed Yassin, Sharon created five, six, 10, 100 Ahmed Yassins," said Eyad Sarraj, a psychiatrist and well-known human rights activist in Gaza, referring to the Israeli prime minister. "Sharon has raised his status to martyr and saint."
When he first learned of the killing, Sarraj said, he was "horrified because of the sense of what will be next, and the fact that they killed a man sitting in his wheelchair."
Normal life was suspended Monday as Gazans mourned the loss of a man who was one of the world's best-known Palestinians. While Yassin was reviled in Israel for his support for suicide bombers and a prediction that Israel would one day cease to exist, opinion polls of Palestinians consistently ranked him second to Yasser Arafat as a popular and trusted leader.
Early in the day, thousands of Palestinians streamed into the grounds of Shifa Hospital in central Gaza City when they heard that Yassin's body was there in the morgue. Palestinian youths set fire to hundreds of tires in the streets to protest the killings, sending thick streams of acrid black smoke billowing into the sky and darkening the sunrise like a looming storm.
"We are here to share in the funeral of a man who is like the Prophet," said Hesham Alaywah, 37, whose 4-year-old son sat on his shoulders wearing the uniform of a Hamas fighter and waving a toy pistol. "I have two kids, and I hope they will be Hamas fighters. If I lose them, it will be easier on me than the assassination of Sheik Yassin."
Loudspeakers on the minarets of mosques rang out with verses from the Koran across the Gaza Strip, an impoverished area on the Mediterranean coast where 1.2 million Palestinians live enclosed by heavily fortified fences and under the patrol of thousands of Israeli troops and armored vehicles. About 7,500 Jewish settlers in 21 communities also live in Gaza and frequently come under attack by Palestinian militant groups.
Waves of protesters, their heads dripping with sweat under a blistering midday sun, trotted shoulder to shoulder through the streets alongside Yassin's plywood coffin, the pallbearers occasionally stumbling under the load. Residents perched in trees and atop billboards, awnings, walls, fences and statues to catch a glimpse of the procession.
The trip from the morgue to Yassin's home, then to El Omari Mosque in central Gaza and finally to Sheik Radwan Cemetery in northern Gaza City, where he was laid to rest on a sandy knoll just a few blocks from the Mediterranean, took about three hours.
Yassin was paralyzed in a gymnastics accident in 1952. Sitting in a wheelchair with his flowing white robes, beak-like nose, wispy white beard and soft, squeaky voice, he was an unflinching critic of Arafat and corruption in the Palestinian Authority and an inflexible opponent of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials considered Yassin a dangerous mastermind of terror and tried unsuccessfully to assassinate him last year. Hamas, officially known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, has launched hundreds of attacks against Israelis, including suicide bombings targeting civilians. The United States lists Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Palestinians regarded Yassin as a charismatic and moderate political and spiritual figure aloof from Hamas's military activities. The group also runs a network of social agencies that distributes food, medical aid and other services to needy Palestinians. His modest concrete home in the Al Sabra neighborhood of eastern Gaza City was a stark contrast to the opulent villas of many other Palestinian leaders in Gaza.
"I think everybody loved him," Hossam Ishtwi, 30, an English teacher, said while standing outside the mosque. "He established many services to help poor Palestinians, so we are all here to show Israel our feelings that they committed a big crime against us, and now we have the right to do anything to them."
"Sheik Yassin was a symbol of the Palestinian people and the Arabian nations, and he was a man of peace," said Abu Salim Ziad, 40, an ironworker. "I feel so sad. When an American or an Israeli dies, the whole world boils, and when tens of Palestinians die, no one does anything."
Yassin rose to prominence in the 1980s when Gazans turned increasingly toward a fundamentalist brand of Islam, encouraged at times by the territory's Israeli military occupiers, who saw the Islamic movement as a political rival and counterweight to Arafat's exiled Palestine Liberation Organization.
But after the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, against Israeli rule broke out in December 1987, Islamic militants quickly sought a leadership role. Yassin helped launch Hamas, which preached destruction of the Israeli state and quickly spread from Gaza into the West Bank.
In a 1997 interview with The Washington Post, Yassin defended suicide bombers who attacked Israelis as "martyrs who seek life for themselves after death, and a life for their people after their martyrdom."
Israel's obliteration as a nation, he said, "is an expectation in the future. I say this from my reading of history."
In recent years Yassin said Hamas would be willing to settle temporarily for an independent Palestinian state in the formerly occupied territories and leave to the next generation of Palestinians the task of, as he put it, "liberating" the rest of the country.
Yassin's funeral procession was awash in a sea of green, yellow, black and red flags, representing Hamas, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- the four main groups that have waged a deadly campaign of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel for the past 31/2 years. About 950 Israelis and more than 2,400 Palestinians have been killed in the violence.
Hamas fighters in black hoods and green camouflage uniforms marched in formation along with the procession, carrying rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles.
The sharp crack of AK-47 gunshots splintered the air and was one of the few things that could be heard over the nonstop songs, testimonials and vows of revenge that echoed from huge loudspeakers carried atop trucks and vans.
"Your way?" a man screamed over a loudspeaker. "Jihad!" the crowd roared. "Your faction?" he asked. "Hamas!" they responded.
"God is great!" they hollered in unison.
Yassin's neighbors said they were awakened at about 5:30 a.m. Monday by two large blasts, followed a short time later by a third. They said they looked out of their homes to see bodies and body parts in a narrow street between Yassin's home and the Islamic Group Mosque, where he had gone to say dawn prayers.
"I was on the first floor sleeping when three missiles struck, and we went to wake up the children and huddled them outside in the back yard," said Mohammed Naim, 25, whose house is about 20 yards from where Yassin was killed. "I ran to the front and saw dead people in the street -- body parts, legs, heads and hands."
A small hole marked the spot where one of the Israeli missiles landed, and dozens of silver dollar-sized shrapnel holes were sprayed across a high wall in front of Naim's house. Painted on the wall was a message written several months ago to mark the Islamic holiday of Eid: "Great greetings for Sheik Yassin with the voice of bullets on the occasion of Eid."
Correspondent Glenn Frankel in London and staff writers Barton Gellman in New York and Fred Barbash and Laura Blumenfeld in Washington contributed to this report.
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U.S. 'Troubled' by Israeli Attack
White House Working to Ease Damage to Foreign Policy Efforts
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16202-2004Mar22.html
The Bush administration said it was "deeply troubled" by Israel's assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, and it struggled yesterday to limit repercussions on a range of U.S. foreign policy priorities, including the war on terrorism, rebuilding Iraq, democratic reforms in the Arab world and the Arab-Israeli peace process.
Senior administration officials warned of the potential consequences publicly and in private talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. "It is very important that everyone step back and try now to be calm in the region. There is always a possibility of a better day in the Middle East and some of the things that are being talked about by the Israelis . . . might provide new opportunities," said national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
"And so I would hope that nothing will be done that would preclude those new opportunities from emerging," she said on NBC's "Today" show.
The administration condemned the group Yassin founded, the Islamic Resistance Movement (known as Hamas), as a terrorist group and affirmed Israel's right to self-defense. But it tried to distance itself from Israel's decision. White House and State Department officials emphasized that the United States had no advance knowledge of the plans by the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"The United States is deeply concerned about, deeply troubled by this morning's actions. . . . The event, in our view, increases tension and doesn't help our efforts to resume progress towards peace," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. "The increase in tension in the region, the natural reaction of many people in the region is going to make progress more difficult."
The Israeli missile strike, which killed the Hamas leader and seven others, has triggered alarm among U.S. officials and Middle East experts that attacks in Israel and the war on terrorism may enter a deadlier phase.
"Israel's decision may have been for its security, but it certainly has implications -- for internal politics and regional events -- for Egypt, Jordan, the United States, Europe and others. It will have shock waves and ripple effects," said Robert Malley, Middle East program director for the International Crisis Group. "Hamas has not targeted American or other targets outside the occupied territories. That might change, whether done by Hamas or in alliance with others or by others in sympathy with Hamas."
A group linked to al Qaeda, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, issued a statement on an Islamist Web site pledging revenge against the United States and its allies over Yassin's death, Reuters reported.
U.S. officials and Middle East experts are also concerned about the potential linkage of what have been separate issues, such as the reconstruction of Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called the assassination an "ugly crime" and called for Muslim unity as a response. "We call upon the sons of the Arab and Islamic nations to close ranks, unite and work hard for the liberation of the usurped land and restore rights," Sistani said in a statement.
The administration also is worried that yesterday's attack will divert attention from two key initiatives on the agenda of next week's Arab League summit in Tunis: an endorsement of political and economic change in the region, and reviving an earlier Arab peace overture to Israel. The United States backs both proposals.
"The killing of Sheik Yassin is what the Arabs are going to want to talk about," said a senior State Department official involved in Middle East policy. "It will in turn undercut their willingness to consider how to push their peace plan, or the possibility of benefits of an Israeli pullout" from Gaza, which Sharon has proposed.
Middle East experts predict that Arab public backlash could even cripple the two Arab League initiatives. "This happens when all the governments face battles with their own public opinion. This assassination makes all these efforts difficult if not impossible," said Shibley Telhami, who holds the University of Maryland's Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development.
The State Department said Washington will continue to work on peace, while nudging both Israelis and Palestinians. "Both sides have obligations and in particular the Palestinian Authority must do everything in its power to confront and halt the terror and violence," Boucher said. But he also repeated U.S. opposition to Israel's policy of "targeted killings."
Israel's foreign minister met yesterday with Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Rice in long-scheduled meetings. After talks with Cheney, Shalom said Israel is "doing everything we can to coordinate our future moves with the American administration."
Assistant Secretary of State William J. Burns met in Cairo yesterday with envoys from the United Nations, European Union and Russia -- who joined the U.S. in backing the peace plan known as the "road map" -- to discuss the status of that initiative and Sharon's plan for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. The United States had hoped to be able to blend Sharon's plan with the road map, although both U.S. officials and Middle East experts fear the attack may hurt the effort.
"The dilemma for the Bush administration is who fills the vacuum once Israel withdraws? A withdrawal could very well now produce Hamas terrorist leadership," said Martin S. Indyk, former ambassador to Israel for the Clinton and current Bush administrations and now at the Brookings Institution Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "Then the U.S. faces the possibility of a failed terrorist state on the border of Israel and Egypt. How do you deal with that?"
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Attack Draws Wide Condemnation
Briton Calls Yassin's Killing 'Unlawful'; Thousands Protest in Jordan, Egypt
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16186-2004Mar22.html
LONDON, March 22 -- The killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin on Monday triggered a widespread and angry wave of condemnation from Europe and the Arab world, both of which contended the attack was an illegal act that would make the search for Middle East peace and the fight against terrorism more difficult.
The mood of many European governments was reflected in the withering criticism voiced by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who usually strikes a balance in his comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Straw told reporters that while he understood why Israel felt the need to retaliate against terrorism, he could not see how it could benefit "from attacking an 80-year-old in a wheelchair." Yassin, a quadriplegic, was actually believed to be 67.
Israel "is not entitled going for this kind of unlawful killing, and we therefore condemn it," Straw added. "It is unacceptable, it is unjustified, and it is very unlikely to achieve its objectives."
Straw was speaking after the monthly meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels. The ministers issued a statement noting that the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, the radical group that Yassin founded, was guilty of "atrocities which have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Israelis" and that Israel was entitled to protect its citizens from terrorism. But they added, "Not only are extrajudicial killings contrary to international law, they undermine the concept of the rule of law, which is a key element in the fight against terrorism."
Egypt and Jordan, Israel's closest Arab neighbors, both of which have signed peace accords with Israel, denounced the assassination. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has sought to push Palestinians back to the negotiating table with Israel, described it as "regrettable and cowardly," while Jordan's King Abdullah called it a criminal act, news services reported.
Asked about its likely impact on the peace process, Mubarak replied: "What peace process, when the situation is on fire?"
Mubarak canceled plans for a handful of Egyptian lawmakers to participate in a celebration in the Israeli parliament of the 25th anniversary of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, the first between Israel and an Arab state.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan condemned the killing as contrary to international law, and he appealed to "all in the region to remain calm and avoid any further escalation in tensions."
Annan called for a revival of the peace process that is jointly endorsed by a group known as the quartet: the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations. It has endorsed the U.S.-backed "road map" for a phased settlement that would lead to an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel -- a goal that Hamas, which advocates an Islamic state in all of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has vehemently opposed.
Quartet representatives were to meet Monday night in Cairo to discuss how to revive the process. But Annan conceded that Yassin's killing would make the effort more difficult. "It doesn't really facilitate the task of peacemakers," he said, according to the Associated Press.
In Jordan's capital, Amman, the AP said, about 15,000 protesters -- including four cabinet ministers and other lawmakers -- marched following afternoon prayers at a downtown mosque, angrily chanting: "We will not be humiliated and we will not be gentle. We are on the path of Ahmed Yassin."
About 7,000 students demonstrated at Cairo's al-Azhar University, where Yassin studied, while about 3,000 at Sanaa University in Yemen attended a rally at which the United States was accused of giving the green light to Israel to assassinate Yassin, the AP reported.
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Palestinians Swear Vengeance for Killing of Cleric by Israelis
March 23, 2004
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/international/middleeast/23MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
GAZA, March 22 - Hours after Israeli missiles killed the spiritual leader of the militant group Hamas, Palestinians heralded him on Monday as a new unifying martyr at a mournful, vengeful and celebratory funeral that drew the largest crowds in Gaza in a decade.
The Israeli government hailed the attack on the leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, as a blow to terrorism comparable to the American pursuit of Al Qaeda.
Protests and violence flared in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel after the killing, by shrapnel-packed missiles fired into a Gaza lane as the sheik, a paraplegic, was pushed home in his wheelchair after dawn prayers.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians carrying the black, yellow, green or red flags of different factions accompanied Sheik Yassin's wooden coffin through streets bitter with the smoke of burning tires and echoing with commemorative gunfire.
Palestinians crowded on rooftops and the crumpled remains of a bombed-out security headquarters in what was easily the largest demonstration here since Yasir Arafat returned triumphantly to Gaza 10 years ago under the Oslo accords.
It was a measure of Sheik Yassin's status as an icon to Palestinians and as a perceived threat to Israelis that his death seemed to hold consequences for every player in the conflict, from the Israelis and Palestinians to the Egyptians and Americans.
The killing starkly illuminated and almost certainly deepened the divide between the current Israeli and Palestinian leaderships, possibly ruling out further negotiations between them over the Bush administration's sidelined peace plan, some analysts said.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, whose government authorized the attack last week, called Sheik Yassin an "archmurderer" committed to "the murder and the killing of Jews wherever they may be and the destruction of the state of Israel."
Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian prime minister, called Sheik Yassin "a great leader." Yassir Arafat, for whom Sheik Yassin was the leading rival as national symbol, lowered his flags to half-staff, declared a three-day mourning period and recited a Muslim prayer for the dead.
"To heaven, you martyr," Mr. Arafat said.
Mr. Sharon had already ruled out the Palestinian leadership as a partner for substantive negotiations, at least for now. He has said he intends to "disengage" unilaterally from the Palestinians by withdrawing settlers and soldiers from most or all of Gaza and part of the West Bank.
Inside Israel, that disengagement plan almost surely received a political boost from the killing of Sheik Yassin. Mr. Sharon had come under attack from his right as rewarding terrorism by speaking of withdrawal while the conflict continued. Right-wing politicians strongly supported the killing of Sheik Yassin.
With the adversaries now even more polarized and Hamas vowing to intensify its violence, Mr. Sharon's go-it-alone approach to what he argues will be more secure boundaries may increasingly appeal to Israelis.
Yet the missile attack may also hinder Israel's efforts to build support in the region for its plan. Palestinians called it a major embarrassment to King Abdullah of Jordan, who met just Thursday with Prime Minister Sharon to discuss the pullout.
Egypt, which has also been in talks with Israel over Mr. Sharon's plan, canceled a trip by legislators planned for this week to mark the 25th anniversary of its peace agreement with Israel. Egyptian and Jordanian diplomats visited the "condolence tent" set up in a soccer field here for mourners.
At least seven people besides Sheik Yassin died in the Israeli attack, including bodyguards and bystanders, Palestinian officials said. Seventeen people were wounded.
Arab and European nations condemned the killing of the sheik. Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, said the attack was "contrary to international law." Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, called it "unacceptable" and "very unlikely to achieve its objectives."
The Bush administration, saying Israel did not consult it in advance, said it was "troubled" by the killing. But Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, told NBC television, "Let's remember that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that Sheik Yassin has himself, personally, we believe, been involved in terrorist planning."
Israeli officials, who repeatedly compared Sheik Yassin to Osama bin Laden, said his role was not in the technical details of preparing attacks but in approving them and motivating suicide bombers. "He was encouraging the phenomenon of suicide bombers," said Maj. Sharon Feingold, an Army spokeswoman. "I'm not saying that he specifically sat down and thought through all these attacks, but he definitely gave the go-ahead."
Palestinians said it was the Israelis who were supplying motivation for violence. Raising clouds of dust in Gaza's streets, masked gunmen from Hamas marched with gunmen from Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, which is connected to Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction.
Mourners attacked Israel as having no sense of justice in using missiles to kill a gray-bearded man in a wheelchair. Yet the tone of the procession was often triumphant.
"This is the birth day of a new Muslim generation," shouted one organizer, perched on a speaker that turned his voice into a reverberating roar as he rode on the roof of a van.
Muhammad al-Hindi, a leader of Islamic Jihad, told a Gaza radio station, "Congratulations to all the Palestinians for the death." He said it would usher in "the victory phase."
Standing on the corrugated tin roof of a cinder-block building to watch the crowd, Muhammad Abu Hussa, 17, said Israel, not Sheik Yassin, was the aggressor. "The fingernail of Sheik Yassin is worth all the Jewish people," he said.
Asked what would bring peace, he replied, "The Jews should be annihilated." He made chopping gestures at his throat, hands and legs. "They should be turned into parts," he said. He said that he was a member of Fatah, not Hamas, and that he was not politically active.
Hamas is officially committed to Israel's destruction, while Fatah leaders say they support a negotiated, two-state solution to the conflict.
Just below the anger at Israel ran a current of anger at the United States, attacked as biased against Palestinians and the source of Israel weaponry. Hamas issued a statement saying American support for Israel enabled the attack. "All the Muslims of the world will be honored to join in the retaliation for this crime," it read.
Israel, which tried in September to kill Sheik Yassin, renewed its decision to do so after a double suicide bombing March 15 at Ashdod port. That attack killed 10 Israelis; Israeli officials said it was intended to kill far more and was aimed at a sensitive site. The defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, said Hamas had become a "strategic threat."
A senior Israeli military official said in a telephone interview on Monday night that he was not surprised by the reaction among Palestinians. "The higher motivation for revenge attacks is obvious and expected," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The question is what is going to happen in the medium and long term, and it's very hard to say right now."
He said the sheik's death had opened a "big hole" in the Hamas leadership, one the group might be unable to fill. He said the strike on Monday should be seen as part of Israel's continuing offensive against Hamas, which includes cutting off its finances and sending ground forces into Gaza. "It's a very comprehensive effort, and they understand it," he said.
Like other Israeli officials, he argued that Hamas was already trying constantly to kill Israelis before the missile strike on Monday.
It is Israel's policy to insist on anonymity for officers with access to intelligence material.
There were some dissenting voices inside the Israeli government. Avraham Poraz, the interior minister and a member of the centrist Shinui party, told Israel Radio, "I think the damage is greater than the usefulness." He added, "This man was beyond everything else a symbol, and also a religious symbol."
Dr. Reuven Paz, a noted Israeli counterterrorism expert, warned of "harsh consequences" for Israel because Sheik Yassin had been "turned into a symbol for the whole Muslim world."
He said Palestinian leaders like the prime minister, Mr. Qurei, would be unable to stand up to the popular support for Hamas. Israeli officials say Mr. Qurei had shown no inclination before to act against the group.
After the killing, Israel sealed off the Gaza Strip, closed fortified checkpoints that cut it into three, and closed off West Bank cities as well. Demonstrations broke out around Gaza and the West Bank. Three Palestinians were killed in a clash with Israeli forces in southern Gaza.
On Monday night, Israeli armored forces entered northern Gaza after militants fired rockets into Israel, Israeli military officials said. No injuries were immediately reported.
Earlier on Monday evening, the Israeli Army said the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah fired dozens of antitank missiles and mortar shells across the northern border at army posts. Israeli artillery fired back, and Israeli warplanes struck inside Lebanon at what Israel said were Hezbollah targets.
Sheik Yassin regularly made the 300-yard round trip from his home to pray five times daily at the Islamic Complex mosque, where he first urged the formation of Hamas in the 1980's. Israel chose to strike Monday, the senior Israeli military official said, because it was the first opportunity for a lethal attack since the government decision.
The missiles punched at least four holes the diameter of broomsticks into the pavement and pitted the curbs and the walls of the surrounding houses with shrapnel. The shrapnel pierced holes through steel doors an eighth of an inch thick.
Palestinian children collected short golden pins, like the severed tips of pens, that apparently were sprayed by the missiles. Following its standard policy, the Israeli army declined to discuss the weapons used in the attack.
Ahmed al-Aloul, 16, said his father, Raed al-Aloul, 52, was killed when he rushed to help the sheik after the first missiles hit. Ahmed had saved the remains of the sheik's wheelchair, which he rolled out of his house on its one remaining caster. The nylon webbing of the seat had been shredded. "I didn't have the courage to look at the scene," Ahmed said.
Sheik Yassin was buried in a sandy cemetery in a grave that was marked for now only with two cinderblocks. A boy named Mahmoud Asharafa, 9, lingered by the grave as the mourners dispersed.
"I love him because he is a freedom fighter," said the boy, one of few mourners seen to wipe away tears. He wore a striped sweater that appeared at first glance to have the word "independence" across the chest. On closer inspection, it bore the letters "END," repeated over and over.
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Israel Defends Killing of Hamas Leader
March 23, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Yassin.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Israel defended its killing of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin before the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, calling him a ``godfather of terrorism'' as the Palestinians pushed for a resolution condemning his death.
The United States, meanwhile, said it would oppose any resolution that ignored Yassin's role in terrorism.
Yassin, the bearded, quadriplegic spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed early Monday in an Israeli missile strike in Gaza City. He is the highest-ranking figure slain in an Israeli campaign of ``targeted killings'' against militant leaders.
On Tuesday the chief Palestinian delegate, Nasser al-Kidwa, called Yassin's killing a ``war crime'' and said the United Nations should view Israel as an illegal occupier of Palestinian lands, not an innocent victim of terrorism.
He said the Palestinians' allies in the Security Council would push for a resolution condemning the killing on Wednesday. The United States was almost sure to veto such a measure.
The United States and Algeria, the only Arab nation on the Security Council, failed earlier Tuesday to agree on a statement that would have had the president of the Security Council criticize the killing. The United States insisted on language condemning recent terrorist activities by Hamas, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said.
In their remarks to the Security Council, both the Palestinians and the Israelis accused other countries of coddling the other side.
``Israel has completely destroyed the lives of the Palestinian people,'' al-Kidwa said. ``Israel is an aggressive, occupying power and is not a country that is defending itself.''
The Israeli ambassador, Dan Gillerman, criticized the Security Council for convening ``not to honor the memory of the hundreds murdered by (terrorism), but to come to the defense of one of its prime perpetrators, a godfather of terrorism.
``As long as we pretend that the response to terrorism is more serious than the terrorism itself, we only invite more of it,'' Gillerman said.
Negroponte noted that Yassin opposed the U.N.-backed ``road map'' plan, which calls for a separate Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel.
``He preached hatred and glorified suicide bombings of buses, restaurants and cafes,'' Negroponte said. ``This Security Council should not, and the United States will not, support initiatives which ignore this reality.''
In the past, the Palestinians have pushed resolutions condemning Israel to a vote, forcing a U.S. veto. The Palestinians then seek a resolution from the U.N. General Assembly, where no nation has veto power.
In Geneva meanwhile, the top U.N. human rights body decided Tuesday to hold Israel to account for its killing of Yassin.
The 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission approved a resolution from the Organization of the Islamic Conference to hold a special debate Wednesday on the assassination.
Developing countries, which make up most of the membership, mustered 34 votes in favor of the resolution. The United States, Australia and Eritrea voted against. Fourteen countries, mostly from Europe, abstained.
Censure by the U.N. body carries no penalties; it simply draws attention to a country's human rights record.
Associated Press reporter Jonathan Fowler in Geneva contributed to this report.
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Hamas Names Hard-liner as New Leader in Gaza
March 23, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/international/middleeast/23CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, March 23 - The Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas named one of its most combative figures, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, as its leader in the Gaza Strip today following Israel's killing of the group's founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
Meanwhile, senior Israeli security officials said top Hamas leaders would continue to be targets as part of an ongoing campaign against Palestinians linked to violence against Israel.
"Everyone is in our sights," said Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel's minister of internal security. "There is no immunity for anyone."
Dr. Rantisi, a pediatrician in his mid-50's, has already survived one such Israeli effort. He suffered multiple wounds when his car was hit by a missile on a Gaza City street last June, but quickly recovered.
While a major figure in the movement, he lacks the towering stature of Sheik Yassin, who established the group in 1987. The sheik was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike as he left a Gaza City mosque following Monday morning prayers.
President Bush did not repeat statements by a White House spokesman that the administration was "deeply troubled" by the killing of Sheik Yassin. Instead, the president told reporters that he was "worried about terrorist groups targeting America." He added, "Whether it be a Hamas threat, or an Al Qaeda threat, we take them very seriously in this administration."
Dr. Rantisi who speaks frequently to journalists, has been the most visible and fiery Hamas spokesman in recent years.
Dr. Rantisi vowed that as leader of Hamas from its Gaza stronghold, the group would continue to push hard to carry out suicide bombings and other attacks.
"The Israelis will not know security," Dr. Rantisi told the crowd at a memorial service today for Sheik Yassin. "We will fight them until the liberation of Palestine, the whole of Palestine."
And in remarks directed at the "military wing" of Hamas, he said, "The door is open for you to strike all places, all the time and using all means."
The Hamas leadership structure is fuzzy - Sheik Yassin held the title of spiritual leader - and the full extent of Dr. Rantisi's authority was not immediately clear.
Khaled Mashaal, based in Syria, remains head of Hamas's political bureau, a key decision-making body, Hamas officials said.
In an interview tonight with the Arab satellite television network Al Jazeera, Dr. Rantisi said he would "obey" the political bureau.
In the past, there has been tension between Hamas leaders in the Palestinian territories and those in exile.
The killing of Sheik Yassin seemed, at least in the short term, likely to increase regional violence as Palestinian groups called for retaliatory attacks.
Israeli aircraft carried out an attack tonight just across the border in southern Lebanon against a group of Hezbollah militants assembling a missile launcher, the Israeli military said. Two militants were killed and one was injured, The Associated Press reported from Beirut, citing a Lebanese security official.
Also, Israeli troops shot to death an armed Palestinian who was crawling as he attempted to approach the Jewish settlement of Morag in the southern Gaza Strip.
In Hamas, a group defined by its extreme positions, Dr. Rantisi is known as the leader who makes the most vitriolic statements and opposes any form of compromise with Israel.
When Hamas and other Palestinian factions declared a unilateral truce with Israel last summer, Dr. Rantisi was a vocal critic of the decision. The truce never fully took hold, and collapsed within a couple months.
Dr. Rantisi no longer practices medicine, and in recent years has taught medical courses at the Islamic University, where many students support Hamas.
He spent years imprisoned by Israel, and was sent into exile in Lebanon in 1992 along with several hundred other Hamas activists. The Palestinian Authority - which he frequently criticizes - also jailed him for about two years in the late 1990's.
While Dr. Rantisi describes himself as a political figure, Israel says there is no distinction between the "political" and "military" wings of Hamas and that Dr. Rantisi is among those who have orchestrated the group's suicide bombing campaign even if they have not planned the details of attacks.
The death of Sheik Yassin brought a deluge of international criticism directed at Israel, and it also produced a measure of Palestinian political unity, at least temporarily.
The Fatah movement which is more nationalist than religious, is headed by the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei and is the main rival of Hamas in Palestinian politics.
But Fatah leaders have lavished praise on Sheik Yassin, and Mr. Qurei traveled from the West Bank to Gaza to attend today's memorial service.
"It is such an ugly crime committed by this government of murderers, it is the Israeli government that assassinated this symbol of resistance," Mr. Qurei said. "We are witnessing today, here in his memorial, the unity of the Palestinian people."
Israel, meanwhile, said it would press its current offensive in Gaza, which began a week ago in response to a double suicide bombing in the Israeli city of Ashdod by the Palestinians that killed 10 Israelis.
"If we will continue, in a determined way, with our strikes against Hamas and other terror groups, with the means I outlined, including action against those leaders, we will bring more security to Israeli citizens," said Israel's defense minister, Shaul Mofaz.
Israeli security officials acknowledge that Sheik Yassin's killing has energized the Palestinian factions. But they say Hamas and the other groups were already going all-out to strike at Israel.
"The Palestinians and Hamas feel they have lost a father," said Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, the head of military intelligence. "But I think they have done their maximum to attack us until now, and will do their maximum to attack us from now on."
-------- mideast
Wave of Anger Rolls Across Arab World
March 23, 2004
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/international/middleeast/23ARAB.html
DAMASCUS, Syria, March 22 - The outpouring of anger and grief that rolled across the Middle East on Monday indicated that in assassinating Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, the Israelis had not targeted just another Palestinian opponent to its occupation.
Regional leaders including President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and President Bashar Assad of Syria weighed in, criticizing Israel for ratcheting up the violence at a time when the first tentative steps toward peace were being taken in almost four years.
More significantly, the heads of important Islamic institutions in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere deplored the Israeli slaying of one of their own, and gave their approval for acts of revenge. None failed to point out that Sheik Yassin was a crippled man confined to a wheelchair who was killed just as he finished the dawn prayers.
Thousands of protesters poured into streets here in Damascus, and in the capitals of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Sudan and Yemen, demanding that the Arab leaders do something to prevent Israel from acting with such impunity.
President Mubarak, who had recently been trying to reassert Egypt's role in shepherding the bickering Palestinian factions to the peace table, was visibly upset.
"This is a brutal act and no one imagined that the situation could reach such a stage," said Mr. Mubarak, who called off a planned visit by an Egyptian delegation to the Israeli Parliament to mark the 25th anniversary of the Camp David accord.
The Egyptian president, noting the efforts to restart peace negotiations, said that these would now have to be aborted. "What peace process, when the situation is on fire?" he said.
In Cairo and Amman, Jordan, both of which house Israeli embassies, demonstrators called for their expulsion. "No Zionist embassy on Arab land," chanted demonstrators who marched through Amman's streets for 90 minutes after noon prayers.
Sheik Yassim's assassination comes at a particularly awkward moment for the Arab leaders, who are due to convene next Monday in Tunis for a meeting to discuss both the Palestinian issue and democratic reforms. Their positions are widely seen by the Arab public as being dictated by Washington, to start with, and the killing is likely to end any discussion of normalizing relations with Israel, first broached at a 2002 summit meeting.
King Abdullah II of Jordan faces the additional embarrassment of just having met Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel last week to discuss the potential Israeli pullout from the Gaza strip.
"We are annoyed and pained by what happened despite our arduous and persistent efforts on all sides, including the Israeli government, to refrain from its policy of military escalation," the king said in a statement.
While no Arab leader is likely to have shared any great affinity with the sheik's extremist Hamas movement, widespread public support for the Palestinian cause dictates that they muster some sympathy for the man or risk further tarnishing their own images. Sheik Yassin was elderly, crippled and a religious man, attributes that evoke respect across the Arab and Muslim world.
This prompted numerous religious establishments to weigh in on his behalf.
Sheik Mohamed Tantawi, the grand sheik of Al Azhar and hence Egypt's highest cleric, whose pronouncements carry the weight of religious law, issued a statement that basically endorsed revenge.
"The assassins did not spare an old and paralyzed man," he said in a statement carried by Egypt's state-run Middle East News Agency. "This dastardly crime needs retribution."
Analysts suggested that by killing Sheik Yassin, Israel risks pushing Hamas into becoming an even more radical organization and diminishing what is already weak support for any peace negotiations.
"Liberals, radicals, nationalists will all unite in rejecting this kind of operation because of Yassin's tragic and dramatic health condition," said Nabil Abdel Fattah, deputy director of Al Ahram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo and a specialist in militant groups. "This will help mobilize emotions against the peace process in general."
Protesters across the Arab world demanded revenge.
Students demonstrated at practically every major university in Egypt. At Zagazig University on the Nile delta, the students hoisted a wheelchair aloft, many of them weeping, said Hatem Zakariah, who took part in the march.
In the Yarmouk refugee camp, which forms part of greater Damascus, a few thousand demonstrators, some brandishing knives and copies of the Koran, chanted slogans including, "America is the enemy of God."
President Assad of Syria, speaking through an unidentified government spokesman, called the killing a "dangerous escalation" of the Middle East conflict. The country's foreign minister, Farouk al-Sharaa, flew to Cairo for consultations along with his Jordanian counterpart, Marwan Muasher.
Exchanges of fire erupted between Hezbollah and Israeli along the border with Lebanon, and an Islamic Web site carried a letter purportedly from Al Qaeda saying revenge attacks should be carried out against the United States for its unconditional support for Israel.
Even Iraq weighed in, with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's most important Shiite cleric, and Foreign Minister Hoshar Zubairy separately condemning the killing.
Ayatollah Sistani, who enjoys vast respect among Iraq's majority Shiites, on Monday chastised Israel in a statement and called for Arab and Islamic unity and "liberation of the usurped land."
----
Israel airs film of police firing on Kurds
Reuters
March 23, 2004
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/22/1079939586466.html
Israeli television stations have broadcast film showing Syrian policemen firing from automatic rifles at unarmed people during what the broadcasters said were clashes between Syrian Kurds and police this month.
About 30 people were killed in clashes in northern Syria about a week ago after a brawl at a stadium in Kameshli during a soccer match between Kurdish and Arab teams. Tensions have flared since.
The Israeli television stations said the footage, shown on Sunday, was taken in the first days of the confrontations on March 12 and 13. It was not possible to check the authenticity of the film with the Kurds or with the Syrian authorities who remain formally at war with Israel.
The footage shows police opening fire with automatic rifles at unarmed people running through the streets and in fields near a town. Automatic gunfire and screams can be heard.
An apparently dead man with what looks like a gunshot wound to his chest is seen, as well as pools of blood and wounded people being carried away.
"The pictures were taken by the Kurds in Kameshli. They were broadcast out of the area before the Syrians closed down the Kurdish media outlets," Ehud Yaari, a correspondent for Israel's Channel Two television, said.
Meanwhile, Syrian Kurds mourned those "martyred" during the unrest instead of marking their spring festival on Sunday with traditional singing and celebration.
Although most Kurds stayed at home on the usually joyous day of Norooz - or "new day" - after their leaders appealed for calm, about 2000 gathered in a field outside Kameshli, near the Turkish border, in an event organised by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party.
"This is not a celebration. We are in mourning for the souls of our martyrs," said student Mohammed Jaafar.
"We didn't give them a good funeral. They shot us, so we consider this their respectful funeral," he said.
Kurds make up about two million of Syria's 17 million population. The majority are Arabs. Syria avoids referring to them as a distinct minority and stresses Syrian unity.
-------- nato
NATO enlargement ceremony at White House March 29
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Mar 23, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040323194239.2o3x6ji3.html
US President George W. Bush in a White House ceremony next week will host the heads of government of seven former eastern bloc countries now joining NATO, a spokesman said Tuesday.
On March 29, Bush will welcome the prime ministers of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, as well as North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
Government chiefs of three other countries also seeking NATO membership, Albania, Croatia and Macedonia, will also be present.
"These Central and East European democracies have already acted as allies through their strong solidarity and actions in the war on terrorism, and in helping to strengthen peace and democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq," the White House spokesman said.
"As NATO acts to face the new challenges of the 21st century, the membership of these seven nations in NATO will advance the cause of freedom and strengthen the Atlantic Alliance, the central pillar of transatlantic relations," he said.
On the same day, the seven nations will hand their ratification documents to US officials -- the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty is deposited in Washington -- in the last step before adhesion to NATO.
A formal adhesion ceremony is scheduled to take place in Brussels on April 2 and will be attended by the foreign ministers of the current 19 and seven new member countries.
-------- pakistan / india
Tribal Leaders Seek Truce in Pakistan
Under White Flag, Chiefs Go to Talk With Besieged Forces Near Border
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16140-2004Mar22.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 22 -- Tribal leaders sought Monday to broker a peaceful outcome to the six-day battle between Pakistani troops and Islamic militants in a remote area near Afghanistan, and the army sought to determine whether prominent al Qaeda figures were among those killed or captured in the fighting.
Security officials, meanwhile, said they had discovered a 1.2-mile-long tunnel that could have served as an escape route for senior al Qaeda fugitives when the fighting erupted last Tuesday, although a military spokesman later played down that possibility.
As army and paramilitary troops held their fire, the Associated Press reported, 18 tribal leaders carrying a white flag entered the battle zone Monday morning for talks with local tribesmen who have joined forces with foreign al Qaeda fighters in the barren hills of South Waziristan, just a few miles from the Afghan border.
The tribal leaders were conveying government demands for the freeing of 12 paramilitary fighters and two civilians, the expulsion of foreign militants and the hand-over of local tribesmen who had fought with the foreign militants in the fortified mud-brick compounds that are the focus of the military operation.
But Brig. Mahmood Shah, head of security for the semi-autonomous tribal regions that line the border with Afghanistan, told reporters in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, that "in light of past experience, we are not very hopeful" about the prospects for the talks, according to the AP.
As the negotiations were beginning, fighters with rocket-propelled grenades ambushed an army convoy supporting the operation to flush out the rebels from their strongholds west of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, according to Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the chief military spokesman. Sultan said he could not provide casualty figures, but the Reuters news agency reported that 12 soldiers were killed and 22 wounded.
As part of its commitment to the U.S.-led war on terrorism, Pakistan over the past two years has deployed 70,000 regular army soldiers into the tribal areas, a traditionally lawless realm that has been a haven for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters who fled Afghanistan after the collapse of the Taliban government in late 2001.
The battle in South Waziristan was the biggest since the army first entered the border area. Last week, government officials said they believed the rebels would not be resisting so fiercely unless they were harboring an important al Qaeda figure, possibly Ayman Zawahiri, the top deputy to Osama bin Laden. They have since lowered expectations about Zawahiri's capture, suggesting that the fighters might instead be sheltering wanted tribesmen or perhaps a militant leader from Uzbekistan.
Senior officials said Sunday that the remains of six rebels killed in the recent fighting had been taken to a military hospital in Rawalpindi near here and that DNA samples would be taken to learn whether any of them were significant al Qaeda figures. "They certainly don't look like Pakistanis; they're all foreigners," said a senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition he not be named.
The official added that Zawahiri, a stout, bearded Egyptian whose picture has been broadcast around the world, did not appear to be among them. "The guess is they are all Chechens or Uzbeks, but DNA tests are being conducted."
The official added that the government was eager to emphasize the involvement of foreign fighters to counter accusations by Islamic hard-liners that the army is targeting Pakistanis in the tribal areas. To that end, state-run television aired mortuary footage of five of the dead fighters, who appeared to be in their late twenties. The sixth body was not shown because it had begun to decompose, although it was unlikely to be that of Zawahiri, a senior security official said on condition of anonymity.
In addition to conducting DNA tests, security officials are interrogating roughly 100 captured rebels -- said to include militants from Chechnya, Uzbekistan and some Arab countries -- for information on the whereabouts of Zawahiri or bin Laden. A Pakistani military intelligence official said on condition of anonymity Sunday that about 20 of the captives were of particular interest. A team of U.S. intelligence personnel -- in addition to the 18 who are assisting the army in its operations in South Waziristan -- is participating in their interrogation.
"We may get vital insight into the guerrilla operation being launched against the U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan," another intelligence official said. "We will also know for sure if Ayman or Osama ever operated from this area."
Shah, the security chief for the tribal regions, left open the possibility that Zawahiri or other prominent fugitives could have escaped through a tunnel that linked the homes of two local tribesmen in the village of Kaloosha -- Nek Mohammed and Sharif Khan -- who were accused of taking up arms with the foreign fighters. Shah told reporters that the tunnel opened onto a dry streambed near the border and "may have been used at the start of the operation."
Sultan said later that the tunnel probably could not have been an escape route because it ended just a few feet outside the wall of Mohammed's compound and was well inside the cordon that military forces threw up around the area at the start of the operation. He described it as a shallow "communication tunnel" that was part of the rebels' defenses.
The fighting that began last week has reportedly killed several dozen men on both sides, as well as a number of noncombatants. There was no word Monday night on the outcome of the negotiations between the tribal leaders and the rebels. "We don't want to be seen as rash," said a senior Pakistani military official. "At the same time," he added, "it is a difficult proposition because we want our men freed without being seen as yielding any ground to the terrorists."
Special correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi contributed to this report.
-------- spies
CIA Exec Meets Athens Olympic Officials
March 23, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-OLY-Athens-Security.html
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- The CIA's top counterterrorism official met Tuesday with Olympic organizers as part of U.S. efforts to strengthen security cooperation in the final months before the games.
No immediate details were given following the talks with Jose Rodriguez, director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. But plans to safeguard the Aug. 13-29 games have taken added urgency following the train bombings in Spain earlier this month.
The talks also coincided with the end of a two-week Olympic security exercise involving 400 U.S. commandos, and fears of a serious escalation in Mideast violence following Israel's killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the militant group Hamas.
Police on Tuesday said they will provide 24-hour guard at Israeli and Jewish sites in Greece and 150 officers to protect Israeli embassy staff from potential terrorist attacks.
Hundreds of Greek and Palestinian demonstrators took part in anti-Israel demonstrations in Athens and the northern city of Thessaloniki to protest Yassin's killing.
``You're going to see a lot of senior American officials come over here ... Get used to it. There's a great deal of interest in the Olympics,'' said the U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Thomas Miller, who accompanied Rodriguez.
Rodriguez made no public comment after the meetings at the Olympic organizing committee's headquarters. A statement from Athens 2004 said Rodriguez met with officials including the chief organizer, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki.
Miller described the talks as part of regular contact between Washington and Olympic planners. In November, FBI Director Robert Mueller visited Athens.
Greece has been under intense international pressure to expand the Olympic security network, which already carries a record price tag of more than $800 million.
``I just think that it's really important to stop using words -- emotional words -- like afraid, scared or this or that,'' Miller said.
Greece has asked NATO allies to help patrol Greek airspace and share intelligence on possible terror threats, including ``protection against a chemical, biological and nuclear incident.''
NATO members France, Germany, Britain, Spain and the United States are part of a seven-nation security advisory group working with Olympic planners. Other members of the task force include Israel and Australia.
-------- un
POLITICS
Shiite Ayatollah Is Warning U.N. Against Endorsing Charter Sponsored by U.S.
March 23, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/international/middleeast/23IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 22 - Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has warned of "dangerous consequences" if the United Nations endorses the American-sponsored interim constitution for an independent Iraq that was adopted over Shiite protests two weeks ago.
The warning came in a letter released by Ayatollah Sistani's office on Monday, four days after it was delivered in New York to Lakhtar Brahimi, the chief United Nations envoy to Iraq. It amounted to a warning that the ayatollah's followers, by far the most powerful political bloc in Iraq, could move to paralyze American plans for a smooth transfer of sovereignty on June 30 unless Shiite terms for changing the interim constitution were met.
Ayatollah Sistani warned in his letter that he would boycott a coming visit to Baghdad by Mr. Brahimi, refusing to "take part in any meetings or consultations" conducted by him or his emissaries, unless the United Nations offered guarantees that it would not endorse the interim constitution.
After nearly a year of discounting the value of a United Nations political role in Iraq, the Bush administration shifted its position recently, saying it strongly favored the United Nations having a part in helping to establish an interim government and organize elections.
Mr. Brahimi, a former foreign minister of Algeria, is to arrive here late this month or early in April to help broker the talks on a transitional government and election arrangements. But Shiite groups that accept Ayatollah Sistani as their ultimate political arbiter have said they will use negotiations over the interim authority - blocking agreement, if necessary - to expand the Shiite majority's powers before an elected government takes over at the end of 2005.
The Sistani letter was the latest move in a complex game of maneuvers with the American occupation authority and the United Nations. As the political timetable here shortens, the ayatollah has appeared to oscillate between ultimatums that stop just short of threatening to provoke public disorder and conciliatory moves encouraging hopes of the Americans that he will in the end prove an ally in their push for a peaceful transfer.
After Shiite leaders on the American-appointed advisory body, the Iraqi Governing Council, agreed earlier this month on an interim constitution that included elaborate minority guarantees, they staged a last-minute boycott of a signing ceremony. It was an effort to force a scaling-back of the blocking powers granted to minorities, particularly Sunni Muslims and Kurds, who are fearful of Shiite domination. After talks with Ayatollah Sistani's aides at his headquarters in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, the Shiite leaders signed the new charter, only to recant immediately after the ceremony by again denouncing the minority guarantees.
As he has with the Americans, the ayatollah has played hot and cold with the United Nations, signaling only a week ago that he favored its participation in the talks on an interim government and elections, then backtracking with his letter to Mr. Brahimi. His moves have kept senior American officials here on tenterhooks, uncertain how far he is prepared to go to realize his demands - and unsure of what they will do if Shiite demands lead to an impasse that threatens to leave Iraq with no government capable of taking over authoritatively on June 30.
Ayatollah Sistani's warnings to Mr. Brahimi were stark. The interim constitution, he said, "enjoys no support among most of the Iraqi people," - meaning the Shiites who account for about 60 percent of the 25 million people - and "confiscates the rights" of the national assembly that is scheduled to be elected by Jan. 31 next year to draw up a permanent constitution. Because of that, he said, the elections he has persistently demanded - for the assembly, for the constitution it will draw up, and ultimately for a permanent government - "become useless."
The cleric said he feared that the United Nations Security Council resolution he had demanded as an international guarantee of elections could be expanded to endorse the interim constitution, "obliging the Iraqi people to abide by it against their will."
He added, "We warn that such a step would be unacceptable to the majority of the Iraqi people, and would have dangerous consequences in the future." He offered no elaboration on what those consequences might be.
American officials have played down the possibility that the maneuvering here could descend into open conflict, or even civil war, saying American powers that will remain after June 30 will be enough to ensure stability. One top official told reporters on the weekend that the interim constitution would matter less in the 18 months before there was an elected government than the competence and honesty of the individuals appointed to head the ministries.
But that, too, the official acknowledged, has been giving the Americans cause for unease. The official said the Iraqi groups on the Governing Council had submitted names for more than 80 deputy minister positions - jobs, the official said, that would be crucial to the government's efficiency. Of the names submitted, he said, about 50 were people with no known qualifications other than their political affiliations.
The official said L. Paul Bremer III, the chief of the American occupation authority, had "put a stop" to the Iraqi machinations, and had demanded that the council members provide career histories of each nominee. "What we'll do is create a professional, uncorrupt administration," the official said, and trust that Iraqis appointed to head the ministries, not the details of the interim constitution, will prove decisive in keeping the country stable.
2 Finns Killed in Baghdad
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 22 (AP) - Gunmen killed two Finnish businessmen as they drove in Baghdad on Monday, the latest foreign civilians to die in Iraq. In the southern city of Basra, 14 British soldiers were wounded in two explosions during a demonstration.
British soldiers fired tear gas at about 500 unemployed Iraqi civilians protesting a failure to get jobs with the local customs police, said Col. Zafer Abdel-Nabi, the chief of Basra customs. The crowd threw stones, gasoline bombs and a grenade at troops; six civilians were wounded, he said.
-------- us
Pentagon certifies need for base closures
By George Cahlink gcahlink@govexec.com
March 23, 2004
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0304/032304g1.htm
The Defense Department should start closing or realigning military bases again next year because it has nearly 25 percent more infrastructure than it needs, Pentagon officials concluded in a report released Tuesday afternoon.
The report, required by Congress, officially certifies the Pentagon's conclusion that a new round of the base realignment and closure (BRAC) process is needed in 2005.
Early next year, an independent, nine-member commission will weigh Defense Department plans for closing bases and make final recommendations to Congress and the president. By the fall of 2005, lawmakers and the White House must accept or reject the commission's list in its entirety. The law requires all bases designated as unnecessary to be realigned or shut down no later than 2011.
"Without the flexibility of the BRAC process, the department is substantially hamstrung from realigning its forces and bases to both respond to and encourage further innovations to sharpen our military capability against an agile threat," Defense officials concluded in the untitled report, which was sent to Congress Tuesday.
The report found 24 percent excess capacity across the military. More specifically, the Army has 29 percent, the Air Force 24 percent, the Navy 21 percent and the Defense Logistics Agency 17 percent, according to the report.
No bases were specifically cited, but Defense officials did break down excess capacity by type of work. Among the largest areas of reported excess were: Army research, testing, development and evaluation facilities and laboratories (62 percent); Navy inventory control facilities (60 percent); Air Force classroom training space (45 percent); and Defense Logistics Agency distribution depots (20 percent).
The report predicted that savings from closing or realigning bases would be "substantial." If 12 percent of bases are closed or realigned, Defense would save $3 billion between 2006 and 2011 and $5 billion annually thereafter, Pentagon officials said. If 20 percent of bases are closed or realigned, Defense would save $5 billion between 2006 and 2011 and $8 billion annually thereafter, the report concluded.
The House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee will question Defense officials about the report at a hearing on Thursday. Some lawmakers, including Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, have called for delaying the 2005 BRAC round. Kerry has said the base-closing process should be suspended because it is ideologically driven, while Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, has pledged to introduce legislation delaying BRAC until 2007 because of increased military commitments around the globe.
"If the ideology is saving the taxpayers' money...then I am guilty as charged," said Raymond DuBois, deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations and environment. He says the goal of BRAC is to eliminate the military's Cold War infrastructure, and delaying the next BRAC round would waste money and leave military commanders without the infrastructure required for today's technology-driven and more agile forces.
-------- propaganda wars
White House Counters Ex-Aide
Advisers Call Clarke Disgruntled, Partisan
By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16200-2004Mar22?language=printer
President Bush's top aides launched a ferocious assault on the former White House counterterrorism official who accused Bush of failing to act on the al Qaeda threat before Sept. 11, 2001, and strengthening terrorists by pursuing a misguided focus on Iraq.
The accusations in the new book by Richard A. Clarke, a veteran of four administrations who served for two years as a top aide to Bush's National Security Council, caused a furor in the capital as Democrats sought to use the allegations to challenge Bush's response to terrorism.
Half a dozen top White House officials, departing from their policy of ignoring such criticism, took to the airwaves to denounce Clarke as a disgruntled former colleague and a Democratic partisan. Vice President Cheney, on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, said the counterterrorism coordinator "wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff." Cheney suggested Clarke did not do enough to prevent three attacks during the Clinton administration and said "he may have a grudge to bear there since he probably wanted a more prominent position."
Although some Republican leaders defended the White House and joined in denouncing Clarke, others expressed concern that the former aide's accusations would compound a recent fall in Americans' perception of Bush's honesty that began with the flawed charges about Iraq's weapons and the understatement of the costs of Bush's prescription drug initiative.
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said he believes the White House has to respond directly to Clarke's allegations rather than question his credibility. "This is a serious book written by a serious professional who's made serious charges, and the White House must respond to these charges," he said.
Clarke, who resigned 13 months ago, wrote in his book, "Against All Enemies," that Bush "failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from al Qaeda despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks." The shift of focus to Iraq "launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide," he said.
The timing of Clarke's accusations is particularly sensitive for Bush because the independent commission investigating the 2001 attacks is taking public testimony this week from Bush and Clinton administration national security officials about their actions before the attacks. The White House, citing constitutional prerogatives, has declined to allow the commission to take testimony from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, although she has been interviewed by commission members privately.
Eight Democratic senators sent a letter to Bush reviving demands for Rice's public testimony to the commission. And some GOP strategists -- with an eye to the commission's report this summer, at the height of the campaign -- expressed concern about Rice's refusal to testify publicly. The furor over the allegations by Clarke, who served in the Reagan, Clinton and both Bush administrations, came as former president Jimmy Carter delivered an unusually stern rebuke of Bush over the Iraq war.
"That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and Washington, claiming falsely that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction," Carter told the Independent newspaper of London, where the Clarke allegations were causing new trouble for Prime Minister Tony Blair, a Bush ally. Carter said Bush and Blair "probably knew that many of the allegations were based on uncertain intelligence."
The Bush White House has had a policy of not directly addressing criticism such as that leveled by former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill, who also charged that Bush was disproportionately interested in Iraq even before Sept. 11. But both the gravity and visibility of Clarke's charge caused the White House to change course. Early viewing estimates are that 16 million people watched Clarke on CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday, making it one of the most viewed shows of the week. Also, Clarke directly challenged Bush's strongest political asset -- his response to terrorism -- and Republicans said that made it imperative to respond.
In addition to Cheney's radio appearance, Rice was a guest on all five network morning shows, and by 11 a.m. the White House had booked more than 15 interviews on cable news channels, as well as numerous talk-radio appearances, over the next nine hours. White House press secretary Scott McClellan spent much of both of his briefings yesterday arguing that Clarke's book was politically motivated and timed. "This is Dick Clarke's 'American grandstand,' " McClellan said.
"His assertion that there was something we could have done to prevent the September 11th attacks from happening is deeply irresponsible, it's offensive, and it's flat-out false," McClellan said. He said Clarke had interviewed to be the deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, then left the administration after being turned down. McClellan said Clarke was repeatedly absent from Rice's daily morning meeting for her senior directors after being told to attend.
McClellan sought to tie the book to Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign by saying that Clarke's "best buddy" is Rand Beers, who resigned as a top counterterrorism official at the National Security Council after the invasion of Iraq and later became Kerry's coordinator for national security and homeland security issues.
Rice, on Fox News, said: "Dick Clarke was counterterrorism czar for a long time with a lot of attacks on the United States. What he was doing was -- what they were doing apparently was not working. We wanted to do something different."
A Rice spokesman, Sean McCormack, said Clarke ate lunch with Rice after leaving the administration and offered none of the reservations or complaints he gave in the book.
Clarke, appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America," said it "pains me to have Condoleezza Rice and others mad at me," but added that "both the Clinton administration and the Bush administration did much less than they should have" on terrorism.
Clarke did not immediately respond to an e-mail from The Washington Post seeking comment.
Clarke's allegations come after two weeks in which Kerry (D-Mass.) struggled for footing and the Bush campaign enjoyed what his aides believed was their best run of the year. But by Friday, a Republican official said the campaign was bracing for a tidal wave of negative publicity from Clarke's book. The campaign's defense strategy was that although Clarke could not be roundly refuted on the facts, enough doubt about the issue could be raised by portraying him as reckless and partisan.
Kerry was reading the book yesterday, his staff said, but he stayed out of sight as he continued his vacation in Idaho. The candidate had no formal statement on the matter, but his campaign put out a news release with excerpts from an interview with Clarke that aired Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes."
Beers said in an interview that Clarke is his best friend but that he did not see the book until Saturday. Beers said he believes that the White House has responded with such vehement and personal attacks because the book "undermines their entire election strategy on the national security side, which is that George Bush is an effective commander in chief who rallied the nation after the 11th of September and is successfully fighting the war on terrorism."
That was the prevailing view among Democratic partisans. "About all that's still propping Bush up politically is the very positive impression that most voters have about his performance immediately following the attack," said Democratic operative Jim Jordan. "Anything that contradicts the legend and recasts Bush as weaker and less sure-footed than previously thought is a huge problem for Bush, and Clarke's account certainly does that."
Although many Republican lawmakers were conspicuously silent on the matter yesterday, Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) took the Senate floor to defend Bush and criticize Clarke. "Maybe, for whatever reason, he has a vendetta against the current president. . . . I'm not sure if he wants to sell books or he's looking for a job or what his efforts are," Nickles said.
Staff writers Helen Dewar, Lisa de Moraes, Barton Gellman and Jim VandeHei contributed to this report.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Preliminary Rulings From 9 / 11 Commission
March 23, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Sept-11-Commission-Conclusions.html
Here are preliminary findings about U.S. diplomatic and military efforts regarding terrorism before Sept. 11, 2001. They are contained in a statement issued Tuesday by the staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States:
--From the spring of 1997 to September 2001 the U.S. government tried to persuade the Taliban to expel Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan to a country where he could face justice and that would not be a sanctuary for his organization. The efforts employed inducements, warnings and sanctions. All these efforts failed.
--The U.S. government also pressed two successive Pakistani governments to demand that the Taliban cease providing a sanctuary for bin Laden and his organization and, failing that, to cut off their support for the Taliban. Before Sept. 11 the United States could not find a mix of incentives or pressure that would persuade Pakistan to reconsider its fundamental relationship with the Taliban.
--From 1999 through early 2001, the United States pressed the United Arab Emirates, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off ties and enforce sanctions, especially related to air travel to Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before Sept. 11.
--The government of Saudi Arabia worked closely with top U.S. officials in major initiatives to solve the bin Laden problem with diplomacy. On the other hand, before Sept. 11 the Saudi and U.S. governments did not achieve full sharing of important intelligence information or develop an adequate joint effort to track and disrupt the finances of the al-Qaida organization.
--In response to the request of policy-makers, the military prepared a wide array of options for striking bin Laden and his organization from May 1998 onward. When they briefed policy-makers, the military presented both the pros and cons of those strike options, and briefed policy-makers on the risks associated with them.
--Following the unsuccessful Aug. 20, 1998, missile strikes against bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders, both senior military officials and policy-makers placed great emphasis on ``actionable intelligence'' as the key factor in recommending or deciding to launch military action against bin Laden and his organization.
--Policy-makers and military officials expressed frustration with the lack of actionable intelligence.
--Some officials inside the Pentagon, including those in the special forces and the counterterrorism policy office, expressed frustration with the lack of military action.
--Both civilian and military officials of the Defense Department said that neither Congress nor the American public would have supported large-scale military operations in Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001.
--------
Rumsfeld Counters 9 / 11 Panel Findings
March 23, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Sept-11-Commission.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Clinton and Bush administration officials engaged in lengthy, ultimately fruitless diplomatic efforts instead of military action to try to get Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal panel said Tuesday. Top Bush officials countered that the terror attacks would have occurred even if the United States had killed the al-Qaida leader.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a strong defense of pre-Sept. 11 actions that have become a major presidential campaign issue, told the federal commission reviewing the attacks that the Sept. 11 plot was well under way when the Bush administration took office in January 2001.
``Killing bin Laden would not have removed al-Qaida's sanctuary in Afghanistan,'' Rumsfeld said. ``Moreover, the sleeper cells that flew the aircraft into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon were already in the United States months before the attack.''
Powell said that even if U.S. forces had invaded Afghanistan, killed bin Laden and neutralized al-Qaida, ``I have no reason to believe that would have caused them to abort their plans.''
Separately, President Bush said Tuesday he would have acted before Sept. 11 ``had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on Sept. 11.''
The testimony by Rumsfeld and Powell came against the backdrop of counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke's claim that top Bush administration officials ignored bin Laden and the threat of the al-Qaida terror network while focusing on Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
Clarke, a holdover from the Clinton administration, said in a newly published book that he warned Bush officials of an urgent need to address the al-Qaida threat but was ignored. Clarke is scheduled to testify before the commission on Wednesday.
Powell did not mention Clarke, but said, ``President Bush and his entire national security team understood that terrorism had to be among our highest priorities and it was.''
Still, according to preliminary findings in one of two reports issued by the commission, it wasn't until the day before the attacks that the Bush administration had a military strategy to overthrow the Taliban government and get at bin Laden in case a final diplomatic push failed. However, that strategy was expected to take three years, the commission said.
The commission report said U.S. officials, in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, feared a failed attempt on bin Laden could kill innocents and would only boost bin Laden's prestige. And the American public and Congress would have opposed any large-scale military operations before the September 2001 attacks, the report said.
In the end, it said, pursuing diplomacy over military action allowed bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders to elude capture.
The panel, formally the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, is holding two days of hearings with top-level Bush and Clinton administration officials. The aim is to question them on their efforts to stop bin Laden in the years leading up to Sept. 11. In addition to Clarke, the panel will hear Wednesday from CIA Director George Tenet and Clinton administration national security adviser Sandy Berger.
The commission's staff has spent months interviewing Clinton and Bush administration officials and poring over documents. Its preliminary findings will be considered by the 10-member panel, which plans to issue a final report this summer.
The staff reports found both administrations lacked the detailed ``actionable'' intelligence needed to strike directly at bin Laden and al-Qaida, so they unsuccessfully sought a diplomatic solution to get the al-Qaida leader out of Afghanistan so he could be captured.
That prompted some angry questioning from commissioner Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska. He asked former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright why nearly a dozen attacks by radical Islamists against Americans from 1993 through 2001 weren't enough for Clinton officials to justify force.
``I keep hearing the excuse we didn't have actionable intelligence. Well, what the hell does that say to al-Qaida?'' Kerry said. ``Basically, they knew -- beginning in 1993 it seems to me -- that there was going to be limited, if any, use of military and that they were relatively free to do whatever they wanted.''
Albright responded: ``We used every single tool we had in terms of trying to figure out what the right targets would be. I am satisfied that we did what we could given the intelligence that we had.''
Former Defense Secretary William Cohen said the Clinton administration recognized the dangers posed by al-Qaida and considered the United States to be ``at war'' against the terrorist organization. Three times after the August 1998 al-Qaida bombings on U.S. embassies in Africa, Clinton officials considered using missile strikes to kill bin Laden. Each time it was decided the intelligence wasn't good enough to ensure success, he said.
Among other staff findings:
-- U.S. officials were concerned that Taliban supporters in Pakistan's military would warn bin Laden of pending operations. The U.S. government had information that the former head of Pakistani intelligence, Hamid Gul, had contacted Taliban leaders as a private citizen in July 1999 and assured them that he would provide three or four hours of warning before any U.S. missile launch, as he had the ``last time'' -- an apparent reference to a failed 1998 cruise missile attack on bin Laden.
-- Pentagon counterterrorism officials prepared a strategy urging the Defense Department in September 1998 ``to take up the gauntlet that international terrorists have thrown at our feet.'' But the paper was rejected by a deputy undersecretary as ``too aggressive.''
-- Rumsfeld told the commission that ``he did not recall any particular counterterrorism issue that engaged his attention before'' the Sept. 11 attacks, other than using unmanned aircraft against bin Laden.
Shortly before the attacks, the Bush administration was debating how to force bin Laden out. At a Sept. 10, 2001, meeting of second-tier Cabinet officials, officials settled on a three-phase strategy. The first step called for dispatching an envoy to talk to the Taliban. If this failed, diplomatic pressure would be applied and covert funding and support for anti-Taliban fighters would be increased.
If both failed, ``the deputies agreed that the United States would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action,'' the report said. Deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley said the strategy had a three-year time frame.
Associated Press reporter Ken Guggenheim contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Sept. 11 panel: http://www.9-11commission.gov
Commission statements:
http://wid.ap.org/documents/documents/911commission6.pdf
http://wid.ap.org/documents/documents/911commission5.pdf
-------- courts
Justices hear ID-showing case
March 23, 2004
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040322-104302-1448r.htm
The Supreme Court yesterday heard oral arguments in a constitutional challenge to a Nevada law that requires people to identify themselves to police officers.
Brought before the court by Nevada rancher Larry Hiibel, the case is rooted in whether the state law violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure and a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
In the case, previously upheld by the Nevada Supreme Court, Mr. Hiibel was convicted of a misdemeanor for refusing to show identification to a Humboldt County sheriff's deputy who was responding to a possible assault call in May 2000.
Some of Mr. Hiibel's supporters - such national groups as the CATO Institute and American Civil Liberties Union have filed briefs on his behalf - maintain that, if not overturned by the high court, the case might set a precedent leading to a requirement that all Americans must carry identification at all times.
The justices appeared divided on the case, questioning with equal aggression Nevada State Public Defender Robert E. Dolan, who is representing Mr. Hiibel, and Conrad Hafen, Nevada senior deputy attorney general, and Sri Srinivasan, assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, who are fighting the challenge.
At issue before the justices is whether a person's refusal to show identification to a police officer gives the officer probable cause to arrest the person. Although the officer must have probable cause to make an arrest, a legal caveat referred to in law-enforcement circles as "Terry stops" allows him to temporarily detain an individual on less than probable cause.
During one exchange, Justice Antonin Scalia asked Mr. Dolan about what sort of questions a police officer can ask an individual that must be answered.
"None at all?" he asked.
Mr. Dolan answered by saying under the Fifth Amendment, an individual has no legal obligation to respond to the officer.
The exchange ended when Justice Scalia asked whether a police officer is allowed to ask questions, but shouldn't expect answers.
Based the 1968 high court case of Terry v. Ohio, an officer can detain and pat down an individual for weapons should the individual be encountered under sufficiently suspicious circumstances - for example, wandering in an alley behind a jewelry story during early hours of the morning.
In the Hiibel case, the question is whether such circumstances were involved in May 2000 when a Humboldt County sheriff's deputy demanded to see identification from Mr. Hiibel, who was smoking a cigarette beside his truck on the side of the road and speaking through the vehicle's window with his daughter.
According to a videotape transcript of the incident from the deputy's squad car, the deputy approached Mr. Hiibel, saying there had been a report of a fight and then repeatedly asked to see the man's identification.
When Mr. Hiibel declined, telling the deputy he would cooperate but he had done nothing wrong, he was arrested and later convicted of a misdemeanor under a state law that requires any person lawfully detained by police to identify themselves.
The conviction was upheld by state courts and eventually reached the Nevada Supreme Court, which ruled by a 4-3 decision that requiring identification during a police investigation "strikes a balance between constitutional protections of privacy and the need to protect police officers and the public."
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case in the next few months.
----
Judges Are Urged to Quit Board Positions
Group: Industry-Funded Foundation Has Interest in Cases Over Which Jurists Presided
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16251-2004Mar22.html
The chief judge of Washington's federal appeals court and two other appellate judges have violated judicial ethics by serving on the board of an industry-funded foundation that has opposed environmental regulations, and by presiding over cases in which the organization's members have a stake, a public interest group charged yesterday.
The Community Rights Counsel (CRC) called on Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, chief of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judges Danny J. Boggs of Kentucky and Jane Roth of Philadelphia to resign their seats on the board of the Foundation for Research in Economics and Environment (FREE) to avoid the appearance of bias. CRC also released a report yesterday contending that FREE, which is based in Bozeman, Mont., has engaged in a wide-scale campaign over the past five years to buy access to judges who hear environmental cases that are financially important to its corporate funders. Among FREE's corporate backers are Texaco Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., General Electric Co., Monsanto Co. and Shell Oil Co.
According to copies of tax records in the report, FREE pays for seminars for judges -- at a cost of about $10,000 each -- to visit resorts in the area around Yellowstone National Park and sets aside a sizable portion of the four-day sessions for fly-fishing, golfing and horseback riding. About 5 percent of the 792 active members of the federal bench attend a FREE trip each year, the group said.
"It's Judicial Ethics 101 that you can't serve on the board of an organization that takes money from corporations to influence the outcome of cases they have before your court," said CRC Executive Director Doug Kendall. "It's outrageous that these junkets continue, and it's doubly outrageous that federal judges serve on the junketing program's board."
Ginsburg, Boggs and Roth all declined to comment yesterday.
John Baden, chairman of FREE, called CRC's accusations "flat wrong." He said he could not speak for the judges but said his group is no more ideological than a university, civic group or conservation organization -- whose boards' judges are generally allowed to join.
He said that his group has a long and respected history of trying to promote "sound environmental policy," and that seminars feature leading experts in their fields who offer a broad range of political viewpoints.
CRC's investigative report, titled "Tainted Justice," noted that Ginsburg and two colleagues on the U.S. Court of Appeals, David B. Sentelle and senior judge Stephen F. Williams, attended FREE seminars while a lawsuit against federal soot and smog regulations was pending before their court in 1998. Those trips were first reported by The Washington Post six years ago.
Yesterday's report revealed, however, that while that case, American Trucking Associations v.EPA, was pending, the attorney who argued against the regulations on behalf of corporate interests had unusual access to the D.C. Circuit judges hearing the case. He was invited to be a FREE board member in 1998 and lectured at a seminar attended by Sentelle, the report said. A FREE official said yesterday that the lawyer, Edward W. Warren, recognized there was a potential ethical conflict and resigned from FREE's board after a year.
Sentelle and Williams also declined to comment yesterday.
The report also said that Boggs, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, sat on FREE's board while he heard a case involving Cordova Chemical Co., which featured arguments made by companies that fund FREE. Roth, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, presided over a case involving another chemical company, in which groups that give FREE money filed a friend of the court brief. She subsequently joined FREE's board.
The CRC report comes days after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia defended his decision not to recuse himself from a case in which Vice President Cheney is seeking to keep secret the deliberations of an energy task force he chaired. Scalia has acknowledged going duck hunting with Cheney but said there is a long history of Supreme Court justices having social interaction with presidents and vice presidents.
A professor of legal ethics said judges' serving on the board of FREE -- a group with a "decided ideological profile" -- is "not defensible" and "even more serious" than the ethical question that Scalia faces.
"Scalia's trip is a single event, affecting a single case," said Stephen Gillers, a New York University law school professor. "Judge Ginsburg's membership is improper, and it compromises the public's view of the impartiality of panels on which he sits in every case of interest to FREE's members. The consequences of this are much broader."
The appearance of judicial conflict, according to Kendall, is not limited to the D.C. Circuit. Vanessa Gilmore, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas, attended a trip funded by FREE while she presided over a case seeking several hundred million dollars in civil fines against Koch Industries Inc., a petroleum, chemical and plastics manufacturer based in Wichita, for hundreds of oil spills in six states, according to the report. Gilmore ultimately accepted a consent decree that required payment of a fraction of the fines sought by the government
Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York attended a seminar paid for by FREE where a former chief executive officer of Texaco gave a lecture titled "The Environment: Some Thoughts from the Corner Office," the report said. A $1 billion tort case accusing Texaco of destroying Ecuadoran rain forest was remanded to Rakoff's courtroom shortly after the seminar.
Some judges have publicly lashed out at criticism of them for attending the seminars. Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the D.C. Circuit wrote that making ethics calls requires good judgment, which judges are presumed to have. "Kendall's real complaint is not with ethics (but) with the content and viewpoint of the seminars," he wrote.
--------
Justices Debate Right to Withhold Name From Police
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16184-2004Mar22.html
What began as a routine investigation of a possible domestic violence incident culminated yesterday in a Supreme Court debate over exactly how much the state may intrude upon individual freedom in the name of safety, as the justices heard oral arguments in the case of a Nevada rancher who was convicted of a crime because he would not give his name to a sheriff's deputy.
At issue was a Nevada law that makes it a misdemeanor to refuse to identify oneself if stopped by a police officer based on "reasonable suspicion" of wrongdoing.
That law violates the constitutionally based right to privacy and the right against self-incrimination, Robert E. Dolan, an attorney for rancher Dudley Hiibel, told the justices. It is "an improper tipping of the balance in favor of the state," Dolan said.
Hiibel's case has become a cause célèbre for civil liberties and privacy advocates, who say the law is tantamount to an internal passport system. To give police one's name is to surrender the key to a trove of private information on government databases, Hiibel's supporters say.
Civil libertarians were particularly troubled by the Nevada Supreme Court's opinion upholding Hiibel's conviction. That court invoked the danger of terrorists "who operate with concealed identities," creating "unparalleled" dangers.
But the state of Nevada, supported by the Bush administration and police organizations, says requiring people to give police their names helps ensure officer safety at a minor cost to individual privacy -- and is less intrusive than the quick frisks for weapons that officers are allowed to make in similar situations.
"The question 'What is your name?' doesn't present any sort of intrusion at all," Sri Srinivasan, an assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, told the court.
Several members of the court seemed to agree with that view. "If there is reasonable suspicion that the person committed a crime, that doesn't shock me," said Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. "Why not let them check in their computer records to see if this is the worst prior offender they've ever had?"
But Justice John Paul Stevens expressed concern that the law lets Nevada convert remaining silent -- which everyone is entitled to do if actually placed under arrest -- into a reason to charge someone.
Hiibel's case began on May 21, 2000, when Deputy Lee Dove responded to a tip about a man punching a woman in a pickup truck. Dove came upon Hiibel standing next to his pickup on the side of a road near Winnemucca, Nev. Dove repeatedly asked Hiibel who he was, and when Hiibel refused, took him to jail.
Hiibel was convicted and fined $250 for violating a state law that permits officers to detain anyone "under circumstances which reasonably indicate that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime," and says that "any person so detained shall identify himself, but may not be compelled to answer any other inquiry."
Nevada's law was intended to codify the Supreme Court's 1968 decision in Terry v. Ohio.
Terry empowered the police to briefly detain suspicious subjects -- such as people who seem to be "casing" a bank in preparation for a robbery -- ask them questions and search them for weapons.
The court authorized "Terry stops" to cover situations in which the police have "reasonable suspicion" of criminal conduct but not enough information for "probable cause," the constitutionally established standard for making an arrest.
Yet the court has never clearly ruled on what police may require of a citizen detained in a Terry stop -- although in past cases, some justices have written that there is no obligation to respond to police questions.
The case is Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, No. 03-5554. A decision is expected by July.
--------
Okla. Opens Trial by Calling Terry Nichols 'A Partner in Terror'
State Says Defendant Helped in 1995 Plot
By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16276-2004Mar22.html
McALESTER, Okla., March 22 -- The state of Oklahoma opened its bombing case against Terry L. Nichols on Monday by calling him a "partner in terror" with Timothy J. McVeigh, as the defense portrayed Nichols as an unwitting dupe in McVeigh's scheme to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building.
Assistant District Attorney Lou Keel told jurors Nichols enthusiastically helped McVeigh plot the attack against the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, and build the "huge monstrous bomb" that killed 168 people and roiled a community.
Keel said the state would prove that Nichols -- already serving a life sentence on a federal conviction -- shared with McVeigh a hatred for the government.
It was Nichols, Keel alleged, who assembled most of the components for the 4,000-pound fertilizer bomb, ultimately packed into drums on a Ryder truck and detonated by McVeigh in front of the building on April 19, 1995.
"These two were partners, and their business was terrorism," Keel said. "It was money out of the pocket of Terry Lynn Nichols that would go toward purchasing most of the components."
Nichols's lawyer, Brian Hermanson, countered by stating that Nichols was set up by his old Army buddy to make it appear that the father of three was involved in the attack, while McVeigh was really covering for others. "This is a case about friendship, manipulation and betrayal," the defense lawyer said.
Hermanson made it clear he will introduce evidence of other possible conspirators, such as the state's star witness, Michael Fortier, another army buddy, who is serving a 12-year federal sentence for not revealing his knowledge about the plot. In a deal with the federal government, Fortier agreed to testify against McVeigh and Nichols.
Hermanson told jurors they should be suspect of Fortier's testimony because he has a vested interest in pleasing the government. And he suggested Fortier was more likely to have been involved, having cased the Murrah Building with McVeigh. Fortier, Hermanson said, never had a conversation with Nichols about the plot.
Nichols listened but showed no emotion as the attorneys outlined their evidence.
In 1997, Nichols and McVeigh were convicted separately for the deaths of the eight federal law enforcement officials who died in the explosion. McVeigh has been executed for the crime, but -- to the dismay of some relatives of the victims -- Nichols was convicted of manslaughter instead of murder, and was spared the death penalty.
Nichols, 48, is being tried for the remaining 161 murders (the number includes a fetus), and the state is seeking the death penalty. The state prosecution has been controversial, as most residents believe it is a waste of money.
Although it is nine years later, legal experts question whether Nichols can get a fair trial in a small state that has been greatly affected by the blast, and where scores of people have some connection to the case or the victims.
The federal trial was moved to Denver when a federal judge ruled that the men could not get a fair trial in Oklahoma. This trial was moved to McAlester, a small town southeast of Oklahoma City.
But the perils of trying Nichols here became abundantly clear Monday. An angry Judge Steven Taylor excused three jurors who he discovered are related to a prosecutor working on the case.
Taylor opened the proceedings by excoriating prosecutors for not immediately revealing that one juror and two alternates were related to District Attorney George Burnett -- information they knew during jury selection. In addition, prosecutors did not inform the judge until after the jury was selected that Burnett had had a "social contact" with one of those jurors.
Taylor dismissed the three and accused the state of "inexcusable" conduct in holding back the information, which disrupted the court's goal of seating 12 jurors and six alternates. The judge denied a defense motion to dismiss the case, but bluntly put the state on notice that this mistake could cost it the case.
"If the panel is depleted . . . if we run out of jurors . . . there will not be a mistrial. There will be a dismissal with prejudice," Taylor said.
The state's first witness was an FBI special agent, Mary Jasnowski. She testified that in a search of Nichols's home, she found a receipt for fertilizer, as well as plastic barrels similar to those used in the blast and anti-government materials.
The trial will resume Tuesday and is expected to last six months.
-------- drug war
The Draconian 'Law 1008' Will Be Revised
The Bolivian Government and Coca Growers, Under the Watchful Eye of the US, Continue Negotiations
By Alex Contreras Baspineiro
Narco News South American Bureau Chief
March 23, 2004
http://www.narconews.com/Issue32/article933.html
COCHABAMBA, 23 de marzo de 2004. After 15 years of imposition from the United States, the Regulation of Coca and Controlled Substances Law, better known as Law 1008, will be revised by a technical and legal committee made up of both government representatives and coca producers.
The committee's creation was the most important accord the two parties reached after intense negotiations held here yesterday.
"A technical and legal committee will be formed that must produce an evaluation of Law 1008 by April 19," said government minister Alfonso Ferrufino. The committee will look at the success of alternative development, as well as the issue of coca eradication, taking into account the moratorium on eradication that the coca growers have proposed."
"We want to show that according to Law 1008, forced eradication of coca crops should not exist, but that such eradication should be voluntary, government-assisted, and subject to alternative development plans," responded congressman and coca growers' leader Evo Morales. "That is to say, we will show that for all these years, the various Bolivian administrations have not followed the law."
Law 1008 was passed on July 19, 1988, during the neoliberal administration of Víctor Paz Estensoro. It comprises 149 separate articles, plus a host of other provisions.
This legal arrangement intentionally penalizes the natural coca leaf along with all other controlled substances. Since the law's passage, the coca producers have demanded a new law that recognizes the benefits of the coca plant, separate from the law that deals with other controlled substances. This demand was never met, because drug policies here are not written by a sovereign Bolivian government; rather, they are imposed by the United States.
None of Law 1008's 149 articles provide for the use of force in the elimination of coca crops. All eradication is supposed to be voluntary and coordinated between farmers and the government.
According to Article 14: "Voluntary reduction is understood to mean that the producers freely coordinate and reduce the surplus volume of coca production, within the framework of alternative development and crop substitution."
Article 22 explains: "All substitution of coca crops will be planned in a gradual and progressive manner, coinciding with sustained socio-economic development programs."
However, the reality is different. With Law 1008, even the constitution has been violated.
The elimination of coca plantations is violent. The political and military forces dedicated to eradication in the Chapare region are currently estimated at more than five thousand. Each year, both coca growers and government troops end up killed or injured as a result of the violence that forced eradication provokes.
Interference from the US
Although the Bolivian government and the coca growers continue negotiations over eradication and alternative development, the US position is well known. Robert Charles, the US assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, said on March 11 that there must be no pause in eradication, and that all coca crops classified as illegal must be eliminated.
After a private meeting with Bolivian president Carlos Mesa, Charles told the press: "In my opinion, a pause in eradication would mean the deterioration of all that has been so far achieved in Bolivia. At the moment that Bolivia and the Chapare should be proud of having put the breaks on this (coca cultivation) and increased their chances for democracy, it seems to me that it would be a mistake to speak of a pause in eradication."
There are an estimated 28,100 hectares (69,500 acres) of coca crops in Bolivia - 23,550 hectares located in the Yungas region, near La Paz, and 4,600 in the Chapare region, near Cochabamba.
Of that amount, 16,100 should be eliminated according to the law, as the law permits only 12,000 hectares in the entire country.
Congressman Morales criticized US meddling in Bolivian internal affairs. But above all, he said, it is an embarrassment that the Bolivian government bows to international pressure; not only on questions of drug control, but on other issues as well that should be handled autonomously.
According to Morales, although the authorities continue eliminating coca crops by force, "there will never be zero coca in the Chapare."
In any case, the coca growers decided to continue negotiations with the government. A technical team will try to expose all the irregularities committed under Law 1008.
A Decision from Below
Coca growers' leader Leonilda Zurita told Narco News today that there have been some advances in the dialogue with the government, but that her actions will depend on the results of the upcoming assembly of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba to be held March 27 in the town of Lauca Ñ, 175 kilometers away.
An assembly of all the coca growers' organizations usually brings together more than one thousand delegates. These men and women from all the federations, local, and regional trade unions, will spend hours debating, but they will eventually produce a set of resolutions to be distributed throughout their bases.
"The truth is that we no longer believe in this government," said Zurita, "because it seems to act in an authoritarian manner, and what's more, is very controlled by the US embassy. Because of that, if they do not end the forced eradication of coca crops and do not demilitarize our communities, we will have to do it ourselves."
The agreement reached yesterday between the government and the coca growers provides for the direct join participation in alternative development programs by the municipalities of the Chapare. It also includes the provisional authorization of 15 markets for legal coca trade, and an independent study on the marketing of the coca leaf.
According to Zurita, Law 1008 is "a North American imposition" that will require not only talk at the negotiating table, but also the mobilization of the Bolivian people, to be changed.
-------- homeland security
Truck Scanners Coming to All Port Terminals
March 23, 2004
By RONALD SMOTHERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/nyregion/23customs.html
JERSEY CITY, March 22 - Addressing concerns that terrorists could bring nuclear weapons or traditional explosives into the country in containerized cargo, federal customs officials said Monday that New York and New Jersey ports would be the first to have technology to scan every truck leaving American ports.
The scanners, known as portal radiation monitors, will be installed by the end of the summer at all cargo terminals operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey - Newark, Jersey City, Bayonne, Elizabeth, Staten Island and Brooklyn - said Commissioner Robert C. Bonner of the United States Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. Customs officers will operate the monitors. By the end of the year, the systems will be in place nationwide at all port terminals receiving waterborne cargo, Mr. Bonner said.
The monitors, housed in frames of bright yellow I-beams that arch over the roadways leading out of cargo terminals at the ports, are intended as the last line of defense in what Mr. Bonner called a "layered" system of detection. That system begins with the identification and search of high-risk United States-bound cargo at overseas ports, a computerized tracking system that further identifies any cargo posing a security risk 24 hours before it arrives, and the checking of the containers at dockside with handheld equipment and X-rays if necessary. That process will now end with the scanning of trucks carrying the containers as they leave the terminal.
"This will increase the ability of U.S. Customs to detect dirty bombs and other radiological materials," said Mr. Bonner, standing in the spindly shadow of one of the first of the portals here at Global Marine Terminal. "This will screen every container for radiation before it leaves the terminal, adding another level of security. As a result America is safer and its people are safer."
About 11,000 vessels carrying three million shipping containers pass through New York and New Jersey ports each year, Port Authority officials have said.
The agency has yet to develop similar monitoring devices for containers that leave the port by rail, said industry officials and other agency planners. In the case of the New York-New Jersey area, that amounts to about 10 to 15 percent of the cargo shipped into the seaport, but it is much more in ports like Seattle and Long Beach, Calif. Edward Hotchkiss, acting assistant area director for seaport operations, said the Customs and Border Protection agency was looking at "choke points" within the terminals where monitoring devices could be installed and developing monitoring systems that can be moved from one siding to another.
The announcement on Monday came nearly two and half years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which sparked concern about the risks of terrorism breaching the shores of the United States by ship. The area's ports were closed for a day after the attacks, and immediately afterward the Coast Guard increased its checks on incoming vessels, and other federal agencies began working on programs to improve monitoring of ships, crews and cargoes.
Mr. Bonner said that so far no illicit radiological devices had been detected by the monitoring and security efforts already in effect, and many tools of those efforts were on display at the news conference. They included handheld radio isotope identifiers, which tell their operators what kind of radiation is emanating from a container; ultrasonic thickness gauges which can detect hollowed-out cargo; infrared devices that detect hot and cold spots in cargo; and portable explosives detectors, which can detect the plasma signatures of everything from nitroglycerine to ammonium nitrate.
Using such devices in September 2002 as they boarded the Palermo Senator, a German cargo ship, while it was entering New York Harbor, customs inspectors detected traces of radioactivity. The ship, bound from Spain, was held six miles at sea for two days before it was determined that detection equipment was being triggered by normally occurring background radiation given off by ceramic tiles that were among the cargo.
Mr. Bonner said that this happened before the introduction of a system that provides extensive computerized listings of all cargo bound for the United States so that the agency can identify "high-risk" cargo that requires closer inspection about 24 hours before it leaves for the United States. Such a system would have caught the ceramic tiles, said Mr. Bonner, adding that if it did not, the portal radiation monitors would.
Chris Koch, executive director of the World Shipping Council, a trade group, applauded the portal radiation monitoring system and said such measures were effective without being disruptive. Similar portals are needed at foreign ports, he said, noting that Europe's largest port, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, was doing just that.
-------- police
FBI Tracked Kerry in Vietnam Vets Group
By Laura Blumenfeld and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 23, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16134-2004Mar22.html
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) was subjected to extensive surveillance by the FBI for more than a year as he led protests by an anti-Vietnam War organization for veterans against the Nixon administration's war policies, according to FBI documents.
The FBI closely tracked the activities of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and Kerry's participation in the organization from 1971 until mid-1972, when officials recommended terminating the surveillance because Kerry was running for the House and agents concluded "there is nothing to associate him with any violence or any violent-prone group or organization."
The Los Angeles Times first reported on the documents yesterday. The documents were in the custody of California author Gerald Nicosia, who had received them five years ago as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. Copies of some were subsequently made available to The Washington Post.
FBI surveillance of antiwar activities in the late 1960s and early 1970s was common, but until now Kerry, a decorated combat veteran in Vietnam, said he had no idea how much he had been tracked as he moved around the country.
Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, described as "surreal" the extent to which the FBI traced his movements and said he was proud of what VVAW had achieved in opposing the war. He said that while "today's FBI isn't the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover," the knowledge of having been spied on for peaceful protest activity "makes you respect civil rights and the Constitution even more."
Douglas Brinkley, author of a new book about Kerry's time in Vietnam and as a VVAW leader, said, "In '71, VVAW was a major priority for the FBI, and Kerry was their spokesman."
Brinkley said Kerry was known inside the Nixon White House as "the young demagogue" who they feared could affect attitudes in Middle America toward the war.
The documents shed new light on some of Kerry's activities and contradict some statements his campaign previously made, including the timing of his resignation from the group and whether he participated in a controversial VVAW meeting in Kansas City, Mo., in November 1971. Campaign spokesman David Wade said Kerry had confused the Kansas City meeting with an earlier meeting in St. Louis.
One memo in the files notes that at that meeting, Kerry "announced to those present he was resigning from the executive committee for personal reasons; however, he would be available to speak for VVAW." That document also reports that Kerry clashed at the meeting with another VVAW leader, Al Hubbard. Kerry questioned whether Hubbard had falsified his service record.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Government leans toward stretching out power plant cleanup of mercury pollution
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
By John Heilprin,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-23/s_14248.asp
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is leaning toward stretching out plans for reducing mercury pollution from power plants through the marketplace rather than rely on technology for quick cuts. Some plants would be able to buy their way out of reducing emissions.
The Environmental Protection Agency had offered options three months ago for reducing the 48 annual tons of mercury emitted from 1,100 coal-burning power plants, the largest source of the pollution. One favored reliance on a short-term technology, the other long-term market forces through which companies could buy rights to continue polluting from companies that do more than is required.
But studies co-sponsored by the Department of Energy and the utility industry have found there was no existing technology to remove mercury equally well from various types and grades of coal. EPA officials say that makes the first option to reduce the pollution to 34 tons by 2008 less feasible.
That leaves the second strategy - endorsed by industry - that would establish a nationwide cap by phasing in lower ceilings on each plant's pollution. Plants that reduce their pollution below a yet-to-be-determined ceiling for each one could then sell credits to plants that don't.
In December, that cap was proposed at 15 tons of mercury pollution by 2018. But now EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt is asking his staff to analyze ways to make the goal reached sooner.
High doses of mercury can cause neurological damage, and the government warned last week that some fish in which the toxic chemical accumulates can pose a hazard to children and to women who are pregnant or nursing.
"The debate is what's the best option, given the available technology. And we think that, given the state of technology, cap-and-trade is better - and we're leaning that way," said EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman.
EPA can turn to that approach only because the Bush administration decided in December that mercury should not be regulated as a toxic substance requiring maximum pollution controls, reversing a Clinton administration determination.
To meet a court-ordered deadline in a lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council 12 years ago, the agency must issue a final decision before the end of 2004.
The idea of trading pollution rights rather than making every plant reduce emissions to a specified level coincides with a position endorsed by electric power producers.
"There currently is no commercially available mercury-specific control technology," said Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, representing utilities. "Our hope is that toward the end of this decade, we will have at least identified new technologies for removing mercury from different coal types and using different boiler configurations."
The agency's preference means some plants may have to make only modest reductions, if any, if they choose to buy emissions credits instead of installing pollution controls. That approach differs radically from the Clinton administration's conclusion that mercury could be cut by more than 40 tons annually by 2008 if the best available technology were used.
But that conclusion was based on an assumption that technology for removing acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide and smog-forming nitrogen oxides would, as a side benefit, also cut mercury emissions sharply.
"It is possible to get a 90 percent reduction in mercury emissions in certain coal types and certain boilers, but to then make the jump and assert a 90 percent reduction is possible across the entire industry is simply impossible," Riedinger said. "The actual range of reductions varies, from between about 17 percent to 90 percent."
Carol Browner, the Clinton EPA's administrator, disputed the utility industry's claims of technological shortcomings.
"We had evidence that you could get there.... It is possible. It is doable," Browner said at a recent news conference held by health advocates and environmentalists on the mercury issue.
She said the agency should set emission limits at the lowest level achievable "rather than asking industry, 'What do you feel like doing?'"
Browner and environmentalists also complained the cap-and-trade approach would let some facilities continue to emit mercury at high levels, creating mercury "hot spots" for nearby populations.
EPA's own Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee wrote Administrator Leavitt in January to advise him "the cap-and-trade program, as proposed, may not address existing hot spots and may create new local hot spots for mercury, disproportionately impacting local communities."
The NRDC sued EPA in 1992 claiming it failed to determine which utility emissions are hazardous air pollutants and decide whether or not to regulate them. The suit was settled in 1994, then modified in 1998 to set deadlines for action on specific pollutants.
"Just as we did with lead, we have to take mercury out of commerce," said Linda Greer, an environmental toxicologist at NRDC.
----
Mohawk Indian tribe seeks court order to stop icebreaking on St. Lawrence
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
By Michael Gormley,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-23/s_14247.asp
ALBANY, N.Y. - The St. Regis Mohawks sought a federal court order Monday to stop icebreaking on the St. Lawrence River, claiming the practice could cause spills, harm fish, disrupt the shoreline, and release contaminants.
The tribe claims that the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. violated federal environmental law and a treaty by not consulting tribal leaders, scientists, and fisheries experts before it began icebreaking. Tribal officials say they must be included in decisions to clear commercial shipping lanes by using powerful boats to break through ice that is often several feet thick.
In a letter to the corporation and to Canadian and U.S. officials, the tribe contends that icebreaking could cause petroleum or chemical spills; harm fish who depend on ice cover for spawning; lead to shoreline flooding and erosion; and release PCB-contaminated sediments.
The Mohawks want the river to melt naturally. But icebreakers clear the river each spring to open the important commercial shipping lane from the Atlantic Ocean to the Midwest and Canadian ports. The river passes along the reservation, which straddles the U.S.-Canada border.
The Canadian Coast Guard, which works with Seaway to clear the channel, began icebreaking in mid-March but has not yet reached the reservation, Canadian officials said Monday.
The St. Lawrence Seaway is scheduled to reopen Thursday.
The tribe contends it tried to negotiate in recent years with Seaway on the icebreaking issue but said talks failed and they were forced seek the court order. Seaway maintains they have been open to talks but the tribe hasn't responded.
"We've offered to discuss the issues with them and they have not responded," Seaway Administrator Albert Jacquez said. Seaway's preliminary review of the concerns finds them without merit, he said.
The tribe has said it have always been open to "meaningful" discussion.
"We are obliged to take this action to protect our community and the natural resources upon which we depend," Chief James W. Ransom said.
No hearing has been scheduled.
U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and a local ecological watchdog group are also opposed to opening the shipping season during winter conditions.
----
Climate Debate Gets Its Icon: Mt. Kilimanjaro
March 23, 2004
New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/science/earth/23CLIM.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Kilimanjaro, the storied mountain that rises nearly four miles above the shimmering plains of Tanzania, is beginning to resemble the spotted owl - at least in the way it has become a two-sided icon in an environmental debate.
The owl first entered the spotlight 15 years ago, in fierce debate over clear-cutting of ancient Pacific forests. Millions of acres were placed off-limits to logging when the bird was listed as threatened under the federal endangered-species law. Soon afterward, effigies of it began showing up on the grilles of logging trucks.
Kilimanjaro's majestic glacial cap of 11,000-year-old ice has long captured imaginations the world over, so it was not surprising that environmentalists focused their attention on it when scientists reported in 2001 that glaciers around the world were retreating, partly as a result of global warming caused by emissions of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases from smokestacks and tailpipes.
Campaigners from Greenpeace, the environmental group, scaled the mountain in November 2002 and held a news conference via satellite with reporters at climate-treaty talks in Morocco. Last October, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is co-author of a bill to curb greenhouse gases, displayed before-and-after photographs of Kilimanjaro during a Senate debate. A British scientist proposed hanging white fabric over the glacier's ragged 10-story-tall edges to block sunlight and stem the erosion.
But now the pendulum has swung. This month, the mountain was taken up as a symbol of eco-alarmism by a cluster of scientists and anti-regulation groups. "Snow Fooling!: Mount Kilimanjaro's glacier retreat is not related to global warming," read a newsletter distributed on March 9 by the Greening Earth Society, a private group financed by industries dealing in fossil fuels, the dominant source of the heat-trapping gases. "Media and scientists blame human activity, but a 120-year-old natural climate shift is the cause."
The group cited a paper in the current International Journal of Climatology asserting that Kilimanjaro's ice was shrinking because East Africa's climate is drying, a process that began more than a century ago, long before humans could have been an influence.
The authors wrote that the dry weather both limited the snows that help sustain tropical glaciers and, by reducing cloud cover, allowed more solar energy to bathe the glacier. In dry, cold conditions, the ice vaporized without melting first, a process called sublimation. There was no evidence that rising temperatures had caused the melting, the researchers said.
So what do these researchers and the ones who first warned of glacial retreat have to say about the clashing public portrayals of their work on Africa's highest peak?
Almost unanimously, they agreed in interviews that the two depictions were wrong, turning what is still a complicated scientific puzzle into a simplistic caricature.
The authors of the new paper said their goal was to challenge what had become orthodoxy about the mountain - that rising temperatures were eating away at the ice - and to present an argument for a different mechanism. But their paper was hardly conclusive, they said. It was mainly a call for more study.
"We are entirely against the black-and-white picture that says it is either global warming or not global warming," said Prof. Georg Kaser, the paper's lead author and a glaciologist at the Institute for Geography of the University of Innsbruck, in Austria. "As a scientist I'm happy it's more complex, because otherwise it's boring."
Other authors of the new study said they were particularly dismayed that the industry-supported group had portrayed their paper as a definitive refutation of the idea that melting from warming was involved.
"We have a mere 2.5 years of actual field measurements from Kilimanjaro glaciers, unlike many other regions, so our understanding of their relationship with climate and the volcano is just beginning to develop," Dr. Douglas R. Hardy, a geologist at the University of Massachusetts and an author of the paper, wrote by e-mail. "Using these preliminary findings to refute or even question global warming borders on the absurd."
In short, Kilimanjaro may be a photogenic spokesmountain - no matter what the climatic agenda - but it is far from ideal as a laboratory for detecting human-driven warming. The debate over it obscures the nearly universal agreement among glacier and climate experts that glaciers are retreating all over the world, probably as a result of the greenhouse-gas buildup.
"These climate skeptics are making generalizations not only to the rest of the tropics but the rest of the world," Dr. Hardy said. "And, in fact, global warming may be part of the whole picture on Kilimanjaro, too."
Most experts in the Kilimanjaro debate accept three things: for more than a century, its ice has been in a retreat that is almost assuredly unstoppable and was not caused by humans; so far, there is scant data on conditions there; and the main scientific question now is how, and how much, climate shifts driven by heat-trapping emissions are accelerating that trend.
Dr. Lonnie G. Thompson, the Ohio State University glaciologist whose work first focused attention on Kilimanjaro's fading ice, said he saw ample evidence that melting was eating away at what remained.
His specialty is extracting cylinders of layered, ancient ice from tropical glaciers, and when his team drilled into one of the mountain's ice fields in 2000, water flooded out of the hole. In the resulting cores, shallow layers contained elongated bubbles - strong evidence of melting and refreezing - while deeper layers had none.
More jarring was the violent collapse of a 10-story-tall clifflike face of one of Kilimanjaro's ice fields in January 2003, witnessed and photographed by trekkers. The collapse sent a huge cascade of ice and water gushing across the flanks of the ancient crater.
"This all suggests that what we are seeing at least in the last 20 years or so is different," Dr. Thompson said. He believes the mountain may be close to a threshold at which melting will become the dominant force eroding the ice. "The balance of evidence says something bigger is going on in the system," he said.
Dr. Thompson said that while the new paper selectively described evidence that drying of African air was the culprit, it did not test that hypothesis.
Perhaps the long-term drop in humidity is to blame, he went on. "But show me. Give me something I can see. Otherwise you raise important issues that need to be studied, and we need data on, but how do you know whether you're right?"
Several independent glacier experts who have followed the Kilimanjaro research said the new paper and Dr. Thompson's earlier assertions about melting were probably both right to some extent.
But some experts see signs that something different has been happening in the region in recent decades. A bit to the north, for example, on the flanks of Mount Kenya, other scientists have been able to measure shifts in patterns of ice loss that show solar radiation - the long-term influence on the ice - is no longer dominating.
Unlike Kilimanjaro, whose ice is mostly oriented toward the sun, Mount Kenya has ice in shadow and sunlight. From 1899 to 1962, those ice fields more exposed to direct solar radiation "wasted drastically" while those in narrow, shaded grooves changed very little, said Dr. Stefan L. Hastenrath, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, who is a longstanding expert on African glaciology.
This implied that changes in cloudiness and sunlight were the dominant force determining the fate of ice. "But since the 1960's the mountain has seen more even loss of ice in shaded and sun-exposed ice," he said.
The editor of the Greening Earth newsletter, Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, a University of Virginia climatologist, said he did not doubt that humans were altering climate. He just feels, he says, there is no sign that humans are pushing matters beyond the natural variability that already exists - and already must be adapted to.
"I've written a bunch of papers saying human beings are warming the planetary surface temperature," he said. "It wouldn't surprise me that you'd see midlatitude glacier recession. The question is, Why is this alarming? Aside from the initial shock value of the notion that human beings can change the climate, why is this such a story?"
But Dr. Thompson sharply criticized the newsletter's interpretation of the Kilimanjaro research. "These people get paid to muddy the waters," he said. "At least we're going out and trying to get the data, which is hard work. If you're going to sit in your office and send out your e-mails with no basis, I'm sorry, but that just doesn't carry the day."
-------- health
Moderate drinking may benefit heart
March 23, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040322-104244-7407r.htm
CHICAGO - Drinking in moderation appears to reduce heart-related deaths in men with high blood pressure, new research suggests, challenging the belief among many doctors that alcohol should be off-limits to such patients.
In the study, men with high blood pressure who reported having about one or two drinks a day were 44 percent less likely to die of cardiovascular causes such as heart attacks than men with hypertension who rarely or never drank.
Alcohol is known to increase levels of good cholesterol and can thin the blood, warding off artery-clogging clots that can cause heart attacks.
A drink or two a day has been linked with reduced cardiovascular risks in healthy men and women. But many doctors are wary about alcohol use in people with hypertension because heavy drinking can increase blood pressure. For that reason, the American Heart Association generally advises patients with high blood pressure to avoid alcohol.
The latest findings suggest that moderate alcohol consumption offers the same benefits to hypertensive patients as it does to healthy people. But the researchers said the findings need to be confirmed in other large-scale studies.
They and other experts advised people with high blood pressure to remain wary about drinking.
"In light of major clinical and public-health problems associated with heavy drinking, recommendations regarding alcohol use must be made on an individual basis," said the authors, led by Dr. J. Michael Gaziano, a researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Boston.
The findings appeared in yesterday's Archives of Internal Medicine.
The study examined 14,125 male physicians who reported having current or past hypertension and were followed for an average of about five years. During the follow-up, 579 of the men died from cardiovascular causes, including heart attacks and strokes.
A reduced risk was found in men who drank moderately and who had blood pressure of at least 140 over 90, the cutoff for high blood pressure, or who kept their blood pressure down with medication or other means.
The data did not differentiate between beer, wine and liquor.
The authors suspect the results also would apply to women.
Dr. Lori Mosca, director of preventive cardiology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, said the study could send "a very bad public-health message" about alcohol. She said that people who drink might have other characteristics that reduce their heart risks.
"The recommendation to avoid alcohol is a wise one among patients with high blood pressure," said Dr. Mosca, an American Heart Association spokeswoman. "The benefit is not proven, and there are known risks."
-------- ACTIVISTS
The man who knew too much
By Robert Fisk
23 March 2004
The Independent
http://www.k1m.com/antiwarblog/archives/000101.html
He was drugged, kidnapped and locked up for 18 years after revealing Israel's nuclear secrets to the world. Next month Mordechai Vanunu is finally set to be released, but just how much freedom will he be allowed? Robert Fisk reports
Any Israeli who bought the 16 February edition of the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth would have believed that a truly wicked man was about to be released from Ashkelon prison. Each time a suicide bomber blew himself up, the prisoner would celebrate. Worse still, said the paper, the inmate - once a keeper of Israel's nuclear secrets - wants to endanger his country further after his release. "He told me," a former prisoner was quoted as saying, "that he has additional material and that he will reveal secrets..."
Should it be a surprise, then, that the very same prisoner, supposedly celebrating the slaughter of innocents while preparing to betray his country yet again, holds a clutch of awards from European peace groups, the Sean McBride Peace prize and an honorary doctorate from the University of Tromso? In 2000, the Church of Humanism told him: "You are honest, courageous and morally highly motivated, and may the great sacrifice you have made serve to protect not only those living in Israel but all the peoples of the Middle East and perhaps the world." The same man has also been put forward as a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mordechai Vanunu, it seems, can only be loved or loathed. Indifference to the former Israeli nuclear technician is impossible. For he is the man who, in 1986, took evidence to The Sunday Times of the full story behind Israel's secret nuclear weapons plant at Dimona in the Negev desert, complete with the total number of advanced fission bombs there - 200 at the time - and, even more disturbingly, complete with pictures. He said that Israel had mastered a thermonuclear design and appeared to have a number of thermonuclear bombs ready for use. He was subsequently lured by a girl from London to Rome and then kidnapped, drugged and freighted back to Israel by Israeli secret policemen. But in just six weeks' time, after 18 years of imprisonment - 12 of them in solitary confinement - the world's most famous whistleblower is scheduled for release. Israel - not to mention the world - is holding its breath.
Will he divulge further secrets of Dimona - always supposing he has any after 18 years of incarceration - or curse the country of which he is a citizen, albeit a citizen who converted to Christianity before his arrest and who wants to emigrate to the United States? Will he emerge a cowed man, anxious only to apologise for the terrible betrayal he inflicted upon his country? Or will he, as his friends and supporters and his adopted American parents hope, become an apostle of peace, one of the greatest of this generation's prisoners of conscience, the man who tried to rid the world of the threat of nuclear annihilation?
The Israeli government is still uncertain how to confront Vanunu's release on 21 April. They are known to be considering - perhaps have already decided upon - "certain supervisory means" and "appropriate measures" to shut Vanunu up. In the second half of January, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with Menachem Mazuz, Israel's attorney general, and the defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, and discussed whether Vanunu should be refused a passport. Vanunu would be free to sunbathe on the beaches of Tel Aviv but could not tour the world advertising Israel's nuclear power. It's a sign of how fearful the Israeli administration has become at the prospect of this one man's release that Sharon also summoned to this conference Yehiel Horev's so-called "Defence Ministry Security Unit", the country's internal and external intelligence services - Shin Beth and the equally overestimated Mossad - and a representative of the Israeli Atomic Energy Committee.
Horev, it is now known, wanted to go much further than Sharon. He proposed clapping an administrative detention order on Vanunu - Israel's usual way of dealing with Palestinians whom they regard as "terrorists" - although the meeting apparently came to the conclusion that this would only enhance Vanunu's reputation as a martyr for world peace. There's another way of shutting Vanunu up, of course. He can be publicly freed and then - the moment he starts talking about his work as a nuclear technician - he can be tried again and thrown back into Ashkelon jail - or Shikma prison, as the Israelis call it now.
But the real problem that Vanunu represents is that he will remind the world at a critically important moment in the history of the Middle East that Israel is a nuclear power and that its warheads stand ready to be fired from the Negev desert. He will also remind the world that the Americans, despite battering their way into Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, continue to give their political, moral and economic support to a country that has secretly amassed a treasure trove of weapons of mass destruction.
How can President Bush remain silent on Israel's nuclear power when he has not only illegally invaded an Arab state for allegedly harbouring nuclear weapons and condemned Iran for the same ambitions, but also praised - along with Tony Blair's government - Colonel Gaddafi of Libya for abandoning his nuclear pretensions? If the Arab states are being "defanged" - always supposing they had any real fangs in the first place - why should Israel not be "de-nuclearised"? Why can't the United States apply the same standards to Israel as it does to the Arabs? Or why, for that matter, can't Israel apply the same standards to itself that it demands of its Arab enemies?
This is the debate that the Israeli and the American governments wish to stifle. In the United States, where any discussion of the Israeli-American relationship that deviates from the benign is routinely condemned as subversive or "anti-Semitic", discussion of Israel's nuclear power is not something that Washington will want to hear on the Sunday talk shows. Vanunu, it should be said at once, is well aware of all this, of his own importance - infinitely greater than it was when he was a mere junior technician at Dimona - and of the role that tens of thousands of anti- nuclear campaigners expect him to play in the world. Many times, through friends and through his own brothers, Vanunu has said that he has no new nuclear secrets but has the right to oppose nuclear weapons in Israel or anywhere else. "All I want to do is to go to America, get married and start a new life," he says.
No one can doubt Vanunu's conviction. Born in 1954 to a religious Jewish family in Morocco, he immigrated to Israel at the age of nine, performed his military service in the mid-Seventies and began work at Dimona in November 1976 while completing a graduate course in philosophy and geography. Perhaps it was during his travels in Thailand, Burma, Nepal and Australia in early 1986 that he decided he had a moral duty to talk about Israel's nuclear weapons. In the same year, he was baptised at an Anglican church in Sydney. Vanunu had clearly become deeply distressed at Israel's growing nuclear power when he walked into British newspaper offices in September of 1986 in the hope of telling the world the truth about Dimona. He had dropped by Robert Maxwell's Daily Mirror at first, handed over his photographs of the nuclear plant and waited for a reply. Unknown to Vanunu, Maxwell sent the pictures round to the Israeli embassy in London to "take a look at them", supposedly to "confirm" whether or not the story was true. It seems likely that Maxwell had motives other than journalistic integrity in this betrayal of Vanunu. After his death at sea in 1991, Maxwell, who had stolen millions in pensioners' funds, was given a state funeral in Israel at which Shimon Peres praised his "services" to the state.
Maxwell's Daily Mirror ran a "spoiler" story on 28 September, belittling Vanunu and carrying the headline "The Strange Case of Israel and the Nuclear Con Man." The Sunday Times ran with the full story - but Vanunu had already disappeared. Entrapped by a female Mossad agent, he had been lured on to a British Airways flight to Rome and promptly kidnapped. It seems, in fact, that he was seized inside Rome's Fiumicino Airport. Unable to speak to journalists, he carefully wrote out details of his movements on the palm of his hand and pressed it to the window of his prison truck as it took him to court. "Rome ITL 30:9:86 2100 came to Rome by BA504," he had written. He had been kidnapped at 9pm on 30 September at Rome International. Were the Italian authorities involved in his kidnap? Were they present when he was seized? Perhaps Vanunu can tell us.
He is certainly a man of endurance. Once, during his 12 years of solitary, the prison authorities accidentally freed him for exercise before Arab prisoners in the jail-yard had been returned to their cells. Vanunu immediately walked towards them. One of the Arabs, a Lebanese imprisoned for smuggling arms into the West Bank, was among the first strangers to bring word of Vanunu's appearance to the outside world. "Vanunu fell into step with us and smiled at us and it was a time before we realised who he was," the freed Lebanese later told The Independent. "He said it was good to be with us and we thought he was a brave man. Then the guards realised their mistake and we were pushed and shoved away from him, back to our cells."
An Israeli journalist visiting another prisoner was amazed to see Vanunu. "For a short moment I saw a bucolic scene," he wrote, "as if taken from some other reality: a serene man, sitting on a bench in a garden and reading Nietzsche in English. I approached him and extended my hand. Pleased to meet you, my name is Ronen,' I said. I'm Motti,' the most confined prisoner in the State of Israel replied. Before we could continue to talk, screaming wardens rushed over and grabbed him away."
A former prisoner, Yossi Harush, has provided another glimpse of the imprisoned Vanunu in the years after his solitary confinement ended. "During the day," Harush told Yedioth Ahronoth, "during walks, he meets people and talks with them. I spoke a lot with Vanunu. We were friends. He would come to my cell... He has good conditions. He is treated nicely in prison... He has no restrictions on leaving his cell, but he is restricted within the prison. I myself, as a working prisoner, painted a red line that he is forbidden to cross. I was ordered to do that, and afterwards our relationship cooled off."
Vanunu has been regularly visited by an Anglican clergyman, Dean Michael Sellors. It was Sellors who pointed out to him that his release date coincided with the Queen's birthday. "He said that in that case, he'd better get a ticket and greet her himself."
Vanunu has also taken heart in the actions of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a normally conservative organisation, which has stated that, "any sanctions against Mordechai after release would be illegal and immoral." A chatline on the Hebrew website of the Israeli daily Maariv shows that a number of young Israelis regard Vanunu as a hero rather than a threat. Mary Eoloff, a retired American schoolteacher who, with her husband, adopted Vanunu in the hope that he could be given US citizenship and released, was the first to reveal that when Israeli security men offered to release him a year before the expiry of his 18 years in jail, Vanunu turned them down. "He believes in freedom of speech," she said.
It remains to be seen if Israel will allow Vanunu the free speech he loves. Horev, the defence ministry security official who attended Sharon's meeting, has spoken of the threat that he believes the nuclear technician represents, which seems to be about ambiguity rather than state secrets. Horev compares this ambiguity to water in a glass. "My job is to ensure that the water doesn't spill over the glass," he said recently. "Up until the Vanunu affair, the water was at a very low level. The affair caused the water level to rise significantly and caused Israel great damage, but the water still didn't overflow. If we let certain people act in the matter, the water will spill."
The Israeli journalist Raanan Shaked was a good deal more cynical when he spoke on the subject on Israel's Channel 10 TV. "Who is the main threat to Israel?" he asked. "Of course, Mordechai Vanunu! He is the big danger. Israeli democracy simply cannot withstand the impact of this one man saying what every child knows: we have nuclear weapons."
On 21 April, when Vanunu is released, we shall find out if the water is going to overflow - and whether Vanunu will cross the red line painted so ominously on the floor at the instruction of the authorities.
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Coalition Seeks to Block U.S. Army's Open Burn of PCBs
MADISON, Wisconsin, (ENS)
March 23, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2004/2004-03-23-04.asp
A coalition of 67 organizations is formally opposing open burning of polychlorinated biphenyls at the Badger Army Ammunition Plant - a proposal that the groups fear would set a national precedent and open the door to similar exemptions at military and civilian facilities across the United States.
In a letter sent Monday to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the groups are opposing a move by the U.S. Army to seek an exemption to a federal EPA law that prohibits open burning of wastes containing more than 50 parts per million of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
PCB concentrations in paint in certain buildings at Badger have been detected as high as 22,000 parts per million - more than 400 times the permissible limit set by the EPA.
"The mere thought of open burning PCB contaminated materials is preposterous," said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group. "EPA regulates burning such materials by requiring 99.9999 percent destruction, even in incinerators. In the Badger proposal there is zero control; zero monitoring; and, zero ability to determine the quantity of this probable human carcinogen released into the environment."
The coalition, which covers the country from Alaska to Puerto Rico, from Indiana to California, and includes a number of Wisconsin groups, warn that open burning results in the uncontrolled release of PCBs, dioxins, and other products of combustion to the environment including polychlorinated dibenzofurans. These compounds are probable human carcinogens and their toxicity can be up to 100 times higher than the toxicity of some PCBs, the coalition says.
Developed and operated by the Army as a production facility for powder propellants between 1942 and 1975, the plant has been decommissioned and is now considered surplus. The property contains some 1,400 buildings, most of them abandoned, and extensive plant infrastructure including rail lines, a heating plant, roadways and bunkers. Many of the structures must be demolished due to structural problems or contamination with explosive residues
Negotiations are underway to transfer the property jointly to the state of Wisconsin, the Ho-Chunk Nation, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dairy Forage Research Branch.
The Badger Army Ammunition Plant (BAAP) is set on 7,354 acres of land in Sauk County, Wisconsin. It is bordered on the north by Devil's Lake State Park, and surrounded by farmland. BAAP is about seven miles south of the town of Baraboo with a population of 11,500, and seven miles north of Sauk City/Prairie du Sac with a population of 6,300.
Addressing explosive contamination is a necessary first step to the removal of buildings and the release of the BAAAP to the public. Buildings must be decontaminated before transfer of property may occur. For some of the buildings at BAAAP, "conventional destruction or demolition techniques would be inadequate and dangerous for the workers as well as any person who may come in contact with the demolition debris during transport or disposal. Therefore, open burning will be used to decontaminate and demolish buildings with explosive risk, under a comprehensive set of required conditions," the Army states in the Environmental Assessment of its landfill expansion plan.
The Army is preparing a separate Environmental Assessment for the proposed open burning of structures at BAAAP, as required under federal regulations. The EPA must complete an evaluation of the open burning plan before the Army's Environmental Assessment can be finalized. Then it will be published and a public information meeting will be held. But now the Army has applied for an exemption from this process.
A process of approval on the state level has been going on for several years. It is the decision of the Air Management Program of the Department of Natural Resource that the explosive decontamination and demolition of contaminated buildings at the BAAAP by open burning, is the type of situation that deserves an exception to state laws.
But however logical and necessary open burning of the BAAP buildings may seem to the U.S. Army and state regulators, the environmental coalition views the proposed burning with horror.
"Decades of scientific research have shown that PCBs, dioxins and furans are major public health threats. Concentrations in the environment, and in the food chain, are already too high," warned Dr. Bruce Barrett with Madison Physicians for Social Responsibility. "Open burning of paints, plastics, and PCB-contaminated materials like that proposed at Badger would is foolhardy, and dangerous. Children, pregnant women, and their fetuses are especially vulnerable. Birth defects and developmental delays could easily result."
Human exposure to these contaminants is a concern because of the wide range of adverse health effects including reproductive and developmental effects, immunologic effects, liver damage, and cancer. Some PCBs can mimic or block the action of hormones from the thyroid and other endocrine glands, affecting normal growth and development.
"PCBs and dioxins are potent xenoestrogens that are biologically active at extremely low doses. They are very persistent and bioaccumulate in wildlife and people," said Dr. Warren Porter, professor of aoology and environmental toxicology at the University of Wisconsin. "Xenoestrogens have been linked to increases in breast cancer, heart problems in developing embryos, reduced sperm counts, neurotoxic, immune, and hormonal effects."
According to the EPA, over 96 percent of human dioxin exposure comes from eating meat, dairy products, eggs and fish. The coalition fears dioxin particles the burning structures would travel far and wide, "eventually settling and contaminating our soil, water, and plants." Dioxins do not break down in the environment, and over time they accumulate in the fatty tissue of animals and then humans who eat those animals.
In addition to Wisconsin, decontamination of buildings by fire has occurred or is proposed at military sites across the nation including Joliet Arsenal in Illinois, Ravenna Army Ammunition Plant in Ohio, and Indiana Army Ammunition Plant. PCB concentrations at these other facilities did not exceed the federal threshold of 50 parts per million, but officials in some states have issued public health advisories prior to each burn.
"The Army has recently begun to open burn some of the abandoned buildings at the closed Army Ammunition Plant near Charlestown, Indiana. After some complaints, the Department of Environmental Management is now issuing health notices prior to each burn," said Richard Hill, president of Save the Valley. "These notices advise local residents that there is 'potential for adverse health effects associated with smoke from the fire' and that concerned people should stay indoors during the burn."
From Puerto Rico Robert Rabin with Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques has plenty of experience with the consequences of military burning.
"Open burning and detonation by the US Navy for decades on Vieques put into our environment a long list of dangerous military toxics we believe are responsible for the health crisis our people suffer," Rabin said. "Vieques has the highest cancer case rate in all of Puerto Rico; there are no other significant sources of contamination."
"We strongly oppose open burning of PCBs at Badger Army Ammunition Plant because it would set a national precedent and open the door for similar exemptions at military and civilian facilities across the U.S., like Vieques," Rabin said.
In its letter to the EPA, the coalition warns that emissions from burning BAAP buildings would also threaten the ecological and cultural health of the Sauk Prairie which stretches across 14,000 acres from the Wisconsin River to the Baraboo Range and nearby Devil's Lake State Park.
"The Badger property is home to nearly 600 species of plants, butterflies, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, aquatic species, and birds. Grassland birds, in particular, have been able to thrive at the plant, making it one of the most critical habitat areas in the Midwest for this rapidly declining group," the coalition writes.
The environmental groups favor non-thermal technologies, including biological deactivation, mechanical demolition and disposal, hydroblasting, inerting, and many others, that they say have been successfully implemented at military bases across the country.
Whether or not the Army gets permission to conduct the open burns, it has plans to build a new landfill in which to place construction and demolition debris from removal of structures on the property. Secondary waste streams would consist of asbestos products, and up to five percent would be waste soil, concrete, and waste ash from the burned buildings, if permission is granted.
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Republican Speaks at Crawford Texas Antiwar Protest
March 23, 2004
Antiwar.com
by Mike Holmes
http://antiwar.com/article.php?articleid=2176
Organizers of the March 20 Crawford, Texas Peace Rally wanted to broaden their line up from the usual antiwar sources to include clergy, antiwar military veterans and their families, and yes, even an antiwar Republican.
It was for the latter reason that I was one of the few, if not only Republican Party speakers at one of the hundreds of March 20 anti-Iraq War rallies held world wide, marking the one year anniversary of the US invasion. Reached through my role as an unofficial advisor to the Texas Republican Liberty Caucus and as one of the half dozen co-founders of the national RLC in 1990, I told rally organizers that while I wasn't currently much of a Republican, I was willing to speak out on this issue. My efforts to find a more credentialed Texas Republican, or line up outspoken Texas libertarian Republican Congressman Ron Paul proved fruitless as Cong. Paul's schedule was set and no other GOP volunteers could be immediately located.
With my longtime Texas RLC activist colleague Lonnie Brantley, I departed from Houston early Saturday for the 250 mile trip to Crawford, located just five miles west of Waco and a few miles from President Bush's small ranch in the low limestone hills of central Texas. We changed from our road clothes into our Republican uniforms- mine slacks, dress shirt and conservative tie- a few miles from Waco and wondered what to expect. The rally was competing with marches in Austin, Dallas and Houston and faced overcast, slightly humid air. The Crawford event was co-sponsored by four Austin, Waco and Dallas area peace and leftist coalition outfits, along with the local Green Party, which was looking forward to an appearance by independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader at the event.
We arrived about noon at picturesque Tonkawa Falls Park, located a mile from Crawford, to the sight of approximately 200 people in a pleasant outdoor locale, about fifty yards from an equally sized group of Texas chili cook-off fans, most of whom were of vastly different political persuasions.
My arrival at the rally as the most overdressed person in sight was not encouraging. I was handed fistfuls of incomprehensively written broadsheets on various subjects, and bombarded with strains of an off-key badly mic ed folksinger, warbling something along the lines of how happy we'll beee, when Keer-rreey is in the White House, sounding even worse than you might imagine.
I received wary glances as I wended my way to the media center, being mistaken for a Homeland Security spy or local narc perhaps, though the narcs around were likely not wearing ties. The crowd was roughly two hundred or more, with the demographic being 80% above age 30, probably the reverse of the demographic of antiwar rallies I experienced 30 years ago. The usual protest rally stereotypes were in evidence: the masked Nixon character on stilts (couldn't they freshen this up a bit?), a psychedelic painted bus (a real 60s cliché), a large blue UN flag (!), banners from Vets Against the War, pale cadaverous socialists trying without much success to flog the Militant tabloid, and fuzzy headed guys in khakis covered in buttons wearing odd hats. One short fellow was dressed in a pseudo military uniform that made him look a bit like a munchkin generalissimo...maybe that was his intention. One polite white haired woman, festooned with buttons and a plastic boater hat, looked much like her counterparts at Texas Republican events, except of course for the messages on her buttons.
Despite efforts at diversity, the crowd was nearly all Anglo with just a few blacks and a small Hispanic contingent, some of whom were selling Che Guevara and Zapata tee shirts dangling from coolie-like pole shoulder racks, also without much luck. The audience was at least half female and mostly yuppie or liberal looking, gone to seed a bit with age and paunch. But unlike protests of old, the faint smell of illegal substances was not detected, perhaps due to the visible presence of police cars on the roads (for the later march into Crawford) and uniformed cops strolling by every so often. Relatively few children or college age people. One organizer lamented to me that his 23 year-old son was apathetic about politics.
The remaining warm up music was earnest but uniformly unlistenable; another reminder of what politics usually does to art.
I hooked up with my PR minder who steered me to a Dallas Morning News reporter and later, a Waco NBC TV reporter, both of whom did professional interviews with me, asking why a Republican was here speaking, etc. I doubt if any was aired or printed, since the Crawford event was peaceful and didn't generate much publicity outside of Texas. Bush wasn't around either. There were also Japanese and Spanish TV crews present, who were interested in filming the actual march into Crawford and didn't seem to be paying attention to any of the speakers.
The line-up began with a group of local Methodist and Baptist ministers, one of whom gave a lengthy opening prayer. There was another subsequent lengthy spiritual moment of silence from another speaker, making the religious formalities of this event competitive with many Republican events I've attended. Oddly, no Catholic priests were on hand, and when I mentioned this to rally organizers they just shrugged. Although the Pope is openly anti-Iraq War, I got the impression that he was as unpopular here as Bush despite the papal stance on the war. A missed opportunity it seemed.
By the time my five minute presentation came up, things were already running behind as is usual at these things. Preceding speakers rambled on with earnest but fairly boring tirades about the war, its evilness, the badness of Bush, etc. There were Democrats, Greens, immigrant rights advocates, the ACLU, antiwar leftists of various stripes, and of course me, the symbol of the Hated Enemy. Well known leftist journalism professor Robert Jensen of the University of Texas gave me a nice, brief eloquent introduction as I stepped up to face what was now about 300 people sitting in a wide semi-circle.
Hello fellow Republicans! I boomed. A couple of seconds of stunned, nervous silence, anybody? The crowd quickly relaxed into a rumble of laughter, releasing a tension which I knew was there. I banged out a few other lines which involved audience participation, began to draw more laughs and at times some genuine applause and hoots. I hit a few themes, such as the existence of a large number of unhappy and angry conservatives and Republicans who were blindsided by the President's unconvincing Iraq invasion rationale. You are surrounded by them, out over there in Crawford, in Waco, and all over Texas, you know, conservative Republicans who voted for Bush but didn't get what they thought they were voting for. These are the people you have to reach with your message.
Bush either lied about WMD in Iraq, or he was stupid. In either case it is unacceptable to vote for him again, starting a war on that basis. This set off a brief competition over whether it was liar or stupid , but in any event the audience got the point. My five minutes was quickly up.
I wrapped up with some good applause. It went over well because I got their attention and had decent stage presence, unlike most of the speakers who ranted or rambled or lapsed into predictable clichés.
Several in the crowd afterward approached me and I was able to discuss Ron Paul and the heroic work of Antiwar.com to several activists who seemed surprised at small government libertarian Republican activism of any sort. One well dressed Pakistani immigrant from Dallas was particularly appreciative, I think being glad that I seemed relatively normal compared to the majority of the culturally left audience. He was particularly concerned with the Patriot Act.
Of the other speakers, particularly impressive was Shannon Sharrock of Military Families Speak Out, herself a recently retired wounded Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot whose military husband is currently flying helicopters in Iraq. Her comments were heartfelt and simple. Along with a few vets and clergy, she was able to avoid the burden of culturally left rhetoric which makes usual antiwar stuff so hard to swallow for average Americans, even when skeptical of government war propaganda.
Nader wasn't scheduled to arrive until after the parade, and Lonnie and I left before then. More people arrived as the parade began to form up, from caravans following Dallas and Austin rallies. News accounts claimed 800 to 1,000 marchers, though that seems high to me.
As we drove out through Crawford, which consists of a highway crossroads with a dozen buildings along the road, we spied a half dozen counter protesters with an American flag and pro-Bush signs. There were we support our troops and we support Bush banners on a couple of local stores, the largest of which looks like it does good business selling Crawford and Bush trinkets.
After shedding my GOP uniform down the road and digging into obligatory Texas road trip food chicken fried steak and Dairy Queen goodies at small towns on the trip back, Lonnie and I pondered ways to overcome the cultural divide between left, right and middle.
If the meat eating chili heads and vegan peaceniks sharing the Crawford park on March 20 were somehow able to share their common fears, disappointments, bewilderment and horror over the un-American doctrine of neo-imperialism in Iraq and elsewhere, those policies would soon be a dead letter.
Somehow the divide and conquer strategy of the War Party must be overcome. Perhaps my Republican presence in Crawford on March 20 was a small start.
Mike Holmes is a long time libertarian political activist and practicing CPA from Houston, Texas.
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